The object of this series is to furnish, in as popular a form as possible, a course of discipline for those who are beginning the study of philosophy. Strictly popular, in the sense the word is used—i. e. signifying that which holds fast to the ordinary consciousness of men, and does not take flights beyond—I am well aware, no philosophy can be. The nearest approach to it that can be made, consists in starting from the common external views, and drawing them into the speculative, step by step. For this purpose the method of definitions and axioms, with deductions therefrom, as employed by Spinoza, is more appropriate at first, and afterwards a gradual approach to the Dialectic, or true philosophic method. In the mathematical method (that of Spinoza just alluded to) the content may be speculative, but its form, never. Hence the student of philosophy needs only to turn his attention to the content at first; when that becomes in a 58measure familiar, he can then the more readily pass over to the true form of the speculative content, and thus achieve complete insight. A course of discipline in the speculative content, though under an inadequate form, would make a grand preparation for the study of Hegel or Plato; while a study of these, or, in short, of any writers who employ speculative methods in treating speculative content—a study of these without previous acquaintance with the content is well nigh fruitless. One needs only to read the comments of translators of Plato upon his speculative passages, or the prevailing verdicts upon Hegel, to be satisfied on this point.

The course that I shall here present will embody my own experience, to a great extent, in the chronological order of its development. Each lesson will endeavor to present an aperçu derived from some great philosopher. Those coming later will presuppose the earlier ones, and frequently throw new light upon them.

As one who undertakes the manufacture of an elegant piece of furniture needs carefully elaborated tools for that end, so must the thinker who wishes to comprehend the universe be equipped with the tools of thought, or else he will come off as poorly as he who should undertake to make a carved mahogany chair with no tools except his teeth and finger nails. What complicated machinery is required to transmute the rough ores into an American watch! And yet how common is the delusion that no elaboration of tools of thought is required to enable the commonest mind to manipulate the highest subjects of investigation. The alchemy that turned base metal into gold is only a symbol of that cunning alchemy of thought that by means of the philosopher’s stone (scientific method) dissolves the base facts of experience into universal truths.

The uninitiated regards the philosophic treatment of a theme as difficult solely by reason of its technical terms. “If I only understood your use of words, I think I should find no difficulty in your thought.” He supposes that under those bizarre terms there lurks only the meaning that he and others put into ordinary phrases. He does not seem to think that the concepts likewise are new. It is just as though an Indian were to say to the carpenter, “I could make as good work as you, if I only had the secret of using my finger-nails and teeth as you do the plane and saw.” Speculative philosophy—it cannot be too early inculcated—does not “conceal under cumbrous terminology views which men ordinarily hold.” The ordinary reflection would say that Being is the ground of thought, while speculative philosophy would say that thought is the ground of Being; whether of other being, or of itself as being—for it is causa sui.

Let us now address ourselves to the task of elaborating our technique—the tools of thought—and see what new worlds become accessible through our mental telescopes and microscopes, our analytical scalpels and psychological plummets.

I.—A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI.

A priori, as applied to knowledge, signifies that which belongs to the nature of the mind itself. Knowledge which is before experience, or not dependent on it, is a priori.

A posteriori or empirical knowledge is derived from experience.

A criterion to be applied in order to test the application of these categories to any knowledge in question, is to be found in universality and necessity. If the truth expressed has universal and necessary validity it must be a priori, for it could not have been derived from experience. Of empirical knowledge we can only say: “It is true so far as experience has extended.” Of a priori knowledge, on the contrary, we affirm: “It is universally and necessarily true and no experience of its opposite can possibly occur; from the very nature of things it must be so.”

II.—ANALYTICAL AND SYNTHETICAL.

A judgment which, in the predicate, adds nothing new to the subject, is said to be analytical, as e. g. “Horse is an animal;”—the concept “animal” is already contained in that of “horse.”

Synthetical judgments, on the contrary, 59add in the predicate something new to the conception of the subject, as e. g. “This rose is red,” or “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line;”—in the first judgment we have “red” added to the general concept “rose;” while in the second example we have straightness, which is quality, added to shortest, which is quantity.

III.—APODEICTICAL.

Omitting the consideration of a posteriori knowledge for the present, let us investigate the a priori in order to learn something of the constitution of the intelligence which knows—always a proper subject for philosophy. Since, moreover, the a priori analytical (“A horse is an animal”) adds nothing to our knowledge, we may confine ourselves, as Kant does, to a priori synthetical knowledge. The axioms of mathematics are of this character. They are universal and necessary in their application, and we know this without making a single practical experiment. “Only one straight line can be drawn between two points,” or the proposition: “The sum of the three angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles,”—these are true in all possible experiences, and hence transcend any actual experience. Take any a posteriori judgment, e. g. “All bodies are heavy,” and we see at once that it implies the restriction, “So far as we have experienced,” or else is a mere analytical judgment. The universal and necessary is sometimes called the apodeictical. The conception of the apodeictical lies at the basis of all true philosophical thinking. He who does not distinguish between apodeictic and contingent judgments must pause here until he can do so.

IV. SPACE AND TIME.

In order to give a more exhaustive application to our technique, let us seek the universal conditions of experience. The mathematical truths that we quoted relate to Space, and similar ones relate to Time. No experience would be possible without presupposing Time and Space as its logical condition. Indeed, we should never conceive our sensations to have an origin outside of ourselves and in distinct objects, unless we had the conception of Space a priori by which to render it possible. Instead, therefore, of our being able to generalize particular experiences, and collect therefrom the idea of Space and Time in general, we must have added the idea of Space and Time to our sensation before it could possibly become an experience at all. This becomes more clear when we recur to the apodeictic nature of Space and Time. Time and Space are thought as infinites, i. e. they can only be limited by themselves, and hence are universally continuous. But no such conception as infinite can be derived analytically from an object of experience, for it does not contain it. All objects of experience must be within Time and Space, and not vice versa. All that is limited in extent and duration presupposes Time and Space as its logical condition, and this we know, not from the senses but from the constitution of Reason itself. “The third side of a triangle is less than the sum of the two other sides.” This we never measured, and yet we are certain that we cannot be mistaken about it. It is so in all triangles, present, past, future, actual, or possible. If this was an inference a posteriori, we could only say: “It has been found to be so in all cases that have been measured and reported to us.”

V. MIND.

Mind has a certain a priori constitution; this is our inference. It must be so, or else we could never have any experience whatever. It is the only way in which the possibility of apodeictic knowledge can be accounted for. What I do not get from without I must get from within, if I have it at all. Mind, it would seem from this, cannot be, according to its nature, a finite affair—a thing with properties. Were it limited in Time or Space, it could never (without transcending itself) conceive Time and Space as universally continuous or infinite. Mind is not within Time and Space, it is as universal and necessary as the apodeictic judgments it forms, and hence it is the substantial essence of all that exists. Time and Space are the logical conditions of finite existences, and Mind is 60the logical condition of Time and Space. Hence it is ridiculous to speak of my mind and your mind, for mind is rather the universal substrate of all individuality than owned by any particular individual.

These results are so startling to the one who first begins to think, that he is tempted to reject the whole. If he does not do this, but scrutinizes the whole fabric keenly, he will discover what he supposes to be fallacies. We cannot anticipate the answer to his objections here, for his objections arise from his inability to distinguish between his imagination and his thinking and this must be treated of in the next chapter. Here, we can only interpose an earnest request to the reader to persevere and thoroughly refute the whole argument before he leaves it. But this is only one and the most elementary position from which the philosophic traveller sees the Eternal Verities. Every perfect analysis—no matter what the subject be—will bring us to the same result, though the degrees of concreteness will vary,—some leaving the solution in an abstract and vague form,—others again arriving at a complete and satisfactory view of the matter in detail.

SEED LIFE. BY E. V.

Ah! woe for the endless stirring,

The hunger for air and light,

The fire of the blazing noonday

Wrapped round in a chilling night!

The muffled throb of an instinct

That is kin to the mystic To Be;

Strong muscles, cut with their fetters,

As they writhe with claim to be free.

A voice that cries out in the silence,

And is choked in a stifling air;

Arms full of an endless reaching,

While the “Nay” stands everywhere.

The burning of conscious selfhood,

That fights with pitiless fate!

God grant that deliverance stay not,

Till it come at last too late;

Till the crushed out instinct waver,

And fainter and fainter grow,

And by suicide, through unusing,

Seek freedom from its woe.

Oh! despair of constant losing

The life that is clutched in vain!

Is it death or a joyous growing

That shall put an end to pain?

A DIALOGUE ON IMMORTALITY. BY ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. (Translated from the German, by Chas. L. Bernays.)

Philalethes.—I could tell you that, after your death, you will be what you were previous to your birth; I could tell you that we are never born, and that we only seem to die—that we have always been precisely the same that we are now, and that we shall always remain the same—that Time is the apparatus which prevents us from being aware of all this; I could tell you that our consciousness stands always in the centre of Time—never on one of its termini; and that any one among us, therefore, has the immovable centre of the whole infinite Time in himself. I then could tell you that those who, by that knowledge, are assured that the present time always originates in ourselves, can never doubt the indestructibility of their own essence.

Thrasymachus.—All of that is too long and too ambiguous for me. Tell me, briefly, what I shall be after death.

Phil.—All and nothing.

Thras.—There we are! Instead of a solution to the problem you give me a contradiction; that is an old trick.

Phil.—To answer transcendental questions in language that is only made for immanent perceptions, may in fact lead us into contradictions.

Thras.—What do you mean by “transcendental” and “immanent” perceptions?

Phil.—Well! Transcendental perception is rather the knowledge, which, by exceeding any possibility of experience, tends to discover the essence of things as they are by themselves; immanent perception it is, if it keeps inside of the limits of experience. In this case, it can only speak of appearances. You, as an individual, end with your death. Yet individuality is not your true and final essence, but only a mere appearance of it. It is not the thing in itself, but only its appearance, established in the form of time, thereby having a beginning and an end. That which is essential in you, knows neither of beginning nor ending, nor of Time itself; it knows no limits such as belong to a given individuality, but exists in all and in each. In the first sense, therefore, you will become nothing after your death; in the second sense, you are and remain all. For that reason I said you would be all and nothing. You desired a short answer, and I believe that hardly a more correct answer could be given briefly. No wonder, too, that it contains a contradiction; for your life is in Time, while your immortality is in Eternity.

Thras.—Without the continuation of my individuality, I would not give a farthing for all your “immortality.”

Phil.—Perhaps you could have it even cheaper. Suppose that I warrant to you the continuation of your individuality, but under the condition that a perfectly unconscious slumber of death for three months should precede its resuscitation.

Thras.—Well, I accept the condition.

Phil.—Now, in an absolutely unconscious condition, we have no measure of time; hence it is perfectly indifferent whether, whilst we lie asleep in death in the unconscious world, three months or ten thousand years are passing away. We do not know either of the one or of the other, and have to accept some one’s word with regard to the duration of our sleep, when we awake. Hence it is indifferent to you whether your individuality is given back to you after three months or after ten thousand years.

Thras.—That I cannot deny.

Phil.—Now, suppose that after ten thousand years, one had forgotten to awake you at all, then I believe that the long, long state of non-being would become so habitual to you that your misfortune could hardly be very great. Certain it is, any way, that you would know nothing of it; nay, you would even console yourself very easily, if you were aware that the secret mechanism which now keeps 62your actual appearance in motion, had not ceased during all the ten thousand years for a single moment to establish and to move other beings of the same kind.

Thras.—In that manner you mean to cheat me out of my individuality, do you? I will not be fooled in that way. I have bargained for the continuation of my individuality, and none of your motives can console me for the loss of that; I have it at heart, and I never will abandon it.

Phil.—It seems that you hold individuality to be so noble, so perfect, so incomparable, that there can be nothing superior to it; you therefore would not like to exchange it for another one, though in that, you could live with greater ease and perfection.

Thras.—Let my individuality be as it may, it is always myself. It is I—I myself—who want to be. That is the individuality which I insist upon, and not such a one as needs argument to convince me that it may be my own or a better one.

Phil.—Only look about you! That which cries out—“I, I myself, wish to exist”—that is not yourself alone, but all that has the least vestige of consciousness. Hence this desire of yours, is just that which is not individual, but common rather to all without exception; it does not originate in individuality, but in the very nature of existence itself; it is essential to anybody who lives, nay, it is that through which it is at all; it seems to belong only to the individual because it can become conscious only in the individual. What cries in us so loud for existence, does so only through the mediation of the individual; immediately and essentially it is the will to exist or to live, and this will is one and the same in all of us. Our existence being only the free work of the will, existence can never fail to belong to it, as far, at least, as that eternally dissatisfied will, can be satisfied. The individualities are indifferent to the will; it never speaks of them; though it seems to the individual, who, in himself is the immediate percipient of it, as if it spoke only of his own individuality. The consequence is, that the individual cares for his own existence with so great anxiety, and that he thereby secures the preservation of his kind. Hence it follows that individuality is no perfection, but rather a restriction or imperfection; to get rid of it is not a loss but a gain. Hence, if you would not appear at once childish and ridiculous, you should abandon that care for mere individuality; for childish and ridiculous it will appear when you perceive your own essence to be the universal will to live.

Thras.—You yourself and all philosophers are childish and ridiculous, and in fact it is only for a momentary diversion that a man of good common sense ever consents to squander away an idle hour with the like of you. I leave your talk for weightier matters.

[The reader will perceive by the positions here assumed that Schopenhauer has a truly speculative stand-point; that he holds self-determination to be the only substantial (or abiding) reality. But while Aristotle and those like him have seized this more definitely as the self-conscious thinking, it is evident that Schopenhauer seizes it only from its immediate side, i. e. as the will. On this account he meets with some difficulty in solving the problem of immortality, and leaves the question of conscious identity hereafter, not a little obscure. Hegel, on the contrary, for whom Schopenhauer everywhere evinces a hearty contempt, does not leave the individual in any doubt as to his destiny, but shows how individuality and universality coincide in self-consciousness, so that the desire for eternal existence is fully satisfied. This is the legitimate result that Philalethes arrives at in his last speech, when he makes the individuality a product of the will; for if the will is the essential that he holds it to be, and the product of its activity is individuality, of course individuality belongs eternally to it. At the close of his Philosophy of Nature, (Encyclopædia, vol. II.,) Hegel shows how death which follows life in the mere animal—and in man as mere animal—enters consciousness as one of its necessary elements, and hence does not stand opposed to it as it does to animal life. Conscious being (Spirit or Mind as it may be called,) is therefore immortal because it contains already, within itself, its limits or determinations, and thus cannot, like finite things, encounter dissolution through external ones.—Ed.]

GOETHE’S THEORY OF COLORS. From an exposition given before the St. Louis Philosophical Society, Nov. 2nd, 1866.

I.—Color arises through the reciprocal action of light and darkness.

(a.) When a light object is seen through a medium that dims it, it appears of different degrees of yellow; if the medium is dark or dense, the color is orange, or approaches red. Examples: the sun seen in the morning through a slightly hazy atmosphere appears yellow, but if the air is thick with mist or smoke the sun looks red.

(b.) On the other hand a dark object, seen through a medium slightly illuminated, looks blue. If the medium is very strongly illuminated, the blue approaches a light blue; if less so, then indigo; if still less, the deep violet appears. Examples: a mountain situated at a great distance, from which very few rays of light come, looks blue, because we see it through a light medium, the air illuminated by the sun. The sky at high altitudes appears of a deep violet; at still higher ones, almost perfectly black; at lower ones, of a faint blue. Smoke—an illuminated medium—appears blue against a dark ground, but yellow or fiery against a light ground.

(c.) The process of bluing steel is a fine illustration of Goethe’s theory. The steel is polished so that it reflects light like a mirror. On placing it in the charcoal furnace a film of oxydization begins to form so that the light is reflected through this dimming medium; this gives a straw color. Then, as the film thickens, the color deepens, passing through red to blue and indigo.

(d.) The prism is the grand instrument in the experimental field of research into light. The current theory that light, when pure, is composed of seven colors, is derived from supposed actual verifications with this instrument. The Goethean explanation is by far the simplest, and, in the end, it propounds a question which the Newtonian theory cannot answer without admitting the truth of Goethe’s theory.

II.—The phenomenon of refraction is produced by interposing different transparent media between the luminous object and the illuminated one, in such a manner that there arises an apparent displacement of one of the objects as viewed from the other. By means of a prism the displacement is caused to lack uniformity; one part of the light image is displaced more than another part; several images, as it were, being formed with different degrees of displacement, so that they together make an image whose edges are blurred in the line of displacement. If the displacement were perfectly uniform, no color would arise, as is demonstrated by the achromatic prism or lens. The difference of degrees of refraction causes the elongation of the image into a spectrum, and hence a mingling of the edges of the image with the outlying dark surface of the wall, (which dark surface is essential to the production of the ordinary spectrum). Its rationale is the following:

(a) The light image refracted by the prism is extended over the dark on one side, while the dark on the other side is extended over it.

(b) The bright over the dark produces the blue in different degrees. The side nearest the dark being the deepest or violet, and the side nearest the light image being the lightest blue.

(c) On the other side, the dark over light produces yellow in different degrees; nearest the dark we have the deepest color, (orange approaching to red) and on the side nearest the light, the light yellow or saffron tint.

(d) If the image is large and but little refracted (as with a water prism) there will appear between the two opposite colored edges a colorless image, proving that the colors arise from the mingling of the light and dark edges, and not from any peculiar property of the prism which should “decompose the ray of light,” as the current theory expresses it. If the latter theory 64were correct the decomposition would be throughout, and the whole image be colored.

(e) If the image is a small one, or it is very strongly refracted, the colored edges come together in the middle, and the mingling of the light yellow with the light blue produces green—a new color which did not appear so long as the light ground appeared in the middle.

(f) If the refraction is still stronger, the edges of the opposite colors lap still more, and the green vanishes. The Newtonian theory cannot explain this, but it is to be expected according to Goethe’s theory.

(g) According to Goethe’s theory, if the object were a dark one instead of a light one, and were refracted on a light surface, the order of colors would be reversed on each edge of the image. This is the same experiment as one makes by looking through a prism at the bar of a window appearing against the sky. Where in the light image we had the yellow colors we should now expect the blue, for now it is dark over light where before it was light over dark. So, also, where we had blue we should now have yellow. This experiment may be so conducted that the current doctrine that violet is refracted the most, and red the least, shall be refuted.

(h) This constitutes the experimentum crucis. If the prism be a large water prism, and a black strip be pasted across the middle of it, parallel with its axis, so that in the midst of the image a dark shadow intervenes, the spectrum appears inverted in the middle, so that the red is seen where the green would otherwise appear, and those rays supposed to be the least refrangible are found refracted the most.

(i) When the two colored edges do not meet in this latter experiment, we have blue, indigo, violet, as the order on one side; and on the other, orange, yellow, saffron; the deeper colors being next to the dark image. If the two colored edges come together the union of the orange with the violet produces the perfect red (called by Goethe “purpur”).

(j) The best method of making experiments is not the one that Newton employed—that of a dark room and a pencil of light—but it is better to look at dark and bright stripes on grounds of the opposite hue, or at the bars of a window, the prism being held in the hand of the investigator. In the Newtonian form of the experiment one is apt to forget the importance of the dark edge where it meets the light.

[For further information on this interesting subject the English reader is referred to Eastlake’s translation of Goethe’s Philosophy of Colors, published in London.]