r, the baboon--a creature, whose nature speculative
naturalists have most cunningly set forth by the theory, that it is a
parody which the devil, in a fit of ill humour, made upon God's noblest
work, man; and don't hope, on the other hand, as many great saints and
sages have done, by prayer and fasting, or by study and meditation, to
work yourself up to a god, and jump bodily out of your human skin. Assume
as the first postulate, and lay it down as the last proposition of your
"philosophy of life," that a man is neither a brute, nor a god nor an
angel, but simply and sheerly a MAN. Furthermore, as man is not only a
very comprehensive and complex, but also, (to appearance at least,) in
many points, a very contrary and contradictory creature, see that you
take the _whole_ man along with you into your metaphysical chamber; for
if there be one paper that has a bearing in the case amissing out of your
green bag, (which has happened only too often,) the evidence will be
imperfect, and the sentence false or partial--shake your wig as you
please. Remember, that though you may be a very subtle logician, the soul
of man is not all made up of logic; remember that reason, (_Vernunft_,)
the purest that Kant ever criticized withal, is not the proper vital soul
in man; is not the creative and productive faculty in intellect at all,
but is merely the tool of that which, in philosophers no less than in
poets, is the proper inventive power, IMAGINATION, as Wordsworth phrases
it: Schlegel's word is _fantasie_. Remember that in more cases than
academic dignities may be willing to admit, the heart (where a man has
one) is the only safe guide, the only legitimate ruler of the head; and
that a mere metaphysician, and solitary speculator, however properly
trimmed,
"One to whose smooth-rubb'd soul can cling
Nor form nor feeling, great nor small;
A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual all-in-all,"
may write very famous books, profound even to unintelligibility, but can
never be a philosopher. Therefore reject Hegel, "that merely thinking, on
a barren heath speculating, self-sufficient, self-satisfied little EGO;"[E]
and consider Kant as weighed in the balance and found wanting on his own
showing: for if that critical portal of pure reason had indeed been
sufficient, as it gave itself out to be, for all the purposes of a human
philosophy, what need was there of the "practical back-door" which, at the
categorical command of
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