the essence of the Ego consists in cognition or thinking, for the Ego is originally not a thought of itself, but a feeling; and by making feeling absorb thought, without noting the broad distinction between them, Fichte fell into all his strange and profound mistakes. If, indeed, the intelligent Ego has also an intellective feeling, it does not therewith terminate in itself, but in universal being. And this elementary thought cannot be taken for Fichte's reflection, since it has nothing reflex about it, and is the immovable and perpetual part of man. Here, however, it seems that Fichte made an approach to the truth, and caught a distant glimpse of it, when he uttered the excellent words : 'While thoughts pass, there is in man an immutable part which contemplates"" (New Essay, vol. iii. §§ 1388-1395).

"We must not confound the consciousness of the soul with the soul itself. Still less ought we to confound with the soul that act with which it says I; or, again, we must not confound the reflection of the soul with the soul itself. Consciousness, Ego pronounced, reflection, are accidents, not the substance of the soul, which, as a reality, is prior to all these its accidental modifications. The confusion of these with the soul itself is the source of all the aberrations and extravagances in which the German school lost, and still goes on losing, itself. Reinhold having proposed the principle of consciousness, Fichte reduced the soul itself to consciousness, and thus converted it into a reflection; but since reflection is only an accident, all substance disappeared from his philosophy, and left in his hand mere accidents. Hence he himself, at the end of all his reasonings, came to the conclusion that 'No being exists, but merely images; every reality is a dream, and thought is the dream of that dream.' From this labyrinth, German philosophy has never been able to extricate itself.

"Fichte began with this proposition, which contains the error indicated, 'The Ego posits itself.' * The proposition

"Das Ich setzt sich selbst, und es ist, vermöge dieses blossen Setzens durch sich selbst; und umgekehrt: Das Ich ist, und es setzt sein Seyn, vermöge seines blossen Seyns.-Es ist zugleich das Handelnde, und das Produkt der Handlung; das Thätige, und das was durch die Thätigkeit hervorgebracht wird" (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenchaftslehre, p. 10). One can hardly blame Rosmini for calling such talk "delirium."

Schelling's

error in

asserting

that the finite

is manifestly absurd, because it supposes that the Eg.
operates before it exists. Now, certainly no being can
posit, that is, create itself. He ought to have said, 'The
soul posits the Ego,' because this proposition would signify,
The soul affirms itself, and in so doing changes itself into
an Ego, because the Ego is the soul affirmed by itself.
Thus the Ego is distinguished from the soul, the Ego being
the soul invested with that reflection whereby it affirms
itself. Now, there is nothing strange in the soul's pro-
ducing this reflection; but it is passing strange that the
soul should be the Ego, that is, the reflected soul, even
before it has made the reflection in question. At the same
time, since the man who philosophizes is already a fully
constituted Ego, it is, of course, by no means easy for him
to dissolve himself, so to speak, and to persuade himself
that his Ego is compound, that it is an accidental, and not
an essential, state of the soul, or, to speak more correctly,
that it is the soul constituted in accidental conditions
(Psychology, vol. i. §§ 72-74). The definition of Soul is
given further on (§§ 121-124). The definition of Ego runs
thus: "The Ego is an active principle in a given nature,
in so far as it has consciousness of itself, and pronounces
the act of consciousness" (Psychology, vol. i. § 55; cf.
Anthropology, §§ 768-805, sqq.). In order to be self-
conscious, that is, to be an Ego, the subject must have
combined the feeling of meity (meità, what the Germans
call Ichheit) with ideal being as intuited, and then, by re-
flection, have analyzed the object thus formed into the judg-
ment, "Meity is." But existent Meity is precisely what
we mean by Ego. Of course, the act whereby the subject
constitutes the Ego, by subsuming itself under being, is in
its beginning unconscious. Its term is self-consciousness.

76.

per

A proper understanding of the nature of ception shows also the erroneousness of the doctrine of Schelling, which has recently been

perceived

the infinite.

this error,

between

lectual

revamped and reproduced. Schelling accepted cannot be Fichte's two objects of perception, and added a without third. Fichte's object of perception, though twofold, was finite. Schelling affirmed that the finite could not be perceived without the infinite with which it was correlated. Now, Fichte attributed to intellective perception what, in reality, belongs to feeling. In like manner, Schelling attributed to intellective perception what belongs to reasoning. Neither the one nor the other understood the Origin of nature of perception, which limits itself to a simple confusion' object, without being obliged to extend itself to intelthe other objects connected with it. Perception perception terminates in a finite object, without ever con- reasoning. sidering that it is finite, or that, in order to exist, it requires an infinite. It terminates in its immediate finite object, without considering that this is an effect and, therefore, could not exist without a cause. It considers it as a being, adding to it the essence of being, without ever considering that, but for this essence, it would not be. All these are subsequent reflections, reasonings, which have perception for their object indeed, but are not themselves perception.

Rosmini devotes a good many pages of his New Essay to a discussion of Schelling's system (vol. iii. §§ 1396–1407); but as it has vanished into thin air, along with many other creations of the German philosophic brain, the criticism need only be referred to.

and

How reasoning. finds the limits, contingency, etc., of perceived beings.

Schelling saw dimly but could

not express

the fact that the mind, prior to all

reason

ings, must have something complete and

universal.

77.

We have now shown that in perception we perceive one object apart from all the rest. It remains to be seen why, in spite of this, we subsequently discover from reasoning that this particular object, this reality, cannot subsist by itself, and that, if it is finite, it is necessarily conditioned by an infinite; if it is contingent, by a necessary, which is its cause, etc., etc. This happens because reflection, turning back upon the object perceived, compares it with the essence of being, which is the light of the mind, and, in so doing, recognizes that in that object the essence of being is not fully realized. It thereby recognizes that the subsistence of this object is conditioned by another greater being. It is clear from this that the last-mentioned German philosopher had a glimpse of a truth, without being able to state it with precision. He saw that the human mind must, from the very beginning of its reasonings, have present to it something full, complete, universal, to which, as to a type, it could refer that which is modal, incomplete, relative; otherwise it would be impossible to explain how we ever came to be aware that the world, for example, is contingent and requires a cause, that it is finite, in other words, immeasurably removed from the infinite, etc., etc. Of course, in order to know this, the mind must possess the perfect type of being to base these judgments upon. But the German philosopher was not able to distinguish

intuition from perception, the ideal mode of being from the real mode, the essence of being from its realization, the ground of subsistence from subsistence itself, that which has being, because it receives it from perception, from that which is being. He, accordingly, attributed to perception what belongs to intuition or else to the comparison of the perceived with the intuited, which is the work of reasoning. He concluded that the human mind naturally perceives the absolute, whereas it only perceives the absolute ground, ideal being. And inasmuch as in perception we hold beings apart, and limiting distinctions belong to the order of reality, he held that, in what he supposed to be primitive and natural perception, Ego, non-Ego, and absolute being were already distinguished, whereas the truth is that in ideal being there is no distinction, no limitation, no mode. It is being, in one unlimited form. In spite of this, ideal being is sufficient for the mind, not only because it renders possible the perception of particular things, but also because it enables it by reasoning to know the limits of the objects of perception and the necessity of the infinite and the absolute.

The error which Rosmini here criticizes is the one with which his own system has most frequently been charged, viz., that it makes the absolute the form of human reason, and thereby results in pure pantheism. There is certainly no error against which Rosmini has more carefully and completely guarded himself. Not only has he repeatedly declared that pantheism is an erroneous and absurd system (Theos., vol. i. § 457; New Essay, vol. iii. § 1178, n. 3); but