15. We may for the sake of illustration imagine to ourselves each system of philosophy as a Drama in which _Things_ are the _Dramatis Personæ_ and the _Idea_ which governs the system is the _Plot_ of the drama. In Kant's Drama, Things in themselves are merely a kind of 'Mute Personages,' κωφὰ πρόσωπα, which stand on the stage to be pointed at and talked about, but which do not tell us anything, or enter into the action of the piece. Fichte carries this further, and if we go on with the same illustration, we may say that he makes the whole drama into a kind of Monologue; in which the author tells the story, and merely names the persons who appear. If we would still carry on the image, we may say that Schelling, going upon the principle that the whole of the drama is merely a progress to the Denouement, which denouement contains the result of all the preceding scenes and events, starts with the last scene of the piece; and bringing all the characters on the stage in their final attitudes, would elicit the story from this. While the true mode of proceeding is, to follow the drama Scene by Scene, learning as much as we can of the Action and the Characters, but knowing that we shall not be allowed to see the Denouement, and that to do so is probably not the lot of our species on earth. So far as any philosopher has thus followed the historical progress of the grand spectacle offered to the eyes of speculative man, in which the Phenomena of Nature are the Scenes, and the Theory of them the Plot, he has taken the course by which knowledge really has made its advances. But those who have partially done this, have often, like Hegel, assumed that they had divined the whole course and end of the story, and have thus criticised the scenes and the characters in a spirit quite at variance with that by which any real insight into the import of the representation can be obtained. If it be asked which position we can assign, in this dramatic illustration, to those who hold that all our knowledge is derived from facts only, and who reject the supposition of ideas; we may say that they look on with a belief that the drama has _no_ plot, and that these scenes are improvised without connexion or purpose.