festations of the absolute. This is _objective_ idealism. But
Hegel tells me, that all these explanations are false. The only thing
really existing is the idea--the relation. The ego and the tree are but
two terms of the relation, and owe their reality to it. This is
_absolute_ idealism."[7]

If Martinus Scriblerus were alive, he also might be tempted to give an
illustration of these three forms of idealism.

The crowd of spectators at a fair, he might say, if they see a man
dancing upon the tight-rope, strained between two posts--have no doubt
in the world that the rope, and the man on it, are equally supported by
the same two posts, which, moreover, they presume to stand up there in
veritable substantiality before them. Were our three sages at the fair,
they would reason otherwise. Fichte would say--these people think there
are two posts! There is but one. That left-hand post is but the shadow
of the other. It is the right-hand _subjective_ post which has projected
it forth.

Schelling, gravely looking on, observes they are _both shadows_:
nay, they are identical. If you were to stand in the centre of
the rope, in the _point of indifference_ between them, and to turn
round till the intellectual intuition were sufficiently excited,
you would find the right-hand and the left-hand post blended
together--undistinguishable--you would perceive their absolute identity.

Shadows! identical! Very true, says Hegel, slowly stepping forward, but
what a mistake have both philosophers and the vulgar been making all
this time! They have presumed that these posts support the rope! It is
the rope which upholds the posts; which are indeed but its opposite
ends. You may see that, separately, each post is good for nothing; it is
the relation between them that is every thing; the rope is all. This
alone can be said to exist. Every thing about us is plainly at one end
or the other end of this, or some other rope. There runs, he would add,
a vulgar tradition that man made the rope. I will demonstrate that the
rope made the man and every thing else in the whole fair.

* * * * *

But it is not our object at present to enter further into the labyrinth
of German metaphysics; at a future time, if our readers should endure
the subject, we will endeavour to act as guide and interpreter through
some of its more curious passages; we are here concerned only with the
points of view taken of the material world. Have