El Camino del Lobo 1st Edition Belfort Jordan

install download

[Link]
belfort-jordan/

Download more ebook from [Link]

We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit [Link]
to discover even more!

Os segredos do lobo O método infalível de venda do lobo

de Wall Street Jordan Belfort

[Link]
infalivel-de-venda-do-lobo-de-wall-street-jordan-belfort/

El amanecer del lobo Mikel Chasco

[Link]

El camino del pecado Tania Sexton

[Link]

El camino del pecado Tania Sexton

[Link]
El camino del pecado Tania Sexton

[Link]

El perfume del Rey 1st Edition Karine Bernal Lobo

[Link]
karine-bernal-lobo/

El camino inesperado 1st Edition Alejandro Monreal

Landete

[Link]
alejandro-monreal-landete-2/

El camino inesperado 1st Edition Alejandro Monreal

Landete

[Link]
alejandro-monreal-landete/

El camino a Rhodes 1st Edition Mariana Zapata

[Link]
mariana-zapata/
Resulta tentador dedicar este libro a la
persona que cambió mi vida y no dejó
nunca de creer en mí: mi pareja, Anne.
Sin embargo, ella me pidió que se lo
dedicara a las personas del mundo entero
que han asistido a mis seminarios, visto
mis videos y estudiado la línea recta o
que me han escrito para pedirme consejo,
y sobre todo a las que me han escrito para
darme las gracias o que se han tomado la
molestia de decírmelo. Tengo que
reconocer que debo principalmente mi
fama a mi retorcido pasado; ésa es sólo
una reducida parte de él, y no la que me
enorgullece o por la que quisiera ser
recordado. A quienes me escribieron para
decirme que les he dado la esperanza de
una segunda oportunidad, que gracias a
que me recuperé de un gran fracaso creen
que ellos podrán superar también
cualquier situación en la que se
encuentren, les dedico este libro; a la
infinidad de personas que me han escrito
para decirme que el sistema de línea recta
cambió su vida, su nivel de éxito y sus
negocios de manera exponencial les
dedico este libro. La creación del sistema
de línea recta cambió mi vida para
siempre; las series de habilidades que
incorpora me permitieron reinventar mi
existencia en una manera que ni siquiera
yo creí posible. Espero que esta obra
permita a muchos más individuos tener
acceso a los dones que no cesa de
brindar; el sistema de línea recta es
realmente para todos. El mayor don que
yo he recibido hasta la fecha es Anne, mi
amor; espero que esta obra conceda
también a todos los que la lean el deseo
de ver cumplidos sus sueños personales.
 PRÓLOGO
EL NACIMIENTO DE
UN SISTEMA DE
VENTAS

Lo que dicen de mí es cierto. Soy uno de

esos vendedores natos capaces de vender
hielo a un esquimal, petróleo a un árabe,
carne de puerco a un rabino o cualquier
otra cosa que se te ocurra.
Pero ¿a quién le importa eso?
A menos que quieras contratarme
para que venda uno de tus productos, mi
aptitud para cerrar una venta es
básicamente irrelevante para ti.
Como sea, ése es mi don: la aptitud
para vender cualquier cosa a cualquier
persona, en grandes cantidades. Y aunque
ignoro si este don procede de Dios o de la
naturaleza, lo que sí puedo decir —con
absoluta seguridad, de hecho— es que no
soy la única persona que nació con él.
Unas cuantas más son en cierto modo
como yo.
El motivo de que sean sólo en cierto
modo como yo tiene que ver con otro
precioso don que poseo, infinitamente
más raro y valioso y que ofrece un
inmenso beneficio a todos, tú incluido.
¿Cuál es ese magnífico don?
El talento para tomar a personas de
todo tipo, sin consideración de su edad,
raza, credo, color, estrato
socioeconómico, categoría educativa o
nivel de aptitud natural para las ventas, y
convertirlas casi al instante en
vendedoras de clase mundial.
Ésta es una afirmación atrevida, lo sé,
pero permíteme expresarla de otra
manera: si yo fuera un superhéroe,
capacitar a vendedores sería mi
superpoder, y no hay alma en el planeta
que lo haga mejor que yo.
Eso sonó espantoso, ¿no es cierto?
Imagino lo que piensas justo ahora:
“¡Qué engreído es este tipo, qué
pretencioso, qué pagado de sí mismo!
¡Echémoslo a los lobos!
”¡Un momento! Él ya es un lobo,
¿verdad?”
Lo fui alguna vez, pero creo que es
tiempo de que me presente formalmente.
Soy el Lobo de Wall Street. ¿Me
recuerdas? El que Leonardo DiCaprio
interpretó en la pantalla grande, el que
tomó a miles de jóvenes que apenas
podían caminar y mascar chicle de
manera simultánea y los convirtió en
vendedores de clase mundial mediante un
sistema de capacitación aparentemente
mágico llamado línea recta. El que
torturó a todos esos aterrados
neozelandeses al final de la película
porque no podían venderle una pluma
como debía ser. Seguro que me
recuerdas.
Después del Lunes Negro, asumí el
control de la pequeña e irrelevante casa
de bolsa Stratton Oakmont, que mudé a
Long Island en busca de fortuna, y fue
ahí, en la primavera de 1988, donde
descifré el código de la influencia
humana y desarrollé ese sistema de
capacitación de vendedores
aparentemente mágico.
Su nombre era sistema de línea recta
—o línea recta, para abreviar—, un
método que resultó tan efectivo y fácil de
aprender que a unos días de haberlo
inventado ya producía abundante riqueza
y éxito a cualquier persona a la que yo se
lo enseñara. En consecuencia, miles de
jóvenes, tanto hombres como mujeres,
empezaron a volcarse a la sala de juntas
de Stratton para aprovechar la
oportunidad de la línea recta y reclamar
su derecho al sueño americano.
La mayoría de ellos eran, en el mejor
de los casos, gente decididamente
promedio, en esencia la triste y olvidada
progenie de las familias obreras
estadunidenses. Eran chicos a los que sus
padres no les habían dicho nunca que
tenían facultades para la grandeza;
cualquier grandeza que hayan poseído en
forma natural había sido literalmente
borrada de ellos a fuerza de
condicionamiento desde el día que
nacieron. Para cuando llegaron a mi sala
de juntas, trataban solamente de
sobrevivir, no de prosperar.
Pero en un mundo poslínea recta,
todo eso carecía de importancia. Cosas
como la educación, el intelecto y la
aptitud natural para las ventas se habían
vuelto ya meras trivialidades que podían
superarse con facilidad. Era suficiente
con que una persona se presentara en mi
puerta y prometiera trabajar al máximo
para que yo le enseñara el sistema de
línea recta y la hiciera rica.
Sin embargo, todo ese éxito precoz
tenía también un lado oscuro. El sistema
demostró ser casi demasiado efectivo;
creó millonarios de nuevo cuño a un
ritmo tan frenético que ellos terminaron
por librarse de las clásicas luchas por la
vida que atraviesa la mayoría de los
jóvenes y que les sirven para forjar su
carácter. El resultado fue un éxito sin
respeto, una riqueza sin límite y un poder
sin responsabilidad y las cosas se salieron
de control en un parpadeo.
Del mismo modo que una tormenta
tropical de apariencia inofensiva utiliza
las cálidas aguas del Atlántico para
crecer, afianzarse, fortalecerse y mutar
hasta alcanzar un punto tal de masa
crítica que destruye todo a su paso, el
sistema de línea recta siguió una
misteriosa trayectoria similar que
también destruyó todo a su paso, yo
incluido.
Cuando eso acabó, en efecto, yo lo
había perdido todo: mi dinero, mi orgullo,
mi dignidad, mi respeto por mí mismo, a
mis hijos —por un tiempo— y mi
libertad.
No obstante, lo peor fue que sabía
que la culpa era mía: había tomado un
don de Dios y abusado de él; había
tomado un descubrimiento asombroso y
lo envilecí.
El sistema de línea recta era capaz de
cambiar la vida de la gente en forma
drástica: emparejaba el campo de juego
para todos los que no habían alcanzado la
grandeza a causa de su nulidad para
comunicar con eficacia sus pensamientos
e ideas de tal modo que los demás los
comprendieran y se sintieran impulsados
a actuar.
¿Y qué hice con él?
Además de romper gran número de
récords en el consumo de peligrosas
drogas recreativas, usé mi descubrimiento
del sistema de capacitación de ventas más
efectivo del mundo para cumplir todas
mis fantasías adolescentes al tiempo que
potenciaba a miles de personas más para
que hicieran lo mismo.
De manera que sí, me merecía lo que
obtuve: terminar hecho polvo.
Pero la historia no termina ahí, desde
luego; ¿cómo podía hacerlo? ¿Cómo era
posible que un sistema que había creado
tanta riqueza y éxito para quienquiera que
lo aprendía desapareciese sin más ni más
en la oscuridad?
No podía hacerlo. Y no lo hizo, por
supuesto.
Todo comenzó con los miles de
exStrattonitas que, luego de abandonar la
empresa, propagaron el sistema y
llevaron a una docena de industrias una
versión diluida de él. Sí, dondequiera que
fueron y por diluida que fuese su versión,
bastaba con enseñar siquiera una fracción
del sistema de línea recta para convertir a
un empeñoso vendedor en un productor
sólido.
 Entonces intervine yo.
Después de dos libros autobiográficos
de gran éxito de ventas y de la taquillera
película de Scorsese, difundí la versión
íntegra del sistema por el mundo entero,
en prácticamente todos los ramos e
industrias: de la banca a la correduría, de
las telecomunicaciones a la industria
automotriz, de los bienes raíces a los
seguros y la planeación financiera, de los
plomeros a los médicos, los abogados y
los dentistas y de los mercadólogos en
línea a los comercializadores fuera de
línea y básicamente todos los que se
hallan en medio. Y pese a que en la
ocasión anterior los resultados ya habían
sido pasmosos, esta vez fueron mejores
aún.
Antes de volver a enseñar este
sistema, dediqué dos años completos a
revisar su código línea por línea, para
tomar cada matiz y llevarlo a un todavía
más alto nivel de pericia operativa
mientras me hacía cargo de que cada bit
se basara en el grado más eminente de la
ética y la integridad.
Fue así como desaparecieron del
sistema todas las tácticas de ventas de
presión aguda, los patrones lingüísticos
cuestionables y hasta las más leves
referencias a cerrar una venta a cualquier
costo con tal de ganar una comisión, todo
lo cual se eliminó en favor de estrategias
más elegantes. Fue un proceso minucioso
en el que no se escatimaron gastos y
ninguna piedra quedó sin voltear.
La tarea de pulir cada aspecto del
sistema recayó en expertos de clase
mundial, desde psicólogos ocupacionales
hasta expertos en creación de contenidos,
buenas prácticas de educación de adultos
y programación neurolingüística. Y lo
que emergió de todo eso fue algo de
verdad increíble: un sistema tan eficiente
y efectivo y que mantenía un tan alto
nivel de ética e integridad que supe en mi
corazón que el sistema de línea recta se
había transformado por fin en lo que
siempre supe que podía ser:
Una fuerza generadora de dinero
orientada al bien.
Lo que te ofreceré en las páginas
siguientes es una solución puesta a punto
para aplicar el sistema de línea recta a
cualquier ramo o industria.
Si te desempeñas en el campo de las
ventas o tienes una empresa propia, este
libro cambiará por completo tu nivel de
juego. Te mostrará cómo reducir tu ciclo
de ventas, aumentar tu índice de cierre de
ventas, desarrollar un flujo constante de
recomendaciones de clientes y crear
clientes de por vida. Te aportará también
una fórmula muy sencilla para instalar y
mantener una fuerza de ventas de clase
mundial.
Si no te dedicas a las ventas, este
libro será valioso para ti de todas
maneras. Uno de los errores más costosos
que los “civiles” cometen es que tienden
a concebir las ventas y la persuasión en
términos tradicionales, en los que un
vendedor cierra una venta y ya. Se
preguntan entonces: “Si no trabajo en
ventas, ¿qué caso tiene que aprenda a
vender?”.
Nada podría estar más lejos de la
verdad.
Aun si no trabajas en “ventas”, debes
ser al menos razonablemente diestro en
las ventas y la persuasión. De lo
contrario, llevarás una existencia
despotenciada.
Vender es todo en la vida.
 De hecho, si no vendes, fracasarás.
Le vendes a la gente la noción —es
decir, la convences— de que tus ideas,
tus conceptos o tus productos tienen
sentido, así seas un padre o madre que
debe convencer a sus hijos de la
importancia de que se bañen o hagan su
tarea, un profesor que debe hacer lo
propio con sus alumnos para que valoren
la educación, un abogado defensor que
tiene que convencer a un jurado de la
inocencia de su cliente, un pastor que
debe persuadir a su comunidad de la
existencia de Dios, Jesús, Mahoma o
Buda o un político ansioso de hacer ver a
sus electores los beneficios de que voten
en cierto referéndum. En suma, las ventas
se aplican a todas las personas y todos los
aspectos de la vida, tanto personales
como de negocios. Después de todo, en
algún momento de nuestra vida todos
tenemos que “vendernos” a alguien: a
una posible pareja, un futuro patrón, un
futuro empleado, una futura primera cita,
etcétera.
Ahí tienes entonces la totalidad de los
escenarios comunes de negocios que
quedan fuera de lo que normalmente
consideramos ventas: un emprendedor
que intenta conseguir capital de riesgo o
una línea de crédito en un banco; la
necesidad de que convenzas a tus
empleados o a un posible recluta de que
tu visión del futuro es lógica y vigorosa;
la necesidad de negociar un nuevo
arrendamiento de un espacio para
oficinas; la de obtener una mejor tasa de
interés para tu cuenta mercantil, o la de
negociar con un proveedor mejores
condiciones de pago.
Como ya dije, no importa cuál sea tu
ramo o si se trata de asuntos personales o
de negocios: siempre queremos transmitir
nuestros pensamientos, ideas, esperanzas
y sueños en una forma que no sólo
impulse a la gente a actuar, sino que
también nos consiga lo que deseamos en
la vida.
La persuasión ética se reduce a eso, y
sin esta habilidad clave es muy difícil que
alcancemos un nivel razonable de éxito o
llevemos una vida potenciada.
De hecho, no de otra cosa trata este
libro. Dado que te brinda una manera
simple pero comprobada de dominar el
arte de la comunicación, podrás
desplazarte por la vida con más poder
personal y tener una existencia mucho
más potenciada.
Sólo recuerda las palabras del tío del
Hombre Araña en la primera película de
este personaje: “Un gran poder”, advirtió,
“implica una gran responsabilidad”.
 Este libro te proporcionará ese poder.
Te exhorto a que lo uses con
responsabilidad.
 CAPÍTULO 2
LA INVENCIÓN DE
LA LÍNEA RECTA

—Estoy dispuesto a quedarme aquí toda

la noche —les dije amenazadoramente a
los Strattonitas, vi a los ojos a todos y
cada uno de ellos y permití que sintieran
todo el peso de mi mirada.
Estaban sentados detrás de viejos
escritorios de madera, dispuestos al modo
de un salón de clases, y sobre cada uno
de ellos se alzaba un modesto teléfono
negro, un monitor de computadora de
color gris y una pila con un centenar de
tarjetas de tres por cinco pulgadas que yo
había comprado en Dun & Bradstreet a
22 centavos de dólar la pieza. Cada una
de esas tarjetas contenía el nombre y
número telefónico de un inversionista
rico, junto con la denominación de la
compañía de la que era dueño y el dato de
sus ingresos anuales del año anterior.
Para Danny y para mí, esas D&Bs,
como les decíamos, valían oro, ya que
cada doscientas tarjetas rendían diez
pistas calificadas, de las que nosotros
obteníamos entre dos o tres cuentas
nuevas. Y pese a que estas cifras podrían
no parecer muy impresionantes, un
agente que hiciera tal cosa durante tres
meses seguidos estaba en condiciones de
ganar más de dos millones de dólares al
año; y si lo hacía durante un año, podía
ganar más del triple de esa suma.
 Por desgracia, los resultados de los
Strattonitas distaban mucho de ser
impresionantes. De hecho, habían sido
sencillamente espantosos. De cada
doscientos candidatos a los que les
llamaban, obtenían en promedio cinco
pistas apenas, con las que cerraban un
promedio de… cero ventas.
Invariablemente.
—Así que pónganse cómodos —
continué—, porque no saldremos de aquí
hasta que resolvamos esto. Comencemos
por ser brutalmente honestos: quiero que
me digan por qué les cuesta tanto trabajo
cerrar ventas con los ricos, porque la
verdad no entiendo —me alcé de
hombros—. ¡Yo sí lo hago! ¡Danny lo
hace! Y sé que ustedes pueden hacerlo
también —les dirigí un remedo de una
sonrisa de compasión—. Es como si
tuvieran un bloqueo mental que se los
impide y ya es hora de destruirlo. De
modo que, para comenzar, díganme por
qué esto les resulta tan difícil; en verdad
quiero saberlo.
Transcurrieron unos momentos
mientras yo permanecía al frente de la
sala y detectaba huecos entre los
Strattonitas, quienes parecían encogerse
literalmente en sus asientos bajo el peso
de mi mirada. Formaban un grupo de lo
más variado, eso es innegable; era un
milagro que cualquiera de esos payasos
hubiese aprobado siquiera el examen que
lo acreditaba como agente de bolsa.
Por fin uno de ellos rompió el
silencio:
—¡Nos ponen demasiadas
objeciones! —gimoteó—. A mí me
llueven por todas partes. ¡Ni siquiera me
dan tiempo de rebatirlas!
—¡Tampoco a mí! —agregó otro—.
Son miles de objeciones y ni siquiera
puedo empezar a resolverlas. ¡Es mucho
más difícil que con las acciones de bajo
precio!
—¡Exacto! —añadió un tercero—. A
mí me acribillan con objeciones —lanzó
un profundo suspiro—. ¡Yo también voto
por las acciones de bajo precio!
—Lo mismo me pasa a mí —agregó
uno más—. Son las objeciones;
simplemente no paran.
El resto de los Strattonitas inclinaron
la cabeza para indicar su acuerdo
mientras farfullaban sentimientos
colectivos de reprobación.
Sin embargo, yo no me dejé
amedrentar. Con excepción de aquella
referencia al “voto” —¡como si ésta
fuera una maldita democracia!—, ya
había oído todo eso en ocasiones
anteriores.
 De hecho, desde el día que hicimos el
cambio los agentes se habían quejado del
mayor número de objeciones y de lo
difícil que era refutarlas. Y aunque había
cierto grado de verdad en eso, no era ni
con mucho tan difícil como ellos lo
hacían parecer. ¿Hay miles de
objeciones? ¡Vaya!, ¡qué gran novedad!
Por un momento pensé actuar de
inmediato contra el alborotador que había
mencionado la palabra que empieza con
V, pero decidí no hacerlo.
Era hora de desenmascarar de una vez
por todas las sandeces de estos
muchachos.
—¡Basta! —dije, con un dejo de
sarcasmo—. Ya que están tan seguros de
que hay miles de objeciones, enlistemos
en este momento cada una de ellas —me
volví hacia el pizarrón blanco, tomé un
marcador con tinta negra de la repisa de
la base y lo dirigí al centro del tablero—.
¡Adelante! —continué—. Díganmelas
todas y yo les recitaré después la
totalidad de las respuestas, una por una,
para que vean lo fácil que es esto.
¡Vamos, comiencen! —se revolvieron
incómodamente en sus asientos; lucían
asustados, como una familia de ciervos
sorprendidos bajo los faros de un coche,
aunque para nada tan hermosos—.
¡Vamos! —insistí—; hablen ahora o
callen para siempre.
—“¡Me gustaría pensarlo!” —gritó
por fin uno de ellos.
—¡Bien! —contesté y escribí la
objeción en el tablero—. Lo quiere
pensar; muy buen comienzo, sigan.
—¡Quiere que le vuelvas a llamar
después! —exclamó otro.
—De acuerdo —respondí y escribí
también esa objeción—. Quiere que le
vuelvas a llamar. ¿Qué más?
—“¡Envíeme más información!”
—Ésa es buena —comenté y la anoté
—. Sigan; si nos lo tomamos con calma,
podemos aspirar a reunir mil objeciones,
así que ya nada más nos faltan
novecientas noventa y siete —les lancé
una sonrisa sarcástica—. ¡Por supuesto
que podemos lograrlo!
—“¡Es una mala época del año!” —
gritó alguien.
—Bien —repliqué—. Continúen.
—“¡Tengo que hablarlo con mi
esposa!” —vociferó otro.
—¡O con su socio! —gritó uno más.
—Excelente —dije muy tranquilo y
escribí ambas objeciones—. Hemos
conseguido un gran avance; ya sólo nos
faltan novecientas noventa y cuatro.
Sigan.
—“¡No tengo liquidez en este
momento!” —exclamó un agente.
—¡Ésa es buena! —dije rápidamente
y la garabateé en el pizarrón—, aunque
deben admitir que es muy esporádica
desde que empezamos a llamarles a los
ricos. Bueno, continuemos; ya sólo nos
faltan novecientas noventa y tres.
—“¡Sólo trato con mi agente!” —
gritó otro.
—“¡Nunca he oído hablar de su
compañía!” —bramó uno más.
—“¡Ya me han estafado en otras
ocasiones!”
—“¡No me agrada el mercado por
ahora!”
—“¡Estoy muy ocupado!”
—“¡No confío en usted!”
—“¡No tomo decisiones
apresuradas!”
Y así prosiguieron por un rato, sin
dejar de mencionar una objeción tras otra
mientras yo las escribía con letra cada
vez más ilegible. Cuando acabaron, yo
había cubierto ya todo pizarrón con los
argumentos que se les ocurrieron… que
al final resultaron ser nada más catorce.
De acuerdo; eran únicamente catorce
objeciones, y la mitad de ellas variantes
de dos: primera, que era una mala época
del año, como periodo para presentar la
declaración de impuestos, el verano, el
regreso a clases, la temporada navideña,
la hora de la cerveza Miller o el Día de la
Marmota, y segunda, que debían hablar
con otra persona, como su cónyuge, su
abogado, su socio, su contador, su agente,
su adivino o su Hada de los Dientes.
¡Cuánta basura!, pensé.
En las cuatro últimas semanas los
Strattonitas habían insistido en que era
imposible lidiar con esos “miles de
objeciones”, hasta el punto de que, en mi
momento más oscuro, casi me
convencieron de que tenían razón, que
eran demasiadas objeciones para que el
vendedor promedio las manejara y que el
éxito que Danny y yo teníamos era un
ejemplo más de la diferencia entre los
vendedores natos y los demás. ¡Pero todo
esto no era más que basura!
De repente sentí que empezaba a
exasperarme.
En retrospectiva, antes siquiera de
que yo inventara el sistema de línea recta,
siempre supe que no existía ninguna
diferencia entre una objeción y otra,
aunque verlas garabateadas en el pizarrón
puso claramente de relieve que eran por
completo indistintas. De hecho, justo en
ese momento caí en la cuenta de que, en
definitiva, eran básicamente iguales, que
las objeciones comunes no eran otra cosa
que cortinas de humo de lo que en verdad
Other documents randomly have
different content
criticised; it is more important to remember that by a criticism Kant
meant an attempt to steer a course between the always enticing
extremes of dogmatism and scepticism,—an attempt to be fair, i. e.
just to both sides, and yet neither to sink into the systematised
placidity of the former, nor to rove in a mere guerilla warfare with
the latter. And it is the mere privateer who in the popular sense of
the word is the mere critic.
Of Kant we must remember that he has the defects of his qualities.
He prides himself on his distinctions of sense and intellect, of
imagination and understanding, of understanding and reason; and
with justice: but his distinctions are sometimes so decisive that it is
hard work both for him and for his reader to reconstitute their unity.
He is fond of utilising old classifications to embody his new doctrine:
and occasionally the result is like what we have been taught to
expect from pouring new wine into old bottles. He draws hard and
fast lines, and then has to create, as it seems, supplementary links
of connexion, which, if they operate, can only do so because they
are the very unity he began by ignoring. One gets perfectly lost in
the multitude of syntheses, in the labyrinth of categories, schemata,
and principles, of paralogisms, antinomies, and ideals of pure
reason. One part of this formalism may be set down to the pedantry
and pipeclay of the age of the Great Frederick—pedantry, from
which, as we console ourselves, our modern souls are freed. But it
arises rather from the necessity of pursuing the battle between truth
and error through every complicated passage in that great fortress
which ages of scholasticism had—on various plans—gradually
constructed. Kant is always a little of the martinet and the
schoolmaster; but it is because he knows that true liberty cannot be
secured without forms and must capture the old before it can plant
the new. The forms as they stand in his grouping may often appear
stiff and lifeless: but a more careful study, more sympathetically
intent, will find that there is latent life and undisplayed connexion in
the terms. Unfortunately the classified cut-and-dried specimens are
more welcome to the collector, and can more easily be put in
evidence in the examination-room.
Thus the original question, Are synthetic judgments a priori possible?
is answered—somewhat piecemeal—in a way that leads the reader
to suppose it is a question of psychology. He hears so much of
sense, imagination, intellect, in the discussion, that he fancies it is
an account of a process carried on by the faculties of an individual
mind. And of course nobody need suppose these processes are ever
carried on otherwise than by individual thinkers, human beings with
proper names. But scientific investigation is concerned only with the
essential and universal. For it, really, sense, imagination, &c. are not
so many faculties in a thinking agent: they are grades and aspects of
consciousness,—'powers' in a process of gradual mental complication
(involution). Kant is really dealing with a 'normal' thought with its
distinguishable constituent aspects. Only—he fails to 'make this
explicit and clear. The individualism—the un-historical prepossession
—of his age is upon his phraseology, if not upon his thought: and
one hardly realises that he is really engaged on human thought and
knowledge as a substantial subject of itself apart from its individual
vehicles,—on that thought, which lives and grows in social
institutions and products,—in language, science, literature, and
moral usage,—the common stock which one age bequeathes to the
next, but which the later-comer can only inherit if he works for and
creates it afresh. If it be a psychology, therefore, it is a psychology
which does not assume a soul with qualities, but which expounds
the steps in the constitution of a normal intelligence.
One may note, without insisting on them too much, the defects of
his treatment of the forms of thought. It may be said that, in the
first place, the table of the categories was incomplete. It had been
borrowed, as Kant himself tells us, from the old logical subdivision of
judgments, derived more or less directly from Aristotle and the
Schoolmen. Now many of the relations occurring in ordinary thought
could not be reduced to any of the twelve forms, without doing
violence to them. But Kant expressly disclaims exhaustiveness in
detail. He could, if he would: but that is for another season. In the
second place, the classification did not expressly put forward any
principle or reason, and gave ground for no development. That there
should be four fundamental categories, each with three divisions,
making twelve in all, seems as inexplicable as that there should be
four Athenian tribes in early times and twelve Phratriai. The twelve
patriarchs of thought stand as if in equal authority, with little or no
bearing upon one another. We have here, in short, what seems an
artificial and not a natural classification of the types of thought. But
Kant himself has given some explanation of the triad, and a
sympathetic interpretation has shown how the four main groups are
steps in the solution of one problem[3] In the third place, the
question as taken up seems largely psychological, or subjective,
concerning the constitution of the human mind as a percipient and
cognitive faculty. But this is necessary, perhaps, to the restricted
nature of Kant's problem. He is dealing with the elements that form
our objective or scientific consciousness of the physical world. The
deeper question of the place and work of mind in life in general, in
law and morality and religion, does not at this stage come before
him. That problem in fact only gradually emerges with the Criticism
of the Moral Faculty and the Aesthetic Judgment. Logic—as the
doctrine of the Logos which is the principle of all things, even of its
own Other—had to wait for its preparation till it could be matured.
In Hegel, the question assumes a wider scope, and receives a more
thorough-going answer. In the first place the question about the
Categories is transferred from what we have called the
epistemological or psychological, to what Hegel terms the logical,
sphere. It is transferred from the Reason subjectively considered as
a mere receptive and synthetic human consciousness to the Reason
which is in the world and in history,—a Reason, which our Reason,
as it were, touches, and so becomes possessed of knowledge. In the
second place, the Categories become a vast multitude. The
intellectual telescope discovers new stars behind the constellations
named in ancient lore. There is no longer, if there ever was, any
mystic virtue supposed to inhere in the number twelve: while the
triadic arrangement is made radical and everywhere recurs. The
modern chemist of thought vastly amplifies the number of its
elementary types and factors, and proves that many of the old
Categories are neither simple nor indecomposable. Thirdly, there is a
systematic development or process which links the Categories
together, and shows how the most simple, abstract, and inadequate,
inevitably lead up to the most complex and adequate. Each term or
member in the organism of thought has its place conditioned by all
the others: each of them is the germ, or the ripe fruit of another.

[1] Spinoza, Eth. ii. 7-13.

[2] Encyclopaedia, §§ 415, 420. Consciousness is only as it were
the surface of the ocean of mind; and reflects only the lights and
shadows in the sky above it.
[3] It is not the least of the merits of the exposition in Caird's
Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, vol. i. to have brought out
this.

CHAPTER X.

THE CRITICAL SOLUTION, CONTINUED: KANT.

Kant's answer to his question was briefly this. Intelligence is

essentially synthetic, always supplementing the given by something
beyond, instituting relationships, unifying the many, and thus
building up concrete totalities. In pure mathematics this is obvious:
the process of numeration shows it creating number out of units,
and geometry shows elementary propositions leading on to
complicated theorems. In abstract physics it is hardly less obvious:
there, e.g., the principle of reason and consequent or the
persistence of substance are rational and legitimate steps beyond
the mere datum. The more important question follows. How are
these 'pure' syntheses applicable to real fact? To that Kant replies:
They apply, because in all that we call real or objective fact there is
a subjective element or constituent. What appears to be purely
given, and independent of our perceptions, is a product of
perceptual and conceptual conditions,—is constituted by a synthesis
in perception, imagination, conception. Our world is a mental growth
—not our individual product, but the work of that common mind in
which we live and think, and which lives and thinks in us. Anyhow it
is not an isolated self-existing un-intelligent world for ever materially
outside us—an other world, eternally separate from us; but bone of
our bone, flesh of our flesh, the work realised by our great 'elder
brother,'—the Idea of human collectivity—the Reason or Spirit in
which we are all one soul. It is therefore no unwarranted step on to
a foreign property when we apply the categories of thought and
forms of sense to determine objective reality: for objective reality
has been for ever made, and is now making, objective and reality by
the conscious or unconscious syntheses of perception and
imagination.
There remains the answer to the same question as regards the
objects of Metaphysics. These objects are according to Kant
inferences, and illegitimate inferences. They are not necessary
elements or factors in the constitution of experience. In order that
there should be experience, knowledge, science, there must be an
endless hold of space and time in which to stow it clearly and
distinctly away: and there must also be ties and relations binding it
part to part, links of reference and correlation, a sort of logical
elastic band that will stretch to include infinitely copious materials.
But each real knowledge attaches to a definite assignable
perception, in a single place and time. From this point we can travel
—by means of like points—practically without limit in any direction.
But though the old margin fades forever and forever as we move, a
new margin takes its place: the limitation and finitude remain: and
new acquisitions are always balanced in part by the loss of the old.
Yet the heart and the imagination are clamorous, and the intellect is
ready to serve them. Such an intellect Kant has called Reason, and
its products (Platonic) 'Ideas.' The (Platonic) Idea expresses not so
much an object of knowledge as a postulate, a problem, an act of
faith. The 'Vaulting ambition' Intelligence 'o'erleaps itself and falls on
t'other,' Unsatisfied with a bundle of sensations and ideas, it
demands their abiding unity in a substantial Soul. To simplify the
endlessness of physical phenomena, it sums them up in a Universe.
To gather all mental and physical diversities and divisions into one
life, it creates the ideal of God.
Each single experience, and the collected aggregate of these
experiences, is felt to fall short of a complete total: and yet this
complete total, the ultimate unity, is itself not an experience at all.
But, if it be no object of experience, it is still an idea on which
reason is inevitably driven: and the attempt to apprehend it, in the
absence of experience, gives rise to the theories of Metaphysics.
Everything, however, which can be in the strict sense of the word
known, must be perceived in space and time, or, in other words,
must lie open to experience. Where experience ends, human reason
meets a barrier which checks any efficient progress, but refuses to
recognise the check as due to a natural limit which it is really
impossible to pass. The idea of completeness, of a rounded system,
or unconditional unity, is still left, after the categories of the
understanding have done their best: and is not destroyed although
its realisation or explication is declared to be impossible.
There is thus left unexplained a totality which encompasses all the
single members of experience—a unity compared to which the
several categories are only a collection of fragments—an infinite
which commands and regulates the finite concepts of the
experiential intellect. But in the region of rational thought there is no
objective and independent standard by which we can verify the
conclusions of Reason. There are no definite objects, lying beyond
the borders of experience, towards which it might unerringly turn;
and its sole authentic use, accordingly, is to see that the
understanding is thorough and exact, when it deals in the co-
ordination of experiences. In this want of definite objects, Reason,
whenever it acts for itself, can only fall into perpetual contradictions
and sophistries. Pure Reason, therefore, the faculty of ideas, the
organ of Metaphysics, does not of itself 'constitute' knowledge, but
merely 'regulates' the action of the understanding.
By this rigour of demonstration Kant dealt a deadly blow, as it
seemed, to the dogmatic Metaphysics, and the Deism of his time.
Hume had shaken the certainty of Metaphysics and thrown doubt
upon Theology: but Kant apparently made an end of Metaphysics,
and annihilated Deistic theology. The German philosopher, as Hegel
has said and Heine has repeated, did thoroughly and with systematic
demonstration what Voltaire did with literary graces and not without
the witticisms with which the French executioner gives the coup de
grâce. When a great idea had been degraded into a vulgar doctrine
and travestied in common reality, the Frenchman met its
inadequacies with graceful satire, and showed that these half-truths
were not eternal verities. The German made a theory and a system
of what was only a sally of criticism; and rendered the criticism
wrong, by making it too consistent and too logical[1].
Science—such is Kant's conclusion—is of the definite and detailed, of
the conditioned. It goes from point to point, within the enveloping
unity of what we call experience, and which rests upon the
transcendental and original unity of consciousness. But a knowledge
of the whole—of the enveloping unity—is a contradiction in terms. To
know is to synthetise: you cannot synthetise synthesis. Knowledge is
of the relative: but an absolute and unconditional totality has no
relations. We may therefore, possibly, feel, believe in, presuppose
the absolute: but know it in the stricter sense, we cannot. It may be
the object of a rational faith. But as for knowledge, we can get on in
psychology without the invisible and immortal soul: we can carry out
sciences of the physical universe, without troubling ourselves about
the 'cosmological' questions of ultimate atoms or ultimate void, of
first beginning and final end: and no proofs will ever prove the
existence of that 'ideal' of reason—briefly termed God—which
transcends and completes and creates all existence. Not that such
Ideas are useless even in science. They represent—if not without
risks—the faith and the presupposition which underlie the spirit of
scientific progress, and set before it an ideal perfection which it will
do well to strive after, though it can never get beyond
approximations. What is perhaps more important: this faith of
reason science is as little competent to disprove, as it is incompetent
to prove it. Science is not all in all: we are more than mere
theoretical and cognitive beings. The logic of science is not the sole
code of our spiritual or higher intellectual life;
'We live by admiration, hope, and love.'
The sequel and development of the first Criticism are found in Kant's
works on ethics, aesthetics, teleology and religion. Only in one
supplementary chapter, and in casual indications as need arises, has
Kant made any pronouncement on his view of Philosophy as a whole
and as a system. That it is and can only be a system, when it really
engages on reconstruction in theory, was of course his fundamental
insight. But in his stage of Zetesis[2], of testing and sifting the sound
from the professed, he has confined himself to breaking up the mass
piecemeal, and leaving each result in its turn to corroborate and
correct the other. Sense and intellect may spring from a common
stem; but let us, he says, deal with them in their apparent
separateness. Reason practical must no doubt be identical at bottom
with reason theoretical: all the more convincing will be the
undesigned coincidence between the results of an inquiry into the
principles of science, and one into the principles of morals. We have
seen that science ultimately rests—though it does not discuss it and
would indeed be incompetent to do so—on a faith, a hope, a
postulate of the ultimate supremacy of intelligence,—the faith of
reason in its own power (not verifiable indeed by an exhaustive list
of actual results)—or in the rationality of the world. For science—
though a kind of action and a part of conduct—is a sort of inactive
action: an enclave in the busy world, a period of preparation for the
battle of life. In the field of conduct the ultimate presupposition,
which was for the luxury of science called a reasonable faith or faith
of reason, makes itself felt in the more forcible form of a categorical
imperative.
Or, at least, so it seems on first acquaintance. The command of duty,
addressed to the sensuously-conditioned nature, brooks no
opposition and condescends to no reasons in explanation or
promises by way of attraction. The moral law claims unconditional
authority: towards its sublime aspect reverence and sheer obeisance
is due, utter loyalty to duty for duty's sake. Nothing short of this
absolute identification with the Ought and a willingly willed self-
surrender of the whole self to it can entitle an agent to the full rank
of moral goodness. Such is the form—the synthetic link which joins
the sensuous will indissolubly with the will reasonable of moral law.
Now for its explanation. Humanity, though in the world of
appearance and experience always subject to sensuous conditions, is
also a power of transcending these conditions. Man is more than he
can ever show in visibly single act. He has in him the hope, the faith,
the vision of absolute perfection and completeness: but has it not as
positive attained vision, but as the perpetual unrest of unsatisfied
endeavour, as the feeling and the anticipation of an unachieved idea.
And that perfection, that completeness he believes himself to be; he
even in some sense is. Lapses and ill-success cannot quench the
faith: for so long as there is life, there is hope.
As he pictures out this invisible self, it may assume various forms
more or less imaginative. At times it may seem a far away, and yet
intimately near, being of beings,—the common father of all souls, the
eternal self-existent centre of life and love, the omnipresent bond of
nature, the omniscient heart of hearts,—on whom he can lean in
closest communion; though he is only too well aware how often he
lives as if God were not, and human beings were roaming specks in
chaos. At other times, he looks up to it as to an inner and better self,
his conscience, the true and permanent being, which controls his
choices and avoidances, which approves and disapproves,
commands and condemns: his soul of soul, genius, and guardian
spirit. In such a mood to be true to his own self—to follow the very
voice of his nature—is to realise his law of life. His Ego is the
absolute ego—the reason which is all things. And lastly, there are
times when he conceives this better self and true essence as the
community of the faithful, as the congregation of reasonable beings,
of all perfected humanity.
In Kantian phraseology, man under one visible form is the union of
an intelligence and a sensibility, of a noümenal with a phenomenal
being. He is, indeed, says Kant, the former only in idea: it is only a
standpoint which he assumes. But it is a standpoint he always does
assume, if he is to be practical, i. e. if he is to move and modify the
world he finds around him. And what standpoint is that? What is the
law that has to govern his action, the law of the spiritual world? Its
supreme law is the law of liberty; and that law is autonomy. Action—
always under law—but that law a self-imposed one. So act that thy
will may be thy law, and with thy will the law of all others
whatsoever; so act that no other human being may by thy act be
deprived of full freedom and treated merely as a thing: so act as to
respect the dignity of every human being as implicitly a sovereign
legislative. In other words, Morality is a stage of struggle and of
progress which bears witness to something beyond. The 'I ought'
represents a transition stage towards the 'I will,' or rather it is the
translation of it into the language of the phenomenal world.[3]
Morality, in a sense-being, always presents itself as a contest
between the good and the evil principle: but in the transcendent and
noümenal being which such a being essentially is,—in the reasonable
or good will, the victory is already won by the good. Good is the law
which governs the world, and which is the strength of the individual
life. To the sensuous imagination, indeed, which here is apt to usurp
the place of reason, things appear under a somewhat different
aspect. There the certainty of self-conquest is forced by the
difficulties of apparent failure to veil itself under the picture of a
perpetual approximation through endless ages towards the standard
of perfect goodness: the confidence that the world is reasonable is
presented under the conception of a God who makes all things work
together for good to the righteous: and the autonomy of reason
presents itself as the postulate of freedom to begin afresh,
absolutely untrammeled by all that has gone before. Thus the
kingdom of reason is represented as having its times and seasons;
as making determinate starts, and working up to a consummation in
the end of ages. But implicitly Kant's idea of reason's autonomy,—of
the 'I ought' as in its supreme truth an 'I will,'—is an eternal truth.
The 'standpoint,' so to call it after Kant, is the standpoint which
explains life and conduct and which makes conduct possible. It is the
assertion that the completeness is, and is my inmost being, the
source of my action, my chief good, and that chief good not a
gratification or satisfaction to be looked forward to as reward, but
essential life and self-realisation. And this joy is what is hidden under
the austere gravity of the categorical imperative.
The Criticism of the Judgment-faculty is Kant's next step towards
providing a completer philosophy. Ostensibly it owes its origin to the
need of supplementing the treatment of Understanding and Reason
by a discussion of Judgment, and of considering our emotional as
well as our cognitive and volitional appreciations. What it really does
is to minimise still further the gulf left between the intellect and
nature—between the natural and the spiritual world. The intellect,
said the first criticism, makes nature: it makes possible the general
outlines of our conception of the world around us as a causally-
connected system, in which a permanent being undergoes perpetual
alteration, and manifests phenomena subject to mathematical
conditions. Intellect, in short, has staked out the world which is the
object of the practical man, and of his adviser the scientist. But
there is another world—the world of beauty and sublimity—the world
which art imitates and realises. The interpretation Kant gives to the
aesthetic world is as follows. The fact of beauty is a witness to the
presence in the mere copiousness of sensible existence of a sub-
conscious symmetry or spirit of harmony which realises without
compulsion and as if by free grace all the proportion and coherence
which intellect requires. Nature itself has something which does the
work that intellect was charged with, and does it with a subtle secret
hand which does not suggest the artificer. The fact of sublimity, on
the other hand, indicates the presence of an even greater spirit. For
beauty may seem—from what has been said—to be only an
unbought accrement to the commodities of life—facilitating the task
of the practical intellect. But the sublime in nature speaks of
something which is greater than human utilities and practical
conveniences. It reveals a something which is in sympathy with our
essential and higher self, and therefore stirs within us the keen
rapture of the traveller who sees from afar his home in 'rocky
Ithaca,' but a something which is cold to daily wants and vulgar
satisfactions, and therefore strikes upon us a gelid awe.
Another world yet remains, which appeals neither to our utilitarian
science, nor to our higher sentiments of artistic perfection. This is
the world as the home of organic life, and perhaps itself an
organism. The organism is apt to be a poser for the ordinary
categories of mechanical science. Here the part contains the whole,
not less than the whole contains the part: the cause is an effect, as
well as cause, of its effect. One thing is in another, and the other in
it: 'the present is charged with the past, and pregnant of the
future,'—as the great founder of modern teleology often said. In the
plant and the animal the natural world has to a certain degree
reached an ideal unity which is also real. Reason—the syllogism—is
here not merely introduced from without, as when man manipulates,
but is the immanent law of a natural life,—the end working out itself
by its own means and act. The fact admitted in these creatures
suggests extending the conception of organism (or teleology) to
nature as a whole. From this point of view Nature may almost be
said to have a history—because it is almost conceived as having one
abiding self which in apparent unconsciousness wonderfully
simulates the purposive adaptation of conscious life. The older
vulgar teleology was somewhat mechanical: it regarded the natural
world outside of—or as it said, below—man as having no end of its
own, but in its series subserving man's commodities. In the teleology
of Kant the supreme end is still in a way man, and still there is a
little of the mechanical about it: but it is not to promote man's
happiness, understood as that probably must be in a selfish sense,
but to produce in him the worthiest agent to carry on to its highest
the rational process of development. The struggles and pains of
natural existence, the laws of life, the competition of rivals, are all
means in the hands of nature to produce an autonomous being.
Kant says, a moral agent. But a moral agent has been already
explained as an intelligence certified unto truth and a self-centred
will whose law is the law of the cosmos,—whose plan of life, if we so
put of it, is essentially a concentration in miniature and in
individuality of the system ordained by the all-present God.
It is true that Kant, after all these soarings, checks enthusiasm by
the words 'not that we can know this, or that it is so: but our nature
with unmistakable tendency bids us act as if it were so. Logic will
hardly justify it—but life seems to demand it.' And some have
replied: 'let us trust the larger hope.'

[1] Hegel's Werke, vol. i. p. 140.

[2] Kant from 1762 onwards continues to insist on the necessity
for philosophy taking up an analytic and critical attitude to current
conceptions: see especially Werke, i. 95 and 292.
[3] Foundation of Metaph. of Eth. (Werke, viii. 82, 89): 'Dieses
Sollen ist eigentlich ein Wollen.'

CHAPTER XI.

SYNTHESIS AND RECONSTRUCTION: FICHTE.

To get the full effect of a new doctrine it must be brought into

contact with a mind unshackled by those traditional prepossessions
which clung to its original author. Kant, essentially by training a man
of the school, was by heart and character essentially a seeker after
the wider ends of the larger world. His lesson is on one hand the
scholar's disproof of pretended science, and on another an appeal
and an example to the mere scholar to make his philosophy ample
for the whole life, and co-extensive with the whole field of reality.
His first disciples who stand forward as teachers caught only the first
part of his message, and sought to set theoretical philosophy on a
sounder basis. Johann Gottlieb Fichte—perhaps the least
professional of great philosophical professors—with a resolute will, a
passion for logical thoroughness, and great impulse to force mankind
to be free and to realise liberty in an institution—was the first who
really grappled with the searching questions that arose out of Kant's
message to his age. His was a Kantism, not certainly always of the
letter, nor indeed always of the spirit: yet for all that, there was
substantial justice in his claim that his system supplied the
presupposition which gives meaning and interconnexion to Kant's
utterances[1]. It is, says the proverb, the first step that costs. And
Fichte took that step. Before his impetuosity the cautelous clauses
which besmirched the great purpose of Criticism shrunk away, the
central truth was disengaged from its old-fashioned swaddling
clothes, and openly announced itself as a renovating, almost a
revolutionary principle.
But, as was to be expected, the unity and force are paid for by a
considerable surrender of catholicity. If Kant's utterances are fused
into comparative simplicity, the unification does not embrace the
whole of the Kantian gospels. What Fichte did in his earlier stage—
the stage by which he counts in the history of philosophy—was to
emphasise and exhibit in his systematic statement that priority or
supremacy of the 'practical' over the 'theoretical' reason which Kant
had enunciated, and to put in the very foreground that self or Ego
which Kant had indicated, under the title of 'transcendental unity of
apperception,' as the focus which gives coherence and objectivity to
experience. But to put the final presupposition at the head and front
of all, as a principle originating and governing the whole line of
procedure, is really to modify in a thorough-going way the whole
aspect of a doctrine and its inner constitution. Kant's way is quiet
analysis: from the given, or what is supposed given, up regressively
to its final presuppositions, its latent prius. He shows you the thing is
so, apparently without effort, by judicious application of the proper
re-agent, as it were. Fichte, on the contrary, pours forth a strong
current of deduction: Let it be assumed that so and so is, then must,
or then shall, something else be; and so onwards. Instead of a
glance at the secret substructure of the world, you see it, at a
magician's mandate, building itself up; stone calling to stone, and
beam to beam, to fill up the gaps and bind the walls together. And
you must not merely read or listen. You are summoned as a partner
in the work; a work the author feels, only half-consciously, he has
not yet quite accomplished, and where therefore he complains of the
bystander's dullness.
This, one may say, was a new conception, certainly a new practice,
of philosophy. Kant had indeed hinted that the pupil in philosophy
must 'symphilosophise'; but practically, even his aim had been to
describe or narrate a process of thought with such quasi-historical
vividness and detail that the listener was sympathetically carried
through the succession of ideas which were called up before him.
What had been generally given in philosophical literature was a sort
of historical account of how thoughts happened: a succession of
pictures presented with the interposition here and there of a little
reasoning, expository of connexions. You enlisted your reader's
sympathy: you set his imagination to work by translating the logical
process into a historical event—the Logos into a Mythos—and
blending with your narrative a little explanation as to general drift
and relations, you left him to himself to enjoy the Theoria. The
nearest approach Fichte makes to this polite and easy method is in
the 'Sun-clear Statement,' where he, as he says, attempts to 'force
the reader to understand' him. But probably these things cannot be
forced. And for the rest Fichte's characteristic attitude is to request,
or command, his reader (or pupil) to think with him, to put himself
in the posture required, to perform the act of thought described. He
has not merely to be present at the lecture, but personally to
perform the experiment. It is not a mere story to be heard and
admired and forgotten. De te O pupil! fabula narratur. If it be a play,
you are the actor as well as the onlooker: and the play is not a play,
but the drama—the nameless drama—of the soul transacted in the
unseen sub-conscious depths which bear up its visible life.
You do not therefore begin by getting a fact put before you. Your
fact, in philosophy, must be your own act: not something done and
dead, passive, a thing, but something doing, alive, active: your
introspection must be, let us say, an experiment in the growing,
responsive, quick life, not anatomy of the mere cadaver. Think,
therefore, and catch yourself in the act of thinking. Get something
before your mind's eye, and see what it involves. It matters not what
you perceive or feel: only realise it fully and penetrate its meaning
and implications. It is of course the perception of something here
and now. And you would be, in ordinary life, eager to get on to
something else—to associate the present fact to something
perceived elsewhere, to draw conclusions about things yet to come.
But if you philosophise, you must check this practical-minded
impatience and concede yourself leisure to ponder deeply all that the
single perception involves. Be content to sit awhile with Mary, by the
side of Rachel of old. Let Martha bustle about. Fichte tells you that
your perception rests,—and you, you see that it rests, on the 'I am
that I am,'—on the I = I, i. e. on the continuity, identity, and unity of
the percipient self. Make the statement of what you perceive, believe
it, that is, assert it: and you have—done what? You have pledged
your whole self—falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus—to its truth: its
background is your whole and one mental life. And is that all? You
have also called the world to witness: your statement—if, as it
professes, it form an item however slight in the realm of knowledge
—requests and expects every other 'I' to acknowledge your
perception. Your certainty of the fact rests on the certainty of your
self: and your self is a self certified by its ever-postulated identity
with other selves, so on ad infinitum. In affirming this (whatever be
your statement) you affirm the Absolute Infinite Ego. Heaven and
earth are at stake in every jot and tittle[2].
At which plain frankness there was much cachinnation and even
muttering among the baser sort. Even wiser heads forgot—if they
ever knew—that Leibniz a century before had startled the world of
his day by a view that 'the Ego or something like it[3] was, under the
name of monad, the presupposition of each and every detail of
existence in any organic total. It was useless for Fichte to repeat[4]
that his philosophical Ego was not the empirical or individual ego
which he in this every-day world had to provide clothes and
company for. It is hard to persuade the world that it does not know
that 'I am I,' and what that means. Later, therefore, Fichte, going
along with the movement of contemporary speculation, and willing
to avoid one source of confusion, tended to keep off the name of
Ego from the absolute basis of all knowledge and experienced
reality. But unquestionably the absolutising of the Ego is the
characteristic note of his first period in philosophy: and it rings with
the spirit of the heaven-storming Titan. It means that the cardinal
principle and foundation of man's conscious moral and intellectual
life is identical with the principle of the Universe, even if the
Universe seem not to know it. It means that self-consciousness—the
certainty that I am I and one in all my manifestations—is the highest
word yet uttered. In, or under, the surface of human knowledge and
belief in reality, there is a transcendental Ego—a self identical with
all other selves,— infinite, unlimited, unconditional, absolute. The
certainty of human knowledge—and therefore of all reality in
consciousness—is the Absolute,—an absolute certainty and
knowledge—but an absolute with which I identify myself,—which I
am, and which is me. This is the absolute thesis—the nerve and
utter basis-laying—at the ground, or rather under the ground, of all I
know, feel, and will.
This, then, is the thesis at the very foundation of all Wissenschaft:
and therefore figures at the head of the Wissenschaftslehre,—the
name Fichte gives his fundamental philosophy. But alone it is
powerless. A foundation is only a foundation, by being built upon.
The position must be defined by counterposition: thesis by
antithesis: ego by non-ego. Ego, in fact, is first made such, as set
against you. In other words, the perception we assumed to start
with does not merely suppose and indeed pre-suppose the absolute
Ego; but it sets in the absolute Ego an ego and a non-ego,—sets
against the lesser ego, something limiting and limited, something
defining it in one particular direction; or, if the original consciousness
we started to examine was an act of will, then, it may be said, the
non-ego appears as about to be limited and defined by the Ego. Be
our consciousness, therefore, practical or theoretical, of action or of
knowledge, its fundamental characteristic is the conjunction
(correlation with subjugation) of an ego and a non-ego. It is always
a synthesis of an original antithesis[5]; of self and not-self. But every
such synthesis which brings together into one a self and a not-self, is
possible only in the original thesis of a greater self—an absolute Ego
—which includes the not-self and the self it contrasts within its larger
self. The unity of the first principle[6] (A = A, or I = I) parting or
distinguishing itself into the opposition of A versus not-A, Ego set
against non-ego, re-asserts itself again in consciousness (perception
of objects, and action upon them by will) as synthesis, i. e. a
conjunction (not a real union). And this synthesis is either the
limitation of the Ego by the non-ego or the limitation of the non-ego
by the Ego. The former gives the formula of theoretical, the latter
that of practical consciousness.
We begin with the absolute Ego. It is absolute activity, utter
freedom. It is the source of all action, all life. Yet if thus implicitly
everything, it is actually nothing. To be something, it must restrict
itself, set up in itself an antithesis:—by the setting up of a not-self, at
once limit and realise itself: translate itself from ideal absoluteness
and unconditionality into a reality which is also limited and partial.
All consciousness and action exhibit this antithesis of a limited self
and an outside and adversative other-being; but the antithesis rests
upon the medium of a larger life, a thesis which transcends and
includes the antithesis, and which leads to that alternating
adaptation of the two sides to one another (their synthesis) which
actual experience presents as its recurring phase[7]. The
Wissenschaftslehre leaving the absolute Ego in the background deals
with the play that goes on in human experience between the
correlatives to which it has reduced itself;—the antagonism, but the
moderated and overruled antagonism, of Ego and non-ego.
Observe the contrast to the ordinary methods of expression. Popular
language—if the popular philosophers are to be trusted as its
exponents—says 'an impression is produced by an external object on
the senses, and causes an idea in the mind.' The 'object' works a
series of marvellous effects on a mind, which—to begin with—is
hardly describable as anything more than an imagined point of
resistance, getting reality by being repeatedly impinged upon.[8]
Fichte's statements are rather interpreters of the vulgar phrases,
which say 'I hear, I see';—as if, forsooth, the 'I' did it all. According
to Fichte, the 'I,'—the absolute 'I,' is the real (but secret) source of
the position in which consciousness finds itself limited by a non-ego.
But within the finite ego and its consciousness there is no
reminiscence or awareness of this its great co-partner's—the
absolute ego's—act. For the finite consciousness, the beginning of its
activity—i. e. of all empirical consciousness, lies in an impulse or
stimulus from without—a mere somewhat of which we can predicate
the very minimum of attributes. It is only felt as opposing: and this
is the first stage or grade of theoretical consciousness: Sensation.
But in the perpetual antithesis—in the self-opposition which is the
radical act of consciousness—the mere limitation of Ego by non-Ego
is confronted by the underlying activity of the Ego which re-asserts
the limitation as its own act. Thus while we are, as it were,
impressed, we re-act against that impression—we set it forth before
us, as ours, and free ourselves from its immediate incumbency and
oppression. Instead of mere sentiency or feeling, we have a
perception (or intuition) of it.
It would be out of place, here, to try to write the interpretation of
that marvellous and difficult piece of dialectic—the
Wissenschaftslehre;—a theme to which Fichte returned again and
again up to his death, ever modifying details, selecting new modes
of exposition, and gradually, perhaps, changing the centre of gravity
of his system. It will be sufficient to note the two purposes which it
keeps in view. On the one hand it is a systematic theory of the
categories. It begins, as we have seen, with the three co-ordinates
of all reflection,—identity, difference, and reason why; it proceeds to
the co-relative principles of activity and passivity; to condition,
quantity, &c. And its work is to show how these forms naturally
emerge in the recurrent antithesis which arises in consciousness,
and how again they are brought together by the overmastering
Absolute thesis into a synthesis, from which the same process re-
appears. How much this corresponds in general conception to the
Hegelian Logic is obvious, and Fichte has the merit of the original
suggestion. With this however he conjoins—what Hegel has
relegated to his Psychology—an evolutional or developmental theory
of the mental powers. We have already seen how sensation is forced
by the latent intelligence to rise into perception (Anschauung): the
line of psychological development is carried on by Fichte through
imagination to understanding and reason. Hegel's work is far more
complete, definite, and detailed: but that need not keep us from
giving due homage to the suggestive sketch of the originator of the
conception[9].
But the theoretical consciousness is not all; and as we already know,
the practical Ego is supreme over it. In it lies the key to the mystery
of the stimulus—the shock from the unknown—which awakened the
activity of the Ego. The non-ego is only a mass of resistance created
by the Ego so that it may be active; only a stepping-stone on which
it may walk; a spring-board from which it may bound. Only so much
reality has the non-ego; the reality of something which may be
shaped, made, made use of. Call the something which the stimulus
(Anstoss) pre-supposes, the thing-in-itself (after Kant): and if you
ask How are things-in-themselves constituted, you get from the
Wissenschaftslehre the answer: 'They are as we should make
them[10],' Or, as it is said in another place: 'My world is—object and
sphere of my duties and absolutely nothing else[11]:' if you ask
whether there is really such a world, the only sound reply I can give
is: 'I have certainly and truthfully these definite duties, which take
the form of duties towards such, and in such, objects; and it is only
in a world such as I there represent and not elsewhere that I can
perform these duties which I cannot conceive otherwise,'
This is a grand word: and yet we feel that, in the intensity of
intellectual consecutiveness and moral inflexibleness, we have lost
some elements to which Kant had given their place in the philosophy
of life. The third of Kant's three Criticisms is conspicuous by its
absence from the Fichtean field of view, and has no recognition in
this scheme of the universe: and the great conception of the natural
world as an organism, in which natural man is only a part, and all is
controlled by an autonomous principle of life, has been for the while
allowed to drop. Even more than in Kant religion tends to be an
epilogue or appendix to morality: and God is identified with the
moral order of the world. It is customary to speak of Fichte's
idealism as ethical, or as subjective: and so long as these words are
understood, no harm is done. But to call it subjective does not mean
that Fichte was so far beside himself as to believe the world was
only a picture or a function of his individual brain. It means that he
throws the weight too much on the side of subjectivity. The Absolute
is, for him in his first stage, described as an Absolute Ego—and
thereby the natural world seems to be left without God: and
subjective duty has too exclusively thrown on it the weight of
certifying objective existence. The world, as we shall see, and have
indeed indirectly gathered from Kant, is too good and worthy to be
the mere block of stone out of which our duties are to be hewn. And
similarly, to call Fichte an ethical idealist is only to name him right,
when we add that his were idealist ethics. The world is not here
merely that social decorum may be maintained, and that puritanical
virtue may pronounce that all is so well, that thenceforth there shall
be no cakes and ale, nor ginger be hot in the mouth. The friend of
the two brothers Schlegel, and their remarkable wives, Dorothea and
Caroline, touched hands with a social group[12] which, for good and
for ill, had emancipated itself from all codes except that which bids
'To thine own self be true:
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'
To him, as to Kant, morality presented itself as autonomy, as the
dignity and grace of human nature in freest development; but to
him, more than to Kant, there commended itself the ideal of a city of
reason, a thoroughly socialised community[13], in which the welfare
of each would be an obligation on all, and the machinery of