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 observes, "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 the 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

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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. A 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 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 modifi

cations 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 mankind look upon as among their most valuable possessions; the Apollo of the Belvidere, the Parthenon, the Cathedral of Cologne? When this is what we want to know, how are we helped by learning that the Apollo is of Parian marble, or the Cathedral of basaltic stone? We must know much more than this, in order to acquire any insight into the principles of statuary or of architecture. In like manner, in order that we may make any progress in the philosophy of knowledge, which is our purpose, we must endeavour to learn something further respecting ideas than that they are transformed sensations, even if they were this.

But, in reality, the assertion that our ideas are transformed sensations, is erroneous as well as frivolous. For it conveys, and is intended to convey, the opinion that our sensations have one form which properly belongs to them; and that, in order to become ideas, they are con

verted into some other form. But the truth is, that our sensations, of themselves, without some act of the mind, such as involves what we have termed an Idea, have no form. We cannot see one object without the idea of space; we cannot see two without the idea of resemblance or difference; and space and difference are not sensations. Thus, if we are to employ the metaphor of Matter and Form, which is implied in the expression to which I have referred, our sensations, from their first reception, have their Form not changed, but given by our Ideas. Without the relations of thought which we here term Ideas, the sensations are matter without form. Matter without form cannot exist and in like manner sensations cannot become perceptions of objects, without some formative power of the mind. By the very act of being received as perceptions, they have a formative power exercised upon them, the operation of which might be expressed, by speaking of them, not as transformed, but simply as formed;-as invested with form, instead of being the mere formless material of perception. The word inform, according to its Latin etymology, at first implied this process by which matter is invested with form. Thus Virgil speaks of the thunderbolt as informed by the hands of Brontes, and Steropes, and Pyracmon. And Dryden introduces the word in another place:

Let others better mould the running mass

Of metals, or inform the breathing brass.

Even in this use of the word, the form is something superior to the brute manner, and gives it a new significance and purpose. And hence the term is again used

* Ferrum exercebant vasto Cyclopes in Antro

Brontesque Steropesque et nudus membra Pyracmon;
His informatum manibus, jam parte polita

Fulmen erat.-En. viii. 424.