Further, "if we analyse origination [literally becoming] it is found, that it is a continuous transition from being into naught and a continuous coming over from naught into being." Comment on this is scarcely required:

"The force of fiction could no farther go."

I will venture, however, to remark that if being and naught are identical, the transition of one into the other the transition of the same thing into the same thing is a most extraordinary process: and when it again happens "may we" (as the poet ejaculated in reference to the future rides of John Gilpin), " may we be there to see.”

You must excuse this little spirt of levity on so weighty a subject, for it is impossible to treat some of the doctrines under consideration with uniform seriousness.

"To laugh were want of goodness or of grace,
But to be grave exceeds all power of face."

LETTER XIII.

THE PROMINENT CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN PHILO

IT

SOPHY AND THEIR CAUSES (IN CONTINUATION).

It may be objected, perhaps, that it is unfair to take single sentences without the context, wrenched from their places in that system of philosophy of which they merely form a part.

And so perhaps it might be were my object to enter into a confutation of the systematic doctrines of the several treatises containing the passages cited: but my principal design being to show the errors flowing from the personification or erection into distinct entities of abstractions and generalities, and especially the multiplicity of fictitious or imaginary objects and events which pervade philosophy and are in a great measure consequent on this practice, the end may be attained by quoting even single propositions provided they clearly manifest the characteristics in question. And I scarcely need to say that the writings on which I am animadverting do not merely exhibit these characteristics in an incidental way and at long intervals, but are almost wholly made up of them.

Nevertheless, to meet the preceding objection as

far as I can do it consistently with that brevity of discussion which is all that such speculations are worth, I will select some one systematic doctrine for particular examination, and try whether we can obtain a different result.

With the same view to brevity, I will take the exposition of the doctrine from the pages of some author who endeavours to present it in a succinct form and a popular style.

The following is an explanation of one part of Hegel's philosophy by a recent English expositor:

"Take any object whatever and ask how it becomes to us a real existing idea or thing (for with Hegel these two are the same). Philosophers ordinarily say, that when we have a perception there is implied the mind or subject that perceives on the one side, and the object which is perceived on the other, the two communicating by some unknown process. The pure idealist, it is true, denies the reality of the object, and regards it as the production of the subject; but Schelling had exploded this notion, and introduced the doctrine of identity, according to which we must admit a real subject and a real object, but must regard them as two corresponding manifestations of the same absolute existence. Hegel, however, now goes one step further in his analysis. He says that there is neither subject nor object separately considered, but that they both owe their existence and reality to each other. The only real existence then is the

relation; the whole universe is a universe of relations; subject and object which appear contradictory to each other are really one- not one in the sense of Schelling, as being opposite poles of the same absolute existence, but one inasmuch as their relation forms the very idea, or the very thing itself."*

A brief consideration of the nature of abstract language suffices to show that this doctrine is just the reverse of the truth. So far from the only real things being relations, there is not a single real entity in the universe answering to that name.

There are innumerable objects in the world which are related to each other in a variety of ways, but there are no separate existences represented by the term relations.

The latter term is, in truth, a generic word of a peculiar character; it is a common name for a number of abstractions. Thus resemblance, distance, fitness, successiveness, symmetry, equality, are all abstract terms; in each case, that which is denoted by them is designated a relation, and none of these terms, the last included, can do more than raise up the ideas of particular objects in pairs or

groups.

It is scarcely needful to enforce here the truth explained in a former letter, that all abstract phrases may be thrown into concrete language. without any loss of meaning. When we say that

* An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe, by J. D. Morell, vol. ii. p. 136.

a portrait has a resemblance to the original, or that one simple flower, a daisy for instance, has a resemblance to another daisy, we express no more in each instance than that one resembles the other. The phrases" they resemble one another," and they have a resemblance to one another," or "there is a resemblance between them," are perfectly equivalent. The relation termed resemblance has thus no independent existence, is no separate entity; and the same is true of all other relations. Pardon me for repeating these familiar truths.

Instead then of the whole universe being a universe of relations, which would be a universe of nothings, it is a universe of related things. The realities are not, as taught by Hegel, the relations between objects, but the objects themselves between which the so-called relations have place, or, in other words, which are variously related to each other.

Mark again the singular reasoning that subject and object are one, because the relation between them forms the very thing itself; which can scarcely be surpassed in self-contradiction and confusion of thought, except it be by the preceding assertion that both subject and object owe their existence to each other the ingenious story of the Kilkenny cats inverted.

I am not sure that I ever met with a finer instance of the absurdities into which the creation of fictitious entities out of the abstractions of language, can betray a reputedly powerful intellect.