: or within it. If any man shall here turn upon us, and assert that there are no such invisible objects; that whatever cannot be so pictured or imagined (meaning imaged) is nothing, and the science that relates to it nothing; we shall regret the circumstance, We shall request him, however, to consider seriously and deeply within himself what he means simply by these two words, Gon and his own SouL; and whether he finds that visible shape and true existence are here also one and the same? If he still persist in denial, we have nothing for it, but to wish him good speed on his own separate path of inquiry; and he and we will agree to differ on this subject of mysticism, as on so many more important ones. literature is too obvious to require much exposition. Have we not also had our Powermen? And will not, as in Germany, to us likewise a milder, a clearer, and a truer time come round? Our Byron was, in his youth, but what Schiller and Goethe had been in theirs yet the author of Werter wrote Iphigenie and Torquato Tasso; and he who began with The Robbers ended with Wilhelm Tell. With longer life, all things were to have been hoped for from Byron: for he loved truth in his inmost heart, and would have discovered at last that his Corsairs and Harolds were not true. It was otherwise appointed: but with one man all hope does not die. If this way is the right| one, we too shall find it. The poetry of Germany, meanwhile, we cannot but regard as Now, whoever has a material and visible well deserving to be studied, in this as in other object to treat, be it of natural Science, Politipoints of view it is distinctly an advance cal Philosophy, or any such externally and beyond any other known to us; whether on sensibly existing department, may represent it the right path or not, may be still uncertain; to his own mind, and convey it to the minds but a path selected by Schillers and Goethes, of others, as it were, by a direct diagram, more and vindicated by Schlegels and Tiecks, is complex indeed than a geometrical diagram, surely worth serious examination. For the but still with the same sort of precision; and rest, need we add that it is study for self-in-provided his diagram be complete, and the same struction, nowise for purposes of imitation, that we recommend? Among the deadliest of poetical sins is imitation; for if every man must have his own way of expressing it, much more every nation. But of danger on that side, in the country of Shakspeare and Milton, there seems little to be feared. both to himself and his reader, he may reason of it, and discuss it, with the clearness, and, in some sort, the certainty of geometry itself. If he do not so reason of it, this must be for want of comprehension to image out the whole of it, or of distinctness to convey the same whole to his reader: the diagrams of the two are differWe come now to the second grand objection ent; the conclusions of the one diverge from against German literature, its mysticism. In those of the other, and the obscurity here, protreating of a subject itself so vague and dim, vided the reader be a man of sound judgment it were well if we tried, in the first place, to and due attentiveness, results from incapacity settle, with more accuracy, what each of the on the part of the writer. In such a case, the two contending parties really means to say or latter is justly regarded as a man of imperfect to contradict regarding it. Mysticism is a intellect; he grasps more than he can carry; word in the mouths of all: yet, of the hun-he confuses what, with ordinary faculty, might dred, perhaps not one has ever asked himself be rendered clear; he is not a mystic, but, what what this opprobrious epithet properly signi- is much worse, a dunce. Another matter it is, fied in his mind; or where the boundary between true Science and this Land of Chimeras | was to be laid down. Examined strictly, mystical, in most cases, will turn out to be merely synonymous with not understood. Yet surely there may be haste and oversight here; for it is well known, that, to the understanding of any thing, two conditions are equally required; intelligibility in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable than intelligence in the examiner of it. "I am bound to find you in reasons, Sir," said Johnson, "but not in brains;" a speech of the most shocking un-investigate in concert. He must devise new politeness, yet truly enough expressing the state of the case. It may throw some light on this question, if we remind our readers of the following fact. In the field of human investigation, there are objects of two sorts: First, the visible, including not only such as are material, and may be seen by the bodily eye; but all such, likewise, as may be represented in a shape, before the mind's eye, or in any way pictured there: And, secondly, the invisible, or such as are not only unseen by human eyes, but as cannot be seen by any eye; not objects of sense at all; not capable, in short, of being pictured or imaged in the mind, or in any way represented by a shape either without the mind however, when the object to be treated of belongs to the invisible and immaterial class; cannot be pictured out even by the writer himself, much less, in ordinary symbols, set before the reader. In this case, it is evident, the difficulties of comprehension are increased an hundred-fold. Here it will require long, patient, and skilful effort, both from the writer and the reader, before the two can so much as speak together; before the former can make known to the latter, not how the matter stands, but even what the matter is, which they have to means of explanation, describe conditions of mind in which this invisible idea arises, the false persuasions that eclipse it, the false shows that may be mistaken for it, the glimpses of it that appear elsewhere; in short, strive by a thousand well-devised methods, to guide his reader up to the perception of it; in all which, moreover, the reader must faithfully and toilsomely co-operate with him, if any fruit is to come of their mutual endeavour. Should the latter take up his ground too early, and affirm to himself that now he has seized what he still has not seized; that this and nothing else is the thing aimed at by his teacher, the consequences are plain enough: disunion, darkness, and contradiction between the two; the writer has written for another man, and this reader, | thinkers, does a frantic exaggeration in senți after long provocation, quarrels with him ment, a crude fever-dream in opinion, any fiħally, and quits him as a mystic. where break forth, it is directly labelled as Nevertheless, after all these limitations, we Kantism; and the moon-struck speculator is, shall not hesitate to admit, that there is in the for the time, silenced and put to shame by this German mind a tendency to mysticism, pro- epithet. For often, in such circles, Kant's perly so called; as perhaps there is, unless Philosophy is not only an absurdity, but a carefully guarded against, in all minds tem- wickedness and a horror; the pious and peacepered like theirs. It is a fault; but one hardly ful sage of Königsberg passes for a sort of Separable from the excellencies we admire Necromancer and Blackartist in Metaphysics; most in them. A simple, tender, and devout his doctrine is a region of boundless baleful nature, seized by some touch of divine Truth, gloom, too cunningly broken here and there by and of this perhaps under some rude enough splendours of unholy fire; spectres and temptsymbol, is wrapt with it into a whirlwind of ing demons people it; and, hovering over unutterable thoughts; wild gleams of splendour fathomless abysses, hang gay and gorgeous dart to and fro in the eye of the seer, but the air-castles, into which the hapless traveller is vision will not abide with him, and yet he feels | seduced to enter, and so sinks to rise no more. that its light is light from heaven, and precious If any thing in the history of Philosophy to him beyond all price. A simple nature, a could surprise us, it might well be this. PerGeorge Fox, or a Jacob Boehme, ignorant of haps among all the metaphysical writers of all the ways of men, of the dialect in which the eighteenth century, including Hume and they speak, or the forms by which they think, Hartley themselves, there is not one that so is labouring with a poetic, a religious idea, ill meets the conditions of a mystic as this which, like all such ideas, must express itself same Immanuel Kant. A quit, vigilant, clearby word and act, or consume the heart it dwells sighted man, who had become distinguished to in. Yet how shall he speak, how shall he pour the world in mathematics before he attempted forth into other souls, that of which his own philosophy; who, in his writings generally, on soul is full even to bursting? He cannot this and other subjects, is perhaps characterspeak to us; he knows not our state, and can-ized by no quality so much as precisely by the not make known to us his own. His words are an inexplicable rhapsody, a speech in an unknown tongue. Whether there is meaning in it to the speaker himself, and how much or how true, we shall never ascertain; for it is not in the language of men, but of one man who had not learned the language of men; and, with himself, the key to its full interpretation was lost from amongst us. These are mystics; men who either know not clearly their own meaning, or at least cannot put it forth in formulas of thought, whereby others, with whatever difficulty, may apprehend it. Was their meaning clear to themselves, gleams of it will yet shine through, how ignorantly and unconsciously soever it may have been delivered; was it still wavering and obscure, no science could have delivered it wisely. In either case, much more in the last, they merit and obtain the name of mystics. To scoffers they are a ready and cheap prey; but sober persons understand that pure evil is as unknown in this lower Universe as pure good; and that even in mystics, of an honest and deep-feeling heart, there may be much to reverence, and of the rest more to pity than to mock. rests. distinctness of his conceptions, and the sequence and iron strictness with which he reasons. To our own minds, in the little that we know of him, he has more than once recalled Father Boscovich in Natural Philosophy; so piercing yet so sure; so concise, so still, se simple; with such clearness and composure does he mould the complicacy of his subject and so firm, sharp, and definite are the results he evolves from it.* Right or wrong as his hypothesis may be, no one that knows him will suspect that he himself had not seen it, and seen over it; had not meditated it with calmness and deep thought, and studied throughout to expound it with scientific rigor. Neither, as we often hear, is there any superhuman faculty required to follow him. We venture to assure such of our readers as are in any measure used to metaphysical study, that the Kritik der reinen Vernunft is by no means the hardest task they have tried. It is true, there is an unknown and forbidding terminology to be mastered; but is not this the case also with Chemistry, and Astronomy, and all other sciences that deserve the name of science? It is true, a careless or unprepared reader will find Kant's writing a riddle; but will a reader of this sort make much of Newton's Principia, or D'Alembert's Calculus of Variations? He will make nothing of them; perhaps less than nothing; for if he trust to his own judgment, he will pronounce them madness. Yet if the Philosophy of Mind is any philosophy at all, Physics and Mathematics must be plain subjects compared with it. But these latter are happy, not only in the fixedness and simplicity of their methods, but also in the universal acknowledgment of their But it is not to apologize for Boehme, or Novalis, or the school of Theosophus and Flood, that we have here undertaken. Neither is it on such persons that the charge of mysticism brought against the Germans mainly Boehme is little known among us; Novalis, much as he deserves knowing, not at all; nor is it understood, that, in their own country, these men rank higher than they do, or might do, with ourselves. The chief mystics in Germany, it would appear, are the Transcendental Philosophers, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling! With these is the chosen seat of mysticism, these are its "tenebrific constel-works is unintelligible, the Translator himself not hav lation," from which it "doth ray out darkness" the study of him. Neither Villers nor those Latin works over the earth. Among a certain class of are known to us. + * We have heard that the Latin Translation of his ing understood it; also that Villers is no safe guide in claim to that prior and continual intensity of application, without which all progress in any science is impossible; though more than one may be attempted without it; and blamed, because without it they will yield no result. The truth is, German Philosophy differs not more widely from ours in the substance of its doctrines, than in its manner of communicating them. The class of disquisitions, named Kamin-Philosophie (Parlor-fire Philosophy) in Germany, is there held in little estimation. No right treatise on any thing, it is believed, least of all on the nature of the human mind, can be profitably read, unless the reader himself co-operates: the blessing of half-sleep in such cases is denied him; he must be alert, and strain every faculty, or it profits nothing. Philosophy, with these men, pretends to be a Science, nay, the living principle and soul of all Sciences, and must be treated and studied scientifically, or not studied and treated at all. Its doctrines should be present with every cultivated writer; its spirit should pervade every piece of composition, how slight or popular soever; but to treat itself popularly would be a degradation and an impossibility. Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine: her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not; whoso would behold her, must climb with long and laborious effort; nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities. men fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in the groves of Academe! Our reader has seen some words of Fichte's: are these like words of a mystic? We state Fichte's character, as it is known and admitted by men of all parties among the Germans, when we say that so robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so lofty, massive, and immovable, has not mingled in philosophical discussion since the time of Luther. We figure his motionless look, had he heard this charge of mysticism! For the man rises before us, amid contradiction and debate, like a granite mountain amid clouds and wind. Ridicule, of the best that could be commanded, has been already tried against him; but it could not avail. What was the wit of a thousand wits to him? The cry of a thousand choughs assaulting that old cliff of granite: seen from the summit, these, as they winged the midway air, showed scarce so gross as beetles, and their cry was seldom even audible. Fichte's opinions may be true or false; but his character, as a thinker, can be slightly valued only by such as know it ill; and as a man, approved by action and suffering, in his life and in his death, he ranks with a class of men who were common only in better ages than ours. The Critical Philosophy has been regarded by persons of approved judgment, and nowise directly implicated in the furthering of it, as distinctly the greatest intellectual achievement of the century in which it came to light. Au. gust Wilhelm Schlegel has stated in plain terms his belief, that, in respect of its probable influence on the moral culture of Europe, it stands on a line with the Reformation. We mention Schlegel as a man whose opinion has a known value among ourselves. But the worth of Kant's philosophy is not to be gathered from votes alone. The noble system of morality, the purer theology, the lofty views of man's nature derived from it; nay, perhaps, the very discussion of such matters, to which it gave so It is the false notion prevalent respecting the ́objects aimed at, and the purposed manner of attaining them, in German Philosophy, that causes, in great part, this disappointment of our attempts to study it, and the evil report which the disappointed naturally enough bring back with them. Let the reader believe us, the Critical Philosophers, whatever they may be, are no mystics, and have no fellowship with mystics. What a mystic is, we have said above. But Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, are men of cool judgment, and determinate ener-strong an impetus, have told with remarkable getic character; men of science and profound and universal investigation; nowhere does the world, in all its bearings, spiritual or material, theoretic or practical, lie pictured in clearer or truer colours, than in such heads as these. We have heard Kant estimated as a spiritual brother of Boehme; as justly might we take Sir Isaac Newton for a spiritual brother of Count Swedenborg, and Laplace's Mechanism of the Heavens for a peristyle to the Vision of the New Jerusalem. That this is no extravagant comparison, we appeal to any man acquainted with any single volume of Kant's writings. Neither, though Schelling's system differs still more widely from ours, can we reckon Schelling a mystic. He is a man evidently of deep insight into individual things; speaks wisely, That such a system must in the end become and reasons with the nicest accuracy, on all known among ourselves, as it is already bematters where we understand his data. Fairer coming known in France and Italy, and over might it be in us to say that we had not yet all Europe, no one acquainted in any measure appreciated his truth, and therefore could not with the character of this matter, and the chaappreciate his error. But above all, the mysti- racter of England, will hesitate to predict. cism of Fichte might astonish us. The cold, Doubtless it will be studied here, and by heads colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and adequate to do it justice: it will be investigated lear, like a Cato Major among degenerate | duly and thoroughly, and settled in our minds and beneficial influence on the whole spiritual character of Germany. No writer of any importance in that country, be he acquainted or not with the Critical Philosophy, but breathes a spirit of devoutness and elevation more or less directly drawn from it. Such men as Goethe and Schiller cannot exist without effect in any literature or in any century: but if one circumstance more than another has contributed to forward their endeavours, and introduce that higher tone into the literature of Germany, it has been this philosopical system; to which, in wisely believing its results, or even in wisely denying them, all that was lofty and pure in the genius of poetry, or the reason of man, so readily allied itself. on the footing which belongs to it, and where thenceforth it must continue. Respecting the degrees of truth and error which will then be found to exist in Kant's system, or in the modifications it has since received, and is still receiving, we desire to be understood as making no estimate, and little qualified to make any. We would have it studied and known, on general grounds; because even the errors of such men are instructive; and because, without a large admixture of truth, no error can exist under such combinations, and become diffused so widely. To judge of it we pretend not: we are still inquirers in the mere outskirts of the matter; and it is but inquiry that we wish to see promoted. 1 Meanwhile, as an advance or first step towards this, we may state something of what has most struck 'ourselves as characterizing Kant's system; as distinguishing it from every other known to us; and chiefly from the Metaphysical philosophy which is taught in Britain, or rather which was taught; for, on looking round, we see not that there is any such Philosophy in existence at the present day.* The Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke and all his followers, both of the French, and English or Scotch school, commences from within, and proceeds outwards; instead of commencing from without, and, with various precautions and hesitations, endeavouring to proceed inwards. The ultimate aim of all Philosophy must be to interpret appearances, from the given symbol to ascertain the thing. Now the first step towards this, the aim of what may be called Primary or Critical Philosophy, must be to find some indubitable principle; to fix ourselves on some unchangeable basis: to discover what the Germans call the Urwahr, the Primitive Truth, the necessarily, absolutely, and etérnally True. This necessarily True, this absolute basis of Truth, Locke silently, and Reid and his followers with more tumult, find in a certain modified Experience, and evidence of Sense, in the universal and natural persuasions of all men. Not so the Germans: they deny that there is here any absolute Truth, * The name of Dugald Stewart is a name venerable to all Europe, and to none more dear and venerable than to ourselves. Nevertheless his writings are not a philosophy, but a making ready for one. He does not enter on the field to till it, he only encompasses it with fences, invites cultivators, and drives away intruders; often (fallen on evil days) he is reduced to long arguments with passers by, to prove that it is a field, that this so highly prized domain of his is, in truth, soil and substance, not clouds and shadow. We regard his discussions on the nature of philosophic Language, and his unwearied efforts to set forth and guard against its fallacies, as worthy of all acknowledgment; as indeed forming the greatest, perhaps the only true improvement, which Philosophy has received among us in our age. It is only to a superficial observer that the import of these discussions can seem trivial: rightly understood they give sufficient and final answer to Hartley's and Darwin's and all other possible forms of Materialism, the grand Idolatry, as we may rightly call it, by which, in all times, the true Worship, that of the invisible, has been polluted and withstood. Mr. Stewart has written warmly against Kant; but it would surprise him to find how much of a Kantist he himself essentially is. Has not the whole scope of his labours been to reconcile what a Kantist would call his Understanding with his Reason; a noble, but still too fruitless effort to overarch the chasm which, for all minds but his own, separates his Science from his Religion? We regard the assiduous study of bis Works, as the best preparation of studying those of laut. or that any Philosophy whatever can be built on such a basis; nay, they go the length of asserting, that such an appeal even to the universal persuasions of mankind, gather them with what precautions you may, amounts to a total abdication of Philosophy, strictly so called, and renders not only its further progress, but its very existence, impossible. What, they would say, have the persuasions, or instinctive beliefs, or whatever they are called, of men, to do in this matter? Is it not the object of Philosophy to enlighten, and rectify, and many times directly contradict these very beliefs. Take, for instance, the voice of all generations of men on the subject of Astronomy. Will there, out of any age or climate, be one dissentient against the fact of the Sun's going round the Earth? Can any evidence be clearer, is there any persuasion more universal, any belief more instinctive? And yet the sun moves no hairsbreadth; but stands in the centre of his Planets, let us vote as we please. So is it likewise with our evidence for an external independent existence of Matter, and, in general, with our whole argument against Hume; whose reasonings, from the premises admitted both by him and us, the Germans affirm to be rigorously consistent and legitimate, and, on these premises, altogether uncontroverted and incontrovertible. British Philosophy, since the time of Hume, appears to them nothing more than a "laborious and unsuccessful striving to build dike after dike in front of our Churches and Judgment-halls, and so turn back from them the deluge of Skepticism, with which that extraordinary writer overflowed us, and still threatens to destroy whatever we value most." This is Schlegel's meaning: his words are not before us. The Germans take up the matter differently, and would assail Hume, not in his outworks, but in the centre of his citadel. They deny his first principle, that Sense is the only inletof Knowledge, that Experience is the primary ground of Belief. Their Primitive Truth, however, they seek, not historically and by experiment, in the universal persuasions of men, but by intuition, in the deepest and purest nature of Man. Instead of attempting, which they consider vain, to prove the existence of God, Virtue, an immaterial Soul, by inferences drawn, as the conclusion of all Philosophy, from the world of sense, they find these things written as the beginning of all Philosophy, in obscured but ineffaceable characters, within our inmost being; and themselves first affording any certainty and clear meaning to that very world of sense, by which we endeavour to demonstrate them. God is, nay, alone is, for with like emphasis we cannot say that any thing else is. This is the Absolute, the Primi tively True, which the philosopher seeks Endeavouring, by logical argument, to prove the existence of God, a Kantist might say, would be like taking out a candle to look for the sun; nay, gaze steadily into your candle. light, and the sun himself may be invisible. To open the inward eye to the sight of this Primitively True; or, rather, we might call it, to clear off the Obscurations of sense, which eclipse this truth within us, so that we may See it, and believe it not only to be true, but the foundation and essence of all other truth, may, in such language as we are here using, be said to be the problem of Critical Philosophy. more certain that I myself exist, than that God exists, infinite, eternal, invisible, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. To discern these truths is the province of Reason, which therefore is to be cultivated as the highest faculty in man. Not by logic and argument does it work; yet surely and clearly may it be taught to work: and its domain lies in that higher region whither logic and argument cannot reach; in that holier region, where Poetry, and Virtue, and Divinity abide, in whose presence Understanding wavers and recoils, dazzled into utter darkness by that "sea of light," at once the fountain and the termination of all true knowledge. Will the Kantists forgive us for the loose and popular manner in which we must here speak of these things, to bring them in any measure before the eyes of our readers?—It may illustrate this distinction still farther, if we say, that, in the opinion of a Kantist, the French are of all European nations the most gifted with Understanding, and the most desti tute of Reason;* that David Hume had no forecast of this latter, and that Shakspeare and Luther dwelt perennially in its purest sphere. In this point of view, Kant's system may be thought to have a remote affinity to those of Malebranche and Descartes. But if they in some measure agree as to their aim, there is the widest difference as to the means. We state what to ourselves has long appeared the grand characteristic of Kant's Philosophy, when we mention his distinction, seldom perhaps expressed so broadly, but uniformly implied, between Understanding and Reason (Verstand and Vernunft). To most of our readers this may seem a distinction without a difference; nevertheless, to the Kantists it is by no means such. They believe that both Understanding and Reason are organs, or rather, we should say, modes of operation, by which the mind discovers truth; but they think that their manner of proceeding is essentially different: that their provinces are separable and distinguishable, nay, that it is of the last importance to separate and distinguish them. Reason, the Kantists say, is of a higher nature than Understanding; it works Of the vast, nay, in these days boundless, by more subtle methods, on higher objects, importance of this distinction, could it be and requires a far finer culture for its de- scientifically established, we need remind no velopment, indeed in many men it is never thinking man. For the rest, far be it from the developed at all; but its results are no less reader to suppose that this same Reason is certain, nay, rather, they are much more so; but a new appearance, under another name, for Reason discerns Truth itself, the absolutely of our own old "Wholesome Prejudice," so and primitively True; while Understanding well known to most of us! Prejudice, wholediscerns only relations, and cannot decide with some or unwholesome, is a personage for out if. The proper province of Understand whom the German Philosophers disclaim all ing is all, strictly speaking, real, practical, and shadow of respect; nor do the vehement material knowledge, Mathematics, Physics, among them hide their deep disdain for all Political Economy, the adaptation of means and sundry who fight under her flag. Truth to ends in the whole business of life. In this is to be loved purely and solely because it is province it is the strength and universal im- true. With moral, political, religious conplement of the mind: an indispensable ser-siderations, high and dear as they may othervant, without which, indeed, existence itself would be impossible. Let it not step beyond this province, however, not usurp the province of Reason, which it is appointed to obey, and cannot rule over without ruin to the whole spiritual man. Should Understanding attempt to prove the existence of God, it ends, if thorough-going and consistent with itself, in Atheism, or a faint possible Theism, whichsiast and a Mystic, till the tumult ceases, and scarcely differs from this: should it speculate of Virtue, it ends in Utility, making Prudence and a sufficiently cunning love of Self the highest good. Consult Understanding about the Beauty of Poetry, and it asks, where is this Beauty? or discovers it at length in rhythms and fitnesses, and male and female rhymes. Witness also its everlasting paradoxes on Necessity and the Freedom of the Will; its ominous silence on the end and meaning of man; and the enigma which, under such inspection, the whole purport of existence becomes. : Nevertheless, say the Kantists, there is a truth in these things. Virtue is Virtue, and not prudence; not less surely than the angle in a semicircle is a right angle, and no trapezium: Shakspeare is a Poet, and Boileau is one think of it as you may: Neither is it wise be, the Philosopher, as such, has no concern. To look at them would but perplex him, and distract his vision from the task in his hands. Calmly he constructs his theorem, as the Geometer does his, without hope or fear, save that he may or may not find the solution; and stands in the middle, by the one, it may be, accused as an Infidel, by the other as an Enthu what was true is and continues true to the end of all time. Such are some of the high and momentous questions treated of, by calm, earnest, and deeply meditative men, in this system of Philosophy, which to the wiser minds among us is still unknown, and by the unwiser is spoken of and regarded as their nature requires. The profoundness, subtilty, extent of investigation, which the answer of these questions presupposes, need not be farther pointed out. With the truth or falsehood of the system, we have here, as already stated, no concern; our aim has been, so far as might be done, to show it as it appeared to us; and to ask such of our readers as pursue these studies, whether this also Academischen Studium, pp. 105-111,) in terms which we * Schelling has said as much or more, (Methode des could wish we had space to transcribe. |