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Were I designing a Literaturblatt for some transcendental Deutsch journal—some hoenigsbergische magazine or weimarische gazette—instead of a "literary leaflet" for the New Monthly, I might plume myself in complacent anticipation on a host of readers—perhaps all of them graduated and salaried Professors[1]—who would steadily wade through whatever sloughs and bogs of metaphysics I might guide them to. Be it true or no, to use a current phrase, that England loves not coalitions, true it is, past all gainsaying, that England loves not metaphysics. A political hotch-potch, after the recipe of "Cauld Kail in Aberdeen," she can swallow, with more or less of eupeptic ease; but a feast of Ontology is with her equivalent to a cannibal déjeûner—self-introspective philosophy is tantamount to a "feed" of human flesh and blood—the analysis of personal consciousness is as alien from her creeds and canons as a "smoked little boy in the bacon rack," or a "cold missionary on the sideboard." Virtually she accepts as faithful types of the metaphysical class, the subjects of Mat Prior's satirics, when he tells, in "Alma," how
One old philosopher grew cross,
Who could not tell what motion was:
Because be walk'd against his will,
He faced men down that he stood still:—
and how
Chrysippus, foil'd by Epicurus,
Made bold (Jove bless him!) to assure us,
That all things which our mind can view,
May be at once both false and true:—
and once more, how
Malebranche had an odd conceit
As ever entered Frenchman's pate—
To wit. So little can our mind
Of matter or of spirit find,
That we by guess at least may gather
Something, which may be both, or neither.
Only to exceptional minds is it given to be content, in studies of this order, to find no end in wandering mazes lost: if the end must remain an undiscovered bourn, people—in England at least—will resolve on
- ↑ For, Professors, according to Mr. Lewes, are the only real students and upholders of metaphysics even in metaphysical Germany. It is a mistake, he affirms, to suppose that Philosophy has any existence there, apart from the Universities; for, though the jargon, indeed, of metaphysics infects the very daily newspapers, so little hold has any doctrine upon the national mind, that if the Professorships were abolished, "we should soon cease to hear of Philosophy." So at least thinks this zealous disciple of Positivism and M. Comte. His position is, that inasmuch as Philosophy is a profession in Germany, it will always, on that condition, find a certain number of professors anxious to magnify its merits, and to increase its influence; and to this fact he refers as explaining the prolonged manifestation in Germany of certain activity in a pursuit long since abandoned by England. See "Biographical History of Philosophy," vol iv., p. 237.
