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    Letters from Germany, 809

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  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

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    Letters From Germ Aim Y.

    gible ^ I shall not extract from them * The foljpy ^ i ng passage is only a specimen of the author ' s manner ; it is taken fepna ^ s ErxcjcTopsedi ^ of JPhilosopbical Knowledge : 6 ( J Kant once pronounced the stcong ^ pression that the understanding of man is the lawgiver of nature * , IJe , was fumble enough to explain this expression of the universal forms of * tune # nd space :

    but others have gone beyond him , and exulted to have the forms , categories , ideas of all existence , in the laws of thinking , and to develop , thein out of human thoyghto I will not remain behind in this sublime art . Theprinciple of the independence of reason , of its absolute self-sufficiency ,, firom the time of Kant , has been regarded as a universal principle of philosoph y * as one of the decisions of time , and to this decision 9 so far from opposing itj , I yield homage and allegianceo Experience is the starting ground of

    philosophy which has no other object than experience ; but on this ground I do not remain . I soon drop the experience ? raise myself above it , and soar into the open region of thinking a priori , and now commences its original ^ perfect , self-sufficient operation ,, Here I sit , shaping forms of thought ^ developing categories and ideas ; and it is wonderful and glorious , that I possess this original , self-active power of forming ideas out of conceptions a priori ; that these ideas , all in their necessity , stand before me as a thick

    phalanx ; that I now look back upon the facts of experience , and discover in them a separate and after-formation of thought and its ideas ; and that I can point to the things of experience and say exultingly , Behold it is in fact as I in my a priori thoughts have developed that it must be , " But enough of chimera . The critic upon Hegel's philosophy ( so called ) in the Hermes , describes it as a work remarkable only for the most sophistical perplexing of the most simple thoughts * In the same critique he offers his

    own induction of Theism ; and it is a specimen of the manner in which the plainest reasoning , such as the apostle ' s argument from the things that are made of the eternal power and Godhead , is here not unfrequently involved in metaphysical obscurity , or clothed in terms which are not understood ^ and are not always intelligible , any where else : 6 t When I infer the Divine existence from the contingency of things in nature , ( they are events ,, they begin to be , ) and from their adaptation to an end , I set out from the

    phenomenon , the world ; but it is not from the spectacle that 1 rise tQ the idea of a God ,, and what the idea involves , for he who stops at the contemplation of the facts of nature will never rise to the knowledge of a God » The condition of contingency and relationship to an end , are unquestionably thoughts of the mind , and through them I rise to the being of a God « It is these which connect my acquaintance with nature , and my recognition of Deity with one another , and the process of the mind is this ; I apply to the

    natural world certain ideas which have beem suggested in the view of its phenomena ; 1 cannot substantiate them in the world itself , that is , when I think upon the facts in nature as events or contingencies , I connect wsth them the idea of a cause but I do not find in nature what has been called the sufficient cause ; that is , I do not find in the phenomena my idea verified , since they offer to ine only conditional (( second ) causes , and an infinite

    regression of them , but not an absolute , a first cause . la the idea of an end is involved relationsSiip to an intelligence , and the inference from an object or end in the natural world to the existence of God , rests upon the notice aliat intelligence in a proper and sufficient sense is not in nature itself * But since the positive ideas of cause and end are not seen verified in the world itself , the mind passes on beyond iu The ideas are iu Uruth conceptions of I he understanding , but the power which , not finding aheir equivalents ia

    Letters From Germany, 809

    Letters from Germany , 809

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1830, page 809, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_02121830/page/9/