It is enough, if only it be rendered intelligible. This
will, I trust, have been effected in the following Theses for those of
my readers, who are willing to accompany me through the following
chapter, in which the results will be applied to the deduction of the
Imagination, and with it the principles of production and of genial
criticism in the fine arts.
THESIS I
Truth is correlative to being. Knowledge without a correspondent
reality is no knowledge; if we know, there must be somewhat known by
us. To know is in its very essence a verb active.
THESIS II
All truth is either mediate, that is, derived from some other truth or
truths; or immediate and original. The latter is absolute, and its
formula A. A.; the former is of dependent or conditional certainty,
and represented in the formula B. A. The certainty, which adheres in
A, is attributable to B.
SCHOLIUM. A chain without a staple, from which all the links derived
their stability, or a series without a first, has been not inaptly
allegorized, as a string of blind men, each holding the skirt of the
man before him, reaching far out of sight, but all moving without the
least deviation in one straight line. It would be naturally taken for
granted, that there was a guide at the head of the file: what if it
were answered, No! Sir, the men are without number, and infinite
blindness supplies the place of sight?
Equally inconceivable is a cycle of equal truths without a common and
central principle, which prescribes to each its proper sphere in the
system of science.
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