MENTAL PHILOSOPHY IN GERILi›.TY

Mn. MORELL who has long been known to us by his works on German Philosophy and Religion, and who is himself the author of a work on Psychology, has translated and edited, with an apparently allowable license of omission and substitution, a little volume entitled " Zur Seelenfrage, eine Philosophische Confes- sion," by Immanuel Hermann Fichte, introducing it to the public under the name of Contnhutions to Mental Philosophy.

Immanuel Hermann, the only son of Johann Gottlob Fichte, "the great Achilles whom we know," was born (we believe at Jena) in the year 1797. "His cradle," says Mr. Morel, "was rocked in the very room which gave birth to the Wissenschafts- lehre." At Berlin he received a sound philological education. Here he listened to the "almost inspired eloquence of Schleier- macher." Afterwards, "in Saarbriicken and in Dusseldorf he followed the profession of a public teacher with credit and suc- cess." While yet on the threshold of youth, Immanuel found in "both his parents an example and experience which shaped his own future life." The teaching and action of the elder Fichte, which proclaimed faith in "the world above sense," stimulated the boy to further contemplation. The picture of a "Life in God," in which he was allowed to take a distant part became to him "the summit and crown of existence," and at the same time aided him in the comprehension of his father's philosophic specu- lations. In the "Doctrine of Science," in the "Way to a Blessed Life," (not a Blind Life, p. 114,) in the lectures on morals de- livered in 1812, the scientific interpretation of his life itself, says the filial Fichte, "came before me with the greatest power." Kant's doctrine also of the Homonoumenon, or Ideal Man, testifying that the soberest of thinkers could not withdraw himself "from the power of that great fact by which man is placed in the midst of a supersensual order of things," had a permanent

• influence on the young thinker. "My half philological studies of Plotinus and the Neoplatonics, ' he tells us in his Confession, "brought me into connexion with Theobophy ; while the love which my mother bore to Christian my sties also in- troduced me into this rich world. of mental experience." The sentimental theism of Jacobi, the natural philosophy of Oken, Spinoza's profound idea of an intellectual love of God, Leibnitz'a notion of unconscious thought, Steffen's doctrine of genius, and the ratiocinations of Hegel, were all reviewed and appreciated by the speculative student. Raising himself from the very first, in fact if not in thought, beyond the mere Pantheistic idea of God, as also beyond the na- tural faith-principle of Jacobi, turning from Schelling, Hegel, Spinoza, and Oken, his attention was directed by Kant, Fichte, Leibnitz, and Steffens to the complete idea of man as based upon Experience. As" time rolled on," we quote from the translator's preface, "the leaven of philosophy began once more to ferment and the scattered opinions of the age to mould themselves into a new form at least in his individual mind and consciousness." In his first work, published in 1832, he took a critical view of the reigning systems of philosophy. In the following year he gave to the world a psychological sketch of the intellectual nature of man. Four years after a third part upon Ontology was added. These works conferred on him a classical reputation, and pro- cured him the appointment of professor of philosophy in the Uni- versity of Bonn. From Bonn he removed to Tubingen in the year 1842. It was while bidding the former professorship that MT. Morel made his acquaintance, and heard him daily discourse. Though highly estimating his clear method of expression and exposition, and his constant appeal to facts, the listener had little idea of the point to which he was tending. Since that period his philosophical tendencies, contained in a series of works on specula- tive theology, ethics, and psychology, ranging over the last twelve years, have "become sufficiently plain and palpable." The crowning work which "is to complete the whole psychological system is still in preparation." Such is a brief notice of the career and position in philosophy of the greater Fichte's son ; for Mr. Morel still considers him as less noteworthy than his father. Could he, however, make good his promise we should place him far higher than his father, assigning him a throne and sceptre, a temple and altar, among the regal and heroic intellects of the world.

From the life we pass to the Doctrine of Immanuel Fichte. All the world knows, as a matter of fact, that there is a region of experience, which may be broken up, reported, and explained : and that there is a very general persuasion that beyond the realm of what is known or knowable through the senses, is a universe exceeding or transcending experience, and therefore neither known nor knowable through the senses. Man desires an explana- tion of the actual world, and he calls that explanation Natural or Physical Philosophy. He desires an explanation of the Unseen World, and he calls that explanation Metaphysical Philosophy. A knowledge of the sensible world is obtained by induction of facts cognizable by sense. A knowledge of the supersensible, revelation apart, has, we are told, been obtained by the agency of a sort of additional sense, called Reason or Intuition. English- men are familiar with the doctrine of innate ideas, which is their vernacular term for the German Vernunft, or the Platonic In- tellection. The Greek metaphysic, ending in futility, reappeared * Contributions to Mental Philosophy. By Immanuel Hermann Fichte. Trans- lated and edited by .1. D. Morel!, A.M. Published by Longman and Co.

in the last century in Germany, and disappeared, like its prede- cessor, in appropriate nothingness. " Being and non-being are

the same." The self-development of the Absolute, or the repre- sentation of the Idea," (in German Idec,) is metaphysio as con- ceived by Hegel. The varieties of nature are the varieties of the Idee. This explanation, in one form or other, satisfied the Teu- tonie intellect till 1848, when the mass took it into its stupid head to grow discontented with that beautiful provision of Provi- dence, which decides that it " ough' to labour and we lie on soffies," and rejecting the liberty of the metaphysicians " spread freedom's aree " in a way of its own, turning some of the "ounnin- eat of us " out of office, and as Mr. Morell assures us, informing German philosophy in a very unmistakeable manner, that it by no means " realized its Maker's original idee."t Thus the ab- stract philosophy of Germany has been brought to a practical termination. Immanuel Fichte seems the proper representative of the present epoch of speculative thought in his own coun- try. The growing tendency of our age, perhaps its one hopeful characteristic, to base its knowledge on facts within experience, happily is not confined to England or France. Germany, too, illustrates it. As science becomes less immersed in matter, as it ascends through the phenomena of motion to the phenomena of life, and culminates in the phenomena of feeling and thinking, it suggests, in its augmenting spirituality, the possibility of apply- ing the method of experience to the world beyond experience. The younger Fichte proclaims that on this world alone can "the lever of science be placed so as to produce any abiding effect. He is sincerely convinced that metaphysics must return after all to the form of psychology, and. psychology must link itself to the rest of the natural sciences." Now this logical interdependence, this scientific vinculum, this extension of the experimental philo- sophy, is precisely what all earnest English minds that have not yet accepted an exclusive " secularism " but are dissatisfied with authority are seeking. The pulse beats, the heart throbs with expectation. Shall the mystery be solved ? Will the second Fichte solve it ? We will see.

The pathway from the world of sense to the world above sense is laid by the experimental knowledge of the human mind. The facts of consciousness must be investigated, for they are the mea- sure of the true essence of the soul. These facts of consciousness are not, however, those of the ordinary psychologist. "We must take the mind of humanity at large, in the fullness of its ideal life (theoretical, artistic' ethical, and religious) and in the might of its preternatural activity, as the real starting-point." In addition to this, we must weigh carefully even those facts which are rare and exceptional. These spring from a source lying within the region of preconsciousness. For the soul is precon- sious and preexistent. Of the three alternative hypotheses-1. the old dualism of a distinct body and distinct soul mechanically united ; 2. The unity which makes the soul either "a portion of the infinite thought of the universe or the result of material organization ; " 3. The unity which makes the soul an indi- vidual substance and the formative principle of the body,—Fichte prefers the last as the only one which harmonizes with his view of the real facts ;" we suppose, of psychology. Among the proposi- tions which he adduces and illustrates we may mention the follow- ing. The soul is a real existence, involving a space-relation. This "invisible pneumatic body" existed potentially before it was brought under organic conditions, but only in virtue of these con- ditions can be raised into the region of consciousness ; it has an original character of its own, it has a twofold life, a preconscious and a conscious life. The preconscious life, explains Mr. Morell, is seen in the building up of organism ; in all the constructive ac- tions; and in all the involuntary workings of the intelligence. The conscious life of the soul is seen in all the ordinary and nor- mal phenomena of our mental development. The preconscious life of the soul can exhibit transcendent phenomena ; it can operate in this way without organic conditions As the conscious life links us by numberless relations to the sense-world, so the pre- conscious life brings us into a series of relations with the spiritual world. This personality of the soul involves in it a complete proof of the Divine Personality. The facts of man's nature and man's history establish the reality of a special Providence, which finds its consummation and only true explanation in the Divine Humanity of Christ, and is applied and carried out by interme- diate orders of spiritual beings. The soul is immortal ; death being a release from the present conditions of time and sense, and man's moral probation extending into the world to come. This future existence of the soul is, first, a slightly- modified continua- tion of the present, succeeded by a sort of Greek Grammar, or Paulo post futuram existence which determines the last crisis of all, and which the opponents of Mr. Kingsley and Mr. Maurice will be happy to hear, qualifies the approved for an immutable Heaven and the rejected for as immutable a Hell. Such are the principal theses of Immanuel Fichte. His method. of conducting these inquiries, is, he asserts, purely inductive and analogical. He begins with facts and proceeds to hypotheses, "by which those facts," as Mr. Morell expresses it, "may receive a rational and self-consistent interpretation." The author for- tifies his argument with an array of facts borrowed from what he calls the magical phenomena of the soul; and his translator felt back on the authority of Sir W. Hamilton, who "many years ago pointed out the fact that there is a process of latent thought +" The mass °ugh' to labour an' we lie on soffies'

Thet's the reason I want to spread Freedom's seer. It puts all the cunninest of us in Mlles.

An reelises our Maker's original idee."—Bsglow Papers.

always going forward more or less energetically in the soul ; " to Dr. Carpenter, who has designated the same phenomena under the term, unconscious cerebration ; to Dr. Laycock, who has brought them under the general category of reflex action ; and to earns Herbert and other German psychologists. Psychology, if we do not greatly err, is still in its infancy. Can it certainly be affirmed that we have unconscious sensations ? The author of The Physiology of Common Life, declares that all our sensations are "elements of consciousness.' No doubt there are unperceived sensations ; and unexplained, perhaps inexplicable processes of thought and feeling. In our ignorance of the intel- lectual laws is it not premature to come to any conclusion on the magical phenomena of the soul ? And if there be an unconscious cerebration, in the entire range of meaning accorded to those terms by Mr. Morell and Immanuel Fichte, does it follow that there is out of time, a preconscious life for the soul ; does it follow "that the soul is preexistent ?" Shall we revive the Platonic doc- trine of Reminiscence with its splendid fascinations, or exclaim with the Platonizing poet-

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,

The soul that rises with us our life's star,

Math had elsewhere its saline,

And cometh from afar."

Throughout the whole of this treatise we do not meet with a single argument which induces any conviction of the preexistence of the soul. We attach no value to reasonings grounded on dream-consciousness, sympathetic and antipathetic rapports, vision, second-sight, presentiment, clairvoyance or halluci-

nation. - nation. Great stress s laid on Kant's alleged discovery of the original existence of space-perception in our consciousness. Im- manuel Fichte maintains that space is not an abstract idea, and that sight and touch are not space-producing senses. His specu- lations on this subject may be found, in the sixth chapter of the Mental Philosophy, which though by Fichte himself, consists of an article contributed to a journal and substituted by the editor, on account of its superior lucidity, for the author's own expo- sition. These speculations Mr. Morel admits are decidedly open to grave objections.

Far from endorsing all the views and sentiments put forth in this little volume the translator acknowledges that it has "few ascertained and demonstrated results," and contents himself with expressing his conviction that it has in it "ample materials and incentives to thinking."

With the qualifications thus intimated we can recommend this Philosophical Confession to all pious and reflective minds. As a restatement of the Religous Problem, under a new psychological aspect, it can hardly be without some significance. Changing assertion into interrogation we would ask, is there "behind the region of consciousness a life full of hidden relations" in any sense and if so, in what sense ? Is it true, for instance, that the instinctive tendencies and activities of the soul, which_ belong to the region of art, are in any way presumptive evidence of our in- terest in a transcendent reality, that they announce the ex- istence of an unseen mystery beyond this visible diurnal sphere ? Can the proposition implied in the question be established or refuted?