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His opinion constitutes the third of those enumerated touching the knowledge of the absolute ; and the following is a brief statement of its prin cipal positions : While the lower sciences are of the relative and conditioned, Philosophy, as the science of sciences, must be of the absolute the unconditioned. Philosophy, therefore, supposes a science of the absolut Is the absolute beyond our knowledge ? then is philosophy itself impossibl But how, it is objected, can the absolute be known ? The ab- aolute, as unconditioned, identical, and one, cannot be cognized onder conditions, by difference and plurality. It cannot, there- fore, be known, if the subject of knowledge be distinguished from the object of knowledge ; in a knowledge of the absolute, existence and knowledge must be identical ; the absolute can only be known, if adequately known, and it can only be adequately known, by the absolute itself. But is this possible ? We are wholly ignorant of existence in itself : the mind knows nothing, except in parts, by quality, and difference, and relation ; con sciousness supposes the subject contradistinguished from the ob ject of thought ; the abstraction of this contrast is a negation of consciousness ; and the negation of consciousness is the annihi lation of thought itself. The alternative is therefore unavoidable : either finding the absolute, we lose ourselves ; or retaining self and individual consciousness, we do not reach the absolut All this Scheming frankly admits. prev next |