self. If, on the one hand, he did not actually deny the hypothetical possibility of any world lying beyond our personal state, on the other, he argued it was not possible to arrive at any positive knowledge of it, except through the medium of self. According to this, the inner consciousness, which obliges us to accept •a certain mental picture as a representation of the external world, is but a form of our spiritual constitution; so that our ideas are fated to jog round for ever in a continual treadmill, the central pillar of the circle being only our own ego. Kant, horrified and alarmed at these sweeping assertions, hastened to disown Fichte as a disciple. But he had been guilty of the same idealism in effect, if not in words; and he had no power to disown those inferences, which were logical deductions from his own suggestions. Had he not made his last distinction in the practical Reason, his whole system must have been torn from its slender moorings, and must have gone afloat into the wide sea of uncertainty.

It is easy to assert in our own day, that cognition of matter must rest on the same footing as consciousness of self. We know self, as exercising certain qualities (such as walking, hearing, seeing;) but in like manner, by sense-perception, we know a body as exercising power and energy. There are (as Kant was careful to intimate) fundamental laws of belief not so ambiguous as common sense. There are principles regulating the mind, which are necessary laws of the faculties themselves. Even madmen (as it has been remarked) do not lose their idea of cause, substance, and existence. Therefore it was the more surprising, that he, whose clear mind perceived the necessity of allowing objectivity to those sublimer notions which are à priori and abstract, should not have allowed reality to the products of the pure Reason, on the same footing as the practical. It was giving credence to one class of convictions, and allowing no credibility to the other.

Without some such reflections as these, it would be impossible to form a faint idea of the historical position of philosophy and science in Germany, in the days of Friedrich von Hardenberg; nor could we hope to comprehend the dreamy tone of mystical idealism which animates his writings.

What Novalis might have been, had he attained to mature manhood, outliving the imaginative errors of his youth, and emancipating himself from the trammels of his earlier teaching, it is now impossible to say. But from a child he was singularly susceptible to the influence of those whom he loved and honoured. Throughout his University career, though he might have been an occasional hermit, he was never a cold egotist.

Influence of Fichte as a Teacher.

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Incessant meditation and reflection gave to his slightest feelings the force of passions. His sensitive imagination was ready to seize eagerly upon the most refined suggestions of philosophy, and to draw from them its own mystical deductions. Ang

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Deeply religious from the constitution of his mind, the pursuit even of knowledge appeared to him unattractive, except as a pacans to raise the soul to higher and sublimer objects. Over Isuch a character as this, in the first enthusiasm of its youth and freshness, it is easy to imagine what an influence Fichte may hare obtained, when, in the year 1798, he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at Jena. His popularity with all the pupils was almost unbounded. With a more attractive person than that of Kant, calm and modest in his manner, dignified and energetic in his teaching, now rising to bursts of fiery eloquence, now summing up his subject with rigorous deduction, the influence of such a man upon an academy of students was almost magical. Add to this, his high and noble character consistently maintained through the trying circumstances of his life, his truthfulness, his unbounded self-control, his unconscious humility, and his self-denying devotion to the good of others, and it will be admitted that, to the great majority of the public, such a man would need only one requisition to raise him to the highest rank of heroism. That condition, persecution, (without which, as Plato discerned, no man could be ever exalted above his fellows,) was reserved for Fichte; and when, after being accused of atheism, and banished from the University, he still devoted the best of his energies to the service of his country, and at last fell a victim to infection whilst nursing the sick in hospitals, it was little wonder that to the enthusiastic votaries of his system, his teaching was invested with double importance, and his name was honoured as if sacred.

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Those of our readers who are but partially acquainted with the history of the author of the Wissenschaftslehre, will not need to be reminded that the charge of infidelity, however apparently deserved, was utterly repudiated by him. I would rather,' said Lord Bacon, 'believe all the fables in the Koran than that this universal frame is without a mind.' Fichte, however, could be accused of no such stretch of credulity; for whilst, on the one hand, it might have been inferred from his teaching that the outward world is only a reflex of our own activity, and that the only God we can affirm is the Rooμos, or moral order of the universe; he united with this idea of selfdevelopment, a theory of the Divine life as a self-forming, selfrepresenting will, clothed to the mortal eye with 'multitudinous

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sensuous forms.' Vague and undefined as Fichte may have heen in his theories of this eternal will, and great as may have been the logical fallacy which led him to append to any such notion the idea of an essential and independent existence, yet never was a man more free from the tendency to profane scoffing, and jesting with sacred matters; never was a philosopher more theo-pathetic, or a whole life more entirely imbued with the feeling of an imagined Divine manifestation. According to his view everything which excited our admiration in this world was shadowing forth the perfection of the Almighty; and the varied beauties of creation were only the thoughts of God apparently expressed in matter. The eternal Will,' he says, is the creator of the world, as he is the Creator of the finite reason. In His light we behold the light, and all that it reveals. Great living Will,' he exclaims, whom no words can name, and no conception embrace! well may I lift my thoughts to Thee; for I can think only in Thee. In Thee, the incomprehensible, does my own existence, and that of the world, become comprehensible to me; all the problems of being are solved, and the most perfect harmony reigns. I veil my face before Thee, and lay my finger on my lips.' But though Fichte would have affirmed that we believe in the existence of a God by the same evidence as we believe in the existence of each other; and though there never was a man more intensely practical in his life, or more vehement in his struggles with doubt, yet his system tended to a vague and unsatisfactory pantheism; and he erred by unduly exalting the faculties of knowledge and will.

Fichte confused himself, as other metaphysicians have done, by a strong craving for confident repose, and a prejudice in favour of a system which should stop inquiry. Such infallibility can never exist independent of revelation; the philosopher who attempts to assert it, is apt to seize hastily upon data which only mislead him, and then employs his ingenuity in reconciling theoretical assumptions with contradictory exceptions. In his later years Fichte appears to have suspected the imperfections of his own analysis, and, being anxious to choose a via media between the two extremes of dualism and nihilism, he was careful to distinguish more decidedly the reality of one absolute existence, whilst he asserted equally the theory of the Ego, and the Non-Ego. Here he made an approximation to the teaching of Spinoza, considering whatever exists as a modification of the Divine Essence.

It was probably at Jena that Novalis became also acquainted with the brothers Schlegel, but especially with Friedrich, with whom he formed a close and enduring friendship. The talent

Friendship with Friedrich Schlegel.

833 for dialectic disquisition was probably the least conspicuous of the varied gifts of this celebrated man. But he also was deeply imbued with the theories of Kant, Fichte, and Goethe, and introduced Hardenberg to the writings of Jacob Behmen and others of the earlier mystics.

The religious principles of Schlegel were at this time vague and undefined in the highest degree. When questioned as to the reality of his convictions on sacred subjects, he invariably replied, My answer is not ready. The reader will remember how he afterwards found is refuge from the errors of vulgar rationalism, or of a more subtle pantheism, in the dogmatic teaching of the Church of Rome, seeking to find sanctuary there from the tormenting problems which continually perplexed him, and a freedom from the eternal malady of thought. We have nowhere a stronger illustration of that craving for infallibility in religious matters, which will occasionally cause men to believe whatever harmonizes with their wishes and affords them rest, independently of the conviction f their reason. Three or four years before Schlegel returned to the ancient Church, the example of such a determination had been given by Count Stolberg; though probably this ultramontane impulse was first imparted to German literature through the writings of Viscount Bonald, and Joseph de Maistre. The writings and conversation of Friedrich Schlegel were useful in introducing Hardenberg to the beauties of Greek and English poetry. His acquaintance with various schools of art, and his knowledge of different languages and literatures, were no less powerful in

tcipating Novalis from the trammels of old schools, and the

tyranny of narrow theories. ambilan

In the following year Hardenberg migrated from Jena to the University of Leipzig, where he passed one season, and was introduced to the notice of Schelling, who had already commenced a private course of lectures to his friends on the subjects of his philosophy. There is a curious parallel to a certain extent between the historic development of the German and English schools of philosophy. The relative position of Fichte between Kant and Schelling may be likened to that of Berkeley between Locke and Hume.

Locke, Berkeley, and Hume follow each other in direct succession, like Kant, Fichte and Schelling; with a remarkable difference or want of parallelism when we come to Schelling. Thus, in Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities, he asserted that colour, taste, and smell, had merely a sub-existence, though substance had an objective reality. Then, just as Fichte criticized Kant, the Bishop followed Locke,

expanding his system to what he considered its proper limits. Berkeley admitted that pain, smell, and colour, were merely mental. But,' said he, hardness, softness, and weight, are mental also; consequently, no matter exists. Their essence is to be perceived.' Then came Hume, who developed idealism to its ultimate consequences. Mr. Locke,' he would have said, was right, and the Bishop was right, but neither went far enough. Berkeley, as a good divine, admitted the existence of spirits besides his own, although he did not perceive them. But even those only existed in his own ideas. There are no spirits, as I do not perceive them. Consequently, there is nothing in the world but impressions and ideas.'le to Inuiger

Here the parallelism ceases. Schelling followed Fichte, as Hume followed Berkeley; but instead of carrying out Fichte's idealism to its remote consequences, Schelling introduced a reaction, embraced botli the elements, (the objective as well as the subjective,) and resolved them both into the higher unity of the Absolute. Thus it would be difficult to overrate the importance of Schelling's position, and its influence over the mind of the age. Fichte accounted for all which appeared to be external to the Ego, by saying it was the reflection of the NonEgo. Kant gave credence to the ultimate convictions of the practical reason; because he knew that with no foundation it would be impossible for them to stand. But he deceived himself by distinguishing between the groundwork of the pure and the practical reason. He satisfied himself by calling the one speculative band the other unavoidable. The practical was unavoidable, because rouched by reason. But consciousness was as much a primitive element of the mind, and had as much a right to be heard, as reason. Consciousness tells us of something besides ourselves. Both reason and consciousness were credible witnesses, not to be set one against the other, but to be heard the one with the other; both were ultimate convictions. It was the more surprising that Kant did not see the importance of the objective element, when he might have learnt experience from the historic development of philosophy in this country. Schelling, however, brought forward that part of the problem which Kant and Fichte had overlooked. Jacobi in his Glaubens Philosophie had based the doctrine of the necessity of faith on the assumed incompetency of reason to perceive the supra-sensible. But this arbitrary faith, as Schlegel declared, when looked at more closely, turned out to be nothing but the old reason in new disguise. Dissatisfied with such a shallow system, Fichte (as we have seen) endeavoured to substitute the philosophical Ich, (Ego) as the only unerring ground of dog