ledge of right and wrong, of good and evil, &c. proceeds neither from imagination, experience, nor understanding, but from a higher source, which he did not attempt to characterize or define. He was content simply to indicate its existence.

Kant also showed that no reliance can be placed on experience, or in other words, on the use of perception, for the proof of any absolute truth. That either absolute truth was a nonentity, and quite impossible, or it must be attained by some other process than the working of mere understanding upon experience. Every empirical conclusion, that is to say, every conclusion from experience, he showed must have its exceptions; and that no man can know when it may happen to him, that the best experience of his life may be bettered by farther experience. Nothing in regard to right and wrong can be demonstrated, unless we admit the existence of a faculty for it, lying in the superior mind. This faculty, or power, may be named Reason.

Just as the eye is sensible to light, and light itself is also an affection of the eye; and if certain properties had not been communicated to the eye, light would not have been perceived; so the properties of objects would not give rise to the perceptions of things and events, had not the organ of perception, and that of understanding, been internally fitted for their several functions. But things and events in the mental organ itself, are a mere image, and not the real outside things and events. Just as the physiological effect of light is not the same with that mechanical light, or cause of light, which lies in luminous objects. The ideas of events and things formed in the mind, belong to the subject that is, to the mind itself; when on the contrary, the perceptive and understanding faculties are actually engaged with nature, when the eye sees, the ear hears, the perception receives, and the understanding kens things and events, looking as it were into nature, and nature penetrating into them, the effects of all things entering so together into the soul, as to create there lively images, which move with the objects. As images in the camera move with the movement of their external objects, there is then a vital and effective communication between the soul and nature, through the joint functions of perceiving and knowing: and this is the

objective condition, as distinguished from the meditative or subjective.

The subjective condition, again, is when we meditate with a consciousness that our ideas are not real, but proceed from our own interior selves.

Again; when we meditate on the perception of an object, we find that we are engaged with images, only, lying in the organs of perception. The organs of perception, when in a healthy state, have images in them only while the senses are in connection with external nature; it is with these images that the thinking and meditative faculty has to content itself.

If the reader will weigh the matter patiently in his mind, he may perhaps, by this distinction of Subject and Object, understand the most difficult things. To recapitalate :

1. The real outside things and events of nature, produce certain effects of light, color, touch, &c., upon the bodily senses.

2. These effects, though they pass in through separate channels of sense, are reunited into perfect images of things and events by the organs of perception.

3. The various images thus formed in perception, are the materials upon which understanding and imagination exercise their powers, and from which they abstract their ideals, their experiences, their fancies, and their memories.

The perception perceives mediately, through the various organs of sense; so that, for example, in looking at a ball of gold, there enters into the eye, not gold, but a yellow color; and in touching it, the sense receives, not gold, but a certain heaviness, &c., &c., and the reunion of these sensuous properties in the perception, gives a notion of a ball of gold as a thing, and of its motion as an event. Both the thing and the event, as images, lie merely in perception, just as the image of the moon, and not the moon itself, lies in the eye. Kant's conclusion from this train of reasoning, was, that we do not ken or perceive things in themselves-we do not understand or know, or get abstract notions of the moon, but only of an image of the moon, formed in perception-we do not understand motions of bodies, but only images of such motions formed in the perception.

Nevertheless, by an exercise of another and quite superior faculty, a faculty of de

termining relations, we know that the mental image must correspond with its objects; we therefore act upon the evidences of sense as true; and are thus kept in active and constant relation with the unknown real world about us.

of Intellect, forms true ideals of human beings, or of persons really existing. And it follows, that the proofs for the existence of human souls, and human persons, are of presicely the same character and validity with those for the existence of

motion in nature.

At the same time our understanding shows us that the course and order of these things and events is governed by certain laws, and orderly recurrences. The abstract laws appearing to the understanding, correspond with certain real laws, existing in nature; for, if things in nature agree with IMAGES in perception, laws in nature agree with Laws in understanding.

It is necessary here to observe, that Kant does not advance this proof. He contents himself with showing that the so called "laws of nature," are in understanding; but he did not seem to perceive that their existence in nature also, is demonstrable by the same argument which shows the existence of real things in nature; an argument which he, himself, was the first to use among the moderns.

To carry this argument a step higher. The superior Reason, which is able, as every one knows, to make use both of understanding and imagination at the same time; that Power, finding in Imagination certain images of life, force, power, beauty, &c., and in understanding certain laws, and necessities; will, by the union of both, attain the ideas of rational beings existing out of itself; in other words, it will attain

It is truly astonishing, that the philosopher who discovered this method of proving the existence of things, (the only one of the least value,) and who applied it to idea of material objects and events, should never have pushed its application to that of rational beings.

One of the most satisfactory results of this method of reasoning, is that it precludes all discussion concerning the existence of things. Things do exist, most indubitably, in the mind; so do laws of nature, and ideas of souls, and all as beings of the mind merely; but when it is perceived that they have a practical efficacy, when it is seen that by Reason we converse, and receive answers through our senses, corresponding with the ideas to which we gave utterance, a necessity forces us to believe in the existence of other beings like ourselves. And when, carrying out certain cogitated laws, we cause the powers of nature to serve us by those laws, a necessity arises for believing that these "laws of nature" in the mind, stand for laws of real nature without. And when, perceiving the color of an object, we put forth the finger and feel its hardness, we conclude with certainty, that the image in the perception, of a thing possessing hard

ing out of itself. Ideas indeed of an immensely abstract and elavated order-but which are so necessary to us, one person cannot speak rationally to another except through the possession of them.

something in nature. The mind, of course, in these natural operations, must be sound and healthy, and not metaphysically or otherwise disjointed.

The expression used by Kant, that we know nothing of the nature of "things in themselves," is meant only to convey the fact that all our knowledge is of a secondary character, and not, as Divinity may be supposed to know itself, by being the same with itself. The image in the mind is not the real thing out of the mind.

How the mind is able to form this idea of things and events as they are in, and the same as they are out of the mind, is perhaps the most curious and instructive

the individual, this is only a spark from the universal life of the world; and as there is a rational soul of the individual, this is only a spark from the Universal Person, the I AM: that the world is both appearance and substance, but that substance can be perceived only by appearance, and known only through intellect.*

We need not name these universal species, lives, laws, and powers in nature, of which the ideas in our Reason are the true images or representatives we need not name them angels, devils, good spirits, bad spirits, &c., as Swedenborg has done, unless it suits our style or our fancy to do this. By individualizing them, we impair our ideas of them; and then begins something very like polytheism.

The philosophical works of Coleridge may be considered, together, as a series of treatises, sentences, aphorisms, and arguments, arranged with very little order, looking to the developement of the philosophical idea of reason, by profound analogies.

The German mind, above all others, discovers an aptitude for analogical reasonings, as is proved by the general character of their science, and the so called symbolical character of their fiction; and Coleridge has been called a German from the same peculiarity; but before pronouncing | Coleridge a German, we must prove him infected with the faults, as well as the excellencies, of the German mind. We must show him pantheistic, and devoid of the idea of a Personal Deity and a divinely constituted state, which we believe is quite impossible. On the contrary, his works overflow with the consciousness of these, and the endeavor to awaken his countrymen to a realizing of their meaning seems to have been the sole aim, if it had an aim, of his life.

Philosophy has always shown two different tendencies, according as the analytic or the imaginative minds of the age have shaped it. The analytic bias may be traced to a predominance of the understanding, or faculty of limits, conditions, negations, and necessities, appearing in such writers

* i. e. understanding, imagination, affection, &c.

as Paley, Hume, and D'Alembert. The imaginative bias, on the contrary, may be best seen in Cudworth, Taylor the Platonist, and poetico-philosophic minds generally. This latter order give an undue predominance to the imaginative, and neglect the verification and correction of their theories by an application to facts.

With the few minds who have shown an equal mastery of the powers, both of analysis and of imagination, it is necessary to rank Coleridge among the English, and Kant among the Germans. These minds, modelled by nature to a comprehensive and universal shape, easily understood the writings of Plato and Bacon, in whom this double character is most remarkable, and, either by freely receiving the ideas of those writers, and of others still more venerable, or by originating the same in themselves, they have re-created philosophy for the moderns.

Yet it will be impossible for us to understand these men, or their philosophy, until we in some measure understand the aims which actuated them. They regarded knowledge as, in its highest sense, identical with power. The knowledge of a nation they believed to be the fountain of its greatness, always remembering that the word "knowledge," thus used, has a moral significance. The knowledge which they regarded, was the knowledge of knowledges, that kind which is universal and productive of new inventions and useful projects. A knowledge which is able, upon occasion, to found the constitution of a new State or to reform that of an old one; to revive the ancient purity of religion by a return to its first principles; to exalt and harmonize the manners, and render society more humane and considerate. This was the superior kind of knowledge, the true Science of humanity, of which they endeavored to express the Ideas. By, and through these Ideas, they communicated the seeds of the same to other minds. All language was considered by them as the vehicle of this kind of knowledge, and to the Faculties which gather it up in experience and give it utterance in acts and words, they gave the name of Reason, or the PERSON, -or the Image of the Person of God.

J. D. W.

NOTHING can be more absurd or more contrary to the facts than the proposition put forth by certain would-be statisticians, that low prices with large production is a state of things favorable to the operative or manual laborer.

The smaller the capital the larger must be the return from its investment. If I have only a thousand dollars, but can make it bring me five hundred every year, I am as well off, nay, in a better condition, than if I had two thousand yielding the same sum. One thousand is easier to manage, and less liable to loss than two thousand. A farm of 100 acres, yielding $500 worth of produce per annum, is a better property than one of 200, yielding the same per annum. There is less ground to be gone over, and in every respect less care to be taken on the smaller, than the larger domain.

It is extremely difficult to find an investment of capital which will yield the owner more than 10 per cent. interest, with no trouble or risk to himself. So rare indeed is the opportunity for a safe and profitable investment without risk or labor, that large capitalists are well contented with 7, and even with 4 per cent. and in England with 3 and 2 1-2 per cent. interest, when the capital is absolutely secured against loss, and gives its owner no trouble in employing it.

A thrifty industrious mechanic, working at good wages, say at $1,50 a day, can support himself and a small family, and have something laid up in a Saving's Bank at the end of the year. After a few years of labor, economy and accumulation, he will find himself master of a small capital, say of $500. Let us suppose that the business at which he works is one which has not as yet attracted the attention of

capitalists, either as importers or manufacturers. The demand is moderate but steady and the prices good. Under these circumstances, our frugal artizan will be able to establish a small factory of his own, with his capital of $500, and can engage another man to work with him as a journeyman receiving wages. With moderate success, he will make his five hundred yield five or six hundred, aided by his own labor, besides enough to pay his journeyman. The next year he will have gained a credit, and can borrow 500 more, at 7 per cent. and with these two capitals he will employ two journeymen, pay the interest, support his family and lay up money.

The success of such a management depends in the first place upon the existence of a good demand with good prices, and in the second upon the thrift and good management of the small capitalist. Let us suppose that he and his journeyman with the families of both, require altogether $1000 for their support, and that the sale of what he manufactures produces that sum, and enough more to pay the interest on the capital borrowed. Our artizan will now subsist but he will make no money-he will have no surplus, or profit, at the end of the year.

Let us now suppose that a number of other artizans, observing the success of this one, combine their labor and capital and engage in the same business, one of them having credit enough somewhere, to borrow a considerable sum to be laid out in machinery. Or, let us imagine, what is quite as likely to happen, that an opulent importer has got wind of the matter; and that now, through a larger quantity being offered for sale, the price of our artizan's product suffers a depression. He will find that to make the same profit