leaves us to grope our way in the dark, or deal with vain shadows. Hence, no sooner have we opened these mystic pages, than our transatlantic Mephistopheles transports us at once into the very "thick of the witch element." Amidst the abstruse and mystical categories of Kant, the egoism and non-egoism of Fichte, the absolutism of Schelling, and the pantheism of Hegel, we may well call out, like Faustus in the Walpurgen, for some "zig-zag light" to guide us on our way— "The limits of the sphere of dream, The bounds of true and false are past, Lead us on, thou wandering gleam!" But before we permit ourselves to be winged away into these twilight realms of imagination, let us pause. "Les Allemands mèlent ils trop souvent la métaphysique à la poesie," observes Madame de Staël; and certainly we do find that most of their poets are philosophers, and most of their philosophers poets. "Nothing," observes Mr. Hume, "is more dangerous to reason than the flights of imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies may in this respect be compared to those angels which the Scripture represents as covering their eyes with their wings."+ But the German mind is imbued with a peculiar disposition to indulge in mysticism and idealism; hence the spirit of pantheism will be found to pervade, more or less, every system of German philosophy. The fundamental principle of this doctrine is, that the material world, in all its varied phases, is a development from, or an extension only, or self-revelation, of the Creator. This attempt at the deification of the material and spiritual phenomena of the universe, as Schlegel designates it, carries us back to the system of emanation, commonly embraced by the ancient barbaric philosophers, and afterwards admitted into the early theogonies of the Greeks. It was affirmed by Plato, that the soul of man and the essential forms of things proceeded by emanation from the Deity.§ The same doctrine, under certain modifications, was adopted by Aristotle. § Pythagoras taught that God was the universal mind diffused through all things, and the source of all animal life.|| In the first centuries of the Christian era, the Cabbala (a pretended illumination invented by the Rabbi Akibha and his disciple Simeon Ben Jochai, the spark of Moses which the Jews affect to have received through tradition from a Divine source) set forth, that all things that exist are penetrated with and partake of the Divine nature.¶ *Shelley's translation of The May-Day Night. † Treatise of Human Nature, vol. i. p. 464. Enfield's History of Philosophy, from Brucker, vol. i. pp. 54, 330. § Ibid. pp. 238, 278. || Ibid. p. 393. ¶Ibid. vol. ii. p. 267. See also Tennemann's History of Philosophy, p. 182. To this theory of emanations was afterwards attached a tissue of imaginations, describing the counteracting influence of demons, which gave rise to the belief in magic, demoniacal possession, and subsequently witchcraft, the pseudo principles of which imposed for many ages upon the credulity of mankind, and really produced, in many well-attested cases, physiological effects, very identical with the phenomena now ascribed to animal magnetism.* Hence pantheism has, under various modifications, been transmitted from the earliest ages through successive systems of philosophy; but Germany, above all European countries, has both in feeling and speculation constantly reverted to it. Her poets, her artists, her musicians, have been all more or less pantheists; the principles of pantheism are as clearly developed in the effusions of Goethe as in the mystical writings of Novalis.t "In the floods of life," says Goethe, "in the storm of deeds, I move up and down, I weave to and fro! Birth and the grave an eternal sea, a changing strife, a glowing life! Thus I create at the roaring loom of Time, and weave the living garment of the Deity."+ But the pantheism of poetry should, we venture to suggest, be distinguished from the pantheism of philosophy. The one is a deeply felt recognition of an all-pervading Divine agency, revealing itself through the universality of nature: the other is an attempt, whether by emanation, evolution, or extension, to account for the same Divine manifestations by identifying the great First Cause with the phenomena themselves. The one uplifts its orisons in acknowledgment of the omnipresence of a Supreme Being, expressing in its adoration. "A sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused; And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, And rolls through all things." § * On this curious subject see an article in the Polytechnic Magazine; page 86, by Thomas Stone, M.D. Mortimer, 1844. † Lewe's Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. iv. p. 184. In Lebensfluthen in Thatensturm Wall' ich auf und ab Webe hin und her! Ein ewiges Meer Ein wechselnd Streben Ein glühend Leben! So schaff'ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit, Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid." § Wordsworth; Lines on Tintern Abbey. The other, instead of enlarging our sense of the Divine Attributes, annihilates them, by destroying the personality of the Deity. The pantheism, however, which sprung out of the ancient systems of cosmogony was avowedly an idealism only, a pure fiction of the imagination; for although the dialectic form of reasoning prevailed in the schools of philosophy, the pantheistic principles were not founded upon any kind of induction until after the revival of letters, when Spinoza, availing himself of the doctrines of Descartes, founded upon them a system of pantheism, which was so logically derived from the Cartesian premises, that, were these admitted to be correct, his conclusions would even to the present day remain incontrovertible. The age in which Spinoza lived was essentially a speculative one; the spirit of metaphysical research was abroad; the arena which had been the scene of the bitter controversies and unseemly wranglings of the Schoolmen, was at length occupied by a more temperate class of philosophers. In England, Locke first laid the foundation of what has been since appropriately called the sensational school of philosophy, from the doctrines of which Hume, by a just logical deduction, founded a superstructure of scepticism, which in its turn roused the energies of Reid, and startled Kant from his "dogmatic slumber." So that from the scepticism of Hume, mediately or immediately, as observed by Sir William Hamilton, "all our subsequent philosophy has been evolved; and the doctrines of Kant and Reid," adds Sir William, " are both avowedly recoils from the annihilating scepticism of Hume; both attempts to find for philosophy deeper foundations than those which he had so thoroughly subverted."* Meanwhile, in France, Descartes, who was, by the unfortunate Condorcet, designated "the father of unfettered philosophical inquiry," promulgated his system, fragments of which have been found scattered over every part of the civilized world. "In his own day, and long after his day, he was," observes Blakey, in his recent History of Philosophy, all-powerful. We find his disciples among persons of all shades of theological belief. In the bosom of the Catholic Church we see Arnauld and Pascal, and Fenelon and Bossuet, and Malebranche embracing and expounding his doctrines with all possible zeal."+ Strange, indeed, that a system which excited so much admiration in minds so orthodox, and produced such an influence throughout Europe, should have given rise, and that by a logical deduction so strictly legitimate as to have "all the appearance of mathematical strictness,"‡ to a pantheistical result, which has been stigmatized, somewhat undeservedly, * Sir William Hamilton's edition of Reid's works, p. 91. perhaps, as the worst species of atheism! The philosophy of Spinoz teaches that there exists, in universum, but one substance infinite in its nature, and that substance is God. "Whatever exists exists in God; for external to his existence nothing can positively be conceived. All things are but the manifestation of his being, and the whole is bound together by an inexorable necessity." That Spinoza affirmed the existence of a God, and affirmed it so earnestly as to merit the appellation given to him by Novalis, of "the God-intoxicated man," may readily, observes Morell, "be admitted in a certain sense; but that he allowed the exist ence of a God, in the ordinary and Christian acceptation of that word is far from being the case. A being to whom understanding, will, and even personality, is denied-a being who does not create, but simply is--who does not act, but simply unfolds-who does not purpose, but brings all things to pass by the necessary law of his own existence; such a being cannot be a father, a friend, a benefactor-in a word, cannot be a God to man, for man is but a part of himself."+ "It may be more correct to term the philosophy of Spinoza a pantheism than an atheism; but if we take the common idea or definition of deity as valid, then assuredly we must conclude that the God of Spinoza is no God, and that his pantheism is only a more imposing form of atheism." The Philosophy of Nature, by Stallo, presents us with a pantheism of the same character; after describing which, he gives us a condensed view of the doctrines of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, with the visionary system of nature propounded by Oken. In order to appreciate the fundamental principles of these dreamy theories, we must set out by understanding clearly the meaning which these philosophers attach to the words subjective and objective. Thus, a man's faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject; the knowledge, therefore, which belongs to his own mind, and which he derives from his own consciousness, is subjective: whereas that which he derives from the observation of the surrounding world, or external objects, is objective. The one is the inward-the other the outward world of existence; and to establish a clear relation between them has been the difficulty of all philosophy. All our ideas, according to Kant, have a double origin -partly subjective, and partly objective; the mind, he admits, has pure Blakey, loc. cit., p. 306. † Peter Bayle, in refuting the doctrine of Spinoza, ridicules it, by saying that ifit were true, in the war raging between the Turks and the Austrians, the Deity was just then cutting himself to pieces. (Art. Spinoza, Dict. Hist. et Critique.) These pseudo-philosophers were wont to take strange liberties: "To-morrow,” said Hegel, at the end of one of his lectures, "To-morrow I shall proceed, gentlemen, to create God!", Morell, op. cit., vol. i. p. 188. suggestive principles of its own, but also derives some perceptions and sensations from without; and the two co-operate to produce knowledge. On the other hand, Fichte-calling the subjective ego, and the objective non ego-argued that, although certain mental conceptions were in me, they were caused by something out of me, so that the ego and non ego became identical. "The fundamental error of Fichte," says Morell, "was, that he entrenched himself so closely within the circle of his consciousness, that it was impossible for him to find any passage from thence into the surrounding world."* After Fichte, came Schelling-the Plato, as he is sometimes called, of modern Germany-who maintained that the ego and non ego (subject and object) are identical, and exist only in the absolute-that is to say, the Absolute, by which he means the Deity, contains within itself, potentially, all that it afterwards becomes by its own self-development. This self-development, be it observed, is not the free and designed operation of intelligence, but rather a blind impulse, working unconsciously in nature, and only coming to self-consciousness in mind. On this principle, all difference between God and the universe is completely lost; his pantheism becomes as complete as that of Spinoza; and "as the absolute is supposed to be evolved from its lowest forms to the highest, in accordance with the necessary law or rhythm of its being, the whole world, material and mental, becomes one enormous chain of necessity, to which no idea of free creation can by any possibility be attached."+ Lastly, after the philosophy of Schelling had obtained a vast popularity in Germany, came Hegel, who boldly started with the postulate, that "being and non-being are the same;" and, denying the existence of both object and subject, insisted that everything was purely ideal. The only real existence which he admits is one of relation ;-"the whole universe is a universe of ideas —a process or movement of the Deity ever unfolding itself, but never unfolded." Such are the pantheistical systems which appear to have fascinated the imagination of Stallo, but which he has explained in a very obscure and imperfect manner. A cloudy element, however, is the most congenial atmosphere for all such fictions; and the unintelligibility of the language in which they are conveyed is their best security against popular ridicule. "The Idea of Life, or Hints for the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of Life," here claims attention; and, assuredly, the very title of this little volume by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, suggests the anticipation of paradoxes as subtile, dreams as wild, and phantasies as startling, as any we have just adverted to. It was observed in the early life |