Thomas Beddoes to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, 28 March 1796
Original Communications.
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.
Sir,
The majority of your curious readers are, doubtless acquainted with the name of Emanuel Kant, professor at Koenigsburg; and not a few must feel a desire to become acquainted with his doctrines: but nothing has yet appeared in our language, calculated to gratify this desire. Indeed, it will require more than ordinary industry and ingenuity, to make a just translation or intelligible abstract of his system. A new nomenclature, more difficult than for the Linnaean botany, must be invented. A very intelligent German writer reckons the acquisition of a clear knowledge of Mr Kant’s principles a hard task for a whole year.
In looking to external signs, I cannot help perceiving, that the fortune of this writer’s doctrines has been similar to that of most great discoveries. They have been much misunderstood, and much opposed. But while the established doctors of speculation appeared in the field of controversy, as adversaries, many of the younger inquirers professed themselves converts. These two circumstances you may, perhaps, allow to be presumptions in the author’s favour.
Were you to take down the neglected volumes of Locke’s Answerers, they would not furnish you with a catalogue of more inconsistent charges than the following, which have been brought, by different persons, against Kant. By his dogmatic opponents, he has been represented as a sceptic, trying to subvert the foundations of all knowledge: by sceptics, as aiming to build up a new dogmatic system out of the ruins of all the preceding. The supernaturalist regards his labours as a crafty attempt to do away the idea of the indispensable necessity of the historical documents of religions, and to establish naturalism, without leaving room for controversy: the naturalist treats him as a supporter of the sinking credit of faith. The materialist ranks him with the disciples of Berkley: the spiritualist, among those who limit every thing real to material world, which he veils under the specious title of the territory of experience.
The example best calculated, as far as I know, to give an idea of the essential part of this new philosophy, is the following: Metaphysicians have been divided into four sects, each characterized by a fundamental tenet, which is combated by the remaining three; and the propositions, contradictory of these tenets, are found to be maintained, each by three acts against one. The propositions, which have the plurality of voices, happen to be the very results of Mr Kant’s examination of our intellectual faculties. They may be thus distinctly stated:
1. The doctrine which characterizes the dogmatic atheist, is that the non-existence of the deity may be proved. This is denied by the other sects.
2. According to the dogmatic sceptic, the question concerning the existence of the deity admits of no satisfactory answer.
3. According to the supernaturalist (of which sect there are a few eminent writers in England, but several in Germany, as Mr Jacobi, the adversary of Moses Mendelsohn ) the answer to that question lies beyond the boundary of reason, and is to be sought exclusively in revelation.
4. According to the dogmatic theist, the being of a God may be demonstrated.
The contradictory propositions are these:
1. The question concerning the existence of a God is not to be answered negatively maintained against the atheist by the three other sects.
2. This question may be answered satisfactorily: maintained against the sceptic by the rest.
3. This question cannot be answered from revelation: maintained against the supernaturalist by the others.
4. The affirmative answer to the question concerning the existence of a Deity, does not admit of demonstration: maintained by the rest against the dogmatic theist.
I owe this short illustration to Mr Reinhold, of Jena, who is, I believe, the most perspicuous expositor of the philosophy of Kant. I shall subjoin to it a translated specimen from the Kritik des Urteilskrafts —the Examination of the Judgment. But I will first observe, that nothing can be conceived more harsh, obscure, and involved, than Mr Kant’s style. Oliver Cromwell is explicit in his speeches, compared to him; and he incloses parenthesis within parenthesis, as Pilpay fable within fable. This is a circumstance of ill omen. It is not easy, however, for an original reasoner to be as perspicuous as a narrator. And the disciples of Mr Kant observe, that Newton’s philosophical contemporaries, with equal deviation from former systems, and the simple surmises of common sense, found no less contradiction in the principles, and obscurity in the proofs.
Space and time, which have been the subject of so much metaphysical disquisition, are said, by Mr Kant, to be forms or shapes of intuition, inherent in the intellect. And this is so essential a doctrine, that if they be merely loose transferable terms, such as I have elsewhere endeavoured to show necessity to be, his system could scarce be maintained. He saw clearly enough that the various attempts of ingenious men to fix ideas upon these terms, had been perfectly vain. But I know not whether the manner of considering words which it is to be hoped that one of our countrymen will soon farther illustrate, had ever occurred to him.
What follows, will hardly give an idea of the subjects generally treated by the philosopher of Koenigsburg, nor of his manner of treating them. I have been obliged to break and unsheathe his sentences; and so must the translator of his works; and this without mutilating or changing the sense.
‘In every thing capable of exciting hearty laughter, there must be absurdity. Laughter is an affection from the sudden change of a strained imagination into nothing. This change which certainly is by no means grateful to the understanding, indirectly, and for a moment, produces very lively gratification. The cause must therefore consist in an influence, exerted upon the body, and in the reaction of this upon the mind. The idea presented is not, in itself, an object of pleasure, as it is in the case of a person who receives tidings of a successful stroke in trade. How, in fact, can mere baulked expectation by pleasing? But a play of ideas takes place, and this excites a play of the ideas of life.
‘An Indian, at table with an Englishman, at Surat, expressed his surprise by loud exclamations, on seeing a vast quantity of froth ooze out of a bottle of porter, as soon as the cork was drawn. Being asked, What surprized him so? Nay, said he, don’t suppose I wonder it comes out, but how did you ever contrive to squeeze it in? We do not laugh at this story, because we find ourselves wiser than the poor Indian, or because the understanding finds it in any thing satisfactory, but our expectation was strained, and suddenly vanishes. A rich man’s heir is desirous to celebrate his funeral with all solemnity, but he complains that he cannot accomplish his purpose; for, says he, the more I give my mourners to look sorrowful, the more cheerful do those fellows appear. The reason why we laugh aloud at this, is the sudden vanishing of expectation. Observe, that the expected object is not changed to its contrary (which must always be something, and often may give pain) but absolutely disappears. At the conclusion of a story, which has raised our expectations, if its falsehood appears evident, we feel displeased. This will be the case, if we be told of one whose hair was turned grey with grief in a single night. But let a person of humour, by way of reply, seriously and circumstantially relate how a merchant, on his return home with his whole fortune in goods, was obliged to throw them all overboard during a violent storm, and that the loss affected him so that the very same night his periwig turned grey; and we shall laugh aloud. For we pleasure in striking to and fro the idea we are catching at, as if it were a ball. We are not delighted, because a liar or a blockhead is set down, for this would not be worth while; and the latter story told with a good face, would of itself occasion a burst of laughter.
In all such cases it is remarkable that the joke must contain something capable of deceiving for a moment. As soon, therefore, as the appearance vanishes, the mind looks back, to be sure whether it is so; and thus, by a rapid succession of exertion and relaxation (unspannung and abspannung) is thrown into oscillations. The recession from that which drew the chord being sudden, and not as if it had been let gradually go, a movement of mind, and a corresponding internal agitation of body, takes place, and continues involuntary, producing weariness, and at the same time exhilaration, which are the effects of a movement that contributes to health.
‘Assuming that with all our thoughts, corporeal movements are harmonically connected, we can pretty well conceive how the sudden removal of the mind, from station to station, in order to consider its object, is answered by a reciprocating contraction and dilatation of the elastic parts of our viscera. There are communicated to the diaphragm, which (as from tickling) throws the air out by sudden jerks, and occasions a healthy concussion. This alone, and not what passes in the mind, is the true cause of the pleasure derived from a thought, which in reality contains nothing. Voltaire says, that providence has given us hope and sleep, as a compensation for the many cares of life. He might have added laughter, if the wit and originality of humour, necessary to excite it among rational people, were not as rare, as the talent for head-breaking, neck-breaking, and heart-breaking fictions, is common among our mystics, esprits forts, and sentimental novelists, respectively.
We may, then, I think, concede to Epicurus what he contends for, ‘All pleasure, even that excited by objects of taste, consists in animal or bodily feeling.’ In granting so much, we shall not in the least degrade the spiritual sense of respect for moral ideas. This is not pleasure, but self-esteem, which raises us above the want of it. Neither will the concession be any degradation of the less noble pleasure of taste.’
You, Mr Editor, will join with me in wishing this celebrated code of metaphysics were translated, that its pretensions may be examined in the country of Locke and Horne Took. But I should be sorry to see it undertaken by a man not master of the two languages.
I am, Sir, your’s
Thomas Beddoes
March 28, 1796
Published: The Monthly Magazine, 1 (May 1796), 265–67