race its genesis. An
enterprise like that of Fichte, although more philosophical than that of
Spencer, in that it pays more respect to the true order of things,
hardly leads us any further. Fichte takes thought in a concentrated
state, and expands it into reality; Spencer starts from external
reality, and condenses it into intellect. But, in the one case as in the
other, the intellect must be taken at the beginning as given--either
condensed or expanded, grasped in itself by a direct vision or perceived
by reflection in nature, as in a mirror.

The agreement of most philosophers on this point comes from the fact
that they are at one in affirming the unity of nature, and in
representing this unity under an abstract and geometrical form. Between
the organized and the unorganized they do not see and they will not see
the cleft. Some start from the inorganic, and, by compounding it with
itself, claim to form the living; others place life first, and proceed
towards matter by a skilfully managed _decrescendo_; but, for both,
there are only differences of _degree_ in nature--degrees of complexity
in the first hypothesis, of intensity in the second. Once this principle
is admitted, intelligence becomes as vast as reality; for it is
unquestionable that whatever is geometrical in things is entirely
accessible to human intelligence, and if the continuity between geometry
and the rest is perfect, all the rest must indeed be equally
intelligible, equally intelligent. Such is the postulate of most
systems. Any one can easily be convinced of this by comparing doctrines
that seem to have no common point, no common measure, those of Fichte
and Spencer for instance, two names that we happen to have just brought
together.

At the root of these speculations, then, there are the two convictions
correlative and complementary, that nature is one and that the function
of intellect is to embrace it in its entirety. The faculty of knowing
being supposed coextensive with the whole of experience, there can no
longer be any question of engendering it. It is already given, and we
merely have to use it, as we use our sight to take in the horizon. It
is true that opinions differ as to the value of the result. For some, it
is reality itself that the intellect embraces; for others, it is only a
phantom. But, phantom or reality, what intelligence grasps is thought to
be all that can be attained.

Hence the exaggerated confidence of philosophy in the p