organic apparatus is what enables us to see a line when placed before us, and it is a derangement in that apparatus which causes us to see the line crooked,-which occasions the particular state of consciousness so described. It must be obvious that the state of consciousness cannot modify itself, which would be implied in the assertion that the mind contributes or furnishes the crookedness (or indeed anything else) to the object.

The only thing furnished by the mind (to speak in the language of the doctrine under examination) is the discernment. If it be said that no one would be so absurd as to maintain the opinion here supposed, I reply, perhaps not in so glaring a shape, but substitute "colour" for "crookedness" and you have the precise doctrine of some eminent philosophers.

If you take the trouble of looking back on what I have written in this letter, you will probably be struck with the numerous forms of fallacy which have arisen from an imperfect discernment or want of discernment that our perception of the external world is a simple fact of consciousness, not requiring, and not susceptible of, explanation.

The case of a straight stick, partly immersed in water, being seen bent, furnishes an instance where the apparent flexure is owing not to the organ but to the two different inorganic media, through which the rays refracted from the two different parts of the stick are transmitted. The percipient mind has nothing to do with originating these circumstances, but is affected by them.

Thus, as we have just seen, it is contended by some philosophers that we know only our subjective states, and merely infer the existence of an external world: by others that an external world does not exist: by others that we do not know external things in themselves: by others that the qualities we perceive in external objects are first put by us into the objects: by others that part of what we perceive is furnished by ourselves and part by the things without us.

These are all so many struggles of speculative minds with a difficulty of their own raising. The plain truth seems to have been too simple for them to accept, and they have strangely wandered abroad in search of what they had left behind at home.

In my next letter, I purpose to consider the other causes already enumerated of the prominent characteristics of the same philosophy.

LETTER XII.

THE PROMINENT CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN PHILO

SOPHY AND THEIR CAUSES (IN CONTINUATION).

IN pursuance of my plan, I now come to the second circumstance to which I attribute the prominent characteristics of German speculation.

It consists in treating the so-called faculties of the mind as real and distinct entities.

This I have elsewhere so fully pointed out in the writings of authors, English, French, and German, that I must content myself on the present occasion with doing little more than referring to the previous letters in which the subject is explained.

It is, perhaps, more conspicuous in Kant than in any of his successors.

With the larger number of these philosophers, (it may be remarked,) whatever becomes of the other faculties, the reason figures as a very important independent entity, and is charged with the most various functions. Thus Schelling talks of the absolute reason embodying itself in inorganic matter- also as entering as an organic law into the germs of vegetable life-further as coming to consciousness in animated nature, until in man it

reaches the stage of self-consciousness, than which it has hitherto got no higher in its range through organized beings. Here, as in the other examples I have cited, we have a description of wholly fictitious events, arising from the original personification of reason. Unfortunately for the philosopher, there is (as it seems almost needless to repeat) no such entity as absolute reason, and consequently no embodying or entering or coming to consciousness on the part of this imaginary power. There is reasoning in abundance in the world, both demonstrative and contingent, but it is always a particular act or series of such acts done by an individual living being.

The following account of some of the doctrines of Jacobi will serve to illustrate how philosophers vary in their descriptions of what the faculties do, and how little likely they are to agree in their psychological views so long as they do not adopt the simple plan of classifying and explaining operations, instead of creating powers and partitioning mental territories:

"In his [Jacobi's] view, reason was something wholly different from that logical faculty which Kant had, in his theoretical philosophy, represented it to be. Jacobi thought that just as our senses are a faculty by which we have immediate perception of what in the province of corporeity has existence for us, so reason is that sense or faculty by which we have immediate perception of that which

in the supersensual sphere of mind and intelligence has existence for us." *

On this it may be observed, without entering

upon

other comments, that since there is no criterion by which to judge whether one philosopher's description of "reason" is more correct than that of another, the assignment of functions is in a measure arbitrary; each speculator is at liberty to comprehend in his award what the other leaves out, and after all no progress will be made by any of them in the classification of the facts which constitute our knowledge of man as a sensitive and intellectual being. If, on the other hand, they content themselves with describing a mental operation they can scarcely fail to agree in the main as to the particulars to be comprehended under it, and, should they differ, every reader may decide the matter thus reduced to its simplest form, by the test of his own consciousness.

Sometimes we find the so-called faculties designated by abstract terms, as in the following description of a doctrine ascribed to Kant:

"In every perception, receptivity and spontaneity are inseparably connected and co-operate together. The former furnishes the material, the latter the form of all experience."

Here pure abstractions are converted into active agents, each having its distinct function yet co

Chalybäus, Historical Development, p. 84. Edersheim's

translation.

L