that mighty and interminable controversy between _object_ and _subject_, we two concluded an alliance which remained unbroken, and produced much benefit to ourselves and others.' The general diagram of a plant, of which Göthe here speaks, must have been a combination of lines and marks expressing the relations of position and equivalence among the elements of vegetable forms, by which so many of their resemblances and differences may be explained. Such a symbol is not an Idea in that general sense in which we propose to use the term, but is a particular modification of the general Ideas of symmetry, developement, and the like; and we shall hereafter see, according to the phraseology which we shall explain in the next chapter, how such a diagram might express the _ideal conception_ of a plant. The antithesis of _subjective_ and _objective_ is very familiar in the philosophical literature of Germany and France; nor is it uncommon in any age of our own literature. But though efforts have recently been made to give currency among us to this phraseology, it has not been cordially received, and has been much complained of as not of obvious meaning. Nor is the complaint without ground: for when we regard the mind as the _subject_ in which ideas inhere, it becomes for us an _object_, and the antithesis vanishes. We are not so much accustomed to use _subject_ in this sense, as to make it a proper contrast to _object_. The combination '_ideal_ and _objective_,' would more readily convey to a modern reader the opposition which is intended between the ideas of the mind itself, and the objects which it contemplates around it. To the antitheses already noticed--Thoughts and Things; Necessary and Experiential Truths; Deduction and Induction; Theory and Fact; Ideas and Sensations; Reflexion and Sensation; Subjective and {38} Objective; we may add others, by which distinctions depending more or less upon the fundamental antithesis have been denoted. Thus we speak of the _internal_ and _external_ sources of our knowledge; of the world _within_ and the world _without_ us; of _Man_ and _Nature_. Some of the more recent metaphysical writers of Germany have divided the universe into the _Me_ and _Not-me_ (Ich and Nicht-ich). Upon such phraseology we may observe, that to have the fundamental antithesis of which we speak really understood, is of the highest consequence to philosophy, but that little appears to be gained by expressing it in any novel manner. The most weighty part of the philosopher's task is to analyze the operations of the mind; and in this task, it can aid us but little to call it, instead of the _mind_, the _subject_, or the _me_. _Sect._ 8.--_Matter and Form._