has written for another man, and this reader, thinkers, does a frantic exaggeration in senti after long provocation, quarrels with him ment, a crude fever-dream in opinion, any finally, and quits him as a mystic. where break forth, it is directly labelled as Nevertheless, after all these limitations, we Kantism; and the moon-struck speculator is, shall not hesitate to admit, that there is in the for the time, silenced and put to shame by this German mind a tendency to mysticism, pro- epithet. For often, in such circles, Kant's perly so called; as perhaps there is, unless Philosophy is not only an absurdity, but a carefully guarded against, in all minds tem-wickedness and a horror; the pious and peacepered like theirs. It is a fault; but one hardly ful sage of Königsberg passes for a sort of separable from the excellencies we admire Necromancer and Blackartist in Metaphysics; most in them. A simple, tender, and devout his doctrine is a region of boundless baleful nature, seized by some touch of divine Truth, gloom, too cunningly broken here and there by and of this perhaps under some rude enough splendours of unholy fire; spectres and tempt symbol, is wrapt with it into a whirlwind of ing demons people it; and, hovering over unutterable thoughts; wild gleams of splendour fathomless abysses, hang gay and gorgeous dart to and fro in the eye of the seer, but the air-castles, into which the hapless traveller is vision will not abide with him, and yet he feels seduced to enter, and so sinks to rise no more. that its light is light from heaven, and precious If any thing in the history of Philosophy to him beyond all price. A simple nature, a could surprise us, it might well be this. PerGeorge Fox, or a Jacob Boehme, ignorant of haps among all the metaphysical writers of all the ways of men, of the dialect in which the eighteenth century, including Hume and they speak, or the forms by which they think, Hartley themselves, there is not one that so is labouring with a poetic, a religious idea, ill meets the conditions of a mystic as this which, like all such ideas, must express itself same Immanuel Kant. A quit, vigilant, clearby word and act, or consume the heart it dwells sighted man, who had become distinguished to in. Yet how shall he speak, how shall he pour the world in mathematics before he attempted forth into other souls, that of which his own philosophy; who, in his writings generally, on soul is full even to bursting? He cannot this and other subjects, is perhaps characterspeak to us; he knows not our state, and can-ized by no quality so much as precisely by the not make known to us his own. His words are an inexplicable rhapsody, a speech in an unknown tongue. Whether there is meaning in it to the speaker himself, and how much or how true, we shall never ascertain; for it is not in the language of men, but of one man who had not learned the language of men; and, with himself, the key to its full interpretation was lost from amongst us. These are mystics; men who either know not clearly their own meaning, or at least cannot put it forth in formulas | of thought, whereby others, with whatever difficulty, may apprehend it. Was their meaning clear to themselves, gleams of it will yet shine through, how ignorantly and unconsciously soever it may have been delivered; was it still wavering and obscure, no science could have delivered it wisely. In either case, much more in the last, they merit and obtain the name of mystics. To scoffers they are a ready and cheap prey; but sober persons understand that pure evil is as unknown in this lower Universe as pure good; and that even in mys-is not this the case also with Chemistry, and tics, of an honest and deep-feeling heart, there may be much to reverence, and of the rest more to pity than to mock.

But it is not to apologize for Boehme, or Novalis, or the school of Theosophus and Flood, that we have here undertaken. Neither is it on such persons that the charge of mysticism brought against the Germans mainly rests. Boehme is little known among us; Novalis, much as he deserves knowing, not at all; nor is it understood, that, in their own country, these men rank higher than they do, or might do, with ourselves. The chief mystics in Germany, it would appear, are the Transcendental Philosophers, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling! With these is the chosen seat of mysticism, these are its "tenebrific constellation," from which it "doth ray out darkness" over the earth. Among a certain class of

distinctness of his conceptions, and the sequence and iron strictness with which he reasons. To our own minds, in the little that we know of him, he has more than once recalled Father Boscovich in Natural Philosophy; so piercing, yet so sure; so concise, so still, se simple; with such clearness and composure does he mould the complicacy of his subject and so firm, sharp, and definite are the results he evolves from it. Right or wrong as his hypothesis may be, no one that knows him will suspect that he himself had not seen it, and seen over it; had not meditated it with calmness and deep thought, and studied throughout to expound it with scientific rigor. Neither, as we often hear, is there any superhuman faculty required to follow him. We venture to assure such of our readers as are in any measure used to metaphysical study, that the Kri ik der reinen Vernunft is by no means the hardest task they have tried. It is true, there is an unknown and forbidding terminology to be mastered; but

Astronomy, and all other sciences that deserve the name of science? It is true, a careless or unprepared reader will find Kant's writing a riddle; but will a reader of this sort make much of Newton's Principia, or D'Alembert's Calculus of Variations? He will make nothing of them; perhaps less than nothing; for if he trust to his own judgment, he will pronounce them madness. Yet if the Philosophy of Mind is any philosophy at all, Physics and Mathematics must be plain subjects compared with it. But these latter are happy, not only in the fixedness and simplicity of their methods, but also in the universal acknowledgment of their

We have heard that the Latin Translation of his works is unintelligible, the Translator himself not hav. ing understood it; also that Villers is no safe glide in the study of him. Neither Villers nor those Latin works are known to us.

on the footing which belongs to it, and where thenceforth it must continue. Respecting the degrees of truth and error which will then be found to exist in Kant's system, or in the modifications it has since received, and is still receiving, we desire to be understood as making no estimate, and little qualified to make any. We would have it studied and known, on general grounds; because even the errors of such men are instructive; and because, without a large admixture of truth, no error can exist under such combinations, and become diffused so widely. To judge of it we pretend not: we are still inquirers in the mere outskirts of the matter; and it is but inquiry that we wish to see promoted.

or that any Philosophy whatever can be built on such a basis; nay, they go the length of asserting, that such an appeal even to the universal persuasions of mankind, gather them with what precautions you may, amounts to a total abdication of Philosophy, strictly so called, and renders not only its further progress, but its very existence, impossible. What, they would say, have the persuasions, or instinetive beliefs, or whatever they are called, of men, to do in this matter? Is it not the object of Philosophy to enlighten, and rectify, and many times directly contradict these very beliefs. Take, for instance, the voice of all generations of men on the subject of Astronomy. Will there, out of any age or climate, be one dissentient against the fact of the Sun's going round the Earth? Can any evidence be clearer, is there any persuasion more universal, any belief more instinctive? And yet the sun moves no hairs breadth; but stands in the centre of his Planets, let us vote as we please. So is it like

pendent existence of Matter, and, in general, with our whole argument against Hume; whose reasonings, from the premises admitted both by him and us, the Germans affirm to be rigorously consistent and legitimate, and, on these premises, altogether uncontroverted and incontrovertible. British Philosophy, since the time of Hume, appears to them nothing more than a "laborious and unsuccessful striving to build dike after dike in front of our Churches and Judgment-halls, and so turn back from them the deluge of Skepticism, with which that extraordinary writer overflowed us, and still threatens to destroy whatever we value most.” This is Schlegel's meaning: his words are not before us.

Meanwhile, as an advance or first step towards this, we may state something of what has most struck ourselves as characterizing Kant's system; as distinguishing it from every other known to us; and chiefly from the Metaphysical philosophy which is taught in Britain, or rather which was taught; for, on look-wise with our evidence for an external indeing round, we see not that there is any such Philosophy in existence at the present day. The Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke and all his followers, both of the French, and English or Scotch school, commences from within, and proceeds outwards; instead of commencing from without, and, with various precautions and hesitations, endeavouring to proceed inwards. The ultimate aim of all Philosophy must be to interpret appearances, from the given symbol to ascertain the thing. Now the first step towards this, the aim of what may be called Primary or Critical Philosophy, must be to find some indubitable principle; to fix ourselves on some unchangeable basis: to discover what the Germans call the Urwahr, the Primitive Truth, the necessarily, absolutely, and eternally True. This necessarily True, this absolute basis of Truth, Locke silently, and Reid and his followers with more tumult, find in a certain modified Experience, and evidence of Sense, in the universal and natural persuasions of all men. Not so the Germans: they deny that there is here any absolute Truth,

The Germans take up the matter differently, and would assail Hume, not in his outworks but in the centre of his citadel. They deny, his first principle, that Sense is the only inlet of Knowledge, that Experience is the primary ground of Belief. Their Primitive Truth, however, they seek, not historically and by experiment, in the universal persuasions of men, but by intuition, in the deepest and purest *The name of Dugald Stewart is a name venerable nature of Man. Instead of attempting, which to all Europe, and to none more dear and venerable than they consider vain, to prove the existence of to ourselves. Nevertheless his writings are not a phi- God, Virtue, an immaterial Soul, by inferences losophy, but a making ready for one. He does not enter on the field to till it, he only encompasses it with fences, drawn, as the conclusion of all Philosophy, invites cultivators, and drives away intruders; often from the world of sense, they find these things (fallen on evil days) he is reduced to long arguments with passers by, to prove that it is a field, that this so written as the beginning of all Philosophy, in highly prized domain of his is, in truth, soil and sub- obscured but ineffaceable characters, within stance, not clouds and shadow. We regard his discussions on the nature of philosophic Language, and his unour inmost being; and themselves first affordwearied efforts to set forth and guard against its fallacies, ing any certainty and clear meaning to that as worthy of all acknowledgment; as indeed forming very world of sense, by which we endeavour the greatest, perhaps the only true improvement, which Philosophy has received among us in our age. It is only to demonstrate them. God is, nay, alone is, to a superficial observer that the import of these discus- for with like emphasis we cannot say that any sions can seem trivial: rightly understood they give suf- thing else is. This is the Absolute, the Primi ficient and final answer to Hartley's and Darwin's and all other possible forms of Materialism, the grand Idola- tively True, which the philosopher seeks try, as we may rightly call it, by which, in all times, the Endeavouring, by logical argument, to prove true Worship, that of the invisible, has been polluted the existence of God, a Kantist might say. and withstood. Mr. Stewart has written warmly against would be like taking out a candle to look for Kantist he himself essentially is. Has not the whole the sun; nay, gaze steadily into your candle. scope of his labours been to reconcile what a Kantist light, and the sun himself may be invisible

Kant; but it would surprise him to find how much of a

would call his Understanding with his Reason; a noble, but still too fruitless effort to overarch the chasm which, for all minds but his own, separates his Science from his Religion? We regard the assiduous study of be Works, as the best preparation of studying those of kaut.

To open the inward eye to the sight of this Primitively True; or, rather, we might call it, to clear off the Obscurations of sense, which eclipse this truth within us, so that we may

see it, and believe it not only to be true, but the foundation and essence of all other truth, may, in such language as we are here using, be said to be the problem of Critical Philosophy.

more certain that I myself exist, than that God exists, infinite, eternal, invisible, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. To discern these truths is the province of Reason, which therefore is to be cultivated as the highest faculty in man. Not by logic and argument does it work; yet surely and clearly may it be taught to work: and its domain lies in that higher region whither logic and argument cannot reach; in that holier region, where Poetry, and Virtue, and Divinity abide, in whose presence Understanding wavers and recoils, dazzled into utter darkness by that

Will the Kantists forgive us for the loose and popular manner in which we must here speak of these things, to bring them in any measure before the eyes of our readers ?—It may illustrate this distinction still farther, if we say, that, in the opinion of a Kantist, the French are of all European nations the most gifted with Understanding, and the most desti tute of Reason;* that David Hume had no forecast of this latter, and that Shakspeare and Luther dwelt perennially in its purest sphere.

In this point of view, Kant's system may be thought to have a remote affinity to those of Malebranche and Descartes. But if they in some measure agree as to their aim, there is the widest difference as to the means. We state what to ourselves has long appeared the grand characteristic of Kant's Philosophy, when we mention his distinction, seldom perhaps expressed so broadly, but uniformly im-"sea of light," at once the fountain and the plied, between Understanding and Reason termination of all true knowledge. (Verstand and Vernunft). To most of our readers this may seem a distinction without a difference; nevertheless, to the Kantists it is by no means such. They believe that both Understanding and Reason are organs, or rather, we should say, modes of operation, by which the mind discovers truth; but they think that their manner of proceeding is essentially different: that their provinces are separable and distinguishable, nay, that it is of the last importance to separate and distinguish them. Reason, the Kantists say, is of a higher nature than Understanding; it works by more subtle methods, on higher objects, and requires a far finer culture for its development, indeed in many men it is never developed at all; but its results are no less certain, nay, rather, they are much more so; for Reason discerns Truth itself, the absolutely and primitively True; while Understanding discerns only relations, and cannot decide without if. The proper province of Understand ing is all, strictly speaking, real, practical, and material knowledge, Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy, the adaptation of means to ends in the whole business of life. In this province it is the strength and universal implement of the mind: an indispensable servant, without which, indeed, existence itself would be impossible. Let it not step beyond this province, however, not usurp the province of Reason, which it is appointed to obey, and cannot rule over without ruin to the whole spiritual man. Should Understanding attempt to prove the existence of God, it ends, if thorough-going and consistent with itself, in Atheism, or a faint possible Theism, which scarcely differs from this: should it speculate of Virtue, it ends in Utility, making Prudence and a sufficiently cunning love of Self the highest good. Consult Understanding about the Beauty of Poetry, and it asks, where is this Beauty or discovers it at length in rhythms and fitnesses, and male and female rhymes. Witness also its everlasting paradoxes on Necessity and the Freedom of the Will; its ominous silence on the end and meaning of man; and the enigma which, under such inspection, the whole purport of existence becomes.

Nevertheless, say the Kantists, there is a truth in these things. Virtue is Virtue, and not prudence; not less surely than the angle In a semicircle is a right angle, and no trapezium: Shakspeare is a Poet, and Boileau is DOLE think of it as you may: Neither is it

Of the vast, nay, in these days boundless, importance of this distinction, could it be scientifically established, we need remind no thinking man. For the rest, far be it from the reader to suppose that this same Reason is but a new appearance, under another name, of our own old "Wholesome Prejudice," so well known to most of us! Prejudice, wholesome or unwholesome, is a personage for whom the German Philosophers disclaim all shadow of respect; nor do the vehement among them hide their deep disdain for all and sundry who fight under her flag. Truth is to be loved purely and solely because it is true. With moral, political, religious considerations, high and dear as they may otherwise be, the Philosopher, as such, has no concern. To look at them would but perplex him, and distract his vision from the task in his hands. Calmly he constructs his theorem, as the Geometer does his, without hope or fear, save that he may or may not find the solution; and stands in the middle, by the one, it may be, accused as an Infidel, by the other as an Enthusiast and a Mystic, till the tumult ceases, and what was true is and continues true to the end of all time.

Such are some of the high and momentous questions treated of, by calm, earnest, and deeply meditative men, in this system of Philosophy, which to the wiser minds among us is still unknown, and by the unwiser is spoken of and regarded as their nature requires. The profoundness, subtilty, extent of investigation, which the answer of these questions presupposes, need not be farther pointed out. With the truth or falsehood of the system, we have here, as already stated, no concern; our aim has been, so far as might be done, to show it as it appeared to us; and to ask such of our readers as pursue these studies, whether this also

Academischen Studium, pp. 105-111,) in terms which we Schelling has said as much or more, (Methode des could wish we had space to transcribe.

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF WERNER.

[FOREIGN REVIEW, 1823.]

Ir the charm of fame consisted, as Horace | with the finger, and having it said, This is he!" has mistakenly declared, "in being pointed at

1. Lebens-Abriss Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werners. Von dem Herausgeber von Hofmanns Leban und NachLass.) Sketch of the Life of Frederic Ludwig Zacharias Werner. By the Editor of "Hoffmann's Life and Re-stronger light than naturally belonged to him, mains.") Berlin, 1823.