Imágenes de páginas
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existimandæ sunt, quarum in se nullus est usus, si ingenia acuant et ordinent.37

There are others whose prejudices are still more formidable, inasmuch as they are grounded in their moral feelings and reli gious principles, which had been alarmed and shocked by the impious and pernicious tenets, defended by Hume, Priestley, and the French fatalists or necessitarians; some of whom had perverted metaphysical reasonings to the denial of the mysteries, and, indeed, of all the peculiar doctrines of Christianity; and others even to the subversion of all distinction between right and wrong. I would request such men to consider what an eminent and successful defender of the Christian faith has observed, that true metaphysics are nothing else but true divinity, and that, in fact, the writers, who have given them such just offence, were sophists, who had taken advantage of the general neglect into which the science of logic had unhappily fallen, rather than metaphysicians, a name, indeed, which those writers were the first to explode as unmeaning. Secondly, I would remind them, that as long as there are men in the world to whom .the г osaurdy is an instinct and a command from their own nature, so long will there be metaphysicians and metaphysical speculations; that false metaphysics can be effectually counteracted by true metaphysics alone; and that, if the reasoning be clear, solid, and pertinent, the truth deduced can never be the less valuable on account of the depth from which it may have been drawn.

A third class profess themselves friendly to metaphysics, and believe that they are themselves metaphysicians. They have no objection to system or terminology, provided it be the method and the nomenclature to which they have been familiarized in the writings of Locke, Hume, Hartley, Condillac," or perhaps Dr. Reid, and Professor Stewart." To objections from this

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37 [De Augment. Scient., vi., c. 3. S. C.] 38 [Appendix Q.]

39 [Appendix R.]

40 [Schelling also says (in Abhandlungen Phil. Schrift., p. 204) "Others were not prejudiced against nomenclature, terminology,—the spirit of system in general,-but only against this nomenclature" namely that of Kant; which he attributes to their having been long accustomed to the statements of Leibnitz, who had communicated his philosophical

cause, it is a sufficient answer, that one main object of my attempt was to demonstrate the vagueness or insufficiency of the terms used in the metaphysical schools of France and Great Britain since the revolution, and that the errors which I propose to attack cannot subsist, except as they are concealed behind the mask of a plausible and indefinite nomenclature.

But the worst and widest impediment still remains. It is the. predominance of a popular philosophy, at once the counterfeit and the mortal enemy of all true and manly metaphysical research. It is that corruption, introduced by certain immethodical aphorisming eclectics," who, dismissing not only all system, but all logical connexion, pick and choose whatever is most plausible and showy; who select whatever words can have some semblance of sense attached to them without the least expendi ture of thought; in short, whatever may enable men to talk of what they do not understand, with a careful avoidance of everything that might awaken them to a moment's suspicion of their ignorance. This, alas! is an irremediable disease, for it brings with it not so much an indisposition to any particular system, but an utter loss of taste and faculty for all system and for all philosophy. Like echoes that beget each other amongst the mountains, the praise or blame of such men rolls in volleys long after the report from the original blunderbuss. Sequacitas est potius et coitio quam consensus: et tamen (quod pessimum est) pusillanimitas ista, non sine arrogantia et fastidio se offert."2

I shall now proceed to the nature and genesis of the Imagination; but I must first take leave to notice, that after a more

principles fragmentarily, in letters to friends, or to distinguished and great Lords, ever with much forbearance towards prevailing opinions, and on that account with less of sharpness and precision than is suitable to scientific explanation; or to their having grown stiff in the school-language and method of Wolf. S C.]

41 ["Finally, the last of all, through the impotent sham philosophy of some waterish authors, or the pandect wisdom of aphoristic eclectics, had lost all sense and taste, not perhaps for a determined system, but for philosophy in general, before Kant had published a syllable of his philosophy." Transl. (Abhandlungen Phil. Schrift., p. 204.) S. C]

42 Franc. Baconis de Verulam, NOVUM ORGANUM. [Aphorisms Ixxvii. and lxxxviii. S. C.]

accurate perusal of Mr. Wordsworth's remarks on the Imagination, in his preface to the new edition of his poems, I find that my conclusions are not so consentient with his as, I confess, I had taken for granted. In an article contributed by me to Mr. Southey's Omniana, On the soul and its organs of sense, are the following sentences. "These (the human faculties) I would ar. range under the different senses and powers: as the eye, the ear, the touch, &c.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating and realizing power; the speculative reason, vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power by which we produce, or aim to produce unity, necessity, and universality in all our knowledge by means of principles à priori;" the will, or practical reason; the faculty of choice (Germanice, Willkühr) and (distinct both from the moral will and the choice) the sensation of volition, which I have found reason to include under the head of single and double touch."" To this, as far as it relates to the subject in question, namely, the words (the aggregative and associative power), Mr. Wordsworth's "objection is only that the definition is too general. To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and to combine, belong as well to the Imagination as to the Fancy." I reply, that if, by the power of evoking and combining, Mr. Wordsworth means the same as, and no more than, I meant by the aggregative and associative, I continue to deny, that it belongs at all to the Imagination; and I am disposed to conjecture, that he has mistaken the co-presence of Fancy with Imagination for the operation of the latter singly. A man may

43 This phrase, à priori, is in common,'most grossly misunderstood, and an absurdity burdened on it, which it does not deserve. By knowledge à priori, we do not mean, that we can know anything previously to experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but that having once known it by occasion of experience (that is, something acting upon us from without) we then know that it must have pre-existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only I know, that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes in order to the experience.

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work with two very different tools at the same moment; each has its share in, the work, but the work effected by each is distinct and different. But it will probably appear in the next chapter, that deeming it necessary to go back much further than Mr. Wordsworth's subject required or permitted, I have attached a meaning to both Fancy and Imagination, which he had not in view, at least while he was writing that preface. He will judge. Would to Heaven, I might meet with many such readers! I will conclude with the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor: "He to whom all things are one, who draweth all things to one, and seeth all things in one, may enjoy true peace and rest of spirit.""

46 Jer. Taylor's Via pacis. Sunday. The First Decad., & S. C.]

17*

CHAPTER XIII.

On the Imagination, or esemplastic power.

O Adam, One Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to him return,
If not deprav'd from good, created all
Such to perfection, one first matter all,
Endued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and, in things that live, of life;
But more refin'd, more spiritous and pure,
As nearer to him plac'd, or nearer tending,
Each in their several active spheres assign'd,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds

Proportion'd to each kind. So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery: last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit,
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd,

To vital spirits aspire: to animal :

To intellectual !-give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
REASON receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive or intuitive.1

"Sane si res corporales nil nisi materiale continerent, verissime dicerentur in fluxu consistere, neque habere substantiale quicquam, quemadmodum et Platonici olim recte agnovere.

“Hinc igitur, præter pure mathematica et phantasiæ subjecta, collegi quædam metaphysica solaque mente perceptibilia, esse admittenda et massæ materiali principium quoddam superius et, ut sic dicam, formale addendum: quandoquidem omnes veritates rerum corporearum ex solis axiomatibus logisticis et geometricis, nempe de magno et parvo, toto et parte, figura et situ, colligi non possint; sed alia de causa et effectu, actioneque et passione, accedere debeant, quibus ordinis rerum rationes salventur. Id principium rerum, an èvreλexstav an vim appellemus, neɑ

Par. Lost. Book v., 1. 469.

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