Sect. 7.-Subjective and Objective.

THE Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy of which I have to speak has been brought into great prominence in the writings of modern German philosophers, and has conspicuously formed the basis of their systems. They have indicated this antithesis by the terms subjective and objective. According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man's faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man's faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man's knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective. And as in man's contemplation of nature, there is always some act of thought which depends upon himself, and some matter of thought which is independent of him, there is, in every part of his knowledge, a subjective and an objective element. The combination of the two elements, the subjective or ideal, and the objective or observed, is necessary, in order to give us any insight into the laws of nature. But different persons, according to their mental habits and constitution, may be inclined to dwell by preference upon the one or the other of these two elements. It may perhaps interest the reader to see this difference of intellectual character illustrated in two eminent men of genius of modern times, Göthe and Schiller.

Göthe himself gives us the account to which I refer, in his history of the progress of his speculations concerning the Metamorphosis of Plants; a mode of viewing their structure by which he explained, in a very striking and beautiful manner, the relations of the different parts of a plant to each other; as has been narrated in the History of the Inductive Sciences. Göthe felt a delight in the passive contemplation of nature, unmingled with the desire of reasoning and theorizing; a delight such as naturally belongs to those poets who

merely embody the images which a fertile genius suggests, and do not mix with these pictures, judgments and reflexions of their own. Schiller, on the other hand, both by his own strong feeling of the value of a moral purpose in poetry, and by his adoption of a system of metaphysics in which the subjective element was made very prominent, was well disposed to recognize fully the authority of ideas over external impressions.

Göthe for a time felt a degree of estrangement towards Schiller, arising from this contrariety in their views and characters. But on one occasion they fell into discussion on the study of natural history; and Göthe endeavoured to impress upon his companion his persuasion that nature was to be considered, not as composed of detached and incoherent parts, but as active and alive, and unfolding herself in each portion, in virtue of principles which pervade the whole. Schiller objected that no such view of the objects of natural history had been pointed out by observation, the only guide which the natural historians recommended; and was disposed on this account to think the whole of their study narrow and shallow. Upon this,' says Göthe, I expounded to him, in as lively a way as I could, the metamorphosis of plants, drawing on paper for him, as I proceeded, a diagram to represent that general form of a plant which shows itself in so many and so various transformations. Schiller attended and understood; and, accepting the explanation, he said, "This is not observation, but an idea." I replied,' adds Göthe, 'with some degree of irritation; for the point which separated us was most luminously marked by this expression: but I smothered my vexation, and merely said, "I was happy to find that I had got ideas without knowing it; nay, that I saw them before my eyes.' Göthe then goes on to say, that he had been grieved to the very soul by maxims promulgated by Schiller, that no observed fact ever could correspond with an idea. Since he himself loved best to wander in the domain of external observation, he had been led to look with repugnance and hostility upon anything which professed to depend upon ideas. Yet,' he ob

serves, 'it occurred to me that if my Observation was identical with his Idea, there must be some common ground on which we might meet.' They went on with their mutual explanations, and became intimate and lasting friends. And thus,' adds the poet, 'by means of that mighty and interminable controversy between object and subject, we two concluded an alliance which remained unbroken, and produced much benefit to ourselves and others.'

The general diagram of a plant, of which Göthe here speaks, must have been a combination of lines and marks expressing the relations of position and equivalence among the elements of vegetable forms, by which so many of their resemblances and differences may be explained. Such a symbol is not an Idea in that general sense in which we propose to use the term, but is a particular modification of the general Ideas of symmetry, developement, and the like; and we shall hereafter see, according to the phraseology which we shall explain in the next chapter, how such a diagram might express the ideal conception of a plant.

The antithesis of subjective and objective is very familiar in the philosophical literature of Germany and France; nor is it uncommon in any age of our own literature. But though efforts have recently been made to give currency among us to this phraseology, it has not been cordially received, and has been much complained of as not of obvious meaning. Nor is the complaint without ground: for when we regard the mind as the subject in which ideas inhere, it becomes for us an object, and the antithesis vanishes. We are not so much accustomed to use subject in this sense, as to make it a proper contrast to object. The combination 'ideal and objective,' would more readily convey to a modern reader the opposition which is intended between the ideas of the mind itself, and the objects which it contemplates around it.

To the antitheses already noticed-Thoughts and Things; Necessary and Experiential Truths; Deduction and Induction; Theory and Fact; Ideas and Sensations; Reflexion and Sensation; Subjective and

Objective; we may add others, by which distinctions depending more or less upon the fundamental antithesis have been denoted. Thus we speak of the internal and external sources of our knowledge; of the world within and the world without us; of Man and Nature. Some of the more recent metaphysical writers of Germany have divided the universe into the Me and Not-me (Ich and Nicht-ich). Upon such phraseology we may observe, that to have the fundamental antithesis of which we speak really understood, is of the highest consequence to philosophy, but that little appears to be gained by expressing it in any novel manner. The most weighty part of the philosopher's task is to analyze the operations of the mind; and in this task, it can aid us but little to call it, instead of the mind, the subject, or the me.

Sect. 8.-Matter and Form.

THERE are some other ways of expressing, or rather of illustrating, the fundamental antithesis, which I may briefly notice. The antithesis has been at different times presented by means of various images. One of the most ancient of these, and one which is still very instructive, is that which speaks of Sensations as the Matter, and Ideas as the Form, of our knowledge; just as ivory is the matter, and a cube the form, of a die. This comparison has the advantage of showing that two elements of an antithesis which cannot be separated in fact, may yet be advantageously separated in our reasonings. For Matter and Form cannot by any means be detached from each other. All matter must have some form; all form must be the form of some material thing. If the ivory be not a cube, it must have a spherical or some other form. And the cube, in order to be a cube, must be of some material; —if not of ivory, of wood, or stone, for instance. figure without matter is merely a geometrical conception ;-a modification of the idea of space. Matter without figure is a mere abstract term;- -a supposed union of certain sensible qualities which, so insulated

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from others, cannot exist. Yet the distinction of Matter and Form is real; and, as a subject of contemplation, clear and plain. Nor is the distinction by any means useless. The speculations which treat of the two subjects, Matter and Figure, are very different. Matter is the subject of the sciences of Mechanics and Chemistry; Figure, of Geometry. These two classes of Sciences have quite different sets of principles. If we refuse to consider the Matter and the Form of bodies separately, because we cannot exhibit Matter and Form separately, we shut the door to all philosophy on such subjects. In like manner, though Sensations and Ideas are necessarily united in all our knowledge, they can be considered as distinct; and this distinction is the basis of all philosophy concerning knowledge.

This illustration of the relation of Ideas and Sensations may enable us to estimate a doctrine which has been put forwards at various times. In a certain school of speculators there has existed a disposition to derive all our Ideas from our Sensations, the term Idea being, in this school, used in its wider sense, so as to include all modifications and limitations of our Fundamental Ideas. The doctrines of this school have been summarily expressed by saying that 'Every Idea is a transformed Sensation.' Now, even supposing this assertion to be exactly true, we easily see, from what has been said, how little we are likely to answer the ends of philosophy by putting forward such a maxim as one of primary importance. For we might say, in like manner, that every statue is but a transformed block of marble, or every edifice but a collection of transformed stones. But what would these assertions avail us, if our object were to trace the rules of art by which beautiful statues were formed, or great works of architecture erected? The question naturally occurs, What is the nature, the principle, the law of this Transformation? In what faculty resides the transforming power? What train of ideas of beauty, and symmetry, and stability, in the mind of the statuary or the architect, has produced those great works which