From the English point of view it is sufficiently amusing to find such a dogma not only gravely stated, but stated as an unquestionable truth. Here we see the experiences of quantitative relations which men have gathered from surrounding bodies and generalized (experiences which had been scarcely at all generalized at the beginning of the historic period)—we find these generalized experiences, these intellectual abstractions, elevated into concrete actualities, projected back into Nature, and considered as the internal frame-work of things—the skeleton by which matter is sustained. But this new form of the old realism, is by no means the most startling of the physio-philosophic principles. We presently read that, “The highest mathematical idea, or the fundamental principle of all mathematics is the zero = 0.” * * * “Zero is in itself nothing. Mathematics is based upon nothing, and, _consequently_, arises out of nothing. “Out of nothing, _therefore_, it is possible for something to arise; for mathematics, consisting of propositions, is a something in relation to 0.” By such “consequentlys” and “therefores” it is, that men philosophize when they “re-think the great thought of creation.” By dogmas that pretend to be reasons, nothing is made to generate mathematics; and by clothing mathematics with matter, we have the universe! If now we deny, as we _do_ deny, that the highest mathematical idea is the zero—if, on the other hand, we assert, as we _do_ assert, that the fundamental idea underlying all mathematics, is that of equality; the whole of Oken’s cosmogony disappears. And here, indeed, we may see illustrated, the distinctive peculiarity of the German method of procedure in these {12} matters—the bastard _à priori_ method, as it may be termed. The legitimate _à priori_ method sets out with propositions of which the negation is inconceivable; the _à priori_ method as illegitimately applied, sets out either with propositions of which the negation is _not_ inconceivable, or with propositions like Oken’s, of which the _affirmation_ is inconceivable. It is needless to proceed further with the analysis; else might we detail the steps by which Oken arrives at the conclusions that “the planets are coagulated colours, for they are coagulated light”; that “the sphere is the expanded nothing;” that gravity is “a weighty nothing, a heavy essence, striving towards a centre;” that “the earth is the identical, water the indifferent, air the different; or the first the centre, the second the radius, the last the periphery of the general globe or of fire.” To comment on them would be nearly as absurd as are the propositions themselves. Let us pass on to another of the German systems of knowledge—that of Hegel.