Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Charles Carroll Everett

realities with which it has to do.

      What has been said suggests the kind of unity which philosophy may reach. It may at least reach the unity of the Idea. Thought, like spirit, involves in its very nature the coexistence, even the identification, of two elements that under all other forms are mutually exclusive; namely, Unity and Diversity. So far as the real may be regarded as the ideal, so far may it be regarded under the form of unity; and, since it is the nature of the mind to think, it cannot rest till it represents to itself all things under the form of thought; that is, till the real has become the ideal.

      I repeat that we are not here concerned to prove that a philosophy such as has been indicated is possible, or to show how far it is possible. All that is here insisted on is that only so far as it is possible can we have any satisfactory thought of our own spirits or of the universe in which we live. This consideration may make us, at least, regard the attempt to reach such a philosophy as an important one. It may prepare us to follow with interest the attempt which Fichte makes to formulate such a system. We must remember, however, that no failures can prove that the undertaking itself attempts the impossible. We must remember that each attempt, although in part a failure, may be, at the same time, in part successful; and, at least, that every such attempt, though it may itself not fully succeed, may do something to make possible the final accomplishment.

II. The Ultimate Reality.

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The real question that philosophy has to answer is this: What really is? Fichte recognized this as the problem with which philosophy has to deal.^[3] This question seems to common thought a very easy one. What is? We are, the world is, and all the persons and objects near and remote that make up the physical universe—these are. Perhaps there may be added to the list, with more or less confidence, spiritual beings. God may be recognized as being. Many would, however, make this last and grandest thought dependent upon those which were named before. To most the external universe is the most certain of realities.

A slight observation does something to disturb the completeness of the notion of the outward universe. Perhaps to few is it wholly rounded and complete. Among the first elements to be transferred from the outer to the inner world are heat and cold. We learn that a body which we call hot simply heats. What we call heat is simply our sensation. Perhaps the next element to be surrendered is sound. I think that nothing contributes more to the first disturbance of our confidence in the reality of the world about us, than the first noticing that one hears the sound of the distant woodsman’s axe, while the axe is rising. This disassociation of elements that seemed inseparable, affects us something as does an occasional tremor in the scenery of the stage. The illusion is for the moment broken. A closer analysis brings to view the fact that light and color are sensations of our own, and thus can, as such, have no external existence. An illustration has been suggested that makes all this very clear. Suppose an indestructible rod in a dark room to be made to vibrate, at first slowly, but with ever increasing rapidity. At first we should feel, if we were near enough, some disturbance of the air. Then we should hear a sound, first low and then continually higher. Then we should have a sense of warmth, if we were near enough; then of heat. Finally, we should see successive colors of the spectrum. These phenomena would not manifest themselves continuously; there would be intervals in which no one of them would be produced. This illustrates very well the fact that all the sensations which have been referred to, and which seem qualitatively distinct, are merely marks by which we check off difference in quantity. In other words, the changes in the rapidity of vibrations or undulations outside of us excite these varied forms of sensation within. We thus rest in the thought of the undulations as something final. But what are these undulations? Is not our idea of them made up of what we have seen or felt? These undulations are made up of sensations of our own, which we have combined and projected into the external world. The older school of English and Scotch philosophy made a distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of objects. The former, such as extension and solidity, were said to belong to the objects; the latter, like color, are the effects produced within our own sensations. Sir William Hamilton insists upon this distinction. He maintains that we must apply to consciousness the principle of evidence: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus;^[4] and that if the testimony of consciousness is broken in regard to these primary qualities of matter, its testimony is good for nothing. He forgets that the testimony of consciousness, or what he calls such, is already proved false by the recognition of the fact of the subjectivity of color and sound. Even the primary qualities of matter have, however, no meaning to us apart from sensation.

      It would here be out of place to detail the methods by which the notion or the form of space is produced within us. There, is, however, no resting place between the position of Kant on the one side, that space is simply a subjective form of perception, originally belonging to the mind itself, and the results of our physiological psychologists on the other, who make it out to be the result of continued sensations to which we lend the form of externality. In either case it is of the mind alone.

Indeed, theoretically, the present age can make little objection to the results above stated. Physiology has proved the phenomenal character of the elements that make up the world of objects, in the midst of which we seem to live. It does not always remember that, thereby, it has taken the solid basis from beneath its own feet. It attempts to construct mental out of physical processes, feeling that thereby it has sufficiently explained them. It docs not always keep in mind that the physical facts upon which it bases its reasoning, are themselves a part of the phenomenal world; that is, that they are products of the mind itself. Herbert Spencer shows how absolutely nothing we know of the real things about us, by pointing out that they are at one end of the nerves, while our sensations are produced at the other.^[5] The argument loses nothing in force, although its own basis is swept away by it; for the nerves themselves belong to that phenomenal world of which they prove our ignorance. Herbert Spencer properly denies that he is a materialist. The reality which he recognizes is something which lies back of the distinction of matter and mind, and manifests itself in both. He insists that the relations of which he speaks may be expressed equally well in terms of mind or in those of matter, according to the point from which we start.^[6] He seems to forget for the moment that we have only terms that are derived from mental processes, and that we always start from the mind, which, indeed, we can never get beyond.

If, however, we grant that the world of visible and tangible objects is one of appearances, must we not recognize the fact that there is a world of reality beyond this, which manifests its existence by means of these appearances? Must we not insist, with Kant, upon the Thing-in-itself, apart from the phenomenon? Does not this reveal itself by the opposition which meets us at every point? I press my hand against a wall, and I feel the opposing pressure. Even though the wall, as I picture it to myself, may be a creation of my internal senses, is not the resistance at least real? But, replies Fichte, in effect, What is your hand, and how do you know that you have a hand? The hand and the wall belong alike to the world of appearances.^[7]

      What do you mean, he urges further, by this reality behind the appearance? Do you not mean something that could be discerned by other senses if we had them, or by other intelligences if there are such? Thus, is not the something behind the appearance merely the possibility of another world of possible sensations? or, putting the matter in another light, is not what we mean, solidity? The appearance seems to us superficial, it has to do with surfaces; but behind these there is the solid reality. What do we mean by this, he asks, in effect, but that we should, could we examine, find ever new surfaces, the process of infinite divisibility being only the possibility of an infinitude of surfaces? Thus, from whatever point we start, we find it impossible to get beyond the world of mental feelings and processes. It is impossible, because we cannot get out of ourselves. We can use no terms but mental terms; thus it is impossible to state precisely what we mean by the something real outside the mind.

It is equally impossible to prove the existence of such a reality, let us speak of it by what abstract or inadequate terms we may. John Stuart Mill, indeed, maintained that the existence of one kind of being outside ourselves can