Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/45

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since by the one we learn what it is that is meant, and by the other that such a thing exists. Like an oracle of the future, he pronounces the sentence : τὸ δ' είναι ούκ ούσία ούδενί ού γὰρ γένος τὸ ὀν : (ESSE autem nullius rei essentia est, quandoquidem ens non est genus) which means : " Existence never can belong to the essence of a thing." On the other hand, we may see how great was Herr von Schelling's veneration for the Ontological Proof in a long note, p. 152, of the 1st vol. of his " Philosophische Schriften" of 1809. We may even see in it something still more instructive, i.e., how easily Germans allow sand to be thrown in their eyes by impudence and blustering swagger. But for so thoroughly pitiable a creature as Hegel, whose whole pseudo-philosophy is but a monstrous amplification of the Ontological Proof, to have undertaken its defence against Kant, is indeed an alliance of which the Ontological Proof itself might be ashamed, however little it may in general be given to blushing. How can I be expected to speak with deference of men, who have brought philosophy into contempt?

§ 8. Spinoza.

Although Spinoza's philosophy mainly consists in the negation of the double dualism between God and the world and between soul and body, which his teacher, Descartes, had set up, he nevertheless remained true to his master in confounding and interchanging the relation between reason and consequence with that between cause and effect ; he even endeavoured to draw from it a still greater advantage for his own metaphysics than Descartes for his, for he made this confusion the foundation of his whole Pantheism.

A conception contains implicite all its essential predicates, so that they may be developed out of it explicite by means of mere analytical judgments: the sum total of