tomatic of its ephemeral reputation. Supposing the praise to be just, it represented the system, however fair and imposing it its first aspect, as vitally and mortally vulnerable (if at all vulnerable) in every point; and, accordingly, it was fast approaching to its dissolution before the death of its author. In Germany, at present, we are told, that a pure Kantian is scarcely to be found.* But there are many Semi-Kantians, and Anti-Kantians, as well as partisans of other schemes built out of the ruins of the Kantian philosophy.† "In fine," says a late author, "the Critique of Pure Reason, announced with pomp, received with fanaticism, disputed about with fury, after having accomplished the overthrow of the doctrines taught by Leibnitz and Wolff, could no longer support itself upon its own foundations, and has produced no permanent result, but divisions and enmities, and a general disgust at all systematical creeds." If this last effect has really resulted from it (of which some doubts may perhaps be entertained), it may be regarded as a favorable symptom of a sounder taste in matters of abstract science, than has ever yet prevailed in that country. §

To these details, I have only to add a remark of Dégérando's, which I have found amply confirmed within

* On this subject, see Dégérando, Tom. II. p. 333. † See Dégérando, and De Bonald.

The words in the original are, “ Un dégoût générale de toute doctrine." But as the same word doctrine is, in a former part of the same sentence, applied to the systems of Leibnitz and of Wolff, I have little doubt, that, in substituting for doctrine the phrase systematical creeds, I have faithfully rendered the meaning of my author. (See Recherches Philosophiques, par M. de Bonald, Tom. I. pp. 43, 44.

§ The passion of the Germans for Systems is a striking feature in their literary taste, and is sufficient of itself to show, that they have not yet passed their noviciate in philosophy. "To all such," says Mr. Maclaurin, " as have just notions of the Great Author of the universe, and of his admirable workmanship, all complete and finished systems must appear very suspicious." At the time when he wrote, such systems had not wholly lost their partisans in England; and the name of System continued to be a favorite title for a book even among writers of the highest reputation. Hence the System of Moral Philosophy by Hutcheson, and the Complete System of Optics by Smith, titles which, when compared with the subsequent progress of these two sciences, reflect some degree of ridicule upon their authors.

When this affectation of systematical method began, in consequence of the more enlarged views of philosophers, to give way to that aphoristical style so strongly recommended and so happily exemplified by Lord Bacon, we find some writers of the old school complaining of the innovation, in terms not unlike those in which the philosophy of the English has been censured by some German critics. "The best way," says Dr. Watts, " to learn any science, is to begin with a regular system. Now," he continues, "we deal much in essays, and unreasonably despise systematical learning; whereas our fathers had a just value for regularity and systems." Had Dr. Watts lived a few years later, I doubt not that his good sense would have led him to retract these hasty and inconsiderate decisions.

the circle of my own experience. It might furnish matter for some useful reflections, but I shall leave my readers to draw their own conclusions from it. "Another remarkable circumstance is, that the defence of the Kantians turned, in general, not upon the truth of the disputed proposition, but upon the right interpretation of their master's meaning, and that their reply to all objections has constantly begun and ended with these words, You have not understood us."

Of

Among the various schools which have emanated from that of Kant, those of Fichte and Schelling seem to have attracted among their countrymen the greatest number of proselytes. Of neither am I able to speak from my own knowledge; nor can I annex any distinct idea to the accounts which are given of their opinions by others. Fichte's speculations about the philosophical import of the pronoun I (Qu'est-ce que le moi? as Dégérando translates the question), I cannot make any thing. In some of his remarks, he approaches to the language of those Cartesians who, in the progress of their doubts, ended in absolute egoism; but the ego of Fichte has a creative power. It creates existence, and it creates science; two things (by the way) which, according to him, are one and the same. Even my own existence, he tells me, commences only with the reflex act, by which I think of the pure and primitive ego. On this identity of the intelligent ego and the existing ego (which Fichte expresses by the formula ego ego) all science ultimately rests.-But on this part of his metaphysics it would be idle to enlarge, as the author acknowledges, that it is not to be understood without the aid of a certain transcendental sense, the want of which is wholly irreparable; a singular admission enough (as Dégérando observes), on the part of those critical philosophers who have treated with so much contempt the appeal to Common Sense in the writings of some of their predecessors.†

"In the history of beings there are (according to

In order to avoid the intolerable awkwardness of such a phrase as the I, I have

substituted on this occasion the Latin pronoun for the English one.

Hist. Comparée, &c. Tome II. pp. 300, 301. See also the article FICHTE in this Supplement, [i. e. the Supplement to Encyclopædia Brittanica; to which this Dissertation was originally prefixed.]

Fichte) three grand epochs; the first belongs to the empire of chance; the second is the reign of nature; the third will be the epoch of the existence of God. For God does not exist yet; he only manifests himself as preparing to exist. Nature tends to an apotheosis, and may be regarded as a sort of divinity in the germ." *

The account given by Madame de Staël of this part of Fichte's system is considerably different: "He was heard to say, upon one occasion, that in his next lecture he was going to create God,'-an expression which, not without reason, gave general offence. His meaning was, that he intended to show how the idea of God arose and unfolded itself in the mind of man." + How far this apology is well-founded, I am not competent to judge.

The system of Schelling is, in the opinion of Dégérando, but an extension of that of Fichte; connecting with it a sort of Spinozism grafted on Idealism. In considering the primitive ego as the source of all reality as well as of all science, and in thus transporting the mind into an intellectual region, inaccessible to men possessed only of the ordinary number of senses, both agree; and to this vein of transcendental mysticism may probably be. ascribed the extraordinary enthusiasm with which their doctrines appear to have been received by the German youth. Since the time when Dégérando wrote, a new and very unexpected revolution is said to have taken

Hist. Comparée, &c. Tome II. p. 314. The doctrine here ascribed to Fichte by Dégérando, although its unparalleled absurdity might well excite some doubts about the correctness of the historian, is not altogether a novelty in the history of philosophy. It is, in point of fact, nothing more than a return to those gross conceptions of the mind in the infancy of human reason, which Mr. Smith has so well described in the following passage: "In the first ages of the world, the seeming incoherence of the appearances of nature so confounded mankind, that they despaired of discovering in her operations any regular system. Their gods, though they were apprehended to interpose upon some particular occasions, were so far from being regarded as the creators of the world, that their origin was apprehended to be posterior to that of the world. The earth (according to Hesiod) was the first production of the chaos. The heavens arose out of the earth, and from both together, all the gods who afterwards inhabited them. Nor was this notion confined to the vulgar, and to those poets who seem to have recorded the vulgar theology. The same notion of the spontaneous origin of the world was embraced (as Aristotle tells us) by the early Pythagoreans. Mind, and Understanding, and consequently Deity, being the most perfect, were necessarily, according to them, the last productions of Nature. For, in all other things, what was most perfect, they observed, always came last: As in plants and animals, it is not the seed that is most perfect, but the complete animal, with all its members in the one; and the complete plant, with all its branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits, in the other."-Smith's Post. Essays on Philosophical Subjects, pp. 106, 107.

† De l'Allemagne. Tome III. p. 107. Londres, 1813.

place among Schelling's disciples; many of them, originally educated in the Protestant faith, having thrown themselves into the bosom of the Catholic church.

*

"The union of the faithful of this school forms an invisible church, which has adopted for its symbol and watch-word, the Virgin Mary; and hence rosaries are sometimes to be seen in the hands of those who reckon Spinoza among the greatest prophets." It is added, however, with respect to this invisible church, that "its members have embraced the Catholic religion, not as the true religion, but as the most poetical;" a thing not improbable among a people who have so strong a diposition to mingle together poetry and metaphysics in the same compositions. But it is painful to contemplate these sad aberrations of human reason; nor would I have dwelt on them so long as I have done, had I not been anxious to convey to my readers a general, but I trust not unfaithful, idea of the style and spirit of a philosophy, which, within the short period of our recollection, rose, flourished, and fell; and which, in every stage of its history, furnished employment to the talents of some of the most learned and able of our contemporaries.‡

The space which I have allotted to Kant has so far exceeded what I intended he should occupy, that I must pass over the names of many of his countrymen much more worthy of public attention. In the account given

See a paper by M. G. Schweighäuser in the London Monthly Magazine for 1804, p. 207.

"Aussi les Allemands mêlent ils trop souvent la Métaphysique à la Poésie." (Allemagne, Vol. III. p. 133.) "Nothing," says Mr. Hume, "is more dangerous to reason than the flights of imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies may, in this respect, be compared to those angels, whom the Scripture represents as covering their eyes with their wings." (Treatise of Human Nature, Vol. I. p. 464.)

According to a French writer, who appears to have resided many years in Germany, and who has enlivened a short Essay on the Elements of Philosophy with many curious historical details concerning Kant and his successors,-both Fichte and Schelling owed much of their reputation to the uncommon eloquence displayed in their academical lectures: "Cette doctrine sortait de la bouche de Fichte, révêtu de ces ornemens qui donnent la jeunesse, la beauté, et la force au discours. On ne se lassait point en l'écoutant."

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Of Schelling he expresses himself thus: Schelling, appélé à l'université de Wirzbourg, y attira par sa réputation un concours nombreux d'auditeurs, qu'il enchaînait à ses leçons par la richesse de sa diction et par l'étendue de ses connoissances. De là, il est venu à Munich, où je le revis en 1813. On dit qu'il a embrassé la religion Catholique." (Essai sur les Elémens de la Philosophie, par G. Gley, Principal au Collège d'Alençon. Paris, 1817, pp. 138, 152.)

by Dégérando of the opponents to the Kantian system, some remarks are quoted from different writers, which convey a very favorable idea of the works from which they are borrowed. Among these I would more particularly distinguish those ascribed to Jacobi and to Reinhold. In the Memoirs, too, of the Berlin Academy, where (as Dégérando justly observes,) the philosophy of Locke found an asylum, while banished from the rest of Germany, there is a considerable number of metaphysical articles of the highest merit.* Nor must I omit to mention the contributions to this science by the University of Goettingen; more especially on questions connected with the philosophy of language. I have great pleasure, also, in acknowledging the entertainment I have received, and the lights I have borrowed from the learned labors of Meiners and of Herder; but none of these are so closely connected with the history of metaphysics as to justify me in entering into particular details with respect to them. I am ashamed to say, that, in Great Britain, the only one of these names which has been much talked of, is that of Kant, a circumstance which, I trust, will apologize for the length to which the foregoing observations have extended.†

The only other country of Europe from which any contributions to metaphysical philosophy could be reasonably looked for, during the eighteenth century, is Italy; and to this particular branch of science I do not know that any Italian of much celebrity has, in these later times, turned his attention. The metaphysical works of Cardinal Gerdil (a native of Savoy) are extolled by some French writers; but none of them have ever happened to fall in my way. ‡ At a more recent period, Genovesi,

* In a volume of this collection, (for the year 1797,) which happens to be now lying before me, there are three profound and important Memoirs on Probabilities, by M. Prévost and M. l'Huillier. Neither of these authors, I am aware, is of German origin, but as the Academy of Berlin has had the merit to bring their papers before the public, I could not omit this opportunity of recommending them to the attention of my readers. To a very important observation made by MM. Prévost and l'Huillier, which has been the subject of some dispute, I am happy to avail myself of the same opportunity to express my unqualified assent. (See pp. 15 and 31 of the memoirs belonging to the Classe de Philosophie Spéculative.) † See Note (U u.)

His two first publications, which were directed against the philosophy of Locke, (if we may judge from their titles,) are not likely, in the present times, to excite any