DISCUSSIONS AND REVELATIONS RELATING TO SPECULATIVE
PHILOSOPHY, MORALS, AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, & ROBERTS.

1857.

265. b. 18.

The right of Translation is reserved.

OTHE

BODI

LONDON PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,

AND CHARING CROSS.

FIRST MEMOIR;

BEING THAT OF

FRANZ CARVEL,

A DISCIPLE OF IMMANUEL KANT, AND BRUSHMAKER IN THE PARISH OF ST. MARYLEBONE:

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

"Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal Now doth ever last."-Cowley.

FRANZ CARVEL.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRESENT, SO CALLED.

TILL I was thirteen I understood the terms Present, Past, and Future, as the great multitude understand them. I say the great multitude, without reference to illustrious exceptions in Germany, and the very few exceptions elsewhere. The great multitude hold this opinion—that the past cannot be again present, and the present cannot be future till the future comes to be present. To say the same thing by example:-people in general think that a man who lives in what is called the present age cannot have a waking communication Iwith people who lived a hundred years ago, or who I will live a hundred years hence. I say that this was my opinion till I was thirteen years old; yet even before this time I had met with a passage our old poets that staggered me. He is speaking of

it

absolute infinite existence; and he says of it "Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,

But an eternal Now doth ever last."

in one

of

It is, I think, a striking fact, that even when a boy

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