he Unconscious, by nature infinite and
inexhaustible; and that creatively work there. From that mystic
region, and from that alone, all wonders, all Poesies and Religions,
and Social Systems have proceeded: the like wonders, and greater and
higher, lie slumbering there; and, brooded on by the spirit of the
waters, will evolve themselves, and rise like exhalations from the
Deep.

Of our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may not this already be said,
that if they have produced no Affirmation, they have destroyed much
Negation? It is a disease expelling a disease: the fire of Doubt, as
above hinted, consuming away the Doubtful; that so the Certain come to
light, and again lie visible on the surface. English or French
Metaphysics, in reference to this last stage of the speculative
process, are not what we allude to here; but only the Metaphysics of
the Germans. In France or England, since the days of Diderot and Hume,
though all thought has been of a sceptico-metaphysical texture, so far
as there was any Thought, we have seen no Metaphysics; but only more
or less ineffectual questionings whether such could be. In the
Pyrrhonism of Hume and the Materialism of Diderot, Logic had, as it
were, overshot itself, overset itself. Now, though the athlete, to use
our old figure, cannot, by much lifting, lift up his own body, he may
shift it out of a laming posture, and get to stand in a free one. Such
a service have German Metaphysics done for man's mind. The second
sickness of Speculation has abolished both itself and the first.
Friedrich Schlegel complains much of the fruitlessness, the tumult and
transiency of German as of all Metaphysics; and with reason. Yet in
that wide-spreading, deep-whirling vortex of Kantism, so soon
metamorphosed into Fichteism, Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and
Cousinism, perhaps finally evaporated, is not the issue visible
enough, That Pyrrhonism and Materialism, themselves necessary
phenomena in European culture, have disappeared; and a Faith in
Religion has again become possible and inevitable for the scientific
mind; and the word _Free_-thinker no longer means the Denier or
Caviller, but the Believer, or the Ready to believe? Nay, in the
higher Literature of Germany, there already lies, for him that can
read it, the beginning of a new revelation of the Godlike; as yet
unrecognised by the mass of the world; but waiting there for
recognition, and sure to find it when the fit hour comes. This age