Revival Reformation Classics: Can Change the World Again.

A Critical History of Philosophy.

BY

REV. ASA MAHAN, D.D., LL.D.,

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I. & II.

FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER.

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BOOK V.

THE MODERN EVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY.

INTRODUCTION.

What is denominated the Modern Evolution in Philosophy begins with Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1636), who is regarded as the author of the inductive method in science. To comprehend the Evolution under consideration, we must attain to a clear and distinct understanding of the true idea of science, on the one hand, and of the method in science really developed by Bacon on the other. 'The sciences,' says Bacon, 'have hitherto been in a most sad condition. Philosophy, wasted in empty and fruitless logomachies, has failed during so many centuries to bring out a single work or experiment of actual benefit to human life. Logic hitherto has served more to the establishment of error than to the investigation of truth. Whence all this? Why this penury of the sciences? Simply because they have broken away from their root in nature and experience. The blame of this is chargeable to many sources; first, the old and rooted prejudice that the human mind loses somewhat of its dignity when it busies itself much and continuously with experiments and material things; next, superstition and blind religious zeal, which has been the most irreconcilable opposer to Natural Philosophy; again, the exclusive attention paid to morals and politics by the Romans, and since the Christian Era to theology by every acute mind; still farther, the great authority which certain philosophers have professed, and the great reverence given to antiquity; and, in fine, a want of courage and a despair of overcoming the many and great difficulties which lie in the way of the investigation of nature. All these causes have contributed to keep down the sciences. Hence they must now be renewed and regenerated and reformed in their most fundamental principles; there must be found a new basis of knowledge and new principles of science. This radical reformation of the sciences depends on two conditions; objectively upon the referring of science to experience and the Philosophy of nature, and subjectively upon the purifying the sense and the intellect from all abstract theories and traditional prejudices. Both conditions furnish the correct method of natural science, which is nothing other than the method of induction. Upon a true induction depends all the soundness of the sciences.'

The validity of the above statements will not be questioned by any individual who is well read in the history of the sciences up to the time of Bacon. In none of the Schools of Philosophy up to this period, as we have said on a former occasion, had a single principle been developed which was of any practical value to mankind, nor a single deduction reached which the race had accepted as true, and about which philosophers themselves were not engaged in endless disputations. All, as Bacon states, was owing to a fundamentally false method which had obtained in all these schools. The question which here arises is this: has the procedure of the Modern Evolution been in fixed accordance with the right method? If we should refer to the Pure Sciences, we should say that the fixed method, in conformity to which they have been developed throughout, has been faultless and perfect. The same remark holds equally true in regard to certain of the Mixed Sciences, such, for example, as Astronomy, Chemistry, Physiology, and Natural Philosophy. Should we recur, however, to Metaphysics, Morals, Cosmology, Ontology, and Ultimate Causation, we should find that the methods which very largely obtain here are as old as those of Vayasa, Kapila, Kanada, and Gautama Buddha, that thought is moving now in the same identical circles as then, and is reaching no new deductions. When we shall have critically examined the principles and method of induction and deduction developed by Bacon, we shall also find them essentially imperfect, and adapted, if strictly followed, to mislead the scientific inquirer instead of giving the right direction to his inductions and deductions. When we shall have accomplished all that Bacon proposes, we shall find ourselves merely at the threshold of the temple of real science, instead of standing amidst the great revelations of the inner sanctuary. All these statements we shall have fully verified when we shall have developed the true idea and method of real science, and shall afterwards in their light have examined those of Bacon.

The True Idea of Science.

Science has been defined 'as knowledge systematized.' As Philosophy, the aim of science, is not to reveal mere facts as they are, but to answer the question why are the facts of the universe as they are and not otherwise. True science has its principles, facts, and deductions, and all as objects of valid knowledge. Every true system of science or Philosophy will be constituted exclusively of principles known to be absolutely valid, of facts known to be real, and of deductions necessarily resulting from said principles and facts and known as thus resulting. To render all this perfectly plain, permit us to invite very special attention to the following definitions and discriminations.

Necessary Ideas and General Notions or Conceptions distinguished.

Among thinkers of the Transcendental School especially, much is said about the distinction between ideas (necessary ideas), that of time or space, for example, and general conceptions, such as are represented by the term man, animal, or creature. While this discrimination is made, the essential characteristics which separate these phenomena of thought from each other are not generally understood. Let us see if we cannot apprehend the reason and ground of this discrimination.

1. The reality represented by a necessary idea is apprehended as really existing, with the impossibility of even conceiving of its non-existence. The object represented by a general conception, on the other hand, we may conceive to exist, but always with the conscious possibility of conceiving of its non-existence. Thus we apprehend the object of the idea represented by the term space or duration as a reality in itself, and that with the conscious impossibility of conceiving of its non-existence. In other words, we absolutely know that space and duration do and must exist. On the other hand, the object of the conception represented by the term man we apprehend as a reality, with the conscious possibility of conceiving of its non-existence. This distinction obtains universally between necessary ideas and general notions or conceptions.

2. All the elements which enter into and constitute a general conception are given by perception, external or internal. The object and characteristics of a necessary idea, on the other hand, are not perceived at all, but are always given as implied by what we perceive. Thus, the qualities represented by the term body are all consciously given by perception. Space, however, is not an object of perception at all, but is consciously given as a reality whose existence is implied by body, which is perceived to exist. The same holds true in all similar cases. We perceive, for example, succession, qualities, and events, and apprehend time, substance, and cause as realities whose existence is implied by facts which we perceive to be real.

3. All the elements which enter into and constitute a general conception, actually exist in every individual of the class which that conception represents. The elements of the conception represented by the term man, for example, actually exist in every individual of the race. So in all other cases. The reality represented by a necessary idea, on the other hand, exists by itself alone, and while it may be related to other realities, it can be compared, but by contrast, with no other. What other reality, for example, is like space or time? So of the terms substance and cause. Each represents a reality which can be compared with nothing else but itself. Necessary ideas can be compared with each other but relatively to our necessary mode of conceiving of their objects, never as realities in themselves.

4. An induction of a large number of individual objects is requisite to develop in the mind a general conception. The perception of a single fact is all that is requisite to develop a necessary idea. A vast number of individual men must have been perceived before the idea represented by the term man could have been originated in the mind. The moment the mind perceived a single body, fact of succession, phenomenon, or event, reason apprehended, not in its abstract, but concrete form, space, time, substance, and cause. The same holds true universally. The perceived cannot be apprehended at all, without the apprehension of the implied.

5. The faculty which gives us necessary ideas is entirely distinct and separate from those which furnish the elements that constitute general conceptions. The faculties which furnish the constituent elements of general conception are two—external and internal perception, or Sense and Consciousness. The faculty which gives us necessary ideas is reason, the faculty of implied knowledge. Through Sense and Consciousness we perceive phenomena, qualities, events; through reason we apprehend Space, Time, Substance, and Cause, realities implied by facts perceived. The distinction, then, between necessary ideas and general notions or conceptions, is wide, fundamental, and palpable, a distinction which true science will not fail to recognize.

Necessary Judgments Intuitively True, and General Judgments, or Propositions.

Equally manifest and fundamental is the distinction between universal and necessary judgments which have intuitive certainty, judgments such, for example, as Body implies space; Succession, time; Phenomena, substance; Events, a cause; and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and general propositions, such as, All men are mortal, and All organized substances are subject to decay and dissolution. Among these distinctions, we notice the following:

1. Universal and necessary intuitive judgments we apprehend as true, with the absolute impossibility of conceiving of their not being true; that is, we not only intuitively know that such judgment is true, but also that it must be true, and by no possibility can be false. This, for example, is the fixed character of all the necessary judgments above adduced. We know absolutely, not only that the judgments, Body implies space; Succession, time; Phenomena, substance; and Events, a cause, are true, but equally that they must be true. In other words, the relation affirmed to exist between the subject and predicate in all such judgments is consciously perceived to be an absolutely necessary one.

General judgments, on the other hand, are apprehended as true, with the conscious possibility of conceiving of their non-truth. The judgment, for example, All men are mortal, we apprehend as true. Yet we can conceive that the facts of the case might be different from what they are. In all such judgments, in other words, the affirmed connection between the subject and predicate is apprehended as a real, but not as a necessary one.

2. In all general judgments, the elements represented by the predicate are contained in the subject as essential qualities and characteristics of the same. When we say, for example, that all men are animals, if all the qualities represented by the term animals did not exist in every man, the proposition before us would not be true. The same holds true of all such judgments.

In all necessary and intuitive judgments, on the other hand, the predicate represents a reality not contained at all in the subject, but sustaining a certain relation to the subject. In the judgment, for example, Body implies space, the predicate represents a reality not contained in, but which sustains a certain relation to, the subject. In other words, body and space are two realities distinct from each other, but which are intuitively apprehended as sustaining necessary relations to each other, and those identical relations affirmed in the judgment to exist between them. The same holds true in all such judgments.

3. Hence we remark, in the next place, that while in general judgments the elements represented by the predicate are contained in the reality represented by the subject, in all necessary intuitive judgments the subject represents a reality which necessarily implies the existence of the reality represented by the predicate in the same judgment. The ground of the validity of a general judgment, as we have seen, is the fact that the predicate represents essential elements contained in the subject. If all the qualities represented by the term animal did not exist in every man, the proposition, All men are animals, would not be true. The ground of the necessary intuitive validity of a necessary judgment, on the other hand, is the fact, not that the subject contains, but that it of necessity implies, the predicate. If body, for example, could exist, and space not be a reality, the judgment or proposition, Body implies space, would not be true.

4. When we reason from a general judgment as a principle in the argument, we gain no new truth whatever. Take as an example the following syllogism: All men are animals. John is a man. Therefore, he is an animal. It is self-evident here that if we did not know at the outset that John is an animal, we should not know that the proposition, All men are animals, is true. The argument, then, gives us no truth not previously known. The same does and must hold true in all cases in which we reason from such judgments or propositions as principles. In all cases, on the other hand, in which we reason from a necessary judgment as the principle in the argument, we gain a new truth. Two objects are before us, of the relations of which, as equal or unequal to one another, we are ignorant; and we are unable to compare them directly the one with the other. We can, however, compare each of them with one and the same object. Having made the comparison, we reason thus: Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another; these objects are each equal to the same thing; therefore, they are equal to one another. Again, Whenever of two objects one agrees, and the other disagrees with the same object, they disagree with each other. Of these two objects, one does and the other does not agree with the same object; therefore, they disagree with each other. Our principle in each of the above arguments is a necessary judgment, a judgment in which the subject implies the predicate, and in each case we reach a truth of which we were before ignorant. The same, from the nature of the case, must hold true in all instances in which we legitimately reason from a self-evident and necessary proposition, as the principle in the argument.

5. We now adduce a distinction of the most fundamental importance in science. We refer to the distinct and opposite law pertaining to the distribution of terms, which obtains in reference to these two classes of judgments. With general judgments, while all universal propositions distribute the subject, all negatives and no affirmatives distribute the predicate. With necessary principles all universals, both negative and affirmative alike, distribute both terms. Conversion of universal affirmative propositions of the former class is always by limitation; as, All men are mortal—some mortal beings are men. Conversion in the case of universal affirmative principles, on the other hand, is in all cases simple; as, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another—things equal to one another are equal to the same thing. The same holds true of all universal affirmative deductions based upon such principles. The Logics hitherto studied in the schools, with almost no exceptions, rest upon an utterly false basis in the respects under consideration, and tend fundamentally to mislead the student in science.

6. Hence, we remark finally that while necessary judgments may, we do not now say always must, be employed as principles in science, mere general propositions can never be legitimately thus employed. Under the latter, as our principles, we can make no progress in knowledge whatever. Under the former we may be perpetually reaching, and legitimately too, deductions containing forms of new and vital truth. The above considerations sufficiently evince the fundamental distinctions between these two classes of judgments or propositions.

Distinguishing Characteristics of Necessary Principles.

We have, in a former part of this treatise, given the distinguishing characteristics of necessary intuitive judgments. As necessary to the end now in view, we repeat here what was there presented. On what conditions, then, do we intuitively perceive a necessary connection between the subject and predicate in a given judgment or proposition? On the following, and only on these, we answer.

1. When the subject is identical with the predicate, as in the judgment, A is A. Whatever A may be, A must be equal to, and identical with, itself. These are tautological, or identical, judgments, and are of course of little or no use in science.

2. When the predicate represents not an accidental, but an essential characteristic or element of the subject, as in the judgment, All bodies have extension. Body would not be body if it had not this quality. If it exist at all, it must have this quality. All such judgments, therefore, which may be denominated indicative, or rather explicative judgments, must possess intuitively necessary validity.

3. The same must hold equally true in all cases in which we intuitively perceive that the subject does and must imply the predicate. We all know, and must know, for example, that if space does not, body cannot, exist. We all know with equal absoluteness, consequently, that if body does exist, space must exist. We therefore intuitively recognize the absolute and necessary validity of the judgment, Body implies space, the subject in this judgment implying the predicate. In all cases of this kind, as in such judgments as Succession implies time; Phenomena, substance; Events, a cause; and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, an intuitively necessary connection exists between the subject and predicate, and the judgment must be valid. Such judgments may be denominated implicative judgments.

4. The only remaining class of intuitively necessary judgments are those in which there intuitively exists, between the subject and predicate, the relation of absolute incompatibility, or contradiction, and the judgment affirms this contradiction. The ideas of existence and of nonexistence are undeniably thus incompatible. Hence the judgment, It is impossible that the same object should, at the same moment, exist and not exist, does and must possess intuitively necessary validity. All such may be denominated incompatible judgments.

Careful reflection will absolutely evince the fact that all self-evident or intuitively necessary judgments do and must belong to one of the four classes above designated; no other relations of intuitively necessary connection between the subject and predicate, in a given judgment, being conceivable, and therefore possible. We have, then, criteria of absolute validity—criteria by which we can, with infallible certainty, determine the real character of every judgment or proposition which is set forth as having self-evident, that is, necessary validity. In every such judgment the subject will and must be identical with the predicate—or the predicate must represent an essential element of the subject—or the subject must imply, or be absolutely incompatible with, the predicate. Any proposition set forth as intuitively or self-evidently true, and not having some one of the above characteristics, is to be repudiated as a lawless assumption. We shall find the above criteria to be of fundamental importance in our future investigations.

Fundamental Error of Kant in respect to Necessary Intuitive Judgments.

'In all judgments,' says Kant, 'wherein the relation of a subject to a predicate is thought (if I only consider the affirmative, as the application to the negative is afterwards easy), this relationship is possible in two ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as something which is contained in the conception A (in a covert manner), or B lies completely out of the conception, although it stands in connection with it. In the first case I name the judgment analytical, and in the other synthetical.' Of the former class, he adduces such judgments as 'All bodies are extended.' 'I need not,' he says truly, 'go out beyond the conception to find extension connected with it.' 'It is therefore an analytical judgment.' Among the latter he reckons such judgments as this, 'Everything which happens has its cause.' 'The conception of cause,' he says with equal truth, 'lies quite out of the first conception, and indicates something different from that which happens, and is not, therefore, at all contained in this latter representation.' All such propositions, he affirms, are consequently synthetical. The validity of analytical judgments, he further affirms, is discernible 'by means of the principle of contradiction;' that is, we should deny our own necessary conception of body if we should affirm that all bodies are not extended. This is not true, he adds, of synthetical judgments. No such judgment is discernible, he affirms, 'by means of the principle of contradiction.' 'Although a synthetical proposition may at all times be discerned by means of the principle of contradiction, yet only in this way, inasmuch as another synthetical proposition is presupposed from which it can be deduced, but never of itself.' According to this thinker, all analytical, and no synthetical, judgments have self-evident validity. The latter class of judgments, consequently, can have not an absolute, but only a relative validity, and as all the sciences rest ultimately upon such judgments, said sciences, in all their principles and deductions, are not absolutely, but only relatively true. Such is the universal doctrine of Transcendentalism. Here we meet with errors utterly subversive to all correct ideas of true science, and as utterly contradictory to facts as affirmed by the universal consciousness.

1. The validity of all synthetical judgments of the class now under consideration, in common with all of Kant's analytical judgments, is in fact, and equally so, discernible, and that of themselves 'by means of the principle of contradiction.' To be conscious of the fact that a denial of the proposition, All bodies have extension, is a contradiction, we must reflect upon the ideas represented by the term 'body,' on the one hand, and the term 'extension,' on the other. We then become distinctly conscious of the fact that the denial under consideration absolutely contradicts our essential conceptions both of body and extension, and of the immutable relations which must exist between them. Take now the judgment, Body implies space, one of our author's synthetical judgments. When we reflect upon the idea represented by the term 'body,' on the one hand, and on that represented by the term 'space,' on the other, we become equally and absolutely conscious that it no more denies our fundamental idea of body to affirm that it has not extension, than it does to affirm that it does not imply space. The affirmed relation between the subject and predicate is no more consciously absolute and necessary in the one case than it is in the other. The same holds true of all synthetical judgments of the class now under consideration. Our ideas of body, succession, phenomena, and events, on the one hand, and of space, time, substance, and cause, on the other, would not and could not be what they are if body did not imply space, succession, time, phenomena, substance, and events, a cause. The absolute validity of all primitive synthetical, as well as all analytical judgments, as both are defined by Kant, is in fact and form equally 'discernible' 'by means of the principle of contradiction.' The relation between the subject and predicate is just as consciously necessary in an implied, and also in an incompatible, as it is in an identical judgment. In denying this our author has started the scientific inquirer after truth upon the fatal track of fundamental error; a greater error in science being hardly possible than this now under consideration.

2. Kant has himself, in fact and form, admitted that the validity of every synthetical judgment of the class under consideration is 'of itself' 'discerned by means of the principle of contradiction,' just as that of analytical judgments is thus discerned. Our author, it should be borne in mind, denies absolutely that either time or space exist as realities in themselves, and that out of the mind they have [no] reality at all; but in the mind, as laws of thought, 'the subjective conditions of sensible intuition.' The same he affirms of space. 'We can therefore,' he says, 'only from the point of view as men speak of space, extended beings, etc. If we abandon the subjective condition under which we alone can receive external intuition, that is to say, the way we are affected by objects, the representation of space means nothing.' But does he also admit the necessary connection between the subject and predicate in all synthetical judgments of the class under consideration? Let us listen to his own words. 'Against this theory, which accords to Time empirical reality, but contends against absolute and transcendental, I have heard from perspicacious men so unanimous an objection that I have collected from it, that such naturally presents itself to every reader who is unaccustomed to those considerations. It runs thus: Changes are real (the alteration of our own representations shows this, although we should deny all external phenomena together with their changes). Now these changes are only possible in time, consequently Time is something real. The answer presents no difficulty. I concede the whole argument.' Here, then, he admits, in fact and form, the absolute validity of the synthetical judgment, Change, or Succession, implies time. In the same manner he admits the necessary connection between the subject and predicate in the synthetical judgment, Body implies space, and in all other similar judgments. He has, therefore, affirmed and denied, and that in the same sense, that the validity of such judgments is, 'by itself,' discerned on the principle of contradiction. In other words, the has, and in the same sense, affirmed and denied that synthetical judgments, in common with analytical, as he has himself defined both, have in themselves necessary certainty. Our philosopher, then, contrary to his prior asseverations, does admit the validity of the axioms, Body implies space, and Succession, time. How does be get rid of the deduction that space and time exist as realities in themselves? By denying reality of body, on the one hand, and of change or succession, on the other. 'Nothing generally which is perceived in space is a thing in itself.' Again, 'I have really the representation of Time, and of my determinations in it. It is therefore not to be looked at really as object, but as the mode of representation of myself as object. But if I myself could invisage myself, or if any other being (could invisage) me, without this condition of sensibility, the self-same determinations which we represent to ourselves as changes would then afford us a cognition, in which the representation of time, and consequently of change, would not at all occur.' To be Transcendental philosophers ourselves, and to admit the truth of the Transcendental doctrine, we must then not only deny the reality of space and time, which Kant elsewhere affirms we cannot deny, and also the existence of all realities in space and time, but in opposition to the absolute dictates of our own consciousness, must deny the reality of all changes anywhere, and all successive experiences in ourselves. Rather than take such a leap into 'the palpable obscure' of the absurd and ridiculous, we shall freely consent to disown the cognomen of philosopher, and to admit our utter want of 'the faculty of intellectual intuition,' 'the vernunst,' and 'Intellectuelle Auschauung,' by which we can affirm and deny the same things, deny all change in nature around us, and all successive experiences in ourselves, affirm the absolute impossibility of conceiving Space and Time not to be realities in themselves, and the identical realities which we apprehend them to be, and then affirm that they are not realities in themselves, and are in fact mere 'subjective laws of sensible intuition.' Such, however, is the system in all its forms, the system which we are hereafter to examine.

3. We have not yet presented the greatest error of Kant in his exposition of the character of synthetical judgments. In all such judgments the subject represents an object of perception and the predicate a reality whose existence is implied by the object perceived. We perceive body, changes, or succession, phenomena, qualities, and events, and apprehend space, time, substance, and cause as implied by what is perceived. Now, no proposition can be more self-evidently true than this, that the perceived must have been in the mind before the implied. If space, time, substance, and cause were apprehended before body, succession, quality, and events, then the former would be known by themselves, and not as they now are, as implied by the latter. According to Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy universally, the implied is always known and apprehended before the perceived, and determines the latter. 'The receptivity (capacity) of the subject to be affected by objects,' says Kant, 'necessarily precedes all intuitions of these objects,' and this receptivity, be says, 'is a pure intuition which bears the name of Space.' Precisely similar statements he makes in regard to ideas of change or succession and time. His fundamental doctrine, we repeat, is that in the order of origination in the mind, the ideas of time and space precede those of succession and body, and determine the same. Now here is a fundamental mistake. The apprehension of that which is known and conceived of, but as implied by something else, cannot have been thought of in the mind before the latter was. We know and can think of time, space, substance, and cause, but as realities whose existence is implied by succession, body, quality, and events which we perceive. The perception of the latter, therefore, must have preceded and determined the apprehension of the former. Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy undeniably reverse the order of universal experience, putting the antecedent in the place of the consequent, and the determined in the place of that which determines. Nothing can be more evident, we repeat, than is the fact that that which implies determines the implied, and not the latter the former, and that the former must have been in the mind before the latter.

4. Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy universally, we remark finally, have given a fundamentally false answer to the question, 'How are synthetical judgments à priori possible?' His opposition of their possibility, the only one conceivable as he affirms, is this. The idea of the predicate must have been in the mind before that of subject, and the former must have determined the latter. 'They (Time and Space),' he says, 'are, for instance, both taken together, pure forms of sensible intuition, and thereby make synthetical judgments à priori possible.' On no other condition, he repeatedly assures us, are such judgments possible. Here again is a fundamental error in science. If we have, as we consciously do have, the capacity to perceive body, for example, and then to apprehend space as implied by what we have perceived, then the apprehended relation between the perceived and implied would be an absolutely necessary one, and we should have, as we now do have, the à priori synthetical judgment, Body implies space The same must hold equally in respect to all such judgments. There are two conditions, therefore, on which 'synthetical judgments à priori are possible,' that given by Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy, and that given above, with this difference, that the latter does and the former does not accord with undeniable facts of conscious experience. In whatever light we contemplate the exposition given by Kant and by the Transcendental Philosophy of the doctrine of analytical and synthetical judgments, we are constrained to affirm that exposition to be fundamentally false, and utterly subversive of true science. As that exposition must be true, or Transcendentalism in all its forms must be utterly false, the system itself must 'vanish into naught.' No system can have a basis more utterly insubstantial and visionary. The above exposure will be found to be of fundamental importance in our future criticisms.

Relations of General and Synthetical Judgments to Science.

Kant has rightly affirmed that synthetical judgments à priori lie as principles at the basis of all the sciences. The reason is obvious. Through no other judgments as principles can we obtain deductions which would have logical validity or would not involve the error of petitio principli. What inference, for example, is deducible from a tautological judgment, such a A = A? Nothing can be yielded by such judgments beyond the judgments themselves. Explicative judgments, such as, All bodies are extended, can do no more than develop in the mind distinct apprehensions of the essential qualities of body, and thus prepare the way for scientific deduction. When, also, we reason from general judgments as principles, as, All men are mortal; John is a man, therefore he is mortal, no new truth pertaining to John is developed, nor is our conviction of the fact of his mortality in the remotest degree increased or diminished. When, on the other hand, we reason from a synthetical judgment as principle, we always, as we have before shown, advance our knowledge of truth. We say, for example, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. A and B are each equal to C; therefore they are equal to one another. In all such cases we obtain scientific deductions unknown before. Nor can we by any possibility obtain valid scientific deductions on any other conditions. Every deduction must be evincible by an ultimate reference to an à priori synthetical judgment—a judgment in which, by necessary intuition, the subject implies or is incompatible with the predicate. When we carefully examine the axioms and postulates which lie at the basis of any valid science; we find all its principles to be of this exclusive character. No deduction can have greater certainty than the principle on which it ultimately rests. One deduction may rest immediately upon another deduction. Both in common, however, must be evincible by an ultimate reference to synthetical judgments or principles of the character now under consideration. We have, then, our infallible tests or criteria of all valid axioms or principles in science. In all such principles the subject must necessarily imply, or be incompatible with, the predicate. All systems, by whatever names supported, or in whatever form developed—systems, not resting upon these identical judgments as principles—are logical fictions and nothing else.

Facts of Science.

Science in all its forms, as we have seen, consists of principles known to be possessed of universal and necessary validity—of facts known, with equal absoluteness, to be real, and of deductions necessarily arising from such principles and facts. Deductions of this exclusive class, and none others, take legitimate rank as truths of science. The criteria by which we may, with infallible certainty—criteria which we must rigidly employ, if we would attain to true, and not false science—the criteria, we say, by which we may with absolute certainty distinguish valid principles in science from all other judgments, we have already given—to wit, judgments in which the subject and predicate are consciously connected by necessary implication, the subject implying the predicate, or in which the subject and predicate are consciously separated by necessary incompatibility, the subject being incompatible with the predicate, and the judgment affirming this incompatibility, as in the judgment, 'It is impossible for the same object at the same moment to exist and not to exist.' Every system not having for its principles one or the other, or both of these classes of judgments, is, we repeat, a logical fiction. Facts which have legitimate place in science must be the conscious objects of valid knowledge. No one will doubt the absolute validity of this principle. If facts not thus known may be adduced, then science would not be knowledge systematized. To distinguish such facts from all others affirmed to be real, we insist have valid criteria by which we can with perfect certainty distinguish the former from the latter. If we have no such criteria, science is undeniably impossible. The existence of such criteria, together with their immutable characteristics, has already been demonstrated. We will here specify but three of these criteria—to wit, Knowledge consciously direct and immediate; Apprehensions common to all minds, and which in all minds ever remain one and the same, and subject to no change or modification, like our apprehensions of a circle or square; and Apprehensions of the validity of which all minds have an absolutely conscious certainty. Suppose that we have facts which are the objects of knowledge consciously direct and immediate—facts of which all minds are and must be possessed of the same identical apprehensions, apprehensions ever remaining immutably the same, without change or modification, and which are to all minds objects of consciously certain knowledge, 'a certainty which remains proof against all grounds and arguments' for its subversion. We must admit all such facts and none others into our system, and construct it in absolute conformity to said facts, or waste our powers in the construction of systems of 'science falsely so called.' Suppose that we are in the presence of diverse classes of facts, of all of which our knowledge possesses all the evidence of validity under consideration. If we take them all into account, and determine in their light our system of universal Being and its laws, one exclusive system—the Theistic, for example, will necessarily arise as the only true one. If we ignore or deny the reality of one class, and determine our theory in the light of the other, another and opposite system results. If we attempt 'by grounds and arguments' to disprove the reality of either class of facts, or the validity of our knowledge of the same, our efforts must fail utterly, as no forms of knowledge can have greater certainty than those possessed of the above characteristics. In despair of reaching the end desired through the Intelligence, which is strictly impossible in all such cases, we turn to the Will, and 'by an act of' (miscalled) 'scientific Scepticism to which we voluntarily determine ourselves,' we ignore and deny the validity of our knowledge of one of these classes of facts, and base our system upon the other. What have we now? A system, we answer, undeniably based, not upon intellectual, but Will data, and nothing else. Or finally, we in our voluntarily determined Scepticism deny the validity of our knowledge both in its subjective and objective forms, and base our systems, as the Sceptics do, upon 'airy nothing,' and locate it nowhere. In such a case we have a system which, by hypothesis, is no system at all. If we in our voluntarily determined Scepticism ignore or deny the validity of knowledge in its objective or subjective forms, our system must locate itself in the sphere of Materialism or Idealism in some specific form, as the case may be. If we voluntarily determine ourselves to 'a scientific Scepticism' in respect to knowledge in both forms, then we are Sceptics, and construct our system from unknown and unknowable materials, and locate it nowhere and in no time. In all the three cases the Will and not the Intelligence undeniably determines our principles, facts and deductions. It is full time that the world should distinctly understand that it is now admitted and affirmed, not merely by the race, but by philosophers of all schools, that within the sphere of the Intelligence no 'grounds or arguments' can be found to invalidate our knowledge of Matter, Spirit, Time, or Space, and that if we deny the validity of our knowledge of any of these realities, it must be by 'a scientific Scepticism to which we voluntarily determine ourselves,' that is, our denial must be, not an act of the Intelligence, but of the Will. Idealism, not by dicta of the Intelligence, but by a blind fiat of Will, denies the validity of knowledge in its objective, and affirms it in its subjective form. Materialism, in the same manner, denies the validity of knowledge in its subjective, and affirms it in its objective form. These affirmations and denials in both forms are made in respect to forms of knowledge undeniably possessed of the same identical characteristics; in other words, fundamental distinctions are made where no differences exist. Scepticism, in impeaching the validity of our knowledge both of Matter and Spirit, and confining it exclusively to phenomena, affirms absolutely the absurdity that consciously known phenomena imply nothing, that is, that Body does not imply space, nor Succession time, nor Phenomena substance, nor Events a cause; nor that the fact that Things are equal to the same thing implies their equality one to the other.

Immutable Condition on which the Validity of Original Intuition in any Form can be Invalidated.

That we have an intuitive perception of our own spirit as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, and of matter as an exterior substance possessed of the qualities of extension and form, even philosophers of all schools admit. On what condition can the invalidity of such intuitions be verified? On one condition exclusively, as we have formerly shown. There must be adduced a form of knowledge absolutely incompatible with the validity of such intuitions, a form, of knowledge of the validity of which we are and must be more absolutely certain than we are or can be of the truth of said intuitions. Is it conceivable that such a form of incompatible knowledge can be adduced? Can we be more rationally certain of the truth of any proposition than each individual is and must be of that of the judgments, I think, I feel, I will, and Matter is directly and immediately before me as an exterior substance possessed of the qualities of extension and form? Suppose that on an analysis of our apprehensions of the self and not-self certain inexplicable difficulties and apparent contradictions should be present in such apprehensions. Can we be more certain, or as certain of the validity of our analysis, as we are and must be of the reality of the self and not-self, and of the certainty of our conscious knowledge of the same? If this were the case, such analysis would for ever displace these apprehensions from human regard. We should no more think of the self and not-self as real existences, of the self as thinking, feeling, and willing, and of matter as possessed of extension and form, than we do of the earth as being a vast plain, and not a globe. The undeniable fact that our analysis, when most fully perfected, leaves our apprehensions and convictions in respect to the self and not-self exactly as they were before, demonstrates absolutely the utter invalidity of that analysis in the matter of disproof. The same does and must hold true of all forms of disproof that by any possibility can be adduced.

Criteria of Valid Deduction in Science.

No deduction, however fixed its connection with its premises, can have higher validity than its premises have. The character of all valid premises and facts has been determined. When do premises yield deductions which possess scientific validity? To this question we answer:

1. The principle being valid, there must be ranged under it all the facts bearing upon the case, none being supposed which are not, and none being omitted which are real. The induction of a single fact not real, or the omission of one which is real, would utterly vitiate the whole procedure.

2. The deduction must fully accord with and account for all the facts bearing upon the case. A single fact incompatible with and not fully explicable by this deduction demonstrates its invalidity.

3. All the facts under consideration must not only be compatible with and explicable by this deduction or hypothesis, but must be equally incompatible with and inexplicable by every opposite deduction or hypothesis. Any class of facts equally explicable by and compatible with two or more distinct and opposite hypotheses, not only fails utterly to prove one in opposition to either of the others, but makes no approach whatever towards proof in any direction.

Conditions of Refutation.

An argument is refuted when it is fully evinced that either premise is invalid, and invalid in any of the forms above explained, or that the deduction has no valid connection with said premises. If it should be shown, for example, that the argument is based upon a wrongly assumed principle—upon a false or partial induction of facts, that all the facts are equally compatible with and explicable by some other and opposite deduction or hypothesis, or that the deduction has no necessary connection with the premises; in either case the deduction has not been proven false, but the argument itself has been utterly invalidated. As laws of scientific induction and deduction, the above conditions of refutation are of the highest importance.

Conditions of Disproof.

Refutation is one thing, disproof is quite another. When an argument has been fully refuted, we have simply evinced the fact that a given deduction or hypothesis, which may be true or false, has been illogically inferred. A deduction or hypothesis has been disproved when it has been evinced, not that it has no valid basis in given premises, but that it is in itself false. This end is accomplished on the following conditions—to wit (we quote from the chapter on the Doctrine of Method in The Science of Logic):

' 1. In case it is a universal proposition, proving its contrary to be true. The proposition is then proved to be false in all its extent.

' 2. Proving its contradictory to be true. In this case, if the proposition is a particular one, it is proven false in all its extent; if it is a universal proposition, it is proven false in that particular form.

' 3. By showing it to be self-contradictory. No such proposition can by any possibility be true.

' 4. By proving that its truth is incompatible with some other proposition known to be true.

' Thus, in law, an alibi undeniably established absolutely disproves any crime charged upon an individual, the fact of his being in another place at the time being absolutely incompatible with the truth of the charge referred to.

' Some propositions may be proven false in one form and some in another, and success in such efforts often depends wholly upon a clear discernment of the form demanded in the particular case under discussion, and the direction of the entire argument upon that one point. How often, for example, is utterly useless and hopeless labour expended in an attempt to prove the opposite of a universal proposition, when nothing is required in the circumstances but proof of its contradictory, the latter being of very easy accomplishment and the former equally difficult, if not impossible.'

A proposition, it should be borne in mind, has been proven to be incompatible with known truth when it has been shown to be contradictory to some self-evidently necessary, intuitively perceived, or clearly demonstrated: truth. An individual professes, for example, to have found valid evidence in disproof of the validity of the necessary intuitive judgment, Phenomena imply substance, or Every event has a cause. What does he profess in such a case? He professes to have found some judgment incompatible with one or the other of these—a judgment more certain than one, not only known to be true, but known equally to be necessarily so. We know that they are and must be true. In other words, Kant professes to prove, and requires us to believe that be has found, a deduction resting upon principles and facts more certain than are judgments which, as he admits and all are conscious, must be true.

To us nothing can be more evident than is the fact that objects are really in motion around us, and that changes, at least in our inward experience, are real and successive. Yet, 'by a series of dependent propositions,' none of which can be so obviously true as is the fact of motion and change, Kant and modern scientists have reached and required us to assent to the validity of the deduction that 'in space, considered in itself, there is nothing movable,' and that in time, as it is in itself, there can be no such thing as change or successive events. In other words, Kant and his school profess to find propositions more certain to us than is the conscious fact that we are in a world of motion and change, and that events within and around us are really successive. Do we need to ponder and weigh arguments whose deductions so palpably contradict such palpably conscious facts?

Objections to a Given Proposition or Hypothesis, when Valid.

'Against almost every hypothesis on almost any subject' (we quote again from The Science of Logic) 'not falling within the sphere of absolute demonstration, very plausible objections may be urged.' Hence a very important inquiry arises—to wit, When shall an objection to any given hypothesis be considered as valid, that is, as conclusive against the truth of said hypothesis? All such objections will have the following characteristics:

1. The facts implied in the objection must be real, that is, must be declared as such by really valid evidence.

2. The validity of said facts must be incompatible, and undeniably so, with the truth of that hypothesis. It must not present a mere difficulty, one which we may or may not know how to explain consistently with said hypothesis, but one which undeniably cannot be thus explained. A difficulty, it should be borne in mind, is one thing; a real incompatibility is quite another. Facts difficult or insusceptible of explanation in our present state of knowledge, may be urged against hypotheses undeniably true. An objection to be valid must present a difficulty of this kind—that the fact which it asserts must be unreal, or the hypothesis against which it is urged must be false. Against the hypothesis of the identity of the nervous fluid and electricity, for example, this objection is urged—to wit, that the latter will and the former will not, in fact, pass along the nerve when it is tightly bound with a cord. Here is a fact affirmed which is not merely difficult of explanation in consistency with said hypothesis, but strictly and undeniably incompatible with it. Either the fact asserted is unreal, or the hypothesis must be false. This is the exclusive character of all valid objections against any hypothesis.

Note 1.—Everyone who urges any particular objection against any hypothesis should be required, before an answer is attempted, to prove that the fact he asserts is real, and then that, if it is true, the hypothesis against which it is urged must be false. This is the burden of proof resting upon the objector.

Note 2.—Individuals, in treating of objections, frequently err in two important particulars—in not distinguishing, in the first place, between a fact difficult of explanation, and one incompatible with the hypothesis against which it is urged; and in the next, instead of requiring the objector to prove his facts, and show that they possess the element of incompatibility, they assume the burden of explaining all difficulties, thus practically admitting that unless an hypothesis is totally free from difficulties it cannot be true.

Method of Refuting Objections, or the Forms in which they may be Refuted.

One topic more demands our special attention—to wit, the proper method or forms of refuting objections. An invalid objection may be shown to be such in one or the other of the following forms, or by more or less of them combined.

1. It may be shown that the objection is based upon a fundamental misconception of the subject against which it is urged.

2. It may be shown that the fact presented in the objection is unreal, or wants valid evidence of being real.

3. That the fact, if admitted, presents a mere difficulty, and wholly lacks the element of incompatibility.

4. That precisely the same objections lie against the opposite hypothesis, when one of the two must be true. That objection cannot be valid which would, as in such a case, exist in all its force if the hypothesis against which it is urged were true.

5. That the same, or precisely similar objections lie against hypotheses known and admitted to be true. Butler's 'Analogy' may be referred to as an example of this form of refuting objections.

Inconceivability as a Test of Truth.

In his chapter on Ultimate Scientific Ideas, Mr. Spencer is at great pains to prove that 'inconceivability is not a test of truth.' Yet in other parts of his works this very principle is most confidently and abundantly appealed to as an absolute criterion of truth and error. In one part of his works we are absolutely assured that the fact, that we cannot conceive a judgment to be true on the one hand, or false on the other, is no certain proof that it is true, or that it is false. In other parts of the same work we are assured, with the same absoluteness, that the inconceivable and impossible are identical. To understand this subject, we need to understand clearly the real meaning of this term as employed in science. Let its see if we cannot attain this end.

The Term 'Inconceivable,' as Employed in Science, Defined.

We have in our minds two classes of intuitive judgments which we characterize as empirical and rational, à posteriori and à priori, or contingent and necessary. As to the former class of judgments, such as, I think, I feel, I will, and Matter is before me as possessed of extension and form, we are absolutely conscious of their truth; yet are able to conceive that they are not true. The latter class we conceive to be true, with the absolute consciousness that they must be true, and can by no possibility be false. Of this class are all of Kant's analytical and à priori synthetical judgments, such as, A is A, All bodies are extended, and Body implies space; Succession, or change, implies time, Phenomena imply substance, Events imply a cause, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and It is impossible for the same thing at the same instant to exist and not to exist. Between the subject and predicate in all such judgments, an absolutely necessary connection is intuitively perceived to exist, their opposites being necessarily apprehended as self contradictory and absurd. Hence, we apprehend all such judgments as true, with the absolute impossibility of conceiving them not to be true, that is, of presenting them to the mind as by any possibility being false. This is the real meaning of the term 'inconceivability' as applicable to such cases. To affirm that a judgment is known to be necessarily true, and cannot be false, and to affirm the absolute impossibility of conceiving that it is false, mean the same thing. To affirm, then, that inconceivability, in the only sense applicable to such cases, is not a test of truth, is to affirm that necessary and absolute knowledge is no knowledge at all. To attempt to prove that inconceivability in this sense is not a test of truth, is to affirm that a form of knowledge more certain than necessary and absolute knowledge does exist, and that the former is incompatible with the latter. This is the wonderful discovery which such thinkers as Messrs. Mill, Spencer, and scientists of their school really profess to have made. In other words, they really profess to have found judgments, the connection between the subject and predicate of which must be recognized as more fixed and certain than obtains in judgments the connection between the subject and predicate of which we cannot but know to be a necessary one. If they will designate such judgments, and establish for them a degree of certainty higher than that which is known to be necessary, they will certainly deserve our thanks. Until they have done this, nothing but 'science falsely so called' will intimate that inconceivability, as above defined, is not and must not be an infallible criterion of truth.

The Secondary Meaning of this Term.

There is an idea sometimes represented by the term under consideration, an idea according to which inconceivability is not a test of truth, and nobody regards it as such a test. We know space, for example, to exist, with the absolute knowledge that it must exist, that is, that it cannot but exist. When we, consequently, attempt to represent in thought the idea of space as a non-reality, we find that we have attempted to perform a conscious impossibility. As representing this conscious impossibility, we say that the non-reality of space is inconceivable, and in this sense, inconceivability, as we have shown, is a test of truth. When, on the other hand, we attempt, through the conceptive faculty, to expand our conceptions, so as fully to comprehend infinite space, we find that we have again attempted the impossible. In this secondary sense of the term infinite space is inconceivable. In this sense, also, as representing what is to the Understanding, or conceptive facility, an object of impossible comprehension, inconceivability is not a test of truth, and the inconceivable and impossible are not identical. An object, on the other hand, may be absolutely known to exist, and yet be, as space is in this secondary sense of the term, inconceivable. What is in this secondary sense of the term inconceivable, may be to the mind, not only an object of absolute knowledge, but may be to the Reason, the organ of implied knowledge, an object of consciously clear and distinct apprehension. To the Understanding, whose exclusive function is to conceive and comprehend the finite, infinity, in all its forms, is inconceivable and incomprehensible. To Reason, on the other, as the organ of implied and necessary knowledge, the infinite and perfect are conscious objects of as clear and distinct apprehension as any other. Hence it is, that we have as clear apprehension of the real meaning of the proposition, Space and Duration are infinite, as we do of the judgment, Body and Succession are finite. Hence it is, that an object may be to the conceptive faculty inconceivable, or incomprehensible, and may be to the Reason an object of most distinct apprehension, and of absolute knowledge. In one sense of the term, therefore, inconceivability is, and in another it is not, a test of truth.

Platonic Ideas.

Few topics in the history of Philosophy have occupied more attention than Plato's doctrine of Ideas. One inquiry, the most important of all, remains unmoved by speculators in such history. We refer, not to the question whether Plato regarded his ideas as real existences, or as archetypes in the mind of God, but to the question, what kind or class of realities do these ideas constitute or represent? Many thinkers, such as Coleridge, and individuals of his school, identify these ideas with what are now regarded as necessary instead of contingent phenomena of thought. These ideas are the objects, as Plato and these modern thinkers affirm, of Reason, the organ of 'universal, necessary, and eternal truth,' and therefore, it is now thought, must be of the character above indicated. This is an important mistake. Plato's ideas are not necessary, as opposed to contingent ideas, but general, or generic, as opposed to individual conceptions. All his examples and expositions show this. As examples illustrative of his own doctrine of ideas, he selects the generic, as opposed to the individual bed, or table. The generic bed and table, the generic man, and generic forms universally, as opposed to individual beds, tables, men, and forms, constituted Plato's ideas, and consequently his universal, necessary, and eternal truths. It was with exclusive reference to the doctrine of ideas in this specific and exclusive form that Aristotle joined issue with Plato. The only issue between the Nominalists and Realists in subsequent ages pertained not to necessary, as opposed to contingent ideas, but exclusively to generic, as opposed to individual conceptions. The question in dispute between these schools was not whether time, space, substances, and causes, really exist, but exclusively whether generic as well as individual terms and conceptions represent real existences.

The ancients knew little or nothing of the proper doctrine of necessary, as opposed to contingent ideas, or of the proper distinction between universal and necessary and general judgments. Hence, they knew very little of the nature of real principles, and consequently of the only proper methods in science. Similar remarks are almost equally applicable to modern scientific thought. In all the Logics since the days of Aristotle, with the exception of a very few of quite recent date, no distinction whatever is made between general and universal and necessary judgments, that is, between the formal and real principles in science; and all the rules pertaining to the distribution of terms, and the conversion of propositions evince the truth of these statements.

Take as illustration the following rules, which, with the exceptions referred to, are found in all Logics ancient and modern which contain any such rules at all, namely: 'All negative and no affirmative propositions distribute the predicate.' 'In converting a universal affirmative proposition, its quantity must be changed from the universal to the particular.' Now there is not a single principle or axiom in any science, a principle in respect to which both these rules do not utterly mislead the student. Among all such judgments, all universals, without exception, distribute both the subject and predicate, and conversion is always simple, and always so, not by accident; but from the necessary relations between the subject and predicate. In all deductions in the sciences also, with the single exception wherein the subject represents an inferior, and the predicate a superior conception, as in the judgment, All men are mortal, all universals distribute both terms, and all conversion of such judgments is simple. Thus, for more than two thousand years has Plato's doctrine of Ideas misled and vitiated scientific thought.

The Central Problem which now lies out, for Solution within the Sphere of Scientific Thought.

No deductions can have higher validity than the principle on which said deductions rest. If a shadow of doubt rests upon the principle, the same doubt must pass over and cloud the deduction. The central problem within the sphere of modern scientific thought may be thus stated, viz.: Have we any real scientific principles which can be verified as such, and what are the fundamental characteristics of such principles?—characteris- tics by which they are clearly distinguishable from all other judgments of every kind. Modern unbelief, in the sphere especially of German and Anglo-Saxon thought, has met the problem with an open denial of the existence of such principles, and of the possibility of their recognition, if they do exist. The necessary consequence of an admission of the validity of this denial is the appalling fact that real science, in any form, is an absolute impossibility; and this is the real dogma which modern unbelief is endeavouring to verify. Having arrived at a distinct recognition of the truth that Religion and Science do, in fact, rest upon the same ultimate principles, and must stand or fall together, they have deliberately determined upon sapping the foundations of both. Hence, they are endeavouring to bear away the temple of divine truth with the open cry, Let science die with religion. As we have absolute faith in both, we wait with calm assurance the result of this vain endeavour.

We claim to have absolutely vindicated for science the existence of such principles, and to have revealed and verified the validity of the criteria by which such principles may be with infallible certainty recognised. Such principles must, of course, when understood, present themselves to universal mind, as possessed of self-evident validity, a validity so absolute that the mind must know that they cannot be false. If such principles as these do, in fact, lie at the basis of universal science, scepticism itself must admit that science does repose upon an immovably valid basis. We shall not stop to repeat the criteria which have been so absolutely verified in preceding parts of this Treatise; but shall proceed at once to our criticisms of the specific forms of the Modern Evolution in Philosophy.

Fundamental Defects in the Anglo-Saxon and German Methods of Developing Systems of Science.

The preceding discussions have fully prepared the way for a distinct statement of the leading defects in the Methods of Modern Scientific Thought. We shall take as examples of what obtains elsewhere, the forms and methods of Anglo-Saxon and German thinking in the sphere of science.

Anglo-Saxon Thinking.

Among the Anglo-Saxons, with hardly any exceptions, no proper discrimination has been made between general propositions and principles, or axioms, in science. In all our Logics, very recent ones excepted, the major premise, in every syllogism presented, is a general proposition, as, All men are mortal. In real science this premise is never such a proposition, but always a self-evident principle, as, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Here we have the occasion of the fundamental mistake of Mr. Mill in his Logic, that all inference from premises laid down involves the error of petitio principii. This would be the case, as we have shown in our criticism of the Logic of Aristotle, were the major premises in our scientific syllogisms, what Mr. Mill assumes them to be, general propositions, and not, what they really are, principles, or self-evident judgments. If we say, for example, All men are mortal; John is a man; therefore, he is mortal, the conclusion, as Mr. Mill says, is really begged in the major premise. If we assume as he does that all deductions are based upon such premises, then he is right in his criticism of the syllogism in all its forms. If, on the other hand, we say, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another; A and B are each equal to C; and, therefore, they are equal to one another, we have a deduction not begged in either premise, but one logically deduced from both together. If we assume, as we must, that all syllogisms, or valid arguments, in all the real sciences, are of this last exclusive character, then Mr. Mills' exposition of the syllogism is at an infinite remove from the truth.

Careful observation and reflection will evince the fact that aside from the Pure Sciences and Natural Philosophy, the error under consideration runs through almost all departments of Anglo-Saxon thought. With the exceptions referred to, principles, as lying at the basis of all forms of science, have no well-defined place in science among our thinkers. Among 'first truths,' as elucidated by our most distinguished philosophers, no characteristics are given but such as are common to contingent and necessary forms of thought; nor were any distinctions presented between general judgments and principles, or between the principles and facts of science.

Hence it is that Anglo-Saxon thought has few of the characteristics of system, and our so-called systems are rather aggregations of topics connected with given subjects than properly systematized wholes, all of whose parts and the place of each part are determined by ultimate principles, and scientifically verified and classified facts. The leading characteristic of such thought is, however, self-contradiction. An Anglo-Saxon thinker will palpably contradict himself in numberless instances in the same treatise, and never suspect his want of self-consistency or the soundness of his logic. The great founder of our philosophy, for example, after affirming that the constituent elements of all ideas in the mind come from two exclusive sources—sensation or external perception, and reflection or consciousness; and after professedly demonstrating the dogma that we have no real knowledge of the facts of the external world, affirms that from these facts we have 'demonstrative evidence of the being of God.' Since that era our wisest theologians and Christian philosophers have repeated this act of self-contradiction. Standing on the outside of this visible, invisible universe, there is first of all a formal admission that we have no real, but only a relative knowledge of any of its facts, then there is an advance into 'the palpable obscure'—into the midst of these admitted unknown and unknowable facts, and from these is deduced a professed demonstration of the doctrine of God. Prior to 1850 an award of some £2,000 for the best, and one of £600 for the second best treatise in proof of the being of God, was offered in Aberdeen. In the treatise which received the first prize, the author lays down, as his major premise, this proposition, 'that our knowledge of the Supreme Being is as valid and not less inadequate than that of an external world.' He then, in fact and form, professedly demonstrates, as his minor premise, the proposition that we have, and can have, no real or valid knowledge of any such world, or of any facts connected with it. 'Matter and spirit,' he affirms, 'are wholly unknown to us as substances.' 'We cannot know,' he says again, 'that any division of conceptions will correspond with the reality of things.' Having thus utterly annihilated his minor premise, and taken from himself utterly the possibility of proving anything whatever upon the subject, he conceives that he has laid down an adamantine rock as the basis of the Theistic argument. The author who received the second prize, after expending all his strength and occupying the most of his treatise in a vindication of 'the design argument,' finally surrenders the argument as invalid, and hands us over for light and consolation to 'the grasp of intuition.' 'In thus abandoning all claim of demonstration,' he says, 'the evidence of the being of God, so far from being weakened, is indeed strengthened. For, in all our knowledge, there is and can be no higher warrant for reality than the grasp of intuition,' affirming, in another connection, that the doctrine of God 'needs and admits of no other proof.' Why attempt, then, to prove the doctrine by an argument occupying more than 300 pages—an argument admitted and affirmed to be invalid? One of the greatest thinkers of this age—an Anglo-Saxon philosopher—after demonstrating, by arguments to which no Sceptic attempts a reply, the absolute validity of 'presentative knowledge,' received through external and internal perception, assures us that human knowledge, in all its forms, has only 'a relative validity.' The same author, after vindicating for Theism a scientifically valid basis, and designating the sources of proof of the being of God, assures us that we have, and can have, no positive knowledge of Him at all, that all our ideas of Him are wholly constituted of 'a bundle of negations,' just as if there can be proof of the validity of 'a bundle of negations.' In our day an individual has been raised to one of the most dignified positions in a great National Church, and that mainly for his high merit in having, as is believed, shown, in a work entitled 'Limits of Religious Thought,' that in the entire sphere of affirmed religious truth there is not, and cannot be, 'a thought' which is not self-contradictory and absurd. 'The conception of the Absolute and Infinite,' says our author, 'from whatever side we view it, appears encompassed with contradictions. There is a contradiction in supposing such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with others, and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as one, and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as personal, and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot without contradiction be represented as active, nor without equal contradiction be represented as inactive. It cannot be conceived as the sum of all existence, nor can it be conceived as a part only of that sum.' Yet he tells us that 'it is our duty to think of God as personal, and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite.' He then makes a formal attempt to verify, on rational grounds, some of the affirmed self-contradictory and absurd doctrines of this self-contradictory and absurd religion. These are a few of 'the deadly wounds' which our Divine religion, in the domain of Anglo-Saxon religious thought, has 'received in the house of her friends.' She may well exclaim, 'Deliver me from my friends, and I will take care of my enemies.'

Let us now, for a moment, turn in another direction. 'It must be admitted,' says Mr. Mill, 'that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii.' 'The syllogism is not a correct analysis of reasoning or inference.' Look again. 'It [the syllogism] is not the form in which we must reason, but it is the form in which we may reason, and into which it is indispensable to throw our reasoning when there is any doubt of its validity.' If, then, we would demonstrate the validity of an argument, we must put it in a form in which the conclusion presents a palpable example of the vicious sophism of petitio principii. The true process of reasoning, he affirms, is not the syllogistic, that is, reasoning from the general to the particular, but 'from particulars to particulars,' 'from known particular cases to unknown ones.' Yet he says that it is only in cases 'in which there is no suspicion of error that we are permitted to use the true process.' In all doubtful cases we must 'throw our reasoning' into the false, and not into the true form. What Daniels, in science, have formed our Logics! The individual whom his friends designate as the Newton and Bacon of this century, after a professed demonstration of the fact that inconceivability is, in no sphere of thought, a test of truth, bases upon this same inconceivability, as we have shown, an affirmed absolute disproof of the self-existence and eternity of God, on the one hand, and an affirmed demonstration of the self-existence and eternity of matter on the other. So everywhere. In one part of his multitudinous productions, inconceivability is professedly demonstrated to be no test of truth anywhere and in any sense. In the other portions of his works, this same inconceivability is employed as of absolute authority in proof or disproof of any dogma which he desires to set up or knock down. Having professedly demonstrated the fact, as the basis of all his deductions, that all our knowledge is exclusively phenomenal, mere appearance in which no reality appears, and 'that the reality existing behind all appearance is, and ever must be, unknown,' he then, in the general and in the particular, teaches just how and why this unknown and unknowable matter from a nebulous state—a state of which he affirms himself absolutely ignorant—whirls and tumbles and worms itself out of universal chaos into the goodly universe which now exists, and just how and why and by what specific processes this unknown and unknowable dead matter evolved itself into the living forms around us, and took on the processes of thought, feeling, and voluntary activity. Another of these great central lights, after affirming absolutely that 'it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit,' tells us just how and why one of these unknown and unknowable entities is to push the other out of existence or out of thought. 'As surely,' he says, 'as every future grows out of the past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.' After affirming 'that we know nothing about the composition of any body as it is,' he affirms absolutely that our thoughts 'are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena,' and our souls and bodies, with our capacities for thought, feeling, and action, are nothing but a congeries of living protoplasms which may be evolved from the dead protoplasms of a dead sheep—a process, he tells us, which shall 'transubstantiate sheep into a man.' Another of the central lights of the New Philosophy, Mr. Maudsley, in common with all his illustrious co-thinkers, affirms, first of all, an absolute ignorance of the nature of mind and matter both. 'We know not,' he says, 'and perhaps never shall know, what mind is.' Again, 'In the assertion that mind is altogether a function of matter, there is no more actual irreverence than in asserting that matter is the realization of mind; the one and the other proposition being equally meaningless so far as they postulate a knowledge of anything more than phenomena. Whether extension be visible thought, or thought invisible extension, is a question of a choice of words and not a choice of conceptions.' Where, then, if as here and elsewhere by this author affirmed, that our ignorance is absolute of both substances, is the ground for any deductions or conjectures even in respect to the functions of either? Yet we are gravely told, on the basis of a few experiments with a beheaded frog and brainless pigeon, and others of a kindred character—we are gravely told, we say, just how matter thinks and feels and wills. 'Eminent physiologists,' we are told, 'maintain that the spinal cord is really endowed with sensation and volition.' 'I hold,' says our author, 'emotion to mean the special sensibility of the vesicular neurine to ideas,' while 'the functions of the intelligence, of emotion, and of will,' 'are the highest functions of the nervous system—those to which the hemispherical ganglia minister.' The following is a more full exposition of his doctrine of volition and will. 'As the spinal cord reacts to its impressions in excito-motor action, and as the motory centres react to their impressions in sensori-motor action, so, after the complex interworking and combination of ideas in the hemispherical ganglia, there is, in like manner, a reaction or desire of determination of energy outward, in accordance with the fundamental property of organic structure, to seek what is beneficial and shun what is hurtful to it. It is this property of tissue that gives the impulse which, when guided by intelligence, we call volition, and it is the abstraction from the particular volitions which metaphysicians personify as the Will.' This dogma, that willing implies an agent who wills, is to our scientist a great absurdity. 'Physiologically,' he says, 'we cannot choose but reject the will; volition we know, and will we know, but the will, apart from particular acts of volition or will, we cannot know.' If the reader does not now fully understand how and why this unknown and unknowable entity called matter, thinks and feels and wills, and if he does not perceive with equal distinctness how and why it is that this other unknown and unknowable entity called mind, does not and cannot think, feel or will, at all, we can only say that he has not yet taken the first step in the sunlight of the New Philosophy.

Where, permit us to ask, but in the realm of Anglo-Saxon thought, can we find such palpable contradictions as the above? And these are but a few examples of what often appears in the wide domain of such thinking. The reason is before us, namely, the want of system in consequence of a want of apprehension of the true doctrine of principles in science, and the consequent habit of leaping from mere facts to deduction, instead of interpreting facts in the light of the principles which the former imply.

German Thinkers.

German thinkers, on the other hand, ever since the days of Kant, have recognized the existence of 'synthetical judgments à priori,' and of their relations as principles of science. Hence German thought has, since the period referred to, been peculiarized by its conformity to the idea of system, system in which every subject rises up before us as a logically consistent whole, with a place in it for every part, and with every part in its place. A German thinker, if he errs at all, does so in respect to his principles and facts, and very seldom in respect to the logical connection of his deductions with the former. His system, if wrong at all, is commonly wholly so, because it is based upon false principles. If you examine the parts of the system relative to one another, and to the great whole, here all is logically consistent throughout, with all the parts fastened together with iron bands. If you examine the principles on which such system rests, you will be most likely, perhaps, to find them to be, not real 'synthetical judgments á priori,' but mere lawless assumptions in the light of which the system itself will stand distinctly revealed as nothing but a logical fiction.

The reason for this characteristic of German thought is found in the fundamental error of the German mind, an error originated by Kant, in respect to the nature of 'synthetical judgments à priori.' Take, in illustration, the principle, Body implies space. According to the Transcendental exposition, the predicate space represents no reality whatever, such as we apprehend as necessarily existing, but a simple idea in the mind itself. The subject of this judgment, also—body—represents no reality external to the mind, but a mere mental state, a sensation, made to appear as such object by the idea represented by the term space, the idea existing in the mind prior to perception, and determining its form. As the predicate in this judgment, space, represents no reality in itself, neither does the subject, body. Thus, all meaning such as we attach to it, and all validity as a test of truth, and a principle in real science, drop out of the judgment, Body implies space. The same holds true of all other 'synthetical judgments à priori.' They give form to our thinking, but have no validity for truth, or application to realities as they are in themselves. Through this fundamental misapprehension in respect to the nature and proper sphere of such judgments, and the fixed relations between the subject and predicate in the same, the errors which we have already fully exposed arise. German thinkers make no distinction between valid principles and mere assumptions in science, and quite as habitually construct their systems upon the latter, as upon the former. The Anglo-Saxon makes no discrimination between universal and necessary principles, and general propositions, and hence, being without law, falls into endless contradictions, in the construction of systems of knowledge. The German, while he maintains the strictest logical consistency in the construction of his system, as frequently as otherwise, in consequence of the error designated, gives us logically constructed fictions instead of real systems of science. The Anglo-Saxon, having no fixed principles in the light of which facts are to be interpreted, often, in the presence of facts of a perfectly unindicative character, makes infinite leaps to deductions which he desires to reach. The German, in his fixed habit of giving system to thought, and of interpreting facts in the light of his principles, whatever they may be, arbitrarily cuts short, or stretches his facts, to make them conform to his assumptions. Take a single example of the habit of the German mind, not of determining hypotheses by facts, but of forcing facts into conformity with hypotheses arbitrarily assumed to be true. The question, for example, whether Thales had 'a conception of God as Intelligence,' is a simple question of historic verity, not to be determined at all by 'the chronology of speculation,' but by which such chronology is itself to be determined. Yet German thinkers, and certain Anglo-Saxons after them, determine facts of history by such chronology.' 'We agree with Hegel,' says Mr. Lewes, 'that Thales could have had no conception of God as intelligence, since that is the conception of a more advanced Philosophy.' World-renowned systems based upon nothing but lawless assumptions, systems in the construction of which facts are in forced conformity to said assumptions, are about as common among Germans, as are world-renowned thinkers. The Anglo-Saxon will continue to contradict himself, and repeat his absurd leaps in Logic, and the German will go on rearing up self-consistent systems of science falsely so called,' systems based upon airy nothing;' and in repeating his crucifixions of facts, until the true doctrine of principles and facts in science shall be clearly understood, and all systems shall be held to the severest scrutiny of such principles and facts. We are now prepared to enter into the interior of the Modern Evolution in Philosophy.

CHAPTER I.

BACON TO REID.

SECTION I.

BACON.

That which peculiarizes the modern from all prior evolutions in Philosophy is the wider prevalence in the latter of the Inductive Method. Every human being is by nature an inductive philosopher, and all men, in all the ordinary transactions of life, reason inductively. In all minds in common there exist, at least in their concrete form, the principles of all the sciences—principles under which facts are subsumed, and from said principles and facts thus contemplated, valid deductions are constantly being drawn. Why do children and men of all ages and classes, when in their presence two objects are compared with a common third, and both are found to agree, or one to agree and the other to disagree, with said object, draw the same conclusions from the facts before them? Because that in all such minds the same principles which lie at the basis of all inference in science are equally present in all in the concrete, in some in the abstract and universal form. An individual is on trial for a crime affirmed to have been committed by him, at a specified time and place, and very strong evidence has been adduced to convict him. On the part of the defence indubitable proof is presented that at that very time the accused was in a distant place, a hundred miles, for example, from the spot where the crime was committed. The child, the savage, and all men will unite in the judgment that this individual did not commit that crime, and that for the reason that all judge of the facts in the light of the same principles. In other words, all mankind are in fact and form, in their varied spheres of thought and action, inductive philosophers. Hence we have an explanation of the spectacle which the world is constantly witnessing—the common-sense of the race correcting and repudiating the deductions of false science. Whenever so-called systems of science fall upon those eternal principles which are common to all minds, and which, in fact, lie at the basis of all true science, such systems fall upon the rock of truth, and must be broken there. The advocates of such systems may, in their defence, assail these principles, and may sustain such assaults by very plausible arguments, just as plausible arguments may be adduced to prove that all proof, by argument, is impossible. But when philosophers attempt to prove, and require us to admit, as is now being done by the advocates of the New Philosophy, that such principles as, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and, It is impossible for the same object at the same moment to exist and not to exist, are not valid for truth, we shall, if we reason inductively, conclude that in the brain of such thinkers science has run mad.

Nor has induction ever been wholly absent from the sphere of philosophic thought. All thinkers, in all ages, have reasoned from certain universally admitted facts, and have differed only in their explanation of these facts. There can be no science without á priori principles. In the pure sciences both principles and facts are given á priori. In the mixed sciences the principles are á priori, and the facts given wholly á posteriori. Among the ancients, the metes and bounds between these two classes of sciences, and the exclusive methods proper to each, were either, with very few exceptions, not understood at all, or totally misunderstood. In the Modern Evolution, these metes and bounds, and the true scientific method in each department of science, lie very much in the region, if not of 'the palpable,' yet of the real 'obscure.' Hence it is that from a high sphere of even Anglo-Saxon thought, we have had, within a few years past, our 'Rational Psychology' and 'Rational Cosmology,' systems in which the facts, nature, powers, and relations of matter and spirit, like all principles, facts, and deductions, in the pure sciences, are professedly determined wholly à priori. In the sphere of the New Philosophy, we meet with an open repudiation of implied knowledge in all its forms—knowledge in the forms represented by the terms, space, time, substance, and cause, a consequent repudiation of all proper principles in science, and an attempt to solve the problem of being and its laws by phenomena affirmed to imply nothing, not even principles by which their explanation is possible. This method of explaining phenomena by phenomena, and giving us systems of science based upon no principles whatever, is called, 'in these last days,' the Method of Induction. In the absence of principles, induction proper of facts, and even original classification of phenomena, is impossible. Of what use would it be to bring together an infinite number of facts, if we have no principles to which to refer them? Let the ideas of resemblance and difference, of equality and inequality, drop out of the mind, and not a single step could be taken in the classification of phenomena. Let the principles, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and When one agrees and another disagrees with the same thing, such objects disagree with one another. Let the ideas of space, time, substance, cause, equality and difference, likeness and unlikeness, etc., disappear from the mind, and an infinity of phenomena might pass before us, and we should be none the wiser for what we behold. The objects of none of these ideas are objects of perception external or internal, that is, none of these realities take rank among mere phenomena, but as rational apprehensions whose validity is implied by phenomena which we do perceive. If our knowledge, as the advocates of the New Philosophy affirm, is confined to mere phenomena, we should remain for ever as ignorant as brutes.

Origin of Scientific Principles.

An explanation more distinct than we have yet given, perhaps, may now be presented of the origin of principles in science. Take any such principle we please, and we shall find that the subject represents an object of perception, and the predicate a reality implied by such object. We need only cite, as examples, such principles as the following: Body implies space; Succession implies time; Phenomena imply substance; Events imply a cause; and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. We perceive, for example, events; Reason, on occasion of such perception, apprehends a cause; the Judgment then intervenes and affirms the necessary relation between what is perceived and what is implied by the perceived. Thus we obtain the universal and necessary principle, Every event has a cause. The same holds undeniably true in the case of all the principles in all the sciences. Let such principles, both in the concrete and absolute and universal forms, drop out of human thought, and, we repeat, science in no form, not even as classification, would be possible.

Origin of False Systems of Philosophy.

We are now prepared to state definitely how it is that false systems of Philosophy take on their particular characteristics. One class begins with implied knowledge, and through this determine all facts and their characteristics, and from principles and facts thus determined construct their systems. Another class repudiate implied knowledge in all its forms, and construct their systems out of mere phenomena, phenomena considered as implying nothing, neither space, time, substance, nor cause, thus attempting to give to 'airy nothing a local habitation and a name.' A third class, without any recognition of the existence of the two forms of knowledge, or of the two classes of realities under consideration, or of their relations to each other, attempt an explanation of the facts of existence without any principles to guide their deductions. What but false and self-contradictory systems can arise under such circumstances?

Implied knowledge, in none of its forms, while it explains the possibility of realities which may be perceived to exist, determines anything whatever in respect to the question, what realities do, in fact, exist. Take the ideas of space, time, substance, and cause. These render conceivable the reality of body, succession, phenomena, qualities, and events, but determine nothing whatever in respect to the kinds of bodies, changes, phenomena, qualities, and events which shall appear. Suppose we attempt through the former, not to explain, but to determine what is. We may thus have system, system perfectly harmonious in all its parts; but our system will and must be a logical fiction and nothing else.

Suppose, now, that we repudiate implied knowledge in all its forms, and attempt to construct our system from mere phenomena, in accordance with the principles of Pure Idealism on the one hand, and of the New Philosophy on the other. Thought, as we apprehend it, implies, of necessity, a subject who thinks, and an object thought of. We drop out, as unreal, the thinker and the object, and assume as alone real the phenomena thought, and attempt to construct from this nothing something which has neither substance nor attributes, subject nor object, the universe as it is, and is seemingly known to us. We set our thought—which exists nowhere, in no time, from no cause, and for no end—we set this thought to work. The system which shall legitimately take form from such a material must, together with its author, be what a learned German said Hegel and his system were, namely, 'The system is nothing in itself, nor of itself; neither was its author in himself, but beside himself.' Take another case. Murder, as universally understood, implies an act, phenomenon, in which one real moral agent, with malice prepense, takes the life of another real moral agent. Every element in the above statement must be true, or there has been no murder. We drop out the killer and the killed, and bring the phenomenon by itself, as alone knowable and known, before a jury constituted of such thinkers as Messrs. Mill, Spencer, Huxley, Emerson, and their co-philosophers. They are required, the phenomenon having been legally verified, to find a verdict in strict accordance with their Philosophy. What would their verdict be? This: 'The jury find that there has been a real appearance, phenomenon, which goes by the name of murder. But since "the reality existing behind all appearance is, and ever must be, unknown," they find no evidence whatever that any real agent acted or suffered in the case. The jury therefore decide that the phenomenon which appeared several months since, should, if it can be caught, be put to death, but that no agent should be held as worthy of "death or of bonds." This, undeniably, is the only verdict which such thinkers could render, without affirming their entire Philosophy to be a lie. May not the world justly affirm that such 'a Philosophy is nothing in itself nor of itself; neither are its advocates in themselves but beside themselves'? But say these thinkers, 'We do know fact and we do know law.' Not so fast, gentlemen. Law is as invisible as space, time, substance, and cause, and if you confine, as you profess to do, all knowledge to mere phenomena, law, as well as all other forms of implied knowledge, must be dropped from your theory and from your vocabulary. You must take your subjectless and objectless phenomena, and with no principles by which you can rationally classify them, construct your baseless system as best you can.

If, finally, without recognizing the distinction between perceived and implied forms of knowledge, and consequently without scientific principles, we begin to theorize about facts and existences within and around us, we shall find ourselves in the proper sphere of Anglo-Saxon thought, where thinking, for the most part, will be without law; where the impossibility of proof, in any form, by argument will be demonstrated by argument; where the invalidity of the most certain will be proven by the less certain; where admitted contradictions will be demonstrated to be objects of rational faith, and the demonstrated object of our supreme veneration and trust shall be 'a bundle of negations.'

All such contradictions and absurdities will appear and disappear, and reappear, and have rule in the sphere of scientific thought, until the distinction between perceived and implied knowledge is distinctly recognized; until each shall have its proper and distinctly recognized place in science; until, from the relations of these, scientific principles are deduced, and under these principles all facts are classified. When the logical deductions yielded by these principles and facts shall be determined, then, and only then, shall we have truths and systems of real science. Here, and only here, do we or can we have a true idea of scientific induction and deduction, and of Inductive Science. The above remarks are so obviously applicable to the Pure Sciences, that nothing further, in that direction, need be added in this connection.

If Bacon did develop this idea of induction and deduction, then is he the proper father of Inductive Sciences. If he failed to do this, however, much as science is indebted to him in other respects, the high place referred to cannot be properly awarded to him.

What did Bacon really do for Science?

In estimating the real indebtedness of science to Bacon (1561-1626), we must bear in mind that he was contemporary with Kepler and Galileo, that Copernicus had lived and died before he was born, and that Roger Bacon (1214-1297) had assiduously cultivated the science of induction, and announced its essential principles. 'Experience alone,' said Roger Bacon, 'gives accurate knowledge.' 'Experiment proves and verifies the highest propositions which the other sciences can present.' Nor did Sir Francis Bacon, like his contemporaries and predecessors named, and others that might be named, make any practical advancement in any of the sciences. His real claims are based upon the fact that he gave impulse and direction to scientific thought and inquiry, by a formal announcement of the doctrine, which the spirit of that age was prepared to receive, namely, that in the à posteriori sciences, all valid deduction must have one exclusive basis—the induction of facts of observation and experiment. That principle being announced and accepted, a permanent foundation for the proper study of nature was laid. So far, the world owes a debt of enduring gratitude to this great thinker.

End and Aim of Induction according to Bacon.

But what direction did he give to induction? What end did he propose as the goal of observation and experiment? And by what method was this end to be reached? Bacon, we must also bear in mind, held in almost sovereign contempt the pure sciences, Mathematics, for example; and with him, Metaphysics were in not much higher repute. Theology, too, was almost wholly excluded from the sphere of science. What he regarded as the sciences stood in immediate connection with Natural Philosophy. 'Let none expect,' he says, 'any great promotion of the sciences, especially in their effective part, unless Natural Philosophy be drawn out to particular sciences; and again, unless these particular sciences be brought back again to Natural Philosophy' 'This ought to be esteemed the great mother of the sciences; for all the rest, if torn from this root, may perhaps be polished and formed for use, but can receive but little increase.' Here we have a very narrow view of the number, sphere, and criteria of the sciences, and here we note the first essential error of our great philosopher.

Fundamental False Principle announced by Bacon.

We now refer to the principle laid down by Bacon, and which gives character to all his views of science, 'that the activity of the intellect is exercised only upon data primitively furnished by sensation.' In accordance with this principle, he 'esteemed Natural Philosophy the great mother of the sciences,' and made little account of the pure sciences on the one hand, and of Metaphysics on the other. Thus this reputed father of Inductive Science started all induction upon the line of Materialism. No principle was ever more false, in fact, than that above announced. Thought and mental activity have been, in truth, quite as much exercised upon facts of mind as upon those of matter, and the great problems now before the world are, in fact and form, mental problems. Those who follow this principle will ignore and repudiate most of the most absolute facts and forms of knowledge. We have just as much reason to affirm that the activity of the intellect is exercised only upon interior, as upon exterior facts, and should be equally wrong in either case.

The Doctrine of Method as Understood by Bacon.

The Method of Induction as understood by Bacon, together with the end aimed at by this method, is thus set forth by himself: 'As things are at present conducted, a sudden transition is made from sensible objects and particular facts to general propositions which are accounted principles, and around which, as around many fixed poles, disputation and argument continually revolve. From the propositions thus hastily assumed, all things are derived by a process compendious and precipitate, ill-suited to discovery, but wonderfully accommodated to debate.

The way which promises success is the reverse of this. It requires that we should generalize slowly, going from particular things to those that are but one step more general; from these to other of still greater extent, and so on to such as are most general.' These general judgments, or generalized facts, now become axioms, or scientific principles, 'axiomata media,' for the prosecution of future scientific inquiry, in which we reason, not from the particular to the general, but from the general to the particular. 'There are two ways,' he says in another connection, 'of searching after and discovering truth; the one, from sense and particulars, rises directly to the most general axioms, and resting upon these principles, and their unshaken truth, finds out intermediate axioms, and this is the method in use; but the other raises axioms from sense and particulars by a continued and gradual ascent, till at last it arrives at the most general axioms, which is the true way, but hitherto untried.'

The immutable condition of generalization, according to our philosopher, is a prior collection of all the facts to be explained and elucidated. 'The first object,' he says, 'must be to prepare a history of the phenomena to be explained, in all their modifications and varieties. This history is to comprehend not only all such facts as spontaneously offer themselves, but all the experiments instituted for the sake of discovery, or for any of the purposes of the useful arts.' In other words, before the process of generalization can be commenced with any rational hope of success, we must really become omniscient in respect to the matters of fact to be generalized. Such is the doctrine of Method as interpreted by Bacon, and such are the ends and aims of induction, as he expounded the subject. On this doctrine as thus understood, we remark:

General Remarks upon this Doctrine.

1. Principles, or axioms of science, as understood and interpreted by Bacon, are identical with general judgments. There are no axioms but such as are obtained by 'a continued and gradual ascent from sense and particulars, till at last we arrive at the most general axioms.' We claim to have demonstrated that principles or axioms in science, and these general propositions, are totally distinct and separate kinds of judgments; that the former lie at the basis of all the sciences, and the latter are ultimate truths reached by scientific processes conducted in the light of scientific principles or axioms. Without principles or axioms, not a step can be taken rationally even in the process of classification or generalization. According to Bacon, these long and painful processes which are necessary preliminaries to science proper are without law or order, and without any criteria by which we can distinguish the true process from the false.

2. This identification of general judgments with principles or axioms in science, or rather the substitution of the former for the latter, has induced the common mistake in respect to the relations of induction and deduction to each other. In induction, it is said, we reason from the particular to the general; while in deduction, we reason back from the general to the particular. By such a maxim, the pupil is totally misled in regard to both induction and deduction. In the former process, we never reason from the individual to the general, nor in the latter from the general to the individual. Reasoning from the individual to the general is false inference, making the conclusion broader than the premise; reasoning from the general to the individual, as Mr. Mill has shown, involves the vicious error of petitio principii. In every valid scientific process and argument, on the other hand, induction and deduction both have place, and are never separated from each other. Every such process begins with a principle or axiom. Under such principles, facts are induced and arranged: this is induction. From this principle and the facts ranged under it, a conclusion is deduced: this is deduction. Take the following example in illustration of what always does and must obtain in induction and deduction, in their only proper forms. Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Here we have our principle. A and B are each equal to C. Here we have our facts induced or ranged under our principle, and this is induction proper. Therefore, A and B are equal to one another. Here we have scientific inference or deduction. Any induction in which facts are not ranged under a principle is a meaningless and lawless procedure. Any deduction in which an inference is not deduced from a principle and facts ranged under it, is either a lawless leap, or a senseless petitio principii in logic or science.

3. This error of identifying principles in science with general judgments, that is, principles which lie at the basis of all scientific induction and deduction, with ultimate truths reached by such processes, has induced in Mr. Mill and other logicians the fundamental error which we have exposed in regard to the syllogism or argument. No thinker who understands the true scientific process, that is, the real nature and relations of scientific induction and deduction, would ever have given utterance to such a fundamental error in science as the following: 'All inference,' says Mr. Mill, 'is from particulars to particulars; general propositions are merely registers of such inferences already made, and short formulas for making more. The major premise of a syllogism consequently is a formula of this description; and the conclusion is not an inference drawn from the formula, but an inference drawn according to the formula; the real logical antecedent or premises being the particular facts from which the general proposition was collected by induction.' Every sentence in the above extract contains a fundamental error in science. No inference in science is 'from particulars to particulars,' but always, as we have shown, from a self-evident, universal, and necessary principle, and facts ranged by induction under such principle; and every scientific inference is not according to, but legitimately drawn from said principle. General propositions are not 'registers of inferences already made,' inferences from particulars to particulars, nor 'short formulas for making more' such lawless inferences, but ultimate truths reached by scientific induction and deduction under and from such self-evident principles. General propositions do have place, as major premises in syllogisms found in such logics as those of Mr. Mill; but never do they have place as such premises in any proper scientific syllogism or argument. Take, in illustration, a single example from Bacon, in which, like other Anglo-Saxon thinkers, he contradicts himself. A given class of facts is before us, facts for the character and occurrence of which an explanation is sought. Two contradictory hypotheses present themselves, one of which must be true, and the other false. In such a case, says Bacon, 'nothing remains to be done but to look out for a fact which can be explained by one of these causes [hypotheses], and not by the other.' This single fact, as Bacon affirms, verifies one hypothesis as true, and the other as false. Here we have 'a general proposition' which is not 'a register of inferences already wade, and a short formula for making more, but which is an ultimate truth deduced immediately from a single fact placed under a self-evident principle, to wit, that of two or more contradictory hypotheses, some one of which must be true, and the other, or others, false, any fact which one does and the other, or others, cannot explain, demonstrates the one to be true and the other, or others, to be false. This ultimate general proposition which has its basis in a primary and self-evident principle, and has been verified by facts placed under such principle, becomes itself a proximate principle, not for the explanation of the fact, or facts, by which it was verified, but of others of the same class which are in themselves explicable on both, or all the hypotheses referred to.

4. Bacon, by his utterly false principle that the activity of the intellect is exercised only upon data primitively furnished by sensation, and by his equally false method of induction and deduction, laid the foundation for the doctrines of Materialism and Atheism, subsequently deduced from his principles. No other doctrines can be legitimately drawn from such principles. Bacon reckons among the causes which have retarded and corrupted the sciences, 'the Idols of the Theatre,' which spring from the ascendency that philosophers and masters acquire over their disciples, and the authority, as first truths, of the axiomatic utterances of great thinkers over the thinking of subsequent generations. The time has arrived for science to free itself from the Idols of Bacon.

5. While Bacon thus laid the foundation for fundamental error, he himself believed in God and religion. In his work on the 'Advancement of Learning,' he thus speaks: 'I hold that this knowledge must, in the end, be bounded by religion, else it will be subject to deceit and delusion.' The comparative worth, in his estimation, of material and mental studies, as a means of attaining to valuable knowledge, human and divine, is thus expressed by him. 'The human mind, if it acts upon matter' (in its researches for truth) 'in contemplating the nature of things, and the works of God, acts' (reasons and judges) 'according to nature' (the reality of things), and is determined thereby; but if it works upon itself, as the spider does' (studies its own nature and operations), 'then it has no end; but produces cobwebs of learning, admirable indeed for the fineness of the thread, but of no substance nor profit.' A sentiment more false and subversive than this has been seldom uttered. 'Know thyself.' Thales evinced far higher wisdom than Bacon.

Principles of Science, how Originated.

If self-evident, and consequently universal and necessary principles, and not general propositions originated by induction, lie at the basis of all science, and consequently of all scientific induction and deduction, how, it may be asked, are these principles obtained? and how can they be distinguished from other forms of thought? These questions we have already repeatedly answered, and we allude to the subject in this connection on account of its bearings upon inquiries which are to follow. The principles which lie at the basis of the sciences exist, as we have shown, not in their abstract and universal, but in their concrete and particular forms, in all minds in common, and all minds in common reason and judge of facts in the light of these principles. Induction and deduction proper are, consequently, common to the race, and in science and common life these processes are carried on in the light of the same self-evident principles. A child, a savage, a common man, and a philosopher, for example, are together in a store where objects are sold by weight. The proprietor lays a pound weight on one side of his scale, and then exactly balances it with fifty different articles in succession. When done up and laid together on the counter, every person present will affirm with the same certainty that each of these masses is of the same weight as every other. If asked for the reason for that judgment, each would reply, 'Because they are, every one of them, equal to that one common measure. The philosopher only, however, could give the answer in its scientific form, namely, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. These masses are also equal in weight to that of the same thing: they are, therefore, all of the same weight. The same holds true universally. The principles which lie at the basis of all the sciences are identical with those which, in all minds in common, lie, in the concrete, at the basis of the natural procedures of the universal Intelligence in ordinary judging and reasoning. All men have common faculties of external and internal perception, and consequently have apprehensions of spirit and matter. All men in common have Reason, the organ of implied knowledge, and consequently have common ideas of space, time, substance, cause, equality, difference, etc. All men in common have the faculty of judgment, which, in its primitive procedures, spontaneously affirms the relations existing between facts perceived and realities implied by such facts. There exist, consequently, in all minds in common, the same principles which lie at the basis of all the sciences—principles in the light of which all facts are explained, and all valid deductions in science are made and verified. The only difference between the primitive, or common, and the scientific process of induction and deduction, is that in the former principles are employed in their concrete, and in the latter in their reflective, abstract, and universal forms. Without these principles, at least in their primitive forms, all existing facts might pass distinctly before the mind, and no discriminations would ever be made between them, no classifications would ever be made of them, and no deductions would ever be drawn from them. Without these same principles in their reflective, abstract, and universal forms, not a step can be taken in any of the sciences.

Common Sense defined, together with its Relations to Science.

As we have shown, there exist, in all minds, common faculties of perception external and internal, a common faculty of implied knowledge, and of primitive and deductive judgment, and consequently common apprehensions of matter, spirit, time, space, substance, cause; common ideas of resemblance and difference, equality and inequality, etc., and common principles of induction and deduction. Now these original apprehensions, ideas, and principles, which lie at the basis of all induction, deduction, and reasoning, primitive, common, and scientific, constitute what is denominated the Common Sense of the race. The facts, principles, inductions, and deductions of Common Sense are the same as those of Science. The only difference lies here. In the former process all is in the concrete and unsystematized, and in the latter in the reflective and systematized form. True science purifies, enlarges, and systematizes the inductions and deductions of Common Sense, but never contradicts its original facts, principles, or deductions. No system of so-called science which contradicts any of the real facts, principles, or deductions of Common Sense, will stand the test of time. As Cicero has truly said, 'All original convictions, strictly common to the race, are laws of nature,' and no other laws can legitimately have more absolute authority in the sphere of science than these. Every system which falls upon the original intuitions of Common Sense, falls upon the immovable rock of truth.

Common Error in regard to Investigation and Discovery of Truth, and Reasoning and Proof.

The common idea that in induction we argue from the particular to the general, and that in argument, or proof, we descend from the general to the particular, has led to a very important error in regard to the relations of investigation and discovery of truth, and proof after truth has been discovered. Now the facts and principles, in the light of which truth is discovered, are the identical facts and principles in the light of which discovery can be verified. A stranger enters the store and sees the articles above referred to lying together upon the counter. Desiring to discover and verify for himself the relative weight of these bundles, he lays each one in succession upon the balance, and marks the result. From the fact that they are all, in weight, equal to the same thing, he discovers or infers that they are all of the same weight. Here is investigation, discovery, and proof all together. If he would verify to himself the discovery made, he must, in the light of the principle, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, repeat in thought the identical experiment by which the original discovery was made. If he would prove to others the validity of his discovery, he must state to them, or repeat in their presence, the experiment by which his own deduction was reached. This holds true in science universally. The same principles and facts, in the light of which deductive truth is originally discovered, these and these alone present valid proof of the truth discovered.

We would by no means be understood here as denying the validity of the analytical, as well as synthetic, methods of proof. We may, if we choose, in accordance with the latter method, first lay down, in proper order, the premises, and then deduce the conclusion; or, in accordance with the former method, we may first state the conclusion, and then present, in proof of its validity, the premises, which is the common mode of reasoning. Each of these methods, however, is utterly unlike reasoning first, without a principle, from the particular to the general, and then, with the latter as a major premise, reasoning from the general to the particular, both procedures being, as we have shown, alike false.

SECTION II.

HOBBES AND GASSENDI.

Bacon furnished the principle and method in conformity to which Hobbes of England (1588-1679) and Gassendi of France (1592-1655) very soon developed a philosophy of universal being and its laws. As these thinkers agree in all essential particulars, and each stands at the head of a particular school in his own country, both schools being identical in their essential characteristics, we refer to said thinkers and their systems in the same connection. Bacon had announced the principle 'that the activity of the intellect is exercised only upon data primitively furnished by sensation,' and that the object and end of induction is to classify and generalize knowledge thus furnished. Such thinkers as those above designated were not slow in discerning the necessary consequences of such a principle, and of such a method of induction and deduction. Before giving the theory of either of these thinkers, we would call special attention to the following very true and important utterance of our Anglo-Saxon thinker: 'Man has the exclusive privilege of forming general theorems. But this privilege is alloyed by another, that is, by the privilege of absurdity, to which no living creature is subject but man only. And of men, those are of all others most subject to it that profess Philosophy.' The reason why philosophers are thus specially privileged is thus most correctly stated by this same thinker: 'When men have once acquiesced in untrue opinions; and registered them as authenticated records in their minds, it is no less impossible to speak intelligibly to such men than to write legibly upon paper already scribbled over.' One of the most marked features of this affinity of philosophers for the absurd is that those who most clearly apprehend its nature, of all others perhaps, most readily leap into the palpable abyss.

Theory of Hobbes.

We will present the theory of Mr. Hobbes in his own words, he being properly pronounced by Mr. Lewes 'the precursor of Modern Materialism.' 'Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider them first singly, and afterwards in a train or dependence upon one another. Singly they are every one a representation or appearance of some quality of a body without us, which is commonly called an object—which object worketh on the eyes and ears and other parts of man's body, and by diversity of working, produces diversity of appearances. The original of them all is that which we call Sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.' Again, 'Because whatsoever we conceive has been perceived first, by sense, either all at once or by parts, a man can have no thought representing anything not subject to sense.'

There is but a single step from Hobbes' theory of knowledge to his doctrine of spirit. As nothing but material forms, bodies, are represented in thought, mind can be therein represented as nothing but a material substance. 'As the object of thought, in all its forms, is body, all science consists in considering the whole relatively to its parts, or the parts relatively to one another.' Knowledge, in its original form, consists in the impressions, images which bodies make upon the physical organization. The continuance and faint recurrence of these images is memory, imagination, and 'all knowledge is remembrance.' What we have to do is not with the psychology of our author, which none now believe, but with his philosophy, which is now being zealously pushed into the sphere of scientific thought.

The Moral and Political System of Hobbes.

In morals, Hobbes has the merit of self-consistency. Bodies he divides into two classes—natural bodies, or, individuals, and political bodies, or communities. As an individual, man is capable of pleasurable and painful sensations, the causes of the former being objects of desire, and of the latter of aversion. Of all objects of desire every individual has a natural right to possess himself, and that by any means in his power. As the desires of individuals are often in conflict, natural right is always with the strongest. Here we have the morality of Materialism, as distinctly and openly expounded, as we have seen, by its teachers in all ages. The whole duty of man, as these teachers expounded it, is fully embodied in the maxim of the robber chieftain:

'He shall get who has the power,

And he shall keep who can.'

As man, as a political body, cannot exist unless natural desire shall be restrained within certain limits, society has the right to force individuals into conformity to wholesome rules and regulations. 'In the social state,' according to our philosopher, as has been correctly stated by another in the Epitome of the History of Philosophy, 'public force is bound by no law. In the primitive state of man, everyone having a right to everything, there is neither justice nor injustice, neither right nor wrong. In the social state, morality is nothing but the public utility, and here again it is to the sovereign public force it belongs to decide what is just or unjust.' An unjust law, according to this thinker, is an impossibility. Public force is bound by no law whatever. The system of Hobbes is all true, or all false throughout; for it is a self-consistent whole, what is not common in the sphere of Anglo-Saxon thought. The absurdity of Epicurus, that material bodies may exercise the functions of Free Will, has never had place in Modern Materialism. The reason is that the advocates of this doctrine in modern times have never attempted, as the Epicureans did, to solve the problem, how can creation, on the hypothesis that matter alone exists, be an event of time—a problem which Materialism must solve, or 'vanish into nought.'

Theory of Gassendi.

In no essential respects did the theory of Gassendi differ from that of his contemporary, Hobbes. The former, in common with the latter, affirmed that the intelligence acts only upon facts furnished by sensation, and that science consists in passing, by a comparison of facts, from singular to general notions. In common with Epicurus, he made two principles, vacuum and atoms, the basis of his physical theory. In respect to morals, he presented nothing worthy of notice. Living under the power of religious intolerance, he saved his head by recognizing God as the original Creator, affirming at the same time that all phenomena are explicable on the atomic theory. Such are the systems which, in these two great countries, England and France, immediately took form from the false principle and method of Bacon. On these systems we have the following important remarks to make:

Remarks upon these Systems.

1. They are both in common, as is true of Materialism in all its forms, based upon a most palpable psychological error—that the constituent elements of all thought, in all its forms, were furnished originally by sensation, and that consequently body is the only object of perception, conception, and thought. We are as absolutely conscious of the presence in our minds of the ideas of space, time, substance, and cause, for example, as we are of those of body or of any material forms, combinations, or changes. We might just as properly affirm that no ideas do exist in the mind but those of space, time, substance, and cause, as make the same affirmation in respect to matter. While Hobbes affirmed that 'whatever we perceive is first conceived by sense,' he affirmed, without thinking of the contradiction, that he had in his mind, in common with everybody else, the idea of infinite space, which no body has seen, touched, nor handled. 'How wonderful is thought!' he exclaims, 'how mighty!—how mysterious! In its lightning speed it traverses all space, and makes the past present.' Yes, even Hobbes had, as we have, the ideas of space and time, which are not material forms, not attributes of matter. In universal thought too, spirit, as distinct and separate from matter, is just as consciously and clearly represented as is matter. It would be no more a denial of conscious facts to affirm that we have no conception of material forms, than it is to affirm that we have no conception of spirit. Between spirit and matter, as represented in thought, there are no common elements whatever, and yet both conceptions are equally present. If an individual should affirm that mind never thinks, feels, nor wills at all, he would not be more palpably wrong than he is, when he affirms that matter and its forms and changes are the only objects of thought. Thought itself, feeling, sensation, emotion, and willing, as objects of thought, have not one of them a single attribute or characteristic of matter. What if a philosopher should tell us of the weight, measure, the inside, the outside, the top and the bottom, this side and that side of thought, feeling, and willing? Should we not justly regard him, as not in himself, but beside himself? We are not now speaking of the validity of thought in any form, but of its elements and forms as it actually exists in the mind. An individual would not be farther from the truth who should seriously affirm that copper constitutes the only circulating medium known on earth, than is the philosopher who assures us that nothing but matter and material forms and changes are represented in human thought.

2. The grounds of the distinction which universal mind has made, and affirms to exist between matter and other realities, and of the conviction that other than material realities do exist, science can never invalidate, but is bound to recognize as valid. All mankind, philosophers included, do, in fact, believe in the reality of matter and of its recognized forms and changes, and in the reality of space, time, substance, and cause, as necessarily implied by the existence of matter, with its forms and changes. If the latter are real, and their reality cannot be disproved, or in fact disbelieved, the former must be real. No form of knowledge can be more certain, and consciously so, than are all these; and the certainty of one of these forms is just as absolute as that of any of the others. As there are, and can be, no forms of knowledge more certain, and consciously so, than are all these, there can be none through which the certainty of these can be invalidated. We may safely challenge the world to present any form of proof to invalidate the argument here presented. In the conscious presence of the phenomena of matter and spirit, universal mind has not only affirmed, and that absolutely, both to be real, but has marked, and knows them, as distinct and separate entities. Of each substance alike universal mind has a perfectly clear, fixed, immutable, and readily defined apprehension—an apprehension which, as we have shown, can no more be changed or modified than can our apprehension of a circle or square. Nor in thought can one of these entities be confounded with the other, any more than can a straight line be mistaken for a triangle. When men deny the distinction between them, they speak of it, recognize it, and really believe in it, just as they did before.

3. The materialistic deduction presents one of the wildest and most absurd leaps in logic known to science. The mind has a perception of an exterior object possessed of extension and form, that is, of body. This perception implies with equal absoluteness three facts—the reality of an exterior object on the one hand—that of the percipient subject, on the other—and that the nature of the subject and object is to be determined by their respective essential phenomena; perception in the subject being always attended with conscious self-recognition as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and voluntary determination, and as distinct and separate from, and totally unlike, the perceived object. In the presence of such undeniable facts, the Materialist takes into account, not at all the subject, or any of the conscious facts referred to, but simply and exclusively the exterior object, with its properties, changes, and relations, and determines his theory of Being and its laws from this exclusive and palpably partial standpoint. The entire logic of this theory may be thus expressed, and no one can show that it has any broader or more valid basis than this. Matter is an object of sense-perception. Therefore, no other reality exists, and no other object is or can be represented in thought. Hobbes most impressively drew his own image and likeness, together with that of all Materialists of all ages, when he affirmed that of all men; philosophers have the greatest affinity for the absurd. The absurdity of the Materialist is only equalled by that of the Idealist, who, in the presence of the same perception, looks inward upon the percipient, and affirms that he only, as phenomenon, has being. What world renowned systems have no other basis than half-truths? This is the peculiar and exclusive character of 'science falsely so called,' in all the forms which it ever has assumed.

4. But the most absurd and hideous feature of Materialism in all its forms, is what has been rightly denominated 'its infernal morals.' The sum of its morals, as unitedly announced by its most illustrious expounders, may be correctly expressed by the following formulas: In the natural state of man, no one human being has any rights which any other human being is under the least obligation to respect. Nor can civil society enact an unrighteous or oppressive law, or perpetrate any form of wrong upon any subject. Nor does any one nation or community possess any rights which any other nation or community is bound to respect. The only difference between the highway robber, the midnight assassin, and the pirate on the high seas, and individuals and the State, is simply one of relative strength. Whosoever performs any act because it is right in itself and morally binding, or refrains from perpetrating any

act because it is morally wrong, is a fool. Take Materialism in its principles, and no other system of morality can be deduced from them. Take the deductions which the wisest expounders of the system have actually drawn from said principles, and the above is a correct summary of said deductions. The individual who, in the open presence of the consciously known attributes of matter and spirit, and above all, of the conscious facts of the moral and spiritual nature of universal mind, can avow himself a Materialist, must have so long and so immutably 'acquiesced in untrue opinions, and registered them as authenticated records in his mind, that it is no less impossible to speak intelligibly to such a man than it is to write legibly upon paper already scribbled over.'

SECTION III.

JOHN LOCKE.

In the same year, 1632, two individuals were born—one in England, and the other in Holland—individuals whose names occupy conspicuous places in the history of Philosophy. We refer to John Locke and Benedict Spinoza. As the latter stands more intimately connected with the German, than the Anglo-Saxon Evolution, and as our plan is to trace first the latter movement as it stands related to Bacon, we shall omit the consideration of systems specially connected with the former movement, until after our present plan has been completed.

When Locke was a student in the University of Oxford, a company of students assembled by accident in his room. They found themselves perplexed and baffled in their discussions of the problems of their age. In the midst of these discussions, it occurred to the youthful mind of Locke that existing thought and discussion were taking a wrong direction; that the first thing to be done was not to attempt to solve the problem of Being and its laws, but to investigate the faculties of the soul, and thus determine the extent and limits of its capacities, so that we can clearly understand what objects it can and cannot know. It was this mental suggestion that gave being and form to his great work on the Human Understanding, the central aim of which, as stated by himself, was 'to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge.' If, by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding,' he says, 'I can discover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man, to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of its capacities. We should not then perhaps be so forward, vaunt of an affectation of a universal knowledge, to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about things to which our understandings are not suited, and of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear and distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view, how far it has faculties to attain certainty, and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state.' In reading the above and similar statements which abound in the writings of this great author, we feel ourselves in company with a thinker whose thoughts are always worthy of grave consideration, and whom, even while we may differ from him in particulars perfectly fundamental, we must hold in deep esteem. Nor is the importance of mental study over-estimated in the above statements. The great problems of world-thought, the problems of the ages, are all located within the proper sphere of Metaphysics, and must there receive their solution.

The Special Peculiarities of the System of Locke.

The peculiarity which distinguished from all others the system of Locke, that only which requires special investigation in a Critical History of Philosophy is his theory of the origin and constituent elements of human knowledge in all its forms. To understand his doctrine in the particular under consideration, we must bear in mind that at that time it was quite commonly believed by scientific men that two classes of ideas existed in the mind, one derived from experience external and internal, the other innate. Of matter, spirit, and their relations, we have only that form of knowledge which is derived from Sense, and Consciousness, and from Reasoning upon facts derived from observation and experience. Ideas of space, time, substance, cause, God, duty, immutability, retribution, and of universal and necessary principles, we bring into the world with us. 'It is an established opinion among some men,' he says, 'that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions, characters, as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first being and brings into the world with it.' The doctrine of Locke is that the elements of all our ideas, simple and complex, are derived from two exclusive sources, represented by the general term 'experience.' These sources are external and internal perception, or Sense and Consciousness, 'sensation and reflection,' to use the phraseology of our author. 'Our observation,' he says, 'employed about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understanding with all the materials of thinking. These two are the foundations of knowledge, from which all ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.' All ideas, he affirms, are simple or complex. The former are directly and immediately derived from original experience; the latter are exclusively constituted from elements furnished by experience. In the reception of simple ideas the mind is passive. In combining these into complex ones, the mind is, in important senses, active. 'As the mind is wholly passive,' he says, 'in the reception of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple ideas as the materials and foundations of all the rest, the others are framed. The acts of the mind wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; by which way it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called abstraction; and thus all its general ideas are made.' The power which the mind has over simple ideas, or the elements of all our knowledges, our author thus correctly expounds: 'When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite variety; and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways mentioned: nor can any force of the understanding destroy those that are there.'

Our author, it should also be borne in mind, uses the term 'sensation,' not in its exclusive modern sense, to represent a mere feeling in the mind, but also to include the act of perception which accompanies this sensitive state, but constitutes no part of it. 'Our senses,' he says, 'conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein these objects do affect them.' 'This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call sensation.'

General Remarks upon this Theory.

Such is the theory of Locke pertaining to the origin and constituent elements of all ideas, and all forms of knowledge which exist in the mind. All is constituted of what we directly and immediately obtain through external and internal perception. Experience being the watch word of the system, it has hence been denominated Empiricism. In respect to a theory which has, in fact, more than any other assignable cause, given form and shape to Anglo-Saxon thought, and occasioned all its inconsistencies and self-contradictions, we would invite special attention to the following general remarks:

1. The whole theory is based upon a most palpable psychological error. There must undeniably exist in the mind not a few ideas and principles which could not have been derived from experience, and are not constituted of elements furnished by experience. No man, for example, has ever seen space or time, and they are not apprehended as attributes of matter or spirit. Yet we have apprehensions of each of these realities, ideas perfectly simple and uncompounded. Each of these realities is also apprehended as absolutely infinite. All objects of perception, also, are apprehended as contingent. We conceive of them as existing with the conscious possibility of conceiving of them as not existing. The ideas of space and time, on the other hand, are necessary ideas. We conceive of their objects as existing with the conscious impossibility of conceiving of their non-existence. There is not a single element or characteristic of either of these ideas which could, by any possibility, have been the object of perception external or internal, and which, consequently, could have been derived from experience. The same remarks are equally applicable to our ideas of substance and cause, ideas actually existing in the mind. What we perceive is quality, or an event. Substance and cause, to which we refer quality and events, we do not perceive, but apprehend as implied by what we perceive.

There are also principles in the mind which could not have been derived from experience external, nor internal, nor from both combined. This fact Kant has rendered demonstrably evident in the Introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason. The criteria which he gives of such principles are the characteristics of strict conscious universality and necessity. 'If a judgment,' he says, 'is thought in strict universality, that is, so that not an exception is allowed as possible, this is not derivable from experience, but is absolutely valid á priori. Empirical universality is, therefore, only an arbitrary progression of validity from that which is valid in most cases, to that which is so in all, as, for example, in the proposition, "All bodies are heavy." Where, on the other hand, strict universality belongs essentially to a judgment that indicates a particular source of its cognition—a faculty of cognition á priori, necessity and strict universality are, therefore, sure characteristics of a cognition á priori, and belong also inseparably to each other.' No argument can have more absolute demonstrative certainty than this of Kant presented above. Experience can only affirm what is, and what generally obtains, within its own sphere, but can never affirm what does and must obtain in all cases actual and conceivable. If, therefore, we do have in the mind ideas and judgments having the undeniable characteristics of strict universality and necessity, then the elements of all our ideas and knowledges were not given by experience, and we have three faculties of original intuition, instead of two, as affirmed by Locke.

As examples of the principles under consideration, Kant first adduces the axioms of mathematics. All these, as apprehended by the Universal Intelligence, have undeniably the essential characteristics of the strictest universality and necessity. We not only know that they do, but equally that they must, hold true universally, and cannot be properly classed as experiential judgments. As an example of more common recognition, he next cites the principle 'that all change must have a cause.' No truth of psychology is, or can be, more palpably obvious than is the fact that there exist in the mind ideas and judgments which could not have been derived from experience, and that consequently the theory of Locke rests upon a most manifest psychological error.

2. The theory of Locke is based upon a most unauthorized assumption, namely, that if any ideas not derived from experience do exist in the mind, they must be innate, and, that in proving the doctrine of Innate Ideas false, he had demonstrated the validity of his own theory. Here we have most palpably a very wide leap in logic. The doctrine of Innate Ideas may be false, and yet there may be three, instead of two, faculties of original intuition. The question how many such faculties the mind is possessed of, cannot be determined by assumption, but by a careful analysis of our complex conceptions, and a scientific determination of the character of the elements which constitute such conceptions. If we should find that a part of these elements were furnished by external and internal perception, and that another portion could not have been thus derived, then we should infer, not the truth of the doctrine of Innate Ideas, but the existence of a third faculty of original intuition—a faculty which, when the proper conditions are fulfilled, furnishes us with these ideas and elements of complex thought. The unauthorized assumption on which the whole theory of Locke most manifestly rests, needs only to be designated to be most fully appreciated.

3. The method of Locke is most palpably false, and although quite common, is, of all others, most perilous to the interests of true science. What is this method? It is, in short, this. In the presence of a class of facts to be explained and elucidated, before any proper arrangement of them, or analysis of their essential characteristics, he starts off with a given hypothesis, and mutilates, stretches, and hews his facts into conformity to the hypothesis referred to. The immutable condition of a proper use of our intellectual faculties is just what he has stated, to 'discover the powers of the mind, how far they reach, to what things they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us.' Equally proper is the first great inquiry which he raises as a means to this end, namely, to 'inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind, and the ways the understanding comes to be furnished with them.' 'Here is wisdom.' How shall the end here proposed be accomplished? But one exclusive method promises success

in such inquiries. We must take our most complex conceptions and judgments, and most carefully analyze the same, determine the elements of which they are constituted, and the mutual relationships of such elements to one another. If such an analysis should clearly verify the fact that no elements exist in any such notions or judgments, however complex they may be, other than were originally furnished by external and internal perception, then the theory of Locke would stand revealed as a demonstrated truth of science. If, on the other hand, we should find a class of elements which obviously could not have been derived from experience, then we must admit and affirm the real existence, not of two, as Locke affirms, but at least of three faculties of original intuition.

If our analysis should verify the existence in the mind of elements of conception not furnished by experience, call these former rational, if you please, the next inquiry which science presents is this—to wit, What are the relations of empirical and rational elements of thought to one another? If in this department of inquiry we should find that rational intuitions have an independent origin in the mind, and that they arise there prior to empirical intuitions, and as laws of thought determine the latter, then we must affirm with Kant and the advocates of the Transcendental Philosophy, that Reason-intuitions represent no realities in themselves, that they exist only in and for the mind, and, as immutable laws of thought, determine all perceptions external and internal and subsequent intellectual operations, and that consequently 'all our intuition is nothing, but the representation of phenomena, that the things which we envisage (behold) are not that in themselves for which we take them; neither are their relationships so constituted as they appear to us, and that if we do away with our subject, or even with the subjective quality of the senses in general, every quality, all relationships of objects in space and time, nay, even Time and Space themselves, would disappear, and cannot exist as phenomena in themselves, but only in us.'

If, on the other hand, our analysis and examination should evince that empirical and rational ideas, as elements of thought, have their fixed and immutable relations to one another, that the former always imply the latter, that the latter are known and can be defined only as implied elements of thought, and that consequently, the former must have preceded in experience, and really determined the latter, then 'all our intuition is not nothing, but the representation of phenomena,' and 'the things which we envisage are that in themselves for which we take them,' and their relationships are so constituted as they appear to us;' and if we should cease to exist, Time and Space would still exist as realities in themselves. Nothing can be more evident, however, than is the fact, that the method of Locks is fundamentally wrong, and perilous to the interests of science.

3. The theory and deductions of Locks have done more than any other cause to impart to Anglo-Saxon thought the characteristics which it visibly possesses before the world, characteristics to which we have frequently referred—to wit, its want of system and self-consistency. Confining, as he really does, all our knowledge to phenomena, openly repudiating the axioms as of little or no use in science, he has, as far as his Philosophy can do it, left for us no principles in the light of which knowledge can be systematized, no principles in the light of which even phenomena can be scientifically classified, compared, or generalized. Everything is left without law or order, excepting through principles which exist in the concrete in all minds in common. What could be rationally expected from such a state of thought, but want of system, and the continued occurrence of contradiction?

We have, in other connections, given examples of palpable contradiction in the sphere of Anglo-Saxon thought. We will now present such a case from Locke himself. Speaking of the question 'whether the idea of space or extension be the same with that of body,' he says: 'It is not necessary to prove the real existence of a vacuum, but the idea of it, which it is plain men have, when they inquire and dispute whether there be a vacuum or no; for if they had not the idea of space without body, they could not make a question about its existence; and if their idea of body did not include in it something more than the bare idea of space, they could have no doubt about the plenitude of the world, and it would be as absurd to inquire whether there were space without body, as whether there were space without space, or body without body, since these were but different names of the same idea.' Here we have reasoning of the soundest character, and here, also, we have an absolute refutation of Locke's whole theory of the origin of ideas. The idea of space as distinct from body is in the mind. This, as Locke has shown, is undeniable. Whence came this idea? Not from reflection, surely; for this, as Locks himself shows us, gives nothing but the phenomena of thought, feeling, and willing, and space is no element of any of these. Nor could this space-idea have been furnished by sensation; for this, as Locke affirms, gives as nothing but body and its attributes. Nor can this space-idea be an element of Locke's complex ideas; for these are constituted exclusively of elements furnished by sensation and reflection. If we have in our minds no ideas or elements of thought but mind and its operations, and body and its attributes, these being all that sensation and reflection, according to Locke's theory, can give us, then space must be identical with body or spirit, or both, or we have an idea in the mind not derived from these sources.

In the above extract, we have this principle affirmed, that inquiry and dispute in respect to the existence of an idea in the mind implies the presence of that idea there. In his attempted elucidation of our idea of infinity, he affirms that we have no positive idea of infinity in any form, no idea of it of which number does not furnish the clearest apprehension, and which is not represented by an indefinite number of finite quantities added to one another. Yet he affirms, that by no such additions can we reach the bounds of the infinite as represented in thought. Now, according to Locke himself, and according to reason also, the agitation of the question whether we have in our minds the idea of infinitude implies the possession of that idea. The fact, that no imaginable number of units, and no imaginable combination of finite quantities, do or can reach the measure of our idea of the infinite, implies that we have an idea of that which nothing finite can measure; that is, we have the idea of real infinitude in our minds. We have, in a former connection, explained the origin of the common error, that we do and can have no real idea of infinity. Ask any person the question, Is Space, Duration, or God, infinite? and he will answer yes, and he is conscious of a distinct apprehension of the meaning of the words he employs. The propositions, Body is finite, and Space is infinite, are each equally intelligible to every mind. Ask any individual to form a conception of infinite space, and, after making the trial, he will probably say, that he cannot do it. If from such trial the inference is drawn, that we have no idea of infinite space, we take a most absurd leap in logic. If we have no idea of infinite space, we could not affirm whether we can or cannot form a conception of it. Suppose we should ask the same individual to form a conception of space itself, and tell us what it is, he would find himself in the same perplexity as before. We should stultify ourselves if we should infer from such trials that we have in our minds no idea of space, as either finite or infinite. The reason of the failure in all such attempts is, that we attempt, through one faculty, to form a conception of a reality which is the exclusive object of another and different faculty. I have in my mind the idea of infinitude, as infinite space or duration. I attempt to expand the faculty of finite apprehension to a comprehension of this reality, and find the attainment, in this form, impossible. What is the only rational inference from such a fact? Not that we have no idea of infinity; for such an assumption contradicts the absolute testimony of consciousness. The only logical inference from such a fact is this. We have, through one faculty—the Reason—a clear and distinct apprehension of a reality of which, through another and different faculty—the Understanding, the faculty of finite apprehension, we can form no adequate conception whatever. The presence not only of scientific principles, but of a most careful analysis of the phenomena, of thought, is requisite to knowledge scientifically systematized, as well as to save philosophers from 'many a blunder and foolish notion.'

4. We have in the case of this great thinker a very striking example of the fatal influence of first assuming some specific hypothesis for the explanation of facts, and then shaping facts into conformity to said hypothesis. This has been the common error of philosophers in all ages, in their attempted solution of the problem of universal Being and its laws. If we begin, for example, with the assumption that but one substance or principle of all things does exist, all questions in respect to real facts of existence are at an end. If as our second step, we assume that Matter, Brahm, the All-One, the Absolute, or simple thought, is that substance, or principle, the question, What realities do exist, is for ever set at rest, however much palpable facts may contradict our hypothesis. 'When men,' as Hobbes says, 'have acquiesced in untrue opinions, and registered them as authenticated records in their mind's, it is no less impossible to speak intelligibly to such men than to write legibly on paper already scribbled over.' The reason is, that when the mind has blindly made its assumption, it has as blindly predetermined the aspect it shall take of all facts which may present themselves. Thus Locke started with the fixed assumption that the constituent elements of all ideas in the mind must have been furnished originally by experience, or external and internal perception. From that moment, the idea of the possibility of any ideas or elements of thought, derived from any other source, dropped out of his mind; and although, in all his subsequent inquiries, ideas and elements of thought, which could by no possibility have been derived from the sources he had designated, appeared, and although he had constant occasion to look upon, analyze, and handle such ideas and elements, he was absolutely blind to the palpable character of what was in open vision before him. He would tell us in so many words that experience, as consciousness, can furnish us with nothing but the phenomena of thought, feeling, and willing, and as sensation, or external perception, can give nothing but body and its qualities, and that the idea of space is, in all its characteristics, totally unlike matter and spirit and their attributes. After affirming all this, he gravely assures us that this idea which he has demonstrated to be utterly unlike anything which experience can furnish us, was, in fact, furnished exclusively by experience. This serious admonition we would give to all inquirers after truth, namely, Whenever any scientist commends to your regard, as a truth of science, any hypothesis pertaining to Being and its laws, first of all set that hypothesis, with all others to which it stands opposed, in the clear light of all the facts to be elucidated, and when you have found that one of these hypotheses will, and none of the others can, explain all these facts, then, and not till then, accept the former as true, and reject all the others as false. If the hypothesis proposed stands revealed to you as thus verified, adopt it; if not, take not such a thinker as your guide in search of truth.

5. Locke, we add once more, through his theory of the Origin of Ideas, his doctrine of external perception, and his definition of truth, while he did nothing whatever for the establishment of what he himself believed to be true—to wit, the doctrines of God, immortality, and of the Christian religion, did lay the foundation for the systems of Materialism, Idealism, and Scepticism, which immediately took form from his teachings. Truth he defined to be the conformity of ideas with realities as they exist in themselves. In external perception, which he affirmed to be the chief source of all our ideas, he held with Plato, that we have no perceptions whatever of realities without us, and borrowed from Plato, to illustrate his doctrine, the image of the dark room in which nothing is visible but shadowy reflections of realities without. Of an external world, therefore, to which a vast majority of our ideas refer, we can have no real knowledge in any form, not even 'a bastard kind of knowledge,' which Plato's ideas did furnish. As all our perceptions are of the shadows of things, and not of the realities themselves, and as we cannot compare the former with the latter, we are left, in respect to the mass of our ideas, simple and complex, without any criteria of truth whatever. Such is the position in which the theory of Locke undeniably leaves us, a position in which no clear path remains for us, a path in which we may advance in conformity to any known laws of scientific induction and deduction, to the doctrines of God, duty, immortality, or of religion in any form. To be sure, he tells us that we have even demonstrative proof of the being of God. In the presentation of this proof, however, he perpetrates an Angle-Saxon act of self-contradiction, first showing that we have not even 'a bastard kind of knowledge' of nature, and then deducing his proof from the facts of nature as if they were validly known. All attempted proof of the doctrine of God, or of any doctrine of religion, from the standpoint of Locke, involves most palpably the absurdity of attempting through the unknown to find the still more profoundly unknown. If we attempt, from the condition in which our philosopher has left us, to solve the problem of Being and its laws, or to determine the relations of our intelligence to that problem, but three roads are open to us.

Systems possibly deducible from the Principles of Locke.

1. Since the mass of our ideas do undeniably, according to this theory, come from sensation, we may assume that all do, and assume with Bacon, that the entire activity of the Intelligence is expended upon materials originally derived from this one source. We may then assume with Hobbes, and Materialists universally, that nothing but matter acting upon a material organization can induce sensation, and consequently originate ideas through sensation. From these assumptions we may draw the obvious and necessary deduction, that as nothing but matter and material forms and attributes can be known to mind, nothing but matter and its forms and laws must be included in our theory of existence. We cannot but know, if we carefully reflect upon the subject, that each of the assumptions on which the above deductions is based involves an infinite leap in logic. Yet Locke leaves us utterly powerless in the dead-lock of Materialism, inasmuch as he leaves us with no facts or arguments for the refutation of the dogmas of this system of fatal error.

2. From the fact affirmed as real by the theory of Locke, that we have no valid, nor even ' a bastard kind' of knowledge of matter, or of its forms or attributes, we may, with Berkeley and the Transcendentalists, deny utterly the existence of an external material universe, and resolve all being into spirit or its operations. Here two paths lie open before us. We may, with Berkeley, assume that God acts directly upon the mind, and thus induces all our sensations and external perceptions, no corresponding objects existing. This theory gives us a personal God, with man as a moral agent. Or we may assume, with Kant and his successors, that sensations, with all accompanying perceptions, are originated by 'the laws of nature.' We thus have a system of Ideal Naturalism, with God as 'a regulative idea,' or the unconscious 'principle of all things.' The theory of Locke leaves us utterly powerless to refute the deductions of Idealism in any form, on the one hand, or to verify the true system, on the other. The Bishop of Worcester, it is said, could never command his temper when arguing with Berkeley. The cause of this fact, the Bishop affirmed to be this, that while he absolutely knew that Berkeley was wrong, he could neither disprove the theory nor refute the arguments of that great thinker. Here is the result of embracing, as the Bishop of Woroester lead done, a theory which proves as equally powerless for the defence of truth as for the refutation of error.

3. From the admitted fact, as affirmed by the theory of Locke, that the main source and mass of all our ideas pertain wholly to shadowy forms instead of real existences as they are in themselves, we may assume with Hume, that as our Intelligence, in a vast majority of instances, is of uncertain validity, it is so in all cases, and thus deny the possibility of an actual knowledge of any reality whatever. This position of absolute and universal Scepticism is utterly impregnable against any assaults which can be made upon it from the standpoint of Locke. What court which would vindicate for itself the show of wisdom or integrity, would allow a witness to give testimony who had been proven to be an habitual liar in a vast majority of his utterances, even when under oath? Not Materialism, as Cousin affirms, nor Idealism, nor any positive system, but universal and blank Scepticism 'is the natural daughter of the system of Locke.' From the standpoint furnished by the theory of this philosopher but one deduction can be logically reached, namely, 'that all our knowledge is exclusively phenomenal,' of delusive appearances, 'and that the reality existing behind all appearance is, and ever must be, unknown.' Of the validity of this deduction from the principles of this theory, the most intelligent theologians who are yet in the meshes of the theory are distinctly aware. They have, consequently, fully assented to the doctrine which Kant has professedly demonstrated, to wit, that all positive systems are unsusceptible of verification by proof. Hence, argue those theologians, as the mind cannot rest satisfied with the Sceptical dogma, it must make its election between a given number of hypotheses, all being strictly equal as far as the matter of proof is concerned; and faith as required of us by our religion consists in assuming the truth of the Theistic and Christian hypothesis, when no rational evidence requires us to believe in this rather than in any of the others. No such faith as this, no form of assent which implies 'a leap in the dark,' is required of us in the Bible. 'If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin.' 'If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin.' 'But now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father.' 'Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.' Christian faith is not blind assent, but voluntary consent and conformity to truth when made known to the mind. When our Philosophy leaves us equally powerless for the defence of truth and the refutation of error, reason demands that we repudiate that Philosophy.

Different Hypotheses in Respect to the Origin of Necessary Ideas, and of Self-evident, Universal, and Necessary Judgments in the Mind.

That necessary ideas, such as those of time, space, substance, and cause, and universal and necessary judgments, such as, Body implies space, Succession, time; Events, a cause; Qualities, substance; and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, do exist in the mind, and that these ideas and judgments were not derived from experience, as Locke affirmed, is now perhaps universally admitted by thinkers of all schools. Aside from the theory of Locke, which may now be considered as exploded, these specific solutions of the problem relatively to the origin and consequent character of these ideas and judgments require, in addition to what has before been said upon the subject, our special attention in this connection. We refer to the theory of Hume, Mill, and the Sceptical School in science—to that of Kant and the Transcendental School—and to that affirmed by the author of this Treatise, and the School of Realism. We will present and consider them in the order designated.

Hypothesis of Hume, Mill, and others of their School.

The hypothesis of Hume, Mill, and others, in respect to the origin of universal and necessary judgments (they say little or nothing of necessary ideas), is this. Under our observation and experience, events follow each other, sometimes in orderly succession, and in others in the relation of immediate and invariable antecedence and consequence. Hence we naturally expect, through the law of association, that such order will obtain in the future. The verification of such expectation induces the belief, at last, that the connection referred to is a necessary one. Hence the origin of the axiom, Every event must have a cause. According to this hypothesis, this and other principles should be held by different individuals, and by the same individuals, at different periods of life, with different degrees of certainty. The child, and savage, put the question, in the presence of any change whatever, What caused it? with a certainty as absolute that said event had some cause as the philosopher does. This relation of universal and necessary connection between the antecedent and consequent exists in respect to judgments about which no individual has had, or can have had, any experience whatever, and exists in a form just as absolute as in the case of judgments in respect to which observation and experience have been most extensive. Take the following as an example of others of a similar character, namely: It is impassible for the same thing, at the same moment, to exist and not to exist. Observation and experience in any form is, in such a case, absolutely out of the question. Yet we know, and cannot but know, as absolutely as in any conceivable case, that such judgment is and must be true, and that universally. An hypothesis which so palpably falsifies the truth in such palpable cases must be held as false universally. This hypothesis rationally accounts for the origin and character of no such judgment whatever.

Hypothesis of Kant, and of the Transcendental School.

The origin of these ideas and judgments, according to Kant and the Transcendental School is in this wise. When the feeling denominated sensation is, from any cause, induced in the mind, Reason, from laws inhering in itself, at once apprehends space, time, substance, cause, etc. These ideas, the first two especially, act upon the sensitive state referred to—the sensation, and thereby produce two results. In the first place, they cause this sensation to appear, not as a phenomenon of the subject which feels, but as a quality of an exterior object having extension, and form, and other qualities—an object existing wholly separate from the mind, and independent of it. Thus are originated our apprehensions of the external material universe. Through these same ideas, in the second place, this same sensation is made to appear, not as a quality of an exterior object having extension and form, but as a phenomenon exclusively of the subject which thinks, feels, and wills, an immaterial subject which has no extension or form. In this manner, all our subjective, or mind apprehensions, are originated. The ideas of space, time, substance, and cause represent no realities whatever, 'We deny to time,' says Kant, 'all claim to absolute reality.' 'We can therefore,' he adds, 'only from our point of view as men, speak of Space, Extended Beings, etc. If we abandon the subjective condition of which we alone can receive external intuition, that is to say, the way we may be affected by objects, the representation of space then means nothing.' 'Time and space,' he says again, 'cannot exist as phenomena in themselves, but only in us.' The ideas of time, space, substance, and cause, and the realities which these ideas represent, are as qualities, according to Kant and Transcendental thinkers, one and identical, and this is just what they expressly teach, affirming that such realities have no existence but as 'representations in the mind.' As these ideas exist prior to all perceptions of objects, and give existence and form to such perceptions and with these to all our apprehensions of realities objective and subjective, it follows, as Kant says, 'that things which we envisage' (behold) 'are not that in themselves for which we take them; neither are their relationships so constituted as they appear to us.' Nothing really exists, as we apprehend them, but the ideas referred to and sensations upon which these ideas act. Such is this Transcendental hypothesis, as presented by its ablest expounders, an hypothesis in respect to which we remark:

(1.) That it rests undeniably, as we have formerly shown, upon a fundamental psychological error. The realities represented by these ideas, those of space and time, for example, are apprehended as the condition of the possibility of body and succession, as implied by the same, and can be represented and defined but as such implied realities. To suppose that mind could have apprehended a reality which it can think of and define but as implied by some other object, before it had any perception or conception of the latter, is a most palpable contradiction and absurdity. If space and time were apprehended before body or succession were perceived or apprehended, then they might be represented in thought and defined with no reference to body or succession. But this, as we have shown elsewhere, is impossible. It is enough to say of this boasted hypothesis that it can by no possibility be true.

2. This Transcendental hypothesis makes Reason, the highest faculty known to this Philosophy, the organ, not of truth or self-consistency, but exclusively of the self-contradictory and absurd. This high faculty, according to this proud Philosophy, this 'intellectuelle Anschauung,' by which, we are told, we 'have an immediate knowledge of the absolute,' in reference to its most fundamental revelations, as 'the vision and faculty divine,' absolutely affirms and denies, of the same object, the same thing, and represents what is affirmed and denied, as at the same time equally true, and not true, of the same reality. This Reason, as these thinkers all affirm, first of all gives space and time as realities wholly exterior to all ideas and substances, and as necessarily existing, whether any other realities do or do not exist. Then this same Reason, as expounded by these same thinkers, affirms with the same absoluteness as before that these same realities exist as no exterior and necessary realities at all, but have being merely as ideas in the mind, that is, as mere contingent phenomena. What 'trick,' to borrow a term from Kant, will this Reason next play upon us?

3. According to this, the basis hypothesis of Transcendentalism, the Intelligence itself, in all its processes, is a self-convicted 'liar from the beginning.' Throughout the wide domain of thought, not an object appears in respect to which the Intelligence, as expounded by this Philosophy, does not absolutely, and in the same sense, affirm and deny the same things. Space and time, as we have seen, are given as realities, and non-realities in themselves; as exclusive exterior and interior existences; and their ideas as necessary and contingent phenomena. Matter is given as an exterior and interior reality, as a real exterior object having actual weight, extension, and form, and as a mere sensation, void wholly of all such qualities, and all objects are 'taken' as being, and not-being, 'that for which we take them.' Mind is, by mind itself, 'taken as being that in itself for which we take it,' and then as 'not being that in itself for which we take it.' In reply, it may be said that these contradictions arise from the different lines on which the Intelligence moves in its natural and scientific processes. In the former process, the Intelligence 'takes things as being that in themselves for which it takes them.' In the latter process, it 'takes the same things as not being that in themselves for which it takes them.' If any person, will, with the philosopher 'put himself into a state of not-knowing,' and then 'philosophize,' he will, in that state of 'scientific Scepticism to which he voluntarily determines himself,' understand this whole matter. We must remember here that the Intelligence can, by no possibility, 'put itself into a state of not-knowing,' or 'determine itself to a scientific Scepticism' in respect to any facts which it has presented to itself as real. This, as admitted by these philosophers, is done, not by the Intelligence, but exclusively by the Will. To philosophize according to such a method, is simply to ignore and repudiate one class of facts which the Intelligence affirms to be real, and then to compel it to construct systems from the class which the will dictates. If this is philosophizing, we have no desire to be classed with the philosophers—philosophers who, when they enter upon the domain of Philosophy, always leave their 'better sense' behind them, 'to laugh and wonder at them' when they return back to their proper selves. No deduction can be verified in science, if this Kantian and Transcendental hypothesis does not stand revealed as a demonstrated error.

The Realistic Hypothesis.

According to the Realistic hypothesis, that maintained by the author of this Treatise, necessary ideas never are, or can be, originated in the mind prior to contingent ones. The former, on the other hand, in the order of origination, always succeed, instead of precede, the latter; and are occasioned by, and sustain to, the latter the fixed relation of implied forms of knowledge. In the axioms, identical and explicative judgments excepted, these two classes of ideas are always conjoined, the subject representing the contingent, and the predicate the necessary form of thought, and the former always implying the latter. The primary faculties of the Intelligence are not merely two, as Locke affirms, but three—Consciousness, the organ of subjective; Sense, the organ of objective; and Reason, the organ of implied knowledge. When facts are perceived through either or both of the faculties first named, Reason apprehends the reality, or realities, implied by the facts referred to. Thus the mind attains to the apprehension of all contingent facts, and to the possession of all necessary ideas, and thus becomes possessed of the entire elements of all its knowledges in all their actual and possible forms. The Judgment now intervenes, and in its primary procedures intuitively affirms the necessary relations between perceived facts and the realities implied by said facts. Thus we obtain the axioms and all forms of original implied judgments, such as, Body implies Space; Succession, time; Phenomena, substance; Events, a cause; Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another.

This hypothesis speaks for itself. No person can distinctly apprehend it and contemplate it in the light of all actual facts of human thought, without being absolutely conscious in himself that it is and must be true. It is undeniably compatible with all the facts under consideration, explains them all, and by them all is affirmed as valid—fundamental particulars in which all other hypotheses totally fail. True science, in all its forms, has its basis in ascertained principles of self-evident, universal, and necessary validity, and all systems not based upon such principles take rank in the sphere of 'science falsely so called.'

Philosophical Systems deduced from the Theory of Locke.

The history of science presents no single production which, from its first publication, excited so much interest, and became the subject of such universal discussion, as 'the Essay on the Human Understanding.' Unbelievers of all schools saw in it what they regarded as the certain means of establishing their own theories, on the one hand, and overthrowing the Christian Religion on the other. Christian thinkers, on the other hand, were divided in opinion in regard to the logical consequences of the principles set forth in the work. Some assaulted those principles as utterly subversive of truth, and others advocated them as laying the foundation for the utter overthrow of error in all its forms. We propose to consider the systems to which the Essay under consideration gave rise, and begin with the—

Systems of Materialism deduced from the Theory of locke.

In England the doctrine of Materialism was not connected with the open avowal of Atheism, as it was particularly in France. English infidels, on the other hand, generally assumed the name of Deists, not denying, in form, the being of God, but openly assailing the claims of the Christian Religion.

Materialism in England.

'It was Locke,' says Lord Shaftesbury, 'that struck at all fundamentals, threw all order and virtue out of the world, and made the very ideas of these (which are the same as those of God) unnatural and without foundation in our minds.' From this unsettled state of thought, Christianity was soon assailed from various quarters. Collins laid out all the strength of his acute mind in establishing the doctrine of Necessity, and that as a means of subverting from its foundations the entire system of Christian Morals and religion. Such thinkers as Dodwell and Priestley, at a later day, boldly avowed the doctrine of Materialism, the latter affirming, in the language of Mr. Morell, that 'thought and sensation are essentially the same thing, that the whole variety of our ideas, however abstract and refined they may become, are nevertheless but modifications of the sensational faculty.' Mandeville, accepting the doctrines of Locke that there are no innate ideas in the mind, based upon the assumption a denial of all moral distinctions.

The author, however, who more fully than others gave form and system to the sensational hypothesis in the direction of Materialism, was David Hartley (1705—1757). At the basis of his theory, Hartley laid down two assumptions—'that ideas of sensation are the elements of which all others are compounded,' and 'that reflection is not a distinct source [of ideas] as Locke makes it.' As we derive from sensation a knowledge of nothing but matter, the principles of our author allow us to assume nothing to be real but this one exclusive substance. As Hartley denied free will, and affirmed matter to be the only object of thought and reflection, thinking and feeling must, according to his theory, consist of certain forms of material activity. This deduction he openly avowed, representing thought and feeling to consist in certain 'vibrations of the nerves in an oscillating nervous ether.' Our author does not affirm that certain states of the brain and nervous system precede thought and feeling, but that thought, feeling, and willing, and 'nervous oscillations in a vibratory ether' are one and identical. All we mean, then, by the words I think, I feel, I will, is that certain vibratory motions have occurred in our nerves and brain. How true is the maxim of Hobbes, that to 'man belongs the exclusive privilege of absurdity,' and 'of men those are of all most subject to it that profess Philosophy.' 'There may be,' said a writer in the Edinburgh Review, 'little shakings in the brain for anything we know, and there may even be shakings of a different kind accompanying every act of thought or perception; but that the shakings themselves are the thoughts or perceptions we are so far from admitting, that we find it impossible to comprehend what can be meant by the assertion.' Equally unmeaning is the assertion of modern scientists, that thoughts and feelings consist in 'certain molecular changes in the matter of life.' Nervous vibrations and molecular changes are one thing, a thought-representation of such vibrations and changes is quite another matter; and the scientist that confounds the two classes of facts, and makes them one and identical, must possess 'the privilege of absurdity' in its most monstrous form.

The absurdity of such an identification, Hartley himself saw and confessed. 'Matter and motion,' he says, 'however subtly divided or reasoned upon, yield nothing but matter and motion still.' The same holds true of 'molecular changes in the matter of life.' 'Divide and reason upon' them as we will, they are nothing but molecular changes still. Let anyone attempt to conceive of such vibrations and molecular changes, 'in a whitish half fluid substance like custard, particles in such a substance' changing their places a little, moving a little up or down, to the right or to the left, round about or zigzag, or in some other course or direction, 'let anyone attempt to conceive of such changes, not as accompanying, but as constituting thought, feeling, and willing, and he will find his mind in a state of dizzy bewilderment, properly represented as the 'antithesis to that in which a man is when he makes a bull.' In other words, he will feel, and rightly too, as if he were standing on his head and making a fool of himself. Hence, while Hartley admitted that his theory of vibrations was destructive of all arguments 'usually brought for the soul's immateriality from the subtlety of the internal senses and of the rational faculty,' he nevertheless desired that 'he might not in any way be interpreted so as to oppose the immateriality of the soul.' So Priestly, the disciple of Hartley, while he stoutly defended the dogma of Materialism, lived and died in the full belief of the immortality of the soul. In our day we have a repetition of the same absurdity. Mr. Huxley, for example, affirms absolutely that thought is nothing but 'the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life,' and as surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action,' and yet affirms as absolutely that he is not a Materialist, and that, as a dogma, Materialism is, of almost all others, most absurd. Those who affirm as truths of science such absurdities, will not long be regarded as central lights in the high sphere of 'knowledge systematized.'

Materialism in France.

The country in which the Materialistic tendency of the theory of Locke had most influence was France. Here individuals who justly rank among the leading thinkers of that age, seized upon the single principle of the Empirical Philosophy, the principle which lies at the basis of Materialism in all ages, and deduced from that principle its entire logical consequences in ontology, religion, and morals. French Materialists seem not to have very distinctly agitated the question whether our knowledge of matter is direct and immediate, or indirect and mediate. The most of them, however, appear to have taken for granted, without explanation or discussion, the doctrine of Locke, that we do know this substance through certain images, or media. The principle in which they all concurred as self-evidently true is the assumption, that all our knowledge is through sensation, and consists of 'sensation transformed,' that nothing but a material cause can originate sensation, that nothing but matter can be to the mind an object of knowledge, and, consequently, that no other substance must be taken into the account in the construction of our system of Being and its laws. As the system and method of all these thinkers are in all essential particulars the same, we shall refer but to a sufficient number of individuals to enable us to present, in distinct and definite forms, said system and method. Here we shall find ourselves within the proper sphere of the 'Sensational School.'

Condillac (1715-1780).

The individual who first gave form and system to the 'Sensational Doctrine,' and thus laid the foundation of the 'Sensational School' in France, was Condillac. 'The chief object' of his great work, 'Traité des Sensations,' as he himself affirms, 'is to show how all our knowledge and all our faculties are derived from the senses; or, to speak more accurately, from sensations.' With great approbation, he cites the maxim attributed to Aristotle: 'Nothing is in the intellect which was not previously in the senses.' 'Immediately after Aristotle,' he says, 'comes Locke; for the other philosophers who have written on this subject are not worthy of mention. This Englishman has certainly thrown great light on the subject, but he left some obscurity. All the faculties of the soul appeared to him to be innate qualities, but he never suspected they might be derived from sensation itself.' 'Locke,' he says again, 'distinguishes two sources of ideas—sense and reflection. It would be more exact to recognize but one; first, because reflection is, in its principle, nothing but sensation itself; secondly, because it is less a source of ideas than a canal through which they flow from sense. This inexactitude, slight as it may seem, has thrown much obscurity over his system. He contents himself with recognizing that the soul perceives, thinks, doubts, believes, reasons, reflects; that we are convinced of the existence of these operations, because we find them in ourselves, and they contribute to the progress of our knowledge; but he did not perceive the necessity of discovering their origin and the principle of their generation—he did not suspect that they might only be acquired habits; he seems to have regarded them as innate, and says only that they may be perfected by exercise.' In the following proposition we have a full and distinct statement of the peculiar doctrine of this philosopher, and of the hypothesis, on the validity or non-validity of which, Materialism itself, in all its forms, must stand or fall. 'Judgment, reflection, the passions—in a word, all the faculties of the mind, are nothing but sensation which transforms itself differently.'

We have now before us the fundamental doctrine of this author, and with him of Materialism universally, 'that all the faculties of the mind are nothing but sensation which transforms itself differently.' The manner in which this transformation is made, we give in the words of Condillac as translated by Mr. Lewes: 'If a multitude of sensations operate at the same time with the same degree of vivacity, or nearly so, man is then only an animal that feels; experience suffices to convince us that then the multitude of impressions takes away all activity from the mind. But let only one sensation subsist, or, without entirely dismissing the others, let us only diminish their force; the mind is at once occupied more particularly with the sensation which preserves its activity, and that sensation becomes attention, without its being necessary for us to suppose anything else in the mind. If a new sensation acquire greater vivacity than the former, it will become in its turn attention. But the greater the force the former had, the deeper the impression made on us, and the longer it is preserved. Experience proves this. Our capacity of sensation is therefore divided into the sensation we have had, and the sensation which we now have; we perceive them both at once, but we perceive them differently: the one seems as past, the other as present. The name of sensation designates the actual impression made upon the senses; and it takes that of memory when it presents itself to us as a sensation which has formerly been felt. Memory, therefore, is only the transformed sensation. When there is double attention there is comparison; for to be attentive to two ideas, or to compare them, is the same thing. But we cannot compare them without perceiving some difference or resemblance between them; to perceive such relations is to judge. The acts of comparing and judging are, then, only attention; it is thus that sensation becomes necessarily attention, comparison, judgment.' As sensation is common to man and the brute, and differs in them only in number and degree, the difference between man and the brute, according to this theory, is rightly stated by its author, namely, 'Men are perfect animals; brutes are imperfect men,' or in the more perfected vocabulary of Darwinianism, Man is a monkey transformed.

The Sensational Hypothesis as stated by Diderot.

Diderot, one of Condillac's celebrated followers, thus expresses his apprehension of this Sensational Hypothesis. We give the statement as translated by Dugald Stewart. 'Every idea must necessarily, when brought into its state of ultimate decomposition, resolve itself into a sensible representation, or picture; and since everything in the understanding has been introduced there by the channel of sensation, whatever proceeds out of the understanding is either chimerical, or must be able, in returning by the same road, to re-establish itself according to its sensible archetype. Hence an important rule in Philosophy, That every expression which cannot find an external and sensible object to which it can thus establish its affinity, is destitute of signification.'

Helvetius (1715-1771), D'Halbach (1723-1778), and

La Mettrie (1709-1751).

Through the individuals named above Materialism was fully developed to its final deductions. Assuming that in the sphere of the intelligence there can be nothing but sensations simple or transformed, Helvetius affirmed that there can be, within the sphere of the Will, no motive for action but bodily pleasure or pain. Animalism is, therefore, the exclusive law of human conduct. That which conduces to pleasurable sensations is right, and that which induces painful ones is wrong. 'Hence,' he says, 'if morality would not be wholly fruitless, it must return to its empirical basis, and venture to adopt the true principle of all acting, viz., sensuous pleasure and pain.'

We give the doctrines of D'Halbach in the language of a French historian, in the 'Epitome of the History of Philosophy:'—Thought is but the faculty of feeling, and sensation corresponds to nothing but sensible things. All idea of spiritual beings is, therefore, destitute of any basis.

The senses discover to us nothing in the universe but matter endowed with certain properties and motions, which is essential to it, since matter is the only existence.

All particular beings are nothing but the different combinations which motion produces in matter.

The moving force is developed in various degrees. Besides the combination designated by the term rude bodies, it produces also another combination which constitutes organized beings, and developing itself still farther, produces effective sensibility, which is only the effect of a certain kind of organization.

All human actions are the necessary result either of the internal motion of the organization, or of external motion by which they are modified.

'The last word of Materialism,' says Schwegler, 'was spoken with reckless audacity by La Mettrie, a cotemporary of Diderot'—to wit, 'Everything spiritual is a delusion, and physical enjoyment is the highest end of man. Faith in the existence of God is just as groundless as it is useless. The world will not be happy till Atheism becomes universally established.' 'In reference to the human soul, there can be no Philosophy but Materialism. All observation and experience of the greatest philosophers and physicians declare this. Soul is nothing but a mere name, which has a rational signification only when we understand by it that part of the body which thinks. This is the brain, which has its muscles of thought, just as the limbs have their muscles of motion. That which gives man his advantage over the brute is: first, the organization of his brain; and second, its capacity for receiving instruction. Otherwise is man a brute like the beasts around him, though in many respects surpassed by them. Immortality is an absurdity. The soul perishes with the body of which it forms a part. With death everything is over.' Hence the motto of French Materialism, 'Death is an eternal sleep.'

That which peculiarizes Modern Materialism.

In the above expositions, the principles and characteristics of the system are so clearly marked, that further expositions are uncalled for. That which, in a special form, distinguishes modern from ancient Materialism, is the fact that the latter had generally an á priori, whilst the former has a psychological basis. Ancient Materialism assumed, first of all, the existence of but one substance, and then leaped to the conclusion that this substance is matter. Modern Materialism, on the other hand, has professedly a psychological basis, the assumption that all ideas in the mind were derived from one exclusive source—sensation, and that knowledge, in its ultimate forms, is nothing but 'sensation transformed.' The ultimate deduction is, that as nothing is to the mind an object of knowledge but matter and material forms, nothing but this substance can, on scientific grounds, be included in our theory of existence. It is undeniable, that between premise and conclusion, in this case, a strictly necessary relation obtains. As science is 'knowledge systematized,' nothing but the validly known can be legitimately included in our systems of Being and its laws.

Another peculiarity of modern Materialism is the fact, that it almost entirely ignores the great problem about which the ancient system concerned itself. We refer to the admitted fact of the organization of the universe as an event occurring in time. As we formerly stated, the ancient system handed down to the modern this problem unsolved, and the latter utterly declines to take the problem up. Yet it lies directly across the path of all deductions in the direction of the system. The common admission, not only of the race, but of philosophers of all schools, as well as the common deduction of all the sciences bearing upon the subject, is the non-eternity of the present order of things. If we postulate the existence of an infinite and perfect personal God, and His will as the law of the universe, then all the facts of this universe are perfectly explicable. As this hypothesis does fully and perfectly explain all the facts, no form or degree, as we have formerly shown, of real proof, positive evidence, or antecedent probability, can be adduced against this hypothesis, and in favour of any other. Any one fact, on the other hand, clearly explicable on this hypothesis, and inexplicable on every other, absolutely verifies the former as true, and all others as false. The problem under consideration does, undeniably, present just such a fact. Matter with its inhering laws being given as the sole existence, matter in a nebulous, or any other unorganized state, and we can no more account, from such data, for the present order of things, than we can for an event without a cause. We might, as we have done in former connections, refer to other facts equally fatal to this system. The most that can be said of the Materialistic hypothesis is this: that it stands before the world as a mere assumption in favour of which no form or degree of real proof, positive evidence, or antecedent probability can be adduced, and against which the most absolute forms of disproof may be adduced.

The characteristic common to Materialism in all ages, and in all its forms, is the total absence of all show of proof or real argument. By ancient and modern Idealism, in its Pantheistic form especially, as we have seen, we are distinctly informed that we must begin with the assumption, 'It is, It is,' that is, with the assumption that but one substance, or principle of all things, does exist, and that that substance is 'the All-One,' or 'the Absolute,' or 'we cannot take the first step in speculative science.' In other words, ancient and modern Idealism does not even attempt to prove itself true, but begins and ends with the broad, and naked, and lawless assumption, that it alone is true, and all other systems false. Standing outside the sphere of Transcendental thought, you must blindly assume, that all within that sphere is true, and all out side of it false, or your entrance is for ever barred. Such, as we have seen, and shall see more fully hereafter, are the express teachings of the great central lights of the system.

The same holds equally with Materialism. Standing with Kanada, Democritus and Epicurus, outside the system, you must, with them, assume as a self-evident axiom that but one substance exists, and that that substance is matter, or you cannot enter their temple and worship at their altar. Standing with Hobbes, Hartley, Priestley, Condillac, and Diderot outside the same system in its modern form, you must, with them, blindly assume that all knowledge is of sensation, and can be nothing else than 'sensation transformed,' and then take, as they did, an infinite leap to the deduction that matter only is real, or you can have 'no part nor lot' with their thinking. You will search in vain throughout all the multitudinous productions of such thinkers for anything in the form of careful psychological analysis, or of corresponding induction from facts of consciously valid knowledge. You will, on the other hand, find the most imperious dogmatisms, and that without number, multitudinous assumptions systematized, facts without number lawlessly assumed, ignored, or denied, as existing exigency demands, and an infinity of affirmed scientific deductions, which are manifestly nothing but infinite leaps in logic. On a careful examination of the productions of these thinkers, you will find this evidence that all are wrong, that no one is satisfied of the validity of the Materialistic argument as presented by any individual but himself. 'I have consulted our philosophers,' says Bassean, than whom none was better able to judge of the facts of the case, 'I have perused their books, I have examined their several opinions, I have found them all proud, positive, and dogmatizing, even in their pretended Scepticism; knowing everything, proving nothing, and ridiculing one another; and this is the only point in which they concur and in which they are right. Daring when they attack, they defend themselves without vigour. If you consider their arguments, they have none but for destruction. If you count their number, each one is reduced to himself; they never unite but to dispute.' 'Each of them knows that his system is not better established than the others; but he supports it because it is his own: there is not one among them who, coming to distinguish truth from falsehood, would not prefer his own error to the truth that is discovered by another.' 'Where is the philosopher who, for his own glory, would not willingly deceive the whole human race?' 'They overturn, destroy, and trample under foot, all that mankind reveres; snatch from the afflicted the only comfort left them in their misery, from the rich and great the only curb that can restrain their passions; tear from the heart all remorse of vice, all hopes of virtue, and still boast themselves the benefactors of mankind. "Truth," say they, "is not hurtful to man." I believe that as well as they; and the same in my opinion is proof that what they teach is not the truth.'

The Doctrine of Idealism, as Developed from the Principles of Locke, by Berkeley (1685-1753).

To do full justice to any thinker we must discriminate between his doctrines and his principles. In doctrine, Locke was a Realist, a Theist, and a Christian. He distinctly avowed a belief in the real existence of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, and consequently taught the doctrine of God, Duty, Immortality, and Retribution. In respect to matter, for example, he made a distinction between its primary and secondary qualities, and distinctly taught that our ideas of the former do correspond with what really exists in bodies. 'The ideas of primary qualities of bodies,' he says, 'are resemblances of them; and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves; but the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all.' Nor has any thinker ever more distinctly and positively affirmed the existence of the soul or spirit as distinct from matter. The same remark is equally applicable to his faith in God. 'There is no truth,' he says, 'which a man may more evidently make out to himself than the existence of a God. Again, 'It is as certain that there is a God as that the opposite angles made by the intersection of two straight lines are equal.' Equally distinct and positive are his avowals in respect to all the doctrines above designated. While he avowed all these forms of belief, he also taught principles utterly subversive of such beliefs. He taught, in the first place, that our knowledge of realities is not, in any form, direct and immediate, but exclusively indirect and mediate. 'It is evident,' he says, 'that the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of ideas it has of them.'

It was quite natural that individuals of the Materialistic tendencies of Hartley, Priestley, Helvetius, and Condillac, should deduce from Locke's doctrine of sensation the dogma of Materialism. It was equally natural that minds of such Idealistic tendencies as Berkeley, in their revulsions especially from the logical consequences of Materialism, should deduce from Locke's doctrine of ideas a system of Christian Idealism. Ideas and their relations, Locke taught, are to us the only possible objects of valid knowledge. Here Berkeley stepped in and affirmed, that as ideas and their relations are the only realities perceived and known to exist, we are bound to infer they alone do exist. If we inquire for the cause or origin of our ideas, two hypotheses present themselves—that they are produced in us by objects from without—or are created by the direct agency of God Himself. As one of these hypotheses must be, and but one can be, true, Berkeley inferred the validity of the latter, as being, of the two, most rational and most fully accordant with conscious facts. Ideas we know to be real. Of matter and its forms we know and can know nothing. Nor can we find anything in matter, as we conceive of it, and we have no knowledge respecting it but through our conceptions, any adaptation to originate ideas. Nor can we conceive of any reality not possessed of ideas, as capacitated to originate them, and establish their relations and laws. We will give the theory of this thinker in his own words. The existence in the mind of ideas of an external world all admit. The intuitive conviction of the race, that of philosophers of all schools included, is that such a world does exist in fact. The only universe which does exist, according to Berkeley and all Idealists, is the ideas themselves. 'I am not for changing things into ideas,' he says, making ideas represent things, he should have said, 'but rather ideas into things; since those immediate objects of perception, which, according to you' (the disciples of Locke) 'are only appearances of things, I take to be the real things themselves.' 'It is indeed,' he adds, in another connection, 'an opinion strongly prevailing amongst men that houses, mountains, rivers, and, in a word, all sensible objects have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding.' 'This,' Mr. Lewes rightly affirms, 'is striking a false key-note. It rouses the reader to oppose a coming paradox.' The reason why a false 'key-note' is struck by such an utterance is, that the said utterance sets distinctly before the mind Idealism as it is. Men do believe that 'houses, mountains, rivers, and, in a word, all sensible objects have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding.' They thus believe because they are absolutely conscious of directly and immediately perceiving, and consequently knowing them thus to exist; and when their real existence is denied, all men intuitively, philosophers as well as others, recognize the denial not as a paradox, but as an absurdity. We have now to do, however, with the doctrines of Berkeley, and not with the question of their validity. That he does identify objects with ideas all admit, and in this identification, as Mr. Lewes rightly remarks, lies 'the kernel of his system.' 'For what are the objects,' asks Berkeley, 'but the things which we perceive by Sense?' 'And what, I pray you,' he adds, 'do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations?' We have a ready answer to each of these questions, an answer which convicts the questioner of a very palpable psychological blunder. In every act of external perception, we are absolutely conscious of the act, as a phenomenon of the percipient subject—the me; and of the object perceived, as a quality not of the subject, but of an exterior substance, having real extension and form, and consequently existing without and independent of the mind. Hence all men, philosophers included, do and must believe 'that houses, mountains, rivers, in a word, all sensible objects,' do thus exist. 'In our perceptive Consciousness,' says Sir Wm. Hamilton, 'there is revealed, as an ultimate fact, a self, and a not-self, each given as independent—each known only in antithesis to the other. No belief is more intuitive, universal, immediate, or irresistible; no belief, therefore, is more true. If the belief be illusive, self and not-self, subject and object, I and thou, are distinctions without a difference, and Consciousness, so far from being an internal voice of our Creator is shown to be, like Satan, "a liar from the beginning."' This is just what Idealism, in all its forms, makes the Intelligence to be, 'a liar from the beginning.' The system takes position in the centre of the sphere of the Intelligence, and affirms the knowing faculty itself to be a lie.

While Berkeley asserted that we perceive nothing but 'our own ideas or sensations,' he also maintained that we do actually perceive the objects which we are conscious of perceiving. 'That the things I see with my eyes,' he says, 'and touch with my hands, do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence I deny is that which philosophers call matter, or corporeal substance. And in doing this there is no damage done to the rest of mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss it.' It is very true that mankind will never miss corporeal substances because philosophers deny their existence. The reason is obvious; they never will and never can credit such denials, and philosophers will as absolutely discredit their own denials as the rest of the race. The real difference, then, as stated by Idealists of all schools, between them and the rest of mankind is this—we do have real perceptions of real objects, and the objects perceived as real do exist. Mankind affirm that these objects, being perceived to be such, are in reality 'houses, mountains, rivers, in a word, sensible forms,' forms distinct from the percipient subject. The Idealist, on the other hand, affirms that these really existing and really perceived objects 'are not that in themselves for which we take them,' but mere 'ideas or sensation' existing nowhere but in the percipient subject. The men, for example, who saw Baalam astride of his beast did really see the object they supposed themselves to see. The objects perceived, however, were not a real man astride a real animal, but a real idea or sensation astride a real idea or sensation. No philosopher can show that we have in the remotest degree caricatured the doctrine of the Idealist, as he avows it; and if he should prove that we have done so, he would prove, not that we have misrepresented a real man—no man, in the express words of his system, being 'that in himself for which we take him'—all that we can be charged with, and all that can be proved against us, according to the system, is a false idea of an idea or sensation, existing nowhere but in our own idea, to which alone we are accountable.

Metaphysical Phantom of Professor Ferrier.

We are now prepared to appreciate the representation of the character of the doctrine of the real existence of a material universe, as set forth by Professor Ferrier of Aberdeen, Scotland. This belief, he assures us, is 'a metaphysical phantom of the brain,' and the world believed in is 'a crotchet-world of philosophers.' In reply, we would say that this belief, instead of being 'a metaphysical phantom of the brain,' must stand or fall with our belief in the existence of the human race. Take away this universe, and with it you annihilate the human race. If this world is 'a metaphysical phantom of the brain,' 'a crotchet-world of philosophers,' so are all apparent vitalized forms upon it. I have, and can have, no other evidence of the existence of any other human being but myself, excepting what is furnished by and through and as existing in 'sensible shows of things' around me. If these 'shows' are nothing but 'ideas or sensations,' in my own mind, what becomes of the minds which seemingly actuate these 'sensible shows of things'? Does a world of rational spirits really inhabit my sensations? Then, let us no longer doubt that myriads of angels can stand together upon the point of a sensation—the point which constitutes the 'sensible show' of the point of a needle. We hold fast our beliefs in a material universe, because we must do so, or relinquish all faith in the actual existence of the human race. For the same reason, we hold that the doctrine of Idealism, which identifies this world with our 'ideas or sensations,' is, and can be, nothing else than 'a metaphysical phantom' and 'crotchet-world' of the brain of a crazy Philosophy.

The Attempt to identify the Doctrine of Idealism with 'the Ordinary Belief of Mankind.'

'Unfortunately for critics,' says Mr. Lewes, 'Berkeley did not contradict the evidence of the senses—did not propound a theory at variance in this point with the ordinary belief of mankind. His peculiarity is that he confined himself exclusively to the evidence of the senses. What the senses informed him of, that, and that only, would he accept. He held fast to the facts of consciousness; he placed himself resolutely in the centre of the instinctive belief of mankind; there he took his stand, leaving to philosophers the region of supposition, inferences, and of occult substances.' 'He [Berkeley] therefore,' says Professor Ferrier, 'sided with the vulgar, who require no distinction between the reality and the appearance of objects, and repudiating the baseless hypothesis of a world existing unknown and unperceived, he resolutely maintained that what are called the sensible shows of things are the very things themselves.' 'What mankind believe that they see,' says Coleridge, 'is the table, and not a shadow between themselves and a real table which is not perceived.' Similar representations are made by Idealists universally. All agree with Berkeley in the assertion 'that the things which I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist—really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence I deny is that which philosophers call Matter, or corporeal substance.' Thus Idealists would have us understand that in the question of external perception, and belief of an external world, they agree with the race, and disagree with philosophers. Permit us right here to ask these Idealists, and that in serious earnestness, the following questions:—Do not the race believe in the real existence of an external material world, and do they not, in this respect, fundamentally differ from you? Do not all mankind regard sensations as exclusively subjective states; and not qualities of external material substances? Do not you regard these same sensations as, not only subjective and sensitive states, but as the only qualities of sensible forms which we do perceive? Do not all mankind intuitively distinguish between their own sensations and 'sensible forms,' or material objects, which they consciously perceive? Do not all mankind regard sensation as a feeling of the mind, and perception—external perception I now refer to especially—as an exclusively intellectual state? In other words, do not all the race intuitively recognize perception as an act of the Intelligence, and sensation as a state of the sensibility? Again, do not all mankind intuitively recognize the object of external perception, not as a Sensation, but as a quality of an exterior object having real extension and form? In other words, is not the act of external perception always attended with the distinct consciousness that while the act of perception is a phenomenon of the me, the object perceived is a not-me? Is not this what every man means when he says, I perceive that man, that ox, that house, that mountain yonder? Do not, then, mankind believe in an exterior, material universe, because they are intuitively conscious of a direct and immediate perception of such reality, as distinct and separate from the perceiving subject? Can any proposition, we ask finally, be more false than the dogma that the Idealistic doctrine of perception, in opposition to the teachings of Realistic philosophers, accords with the ordinary and instinctive belief of mankind'?

The Sceptical Deductions from the Principles of Locke. David Hume (1711-1776).

According to Locke, as we have seen, all our knowledge of 'things without us' is exclusively indirect and mediate through sensation or mental images. We have already contemplated the distinct and opposite deductions of Materialism and Idealism—deductions based upon this assumption—an assumption equally compatible, as we have also seen, with three distinct and mutually incompatible hypotheses—Materialism, Idealism and Realism. A quite common mistake in regard to the teachings of Locke demands special attention in this connection. While he did maintain that our knowledge of matter is indirect and mediate, he did teach that we do have a knowledge, direct and immediate, of the actual operations of mind. While, therefore, his principle of external perception did not allow him to admit that matter is directly and immediately perceived by us as having extension and form, he did hold that we have a direct and immediate consciousness of the validity of the judgments, I think, I feel, and I will. Locke furnished us with no basis for doubt in respect to mind.

Error, however, having, on the principle of Locke, swung round through Materialism and Idealism, finally, as in past ages, landed in universal Scepticism. This consummation was reached by that great thinker, David Hume. Locke had affirmed that our knowledge of external nature, or of matter, is indirect and mediate, and does not, in reality, extend beyond sensation. Hume extended the same principle to mind. The argument of this thinker is thus very concisely and correctly expressed by Mr. Lewes. 'All that we have any experience of is impressions and ideas. The substance of which these are supposed to be impressions is occult—is a mere inference; the substance in which these impressions are supposed to be, is equally occult—is a mere inference. Matter is but a collection of impressions. Mind is but a succession of impressions and ideas.

Thus was Berkeley's dogmatic Idealism converted into Scepticism. Hume, speaking of Berkeley, says, 'Most of the writings of that very ingenious philosopher form the best lessons of Scepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modern philosophers, Boyle not excepted. He professes, however, in his title page' (and undoubtedly with great truth), 'to have composed his book against the Sceptics, as well as against the Atheists and Freethinkers. But that all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are in reality merely Sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer and produce no conviction.'

In the definition of Scepticism incidentally given in the passage above cited, Hume did not speak at random; but most deliberately announced the system as it is. This thinker, like all men of his school, is to be contemplated from two distinct and opposite standpoints—as a philosopher of a certain sort, and as a man. In the former relation, he held that all our knowledge is of mere subjective 'impressions and ideas,' and that the realities, or substances, to which these 'impressions and ideas' are supposed to pertain as objects and subjects, are and ever must be occult, that is, unknowable and unknown. In the latter relation, that is, in the natural or normal state of his Intelligence, he never did, and never could, for a single moment give credence to the deductions of his own Philosophy. The sceptical argument, from his so-called philosophical standpoint, appeared to 'admit of no answer.' Yet that every argument did, even in his own mind, 'produce no conviction' which could for a moment remain after thought had returned to its normal state. On this subject, Mr. Hume's utterances are most distinct and explicit. Speaking of his own sceptical argument, he says, 'Should it be asked me whether I sincerely assent to this argument which I seem to take such pains to inculcate, and whether I be really one of those sceptics who hold that all is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possessed of any measure of truth or falsehood, I should reply that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion.' (Very truly said, Mr. Hume. You have presented arguments to induce us to believe what you yourself affirm, that neither 'you nor any other person does sincerely and constantly believe,' arguments which, as you anticipate and affirm, will 'produce no conviction' in our minds whenever they are in their natural or normal state.) 'Nature,' Mr. Hume goes on to say, 'by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light upon account of their customary connection with a present impression, than, we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake, or seeing surrounding bodies when we turn our eyes toward them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken pains to refute the cavils of this total Scepticism has really disputed without an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to establish a faculty which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind and rendered unavoidable.' 'Thus the Sceptic,' he adds, 'still continues to reason and believe, even though he asserts that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, though he cannot pretend by any arguments of Philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteemed it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in body? but 'tis in vain. Whether there be body or not, that is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.'

Mr. Hume now goes on to show, that while the faith of the Universal Intelligence in the validity of its knowledge of realities, which, as he has shown, cannot be shaken by argument, 'is soon destroyed by the slightest Philosophy,' this very all-destructive Philosophy cannot itself be verified by 'a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even by any appearance of argument.' 'Men,' he says, 'are carried by natural instinct and prepossession to repose faith in their senses. When they follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images presented to the senses to be external objects, and never entertain the suspicion that the one are nothing but the representatives of the other. But this universal and primary opinion is soon destroyed by the slightest Philosophy, which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception. So far, then, we are necessitated by reasoning to contradict the primary instincts of Nature, and to embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our senses. But here Philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed, when she would obviate the cavils and objections of the Sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instinct, for that led us to quite a different system, which is acknowledged fallible, and even erroneous; and to justify this pretended philosophical system by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even by an appearance of argument, exceeds the power of all human capacity.'

Such is the Sceptical Philosophy as the system is presented by its ablest expounder, and the fulness, completeness, and correctness of his presentation none will question. It has been our aim to present the system, not as we may be supposed to have apprehended it, but as apprehended and presented by its authors and advocates. We are now fully prepared to form a just estimate of the real merits of the system. To accomplish this result is the object of the following remarks and suggestions.

The Basis-Principle of the Sceptical Philosophy.

To appreciate correctly and fully the real character of any system, we must, first of all, clearly determine the nature of the principle on which the said system is based. The principle on which the entire system of the Sceptical Philosophy rests has been most clearly and specifically announced by Hume, and his statement fully accords with that announced by all Sceptics from Protagoras to Spencer. The principle is this 'Philosophy' (the Sceptical Philosophy) 'teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception.' The reason why all men believe that they perceive, and consequently know, as they are in themselves, external objects, is that 'they always suppose the very images presented to the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one are nothing but the representations of the other.' All our knowledge, says the Sceptic, is representative, derived through representative images of objects, and not from any direct aspects of the objects themselves; and as we cannot compare the representative images with the represented objects, we cannot know whether the former do or do not correspond with the latter. 'The reality existing behind all appearance' (representative image), as Mr. Spencer says, 'is and ever must be unknown.' If we grant the principle of this image-representative character of all our knowledge, we must grant the validity of the Sceptical deduction, in its entireness. But what is the real character of this principle? We answer:

1. This principle has not one of the characteristics of a real principle in science. The proposition that 'nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception,' is, undeniably, not a self-evident or necessary truth. If it were such a truth, the validity of any opposite judgment would be absolutely inconceivable. Now it is just as conceivable in itself, that an intelligence may be given which shall know exterior objects as well as subjective states, and for aught that can be determined à priori, the human intelligence may be just such a power. Whether this Intelligence is, or is not, such a power, is not to be assumed as a self-evident truth, but is to be determined as a question of fact, and that by an appeal to consciousness.

2. The validity of this principle can by no possibility be verified as a truth of deduction. If all our knowledge is exclusively representative, we have no consciousness of the fact. We are not conscious, for example, of knowing that we think, feel, and will through an image-representation of ourselves, as exercising these functions. Nor are we conscious of knowing body as having exteriority, extension and form, through any image-representation of body.

3. The basis-dogma of Scepticism, the principle from which the system borrows all its claims to our regard, stands revealed before us, therefore, as nothing but a naked and lawless assumption, a mere opinion not self-evidently true, and which cannot be verified by any show of proof, positive evidence, or even antecedent probability. No assumption ever danced in the brain of a crazy Philosophy, an assumption which has less claims to our regard as a principle, or verified truth of science, than has this basis-dogma of the Sceptical Philosophy, that 'nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception.'

4. This basis principle of Scepticism is utterly false, or the Universal Consciousness is, in the language of Sir William Hamilton, 'a liar from the beginning.' External perception we are distinctly conscious of, not as a sensitive state; but as an exclusively intellectual act. In every such act, two distinct and separate factors are always given, the self as the subject, and a not-self as the object of the perception. The self and the not-self the Intelligence has absolutely distinguished, and separated the one from the other, and by no possibility can the same Intelligence join them together and affirm them to be one and identical.

The Dilemma in which the Sceptical Philosophy is Involved.

'The great embarrassment' in which Mr. Hume has demonstrated that the Sceptical Philosophy is involved, and this by the principle on which that Philosophy is based on the one hand, and by the intuitive convictions of the race, convictions which can be invalidated by no 'chain of clear and convincing argument,' on the other, is thus very clearly and succinctly stated by our philosopher himself. 'Do you follow the instinct and propositions of nature in assenting to the veracity of the senses? But these lead you to believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object.

'Do you disclaim this principle in order to embrace a more rational opinion, that the perceptions are only representations of something external? You here depart from your natural propensities and more obvious sentiments, and yet are not able to satisfy your reason, which cannot find any convincing argument from experience to prove that the representations are connected with external objects.'

This is truly a sad dilemma, from which no reasoning or argument can emancipate us as long as we admit as the basis and starting-point of Philosophy, the principle that 'nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception,' This undeniable fact should convince every reflecting mind, and will convince all but philosophers who have become immutably habituated to 'the privilege of absurdity,' that 'there must be something rotten,' if not 'in Denmark,' at least, in the principle which involves science and all reasoning and thought in such palpable and inexplicable contradictions.

Hume's Avenue of Escape from the Dilemma under Consideration.

According to the express admission of Hume, and all Sceptics, and Idealists of all schools, the best that can be said of their systems is, that in their construction an unanswerable argument encounters an immovable conviction, and there is left to us the sad alternative of making our election between the two, and thus determining and acting without a reason. The passage opened for us out of this dilemma by Mr. Hume we state in his own words. 'If belief were a simple act of thought, without any peculiar manner of conception, or the addition of force and vivacity, it must infallibly destroy itself, and in every case terminate in a total suspension of judgment. But as experience will sufficiently convince any one that although he finds no error in my argument, yet he still continues to think and reason as usual, he may safely conclude that his reasoning and belief is some sensation or peculiar manner of conception, which 'tis impossible for mere ideas and reflections to destroy.' The reader is familiar with the fable in respect to the Friend, who, not liking to kill his dog with his own hand, induced others to do it, and thus got rid of the animal by giving him a bad name. By a mere change of name, that he may rescue an argument from an otherwise inexplicable difficulty, Mr. Hume proposes to annihilate the force of what he admits and affirms to be an original intuition to which 'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us;' and 'which 'tis impossible for mere ideas and reflections to destroy.' Now, if he may lead us out of this dilemma by simply calling this, which he elsewhere calls the 'universal and primary opinion of all men,' 'some sensation or peculiar manner of conception,' we may, with equal propriety, lead ourselves out by calling his and the Sceptical argument 'some sensation or peculiar manner of conception' which false science has, by 'playing tricks upon Reason,' intruded into the sphere of Philosophy.

Mr. Hume's and the Sceptical Contradictions.

Mr. Hume has told us, and the strict universality of the phenomenon absolutely evinces the truth of his statement, that the faculty which originates the intuitions under consideration, and has induced the consequent 'faith in the senses,' was 'implanted in the mind' by 'Nature;' that this intuitive belief in the reality of material forms around us, it is 'impossible for mere ideas and reflections to destroy;' and that to 'justify this pretended philosophical system (which would destroy these primary beliefs) 'by any chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of human capacity.' In the same paragraph in which the above truthful utterance is found, we are also assured that 'this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest Philosophy, which teaches that nothing can ever be present to the mind but images or perceptions.' The same thing, then, can and cannot be at the same moment destroyed and not destroyed, and may at the same moment be destroyed and continue absolutely indestructible.

Mr. Lewes's Criticism of Reid's Criticism of Hume.

Mr. Lewes takes great offence at Mr. Reid for his exposition of the absurdity involved in the plan and end aimed at by Mr. Hume in his Treatise on Human Nature, which, as Mr. Reid states is, in reality, an attempt to convince Human Nature that Human Nature does not exist at all. 'Reid,' says Mr. Lewes, 'from whom one might have expected something better, is surprised at Hume's pretending to construct a science of Human Nature,' when the intention of the whole work is to show that there is neither human nature nor science in the world. It may, perhaps, be unreasonable to complain of this conduct in an author who neither believes his own existence nor that of his reader, and therefore could not mean to disappoint him, or laugh at his credulity. Yet I cannot imagine that the author of the Treatise on the Human Nature is so sceptical as to plead this apology. He believed, against his principles, that he should be read, and that he should retain his personal identity till he reaped the honour and reputation justly due to his metaphysical acumen.' He continues further in this strain, dragging in the old error about Pyrrho 'having inconsistently been roused to anger by his cook, who probably had not, roasted his dinner to his mind,' and compares this forgetfulness to Hume's every now and then relapsing into the faith of the vulgar.'

'If this,' continues Mr. Lewes, 'was meant for banter, it was very poor banter; if for argument, it was pitiable. But if such arguments appeared valid to a thinker of Reid's reputation, it is reasonable to suppose that inferior men may also receive them as conclusive.'

In reply, we would say to Mr. Lewes that this argument was unquestionably presented in sober sincerity by Mr. Reid, and that it will be received as conclusive, not only by men inferior and equal to that great thinker, but by all men, in short, who understand the subject. Unless Mr. Hume was not 'in himself, but beside himself,' when he wrote this Treatise, it was his specific intent to convince Human Nature that the idea represented by the words 'Human Nature' is a chimera; that the external world, with all its embodied occupants, has no being outside the self, and exists but as an 'image or perception' of the self; that 'Matter is but a collection of impressions,' and 'mind is but a succession of impressions and ideas.' Assuming the Philosophy of Mr. Hume to be correct, what spectacle does his Treatise on Human Nature present but that of 'a collection of impressions and ideas' attempting to convince 'a collection of impressions and ideas' which has no existence but as 'an image or perception,' dwelling nowhere but in said 'collection of impressions and ideas,' that Human Nature but as such subjective 'image and perception' has no existence at all? This is the identical account which Mr. Lewes has himself presented of this Philosophy. 'Probing deeper,' he says, 'in the direction Berkeley had taken, he (Hume) perceived that not only was Matter a figment, but that Mind was a figment also.' According to this showing, what is the Treatise on Human Nature but a conscious 'figment,' attempting to convince 'a figment' which has no existence but as a subjective 'image or perception' in the former 'figment,' that Human Nature is nothing but 'a figment'? The validity of such expositions of his system, Mr. Hume himself does, in fact, admit. He justifies, as we have shown, his whole course of conduct in originating the works he produced, on the avowed fact that he did not believe his own Philosophy. Speaking of his own Scepticism, he says, 'that neither I nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion.' A strange Philosophy that, which cannot be defended but upon the supposition that said Philosophy is false in fact, and cannot be 'sincerely and constantly' believed, which can be even seemingly verified but by arguments which 'produce no conviction,' and which 'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us to judge' of as false. Such is the exact character of the Sceptical Philosophy in all its forms, as admitted and affirmed by its ablest expounders.

Reaction in the Direction of Realism or Common-Sense.

Reid (1710-1796); Beattie (1735-1803); Dugald Stewart (1753-1828); Jouffroy, born 1796.

The doctrines of Materialism, Idealism, and Scepticism, as successively developed from the essential principles of the Philosophy of Locke, seemed, for a time, quite likely to produce throughout Christendom a total eclipse of faith, not only in Christianity, but in religion itself, as far as belief in a personal God was concerned. Under the teachings of Dr. Thomas Reid, born in Glasgow 1710, and in 1763 called to the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of the city of his birth, an effective reaction against all these systems occurred in the direction of fundamental truth. The teachings of this great thinker were elucidated and enforced by James Beattie, Professor of Moral Philosophy, first in the University of Edinburgh and afterwards in Aberdeen, and by Dugald Stewart, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Theodore Jouffroy introduced the doctrines of these authors into France by a translation of the works of Reid and Stewart, and by a very clear exposition and an unanswerable defence of the Doctrine of Common-Sense. We gave an extract from the Essay of this author on this doctrine in our exposition of the teachings of Socrates. As all the authors above named agree in all essential particulars in their philosophical teachings, we shall confine our expositions and criticisms to the one doctrine in which they all agreed and which they so ably defended.

The Doctrine of Realism, or Common-sense, defined and Elucidated.

The doctrine to which we refer received, through Dr. Reid, the desig- nation of the Philosophy of Common-Sense, but is now represented by the term Realism. On a critical examination of the common principle on which the systems of Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism are based, namely, that all our knowledge, both in its objective and subjective forms, or of one or the other of them, is exclusively indirect and mediate, through 'sensation or perception,' Reid perceived that the argument of each of said systems was unanswerable. On a correspondingly critical examination of the facts of his own consciousness, he found that he was absolutely conscious of the self, mind, and of the not-self, matter, as realities in themselves, and of time and space as objects of absolutely implied and necessary knowledge. He also found that the facts of his own consciousness, as he had interpreted them, did fully accord with the absolute intuitions and necessarily-determined convictions of the Universal Intelligence, and that this perfect accordance was admitted and affirmed by philosophers of all schools. He found, also, that the intuitive and absolute belief of the race in Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, as really existing, and known and knowable realities, is a belief to which all philosophers of all schools affirm that 'nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us,' a belief 'innate and connatural,' and which 'remains proof against all grounds and arguments for its removal,' a belief 'which 'tis impossible for ideas and reflections to destroy,' a belief, finally, to overthrow which, 'by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of all human capacity.' He found also that, as all philosophers admit, this belief, neither in its objective or subjective form, can by any possibility be ignored, or excluded from the sphere of Philosophy, but by an act of 'Scepticism to which the mind voluntarily determines itself,' that is, not by an act of the Intelligence, but of the Will. His deduction consequently was that sceptical doubt—Idealists, Materialists, and Sceptics being judges, that sceptical doubt, in respect to the validity of our knowledge of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, can have place in the human mind, not as a dicta of the Intelligence, but exclusively as a sentiment of Will.

On a careful criticism, also, of the common principle on which all these systems rest, he clearly ascertained and demonstrated that principle to be, not a self-evident truth, nor one capable of being verified as true, but a mere lawless assumption which has no more right to a place as a principle in science than the dicta of Chaos and Old Night.

Finally, on a most rigid scrutiny of the assumption of Locke, that all our knowledge is derived exclusively from 'sensation and reflection,' or consciousness, he discovered and absolutely evinced, as existing in the mind, forms of implied and necessary knowledge, which by no possibility could have been derived from experience, and which as absolutely implied the existence of three, instead of two, faculties of primary intuition—to wit, Consciousness, Sense, and Reason. Although Dr. Reid did not give these specific names to these faculties, he did affirm and prove their actual existence.

Dr. Reid most profoundly explored all the doctrines and problems above designated before he propounded his own system—the system originally designated as the 'Philosophy of Common-Sense,' and now as Realism. What is this Philosophy? That is the question to which special attention is now invited.

Realistic Principle and Postulate.

The general principle that lies at the basis of this Philosophy is this, that whatever the Universal Intelligence, in its original, necessary, and intuitive procedures, consciously gives us, as directly and, immediately known to be real, together with all that is necessarily implied by what is thus known, must be, admitted as real, and really knowable and known. Nothing thus given must be excluded from, and nothing not thus given must be included in, our theory of existence. The fundamental postulate of the system is that the Intelligence, relative to some realities, is a faculty of real and really valid knowledge, and that the question, what can we know, can be answered but through another—to wit, what do we know, and what powers of knowledge are implied by the facts of actual knowledge.

Representative and Presentative Forms of Knowledge.

According to the fundamental teachings of this Philosophy, also, real knowledge can exist but in two forms, indirect and mediate, or representative, and direct and immediate, or presentative. We have consequently another fundamental principle of this system—to wit, that knowledge of the former class—knowledge consciously indirect and mediate, together with its necessary logical antecedents and consequents, has merely a relative validity, and that knowledge consciously of the latter class—knowledge consciously direct and immediate or presentative—has, together with all its necessary antecedents and consequents, an absolute validity for the reality and character of its objects. The validity of this principle in both forms is, in fact, admitted even by philosophers of all schools. All admit that knowledge, in its representative and presentative forms, does exist in the mind, and that knowledge in but one or the other of these forms can exist. All admit, also, that knowledge, in each form, has the identical validity above ascribed. The only question at issue between the various schools in Philosophy is the actual extent and limits of representative, on the one hand, and of presentative knowledge on the other. Whatever elements any school introduces into its system, it does so on the exclusive grounds that such elements are the conscious objects of knowledge direct and immediate. Now science demands absolutely and immutably that if the validity of this principle be admitted in any, it must be admitted in all cases to which it legitimately applies.

The Realistic Deduction.

The deduction of Realism from the above principles, and from absolutely conscious facts which come under these principles, is this, that Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space are realities in themselves—realities consciously known as such. That mind is directly, immediately, and absolutely conscious of itself, as actually exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing; that matter, as an exterior object possessed of real extension and form, is directly and immediately before the mind as the conscious object of knowledge absolutely presentative; and that time and space are given in the universal consciousness as realities necessary in themselves, and necessarily implied by objects of knowledge consciously direct and immediate, must be admitted, or we must, without a reason, affirm the Intelligence itself, in its most absolute procedures, to be a lie. No individual can affirm mind or matter to be an object of valid knowledge without being bound by his own reason for that affirmation to admit that both are thus known, each being the conscious object of the same identical form of knowledge. No individual can affirm that he knows one of these realities and does not know the other, without involving himself in the most palpable contradiction and absurdity; because he affirms the validity of consciously presentative knowledge in one form, and denies its validity in another equally palpable form. To affirm that we do know phenomena or appearances, and do not know the manifested objects, involves us in the absurdity of affirming that there may be real and really known appearances when nothing appears, and real and really known manifestations when nothing is manifested.

Such is the Philosophy of Common Sense, as, in its germs, set forth by Buffier and Reid, and as developed in its perfected forms by subsequent thinkers, now known as Realism. Our object is not to present the system in its incipient and necessarily imperfect forms, but in the completed form in which it now stands before the world. 'Respecting the interpretation of Sir William Hamilton of Reid's doctrines,' says Mr. Lewes, 'I will only say that he has shown what a subtle mind can read into the Philosophy of Common-Sense; but he has not in the least produced the conviction in me of Reid's having meant what his illustrious interpreter supposed him to have meant.' The leading object, we must bear in mind, of Sir William Hamilton, was not to prove that Reid did himself apprehend fully the form of the building the foundation of which he had laid, and the general plan of which he had laid out, but to develop and perfect the work which that great thinker had so well begun. The term Realism represents the Philosophy of Common-Sense in its present perfected form, the system which now confronts Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism before the world. It is undeniable that some one of these systems, none others being conceivable, must be true and all the others false. We would now invite very careful attention to certain general reflections and observations which have a fundamental bearing upon the claims of Realism as contrasted with those of each of the systems to which it stands opposed. We remark:

The Claims of Realism, as Contrasted with those of Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism.

Realism accords, in all its Teachings, with the Absolute Testimony of every Individual Consciousness, and the Intuitive Convictions of the Race.

1. Realism, in its principles, facts, and deductions, absolutely accords with conscious facts, and all self-evident and intuitive judgments and necessary inferences, just as they exist in each individual mind, and as a necessary consequence, as fully accords with the intuitive 'absolute and uncontrollable' convictions of the Universal Intelligence. The strict validity of this statement is not only verified by absolutely conscious facts, but is openly admitted and affirmed, as we have seen, by philosophers of all schools. The deduction is absolute that this system is true, or the Intelligence itself, in its consciously normal procedures, is fundamentally deceptive.

The Doctrines of Realism can by no Possibility be Disproved.

2. The validity of this system can by no possibility be disproved. To do this, as we have shown, some incompatible proposition must be adduced, a proposition of the validity of which we have a greater certainty than we have of the fact of our own existence; of that of material forms around us, and of the reality of time and space. Now everyone is conscious that no such proposition can be adduced. This fact is also openly admitted by philosophers of all schools. When those intuitive convictions to which 'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determined us,' convictions of the actual existence of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, and of the absolute validity of our knowledge of the same—when these convictions are assailed by arguments which appear unanswerable, even such arguments, as all philosophers admit, 'produce no conviction.' Why do such arguments produce no conviction in any mind? But one answer can be given. They ought not to produce conviction, for the reason that we cannot be so certain of the validity of any argument on such a subject as we are and must be of the absolutely conscious fact of our own existence, of that of material forms, which are to us the conscious objects of knowledge consciously direct and immediate, and of the reality of time and space. Knowledge 'which lays claim to immediate certainty,' as this undeniably does in all its forms, and which 'remains proof against all grounds and arguments' adduced for its removal, thus remains, because it is possessed of higher conscious certainty than is possessed by any 'grounds and arguments' which can be adduced for its removal. How can the Realistic deduction or system be invalidated, when, as all philosophers admit, a doubt of its validity can have place in the mind but by 'an act of (scientific?) Scepticism, to which the mind voluntarily determines itself?'

This Doctrine Verified by the Highest Conceivable Forms of Proof.

3. The validity of the doctrine of Realism, we remark, in the next place, is verified by the highest forms of proof of which we can possibly form a conception. All its expositions in regard to the nature and character of our knowledge of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, absolutely accord with the absolute affirmations of every individual consciousness, and of the absolute intuitive convictions of the race. When we affirm, for example, that we are absolutely conscious of the self, mind, as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, and of the not-self, matter, or material objects, as directly and immediately before us, as having real exteriority, extension and form, that is, as the objects of knowledge consciously direct and immediate, we simply interpret facts just as they are absolutely attested by every individual consciousness, and the intuitive convictions of the race. So palpable and undeniable is this absolute accordance, that philosophers of all schools are constrained to admit and affirm that this absolute and universal belief in the real existence of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, and of the validity of our knowledge of the same, is a belief or state of universal consciousness to which 'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us.' So absolute is this belief, as all philosophers, also, of all schools admit and affirm, 'laying claim as it does to immediate certainty,' that it 'cannot be removed by grounds or arguments.' Arguments, on the other hand, adduced to remove and displace it, even when they appear unanswerable, 'produce no conviction.' When 'by an act of' (so-called) 'scientific Scepticism to which we voluntarily determine ourselves,' we 'compel ourselves to treat this knowledge as a prejudice innate indeed and connatural, yet as nothing but a prejudice,' this same belief remains even in the consciousness of the philosopher, after all his attempt at intellectual abnegation, just as 'absolute and uncontrollable' as before. By all his self-determined Scepticism, he has not pushed this intuitive conviction, this conscious knowledge of facts and realities, one hair's-breadth from its immovable foundations. Nor can our apprehensions of the essential characteristics of any one of these realities be, in the remotest degree, changed or modified, any more, as we have formerly shown, than can our ideas of a circle or a square. Reason about them as we will, make what assumptions about them we can, and compel ourselves as often and as much as we choose to treat our belief in them 'as nothing but a prejudice,' still Mind, Matter, Time, and Space, are to us the same identical realities they were before. Nor, in thought, we remark finally, can we by any possibility confound any one of these realities with any other. We can no more think of mind as matter, or matter as spirit, than we can of space as time, or a circle as a square. Nor can we designate a single quality in any one of them, which, in the remotest degree, resembles any quality possessed by any other. All men know Mind, Matter, Time, and Space, as realities totally distinct, the one from every one of the others; and reason about them as we will, they will be present to each individual mind as the same distinct and separate realities they were before. Affirming matter to be spirit, or spirit matter, and compelling ourselves, in the construction of systems, to treat them as one and the same entity, does not and cannot render them such in thought. Such are the undeniable facts of the case before us. Can we conceive of forms of knowledge having characteristics of more absolute validity than those above designated?

Why are the Claims of Realism Impeached?

4. We have, finally, a word to say in regard to the motives which really determine all scientific movements in the opposite direction of Realism. There is not a philosopher on earth, and there never has been one, who is not absolutely convinced that if the doctrine of Realism in respect to Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, be admitted as valid, that with this admission, the doctrines of an infinite and perfect personal God, of duty, immortality, and retribution, stand revealed as intuitive or demonstrated verities. All are now equally aware, that the admission of the validity of either of the opposite systems throws all these doctrines into a deep and dark eclipse. All are aware, also, that a denial of these doctrines must be based exclusively upon an impeachment of the validity of our knowledge of Matter or Spirit, or of both together. Nor does anyone profess to find a basis for such impeachment within the proper sphere of the Intelligence. Such impeachment, on the other hand, as these philosophers admit, must be based wholly upon a so-called 'scientific Scepticism to which the mind voluntarily determines itself.' In other words, such impeachment is, and cannot but be, exclusively a matter, not of the Intelligence, but of the Will. What is the motive for this exclusively will-begotten and will-determined Scepticism? This same Scepticism has equal validity against nature, and all individual, domestic, social, and civil relations, that it has in respect to religion. We can have no excuse for treating visible nature as a reality, and religion as an illusion. Now, these men are very earnest in urging us to treat as valid the teachings of Common Sense, in the former sphere, and implicitly to follow their Philosophy, or self-determined will-doubts, in the entire sphere of morality and religion. All 'works of Divinity and School-Philosophy' must, without examination, be committed to the flames, while all material and sensitive 'figments' are to be handled very lovingly, and believed in most sincerely. 'Permit me,' exclaims Mr. Huxley, 'to enforce this most wise advice.' In other words, these men would have us obey implicitly those 'innate and connatural' convictions, to which 'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us,' in all departments of thought and activity, until we find ourselves standing upon the borders of the sphere of religious thought and action, where we are about 'to behold the face of infinity unveiled.' Here we must instantly stop, and planting ourselves immovably upon our will-doubts, the 'scientific Scepticism to which we have voluntarily determined ourselves,' abruptly, and without thought or inquiry, turn our faces worldward again. Now, when men philosophize nowhere but in the sphere of religious doubt and denial, we infer that they philosophize for no other real motive. They violently push Religion out of the sphere of scientific thought and inquiry, because she is to them an unwelcome intrusion. They philosophize under no other real motive, but to eclipse from the world the face of God. A godless Philosophy can have no other origin but the sentiment of a godless Will. We challenge any philosopher to explain the facts of the case upon any other hypothesis.

CHAPTER II.

THE GERMAN EVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY.

For a long period, Germany claimed for itself the high honour of being the home of Philosophy, and this honour Christendom, with few exceptions, yielded to her. German thought finally culminated in four grand systems, which stand out before the world as complete and perfect of their kind. With these systems, scientific thought is now almost exclusively concerned, no thinkers regarding any preceding systems as true. We shall, therefore, very cursorily notice the productions of those great leaders of philosophic thought, who did much to prepare the way for the German Evolution in its perfected forms, and in doing this shall merely or mainly refer to essential principles developed by these thinkers which gave character and form to the Evolution. We refer to Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, and shall refer to their works under their names as above designated.

I. Descartes (1596-1650).

Descartes was of French descent. He stands, however, in more intimate relation with the development of German than of French thought. Though born nearly half a century later than Bacon, the Method of Descartes was almost exclusively à priori. He is most distinctly remembered on account of the maxim which, as a principle, he laid at the basis of his system, namely, Cogito ergo sum. Science, he maintained, must have for its point of departure some one truth at least about which there can be no dispute. Where shall this truth be found? The controlling motive which determined him to devote the powers of his great mind to philosophical inquiry was a most honourable and Christian one. 'I have always thought,' he said, 'that the two questions, of the existence of God and the nature of the soul, were the chief of those which ought to be demonstrated rather by Philosophy than by Theology; for although it is sufficient for us, the faithful, to believe in God, and that the soul does not perish with the body, it certainly does not seem possible to persuade infidels to any religion, nor hardly to any moral virtue, unless we first prove to them these two things by natural reason.'

Here the question returns upon us, to wit, Where shall we find our basis for demonstrating these or any other truths? Not in the thinking of the world around, nor in that of past ages; for here all is 'confusion worse confounded.' Nothing, not even the deductions of the pure sciences, had been universally accepted as true. Nor could he find the truth referred to in his own previous apprehensions and reasonings; for here the same uncertainty prevailed as everywhere else. 'It is not today, for the first time,' he says, 'that I have perceived in myself that from my earliest years I have received a great many false opinions as true, and that what I have built upon principles so badly ascertained can be only very doubtful and uncertain. And, accordingly, I have decidedly judged that I must seriously undertake some time in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had before taken upon trust, and begin altogether anew from the foundation, if I would establish anything firm and constant in science.' 'By an act of scientific Scepticism to which he voluntarily determined himself,' he posited all existing thinking as uncertain. What, then, does really and undeniably exist? The fact of doubt. That is real, whatever else may be uncertain. But to doubt is to think. No one can deny this, and thinking implies a thinker. So far all is certain, indisputable. I think, therefore, I exist. Something, consequently, the being that thinks, does exist. Here we have found a rock of known truth which cannot be moved. Such is the affirmed rock of truth on which this great thinker proceeded to erect his system of knowledge. Let us stop here and give the subject a very careful examination.

The Method of Descartes.

1. We remark, then, in the first place, that in his principle of universal doubt, Descartes has announced a method in Philosophy, a method to which Idealism, in all previous ages had in fact, and in all subsequent periods has in form, adopted. Idealists of all Oriental, Grecian, Christian, and Mediaeval Schools, whenever they began to philosophize, did, in fact and form, as we have seen, renounce all their previous thinking and beliefs, as uncertain and illusory, and in a state of self-determined nescience, expected, through Reason, ecstasy, or intellectual intuition, to receive a direct and immediate revelation of absolute truth. The Modern Idealist avowedly 'puts himself into a state of not-knowing,' and 'assumes all his previous knowledge to be uncertain,' 'when he begins to philosophize,' We have here, then, the fixed method of these important schools in Philosophy, and should carefully inquire into its validity. The motive of Descartes in 'his voluntary doubt, his self-determined indetermination,' as Coleridge calls it, was thereby to find the truth. 'I do not in this,' says Descartes, 'imitate Sceptics, who doubt that they may doubt, and seek nothing but incertitude itself. For my total aim in this is to find what is certain.' The same motive is professed by all who adopt this method. It is assumed by such thinkers, that if they do 'put themselves into a state of not-knowing,' and 'assume all their previous knowledge to be uncertain,' and do this for the single purpose of finding absolute truth and certitude, they will surely find what they seek. Is it self-evidently certain that this is the certain, and as is affirmed, the only certain method of finding absolute certitude? Looked at from the à priori standpoint, it seems, of all conceivable methods, the most uncertain and absurd. It seems like violently putting out our eyes for the purpose of clear vision, and putting ourselves 'upon airy nothing' as our standpoint for moving the world. If our Intelligence thus far has given us nothing certain, why trust it for the future? If we refer to experience, then, this method stands revealed as, of all others, the most certain to lead into 'the palpable obscure' of absolute incertitude. The reason is obvious. The forms of affirmed absolute truth obtained through this method are just as contradictory as the responses of Chaos and Old Night. Descartes himself has furnished another example of the utter incertitude of this method; for nobody now believes that he thereby made anything whatever certain. The experience of ages has absolutely demonstrated the utter unreliability and absurdity of the fixed method of Idealism in all its stages of existence. Besides, 'this voluntary doubt, this self-determined indetermination,' is an assumption which is utterly groundless. While uncertainty and error do exist, real certainty and truth are, also, equally real. This is not only affirmed by the universal consciousness, but is equally evinced by the open confession of all doubters, namely, that universal doubt cannot exist as a dicta of the Intelligence, but always has being as an exclusive sentiment of Will, a 'voluntary doubt, a self-determined indetermination.' The only proper method is to advance into the centre of the sphere of certainty and uncertainty, and of truth and error, and by the application of valid criteria, distinguish the former from the latter. "Then, and then only, shall we have real science.

This Principle renders Certitude, in any Form, Impossible of Attainment.

2. This principle of voluntarily determined universal doubt, if sanctioned, subverts utterly the foundations of valid knowledge, and renders science, in any form, impossible. The right to assume all existing forms of knowledge to be uncertain implies, of course, the right to make the same assumption in respect to any part of such knowledge we may deem necessary to future certainty. If we may assume universal doubt as valid in respect to the result of all past and present inquiries, we may, with good reason, assume that the results of all future inquiries will be as uncertain as those of the present and past, and thus deny the possibility of knowledge and science on any conditions conceivable or possible. If we may begin to philosophize by ignoring all present and past forms of knowledge, we may, at any stage of subsequent inquiry, stop, and by an act of 'self-determined indetermination,' affirm that thus far all is doubtful. In regard to the facts which shall then lie before us, we may, by 'voluntary doubt,' repudiate any part of said facts we choose, and construct our system from what remains. When we have done this, we may then, by a 'self-determined indetermination,' assume that system to be of doubtful validity. The only position really left us is the old principle of Pyrrho—to wit, 'I don't know that I don't know anything.' In other words, I not only doubt the validity of knowledge, but that of doubt also.

This Principle of no Logical Consequence.

3. We remark, in the next place, that Descartes, and all who adopt his method, are utterly mistaken in regard to the value of the position he supposes himself to have gained by his principle, 'I think, therefore, I exist.' To doubt, he says, is to think, and the fact of thinking implies the real existence of its subject. The words, I think, however, as employed by Descartes, do not imply thinking in general, but thinking of one exclusive kind—to wit, doubting, this being all that is given in the premises. The principle, Cogito, ergo sum, as Descartes employs the words, means nothing more than this: I doubt, therefore, I exist. The individual thus revealed as existing, is a doubter, and nothing else, and the capacity revealed is a capacity to doubt, and nothing more. No basis is given for the hope of certitude in any form but one, the certainty of not finding anything certain.

The Deduction from the Principle invalid.

4. The inference which Descartes has deduced from the fact of doubt—to wit, I, therefore, exist—he is bound by his own principle to assume as of uncertain validity. His avowed object was to find a position which no one does or can doubt. This he professedly found in the argument, 'Cogito, ergo sum.' The validity of this argument has, in fact, been doubted and denied, by whole schools in Philosophy, ever since the commencement of historic philosophical thought, and is now as absolutely and universally denied by Sceptics, Ideal-Dualists, and Pure Idealists. All philosophers of all schools admit the reality of thought, while multitudes, in all ages, have denied the validity of the principle, Thought implies a thinker. The reasons, therefore, for which Descartes assumed all his previous knowledge to be uncertain, should have induced him to assume that his argument, I think, therefore, I exist, is of doubtful validity. He had failed to find a form of certitude which could not be doubted.

The Use which Descartes makes of the Principle, Cogito, ergo sum, as a Universal Criterion of Truth.

Having found one judgment of the validity of which there can be no doubt, Descartes seeks and professedly finds in said truth, an infallible criterion of truth universally. What are the characteristics of the judgment, I think, therefore, I exist? They are two—absolute distinctness of apprehension, and absolute conscious knowledge of the fact of personal existence as true. Hence the criterion, namely, whatever we as distinctly and clearly apprehend and perceive to be true, as we do the fact of our own personal existence, must be true. 'Quidque tam cleré ac distincté percipitur quam istud.' His meaning is not, as Mr. Lewes states, this, that 'all clear ideas are true,' but this, ' whatever is as clearly and distinctly perceived, quam istud' (as the fact of our own existence, this being the specific fact referred to), 'is true.' To conceive and perceive, clearly and distinctly, are two distinct and separate states of mind. Here we do have an infallible criterion of truth. Descartes came at this criterion very awkwardly, it being just as undeniable that we feel and will and therefore exist, as it is, that we doubt, or think, and therefore exist. We lay this down, as an infallible criterion of truth, that whatever is as clearly and distinctly apprehended and known as real, as is the fact of our own existence, as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, is, and must be, true. This is undeniably manifest from the conscious fact that no higher and more absolute forms of certitude can even be conceived to exist than we have here, and that consequently such knowledge can, by no possibility, be invalidated and displaced by any other forms possessed of greater certitude.

In his position, also, that two finite substances do exist, mind and matter, the former as exercising the functions of thought, and the latter as possessed of real extension and form, he has announced a doctrine intuitively true on the one hand, and which by no possibility can be invalidated on the other. The reason is obvious and undeniable. Of the existence of these two substances as possessed of these two distinct and separate characteristics, we have a conscious perception and equally clear and distinct. Nothing can be, to universal mind, more certain, and consequently, by no other forms of certitude can our knowledge of these substances be invalidated. Descartes is equally right, also, in his position, that as mind and body have nothing in common, they must be regarded as distinct and separate substances. Equally clear and distinct, as necessary in themselves, and as implied by facts perceived, is our knowledge of time and space.

Had this great thinker proceeded to deduce from the attributes and relations of these two substances, 'the things that are made,' the doctrines of God, Duty, Immortality, and Retribution, he would have established truth upon immovable foundations. The validity of our knowledge of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, as we have abundantly and absolutely demonstrated, cannot be disproved, and such validity being admitted, none can doubt the consequent absolute verity of the doctrines under consideration. His method of philosophizing, however, led him to a different, and consequently invalid form of argumentation in respect to these themes. As the invalidity of the argument which he did pursue is now universally admitted, its statement and refutation do not fall in with the fixed plan of this Treatise. We cannot argue from the mere existence and character of an idea, its object not being directly perceived as real, or apprehended as necessarily existing in time and space, to the validity or invalidity of that idea. The conscious fact, however, that the Universal Intelligence in its normal procedures, and by laws of perception, apprehension, and deduction, to which 'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us,' does apprehend as absolute verities, Matter, Spirit, Time, Space, God, and Immortality, does imply the validity of these doctrines, or that of the deduction, as we have before said, that the Author of nature who must be God, or a law of nature, intentionally, or necessarily determines us to error instead of truth. His doctrine of Pre-established Harmony is based upon a mere assumption, which is also self-contradictory and absurd. As mind and body have nothing in common, neither can, he argues, in the remotest degree be affected by the other. Mind is in the body, but not of it. How, then, do the actions of the latter correspond with the states of the former? The body, he affirmed, is a divinely constituted automaton, and so constituted that its activity necessarily corresponds with mental states, though not influenced and determined by them. How did he know that two substances, as distinct in their nature as matter and spirit, may not mutually affect each other? That they cannot is not a self-evident truth, nor one capable of verification by proof. On the other hand, we have the same evidence, that they do affect each other, that we have of the validity of the principle of attraction. God, as a spirit, as Descartes affirms, does exercise absolute control over matter. Why, then, may not finite spirit control the same substance, and be affected by it in some degree? When will philosophers understand that à priori nothing whatever can be determined about the existence, nature, or relations of substances? Here we have but one exclusive principle to guide us—to wit, Whatever is directly and immediately manifested to the Intelligence as real, together with whatever is intuitively or deductively implied by the manifested reality, must be admitted as actual, and nothing not thus revealed must be thus admitted.

Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677).

If the development of a system of which all philosophers speak, which very few understand at all, which none can fully comprehend, and which, as far as known, is held in general reprobation—if such facts as these constitute an individual a great thinker, Benedict Spinoza has attained to this high eminence. Born and educated a Jew, and excommunicated from his native church because he had apostatized from its faith, he devoted his great powers to the extirpation of religion in all its forms, and with religion the utter subversion of fundamental morality. His moral teachings none seem to have misapprehended, and in the statement of them all histories of Philosophy agree. Where full and exact statements have been made by others, our object being to give facts as they are, we choose to cite from them, rather than appear to be original when originality is impossible. We therefore give from the 'Epitome of the History of Philosophy' the following very clear and succinct statement of the moral teachings of this philosopher.

Moral Teachings of Spinoza.

'In morals he radically destroyed the notions of right and wrong, as incompatible with a system where everything is identical, where everything that happens is the necessary result of the energy of the sole substance.

In politics he maintained, also, very consistently, that everything which is commonly designated by the name of rights is reduced to the notion of force. It followed, indeed, from his moral doctrine, that justice relatively to each being can be conceived only as the measure of his power, since, in order to conceive it under any other notion, we must return to the ideas of an obligatory Divine law and of free-will—two things evidently excluded by his fundamental principle.

'Spinoza thus reached, as the last consequence of his principles, the same monstrous maxims to which Hobbes had arrived by an opposite route. The English philosopher set out from the diversity of human individuals as naturally hostile; the Dutch Jew started from their absolute identity. The one excluded from the social theory the notion of the infinite element, the principle of moral obligation; the other excluded the notion of finite beings, subjects of these obligations; and both constructed the politics of force, which transformed itself in the system of Hobbes into pure despotism, in the system of Spinoza into pure anarchy.' Principles which necessarily yield such monstrous deductions as these must be as false, as said deductions are monstrous. Yet the Scepticism and the Materialism of our age regard the teachers of such principles and deductions as the benefactors of the rate. 'Spinoza,' says Mr. Lewes, 'stands out from the dim past like a tall beacon, whose shadow is thrown athwart the sea, and whose light will serve to warn the wanderers from the shoals and rocks on which hundreds of their brethren have perished.'

Spinoza's Doctrine of Being.

We now go back, from the moral deductions of our philosopher, to the principles from which said deductions were drawn. Descartes, as we have seen, affirmed the existence of two substances—matter and spirit. Here Spinoza took direct and open issue with his predecessor. Beneath all phenomena, says the former, there is substance, which alone is real. By a series of definitions and deductions, the validity of which no thinkers now admit, he deduced the dogma of the real existence of one sole substance, which he calls God. God to him, consequently, was the sole and exclusive reality; not God, in the Christian, or Theistic sense, as Spinoza himself affirms, but God as 'the one reality.' If we ask who, or what this 'one reality' is, whether it is material or spiritual, here we find ourselves in the 'palpable obscure of his system.' As far as he held any positive views upon the subject, we think that he agreed more nearly than with other philosophers, with Anaximander, who seems to have taught the doctrine of a kind of infinite ether, as the principle and cause of all things. God is substance, the one reality, and as such is infinite and absolute. So far the teachings of Spinoza are positive. 'There cannot,' he says, 'be many substances, but only one substance.' 'By God,' he says, 'I understand the Being absolutely infinite, i.e., the Substance consisting of infinite Attributes, each of which expresses an infinite and eternal essence.' The meaning of the words 'absolutely infinite,' he thus explains. 'I say absolutely infinite, but not infinite suo genere; for to whatever is infinite only suo genere, we can deny infinite attributes; but that which is absolutely infinite includes in its essence everything which implies essence, and involves no negation.' To understand this explanation, we would remark, that if we should affirm God to be infinite as spirit, we could deny of Him infinity in all its forms not applicable to spirit. This is 'infinite suo genere,' according to Spinoza. If, on the other hand, we say that God is 'absolutely infinite,' we include in our definition 'everything which implies essence,' that is, all substances that really exist, and no real attribute of any existing essence can be denied of Him. To explain the system of Spinoza is all that is required at this point, as the doctrine of Pantheism will be fully discussed when we come to consider the doctrine of Schelling.

LEIBNITZ.

His System Stated.

The system developed by Leibnitz presents us with another illustration of the tendency of error to develop itself from opposite extremes. Idealism always develops Materialism, and these, in their combined influence, give rise to Scepticism. So Spinoza stands at the ultimate of one extreme; and Leibnitz at that of the opposite one. The conception of substance lay at the basis of the system of each—the doctrine of one sole indeterminate substance, constituting the peculiarity of the system of the former—and that of an infinite number of distinct and dependent entities, Monads, constituting the ground characteristic of the system of the latter. From the à priori standpoint from which each determined his system, one has just as valid claims as the other, and neither, like all other systems developed from the same standpoint, rests upon any scientific basis, each and all such systems being the exclusive creation of the Imagination under the guidance of the logical faculty. Spinoza, for example, imagined a universe constituted wholly of indeterminate substance self-developed, and through the logical faculty gave system to what his Imagination had originated. Leibnitz imagined a universe constituted of distinct and separate individual existences, Monads, and through the Judgment, systematized the materials which the Imagination had furnished him. This is true, as we have before shown, of all systems originated from the same standpoint. The Will, first of all, elects the materials which shall be put into, and excluded from, the building; the Imagination then gives it its general form, and the Judgment finally perfects and systematizes the arrangement of all the parts. In the construction of the system of Spinoza, for example, the Will, first of all, excluded from it all individual essences, the multiple, and gave, as the exclusive material for the building, one indeterminate, but infinite substance. The Imagination then imparted to the structure its general form, that is, conceived what a universe must be, a universe constructed from such a material. The Judgment, finally, gave to the system a logically consistent development. The Will, in the case of Leibnitz, repudiated the doctrine of the 'All-One,' and elected, as the material for his system, an infinity of Monads. How the building then took form and logical completeness, has been sufficiently indicated. Here we have the identical method by which every system of Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism that ever took form in human thought was originated.

As an illustration and example of the validity of these statements, permit us to direct special attention to the world-renowned Monadic System under consideration. What is the character of the Monads of which this system is constituted? We select here the very concise and accurate description of them given by Schwegler. 'The Monads of Leibuitz are similar to atoms in their general features. Like these, they are corpuscular units, independent of every external influence, and in destructible by any external cause. But notwithstanding this similarity, there is an important and characteristic difference between the two. First, the atoms are not distinguished from each other, they are qualitatively alike; but each one of the monads is different in quality from every other, every one is a peculiar world for itself, every one is different from every other. According to Leibnitz, there are no two things in the world which are exactly alike. Secondly, atoms can be considered as extended and divisible, but monads are metaphysical points, and actually indivisible. Here, lest we stumble at this proposition (for an aggregate of unextended monads can never give an extended world), we must take into consideration Leibnitz's view of space, which, according to him, is not something real, but only confused, subjective representation. Thirdly, the monad is a representative being. With Atomists such a determination would amount to nothing, but with Leibnitz it has a very important part to play. According to him, in every monad every other is reflected; every monad is a living mirror of the universe, and ideally contains the whole in itself as a germ. In thus mirroring the world, however, the monad is not passive, but spontaneously self-active; it does not receive the images which it mirrors, but produces them spontaneously itself, as the soul does a dream. In every monad, therefore, the All-seeing and All-knowing One might read everything, even the future, since this is potentially contained in the present. Every monad is a kind of God. (Parvus in suo genere Deus.)'

How shall we account for the origin and representation of such a system in human thought? Logically no such account can be given, there not being a single fact known to man which, in the remotest degree, indicates the existence of such a monad, much less that the present universe is constituted exclusively of such monads. What fact of matter or spirit known to mind indicates that this universe is, in reality, wholly constituted of an infinite number of 'metaphysical points,' each of which, in its spontaneous self-activity, mirrors in itself the universe with all events past, present, and future, an infinite number of such monads, each of which, as such a mirror, is 'a kind of God?' There is but one intellectual faculty which can, by any possibility, originate such a conception, and that is, undeniably, the Imagination. His individual monads, his universe of monads, and his God-monad, are, everyone of them, a mere creation of a scientifically disordered Imagination. Had Leibnitz presented his system as a real creation of the Imagination he would justly have rank with Milton. But when he seriously tells us that 'space is not something real, but only confused, subjective representation,' and that his little divinity-monads are real existences, then we say, with truth, that his system is the exclusive creation of the Imagination utterly bewildered by a crazy science. Yet this system has just as solid a basis, is just as logically self-consistent, and has, upon scientific grounds, just as valid claims to our regard, as any other that ever has been or ever can he originated from the à priori stand point. Why, for example, did Kapila and Kant give us two unknown and unknowable entities? Why did Kanada, Democritus, Epicurus, Hobbes, and Coudillac, give us an infinite number of heterogeneous, or homogeneous, material atoms? Why did Vayasa, Zeno, Plotinus, Giordano Bruno, and Schelling, give us Brahm, the All-One, or the Absolute? Why did Gautama Buddha, Pythagoras, and Hegel, give us pure thought? And why did the Subjective Idealists of the Buddha Schools, and Fichte in modern times, give us 'the me?' And why did Spinoza give 'one indeterminate substance,' as the sole substance and principle of all things? For the same reason, we answer, that Leibnitz gives us an infinite number of little divinity-monads as constituting the universe. Each system was originated through the same method, took form through the action of the same faculties, and has, upon scientific grounds, the same identical claims, that is, no claims at all to our regard. We should suppose that the scientific world is and must be now at length fully prepared to suffer this à priori method, which, as the experience of thousands of years has demonstrated, can do no more than give being to a specific number of specific, but utterly incompatible and contradictory systems, each having absolutely equal claims with every other, and all in common no scientific basis at all—that this old method, which, by thus giving being to mutually conflicting and destructive systems, finally leaves the race in the icy embrace of a Godless, soulless, and morally death-inducing Scepticism— we should suppose, we say, that a method in Philosophy which can do no more than repeat such destructive contradictions and abortions, might now be permitted to sleep its 'eternal sleep' in the tomb of the dead systems which it has originated. As the system of Leibnitz has now no advocates, no further notice of it is required.

The Influence of Leibnitz in the Sphere of World-thought.

While Leibnitz originated a system which no school accepted as true, he had very great influence, through certain special doctrines which he set forth, in giving direction and form to subsequent German thought, doctrines which were accepted as principles in Philosophy. We refer to the important and valid distinction which he clearly set forth between contingent and necessary forms of thought, to his doctrine that space, and with it, time, is 'not something real, but only a confused, subjective representation,' and that each monad, through its' 'spontaneous self-activity,' mirrors forth to itself the universe. It was thus that such thinkers as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz furnished the principles on which are based the perfected systems developed by Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, systems which we are next to consider.

CHAPTER III.

KANT TO HEGEL.—SYSTEMS OF IDEALISM PERFECTED THROUGH GERMAN THOUGHT.

SECTION I.

GENERAL STATEMENTS PERTAINING TO THESE SYSTEMS.

Four individuals of German birth and education stand before the world as representatives of the four systems, in one of which Idealism, when perfectly developed, must take rank, viz., Ideal Dualism, Subjective Idealism, Pantheism, and Pure Idealism. Kant represents the system in the first, Fichte in the second, Schelling in the third, and Hegel in the fourth form designated. No thinker has since attempted to improve or modify, in any essential particular, any one of these systems as perfected by these great master minds. To abolish the form of the system, as developed by either of these thinkers, is a final annihilation of the system in that one form. To subvert the system in the four forms developed by these men, is 'a final dissolution of Idealism itself, leaving to it no hope of a future resurrection, unless it be in some country distant from Germany.'

One fact which is very peculiar, and as real as it is peculiar, here demands special attention. As soon as the systems, in these perfected forms, were presented, and the wonder of the first presentation had passed away, all interest in the system died out even among German scholars, and that before the great perfecters of the same had, all of them, passed to 'the undiscovered country.' Schelling lived to see the lecture-rooms, once so crowded, in the German Universities—lecture-rooms in which the various systems of Transcendentalism are expounded, almost utterly deserted of students. Idealism in its highest forms, as developed by its most illustrious representatives, is not like the creations of the great masters of art—living forms which command the increasing admiration of future generations, but a dead monstrosity which even scholars leave to be dissolved and pass away through its own inherent principles of decay and dissolution. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel left no successors, but commentators on the systems which their famous predecessors had originated, and these commentators now read their dull lectures to students who are in other rooms listening to other readers. If anyone supposes that there is anything of permanent interest, to say nothing of truth or utility in these systems, palpable facts evince that they are mistaken.

One fact which gave the system, as developed by those great thinkers, a temporary influence, was the general impression that Idealism had never before been developed in the forms perfected by these philosophers. Here the world finds itself as much mistaken as it had been in respect to the intrinsic character of the system. The system, in none of its forms, methods, principles, or formulas, presents anything new. All, as we have seen, are as old as Vayasa, Kapila, and Gautama Buddha.

Points of Agreement and Disagreement between the Expounders of the System in its Various Forms.

In contemplating Idealism in the diverse forms under consideration, we must bear in mind that in certain essential particulars Idealists of all schools fully agree, and that in particulars equally essential they fundamentally disagree. All agree perfectly, for example, that the external universe, as we apprehended it, has no real existence, and that neither Matter nor Spirit, Time nor Space, is such a reality as we apprehended it to be. The formula of Kant upon this subject, has been universally accepted as the necessary deduction of the system in all its forms, viz., 'We have therefore intended to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of phenomenon, that the things which envisage (behold) are not that in themselves for which we take them; neither are their relationships so constituted as they appear to us, and that if we do away with our Subject, or even only the subjective quality of our senses in general, every quality, all relationships of objects in space and time, nay, even Time and Space themselves, would disappear, and cannot exist as phenomena in themselves, but only in us.' All agree consequently that there is an irreconcilable and necessary antagonism between the spontaneous, natural, necessary, and normal, on the one hand, and what they call the scientific procedures of the Universal Intelligence, on the other. According to the former, to which 'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determined us, to "judge as well as to breathe and to feel" we apprehend Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space to be realities in themselves, and the identical realities for which we take them.' By the latter process, 'to which we voluntarily determine ourselves,' we affirm these same objects to be 'not that in themselves for which we take them;' and that not only the universe of matter and spirit, but even time and space, have 'no existence as realities in themselves,' but merely as 'subjective representations,' phenomena in what we call ourselves. On all these subjects, Idealists of all schools are perfectly explicit and identical in their statements. Indeed, if all these statements are not strictly true, Idealism, in all its forms, must be false. All these schools, also, fully agree in the doctrine that the ideas of time and space are developed in the mind prior to all perception, external or internal, that through these ideas the same identical thing, sensation, is made to appear, in external perception, as the exclusive quality of an external material substance existing distinct from, and independent of, the mind, and then, in internal perception, as an equally exclusive quality of the mind. 'Space and Time,' says Kant, 'are the pure forms of them' (our perceptions external and internal), 'Sensation the matter. Those' (forms of Space and Time) 'we alone cognize à priori, that is, before all real perception.' In two fundamental particulars these reason-ideas, Time and Space, cause the same identical object, sensation, to be directly and immediately perceived, not as it is, but as it is not in itself. They cause it, first of all, to be consciously perceived as the exclusive quality of a not-me, which does not exist at all, and then as an equally exclusive quality of 'the me,' which 'is not that in itself for which we take it.' Reason, then, according to the universal teachings of Idealism—Reason, which the system gives as 'the organ of necessary and eternal truth,' 'the vision and faculty divine,' this Reason itself is undeniably, or the system is untrue, 'like Satan, a liar from the beginning,' causing as it does, and that through two of its most fundamental ideas, Time and Space, the same object, sensation, to be perceived in two absolute forms, and in both as it is not, and not as it is. All the schools of Idealism, also, fully agree in constructing their systems from Will-data. Each school, when 'it begins to philosophize, puts itself into a state of not-knowing,' and then, 'by an act of absolute and scientific Scepticism to which the mind voluntarily determines itself,' ignores and repudiates all forms of knowledge but those from which its own peculiar system is to be constructed. We might state other particulars in which these schools fully agree, but these are sufficient for our purpose.

While all these schools agree in the dogma that sensation constitutes the matter of all our perceptions, they disagree in regard to the originating cause of the sensation, and this disagreement gives character to the special forms which the system assumes. Kant refers the sensation to an unknown and exterior cause, and this fact gives his system its dualistic form. Fichte refers the same phenomenon, the sensation, to the spontaneous and unconscious actings of inhering principles of the mind itself as its cause, and this hypothesis gives to his system the character of Subjective Idealism. Schelling refers the same fact to principles thus acting in the Infinite and Absolute, and hence, Pantheism. Hegel, on the other hand, affirms sensation to be a form of thought, and accounts for its existence by reference to the actings of unconscious principles in pure thought. As a consequence we have, with him, Pure Idealism. While all these schools, also, agree in their method, they disagree in their fundamental assumptions and in the materials which each selects for the construction of its own special system.

Promises and Professions with which these Forms of Idealism were Introduced to the World.

No intelligent thinker now doubts that Idealism, in all its forms, is in its essential principles and deductions utterly subversive, not only of religion, but equally so of morality. If there is no external universe, as the system affirms, there is, revealed to the individual, no realm of moral agents of whom he is one, and to whom he does, or can, sustain any known natural or moral relations of any kind. These are the identical deductions which the ablest Idealists have actually drawn from their own system. Yet Idealism, in all its forms, was introduced into the realm of modern thought with absolute assurance that evangelical religion and essential morality would find in these systems their proper home, and are here revealed as resting upon eternal foundations. Reason which, as we have shown, stands revealed in all the principles and deductions of the system, as a graceless liar and deceiver, was represented as the organ of religion and morality in the mind, as 'the vision and faculty divine,' as sustaining the same relations to necessary and eternal truth that Sense and Consciousness do to contingent phenomena. 'Only by means of this critique,' says Kant, 'can the roots themselves be cut off from Materialism, Fatalism, Atheism, Freethinking Unbelief, Fanaticism, and Superstition, which may be universally hurtful—finally, also, from Idealism and Scepticism, which are more dangerous to the schools, but hardly can pass over to the public.' We all know with what assurances of new health and life and immortal vigour, to religion and morality, this system was introduced into the sphere of Anglo-Saxon thought by Coleridge and his associates. Yet in no form in which the system is presented, do we find a personal God, or any personality possessed of any form of intelligence higher than that possessed by man. From no form or development, principle or deduction of the system does a ray of light fall upon the questions pertaining to the soul, to God, immortality, or duty, but 'darkness all and ever during night' encircles all these subjects. When the system, in its varied forms, principles, and deductions was fully understood by the students in the German Universities, the natural, consistent, and avowed sentiment deduced was, that inasmuch as they were, by their Philosophy, released from all duty to God or man, and from all concern for what awaits them in a future state, 'nothing remained for them but a merry life.' Here we have the system as it is.

What we Propose to Prove in Regard to all these Systems.

In former parts of this Treatise we have affirmed, and, as we judge, proved, that Idealism, in none of its forms, has any scientific basis whatever; that, in fact and form, it has no other basis than mere lawless assumption; that the material of the building, in all its forms, is wholly constituted of will-data, and that all its principles and leading facts are begged, just as the exigencies of the system demand. We shall now proceed to verify all these statements by a critical examination of each system in the order indicated—the order in which the different systems took form in German thought.

SECTION II.

IDEAL DUALISM.—IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804).

Postulate common to all these Systems.

The postulate common to all these systems is this, that something is real, and that truth, in some form, is, to the Intelligence, an object of valid knowledge. Something is, and something is known as it is. No one does or can doubt these statements, and no one professes to doubt them. The only question debatable or debated, in the sphere of scientific thought, is not the fact, but the extent and limits of valid knowledge. Nor does anyone doubt that knowledge implies the existence of a faculty of knowledge, on the one hand, and objects so correlated to said faculty on the other, that when the proper conditions are fulfilled, real knowledge of said objects necessarily arises. That the Intelligence is a faculty of valid knowledge all admit. The only question in difference pertains to its proper objects. All agree that the Universal Intelligence has apprehended Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space as realities in themselves, and as objects knowable and known, and that they are thus apprehended, because 'Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined' the Intelligence thus to apprehend these realities. Realism affirms that we thus apprehend these realities because the Intelligence is to them a faculty, and they are to it objects of valid knowledge, and that to deny this is equivalent to the dogma that no faculty, or objects of valid knowledge, do exist. The reasons are obvious and absolute. A denial of the validity of our knowledge of any one of these realities must be for reasons which do and must require us to deny the validity of our knowledge of any other reality, or of any truth whatever. Here (we say nothing now of the dogmas of Materialism and Scepticism, Idealism joins issue with Realism, and affirms that this universe, which is consciously perceived as an eternal and independent reality, has no existence out of the mind, but is wholly constituted of subjective states, sensations, made to appear as such exterior objects by laws inhering in the Intelligence. This vast and goodly universe which we behold, and in which we seem to dwell, and to dwell with a vast realm of Intelligences like ourselves, is nothing but 'sensation transformed' and made objective by the Intelligence. We do not know objects as they are, but, out of our own sensations, make these objects for ourselves, and by virtue of laws inhering and acting potentially in the Intelligence, make these subjective states realities external to ourselves. 'Hitherto,' says Kant, it has been assumed that all our knowledge must regulate itself according to the objects; but all attempts to make anything out of them à priori, through notions whereby our knowledge might be enlarged, proved, under this supposition, abortive. Let us, then, try for once whether we do not succeed better with the problems of metaphysics, by assuming that the objects must regulate themselves according to our knowledge, a mode of viewing the subject which accords so much better with the desired possibility of a knowledge of them à priori, which must decide something concerning objects before they are given us.' Here, then, we have the two hypotheses—Realism and Idealism—set with perfect distinctness before our minds. Either Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, that is, the universe which we apprehend, with time and space in which this universe is apprehended as existing and acting, are realities, and as such are known to mind as they are, and thus known because the Intelligence is to them a faculty, and they are to it objects of valid knowledge; or Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space have no existence out of ourselves, and would cease to be if we should cease to think, or our sensations should disappear. 'If we do away with our Subject,' says Kant, 'or even only the subjective quality of our senses in general, every quality, all relationships of objects in space and time, nay, even Time and Space themselves, would disappear, and cannot exist as phenomena in themselves, but only in us.' On these hypotheses, as thus confronted with each other, we have, in this connection, the following remarks to make.

General Remarks upon the Two Systems, Realism and Idealism.

1. We notice in the statement of Kant an important historical error. 'Hitherto,' he says, 'it has been assumed that all our knowledge must regulate itself according to the objects.' The opposite doctrine, that is, his own, had been distinctly taught ever since the dawn of Idealism in the Oriental world. The same was true of Idealism, as represented in the Grecian evolution, and in that of all succeeding ages. Plotinus, more than fifteen hundred years prior to Kant, thus announced the Kantian formula. 'With me the act of contemplation makes the thing contemplated, as the geometricians contemplating describe the lines correspondent. But I am not describing lines, but simply contemplating; the representative forms of things rise up into existence.' In nothing but mere details is there anything original in modern Idealism in any of its forms.

2. While the doctrine of Realism accords with the original and necessary intuitions of the Universal Intelligence, and with the fundamental facts as absolutely affirmed by every individual consciousness, this formula of Idealism is not self-evidently true, nor can it by any possibility be verified by proof. It is certainly not a self-evident truth, that 'the act of contemplation makes the thing contemplated,' that the act of perceiving a mountain, or granite boulder, for example, creates the mountain, or boulder, and creates them out of sensation.

Nor can this dogma be verified by proof. The earth, or ocean, is before us. How can any man in his senses imagine even that he can prove to himself that neither of these objects existed before he beheld them, and that as beheld, he himself created them from elements extracted from or perceived in his own sensations? Can he adduce an argument to prove this fact, an argument of the validity of which he is and must be more certain than he is and must be of the reality of the objects before him?

The gross sophistry and invalidity of all the arguments ever employed to verify this dogma are demonstrably manifest in this undeniable fact, that such arguments produce no conviction whatever, even in the minds of those who employ them. One of these philosophers comes before his class. His avowed object is to prove that 'contemplation creates the object contemplated,' and that in perception we perceive nothing but our own sensations. Do his arguments induce in his own mind even the momentary suspicion that a real audience is not before him, and that he is addressing and arguing with, and anxiously striving to convince, nothing but a number of his own sensations, which he has inwardly manufactured into a corresponding number of human beings? What, then, are these arguments but real conscious sophistries, 'tricks played upon reason,' senseless tricks, because void of all power to deceive? Would Kant ever have produced his 'Critique of Pure Reason' had he really believed his own theory? If there is no external universe, the idea of the human race is a chimera, 'a chimera dire.' When the Idealist denies the fact 'that there are things without us,' the term 'us' represents not only 'the me,' but a multitudinous realm of actually existing rational beings all exterior to 'the me.' Nor does he, for a moment, even while arguing the truth of his doctrine, doubt the actual and ab extra existence of this realm of rationals. Nor does he doubt that in all essential particulars he knows these beings as they are. Equally certain is he all the while that this realm of rational beings are, in common with himself, actual inhabitants of a real universe exterior to them all. No individual does or can find within or without himself the least ground for a consciously valid doubt on all these subjects. Where, then, is the value of his arguments? Arguments which do, in fact, produce no real conviction in the minds of those who employ them, must be sophistical, and should be so regarded, even though we should be unable to detect 'the trick played upon reason.'

3. There is nothing of which we are or can be more distinctly conscious than we are of the fact that our knowledge is, in all cases, determined by its proper objects, instead of the objects being originated and made real to the mind by the act of knowing. We apprehend ourselves, as capacitated to think, to feel, and will, because we are distinctly conscious of ourselves as actually exercising these functions. The same holds equally in regard to things without us. In respect to their primary qualities we consciously conceive them, as we consciously perceive them. The secondary qualities, as Sir William Hamilton has truly stated, we neither 'conceive nor perceive,' but apprehend as the unknown causes of conscious states of our Sensibility, sensations. In other respects our knowledge is consciously determined by its proper objects, and does and must consciously 'regulate itself according to the objects.' We can as readily doubt our own existence as really doubt the validity of the above statements.

4. As admitted by Idealists of all schools, a doubt of the fact that our knowledge does and must 'regulate itself according to its objects,' has being in the mind, not as a dictum of the Intelligence, but exclusively as a sentiment of Will. This doubt, as, in fact and form, stated by these philosophers, is a state to which 'the mind voluntarily determines itself,' 'a self-determined indetermination.' We may, as Coleridge states, 'compel ourselves to treat as nothing but a prejudice,' the conviction 'that there exist things without us,' but can never compel the Intelligence thus to regard them.

5. The reason given by Kant for adopting his hypothesis is obviously of no conceivable validity. We state the reason in his own words. 'Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must regulate itself according to its objects; but all attempts to make anything out of them à priori, through notions whereby our knowledge might be enlarged, proved, under this supposition, abortive.' The argument is simply this: On an hypothesis consciously true, philosophers had endeavoured, without success, to determine what could be made out of such objects à priori, that is made out 'through notions whereby our knowledge might be enlarged.' This certainly is a very grave problem, one which may, or may not, be capable of solution. The fact that, up to the time of Kant, it had not been solved, was no proof whatever that some future philosopher would not solve it. Suppose we grant the impossibility of its solution. What reason have we here for denying facts of the reality of which, and of the validity of our knowledge of which, we are absolutely conscious? Granting this, say Kant and the Transcendental philosophers, we 'can know nothing of these objects à priori.' We can have no à priori 'notions of them, whereby our knowledge might be enlarged.' Very well, we reply. Let us be content with our à priori, and necessary nescience, and concern ourselves with what we can and do know, and not 'compel ourselves' for the sake of entertaining certain à priori notions, to 'treat as a prejudice' forms of knowledge of whose validity we are absolutely conscious.

Had our philosopher, on the other hand, instead of taking this sudden leap in the dark, and that for no valid reason whatever, carefully studied the relations between the elements and forms of our à priori and à posteriori knowledge, he would have discovered, that while the common theory of knowledge is admitted to be valid, we can have the same degree of à priori knowledge of objects, and the same à priori 'notions whereby our knowledge may be enlarged' that we can have on his theory. According to his theory, knowledge à priori precedes in experience, and determines knowledge is à posteriori. The former, consequently, explains the latter, and the end desired by Idealism is attained. Let us suppose this order to be reversed, that the latter is originated first, and implies the former. In this case, knowledge à priori would, undeniably, be just as explicative of knowledge à posteriori, as on the Ideal theory. We have, also, Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, given as realities in themselves, just as given in the Universal Intelligence, instead of mere illusory subjective representations, as given nowhere but in the brain of a crazy Philosophy. We first perceive body, succession, events, and qualities, and then apprehend space, time, cause, and substance, as implied by facts perceived. In our perceptions, we have knowledge à posteriori, and in our implied apprehensions we have knowledge à priori. In this case, none can deny that knowledge in the latter form is just as explicative and expansive of knowledge in the former, as it would be on the Idealistic theory. Nothing can be more inconclusive than is this argument of Kant, the only argument by which his hypothesis has or can have the remotest appearance of validity.

6. Our final remark is, that it now becomes absolutely evident that Idealism has no scientific basis whatever, no foundation at all, but a mere lawless assumption. The statement of Kant himself implies this. 'Let us, then, try for once,' he says, 'whether we do not succeed better with the problem of metaphysics, by assuming that the objects must regulate themselves according to our knowledge.' Now commences, not an intellectual, but will-compulsory process, a process in which by successive assumptions 'to which the mind voluntarily determines itself,' facts of absolutely conscious knowledge are ignored, treated as a prejudice, or accepted just as the exigencies of the predetermined system demand. This statement will be fully verified in all our future criticisms. We might, if we should choose, stop here, and validly claim that Idealism, in all its forms, has no scientific basis, and must be located in the sphere of false science, we having demonstrated that the system has no other foundation than lawless assumption, which is contradicted by the necessary intuitions of the Universal Intelligence. The importance of the subject, however, requires that the system, in all its principles and forms, should receive a rigid examination.

The Real Object of Perception according to Kant and Idealism universally.

All systems concur in this conscious fact, that in perception some object is actually perceived. The only question at issue pertains to the inquiry, What is this object? According to Realism, the object perceived is the real self in the exercise of the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, and the not-self, as an exterior object really possessed of the qualities of extension and form. To this statement Kant and all Idealists demur, affirming that the real object perceived is neither the self nor the not-self, but a mere subjective state, a sensation. Sensation, in the system of Pure Idealism, is given as a form of thought called by that name. In all the forms of Idealism, sensation is given as 'the matter' of all our perceptions, that is, as the real object perceived. Why has this specific and special state been fixed upon as the exclusive object of all our perceptions? We are no more conscious of it as such object, than we are of any other state. Nor is sensation in itself any more like what we consciously behold, than any other state—an act of will, an emotion, a desire, or some special form of thought. Sensation, as we are conscious of it, is no more like a granite rock, or a mountain, for example, than is an act of will, or the idea of space. Why, then, has sensation been selected as the exclusive object of all our conscious perceptions? No reason can be assigned for such a selection, but an arbitrary act of will, a lawless assumption. Space is undeniably as much like a granite boulder as is sensation, and the idea of space as really exists in the mind, as the sensation. Why are we not told that the idea, instead of the sensitive state, is the real object of perception? No philosopher can give an intelligent answer to any such question. In this respect, Ancient Idealism manifested higher wisdom than modern. The former simply affirmed that 'contemplation creates the thing contemplated,' but entered into no specifications. In attempting to specify the what and the why, Modern Idealism has fully exposed its native lawlessness.

The Originating Cause of Sensation, according to Kant and other Idealists.

'That all Cognition,' says Kant, 'begins with Experience there can be no doubt; for how should the faculty of cognition be awakened into exercise, if this did not occur through objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, and partly bring the understanding capacity into action to compare these, to connect, and to separate them; and in this way to work up the rude matter of sensible impressions into a cognition of objects, which is termed experience. In respect to time, therefore, no cognition can precede in us experience, and with this all commence.' There is enough in this single sentence, the first sentence in his famous 'Critique of Pure Reason,' to explain and refute his whole system. In his subsequent teachings, we are instructed to regard all à priori ideas and principles and necessary ideas, and 'synthetical judgments à priori,' that is, the axioms in science, as having no validity, as tests of what is true or false in itself, but merely relatively to our experience-cognitions. This also is fundamental to his system. Time, space, substance, and cause, we are assured, are not 'that in themselves for which we take them,' and the ideas we have of them have no validity for realities in themselves, and exist in us merely as laws of sensible intuition which have no real, but only a relative validity. The same, we are also taught, holds equally true of all reason judgments, the principles or axioms in science. In the sentence before us, however, we have a real fact given, the commencement of cognition, together with the absolute affirmation that this fact must have a cause. 'That all our Cognition begins with Experience there can be no doubt; for how otherwise should the faculty of cognition be awakened into exercise, if this did not occur through objects which affect our senses?' In this case, therefore, the principle of causality has absolute validity for truth, and if so here, why not relatively to all events? Further, if the principle, Every event must have a cause, is valid for truth, for realities in themselves, all the axioms must have the same validity; this and all others having, undeniably, the same identical, fundamental characteristics. The entire Transcendental doctrine of Kant and other Idealists relatively to à priori ideas and principles as a necessary consequence falls to the ground, and in its fall carries with it Idealism itself. There is no escaping this conclusion.

Our present concern is, however, the real doctrine or Cosmology of Kant, as indicated and presented in this sentence. Sensation is the fact with which, as he everywhere teaches, cognition begins, and this fact implies the existence and action of exterior 'objects which affect our senses,' that is, produce sensation. Here we have his doctrine of Noumena, the doctrine which affirms as the sum and principle of all things the existence of two unknown and unknowable entities, the subject which cognizes through sensation, and the exterior cause which produces the sensation, and thus 'awakens the cognition-faculty into exercise.' The question which here presents itself is this. Why did Kant assign to sensation an unknown cause, and that an exterior one? Why did he not, with Berkeley, attribute sensation as a fact to the agency of God as its cause, and thus give us for the event a known cause? Why, on the other hand, did he not, with Fichte, refer the same fact to causes acting potentially and prior to consciousness in the subject itself? Each of these causes as adequately accounts for the fact before us as that assigned by Kant, and is quite as probably the real cause. The most that can be said of Kant's doctrine of Noumena is that it is a mere guess in the dark. For sensation he must find a cause, and blindly assigns. as that cause, the first object which presented itself to his mind. In this manner his entire system is constructed from beginning to end.

The Law of Perception, according to Kant and Idealism universally.

That objects of Sense-perception, we say nothing now of perception in its subjective forms, do appear to mind, and are consciously perceived as real external objects having actual extension and form, is the common doctrine of all schools in science. Yet the only object really perceived, according to Kant and Idealism universally, is not any exterior object at all, but a mere subjective state, a sensation. How is this exclusively subjective state, a feeling, as all admit, having neither extension nor form, made to appear, in perception, as a consciously and exclusively external object, having these specific qualities? To this question, Kant and Idealists universally give this specific answer, and they give none other. Sensation is made to appear to the mind, as such objects, by means of the ideas of time and space existing in the mind prior to perception. We need not repeat citations here to show that this is the identical doctrine of Idealism on this subject, as none will deny or wish to deny the validity of our statement.

The question which here arises is this. Why were these ideas assigned as the determining cause and law of external perception? An individual who assigns a specific cause for specific effects must, to say the least, assign a cause obviously adequate and adapted to produce said effects. Else, he insults our intelligence. Now, in the name of reason, we may ask, Where is there in these ideas any adaptation, or adequacy, to act as such a cause? Where is there in them the remotest appearance of adequacy and adaptation to cause a merely subjective feeling, utterly void in itself of all the qualities of conscious or unconscious exteriority, extension, and form, to be perceived by the mind as an exclusively external object possessed of such qualities? We are not conscious of these ideas as producing any such effects; nor can we discover in them any adaptation to produce such effects. Time and space, as apprehended by the Universal Intelligence, and as expounded by all Idealists, are infinite quantities, and are necessary realities exterior to all substances and independent of them. How can the idea of two necessary, external, and infinite objects cause an exclusively subjective feeling, void of all-extension, to be consciously perceived as an exclusively external object, having any extension at all, and especially finite extension? How can such ideas cause different sensations, all absolutely equal, as far as the attribute of extension is concerned, to be directly and immediately perceived, as having this quality in different degrees? This Transcendental hypothesis has nothing whatever to commend it to our regard but its intrinsic absurdity, and presents us with another example of a blind guess in the dark. We will now proceed to demonstrate the fact that these ideas could not have acted the part assigned to them in perception, because they were originated in experience after perception, and could not have preceded it as pre-determining causes.

The Origin of à Priori or Necessary Ideas and Principles, according to Kant and Idealism.

Hypothesis stated.

The hypothesis of Kant and all Idealists on this subject is very simple, and may, in few words, be so presented that all can readily apprehend it. Some unknown cause acts upon the unknown subject, and thereby induces a sensation. On occasion of the existence of this subjective state, and prior to all perception of any kind, the ideas of time, space, substance, and cause, are awakened in the mind. These ideas cause this sensation to appear to the mind as an external object having, among other qualities, real extension and form. Thus we get the external universe. These same ideas also operating upon this same sensation cause the subject of it to appear to itself as the 'I,' the 'me,' a real subject exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing. Thus, through these ideas acting upon this merely subjective state, sensation, we have all our perceptions external and internal, and all our conceptions of the 'me' and the 'not-me,' that is, of the universe.

Further, as these ideas spring up spontaneously in the mind, they represent nothing real, and their objects have no existence but as mere 'mental representations.' As these ideas also, acting upon sensation, determine the forms in which it shall appear to the mind, all our perceptions and conceptions, objective and subjective, have and can have no validity for realities as they are in themselves. 'The things which we envisage' (behold) 'are not that in themselves for which we take them, neither are their relations so constituted as they appear to us.' 'We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and need not belong to every being, although to every man.' Here, aside from the palpable absurdity of assigning to these ideas the delusive functions ascribed to them, other errors of fundamental importance present themselves, errors among which we specify the following:—

Errors Involved in the above Hypothesis.

1. The first error that we notice is a psychological one of fundamental importance. The ideas of time, space, substance, and cause, as Cousin, in his 'Review of Locke,' has fully demonstrated, are in the mind, not as the chronological antecedents, but consequents, of perception. We necessarily apprehend space, time, substance, and cause, as realities whose existence is necessarily implied by body, succession, phenomena, and events, which we consciously perceive, and we conceive of the former but as thus implied. There can be no absurdity more palpable than this, that when an object can be apprehended and defined but with fixed reference to and as implied by another object, the idea of the former was in the mind prior to that of the latter. This error has been most fully exposed in other connections, with this undeniable deduction, that Idealism can by no possibility be true, because it must fall to pieces on this fatal blunder in psychology. To make ideas which could not have been in the mind until after perception, the pre-exitsing cause of perception, is to affirm that a cause acted before it existed at all.

2. This hypothesis of Kant makes the existence, in the mind, of these ideas an event without a cause. A mere sensation is given. But before its recognition in external or internal perception, with nothing present as an object of thought or perception, an apprehension of four non-existing realities arises in the mind, of space, time, substance, and cause. If we have not here an event without a cause, we would be thankful to any philosopher who will give us a definition of such an event—a definition which will not include that under consideration.

3. The exposition given by Kant himself, of the ideas of time and space particularly, are undeniably self-contradictory. He first gives them as necessary and infinite realities which must exist, whether anything else exists or not, and then, as we have shown, as mere contingent facts which have existence but in thought, and would cease to be 'if we should do away with our subject, or even the subjective quality of the senses in general.' 'We can never make to ourselves,' he says, 'a representation of this, that there is no space, although we may very readily think that no objects therein are to be met with.' Precisely similar statements he makes, and truly so, in respect to time. 'Time is a necessary representation.'—'We cannot, in respect of phenomena in general, annihilate time itself, although, indeed, we may take away from time phenomena.' He then adds, in the same connection, 'We can, therefore, only from our point of view as men speak of Space, extended Beings, etc. If we abandon the subjective condition under which we alone can receive external intuition, that is to say, the way we may be affected by objects, the representation of space means nothing.'—'On the other hand, we deny to time all claim to absolute reality.' Here we are gravely assured that the same things, and absolute opposites, are at the same time true, and not true, of the same objects. Here we have, also, a palpable example of the action of the Intelligence and Will in the construction of the varied systems of Idealism. To the Intelligence, space and time can be represented as nothing but infinite and necessarily existing realities. In the construction of his system, however, the Idealist, by an 'act of absolute scientific Scepticism to which he voluntarily determines himself,' 'compels himself to treat' this form of absolute and necessary knowledge 'as nothing but a prejudice, innate, indeed, and connatural, yet nothing but a prejudice,' On one condition only, we must bear in mind, can we be Transcendental philosophers—to wit, that we consent to compel ourselves to affirm absolute opposites of the same objects, and to treat, not only contingent, but even necessary forms of thought 'as nothing but a prejudice.'

4. The palpable absurdities necessarily involved in this hypothesis, present the last of its characteristics to which we would direct attention. If time and space are not realities in themselves, but are only 'mental representations' in ourselves, then there can by no possibility be any such thing as extended and movable objects, or any real changes in the experience of any being. This necessary deduction from the essential principles of their system is openly admitted, and affirmed as true, by Kant and Idealists of all schools. 'In space,' says Kant, 'considered in itself, there is nothing movable.' 'If I myself could envisage myself, or if any other being (could envisage) me without this condition of sensibility, the self-same determinations which we represent to ourselves as changes would then afford us a cognition in which the representation of time, and consequently also of change, would not at all occur.' If anyone will 'compel himself to treat himself'—he cannot think himself—as never having had any really successive changes in his inward or outward experience, he must, 'when be begins to philosophize, put himself so far 'into a state of not-knowing,' as no longer to 'be in himself, but beside himself.'

Kant's Doctrine of Analytical and Synthetical Judgments.

Upon the validity of his distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments, and upon that of his special exposition of the same, Kant bases the entire claims of his system.

Kant's Definition of these Judgments.

We will give our philosopher's definition of these judgments in his own words. 'In all judgments,' he says, 'wherein the relationship of a subject to a predicate is thought (if I only consider the affirmative, as the application to the negative is afterwards easy), this relationship is possible in two ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject B, as something which is contained in the conception A (in a covert manner), or B lies completely out of the conception A, although it stands in connection with it. In the first case I name the judgment analytical, in the other synthetical.'

He then goes on to show, and that most conclusively, that there do exist in the mind many judgments of this second class—judgments which possess universal and necessary self-evident validity. Such judgments he denominates 'synthetical judgments à priori.' So far, with immaterial exceptions, we fully agree with this great thinker. With him we fully agree, also, that all the axioms in all the sciences are of this character.

The Fundamental Problem in Philosophy according to Kant.

Having defined judgments of this class, and having demonstrated the existence of such judgments in the mind, he then presents this as the fundamental problem in science—to wit, 'How are Synthetical Judgments à priori possible?'—'Upon the solution of this problem,' he adds, 'or upon a satisfactory proof that the possibility which it longs to know explained, cannot at all, in fact, take place, depends now whether Metaphysic falls or stands.' Again he says, 'All metaphysicians consequently are solemnly and legally suspended from their occupations till they shall have answered in a satisfactory manner the question, How are synthetic cognitions à priori possible? For in the answer to it, the only credential which they must show when they have anything to bring us in the name of pure reason consists; if, however, they do not possess it, they can expect nothing else than to be, without farther inquiry, dismissed by reasonable people who have already been so often deceived.' So far we are at one with Kant, and we have here his express authority for affirming that if he has failed to solve this problem, and especially, if he has given a totally false solution of it, 'reasonable people' are bound, 'with out further inquiry,' to repudiate his system. We also admit that if we fail to give what 'reasonable people' are bound to accept as the true solution, our system should be dismissed in a similar manner. To impress the reader with the fact that we do not over-estimate the importance of this problem in itself, nor its importance in Kant's estimation, we again cite his words. 'It may be said that the whole Transcendental Philosophy, which necessarily precedes all Metaphysics, is nothing but the complete solution of the problem here propounded.' Let us now compare the two solutions under consideration.

Kant's, as Contrasted with the True Solution of this Problem.

In critically noticing these synthetical judgments à priori of Kant, the axioms in all the sciences, such as, Body implies space, Succession implies time, Events imply a cause, Phenomena imply substance, and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, two fundamental facts will be observed, namely, that in such judgments the subject represents a fact of perception—a contingent idea, as those of body, succession, quality, and events, and that the predicate represents a reality necessarily implied by the fact perceived, or a necessary idea, as those of space, time, cause, and substance; and that, in all cases, consequently, the subject implies the predicate, that is, the reality represented by the subject cannot be conceived of as possibly existing without supposing the existence of the reality represented by the predicate. If, for example, body does exist, space must exist, the existence of the former being conceivable but upon the condition that the latter does exist. The same holds true in all other cases. This, then, is the fixed and immutable relation existing between the subject and predicate in all 'synthetical judgments à priori,' that is, in the axioms in all the sciences—to wit, the subject, in the sense explained, implies the predicate. On no other conditions, as we have shown elsewhere, can such judgments possess self-evident, universal and necessary validity. Such judgments, as Kant affirms, do exist in the mind, and do lie at the basis of all the sciences. How shall we account for their existence and peculiar characteristics? This is the problem upon the solution of which, as he affirms and as all must admit, the Transcendental Philosophy must stand or fall. The same, we admit, holds true of Realism. The system which fails, and necessarily fails, to solve this problem, or presents a false solution, and can present no other, must be false. The system, on the other hand, which presents the real and valid solution must be true.

Kant's Solution.

What is the solution, and the only solution, presented by Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy? It is this. On occasion of the mere existence of sensation prior to all perception external or internal, and to 'all real impressions, by which we are affected by objects,' and in the total absence of all realities to which these, or any other ideas, are applicable, there spontaneously arise in the mind, through the action of Reason, the ideas of space, time, substance, and cause; and these ideas thus originated, acting upon the sensation, cause it to appear in external perception, as an exterior object having real extension and form, and other material qualities. As these ideas thus causelessly arise in the mind, they do and can represent nothing real in itself, and must be regarded as nothing but 'mental representations.' As these ideas determine our perceptions, and thus originate their objects, 'the things which we envisage' (perceive) 'are not (and cannot be), that in themselves for which we take them, neither are their relationships so constituted as they appear to us.' Yet there would be a universal and necessary connection perceived to exist between these ideas, as causes, and their determined ideal objects, as effects. Hence, our 'synthetical judgments à priori,' such as, Body implies space, Succession implies time, Phenomena imply substance, Events imply a cause, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, etc. 'The problem,' says Kant, 'is therefore solved.' 'We readily apprehend,' he affirms, 'not only how these judgments are originated in the Intelligence, but also why they are applicable to, and explicative of, all facts of experience.' In answer to the question, 'How can an intuition of the object precede the object?' he says: 'Were intuition of such a nature as to represent things as they are in themselves, no intuition à priori would have place; it (intuition) were always empirical.'—'It therefore is only possible in one way for my intuition to precede the reality of the object, and to have place as cognition à priori.'—'Were Time, therefore (and thus also Space), not a mere form of your intuition, which contains conditions à priori, under which alone things can be external objects for you, which, without these subjective conditions, are nothing in themselves, you could not decide anything at all à priori with respect to external objects synthetically.' The argument of Kant is this: We can account for the existence in thought of 'synthetical judgments à priori,' and for their known relations to facts of experience, but upon one hypothesis, that which he and Transcendental philosophers have proposed. Therefore, that Philosophy is true, and all other systems false. On this solution of the problem under consideration, we remark, in general, that should another solution, equally explicable of all the facts of the case, be presented, all logical consequence would be taken from this Transcendental solution, though neither of them could be proved true, we, in such case, being left in the embrace of Scepticism. If, on the other hand, this Transcendental solution shall be proved false, and the opposite one true, then Transcendentalism itself stands revealed as a system of fundamental error, and that opposite system as true. On this Kantian and Transcendental solution, we remark specifically:

1. It rests, as we have already demonstrated, upon a fundamental psychological error. The ideas of time, space, substance, and cause, do not, in fact, precede but succeed experience, that is, 'external and internal perception.' We first perceive body, succession, phenomena, and events, and then apprehend space, time, substance, and cause, as implied by what we perceive. The opposite doctrine, the Transcendental, is absolutely self-contradictory and absurd. None will affirm that we have, or can have, a conception of body, succession, phenomena, and events, before we actually perceive them. Much less can we apprehend them in their general, before we have perceived them in their individual forms. The term 'events,' for example, represents a general conception deduced from the particular events which we have perceived. Now, the term 'cause' is utterly meaningless, undefinable, and of impossible existence in the mind without the apprehension of an event. The latter idea, therefore, must have been in the mind prior to the former. The same holds true of the idea of substance. We can conceive and define it, but as that to which phenomena or qualities are referred, and in which they inhere. If we first conceived of substance, that which stands under, and makes real phenomena, or qualities, and afterwards apprehended the latter, there would and could be, as now, no necessary connection between them, and the latter would not imply the former. The same holds especially true of the ideas of space and time. These realities are apprehended, and can be defined but as the places of body and succession, and as the immutable condition of their existence and occurrence. How can that which can by no possibility be conceived or defined, but as sustaining fixed relations to some other reality, be apprehended before such reality is perceived or thought of at all? There can be no more absurd and self-contradictory idea in Philosophy than is involved in the dogma, that necessary ideas were originated in thought before contingent ones, that the idea of cause, for example, could exist in the mind prior to, and independent of, that of an event, the idea of a maker, in the total absence of all conception of anything made, or to be made.

2. This Kantian and Transcendental solution of this problem does, in fact and form, involve the absurdity of an event without a cause. When a cause is assigned for a given event, a cause palpably unadapted and inadequate to produce any such event, we have, in reality, the absurdity of an event without a cause. Let us now carefully contemplate the case before us. We have given the fact of sensation. On occasion of its mere existence, prior to its recognition in consciousness, and to any perception external or internal, relatively to it, there springs up spontaneously in the mind the ideas of space, time, substance, and cause. There is most obviously, nothing whatever in the sensation, nor in its relations to the Intelligence, the latter not having been affected at all, to originate these ideas, any more than there is in empty space to originate real substance. To affirm that this sensation, in the relations assigned to it, induced these ideas, is, in fact and form, to affirm an event without a cause, we being absolutely assured that the Intelligence was affected, and called into action, when by hypothesis nothing whatever had affected it. Were we told that the mind first becomes conscious of the sensation, and then afterwards apprehends the realities under consideration, here would be something rational. These ideas, however, could not in this case act upon the sensation, and make it appear as an external object. Before this action, the fleeting and momentary phenomenon would disappear. Why did not these philosophers tell us that prior to sensation the Intelligence spontaneously, and when affected by no cause, acted, and thus originated these ideas, that they then originated the sensation, and finally caused this same phenomenon to appear, in external and internal perception, as 'the not-me,' and 'the me'? They would then, to be sure, have affirmed an event without a cause, but would have been self-consistent in their absurdity.

3. The necessary deduction from the above considerations and arguments, which we are bold to affirm none will even attempt to invalidate—the deduction is absolute—that this Kantian Transcendental solution is an utter and hopeless failure, and that with it Idealism itself must fall. This problem has not been, and cannot be, solved within the sphere of this system. There is no escaping this deduction. 'Reasonable people, who have been so often deceived,' will, therefore, 'dismiss' the advocates of the system, 'without further inquiry.' This they will do, if they shall follow the wise advice of the 'venerable sage of Konigsberg,' who has visibly failed in his fundamental argument. The true solution now claims attention.

The True Solution of this Problem.

Let us now suppose that with the total absence of all necessary ideas, the mind, the proper conditions having been fulfilled, has a direct and immediate perception of body, change, phenomena, or qualities, and of events, and that on occasion of such conscious perceptions, Reason apprehends, as necessarily implied by what is perceived, space, time, substance, and cause. We should then obtain all 'the synthetical judgments à priori' known to science, judgments such as, Body implies space, Succession implies time, Phenomena imply substance, Events imply a cause, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and all other axiomatic judgments.' We should have all these, also, in the identical forms in which they actually exist in the Universal Intelligence. Necessary ideas, and 'synthetical judgments à priori,' and all deductions in the pure sciences, would be just as applicable to all facts and forms of contingent knowledge, as on the Kantian hypothesis. Nothing in or resulting from implied knowledge can be incompatible with that by which the former is implied. All that pertains to the implied must, on the other hand, be applicable to, and explicative of, that by which the former is implied. In all the sciences facts are explained by principles which said facts imply. Nothing, therefore, can be said in favour of the Kantian solution which does not hold equally in respect to this.

We have, then, undeniably another solution than that given by Kant and the Transcendental Philosophy, of the problem, 'How are synthetical judgments à priori possible?' a solution, to say the least, as possible in itself, as compatible with all the facts of the case, and as explicative of the same, as is that given by Idealism. This palpable fact as undeniably takes from Transcendentalism all possible and conceivable claims to our regard as the true system. Unless it can be demonstrated that necessary ideas, such as those of time, space, substance, and cause, do precede and determine our perceptions, and that the existence in the mind of 'synthetical judgments à priori' are explicable' but upon that one exclusive hypothesis, then, as the profoundest Idealists affirm, and as all must admit, their system falls to pieces, and 'all reasonable people, who have been so often deceived,' should, 'without further consideration,' dismiss the system from their regard. Now we have before us, undeniably, we repeat, another solution of this problem, a solution, to say the least, just as practicable, just as compatible with all the facts of the case, and just as explicative of the same as is the one presented by Idealism. This system, therefore, falls to pieces, and drops from all claims to our regard, and that on its own fundamental principles.

The fundamental difference between the two solutions, however, yet remains to be stated. The Transcendental solution stands revealed before us as a demonstrated error. It cannot be true. That Philosophy, therefore, must take rank in the sphere of 'science falsely so called.' The Realistic solution, on the other hand, must be true, because it perfectly accords with all the facts of the universal consciousness, and is necessarily implied by said facts. The undeniable relations between the subject and predicate in every 'synthetical judgment à priori,' that is, in all axiomatic judgment, or principles in science, can be explained but upon one exclusive hypothesis, an hypothesis which absolutely accords with conscious facts—to wit, that contingent ideas are, in all cases, the chronological antecedents of their correlative necessary ones, and that the former always imply the latter. As the former, consequently, must be held as valid for the reality and character of their objects, so must the latter. 'The things which we envisage (directly and immediately perceive) are, therefore, that for which we take them, and their relationships are so constituted as they appear unto us,' and time and space, substance and cause, are realities in themselves, and such realities as we necessarily apprehend them to be. We must be false to all conscious facts, and to all which such facts imply, or admit the absolute validity of these deductions. Perception, we must bear in mind, does not succeed, but precede, necessary ideas in the mind. This we have rendered demonstrably evident, our solution of the problem under consideration, therefore, must be true, and Realism is verified upon strictly scientific grounds.

An Example of Fundamental Error, together with the Manner in which it and Similar Errors are Insinuated into the Sphere of Science.

The second sentence in the 'Critique of Pure Reason' contains a fundamental error—an error so stated, however, that its apparent harmlessness insures for it a ready admission into all but carefully reflective minds. 'Although all our cognition begins with experience, still, on that account, all does not precisely spring out of experience. For it may easily happen that even our empirical cognition may be a compound of that which we have received through our impressions, and of that which our proper Cognition-faculty (merely called into action by sensible impressions) supplies from itself.' Among the ideas thus furnished—ideas which consequently have no validity for the realities which they represent—are, he afterwards tells us, such as these, those of Space, Time, Substance, Cause, God, Liberty, and Immortality. In respect to the realities represented by these ideas, if any such realities do exist, 'facts of Experience,' he tells us, 'can afford neither guide nor correction.' All proof of the being of a personal God is thus, as he afterwards shows, taken away, and the term God is made to represent nothing but 'a law of nature.' We may say that God does this and that, 'if we mean nothing more than that the laws of nature do it,' Thus the face of God is totally eclipsed from the world. By a precisely similar method does Mr. Thompson, in his miscalled 'Christian Theism'—a work which has no other bearing but the verification of Scepticism in its darkest forms—conducts to this deduction in regard to Theism. 'We speak,' he says, 'of a certain relation to ourselves when we say of matter that it is hard. We do the same thing when we say of God that He is good.' By what process is the face of God thus utterly veiled from our minds? In the early portion of his work, he affirms that a portion of our knowledge of nature is, to say the least, furnished, not through facts apprehended, but through the mind itself, according to the method of spontaneous apprehension above presented. 'May not this faculty,' he then adds, 'be the origin of the whole? May not all the laws and appearances of nature be evolved from a spontaneous action of the soul according to the laws of its being? May not life be a self-consistent dream? It is a supposable theory of existence, and one not to be refuted by arguments, nor quite evaded on any theory of perception.' Where is the error here? In the false assumption that some portion of our knowledge, to say the least, is 'evolved from a spontaneous action of the soul.' As a matter of fact, not a single element of thought has been thus evolved. Analyze any conception, or form of thought existing in the mind, and you will find but two classes of elements in them, those furnished by perception external or internal, and those implied, and necessarily so, by facts perceived. Conception, in none of its forms, takes any elements from perception, but those consciously taken from the objects perceived, and Reason furnishes no elements but those which are consciously implied by consciously perceived facts. Outside of the elements thus evolved, no forms of thought can be found. This holds absolutely true of perception in its indirect forms, that is, perception through sensation. What is here given? In consciousness the sensation is given as it is in itself, and nothing more nor less is given. Through Reason a cause not known, but real and adequate, is given for the sensation. And the sensation itself and the reality of the unknown cause are all that is given. In connection with perception, in its direct and immediate forms, conception takes in nothing whatever not consciously taken from the object, and not furnished by Reason, as consciously implied by facts consciously perceived. There is not an element of thought in the mind which was not received through one or the other of these sources. Through facts consciously perceived, through Reason-ideas consciously implied by such facts, we obtain all our apprehensions of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, and outside of apprehensions thus evolved, no elements of thought do, or can, have place in the mind.

Kant's 'Antinomies of Pure Reason.'

The last hope of Idealism lies in what are called the 'Antinomies of Pure Reason.' Our apprehensions of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space can by no possibility be valid, it is argued, because said apprehensions are, all of them without exception, self-contradictory. Having, in former connections, sufficiently indicated the nature of the fallacies everywhere involved in these Antinomies, we might very properly omit any further discussion of them. On account of their fundamental bearings, however, upon our leading inquiries, we shall give some special attention to the subject in this connection. The question before us, then, is this. Are our ideas of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, each of them in itself undeniably self-contradictory—so contradictory that we are bound to regard them as absurd, and therefore of impossible validity? Idealism assumes that they are, and bases its own claims upon the validity of that assumption. Here the issue is joined by an absolute denial of the validity of this assumption. On what conditions can the existence of such contradictions be verified? On the following, we answer.

Conditions on which the Existence of such Antinomies can be Verified.

1. The ideas of these realities, as presented in the argument, must be strictly identical with those existing in universal thought. It is quite common and easy to give a definition to an idea—a definition which renders it self-contradictory when nothing of the kind really exists in the idea when rightly defined. In the case before us, philosophers must be held to the strictest account.

2. The argument must induce a higher and more absolute degree of certainty of its own validity than we actually possess of the fact of our own existence as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, of that of matter as an external object possessed of extension and form, that is, of the material universe immediately before and around us, and of the reality of time and space. If the argument fails to induce this higher and more absolute conscious certainty, we dementate ourselves if we admit, for a moment, its validity. We may not be able to detect the fallacy, but we may, on its failure in the respect designated, absolutely know that it exists.

3. The argument, we remark again, must induce that form of certainty which utterly and permanently displaces the ideas under consideration, and renders them ever after, in the mind's regard, conscious absurdities. When an idea has been really shown to be intrinsically self-contradictory and absurd, that idea at once drops out of human regard. The philosopher affirms our ideas of matter, spirit, time, and space to be in themselves self-contradictory and absurd, and presents his argument to verify that proposition. The argument appears sound and valid. Yet the ideas and convictions do consciously occupy, and necessarily so, the same place in thought and regard that they occupied before. What is the inference which Reason deduces from such facts? That the philosopher is, in truth, acting the part of the sophister—a juggler in science, who, in the language of Kant, 'is playing tricks upon reason.' 'All reasonable people who have been so often deceived, will, without further inquiry, dismiss such a reasoner, and 'leave him alone in his glory.'

4. If the argument has the same identical force against the doctrine that anything whatever is real, and that anything can be known, and especially if it proves anything, it does that all proof by argument is impossible, then we are bound to repudiate it as a self-revealed form of sophistry and absurdity. It is the common doctrine of all systems—a doctrine which must be admitted or nothing can be known—it is the common doctrine of all systems, we say, that phenomena, appearances, are real, and are known as they are in themselves. Suppose that on examination it shall appear that every one of these Antinomies has the same identical place in our conceptions of phenomena that it has in our ideas of matter, spirit, time, and space. If we are 'reasonable people,' we shall infer that these Antinomies are themselves the Grossest absurdities, senseless 'tricks played upon reason.'

These Antinomies of impossible Validity.

The kind of contradictions which our philosopher finds, as he supposes, in these ideas is very special and peculiar. It is not this, that in them, as in all other cases of the same kind, the same thing is affirmed and denied in each of these ideas. This, on the other hand, is the form of contradiction. Take any one of our world-conceptions, and on analysis it will be found that if you admit its validity, two distinct and contradictory propositions may be deduced from it, and that with demonstrative certainty. As these two contradictory judgments cannot both be true, the idea which equally and absolutely verifies them both must itself be void of validity. Hence, 'the things which we envisage are not that in themselves for which we take them.' If what is here affirmed of these ideas is true, the Transcendental deduction in respect to them must be valid. What are the facts of the case?

In reply, we would remark in general, that we have this absolute proof of the utterly sophistical character of the entire argument by which these Antinomies are professedly verified, that in no mind, not even in that of the reasoner who employs it, does this argument produce conviction. When we have most carefully studied these Antinomies and as carefully weighed the argument by which they are professedly verified, our real apprehensions and convictions in regard to Mind and Matter, Time and Space, remain just what and as they were before. Doubt on this subject can have place in the mind but by an act of will, a 'Scepticism to which we voluntarily determine ourselves.' His own argument never for a moment induced in the mind of Kant himself a doubt of his own personal existence, or of the reality of the visible universe around him, a universe verily inhabited by a vast realm of rational beings like himself. This Kant and all other philosophers fully admit. 'It inheres in Reason,' he tells us, to believe in the absolute validity of our world-conceptions. That belief, we are assured, 'remains proof against all grounds and arguments.' The reason is obvious, and has been correctly stated by Mr. Herbert Spencer. An attempt is made to invalidate original intuitions by a series of dependent propositions, not one of which possesses greater certainty than the single proposition to be disproved.'

Another fundamental reason why these arguments fail to induce conviction is this. When we most carefully reflect upon each of the ideas under consideration, those of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, we are conscious of no appearance of self-contradiction in anyone of them, nor of any appearance of incompatibility between anyone and any other of them. The attempt to prove the existence of such contradiction in any one of them, or of the relation of incompatibility between them, intuitively impresses the mind as an attempt to realize the palpably absurd, like an attempt to prove to us the existence of a dark cloud between us and the noon-day sun, when not a solitary cloud is visible above the horizon. We look at the argument. It seems unanswerable. We turn back to the idea, and all appearance of the professedly demonstrated contradiction disappears. 'Reasonable people' hence conclude that they have been perplexed and puzzled by a very ingenious 'trick played upon Reason.'

When we carefully analyze these ideas just as they exist in thought, we become absolutely conscious of the total absence of all appearance even of contradiction in them. Our ideas of space and time are, each of them, absolutely simple ideas. This all admit. Now the perfectly simple cannot contradict itself, and it is a contradiction to suppose it can. Nor can the absolutely simple give rise to contradictory deductions, or be incompatible with any other reality.

Matter is thought as a substance existing in space, and occupying space. There is, undeniably, nothing here self-contradictory, or incompatible with the idea of space. Body is thought as a compound constituted, not of compounded, but of absolutely simple parts. Here is the palpable absence of all, even seeming, contradiction. The compound necessarily implies the simple, and the implied and that which it implies cannot be incompatible with one another. In our idea of matter, then, as the reality actually thought by the mind, all seeming proof to the contrary notwithstanding, there can be by no possibility anything self-contradictory.

Mind is apprehended as distinct from, and unlike, but not as incompatible with, matter. The idea that one exists does not render, even antecedently probable, the non-existence of the other, and the idea that both exist together is just as possible and probable in itself as that either exists alone. Nor is there anything in our ideas of either of these substances, or in those of both together, even apparently contradictory to our ideas of time and space. Consider now the judgments, I think, I feel, I will. Is there any thing self-contradictory here? Does our idea of the I contradict any of its attributes? Are these attributes incompatible with one another? We do and cannot but know, that there is here the utter absence of all contradiction, even in appearance. Hence, when an argument seemingly evinces the presence of such contradiction, that argument does and must fall to pieces upon such absolutely conscious facts.

The absurdity of the attempt to prove the invalidity of our knowledge of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, by argument, fully evinces how deeply schooled certain philosophers are 'in the privilege of absurdity.' Take, as an example, Kant's statement of the utter impossibility of believing in the non-reality of space. 'Take away from your Experience—conceptious of body—everything which is empirical therein—still the Space remains which it (the body), that has now disappeared, occupied, and this you cannot leave out.' In other words, it is absolutely impossible for us not to know, or even not to conceive, that Space is real, and is what we apprehend it to be. Yet, by an argument, 'a series of dependent propositions,' he professes to prove that Space, as we apprehend it, does not exist at all. In other words, by an imagined irresistible, he imagines himself to have removed, and annihilated, an affirmed immovable and indestructible. So much for our necessary ideas. Let us now contemplate his own estimate of the power of his arguments to invalidate our world-conceptions. 'Transcendental Dialectic,' he says, 'will thereupon satisfy itself with exposing the appearance of Transcendental judgments, and at the same time preventing from deception; but that (like logical appearance) it should, in fact, disappear and cease to be appearance, this Transcendental Dialectic can never effect. For we have to do with a natural and unavoidable illusion, which itself reposes upon subjective principles, and substitutes them for objective, whilst logical dialectic has in the solution of false conclusiveness only to do with an error, in the following up of principles, or with an artful appearance in the imitation of the same. There is therefore a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason, not one in which, for instance, a blockhead, from want of knowledge, involves himself, or which a sophister has artfully imagined, in order to torment reasonable people, but which irresistibly adheres to reason, and even when we have discovered its delusion still will not cease to play tricks upon reason, and to push it continually into momentary errors which always require to be obviated.' Yes, the immovable, the me and the not-me, the self-conscious I, and the world occupied by a vast realm of Intelligences like the self-conscious I—this immovable, when assailed by Kant's and the Transcendental imagined irresistible, appears, when the cloud of sophistical argument disappears, as it must—this immovable appears standing and reposing just where and as it was before, and all the Antinomies must be recalled, and gone over again, before this immovable can again be, for an instant, even seemingly moved. Such is the absurdity of imagining that absolute intuitive knowledge can be invalidated by 'a series of dependent propositions.' The philosopher who conceives that he can invent or adduce an argument of the validity of which we are and must be more certain, than we are and must be of the absolutely conscious certainty of our knowledge of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, must have become so disciplined in the privilege of the absurd, that it has become to him 'a natural and unavoidable illusion.' Let us now advance to a special consideration of the intrinsic character of these Antinomies. On this subject we remark:

Special Criticisms of these Antinomies.

I. Some of them are based upon false definitions of our world-conceptions.

We will select as an example of this class his second 'Contradiction of Transcendental Ideas,' and will first consider what he denominates the Thesis. It reads thus:

'Every compound substance in the world consists of simple parts, and there exists everywhere nothing but the simple, or that which is compounded of it.'

His proof of this proposition reads thus: 'For if we admit that compound substances do not consist of simple parts, then if all composition were done away with in thought, no compound part (and as there are no simple parts), none simple, and therefore, nothing at all would remain over; consequently no substances have been given.'

Here the idea of the compound body is identical with the same idea as it actually exists in the mind, and the proof is, consequently, strictly demonstrative. Let us now contemplate the Antithesis, which reads thus:

'No compound thing in the world consists of simple parts, and there exists nothing anywhere simple.' His proof of this proposition reads thus:

'Let it be supposed a compound thing (as substance) consists of simple

parts. Since all external relationships, consequently, also, all composition of substances, is possible only in space, so the compound must consist of as many parts, as just the space also consists of many parts, which that occupies. Now space consists not of simple parts, but of spaces. Consequently, each part of the compound must occupy a space. But the absolutely first parts of every compound are simple. Therefore, the simple occupies a space. Now, as every real which occupies a space comprises within itself a diversity of parts existing externally to each other, consequently is compounded, and, in fact, as a real compound, not from accidents (for these cannot be external to one another without substance), consequently from substances, the simple would thus be a substantial compound, which contradicts itself.' We have here more errors than we shall be able to enumerate, and will specify only the following:

1. No compound thing is of itself a substance, as Kant here makes 'the compound thing.' Substance is in itself simple, and incapable of division. Every compound is a congeries of substances, and is constituted of as many real substances as it has simple parts. The term 'matter' represents not one single substance, but many particles of material substances represented by a common name.

2. It is by no means self-evident, and is equally unsusceptible of proof, that every reality which occupies a space, must be what Kant makes it, a real compound. If this were so, the existence of matter would be inconceivable and impossible; for this substance, if it exist at all, must occupy a space. Kant does not know, and nobody else can know, that there may not be an absolutely simple, or a real substance, which does occupy a space.

3. In the Thesis the term simple represents, as it should, an idea of Reason—a form of implied knowledge. In the Antithesis, on the other hand, the same term represents, not a Reason-idea, but an Understanding- conception. In the first sense, the term represents a real simple; in the second it does and must, from the law of this secondary and conceptive faculty, represent a real compound. The compound necessarily implies the simple which Reason apprehends, as thus implied. If you attempt, through the conceptive faculty, to form a conception of this simple, you will of necessity combine into the conception many simples, and thus apprehend a compound. Here lies the fallacy in the argument of Kant to prove our world-conceptions and ideas to be self-contradictory. In his Thesis he employs a term in one specific sense, and in his Antithesis in another and different sense; and thus induces the appearance of contradiction where none, in reality, exists. Take any Reason-idea or form of implied knowledge we please, and attempt, through the Understanding, a secondary and the conceptive faculty, to form a conception of the reality represented by this idea, and we shall find that we have attempted the impossible, or shall form a conception incompatible with the idea. We shall hence conclude, either that the reality is inconceivable and beyond human apprehension, which is true only of this secondary or conceptive faculty; or we shall form a conception contradictory to the idea, and shall consequently, as Kant has done in the case before us, erroneously conclude that the idea itself is self-contradictory. Multitudinous errors of the most dangerous character are thus introduced into the sphere of science. The fallacy of most of the Antinomies becomes palpable at once when the simple touchstone before us is applied to the case. In most cases it will be found that the same term is employed, in the one case, to represent a Reason-idea, and in the other an Understanding-conception, and hence, unintentionally perhaps, ' a trick is played upon Reason.'

II. In other cases we find, not only the error above designated, but arguments either manifestly fallacious, or of no logical consequence. We present, as an example of this class, his 'First Contradiction of Transcendental Ideas.' The Thesis reads thus:

'The world has a beginning in time, and is also enclosed in limits as to space.' His proof of this proposition, in its two forms, is thus presented.

'For if we admit that the world has no commencement as to time, an eternity then has elapsed up to each given point of time, and consequently an infinite series of states of things following upon one another in the world, has passed away. But now the infinity of a series consists in this very thing, that it can never be completed by a successive synthesis. Consequently an infinite elapsed cosmological series is impossible.'

In respect of the second point, if we again admit the contrary, the world will thus be an infinite given whole of contemporaneously existing things. Now we cannot think the magnitude of a quantum which is not given within certain limits of every intuition.'

'An infinite aggregate of real things cannot be looked upon as a given whole, and therefore not as given contemporaneously. Thus the world is not, in respect to its extension in space, infinite.'

We have here, in the first place, an attempt to prove, by a totally fallacious argument, a great truth—the non-eternity of the present order of things. The question whether the world has or has not a beginning, is a mere question of fact—a question to be determined, in no sense or form, à priori, but exclusively à posteriori. The doctrine of an infinite series has long since been exploded as having nothing to do with the cosmological argument. The doctrine of the non-eternity of the world is neither proved nor disproved in the argument before us. Nor can we determine à priori whether the world is limited or unlimited in extent. The argument of Kant, in respect of both points, is utterly fallacious, because inapplicable to the subject.

In the use of the term think, we have another example of the error above elucidated. In one sense we can, and in another we cannot, think a quantum which is infinite. To Reason, the organ of implied knowledge, the idea of infinity is just as plain as any other. Through this faculty an infinite quantum is thinkable. But when we attempt to conceive the Infinite, in any form, through the Understanding, the faculty of finite conception, then the Infinite, in any form, is unthinkable. In his Thesis and Antithesis, in the case before us, Kant employs the word think, first in the latter, and then in the former sense, and thus again presents the appearance of a contradiction where none, in reality, exists. This Antithesis reads thus:

'The world has no beginning and no limits in space, but is, as well in respect of time as of space, infinite.' In proof of this proposition, we have the following argument.

'Let it then be supposed that it has a beginning. As the beginning is an existence, which a time preceded wherein the thing is not—a time must thus have gone before wherein the world was not, that is, a void time. But now in a void time no origin of anything is possible, because no part of such a time has in itself, prior to another, any distinctive condition of existence rather than non-existence, whether we admit that the condition of this existence arises of itself or through another cause. Several series of things can, therefore, begin in the world, but the world itself can have no beginning, and therefore is, in respect of elapsed time, infinite. As to what concerns the second point, let us first take the contrary, that is to say that the world, in respect of space, is finite and limited; it finds itself, in this way, in a void space which is not limited. There would, therefore, be met with, not only a relationship of things in space, but also of things to space. Now as the world is an absolute whole, without of which no object of intuition, and consequently no correlative of the world is found wherewith the same stands in relationship—the relationship of the world to void space would thus be a relationship thereof to no object. But such a relationship, and, therefore, the limitation of the world by void space, is nothing; consequently the world, in respect of space, is not at all limited, that is to say, in regard to extension, is infinite.'

This argument, to prove that the world has no beginning, is based upon the assumption that none but necessary forms of causation do exist. If the ultimate cause of the world is a necessary one, it must have acted from eternity, and the world, as Aristotle asserts, must have had no beginning. But if this cause, as Plato affirms, is a free and not a necessary one, then the creation of the world may have been an event of time. The argument of Kant here rests upon nothing but a lawless assumption.

The best that can be truly said of his argument to prove the infinity of the world is, that it is, in reality, an insult to our Intelligence. In his Thesis, as we have seen, he represents the infinity of the world as absolutely unthinkable. Here, in his Antithesis, he represents this same thing as perfectly and readily thinkable, and thus contradicts himself.

Then the deduction that the world must be infinite, or there would be, outside of it, an infinity of void space, to which as such the world would be related, is simply ridiculous. A Dutchman, when addressed with a similar argument, rightly replied: 'Veel, vot of it?' The argument of our philosopher, under his first Antinomy, is undeniably a total failure.

III. In two other affirmed Antinomies, the only additional ones adduced by Kant in addition to the errors above indicated, we have exclusively an à priori argument, where the argument à posteriori has as exclusive place. His Thesis under his third affirmed Contradiction of Transcendental Ideas is given in this form:

'Causality according to the laws of nature is not the only one from which all the phenomena of the world can be derived. There is, besides, a causality through liberty necessary to be admitted for the explanation of the same.'

The argument in proof of this proposition is a simple repetition of that adduced under No. I., the absurdity of the doctrine of an infinite series of successive events, a doctrine which must hold true, if there is the action of no free cause in nature. 'Consequently,' he says, 'the proposition—as if all causality were only possible according to the laws of nature—contradicts itself in its unlimited generality, and this causality can, therefore, not be admitted as the only one.'

No advocate of the doctrine of necessity would for a moment admit the validity of this, or any such argument, and the advocate of the opposite doctrine will utterly repudiate it, if he has any respect for such doctrine, or for the real argument on which it rests. The proposition before us, whether true or false in itself, has not in the argument of Kant even the appearance of being a verified truth, much less what he professes to have rendered it, a demonstrated truth. Whether there is or is not a free cause acting in nature is a question of fact, and not of à priori determination. We might as properly attempt to demonstrate à priori the age of the world, as thus to determine whether man, or God, is a free or a necessary agent.

The same remarks are equally applicable to the Antithesis under this affirmed contradiction. The proposition is expressed in the following words: 'There is no liberty, but everything in the world occurs only according to the laws of nature.' The following is the affirmed proof of this proposition:

Granted that there is Liberty in a Transcendental sense, as a particular kind of causality, according to which the events of the world might happen, that is to say, a faculty of beginning absolutely a state, consequently also a series of consequences thereof—not only will a series thus begin absolutely by means of this spontaneity itself for the production of the series, that is, causality—so that nothing precedes whereby this occurred action is determined according to constant laws—but every commencement of acting presupposes a state of the yet not-acting cause, and a dynamical first beginning of the action; a state which has no dependence at all of causality upon the preceding one of the self-same cause—that is, it does not in any way follow from it. Transcendental liberty is, therefore, opposed to the causal law, and such a conjunction of the successive states of effective causes, according to which no unity of experience is possible, and which therefore is not met with in any experience, is consequently a mere ideal thing.'

It is perfectly evident and undeniable that the term 'liberty' is employed in the Thesis in accordance with its general acceptation, and in the Antithesis in the Transcendental sense, a sense peculiar to Kant, and of which it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain any definite meaning. Granting, which we do not, the validity of his 'Proofs' in both forms, no real contradiction is proved. What may be true of liberty in the common, may be necessarily untrue of it in the uncommon, or Transcendental sense. His argument, therefore, under his 'Third Contradiction of Transcendental Ideas,' is an utter failure, and that for two reasons—the fact that the argument in proof of his Thesis is undeniably fallacious; and that, granting the validity of his proofs both of his Thesis and Antithesis, we have nothing more nor less than this, that what is true of liberty in one sense of the term is untrue of it in another and different sense.

When Kant affirms in his Antithesis here, that the doctrine of 'Liberty in a Transcendental sense' implies 'a faculty of beginning a state, consequently also a series of consequences thereof,' and so beginning the same, that the series shall not 'be determined according to constant laws,' he has fully evinced the fact, that his doctrine of Transcendental liberty is either false, or opposed to the idea of liberty according to its common acceptation. Granting that all events in nature occur, 'according to constant laws,' this fact is equally compatible with the idea that the First Cause is a free or necessary one. This order of events may thus arise, because God willed it, when He might have willed otherwise, or because He willed it, with the impossibility of willing differently. Nothing can be more evident than is the fact that the argument in proof of this third Antinomy is an utter failure.

His Thesis under his fourth and last Antinomy is the following: 'Something belongs to the sensible world which either as its past, or its present cause, is an absolutely necessary being.'

The argument in proof of this proposition is based upon the assumption, undeniably true unless we assume the Universal Intelligence to be a lie, that 'the sensible world, the whole of all phenomena, contains at the same time a series of changes,' and 'every change is subject to its condition,' that is, has a cause; and that 'every conditioned that is given in respect to its existence, presupposes a complete series of conditions up to the absolutely unconditioned, which alone is absolutely necessary,' that is, eternally exists. The argument is but one form of stating the self-evident and necessary principle, that the Conditioned implies the Unconditioned; and Granting the fact that changes are real, which Transcendentalism most absurdly denies, the argument has demonstrative validity.

Let us now consider the Antithesis under this affirmed Antinomy. This proposition reads thus: 'There exists nowhere any absolutely necessary being, neither in the world nor out of the world, as its cause.'

The reader will bear in mind here, that if this proposition is verified by the affirmed 'Proof' which follows, then the facts or phenomena of nature are as they are for no reason or cause whatever. The cause of these phenomena must, if they exist at all, exist in the 'sensible world,' as an inhering law of the same, or must exist 'out of the world.' To prove this Antithesis, therefore, is to disprove, not only the being of God, but equally the existence of any laws, or causes, in nature. Nothing in nature, or in the world of phenomena, is determined or determinable; nothing is to be explained, because nothing is explicable. Has our philosopher really proved this proposition? Let us see.

'Let it be supposed,' he says, 'that the world itself is, or in it there is a necessary being; there would then be in the series of its changes either a beginning which was unconditionally necessary, consequently, without cause, which is opposed to the dynamical laws of the determination of all phenomena in time; or the series itself would be without any beginning, and although contingent and conditional in all its parts, yet in the whole, absolutely necessary and unconditioned, which contradicts itself, since the existence of a multitude cannot be necessary, if no single part of the same possess necessary existence in itself.'

The fallacy of this argument, which is against the doctrine that the Unconditioned can be an inhering law of nature, is perfectly obvious. His argument, as far as it relates to the idea of a series induced by such a law, a series commencing in time, has validity, and implies the existence of an Unconditioned Cause of some kind. It is in the argument pertaining to the idea of a series which has no beginning, that the fallacy referred to lies. The series is one thing, and the cause which produced it, whether it be a law of nature, or an agent from without, is quite another. The cause may be unconditioned, and the resultant series, in whole, and in all its parts, may be conditioned. Kant identifies this cause with its resultant series of changes. If the series had no beginning, he argues, it would be, 'although contingent and conditioned in all its parts, yet in the whole, absolutely necessary and unconditioned.' Never was there an argument more fallacious. The Unconditioned is, by hypothesis, neither the whole, nor any part of the series, nor does it imply that the whole, or any of its parts, is unconditioned. This holds equally, whether the series had or had not a beginning.

Equally manifest is the fallaciousness of the argument that the Unconditioned cannot be a cause out of the sensible world. 'Let it be supposed,' he says, 'on the other hand, that there is an absolutely necessary cause of the world out of the world; then this cause is the highest member of the series of causes of changes in the world, and first commences the existence of the last and their series. But still, then, it must begin to act, and its causality would belong to time, but precisely on such account to the complex of phenomena, that is, to the world, which contradicts the supposition. Consequently, neither in the world nor out of the world (but with it causal conjunction), is there an absolute necessary being.'

In reply, we would say, that if the series of changes has no beginning, the same would hold true of the action of the cause which produced the series; and the cause did not, as Kant falsely affirms, 'begin to act.' It is only on the hypothesis that the series had a beginning, that the act of the Unconditioned producing the series must have been put forth in time. Nor is the act producing the series, whether the latter had or had not a beginning, nor the subject of this act, to be confounded with the series, or to be regarded as a member of the same. The cause, in its act, and in itself, is one thing; the resultant changes, or series, is quite another. The Unconditioned, considered as 'a cause of the world,' is not 'a member in a series of causes,' but a cause sui generis. All secondary causes exist as members of the series from which the Unconditioned remains eternally distinct. The contradiction, therefore, which Kant professedly finds in this connection, has no existence but in his bewildered apprehensions of the sensible world, its series of changes, and the Unconditioned Cause of the same.

General Remark upon these Antinomies.

We here conclude our criticism of these celebrated Antinomies. We reserve, until we come to consider the same class of phenomena as presented by Mr. Herbert Spencer, one of their leading characteristics. We refer to the fact that these Antinomies have the same validity against forms of knowledge which Kant and all Idealists and Sceptics, even, admit and affirm to be absolutely valid—our knowledge of phenomena. We do not and cannot know Matter, Spirit, Time, or Space, or any reality, as it exists in itself, but we can and do know phenomena. This is the common and absolute doctrine of all these schools. Now the Antinomies, as we shall show, have the same validity against our knowledge of phenomena as against our knowledge of the realities themselves. That the arguments by which these Antinomies are professedly verified, should have obtained, and so long held, so high a place in the sphere of scientific thought, and that on their apprehended validity, men, schooled in science, should admit as doubtful their own personal existence and that of the world and of the human race around them, to say nothing of the doctrine of God, duty, and immortality, most palpably evinces how imperfectly schooled scientific men are in the Logic of reasoning, and how deeply schooled they are 'in the privilege of absurdity.'

Conclusion of our Criticism of Kant and of Ideal Dualism.

We have followed this great thinker in his great experiment in science —an experiment in which he has 'tried, whether we do not succeed better in the problems of metaphysics when we admit that objects must' (not determine our cognitions, but) 'regulate themselves according to our cognition.' We have carefully, we may add, followed this thinker in every important path in which he imagines himself to have discovered the track of truth. Everywhere we have found his experiment to be an utter failure. The only deduction left us is that the method of this philosopher, and of the schools which he founded, is totally false, and that the systems produced through it cannot be true. It remains now to consider Idealism in its other fundamental forms.

SECTION III.

SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM.—JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. (1762-1815.)

Common Doctrine of Idealism in all its Forms, and the Logical Consequences of that Doctrine.

The common doctrine of Idealism is that the object of external perception is an exclusively mental state represented by the term sensation. To account for the existence of this state, Kant posited two unknown and unknowable entities—the unknown subject which experiences, and an unknown and unknowable external object which causes the sensation. Here Fichte finally joined issue with his former teacher. Science, argued the former, is knowledge systematized, and the system must be wholly constructed from what is absolutely known. Now nothing is, or can be, absolutely known but subjective states. To introduce as real the admitted unknown into our system, is to construct that system out of we know not what. Hence Fichte denied, or took away, the external object.' For the identical reason for which he took away this object, Hegel, with absolute logical consistency, took away the subject, and affirmed pure thought to be the alone real. In Hegel, or Pure Idealism, Idealism itself reaches its necessary logical consummation. The common doctrine of the system, in all its forms, is that in the Intelligence all objects and mental states exist as exclusive thought-representations, and these representations are all that is absolutely known to be real. Science, or knowledge systematized, will consequently be wholly constituted of these representations, and nothing else will be accepted as real. There is an absolutely necessary connection between this common principle and this final deduction. The error, if it exist and is discoverable, must be found in this common principle. The question upon the correct solution of which Idealism, in all its forms, must stand or fall, is simply and exclusively this: are we, in fact, absolutely conscious of nothing but mere thought-representations? Are these representations the exclusive objects of absolutely conscious knowledge? If this doctrine is true, then we must be equally conscious of all sensations and other so-called sensitive states, such as emotions and desires, of all acts of will, and of the subject which thinks, as well as of external objects, but as mere thought-representations. We must be conscious, not of the I, the subject which thinks and feels and wills, nor of feeling and willing, nor of any external object; but exclusively, we repeat, of mere thought- representations of such realities and facts. Is this a correct representation of facts just as we are conscious of them? Are we not just as absolutely conscious of the I as thinking, as we are of the thought itself? Are we not just as conscious of feeling and willing as of thinking? Are we not conscious of sensation as an exclusively sensitive state, and of external perception as an equally exclusive intellectual state? Are we not, we ask finally, just as absolutely conscious of a direct and immediate knowledge of the external object as possessed, for example, of real exteriority, extension, and form, as we are of thus knowing the sensation? Consciousness, as Sir William Hamilton affirms, 'is a liar from the beginning,' or all these questions must be answered in the affirmative. We are, in all intellectual states, as absolutely conscious of the self as thinking, as we are of the phenomena of thought. We are as absolutely conscious of feeling and willing as we are of thinking, and might as properly resolve thought into feeling or willing, as the last two into thought-representation. Idealism, in none of its forms, has any other foundation than a partial induction of facts 'to which the mind voluntarily determines itself.' What we desire to set distinctly before the mind here is the fact that we cannot take a single step with Kant or Fichte, with Schelling or Hegel, without palpable self-contradiction. We are now prepared to consider the fundamental doctrine or principle of Fichte as 'the great expounder of modern Subjective Idealism.

Fichte's Basis Principle of all True Science.

As science is knowledge systematized, Fichte affirmed that in order to have real science we must, first of all, find 'the absolute and unconditional principle of all human knowledge.' What is this principle? That of 'absolute identity, to wit, A = A,' was his reply. This principle, announced in another form, has been thus expressed: The immutable condition of knowledge is 'a synthesis of being and knowing,' that is, the subject and object of knowledge must be one and identical, and thus come under the principle, A = A. If what is really meant by this principle is, that in all really scientific procedures every step shall be as certain as the principle of identity under consideration, we should have a valid criterion for scientific deduction. This, however, is not what is meant by the principle. It is this. To have real science, the whole system must be nothing but this one principle repeated in different forms. Here, as we will now proceed to show, we have a fundamentally false idea of science, and the announcement of an equally false method in science. This we affirm from the following considerations:—

Critical Remarks upon this Principle.

1. This principle is of no logical or scientific consequence whatever, and no valid deductions of any importance can be deduced from it. In the proposition, A = A, A is not given as existing, or as not existing, or as possessed of any conceivable or definable attributes. The same holds of the corresponding judgments, Not A = not A, and it does not = Not A. Nor does there follow from any or all of these judgments together, nor would there follow from an infinite number of such judgments, what Fichte says does follow, that A is determined or limited by, or determines or limits, Not A. Things known to exist do not determine or limit one another. Space neither determines nor limits time, nor time space. The same holds equally and absolutely true in numberless other cases. Much less, then, can we affirm that any one unknown thing does, or does not determine or limit another unknown object. By no possibility can any science be founded upon mere identical principles.

2. All the valid sciences do, in fact and form, rest, not upon identical judgments, but upon synthetical judgments à priori, that is, upon self-evident judgments in which the subject represents one reality, and the predicate another, the former implying the latter, as, Body implies space, Events imply a cause, and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. The axioms and postulates in all the sciences are of this exclusive character, and without such principles science, in any form, is impossible.

3. Fichte, in developing his own system, just as far as he reasons logically at all, proceeds not upon his own principle of identity, but exclusively upon synthetical judgments of the class under consideration. All will admit, he argues, that the proposition A = A, is absolutely true, and in affirming this, we ascribe to the mind a faculty of knowing absolute truth. On what grounds, we ask, do we ascribe this? Not merely on the ground that the thought-representation of such truth, and the faculty which represents it, are one and identical, but that the former implies the latter. So it is upon the principle, not of Identity but of Implied knowledge, that he arrives at the fact of the existence of the mind. In affirming A = A, I pass a judgment, he argues, and in doing so, I affirm myself, as I think. Here again the reality of the ego is affirmed, not on the principle, that the thought and the I who thinks are identical, but that the former implies the latter. The being of the ego is given in positing the ego as the subject of the thought-representation, A = A.

Having verified the existence of 'the me,' not through his own principle, but through another and different one, a principle which leads to a system the opposite of his own, Fichte, in the same manner, accounts for the origin of the mind's activity as a knowing faculty. The object of perception external and internal is, according to Idealism, as we have seen, sensation considered as an idea, or sensitive state. On what hypothesis does he account for the origin of this state? Knowledge, as we are conscious of it, argues our philosopher, is consciously subject to constraint on the one hand, and to limitations on the other. We did not ourselves voluntarily originate this knowledge. We are consciously necessitated to feel and to think as we do, and to know what we know. Our knowledge, also, is subject to conscious limitations. How shall we account for these facts? We must suppose the mind to be, in its own nature, spontaneously active, and that this activity is subject to certain 'inexplicable and absolute limitations.' Prior to all conscious states, there is a form of unconscious spontaneous activity which is restrained and resisted by the principle of limitation referred to. The action and reaction of these two principles in unconscious counter agency induces the mental state called sensation. This state is intuitively perceived in the consciousness as a phenomenon of the subject, 'the me,' 'the ego,' on the one hand, and a quality of 'the not-me,' or 'non-ego,' on the other. Thus we obtain all our original perceptions external and internal, and all forms of thought existing in our experience. The fact of this original and unconscious mental action and reaction by which sensation and all subsequent mental action are occasioned, is not given as identical with any conscious state, but as the cause of the same, and as implied by it. Thus, every step which our philosopher has taken in the construction of his system, is in open violation of the principle which, in fact and form, he laid down as the sole basis of his system. He begins with an A, for example, and promises to find no deductions which shall not each be another A, identical with the first. Instead of this, he begins with an A, that is, with facts real or assumed, and then finds, not an A, but a B, which is, in fact and form, given, not as identical with, but implied by A. No step can be taken in science in any direction, upon Fichte's fundamental principle, A = A. Every true science in all its procedures advances on the assumed authority, not of identical, but synthetical judgments à priori. We shall perceive soon that this principle undeniably gives us a system the opposite of Idealism in any and all of its forms.

Fundamental Assumptions which, as Principles, Lie at the Basis of Subjective Idealism.

Two assumptions of a special character peculiarize Subjective Idealism—that which pertains to the origin of sensation, and that of identity as announced in this form, that the condition of valid knowledge, in any form, is 'a synthesis of being and knowing,' that is, that the subject and object of knowledge must be one and identical, and thus come under the principle A =A.

The first has all the characteristics of a mere lawless assumption, and nothing more. It is by no means self-evident that the spontaneous action of the two unknown and inexplicable principles under consideration would induce the specific state called sensation. The known cannot be thus deduced from the unknown. Then there are other hypotheses on which the existence of this state can be as adequately accounted for as upon this. The common hypothesis, which refers the sensation as an effect to the action upon our sensitivity of a known exterior cause, matter, as fully and adequately accounts for said effect as the hypothesis of Subjective Idealism. The same may be said of the two opposite hypotheses—those of Kant and Berkeley. The most that can be said of this hypothesis of Fichte's is, that it is a mere unverified and indemonstrable assumption—an assumption which has, and can have, no higher claims to our regard than many others which may be adduced, and which is by no means as reasonable as the common hypothesis.

Precisely similar remarks are equally applicable to this second assumption. There is but one conceivable condition of real knowledge which does and must have universal and necessary validity—the existence of a faculty and a correlative object of knowledge, and these in such relations that real knowledge necessarily arises in consequence of this correlation. What said faculty, objects, and relations shall be in any specific case, can no more be determined à priori than can the real distance between New York and Nankin be thus determined. The question what can we know, as we have shown in other connections, can be correctly answered but through another—to wit, What do we consciously know, and what is implied by the conscious facts of real knowledge? For aught that we can thus determine, valid knowledge can exist but in reference to objects external to the mind. Or such knowledge may be conditioned on a synthesis or identity of being and knowing, or may be possible and actual in all the forms designated. The doctrine that the condition of valid knowledge is 'a synthesis of being and knowing,' not only stands revealed as a mere assumption, but is palpably contradicted by absolutely conscious facts. If we are conscious of anything, we are absolutely conscious of actual knowledge both in its subjective and objective forms. Subjective Idealism not only rests upon a mere assumption, but upon one consciously false.

Fichte's Criterion of Absolute Knowledge.

The proposition A = A, he affirms, is an absolute truth, and must be regarded as such. The definite reason which he assigns is, that all men do and must, as soon as they apprehend it, thus regard this judgment, and this fact of universal and necessary recognition implies the existence in the mind of a capacity to know absolute truth. Our philosopher is, thus far, undeniably correct, and here we have an infallible criterion of valid knowledge, to wit, that whatever the Universal Intelligence, from the laws of its constitution, does and must directly, immediately, and absolutely perceive to be real, must be real, and must be 'that in itself for which we take it.' In other words, whatever the mind has as absolute a conscious knowledge of, as it has of absolute truth, must be accepted as true. To deny this is strictly equivalent to the affirmation that absolute conscious knowledge is no knowledge at all, that is, that A is not A.

Let us now, in the light of these statements, the validity of which none will deny, contemplate the following universal and absolutely conscious facts. In every act of external perception two factors are always given, and given with the same absolute distinctness and certainty, the self as the subject, and a distinct and separate not-self as the object, of the perception. The reality of each of these is affirmed with the same absoluteness, and neither is ever confounded with the other. Nor are the attributes of either, in any respect, like those of the other. Nor is the mind less certain of the reality and essential character of either of these objects than it is of the validity of the judgment A=A. Conscious certainty is as invincible against all attempts to 'remove it by grounds and arguments,' in the former case as in the latter. Within the sphere of the Intelligence not a solitary element of doubt does or can exist in the one case any more than in the other. In the service of false science we may 'compel ourselves to treat this knowledge,' and in one form just as easily as in the other, 'as nothing but a prejudice.' By no form of reasoning, or argument, or will-compulsion, however, can the Intelligence be induced to reverse its original intuitive judgment, that the self and not-self, the perceiving subject and the perceived object, exist, as real, really known, and distinct and separate, entities, any more than it can be induced to reverse the judgment A = A. Certainty is just as absolute in one case as in the other. Upon this immovable rock, the necessarily and absolutely intuitive knowledge of the Universal Intelligence, Idealism in all its forms, and with it Materialism, on the one hand, and Scepticism on the other, must fall to pieces. The perceiving subject and the perceived object are realities in themselves, knowable and known as such; realities distinct and separate from each other, or knowledge is not knowledge, the doctrine of Absolute Truth is a chimera, and 'Consciousness,' in the language of Sir William Hamilton, 'is a liar from the beginning.' Every conceivable criterion of truth, as we have before shown, conducts us to the same conclusion.

The Necessary Moral and Religious Deductions of Subjective Idealism.

The avowed sentiments of an author are one thing, the necessary deductions from his system are quite another. It is not with the moral and religious teaching of Fichte that we have now to do, but with the moral and religious doctrines and principles which necessarily result from his system—doctrines and principles which its ablest advocates have deduced from the same. The following paragraph from his writings sets distinctly before us that system as it is, and fully evinces the fact that we have correctly expounded the same. 'Try your utmost,' he says, 'to conceive an object as anything more than a synthesis of perceptions. You cannot. You may infer, indeed, that a substratum for all phenomena exists, although unknown and unknowable. But on what is your inference grounded? On the impossibility of conceiving the existence of qualities, extension, colour, etc., apart from some substance of which they are qualities. This impossibility is a figment. The qualities have no need of an objective substratum, because they have a subjective substratum; they are the modifications of a sensitive subject, and the synthesis of these modifications is the only substratum of which they stand in need. This may be proved in another way. The qualities of objects, it is universally admitted, are but modifications of the subject; these qualities are attributed to external objects; they are dependent upon the subject for their existence; and yet, to account for their existence, it is asserted that some unknown external something must exist as a substance in which they must inhere. Now it is apparent that, inasmuch as these qualities are subjective and dependent upon the subject for their existence, there can be no necessity for an object in which they must inhere.'

There are more errors in this paragraph than we need now to specify, as they have been already exposed. When our author affirms that 'it is universally admitted' that 'the qualities of objects are but modifications of the subject,' he has affirmed the opposite of what is universally true. In universal mind, qualities are consciously perceived as subjective and objective, and the two classes, but in the deductions of false science, are never confounded with one another. Qualities consciously subjective imply the reality of the subject. Qualities consciously objective imply equally the reality of the object. As the qualities are universally and absolutely given, the one class as interior and the other as exterior, they imply the reality of the perceiving subject, and of the perceived external object. To confound the perceived object with the perceiving subject, and to make the former dependent for its existence upon the latter, while each is given as distinct and separate from, and independent of the other, is one of the most palpable and absurd assumptions conceivable.

Our present concern, however, is with the necessary moral and religious consequences of this system. Its fundamental assumption, as we have seen, is that but one substance, or principle of all things, does exist, and that that substance is the self. The universe which we behold as real, and all the realities therein, are nothing but 'modifications of a sensitive subject,' and depend upon this subject, the self-conscious me, for their existence. If this system is true, I have no evidence whatever, but am bound to hold the contrary, that any rational being but myself exists. God is but an ideal Creator of an ideal universe, and owes His existence to the me in the same sense that the universe does. When the learned advocates and expounders of the system, in the German Universities, were accustomed to address their pupils to this effect: 'Having completed our generation of the universe, to-morrow, gentleman, we will generate God,' they said nothing irreverent or untrue their system being admitted. Admitting the system to be true, no deduction can have more absolute validity than this, that, self aside, we owe no real obligations to humanity, on the one hand, or to God on the other. Humanity, as it really exists—and our duties grow out of what we know to be real—humanity, we say, has no more susceptibility of good or ill, pleasure or pain, than the granite boulders which seemingly lie around us. To worship a God whom we have generated, is to 'make ourselves fools.' As Number One alone exists, all our care should be given to Number One, the self. Such are the necessary deductions of the systems, and such are the deductions actually drawn from it by its ablest advocates and expounders.

SECTION IV.

PANTHEISM PROPER. FREIDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH SCHELLING, BORN 1775 AND DIED 1854.

Pantheism Defined.

Schelling was the early and devoted disciple of Fichte, as the latter was of Kant. Each separated from his original teacher and guide on questions mutually deemed of fundamental importance. Kant, to account for the fact of sensation, postulated an unknown reality exterior to the Ego. Fichte found the cause of this fact in certain spontaneous and unconscious activities in the Ego itself, and thus deduced Nature exclusively from the Ego. On the assumption common to all forms of Idealism, Ideal Dualism excepted, that but one substance or principle of all things does exist, the finite Ego, in the system of Subjective Idealism, becomes the sole reality. For this subjective and finite Ego, Schelling substituted an objective and infinite Ego, which he called the Absolute. The real doctrines of the teacher and pupil are very clearly and succinctly stated by Mr. Lewes in the following paragraph. 'In what, then, does Schelling differ from Fichte, since both assert that the product (Object) is but the arrested activity of the Ego? In this: the Ego, in Fichte's system, is a finite Ego—it is the human soul. The Ego, in Schelling's system, is the Absolute, the Infinite, the All, which Spinoza calls substance; and this Absolute manifests itself in two forms—in the form of the Ego and in the form of the Non-Ego, as Nature and as Mind.' In the language of Schelling, 'Nature is Spirit visible; Spirit is invisible Nature; the absolute Ideal is at the same time the absolute Real.' In the system of Fichte, all individual varieties are but varieties of the one finite Ego. In the system of Schelling, 'the individual varieties are but varieties of the eternal One.' In both systems, nature and mind, matter and spirit, the Ego and the Non-Ego are one and identical. In the system of Fichte, Nature, or the Non-Ego, is but a manifestation of the Ego—the latter developing, from itself, the former. In the system of Schelling, both Nature and Mind, Matter and Spirit, the finite Ego and the Non-Ego, are but manifestations of the Absolute, and are identical with it. If we employ the term Nature to represent 'Spirit visible' and 'invisible Nature,' then Nature and the Absolute are one and identical, and the former equals the latter.

Theism and Pantheism Contrasted.

According to Theism proper, God is a free self-conscious Personality—a spirit possessed of all perfections possible to mind, and each perfection strictly infinite. This personal Deity is from 'everlasting to everlasting,' and sustains to all conditioned forms of being the relation of unconditioned cause. The organization of the Universe, with the order of events in it, is as it is, because he willed it, and would be different from what it is had he so willed. As 'we are the offspring of God,' and since God, as manifested to us, possesses every possible perfection which can demand the supreme homage and esteem of rational natures, our first and supreme duty is to render to God such homage and regard. As all rationals are the common offspring of a common Divine parentage, another principle binds us with equal absoluteness, viz., that we 'love our neighbour as we do ourselves.'

Pantheism, on the other hand, denies of the Absolute all personal attributes, and presents it as a necessary activity which can but develop itself, and must develop itself in the existing forms of 'visible Spirit' and 'invisible Nature,' and in no other. This Absolute becomes conscious of its own existence, nature, and activity but in the consciousness of man. In the Absolute, intelligence in no higher forms than exist in man exists at all. As 'visible Spirit' and 'invisible Nature,' with all their forms of activity, are but 'varieties of the eternal One,' the order of events in the Universe can be but as it is, and 'nought is but God.' As God, if worshipped at all, should be worshipped in the highest form in which He is manifested to us, and as man is the highest 'variety of the eternal One,' God, as man, is, according to this system, the only proper object of worship; and those two Pantheists who graduated from one of our eastern American Colleges, and who always made each other the express object of Divine worship when they met, thus saluting each other as 'Good morning, God,' and 'How do you do, Jehovah?' acted most rationally, and rendered the only form of Divine worship which the system legitimatizes. Nor, according to the necessary and immutable principles of the system, can there be any such thing as moral wrong or essential evil in the Universe, unless the Absolute is a sinner, man and all his activities being nothing but necessary 'varieties of the eternal One.' 'Vice and crime,' on the other hand, 'must be normal states of human nature.' We give the moral deductions of the system, not only as they are, but as specifically stated by its advocates and expounders. 'Holding as they do,' says one of these authors, 'but one essence of all things, which essence is God, Pantheism must deny the existence of essential evil. All evil is negative—it is imperfection, non-growth. It is not essential, but modal. Of course there can be no such thing as hereditary sin—a tendency positively sinful in the soul. Sin is not wilful transgression of righteous moral law, but the difficulty and obstruction which the Infinite meets with in entering into the finite.' Not a very worshipful form of being can 'the eternal One' of Pantheism be—a form of being which necessarily involves itself in conditions in which it cannot grow, but must manifest itself as cannibalism; lying, fraud, robbery, and murder, and finds unconquerable 'difficulty and obstruction' in its attempts to enter into its own varieties—the finite. Such, however, is Pantheism at its best estate. As Pantheism and Atheism, both in common, identify God with nature, one may as properly be called Atheism as the other, and both stand together at an equal remove from the doctrine of a personal God, who can be the only proper object of rational worship.

Bearing of Pantheism upon the Idea of the Existence of the Human Race.

Nor should the bearing of Idealism, in its fundamental principles and necessary deductions upon the existence of humanity in general, be overlooked in this connection. The world of perception, that is, the actually perceived universe, has, according to the immutable teachings of the system in all its forms, no existence at all, but as an exclusively subjective thought-representation. Outside of this representation, nothing, as far as this universe is concerned, is real. With this universe, all its inhabitants, rational and irrational, disappear, and can have no being but as elements of this thought-representation. If the Absolute has developed itself in other consciousnesses than my own, of the fact I can have no evidence whatever. With the Universe of perception, all rationals and irrationals ever manifested in any form to 'the me,' have for ever disappeared, being swallowed up and lost in this subjective thought- represensation in which, and as elements of which, exclusively, we repeat, such creatures are real.

It has been our fixed and sincere aim, in the above statements, to present the system under consideration as it is in itself. If anything has been misstated, we would be thankful to be convinced of the error. On the claims of the system to our regard, we present the following fundamental suggestions.

GENERAL REMARKS UPON THE SYSTEM.

I. All Rationals must intuitively and necessarily Recognize the System as Absolute Error.

No individual who is in his right mind can apprehend the system as it is and not be as absolutely certain that it is false, as he is and must be that he exists and thinks at all. We can by no possibility recognize ourselves as existing and thinking, without, with equal distinctness, recognizing ourselves as existing and thinking as inhabitants of a world external to ourselves—a world peopled by a realm of rationals like, and irrationals unlike ourselves. We can no more think of this visible universe, with all its peoples, as having no existence but as a thought-representation in ourselves, and as elements of such representation, than we can think of ourselves as, at the same moment, existing and not existing. We must bear in mind that if the visible universe is unreal, except as a thought-representation within the sphere of consciousness, the same does and must hold equally true of the human race, which are known to us, and representable in thought but as inhabitants of this visible universe. Now no man does or for a moment can doubt the existence of the human race. Hence he cannot, for a moment, really believe the doctrine of Pantheists. Every one, on the other hand, does and must know in himself that the system is false. To say that it is true, and to compel ourselves to treat it as true, is one thing; to think it as true, to banish from the Intelligence the consciousness that it is and must be false, is quite another. When Schelling, for example, was, in his lectures, endeavouring to prove that 'the great globe itself, with all that it inherits,' had no existence out of himself, did he, for a moment, doubt that he was in a real lecture-room, and was there addressing a real class of rational beings, like, but distinct from and in the exterior presence of, himself? We know that he did not. We know, therefore, that he never did, whatever he said to the contrary, really think his own system true. That system is false, or knowledge is not knowledge.

II. Pantheism cannot be Verified on Scientific Grounds.

Nor can this system by any possibility be verified on scientific grounds. The reason is obvious and undeniable. There is not a single fact known to mind, or represented in thought, a fact of external or internal perception, which, in the remotest degree, indicates the existence of but one substance or principle of all things. Every fact known to mind, on the other hand, as absolutely indicates the truth of the opposite system. Matter, as perceived and represented in thought, exists but as an organized aggregate of individual particles, or atoms; and mind is perceived and represented in universal thought, as an associated realm of Monads, or individuals. To advance into the centre of this universe of distinct individualism, and affirm that but one substance or principle of all things does exist, is not to interpret, but with brazen-faced impudence to insult the Intelligence, is not to systematize, but to confound and annihilate knowledge. Nor has any philosopher, since the world began, even attempted to verify this system by a process of induction and deduction. The method of Idealism, in all its forms, on the other hand, is exclusively á priori. Within the sphere of conscious facts, the only sphere in which any doctrine of existence can be verified, no philosopher professes to find a basis for this system. In other words, the system has no scientific basis at all, and cannot be verified on scientific grounds.

III. Pantheism Falls to Pieces on every Principle recognized as such by Idealism in any of its Forms.

If we assume as valid any principle postulated as a principle in science, by Idealism in any of its forms, Pantheism, in the light of that principle, stands revealed as a system of error. On the principles peculiar to Ideal Dualism, all know that Pantheism cannot be true, these principles peculiarizing the former system from Idealism in all other forms. The principles assumed as valid by and common to Idealism in all the forms last referred to, are three—that but one substance or principle of all things does exist—that the condition of valid knowledge, in any form, is a synthesis of being and knowing—or an identity of being and knowing. As Pantheism cannot be verified by the induction of conscious facts; as it must be false, if the principles peculiar to Ideal Dualism are true; and as it can be demonstrated that it is, as a system, utterly incompatible with the principles above designated—then it can by no possibility be anything else than a system of false science.

If, now, we bring the system to the rigid test of the principle first designated, the principle that but one substance or principle of all things does exist, we shall find ourselves absolutely bound by logical consistency and fidelity to adopt the hypothesis of Subjective Idealism, and repudiate that of Pantheism. While we have no consciousness whatever of the reality of the Absolute, we do and cannot but have a direct, immediate, and absolute consciousness of the real existence of the individual and finite self. If but one substance does exist, there is no escaping the deduction that, not the exterior and unknown Absolute, but the absolutely known Me, is that substance. There is no escaping this deduction, but by repudiating the known as unreal, and assuming the unknown as the alone real, than which no deduction can be more obviously absurd.

The same holds equally when we test the system by the second principle, which affirms that the condition of valid knowledge is a synthesis of being and knowing. We are absolutely conscious of the fact of knowledge, and of the finite self as the subject of the same. In no other form is the synthesis under consideration actual, or conceivably possible; and as but one substance, according to the system does exist, and the finite self is given in the universal consciousness as real, this self must be that substance, or Idealism cannot be true. So obvious is the incompatibility between Pantheism and this principle, that the former has never been deduced from the latter. Schelling himself abandoned this principle, and based his doctrine entirely upon the third stated—to wit, that the condition of valid knowledge is an identity of being and knowing.

On this principle, also, as upon the two former ones, the system suffers a fatal shipwreck. If the assumption, that the condition of valid knowledge is that the subject of knowledge, and knowledge itself, must be one and identical, then ideas alone are real, and neither the finite Ego, nor an infinite and absolute Ego, exist at all. The idea of substance, on the other hand, is a chimera, and Pure Idealism and not Pantheism must be true. No deduction can have more demonstrative validity than this. Our investigations thus far conduct us to this one absolute deduction, namely, that, tested by the absolute intuitions of the Universal Intelligence, by all conscious facts of external and internal perception, by all our immutable conceptions of matter and spirit, and by all the special and common principles of Idealism in all its forms, Pantheism stands revealed as a system of undeniably fundamental error. Instead of having any claims to our regard as knowledge systematized, what every system of true science must be, it stands distinctly and undeniably revealed as one of the wildest dreams of false science. Before the validity of this statement is denied, let the above exposition of this system, and especially the above arguments against it, be refuted.

IV. Evidence actually Relied upon to Prove this System.—Its Source and Origin Explained.

Pantheists of all schools, Schelling included, have, in fact and form, abandoned all pretensions that their doctrine can be verified by any form of intuition common to the race, or by any process of induction and deduction. All proof in every such form is not only abandoned, but another and totally different kind is substituted, a kind furnished, not by Reason, that being common to all men, but by a special faculty of super-sensuous intuition, a faculty not possessed at all, but by philosophers of this one school, and denominated, 'Intellectual Intuition,' 'Intellectuelle Anschauung.' This faculty, according to Plato, 'is possessed only by the gods and a very small portion of mankind.' 'The gods,' by universal assent, have been long since 'ruled out of court,' and this 'vision and faculty divine' is affirmed to be possessed but by the favoured few of the single class referred to. The idea of the existence of such a faculty as the exclusive privilege and possession of this small class, a faculty denominated by Plato Reason, and by Plotinus Ecstasy, did not originate with Schelling, but has been distinctly avowed by Pantheists in all ages since the organization of the Vedanta School in India. This faculty, being totally wanting among the rare generally, and even among the vast majority of educated minds, Schelling claims it, as the glory of his system, that it can be understood, not by the classes referred to, but exclusively by the few in whom the 'Intellectuelle Anschauung is inborn.' We need not repeat here citations to the same effect, citations formerly made from Coleridge and others.

This peculiar and special faculty, which is 'a kind of higher and spiritual sense,' 'through which we feel the presence of the Infinite within and around us,' the faculty which 'affords a species of knowledge, which does not involve the relation of subject and object, but enables us to gaze at once by the eye of the mind upon the eternal principle itself from which both proceed, and in which thought and existence are absolutely identical'—this special faculty, we say, which is inborn only in the membership of this highest of all the high schools in science, does not act at all through the faculties common to men, nor by any process of induction and deduction. All things, on the other hand, are a direct and immediate beholding. Originally the self-existent One,' is 'the only absolute reality' existent, 'all else being nothing but the developing of this one original and eternal being.' Through the 'Intellectuelle Anschauung,' the philosopher rises to a direct and open vision of the Absolute, as 'the sole ground and realistic basis of all things,' and thus beholds, not only the Absolute as it exists in itself, but all 'the potencies' which have being in the Absolute, and how these potencies operate in producing the varied ideal creatures denominated Nature—just how, in short, 'from the absolute subject, or natura naturans, is derived the absolute object, or natura naturata.' 'Unless we can disentangle ourselves,' says Schelling, 'from our unreflective habits of thinking, unless we can look through the veil of surrounding phenomena, unless by this spiritual vision we can realize the presence of the Infinite as the only real and eternal existence, we have not the capacity to take the very first step into the region of the speculative philosophy.'

The reader will now fully understand the character of the philosophic teachings of such thinkers as Schelling. They never reason at all. They never present principles and facts, and then draw from the same their deductions. They simply report to us their visions of the Absolute, visions real or imaginary. They affirm the existence in the Absolute of three movements, which they call 'potencies'—the potency of reflection, in which 'the Absolute produces finite reflections of itself, and thus sees itself objectified in the productions of the material world—the potency of subsumption, or 'the regress of the finite into the Infinite,' the movement in which 'nature makes itself absolute, and assumes the forms of the eternal'—and the potency in which the two movements are combined, and realize 'the reunion of subject and object in the divine reason,' a union in which God is openly beheld, 'not in his original or potential, but in his unfolded and realized existence of forming the whole universe of Mind and Being.' If asked for a reason for such teachings, our philosophers, as Mr. Lewes says, will remain silent for a few moments, smile complacently, and then go on to detail their visions through the Intellectuelle Anschauung. The reason is, that they have no reasons whatever to offer. They can only tell us what they have or what they imagine themselves, through direct and immediate intuition to have, seen and heard. It is perfectly evident that we, the mass of minds, educated and uneducated, in whom 'this Intellectuelle Anschauung is unborn,' and who, consequently, in the language of Coleridge, must have our dwelling places on this, 'the Cis-Alpine region of Philosophy'—it is absolutely evident, we say, that we, if we would possess ourselves of these treasures of absolute and eternal truth, must receive with absolute faith the reported visions of these self-affirmed divine seers. As they verify nothing by miracle, and prove nothing by argument, but this alternative is left us—to repudiate their teachings entirely, and trust the faculties we consciously possess, or to receive and trust, as eternal verities, these reported visions of the Absolute. Before we surrender our faith to the absolute keeping of these men, we having left 'the gods' out in the cold, the following considerations should be most carefully weighed.

1. We must bear distinctly in mind that, in different philosophers, in whom, if anybody, this faculty is most fully inborn, this Intellectual Intuition gives with the same absoluteness totally contradictory and incompatible vision of the Absolute, of his potencies and modes of operation. Take Plato and Schelling as examples. Both professedly possessed this special faculty, and both give us the revelations of absolute truth which they honestly believed themselves to have received through the beholdings of this 'vision and faculty divine.' Nor will any candid thinker affirm that Schelling did and Plato did not possess this faculty, and that in the latter it was not, to say the least, as fully developed, as in the former. What are the revelations of this identical faculty, if it existed in either of them, given through these two men? In Plato, 'in an intuitive manner,' and with a certainty greater than that which characterizes the pure and absolute sciences, this faculty affirmed the being of a personal God, the reality of matter and finite spirit, and of time and space, together with the doctrine of Immortality and Retribution. In Schelling, this identical faculty absolutely denied all these, and affirmed the self-existent One to be the only absolute reality, to be 'the sole ground and realistic basis of all things.' If we admit the validity of the absolute revelations of this faculty through Plato, we must deny all its equally absolute revelations through Schelling, and this, when the evidence on both sides is absolutely equal. We must utterly repudiate the validity of the faculty in both, or believe without a reason. So in all other cases.

2. As we have no means, by visions of our own, to test the validity of these reported revelations, we should dementate ourselves, and involve ourselves in the greatest conceivable folly and presumption, if we should repudiate Plato on the one hand, and surrender our faith to the absolute and unquestioned keeping of Schelling, on the other, that is, embrace the doctrine of Pantheism, unless we have more absolute evidence of the infallibility of Schelling and his co-seers, than we have of our own personal existence, and that of the universe, and of the human race around us. We cannot, as we have seen, arrive at this doctrine as a truth of intuition, or by any process of induction and deduction. Nor are we possessed of 'the Intellectuelle Anschauung.' We must, then, repudiate Pantheism, or deny intellectual intuition as it affirms absolute truth through Plato and his school, on the one hand, denying also all truth as revealed to us through our own faculties of intuition and induction and deduction on the other, and affirm as absolutely infallible this same 'Intellectuelle Anschauung,' as it exists and acts in Schelling and his school. Men who utterly discredit Plato, and Christ, and the necessary intuitions and judgments of their own faculties, yet repose absolute trust in the unverified revelations of Vayasa, Pythagoras, Zeno, Plotinus, and Schelling, regard themselves as the high representatives of Science, Philosophy, and Mental Independence. It is some consolation to reflect that no class of beings but men 'enjoy the privilege of absurdity.'

3. The absurdity of these reported revelations obtained through this 'Intellectuelle Anschauung,' is too palpable and monstrous to command for a moment the belief of reflective minds. What are these revelations? By direct and immediate 'spiritual vision' these men profess to look quite through 'all of surrounding phenomena,' and to 'behold with open face' 'the self-existent One,' not only as 'filling the universe of space,' but as 'the only real and eternal existence.' Here is, in reality, a direct and open profession of absolute omniscience on the part of these self-styled and self-inaugurated seers. How else can they behold this 'self-existent One' as actually filling infinite space? No being but one absolutely infinite can have any such vision as this. Who but a being possessed of absolute omniscience can know, or without infinite presumption affirm, that nowhere in infinite space, any being or object but this 'self-existent One' does exist? 'No man knoweth the things of man, but the spirit of man that is in him.' But here are self-asserted seers, who profess by direct and open beholding to know not only 'the things of God,' but all the potencies, and the exact manner of the workings and movements of all the potencies, in the infinite and eternal mind. We must regard these seers as absolutely omniscient, or regard their reported visions of the Absolute as the wildest conceivable dreams of a bewildered and crazy Philosophy.

If we grant the existence of 'this self-existent One' of Pantheism, and that the potencies existing in him, and the manner of their operation, are correctly reported by these men, what sort of being must he be? In the first place, he must be strictly and absolutely finite in himself, or he could not be thus comprehended by finite minds. Then, was there ever so absurdly-acting an object represented in thought? Originally void of all intelligence, it is ever striving after self-knowledge. Ever existing as the eternal One, and utterly ignorant of the idea of self-development, it is ever striving to develop itself. In its first effort to find itself, it sees itself in self-generated ideal material forms wholly unlike itself. Having thus in the first movement got out of itself and into the finite, it now in the second attempt, 'the potency of subsumption,' makes an endeavour to 'return into the infinite,' that is, to see itself as infinite. In the last eudeavour, 'through the Potens der Vernunft,' that of intellectual intuition, in the consciousness of these seers, all distinction between subject and object, the finite and infinite, disappears, and we have 'the self-existent One,' as 'natura naturata.' Now if such a thing does thus exist and act somewhere in infinite space, and if certain seers are privileged to behold it, we make no objection, provided they do not impose this crazy thing upon us, as being our actual selves, and the world, and the races in it which we behold around us, and especially as the God whom we now worship and approach in prayer, as 'Our Father which art in Heaven.'

There is no standpoint from which this doctrine of Pantheism can be presented, no standpoint from which it does not, when apprehended as it is, appear as a blended mass of crude absurdities. There is not an element in it, nor a characteristic of it, which does not commend it to our deepest reprobation. Nor can there be vindicated for it the remotest claim upon our regard, even as a possible truth.

SECTION V.

PURE IDEALISM.—GEORGE WILHELM FREIDRICH HEGEL (1777—1831.)

Sehelling and Hegel.

'The great want of Schelling's Philosophy,' says Schwegler, 'was its inability to furnish a suitable form for philosophic content. Schelling went through the list of all methods, and at last abandoned all. But this absence of method into which he ultimately sank, contradicted the very principle of his philosophizing. If thought and being are identical, yet form and content cannot be indifferent in respect to each other. On the standpoint of absolute knowledge, there must be found for the absolute content an absolute form, which shall be identical with the content. This is the position assumed by Hegel. Hegel has fused the content of Schelling's Philosophy by means of the absolute method.'

Ancient and Modern Idealism.

Here we have an explanation of the real difference between the method of philosophizing among ancient and modern Idealists, and the consequent advantage which the former had over the latter. Assuming to themselves, 'with the Gods and a very small portion of mankind,' the exclusive possession of the faculty of direct and immediate insight into 'being in se,' the ancient Idealists simply announced their visions as forms of absolute truth, and this without explaining the mode or the quo modo of anything. After the announcement of the formula, 'Brahma alone exists; everything else is illusive,' the Yogee of the Vedanta School affixed the fewest possible explanations of the quo modo of the origin of illusory forms from Brahm, while the few explanations actually given were at an infinite remove from facts of consciousness. Similar remarks are applicable to ancient Idealists of all schools. By thus placing their systems at an infinite remove from conscious facts, and giving us as few specific explanations as possible, those systems presented few assailable points where they could be successfully attacked.

Modern Idealists, on the other hand, after setting forth their principles and systems, descend to details, and explain to us the quo modo of the operations of their affirmed potencies, telling us just how the absolute subjective becomes, in perception, the absolute objective, and how the seemingly real arises from the actual ideal. By means of these details and specific expositions, their systems are brought within the purview of conscious facts, and are thus rendered too monstrously absurd to command belief. Kant, for example, after announcing the formula that 'objects must regulate themselves according to our cognition,' attempts to give us, in specific detail, the quo modo by which mere subjective states, sensations, are made to appear, in external perception, as the exclusive qualities of exterior material substances, with all the deductions necessarily arising from such expositions. His system is thus at so many points brought into direct and palpable contradiction with absolutely conscious facts, that we are necessitated at length to affirm and to know that it cannot be true. When he tells us, for example, that the ideas of time and space existing in the mind prior to perception, and each pertaining to its object as absolutely infinite, make the sensation—an exclusively subjective state—a state utterly void of extension and form, appear in conscious perception as a quality of an exclusively exterior object, an object having specific and finite extension and form, the whole exposition becomes too monstrously absurd not to be repudiated. When he still further represents time and space as necessary and absolute existences, each strictly infinite, and then affirms that these same necessary forms of existence do not exist at all out of and independent of ourselves, but are only ideal representations in ourselves, we know, and cannot but know, absolutely, that such self-contradictory presentations "must be absurd and false. When he distinguishes phenomena as representing realities as they appear unto us, and noumena as representing the same realities as they really exist in themselves, and then affirms that we necessarily conceive of phenomena as occurring in time and space, and noumena as having no relation to time or space, such palpable contradictions to absolutely conscious facts appear that we cannot but know our selves as confronted with fundamental error. If we know anything, we know absolutely that all realities must have the same relations to time and space that their phenomena do. When he further affirms, as necessary deductions from the principles of his system, that there can be no such thing in time as real successive experiences, or changes in or out of ourselves, and no extended and moving bodies in space, the error becomes too consciously palpable not to be absolutely known to be such. When, finally, we become absolutely aware that all these and other equally palpable contradictions to absolutely conscious facts must be true, or the system itself false, the validity of the system no longer remains a matter of doubt or a question of verity. On the other hand, we know absolutely that it must be false.

So when Fichte affirms that a system of absolute truth must be constructed throughout in strict conformity to the principle of absolute identity, viz., A = A, and then refers the most essential element of his system, sensation, as its cause, to certain spontaneous and unconscious activities of the mind, activities of which, as he admits, we can know nothing, the fact becomes so consciously palpable that his system is undeniably self-contradictory, and rests upon 'airy nothing,' that we cannot but know it to be false.

So when Schelling, in his successive endeavours to expound and verify his system, 'goes through the list of all methods, and at last abandons all,' when, as a last resort, he sets up the absurd claim of the possession of 'a vision and faculty divine,' a faculty utterly unborn in all rationals but the Gods and a very small portion of mankind; and above all, when the palpable monstrosities of the revelations of his 'Intellectuelle Auschauung' are set out in distinct visibility before the mind, we then become absolutely conscious that further credulity in us ceases to be a virtue. We repudiate his whole system as known error.

Had Hegel also imitated the wisdom of Gautama Buddha, Pythagoras, and other ancient Pure Idealists, by simply announcing, as a principle in science, the formula that 'being and knowing must be one and identical,' and then presented the necessary deduction that thought only is real, his system would not be as assailable as it now is. But when he attempts, as he does, to explain the whole process by which pure thought, as the sole existence, thought existing by itself, without subject or object, thought existing nowhere and in no time, develops itself by rendering real to itself Matter, Spirit, Time, Space, God, Duty, and Immortality, in such details, he sets out the absurdity of his system in so many palpable and undeniable aspects, that we become necessarily conscious of the strict verity of the statement formerly cited of a learned German author, that 'the system of Hegel is nothing in itself nor of itself; neither was its author in himself, but beside himself.' The above statements will be fully verified in the following exposition of and criticisms upon this last development and final outcome of Idealism.

The System Defined.

The system of Hegel, or Pure Idealism, may be presented in few words. As a system, it has its exclusive basis upon and derives all its claims from one single formula, assumed to possess self-evident and absolute validity, namely, 'Being and knowing must be one and identical,' that is, there must be an absolute identity between knowledge and its object. The necessary deduction from this formula, its validity being admitted, is that pure thought without real subject or object, and that only, is real. 'Everything else is illusion.' 'The result of Philosophy,' says Hegel, as cited by Schwegler, 'is the thought which is by itself, and which comprehends in itself the universe, and changes it into an intelligent world. To raise all being to being in the consciousness, to knowledge, is the problem and the goal of philosophizing, and this goal is reached when the mind has become able to beget the whole objective world from itself.'

In the three forms of Idealism hitherto considered, the term 'substance' represents a reality in itself, and the validity of the principle, Phenomena imply substance, is affirmed. Ideal Dualism recognizes the actual existence of two real entities, though unknown. With Fichte the Me, and with Schelling the Absolute, are also realities. With Hegel, the doctrine of substance totally disappears, and thought stands before us as the alone real. As any one thought is, with Hegel, just as real as any other, so, in his regard, is each thought just as true as any other. According to the immutable principles of his system, error in its development is an absolute impossibility; for whatever he thinks the process to be, that it must be in itself. For the same reason, whatever we think to be real is real, the thought and its object being one and identical. It is upon this principle that Hegel affirms the actual existence of nothing. We think of something, on the one hand, and of nothing, on the other. As thought and its object are the same, nothing is just as real as something. If we reflect upon the ideas represented by the terms 'something' and 'nothing,' we find them related to each other as contradictories, or contraries, and contraries are commonly supposed to exclude each other reciprocally: Existence, for example, excludes Non-Existence. This Hegel denied. 'Everything,' we quote now from Mr. Lewes, 'is contradictory in itself: contradiction forms its essence: its identity consists in being the union of two contraries. Thus Being (Seyn) considered absolutely—considered as unconditioned—that is to say, as Being in the abstract, apart from any individual thing, is the same as Nothing. Existence is, therefore, identical with its negation. But to conclude that there is not Existence would be false; for abstract Nothing (Nichts) is at the same time abstract Being. We must, therefore, unite these two contraries, and in so doing, we arrive at a middle term—the realization of the two in one, and this is unconditioned existence—it is the world.' We may now understand clearly the meaning of Hegel's famous maxim, 'Being and Non-Being are the same.' 'Non-Being,' he says, 'the Nothing exists—because it is a Thought.' 'It is not, however,' he adds, 'merely a Thought, but it is the same Thought as that of a pure Being (Seyn), viz., an entirely unconditioned Thought.'

If, therefore, we ask the question, What is it that gives being to the world of perception, Hegel's answer is ready. It is this. The idea of two contraries arises before the mind, as Being and Non-Being, Something and Nothing. As these contraries are identified in thought, a form of individual existence becomes palpable in external perception, the idea of 'the identity of contraries being the condition of all existence.' In illustration of this idea of existence, Hegel takes the case of the two poles of the magnet. These are opposites, or contraries. What one attracts the other repels. At the centre, however, all force of attraction and repulsion disappear. The reason is, that here these two contraries become one and identical. So the perpetual recurrence in thought of the imcompatibility and identity of contraries makes the whole world of perception rise up before the mind.

If we ask, as the second question, What is true, Hegel's principle and method furnish us here also an equally ready answer. If the Object and Subject, that is, Thought and its Object, are one and identical, then whatever is true of Thought must be true of its Objects. As Mind and Matter, Ideas and Objects, are identical, what is real in the former must exist in the latter. This is the doctrine openly avowed by Hegel, and this, with his explanation of 'the condition of all existence,' constitutes the peculiarity of his method, for the development of which he has been awarded by his school such immortal honour. An idea, a pure thought, exists. Its inherent activity tends to develop what is in it. In doing so, a diremption occurs by which the idea is separated into two parts—a positive and a negative which mutually exclude each other, as Being and Non-Being. The positing of the first is called Thesis, and that of the second, Antithesis. By a further process, this negation, or diremption, is itself negatived, and the two contraries become one and identical. This is Synthesis. The original idea, however, is not now what it was before, but exists in a developed form, and by this synthesis the world of visible nature rises before us. By a still further process, a diremption occurs, and the idea of the object perceived and the perceiving subject, are present to Thought as contraries which, as in the case above stated, mutually exclude each other. As a last negation of this final negation, an all-comprehending synthesis occurs, in which Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, become one and identical, and Thought stands revealed to itself 'as the reality of Things.' This last process, or synthesis, is science, and this all-comprehending idea, in which Thought becomes distinctly conscious of itself as the sole reality, is God. Such is the system. What shall we think of it? In considering this question, let us first notice certain of

Its General Characteristics.

In contemplating this system, we freely grant to it one high merit, that of self-consistency. Of all thinkers, Hegel was one of the most logical. Each principle he apprehended, not only as it is in itself, but in its remotest consequences, and so constructed his system, that there is no appearance of contradiction between its basis principles and intermediate and final deductions. Wisely repudiating the self-arrogant pretensions of an exclusive possession of a special faculty of scientific insight, he claimed for himself no faculty which is not common to the race, and based his system upon, and developed it in strict accordance with, real or assumed, scientific principles.

Pure Idealism has the high merit of self-consistency in another form. It is, as a system, a necessary deduction from the fundamental principles of Idealism in all its prior forms. If, as Ideal Dualism affirms, 'objects must regulate themselves according to cognition,' the latter giving being and form to the former, and if time and space are nothing but thought-representations, it is absurd to represent noumena, realities in themselves, as anything else than such representations. If the Not-me, with time and space, is, as Subjective Idealism affirms, nothing but a thought-representation, why should we not affirm the same thing of the Me? If the condition of valid knowledge is 'a synthesis of Being and Knowing,' why not identify the former with the latter, instead of referring the latter to the former? If, as Pantheism teaches, 'Being and Knowing are one and identical,' then it is infinitely absurd, and absolutely self-contradictory, not to affirm Being to be nothing but a thought-representation, and ideas to be the only reality. When we have taken the first step within the sphere of Idealism, we cannot, without palpable logical infidelity, stop short of the ultimate deductions of Pure Idealism. If, then, we accept this system as true, we must repudiate Idealism in all other forms, and with these all other philosophical systems, as utterly false. If, on the other hand, we reject this system, we must, with it, repudiate Idealism universally, and search for truth in some other sphere of thought and inquiry. Pure Idealism is, as its advocates truly affirm, not a Philosophy, a system which may take rank among other systems, but the Philosophy; or it is a system of total error.

While this system stands distinctly revealed as the irreconcilable antagonist of all others, it is palpably self-contradictory, we remark right here, and that in the light of its fundamental principles and method, to affirm it to be true, and any other system to be false. As Thought and Reality, according to this system, are one and identical, one Thought-Representation is, and must be, just as real, and, consequently, just as true, as any other. To vindicate for any system the most veritable claims for our regards, it needs only to be clearly developed and presented as a Thought-Representation. This representation, as the contrary of every other, and necessarily excluding, and excluded by, every other, as Something and Nothing, is, as a Thought-Representation, the only sense and form in which anything is real or true, just as real, and, consequently, just as true as any other, and no system can be anything else than a form of absolute truth. We are aware that we are here trespassing upon a question of future discussion, the question pertaining to the truth of this system. As this aspect of the subject forces itself upon us in this connection, we present this formula for the serious reflection of the reader, If this system is true, every other, not identical with it, must be false; and if this system is true, every other must be, in all its principles, elements, and deductions, a form of absolute truth. Truly and properly defined, defined just as its ablest advocates expound the system, Pure Idealism is the universal synthesis of all absolute contraries and contradictions. Can a system which absolutely involves such palpable absolute incompatibilities and contradictions as these, be anything else than 'science falsely so-called'? Yet, what has been said of this system, holds with equal absoluteness of Idealism in all its forms. The common doctrine of the system, in all its forms, is, that Cognition, Ideas in the mind, determine Objects, that is, give existence and form to these objects, whether they be objective or subjective. As time and space, and all other objects of thought, have no existence but as Thought-Representations, one such Representation must be just as real, and, consequently, just as true as any other. No form of Idealism, therefore, can be true, unless all other forms of the same general system, and all other systems, must be absolutely false, on the one hand, and the exclusive embodiments of absolute truth, on the other.

In determining the question whether the system is true, two distinct and separate methods, each perfectly valid, may be pursued. We may enter into a direct examination of the character of the principles and method of the system, and thus evince its error or its truth. Or, under the principle that the greater certitude must never be supplanted in our regard for the less, we may compare the conscious certitude which the presentation of this system, in its principles, method, and deductions, induces in our minds of its truth, with that which does and must exist in regard to the validity of our essential apprehension of the reality of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space. We may put to ourselves, for example, such questions as these: Am I as consciously certain that this system is true as I am that I actually exist as a self-conscious personality exercising the functions of thought, feeling and willing, that an external universe occupied by realms of rational and irrational existences is actually before me, and really external to me, and that time and space are realities necessary in themselves, and necessarily implied by actually conscious facts? Am I as certain that Being and Knowing are one and identical, and consequently, that nothing is real but pure Thought without Subject or Object, as I am that Thought implies a Thinker, Phenomena Substance, Events a Cause, and that Something is more real than Nothing? Am I as certain that Thought may exist as the sole reality as I am and must be that wherever and whenever Thought is, there must have been some being then and there present who put forth that thought? A gentleman, after graduating in one of our American colleges, and finishing his theological education, spent several years in a German University, where he embraced this doctrine of Pure Idealism. On his return to his native country, he gave up the ministry and all his previously cherished ideas of religion and immortality. 'Mr. Finney,' said this man at one time, 'I wish I could believe what you preach. I wish I could believe what I once did. But I cannot. I doubt the reality of all things of which you speak. I regard nothing which you call substance as real.' 'Do you really think as you speak?' replied President Finney. 'I do,' was the response. 'The thought, then, to which you refer is real?' 'It is.' 'Tell me, now, what you really believe. Is there, or is there not, actually present, a real person who thus thinks?' 'I have not thought of that before,' was the reply. 'I admit that I cannot conceive it possible that there should be anywhere, and at any time, a thought which no real person thinks.' Here we have an infallible criterion of truth. Unless we are and must be more absolutely certain that Thought does exist as the only reality than we are that thought implies a real subject who thinks, we dementate ourselves if, for a moment, we harbour the idea that this system can be true. We are now fully prepared to enter directly upon the question of the validity of this system.

Specific Criticism on this System.

I. It has no Scientific Basis.

Let us now, first of all, direct special attention to the principle on which the whole system is based, and from which it derives all its claims to our regard, the assumption that Being and Knowing are and must be one and identical; in other words, that thought does not represent, but is absolutely identical with, its object. Grant the validity of this formula, and all the deductions of Pure Idealism follow of necessity, and the system must be true. Take away this principle, and the system has, undeniably, no basis whatever, and stands distinctly revealed as a monstrous development of false science. Although, in our general introduction, we said all that is really needful in respect to this formula, yet, on account of its fundamental bearings upon our present inquiries, we here renew the discussion. What, then, are the essential characteristics of this formula this basis principle of Pure Idealism? We answer:—

1. It has no claim whatever to the place it occupies in this system, that of a first truth, axiom, or principle in science. It is neither a self-evident nor a necessary truth. The best we can say of it is, on the other hand, that it is a mere problematical judgment which may, or may not, be true. Is it not just as conceivable that every Thought has a real Thinker for its subject, as it is that it exists alone? Is it a self-evident and necessary truth that nothing is real but Thought? When we carefully examine the subject and predicate of this judgment, we cannot fail to discern that no necessary connection exists between them, that neither is identical with, or implies the other. Nothing is or can be more evident than this, that this formula or judgment is not possessed of a single characteristic or element of a valid principle in science.

2. Nor can it by any possibility be verified by valid proof, or any form or degree of positive evidence. From whence can such proof or evidence be deduced? How can any individual prove to himself that he himself does not actually exist, and exist not as a mere thought-representation, but as an actually real, personal thinker? What thought has ranged through infinite space and found that real substances do not somewhere exist? So evident is the fact, that this formula is incapable of proof, that proof of its validity has never been attempted even by those who construct their systems upon it. All, in fact, do admit that if it has not an absolute claim to our regard, as a self-evident and necessary truth, it is to be repudiated as a mere lawless assumption.

3. Equally void of all claims to our regard is this formula, on the score of antecedent probability. It is, undeniably, as probable in itself, that thought never exists without a thinker, as that it exists alone, without subject or object, as the sole reality. It is as undeniably probable that substances exist, as that phenomena do; that a thinker exists, as that thought does, and that thoughts are, as that they are not, thought by somebody. In whatever light this formula is contemplated, it stands revealed as a mere lawless assumption, having no self-evident, verified, or probable validity, and consequently, no more right to a place as a principle in science than Satan has to rule in heaven.

4. This formula, we remark finally, is just as undeniably false as the axioms in science are undeniably true. Unless, for example, the principles, Body implies space, Succession implies time, Phenomena imply substance, Events imply a cause, and It is impossible for the same thing, at the same moment, to exist and not to exist, are false, this assumption cannot be true. If phenomena imply substance, and Events a cause, Thought does and must imply a thinker. While the proposition, Being and Knowing are one and identical, stands distinctly revealed as a mere assumption, the opposite formula, Thought implies a thinker, has all the characteristics of a self-evident and necessary principle in science. While no necessary connection can be discerned between the subject and predicate in the former case, this identical relation does undeniably obtain in the latter. We can no more conceive of thought without a thinker, than we can of the annihilation of space, of phenomena without substance, of an event without a cause, or that things equal to the same thing are not equal to one another. We arrive, then, at this absolute deduction, that Pure Idealism must be false, or that not one of the axioms in any of the sciences can be true.

II. It is Absolutely Impossible in Thought to Represent this System as True.

It is absolutely impossible for thought to represent to itself this system as true, that is, for any thinker to even represent to himself the system as it is. To express a judgment in words is one thing; to make a consciously real representation of that judgment—a representation especially of it as true, is quite another. I may affirm, in words, that events do occur without causes; but I can never represent, in thought, any such judgment. I may affirm, but can never think, that space is not a reality in itself. I may affirm space to be, but can never think space as being, in itself, a mere Thought-Representation. When I affirm space to be, in itself, such a representation, the term space, in this proposition, does not represent at all the real idea which I actually have of space, but something else which is not space. I may say, in words, that thought exists when no individual being is thinking. Such words, however, convey no meaning which I can, by any possibility, represent to myself, much less represent as true. When, therefore, one says that Thought may, and does, exist when nobody is thinking, the term thought does not represent our idea of thought as it is, or the judgment must be recognized as self-evidently false.

Let us now apply these undeniably valid principles to the necessary principles and deductions of Pure Idealism. The proposition which we lay down is this, that these principles and deductions are utterly incapable of being represented in thought, but as unthinkable chimeras and absurdities. Take, as examples of the fundamental teachings of the system, the doctrine which must be true or the system false, that Nothing is just as real as Something; in other words, that the Unreal is just as real as the Real. Let any one attempt to represent in thought the real meaning of the proposition, The Unreal is just as real as the Real, and he will find that he has attempted an utter impossibility. Nor is he at a loss for the reason. The words, Something and Nothing, the Real and the Unreal, represent absolute contradictions, which must mutually exclude one another, and cannot be thought belonging to the same identical class of realities.

Take, now, another fundamental doctrine of the system. We give it in the words of the author. 'Being considered absolutely—considered as the unconditioned—that is to say, as Being in the abstract, apart from any individual thing, is the same as Nothing.' The term Being in most abstract form, and as defined by all standard Lexicography, represents all real existences of every kind. The term Nothing, on the other hand, in a similar form, represents no really existing thing whatever. What does a philosopher mean when he affirms that, in the most abstract forms, the two terms are identical in meaning, and represent the same objects? Let any one attempt to represent in thought, Being and Nothing, or the Real and the Unreal, as being identically one and the same. He will find, as before, and for the same absolutely conscious reason, that he has attempted the impossible.

Take one other equally fundamental doctrine of the system, viz, that 'the condition of all existence is the identity of contraries,' contraries which, as irreconcilable contradictories, mutually exclude each other. Can we, by any possibility, represent to ourselves the idea of such contraries as being one and identical, and, above all, that real existence, in all its perceived and apprehended forms, consists in such syntheses?

We can here understand what Hegel referred to when, as death approached him, he expressed the opinion that little was to be expected from his Philosophy, for the reason that but one single individual 'had understood the system, and he had misunderstood it.' How can that be understood which cannot be represented in thought? As no one can represent to himself the system as it is, among those who attempt to understand it there will be as great diversity of opinion as there are individuals, and he who best understands it must also misunderstand it. The nearest approach that can be made to a correct idea of the system is the definition given of one of the Beasts in the Apocalypse, the Beast which most probably was intended to represent false science, to wit, a 'Beast that was, and is not, and yet is.'

Here we have one of the most important criteria of false science, as distinguished from the true. True science, as knowledge systematized, so explains and elucidates its proper subjects as to render them clearly representable in thought. False science so confounds opposites, and identifies contradictions, that he who best understands, misunderstands, and none can represent in thought what is affirmed in words. Such is Idealism in all its forms, and Pure Idealism in particular, and such too is the system which is the Antithesis of Idealism, Materialism. The common characteristic of both systems is, that 'they darken counsel by words without knowledge.' I may, for example, employ such language as this: 'The thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life,' and if you do not attempt to understand me, and thereby misunderstand me, you may think that 'I speak mysteries.' But if you attempt to identify in thought, thinking and molecular changes, and to conceive the possibility that one can be identical with the other, you will find the words to be utterly void of meaning. So when, as in the cases before us, you find contraries so confounded, and contradictories so identified, that you cannot represent in thought what is affirmed in words, you may know absolutely that you are in the presence of fundamental error.

III. The Monstrous Deductions of the System verify it as a System of False Science.

The monstrous deductions which necessarily arise from the essential principles and deductions of this system absolutely verify it as 'science falsely so called.' As whatever is real is, of course, true, and as, according to the system, nothing but thought is real, and one thought is just as real as another, it follows of necessity, that any one thought must be just as true as any other. Error, then, in any form, is an absolute impossibility, and nothing is or can be represented in thought but absolute truth. Any two or more absolutely opposites and contradictories may at the same time be absolutely true and absolutely false, it being thus apprehended in two contrary thought-representations. A so-called monomaniac whom we once knew, actually thought that the Almighty had committed to him 'all power and all authority' over the entire human race. This, in his mind, was an actual thought-representation, and according to the absolute doctrines of Pure Idealism, was an absolute truth. A so-called maniac, when we were in London years ago, had in thought absolutely identified himself with God, and believed and taught that he was the sole creator and governor of the universe. He was just that creator and governor, or the system under consideration must be false. That thought-representation in that poor creature's mind was absolute truth, if this system is true. We do not caricature this system, but represent it as it is.

Mr. Lewes gives forth the proper utterances in regard to the system. 'Of the three forms of Idealism, this is surely the most preposterous; and that any sane man—not to speak of a man so eminent a man as Hegel—should for an instant believe in the correctness of the Logic which "brought him to this pass"—that he should not at once reject the premises from which such conclusions followed—must ever remain a striking illustration of the unbounded confidence in bad Logic which distinguishes metaphysicians as truly a race mad with Logic, and feeding the mind with chimeras.'

IV. Nothing good can be said of the System.

While all that has been said above is undeniably true of this system, nothing whatever that is good can be said of it. It has, as we have absolutely verified, no other basis but a lawless assumption in favour of which nothing can be said, and which is demonstratively false. It affirms the absolute identity of affirmed absolute contradictories, and gives us a universe exclusively constituted of such identities. It annihilates all distinction between truth and error, and makes the wildest thought-representations of madness just as real, and consequently as true, as the most perfected thought-originations of the highest wisdom. It reveals itself as the all-destructive antagonism of all other systems, and then presents them all as the unadulterated revelations of absolute truth. While all this, and much more that is the worst of all that is bad, is true of the system, what good, we ask, can be said of it? We will permit Hegel himself to answer this question. Having laid down as his first proposition in Logic, the dogma, that 'Being and Non-Being are the same,' he presents the question as asked, in the language of Mr. Lewes, 'by stupid common-sense,' 'whether' (we now use the words of Hegel) 'it is the same if my house, my property, the air I breathe, this town, sun, the law, mind, or God, exist or not?' 'In such examples,' he replies, 'particular ends—utility, for instance—are understood, and then it is asked if it is indifferent to me whether these useful things exist or not? But in truth, Philosophy is precisely the doctrine which is to free man from innumerable finite aims and ends, and to make him so indifferent to them that it is really all the same whether such things exist or not.' In other words, the highest glory of this Philosophy is, that it so confounds and identifies the Useful and the Hurtful, as to render man utterly indifferent to the question, whether the thought-representations of the self, or one's neighbour, shall enjoy the conscious thought-representation of a good dinner, or the toothache, or whether either exists or not. The highest utility which can be drawn from this Philosophy, its great expoulnder being our authority, is an absolute indifference to all utility. Would it not be of great utility if all should cultivate this Philosophy?

V. Neither Hegel, nor any other Thinker, ever did or can fully believe this System.

We have but one additional remark to make on this system. It is this. Neither Hegel, nor any other thinker, ever did or ever could for a single moment, really believe it true. What can in no form be really represented in thought, can by no possibility be really believed; because no object of belief is really present in thought. With the absolute consciousness which we constantly do and must have of our own personal existence, of the reality of the world and race around us, and of the reality of time and space, we can never for a moment represent to ourselves as true the formula, that Being and Knowing are one and identical, and that, consequently, nothing is real but thought. Conscious certitude, in the former case, is so absolute, that it cannot be displaced. Nor can we reflect upon this formula and its consequent, without a consciousness equally absolute, that it does and can possess no certitude equal to that which characterizes that of our own conscious personal existence. No man, then, can by any possibility have in his mind for a moment the real conviction, that Thought is the sole reality. This is especially true of the fundamental doctrine of this system, 'that Being and Non-Being are the same.' There is no idea expressed by that proposition which can be represented in thought, so as to become, in any sense, an object of belief. We can have, in no sense or form, an idea of Being as No-Being, and hence such idea cannot for a moment be an object of real belief. Much less can any man really believe that the condition of existence is a synthesis, or identity of contraries which materially exclude each other. When we are told of the identity of the Real and Unreal, the term 'identity,' in such connection, has no meaning of which we can obtain the remotest idea, an idea which can be an object of belief. The proposition, that the condition of existence is the identity of contraries which mutually exclude each other, expresses no meaning whatever which can be, in any sense or form, we repeat, represented in thought, and can, therefore, to no mind be an object of real belief.

General Remarks upon Idealism.

I. It is constructed throughout upon Assumptions which beg all its Deductions near and remote.

We have said, and now proceed to prove, that Idealism, in all its forms, is constructed in conformity to the fixed method of begging all its deductions by mere assumptions adduced as the exigencies of the system demand. Let us contemplate a few palpable facts in verification of this statement.

If we have a valid knowledge of matter as well as of spirit, Idealism, in none of its forms, can be true. How is knowledge in its objective forms got rid of? It is, as Idealists affirm, wholly by an arbitrary act of Will, 'a self-determined indetermination,' 'an act of absolute scientific Scepticism to which the mind voluntarily determines itself.' Here, then, is an acknowledged assumption which, granting its validity, renders Idealism, in some form, necessarily true, and all other opposite systems false. How easy it is to construct systems, when we are thus permitted to assume principles which necessarily involve all the deductions we desire to reach.

Kant, as he himself affirms, enters upon the development of his system, not as a demand of the Intelligence, but as a mere experiment. 'Let it be once, therefore, tried,' he says, 'whether we do not succeed better in the problem of metaphysics, when we admit (assume) that objects must regulate themselves according to our cognitions.' Here, then, at the outset, is an assumption which involves the whole conclusion desired to be reached, and the fixed method subsequently pursued, that of assuming as true what involves any immediate or remote deductions desired to be reached, renders a failure in said experiment impossible. External perception, as given in the universal consciousness, implies a perceiving subject, and a perceived external object. To admit the reality and validity of perception in this form, would imply that our knowledge does and must regulate itself according to the object. Hence, an exclusively mental state, and among many others, which, as we have shown, might as reasonably be assumed as this, a specific mental state, sensation, is assumed to be said object. No conscious fact, nothing whatever but the conscious exigency of the experiment, exists to justify such an assumption. But how shall the existence of this state be accounted for? Among the many hypotheses which present themselves, each as adequate, accounting for the fact as that adopted by Kant, that special one is assumed which implies his peculiar doctrine of Noumenon, and gives consequent being to his system—the assumption of a subject and external cause, both alike unknowable and unknown. But how is this exclusively subjective state, which is utterly void of extension and form, made to appear in perception as an exclusively exterior object having both these qualities? A cause for this strange fact must be found. As no other cause suggests itself but two necessary ideas, time and space, these were assumed as that cause. But time and space, as represented in universal thought, are realities necessarily existing and known as implied by the facts perceived, and not as the law or cause of the perception. But if these objects are admitted to be realities in themselves, and such realities as we necessarily apprehend them to be, then we have an undeniable case in which our cognition does 'regulate itself according to its objects,' and if this principle holds in this case, it must be admitted to hold in all others. Time and space, therefore, must be assumed to be no realities in themselves at all, and especially not the realities which we necessarily apprehend and cannot but know them to be. They must be assumed to have no existence at all out of the perceiving subject, and to exist there merely as pure ideas and laws of perception. This monstrously absurd leap in science was accordingly taken, and taken for no other conceivable reason but to reach the ultimate deduction desired, namely, that 'the things which we envisage are not that in themselves for which we take them; neither are their relationships so constituted as they appear unto us,' and 'We know nothing (of these things) but our manner of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which need not belong necessarily to every Being, although to every man.' Thus, Ideal Dualism has throughout exclusive being and form from mere successive assumptions arbitrarily adduced as the exigencies of the system demand, assumptions which beg, or necessarily imply, the deductions desired to be reached. If you contemplate these assumptions as they are in themselves, you find them to stand in open opposition to universal intuition, to have no other characteristics but arbitrary fiats of Will, and to have been forced into the sphere of science for no other conceivable reason than that assigned.

Fichte, in opposition to Kant, desired to develop a system in which the cognizing subject, the Me, should stand revealed as the sole existence, the exclusive substance and principle of all things. To reach this deduction, he first of all 'put himself into a state of not-knowing,' and 'assumed all existing forms of knowledge to be uncertain.' In this state of absolute nescience 'to which he voluntarily determined himself,' he assumed, arbitrarily as we have demonstrated, that is, by hypothesis made a guess in the dark, that the necessary condition of valid knowledge in any form is 'a synthesis of being and knowing;' in other words, that the subject and object of knowledge must he one and identical. Thus, by a single assumption for the validity of which no reasons whatever can be assigned, and which palpably contradicts absolutely conscious facts, the near and remote deductions of his entire system are begged. To emancipate himself from all difficulties, he had but one fact to account for, the existence of sensation as the exclusive object of external perception. The cause of this fact he found by an assumption palpably opposed to the basis principle of his system, and of all true systems—to wit, that every scientific system must really consist of identical propositions, as A = A, an assumption, also, which stands as one among many other hypotheses, each of which, as adequately as this, accounts for the existence of sensation, the assumption that sensation is caused by the spontaneous action of unknown and inexplicable activities in the Me. Every deduction which characterizes the system is reached by an arbitrary assumption which necessarily implies said deduction.

Schelling, repudiating the system of Subjective Idealism, and desiring to reach that of Pantheism, after having, 'by an act of absolute and scientific Scepticism to which he voluntarily determined himself,' 'compelled himself to treat' the universal and absolute intuition, 'that there exist things without us,' 'as nothing but a prejudice,' repudiated, first, as necessarily involving the doctrine he repudiated, the dogma that 'the condition of valid knowledge is a synthesis of being and knowing,' and then assumed that of Pure Idealism, viz., that the condition sought is 'an absolute identity of being and knowing.' Perceiving at length that this assumption implied the truth of the doctrine of Hegel, and not of his own, he repudiated this also. As a final resort, he assumed for himself the possession of a special faculty of absolute, intellectual intuition, 'the Intellectuelle Anschauung,' a faculty utterly wanting in all rationals 'but the Gods and a very small portion of mankind,' a faculty which directly and immediately perceives and affirms the Absolute as the sole reality, and as directly and absolutely perceives in the Absolute all 'the potencies,' with the specific modes and manner of their action, potencies, the action and reaction of which, in the Absolute, develops the absolute into the ideal universe which we seemingly behold and contemplate. If you ask for proof of the existence of this faculty in these rationals, and for the evidence of its absolute and exclusive validity, they have nothing whatever to offer. All is assumed to meet the exigencies of the system previously determined on, and assumed as involving that system.

By one all-sweeping assumption, for the validity of which, as we have demonstrated, not a solitary valid reason can be presented, Hegel begs his entire system—the assumption that 'Being and Knowing must be one and identical.' When he would account for our thought-representations of realities, everything is accounted for by an arbitrary assumption which implies the desired deductions, the assumption, for example, that 'the condition of all existence,' that is, of ideas of realities as existing, is a synthesis, or 'identity of contraries.' Not a single peculiar deduction is reached in this or any other form of Idealism, but is gained by an arbitrary assumption of this exclusive character, an assumption which, by necessary implication, begs the deduction desired.

II. The Fixed Method of Idealism the most Lawless Conceivable.

What shall we think of systems undeniably constructed in exclusive conformity with the method above described? To call them Philosophies is to confound utterly all distinction between Science and Fiction. Granting the validity of this method, there is no absurdity conceivable which may not be absolutely verified as a form of eternal truth. The time has come when 'sensible people who have been so often deceived,' if they would merge from the chaos of absurdities in which false science has involved human thought, and emerge into the sunlight of truth, must judge of all Philosophies in the light of their basis principles and fixed methods, and must repudiate, 'without further examination,' all systems as logical fictions which rest, not upon self-evident and necessary principles, but upon mere assumptions. When this is done, Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism, will have no place in human thought and regard, but as dead absurdities of the past.

Especially is this true if we would, as we have before stated, properly appreciate German thinkers—thinkers as logical as they nowhere else exist on earth, and thinkers so reckless in the substitution of mere assumptions in the place of valid principles in science. As Kant affirmed of 'the question of the possibility of synthetical judgments à priori,' we affirm, in the name of science and humanity, in respect to the distinction between assumptions and principles in science. 'All' (German especially, and all other) 'metaphysicians consequently are solemnly and legally suspended from their occupations till they shall have answered in a satisfactory manner the question,' how are valid principles, or real axioms, in science, distinguishable from mere assumptions so often employed as principles in the construction of systems of knowledge, and what are the peculiar and essential characteristics of each of these classes of judgments? The want of this distinction renders still true of German philosophic thought what Kant said of it in his time, to wit, 'In this country (Germany) there, in fact, is not as yet a sure standard to distinguish solidity or profundity from superficial prattle.' When German thinking shall be based upon real principles, and not as now upon mere assumptions, then will it, in the sphere of science, be the essential light of the world.

III. The Absurdity of a False Philosophy.

The ancient poet, who knew but three classes of philosophers, namely, Idealists, Materialists, and Sceptics, affirmed, in the passage above cited, that they are a race of men who are 'mad with logic, and who feed the mind on chimeras.' Permit us to give a palpable example of this kind of scientific illusion. We take it from Coleridge.

'Des Cartes, speaking as a naturalist and in imitation of Archimedes, said, Give me matter and motion, and I will construct you the universe. We must of course understand him to have meant: I will render the construction of the universe intelligible. In the same sense the Transcendental philosopher says, Grant me a nature having two contrary forces, the one of which tends to expand infinitely, while the other strives to apprehend or find itself in this infinity, and I will cause the whole world of intelligences, with the whole system of their representations, to rise up before you.' These two forces, he tells us, 'must be infinite,' and counteract each other by their essential nature.' When 'by the process of discursive reasoning,' and by 'contemplating intuitively' (the action of) this one power with its two inherent indestructible yet counteractive forces, the Transcendental philosopher shall have determined 'the results or generations to which their interpretation gives existence,' he will then have explained the universe, that is, 'caused the world of intelligences, with the whole system of representations, to rise up before you.' Coleridge gives the above, and truly, not as his own, but as the Transcendental exposition of the origin of the universe, and of all its facts. Who, we ask, but 'a race mad with logic,' ever could have imagined even that they could, by 'discursive reasoning,' or 'intuitive contemplation,' or by any other process, determine specifically 'the results or generations' of the action of two such forces 'interpenetrating' and 'counteracting' each other? Where is our à priori or à posteriori basis for any such calculations? The idea presented of these two forces could have birth nowhere but in the brain of a crazy Philosophy. A force already infinite by hypothesis, striving to 'expand infinitely,' and another form of infinity 'striving to apprehend or find itself,' that is, infinite nescience striving to know itself! Infinity striving to expand to the measure of its own dimensions! Transcendental wisdom begat, from its own proper self, that idea. We have, as one of the highest developments of Anglo-Saxon thought, 'a Rational Cosmology,' in which the elements which constitute the universe are affirmed, on the authority of á priori intuition, to have been originated by the meeting in an indefinite number of points in space of 'two spiritual forces in counter agency.' Where, we ask again, can any man have any à priori or à posteriori basis for determining definitely or indefinitely the results of the meeting of two such forces in this manner? It is just such absurdities as these, that philosophers have been for ages imposing upon the world as forms of absolute truth. Let them now be required to evince the possession of real rationality in science.

SECTION VI.

IDEALISM WITHIN THE SPHERE OF ANGLO-SAXON THOUGHT. 'INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSICS,' BY THE LATE J. F. FERRIER, PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY, ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND.

Germany, so far as modern thinking is concerned, has been considered the proper home of Idealism. By such thinkers as Coleridge, Carlyle, and J. S. Mill in England, and R. W. Emerson in America, it has been introduced, not in systematic form, but in 'scattered fragments of broken thought' to the Anglo-Saxon mind. But one thinker among us, the late J. F. Ferrier, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in St. Andrews, Scotland, has systematized the system. The work of this author entitled 'Institutes of Metaphysics, the Theory of Knowing and Being,' reached a second edition in Scotland as early as 1856. To this work, which is little known in the United States, it seems to be mainly owing that Pure Idealism, or Pantheism, is the accepted doctrine in some of the Scotch Universities. In Scotland this treatise appears to be regarded as unanswerable, no reply to our knowledge ever having been made to it, and in Germany it is spoken of, and truly so, as one of the ablest of its kind. In writing a Critical History of Philosophy, our work would be incomplete did we not give an exposé of this fundamental treatise, the fragmentary thoughts of other thinkers of the same school having been so fully elucidated as to require no farther particular notice. The following statements and criticisms, in respect to the Institutes, will not, we trust, be without interest and profit to our readers.

Present state of Philosophic Thought according to our Philosopher.

'The whole philosophical literature of the world,' says Professor Ferrier, and very truly so, 'is more like an unwieldy commentary on some text which has perished, or rather has never existed, than what a Philosophy itself should be. Our philosophical treatises are no more Philosophy than Eustathius is Homer, or than Malone is Shakespeare. They are mere partial and desultory annotations on some text, on which unfortunately no man can lay his hands, because it nowhere exists. Hence the embroilment of speculation; hence the dissatisfaction, even despair, of every inquiring mind which turns its attention to metaphysics. There is not now in existence even the shadow of a tribunal to which any point in litigation can be referred. There is not now in existence a single book which lays down with precision and impartiality the Institutes of all metaphysical opinion, and shows the seeds of all speculative controversies. Hence Philosophy is not only a war, but it is a war in which none of the combatants understand the grounds either of his own opinion or that of his adversary; sees the roots of the side of the question which he is ever attacking or defending. The springs by which these disputations are worked lie deep out of their own sight. Every doctrine which is either embraced or rejected, is embraced or rejected blindly and without any insight into its merits; and every blow which is struck, whether for truth or for error, is struck ignorantly and at hap-hazard.'

Here we have, in another form of words, a simple repetition of what Bacon said of the results of philosophic thought and enquiry up to his, and of what Kant as truly said of the results of the same movement, up to his, time. Nor has the New Philosophy settled a single issue, or developed a single principle, or reached a single deduction, which has been accepted, even by the schools, as a self-evident, or scientifically ascertained, truth. The most enthusiastic disciples, for example, of the doctrine of Development, Evolution, and Spontaneous Generation, openly admit that not one of their favoured theories has yet reached the high sphere of scientifically verified truth. Nor has a single argument or form of proof been presented, as to the validity of which the advocates of these theories are agreed.

While this is an undeniable, it is, certainly, a very melancholy, state of facts. For more than twenty-five centuries, philosophic thought has been intensely active, and philosophic enquiry has been pushed with tireless energy by the greatest thinkers the world has known. Yet nothing has been satisfactorily settled. 'Darkness all, and ever during night,' as at the beginning, still broods over the great problems which it is the mission of 'divine Philosophy' to settle. The facts before us force upon us one of two deductions—that these problems are of impossible solution, or that philosophic enquiry has been pursued by a fundamentally false method. Our previous investigations and criticisms have absolutely verified this fact, that since the times of Vayasa, Kapila, Kanada, Gautama Buddha, Pythagoras, Zeno, Democritus, Epicurus, Protagoras, and Pyrrho, the formulas, problems, methods, and deductions of Philosophy, in none of the schools, Realism excepted, have received any essential change or modification. The reason is manifest. The method and problems of all these schools have been the same. If Vayasa, Kapila, Kanada, Gautama Buddha, and Protagoras, failed in the solution of the great world-problems, and failed because of their false methods, what better can be reasonably expected from Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Condillac, Comte, Buchan, Hume, Mill, and Spencer, who have, undeniably, done nothing more than give us the same identical problems, as solved by their illustrious predecessors? We are required, by such facts, not to despair of Philosophy, but of the methods of philosophizing which have immutably obtained in these schools. If, by the first methods of philosophizing, which Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism do, and must, pursue, or yield all claims to our regard—if by such methods not a single deduction has been, or can be, reached, which, even in these schools, will be universally accepted as scientific truth, the 'reasonable people, who have been so often deceived,' should for ever repudiate these methods and enquire for the true one.

What is Philosophy according to our Author?

Our author's definition of Philosophy requires special attention. 'Philosophy,' he says, 'when used by itself, is synonymous with speculative science, or metaphysics.' 'A system of Philosophy,' he adds, 'is bound by two main requisitions—it ought to be true, and it ought to be reasoned,' that is, as he subsequently affirms, to be verified 'on strict demonstrative proof.' 'No man,' he says, in summing up his exposition of Philosophy, 'is entitled, in Philosophy, to say that a thing is true, if he can possibly help thinking it to be true. No man is entitled, in philosophy, to take any one step, if he could possibly have taken another,' In the sphere of 'speculative science, or metaphysics,' that is, in respect to the problems of 'knowing and being,' Philosophy, according to our author, is a system of 'reasoned truth,' or, as he more fully expresses himself, 'an unbroken chain of close demonstration carried through from the first word to the last.' 'The general character of the system is,' he adds again, 'that it is a body of necessary truth. It starts from a single proposition which, it is conceived, is an essential axiom of all reason, and one which cannot be denied without running against a contradiction. From this single proposition the whole system is deduced in a series of demonstrations, each of which professes to be as strict as any demonstration in Euclid, while the whole of them taken together constitute one great demonstration. If this rigorous necessity is not their character to the very letter—if there is a single weak point in the system—if there be any one premise or any one conclusion which is not as certain as that two and two make four, the whole scheme falls to pieces, and must be given up, root and branch. Everything is perilled on the pretension that the scheme is rigidly demonstrated throughout; for a Philosophy is not entitled to exist, unless it can make good this claim.'

Our author thus most candidly and properly lays his system open for the most rigid criticism. Such criticism, however, should be, though rigid, as fair and candid as is the treatise itself. Nor can any one have any adequate excuse for misunderstanding this author, he being one of the most perspicuous writers in Philosophy that we ever met with. His work deserves to be carefully studied, if for no other reason than as a model of perfect style in the expression of scientific thought.

The Elements of which such a System is, according to our Author, Exclusively Constituted.

'Philosophy,' our author affirms, 'executes her proper functions only when dealing with necessary truth.' Hence his 'Definition of Metaphysic:' 'Metaphysic is the substitution of true ideas, that is, of necessary truths of reason, in the place of the oversights of popular opinion and the errors of psychological science.' In accordance with this definition, he says that 'Philosophy is the attainment of truth by the way of reason.' No contingent truths, that is, facts of à posteriori knowledge, have any place at all in our author's scheme of demonstrated truth. His system, on the other hand, is to be wholly constituted of the elements of knowledge á priori, or of necessary truth.

Object and Aim of Philosophy according to our Author.

Yet the object and aim of Philosophy, as our author clearly sets them forth, is to determine the nature and character of facts and realities which are the exclusive objects of knowledge á posteriori. In other words, the whole problem of Philosophy has fundamental reference, not to necessary, but contingent truth. This ground-problem, which is not the first, but 'the last or ultimate' aim of Philosophy, as our author truly states, is announced in the form of a question—"What is truth?"' 'Its announcement,' he adds, 'proclaims and fixes one great section of Philosophy, the division which has for its object the problem, What is true being—absolute existence? This branch of the science is usually and rightly denominated Ontology (logoV twn ontwn)—the science of what is.' To the above we reply: Aside from time and space, all objects can be to us objects of knowledge, not à priori, but à posteriori. These two realities are necessarily apprehended by us as necessary forms of being. Not so with substances and causes which we apprehend as existing and acting in time and space. These we may, not without error, but without self-contradiction, affirm to exist, or not to exist. Of all these we can have no knowledge whatever but through perceived facts, and realities apprehended as implied to exist by the facts referred to. The fact of knowledge, for example, is a contingent and not necessary truth. There was a time when we began to know, and it is conceivable that there may be a time when we shall cease to know. The fact is conceivable that there may be no object to be known, no being capacitated to know, and no knowledge anywhere in any form. We know that we think, feel, and will, not à priori, but because we are conscious of ourselves as exercising these functions. The problem of Ontology is to be solved in the light of necessary principles, to be sure, but wholly within the sphere of knowledge à posteriori. The question, 'What is,' is simply and exclusively a question of fact, and not of à priori or necessary knowledge.

If we contemplate the principles or axioms in any or all the sciences, we shall find that their exclusive function is to explain the character and relations of facts and objects which may, and not at all to determine what facts and objects do exist. The principle, Every event must have a cause, for example, has absolute validity relatively to any event which may, but has no consequence whatever in determining the question what events do occur. The same does and must hold true of all such principles. They explain what is, but have no consequence in determining what facts or objects do exist. In attempting to determine the facts and realities of existence, wholly through principles of à priori or necessary knowledge, our author has undeniably started philosophic thought and inquiry upon the wrong track, and rendered his system an inevitable failure. More of this hereafter.

Relations of Philosophy to Common-Sense according to our Author.

Philosophy, according to our author, determines demonstrably the facts and realities which do and do not exist wholly by means of the principles and forms of necessary knowledge. 'Philosophy,' he says, 'executes her proper functions only when dealing with necessary truth.' In doing so, however, Philosophy does not explain 'natural thinking,' but 'distinctly proves that such thinking' consists of a series of judgments, each of which involves a mental contradiction—in other words, controverts a necessary truth or law of reason.' 'But further, it will be observed,' he adds, 'that this system is antagonistic, not only to natural thinking, but, moreover, to many a point of psychological doctrine. This, too, is inevitable. Psychology, or 'the science of the human mind,' instead of attempting to correct, does all in her power to ratify the inadvertent deliverances of ordinary thought, to prove them to be right. Hence psychology must, of necessity, come in for a share of the castigation which is doled out and directed upon common and natural opinion. It would be well if this could be avoided; but it cannot. Philosophy must either forego her existence, or carry on her operations corrective of ordinary thinking, and subversive of psychological science.'

Granting the Facts to be as Stated, What shall we do?

Granting that when moving upon the track of 'natural thinking' and 'psychological science,' we do and must believe in the real existence of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, and in the validity of our knowledge of the same, and that when we enter the domain of this form of so-called Philosophy, and deal with so-called necessary truth, we are necessitated to repudiate utterly the doctrines of Common Sense, and of 'the science of the human mind—what shall we do in such a sad dilemma? We are, if our author is correct, in the presence of two forms of truth, one necessary and the other contingent, each, however, having power equally absolute to force conviction, and each absolutely identical with the other as far as the element of conscious certitude is concerned. It is undeniable that certitude being equal, neither of these forms of knowledge can invalidate the other. We have before us the actual spectacle of the irresistible and immovable in counter agency. The action of the Intelligence, therefore, is utterly brought to a standstill. We have wills, however, and by 'an absolute and scientific Scepticism to which we voluntarily determine ourselves,' we can 'compel ourselves to treat' either form we choose 'as nothing but a prejudice, innate, indeed, and con-natural, yet nothing but a prejudice.' To us the course of true wisdom is manifest. By a 'voluntarily determined indetermination,' we repudiate this Philosophy and decide for 'natural thinking' and 'the science of the human mind.' For so doing, we have reasons consciously valid. Following this Philosophy, we know or assume that 'bread and butter' is an illusion; following 'natural thinking,' we believe in 'bread and butter,' and get them. Following this Philosophy, we recognize the Self and the Not-self, the individual, the family, the state, the race, the universe, all as 'downright falsities;' following 'natural thinking' and 'the science of the human mind,' all these, rendered real and sacred to us by the ideas of a personal God, duty, immortality, and retribution, become to us sacred verities. In addition to all this, our author has furnished us with a reason of infinite weight for the form of 'self-determined undetermination' under consideration. It is, as he assures us, only at intervals few and far between, that we can believe in the deductions of this Philosophy. 'It is probable,' he says, 'that many philosophers, and more people than they, have actually regarded truth as untrue, because man's faculties are incapable of grasping her deepest disclosures, except at rare intervals and when on their widest stretch.' We have here the doctrine of Ecstacy, as proclaimed by Plotinus, revived and reasserted. We have our author's authority, also, for the doctrine that his Philosophy may be regarded as untrue, and for affirming that it ought to be so regarded. 'No man,' he says, 'is entitled in Philosophy to say that a thing is true, if he can possibly help thinking it true.' But here is presented a valid reason for repudiating, if we cannot escape in any other way, our present dilemma. 'We cannot, 'except at rare intervals,' grasp the truths of this Philosophy, and do our best, we can, at no time, stay but for a moment on her mounts of observation. The truths of 'natural thinking' and of 'the science of the human mind,' on the other hand, are omnipresent and always real with us, and amid and with these, and not with the momentary visions of this Philosophy, is the battle of life to be fought.

There is another path still which is open to us out of our present sad dilemma. Up to the time when the work before us appeared, Philosophy had undeniably settled nothing. Are we, or shall we be, as absolutely assured of the validity of our author's affirmed demonstrations, as we consciously are of the essential facts of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space? Is our certitude as absolute in respect to the validity of our author's argument, as we are of the fact that we think, feel, and will, and that matter is directly and immediately before us as possessed of real extension and form? Besides, by our author's own showing, his deductions are not real truths of science. The peculiarity of demonstrated truth is this, that when it has been once clearly apprehended in the distinct light of its own demonstration, that truth ever remains an absolute fixture in the mind, and can never recur again in thought without being recognized as characterized by the same absolute certitude as at the first. We can never, for example, think of all the angles of a triangle, and of two right angles, without an assurance as absolute as we ever had that the former are equal to the latter. The same holds true of all demonstrated truth. Now the deductions of this Philosophy, as our author admits, can be apprehended as true, but 'at rare intervals,' and when our intellectual faculties are 'on their widest streatch.' This demonstrates the deduction that in this Philosophy we do not find truth, and especially demonstrated truth.

But suppose that we should find, as we shall in the sequel, that the staple on which all our author's professed demonstrations hang, and upon which he admits and affirms all their claims to our regard depend, is not, as he supposes, a necessary truth at all, but exclusively a contingent fact, not a form of à priori knowledge at all, but exclusively of knowledge à posteriori. Then our dilemma wholly disappears, and we find ourselves in the clear sunlight of 'natural thinking' and of 'the science of the human mind.'

Our Author's definition and Canon of Necessary Truth.

As Philosophy, according to our philosopher, has to do only with necessary truth, the question, what is the true definition and criterion, or canon, of such truth, becomes a question of fundamental interest. On this subject we will allow our author to speak for himself, as no other individual has set forth the true definition and canon of necessary truth more perspicuously or correctly. 'A necessary truth or law of reason,' he says, 'is a truth or law, the opposite of which is inconceivable, contradictory, nonsensical, impossible; more shortly, it is a truth in the fixing of which nature had only one alternative, be it negative or positive.'

'The canon of all Philosophy: Affirm nothing except what is enforced by reason as a necessary truth, that is, as a truth the supposed reversal of which would involve a contradiction; and deny nothing, unless its affirmation involves a contradiction, that is, contradicts some necessary truth or law of reason.'

Remarks on this Canon.

This canon, we remark, has absolute validity within the sphere of necessary truth, and might and should be accepted as 'the canon of all Philosophy,' provided Philosophy is confined within the narrow domain of mere necessary truth, or of knowledge à priori. If, on the other hand, Philosophy in its true and proper sphere transcends the narrow limits of knowledge à priori, that is, of necessary truth, and if its main problems, as they undeniably do, lie within the domain of contingent truth, or knowledge à posteriori, then we have here a true canon for Philosophy in one sphere, but not 'for all Philosophy.' We need, also, in addition to the former, an equally universal and valid canon of 'all Philosophy' within the domain of contingent truth, or of knowledge à posteriori, What is this canon?

Canon of Contingent Truth.

It is announced by Cousin in this form. We now cite correctly, but from memory, as far as words are concerned. A necessary judgment forces conviction, with the absolute impossibility of conceiving, or in thought representing, the opposite judgment to be true. A contingent truth, or judgment, on the other hand, forces conviction, and yet leaves it possible for the mind to represent, in thought, the opposite judgment as true. The necessity of thinking, but not of merely conceiving, the judgments to be true is just as absolute in one case as in the other.

In addition to these, we present the elements of absolutely conscious certainty and immutability, as infallible criteria of contingent truth. Any truth of which I have and must have as absolute a certainty as I have of the proposition, Two and two make four, and my essential apprehensions of which I can no more change than I can my ideas of a circle or a square, must be as real as any form of necessary truth.

Take, as illustrations of each of the above canons, the following conscious facts. I am as absolutely necessitated to be conscious of myself, as exercising the distinct functions of thought, feeling, and willing, as I am to believe that things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Nor is certitude more universal and absolute in one case than it is in the other. Nor can I any more, in any essential particular, change my apprehensions of myself, as exercising and capacitated to exercise these functions, than I can change or modify my ideas of a circle or a square. By a necessity equally absolute, as, not only the race, but philosophers of all schools admit, are we compelled to believe in an external universe, and in the validity of our consciously necessitated knowledge of the same. Of no form of necessary truth is our conscious certitude more absolute than it is and must be in respect to the reality of material forms and existences around us. Nor can we any more change or modify our apprehensions of the essential characteristics of these material forms than we can our ideas of a straight line or of a triangle. All this is undeniable and undenied. If we have not here absolute criteria of valid knowledge, then knowledge is not knowledge, and equally so in its necessary and contingent forms. Had our author given these two canons, instead of the one he did give, he might have truly said, 'Let this rule' (these rules) 'be strictly adhered to, and all will go well with Philosophy. Its' (their) 'importance, of course, consists not in its' (their) 'being stated, but in its' (their) 'being practised.'

A Great Service done by our Author to Philosophy.

A very prevalent error in modern scientific thought is the assumption that knowledge in no form, not even within the sphere of necessary ideas, has absolute validity for all real intelligents, but has validity but within the sphere of human thought and enquiry. To affirm this, as our author has fully demonstrated, is equivalent to the assumption that knowledge is not knowledge, in other words, that a fact may exist without being what it really is. A being that cannot know that A = A, cannot know any thing. 'It may seem,' says our author, and most truly so, 'to adopt a somewhat presumptuous line of exposition in undertaking to lay down the laws, not only of our thinking and knowing, but of all possible thinking and knowing. This charge is answered simply by the remark that it would be still more presumptuous to exclude any possible thinking, any possible knowing, any possible intelligence, from the operation of these laws—for the laws here referred to are necessary truths—their opposites involve contradictions, and, therefore, the supposition that any intelligence can be exempt from them is simply nonsense, and, in so far as senselessness is a sin, this supposition is sinful. It supposes that Reason can be Unreason, that wisdom can be madness, that sense can be nonsense, that cosmos can be chaos.'—'It is absolutely for the salvation of our argument that these necessary laws should be fixed as authoritative, not over human reason only, but as binding on all possible intelligence.' Systems of Philosophy based upon the idea that admitted necessary judgments even may be false, and which cannot be true, unless that idea is valid, we should dementate ourselves if we did not repudiate as systems of senseless error.

Very Important Fact and Principle as Stated by our Author.

'The unreasoned and generally unsatisfactory state of Philosophy,' says our author, 'is to be explained by the circumstances, that no enquirer has ever got to the beginning; and this, again, is to be accounted for by a fact for which no man is answerable, but which is inherent in the very constitution of things—the circumstance, namely, that things which are first in the order of nature are last in the order of knowledge.' Here we have clearly set before us the central problem in Philosophy, namely, the real relations between necessary and contingent forms of thought, or à priori and à posteriori, forms of knowledge. Until this problem is clearly and satisfactorily solved, Philosophy can never become real science. Three, and only three, solutions of this problem have been given which deserve attention, and to these special attention is now invited. We assume, as a verified truth of science, the actual existence of these two forms of thought—the contingent and the necessary.

The Kantian or Sceptical Exposition of the Relations between Contingent and Necessary Forms of Thought.

According to Kant, and the Sceptical School in science, as we have seen, necessary ideas are originated in thought prior to contingent ones, and the former give existence and form to the latter. As the former have no validity for things in themselves, the latter can have none, and all our necessary ideas and world-conceptions are utterly void of real validity. This exposition, as we have demonstrated, is based upon a fundamental psychological error. Contingent ideas, or facts of perception, external and internal, were prior in the order of time to necessary ideas. In other words, we had perception of body, succession, phenomena., and events, before the ideas of space, time, substance and cause were originated in the mind. The error of this Kantian exposition is now generally, if not universally, admitted.

Professor Ferrier and the Idealistic Exposition.

Professor Ferrier rightly affirms that, while knowledge, in its necessary forms, is first in the order of nature, it is last in the order of experience. In other words, 'real thinking, in the order of time and experience, precedes Philosophy, and contingent ideas are originated in thought prior to necessary ones.' So far, he is undeniably right. The immutable relation between these two forms of thought, the contingent and necessary, on the other hand, is, as he affirms, that of irreconcilable and distinctive antagonism. 'The original dowry, then, of universal man is inadvertency and error. This assumption is the ground and only justification of the existence of Philosophy.' 'As these inadvertences' (of natural thinking), he adds, 'are generally confirmed, and never corrected, by psychology, and are thus converted from oversights into something worse, it is further the business of Philosophy to refute psychology. This is what Philosophy has to do.' Mr. Spencer has furnished us with the formula which renders demonstrably evident, that the fulfilment of such a mission on the part of Philosophy is an absolute impossibility. It is this. The doctrine of the real existence of matter and material forms, as apprehended by 'natural thinking,' 'can be disproved but by a series of dependent propositions, no one of which is more evident than the single proposition to be disproved.' Professor Ferrier's exposition can never long command the assent of any class of real thinkers.

And what is the real condition of universal human nature, according to this hypothesis? 'The natural thinking' of the entire race, from the dire necessity of the case, 'must be error,' while truth can be apprehended but by philosophers of a certain school, those who repudiate 'natural thinking,' and 'the science of the human mind,' and can be apprehended by this small portion of mankind but 'at rare intervals,' and when their faculties are 'on their highest stretch.' Rather than accept such a dogma, and entertain the implied ideas of the author of 'Mind,' we should choose to accept as true the utterance that such philosophers 'are truly a race mad with logic and feeding the mind on chimeras.' The error of this hypothesis will appear still more manifest when we shall have considered the third and true one, namely:

The Hypothesis of Realism.

Realism agrees with the hypothesis last exposed, in the doctrine that necessary knowledge is prior to the contingent in the order of nature, and after it in the order of actual knowledge; that is, that necessary ideas are the logical antecedents of contingent ones, while the latter are the chronological antecedents of the former. We apprehend, for example, Space, Time, Substance, and Cause, as the necessary conditions of the possibility of Body, Succession, Phenomena, and Events, while these latter realities are perceived and apprehended before the former. According to this hypothesis, necessary knowledge, so far from being incompatible with and destructive of knowledge in its contingent form, is implied by, and is consequently explicative of, the latter. This hypothesis has this absolute claim to our regard, as the truth on this subject, that it absolutely accords with conscious facts. Take any form of necessary knowledge we please, and we shall find, on careful reflection, that we are necessarily and absolutely conscious of it as implied by some form of contingent knowledge. In all the axioms, for example, the subject represents a contingent and the predicate a necessary truth, the former implying the latter. Thus we have the axioms, Body implies space, Succession implies time, Phenomena imply substance, Events imply a cause, and Things equal to the same thing must be equal to one another. Now the implied cannot, by any possibility, be incompatible with, but must be explicative of, that by which the former is implied.

Here we have an explanation of the fixed relations which undeniably do exist between the sciences and 'natural thinking,' or facts of observation and experience, the former always explaining and systematizing the latter. The knowledge which the merchant has of the science of numbers, does not induce him to burn up his day-book, but enables him to systematize the recorded accounts in that book. The Pure Sciences, with Natural Philosophy, enable us to explain the mechanism of the material universe. So Philosophy, or Metaphysics, is not a universal destructionist, as our author supposes, but a universal expounder of conscious facts; and does not antagonize and destroy 'natural thinking,' but verifies, explains, and systematizes such knowledge, a mission infinitely more exalted and Divine than that set forth by our author and his school. A Philosophy that antagonizes, and would abrogate and annul, the apprehensions which do and must exist in the Universal Intelligence of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, is not 'a Divine Philosophy,' but a Philosophy maddened by false science.

The Ontology of our Author.

We are now prepared to consider directly the ultimate deduction of our author—deduction which fixes and determines his system. This deduction we give in his own words—words through which his doctrine is so distinctly announced that it cannot be misapprehended. 'By these considerations this system is absolved from all obligation to point out the causes or origin of cognition. The truths which it has reached render that question absurd. It is unanswerable, because it is unaskable. The question is, What are the conceivable causes in existence which generate knowledge? And the answer is, That no existence at all can be conceived by any intelligence anterior to, and aloof from, knowledge. Knowledge of existence—the apprehension of one's self and other things is alone true existence.' 'The equation or coincidence of the known and the existent is the ultimate conclusion which Philosophy has to demonstrate.' 'Thus Knowing and Being are shown to be built up of the same elements.' 'We are compelled, by the most stringent necessity of thinking, to conceive a Supreme Intelligence as the ground and essence of the Universal Whole.' In the course of his argument, he first takes away matter, and then mind, as realities in themselves, and gives them real existence, as mere thought-representations, in strict accordance with the principle that Being and Knowing are one and identical, that is, 'Knowledge is alone true existence.'

The Ontology of our author, then, is Pure Idealism in its most absolute or Hegelian form. His Pantheism, which affirms 'a Supreme Intelligence as the ground and essence of the Universal Whole,' is Pantheism in the Hegelian sense, and not in that of Schelling. It is God as the Absolute Idea which is the ground and essence of all thought, pure thought being all that is. On the system as thus announced, we would invite special attention to the following fundamental suggestions.

Fundamental Characteristics of this System.

I. It is Constructed Throughout upon a Fundamentally False Method.

The first characteristic that we notice of this system, is its fundamentally false method. Our philosopher professes to determine, wholly through knowledge à priori, the facts and forms of existence which are the exclusive objects of knowledge à posteriori. Worse than this. He professedly abrogates wholly knowledge in the latter, through knowledge in the former form, when the exclusive mission of the former is, not to abrogate and annul, but to explain and elucidate facts and objects of knowledge of the latter form. What if a philosopher should professedly determine wholly à priori, and by means of the principle in its positive and negative form, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, just what, and how many existing, objects do agree and disagree with one another? By just such a method as this, our philosopher, as he thinks, first abolishes and annihilates, and then recreates and reconstructs 'the Universal Whole.' Now he can no more determine, by 'dealing only with necessary truth,' facts and forms of real existence, than he can by the science of Numbers or of Geometry, in ignorance of all facts of observation, determine the distance between the earth and the sun.

II. In the Construction of his System, our Author Fundamentally Contradicts his own and the Universal Canon of Necessary Truth.

In the construction of his system, our philosopher, we remark, in the next place, fundamentally contradicts his own and the universal and absolute canon of necessary truth. 'A necessary truth or law of reason,' says our philosopher, and most truly so, 'is a truth or law, the opposite of which is inconceivable, contradictory, nonsensical, and impossible; more shortly, it is a truth, in the fixing of which nature had only one alternative, be it positive, or negative.' In the light of this self-evident and necessary truth, and criterion of all necessary truth, let us consider the following affirmations of our author in respect to time and space. 'Time is not time, but nonsense, without mind; space is not space, but is nonsense, without mind.' Mind and Thought, Being and Knowing, with our philosopher, we must bear in mind, are one and identical. His doctrine is, that if mind or thought did not exist, neither space nor time would exist. Now, space and time are represented in universal thought as absolutely necessary realities—realities which must continue such, if neither mind, nor thought, nor any other objects, should exist. The condition of the possible existence of mind and thought, and every other phenomenon, or substance, as represented in universal thought, is the reality of time and space; and while all other phenomena and realities may in thought be represented as real or unreal, time and space can but be represented as absolutely real.

The same holds equally of our philosopher's whole doctrine of the absolute identity of Being and Knowing. We have no more absolute forms of necessary truth than are embodied in the principles, Body implies space, Succession, or change, implies time, Phenomena imply substance, Events imply a cause, and Thought implies a real being, a substance in se, who thinks. A contradictory to a necessary truth is possible, and not to be represented in thought, if the doctrine of our author is true, that 'the apprehension (mere thought) of one's self and other things, is the only true existence.' Thought is a state of the Me, and not the Me itself. Our philosopher's system is false, or the axioms of all the sciences are untruths, and necessary truth is not necessary truth, and, indeed, no truth at all.

III. By our Author's Immutable Canon of Judgment, we are bound to Reject his System.

'No man is entitled, in Philosophy,' says our author, 'to say a thing is true, if he can possibly help thinking it true. No man is entitled, in Philosophy, to take any one step, if he could possibly have taken any other.' By this simple canon, every man is barred taking a single step in the direction of this Philosophy. Instead of being compelled to think space and time as 'nonsense, without mind,' we are necessitated by the immutable laws of our necessary thought, to think that space and time would exist, though nothing else, not even thought, should exist. The statement of Kant on this subject is undeniably true, viz.: 'We can never make to ourselves a representation of this—that there is no space, although we may readily think that no objects therein are to be met with.' We not only are not necessitated to think our author's doctrine in respect to time and space to be true, but are absolutely unable to 'make to ourselves the representation' that it can be true.

The same holds equally true of our author's dogma of the absolute identity of Being and Knowing. We can not only 'help thinking' that 'knowledge of existence—the apprehension of one's self and other things —is alone true existence,' but can far more readily 'represent to our selves' that thought implies a real being who thinks. Necessary truth, on the other hand, is no truth at all, and knowledge is not knowledge, unless the necessary judgments, or principles, Phenomena imply substance, Events imply a cause, and Thought implies a real thinker, have absolute validity. Unless, therefore, 'the opposite of that which is inconceivable, contradictory, nonsensical, impossible,' can be true, our author's system must be false.

IV. The System is in itself Self-contradictory and Absurd.

The advocates of the system speak largely of knowledge, of contingent, necessary, and absolute knowledge, and of being, as contingent, necessary, and absolute forms of existence. Yet, what is being in all its forms, according to this system? Nothing but 'knowledge, apprehensions of one's self and other things.' And what is knowledge but knowing, when nothing is known; apprehending, when no reality is apprehended; or apprehending as real what does not exist at all? It is self-contradictory and absurd, to call what is here represented as real, as existence in any form, and especially to call that knowledge in which nothing is known. We have given a simple 'apprehension of one's self and other things,' 'the one's self and other things' not existing at all, 'the apprehension being the sole existence.' It is absurd and a self-contradiction, we repeat, to call such apprehension either being or knowledge. Yet this is the system, just as expounded and argued in this treatise, and this is Idealism, as it is in itself.

In another and still higher sense, this system is self-contradictory. Our philosopher professedly deals but with knowledge in its necessary forms. He forgets that as an existing fact knowledge, in every form alike, is a contingent and not a necessary truth. When the question is asked, Does knowledge in any form exist? we answer, Yes. The fact that it does not exist, is just as consciously conceivable as is the non-being of any other reality. Knowledge is real. That is certain. It is certain, however, not in the sense that the opposite fact is inconceivable. In other words, the fact of knowledge is a contingent and not a necessary truth. Our philosopher is professedly dealing only with necessary truth. Yet the subject matter of his whole treatise is a contingent fact, and not a necessary truth at all. Knowledge, in its necessary form, pertains exclusively to that the non-being of which is inconceivable, and, therefore, a necessary form of existence. At the basis of this whole treatise lies the fact of knowledge, a contingent, consequently, and not a necessary truth. His Philosophy, therefore, is a fundamentally false and absurd Philosophy.

V. The Staple on which this whole System hangs is, in Fact and Form, a Contingent and not a Necessary Truth, if a Truth at all.

We now advance to a consideration of the fundamental logical error in this whole treatise. 'Philosophy,' our author affirms, 'executes her proper functions only when dealing with necessary truth.' 'The general character of this system is,' he adds, 'that it is a body of demonstrated truth.' Again, 'if there is a single weak point in the system, if there be any one premise or any one conclusion which is not as certain as that two and two make four, the whole scheme falls to pieces, and must be given up root and branch.' The proposition which we here lay down, and which we will now proceed to demonstrate, is this: The staple, the very first proposition, that on which, our author's entire chain of reasoning depends, is, if true, a contingent and not a necessary truth; a truth also which has no bearing, near or remote, in favour of our author's final deductions. The proposition to which we refer is the first in his whole series of propositions, and reads thus:—

Our Author's Universal Formula.

'The Primary Law or Condition of all Knowledge.—Along with whatever any intelligence knows, it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognizance of itself.' The real meaning of this formula, as explained in Proposition II., is this. Knowledge, in all its forms, includes as its real object, an 'object plus subject,' the Me and the Not-me constituting the one object. The theory of the author, then, is this. Knowledge, or thought, in no form can, by any possibility, exist, but as representing at one and the same time 'an object plus a subject.' We have here a perfect opportunity to represent with entire distinctness our author's system as it is. Suppose an apprehension to exist, an apprehension in which an object plus a subject is represented as real. Take away the object and subject, and suppose the apprehension, as representing the Me, to 'be the sub-existence.' Here you have our author's system, and Pure Idealism, as it is. The doctrine is that in no form, but as representing at the same time 'an object plus subject,' can thought exist, and that knowledge in this exclusive form is the sole existence. Nothing else is real but these exclusive forms of thought-representations. The difference between this formula of our author and that of Hegel and Idealism generally is this. According to that of the latter, knowledge, or thought, no specific characteristics being designated, is the sole reality, 'the Universal Whole.' According to Professor Ferrier, Knowledge, or thought, in one specific form, as 'an apprehension of one's self and other things, is the sole existence,' 'the Universal Whole.' The doctrine of our author, we repeat, is this: Thought can by no possibility exist but in this one exclusive form, as 'a representation of one's self and other things.' Unless an apprehension embraces these dual elements, 'an object plus subject,' our philosopher affirms 'no intellectual apprehension of any kind is possible; and whenever it is complied with, some kind of knowledge is necessary.' On this proposition, as thus expounded, and correctly so, as all will admit, we invite special attention to the following undeniable statements.

I. This Formula not a Self-evident or Necessary Truth.

This formula is commended to our regard as presenting a self-evident, or necessary truth. Has it the characteristics of such a truth? Let us grant that knowledge, or thought, is the sole existence. Our author affirms that his system, by its immutable characteristics, 'is absolved from all obligation to point out the causes or origin of cognition.' If we know not, and cannot know, 'the causes or origin of cognition,' how can we know 'the ground or condition' of its possibility? More especially, how can we determine à priori, and by necessary and immediate intuition, not only what the specific form of this uncaused cognition is, but what it must be? How can we thus discern what non-realities must be represented as real in such cognition? Instead of not being able to 'help thinking' this formula true, we find ourselves utterly unable to 'help thinking' it false. The question, what is the specific form of universal cognition, is wholly a question of fact; a question not of intuition à priori, but of à posteriori, determination. There is nothing in or about cognition from which we can discern intuitively what its absolute form must be.

II. As Presented by our Author Himself, this Formula, if True, Embodies a Contingent, and not a Necessary Truth.

The manner in which our author attempts to verify his formula, evinces fully that even in his regard it, if true, embodies a contingent, and not a necessary truth. Cognition, considered as a fact, is a contingent, and not a necessary, form of existence, we being able to represent it in thought, as existing or not existing. How does our author attempt to verify his formula? Not by presenting, as is done in the case of all axiomatic truths, his proposition as an intuitively self-evident and necessary one, a proposition, 'the opposite of which is inconceivable, contradictory, nonsensical, impossible.' On the other hand, a very humble appeal is made to consciousness and reasoning, to prove, not that we must, but that, as a matter of fact, we do, in all our thinking, have some consciousness of ourselves, 'that, however deeply engrossed we may be with the objects before us, we are never stripped entirely of the consciousness of ourselves.' By such appeals we merely discover what is; and never what must be. Thus, by a feeble independent argument, he attempts to verify his formula, not as a first truth of reason, but a deductive one. 'If it were possible for an intelligence,' he says, 'to receive knowledge at any one time without knowing that it was his knowledge, it would be possible for him to do this at all times. (Here is an undeniable non sequitur. For aught that we can know à priori, and intuitively, and especially necessarily, 'attention may, at times, be so absolutely engrossed with its object, as totally to exclude self-recognition, while, in other relations, self-consciousness must, from the nature of our intellectual faculties, exist.) 'So that,' our author continues, 'an intelligent being might be endowed with knowledge without once, during the whole term of his existence, knowing that he possessed it.' This very statement evinces absolutely that the existence of such a being is conceivably possible. Not a few philosophers attribute knowledge, in some form, to the brute, and yet deny of him totally the capacity of self-knowledge. Such a doctrine may be false; yet it is, undeniably, conceivably true; and this palpable fact demonstrates this formula not to be what it is claimed to be, a fiat, or necessary and intuitive, truth of reason. Nor can any one intelligently read our author's observations on this formula without receiving the distinct and indubitable impression that the learned Professor himself feels that he has presented, not a necessary but contingent form of cognition.

Other and True Statements of our Author absolutely Verify his Formula as not, if True at all, Presenting a Necessary, but Contingent Truth.

In other statements, our philosopher fully evinces the fact that his formula, if it presents any form of real truth, presents said truth, not in its necessary but contingent form. 'Nine hundred and ninety-nine parts of our attention,' he says, 'may be always devoted to the tiring or business we have in hand; it is sufficient for our argument if it be admitted the thousandth part, or even a smaller fraction, of it is perpetually directed upon ourselves.' It is conceivable, our author admits and affirms, that attention may be so absorbed with its object, that but one part out of a thousand is left for self. If attention may be occupied with its object, in such circumstances, it is undeniably conceivable that such attention may be continued when this small fraction of self-recognition is taken away. Nor is it a self-evident and necessary truth, that this fraction does not sometimes disappear. In the presence of such undeniable facts, we can 'help thinking' that this formula presents a self-evident and necessary truth, and cannot 'help thinking' that it may not be even contingently true.

This Formula is Consciously not Necessarily True.

Many years ago there appeared an article, argued with great ability, in a leading quarterly—the Edinburgh Review, if we do not forget. The exclusive object of the article was to prove that when attention becomes so absolutely absorbed with its object, that all self-recognition ceases, then the Intelligence acts with the greatest possible precision and energy. The argument was one of progressive approach. In proportion to the distinctness of apprehension of, and fixedness of attention upon the object, self-recognition is diminished, and intellectual precision and energy are increased. Let apprehension become so distinct and attention so fixed as to utterly displace all self-recognition, and then intellectual precision and energy would reach their highest possible state. Nobody objected, or can object, to the doctrine of this article, on the ground that said doctrine is not conceivably true. Such a doctrine may not be true, but it involves no element of 'self-contradiction, absurdity, nonsense, or impossibility,' and this is all that is requisite to take this formula wholly out of the sphere of self-evident and necessary truth, and to reveal it, when presented as such a truth, as an error of false science.

This is not the True, but a False Formula of Knowledge in its Universal and Necessary Forms.

We now advance absolute proof that this is not the true, but a false formula of knowledge in its universal and necessary forms. Given a fact of real knowledge, what does this fact by itself and from itself alone imply? 'Just this, and nothing more,' we answer, namely, a capacity, and a correlate object of knowledge, and these in such relations to each other, that knowledge necessarily arises in consequence of their mutual relations to each other. Without these conditions, the existence of knowledge is inconceivable, and when these conditions do exist, knowledge must arise. No truth can be more self-evident, and necessarily so, than this, and here are all 'the grounds and conditions' apprehended as necessary to the existence of the fact of knowledge. What the specific form of knowledge must be, and what specific elements must be in it, is exclusively a question of fact, a question not to be determined à priori, but wholly à posteriori.

This Formula is perfectly Contradictory to our Author's Exposition of Philosophic Knowledge.

No idea, according to our author, can exist which does not pertain to its object as 'an object plus a subject.' In philosophic knowledge, according to this same author, both subject and object, the Me and the Not-me, disappear, or become one and identical, and thought as representing this identity, and that alone, is real. The object of knowledge in this form is not an 'object plus a subject,' but knowledge without such subject or object, or both in an absolute synthesis. Here, then, is knowledge in its highest and final form, knowledge which exists without 'the ground or condition' without which, according to this formula, knowledge in no form is possible. Either Idealism is false, or this formula is void of validity. There is no escaping this conclusion. A synthesis of A and B, in which both become one and identical, or both disappear, is a very different thing from A plus B. Philosophical knowledge, according to our author and Idealism universally, represents an absolute synthesis in which all plurality disappears, and no duality of objects exists. Either this formula is false, then, or our philosopher has made it the basis of a false deduction.

This Formula, its Validity being Admitted, lays no Basis whatever for the Ultimate Deductions of Idealism.

Granting, now, the full validity of this formula, what follows? Have we any ground at all in it for the ultimate deductions of Idealism, 'that Being and Knowing must be one and identical,' or that 'Knowledge, or apprehensions of one's self and other things, is alone true existence'? Suppose, that in its duality of representation, knowledge in its most absolute and conscious forms always does give the self and the not-self as distinct and separate forms of real existence, forms of being directly, immediately, and absolutely known to be real existences. Suppose, still further, that conscious certitude, in the validity of such apprehensions, is just as absolute as does or can characterize any form of necessary truth; a certainty which remains absolute 'proof against all attempts to remove it by grounds and arguments;' a certainty so absolute that even philosophers, 'who are mad with logic,' can by no possibility even doubt, but at 'rare intervals,' and such doubts can be of but momentary continuance. Suppose, once more, that in minds in whom the demonstrations of our author, and other Idealists, seem unanswerable, they yet produce no conviction, and that in no minds can there be such absolute certitude of the validity of such affirmed demonstrations, as there is and must be of the reality, and of the validity of our knowledge of the self and not-self. All this is undeniably true of the two realities, spirit and matter, represented in universal thought, and with those of space and time. We are, then, necessitated to repudiate Idealism, or repudiate the absolutely known, on the ground of the consciously uncertain, not to say false.

Concluding Reflection on this Criticism.

We have been at so much pains to expose the errors involved in the Proposition under consideration, for the reason that it constitutes the avowed staple upon which all that is subsequently found in the treatise depends. 'Looked at in itself, or as an isolated truth,' says our author, 'our first proposition is of no importance, but viewed as the foundation of the whole system, and as the single staple on which all the truths subsequently to be advanced depend, it cannot be too strongly insisted on or too fully elucidated. Everything hinges on the stability which can be given to this proposition.'

Having absolutely demonstrated the fact that our philosopher has fundamentally erred in his really and avowed 'staple proposition,' it would be a work of needless supererogation to follow him further on his track of error. 'As is the method of a philosopher,' says Cousin, and this is one of his most important utterances, 'such will be the destiny of his system.' As long as the à priori method determines our deductions in the problem of being and its laws, the reign of Chaos and Old Night will continue in the realm of Philosophy.

CHAPTER IV.

MATERIALISM IN ITS MOST MODERN FORM.

SECTION I.

POSITIVISM.—COMTE AND OTHERS.

After Idealism had had, in its diverse and contradictory forms, one after the other, supreme control, especially in the sphere of German thought, and each form had been, in its turn, repudiated, those systems, as had been true in previous ages, were supplanted by Materialism in its baldest form. In the development of the system in this its most modern form, we find very little or anything that is new until we come to the so-called 'New Philosophy,' which, in fact, has no predecessor, being a conglomerate of Scepticism in its intensest form, on the one hand, and of Materialism, in its baldest form, on the other. In treating of Materialism in the form under consideration, we commence with the so-called Positive Philosophy as most fully developed by Comte of Paris.

There was a time when Comte's Positive Philosophy seemed likely to become the universally accepted form of Materialism. Now 'there is none so poor' as to do reverence to this Philosophy or to its author. Two facts, among others, have brought about this result. Comte, in the first place, admitted the universally conscious fact that, by the immutable laws of his nature, man is a religious being, and developed a system of religious worship in which humanity, as the object of human worship, is to supersede Infinity and Perfection, dead humanity, as ideally existing, instead of the Living God. At first infidelity manifested a strong inclination to accept of the New Religion, such thinkers as the late J. S. Mill favouring its adoption. Even the credulity of Unbelief, however, was soon shocked at the absurdity of worshipping Death. With all who are acquainted with Christianity, also, there is an irrepressible conviction that rational human election lies between the Christian religion and no religion at all. To acknowledge mankind to be by nature religious beings, is, in reality, to admit the fact that all men should be Christians. In rejecting the religious element in Comte's system, unbelievers repudiated the system itself, and especially as represented by this thinker.

Another and main reason for the repudiation of Comte, on the part of unbelievers of all schools, was his open admission that but one alternative is open to Philosophy, viz., to ignore all enquiry in respect to ultimate causation, or to accept of the Theistic Hypothesis as the only one which can receive even an apparent verification. The teachings of Comte, on this subject, have not received the attention of philosophers which the subject demands. Permit us to invite special attention to his statements on this subject.

Comte's Judgment of the Real Scientific Merits of Atheism, on the one hand, and Theism on the other.

Until quite modern times all philosophers of all schools have admitted, as self-evident, the principle of Ultimate Causation, namely, that there is, either within or out of and above nature, an ultimate reason why the facts of the universe are as they are and not otherwise. This principle is but a necessarily implied form of stating the basis principle of all the inductive sciences—to wit, Every event must have a cause, and all admit that the principle has identically the same validity in one form as in the other. It is only within the sphere of the Modern Evolution in Philosophy that the validity of this principle, in either form, has been questioned. Scepticism differed from other systems, not in denying the validity of the principle, but the possibility of a solution of the problem of Ultimate Causation —the problem which all other systems professedly did solve. The great effort of the advocates of the New Philosophy, of such thinkers as Comte, Mill, Spencer, and Huxley, is to remove the problem under consideration out of the sphere of science by open denial of the validity of the principle that Every event must have a cause, and affirming, as the necessary consequent, that the problem of Ultimate Causation does not fall within the proper sphere of scientific inquiry. The reason is obvious. All thinkers in common have become distinctly, conscious that if this problem is pushed to an ultimate solution, the evidence will be found to lie with infinite weight in favour of Theism, no evidence, in any form, being demonstrated to exist in favour of the opposite hypothesis. Let us now listen, on this fundamental aspect of the Theistic problem, to Comte, than whom no man living or dead was better able to judge of the real character of the argument before us. 'If we insist,' says Comte, 'upon penetrating the insoluble mystery of the essential cause of phenomena, there is no hypothesis more satisfactory than that they proceed from wills dwelling in them or outside of them, an hypothesis which assimilates them to the effects produced by the desires which exist within ourselves. Were it not for the pride induced by Metaphysical and Scientific studies, it is inconceivable that any Atheist, ancient or modern, should have believed that his vague hypothesis on such a subject were preferable to this direct mode of explanation. And it was the only mode which really satisfied reason, until men began to see the utter inutility of all absolute research. The order of nature is doubtless very imperfect in every respect; but its production is far more compatible with the hypothesis of an intelligent will, than with that of blind mechanism. Persistent Atheists would seem to be the most illogical of theologians; for they occupy themselves with the same questions, yet reject the only appropriate method of handling them.'

For ourselves, we have far more confidence in Comte's judgment of the validity of an argument, than of his wisdom or unwisdom in judging of the works and government of Infinity and Perfection. In Southern India there are said to be a class of religionists, who are taught specifically from childhood up to observe absolutely the rites and ceremonies of their own religion, but never to enquire at all about the evidence of its truth, nor to pay the remotest regard to anything which may be said to them about any other religion. Fewer converts, it is said, are made among this than among any other people, the mind being utterly and religiously closed to all enquiry of every kind. This is, in fact, the position of modern unbelief. 'All absolute research,' all attempts to solve the problem of Ultimate Causation, are to be utterly ignored as wholly inutile and vain. 'If a man asks me,' says Huxley, 'what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do not know; that neither I nor anyone else have any means of knowing; and that under these circumstances I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call me a Sceptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being answered, and, therefore, not worth the attention of men who have work to do in the world; and thus ends one of his essays:

'"If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school of metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning about quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it, then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

'Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing?'

Why will not and cannot mankind follow 'this most wise advice'? Huxley has himself answered the question. 'We are naturally curious about such subjects, and consequently must enquire about them.' Whatever these Scientists may say to the contrary, they and all mankind do and must know that every event does and must have a cause; that, as a consequence, there is and must be an Ultimate Reason why things are as they are, and not otherwise, a First and All-determining Cause, which gave being and form to this goodly universe. All are and must be conscious of an infinite interest in knowing what this Cause is, and what are our present and future relations to it. We are impelled by an immutable law of our mental nature to ask, not only what is real, but why are things as they are, and not otherwise. Rational mind can no more ignore or suspend thought in respect to 'absolute research' than it can cease to be conscious of thinking at all. We cannot put the enquiry, What is real? without being forced to ask ourselves, Why are the facts of universal nature as they are, and not otherwise? Why are these Scientists so solicitous to persuade us to ignore and suspend all enquiry in this one direction? Comte has given the answer, the only one which the nature of the case admits of. 'If we insist upon penetrating the' (miscalled) 'insoluble mystery of the essential cause of phenomena, no deduction but the hypothesis of an intelligent will,' that is, of a personal God, 'will satisfy the reason.' We must take this great central fact with us as a guiding light, if we would penetrate 'the hidings of the power' of modern unbelief. The 'most wise advice' of the advocates of the New Philosophy is, and this is their last hope, not to quicken and push, but to ignore and suspend thought and enquiry in the direction of our most sacred duties and immortal interests.

Here lies the mortal offence of Comte in the regard of unbelievers. Had he said with Hume that we should not inquire at all in the direction of the question of Ultimate Causation, and that for the reason that no solution of such a question is possible, all unbelievers would have honoured him as their great leader, and as the great leader of modern thought. But when he assures them that if they choose to enquire, the weight of evidence will be found to be 'as infinity to unity' in favour of Theism, then the case is changed. Now, they cannot follow him without admitting that they would be Theists but for the fact that truth with them is not an object of enquiry.

While modern unbelief has repudiated Comte, it has accepted as true his fundamental principles. If we consider the doctrine of Positivism as developed by this thinker, we shall find it to constitute the central dogma of the advocates of the New Philosophy, however they may affect to despise the author of this doctrine. Nor can any one comprehend the present state of Anti-Theistic thought, without a distinct understanding, of this doctrine. What, then, is Positivism?

Positivism Defined.

'Each branch of our knowledge,' says Comte, 'has three different theoretical conditions—the theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the scientific, or positive—these conditions being 'essentially different and radically opposed to each other.'—'In the final, the positive state,' he adds, 'the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and distinction of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws; that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation clearly combined are the means of this knowledge.'—'Our business is—seeing how vain is every research into what are called causes, whether first or final—to pursue an accurate discovery of these laws, with a view of reducing them to the smallest number possible.'

The ultimate perfection of the Positive system would be to represent all phenomena as particular aspects of a singular grand fact, such as gravitation, for instance.'—'All fundamental conceptions having become homogeneous, the Positive state will be fully established. It can never again change its character, though it will for ever be in course of development by additions of new knowledge. Having acquired the character of universality, which has been the only advantage with the two preceding systems, it will supersede them by its natural superiority, and leave to them only an historical existence.'

From this system Comte deduces a special idea of education. 'The best minds are agreed,' he says, 'that European education, still essentially metaphysical and literary, must be superseded by a Positive training conformable to our time and needs.' The grand result of the Positive Philosophy 'will be to regenerate education.'

With the above teachings of Comte, Herbert Spencer, in common with Mill, Huxley, and others, fully agrees. Why does Comte utterly evade all enquiry in respect to proximate and ultimate causation—moral responsibility and metaphysics? Because, as they affirm, all such problems lie within the sphere of the absolutely unknowable and unknown. For this identical reason, Huxley, after Hume, urges us to regard and treat all such enquiries as 'Lunar Politics.' 'The Atheistic, the Pantheistic, and the Theistic hypotheses,' says Herbert Spencer, contain the same ultimate element'—'an absolute mystery'—the utterly inscrutable power which the universe manifests to us.'—'To this conclusion,' he adds, 'science irresistibly arrives as it reaches its confines; while to this conclusion religion is irresistibly driven by criticism. As 'ever-during dark' involves the problems of ultimate causation as professedly solved in the schools of Idealism, Materialism, and Theism, all enquiries pertaining to God, the soul, moral responsibility, and immortality, should be repudiated, and treated as having no more rational place in human thought than 'Lunar Politics.'

As all real knowledge with us pertains exclusively to facts of observation, together with 'their invariable relations of succession and resemblance,' or 'their laws,' the exclusive sphere and direction of human thought and enquiry, that is, of scientific induction and deduction, thus becomes absolutely determinable and determined. The basis of all science is assumed facts. When these facts shall have been generalized so as to 'represent all phenomena as particular aspects of a particular grand fact, such as gravitation, for instance,' then the Positive system' will have reached 'its ultimate perfection.' To this 'ultimate perfection' Huxley affirms himself to have attained. 'Fact,' he says, 'I know; and Law I know.'

Equally determinable, also, is the question, what education should be. No longer is the maxim of ancient wisdom to command our regard, viz., 'Know thyself.' No longer is the maxim, 'The proper study of mankind is man,' to be a guiding light in education. The questions, What am I? Whence came I? To what or to whom do I owe my being? What ought I to be, to do, and to become? Whither am I bound, and what awaits me in the eternal future? all such enquiries are to take rank in human thought, 'as Lunar Politics.' The child, the youth, and the man, should be educated to observe visible, tangible facts, and to generalize the same. Moral training should consist exclusively in determining the specific effects which do follow, in experience, from particular acts and courses of conduct, and forming the habit of 'living according to nature.'

In this new system of moral training, the object to be aimed at is to render man not virtuous at all, in the common acceptation of the term, but to render him, in the language of Spencer, 'organically moral.' Of the results of this new form of moral training, Spencer speaks very apprehensively. 'Indeed, were it not,' he says, 'that throughout the progress of the race, men's experience of the effects of conduct have been slowly generalized into principles; were it not that these principles have been from generation to generation insisted on by parents, upheld by public opinion, sanctified by religion, and enforced by threats of eternal damnation for disobedience; were it not that under these potent influences habits have been modified and feelings proper to them made innate; were it not, in short, that we have been rendered in a considerable degree organically moral, it is certain that disastrous results would ensue from the removal of those strong and distinct motives which the current belief supplies. Even as it is, those who relinquish the faith in which they have been brought up for this most abstract faith in which science and religion unite, may not uncommonly fail to act up to their convictions.' Of all men they are, in reality, most criminal who put in jeopardy all human interests by subverting morality itself, and thus separating from all interests the idea of moral sacredness. Our present concern, however, is with the truth of Positivism, and not with its moral teachings. The points in which the advocates of the system fully agree are the following: 1. The basis of their system, or the material of which the whole is constructed, are facts of external observation, or material phenomena. 2. That the exclusive object of science, or Philosophy, is to generalize these phenomena, and thus determine 'their laws,' or 'their invariable relations of succession and resemblance.' 3. As 'the reality existing behind all appearance (or phenomena) is, and ever must be, unknown,' the Positive Philosophy 'gives over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena.' 4. Taking into account nothing but the positively known phenomena actually observed, and searching far and finding nothing, in our deductions, but the actual, essential, and universal elements, or characteristics, of these absolutely knowable facts, the system thus deduced must have throughout an absolutely positive character, and must embody nothing but absolutely fixed and changeless results. The system developed 'can never change its character, though it will be for ever in course of development by additions of new knowledge. It will thus supersede all other systems, and leave to them only an historical existence.' But for the absolute demands of truth, we should not feel at liberty to disturb such pleasing and positive dreams. That the system may be rightly understood and appreciated, we invite special attention to its essential characteristics.

Essential Characteristics of the System.

1. The first characteristic that we notice, and a fundamental one, too, is its palpable partialism. It takes into account but one half, and these the least important, of absolutely known facts. It has no more claim to our regard as a Philosophy, much less as the Positive Philosophy, than would a professedly absolute system of Astronomy which should ignore

and deny the existence of all fixed stars. Facts of mind, of internal perception and reflection, are just as real and absolutely known as are those of matter, or external phenomena. We as absolutely know that we think, feel, and will, as we do that we know external phenomena, and the latter class of facts have no importance whatever but as related to the former. A Philosophy of mind, of thought, feeling, and willing, is just as real and as positive a Philosophy as is that of matter or of material phenomena. We might as properly exclude the latter from the sphere of Science and Philosophy as the former. It is just as vain and absurd also to resolve the former class of facts into the latter, as to resolve the latter into the former. There are no facts of which we are or can be more absolutely conscious, for example, than we are of that form of moral freedom, call it what name you will, which renders us morally responsible agents, and involves us in the real desert of good or ill, when we do the right or perpetrate the wrong. This Idealists, Materialists, Positivists, and Sceptics, of all schools, ever have believed, do believe, and must believe, their Philosophy to the contrary notwithstanding. If man is a machine, as these Scientists argue, he is, undeniably, in distinction from all other machines, morally responsible for the track on which he runs. Any system that ignores the facts of man's intellectual, sensitive, moral, and spiritual nature, and confounds things which fundamentally differ, as do spirit and matter, is a positive system in this sense only, that it is a rude conglomerate of positive error.

2. This system, also, is self-contradictory and absurd, being constructed throughout in the light of principles which it utterly repudiates. We must bear in mind that the system at its point of departure in search of truth utterly repudiates all necessary ideas and principles. 'In the final, the positive state,' says Comte, 'the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws; that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance.' In other words, the exclusive aim of Philosophy, according to Positivism, is to generalize facts. On what condition is generalization possible? The pre-existence in the mind of absolute ideas, we answer, the very ideas which this system utterly repudiates. Suppose that there exist in the mind no such ideas as those of resemblance and difference, likeness and unlikeness, equality and inequality, greater and less, how could phenomena be classified or generalized? Coleridge tells us of a lunatic who, as he listened to a clock as it was striking the hour twelve, counted the strokes thus, 'One-one-one.' The lunatic pronounced the clock a graceless liar, for the reason that it perpetually struck one, when the real number was twelve. Here is the result of the mind becoming confused in respect to the idea of number. Suppose this idea to wholly drop out of the mind. It would be utterly impossible, in that case, to count anything. So, if the ideas of order, resemblance and difference, identity and diversity, and others of a kindred nature, should drop from thought, not a single step could be taken in the direction of classification, or generalization; nor could the presence of law be anywhere recognized. Now, the ideas of space, time, substance, and cause, are, undeniably, just as universal, just as necessary and absolute, as are those above designated. If any one of these ideas must be accepted or repudiated in Philosophy, all must be. On the same conditions on which we can know law and phenomena as alike or unlike, we can know time, space, substances, and causes. If any distinctions are to be made in phenomena, on the ground of their obvious likeness or unlikeness, the phenomena of thought, feeling, and willing, must be totally separated from those of external perception. If substances, in their fundamental characteristics, or phenomena, unlike, are to be distinguished and separated from one another, it is a violation of all laws of scientific induction and deduction to identify matter with spirit, or spirit with matter, or to confound thought, feeling, and willing, with material phenomena, or the latter with the former. This is just what Positivism does. It first of all repudiates all forms of implied knowledge, and then, in the light of such knowledge in one form, the only form which meets its special exigencies, makes all its generalizations and deductions.

3. Positivism, we remark, in the next place, has no other basis than mere lawless assumption. It assumes, for example, that we can know law, but cannot know substances and causes; that we can distinguish, separate, classify, and generalize phenomena, but cannot do any of these relatively to the substances to which these phenomena pertain. Where is the ground for any such assumptions as these? Law, as we have shown in other connections, is just as invisible as time, space, substances, and causes. In distinguishing, separating, classifying, and generalizing phenomena, we, in fact and form, do the same things relatively to their substances. In distinguishing and separating, as we must do, the phenomena of thought, feeling, and willing, from all material forms and manifestations, we do and must distinguish and separate spirit from matter. Nothing can be more absurd and lawless than is the assumption that we can know fact and law, and cannot know the substances and causes, which these same facts as absolutely imply as they do the law to which these facts accord. The idea of appearances in which no realities appear, of phenomena in which no substances are manifested, of events by which no causes are implied, of thoughts which nobody thinks, and of acts without an actor, is an inane dream of a crazy Philosophy.

4. No system was ever constructed, the entire method of which is more utterly lawless than is that of Positivism. It utterly ignores, and repudiates as insolvable, in the first place, all the leading problems of human thought and enquiry—those of Metaphysics, and of Proximate and Ultimate Causation, for example. It then as arbitrarily repudiates all forms of implied knowledge, and with these, all necessary ideas and principles, the ideas of substance, cause, and personal identity, for example, and with these all corresponding axioms. Of two fundamental classes of facts, each known with equal absoluteness, mental phenomena, on the one hand, and physical on the other, it arbitrarily repudiates the former, and selects the latter as the exclusive basis of all its deductions. Having openly repudiated all necessary ideas and principles, the system, in its final extremity, arbitrarily selects as its guiding light and sole authority, one of these repudiated ideas and principles, the idea and principle of Identity and Diversity, Resemblance and Difference, and, consequently, of Law. Having by this lawless method reached its ultimate deductions, the system inaugurates itself before the world as the Positive Philosophy. Having found all its claims endangered by one element of human nature, an element which will, despite all the admonitions of false science, command a hearing, the religious principle in man, Positivism finally develops a religion which, in fact and form, consists in the worship of Death, dead and extinct souls, ideally existing, a religion which, in the language of Huxley, is 'Catholicism minus Christianity.' Thus we have furnished to our hands another class of thinkers who have baptized themselves candidates for the asylum of that genus of philosophers 'who are mad with logic.' Take the fixed method of Positivism, and there is not a systematized absurdity, actual or conceivable, which cannot be demonstrated to possess the same claims to our regard as the Positive Philosophy, that the system under consideration does. In the construction of this system, lawlessness reaches its final consummation. We might proceed to an indefinite length in our criticisms of this lawless system. The above, however, are sufficient for all the demands of science.

SECTION II.

THE PRESENT PHASES OF MATERIALISM.

The Logic of the System.—Examples from Professor Huxley.

'If there is one thing clear about modern science,' says Huxley, 'it is the tendency to reduce all scientific problems, except those which are purely mathematical, to questions of molecular physics, that is, to the attractions, repulsions, motions, and co-ordination of the ultimate particles of matter.' In another connection he affirms absolutely that thoughts, and here he would include all mental facts, 'are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.' 'Any one,' he says again, 'who is acquainted with the history of science, will admit that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity.' By spontaneity our author means free determination. We must admit that we have totally misread 'the history of science,' or utterly deny the historical correctness of the above statements. In past ages Materialism has never generated a numerous school of thinkers as compared with the disciples of opposite schools, and has invariably, India excepted, been, after a short season of popular favour, supplanted by Scepticism. At the present time, also, few scientists, not even such as Huxley, are avowed Materialists, but rather Sceptics who explain facts from the material standpoint. Let us, however, listen still further to Huxley. 'As surely as every future grows out of the past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.'

According to the Theology of India, Brahm, who is the sole reality, lies in a profound slumber on the encircling folds of a huge serpent. What this serpent is, Brahm alone having real existence, we are not informed by the Brahminical theology. This deep mystery our so-called modern science has solved. This monstrous anaconda, which is not only to swallow up or 'devour spirit and spontaneity,' and with these 'knowledge, feeling, and action,' but even Brahm himself, and all our immortal hopes, is 'matter and law.' Through 'the tightening grasp' of this all-crushing and all-devouring anaconda—to wit, 'matter and law'—the soul, God, duty, and immortality are to be crushed out of human thought and regard.

If, in our desire to attain to clear visions of this whole subject, we put the question, What is this 'matter and law?' the deep midnight of absolute nescience encircles us. 'It is certain,' we are assured by Huxley, 'that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit,' and that 'the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas.' If we further enquire about 'the ultimate particles of matter,' or 'molecular physics,' we are here, also, assured by this same high authority 'that it is also, in strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is.'

Yet, within the sphere of the absolutely unknowable and unknown, and relative to the same, this same thinker promises to give us absolute demonstrations of infinite importance, demonstrations which shall not only reveal to us the mysteries of being and of life, but shall take from us our souls, our God, our moral duties and relations, our immortal hopes, and locate all our religious ideas and doctrines within the sphere of 'Lunar Politics.' 'I propose to demonstrate to you,' he says, 'that a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition, does pervade the whole living world.' We must bear in mind, that in the sentence above cited, he affirms an absolute ignorance of 'the composition of any body whatever.' Yet here he promises us absolute demonstration in regard to 'the substantial composition of all vitalized bodies, the most mysterious combinations in nature.' After having, by a series of inductions and deductions, of a character for which science, were it a person, might convict him, in any court, of obtaining conclusions under false pretences—after having, by such a process, reached his imagined demonstration, he thus sets forth its bearings upon our immortal aspirations and hopes. 'I bid you beware that in accepting these conclusions, you are placing your foot on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of heaven.'

Should we ask Huxley and his co-scientists for the reason and grounds of these absolute affirmations in regard to the relations of substances of which an equally absolute ignorance is affirmed—if we should ask them to give us the reason why they affirm that one unknown and unknowable something called matter is to 'devour' another equally unknown and unknowable something called spirit, their answer is ready. This each one of 'the privileged spirits' has found out, not by any insight into the reality or relations of things, but by ' the increase of his wisdom.' If we should ask for an explanation of the fact, that all these palpable contradictions and absurdities have place in a single article of thirty-five pages of printed matter, the same answer must be given, namely, by 'the increase of wisdom.'

Examples from Professor Maudsley.

It would seem that the prediction of Huxley in regard to the gradual extension, through physiology, of 'the realm of matter and law,' over the domain of 'thought, feeling, and action,' was receiving a very rapid accomplishment. In the dissection of dead men's brains, and of those of other dead animals, there has been a professed discovery, not only of the brain-organs of all mental operations, but of the kinds of 'molecular changes in the matter of life,' through which all mental phenomena are produced. We have all these wonderful discoveries set forth especially in the various volumes which have proceeded from the pens of such physiologists as Professor Maudsley, of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Our main citations will be from his volume entitled 'Body and Mind.' Professor Maudsley, we must bear in mind, fully agrees with Huxley in affirming an absolute ignorance of the nature of matter and spirit, and of the 'substantial composition of every body whatever.' This admitted and affirmed ignorance, however, is with him, as well as with Huxley, and their associates in science, no barrier whatever to the most imperious and dogmatic teachings in respect to the science of both matter and spirit. As an example of what may reasonably be expected, in the latter science, from such thinkers, we present here Professor Maudsley's idea of the only scientific method in the study of this science.

Professor Maudsley's Method of Mental Science.

'Surely it is time,' he says, 'we put seriously to ourselves the question whether the inductive method, which has proved its worth by its abundant fruitfulness whenever it has been faithfully applied, should not be as rigidly used in the investigation of other natural phenomena. If so, we ought certainly to begin our enquiry with the observation of the simplest instances—with its physiological manifestations in animals, in children, in idiots, in savages, mounting by degrees to the highest and most recondite facts of consciousness, the interpretation or misinterpretation of which constitutes what has hitherto been claimed to be Mental Philosophy.'

We take no issue with Professor Maudsley in regard to the principle, that Mental Philosophy should be investigated and developed throughout, in absolute accordance with the real requirements of the inductive method. We differ from him fundamentally, however, in regard to the principles of this method, and especially their applications in respect to the science under consideration. In developing the science of Physiology, Botany, or that of Medicine, for example, we wonder if the faculty of the Royal College of Physicians of London, of which faculty our professor is an honoured member, begin their instructions, and base all their final deductions in such sciences, upon facts bearing upon the same, as known to 'animals, children, idiots, and savages.' Do they understand that in order to know a Newton, or Milton, they must first know 'the animal, the child, the idiot, and the savage'? In order to understand modern architecture, must we first understand the method of the beaver in the construction of his dam, of the child in the construction of his cob-house, or of the savage in the construction of his wig-wam? To know anything as it is, should we not, first of all, study it as it is? To know how anything came to be what it is, must we not, first of all, know it as it is? If we commence our investigations, with no distinct apprehensions of the ultimate facts to be explained and elucidated, are we at all likely to understand the bearing of the remote facts which we do find? Mind as it is, and the relations of the mind to the body, facts pertaining to all these, are directly and immediately before us, and we can know them as they are. The mental states of the animal, the child, the idiot, and the savage, are by no means so well known to us. Facts of this latter class, if knowable and explicable at all, can be known and explained but through facts of the former class. To attempt to explain the former through the latter, is an attempt to find light through 'the palpable obscure,' and that while we are equally ignorant of both. Professor Maudsley and his associates in the Royal College, have, we do not question, been children. We are not quite certain, however, of the accuracy of their recollections of the facts of infantile experiences. Of the fact that they have never been (irrational) animals, whatever their very remote ancestors may have been, we feel absolutely assured. Nor have we the remotest apprehensions that they have ever been idiots or savages. We are not at all assured, therefore, of the accuracy of the data which they may furnish us from these 'lands of darkness, as darkness itself, where the light is as darkness.' We do not question the fact, however, that each member of this learned faculty has 'a sound mind in a sound body.' We commend these to them, therefore, the essential facts of each, together with their mutual relationships, which are directly and immediately before them—we commend these to them, we say, as facts which are first to be investigated and known. When we know what we are, then, and not till then, shall we be at all prepared to move the question, how came we to be what we are? Cousin never gave faith a truer and wiser utterance than this, viz.: 'As is the method of a philosopher, such will be the destiny of his system.' We cannot rationably hope, through a fundamentally false method, such as Professor Maudsley's undeniably is, to reach any but fundamentally false deductions.

Examples of our Professor's Inductions and Deductions.

Our professor, having announced his method, now proceeds in accordance with the same, to present us with his inductions and deductions. 'To begin the study of mind, then,' he says, 'with the observation of its humblest bodily manifestations, is a strictly scientific method.' We think that he might as properly commence the study of Astronomy with the observation of the humblest bodily manifestations,' as thus to commence 'the study of mind.' Our present concern, however, is with our professor's particular inductions and deductions. The kind of 'bodily manifestations' which he presents, are some very interesting experiments which have been made upon the bodies of decapitated frogs and brainless pigeons. 'If the hind foot of a frog that has had its head cut off be pinched, it is withdrawn from the irritation,' 'If the excitation be stronger, a movement of all the limbs follows, the frog jumping away.' From these facts, our professor draws the following deductions. 'Independently of consciousness and of will, an organism plainly has the power—call it intelligent, or call it what we will—of feeling and eschewing what is hurtful to it, as well as of feeling and ensuing what is beneficial to it.' By other equally interesting experiments which we need not detail, our professor reaches the following additional deduction: 'Notably we have here not merely contractions of muscles, but combined and harmonized contractions in due sequence for a special purpose. There are actions that have all the appearance of being guided by intelligence and instigated by will in an animal, the recognized organ of whose intelligence and will has been removed.' 'Some eminent physiologists,' our Professor informs us, 'now maintain, on the strength of these experiments, that the accepted doctrine of reflex action is quite untenable, that the spinal cord is really endowed with sensation and volition.' Our professor's deduction is thus set forth by himself. 'When, therefore, we have taken out of a voluntary act the large part which is clue to the automatic agency of the motor centres, it clearly appears that we have subtracted no small proportion from what we are in the habit of comprising vaguely under mind.' It is thus on the principle of gradual approach that our professor takes one class of so-called mental phenomena after another from 'under mind,' until he has identified all supposed mental activity with that of 'the various nerve-centres,' and thought, feeling, and willing stand revealed as nothing but 'the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life.' 'When we have yielded up to the spinal cord,' he adds, 'all the part in our actions that properly belong to it, and to the sensory ganglia and their connected motor nuclei all the part that belongs to them, we have subtracted no inconsiderable part from the phenomena which we are in the habit of designating mental and including under mind.' Our professor now goes on to show that 'the functions of intelligence, of emotion, and of will,' which 'are the strictly mental functions,' are 'the highest functions of the nervous system—those to which the hemispherical ganglia minister.' One function of the nervous system is to think or to receive impressions. 'I hold emotion to mean,' he says, 'the special sensibility of the vascular neurine to ideas; the registration of them is memory, and the reaction of them is volition.' Again, 'in every nerve-cell, there is memory, and not only so, but there is memory in every organic element of the body.' In the following extract we have a specific definition and exposition of the doctrine of the Will. 'As the spinal cord reacts to its impressions in excito-motor action, and as the sensory centres react to their impressions in sensori-motor action, so, after the complex interworking and combination of ideas in the hemispherical ganglia, there is, in like manner, a reaction or desire of determination of energy outward in accordance with the fundamental properties of organic structure to seek what is beneficial and shun what is hurtful to it. It is this property of tissue that gives the impulse which, when guided by intelligence, we call volition, and it is the abstraction from the particular violations which metaphysicians personify as the will, and regard as their agent. Physiologically, we cannot choose but reject the will; volition we know, and will we know, but the will, apart from acts of volition or will, we cannot know. Thus physiology vindicates its supremacy, not only over the physical organism, but also 'over the entire realm of thought, feeling, and action.' All the deductions of our professor, it will be observed, are drawn from 'physiological manifestations in animals, such as headless frogs, and pigeon, deprived of their brains,' not referring at all to similar manifestation, in 'children, idiots, and savages,' all the facts deemed requisite to his purpose being furnished in the field first designated. Of one fact we have been fully convinced by our professor, viz., of the truth of the following statement made by him, and of its truth in respect to all who study mind after his method. The statement is this: 'We know not, and perhaps never shall know, what mind is.'

Remarks upon the above Deductions.

We will now, in remarking upon the above deductions, present a well authenticated fact which we will set over against those drawn from headless frogs and brainless pigeons. Years ago, a woman in South Carolina, some time before the birth of a child, was fearfully frightened by being struck at by a rattlesnake. Her child, who grew up to be a man, had certain special peculiarities about him. One arm naturally curled up and rested on his side in accordance with the coiling of the serpent. His eyes had also a serpentine and fiery appearance. When suddenly startled, and especially at the sight of a snake, they would roll and sparkle, and his hand and arm would strike at the object before him, and then coil up again, in exact accordance with the appearance and movements of the creature referred to. All these movements were perfectly involuntary, and even in opposition to the will of the individual. Under other circumstances, the entire muscular system of this man was under the perfect control of his will. Here we have two classes of acts, the one of which may be denominated voluntary, and the other involuntary or automatic, the latter being exactly, as none will deny, the same in kind as those which our professor has adduced relatively to the action of headless frogs and brainless pigeons. Suppose, now, that we desire to determine, in the case of the individual under consideration, the real relations of the action of his will to that of his physical organization. On which class of physiological manifestations 'shall we base our deductions? On the voluntary, or the involuntary or automatic? Have the latter any bearing whatever upon any such inquiries? Who, but 'a race mad with logic,' would base fundamental deductions in regard to the will itself, and to its relations to physiological manifestations' upon facts with which the will consciously has nothing whatever to do? As for Professor Maudsley's facts pertaining to frogs and pigeons, we do not know that such creatures have wills at all. Nor do we know whether the spirit of the frog or pigeon does at once leave its body when it is deprived of its head or brains. The conclusion is undeniable, that the facts adduced, granting them to be real, do not bear at all upon the professor's deductions. Nor can he, or anybody else, know that the nature of the facts are as he represents them to be. Granting that the physical organism of animals and man may, when the spirit has left the body, and when subjected to certain influences, perform certain acts perfectly similar to those performed by living creatures, what has all this to do in determining the nature of mind, or of its relations to the body when in it and animating it? To resolve any such questions, we must first know mental facts as they are in themselves, irrespective of their origin or physical consequences. Then, and not till then, are we prepared to inquire intelligently into the physical conditions and effects of such phenomena. In determining these conditions and results, however, we determine nothing whatever in respect to the nature of mind or its phenomena. We know matter and its properties exclusively through external perception. We know mind and its phenomena as exclusively through internal perception or consciousness. Mental philosophy and physiology are sciences as distinct and separate from each other as are those of chemistry and astronomy. The conditions precedent of mental states are one thing. The states themselves are quite another. To confound the latter with the former, or to attempt to determine the nature of the former through the latter, is one of the most palpable illusions of false science. The immutable condition of the possibility of body is the existence of space. What if a philosopher should, for this reason, affirm body and space to be one and identical, or should deduce the attributes of body from those of space? To know whether mind and matter are identical in their nature, we must, first of all, determine their attributes. If their attributes are identical in character, such must be the nature of their respective subjects. If their attributes, or phenomena, are essentially unlike, we violate all the laws of inductive science if we refuse to regard matter and spirit as distinct and separate entities. The question of the identity or diversity of matter and spirit being thus settled, that of their relationship comes next in order, and here physiology stands revealed as one of the sciences of leading importance. Let our physiologists understand, however, 'that reasonable people, who have been so often deceived,' will regard them as engaged in senseless sophistry, as 'playing tricks upon reason,' when they tell us that 'as surely as every future grows out of the past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.' Matter we know, and mind we know, because we have carefully studied the facts of each, and studied and compared these facts in the sunlight of the immutable principles of inductive science. Having done so, we have no more apprehension that 'the physiology of the past, present, or future, will take from us our God, our souls, our moral ideas and principles, and immortal hopes and fruitions, than we have that the monkeys of the future will be the leading professors in the London University.

SECTION III.

MATERIALISM AS PRESENTED IN SUCH PRODUCTIONS AS THOSE OF DR. LOUIS BUCHNER.

German thought, after wandering for long and many years through the dry regions of Idealism, seeking rest there and finding none, seems to have abandoned her former wandering places and to have made her abode in the still more dark and desolate clime of Materialism. We have before us, for example, a translation of the tenth edition of Dr. Louis Buchner on 'Force and Matter.' In such works as this, 'the last word of Materialism' appears to have been pronounced. As preparatory to our criticism on the productions of such thinkers, we invite special attention to certain facts and principles which have been stated and verified in our previous discussions.

Facts and Principles formerly Stated and Verified.

1. In universal thought, two distinct and separate classes of facts, or phenomena, are distinctly represented—those of thought, feeling, and volition, on the one hand, and those of external forms on the other, facts denominated mental and material. These two classes of facts are thus distinguished and separated from one another, because no common elements, or characteristics, exist between them. With the verdict of the Universal Intelligence thus far, philosophers of all schools agree. No one professes to have discovered any essential characteristics common to these classes of phenomena. Nor has any philosopher professedly designated any such common and intrinsically inhering characteristic.

2. Under the influence of the self-evident and necessary principle, that Phenomena imply substance, and that Substances, as a necessary consequence, must be, in their nature, as their essential phenomena, universal thought has referred these two classes of phenomena, which can, by no possibility, be confounded or identified with one another, to two correspondingly distinct and separate entities, or substances, denominated Matter and Spirit. In the necessarily induced and intuitive convictions of no rational mind, does, or can, the remotest doubt have place of the absolute validity of the above distinctions, or of the distinct, separate, and actual existence of mind with its respective phenomena, on the one hand, and that of matter and its consciously known properties on the other. Hence it is that, in universal thought, mind and matter, and with these, as necessarily implied by the same, time and space, stand revealed as distinct, separate, and validly known realities. In the fact that they are thus apprehended, all philosophers of all schools absolutely agree.

3. The strict universality and absoluteness of these apprehensions undeniably verify them as laws of nature—nature in her highest developments, the necessarily induced and determined intuitions of universal mind. If we cannot find and know law here, we can find and know it nowhere.

4. The validity of these apprehensions and convictions science can never overthrow, but must admit and acknowledge. How can these apprehensions and convictions be invalidated? On this one exclusive condition, we answer, the condition which we have so frequently designated. We must find a form of knowledge of the validity of which we are more absolutely assured than we are, or can be, of the validity of these convictions, and absolutely incompatible with the same. We must, in short, find some proposition of the validity of which we are more absolutely assured than we are of the conscious fact of our own existence as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, that matter is directly and immediately before us as possessed of real extension and form, and of the reality of time and space. No philosophers, of any school, profess to find any such proposition as this. On the other hand, they universally admit, as we have abundantly shown, that these convictions remain, even in their own minds, absolute proof against 'all the grounds and arguments' which they adduce to invalidate said convictions. Nothing can be more certain than this, that Realism, which affirms the distinct and separate existence of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, and the validity of our knowledge of the same, has for its basis the rock of truth—a rock which, by no possibility, can be shaken.

5. Hence, we remark again, that Materialism, on the one hand, and Idealism on the other, have, and can have, no scientific basis whatever. Each affirms what true science must and will recognize as true, and each denies what must be true, or the laws of nature must be a lie. Neither can disprove what the other affirms, and each can present absolute disproof of what the other denies. Each affirms an absolute truth, the reality of matter or spirit, and the validity of our knowledge of the same, while each denies a truth equally absolute, the reality of matter or spirit, and the validity of our knowledge of the same. Neither has, or can have, a scientific basis, because it takes a half for the whole.

6. Hence, we remark finally, that the fact that four distinct and separate realities, and these only, are represented or representable in human thought—to wit, Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space—fixes and determines the sphere of the various sciences. We shall now refer to but two classes of these sciences—those which have their basis in conscious facts of mind on the one hand—and those which are based upon the consciously known facts of matter on the other. As these two classes of facts have, undeniably, no common elements or characteristics whatever, they must be both specifically, and generically, distinguished and separated from one another. The same must be true of the two substances to which these fundamentally diverse facts must be referred. Before matter and spirit can be confounded, either with the other, there must be adduced essential elements, or characteristics common to these two classes of facts. As such elements, or characteristics, do not exist, a corresponding distinction and separation, consequently, must exist between mental on the one hand, and material science on the other. Each of these sciences has principles common to the other, as all science rests upon the same essential principles, but each is based wholly upon facts peculiar to itself, facts known through a peculiar and special faculty. To confound these two sciences with one another, to carry over the deductions of one into those of the other, is not science, but 'science falsely so called.' When we have determined the distinct and separate characteristics of these two substances, we may then very properly institute an inquiry into their actual relations to each other. In determining these relations, however, we determine nothing whatever in respect to the nature of the things related. Objects may be related on the grounds of common qualities. No such relations, as we have shown, do exist between matter and spirit. In their natures, consequently, they cannot be identified with one another. Objects fundamentally diverse in nature, however, may, for aught we can know to the contrary, mutually influence and affect each other. Here, then, if anywhere, exist discoverable relations between matter and spirit.

Here, also, we understand clearly the false logic of Materialism on the one hand, and of Idealism on the other. Neither confounds matter with spirit, or spirit with matter, on the ground of ascertained qualities common to the two, but exclusively upon the influences which they mutually exert upon each other. For aught we can know to the contrary, substances may affect one another, because they are diverse, as well as identical in nature. Can there be a greater absurdity than is involved in the idea that mental will abolish and supersede physical science, or the latter the former?—that 'the physiology of the future will gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action'?—that the revelations of the microscope and scalpel will take from us our souls—our God—our religious and moral ideas—and our immortal hopes? An individual has profoundly studied the phenomena of light, and kindred facts. Has he not thereby obtained an absolute knowledge of 'the physical value of prayer'? Scientists who reason thus, who base upon dissections of dead men's brains, and experiments on the bodies of headless frogs and brainless pigeons, wide-sweeping conclusions in regard to mind and religion, such scientists clearly evince, not scientific wisdom, but the fact that 'shallow drafts' of physiology, and other natural sciences, have 'intoxicated their brains,' and infected them with a lawless monomania in respect to all the great facts and deductions of the higher sciences. We are now prepared to look directly at the logic of Materialism, as presented in the productions above referred to.

Mistake of Buchner and others, in respect to the Relations of External Nature to Mind.

'Nature,' says Buchner, 'exists neither for religion, for morality, nor for human beings; but it exists for itself.' Here we have an error of fact, an error of a fundamental character. If we can understand anything, we cannot but apprehend universal nature around us, as existing and acting with specific reference to the wants of sentient existence. Throughout the wide domain of universal nature, there is not a single want of sentient existence, for which there is not a specific provision, nor a single essential adaptation for which there is not a specifically adapted sphere of activity. The body, 'the house we live in,' what is it but a specifically adapted locomotive dwelling, or habitation, for mind, the occupant, mind as endowed with the power of rational thought, of feeling, and voluntary determination? There is not an organ or function of this wonderful machine, which does not exist in specific adaptation to some specific want of rational mind. This holds equally true of visible facts around us. The earth, which existed ages prior to man, was stored with an infinity of provisions which answer no end but the wants of man. The earth and the heavens considered as a great whole, this goodly universe, we find organized throughout in absolute accordance with fundamental scientific ideas and principles pre-existing nowhere but in rational mind, and so organized that it lies open before us as a great volume for rational thought and study, and consequently for the scientific education of mind. He has, undeniably, read nature with his mental eye closed to all her leading facts, who entertains the absurd dogma, that 'Nature exists neither for religion, nor for morality, nor for human beings; but for itself alone.' Nature visibly exists, not for itself at all, but for human beings and other sentient existences. The visible fact, that nature exists and acts for mind, is a visible demonstration of the fact that nature's architect is the infinite and eternal mind.

SECTION IV.

THE UTILITY OF MATERIALISM AS ESTIMATED BY ITS ADVOCATES.

The question, cui bono, what is the intrinsic tendency of this system, is the crucible in which every system commended to human regard must be tried and tested. The conviction lies with infinite weight upon the universal Intelligence, that ultimate truth must be possessed of the highest utility. That philosopher or man is a savage in spirit, a savage of the most malignant character, who would communicate what he regards as truth to an individual to whom that communication can be a cause of nothing but evil. A scientist is not excusable in his occupation, because his professed motive is the discovery and communication of truth, when he is and must be conscious that the belief of what he presents as the truth will work nothing but mischief to mankind.

We have now to do with the tendency of Materialism, as presented by its advocates. Buchner, for example, speaks quite hopefully of his system in his preface to the tenth edition. 'If all official science and cosmology,' he says, 'sustained by the powers of habit, usage, ignorance, indolence and might, should yet for a while assert their dominion, still the time must come when they will have to submit to deep-reaching changes towards freedom, Positivism, and sound natural truth; and then will the day dawn that shall bring to man not only spiritual and moral, but like wise political and social deliverance.' He seems to be far less hopeful and jubilant on a survey of his system after he has fully developed it. In his preface, as if conscious that his system is utterly subversive of all moral ideas and principles, he thus speaks: 'Science has no concern with morals; and all free enquiry would be at an end if it were made dependent on them.' Let us ask right here if the moral principle, 'Be honest in all enquiries after truth,' is not as binding in science as in any other department of thought and activity? Is there not as much and as culpable dishonesty in scientific research as anywhere else? Can he be imbued with the real spirit of science, of Philosophy, and of truth, who assures us, that 'the person of the investigator, and his moral convictions, have nothing to do with his investigations.' He is no philosopher in spirit who does not perceive in the fact, that a so-called scientific deduction is, in its nature and necessary consequents, utterly subversive of fundamental morality, conclusive proof that that dogma cannot be true. Materialism, in the language of Buchner, affirms, that 'there are no other forces in nature beside the physical, the chemical, and mechanical.' Mind, then, with the body, and our author so affirms elsewhere, is nothing but 'a physical, chemical, and mechanical' machine, and can no more be responsible for its activity than is any other machine. So, in fact and form, do Buchner and all Materialists teach. Has such science 'no concern with morals'? It, undeniably, has none but utterly to subvert them. Let us now consider our author's concluding reflections, in which we have his own distinct estimate of the utility, or rather, utter inutility of his system. The following extract includes a sentence upon which we commented in former remarks. 'We must, finally,' he says, 'be permitted to leave all questions about morality out of sight.' [This certainly must be done, or his system cannot be saved from the just reprobation of the world.] 'The chief, and, indeed, the sole object which concerned us in these researches is truth. Nature exists neither for religion, for morality, nor for human beings; but it exists for itself.' [An infinite slander upon nature.] 'What else can we do but take it as it is? Would it not be ridiculous in us to cry like little children, because our bread is not sufficiently buttered?

'To those who may, by some of the results of our investigations, have felt shaken in their philosophical and religious convictions, we recommend the following passage of Cotta as a fit conclusion of this chapter, and of this whole work:

'"Empirical natural science has no other object than to find out the truth, be it, according to human notions consolatory or the reverse, beautiful or ugly, logical or illogical, rational or absurd, necessary or contingent."'

In a note upon the above passage our author adds: 'The highest and only fixed point of view adopted in our investigations is that of truth.' He then repeats the passage above cited. Further on he adds: 'That truth is not always pleasant, not always consolatory, not always lovely, is well known as the old experience of the almost total absence of internal and external reward which its followers meet with. As the reward at least is in no proportion with the difficulties which the individual has to encounter on such a road. Externally it ever and everywhere, where truth had to combat received opinions, consisted in personal danger and persecution; and the uncertainty of its internal reward has been well expressed by a Persian poet:

'"But no! set aside mind, break asunder its chains!

Be a fool! for the fool alone doth enjoy life,

Like the nightingale, by the ease such a heart ever rejoices,

For it escaped, torture of knowledge, thy sting."'

According to a certain book, 'the sting of death is sin.' According to those who know Materialism as it is, and regard it as embodying 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' that sting is real knowledge. The grand mission of Buchner, and other teachers of Materialism—that mission, as interpreted by themselves, is to imbue mankind with apprehensions and convictions, which have no other tendency than to subvert their morals, and render knowledge to them a greater curse than ignorance could be. In all this they are unquestionably right. 'There have at all times,' says our author, 'been great philosophers holding such or similar opinions, who, nevertheless, were neither fools, robbers, assassins, nor desperadoes.' Was there any philosopher, or any other human being, we ask, who was detained from becoming any, or all, of these in consequence of 'holding such or similar opinions'? What other morality do 'fools, robbers, assassins, and desperadoes' desire but that which Materialism, in all its forms, implies, and which is, in fact, developed in all its schools?

SECTION V.

SPECIFIC AND SPECIAL DOGMAS OF MATERIALISM.

To comprehend fully any system of true or false science, there must be a distinct apprehension of its special and peculiar doctrines. The central doctrine of Materialism is, of course, the real existence of matter as the only existing entity. The idea of matter, granting its existence, is that it exists as an aggregate of individual and independently existing molecules, atoms, or particles, each existing in space and occupying space. All Materialists, as far as we know, Materialists ancient and modern, agree that the organization of the universe as it now exists, was an event of time, and that prior to its organization, matter did exist in a chaotic state; as nebula, or a combination of fluid; or fiery elements. From this primal chaos, represent it by what terms we may, matter, by virtue of its own inhering principles and laws, organized itself into the present universe, with all the vitalized and unvitalized forms existing in it. 'Such a process,' says Buchner, 'seems, in the presence of the wonderful organic forms which surround us, miraculous to the unassisted eye. But the eye of the investigator penetrates through countless periods backwards, and observes how one organic part has been slowly developed from another.' In another connection, he tells us that 'no naturalist has ever attempted'—'to explain how, by merely mechanical, physical, or chemical forces, an eye, for instance, can be formed.' The eye of the naturalist, or investigator, we are absolutely assured, however, does penetrate 'through the countless ages of the past, and observes how,' that is, clearly sees the how, but can tell us nothing about what he sees. We, poor sightless creatures, must accept of the investigator's seeing upon trust. This matter, we are further assured, 'is not worthless or vile, but rather the most precious thing we know of; it is not without feeling, but is full of most accurate sensibility in the creatures it brings forth; nor, lastly, is it devoid of spirit or thought, but, on the contrary, develops in the organs destined thereto by the peculiar kind and delicacy of their composition, the highest mortal potencies known unto us. What we call life, sensibility, organization, and thought, are only the peculiar and higher tendencies and activities of matter, acquired in the course of many millions of years by well-known natural processes, and which, in certain organisms or combinations, result in the self- consciousness of matter.' 'The eye of the investigator,' though he can tell nothing of the how of his seeing, or of the process of what he sees, does 'penetrate through all these many million of years,' or 'through countless periods backwards and observes how.'

Matter, we must bear in mind, never in all these wonderful processes becomes anything else than an aggregate of molecules, and that thought, feeling, and willing, are nothing but 'molecular changes in the matter of life.' We must bear in mind, also, that all these molecular changes are determined by necessary 'physical, chemical, and mechanical laws.' Matter thinks, feels, wills, because it must do so, and can, in no case, but think, and feel, and will, and act, as it does. Thinking, which cannot but be as it is—thinking, this 'the most precious thing we know of,' certainly should furnish us with nothing but absolute truth. How is it with the actual thinking of this 'most precious thing'? In our 'molecular change' it absolutely affirms the real existence of four distinct and separate realities, to wit, Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space; and in connection with these, the being of an infinite and perfect personal God, the immortality of the soul, the sacredness of duty, and the fact of moral retribution. In all these particulars, the affirmations of this 'most precious thing' are absolute. In another molecular change in this same 'most precious thing' it affirms, just as absolutely, the non-being of matter and the sole existence of spirit or its operations. In another change it denies absolutely the existence of spirit, and affirms matter to be the only reality. In still another change it affirms that nothing whatever can be known of the real nature or relations of matter or spirit. In one 'molecular change,' this 'most precious thing,' affirms Comte, Emerson, Darwin, Buchner, Huxley, Maudsley, and Spencer, to be the great central, scientific light of this century and of the world. In another, it affirms, with the same absoluteness, these same thinkers to be 'a race mad with logic, and feeding the mind on chimeras.' All these absolute contradictions are, in its necessary 'molecular changes in the matter of life,' affirmed as absolute truths by this, 'the most precious thing that we know of,' according to the system under consideration. In view of such palpable facts, we are constrained to regard Matter, in the development of thought and science, as a graceless 'sinner, and just nothing at all.'

SECTION VI.

THE BASIS ASSUMPTION OF MATERIALISM.

Materialists of all schools admit that their system affords no specific explanation of the leading facts of the universe. They claim to have proved, however, that no forces do, in fact, exist and act in nature but the strictly 'physical, chemical, and mechanical,' and hence infer, as a necessary consequence of that deduction, that the great leading facts referred to must have been produced by the action of these forces. 'The naturalist,' says Buchner, 'merely proves that there are no other forces in nature besides the physical, chemical, and mechanical, and infers irresistibly that the organisms [these being referred to as examples of all other facts] must also have been produced by these forces.' As it is a fact that the universe was organized by power of some kind, if we grant that no other forms of power do exist but 'the physical, the chemical, and mechanical,' we must refer to them as the causes of existing organizations of every kind. The claims of the system, therefore, depend upon the validity of the proof of this doctrine of the exclusive existence of the classes of forces designated.

Proof Presented of the Validity of this Assumption.

In proof of the doctrine that there exist and act in nature no other forces, or forms of power, than 'the physical, the chemical, and mechanical,' Buchner devotes the first chapter of his great work on 'Force and Matter,' a chapter covering eight small pages. On the doctrine of this single chapter his whole work is based. If his argument fails him, his system in its entireness lies upon his hands as an abortion in science. What is this argument? In carefully reading the chapter over and over again, we find nothing whatever in it that has the least appearance of real argument or proof. On the other hand, we are treated to an unconnected string of mere opinions cited from various thinkers, and to a series of naked assumptions set forth by the author himself, assumptions verified by not a single fact or argument. These opinions all concur in this, that the idea of forces in nature separate from and 'independent of the bodies from which they proceed and upon which they act,' is a chimera. 'No force,' says our author, 'without matter—no matter without force? Neither can be thought of per se; separated, they become empty obstructions.' Again, 'If the material particles capable of an electrical condition had never existed, there would have been no electricity, and we should never have been able to acquire the least knowledge or conception of electricity. Indeed, we may say electricity would never have existed without these particles.' Once more, 'Nothing but the changes which we perceive in matter by means of our senses could ever give us any notion as to the existence of power which we qualify by the name of force. Any knowledge of them by other means is impossible.'

The considerations and facts here presented have absolute weight against the dogmas of certain scientists who talk of force, motion, and change, as things really existing, things which are attributes of neither matter nor spirit. We do not believe in matter nor spirit, these men tell us. We believe in force. Nothing real but force. The force referred to is in itself an invisible and intangible something not existing and acting in space, nor occupying space. What is this something, this force? Why, it is force, we are told. A change occurred in visible forms around us. What produced it? is the enquiry. Why, force, we are told again. What was that in which the change was induced? Not matter, we are told again, but force was changed, force was changed by force. That is all. Just dismiss from thought matter and spirit, and talk of force if you desire to speak scientifically. The idea of motion in which neither spirit nor matter moves, of change in which no conscious or visible substance is altered, and force in the activity of which neither matter nor spirit acts, is a simple revival of the doctrine of ancient Realism, the doctrine which denies the reality of all forms of individual existence, and affirms as the sole reality, species, genera, and universals. The state of some particular combination of matter, or of some individual spirit, is changed. This change, and all other changes, imply the action of specific causes, mental or physical. Abstract the idea common to all particular changes, that of a cause, and represent this idea in its universal form by the term force. Represent this force as the sole reality, and what have we? The universal, which has and can have no existence but in the individual, as the sole and exclusive reality. When scientists talk of force, motion and change as the only forms of real existence, they seem to utter wisdom. The reason is that neither the speaker nor hearer has any conception of what is meant, and consequently imagines that something wonderful has been spoken. We would sincerely thank any scientist who will tell us what he means by force in the action of which neither matter nor spirit has any part. If his reply is that by this term he means force, we may, as 'prudent people who have been so often deceived,' leave him alone in his glory.

The Illusion and Error of Materialism here.

Wherein lies the error of Buchner and others in their reasoning from the fact that apart from matter there can be no 'physical, chemical, and mechanical forces?' In 'the philosophical consequences' deduced from 'this simple and natural truth,' to wit, that no other forces do exist and act in nature but 'the physical, the chemical, and mechanical,' Buchner sets forth such as the following, an absolute denial of the existence and action of a personal God in or over nature. 'Those who talk,' he says, 'of a creative power, which is said to have produced the world out of itself, as out of nothing, are ignorant of the first and most simple principle, founded upon experience, and the contemplation of nature. How could a power have existed not manifested in material substance, but governing it arbitrarily according to individual views?' 'Neither could separately existing forces be transferred to chaotic matter, and produce the world in this manner, for we have seen that a separate existence of either is an impossibility.' 'That the world is not governed as is frequently expressed, but that the changes and motions in matter obey a necessity inherent in it which admits of no exception, cannot be denied by any person who is but superficially acquainted with the natural sciences.'

What basis has Buchner laid for these wide-sweeping deductions? He has alluded to but one exclusive kind of force—'the physical, chemical, and mechanical'—and has shown conclusively that this kind of force has no existence but as a property of matter. If this kind of force did exist as a property of any other substance than matter, it would not be proper to define it as 'physical, chemical, and mechanical'—that is, material. From the fact that no one questions that matter does possess this peculiar kind of force, he from hence draws the wide-sweeping deduction that no other kind of substance but matter, and no other kind of force but the 'physical, the chemical, and mechanical,' do exist or act in nature. Here, undeniably, is an infinite leap in logic, there being not the remotest connection between premise and conclusion. Matter, as all admit, does possess real 'physical, chemical, and mechanical' force; and as all but thinkers 'mad with logic' admit, force of this kind has no existence but as a property of matter. This we readily grant. 'Veel, vot of it? What basis have we here for the deduction that no 'individual creative power' does exist, and that none but material forces do exist and act in nature? Such is the logic of Materialism, and it has no higher logic than this.

We have just as absolute proof, we must bear in mind, that spirit is real, as we have that matter is, and have proof as absolute that one of these is not the other as we have that either exists at all. We have as absolute evidence that mind is a force—a force in and over nature—as we have that matter is endowed with 'physical, chemical, and mechanical' force. The machinery of the world is set in motion by mere will-force. A thought suggested to the mind may agitate and prostrate the whole physical system, and even sunder the cord of life itself. Have Materialists forgotten that 'Knowledge is power'? Have sensation, emotion, and desire no power over the physical system? Intellect, sensibility, and will in man are undeniably forces actually existing and acting in the visible universe; nor without a violation of all the laws of inductive science can spirit be identified with matter, or matter with spirit. What, then, do we find in the universally admitted fact that matter is possessed of the property of 'physical, chemical, and mechanical' force to disprove the being of God, and his sovereignty over nature?

SECTION VII.

FUNDAMENTAL MISAPPREHENSION OF THE REAL ISSUE BETWEEN MATERIALISM AND REALISM, OR THEISM.

Buchner, and other Materialists, are at great pains to show that matter is not a created substance, but must have existed from eternity. It is assumed, that if the eternity of matter, as substance, be granted, it will necessarily follow that no other substance does exist, and that this one substance existing alone, and by itself, must have been, from a state of universal chaos, self-organized, self-vitalized, and self-rationalized, and itself constitute the universe as we now find it. Buchner devotes his second chapter of six pages to the establishment of the 'Immortality of Matter.' Here, as in his first chapter, the reader will search in vain for the show of a fact or argument in proof of the doctrine to be established. We are simply treated to a string of dogmatic utterances on the part of our author, and to an array of mere dogmatic opinions cited from various thinkers ancient and modern. In this chapter, also, a totally false issue is raised with Realism and Theism. Granting the eternity of matter considered as substance, and we detract nothing whatever from the infinite weight and force of the evidence which exists for the reality of spirit, the soul, and God, and for the truth of the doctrine, that 'the worlds were made by the word of God,' and not self-organized. Ever since the origin of philosophic thought, many of the greatest and wisest thinkers, such as Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle, and Sir William Hamilton, have distinctly held the doctrine of the eternity of matter as mere substance, and have yet believed in spirit as distinct from matter, in the immateriality and immortality of the soul, in the being of a personal God, and the organization of the universe 'by the word of God.' The great central fact of the universe, the fact which lies at the basis of all problems pertaining to Ultimate Causation, the fact admitted as real by all intelligent scientists of all schools, the fact in the affirmation of which the final deductions of all the sciences bearing upon the subject unite, is not the mere existence of matter, or of any specific substance, but the actual organization of the universe as an event of time. Given matter as a universal chaos of unorganized atoms, molecules, or particles, its primitive state as affirmed by universal science, matter with its mere 'physical, chemical, and mechanical' principles, or laws, the problem of Materialism is, to deduce from these exclusive premises the universe as it is, the universe organized throughout in absolute accordance with fundamental ideas of the pure Intelligence, and as a system of wisely adapted means and ends, the universe peopled with vitalized and unvitalized, rational and irrational forms of existence, and all originated as an event of time. Comte was too wise and fundamental a thinker to deny the facts before us, or to explain their origin on any hypothesis but that of Free-Will guided by Intelligence; too wise and fundamental a thinker not to admit and affirm that the problem of Ultimate Causation must be utterly ignored, or the Theistic hypothesis must be admitted as a demonstrated truth. The same holds true of all thinkers who are not 'mad with logic.'

The utterance needs to be repeated in the ears of scientists of this latter class, until they are compelled to think upon it, and, as a necessary consequence, to admit its truth, that existence, in all its forms, is to all finite intelligences an impenetrable mystery. What realities do exist, it is our high privilege to know. But when we push the enquiry, why, for example, does matter or spirit exist, instead of not exist, we can give no answer whatever to any such question. As existence in all its forms is to us an utter mystery, one form of existence is just as à priori probable and possible in itself as any other. Nor does the admitted fact, that any one substance does exist, render at all improbable the existence or non-existence of any other compatible form of being. Of the four realities represented, and alone representable, as real in human thought—to wit, Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, the idea that any one of these does exist, does, in no sense or form, imply or render probable the non-being of any one or of all the others. It is, on the other hand, just as á priori or antecedently probable that they all exist together, as that any one of them exists alone. In determining the question, What realities do exist? we have but one principle known to science as our guide—to wit, Whatever is directly and immediately manifested to the Intelligence as real, must, together with all that is necessarily implied by what is thus manifested, be admitted as actual.

Taking this one self-evident principle as our guide, the only principle, we repeat, known to science as applicable to such a case, it is absolutely undeniable, that of spirit and matter, we have just as absolute evidence that one of these substances exists, as we have that the other does, and just as absolute proof that both exist together, as we have that either exists at all. The same identical evidence which can be adduced in favour of the existence or non-being of either, exists, in all its force, for or against the existence of the other. Nor, in the manifested properties of these substances, can a single common element be found, an element in view of which they can be affirmed to be identical in their nature. The only fact ever thought of as implying any identity of nature between them, is their mutual influence each upon the other, a fact undeniably as compatible with their being opposite, as identical, in nature.

Buchner and other scientists 'weary themselves for nought,' when they agitate the question of the 'Immortality of Matter,' considered as a mere substance, and with the 'Immortality of Force' considered as a property of matter, as if these had any bearing at all upon the problem of ultimate causation. The organization of the universe as an event of time, and not the mere existence of substance, is the great central fact on which, exclusively, all questions of ultimate causation must turn. It is a vain endeavour when scientists of any school attempt to divert attention from this fact.

SECTION VIII.

THE LOGIC OF MATERIALISTS.

Whoever carefully studies the productions of leading Materialists will not fail to observe this very striking peculiarity of their logic or reasoning. All their special deductions have no other basis than half-truths assumed as the whole. They have studied matter and know its properties , from the fact that matter and its properties do exist, they have wildly jumped to the conclusion that nothing is real but this one substance. They have found matter to exist as endowed with a diversity of forces, 'physical, chemical, and mechanical,' and have hence concluded that no other form of power exists and acts in nature. Matter as substance, and force as a property of matter, are immortal, says the Materialist, and hence concludes that nothing is real but matter and its forces. What if a man should argue from the admitted fact that 'salt is good,' that nothing but salt is good for man? The logic in this case is just as valid as in any of the peculiar deductions of Materialists, and is of the same character.

Right over against the absurdity of the deductions of Materialists lie those of the Idealists. The latter has made mind the almost exclusive object of thought and study. From such an exclusive consideration of subjective facts which are all real, 'he compels himself to treat' the universal intuitive and con-natural belief of the race, 'that there exist things without us,' 'as nothing but a prejudice,' and resolves existence in all its forms into spirit, or pure thought. The logic of the Materialist on the one hand, and of the Idealist on the other, falls to pieces on the same fatal error, assuming half-truths for the whole.

Take another example of the same kind of partialism. Nature, as revealed to the human intelligence, exists and acts as a scientifically and systematically organized whole, a whole complete in all its parts. All things exist and act also in subordination to fundamental ideas pre-existing in the intelligence, order being nature's as well as 'heaven's first law.' What is law, of which modern scientists say so much? It is not the original forces of nature, as attraction, for example, but the rule, in conformity to which such forces act. When such forces are specifically organized so that their mutual action and reaction shall produce results conformed to fundamental ideas pre-existing in the Intelligence, here we have law in its higher and proper forms. When such powers act so as to produce confusion rather than orderly results, here, as all affirm, is disorder in the place of law. Now it is just as impossible for us to conceive of an inconceivable number of blind forces in a state of chaotic disorder as spontaneously organizing themselves so that all their individual and mutual activity shall issue in orderly results conformed to fundamental ideas pre-existing in the mind, as it is to conceive of an event without a cause. Such results, under such circumstances, would, indeed, be more than events without causes; they would be events in opposition to causes which can but produce events of an opposite character. A confused conglomeration of blind forces can produce nothing but 'confusion worse confounded.' Chaos can do nothing but perpetuate itself.

The original state of the entire elements which constitute the material universe was, as all admit, a blind and soulless chaos. Now all is order, a scientifically sytematized whole, with a place for every atom, and every atom in its place. In other words, all this infinity of atoms is now organized, and acting in conformity to law, or fundamental ideas in rational mind. This subordination of all things to law, that is, to fundamental ideas in rational mind, is adduced by the Materialist as absolute disproof of the existence and action of rational mind in and over nature, excepting as the final result of the necessary action of 'physical, chemical, and mechanical' forces in motion. The organization and action of the German armies in the late German-French war, were in strict accordance throughout with law, law in the highest perfection known to military science. The prominent idea which the organization and movements of these armies suggest, is the universal prevalence of law. Will not this fact be adduced by these Scientists as absolute proof that Moltke is a myth? Shall we not be gravely assured that law, and not mind, organized and controlled those armies? Shall we not be assured that Moltke, if he existed at all, existed not as the organizer and director of those armies, but as the exclusive result of law which did organize and control said armies? This would be logic perfected, compared with the deduction of the Materialist, that the rising of the universe from chaos to universal order is proof that mind has no place in this universe but as an effect of this order, that is, that 'the worlds were made' by law, and not 'by the word of God.' The organization and movements of those armies demonstrate the existence and all-pervading control of one of the greatest military organizers and strategists the world ever knew. So the scientific organizations of this vast and goodly universe from a state of universal and lawless chaos, and its present movements in fixed subordination to ideas of a wisely adjusted system of means and ends, renders equally evident the existence and all-presiding agency in and over nature of an infinite and eternal Spirit, that is, of a personal God. The argument is just as absolutely demonstrative in one case as in the other, and both cases come under the same identical category. The idea of universal law is one of the last which blind Materialism should attempt to force into its service.

There is still another aspect which must be taken of this subject in order to a proper understanding of the logic of Materialists. As seen by the eye of natural science, matter appears as a mere 'physical, chemical, and mechanical force,' acting in conformity to corresponding laws, this phase being the only aspect of nature which such science looks at. From the narrow and exceedingly partial deductions thus obtained, the Materialist takes an infinite leap to the conclusion that there are no forces in nature but 'the physical, chemical, and mechanical,' and none but corresponding laws. This conclusion is deduced in the face of an infinity of as palpable facts of an opposite nature which are known to mind. Thought, feeling, and willing, are forces in the visible universe, forces just as real, Just as active, and just as efficient as are 'the physical, the chemical, and mechanical.' Mind, the subject which thinks, feels, and wills, is a substance just as real as matter, and as manifestly affects, and controls matter as matter affects itself. Calling the action of matter upon matter a natural influence, that of mind is wholly supernatural, and we are just as familiar with the existence and action of supernatural as we are with those of natural forces in nature. Nor is the action of supernatural forces in nature any more in violation of law than is the action of natural forces. Mind is constantly and visibly changing the order of events in nature, with no violation of law of any kind. It as absolutely accords with the nature of matter to be controlled by volition as by material attraction. So if the divine volition should produce changes in the order of events in nature, this would no more imply a violation of natural law than do all the changes which human volition is constantly producing. A more inane utterance was hardly ever recorded than is that of Giebel, and cited by Buchner, in regard to miracles. 'Miracles,' says this individual, 'are great horrors in the domain of science, where not blind faith, but conviction derived from knowledge, is of any value.' 'Miracles,' says this individual, 'are great horrors in the domain of science, where not blind faith, but conviction derived from knowledge, is of any value.' 'Miracles,' we reply, 'are great horrors in the domain of science,' but to those who are voluntarily blind to one half of the real facts of nature. To all minds who have candidly weighed all the facts of nature, facts mental and physical just as they are, no class of events can appear more reasonable than the supernatural and miraculous. A miracle, or supernatural event, occurring through the will of God, is no more a violation of any natural law than is the motion of the human hand in conformity to a fiat of the human will. A change in the current of events in nature, or a real miracle, induced by the will of God, is perfectly analogous to changes which are constantly occurring around us through the action of the will of man.

Let us now contemplate another aspect of the logic of the Materialist. From the fact that our most powerful microscopes fail to discover the atoms or molecules of which the masses of matter around us are constituted, on the one hand; and that our largest telescopes fail equally to discover the actual limits of the universe, on the other, Buchner gravely draws the following deduction: 'If, then, we can find no limit to minuteness, and are still less able to reach it in respect to magnitude, we must declare matter to be infinite in either direction, and incapable of limitation in time and space.' It is assumed here that anything whatever which extends in the direction of minuteness or magnitude beyond the reach of the microscope and telescope must be infinite, and 'incapable of limitation in time or space,' the reach of these instruments constituting the measurement of infinity. Let us suppose that there are stars whose light has been travelling towards us ever since the origin of the universe—stars whose light has not yet reached us. Those stars are no nearer the limits of infinite space than is the circumference of the solar system, and the distance of those stars is no more proof of the proper infinity of matter than is the extent of our system. That which is strictly infinite must extend immeasurably beyond the reach of instruments thousands of times as powerful as any which man has yet invented. If matter thinks, and the above are examples of its deductions, we hesitate not to pronounce this matter a very bad logician. The theory and logic of Buchner present us a striking example in illustration of a statement which he cites from Herschel, to wit: 'Nothing is so improbable but a German will find a theory for it.'

Reliability of our Author and Scientists of his School in the Statement of Facts.

What bearing the character of the different skulls and brains of the varied races of men, together with the low religious ideas of savage people, have upon the question whether mind or matter are one and identical, none but scientists 'mad with logic' can discern. To one who has had the personal knowledge that we have had of the negro and savage, and also the historic knowledge that we possess of the character and thinking of the various races of men, the statements set forth by such individuals as Buchner appear not merely erroneous, but ridiculous. We will give as an example a passage cited by our author from Dr. Moffat—a passage written and published more than half a century ago. The passage reads thus, and refers to the Bechuanas in South Africa: 'I have often wished to find something to work upon the heart of the natives. I have asked them for the altar of the unknown God, for the faith of their ancestors in regard to the immortality of the soul, or any religious idea, but they have never thought of such things.' In a course of lectures delivered at Oberlin when I was President of that college, I stated that, from a careful knowledge of the human Intelligence, I was absolutely assured that there was no people on earth who are, or could be, ignorant of the distinction between matter and spirit, of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, of God as the creator of all things, of the law of duty, and of the doctrine of future retribution. In opposition to such teachings, the identical passage above cited was presented. In reply, I requested a brother of the celebrated traveller Dr. Livingstone—a brother who was then present as a member of that class—to write to Dr. Livingstone, who had then for years been a missionary among this very people, and ascertain the facts of the case as then known. In reply, Dr. Livingstone fully confirmed the strict verity of every statement I had made. The mistake of his father-in-law, Dr. Moffat, and other travellers, he observed, was occasioned by the mutual ignorance of these peoples and their visitants, of the terms in which both classes were accustomed to express their moral and religious ideas. In subsequent communications published in the missionary papers, Dr. Livingstone affirms that this people have very clear ideas of sin, and its moral deserts, of the soul, of a Creator of all things, of immortality and retribution. When told of the reports of travellers about their ignorance of such truths, they refer at once, in refutation of what they regard as slanderous statements, to their familiar traditions and utterances, which are preserved among them from their remote ancestry. He has poorly studied the laws of the human mind, and has most carelessly interpreted the known facts of human nature, who imagines that there are, or can be, tribes of men who are destitute of fundamental ideas and principles pertaining to morality and religion. Christian missions have been established among every nation, and kindred, and tribe under heaven, and, without exception, missionaries have found, even among the lowest fetich and cannibal tribes known on earth, the presence of such moral and religious ideas as laid the foundation for the highest moral and Christian culture, together with capacities for education and civilization in their most perfected forms. An English ship, for example, was wrecked upon one of the large South-Sea Islands, an island once inhabited by a race of the most ferocious cannibals on earth. When the sailors saw multitudes of men rushing towards them from the hills in every direction, nothing was present to the thoughts of the former but the idea of being murdered, roasted, and eaten by the people before them. What was the surprise of these despairing mariners when they beheld the multitude approaching them all decently clad as civilized men, and when they heard from all the exclamation, 'Peace be with you,' 'Love be with you,' when they were kindly taken to Christian communities, most bountifully cared for in Christian families, and when taken off by a vessel which touched at the island, were loaded with gifts, and presented with every article which could be gathered from the wreck of their ship. That island was then covered with schools of the common and higher grades, had upwards of five hundred Christian churches, presided over by a corresponding number of educated native pastors. It had also a wisely constructed code of laws, and its courts, in which justice between man and man was as righteously administered as among any other people on earth. The above facts we received from the late Professor Cocker, of the Michigan University, who testified what he personally saw and heard on a visit to the island. Similar facts are now rising up before us the world over. All who know the author of this Treatise are aware that he has educated many hundreds of youths of both sexes and of all colours, youths as intelligent as were found in any other institutions. Among these were Africans whose faces were so black as to draw forth from a little daughter the remark that 'she could not see them.' Neither myself nor any of my associates ever found among our white, capacities for any attainments, capacities not common to our coloured pupils; nor, when in the same classes, was the progress of the latter of the least hindrance to that of the former. One of the most intelligent and noblest females we ever educated was a pure native African, one of the Armistad captives. As a general scholar, few exceeded her, and none in mathematics. When introduced to these captives we made their physiognomy a special study. This we say with truth, that over the eyebrows of Cinquez, and other leading minds among them, foreheads rose up like towers, while the countenances and actions of the mass indicated capacities which utterly falsify the representations of infidel scientists. 'I have often tried,' says Burmeister, as cited by Buchner, 'to obtain an insight into the mind of a negro; but it never was worth the trouble. The only valuable result obtained was, that there is not much mental life in a negro, and that all his thoughts and actions are merely directed to the lowest requirements of human existence.' Such statements simply evince a stupid ignorance of facts of history, and of multitudinous observable facts which lie everywhere in the world around us.

Concluding Reflection.

Materialism, we here remark, in conclusion, has no other basis than a mere lawless assumption, not rendered even probably true by a single fact known to science. In carefully analyzing mental and material facts, not a solitary element common to the two can be designated, an element on account of which the two classes of phenomena can be ranged under the same species or genera. There is not, consequently, known to science a single common element, or fact, on account of which matter can be identified with spirit, or spirit with matter. The known relations of these two substances present the same identical reasons for resolving matter into spirit, that they do for resolving spirit into matter, and such relations present no valid reasons whatever for confounding one of these substances with the other. The Scientists who suppose that material is to supersede mental science, and who profess to discover through physiology, chemistry, natural Philosophy, and astronomy, that men have no souls, that the universe is without a God, and that all our moral and religious ideas are figments, may have a temporary celebrity, but will not long lead the thinking of this or any coming age.

SECTION IX.

THE THREE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF MODERN NATURALISM—EVOLUTION—SPONTANEOUS GENERATION —AND DEVELOPMENT, OR TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES.

Terms Defined.

Modern Naturalism has based its claims upon three necessarily connected central doctrines, each one of which must be true, or Naturalism itself must be admitted to be false. We refer to the doctrines represented by the terms Evolution, Spontaneous Generation, and Development, or Transmutation of Species. The first is the general doctrine which includes the other two. Given matter as the only existing substance, matter in a universal chaotic state, represented in the language of Professor Tyndall by the words 'fiery cloud.' From this state—how induced we are not told—matter, by virtue of its own inhering 'physical, chemical, and mechanical forces,' or laws, develops itself, by successively induced organizations and transformations, into this goodly universe which now exists. This general doctrine is represented by the term, 'Evolution.' The term, 'Spontaneous Generation,' represents the doctrine, that when the material atoms which originally constituted 'the fiery cloud' referred to, had organized themselves as the planetary universe, and had prepared the earth to sustain vitalized organizations animal and vegetable, matter did then and there spontaneously develop itself into certain living forms of the character designated. The term, 'Development,' represents the doctrine that matter, by virtue of the inhering forces designated, did, by successive transmutations of lower orders, primarily generated into those of the higher, originate all existing and extinct species of plants and animals known to science. All these doctrines have such a necessary connection, that if either fails of a scientific confirmation, each of the others, and Naturalism itself, fails with it.

The Proposition which we Propose to Verify relatively to these Doctrines.

The proposition which we will now proceed to verify relative to these doctrines is this. The advocates of these doctrines have not yet adduced a single fact or argument which, when placed in the clear light of the immutable laws of scientific induction and deduction, render said doctrines even probably, much less certainly, true. A statement of the same effect was made by Professor Agassiz, a statement which we will now proceed to verify.

The Two Distinct and Opposite Hypotheses.

We must bear in mind that there are two distinct and opposite hypotheses in regard to the origin of species as well as in regard to the origin of the universe—their origin through the word or fiat of God, and through natural law or development—and that one of these, in opposition to the other, must be true. The problem for science to solve is, Which is true and which is false? On what conditions can valid proof in either direction be adduced? On the following, we answer. It must be rendered undeniably evident that all the facts bearing upon the question are fully explicable on one hypothesis, and are utterly inexplicable on the other. Facts equally explicable on each hypothesis do not render one, in opposition to the other, even probably true. To prove his hypothesis, the Darwinian must show incontestably that all the facts bearing upon the question of the 'Origin of Species' would be, in all respects, as they are, were his theory true, and would not and could not, in essential particulars, be as they are, were the common theory true. Until he has done this, he has failed to adduce a single fact which bears even the appearance of proof of his theory, or a fact which renders that theory, as opposed to the other, even probably true. Here are the immutable conditions of proof in respect to all hypotheses in the whole domain of science.

Have Darwinians, or Evolutionists, as yet, adduced a single fact of the decisive character under consideration? Have they adduced a single fact which can be fully explained on their own, and cannot be explained just as fully and readily on the theory which they deny? Without fear of contradiction, we affirm that no such fact has yet been adduced. No form or degree of real proof, or probable evidence, therefore, has yet been adduced in favour of this theory and against the common one. Yet, a theory in favour of which not the remotest degree of scientific proof or positive evidence has been adduced is proudly pushed before the world as having a high place within the realm of science; and those, as Professor Agassiz says, are ridiculed as fogies in science who do not readily admit the claims of this lawless hypothesis.

Opinions of Scientists best qualified to judge of the Nature of the Evidence presented.

Let us, in the first place, consider the views of scientific men in regard to the facts and proofs adduced by Naturalists in favour of their doctrines, scientific men who have carefully weighed all their facts and arguments, and who are best qualified to judge of their real bearings. It should be borne in mind that while the advocates of these dogmas vaunt of Evolution and Development as among the most important of the sciences, not one of these men professes that any one of their dogmas has yet been verified upon scientific grounds. Huxley, for example, distinctly admits and affirms that he knows of no proof of a single fact of spontaneous generation. 'All I feel justified in affirming is, that I see no reason for believing that the feat has been performed yet.' In respect to the evidence adduced in proof of the theory of Development, Huxley is equally explicit. 'After mature consideration,' he says, 'and with assuredly no bias against Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the case now stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in Nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural.' 'Development,' he says, 'must remain still an hypothesis, and not yet the theory of species.' Of the bearing of known geological facts upon this doctrine, Huxley thus speaks. 'Obviously, if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are co-eval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just conception of the nature and the extent of the earliest fauna and flora, the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to have taken place in any one group of animals or plants, is quite incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a necessary process of progressive development, entirely compressed within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks.'

'What, then,' he asks, 'does an impartial survey of the positively ascertained truths of paloeontology testify in relation to the common doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from more to less embryonic forms, or from more to less generalized types, within the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous rocks? It negatives those doctrines; for it either shows us no evidence of any such modification, or demonstrates it to have been very slight; and as to the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatever that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more generalized than the later ones.' The rocks, then, are a mass of liars, or this theory is built upon the 'sand.' The only possibility of this theory being proved true, as Huxley further states, geology having utterly failed to furnish anything but facts in disproof of the dogma, is 'by observation and experiment upon the existing forms of life,' a form of proof most obviously about as likely to be furnished as is the occurrence of the fact, that we shall yet catch larks in consequence of the falling of the sky.

Nor does even Darwin profess that he has yet proven his theory true. On the other hand, he openly admits, as we shall see hereafter, that many palpable and fundamental facts are utterly inexplicable on his theory.

'Those who hold the doctrine of Evolution,' says Tyndall, 'are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield no more to it than a provisional assent.' In reading an article in defence of the doctrine of Evolution, an article written by Professor Yeomans, we looked in vain for a single fact or real argument bearing upon the subject. Nothing was, in reality, presented but a series of dogmatic utterances confirmed by the mere opinions of scientific men, and, among these, the doctrines of such men as Dana and Agassiz wrongly presented.

Let us now consider the direct testimony of Tyndall to the real scientific aspect of the evidence at present before the world in favour of this doctrine of Evolution, and, with it, of the two others under consideration. 'However the convictions of individuals here and there,' he says, 'may be influenced, the process must be slow and secular which commends the rival hypothesis of Natural Evolution to the public mind. For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone the wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the mind itself—emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation'—'I do not think,' he adds, 'that any advocate of the Evolution hypothesis would say that I over-state it or over strain it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before you unclothed and unvarnished the notions by which it must stand or fall.'—'Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind!'

Here we have the mature judgment of a well-informed and most competent thinker, not only in respect to the theory itself, but equally in respect to the character of the evidence on which the claims of that theory are based. Whenever a theory has been demonstrated as true, or has been so far verified as to stand revealed as even a probable truth, it has thereby been taken wholly out of the sphere of the absurd. Nothing but that which is sustained by no valid evidence has any place in the sphere under consideration. Ascertained truth may lie within the sphere of the mysterious, but never of the absurd. Evolution, then, and the other cognate dogmas, according to Tyndall, have not only not been proven true, but are wholly unsustained by any such probable evidence, as to remove any one of them out of the sphere of the absurd. Nor can any thinker adduce a single fact or argument in disproof of the above statements.

Nothing, according to Tyndall, can justify at all a belief of those dogmas but a fundamental change of our ideas of matter. 'These Evolution notions,' he says, 'are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas of matter which were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast, the one as all-noble, the other as all-vile. But is this correct? Does it represent what our mightiest teachers would call the Eternal Fact of the Universe? Upon the answer to this question all depends.' Tyndall errs here in two fundamental particulars. 1. The idea of matter, as it does, in fact, exist in the Universal Intelligence, was never 'drilled' into any mind, but exists there because, as Hume truly affirms, 'nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us thus to judge as well as to breathe and feel.' The same identical ideas of matter are strictly common to all minds, those of philosophers as well as the rest of mankind, and these ideas are repudiated only in systems of false science. 2. Ideas of 'a fiery cloud,' and of thought, feeling, and willing, of the monkey and the man, are just as incompatible with one another, and as immutably so, as are the objects which said ideas represent. The idea of rationality can no more be developed from that of 'a fiery cloud' than can the one reality be developed or evolved from the other. Evolution, then, in all its forms, undeniably lies within the sphere not even of reliable truth, but of the absurd.

Nor should the views of our most eminent scientists, who, after the most mature examination of the evidence on both sides, have rejected these naturalistic dogmas, be overlooked in this connection. We refer to their judgment of the value and weight of the evidence adduced in favour of these dogmas. The candour of such men as Messrs. Agassiz, Dana, Miller, and others, cannot be questioned, nor the carefulness with which they have weighed all the evidence presented by Evolutionists in favour of their dogmas. The candid and mature judgment of the class of scientists under consideration is, that in the clear light of the evidence presented, these dogmas do not have legitimate place within the sphere of probable truths.

To the same effect is the testimony of the best informed and most influential Naturalists in Germany, this country, and the United States. All affirm that the evidence adduced in favour of Darwinianism is utterly inconclusive. We present that of a single individual, M. Flourens, the great French Naturalist, than whom few are more capable, as few have had such extensive means of knowing facts as they are—facts bearing upon the subject. 'The animals of Aristotle, which he has noticed,' says M. Flourens, 'are recognized in the present time even to the minutest particulars. Wonders are hoped for, and thought to be found in the particular changes of beings. The greatest wonder is that species are fixed, and that the different species are eternally fixed. Nature is organization. We must personify organization and say, Organization selects organization. Darwin confounds immobility with mutability. Radical change has never been seen. One cannot but admire the talents of the author (Darwin). But how obscure and false are his ideas! Hybridity, in no case and in no sense either in vegetables or animals, is the source of new species.'

The Form of Positive Evidence actually Presented.

Let us now consider the positive evidence presented by its advocates in favour of the doctrine of Development. We give the evidence, as presented by Darwin in his work on 'The Descent of Man.' This evidence is given in the first chapter of the work referred to—a chapter entitled, 'The Evidence of the Descent of Man from some Lower Form.' This evidence is presented under three general divisions, and we give it in the order presented by our author, and in his own language.

'The Bodily Structure of Man.—It is notorious that man is constructed on the same general type or model with other mammals. All the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and internal viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shown by Huxley and other anatomists.' 'Man is liable to receive from lower animals, and to communicate to them, certain diseases, as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders, etc.; and this fact proves the close similarity of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more plainly than does their comparison under the best microscope, or by the aid of the best chemical analysis.'

'Embryonic Development.—Man is developed from an ovule, about the 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respects from the ovules of other animals. The embryo itself at a very early period can hardly be distinguished from that of other members of the vertebrate kingdom.' What Darwin designates by the term ovule, Professor Agassiz calls the egg. 'All animals,' says the latter, 'without exception, high or low, of whatever ultimate complexity or simplicity of structure, originate from eggs, and from eggs of the same character.' The following important extract from a course of lectures on 'The Method of Creation'—a course delivered in Harvard University, will interest and instruct the reader:—

"The formation and growth of the egg and its fecundation prior to the formation of the new being are among the most mysterious processes of the organic world. The eggs laid by different kinds of animals are themselves so various in size, form, and appearance, that it is difficult to believe they are all one and the same thing. Look at this huge egg, for which a man's hat would be too small a cup. It is the egg of an extinct bird found at Madagascar (the aepyornis), the largest bird's egg known. Such an egg has been found to hold eight times as much as an ostrich's egg, and 148 times as much as a common hen's egg. Compare it with the egg of the humming-bird, smaller than a hazel nut, scarcely larger than a small pea. In form and general aspect the difference, even among birds' eggs, is endless. Some are elongated, some are spherical, some are dull on the surface, some are polished, some are dark, others gray or white, others very bright. The number known is large. Ornithologists are acquainted with about 5,000 different kinds of birds' eggs. While they differ in detail, the general pattern of birds' eggs seems the same. The outside shell is brittle, and within there is a lining membrane covering the white, while in the centre is the yolk, differing in dimensions in different species of birds as much as the eggs themselves. Quite otherwise, seemingly, is the egg of the mammalia. Those which are developed are never laid. As eggs they are microscopically small, and they undergo all their transformation within the mother. Yet their structure at some time or other, in an early stage of their growth, is the same as that of the egg in all other classes of animals.

'Among reptiles the eggs exhibit great variety. The eggs of alligators are elongated, almost cylindrical, evenly rounded at both ends, and about the size of an ordinary duck's egg. The eggs of the sea-turtle are about as large as a small apple; they are rounded, and have a flexible shell. Those of the snapping turtle are much smaller, but also rounded. Those of our terrapins are oblong, as are also those of lizards. Snakes' eggs are oblong and sometimes cylindrical in shape. Frogs and toads lay numbers of small eggs. They are dropped in the water like fish spawn, in large clusters or strings. The Surinam toad (pipa) carries her eggs soldered together like a honeycomb on her back. The alytes carries them between its legs rolled up in a bunch.

'Among fishes the eggs of different kinds differ amazingly in external appearance. Some of them would hardly be believed to be eggs at all. Take, for instance, the skate's egg. It looks like a flattened blackish leather bag, with four horns or handles at the four corners. The yolk in such an egg is about the size of a walnut, though it may be larger or smaller according to species. All skates and sharks have eggs like these, though not all lay them, the young, in many instances, undergoing their development within the mother. The chimera has a still more curious egg. It is like a leaf made out of parchment. In the centre is an oblong cavity containing the yolk.

The number of eggs laid by animals belonging to the same class is again singularly different. The eggs (or, as we call them, the spawn) of some fish are exceedingly small, and are laid in large masses. The spawn of a single herring is made up of hundreds of thousands of eggs. Other fishes lay only a few dozen at a time, and in some kinds they are of considerable size. Some fishes let their spawn fall into the water; others make nests for their eggs, and others carry them until the young are fully developed. Some catfish carry their young in the mouth till they can provide for themselves. Certain fishes carry their young along the gills, and they go in and out at will through the gill-cavity. Others carry them attached to the surface of the belly or under the tail, and among the pipe fishes, strange to say, this office devolves upon the males (syngnathus). In the higher vertebrates the young are less numerous, a great many mammalia bear but one at a time.'

A still greater diversity becomes apparent, as the learned Professor goes on to show, when the eggs of the other types of the animal creation are taken into account—the radiates, articulates, and molusks. The number of eggs in different animals differs as one to many thousands or millions. The time of producing the animal being from the egg varies from a few days to several years. The period in which all eggs are alike also in the process of developing individual life is a short one. As the process advances, our professor informs us, this same ovule, or egg, takes on, in different animals, an endless diversity of forms. One very interesting fact stated by Darwin and Agassiz, and familiar to all scientists, is this. The ovule in its process of development in the animal which stands at the head of its class, the vertebrates for example, does assume successive forms in accordance with adult forms of lower orders. The embryo of man at first resembles that of all other animals. In its progressive developments it takes an appearance analogous to that of the fish, the serpent, and the bird. To complete the view of the whole subject, special attention must be directed to the following fundamental fact stated by Professor Agassiz.

'What now, we would ask is the significance of an egg? Is the egg itself an individual? Is it a new being? I think as we go on we shall be brought to the conclusion that the egg is the new being, endowed with an individuality, that is, with a typical character so distinct that never since the world began did the egg of any one animal produce an animal differing from the parent in essential features, or the seed of any plant produce anything differing essentially from the plant which bore it. Whatever phases an egg passes through, however much it transiently resembles the adult condition of some animal lower than itself in the same type, it never ends by producing anything but the kind of animal from which it arose. There is not a solitary instance on record of a deviation from that ever-recurring cycle of development which shows a succession of specifically identical individuals as the result of reproduction, whether through eggs, budding, or division. There are no modes of multiplication known except these three.'

In view of all the above facts, the shallow sophistry in the argument of Darwin based upon 'Embryonic Development,' becomes so apparent as greatly to weaken our respect for him as a logician. His whole argument is based exclusively upon mere similarity of embryonic form in the origin and primal conditions of the egg, all other fundamental facts being utterly overlooked.

The third argument of Darwin, the one on which he greatly relies, is based upon what he denominates 'Rudiments.' 'Rudimentary organs,' he says, 'must be distinguished from those that are present, though in some cases the distinction is not easy. The former are either absolutely useless, such as the mammae of male quadrupeds, or the incisor teeth of ruminants which never cut through the gums; or they are of such slight service to their present possessors that we cannot suppose that they were developed under the conditions which now exist. Nascent organs, on the other hand, though not fully developed, are of high service, and are capable of further development.' The kinds of such rudimentary organs which are undeniably common to man and monkeys, and other animals, need not here be specified, the facts being admitted. The argument of Darwin from these facts is that these organs were once employed by man, for example, when he was in the condition of animals to whom they are useful, and hence argues that man is descended from that class of animals. The upper portion of the ear of some men and of certain monkeys, is 'slightly pointed.' 'The occasional appearance of this fact among men' is 'a vestige of formerly pointed ears,' which all men wore when they were monkeys, or the early descendants of monkeys.

'The bearing,' says our scientist, 'of the three great classes of facts now given is unmistakable. But it would be superfluous here fully to recapitulate the line of argument given in detail in my "Origin of Species." The homological construction of the whole frame in the members of the same class is intelligible, if we admit their descent from a common progenitor, together with their subsequent adaptation to diversified conditions. On any other view the similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat, etc., is utterly inexplicable.' 'Consequently, we ought frankly to admit their community of descent; to take any other view, is to admit that our own structure, and that of all animals around us, is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment.'

Such is the only show of positive evidence which is adduced, or can be adduced, in favour of this doctrine. Facts pertaining to natural and sexual selection, conflict for existence, etc., are not adduced to prove the doctrine, but to explain the possibility of origination by transmutation. The assumption which lies at the basis of this argument is this: If species had been originated by the fiat of God, and not by natural law, and law in the form under consideration, none of the facts above adduced would have appeared, or have place in nature. Take away this assumption, and none of these facts have the remotest bearing upon the problem of 'The Descent of Man.' Where is the proof, or even the probable evidence, in favour of the validity of this assumption? Does Darwin, or any other scientist, know that if God did create the world and all things, and did originate species with the fixed laws of propagation which have, since the commencement of the Geological Era, actually and universally obtained, all the facts under consideration would not be just as they are? We must hold these scientists to this crucial test. Until they have demonstrated to us just how Infinity and Perfection would create a universe, should He create one, and this world, did He create it, and what facts would and would not be found in such a world, and just how Natural Law would develop a universe, this world included, out of 'a fiery cloud,' we dementate ourselves when we give the remotest weight to such arguments as these.

Let us suppose that 'the worlds were created by the word of God,' and that He gave form to all the vitalized kinds of being known to science. Is it not most rational to suppose, that in giving being to such creatures, that they, in their physical conformation, would not be constructed in accordance with certain fixed typical forms, so that man might be able to classify them, and know them as individuals and classes through their individual and type forms? Is it not most rational to suppose, that there would be essential facts common and peculiar to the diversity of races originated? Can man determine á priori just where, and in what respects, these resemblances and differences would appear? Who knows, or what reasons have we or can we have to suppose, that just the common and diverse facts which do appear would not exist in a world thus originated? Until Darwin and his co-scientists have 'found out the Almighty unto perfection,' modesty, if they have any, would induce them not to dogmatize as they do in a sphere where their ignorance cannot but be absolute. The deduction is undeniable, that the facts adduced, or any others which maybe adduced, pertaining to the 'Bodily Structure of Man,' have no bearing whatever upon the problem pertaining to the 'Origin of Species,' such facts being equally compatible with both hypotheses. So far, Evolutionists have palpably failed to render their dogma even probably true.

Argument Based upon Facts of 'Embryonic Development.'

Let us next consider the argument based upon facts of 'Embryonic Development.' We will suppose that no difference of form, or chemical composition, can, by any possibility, be detected between the ova of man and of the brute. What is the real bearing of such facts upon the question under consideration? Does any one, can any one, know that just this identity would not exist, were species originated by the fiat of God, and not by evolution through natural laws? No one will have the effrontery to pretend that he is possessed of such knowledge as this. The fact, then, makes no approach whatever in the direction of valid proof or positive evidence.

Let us now consider this fact from another point of view. We will suppose that a perfect identity of size, form, and chemical composition, as far as man can discover, does obtain in the case of all such ova. Yet from the ovum of the brute nothing but a brute, and from that of man nothing but a man, can, by any possibility, be produced. What do such fundamental facts necessarily imply? This, we answer, that there are fundamental differences in the nature of these ova, differences which neither the microscope, nor the most careful chemical analysis, can detect, and, consequently, that a man cannot have been begotten by a brute. This is the exclusive deduction of true science.

Argument Based upon Facts pertaining to Rudimentary Organs.

Of a precisely similar character is the argument based upon 'the rudimentary organs' which appear in man and other animals. Darwin here, as in other connections, draws so heavily upon our credulity that 'reasonable people who have been so often deceived' must be irresistibly inclined to laugh at his palpable sophistry and absurdity, rather than yield to him the assent which he so confidently expects to receive. Think of the argument deduced from certain facts which characterize the ears of certain individuals, the appearance of 'a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly folded margin or helix.'—'In many monkeys, which do not stand high in the order, as baboons and some species of macaws, the upper portion of the ear is slightly pointed, and the margin is not at all folded inward; but if the margin were to be thus folded, a slight point would necessarily project inward, and probably a little outward. This could actually be observed in a specimen of the Ateles bulzebuth in the Zoological Gardens; we may safely conclude that it is a similar structure—a vestige of formerly pointed ears—which occasionally reappears in man.' The inference which our scientist desires us to draw from these occasional facts is, that all mankind once had 'pointed ears,' and were consequently descended from monkeys 'which do not stand high in the order.' We are perfectly willing to leave such reasonings with monkeys, and with men who are thereby convinced. To Darwin, and his co-thinkers, however, we would seriously put this question: Do you know, gentlemen, that if man is not a monkey transformed, but was made by the Most High, and 'made in the image of God,' that in the ears of some individuals of our race, such 'little blunt points' would not appear? We would further ask them if they know, and if so, how, that if man was divinely created, and not 'developed from the lower orders,' there would be found upon him no 'rudimentary organs,' and the identical ones that now appear? Do they know that perfect wisdom might not choose to have them as they are, whether they had ever been, or not been, used? Do they know that on the hypothesis of diverse origination, these organs may not have been of use, though their necessity has now disappeared? Are not all their arguments, in fact, based upon absolute ignorance of the reasons why facts which they advance do exist? Scientists living in the light of the nineteenth century should have wisdom to discern that dogmatism is out of place where ignorance is absolute. Nothing is, or can be, more evident, than is the fact that the positive evidence adduced to prove the 'descent of man from lower orders,' does not render that dogma even probably true.

Argument Based upon the General Relations of the Forms and Classes of Vitalized Existence.

A fundamental argument in favour of this doctrine of Evolution is based upon the progressive forms of vitalized existence in the world around us. Each species and form of vitalized existence, from man downward, seems to be removed but a single step above that which is next below it. The vegetable kingdom, for example, makes, finally, so near an approach to the animal, that the dividing line between the two is wholly invisible and indeterminable. What basis do we find here, granting all that is claimed, as far as visible facts are concerned, for a deduction in favour of one, as against the other, of the hypotheses under consideration? Are we, can we be, absolutely sure that if the common hypothesis were and the Development theory were not true, the visible facts under consideration would not be just, in all respects, as they are? Do any of these Scientists know just how God, if He should make a world, would make it? Do they know, and can they inform us, just how nature, under the control of natural law, would organize itself? Unless they know all this, they cannot find in the facts before us any form or degree of real proof or positive evidence in favour of their hypothesis, as against the other.

Let us now, for a moment, look at this apparently connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdom, these rock-mosses, call them by what name it is thought best, these vitalized forms which cannot with certainty be classed with the animal, or separated from the vegetable, kingdom. If, within these visible forms, there is real animal life, a capacity of feeling, and of consequent pain and pleasure, then we have, whatever the exterior may be, a form of being at an infinite remove from the vegetable—a form of being with susceptibilities, the existence of which cannot be accounted for by anything that can be found in the vegetable kingdom. Here is a new creation which the vegetable has no adaptation whatever to originate—a new creation, to account for which science demands the deduction that a cause outside the vegetable kingdom has acted.

Another very important enquiry arises here, viz., Does this apparently vegetable-animal constitute a fixed species, or does it, as a matter of fact, develop itself into different and higher species? If it does develop itself into new, and separate, and higher forms of animal life, then we find here a show of argument for Darwin. If, on the other hand, it remains, like other species, a fixture in nature, then the evidence is wholly in the opposite direction. We find ourselves at the exact point of departure where vegetable life, if anywhere, does develop itself into animal life. If, at this point, we find the same fixedness as everywhere else, and no evidence of advance at all, then the chain between the two forms of being and life is broken, and cannot be united by natural law.

Let us next revert to the other end of this chain, and see what revelations we find here. Between the mere skeleton forms of the highest order of the monkey species and that of man, as Huxley shows, there is a great resemblance, and a very gradual advance from the lowest to the highest order of skeletons among the former species. From a prudent regard to science, it may be, Huxley has omitted that portion of the monkey skeleton which constitutes the tail, a fact of no little weight in our judgment, when the problem of the Origin of Species is under discussion.

We will grant, however, all the identity, or approach to identity, of skeleton construction which is contended for, and will invite our scientist to a careful examination with us of the real bearing of this fact upon the problem before us. Here, first of all, we would seriously, and in all earnestness, put the question to him, whether lie himself knows or believes that anyone else can know that the same identical resemblances would not appear, provided species were not developed, or evolved, by natural law, but were originated 'by the word of God'? If he has not absolute knowledge here, and cannot put us in full possession of the same, he has presented nothing whatever which has the remotest bearing in favour of his own, and against the common theory.

Huxley, and his co-scientists, also, utterly overlook in this argument the problem to be solved. It is not that of a skeleton-resemblance, or of varieties in species, but of the origin of Species. If these men could produce a single fact of transmutation of one well-defined species into another and different one, one equally well defined, they would present an argument of real weight in favour of their hypothesis. But as long as they can present nothing but skeleton resemblances, and varieties in the same species, they have done nothing whatever to prove, or render probable, the truth of their theory. If they could produce, for example, an undeniable case of a veritable human being actually born of veritable monkey parents, they would produce a fact of fundamental bearing in favour of their doctrine. But, in the absence of all verified facts of actual transmutation of species of any kind, they insult our intelligence, when they ask us to regard such transmutation as the exclusive law of universal nature, and to base our faith in that law upon such unindicative facts as they do adduce. They may tell us that the lines between diverse species are not always clearly ascertainable. If so, such orders of creatures are to be left wholly out of the account. The argument, to have any degree of scientific weight, must be based wholly upon facts pertaining to species which are clearly marked and well defined, and not of a doubtful character.

Suppose, now, which is strictly true, that we find at the higher, just what we did at the lower end of our chain—to wit, not facts of transmutation of species, but palpable evidence of a fixed law in nature, that each species does, in fact, produce its kind, and nothing else. Then we have positive proof, not in favour, but against this doctrine of Transmutation, proof which is greatly strengthened by the fact that transmutation utterly fails, even in cases of the greatest physical resemblances.

Let us now contemplate one other aspect of the facts before us. At the point of departure, where the animal and vegetable kingdoms make the nearest apparent approach to each other, we found the two even there separated at an infinite remove from each other. We found in the animal here what is utterly absent in the vegetable—a capacity to feel, to experience hunger and thirst, and a consequent desire for food—a capacity for pleasure and pain. At the other end of the same chain, we find in man, in his lowest capacities, facts which separate him at an equal distance from the brute, in his highest estate. Rational is, undeniably, at as wide a remove from irrational life, as animal is from vegetable life. The nearer the approach in physical conformation, this fundamental distinction remaining, the wider, the more impassable and distinctly palpable does the separating gulf become. Suppose that a class of beings were found between whom and man no physical differences can be discovered. Yet the former immutably begets its kind, and they, notwithstanding all that can possibly be done with and for them, remain irrational. The latter, also, immutably begets its kind, and these, without exception, are rational. Here we should have the highest possible demonstration of the fact that rationality does not depend upon emotive, sensative, or physical resemblances, and that man, as possessed of rationality, is at an unapproachable remove from the brute. The more near, and the greater in number such resemblances are shown to exist, the more perfect and palpable does the proof become, that man cannot have been originated, by transmutation, from the brute. Darwin, by the presentation of such interesting and striking emotive, sensative, and physical resemblances between man and the brute, is constantly furnishing us with the most valid and palpable disproof of his own theory. When these scientists assure us that there is no fundamental difference between the intelligence of man and that of the brute, they insult our intelligence, on the one hand, and betray their own scientific stupidity on the other. Why do they not erect schools and colleges for the education of their monkeys? The reason, and only reason is, that they and all the world know, that men may, and monkeys cannot be, taught science.

Variations of Species Produced by Natural Selection and other Causes.

It is an undoubted fact that within the circle of almost any given species of vitalized existence many distinct varieties appear—varieties all of which no doubt originated from the same primal stock. While this fact is most palpable, no scientist of any school professes to present a single well established fact of actual transmutation, that is, of development of any one distinct and well defined species into another and opposite one which is equally well defined. No such fact is known, as men best informed, Huxley and Darwin, for example, fully admit even to the science of Geology. Nor is there a fact known to science of an actual change, of even one type-form into another. Yet within the circle of given species, and through the influence of climate, natural, and sexual selection, conflict for existence, and other known, and no doubt unknown causes, great changes have been induced—changes resulting in many and diverse varieties. This all will admit is a fair statement of the facts of the case as known to science. The deduction based upon these facts, is the origin of all forms of vitalized existence through one exclusive cause—the transmutation of one species into another, and this by natural law acting under the influences above referred to. Here again we have an infinite leap in logic, and a palpable example of another equally fundamental logical error, misstating or mistaking the question at issue. The question before us is not what varieties are produced by these and other causes in species already existing, but are species themselves originated by these or any causes by transmutation of one species into another? In other words, the question does not pertain at all to the how or wherefore varieties, but species are originated. The existence of varieties, evidently originated from a common stock, evinces the adequacy of the causes referred to, to give being to such varieties whenever and wherever the proper conditions are fulfilled. The induction of facts of actual transmutation, this and nothing else, can evince in these causes, or any others acting in nature, an adequacy to transmute one species into another. If no such fact can be adduced, even among the lower orders of vitalized existence, where is the basis, in the existence and action of these causes, for the deduction that the monkey is 'the father of the man'? If these causes, which have undeniably been acting with full force ever since the Geological Era began, have availed to produce numberless varieties in species actually existing, and have never availed to produce a single known fact of actual transmutation of one species into another, what higher proof can we ask to verify for natural law and these causes full adequacy to produce the former class of results, and of their total in adequacy to produce the latter? Darwin, it has been said, by showing the action in nature of the principles of natural and sexual selection, of conflict for existence, etc., has placed his doctrine under known laws of nature. He has, indeed, done this, and has thus proved his doctrine false, having placed that doctrine under laws, the only known ones applicable to the case—laws palpably inadequate to develop palpable facts in conformity with his hypothesis.

Let us now contemplate another aspect of this argument—an argument based upon this assumption, and having no force at all on any other—to wit, that if species were originated, not by transmutation, but by the fiat of God, they would possess such a fixed character that the causes referred to would not produce the varieties which do exist. Darwin really professes to 'have found out God and to have found out the Almighty unto perfection.' We affirm that neither he, nor any other scientist, knows at all that if 'the worlds were framed by the Word of God,' and species were originated by his direct fiat, that we should not have and have had the same species, and the same varieties that do exist and have existed. All his multitudinous inductions and deductions consequently fail utterly, not only to prove his theory, but to render it, as against the common one, even probably true. The above facts and arguments lie with equal weight against every form of argument which ever has been adduced in favour of this boasted hypothesis.

Argument Based upon the Unverified Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation.

The advocates of the New Philosophy are waiting with breathless, but despairing expectation for a verification of their doctrine of Spontaneous Generation, the spontaneous development of dead matter into vital forms. If this doctrine should be verified, all difficulties which their theory of Development now encounters would, they think, for ever disappear. Permit us, for a few moments, to question these Doctors of Science who are putting nature into the crucible for the purpose of forcing from her a confession of her actual possession of the hidden power under consideration. Are you, can you be, we ask in the first place, absolutely sure that your 'trial of fire' has annihilated every vital embryo in the mass of affirmed dead matter before you?—May there not be in this mass divinely originated embryos which no degree of heat which you can originate can annihilate? In the next place, do the vital forms which this dead matter, assuming it to be dead, originate, possess the power, under any existing influences, of self-transmutation into other and higher forms of being and of life? Unless you are absolutely assured yourselves, and can as absolutely assure us, on all such points, your expiriments, however they may result, can have no bearing, whatever, in favour of your doctrine of Transmutation of Species. It is quite sufficient to say here, that this doctrine of Spontaneous Generation has not only never been verified, but, if verified in the only form possible, would have no bearing whatever upon the doctrine of Transmutation of Species. This last doctrine can be proven but by the presentation of facts of actual transmutation, facts which cannot be adduced.

Evidence Bearing upon the General Doctrine of Evolution.

The common doctrine of all schools is the general progress of creation from the less in the direction of the more perfect. The 'fiery cloud' was succeeded by the scientifically organized planetary system. The molten state of the earth was succeeded by successive rock-formations; these by the oceans and continents; and these by successive vitalized forms, until creation culminated in man, the successive races which have peopled the earth being always in fixed adaptation to its state at the time. This holds equally of vegetable and animal life. While progression, in general, had been in the direction indicated, this has by no means been universally the case. The earliest forms of being and life were not always in accordance with less generalized and less perfect types than the later ones, and in no case, as Huxley states, 'were the earlier members of any long continued group more generalized in structure than the later ones.' On the other hand, the reverse of this not unfrequently has occurred. In all the successive steps in the progress of creation, also, there was the most fixed and palpable reference to the wants of man. The coal formations, and endlessly diversified mineral deposits, for example, occurred untold ages before man appeared, and yet have specific and exclusive reference to his individual necessities, and are without use in nature, man not existing. 'All life is from the egg,' the egg originated in the ovary of the female, and afterwards impregnated through the male. This is the almost universal law. To this generally fixed law, however, there are some exceptions. 'It is now clearly proved,' says Professor Agassiz, 'not only for wasps and bees, but also for a number of other insects belonging to the Hymenoptera, that virgin females may produce male offspring without any participation of males.' Among 'the Phyllopods, a family of crustacea,' 'the unfecundated females of these crustacea,' he adds, on the authority of Siebold, 'produce in successive generation, females, and females only.' The general law is, that intelligence is manifested but in connection with a brain. Yet the bee, which manifests as high intelligence as any creature below man, in the language of Professor Agassiz, 'has no brain proper, nor does their nervous system correspond in any way to that of the vertebrates.'—'Their structure shows no organs similar to those by which the mental functions are manifested in the higher animals and in man. So of other insects.' After giving fundamental facts pertaining to Vertebrates and Articulates, the Professor adds: 'Thus it appears that the batteries from which all volition starts, by which all the acts of life are performed or regulated, through which all external impressions are communicated and acted upon, are very different in these two types in the animal kingdom.' The conclusions forced upon us by the most palpable aspect of the facts which lie around us in the universe is this, and only this, that while order obtains with strict universality in all departments of the universe, the order which does obtain cannot be that determined by mere Natural Laws, but is that peculiar and specific kind of order determined by Will, under the guidance of Intelligence. Throughout the solar system, for example, all is order. Yet the peculiar character of the order, the orbits of the comets, and the movements of certain satellites, for example, can by no possibility be explained on the hypothesis that this system was evolved by natural law from 'a fiery cloud.' The same holds equally and especially in respect to fundamental facts in the animal and vegetable kingdoms around us. The following extract from Professor Agassiz presents our ideas on this subject in a form which cannot be excelled, and which will be read with the deepest interest and profit:

'Then while it may be said on the whole in a general sense that lower forms have preceded higher ones, and that embryonic development follows the same progress from the simpler to the more complex structure, it is not true in detail that all the earlier animals were simpler than the later. On the contrary, many of the lower animals were introduced under more highly organized forms than they have ever shown since, and have dwindled afterward. Such are the types which I have called synthetic types, combining characters which were separated later and found expression in distinct groups. That presentation of palaeontological phenomena which would make it appear that the whole animal kingdom has been marshalled in a consecutive procession beginning with the lowest and ending with the highest, is false to nature. There is no inevitable repetition, no mechanical evolution in the geological succession of organic life. It has the correspondence of connected plan. It has just that kind of resemblance in the parts, so much and no more, as always characterizes intellectual work proceeding from the same source. It has that freedom of manifestation, that independence, which characterizes the work of mind as compared with the work of law. Sometimes, in looking at this great epos of organic life in its totality, carried on with such ease and variety, and even playfulness of expression, one is reminded of the great conception of the poet or musician, where the undertone of the fundamental harmony is heard beneath all the diversity of rhythm or of song. So great is this freedom, so unlike the mechanical action of evolution, that we find endless discrepancies, endless incongruities, appalling anachronisms in the would-be uninterrupted series of progressive events as, advocated by the supporters of the transmutation dogma. Animals that should be ancestors if simplicity of structure is to characterize the first born, are known to be of later origin; the more complicated forms have frequently appeared first, and the simpler ones later, and this in hundreds of instances. Any one doubting my statements needs only compare the leading treatises of paleontology with the best systematic works on zoology. The assertion does not bear serious examination. It is just one of those fancied results following the disclosure or presentation of a great law which captivates the mind, and leads it to take that which it wishes to be true for truth.

'I may seem to have made only assertions without demonstration in facts. It is true that I have had time only for a general illustration, and have been unable to present to you the crowd of examples which present themselves to my mind. This I hope to do later. Meantime I think I have done something to show you that the interpretation I put on my own facts is more correct than that which the transmutationists put upon them. I believe that all these correspondences between the different aspects of animal life are the manifestations of mind acting consciously with intention toward one object from beginning to end. This view is in accordance with the working of our minds; it is an instinctive recognition of a mental power with which our own is akin, manifesting itself in nature. For this reason more than any other, perhaps, do I hold that this world of ours is not the result of the action of unconscious organic forces, but the work of an intelligent, conscious power.'

In his argument based upon the fact of progress in nature, the Evolutionist overlooks entirely the peculiar and special characteristics of this progression. From the fact also that events orderly succeed one another, he concludes by an infinite leap in logic, that they are, by natural law, developed from one into the other. The rock formations are, for ex ample, in order by succession. Why does he not conclude from hence, that the lower transmuted or evolved themselves into the higher formations? Their antecedence and consequence, that is, mere orderly succession, do not evince the relation of cause and effect. The reign of fishes did precede that of reptiles, and these last that of mammals. Those facts are just as compatible with divine origination as with that of originations by transmutation, and do not of themselves render either system, as opposed to the other, even probably true. Yet these facts of orderly and progressive succession, furnish all the evidence which the Evolutionist can present in favour of his theory. In the light of the immutable principles of scientific induction and deduction, that theory has not yet been brought within the sphere of probable truth. Its influence with the public has no other basis than mere opinion sustained by the names of distinguished scientists, scientists not one of whom can adduce a single fact which renders his hypothesis, as opposed to the common one, even probably true.

Forms of Evidence which Disprove this Theory.

We have, we believe, fully verified the proposition that no fact has yet been adduced which affords the remotest degree of real proof of this doctrine of Development, or Evolution, and renders it even probably true. Let us now consider some of the facts which go to disprove this hypothesis. The principle which lies at the basis of the argument here is this. When two distinct and opposite hypotheses are before us, one of which must be true and the other false, and when all the facts bearing upon the case are fully explicable on one, and some of them, at least, are utterly inexplicable on the other, the former, in opposition to the latter, must, in all cases, be accepted as verified truth of science. There can be no exceptions to this principle. How stands the case relatively to the two hypotheses under consideration, hypotheses, one of which must be true and the other false? It is undeniable, as we have shown, and as every candid thinker will admit, that, without exception, all the facts under consideration are fully and readily explicable on the common hypothesis. How is it with this theory of Development? It is admitted and affirmed by its advocates that multitudes of facts do present themselves, for which their theory furnishes no explanation whatever. In traversing the multitudinous works of Darwin, we constantly encounter just such admissions. Positive facts lift their forms before us, facts which our scientist is constrained to admit are utterly inexplicable on his hypothesis. Then we approach vast chasms which would be filled with an infinity of facts of a given character were his theory true—chasms in which not one of these facts do appear. In the presence and absence of the facts referred to, such confessions as the following are here and there wrung out of our scientist. 'To suppose that the eye, with its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic observation, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.' How readily explicable is this great central fact of nature on the common theory!

Again, 'Why does not every collection of fossil remains offer plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life? We meet with no such evidence, and this is the most obvious and forcible of the many objections which may be urged against my theory.' 'I do not pretend,' he says again, 'that I should ever have known how poor a record of the mutations of life the best preserved geological section presented, had not the difficulty of our not discovering innumerable transitional links between the species which appeared at the commencement and close of each formation pressed so hardly on my theory.' Now the presence of facts fully explicable on one, and utterly inexplicable on the only opposite, hypothesis, and the total absence of facts, for the absence of which the one does, and the other cannot account, demonstrate the former as true and the latter as false.

Huxley also makes quite a fair show in his comparison of the dry skeletons of monkeys and men, the caudal appendage being dropped from the former. But when rationality and irrationality lift their forms before him, a gulf so wide appears between them, that he is constrained to admit that science, as known to man, cannot bridge over the appalling chasm. How can transmutation occur here? Not surely by any gradual mutation, the only form of change explicable by natural law, as universally understood. Huxley has, confessedly, no faith in God. He has, as he assures all, 'faith in matter.' Through his 'great faith' here, he readily draws on his imagination, and assumes in matter, or nature, this principle—a capacity, at wide intervals, and by 'sudden leaps and starts' of stepping across gulfs too infinitely wide for science to bridge over. By a convulsive throe during one of these fits, vegetable was transmuted into animal life; and in another, a monkey, dropping his tail, was developed into a man, irrationality into rationality. These, and kindred monstrosities, we are to accept as truths in science, or take rank, in sphere of fogyism, with such slow thinkers as Agassiz, Dana, and Miller. When we think of the abyss of absurdity into which the advocates of the New Philosophy require us to descend, we are reminded of two lines in the 'Dunciad.' A father has led his sons to a spot just over the place where all the filth of a great city is collected, and exclaims:

'Come here, my children; here plunge in;

Here let us dash through thick and thin.'

Deduction from Man's Place in Creation.

We have now shown that all the arguments and facts which have ever been adduced in favour of this doctrine of Transmutation of Species utterly fail to raise the doctrine to the dignity of even a probable truth. We have also shown that, as admitted by the advocates of this hypothesis, there are facts utterly inexplicable on this hypothesis, the same facts, and all others known to science, being fully and readily explicable on the opposite and only remaining hypothesis. We will now suppose that the fact has been fully verified as a truth of science, that this doctrine holds true with regard to all vitalized existences, man excepted. We will further suppose that there exists an accredited revelation from God, that in the creation of man he had departed from the law of vital origination which obtains in all other cases, and had formed him, both in respect to his physical and mental nature, by an immediate fiat of Divine power. As there would be nothing whatever in the facts of science supposed to discredit at all the doctrine of universal creation 'by the Word of God,' so there would be nothing in the same facts to throw the least discredit over the revelation under consideration. On the supposition that such is the specific account of the origin of man given in the Bible, no issue, on account of the origin of other forms of vitalized existence, can be raised between science and the Bible, unless it can be demonstrated wholly independent of such facts that man was not thus created, but was actually begotten by a monkey or some other animal. Man's place in creation, on the other hand, as 'created in the image and after the likeness of God,' and 'made to have dominion over the works of God,' render altogether credible and probable such a revelation of the origin of humanity. In no case, we remark, and on no condition known to science, can a conflict be shown to exist between science and the Bible as far as the origin of man is concerned.

SECTION X.

THE DOGMATISM OF MODERN NATURALISTS.

No one can read the productions of Modern Naturalism without being deeply impressed with the fact of the habitual and imperious dogmatism of the advocates of the doctrine. From their manner of utterance, it would seem that they must 'be the men,' that 'wisdom must die with them,' and that science is, and must be, 'all their own.' Evolution, Spontaneous Generation, Transmutation of Species, and other kindred doctrines are held up as the sciences of the age. All who question these doctrines are branded as fogies in science. Those who believe that 'the worlds were made by the Word of God,' are ridiculed by Spencer as holding 'the carpenter theory,' and those who believe in the soul, God, duty, immortality, and retribution are ranked by Huxley with those who concern themselves with 'Lunar Politics.' 'They know fact, and they know law.'

Yet, as Tyndall observes, and none, not even these scientists, will deny, these very Dogmatists are themselves distinctly aware 'of the uncertainty of their data,' and they yield to their own deductions no more than 'a provisional assent.' What, excuse, then, have these men for holding up conscious uncertainties as scientific truths, and deductions from premises of the uncertainty of which they are distinctly aware as scientifically ascertained verities? What excuse have they for attempting to subvert the necessarily induced intuitions of the Universal Intelligence, and the received doctrines of revealed religion, by means of 'grounds and arguments' of the utter uncertainty of which they are themselves distinctly aware? 'Two things,' said Kant, 'fill me with awe—the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.' He richly deserves the deep reprobation of the universe, who, without absolutely knowing whereof he affirms, and without being able equally to assure others, attempts to subvert our faith in the reality of the 'starry heavens,' or to destroy, or weaken, or pervert 'the sense of moral responsibility in man.' While the fixed tendency of Naturalism, in all its forms, and the equally immutable aim of Naturalists of all classes, is to leave unshaken 'our faith in matter,' and consequently our belief in 'the starry heavens,' the known tendency of all their teachings is to annihilate utterly 'the sense of moral responsibility in man. Naturalism, whether it assumes the form of Idealism, Materialism, or Scepticism, denies absolutely the existence of moral evil, the desert of good or ill on account of moral action, or man's real responsibility for his actions as good or bad. No Naturalist will deny the doctrine of Emerson, 'that vice and crime are normal states of human nature.' Yet all these men are distinctly aware of 'the uncertainty of the data' from which they deduce such monstrous dogmas, and themselves yield to their own utterances but 'a provisional assent.'

Tyndall's Doctrine of the Scientific use of the

Imagination.

Hvxley's Sophistries Exposed.

In an article on 'The Scientific Use of the Imagination,' Tyndall has endeavoured to reconcile us to the imperious dogmatism of Modern Naturalism. The facts on which his deductions in this article are based, however, render the presumption of that dogmatism most palpable. Take, in illustration, the following utterance of Huxley. 'I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding apparent difficulties, a threefold unity— namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the whole living world.' The facts on which this deduction is based, are exclusively facts revealed through the microscope, in the process of chemical and physiological analysis. The proposition to the validity of which our scientist's microscopical observations conduct him, is thus expressed by himself: 'Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life,' and chemical analysis affirms protoplasm, in all its forms, to be constituted of the same identical elements. From these statements, we now revert to Tyndall. 'It cannot be too distinctly borne in mind,' says Tyndall, and undeniably so, 'that between the microscope limit and the true molecular limit there is room for infinite permutations and combinations. It is in this region that the poles of the atoms are arranged, that tendency is given to their powers, so that when these poles and powers have free action and proper stimulus in a suitable environment, they determine, first the germ, and afterwards the complete organism. This first marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends, baffles a keener power than that of the microscope. Through pure excess of complexity, and long before observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck dumb with astonishment which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our instrument, but whether we ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural elements of nature.' Through instruments which, undeniably, cannot reach or determine the character of the ultimate elements which constitute any material combination whatever, Huxley professes himself able to demonstrate the threefold unity above designated. A more recklessly presumptuous proposition was never, we boldly affirm, laid down by any thinker before or since. The microscope, and physiological and chemical analysis may affirm a unity when and where a full knowledge of the ultimate atoms would affirm a very wide and essential diversity.

How can the question, whether the unity referred to does or does not obtain, that is, not whether 'protoplasm simple or nucleated is the basis of all life,' but whether in protoplasm in all its forms, 'a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition' does exist? A large number of forms of protoplasm, the ovules of man, and of other animals, are before us. As far as microscopic and chemical observation can determine, here is the identical unity affirmed. Huxley affirms, that through these observations and experiments, the absolute fact of such unity has been demonstrated, affirming at the same time that 'we know nothing about the composition of anybody whatever as it is.' As this absolute ignorance about the real composition of all bodies whatever leaves 'all reasonable people who have been so often deceived' in doubt about the validity of this boldly affirmed demonstration, we wait for more mature observations. As the result of the most careful and widely extended observations, it is found, that the fundamental diversity of these ovules is demonstrated by their finally developed results. The ovule of the man, for example, under any circumstances whatever, can be developed into nothing but a man, and that of the dog into nothing but a dog. So in all other cases. In view of such fundamental facts, 'reasonable people who have been so often deceived' by the sophistries of false science, conclude that 'between microscope limit and the true molecular limit,' not a unity, but wide diversity of 'substantial composition' did, in fact, exist, a diversity which the microscope fails to discern. Who can doubt that we have here the true process of scientific induction and deduction, while Huxley's affirmed demonstration is a gross blunder in science?

Tyndall's Theory Specifically Expounded and Refuted.

We are now prepared to understand clearly Tyndall's theory of the 'scientific use of the imagination.' In the unknown and unknowable sphere which lies between the 'microscope limit and the true molecular limit,' the sphere in which 'there is room for infinite permutations and combinations,' 'permutations and combinations' from all proper attempts to determine the nature of which 'the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem,' in this unapproachable sphere, we find the proper place for the action, so says Tyndall, of 'the speculative faculty of which the imagination forms so large a part.' 'But the speculative faculty,' he says, 'of which imagination forms so large a part, will nevertheless wander into regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be entirely shut out. We think that though the detailed analysis may be, and may for ever remain, beyond us, general notions may be attainable. At all events, it is plain that beyond the present outposts of microscopic enquiry lies an immense field for the exercise of speculative power. It is only, however, the privileged spirits' [such, for example, as Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall] 'who know how to use their liberty without abusing it, who are able to surround imagination by the firm frontiers of reason, that are likely to work with profit here. But freedom to them is of such paramount importance that, for the sake of securing it, a good deal of wildness on the part of weaker brethren may be overlooked.'

We venture to affirm that a more 'lawless method in science was never developed, even in the brain of a crazy philosopher. Science proper has nothing whatever to do but with facts of real knowledge, facts of this exclusive character, together with the realities and principles which such facts necessarily imply. When 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so large a part,' advances, and, with infinite presumption, as 'all reasonable people cannot but regard such procedures,' 'between the microscopic limit and the true molecular limit,' a sphere from which 'the most highly-trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment,' and develops here 'general notions,' notions on which systems of universal being and its laws are constructed, systems on the authority of which all our ideas of God, the soul, duty, immortality, and retribution, are affirmed to be figments, and the essential doctrines of our holy religion are located in the wild realm of 'Lunar Politics'—we denounce such procedures as utterly lawless, and subversive of all ideas of true science. If 'the general notions' and the systems based upon the same notions, systems, which 'the privileged spirits develop relatively to the affirmed and admitted unknowable and unknown, were presented to the world as being what they really are, mere logical fictions, and nothing else, mankind may safely allow 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so large a part,' to range at will 'through all the regions of unphilosophic space,' and perfect up there just what fictions it chooses. It would be a matter of interest to learn what this 'speculative faculty' in 'the privileged spirits' can combine out of the elements of 'the palpable obscure.' But when these 'privileged spirits' present to the world the 'general notions' and systems which they have combined out of no other elements than those referred to, as the verities of science, then they stand revealed, not as properly privileged, but 'false spirits.' Let any thinker carefully examine the modern doctrines of Evolution, Spontaneous Generation, Development, and other kindred dogmas, and he will perceive most clearly that every one of them is constructed in exclusive, and, taking Tyndall as our authority, in admitted conformity to the lawless method above presented. The advocates of all these dogmas are, as Tyndall affirms, distinctly aware of 'the uncertainty of their data,' and themselves yield to their own affirmed deductions of valid science 'only a provisional assent.' The reason is, that those deductions are nothing but 'general notions,' whose elements are exclusively extracted by the 'speculative faculty' in these 'privileged spirits' from the admitted 'palpable obscure' of the unknowable and unknown.

An Illustrative Example of the 'Scientific Use of the Imagination.'

We will give, in elucidation of the validity of the above statements, the example which Tyndall gives as embodying his own idea of the speculative method, and the authority which deductions in accordance with that method should have with unprivileged spirits. 'In more senses than one Darwin,' says Tyndall, 'has drawn heavily upon the scientific tolerance of his age. He has drawn heavily upon time in the development of species, and he has drawn adventurously upon matter in his theory of pangenesis. According to this theory a germ already microscopic is a world of minor germs. Not only is the organism as a whole wrapped up in the germ, but every organ of the organism has there its special seed. This, I say, is an adventurous draft on the power of matter to divide itself and distribute its forces. But, unless we are perfectly sure that he is overstepping the bounds of reason, that he is unwittingly sinning against observed fact or demonstrated law—for a mind like that of Darwin can never sin wittingly against either fact or law—we ought, I think, to be cautious in limiting his intellectual horizon. If there be the least doubt in the matter, it ought to be given in favour of the freedom of such a mind. To it a vast possibility is in itself a vast dynamic power, though the possibility may never be drawn upon.'

Here are, undeniably, more errors of a fundamental character, errors utterly subversive of all valid scientific methods, than we shall have time to enumerate. True science allows no thinker to make any 'drafts upon time' or matter but such as known facts demand. Science absolutely 'limits the intellectual horizon' of all scientists in common to the sphere of the knowable and known, and repudiates the authority of 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so large a part' in 'regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be utterly shut out.' Science knows of no 'privileged spirits' in her sphere. Dreams, science listens to as dreams; and 'general notions' pertaining to 'secret things' from which 'the most highly-trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination retires in bewilderment,' she accepts as logical fictions, and nothing else. Where a single valid doubt attaches to a notion, whether particular or general, Science bids such notion stand outside her sphere, until it brings an absolute verification of its truth. The thinker to whom 'a vast possibility' is an actually existing 'dynamic power,' Science ranks with the race who are 'mad with logic, and who feed the mind on chimeras.'

These 'great swelling words of vanity' about 'privileged spirits' among 'the first three' of whom, and as 'their captain,' each speaker and author of course ranks himself, remind us of a fact which occurred in Boston, U.S., many years ago. At a great festival in commemoration of the battle of Bunker Hill, a festival at which not a few wise men 'erred through wine and strong drink,' one such, an aged man, and venerable when sober, arose, and thus delivered himself: 'Mr. Speaker, I rise to express a sentiment in respect to those illustrious patriots and heroes who fought, bled, and died at Bunker Hill, Concord and Lexington, of whom, Mr. Speaker, I am one.'

Mr. Darwin's Drafts upon Time.

Let us for a moment consider the 'heavy drafts' which the speculative thought of Darwin makes upon time. All scientists are agreed that Huxley is right in affirming that when tested by all the facts known to science relatively to existing orders of vitalized being, and by all the facts presented by fossiliferous rocks, the theory of Darwin utterly fails of verification even as probably true. During all this wide interval of time, the causes to which he assigns the origin of all species have been in full operation, a period covering, as some suppose, from one hundred to several thousand of millions of years. During all this period all type-forms have persisted without making the remotest approach towards each other; not a single known fact of species-transmutation has been discovered, nor a single exception to the law that 'all life is from the egg,' and that no egg has produced an individual not of the species of its parentage; no indication has been discovered that any long-continued group were less generalized at the beginning than at any subsequent period; and all modifications of known species which have occurred, as Huxley says, 'excite our wonder, not that they are so great, but that they are so small.' No thinker professes to doubt the strict validity of the statement of Huxley, that 'the insignificant modifications which can be demonstrated to have taken place in any one group of animals, or plants, is quite incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a necessary process of progressive development, entirely comprised within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks,' that is, within a period, as these scientists reckon time, of from one hundred to several thousand millions of years. The real problem which science presents is this. If within this long period all the combined causes operating in nature have visibly failed to produce a single known example of transmutation of a single type-form into another, or of any one well-defined species into another, or a single exception to the fixed law of vital propagation—if all these causes have failed utterly to produce but 'insignificant modifications,' 'in any one group of animals or plants,' how long a period must be allowed in which these insignificant causes shall produce half a million of such transmutations? Do not palpable and undeniable facts which 'negative' the adequacy of these causes to produce a single fact of real transmutation during, say, five hundred millions of years, absolutely negative their adequacy to produce five hundred thousand such transmutations during the eternity past? In other words, does not a final persistence of from one hundred to several thousand millions of years continuance indicate, most absolutely, the action of a fixed law, in nature? If such facts do not verify the existence and operation of such a law, what facts, we ask, can do it? Do not such facts absolutely verify the deduction, that either Darwin is wrong, or the laws of nature are a lie?

Standing in the presence of all these facts, and admitting them all, for 'what does Darwin draw so heavily upon the scientific tolerance of the age'? For 'heavy drafts upon time,' and for 'adventurous drafts' upon our fundamental ideas of matter. Is he himself even sure that if these heavy and adventurous drafts are honoured by 'the scientific tolerance of the age,' his theory will then be verified by facts? By no means. No one thinker is more distinctly aware of the 'uncertainty of his data,' or yields a more 'provisional assent' to his deductions than does Darwin. The careful reader of his 'Origin of Species' cannot fail to have noticed how unpositive are all his deductions. Granting his heavy and adventurous drafts upon time and matter, and what then? Anything certain? No such thing. All the assurance we receive is, that Darwin cannot see but that it might be so. These are forms of expression with which the pages of that treatise swarm. 'I cannot see but that it might be so.' In other words, Darwin cannot see but that there may be 'a vast possibility.' He then draws heavily upon us for a positive conviction of the actual existence and operation of a corresponding 'dynamic power.' If we ask him to give us the real facts on which he makes these 'heavy drafts' upon our 'scientific tolerance,' he has but one and the same answer to give, namely, 'I cannot see but that such facts may exist.' This is, undeniably, the most that Darwin, or any other Evolutionist, can say in behalf of their heavy and adventurous drafts upon our credulity. Take away these 'heavy drafts upon time,' and these 'adventurous drafts upon matter,' and no scientist of any respectability will pretend but that his dogmas are 'fit only for the intellectual gibbet;' nor can 'Science honour these heavy drafts,' without unmasking herself before the world as 'science falsely so-called.'

Just here Tyndall comes to Darwin's aid. To be sure the theory advocated by the latter 'represents an absurdity too monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind.' We ought not, however, to vindicate our sanity by rejecting the monstrosity, and that for two reasons. Matter may not be, in the first place, 'the vile thing' which we take it to be. Without the total revolution of the notions now prevalent (in regard to matter) the Evolution hypothesis must be condemned. But more than all, Darwin is one of 'the privileged spirits' who 'can never sin willingly against law or facts.' We must bear in mind that the reason why he makes such 'heavy drafts upon time,' and such 'adventurous drafts on the power of matter' is, that he is one of 'the privileged spirits' in whom 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so great a part, will nevertheless wander into regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be utterly shut out,' and will boldly grapple, and speculatively solve these problems, from 'the contemplation of which' 'the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination retires in bewilderment. Dwelling, as Darwin does, in the high realm of 'the privileged spirits,' whose 'speculative faculty' will roam 'through all regions of philosophic space,' and unphilosophic too, 'we ought to be cautious,' says Tyndall, 'in limiting his intellectual horizon.' 'If there be the least doubt in the matter' (and anyone can doubt when he chooses), 'it ought to be given in favour of the freedom of such a mind.' In other words, we ought to permit the speculative thought of these 'privileged spirits,' when dogmatizing in respect to problems from which 'the most highly trained intellect, the most refined imagination, retires in bewilderment,' to take from us our faith in God, in the soul, our 'sense of moral responsibility,' our immortal hopes, and to locate our religion in the sphere of 'Lunar Politics.' We may safely challenge any Evolutionist to show that we have 'overstated or overstrained' 'the drafts' which 'these privileged spirits' are openly and constantly making upon 'the scientific tolerance of the age.'

Tyndall's Exposition of the Final Cause of Affirmed Facts of Transmutation and Evolution.

Let us now, for a moment, contemplate the ground on which Tyndall would verify the dogmas of Pangenesis and Transmutation of Species. If we fundamentally change our idea of matter, and 'consider spirit and matter as equally worthy and equally wonderful,' if 'we consider them, in fact, as two opposite faces of the self-same mystery,' then nothing will appear more reasonable than the doctrines under consideration. We are here reminded of another fact which also occurred in the city of Boston. An individual called together a great meeting to witness the movements of a machine which, once in motion, would never stop as long as the material lasted. The people saw before them a most perfectly constructed machine. There was one essential difficulty about it, however. 'It would not go.' What if the inventor had thus addressed the spectators: 'I freely admit, gentlemen, that according to the ideas of motion and rest "which have been drilled into you when young," the notion that you have in the machine before you a genuine case of perpetual motion is "absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual gibbet." Rest and motion "have ever been presented to you in the rudest contrast," the one as all-still, the other as all-active. But is this correct? Does it "represent what our mightiest spiritual teacher would call the Eternal Fact of the case"? Upon the answer to this question all depends.' 'Our mightiest spiritual teacher' has absolutely affirmed 'the idea of something and nothing,' all opposites, and consequently motion and rest, 'to be one and identical,' 'opposite poles of the self-same mystery.' Grant this great truth of speculative thought, and all absurdity disappears when you admit this machine to be always in motion, even when it seems to be not moving at all. We submit the case to every candid thinker, whether we have not here an example perfectly parallel to that presented by Professor Tyndall. Are not matter and spirit, and our fixed ideas of the same, as distinct and separate from one another, and as immutably so as are our conceptions of motion and rest? Can the former any more than the latter be considered 'merely as two opposite poles of the self-same mystery'? Is it less 'absurd and monstrous, and more fit for the intellectual gibbet,' to suppose the latter to be transmuted into one another than the former?

Tyndall informs us that the common theory of the origin of species 'can never be stormed, and that it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege,' and not then, but upon the condition of the fundamental change of our ideas of spirit and matter, the change which he urges upon us. How long is this siege, judging from the past, likely to continue, before the common theory shall capitulate? For more than twenty-five centuries, the Yogees of Oriental nations, the Idealists of Greece and the Middle Ages, and the Rationalists and Privileged Spirits of modern times, have laid the closest siege to this belief, and never than now with less promise of success. Idealists to-day represent the smallest school in Philosophy known in Christendom. Idealists, to entertain any reasonable hope of carrying this belief of the race, must lay about as heavy drafts upon the future as Darwin does upon the past. Granting the fact that spirit and matter should be 'considered as opposite faces of the self-same mystery,' the forms of each, as manifested or represented in thought, are, as we have said, just as distinct, separate, and as impossible of transmutation into one another, as are the substances themselves, supposing them to exist as represented in the common belief. A thought-representation of a monkey, for example, can no more be transmuted into that of a man, than can a real monkey be transmuted into a real man. There are not only no known facts by which the common belief in respect to the Origin of Things, can be stormed or carried by a siege, and these Evolution doctrines proven true, but no conceivable conditions on which the said dogmas can be rendered anything else than 'absurd. monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual gibbet.'

What We Can and Cannot Know of Matter.

It is absolutely certain that we have no direct and immediate knowledge, either by observation or through 'general notions' originated by imaginative speculative thought, of the primal atoms of matter. What 'lies beyond the outposts of microscopic enquiry' must remain to direct observation, and to 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so great a part,' a terra incognita, from which 'the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and deciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment.' None but the most recklessly adventurous speculators, miscalled 'privileged spirits,' will attempt 'through this "palpable obscure," to find out their uncouth way.' Yet there is an obviously scientific method of studying matter, even in its ultimate forms. Matter, as directly perceived by us, exists as a compound of greater or less magnitude. This is true of matter as perceived through the natural eye, through the microscope and telescope, or by any other means. What cannot be known of this substance by direct inspection of its atomic forms, may, in many fundamental particulars, be fully known through the aggregates which we do perceive. We know absolutely, for example, that the essential properties, qualities, and attributes of the ultimate particles which constitute any aggregate cannot be essentially dissimilar from the aggregate itself. On the other hand, these particles must be, in their essential characteristics, like the aggregate to which they give being and form. We know, and cannot but know, that 'the great globe' on which we dwell, cannot be constituted of any number of totally unextended atoms. If the compound has extension and form, so must its constituent atoms have. If the compound exists in space and occupies space, the same must be true of each of its constituent atoms. We can perceive and study the aggregate, but cannot directly do this in respect to its constituent ultimates. As the latter must, in essential characteristics, be as the former, we can be constantly enlarging our real knowledge of the latter through a wise study of the former, and this is the exclusive method by which such knowledge can be enlarged and perfected. Nor is knowledge obtained through this method, in its legitimate procedures, less real, less valid, or less important, than that which is direct and immediate. They equally err, who affirm, on the one hand, that we do and can know nothing of the ultimate particles of matter, 'nothing of the real composition of any body as it is,' and who, on the other, as 'privileged spirits,' present us, as truths of science, 'general notions' developed by 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so great a part,' in 'the palpable obscure,' where all data are palpably uncertain, and all deductions, consequently, 'fit only for the intellectual gibbet.' A large number of aggregates, the ovules, or eggs, of diverse species of the animal creation, are before us. As far as microscopic, chemical, and physiological observation do, or can, extend, they all possess an absolute 'unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition.' So far our knowledge is real and important. Are there no real and fundamental diversities in these various aggregates? We extend our observations, and find that in their ultimate developments these aggregates immutably take on an endless diversity of essential forms and attributes. We have now obtained fundamental facts which utterly nullify and subvert Huxley's affirmed demonstration, with all the deductions based upon it. We have not found any fact, however, which contradicts any microscopic, chemical, or physiological fact which we had formerly found. There was in these ovules the real unity which scientific observation affirmed. Beyond 'the outposts of microscopic enquiry,' however, there were real fundamental diversities which determined and revealed the essential diversities referred to. Our knowledge in this ultimate is just as real and just as valid as in any other form, and in every stage we are enlarging and perfecting our knowledge of matter as it is. If the atomic forms which constitute an aggregate could be, in their essential nature, utterly unlike the aggregate to which they give being and form, then we could, indeed, know nothing of such forms. The idea, however, that any aggregate and its constituent elements, may be essential opposites and contradictories, and not homogeneous realities, is equivalent to the absurdity that ten nothings can constitute a real something, and ten negatives, one real positive. In every appearance some reality appears, and to the extent of the appearance its substance appears as it is. So, in every aggregate, we have a real revelation of the real nature of its constituent atoms, and in enlarging and perfecting our knowledge of aggregates, we are doing the same in respect to their atomic elements.

Two substances are before us—call them, if you please, matter and spirit. The former, in its aggregates, and consequently in its elements, not only exists in, but occupies space; in other words, is immutably possessed of extension and form. The latter, in no one of its manifestations, indicates, in the remotest degree, the possession of any such attribute. The more we study the manifested attributes of these substances, the wider and more palpable does the fundamental distinction and separation between them appear. Not a common fact, a fact indicating their identity of nature, can be adduced. It is for scientifically valid reasons, therefore, that the Universal Intelligence has apprehended them as real, and affirmed them to be distinct and separate realities, Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, and science can adduce not a single fact to indicate their identity. In the study of their properties and attributes, we enlarge more and more our real knowledge of these respective realities. We cannot study phenomena without studying substances, or know phenomena without knowing the real substances which said phenomena imply. The idea that the phenomena, or manifested qualities, of two substances may be fundamentally unlike and opposite, and the substances themselves be identical in nature, or 'the two opposite poles of the self-same mystery,' is one of the wildest illusions of a crazy Philosophy. It is through such illusions as these, drawing positive deductions from consciously uncertain data, forming 'general notions' in spheres where 'the hope of certainty is shut out,'—it is exclusively by such processes as these, that the doctrines of Evolution, Spontaneous Generation, and Transmutation of Species, have their origin. Let the doctrine of Transmutation, for example, be subjected to the rigid test of scientific induction and deduction; let all uncertain data be shut out, and with these all deductions to which nothing but 'a provisional assent' can be given; let there be a total banishment of all 'general notions' developed by the 'speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so great a part,' and developed in spheres where not only 'the hope of certainty is shut out,' but from which 'the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment;' let 'the privileged spirits' who advocate this doctrine be strictly confined to naked principles and facts bearing upon the subject, and there is not one among even those who would not unite with Tyndall in affirming the theory to 'represent an absurdity too monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind.' The same holds equally true of the other doctrines under consideration.

CHAPTER V.

THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.

Certain forms of modern thought which are agitating, and very extensively influencing, the thinking of Christendom, are now represented by the term, 'New Philosophy.' In this school are included the leading Anti-Theists of the age, such as Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, the late J. S. Mill, Yeomans, and the late Emerson. It is only in their ultimate and most general deductions, that any two of this class of thinkers agree. Mill, Tyndall, and Emerson, for example, appear to be Idealists of the German Schools; Maudsley and Buchner, to be gross Materialists; and Spencer, Huxley, and others, to be Sceptics proper. While most of the advocates of this Philosophy disavow Materialism, they unite in explaining the facts of the universe from the material standpoint. In the principles, leading assumed facts, and final deductions of this Philosophy, there is, in reality, nothing that is really new, or which is presented in any essentially new form. Their basis principle, method, and ultimate deductions, on the other hand, are as old as Protagoras, Pyrrho, and the Sceptics of the Middle and more modern ages.

There are certain peculiarities of this New Philosophy, however, which justify its advocates in christening it with the name they have adopted for it. While all its advocates are avowedly intense Sceptics, affirming an absolute ignorance of all realities as they are in themselves, they are equally absolute Positivists in their avowals of the doctrine of Materialism. While they also avow their absolute ignorance of said realities, they avow themselves possessed of 'general principles' by which, in the language of Tyndall, they can 'uncover the universe,' that is, give us the solution of the great problem of universal Being and its laws. Here is something of which it can be said in truth, 'See, this is new.'

One fact common to the advocates of this Philosophy in its present and most ancient forms, is their popularity with the people in consequence of their wonderful proficiency in useful and popular sciences which had been inexcusably neglected by the schools. Protagoras and his co-thinkers were the most proficient men of their age in the sciences of rhetoric, elocution, diplomacy, and even of war. Modern Sceptics have claimed a monopoly of the natural sciences especially, and are endeavouring to make it appear to the world that these, or religion, must be repudiated. The time has arrived when such claims must be rigidly scrutinized, and the New Philosophy, which is not new, but 'decayeth and waxeth old, and is ready to vanish away,' should be known as it is. Let us, then, enter at once upon the work before us—a scientific criticism of this so-called New Philosophy.

SECTION I.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF SCIENCE ACCORDING TO THE ADVOCATES OF THIS PHILOSOPHY.

Every system has its tests of truth. So has the new Philosophy, and this test is thus set forth by Huxley in his Lay Sermon on Descartes, and taken approvingly from that author, namely, 'There is a path that leads to truth so surely, that any one who will follow it must needs reach the goal, whether his sagacity be great or small. And there is one guiding rule by which a man may always find this path, and keep himself from straying when he has found it. The golden rule is—give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted.' This is the affirmed watchword of this school. Let us suppose the following deductions of the great leader of the school to be truths of the character above designated, and all the school affirm that they are such, and then ask ourselves the question, What can we know on any subject, granting the validity of those deductions? The basis of this so-called 'New Philosophy' is, in fact and form, laid down by Spencer in his great work entitled, 'First Principles of Philosophy,' and the system itself must stand or fall with those principles. We propose, therefore, to give this work a fundamental criticism. This work is divided into two parts, entitled, The Unknowable and the Knowable. We will first consider his doctrine of the Unknowable, in which we are distinctly informed of what realities we are, in the author's judgment, absolutely ignorant. Let us consider what these realities are. We shall then be prepared to answer the question, What can we know, granting the validity of these deductions?

SECTION II.

REALITIES OF WHICH, ACCORDING TO SPENCER, OUR IGNORANCE IS AND EVER MUST BE ABSOLUTE.

The following deductions Spencer professes to have rendered demonstrably evident, and to have done this in his 'First Principles of Philosophy.' We will state his deductions in his own words.

1. While it is certain that there does exist an ultimate reason, or first cause, why the facts of the universe are as they are and not otherwise, the character of this cause is, and must ever remain, absolutely unknowable and unknown to us. 'If religion and science are to be reconciled, the basis of reconciliation must be this deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts—that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.'

2. While it is impossible for us to conceive of space and time as not existing, they not only are not, and cannot be, the realities which we apprehend them to be, but it is absolutely impossible for us to know what realities they are. 'It results, therefore,' he says, 'that Space and Time are wholly incomprehensible. The immediate knowledge which we seem to have of them proves, when examined, to be total ignorance. While our belief in this objective reality is insurmountable, we are unable to give any rational account of it. And to posit the alternative belief (possible to state, but impossible to realize) is merely to multiply irrationalities.'

3. Equally invalid are our apprehensions of matter. 'Matter, then, in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time. Frame what suppositions we may, we find on tracing out their implications that they leave us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities.'

4. Equally absurd and self-contradictory are all our apprehensions of motion and rest. 'Thus neither when considered in connection with Space, nor when considered in connection with Matter, nor when considered in connection with Rest, do we find that motion is truly cognisable.'

5. Of the same absoluteness is our ignorance of Law, Power, or Force. 'While, then, it is impossible to form any idea of Force in itself, it is equally impossible to comprehend either its mode of exercise or its law of variation.'

6. While the facts of consciousness 'constitute a series,' and 'beyond question,' occur in succession, it is absolutely impossible for us to know whether 'the chain of states of consciousness is infinite or finite.' 'Hence while we are unable either to believe or to conceive that the duration of consciousness is infinite, we are equally unable to know it as finite, or to conceive it as finite.'

7. Equally absolute is our ignorance of the subject of consciousness, the self which thinks, feels, and wills. 'Clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and the known are one—in which subject and object are identified, and this Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both. So that the personality of which each is conscious, and of which the existence is to each a fact beyond all others the most certain, is yet a thing which cannot truly be known at all: knowledge of it is forbidden by the very nature of thought.'

Granting the Validity of these Deductions, What can we Know?

Thus, according to our philosopher, our ignorance is absolute and remediless—of the Ultimate Cause of the Facts of the Universe—of Matter and Spirit—of Time and Space—of Cause, Power and Force—and of Change, Motion, and Rest. Not only is our ignorance of all these realities, if they exist at all, absolute, but all the apprehensions we can form of any one, and of all, of them in common, are palpably self-contradictory and absurd, and therefore false. Such is the standpoint on which Spencer has located universal mind in regard to all realities subjective and objective, finite and infinite. Granting the validity of all these deductions, and rigidly applying the Golden Rule of the New Philosophy, namely, 'Give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted,' of what, we ask, can we have any certain knowledge? If all our ideas, actual and possible, of Spirit, Matter, Time, Space, Cause, Force, Change, Motion, and Rest, and consequently all our apprehensions of the properties, attributes, and relations, of these chimeras, are figments, how can we know even this, 'that we nothing know'? We have obviously and undeniably but one faculty—that of absolute and universal nescience, a faculty which cannot even know its own imbecility to know anything. If we know nothing of time, we cannot know events as successive, and if we know nothing of space, we cannot know even phenomena, as having the appearance of extension and form. If we have no valid ideas of Cause, Power, Force, Change, or Motion, what, according to the Golden Rule of the New Philosophy, can we know of facts or anything else?

The logical process by which Spencer reaches these wide-sweeping deductions, reminds us of a fact, or rather statement, which we heard many years ago. A very celebrated president of one of our oldest colleges was in the habit of entertaining his classes with an endless diversity of anecdotes. In some of these, he made almost as heavy drafts upon the faith of his audiences as Darwin does upon 'the scientific tolerance of the age.' When the venerable president had made one such statement, one of the class requested the privilege of stating a fact which he once witnessed, a fact parallel to that of which they had just heard. 'A juggler,' said the student, 'after performing a great many unaccountable tricks, finished his performances with a feat about which there could be no mistake. All was real. The man, in my own, and in the presence of a vast concourse, set a ladder upright and unsupported upon the ground, and then passed up between the rounds alternately until he seated himself upon the top one. He then put down his hands and took the ladder up after him. When we left, he was seated in the upper air with his ladder in his lap.' The feat which that man was affirmed to have performed in Physics, Spencer repeats in Philosophy. At the end of each of his logical processes, we find him seated firmly in absolute nescience of all that is real, with all the premises by which he reached his deduction taken from beneath him. If our ignorance of Spirit, Matter, Time, Space, the First Cause, Motion, Change, Rest, and Force, is absolute, the deduction which our philosopher always reaches, then there can be no data from which we can reason at all in any case.

Spencer is universally acknowledged to be the leading advocate and expounder of the New Philosophy. If these deductions, as principles, fail him, the pillars of his entire system are borne away, and that system lies in ruins around him. Now every one of these deductions is reached by a formal logical process, and wholly depends for its validity upon the validity of that process. On what condition can any one and all of these deductions be verified? Every valid logical process does and must start from, and be based upon, some absolutely known fact or truth—a fact or truth which absolutely verifies all subsequent procedures based upon it as a principle. In each of his processes, Spencer impeaches, and professedly invalidates, an existing form of knowledge of a specific character, as our knowledge of Matter, Spirit, Time, Space, Motion, Change, etc., and of each in succession. The validity of his logical processes, each and all in common, is therefore immutably conditioned upon this fact, viz., there must lie at the basis of every one of these processes a form of knowledge of the validity of which we are, and must be, more absolutely assured than we are of that of the specific convictions which are impeached and professedly invalidated, and the former must be undeniably incompatible with the latter. In other words, there must be found at the basis of each, and every one of these processes, a form of knowledge of the validity of which we are, and must be, more absolutely certain than we are, or can be, of the reality of Time, Space, Spirit, Matter, and of the facts of change and motion in the world around us, and of the validity of our knowledge of these realities and facts, and the former forms of knowledge must be utterly incompatible with the latter. Has Spencer found, or professedly designated, any such form of knowledge as this? By no means. Nor will he designate any form of knowledge incompatible with our ideas of time and space, and on a comparison, affirm that our knowledge in the former case has greater and more rational certitude than in the latter. Is there, can there be, any truth of which we are, or can be, more absolutely assured than we are of the fact of our own personal being as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, of matter as directly and immediately before us, and as possessed of real extension and form, and of the reality of the facts of motion and change in the world around us? The world would laugh at any philosopher who should designate a form of knowledge, which is characterized by greater conscious certitude, than is our knowledge of the realities under consideration. The fact is undeniable, that it is as absolutely impossible to find a valid basis for an impeachment and invalidation of our knowledge of these realities, as it is to find a standing-place and a lever from which, and by which, we can lift the earth out of its place.

What must be the General Character of the Logical Processes by which these Deductions can be Verified?

We have now absolutely verified the fact that none of Spencer's logical processes, by which he professedly demonstrates the validity of the deductions under consideration, can have logical validity, for the undeniable reason that not one of them has any logical basis. There is still another test by which the real validity of any argument may be determined. We refer to its real power to induce conviction. In each of the processes under consideration, a specific form of belief strictly common to all minds is professedly invalidated. Yet the argument produces no such result in any mind, not even in that of Spencer himself. After carefully weighing all his arguments, and admitting their speciousness and seeming validity, our ideas and beliefs in regard to Space, Time, Matter, Spirit, Cause, Power, Force, Motion, and Change remain just as they were before. This is just as true of Spencer as it is of the rest of mankind. Having professedly demonstrated the utter invalidity of all our knowledge of all these realities, and the utter absurdity of all our actual and possible apprehensions of the same, he, in the Second Part of the treatise before us, employs as valid, and as having fundamental authority in science, the very forms of knowledge, the utter invalidity and absurdity of which he, in Part First, professedly demonstrates. Nor does any philosopher employ the doctrines of Force, Motion, and Change, for example, more abundantly, and as having higher validity, than does Spencer in his multitudinous volumes. It has been truly said by a rising author, that Spencer's arguments in Part First must be utterly illogical and fallacious, or his deductions in Part Second must be as utterly false. These statements will be fully verified hereafter. The Sceptical or fallacious character of our philosopher's logic is fully verified by the criterion of Hume, that is, that while said arguments may appear unanswerable to some, they produce no real conviction in any minds.

Spencer's Estimate of the Real Validity of his own Logic.

Spencer has given us a formula by which he has not only revealed his own estimate of the validity of his own arguments in proof of the deductions under consideration, but by which we may infallibly judge of their validity. In speaking of the argument of Idealism against Materialism, Spencer says, and his statement is manifestly undeniable, that the validity of our knowledge of matter can be disproved, but 'by a series of dependent propositions, no one of which is more certain than the single proposition to be disproved.' Here, then, is our philosopher's formal estimate of the real validity of his own argument against the validity of our knowledge of this substance. If you will apply this infallible test to every proposition found in every argument adduced by him to verify his own deduction, you will find that you have, and can have, no more certainty, to say the most, of the truth of that proposition than you have, and must have, of that of the one proposition which the former has been deduced to disprove. All attempted proof by means of such propositions must, of course and of necessity, be invalid. To state the truth of this matter as it really is, we must affirm that Spencer has undeniably attempted to demonstrate the invalidity and absurdity of our knowledge of Time, Space, Matter, Spirit, Motion, Change, Cause, and Force, and to do this by means of 'a series of dependent propositions,' not one of which is possessed of as high a degree of certainty as is possessed by our knowledge of every one of these verities.

The actual and Specific Character of the Logical Processes by which Spencer reaches these Deductions.

A direct and careful examination of the logical processes by which Spencer reaches these lawless and subversive deductions, will fully evince that said processes are of such a character of non-consecutiveness and inconsequence, as to make quite as heavy drafts upon the logical, as those of Darwin do upon 'the scientific tolerance of the age.' This statement we will now proceed to verify.

Important Mis-statement of Facts.

We commence our criticisms with a citation of a passage which embodies the basis of his discussions of the relations which exist between Religion and Science. 'Of all antagonisms of belief,' he says, 'the oldest, the widest, the most profound, and the most important, is that between Religion and Science. It commenced when the recognition of the simplest uniformities in surrounding things set a limit to the previously universal fetishism. It shows itself everywhere throughout the domain of human knowledge, affecting men's interpretation alike of the simplest mechanical accidents and of the most complicated events in the histories of nations. It has its roots deep down in the diverse habits of thought of different orders of minds. And the conflicting conceptions of nature and life which these diverse habits of thought severally generate, influence for good or ill the tone of feeling and of daily conduct.' Spencer, in the first sentence of the treatise before us, affirms that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but 'very generally also a soul of truth in things erroneous.' The paragraph above cited must be excepted totally from this formula. There is not a single statement in that paragraph which can be, with a full knowledge of facts, accepted as true, and which must not be regarded as blank error. There never was a time in the history of the race when fetishism was universal among men, or commanded the faith of but a comparatively small portion of the human family. Nor was fetishism the original religion; it exists, and has existed nowhere but as a degenerate result of human apostasy from Monotheism which was, in fact, the original religion of mankind. These statements have been fully verified in former portions of this treatise.

In regard to this affirmed conflict between Religion and Science, we reply, that among more than three-fifths of the race, there is not now, and never has been, even the appearance of conflict between the accepted science and religions of any of these peoples. Nor is there within the circle of Christendom any even apparent antagonism between Religion and any principle or deduction of Science, which has been universally accepted as true among scientific men. The only conflict that does exist obtains wholly between the unverified doctrines of certain schools in Philosophy, doctrines about which scientists differ among themselves and certain forms of Christian doctrine. We may safely challenge Spencer and his school to designate a single deduction of science, universally accepted in the schools of science, as true, between which and any essential doctrine of the Christian Religion there is even a seeming antagonism.

If we turn our thoughts from doctrines to scientific men, we shall find that those who have shined as stars of the first magnitude in the firmament of science have been openly avowed Theists. We refer to such central lights as Thales, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, and Locke.

If we recur to the doctrine in the universal acceptance of which the antagonism between Religion and Science can, according to Spencer, be reconciled, we shall find that this doctrine has never been accepted as true, but by the smallest and least influential of all the schools in science. All schools unite in affirming the validity of the principle that there does and must exist an ultimate reason why the facts of the universe are as they are, and not otherwise. In other words, all schools agree in the validity of the doctrine of First Cause. When we ask the question, What is this cause, three, and only three, positive answers have ever been given, viz., the agency of a personal God, a law of order eternally existing in matter, and a similar law inhering in spirit or thought. To all these the Sceptical hypothesis stands opposed, namely, that this cause is wholly unknown and unknowable, a doctrine repudiated by all Theists on the one hand, and by all schools in science, the small and uninfluential Sceptical one excepted, on the other. The immutable condition of reconciling Religion and Science, according to Spencer and his school, is the universal acceptance of this Sceptical dogma. As if one of the smallest of all the sects in Christendom should propose to reconcile all denominational antagonisms by the universal adoption on the part of all Churches of its creed and forms! Spencer's basis of reconciliation is still narrower than this. It is to harmonize Religion and Science by an utter termination of all positive thought and enquiry in respect to the great problem of universal mind, the reason why this great and goodly universe did, as an event of time, rise from chaos to order as it now exists. Thought and enquiry will never rest but in a specific solution of this problem. The acceptance of Spencer's terms, also, is not a reconcilement of Religion with Science, but the utter annihilation, as he well knows, of the former at least, the avowed location of all religious thought and enquiry within the sphere of the absurd and ridiculous—the sphere of 'Lunar Politics.' Very modest peacemakers are these, our Sceptical friends. If, on the other hand, we rigidly follow out Spencer's great central scientific principle, we must still be positive Theists. Science, as defined by Spencer, is 'knowledge of the highest degree of generality.' The leading method of finding truth, he tells us, is 'to compare all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those various special and more concrete elements in which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the discordant constituents have been eliminated; and to find for this remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true throughout its divergent modifications.' By following out this method our knowledge becomes science, because it must, in that case, assume 'the highest degree of generality.' We do not at all adopt our author's definition of science as worthy of universal acceptation. As far as it extends, however, that definition, seen in the light of the above exposition, indicates an important direction to thought and enquiry, when the object is truth. Let us now apply this principle to a specific case. As a matter of fact, no sentiment or belief is more universal with the race than those represented by the term Religion. If you will examine this belief until you have found the element strictly common to it in all its endlessly diversified forms, you will find that element represented in the belief in a personal God as the Author and Governor of nature. In religious thought God is omnipresent as a person, the Creator and moral and physical Governor of the universe, an object of worship, and a hearer of prayer. The Great First Cause is such a personality, or nature, as represented in the highest department of universal mind, and one of the most important of all the principles of scientific induction and deduction, are both the fixed correlations of the unreal and untrue instead of the real and the true; than which few doctrines are more absurd.

Spencer's Professed Invalidation of all our 'Ultimate Religious Ideas.'

In order to locate the doctrine of Ultimate Causation within the sphere of the Unknowable, it was necessary for Spencer to demonstrate the utter invalidity of all 'Ultimate Religious Ideas.' This end he attempts to accomplish in Chapter II. of Part I., the chapter in which he treats of 'Ultimate Religious Ideas.' The argument for invalidation, in the reasoning of our author, in respect both to Ultimate Religious and Scientific Ideas, assumes two forms—the principle of inconceivability, which locates its object in the sphere of the Unknowable—and that of the absurd or self-contradictory, which locates its object within the sphere of the Unreal. That of which we have and can have no apprehension, must be to us utterly unknowable. A proposition, or idea, which is self contradictory, or absurd, must be false. Under one or the other, or both these categories, Spencer professedly reduces all our Ultimate Religious as well as Scientific Ideas.

Terms 'Inconceivable' and 'Absurd' Defined.

To appreciate the real force of his reasoning on all these ideas, it is needful to recall the definitions and elucidations formerly given of the terms 'inconceivable' and 'absurd.' Of whatever we know and can know nothing, we, of course, can form no apprehensions. Such realities are absolutely inconceivable, and come under the class of the Unknowable. The term 'inconceivable' is often employed in the sense of incomprehensible. When an object, for example, is so vast that we find it difficult, or impossible, to form distinct apprehensions of it as a whole with all its parts, we are accustomed to say that we can form no conception of such object, that is, that it is inconceivable or incomprehensible. The magnitude of our National Debt may be definitely stated. Yet it is often affirmed to be inconceivable or incomprehensible. That is, we are unable to form a distinct conception of it as a whole with all its parts. An object inconceivable in this sense may be known to be real; and that in connection with a distinct apprehension of all its essential characteristics. Of the individual who, for the reason that in the sense explained, our National Debt is inconceivable, should affirm the idea of it to be a figment, or should locate the object in the realm of the Unknowable, all men would rightly affirm that a very shallow Philosophy had intoxicated his brain.

An object, also, may be absolutely known to be real, and we may have a very clear and distinct idea of it, and yet this object may be utterly inconceivable to us, for the reason that it is not an object of the conceptive faculty under consideration. Colour cannot be known through the ear, nor flavour through the eye. An object may be clearly apprehensible and absolutely known to be real through one faculty, and absolutely inconceivable through another. The fact that an object is utterly inconceivable to the faculty by which we form conceptions of realities in the universe within and around us, the faculty by which we can conceive of a mountain or a lake, and cannot conceive of the National Debt, or of 'the starry heavens,' is no evidence at all, that such object may not be, and is not, clearly apprehensible and absolutely known to be real through some other faculty. We have a faculty which forms conceptions of objects of perception whether external or internal. To form such conceptions is the exclusive function of this faculty. Whatever is not perceived to be real is utterly inconceivable, as far as this faculty is concerned.

Now we have another besides this faculty of finite and limited conception, the faculty of implied knowledge—the Reason—the faculty which apprehends and affirms the reality of objects whose existence is necessarily implied by objects of perception. Thus it is that on the perception of body, succession, phenomena, and events, Reason, as absolutely implied by what we perceive, apprehends and affirms as real, space, time, substance, and cause. Our Reason-ideas, that is, our ideas of space, time, substance, and cause, are just as clear and distinct, and as valid for the reality and character of their objects, as are our Understanding-conceptions. Yet the objects of such ideas are utterly inconceivable through this latter faculty, the faculty whose exclusive objects are perceived realities. It is, undeniably, a very false logic, and an equally shallow Philosophy, to locate the First Cause, time, space, substance, and cause, among things Unknowable, and to deny the validity of all our ideas of the same, because we cannot conceive of these realities through the faculty which can conceive of a mountain, but cannot conceive of our National Debt or of the visible universe.

Of the absurd but little need be said. A conceptive idea, or proposition, is absurd which is either self-contradictory, that is, affirms and denies the same thing of the same object, or which denies any absolutely known truth. To sustain the charge of absurdity in either sense against any universal conception, idea, or form of belief, such conception, idea, or form of belief, must be presented just as it lies in the Intelligence, and not as we, or others, may falsely define it. Any conception, idea, or belief, may be so defined as to be absurd in either or both these senses, when all appearance of absurdity will vanish at once if the same apprehension is presented just as it lies in the general Intelligence.

The Sources of Spencer's False Deductions.

We can now understand clearly the false reasonings of Spencer, by which he locates the objects of all Ultimate Religious and Scientific Ideas within the sphere of the Unknowable, or the Absurd. Whenever he has affirmed these realities to be unknowable, he has done so, and that exclusively, on the ground that said realities are inconceivable through the faculty which can conceive of a mountain, and cannot conceive of the national debt, or of the visible Universe; or he has, through false definitions of these Ideas, made them to appear absurd. Why, for example, has Sir William Hamilton affirmed, that 'to think is to condition, and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought?' His fundamental error lies here. He has assumed, that whatever is not apprehensible through the faculty which cannot think the debt of his own nation, or the visible universe, is not thinkable at all. What maybe wholly unthinkable through this limited and limiting faculty of finite conception, may be the object of the most clear and distinct apprehension through Reason, the organ of implied knowledge. When we have in our minds the idea of the Infinite in any of its forms, as that of God, space, or time, or the idea of any object of implied knowledge, such as substance, or cause, if we attempt to form a conception of such object, we shall, of course, employ the faculty whose exclusive function is to form conceptions of objects of perception, and shall, consequently, fail in our endeavours. If we conclude from hence that said object is unapprehensible and unknowable in any sense, or, through any mental faculty, we simply involve ourselves in a most palpable and fundamental psychologic error. Let us now contemplate the application of these distinctions to the logic of Spencer.

Spencer's Professed Invalidation of 'Ultimate Religious Ideas.'

In speaking of the idea of God as self-existent, he rightly affirms, that by such a term we simply mean uncaused existence. 'The assertion,' he says, 'of self-existence is simply an indirect denial of creation. In thus excluding the idea of an antecedent cause, we necessarily exclude the idea of a beginning; for to admit the idea of a beginning—to admit that there was a time when its existence had not commenced—is to admit that its existence was determined by something, or was caused; which is a contradiction. Self-existence, therefore, necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning.' So far our philosopher is undeniably correct. What he denies is the possibility of forming such a conception, a conception of self-existence, or 'existence without a beginning.' 'Now by no mental effort,' he says, 'can we do this.' Then follows the reason. 'To conceive existence through infinite past time, implies a conception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility.' How does Spencer know, that 'by no mental effort' we can form 'a conception of infinite past time'? The reason is, that he has attempted without success to form such a conception, just as one may attempt to conceive of our National Debt, or of the physical universe. In the latter cases, we should fail on account of the vastness of the objects, and in the former, we should fail, not because we have no idea of 'infinite past time,' but because this reality is not the object of the Faculty through which we endeavour to form the conception of said reality. That we do have the idea of 'self-existence,' 'existence without a beginning,' and of 'existence through all past time,' every one is as distinctly and as absolutely conscious as he is of any other form thought. To form such an idea requires no mental effort at all, the idea being present in the mind without any effort on our part. Of the presence of this idea in the mind, Spencer is as distinctly aware as is any other thinker. He knew, and could not but have known, what he meant by the words, 'self-existence,' 'existence without a beginning,' and 'existence through infinite past time.' 'It is impossible,' he says, 'to avoid making the assumption of self-existence somewhere,' that is, of 'existence without a beginning,' or 'existence through infinite past time.' Now we can, undeniably, avoid making any assumptions about objects of which we have, and can have, no conceptions, and no ideas, at all. Indeed, we can make no rational assumptions, whatever, about any such objects. The only conceivable, or possible, reason why we cannot avoid 'making the assumption of self-existence somewhere,' is that we can, by no possibility, avoid having 'the idea of infinite past time,' and with it that of 'existence without a beginning,' and, consequently, of 'existence through infinite past time.' If we had no such ideas, we could be conscious of no necessity to make assumptions in respect to them anywhere. Here, the following passage from Mr. B. P. Bourne, in an article in the New Englander, deserves special attention. 'But see how Spencer answers himself. Infinite time is an impossible conception, and any idea involving it must be viewed as a "pseudo-idea." Yet, as soon as he has packed God and religion off to the unknowable, he tells us, with undoubting assurance, that matter was never created (Chapter II.). But if never created, then matter must have existed through infinite past time.' The conception, then, of uncreated matter involves the conception of infinite past time. The idea of 'infinite past time' is, with our philosopher, a really existing and valid idea, when matter is under discussion, and 'a pseudo-idea,' when God and religion are being considered. 'In the New Philosophy, things equal to the same thing are not equal to one another.' Bourne truly says: 'Spencer evidently believes, with Emerson, that "a foolish consistency is the bugbear of weak minds."' No deduction can be more evident than is the fact that Spencer has utterly failed in his attempt to locate Ultimate Religious Ideas in the sphere of the Unknowable.

Spencer's Argument to Reduce 'Ultimate Religious Ideas' under the Category of the Absurd.

Our philosopher is not at all satisfied with locating God and religion in the sphere of the Unknowable. All 'Ultimate Religious Ideas' must also be brought under the category of the absurd, or self-contradictory. His entire dependence here is upon Mansel, from whose work on 'The Limits of Religious Thought' a long quotation is made. Our criticism on this passage will be a refutation both of Mansel and Spencer. Spencer's reasons for thus citing from Mansel are thus stated by the former: 'I gladly do this, not only because his mode of presentation cannot be improved, but also because, writing as he does in defence of the current Theology, his writings will be more acceptable to the majority of readers.' Let us now turn our attention to Mansel, and to Spencer through the former. We must call to mind a principle formerly stated, a principle, the validity of which none will question, namely, when any given doctrine is objected against, that doctrine must be stated as actually held by its advocates, and not falsely defined to suit the objector. This is precisely what Mansel has done. Instead of presenting the idea of God as revealed in Scripture, as presented in all received Theistic treatises, and as defined by all standard lexicography, he has adopted certain definitions of the ideas of a First Cause, of the Infinite and the Absolute, definitions given in the schools of Pantheism and Pure Idealism, definitions which present Deity as unlike the God of Revelation and Theism proper, as absolute chaos is unlike universal order. 'The metaphysical representation of Deity,' he says, 'as Infinite and Absolute, must necessarily, as the profoundest metaphysicians have acknowledged, amount to nothing less than the sum of all reality.' 'If the Absolute and Infinite is an object of human conception at all, this and none other is the conception required.' Here we have the doctrine of a personal God specifically denied, and that of Pantheism as openly avowed as the only possible idea we can form of God as the Infinite and Absolute. Now Theism and Pantheism are undeniable contradictories, and to substitute the latter for the former, in an argument to prove the doctrine of Theism, as held by Theists, self-contradictory, is as gross a violation of the laws of logical integrity as can be conceived of. If God cannot be conceived as the Infinite and Absolute without identifying Him with nature and all other realities—time and space, for example, then, according to the Theistic idea, as held by all its advocates, God is not, in any such sense, either Infinite or Absolute.

Again, 'By the Absolute,' says Mansel, 'is meant that which exists in and by itself, having no necessary relation to any other being.' When God put forth the act of creation, he undeniably ceased to be the Absolute in any such sense as this. From eternity God did sustain, and must have sustained, the prospective relation of Creator of all things. In creation, He could not but have sustained these actual relations. And to eternity, He must sustain the relations of Creator and Governor of the universe. The God of Revelation and Theism was never, and never can be, and was never thought of by Theists, as the Absolute in accordance with the definition of the term given by Mansel, and 'the profoundest metaphysicians' to whom he refers. If the common Theistic idea is self-contradictory, it is not so because it embraces this doctrine of the Absolute.

'By the Infinite,' adds Mansel, 'is meant that which is free from all possible limitation, that than which a greater is inconceivable, and which consequently can receive no additional attribute or mode of existence which it had not from all eternity.' This idea, as well as that of the Absolute, is, Mansel affirms, in palpable and irreconcilable contradiction to our idea of God as First Cause. 'A cause,' he says, 'cannot, as such, be absolute; the Absolute cannot, as such, be a cause.' 'In affirming creation of God, we are,' he further says, 'checked by the third conception, that of the Infinite. How can the Infinite become that which he was not from the first,' that is, from all eternity. According to this idea, God cannot be Infinite, unless he eternally remains inactive, or 'from everlasting to everlasting,' merely repeats the same identical act, the opposite idea implying that by a new act God would become a new being. Now acts manifest being, but do not determine or change being in se. When we speak of God as infinite, we refer, not to what He does, but to what He is in Himself, and revealed as being in Himself, and thus revealed through His Word and works. According to the revealed and common Theistic idea of God, 'He can create and He can destroy,' and this without ceasing to be infinite, but because He is infinite.

Take away these undeniably false definitions of God as First Cause, as the Infinite and the Absolute, and all appearance of contradiction in the Theistic idea vanishes at once. There are, as all thinkers admit, but two conceivable hypotheses of ultimate causation—that of an inhering law of nature, and that of the will of a self-conscious personal God acting upon nature from without. One of these hypotheses undeniably must be true and the other false, and neither in itself is any more self-contradictory than the other. The question, which is true and which false, is simply a problem of fact and evidence, and in no sense or form capable of an à priori solution. Spencer has equally failed, and failed utterly, in his attempt to 'pack God and religion off to the unknowable,' and in his endeavour to reduce 'Ultimate Religious Ideas' under the category of the absurd or self-contradictory.

The Consolation which Spencer offers us, on account of our being Robbed of our God and our Religion.

Spencer seems to be fully aware that he has robbed us of infinite good in coolly 'packing our God and our religion off to the unknowable,' and reducing all our 'Ultimate Religious Ideas' under the category of the absurd, and thus demonstrating them to be mere 'pseudo-ideas.' For such a loss he offers us this consolation, and this motive for never again returning to our primitive faith. 'The choice,' he assures us, 'is not between personality and something lower than personality, whereas the choice is between personality and something higher. Is it not just as possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence

and Will as these transcend mechanical motion?' In reply, we would assure Spencer that 'God we know, and religion we know,' and that through these there does, in fact, descend to us 'everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.' Before we relinquish this infinite good for his 'something higher,' we would seriously ask him three questions, namely, Can you tell us what this 'something higher' is? If so, can you prove to us that this 'something higher' really exists, or that it is not a mere figment of your brain? Are you at all sure that 'there may be a form of being,' higher at all than that possessed by a personal God endowed with infallible wisdom, absolute omniscience, Almighty power, and every possible moral perfection? If Spencer really supposes that there is, or that there 'may be, a form of being' higher than this, we hesitate not to assign him a very low place in the sphere of a crazy Philosophy. We honestly accept his offered consolation, also, as an insult to our Intelligence, and a very unbecoming sneer at our imagined credulity.

Spencer's Professed Invalidation of all Ultimate Scientific Ideas.

Having, as he imagines, reduced all 'Ultimate Religious Ideas' under the categories of the unknowable and the absurd, Spencer now proceeds to do the same thing with all our 'Ultimate Scientific Ideas.' Ultimate Ideas, it should be borne in mind, represent those basis principles which alone and exclusively render science in any form, and the scientific explanation of any facts, possible. To invalidate these ideas thus far, is to remove utterly the possibility of science in any form. As the philosopher of the New Philosophy, Spencer, as he begins to philosophize, first of all places himself upon the top round of his scientific ladder, then takes that ladder up after him, and finally shows himself to the world, with his ladder in his lap, sitting in mid air, where he can see nothing, and explain nothing, as it is. In other words, Spencer, as he begins to philosophize, first of all, in fact and form, takes from himself the possibility of Philosophy in any sense or form. The validity of these statements will become demonstrably evident as we proceed. Let us now follow our Philosopher in his varied reasonings. The first class of these ideas to which he refers are those of

Time and Space.

In considering his criticisms on these ideas, let us first consider his most conclusive refutation of Kant's hypothesis, that space and time exist but as subjective laws of thought. To this exposition Spencer replies thus: 'In the first place, to assert that space and time, as we are conscious of them, are subjective conditions, is by implication to assert that they are not objective realities: if space and time present to our minds belong to the Ego, then of necessity they do not belong to the Non-ego. Now it is absolutely impossible to think this. The very fact on which Kant bases his hypothesis, namely, that our consciousness of space and time cannot be suppressed, testifies as much: for that consciousness of space and time which we cannot rid ourselves of is the consciousness of them as existing objectively. It is useless to reply that such an inability must inevitably result if they are subjective forms. The question here is, What does consciousness directly testify? And the direct testimony of consciousness is, that Time and Space are not within but without the mind, and so absolutely independent of it that they cannot be conceived to become non-existent, even were the mind to become non-existent.' According to Spencer, then, his reasonings thus far being absolutely conclusive, space and time do exist as realities external to, and wholly independent of, the mind, realities which do and must exist even were the mind and all other realities annihilated. So far, then, space and time are existences knowable and known.

How then can Spencer prove 'that the immediate knowledge which we seem to have of them (space and time) proves, when examined, to be total ignorance'? Has he not here most palpably contradicted himself? He has affirmed that we have consciously an absolute knowledge of space and time as realities actually existing, as existing externally to, and independent of, the mind, and as realities which must exist, even though 'the mind should become non-existent.' In his argument he claims to have proven our ignorance of those same realities which 'cannot be conceived to become non-existent' to be total. But how does our philosopher, after having affirmed absolutely that the consciousness of space and time which we cannot rid ourselves of, is the consciousness of them as existing objectively, how does he professedly reduce this knowledge to 'total ignorance'? The following is his argument: To say that Space and Time exist objectively, is to say that they are entities. The assertion that, they are nonentities is self-destructive; nonentities are non-existences; and to allege that non-existences exist objectively is a contradiction in terms. Moreover, to deny that space and time are things, and so by implication to call them nothings, involves the, absurdity that there are two kinds of nothings. Neither can they be regarded as the attributes of some entity, seeing not only that it is impossible really to conceive any entity of which they are attributes, but seeing further that we cannot think of them as disappearing, even if everything else disappeared; whereas attributes necessarily disappear along with the entities they belong to. Thus, as Space and Time cannot be either nonentities nor the attributes of entities, we have no choice but to consider them as entities. But while on the hypothesis of this objectivity Space and Time must be classed as things, we find, on experiment, that to represent them in thought as things is impossible. To be conceived at all, a thing must be conceived as having attributes.' 'All entities which we actually know as such are limited.' 'But of Space and Time we cannot assert either limitation or the absence of limitation. We find ourselves totally unable to form any mental image of unbounded Space, and yet totally unable to imagine bounds beyond which there is no Space.' On this strange process of argumentation, in which we have, literally, 'confusion worse confounded,' we invite special attention to the following remarks and considerations.

1. We have here a strange confusion in the use of terms. If by the term 'entities' he means realities, or what does, in fact, exist, then the statement that, 'To say that Space and Time exist objectively, is to say that they are entities,'—real existences, is senseless tautology. He himself, as we have shown, affirms absolutely that they exist, that is, are entities, employing the term 'entities' as meaning any objects which really exist. He has affirmed, also, that they exist 'objectively,' that is, as Non-egos, instead of 'subjective conditions.' Does Spencer really intend to affirm that, 'To say that Space and Time exist objectively,' that is, as real existences independent of the mind, and not as 'subjective conditions,' is to say that they are 'entities,' that is, real existences? In other words, does Spencer really intend to inform us, that to say that an object exists, is to affirm that it does exist? This must be his meaning, if he employs the term 'entities' as synonymous in meaning with the term realities.

If, on the other hand, he employs the term 'entities' in its most proper sense, to mean substances, then he has confounded Space and Time with realities which we necessarily apprehend, not as Space and Time, but as existing and operating in Space and Time. Now, Spencer must employ the term 'entities' in one or the other of the senses under consideration. In the one case, his argument simply involves the deduction, that what exists does exist. In the other case, objects differing as finite and infinite, and as objects of Reason-Ideas, and as Understanding-Conceptions, are confounded with one another. In neither case is there the remotest show of valid argument.

2. In his whole argument, Spencer has palpably confounded the action of the Reason with that of the Understanding, and Reason-Ideas with Understanding Conceptions. In treating these realities as 'entities,' he clearly brings them under the exclusive purview, not of Reason, the faculty to which they exclusively pertain, but of the Understanding, whose exclusive objects are the finite and the limited. The validity of this statement becomes perfectly manifest in his assertion that 'we find ourselves totally unable to form any mental image of unbounded space.' Why do we find ourselves unable to form any such image? Because, in making the effort, we, of necessity, employ the faculty which can by no possibility 'form an image' of the object of any Reason-Idea whatever. While we may make, and fail in, the attempt to form an image of unbounded space,' the idea of 'unbounded space' lies with perfect distinctness in the mind. We know absolutely that the object does and must exist, and with equal absoluteness know, and consciously know, the reality as it is. To locate Space and Time in the domain of the absolutely unknowable, because we cannot 'form images' of them, is one of the wildest deductions any scientist ever made.

The idea that Space and Time can be reduced to the sphere of the Unknowable, and that our ideas of them can be reduced under the category of the absurd, is one of the wildest dreams of false science. Our ideas of these realities are, undeniably, absolutely simple. Nothing of the complex can be found in them. How, then, can they be, or be shown to be, self-contradictory? To prove this is equivalent to an attempted demonstration, that an object is not equal to, or identical with itself. Our knowledge of these realities is, also, so consciously absolute, that we can by no possibility think of them as not existing, or think of them as being in any respects different from what we do and must apprehend and know them to be. What form of knowledge can possess higher certainty than this? Will Spencer, or some other thinker, tell us how it is possible that a perfectly simple idea can be self-contradictory, and of the validity of what proposition we can be more absolutely certain than we are of the proposition, Space and Time exist? On what 'grounds and arguments,' then, can we reduce these realities to the sphere of the utterly unknowable, and subject their ideas to the category of the absurd? What must be the destiny of a Philosophy, or of a system of Being and its laws, which are just as necessarily false as our ideas of Space and Time are necessarily true? or as certainly false, as these ideas are certainly true? These knowing ones have surely attempted a more than Herculean task when they have essayed to cast infinite Space and eternal Duration over into the Trans-Alpine regions of the unknowable and absurd.

Spencer's Criticisms on Matter.

We have, in our criticisms on Kant's 'Antinomies of Pure Reason,' said all that is really needful to reply to Spencer's criticisms on Matter, the utterances of the latter being, in fact, a mere repetition of those of the former. The deductions of each of these philosophers, as we then proved, are based wholly upon a misapprehension of the real conception of this substance, as that conception actually exists in the human mind. Matter as perceived and conceived is a compound. Now the compound implies the simple, just as body implies space, succession time, phenomena substance, and events a cause. Our real conception of Matter, as perceived, is that of a compound constituted of simple parts. The simple is not the object of conception, for the reason that all objects of implied knowledge are the exclusive objects of Reason-Ideas, and not of Understanding-Conceptions at all. Taking Matter as actually apprehended by the Universal Intelligence, and there is no appearance of contradiction in any of our conceptions of that substance. The perceived can, by no possibility, be incompatible with the implied, or the latter with the former. A perception constituted of elements perceived, and of elements implied by what is perceived, cannot be self-contradictory. All our conceptions of Matter are exclusively constituted of these two classes of elements—those perceived, and those implied by the perceived. Thinkers who imagine that they find such conceptions to be self-contradictory, thereby convict themselves of the most palpable psychological blindness.

The error of Kant and Spencer here consists wholly in making Matter, not only as a compound, but also in its simple elements, the exclusive object of Understanding Conceptions. Hence the dogma of the infinite divisibility of Matter. 'Matter,' says Spencer, 'is either infinitely divisible or it is not: no third possibility can be named. If we say that Matter is infinitely divisible, we commit ourselves to a supposition not realizable in thought.' 'Really to conceive the infinite divisibility of matter is mentally to follow out the divisions to infinity; and to do this would require infinite time. On the other hand, to assert that matter is not infinitely divisible, is to assert that it is reducible to parts which no conceivable power can divide, and this verbal supposition can no more be represented in thought than the Other.' Why is it impossible for us to conceive of 'parts which no conceivable power can divide'? On account, we answer, of an immutable law of the conceptive faculty, by which the formation of such a conception is attempted. All Understanding-Conceptions do and must represent wholes constituted of parts. If you divide this whole, and then, through this same faculty, form conceptions of each of the divided parts, you will of necessity make each of the parts what the whole was before, a whole constituted of parts. Carry on the process as long as you please, and from the immutable law of the faculty employed, the result will be the same as at the beginning. If, from this process, you infer that you have, and cannot have, a Reason-Idea of a simple which is not a compound made up of parts, you simply perpetrate upon yourself a great psychological blunder. You had and could not but have had, at the beginning, just such an idea, with an absolute consciousness of its necessary validity. Spencer, then, in common with many other thinkers, from Zeno of Elia to Kant, has utterly failed in his attempted demonstration of the doctrine thus stated by Spencer. 'Frame what suppositions (of Matter) we may, we find on tracing out their implications that they leave us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities.' Take away the fundamental errors of these thinkers in their analysis of the real conceptions of this substance, as they actually exist in universal mind, and all such absurdities for ever disappear with this necessary deduction, that some 'privileged spirits' 'have blundered.'

There is a question which we would now put to these 'privileged spirits.' Of which, gentlemen, do you really suppose mankind must be and ought to be most assured—of the validity of your argument, or of the reality of the forms which you are endeavouring, by your reasonings, to cast over into the regions of the unknowable and absurd? Are not all your reasonings made up of 'a series of dependent propositions, no one of which is more certain' (to say the least) 'than the single proposition to be disproved'? Can we be more rationally and absolutely assured of the validity of your argument than we are and must be, of the fact that Matter is directly and immediately before us, as actually possessed of the attributes of extension and form? Have you forms of knowledge of higher certitude than those possessed by intuition consciously direct and immediate? Nothing but its graceless 'impudence' saves modern Scepticism from the contempt of the world.

Spencer's Criticism on the Doctrine of Motion.

By three distinct processes of reasoning, Mr. Spencer endeavours to establish his doctrine of the absolute incognizableness of Motion. Let us, for a few moments, consider these arguments in the order presented, keeping this fundamental principle of all true science distinctly in mind, that we are bound to repudiate his argument, however plausible it may appear, unless it produces conviction more absolute than we are now possessed of, of the fact of Motion. We may have an absolute knowledge of matters of fact, when considered as such, and yet be utterly unable to explain the why and the wherefore of their occurrence, facts, too, against the possible occurrence of which very puzzling arguments may be adduced. The question whether real motion does occur is, first of all, a question of fact, and when its actual occurrence has been verified by the form of evidence proper in the case, no puzzles about the why and the how, are to change or modify our judgment as to facts.

The first argument of Spencer is based upon the varied kinds of motion which must be admitted to be occurring at the same moment, provided we admit the fact of real motion. While the earth is turning on its axis 'at the rate of a thousand miles per hour,' it is also moving in its orbit around the sun, at the rate of 'some sixty-eight thousand miles per hour,' while the 'whole solar system is moving towards the constellation Hercules.' Granting all this, how is it possible that there should be real motion upon the surface of the earth? 'While we are obliged to think (believe) that there is an absolute motion, we find,' says Spencer, 'absolute motion incomprehensible.' 'Veel, vot of it?' We know, and 'are obliged to think that there is absolute motion.' We also know, and are 'obliged to think,' we will suppose, 'that absolute motion is incomprehensible.' Where is the unreasonableness of admitting the validity of both propositions? Nor is the idea of the several motions of the earth, as asserted by science, at all incompatible with the idea of real motion upon the earth's surface. While the earth is turning upon its axis, moving around the sun, and towards the constellation Hercules, real steamboats may absolutely move from Liverpool to New York. We may admit all these facts with no even seeming contradiction.

'Another difficulty presents itself,' says Spencer, 'when we contemplate the transfer of motion.'—'In what respect does a body after impact differ from itself before impact? What is this added to it which does not sensibly affect any of its properties, and yet enables it to traverse space?'—'What has been communicated? The striking body has not transferred a thing to the body struck; and it is equally out of the question to say that it has transferred an attribute. What, then, has it transferred?' The assumption here is, that 'impact' can effect nothing in respect to the body struck, unless the former imparts to the latter 'a thing' or 'an attribute.' A most palpable blunder. Motion, whether apparent or absolute, is not represented in thought as 'a thing,' or 'an attribute' of a thing, but a state of 'a thing.' That which can add to 'a thing' no new thing, and no new attribute, may change the state of a thing from rest to motion, and this is what impact does. While the effect is real, and known to be such, our inability to comprehend the why and the how is a most invalid reason for casting the known and comprehended effect, the fact of motion, 'over into the Trans-Alpine regions of the unknowable and absurd.'

For his third argument, our philosopher adduces what he rightly calls 'the old puzzle concerning the connexion between Motion and Rest. We daily witness,' he adds, 'the gradual retardation and final stoppage of things projected from the hand, or otherwise impelled; and we equally often witness the change from Rest to Motion produced by the application of force. But truly to represent these transactions in thought we find impossible. For a breach of the law of continuity seems necessarily involved, and yet no breach of it is conceivable. A body travelling at a given velocity cannot be brought to a state of rest, or no velocity, without passing through all intermediate velocities: This he affirms to be inconceivable, and therefore impossible. 'Mentally follow out the decreasing velocity as long as you will, and there still remains some velocity. Halve and again halve the rate of movement for ever, yet movement still exists; and the smallest movement is separated by an impassable gap from no movement.'

In reply to all this, we would remark, this 'old puzzle' does not pertain at all to the fact of 'Motion or Rest,' but wholly to 'the connexion between them.' The fact we clearly and readily apprehend, and absolutely know to be real. About their connexion, as Spencer affirms, there is something really puzzling. On the basis, not of any ignorance of facts, but wholly of this 'old puzzle,' Spencer would have us cast what we consciously understand and know to be real, over into the dark regions of the unknowable and absurd. We must understand that this 'old puzzle' has the same force against the idea of any degree, whatever,

of retardation of Motion, as against its total cessation. Let zero represent the point of rest, and 10 the degree of velocity actually existing. Retardation cannot reach 5, or any diminished degree of velocity, 'without passing through all intermediate velocities,' which is impossible, unless zero may be reached. It is high time that science was done with puzzles old and new, and that it should consent to abide by the verdict of facts. In introducing the term 'old puzzle,' Spencer has revealed the true character of all his arguments in this fundamental department of his Philosophy. All these arguments are literally old, and not one of them ranks higher than a puzzle.

Spencer's Criticism of the Doctrine of Force.

Of the same character as that which peculiarizes the reasonings above considered, is that of our philosopher pertaining to the doctrine of Force. In respect to this, as well as other subjects, there are some things which we do and can know, and others which, for the present at least, must remain unknown. The immutable condition of the possibility of knowledge in any form, for example, is the existence of a power and an object, whatever it may be, so correlated to that power, that when the required relations obtain, knowledge of necessity arises in consequence of this correlation. If the question be asked why, when these conditions are fulfilled, knowledge does arise, the only answer which the case admits of, and the only reason which does or can exist, is the correlated nature of the object and power referred to. A change has occurred in nature, or in the state of some existing object. The fact implies the existence and action of a cause adequate and adapted to produce the effect under consideration. In the known change two important facts are clearly made known—the nature of the susceptibilities of the object changed, and the real capacities of the cause inducing the change. Hence we are constantly classing objects in view of their revealed interior susceptibilities and capacities, as well as in view of their external resemblances and differences, and our knowledge is just as clear and valid and important in one case as in the other. Objects in nature, as far as their external resemblances and differences and interior susceptibilities and capacities are concerned, are palpably located within the sphere of the knowable. So far we are not using unmeaning, nor non-understood words when we speak of the forms, susceptibilities, and forces of material objects around us. À priori, our ignorance is absolute on all these subjects. Nor can we thus determine anything whatever about the how, the why, or the wherefore of the action of any force in nature. We cannot thus determine whether antagonistic forces, to be equal or unequal, must or must not be 'like in kind,' or whether objects, to attract one another, must be in contact each with the other. For aught we can thus determine, thought, feeling, and willing may be forces as real and efficient to produce material changes as are material forces. All such questions are exclusively questions of fact, and in no sense or form of à priori determination. If objects, when in a vacuum and at a distance from each other, do, in fact, incline or draw towards one another, then we are to infer that they have the interior capacity of mutual attraction whether in contact or not, or with or without an 'intervening medium.' If an individual affirms that we can determine à priori the how, the why, or the wherefore of the action of forces in nature, or that what we cannot thus determine must be unknowable, and finally, that we do not and cannot know à posteriori the real forms, susceptibilities, capacities, or forces of objects around us, he simply evinces a palpable blindness to obvious facts—a blindness induced by blindly following the teachings of false science.

How does Spencer reach the deduction that 'while it is impossible to form an idea of Force in itself, it is equally impossible to comprehend either its mode of exercise or its law of variation'? By assuming, we answer, that all such questions, if resolvable at all, are exclusive problems of à priori determination, and that what is not thus determinable must be located in the sphere of the unknowable. He cannot thus 'think of forces as equal without thinking of them as alike in kind.' He cannot thus 'represent in thought' 'how one thing can act upon another through a space which is absolutely empty,' or how there 'can be the attraction of one body upon another at a distance,' either in 'the presence' or 'absence' of an 'intervening medium.' He hence concludes that Force, with 'its mode of exercise and law of variation,' is, and ever must be, unknown. The validity of our deduction is absolute, that it is utterly impossible to 'represent in thought' a more unscientific method of induction and deduction, than Spencer has adopted throughout in the discussion of Ultimate Religious and Scientific Ideas. Problems which are of exclusively à posteriori, he has made the exclusive subjects of à priori determination.

Spencer's Doctrine of 'the Duration of Consciousness.'

'Turning now,' says Spencer, 'from outer to the inner world, let us contemplate, not the agencies to which we ascribe our subjective modifications, but the subjective modifications themselves. These constitute a series. Difficult as we may find it distinctly to separate and individualize them, it is nevertheless beyond a question that our states of consciousness occur in succession.'

So far, undeniably, facts of consciousness are knowable and known. Succession we know to be real. Now succession absolutely implies time, and is possible, but upon the condition that time is real, and can be known as succession but upon the condition that time is really known as it is. Spencer has thus most palpably convicted himself of fundamental error in casting time over into the Trans-Alpine regions of the unknowable and unknown.

The great question before us, as Spencer himself states it, is this: 'Is the chain of states of consciousness infinite or finite?' Did Spencer really know what he meant when he put this question? If he did, he stands convicted of fundamental error in his former affirmation that the infinite is, in every sense of the word, 'unthinkable,' and therefore unknowable. If he does not know what he means by this question—and he does not unless he knows the meaning of the term infinite—then why has he insulted us by putting to us a question the meaning of which he does not himself understand?

But what is the basis of his deduction that 'while we are unable to believe or to conceive that the duration of consciousness is infinite, we are equally unable to know it as finite, or to conceive it as finite?' For this conclusion two reasons are assigned, reasons which we will consider in the order stated. The following is his first reason: 'We cannot say infinite, not only because we have indirectly reached the conclusion that there was a period when it commenced, but because all infinity is inconceivable—an infinite series included. We cannot say finite, for we have no knowledge of either of its ends. Go back in memory as far as we may, we are wholly unable to identify our first states of consciousness.' 'We have no immediate knowledge of a termination of the series at a future time, and we cannot really lay hold of that temporary termination of the series reached at the present moment.' Here permit us to ask the question, is it not at least conceivable that the series under consideration shall cease at death? Or is the future eternity of consciousness a necessary form of thought? Will not Spencer and all thinkers of all schools answer this last question in the negative, and the first in the affirmative? The finiteness of the duration of consciousness in one direction, the future, is undeniably conceivable. How is it with the past? Spencer assures us that 'the conclusion that there was a period when it (consciousness) commenced,' has been 'indirectly reached.' 'A conclusion indirectly reached' is, undeniably, at least conceivably true. What, also, must we think of the logic which concludes from the fact that we cannot determine the exact moment when a series began, that we cannot know, or conceive, that it had a beginning at all? Because we do not know the exact spot where the Nile has its source, must we affirm that the fact that it has a source cannot be even represented in thought? Because we cannot determine the exact moment when we began to be conscious, must we conclude that we cannot know or conceive that we were not conscious before we were begotten at all, or before the material universe existed as 'a fiery flame,' or a monkey begot a man? We are seriously inclined to ask the question, In what University did our philosopher study logic?

Spencer's second argument is thus stated by himself. 'To be known at all, any mental affection must be known as such or such, as like those foregoing ones, or unlike them; if it is not thought of in connection with others, not distinguished or identified by comparison with others it is not recognized, is not a state of consciousness at all. A last state of consciousness, then, like any other, can exist only through a perception of its relations to previous states.' Granting the validity of this argument, the deduction is absolute that we are not now, and never have been, conscious at all, or that consciousness has actually endured through the eternity past. If each act of consciousness, as is here asserted, does imply a series of pre-existing states of the same kind, then the series itself, if it exists at all, must have been eternal. No demonstration is, or can be, more absolute than this. We know the logic here to be false, because we do and must know the deduction reached to be false. In knowing this, we also know that the Philosophy on which that deduction is based is 'science falsely so called.' It is fundamental in the Philosophy of Spencer, as distinctly avowed by himself, that no one object can be known but through a pre-formed idea of a class of objects of the same kind. Now the universally known scientific process is the reverse of this. Class conceptions as species and genera are and can be formed, but by abstraction from individual conceptions. The immutable condition of the possibility of classification, is the prior existence of individual conceptions. Every schoolboy knows this, and a philosopher evinces an unaccountable ignorance of his own profession who does not know it. The argument of our philosopher under this, as well as under all other topics in the present connection, is undeniably of a character of which the science of this nineteenth century has good reason to be ashamed.

Spencer on the Doctrine of Personal Existence.

The last of our 'Ultimate Scientific Ideas' which Spencer locates under the categories of the unknowable and absurd, is the doctrine of our own personal existence. 'Nor do we meet with any greater success,' he says, 'when, instead of the extent of consciousness, we consider its substance. The question, What is this that thinks? admits of no better solution than the question to which we have just found none but inconceivable answers.'

In the discussion of this, as well as other subjects, permit us to remark here, Spencer, and not a few other thinkers, forget that the question, What can we know? can be truly answered, but through two others, namely, What do we consciously know? and What is implied by the facts of such knowledge? À priori, we can no more determine what are and what are not objects of valid knowledge than we can thus determine what realities and events do and do not exist and occur in space and time. As the character of the effect determines the reality and adaptation of its cause, so do the fact and object of knowledge reveal the existence and character of the power of knowledge. Whether the capacity of self-knowledge does or can exist, depends exclusively upon the question whether such knowledge does consciously exist. The philosopher who attempts to determine à priori whether he himself does or does not exist, think, feel, and will, has need to be taught anew what are the first principles of scientific induction and deduction. What if he should attempt in the same manner to determine whether he can know anything at all, that is, should endeavour to know whether knowledge is possible. Such a philosopher would evince a very long and severe training 'in the privilege of absurdity.'

In regard to the fact of self-knowledge, and the absolute impossibility of disproving its validity, Spencer is quite full and explicit. He admits and affirms that 'this fact of personal existence is testified to by the universal consciousness of men,' that 'it is a belief which no hypothesis enables us to escape,' that 'no Sceptic who has decomposed his consciousness into impressions and ideas, can explain the fact that he considers them as his impressions and ideas,' that having 'admitted, as he must, that he has impressions of personal existence,' he 'can have no warrant for rejecting this impression as unreal while he accepts all his other impressions as real;' and that 'unless he can give satisfactory answers to all the enquiries' which arise on this subject, 'which he cannot, he must abandon his conclusions, and must admit the reality of the individual mind.' He might have added here, that the validity of this conviction can by no possibility be destroyed by any other form of knowledge, nor by any deductions reached by any process of reasoning. The reason is obvious. No conviction can be characterized by greater certitude than this: nor can we be so certain of the validity of any argument against it as we are of that of the intuition assailed.

With Spencer, and the advocates of the New Philosophy, however, the most absolute, universal, and fundamental, intuitions can be invalidated by the most shallow arguments. 'But now,' he says, 'unavoidable as is this belief—established though it is by the assent of mankind at large, endorsed by divers philosophers, except by the suicide of the Sceptical argument—it is yet a belief admitting of no justification by reason: nay, indeed, it is a belief which reason, when pressed for a distinct answer, rejects.' Spencer, let it be understood, is now aiming to convince his own consciously personal self, and all other conscious personalities, that it is absurd and self-contradictory for any personality to believe that any personality exists; that the propositions, I think, I feel, and I will, are illusions which no person exists to entertain.

What is the argument on which all persons are not only 'packed off to the unknowable,' but out of existence? It is thus stated by our philosopher. 'The mental act in which self is known implies, like every other mental act, a perceiving subject, and perceived object.' (True, but not that subject and object are distinct and separate existences.) 'If, then, the object perceived is self, what is the subject that perceives? Or if it is the true self that thinks, what other self can it be that is thought of?' (No other self, we answer.) 'Clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and the known are one—in which subject and object are identified, and this Mansel rightly holds is the annihilation of both.' Were you yourself, Spencer, really convinced by this argument? If you say you were, you admit the invalidity of your argument, because you thereby admit that one real person exists to be convinced. If you yourself were not convinced by this your argument, why impose it upon us? If you really believe that no real person exists to convince or to be convinced, why argue at all? Are you not distinctly aware that you have here employed merely an ingenious puzzle which has and can have no validity against an absolutely conscious fact? Are you not aware that knowledge, whether of self or any other object, is not a person, but a state of a person? an intellectual state in which a person, because he has the capacity of subjective as well as of objective knowledge, cognizes himself in his acts of knowing, feeling, and willing, as the personal subject of these states. Suppose I experience a feeling of pleasure or pain. The consciousness of the pain is one thing, and the pain of which I am conscious, with myself as its subject, is quite another. To make the subject knowing and the act of knowing one and identical, is to separate from the subject of knowledge all feeling and acts of will, and all capacities or such states. To identify knowledge with its subject, which we do when we deny the possibility of self-knowledge, is to affirm that there may be real knowledge without a subject which knows, one of the greatest absurdities ever dreamed of by a crazy Philosophy.

Let us now consider this argument in the light of the various theories pertaining to the conditions of the possibility of knowledge—theories vowed by different schools in Philosophy. According to Materialism, knowledge is possible, and conceivably so, but in its objective form. According to Idealism, it is possible, and conceivably so, but in its subjective from; while Realism affirms its conceivable possibility and actuality in both forms. Now there is nothing absurd or self-contradictory in either of these hypotheses. The truth of each is as conceivably possible as is that of either of the others, and the question which is, and which is not true, is a simple question of fact to be decided by an appeal to consciousness. The existence of a capacity for knowledge in either form renders knowledge, in that form, possible. The conscious fact of knowledge, in that form, evinces absolutely the existence of the implied capacity. The possibility of a form of knowledge, 'in which the subject and object are identified,' is just as consciously conceivable as is that form in which they are distinct and separate from each other.

Let us now, in the last place, contemplate the deduction which Spencer has drawn from this undeniably sophistical argument. 'So that the personality,' he says, 'of which each is conscious, and of which the existence is to each a fact beyond all others the most certain, is yet a thing which cannot be known at all: knowledge of it is forbidden by the very nature of thought.' Here we have an absolute avowal of the dogma that there may be an absolute and universal conscious knowledge of a fact which cannot be an object of knowledge at all, and that at the same moment, and in reference to the same fact, there may be, in the same sense, absolute certitude and absolute incertitude, and that we may be absolutely conscious of an absolute knowledge of a given fact, and at the same moment have a consciousness equally absolute, that we have, and can have, no knowledge of that fact at all. The necessary deduction from this dogma is that knowledge in no form is, or can be, possible to us. If a fact, 'which is to each person beyond all others most certain, cannot be truly known at all,' what must be true of all other facts? This undeniably. Not one of them can be an object of real knowledge. With this necessary and fundamental deduction from the most fundamental dogma of Spencer and the New Philosophy, what folly would it be in us to follow him into his sphere of the knowable! There is, and can, be no such sphere, unless his Philosophy is false throughout.

We have now carefully examined every one of Spencer's arguments in respect to Ultimate Religious and Scientific Ideas, and have demonstrated every such argument to be an utter failure. As the validity of his system is absolutely conditioned upon that of his doctrine of the Unknowable, the subversion of this doctrine involves of necessity the utter overthrow of the system based upon said doctrine. We might, therefore, very properly suspend our whole discussion here. A system must be false which rests upon such a bank of sand as is this doctrine of the Unknowable. For the sake of truth, however, we will advance still further in our criticisms.

Spencer's Doctrine of the Relativity of all Knowledge.

The Doctrine Explained or Defined.

Philosophers of certain schools make a distinction between realities as they are in themselves, and the impressions which said realities make upon us. These impressions such schools represent by such terms as phenomena and appearances. The questions at issue between the schools pertain to the enquiry whether, through these phenomena or appearances, realities become known to us as they are, or is our knowledge confined exclusively to these appearances? Realists affirm that in phenomena substances are manifested as they are, and not as they are not, and that in appearances the realities themselves appear. The doctrine of the Sceptical school, that with which we are now concerned, and to which Spencer avowedly belongs, is that our knowledge is exclusively of phenomena or of appearances, and that, in the language of the philosopher designated, 'the reality existing behind all appearances is, and ever must be, unknown.' Spencer and his school are Positivists in this sense. They believe that these phenomena, appearances, impressions, call them by what names we will, really exist and exist as objects of valid knowledge, that these impressions do not exist uncaused, and that the unknown and unknowable causes which produce these impressions do really exist. 'It is rigorously impossible,' says Spencer, 'to conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of Appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a Reality of which they are appearances; for appearance without a reality is unthinkable.' 'Hence,' he adds, 'our firm belief in objective reality—a belief which metaphysical criticism cannot for a moment shake.'

Phenomena, or appearances, which we can know, we must bear in mind, are not, according to Spencer and his school, anything external to the mind, and presented objectively to it, but subjective impressions made by existing realities upon the mind itself. 'We can know,' says Spencer, 'only impressions produced on us,' that is, only subjective states caused by 'the realities existing behind all appearances.'

To understand fully the doctrine of the 'Relativity of all Knowledge,' we must also bear in mind that impressions received from existing and acting causes depend not merely upon the nature of said causes, but equally upon that of the subject receiving the impressions. As the natures of different classes of subjects may differ one from another, so may the impressions which the same causes make upon different classes of minds. The impressions common to the human race may not be at all like those made by the same causes upon other classes of intelligents, supposing such classes to exist. Our knowledge of phenomena, therefore, has validity only relatively to us as men. Such is the doctrine of the 'Relativity of all Knowledge,' as held by Spencer and his school. This doctrine may be thus stated: We do, and can, have a valid knowledge of phenomena, or of the subjective impressions which realities make upon us. On the other hand, while we do know that real causes of these impressions do exist, we do and can have no valid knowledge of these causes. In other words, appearances we know; but 'the reality existing behind all appearances is, and ever must remain, unknown.' Permit us to invite special attention to the following specific reflections upon this doctrine, reflections the validity of which will not, we judge, be questioned.

Admitting the Validity of Spencer's Arguments which we have Examined, Phenomena must be as Unknowable as are the Realities which exist behind all Appearances.

If we admit the validity of Spencer's arguments in regard to 'Ultimate Religious and Scientific Ideas,' phenomena must be as absolutely unknowable as are 'the realities which exist behind all appearances.' Phenomena, we must bear in mind, are exclusively, according to the doctrine under consideration, not objects exterior to the Ego, but subjective impressions made by existing causes upon the Ego, in other words, mere subjective states of the Ego. Now a knowledge of these subjective impressions, or states, and the impressions, or states, known, are facts entirely distinct and separate from one another, just as distinct and separate as are our apprehensions of 'realities existing behind all appearances, and the realities themselves.' Our apprehensions, or conceptions of phenomena or appearances, and of the subjects of such phenomena, are also identical in all their elements and characteristics. Our apprehensions, or conceptions, of the phenomena of matter, for example, and our conceptions of matter itself, are absolutely identical. If our conceptions of the latter are self-contradictory, and, therefore, of inconceivable validity, so are our conceptions of the former. If, for the reasons stated, matter is to be located in the sphere of the unknowable, so must our conception of the phenomena of matter. If our conception of an extended and compound substance be self-contradictory, so must our conception of the complex notion of such a substance be. There is no possible escape from this conclusion. Spencer, and all who think with him, forget that every element which enters into our conception of any reality which 'lies behind all appearances,' must exist in the phenomenon which, to us, represents that reality. If our conception of the latter is self-contradictory, so must our conception of the former be, the two conceptions being absolutely identical. The deduction is absolute, that if realities 'are, and ever must be, unknown,' so must their phenomena be. If, then, our philosopher is right, in casting, for the reasons assigned, the objects of all our 'Ultimate Religious and Scientific Ideas' over into the region of the unknowable, he must, or reveal an utter want of logical consistency and integrity, do the same in regard to all phenomena from which are derived all our conceptions of such realities.

Spencer affirms, 'that a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and the known are one—in which subject and object are identified; and this Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both.' If this is implied by 'a true cognition of self,' the same thing must be implied by any 'true cognition of any subjective state of the self.' If the knowledge of the self 'is forbidden by the very nature of thought,' 'the nature of thought' must equally forbid self-knowledge in all its forms specific and general, in other words, a knowledge of all subjective impressions, or of all phenomena. Spencer's Philosophy, therefore, carries over not only realities, but all appearances of the same, all phenomena in common, into the Trans-Alpine regions of the unknowable and absurd. In other words, that Philosophy takes from us utterly all principles and all materials which render knowledge and science in any form possible.

This Doctrine Totally Ignores and Confounds the Fundamental Distinctions which Actually Exist between Different Classes of Phenomena.

This doctrine, also, totally ignores and confounds the fundamental distinctions which actually exist between different classes of phenomena. One class, for example, are wholly sensitive, emotive, and voluntary states, and another are as exclusively intellectual states. Of the latter, one kind are constituted of consciously direct and immediate perceptions of the Self, in the exercise of thought, feeling, and voluntary determination. The other kind consists of equally absolute, and consciously direct and immediate perceptions of external material substances, as possessed, among others, of the qualities of real extension and form. So far as the essential qualities of the Self and Not-self are concerned, the Ego and the Non-ego are consciously conceived as consciously perceived. Now, consciousness, as Sir William Hamilton affirms, 'is a liar from the beginning,' or intellectual phenomena, in the form of conscious perceptions, are actual perceptions of realities in their fundamental qualities, and not perceptions of the phenomena of such realities. In conscious perception, no phenomena intervene between us and the reality; but the reality itself is beheld face to face. In internal perception, we are directly and immediately conscious, not of an appearance of a self, but of the real Self in the exercise of thought, feeling, and willing. In every act of external perception, we are directly and immediately conscious of the self, as a perceiving subject, and of the Not-self, as a directly and immediately perceived exterior object. Such are the facts, just as they lie out under the eye of the universal consciousness. Realities act upon us in the production of sensitive and emotive states of which we are conscious, and in which we are consciously passive. When the proper conditions are fulfilled, the Intelligence becomes consciously active in the direct and immediate perception or knowledge, not of intermediate phenomena, but of realities themselves in their fundamental characteristics and qualities. The term 'phenomena,' therefore, represents two classes of facts—sensitive and emotive conscious states of the Self, in which we are passive, and consciously perceived attributes of the actual Self, and the actual Not-self, attributes in the perception of which we are consciously active. To represent all phenomena in common, as mere passive impressions made on us by realities which we do not perceive at all, is to ignore and confound distinctions which consciously exist in phenomena as apprehended by universal mind. Thus the New Philosophy, instead of interpreting phenomena as they are really known, fundamentally misinterprets such phenomena. The most essential class of conscious phenomena are not subjective impressions, but qualities and attributes of realities themselves, qualities and attributes consciously perceived.

The Doctrine of the 'Relativity of all Knowledge' is not Intuitively True, and cannot be Verified by Argument.

Our next and very important suggestion is this: This doctrine of the 'Relativity of all Knowledge' is not intuitively or self-evidently true; nor that it can by any possibility be verified by argument. That all our knowledge of the Self, as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, and of matter as possessed of exteriority, extension, and form, is consciously indirect and mediate, through consciously intermediate phenomena, no philosopher professes to believe. If phenomena do intervene between us and objects which we consciously perceive, we, undeniably, are not conscious of the presence of such mediums. It cannot, therefore, be intuitively or self-evidently true, that such mediums do exist at all. On the other hand, not a known fact can be adduced to prove the existence of such a medium. Nor can any valid à priori grounds or arguments be adduced in proof of this doctrine. The existence of a capacity of a direct and immediate knowledge of real qualities of objects, is just as conceivably possible, as is that of a capacity thus to know phenomena, mere subjective impressions especially. By no possibility, therefore, can this doctrine be verified as an intuitive or deductive truth.

This Doctrine has no other Basis than a mere Lawless Assumption, an Assumption not only not Sustained by any Form or Degree of Real Evidence, but most palpably False.

On what basis, then, does this doctrine rest? To this question but one single answer can be given, viz., it has place in science as a mere lawless assumption, in favour of which no form or degree of real evidence can be adduced. That a portion of our knowledge, the smallest and least important of it, is indirect and mediate, or relative, no one doubts. That another, and by far the greatest and most important part—to wit, all perceptions external and internal—are not phenomenal, but real, is equally manifest. Perceptions objective and subjective, perceptions as intellectual states, are given in the universal consciousness as real knowledges, not of representative phenomena, but of objects themselves in their essential properties, realities of the fundamental characteristics of which our conscious perceptions and conceptions are consciously identical. In all classifications of visible and tangible objects, for example, all men, and all philosophers, Spencer among the rest, are distinctly conscious that they are classifying, not subjective impressions, but objective realities, realities of which, as we have said, our conceptions and perceptions are consciously identical. Hence it is, that we may assume, for the sake of a system, that all our knowledge is of mere subjective impressions, or of phenomena, and therefore of mere relative validity, just as we may assume that events do occur without causes. No man, not even a philosopher, however, can really believe the former, any more than he can the latter assumption to be true. It is sufficient for our present purpose to show, as we have done, that this doctrine of the 'Relativity of all Knowledge' has, and can have, place in thought but as a mere assumption, a dictum of will, and not as intuitive or deductive truth of the Intelligence.

Forms of Absolute Knowledge do Exist, Forms which are neither Phenomenal nor Relative.

We now proceed, in the last place, to demonstrate the fact that there do exist in the mind forms of real and absolute knowledge, forms which are neither phenomenal, nor relative, but universal and absolute. Spencer admits and affirms, for example, that every event does and must have a cause, and that phenomena do imply the real existence of substance. 'It is rigorously impossible,' he says, in a passage before cited, 'to conceive that our knowledge is of appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a reality of which they are appearances.' How came such knowledge in the mind? Analyze phenomena as much as you please, and you will not, and cannot find it there. These are principles which you do and must know to be equally applicable, not only to phenomena and events, which you have known, but to all events known and unknown to you, phenomena and events which ever have occurred, or ever will occur. With equal absoluteness, we also know that all real objects, phenomena, and events, of the past, present and future, must exist, and occur in some definite place, and in some definite time, that all things equal to the same thing must be equal to one another, and must be like or unlike, equal or unequal to, one another. All these are real and absolute forms of knowledge, and not one of them has a single characteristic of mere phenomenal or relative knowledge. Take these and kindred forms of universal and absolute knowledge out of the mind, and not a single step in science could be taken in any direction whatever. Take from the mind the Reason-Ideas, not merely of space, time, substance, and cause, but of equality and inequality, likeness and unlikeness, resemblance and difference, and not a single step could by any possibility be taken even in the process of classification. What ought we to think, then, of the doctrine that all our knowledge is of phenomena? What ought we to think of the doctrine that an Intelligence which can and does have an absolute knowledge of the universal and necessary relations of all realities, and all phenomena, can have no knowledge of the realities related and implied by their phenomena; and this especially when no evidence of any kind can be adduced in its favour, and when it must be held as false, or the universal consciousness must be affirmed to be 'a liar from the beginning'?

SECTION III.

SPENCER'S DOCTRINE OF SCIENCE OR PHILOSOPHY.

Spencer, after having determined, as he supposes, the extent and limits of the sphere of the Unknowable, then proceeds to a discussion of the doctrine of the Knowable. He introduces us to his ideas in respect to this doctrine by defining and elucidating in Chapter I. his idea of Philosophy, an idea which requires special attention as the condition of understanding what we may rationally expect from our philosopher. 'Philosophy,' he tells us, 'is knowledge of the highest degree of generality.'

'What,' he asks, 'must be the specific shape given to this conception? The range of intelligence we find to be limited to the relative. Though perfectly conscious of a Power manifested to us, we have abandoned as futile the attempt to learn anything respecting the nature of that power, and so have shut out Philosophy from much of the domain supposed to belong to it. The domain left is that occupied by Science. Science concerns itself with the co-existences and sequences among phenomena, grouping these at first into generalizations of a simple or low order, and rising gradually to higher and more extended generalizations. But if so, where remains any subject-matter for Philosophy? The reply is—Philosophy may still probably be the title retained for knowledge of the highest generality.'

It will be perceived at once that we have here the ideas of Science and Philosophy, the ideas set forth by Aristotle, and re-affirmed by Bacon, and which to this day continue, in important respects, to misdirect scientific thought and enquiry. Real Science, instead of ending with 'knowledge of the highest degree of generality,' actually commences and determines its whole procedure under knowledge in its absolutely universal and necessary forms. Real Science in all its forms begins with, and regulates all its inductions and deductions by, the Axioms and Postulates called principles, which are nothing but absolute knowledge in its intuitive, universal, and necessary forms. Without such principles not a single step, as we have seen, can be taken in scientific classification and generalization, which are departments of Science in its mere primary forms. Before beginning to investigate 'the co-existences and sequences among phenomena,' the principles which are to regulate such enquiries must be determined, else all such enquiries will be lawless in their processes, and will land us in no verified results. Entering upon his investigations in the sphere of the Knowable, under the influence of such wild ideas of the Unknowable, and with such an idea of Science as Spencer has avowed and defended, it would be more than a miracle if his deductions should not be the most wild and lawless conceivable. In reference to realities of which he has no conceptions but those which are affirmed to be self-contradictory, he is to proceed from 'generalizations of a simple and low order,' to those which are 'of the highest degree of generality,' and all this with no fixed and valid principles to guide his 'uncouth way through the palpable obscure.' Let us now see what kind of 'general notions' our 'privileged spirit' shall furnish us with, as 'he wanders into regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be entirely shut out.' We must bear in mind that Spencer, as soon as he enters the sphere of the Knowable, turns our thoughts from mere phenomena to 'the realities existing behind all appearances,' and presents us with affirmed solutions in regard to the great problems pertaining to Being and its laws. This we shall see as we follow him into this new sphere.

SECTION IV.

THE DATA OF PHILOSOPHY ACCORDING TO SPENCER.

Having defined his idea of Philosophy, the next enquiry to which our philosopher very properly advances is, 'The Data of Philosophy.' Philosophy, in common with all sciences, must, of course, have its point of departure. In other words, there must be some data from which the process commences, and upon which its validity depends. At this vital point it is indispensable that we fully understand our author. We will here, therefore, permit him to speak for himself.

The Starting point of Philosophy, according to Spencer.

'In what way, then,' he asks, 'must Philosophy set out? The developed intelligence is framed upon certain organized and consolidated conceptions of which it cannot divest itself, and which it can no more stir without using than the body can stir without the use of its limbs. In what way, then, is it possible for Intelligence, striving after Philosophy, to give an account of these conceptions, and to show either their validity or their invalidity? There is but one way. Those of them which are vital, or cannot be severed from the rest without mental dissolution, must be assumed as true provisionally. The fundamental intuitions that are essential to the process of thinking must be temporarily accepted as unquestionable, leaving the assumption of their unquestionableness to be justified by the results.

'How is it to be justified by the results? As any other assumption is justified—by ascertaining that all the conclusions deducible from it correspond with the facts as directly observed—by showing the agreement between the experiences it leads us to anticipate, and the actual experiences.'

Remarks upon this Doctrine.

Here we have, undeniably, a totally false idea of the basis principles of Philosophy, as well as of science universally. If Philosophy is what Spencer has defined it to be, 'completely verified knowledge,' its basis principles must not be 'conceptions assumed as true provisionally,' nor 'intuitions temporarily accepted as unquestionable,' but forms of absolute knowledge. No deduction can claim higher validity than the conceptions or intuitions from which said deductions are drawn. If the former have only a provisional or temporarily accepted validity, such must be the character of the latter. What is it that imparts such absolute certitude to all deductions reached in the pure sciences? The absolute certitude of their principles in the first case, and of their facts in the next. If incertitude, or mere provisional or temporarily accepted certitude, attaches to our basis-conceptions or intuitions, the incertitude will increasingly attach to all subsequent procedures, and vitiate all final deductions. By no such process, surely, can 'completely verified knowledge' be reached. 'Behind all phenomena,' there must lie forms of absolute knowledge, principles of which we know not only that they are, but that they must be true, or even phenomena can never be classified or generalized, and no á posteriori science can possess the characteristics of 'completely verified knowledge.' Nor does any really scientific deduction require the experience-verification to which our philosopher refers. When, for example, a child, a savage, a philosopher, and an idiot if he knows anything, clearly perceive that any two objects are equal to any common third object, all in common know with the same absoluteness, and that prior to all experience of the kind, that those objects are and must be equal to one another. The same holds equally true of all deductions necessarily yielded by valid principles, and validly known facts. Such deductions reveal, not only what experience has been in the past, but what it must be in the future.

Spencer's assumed Doctrine in Philosophy.

Having affirmed that Philosophy must set out with assuming as 'provisionally' or 'temporarily' true those 'conceptions' or 'intuitions,' 'which the intelligence can no more stir without using than the body can stir without help of its limbs,' our philosopher now goes on to designate his idea of what these data are. 'What is this datum, or rather, what are these data,' he asks, 'which Philosophy cannot do without? Clearly one primordial datum is involved in the foregoing statement. Already by implication we have assumed, and must forever' (he had just said temporarily) 'assume that congruities and incongruities exist, and are cognizable by us. We cannot avoid accepting as true the verdict of consciousness that some manifestations are like one another, and some are unlike one another. Unless consciousness be a competent judge of the likeness and unlikeness of its states, there can never be established that congruity throughout the whole of our cognitions which constitutes Philosophy; nor can there ever be established that incongruity by which only any hypothesis, philosophical or other, can be shown erroneous.' 'Consequently, the assumption that a congruity or an incongruity exists when consciousness testifies to it, is an inevitable assumption. It is useless to say, as Sir W. Hamilton does, that "consciousness is to be presumed trustworthy until proved mendacious." It cannot be proved mendacious in this, its primordial act; since, as we see, proof involves a repeated acceptance of this primordial act. Nay more, the very thing supposed to be proved cannot be expressed without recognizing this primordial act as valid: since, unless we accept the verdict of consciousness that they differ, mendacity and trustworthiness become identical. Process and product of reasoning both disappear in the absence of this assumption.'

Spencer goes on to remark; and truly so, that a careless comparison may deceive, and that therefore deliberate ones are alone to be relied on, that a consciousness of likeness or difference which survives critical examination must be accepted in place of one that does not survive—the very survival being itself the acceptance.' This distinction he afterwards represents by the terms 'vivid and faint representations.' The former, of course, should always be relied on in preference to the latter, and that especially when they are opposites.

The above reasonings must be accepted as sound, however impossible it may be to reconcile his present with his past deductions, and to whatever consequences these fixed data in Philosophy may lead. That we may fully understand and appreciate this subject, special attention is invited to following

Reflections on these Data.

These Data contradict our Author's preciously affirmed Doctrine of the Impossibility of Self-knowledge.

In his former reasoning our philosopher professes to have demonstrated the absolute impossibility of self-knowledge. 'Clearly,' he says, 'a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and the known are one—in which subject and object are identified; and this Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both.' Among these data we find self-knowledge affirmed, not only as possible, but as actually existing, and also presented as the immutable condition of the existence of Philosophy in any form. 'Unless consciousness be a competent judge of the likeness or unlikeness of its states, there can never be established that congruity throughout the whole of our cognitions which constitutes Philosophy.' 'Consequently the assumption that a congruity or incongruity exists, when consciousness testifies to it, is an inevitable assumption.' 'Process and product of reasoning both disappear in the absence of this assumption.' Whenever we are conscious of any state, we are absolutely conscious of the Self as the subject of that state. To affirm consciousness to be truthful in respect to the state, and mendacious in regard to the subject of the state, is arbitrarily to affirm consciousness to be in the same act, and at the same moment, utterly truthful and utterly mendacious. To affirm universally that self-knowledge is impossible, and rendered so 'by the very nature of thought,' and then to affirm this same kind of knowledge to be possible and actual relatively to all subjective states, is the most palpable form of self-contradiction conceivable.

According to Spencer Consciousness is utterly Mendacious in its most, and fully Trustworthy in its less, Absolute Dicta.

Spencer, we remark in the next place, has affirmed that we are more distinctly conscious and certain of our own personal existence, than we are, or can be, of any other fact, and yet that this conscious intuition is 'a belief admitting of no justification by reason; nay, indeed, it is a belief which reason, when pressed for a distinct answer, rejects.' In reference to facts of consciousness 'beyond all others the most certain'-consciousness, according to our philosopher, is to be held as utterly mendacious. Facts of consciousness, on the other hand, of known less certitude, the conscious congruity or incongruity of subjective states, are, according to the same thinker, to be accepted as the starting-points and basis-data of Philosophy. Conscious facts, 'beyond all others the most certain,' are undeniably, in fact and form, excluded totally from Spencer's system of Philosophy, while facts of consciously less certitude, and admitted to be such, constitute the sum and substance of that Philosophy. We cannot follow Spencer, and the teachers of the New Philosophy, without deliberately putting out our own eyes, and committing ourselves to the guidance of known blindness.

We must utterly Repudiate Spencer and the Possibility of Philosophy, or fully Admit the Claims of Realism.

Spencer has fully verified the deduction that 'we cannot avoid accepting as true the verdict of consciousness, that some manifestations are like one another and some are unlike one another,' or 'there can never be established that congruity throughout the whole of our cognitions which constitutes Philosophy.' If the validity of the testimony of consciousness is to be admitted here, and it must be admitted or the possibility of Philosophy must be denied, then the absolute trustworthiness of this same faculty must be admitted in all cases in which its testimony is equally, and especially where it is more, direct and absolute. Now Spencer has affirmed, what none will deny, that we are conscious of our own personal existence, and that the fact of personal existence is to each a conscious 'fact beyond all others the most certain.' Why should we admit the testimony of consciousness in reference to the congruities and incongruities of all subjective states, and reject its testimony in forms admitted to be equally direct, universal, and more absolute? The testimony of consciousness to our personal existence is 'a primordial act' of this faculty. Its testimony to the relations of subjective states is testimony in a secondary form, the consciousness of the subjective states being the primordial, and of the relations of said states being its secondary acts. To reject the validity of consciousness in its primordial acts is, as Spencer has shown, to 'remove utterly the possibility of Philosophy,' to do that in which 'process and product of reasoning disappear.' On what authority does Spencer deny the validity of conscious knowledge, in its primordial and most certain form—its testimony to our own personal existence, and affirm its validity in a secondary and less certain form?

The same remarks are equally applicable to the conscious certitude of our knowledge of the Self and Not-self, or of spirit and matter. In the consciousness which we have of the Self, as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, willing, and of matter as directly and immediately before us, as an exterior object having real extension and form, we have the testimony of consciousness in its universal, necessary, and primordial forms, forms the validity of which Spencer and the disciples of the New Philosophy deny. In the testimony of consciousness to the relations of conscious states to one another, we have undeniably this testimony of its secondary forms, forms the validity of which those thinkers not only admit, but make the basis and substance of their system. We must, then, admit the validity of our knowledge of matter and spirit or take away all primordial intuitions, without which Philosophy in all its forms is impossible; or, as a last resort, do as these Sceptics do, reject primordial intuitions admitted to possess the highest possible conscious certitude, and construct our system out of secondary intuitions admitted and affirmed to possess less certitude than the primordial ones which have been rejected.

The fixed Method of Spencer and the Disciples of the New Philosophy in Constructing their System.

We are now prepared to give an impartial and undeniably correct statement of the fixed method of Spencer, and of his associates in Science, in the construction of their system of Philosophy. Their exclusive dependence, as far as their facts are concerned, is the testimony of consciousness. This, their sole witness, is first of all demonstrated professedly to be utterly and universally untrustworthy. This is the exclusive object of paragraph 19 in the chapter on 'Ultimate Scientific Ideas.' Then a single department is arbitrarily selected in which the testimony of this verified universally mendacious witness is to be accepted as absolutely trustworthy, the only department which will furnish the facts out of which their peculiar system can be constructed. In all other departments, even where testimony is more primordial, direct, and certain than here, this faculty is left under the charge of universal and absolute mendaciousness. In conformity with no other method is the development of such a system as Spencer's, and that avowed by the disciples of the New Philosophy, possible.

What is Knowledge, or Knowing, according to Spencer?

Science, as defined by Spencer, as we have seen, is 'completely unified knowledge.' This brings directly before us the question, What is his idea of the knowledge, or knowing, which science classifies? 'Knowing,' as he specifically defines it, 'is classifying, or grouping the like, and separating the unlike.' 'The unification of knowledge,' he further says, 'proceeds by arranging the smaller classes of like experiences within larger, and these within the still larger.' 'The proposition by which knowledge is unified,' he says finally, 'must be one specifying the antithesis between two ultimate classes of experiences, in which all others merge.'

This definition of knowledge overlooks entirely, and as we shall see intentionally, knowledge in its original, primordial, and most fundamental form, the knowledge of the objects known to be like, or unlike. In utter ignorance of A and B in their individual qualities, and as forms of individual existences, how can we know them to be like, or unlike, one another? The consciousness, or immediate knowledge of things as related to one another, implies of necessity a prior consciousness, or knowledge, of the things related. The opposite supposition is, undeniably, self-contradictory and absurd.

Knowledge in its proper primordial forms Spencer not only ignores, but in fact and form repudiates as of impossible existence. 'Every complete act of consciousness,' he says, 'besides distinction and relation, also implies likeness. Before it can become an idea, or constitute a piece of knowledge, a mental state must not only be known as separate in kind from certain foregoing states to which it is known as related by succession, but it must further be known as of the same in kind with certain other foregoing states.' 'Both the successive mental states and the successive relations which they bear to each other, must be classified. In brief, a true cognition is possible only through an accompanying cognition.' On the assumption of this condition of possible knowledge, he denies utterly the possibility of our knowing God. 'The First Cause, the Infinite, the Absolute, to be known at all, must be classed. To be positively thought of, it must be thought of as such or such—as of this or that kind. Can it be like in kind to anything of which we have sensible experience? Obviously not.' 'To admit that it cannot be known as of such or such, is to admit that it is unknowable.' Upon the same principle, as we have seen, he denies the possibility of our knowing or conceiving the duration of consciousness to be finite or infinite. 'To be known at all, any mental affection must be known as such or such—as like those foregoing ones or unlike those: if it is not thought of in connexion with others—not distinguished or identified by comparison with others, it is not recognised—is not a state of consciousness at all.'

The above citations leave no doubt about the meaning or real idea of knowledge, according, to the great expounder of the New Philosophy. Of no object can we have a direct and immediate knowledge. All knowledge begins with a consciousness of relations between objects, and that in absolute unconsciousness, or nescience, of the objects related, and all we can know of said objects is that they are like or unlike certain other objects, and therefore belong to such and such classes of objects, our ignorance of the objects themselves being absolute. On this doctrine we present the following fundamental suggestions.

This Doctrine Renders the Commencement of Cognition Absolutely Impossible.

Our first suggestion is this. This doctrine renders, not only inconceivable, but absolutely impossible, the beginning of cognition. Every series must be infinite, or have a beginning, a first member. According to Spencer, the duration of human consciousness must, as we have shown, have been co-extensive with the eternity past, or it could never have occurred at all. If no fact, or conscious state, can be known at all, but 'as the same in kind with certain other foregoing states'—the doctrine of Spencer stated in his own words—then, undeniably, there can by no possibility be any first cognition, any first known fact, or state, or impression. The series must have been from eternity, or it could never have existed at all. There is no escaping this conclusion. Spencer does not relieve the difficulty at all, by telling us that 'cognition proper arises gradually.' That which thus rises must have been rising from eternity, or have begun to arise. If cognition is possible but upon the condition that some object is cognized as like or unlike some objects of prior cognition, cognition, whether faint or clear, can begin but in this exclusive form. Spencer, therefore, as the expounder of the New Philosophy, presents us with a system of fundamental error, or the series of human consciousness must have been, as far as the past is concerned, eternal.

This Doctrine Self-contradictory and Absurd.

'All thought,' says Spencer, in finally explaining his theory of knowledge, 'involves the consciousness of likeness: the one thing avowedly postulated cannot be known absolutely as one thing, but can be known only as of such and such kind—only as classed with other things in virtue of some common attribute.' How can we know that any number of individual things have any one or more common attributes. unless we know the individual things themselves? Do we, can we, know the individual 'as one thing,' exclusively 'in virtue of some common attribute,' or in virtue of this and other peculiar and special attributes? The individual who classes objects before he knows even that they exist, each one of them, as 'one thing,' makes blank midnight his medium of vision, and can have no clearer knowledge of his classes than he previously had of the individuals of whom he knew nothing. Absurdity has most palpably reached its consummation in the doctrine under consideration. The Philosophy, permit us to add, which cannot definitely explain knowledge in its necessary primordial forms, that cannot explain the possibility of original individual conceptions, together with the method of their actual formation, and cannot show how all true classification is based upon the elimination of qualities common to individuals previously known, is a Philosophy which is a disgrace to the intelligence of the present century.

The Character of Spencer's System, Commonly Called the New Philosophy.

The character of Spencer's system, and with that the character of the New Philosophy, now admits of a ready explanation. This Philosophy begins with 'certain general conceptions,' which represent certain relations of likeness or unlikeness affirmed consciously to exist between realities unknown and unknowable to us, realities each of which is 'postulated as one thing.' From these notions still more general ones are eliminated, and so on until we obtain certain ultimate ideas, or conceptions, which include and unify all prior conceptions. In these ultimate conceptions, all that is real has dropped out of his facts, and all real meaning out of his words. All his moving, organizing, and unifying forces are pure abstractions of which neither himself, nor anybody else, as he himself affirms, has any definite conceptions. We speak deliberately, and mean what we say, when we affirm this, and will now proceed to verify these statements.

What are the exclusive causes postulated as real, to which he refers all phenomena, causes through the affirmed operations of which he professedly explains all conscious facts or effects? Let anyone turn to the table of contents in the 'Doctrine of the Knowable' in the First 'Principles of Philosophy,' and he will perceive that the only causes designated are Matter, Motion, and Force. Through these causes exclusively all facts of 'Evolution and Dissolution,' 'Multiplication of Effects,' and facts of 'Segregation,' and 'Equilibration,' all facts of nature, in short, are explained and elucidated. What are the necessary relations of the Intelligence to these causes, according to Spencer, and the fundamental teachings of the New Philosophy? Let us read over again Spencer's final deductions relatively to all these causes—deductions as stated by himself.

'Matter, then, in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time. Frame what suppositions we may, we find, on tracing out their implications, that they leave nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities.

'Thus neither when considered in connection with Space, nor when considered in connection with Matter, nor when considered in connection with Rest, do we find that Motion is truly cognizable. All efforts to understand its essential nature do but bring us to alternative impossibilities of thought.

'While, then, it is impossible to form any idea of Force in itself, it is equally impossible to comprehend either its mode of exercise, or its law of variation.'

Spencer has burdened himself with a task, the accomplishment of which is palpably beyond the capacities of any mind finite or infinite—the keeping of all causes within the circle of the absolutely unknowable—and yet, not only designating the exact nature and manner of such causes, but scientifically expounding to us the exact quo modo of the action of such causes in originating the phenomena or facts of the universe. Of course, in the endeavour to realize such a purpose, by such a method, all of substance must more and more drop out of the facts adduced, and all real meaning out of the words employed. Hence it is, that when our philosopher reaches what he regards as 'knowledge completely unified,' then his system appears, and appears truly, as the Unintelligible Philosophy of the Unknowable.

The Ultimate Datum of Philosophy according to Spencer.

'The proposition by which knowledge is unified,' says Spencer, 'must be one specifying the antithesis between the two ultimate classes of experiences, in which all others merge.' We are accordingly assured that Philosophy must find some ultimate classes of likenesses and unlikenesses, in which all other classes merge,' and while we must hold that 'all things known to us are manifestations of the unknowable,' careful analysis verifies the deduction, that 'all such manifestations are divisible into two classes. What is this division equivalent to? Obviously it corresponds to the division between object and subject. This profoundest of distinctions among manifestations of the Unknowable, we recognize by grouping them into Self and Not-self.' We have here, undeniably, the only true segregation and classification of all facts which constitute the basis of all philosophical induction and deduction. All such facts necessarily take rank as subjective or objective, and, consequently, as the direct and immediate manifestations of the Self, or of the Not-self. Two questions naturally and necessarily arise here, namely: the direction which philosophic thought and enquiry should take from this its fixed and determined point of departure; and the direction given to such thought and enquiry by Spencer. We will consider these questions in the order indicated.

The Fixed Direction which Philosophic Thought and Enquiry should now Take.

The Universal Intelligence has arranged all known facts under two allcomprehending divisions, subjective and objective, and has referred these facts to a Self and a Not-self, as their subjects. Science, as Philosophy, according to Spencer, and here he is undeniably right, has recognized this segregation and classification as valid, and has accepted it as the basis and starting point of philosophical thought and enquiry. Among the great problems which arise right here, and demand the most careful scrutiny of the philosopher, we designate the following:

1. A scientific scrutiny of the character of our knowledge of these two classes of manifestations. Is that knowledge, for example, consciously direct and immediate or consciously indirect and mediate, consciously presentative or consciously representative? Are we conscious of perceiving, or knowing, the subjects of these manifestations through intervening media, or of beholding the subjects themselves face to face? In other words, are we absolutely conscious of the Self as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, and of the Not-self as an exterior object having real extension and form? Are the essential qualities equally of the Self and Not-self consciously conceived as consciously perceived; or are we conscious of those qualities as the unknown causes of conscious states? Do not all the primary qualities of matter, for example, belong to the first, and all its secondary to the second, class of facts? Do not such undeniable facts verify the Self and the Not-self, as essentially distinct, consciously real, and consciously known entities, and is not science required to recognize them as such? Can we be more certain of the truth of any proposition than we are, and must be, of the Self and Not-self, as really existing and actually known entities? Is not science required, finally, not only to admit the validity of our knowledge of these realities, but to affirm that this knowledge can by no possibility be invalidated?

2. The next step required of Philosophy is a final segregation and classification of the sciences under the two divisions indicated, to wit, as Subjective and Objective—as Metaphysical and Physical. We say nothing now of the pure, or à priori sciences, these pertaining not to conscious facts, with which we are now concerned, but to forms of implied knowledge. The great enquiry here will be the number and exclusive sphere, the principles and facts of the two classes of the sciences under consideration. In this connection, it will be shown, that while the principles of all the sciences are really the same, the facts pertaining and giving being to each, are special, peculiar, and exclusive, and, hence, that the deductions of no one science can contravene or modify those of any other.

3. Having determined the existence and character of the Self and Notself, and having determined the number and fixed the metes and boundaries and objects of the varied sciences, the next proper question for scientific investigations and solution would be the mutual relations of the Self and Not-self, of Spirit and Matter, to one another. Then such questions as these would arise, viz., Is visible nature organized throughout in accordance with scientific ideas and principles pre-existing in the human Intelligence? What relations do the provisions and arrangements of nature sustain to the wants of mind? Are all things arranged as a correlated system of means and ends? How far do physical causes determine mental states? and how far is the order of events in external nature determined by mental acts and states? These, and all the above problems, must be solved before we can have 'knowledge, completely unified,' even as far as nature is concerned.

4. But scientific thought and enquiry do not stop here. When all the problems above referred to have been fully solved, and all mental and material facts have been segregated, classified, unified, and set in systematized order before the mind, then the great problem of Ultimate Causation lifts its divine form before us, and demands of Philosophy a final scientific solution. What that solution will be can be to no reflective mind a matter of doubt. At the reunion of German scientists in Innspreck, several years since, M. Mayer, one of the leading physicists of Germany, after affirming that the common deduction of all the sciences bearing upon the subject is the fact of the origin of the universe as an event of time, and its origin, consequently, through the agency of a personal God, gave utterance to this memorable truth, that 'an exact Philosophy should and can be nothing but an introduction to the Christian religion.' Philosophic thought, bewildered for a time by the glare of false science, is now, undeniably, on its return to its proper centre, God and the Christian religion, and will, ere long, be immutably and intensely Theistic and Christian.

The Direction given to Philosophic Thought by Spencer and the Advocates of the New Philosophy.

No intelligent and candid thinker will question the fact that we have, under the above topics, indicated the direction which philosophic thought must take, under the circumstances indicated, if it shall advance upon the track of truth. What course does Spencer actually take under these same circumstances? Having affirmed that 'the proposition by which knowledge is verified, must be one specifying the antithesis between two ultimate classes of experiences in which all others emerge,' and that these classes 'correspond to the division between subject and object,' and that we 'recognize, these distinctions among manifestations of the Unknowable by grouping them into Self and Not-self,' he immediately abandons the first member of his antithesis, and resolves all 'manifestations of the Unknowable' into one exclusive class—the Not-self, explaining all phenomena as the exclusive resultants of the action of Matter, Motion, and Force. In the realm of nature, Matter, with its properties of Motion and Force, lifts its Gorgon form, 'banishing from all regions of human thought spirit and spontaneity,' and, with its own physical, chemical, and mechanical laws, becoming itself co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.' In his system, the Self appears, not as the antithesis of, but as identified with, and lost in, the Not-self. Instead of 'perfectly unifying knowledge,' by giving the proposition promised, he, in fact and form, reduces all manifestations under the least important member of the promised antithesis. The Self has no place in his system but as an exclusive product of the Not-self. The infinite pains which he is at to banish Spirit from the realm of nature, and to set forth Matter, with its Motions, Forces, and Laws, as the sole reality, we shall see most clearly hereafter. Spencer, in short, takes not a single step upon the track which he has himself laid down as the exclusive track on which Philosophy must advance, if she would move in the direction of truth. A method in science more lawless and self-contradictory than that which he pursues, it is impossible to imagine. His system gives him nothing whatever but phenomena, objective and subjective, phenomena to be classified and generalized. Of the realities which originate phenomena, and which, to use his own words, 'exist behind all appearances,' he affirms an absolute and hopeless ignorance. With such realities, consequently, his own avowed principles permit him to have nothing to do. Yet in his system phenomena are neither classified nor generalized. Nor is there any arrangement of phenomena which presents even the appearance of 'knowledge completely verified;' much less has he reduced all phenomena under 'one proposition which specifies the antithesis between two ultimate classes of experiences in which all others emerge.' On the other hand, he has openly departed from phenomena, as far as their classification, generalization, and consequent verification are concerned, and has professedly explained all phenomena by means of entities previously affirmed to be entities, utterly unknowable and unknown, viz., Matter, with its principles of Motion, Force, and Law, assumed as knowable and known.

Spencer,'s Classification of all Manifestations as Faint and Vivid.

All our knowledge, according to Spencer, is, as we have seen, of phenomena or appearance, with this addition, that phenomena imply the existence behind all appearance of some unknown and unknowable reality. Phenomena, then, are defined by him as 'manifestations of the Unknowable'—manifestations which he separates into two classes—the subjective and objective, and represents by the terms subject and object, or the Self and the Not-self. As preparatory to an ultimate purpose which will be rendered quite manifest hereafter, our philosopher distinguishes manifestations as possessed of the characteristics of faint and vivid. Manifestations of the vivid order, he tells us, 'are originals, while those of the other order are copies.' We now invite very special attention to the following statements of Spencer in regard to subjective and objective manifestations—those represented by the term Self or Ego, on the one hand, and those represented by the term Not-self, or Non-ego, on the other. 'These faint manifestations,' he says, 'forming a continuous whole, differing from the other in the quantity, quality, cohesion, and conditions of existence of its parts, we call the Ego; and those vivid manifestations indissolubly bound together in relatively immense masses, and having independent conditions of existence, we call the Non-ego.' The Self, then, is a dependent derivative manifestation—a copy of the Non-ego which is the independent original. This prepares the way for subsequent deductions in which the Self, the Ego, is transmuted into the Not-self or Non-ego, and 'matter and law devour spirit and spontaneity,' and 'become coextensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action,' and all mental operations appear but as 'molecular changes in the matter of life.'

In the doctrine here presented, Spencer, as is common with him, not only in the most palpable form contradicts himself, but as obviously contradicts most palpable conscious facts. Of what fact or manifestation are all men, according to Spencer, most absolutely conscious, and therefore certain? Of their own personal existence, that is, of the Self or Ego. 'Personality,' he tells us, 'is a fact of which each is conscious,' and 'the existence of which is to each a fact beyond all others the most certain.' 'The existence of each individual as known to himself,' he says again, 'has been always held by mankind at large the most incontrovertible of truths. To say, 'I am as sure of it as I am sure that I exist,' is, in common speech, the most emphatic expression of certainty.' Have all mankind concurred in making their most faint, instead of their most vivid impressions, their least instead of their most certain manifestations, the standard and test of certitude? In classing all Ego-manifestations under the faint, and the Non-ego under the vivid manifestations, he has affirmed this. In the above citations he most positively asserted the opposite. What shall mankind do when Spencer thus disagrees with Spencer? In the language of Kant, we say, that 'reasonable people who have been so often deceived, will dismiss such thinkers without further enquiry.' In the above citations, also, Spencer has rightly stated the absolute dicta of the universal consciousness on this subject, and has thus not only arrayed himself against himself, but has set his own doctrine in open opposition to his own representation of the affirmations of that universal consciousness—a representation which fully accords with undeniable facts. If the vivid is to transmute into itself the faint representation, we have more grounds for the assumption that 'spirit and spontaneity' shall 'devour matter and law,' than that the latter shall devour the former. We have no grounds, however, for either assumption, and still less, if possible, for classing subjective impressions under faint, and objective ones under vivid manifestations.

Spencer's Definitions of Space, Time, Matter, Motion, Force, and other terms.

According to our philosopher, Space, Time, Matter, Motion, and Force, are realities unknown and unknowable to us—realities of which we can, by no possibility, form any apprehensions which are not self-contradictory and absurd. As all the terms representing these realities are to be hereafter employed by this same thinker, as representing objects specifically apprehended, it became necessary to define their meaning and use. To this end he devotes an entire chapter. Let us carefully scrutinize these definitions and expositions. 'That sceptical state of mind,' he says, 'which the criticisms of Philosophy usually produce is, in great measure, caused by the misinterpretation of words. A sense of universal illusion ordinarily follows the reading of metaphysics; and is strong in proportion as the argument appeared conclusive. This sense of universal illusion would probably never have arisen had the terms used been always rightly construed.' To remedy this evil is the express object of the definitions set forth in this chapter. Let us, then, follow our philosopher with great care in the direction here indicated.

Definitions of the terms 'Phenomenon' and 'Appearance.'

'The word "phenomenon" and its equivalent word "appearance," he says, 'are in great part to blame for this.' Of the specific reasons why this effect follows from the use of these words it is not needful to speak, our concern being with his definition of these terms. To prevent 'the misleading associations' connected with these terms, Spencer substitutes in their place the use of the term ''effect,"' that is, that when the term 'phenomenon' or 'appearance' is employed, that its meaning be identical, and be understood to be identical, with that 'represented by the term "effect."'

Here we have, not clearness, distinctness, and definiteness, but 'confusion worse confounded,' introduced in the use of terms. The term 'effect' represents a change of state in some object, and that irrespective of the knowledge which any being may have of that change. When that change is perceived by some Intelligence, the term 'phenomenon' represents both the object perceived and the act of perception itself. Effect, as phenomenon, is a real change in some object, a change perceived. The term 'phenomenon' or appearance, when employed in a strictly scientific sense, represents, not effects or substances as they are in themselves, when not known, but as perceived and apprehended by intelligent beings capable of knowing objects as they are. The phenomenon, and appearance, in this scientific use, we repeat, represent the known facts of nature, facts mental and physical. Scepticism affirms phenomena and appearances to be representative media intervening between intelligence and realities subjective and objective, and confines all knowledge to these media. According to the common and true use, phenomena are the real facts of nature perceived and apprehended by the mind. In no system, however, are the terms 'phenomenon' and 'appearance' employed as identical in meaning with the term 'effect,' nor does Spencer employ these terms in accordance with his own definition of them.

The terms 'Real' and 'Reality,' as Defined by Spencer.

'The peasant,' says Spencer, 'on contemplating an object, does not regard that which he contemplates as something in himself, but believes the thing of which he is conscious to be the external object—imagines that his consciousness extends to the very place where the object lies: to him the appearance and the reality are one and the same thing. The metaphysician, however, is convinced that consciousness cannot embrace the reality, but only the appearance of it; and so he transfers the appearance into consciousness, and leaves the reality outside. This reality left outside of consciousness, he continues to think of much in the same way as the ignorant man thinks of the appearance.'

Spencer has here stated a very important truth, provided he employs the term 'consciousness' in the sense of conscious perception. What the peasant and all mankind, philosophers included, are absolutely conscious of in external perception, is a direct and immediate beholding, face to face, not of some intermediate image of some exterior object, but of the object itself, and that conscious perception does extend to said object. Of such perception, not of an intermediate representation, but of the exterior object itself, the philosopher is as absolutely conscious as everybody else. Metaphysicians, however, as 'they begin to philosophize, put themselves into a state of not-knowing;' and having thus made fools of themselves, imagine, and then assume, the existence of an intervening veil between them and the object consciously perceived, a veil which totally hides the object from the perceiving subject, and locates the former in the sphere of the Unknowable. Having recovered his proper consciousness, however, he does and must think of the object just as the rest of mankind do, and that for the reason that the consciousness does and must give the lie to his metaphysical dream.

Our, present concern, however, is with Spencer's idea of the real, or with his idea of the real meaning represented by the term reality, the meaning for the statement of which what we have noticed above is preparatory. 'By reality we mean,' he says, 'persistence in consciousness,' a persistence that is either unconditional, as our consciousness of space, or that is conditional, as our consciousness of our body while grasping it. The real, as we conceive it, is distinguished by the test of persistence, for by this test we separate it from what we call the unreal.'

We have here, we remark in the first place, a term which all understand, and understand alike; we have such a term defined by words which very few, if any, understand, words the meaning of which Spencer, if he knows it, has failed to represent. What is the meaning of the words 'persistence in consciousness?' Do they mean uninterrupted consciousness? If so, nothing is real, because we are not uninterruptedly conscious of anything. If, by 'persistence in consciousness,' he means the repetition of the same state, when the same conditions are fulfilled, then past events of actual occurrence and of whose occurrence we were conscious, or cognizant, must be ranked among the unreal, because the consciousness we once had of them has passed away, and can never again be renewed. If, we remark again, by the words 'persistence in consciousness,' our author means any conscious state whatever, then we must regard all objects but the states referred to as unreal. Suppose we ask the question whether there is any such reality as 'persistence in consciousness,' or whether such states really do, or do not, exist or occur? Such a question reveals at once the absurdity of the definition under consideration, because it reveals at once the fact that 'persistence in consciousness' can be not 'the sum of all reality,' but one among many other real facts. If, we remark finally, by the words 'persistence in consciousness' Spencer means to designate a class of apprehensions and convictions which exist in all minds, and exist without change or modification, and that persistence in this form is a test of truth, he has presented us with a very important principle in science, but has adopted a very awkward method of expressing that principle. In all minds, for example, there do, in fact, exist distinct apprehensions of space, time, spirit, and matter, with absolute convictions of the real existence of the objects of these apprehensions. In all minds, also, these apprehensions, in all their essential characteristics, remain immutably identical, and can be no more changed or modified than can our ideas of a circle or a square. The same holds equally true of our convictions of the absolute validity of said apprehensions relative to the reality and character of their objects. In all minds these convictions not only exist, but are characterized by the same conscious certitude, a certitude which 'remains proof,' as Coleridge truly affirms, and all philosophers admit, 'against all grounds and arguments' adduced for its subversion. Apprehensions and convictions thus universal and thus immutable and irrevocable, must be admitted to be, as Cicero truly observes, 'laws of nature.' To affirm that such apprehensions and convictions do not have absolute validity for the reality and character of their objects is equivalent to the affirmation that the laws of nature are a lie. If Spencer, we repeat, adduces such 'persistence in consciousness' as a test of absolutely, instead of relatively, valid knowledge, he has indeed given us an important test of truth. This fact, however, is undeniable, namely, we cannot deny the absolute validity, in all essential particulars, of the apprehensions and convictions common to all minds in respect to spirit, matter, time, and space, without impeaching the validity of the laws of nature. We hardly think, however, that this is the meaning which Spencer attaches to the words 'persistence in consciousness.'

When he says, 'By reality we mean persistence in consciousness,' we know that an error is expressed in words, whatever their intended meaning may be. Reality represents actual, in opposition to mere imagined, existence. In its application to matter and spirit, the term is applied equally to them as substances, in which respects they never change, and in reference to their states, which are constantly changing. That which actually exists is real. So is a particular state of any existing thing, though said state existed but for a moment. Real knowledge of such existences, and of their modes of being, implies apprehensions and convictions necessarily induced in all minds who know the facts; and which remain in such minds without the possibility of change or reversal, as is the case with our knowledge of matter, spirit, time, and space.

Spencer's Definition of Space and Time.

In the elucidation of the doctrine of the Unknowable, 'Space and Time,' we are told, 'are wholly incomprehensible. The immediate knowledge which we seem to have of them, proves, when examined, to be total ignorance.' It would seem that no philosopher, when in his right mind, would attempt to define that of which he affirms himself totally ignorant. Such considerations, however, are, with our philosopher, no estoppel whatever. The Unknowable is with him as specifically definable as is the Knowable. 'The abstract of all sequences,' he affirms, 'is Time. The abstract of all co-existences is Space.' By the term 'abstract' here, he means, as he himself affirms, 'that which is left behind when the realities are absent.' Have we any apprehension of what is thus left? If we have not, then our philosopher has used words without meaning. If we have such apprehension, and we consciously have, then our apprehension of space is real knowledge, which it undeniably is, and not 'total ignorance,' as Spencer affirms it to be. 'Our conception of space,' says Spencer, 'is produced by some mode of the Unknowable.' The opposite of this is consciously true. We apprehend space, not as an unknown something, 'the conception of which is produced by some mode of the Unknowable,' but as an absolutely known reality, the existence of which is necessarily implied by body, which we consciously know to be real. Body implies Space, and Succession implies Time. We know and cannot but know body and succession to be real, and consequently know that Space and Time must exist, and must exist as the realities which we apprehend them to be. To speak of these necessary forms of being as 'relative realities,' realities real to us, but which may or may not be real existences in themselves, is to affirm the universal consciousness in its most absolute deliverance to be a blank lie. Spencer's attempt to define specifically objects of which he affirms, and professedly demonstrates, our necessary 'total ignorance,' is, outside the sphere of the New Philosophy, an anomaly in science. How we can be said to have even a relative knowledge of any object of which our ignorance is total, is more than we can understand.

Spencer's Definition of Matter.

When we were with our philosopher in the sphere of the Unknowable, we were assured that 'Frame what suppositions (of Matter) we may, we find on tracing out their implications that they leave us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities.' Passing over with this same philosopher into the sphere of the Knowable, we find this same matter a clearly known and a specifically definable thing. 'We think of Body,' he says, 'as bounded by surfaces which resist, and as made up throughout of parts that resist. Mentally abstract the co-existent resistences, and then the consciousness of Body disappears; leaving behind it the consciousness of space.' Here Spencer has framed for us apprehensions both of matter and space, apprehensions quite intelligible, and utterly void of all 'opposite absurdities.' Matter, as we perceive and apprehend it, is a compound existing in and occupying space, a compound constituted of simple parts. Such is the conception which our philosopher has framed for us of matter, a conception utterly void of even seeming contradictory elements. The doctrine of our philosopher is that the real knowledge which all mankind believe themselves to have of matter is self-contradictory and absurd; but that if we assume this same affirmed knowledge to have only a relative validity, then all seeming contradiction disappears. We must bear in mind here, that the apprehensions which are supposed by mankind to have a real, and by philosophers of a certain school to have only a relative, validity, are, in fact and form, identical. If, in either relation, they are self-contradictory and absurd, they must be in the other. Without palpable self-contradiction, therefore, Spencer cannot hold our conceptions of this substance to have either a real or relative validity, and in the one case any more than in the other. Spencer, therefore, has fundamentally erred in respect to his entire doctrine of matter, or he is, by logical integrity, absolutely bound to leave this substance totally outside the sphere of science, both in its absolute and relative forms,

Spencer's Definition of Motion.

Motion was affirmed by our philosopher, when we were with him in 'the palpable obscure' of the Unknowable, to be, in every conceivable relation, absolutely uncognizable, 'all efforts to understand its essential nature only bringing us to alternative impossibilities of thought.' As we stand with this same philosopher, however, under the sunlight of the Knowable, we find this same fact, like matter, to be an object of which we can most easily conceive, and which we can as readily define. 'The conception of Motion,' he says, 'as presented or represented in the developed consciousness, involves the conception of Space, of Time, and of Matter. A something that moves—a group of co-existent positions occupied in succession, and a group of co-existent positions united in thought with the successive ones—these are the constituents of the idea.' What is there here that is incognizable, self-contradictory, or absurd? Nothing whatever, for the reason that we are now considering Motion as a fact of which we have only a relative knowledge. The same apprehension, however, when it pertains to its object as a fact really known, becomes absolutely self-contradictory and absurd. The same identical object may, in the sphere of the New Philosophy, possess throughout absolutely incompatible, and absolutely compatible, characteristics. It may be absolutely self-contradictory, and self-compatible, remaining all the while absolutely the same thing. If employed in the sphere of real knowledge, the fact of Motion is inconceivable, and every conception we can form of it is self-contradictory and absurd. The same fact and the same apprehension of it, when employed in the sphere of relative knowledge, are validly employed. If Spencer's argument in paragraph 16 is valid, then the doctrine of Motion has no place in science either in its real or relative forms. That which is absolutely unknowable must for ever remain undefinable, and outside the sphere of science in all of its forms alike.

Spencer's Definition of Force.

Force, like God, space, time, matter, motion, consciousness, and the soul, were professedly demonstrated, in the sphere of the Unknowable, to lie wholly and in all respects outside of the sphere of human knowledge. 'While there,' we were told, 'it is impossible to form any idea of Force in itself; it is equally impossible to comprehend either its mode of exercise or its law of variation.' Now, as we advance into the light of the Knowable, this same Force reappears 'as the ultimate of uitimates.' 'Matter and Motion,' he says—a definition of these objects of which we never heard before—'are concretes built up from the contents of various mental relations; while Space and Time are abstracts of the forms of these various relations. Deeper down than these, however, are the primordial experiences, which, as occurring in consciousness in different combinations, supply at once the materials whence the forms of relations are generalized, and the related objects built up.' At first, matter and motion, with time and space, are presented to us as realities unknown and unknowable, realities of which we can form no ideas or conceptions, but those which 'leave us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities.' Then we have formal definitions of these same realities, definitions which present them as clearly apprehensible objects of implied knowledge. Now, matter and motion are defined as 'concretes built up from the contents of various mental relations.' We have before heard of relations between realities, such as likeness and unlikeness, equality and difference. We have heard, too, of 'mental relations,' as the relations of cause and effect, antecedence and consequence, between diverse mental states, as between thought and emotion, for example. But of 'concretes built up from the contents of these mental relations' we never heard before. Nor are we at all able to conceive how matter and motion can be concretes constituted of elements extracted from mental relations. Nor are we able to conceive how space and time can be 'abstracts of the forms of these relations.' But when we are required to go 'deeper down' into this 'palpable obscure,' and form apprehensions there of 'the primordial experiences of force, which, as occurring in consciousness in different combinations, supply at once the materials whence the forms of relations are generalized, and the related objects built up,' 'we find ourselves in the antithesis in which the individual is when he makes a bull,' and we sincerely advise our philosopher to refer his doctrine of space, time, matter motion, and force, back again to the sphere of the Unknowable, and to leave these objects there, until God shall say, 'Let there be light' in the realm of the New Philosophy. We were still more deeply impressed with the propriety of this advice, when we read the following definition of consciousness, viz., 'Consciousness consists of changes.' Wherever changes occur, then, whether in the sphere of the Unknowable, or of the Knowable, there is consciousness. We had always supposed before, that consciousness is one of the faculties which cognizes changes. We here learn that the faculty which cognizes changes and the changes themselves are identical. Will it be long before the whole world will accept as true the ancient poet's definition of the Genus Philosophers—to wit, 'a race mad with logic, and feeding the mind on chimeras'?

spencer's perfected idea of the mission of philosophy.

Having completed his definitions of Phenomena, Reality, Space, Time, Matter, Motion, and Force, our philosopher presents us with his completed idea of the mission of Philosophy, and of the end which, as the philosopher of the New Philosophy, he proposes to accomplish. Lest we should be supposed to do injustice to his statement of this mission, we give the preceding paragraph. 'A single impression of Force,' he says, 'is manifestly receivable by a sentient being devoid of mental forms;' grant but sensibility, with no established power of thought, and a force producing some nervous change will still be presentable at the supposed seat of sensation. Though no single impression of force so received could itself produce consciousness (which implies relations between different states), yet a multiplication of such impressions, differing in kind and degree, would give the materials for the establishment of relations, that is, of thought. And if such relations differed in their forms as well as in their contents, the impression of such forms would be organized simultaneously with the impressions they contained. Thus all other modes of consciousness are derivable from experiences of Force; but experiences of Force are not derivable from anything else. Indeed, it needs but to remember that consciousness consists of changes, to see that the ultimate datum of consciousness (changes) must be that of which change (consciousness) is the manifestation; and that thus the force by which we ourselves produce changes (consciousness), and which serves to symbolize the cause of changes (consciousness) in general, is the final disclosure of analysis.' Whether the reader has, or has not, understood the above paragraph, he is now prepared to understand and appreciate the following final statement of the

Mission of Philosophy.

'It is a truism to say,' says Spencer, 'that the nature of this indecomposable element of our knowledge is inscrutable. If, to use an algebraic illustration, we represent Matter, Motion, and Force, by the symbols x, y, z; then we may ascertain the values of x and y in the terms of z, but the value of z can never be found; z is the unknown quantity which must for ever remain unknown, for the obvious reason that there is nothing in which its value can be expressed. It is within the possible reach of our intelligence to go on simplifying the equations of all phenomena, until the complex symbols which formulate them are reduced to certain functions of this ultimate symbol; but when we have done this we have reached that limit which eternally divides science from nescience.'

Spencer first defined Philosophy as 'knowledge of the highest degree of generality.' He afterwards gives this as the more perfected definition, namely, 'Philosophy is completely unified knowledge.' In the above paragraph we have the final statement, which may be expressed thus—Philosophy consists in ascertaining the values of unknown quantities, 'x and y,' 'in the terms of z, whose value can never be found.' When we were President of Adrian College, we received from an individual whom we had never seen, and of whom we had never before heard, a letter recommending two young men as candidates for admission to the College. He then added, 'There are also in this vicinity two lads who are talking about going to the same Institution. Each of these lads is about my size.' Here were two unknown quantities, 'x and y,' expressed in the formula 'about my size,' or the quantity z, of the value of which I was ignorant. Yet my ignorance of z was not absolute. I had good reason to conclude, leaving 'boditorial corporosity' out of the account, and retaining only the conception of height, that the symbol 'about my size' represented a quantity lying somewhere between four and seven feet. Ascertaining the value of x and y, the height of the two lads, through z, representing a height somewhere between four and seven feet, would evidently be knowledge somewhat confused. Had the letter stated the matter in this form, these lads, x and y, are about the size of a z, the size of which 'can never be found,' then we should, undeniably, have Spencer's idea of Philosophy, quo ad hoc, perfectly realized. Then 'we should have reached the limit which eternally divides science from nescience.' Then we should have had Philosophy itself, that is, 'knowledge of the highest degree of generality,' or, more perfectly expressed, 'completely-unified knowledge.' In other words, we have two quantities represented by the terms matter and motion, quantities of the value of which our ignorance is absolute. We have another unknown quantity represented by the term force, a quantity, 'the value of which can never be found.' When the values of the two unknown quantities first designated shall have been expressed 'in the terms' of the unascertainable quantity last designated, then, according to Spencer and the New Philosophy, Philosophy has completed her mission, and located us at 'that limit which eternally divides science from nescience.' One thing Spencer may be most reasonably required to do in this connexion—to explain the real difference between science and nescience, or the real meaning of the two terms. If 'completely unified knowledge' consists in presenting x, of which you know nothing, as equal to z, 'the value of which can never be found,' wherein does 'completely systematized knowledge,' or Philosophy, differ from 'completely systematized nescience?'

Let us suppose that after I had received the letter above referred to, Spencer, Tyndall, and Huxley had called at my study, and found me profoundly pondering the problem presented in said letter, and avowing the full conviction that letting x and y represent the young lads, and z the writer of the letter, I could determine the sizes of x and y in the terms of z, whose size I could by no possibility determine. Would not those great thinkers have left that study with the undoubted persuasion that the President of Adrian College was, quo ad hoc, to say the least, out of his head? Now, when a world-expounder affirms absolutely that he can determine the value of two unknown quantities in the terms of a third quantity 'whose value can never be found,' do we slander or misrepresent him at all when we affirm that he is the advocate and expounder of a crazy Philosophy?

The Mission of Philosophy as Required by Spencer's Avowed Principles and Facts, and as finally Avowed by Himself.

Spencer, as we have before seen, has given us, in two not incompatible forms, specific definitions of Philosophy, namely, 'knowledge of the highest degree of generality,' and 'completely unified knowledge.' He has also given us the exclusive objects of knowledge, phenomena, or appearances, with the affirmation that all realities of every kind are located in the sphere of the utterly Unknowable and Unknown. Phenomena imply the existence of realities, but do not reveal them or bring us into such relations to them that we can form any apprehensions of them—apprehensions which are not self-contradictory and absurd. Granting that such is Philosophy, and such its exclusive facts, what must be its exclusive mission? This, and only this, we answer—to classify and generalize, and thus systematize phenomena as such, with no outlook whatever beyond the phenomenal, with no conjectures even in regard 'to the reality which exists behind all appearances.' If Philosophy shall dogmatize, guess, or assume anything whatever in regard to the affirmed Unknowable or Real, she has transcended her sphere—the sphere which she has specifically marked out for herself according to Spencer and the New Philosophy. Phenomena and the Knowable, according to him and his system, are identical. To find wherein phenomena agree and disagree, and what elements are common to them all, and thus to unify them under such elements, this is the extent, limits, and exclusive mission of Philosophy as he has defined the subject.

What are Matter, Motion, and Force as he has defined them? They are realities if they exist at all—realities lying wholly in the sphere of the Unknowable—realities suggested by phenomena as possible existences, but so suggested that we can form none but absurd and self- contradictory conceptions of them. What is the mission of Philosophy as finally stated by Spencer himself? It is to find the value of two totally unknown quantities, Matter and Motion, in the terms of another unknown quantity, Force, 'whose value can never be found.' To be self-consistent, and avoid the most palpable forms of the self- contradictory, are no articles of Spencer's Philosophic creed.

The Moral Integrity of Scepticism.

We will suppose that we have a knowledge of the size of a certain individual, z, and have no knowledge direct or indirect of the size of two lads, x and y. I affirm upon my honour, to individuals concerned to know the truth, that x and y are about the size of z, or that I honestly believe that such is the state of facts. Can I be saved, on making such declarations, from the just charge of falsehood? I make the same affirmations, on oath, in a court of justice. Should I not, on the facts becoming known, be indictable for perjury? The reason is obvious. I have affirmed the relation of likeness, or equality, to exist between quantities the value of which I do not, and a quantity the value of which I do, know. It would be no excuse were I to affirm that I had merely expressed the value of the unknown in terms of the known.

The case, certainly, would be no better were I to make the same declarations in utter ignorance of the real and relative size of all the parties in common. The reason would be, that I have affirmed specific relations to exist between quantities, of the value of all of which I am totally uninformed. The law of integrity, in all cases, confines our affirmations to the relations of known values.

Place now in the light of the above principles, whose absolute validity none will question, the following positive utterance of Professor Huxley. 'The thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life, which is the source of our other vital phenomena.' The doctrine undeniably intended to be asserted is this: Thought, in all its forms, 'is the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life.' What, he being the judge, does he know, and of what is he ignorant in this case? Thought is a phenomenon, or fact, which he does know, and professes to know. 'Fact I know,' he says. Of molecules which lie beyond the limits of the microscope he affirms himself absolutely ignorant. 'We know nothing about the composition of (the molecules which constitute) any body whatever.' If he is absolutely ignorant, as he affirms he is, of molecules, he must, of course, be equally ignorant of the expression of their changes. Here, then, he has absolutely affirmed an identity between what he affirms to be an utterly unknown and a perfectly known quantity. What grounds has he for such dogmatic utterances in such a palpable case? Such an utterance made under oath in a court of justice, where a single shilling pended upon his testimony, would be an indictable offence. What must be the moral obliquity involved in such an utterance when its validity, as the author himself affirms, and entreats us to admit, locates our religious problems within the sphere of 'Lunar Politics'?

Take, as another example of the same class of utterances, the following declaration of Professor Maudsley: 'I hold emotion to mean,' he says, 'the special sensibility of the vascular neurine to ideas.' Consciousness reveals emotion, and our professor, as he will admit, knows what emotion is. Neither the microscope, nor scalpel, nor chemical analysis, reveal the elementary constituents of 'the vascular neurine,' much less any susceptibilities to ideas residing in it. As far as susceptibilities to ideas is concerned, this 'vascular neurine' must be to our professor an absolutely unknown quantity. So he regards the matter; for he avows the same utter ignorance of the constituent elements of all material forms and organs that Professor Huxley does. Professor Maudsley, then, professedly holds, that is, believes, that the relation of absolute identity exists between susceptibilities that he cannot know to exist at all, much less their nature, and a mental state, emotion, of which his knowledge is perfect. Now, our professor does not, and cannot, hold any such belief. Real belief is absolutely impossible in the total absence of all conceivable grounds. On one side of the scale lies a perfectly known quantity—emotion. On the other lies a quantity equally unknown, as far as emotive susceptibilities are concerned—a mass of 'vascular neurine.' A scientist, 'mad with logic,' may assume an identity between the absolutely known and unknown here. He can by no possibility believe such an identity real, and moral integrity prohibits the affirmation of such a belief.

The case of Spencer is, if possible, still worse. He professes to have ascertained the real value of two unknown quantities, matter and motion, in the terms of another quantity, 'whose value,' as he affirms, 'can never be found.' In other words, he professes to have ascertained the actual relations which exist between quantities, of the real value of all of which, as he affirms, his ignorance is absolute. Presumption and logical obliquity here reach their 'ultimate of ultimates.'

The Real Scientific Value of such Deductions.

We have before us two classes of propositions. In one class, a specific relation of resemblance or difference, antecedence and consequence, or cause and effect, for example, is affirmed to exist between two objects, one of which we know, and of the other our ignorance is absolute. In the other class, the value of one or more unknown quantities is professedly expressed in the terms of another quantity 'whose value cannot be found.' Of what value are such deductions in science? Of none whatever. We have here the specific character of all anti-Theistic deductions, those especially which fall within the sphere of the New Philosophy. In cases where a specific relation can be affirmed but upon the exclusive condition that the value of both members of the equation is absolutely known, such relation is affirmed to exist between objects the value of one of which is fully known, and that of the other as absolutely unknown, or when absolute ignorance is admitted to exist in respect to the value of both members. We may take up in succession every deduction of a Materialistic and anti-Theistic character to be found, for example, in Huxley's address on the 'Physical Basis of Life,' or in Professor Maudsley on 'The Body and the Mind,' and demonstrate that deduction to be of the same identical character with that of the first class above presented. All of Spencer's deductions falling under the doctrine of the Knowable, as he himself affirms, have no other merit or force than this—a representation of the value of utterly unknown quantities, by means of the terms of a quantity 'whose value can never be found.' It is in the exclusive employment of just such reasoning as the above that the attempt is being made to subvert the faith of mankind in God, the soul, fundamental morals, and religion. The time is not distant when no thinker can reason thus without consciously subjecting himself to the just charge of a deliberate attempt, and that in relation to the most important of all subjects, to deceive the whole human race. Such reasonings are a gross insult to our intelligence. They are, in a special sense, inexcusable in Spencer, after he has distinctly informed us, 'that the universal illusion which follows the reading of metaphysics would probably never have arisen, had the terms used been always rightly construed.' Having thus laid it down as the sacred duty of the philosopher to employ none but specifically defined and well understood terms, he then employs, in the most important departments of science, none but terms which represent unknown and undefinable quantities, and so employs said terms that the reader will, almost of necessity, attach a specific meaning to each of them, while, in the mind of the writer, they represent no known or definable meaning whatever. These remarks have a special application to his employment of the terms, matter, motion, and force, in all his multitudinous works, works in which he professedly solves the problem of universal Being and its laws. Let the reader bear distinctly in mind this important fact, that when you meet in any of these works with any of these terms, said term does not at all represent the meaning which you and all the world attach to it. That term, on the other hand, represents a reality of which, if it exists at all, Spencer has, and professes to have, no knowledge whatever. Suppose, that whenever in Spencer's works you meet with the terms under consideration, you pronounce the letter x whenever you meet the word matter, and for motion read y, and for force read z, and do this with the distinct understanding that each of these letters with the word for which the former is substituted, represents a quantity whose 'value can never be found,' and Spencer's philosophic treatises would have all the meaning and value in science that they now possess. Take the sentence from Huxley in which he affirms 'thought to be the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life,' and bear in mind that the first member of the equation—thought —represents a fact of which, as Huxley admits, we have a perfect knowledge; and the second, 'molecular changes in the matter of life,' represents a something of which Huxley affirms positively that he 'knows nothing whatever.' Substitute for this unknown member of the equation some unmeaning cabalistic word, as abracadabra, and read the sentence thus: 'The thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them' (that is, thought in all its forms), 'are the expression of abracadabra.' The sentence, as it now stands, would have just as much, and just the same, real meaning, even in the mind of Huxley, as it does when, instead of this cabalistic term, we read 'molecular changes in the matter of life.' The same holds true in all cases in which the relation of identity is affirmed between mental phenomena, which we know, and 'molecular changes,' 'vascular neurine,' and other material forms, the value of which, according to these scientists themselves, 'cannot be found.' We have no objection to the use, to any extent, of such equations, provided their utter valuelessness in science is distinctly understood and admitted. But when these meaningless equations are so worded as to seem to have infinite meaning, when nothing is, in fact, expressed, and when, by such sophistry, there is induced in multitudes of minds an utter subversion of world-knowledge, moral distinctions, and fundamental religious convictions, and with these all their immortal hopes and fruitions, then regard for truth, and for man, demands that the sophistry be exposed.

Spencer's Doctrine of the Indestructibility of Matter.

Chapter IV. of Part II., the object of which, as we have stated, is an elucidation of the doctrine of the Knowable, is wholly occupied with an attempted demonstration of the doctrine of the Indestructibility of Matter. This he does, Spencer tells us, 'partly because the symmetry of our argument demands the enunciation of this truth, and partly because the evidence on which it is accepted requires examination.' As we have here the foundation and starting point of his entire doctrine of Evolution and other kindred and dependent doctrines, we must submit his argument on this subject to the most rigid examination.

The Meaning of the tern 'Matter' in this Chapter.

The first question which arises, in this connection, is the specific meaning of the term 'matter,' as this term is employed in this chapter, and consequently in those that follow. Does he employ the term in accordance with its accepted usage? In other words, does this term, as here employed, represent the conception of this substance, just as it exists in the Universal Intelligence, and as defined in all our standard lexicons? If he does, then, according to his professed demonstration in Paragraph 16, Part I., we have nothing whatever to reason about. Of the object of that conception (matter as universally apprehended), he says, 'Frame what suppositions' (of it) 'we please, we find on tracing out their implications that they leave us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities.' No object corresponding to such a conception can exist; and this is the fixed character of our conception of matter according to Spencer's professed demonstration. Surely our philosopher will not permit us to suppose that in the chapter before us he is employed in the absurd attempt to prove that the object of a conception palpably self-contradictory and absurd has existed during the eternity past, and must exist during the eternity to come?

If Spencer does not here employ the term 'matter' in strict accordance with its accepted meaning, then his entire reasoning in this chapter is meaningless and absurd. All his illustrations, examples, and deductions, pertain to matter as generally understood. All his examples pertain to this substance as perceived through the senses, and analyzed by the chemist, physicist, and physiologist. 'The chemist, the physicist, and physiologist,' he says, 'not only one and all take' (the indestructibility of matter) 'for granted, but would severally profess themselves unable to realize any supposition to the contrary.' Again he says, 'Though it is possible to imagine a piece of matter to be compressed without limit, yet however small the bulk to which we conceive it reduced, it is impossible to conceive it reduced to nothing.' Such examples render it demonstrably evident that Spencer does, in this chapter, employ the term 'matter' in strict accordance with its accepted usage. Undeniably, therefore, he appears before us as employed in the sublime endeavour to demonstrate the eternal existence of an object, the conception of which is admitted and affirmed by himself to be self-contradictory and absurd.

Let us now contemplate the only specific definition which Spencer has given us of the term 'matter,' and see how the case stands in the light of this definition. 'Matter and motion,' he tells us, 'are concretes built up from the contents of various mental relations.' Contemplate the various relations existing between the phenomena of thought, feeling, and willing, the only mental relations represented in human thought. Extract from these relations certain elements. Finally combine these elements, as contents, into certain concretes. We thus obtain the realities which Spencer represents by the term 'matter' on the one hand, and 'motion' on the other. Unless these mental facts are from eternity to eternity, and Spencer will not pretend this, their relations cannot be eternal. The same must be true of concretes framed from contents extracted from these relations or existing in them. It is undeniable that the argument in the chapter before us cannot pertain to matter as above defined. If this is the meaning of the term as here employed, in what an infinitely important occupation has our philosopher employed himself—the attempt to demonstrate the fact that 'a concrete built up from the contents of various mental relations,' a concrete which can have but a temporary being, if it can exist at all, must have an eternal existence. What bearing can the existence of such a concrete, granting it real and eternal, have upon the problem of universal being and its laws? How Spencer can be relieved from the charge of making a palpable bull in science, we are unable to conceive.

spenoer's argument relative to the eternity of matter and that of god.

In his argument, Paragraph 11, relative to the doctrine of the self-existence of God, Spencer, by the following argument, professedly reduces that doctrine under the category of the absurd. 'The assertion of self-existence,' he says, and truly so, 'is simply an indirect denial of creation,' and 'to form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort,' he adds, 'can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past-time, implies the conception of infinite past-time, which is an impossibility.' It is upon the validity of this argument that he represents the doctrine of the self-existence of God as absurd, and hence, that the object of the idea of God must lie within the sphere of the Unknowable. When our philosopher approaches the subject of Matter in the chapter before us, however, he finds no difficulty whatever in conceiving of the self-existence of this substance, and in demonstrating the validity of that conception. 'The annihilation of matter,' he says, 'is unthinkable for the same reason that the creation of matter is unthinkable; and its indestructibility thus becomes an à priori cognition of the highest order,' Thus the same identical argument has absolute validity in disproof of the self-existence of God, and in proof of the self-existence of matter. Thus also Spencer in Part I., when treating of the doctrine of the Unknowable, absolutely contradicts Spencer in Part II., when treating of the doctrine of the Knowable. If he is right in either case, he must be fundamentally wrong in the other, unless two absolutely contradictory propositions can each be absolutely true. The above statement applies, in all its force, to the entire arguments pursued in the two departments of our philosopher's 'First Principles of Philosophy.' If his doctrine of the Unknowable is, as a whole, true, his doctrine of the Knowable must be, throughout, fundamental error, absolute opposites being therein affirmed. What is affirmed to be absolutely inconceivable and unknowable in one case, is positively affirmed to be absolutely conceivable and knowable in the other.

Spencer's Real Estimate of the Value of the Doctrine of the Indestructibility of Matter.

In speaking of the doctrine of the Self-existence of God, Spencer says 'that even were self-existence conceivable, it would not in any sense be an explanation of the universe.' An establishment of the doctrine of the self-existence of matter, on the other hand, is by him deemed essential to 'the symmetry of his argument' in respect to the same subject. Now if we grant the validity of this latter doctrine, not a ray of light is thereby thrown upon the origin of the universe. The grand problem on this subject is, not the existence of matter as a substance, but the organization of the universe as an event of time. The idea of the eternal existence of matter as substance is absolutely incompatible with that of the organization of the universe by Natural Law, and this as an event of time. It lies utterly beyond the reach and possibility of human thought to reconcile these two ideas. Chaos and Order are two Ultimates of an absolutely opposite and incompatible character. There is, and can be, no adaptation in one of these to transmute itself into the other. Under Natural Law acting upon the same substances, Chaos or Order must be as eternal as are the law and the substances acting and acted upon. There is no escaping this deduction. There is just this difference between the bearing of the doctrine of the Self-existence of God, and that of matter, upon the now universally admitted fact of the organization of the universe as an event of time. The idea of the eternal existence of a free, self-conscious, personal God, renders perfectly conceivable and explicable the eternal existence of all existing substances, and their organization into the existing universe as an event of time; while the self-existence of matter, eternally acted upon by Natural Law, renders the same facts utterly inconceivable and inexplicable.

The Validity of Spencer's Philosophy Tested in the Light of His own Criterion of such Validity.

Nothing is easier than to convict Spencer of fundamental error by means of his own avowed criteria of truth. Take, in illustration, one such criterion, the validity of which will not be questioned. 'There can be no relation established,' he says, 'and therefore no thought framed, where one of the related terms is absent from consciousness.' Of two terms of a given equation, one, we will suppose, represents a known, and the other an unknown quantity. The latter term is, in the consciousness, no quantity at all. How can a relation be established in such a case? Suppose that both terms represent unknown quantities. Then both terms are alike absent from the consciousness. How can any specific relation be established or affirmed in such a case? Now the whole mission of Philosophy, as stated in fact and form by Spencer himself, consists exclusively in ascertaining the value of two unknown quantities, matter and motion, in the terms of Force, 'whose value can never be found,' that is, in 'establishing the relations between terms,' all of which 'are absent from consciousness,' as the unknown must be.

'Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophy.'

spencer's doctrine of motion.

Most of the remarks made in regard to Spencer's doctrine of the Indestructibility of matter, have an application equally direct to his doctrine of motion. If, in the chapter devoted to the elucidation of this subject, he employs the term motion in accordance with its accepted meaning, then, according to his professed demonstration in Paragraph 17, he is speaking of that which cannot exist at all, or of which his ignorance is absolute. 'Neither when considered in connection with space, nor when considered in connection with matter, nor when considered in connection with rest,' he tells us, 'do we find that Motion is truly cognizable. All efforts to understand its essential nature do but bring us to alternative impossibilities of thought.' If Spencer's argument on this subject is valid, there can be no fact corresponding to the conception represented by the term motion. No object corresponding to a self-contradictory and absurd conception can exist. What need is there that he should demonstrate to us the indestructibility of that which does not exist at all, or of which, if it does exist, our ignorance is absolute?

If, on the other hand, he does not employ the term in accordance with its ordinary acceptation, then the term, as employed by him, has no conceivable nor determinable meaning at all, and neither Spencer nor any one else can tell us whether the term represents any really existing object or not. To think of an object of which we do, and can, know nothing, as either destructible or indestructible, is, in the language of our philosopher himself, to 'establish a relation between two terms, when one is absent from the consciousness, which is impossible.'

We will now grant, for the sake of the argument, that the term motion, as now employed by Spencer, is employed in its ordinary sense, and represents a really existing fact. His doctrine, that motion can neither have a beginning nor an ending, is neither capable of being proved inductively, nor as 'a necessity of thought,' much less in both forms, what he affirms to be true. Motion, as he has defined it, is not a substance, but a state of a substance. A substance may, in itself, be indestructible, while its states may be mutable and temporary. Let us conceive of two bodies, each possessed of the same momentum as the other, to meet from opposite directions in Space. The result cannot but be an utter cessation of motion on the part of each, that is, an utter termination of all motion, as far as these bodies are concerned. This single example renders demonstrably evident the conceivability of the annihilation of motion. For aught that Spencer, or any other human being does, or can, know to the contrary, there may be causes in actual operation in nature, causes which will ultimately terminate all existing motion. Nor are there any facts with which we are more familar than we are with those of the beginning and termination of motion. How constantly, for example, are endlessly diversified forms of motion begun and ended by acts of will? Nor does Spencer, nor the New Philosophers, know but that all motion in the universe was originated by the volition of God, and will cease at His bidding, until 'the New Heavens, and the New Earth,' shall be set in motion by the same all-originating Power. Scientific modesty will prevent all prudent philosophers from dogmatizing on themes so far above them as these.

Spencer's Doctrine of Force.

Doctrine Stated.

Matter; motion, and force, according to Spencer, constitute and explain the Universe, Matter and Motion being unknown quantities whose value is to be ascertained by means of the terms of force, 'whose value can never be found.' It is through successive equations in which the values of the two former unknowable somethings are to be expressed in the terms of the latter unknown and unknowable quantity that the Universe is to be explained, and we are thereby to be placed on 'the limit which eternally divides Science from Nescience.' Matter, unless we wholly misunderstand our philosopher, constitutes the material out of which the Universe is constituted; Motion is the eternal state of Matter; while Force, as 'the ultimate of ultimates,' is, as an inhering property of Matter, the final determining cause which gave the direction to the existing motion of the material molecules, the direction by which the primal nebula, or 'fiery flame,' became the Universe that now is, We must bear in mind here, that what we do know, and all we know, according to the fundamental teachings of the New Philosophy, is phenomena, appearances, manifestations, or impressions of which we are conscious, while the reality which 'exists behind all appearances is, and ever must be, unknown.' This reality, whatever it may be, is, by the fundamental principle of the system, wholly excluded from the sphere of science, the Known giving no valid indications of the character of the Unknown. But one mission, as we have before said, is consequently left for Philosophy—to classify and generalize phenomena, and this with no reference whatever to what phenomena do not, and cannot, according to the system, reveal, viz., the reality referred to. The system separates, by an impassable gulf, phenomena which we do know, and 'the reality existing behind all appearances,' the reality which we do not know, and renders it absolutely impossible that either shall be known through the other. The system, then, requires absolutely that the Unknown and Unknowable shall be wholly left outside the sphere of scientific thought and enquiry, and all enquiry fixed upon what we do and can know, phenomena, with their relations, not to the Unknown, but to one another. Does Spencer follow the only method which his system legalizes, and which he has, as we have seen, laid down as the exclusive highroad for science? Instead of doing this, he first of all locates space, time, God, matter, motion, force, consciousness, and the soul, in the exclusive and unapproachable sphere of the Unknowable and Unknown, and having specifically set out before us phenomena as the exclusive sphere for scientific thought and enquiry, he makes it the supreme aim of all his inductions and deductions, not to explain phenomena by classifying and generalizing them, but to explain the Universe of phenomena through the unknown relations of three unknown and unknowable quantities— matter, motion, and force. The utter viciousness of such a method becomes demonstrably manifest at once. In every such explanation, a relation is affirmed where, in the language of Spencer himself, 'there can be no relation established, and therefore no thought formed, one of the related terms being absent from consciousness,' that is, phenomena which we do know are professedly explained by terms of the meaning of which we are utterly ignorant. Here are certain general reflections upon the doctrine under consideration, reflections which demand our special attention.

Spencer's Partialism.

The objects of all Ultimate Religious and Scientific Ideas, objects such as God, space, time, matter, motion, force, consciousness, and the soul, Spencer has located in the sphere of the Unknowable, and affirmed that of each and every one of these objects our ignorance is alike absolute. Out of these objects, all of which have equal claims, or no claims at all, to a place in the sphere of science, he has selected three—matter, motion, and force, and has made these, as if they were known quantities, the exclusive basis for the explanation of the Universe. Why has he made this selection? No reason whatever can be assigned for it. No selection conceivable is, or can be, more arbitrary and unauthorized. A fundamental difference is made between things given as absolutely equal. Spencer has assumed matter, the Not-self, as the substance and principle of all things. Why did he not assume spirit, or the Self, as that substance and principle? As he represents them, the phenomena to be explained are subjective impressions. Why did he not select the subject of these—the Self, as the basis of his explanation of phenomena? As all phenomena, according to him, rank as subjective and objective, and pertain to the Self—on the one hand, and the Not-self on the other, why did he not adopt both as the basis of his expositions? Neither Spencer, nor any other individual, can offer the remotest reason in justification of such a lawlessly arbitrary selection as he has made, in making matter, motion, and force his exclusive principles for the explanation of the Universe. If we are to go out of the sphere of the Knowable into that of the Unknowable, to find a basis for the explanation of the facts under consideration, some half-a-dozen standing-places present themselves, each of which has equal claims with that selected by our philosopher, and none having any claims whatever over any of the others.

The Character of Spencer's 'Ultimate of Ultimates,' viz., Force.

It should be borne in mind that Force, Spencer's 'Ultimate of Ultimates,' the ultimate principle, in the light of which all other unknown ultimates, and all known facts, are to be explained, is with him an avowedly unknown quantity. 'While, then, it is impossible,' he says, 'to form any idea of Force in itself, it is equally impossible to comprehend either its mode of exercise or its law of variation.' This he said when treating of the Unknowable. When treating of the Knowable, he affirms that Force 'is an unknown quantity which must for ever remain unknowable.' When the value of any unknown quantity is ascertained in terms of Force, the real meaning of the equation must be this, namely, the value of this quantity equals something, we know not what. How clear and definable is the limit which according to the New Philosophy, 'eternally divides science from nescience.'

In order that we may, if possible, have a more specific idea of this force, we will represent the material of which the universe is constituted, whatever this material may be, by the term 'Nature.' The term 'force' would then represent the ultimate reason, or cause, which determined nature to pass out of its primal nebulous, fiery-flame, or chaotic, state, into that of universal order as it now exists. This force, whatever it may be, must be one which acts in absolute conformity to pure scientific ideas and principles, the result of its action being the realization of such ideas and principles. What is this force?

It must exist, we answer, in the first place, as an inhering principle in nature itself, or as a cause acting upon nature from without, no other hypothesis being conceivable or possible. Now the idea of its existence as an inhering law of nature is absolutely incompatible with the undeniable fact of the organization of the universe as an event of time. This force, if it inheres in nature, exists there as an immutable and necessary law of universal scientific order. Acting as, by hypothesis, it must have done from eternity, it could never have permitted the primal chaos from which universal order was evolved. To say that the past of nature has been an actual succession of evolutions and dissolutions, is to assume that from time to time nature reverses her own laws, the same identical inhering force acting at one time as an immutable law of universal scientific order, and then as the equally universal law of universal unscientific disorder, than which a more absurd dogma is inconceivable.

This force, as the principle of universal scientific order, must exist distinct from nature, and act upon it from without. What, on such an hypothesis, must be its character? Here, also, but two hypotheses present themselves, one of which must be true and the other false. If we admit 'the Ultimate of Ultimates' to be a free, self-conscious, infinite and perfect personal God, then does the organization of the universe as an event of time, its organization as a wisely adjusted system of means and ends, with a place for everything and everything in its place, and all things existing and acting in exact accordance with absolute scientific ideas and principles, then we say, does the organization of this goodly universe become a rationally explicable fact. If, on the other hand, we assume this 'Ultimate of Ultimates,' not to be a personal God, then we must affirm it to be an indefinable, unthinkable, impersonal something, in the activity of which infinite blindness supplies the place of omniscient vision, and absolute nescience acts in absolute accordance with ideas and principles of absolute science. Between these two hypotheses we must make our election. The verdict of Comte on these two hypotheses, one of which, we repeat, must be true and the other false, may be profitably read in this connexion. 'If we insist upon penetrating the mystery of the essential cause of phenomena, there is no hypothesis more satisfactory than that they proceed from wills dwelling in them, or outside of them, an hypothesis which assimilates them to the effect produced by the desires which exist in ourselves. Were it not for the pride induced by metaphysical and scientific studies, it would be inconceivable that any Atheist, ancient or modern, should have believed that his vague hypotheses on such a subject were preferable to this direct mode of explanation.' With Spencer and his associates in the doctrines of the New Philosophy the case is different. They 'insist upon penetrating the (so-called) insoluble mystery of the essential cause of phenomena,' and do so under the avowed belief that of the two hypotheses under consideration, 'the choice is not between personality and something lower than personality; whereas the choice is between personality and something higher.' Yes, these men affirm themselves to believe that there may be a blind, unconscious, and unknowing something infinitely superior to an infinite and perfect self-conscious mind, that in the sphere of infinite blindness and absolute nescience, 'there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence and Will, as these exceed mechanical motion.' Hobbes was undeniably right in affirming that to 'man alone belongs the privilege of absurdity, and that among men none exercise that privilege to the extent that philosophers do.'

Spencer's Reasons for Rejecting the Theistic, and Adopting the Atheistic Hypothesis, in regard to the Character of the 'Ultimate of Ultimates.'

In a recent essay in reply to Martineau, Spencer assigns the following reasons for rejecting the Theistic, and, as a necessary consequence, the adoption of the Atheistic hypothesis of Ultimate Causation. 'If, then, I have to conceive evolution as caused by an "originating Mind," I must conceive this mind as having attributes akin to those of the only mind I know, and without which I cannot conceive mind at all. I will not dwell upon the many incongruities hence resulting by asking how the "originating Mind" is to be thought of as having states produced by things objective to it; as discriminating among these states, and classing them as like and unlike, and as preferring one objective result to another. I will simply ask what happens, if we ascribe to "originating Mind" the character absolutely essential to the conception of mind, that it consists of a series of states of consciousness? Put a series of states of consciousness as cause, and the evolving universe as effect; and then endeavour to see the last as flowing from the first. It is possible to imagine in some dim kind of way a series of states of consciousness serving as antecedent to any one of the movements I see going on; for my own states of consciousness are often indirectly the antecedents of such movements. But how if I attempt to think of such a series as antecedent to all actions throughout the universe, to the motions of the multitudinous stars through space, to the revolutions of all the planets round them, to the gyrations of all these planets on their axes, to the infinitely multiplied physical processes going on in each of these suns and planets? I cannot even think of a series of states of consciousness as causing the relatively small group of actions going on over the earth's surface; I cannot even think of it as antecedent to all the various winds and the dissolving clouds they bear, to the currents of all the rivers, and the guiding action of all the glaciers; still less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from tropical palms down to polar lichens, and in all the animals that roam among them, and the insects that buzz about them. Even to a single small set of these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot conceive as antecedent a series of states of consciousness—cannot, for instance, think of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at this instant curling over the shores of England. How, then, is it possible for me to conceive of an "originating Mind," which I must represent to myself as a series of states of consciousness, being antecedent to the infinity of changes simultaneously going on in worlds too numerous to count, dispersed throughout a space that baffles imagination?' On this passage, we remark:

In the above Passage, Spencer's Blank Atheism becomes Undeniably Manifest.

In the above passage, we remark in the first place, Spencer's blank Atheism becomes absolutely manifest. In other connections he has told us that, in regard to the question of Ultimate Causation, we have to make our 'choice between personality and something higher than personality.' In the same connection, he openly avows his own adoption of the latter hypothesis. Everywhere he evinces a distinct consciousness of the fact, that there are, in reality, but two hypotheses on this subject—the Theistic, and that of Natural Law. In the above passage, his avowed object is to demonstrate the validity of the latter hypothesis by a disproof of the former. In Spencer's system there is, undeniably, no more place for religion than there is for Lunar Politics. One of the leading burdens of all his philosophical works is to locate the two in the same sphere. He must have a very poor idea of religion, and a false one at that, who does not regard the doctrine of a personal God as the basis of all religion, a doctrine which it is the avowed object of Spencer to subvert. Spencer has, in fact and form, abstracted from his Unknowable, as well as from his 'Ultimate of Ultimates,' every characteristic which can render it the proper object of religious homage. Whatever his Unknowable may be, it is avowedly void of all Intelligence and Will, and his Force is as blind as Polyphemus, after his one and only eye had been put out.

Spencer's Definition of Mind.

The next fact which claims our notice in respect to the above passage, is the new definition which it presents of mind. 'The character absolutely essential to the conception of mind,' he says, is 'that it consists of a series of states of consciousness.' The term mind, we and all the world, Spencer included, except in his philosophic dreams—the term mind, we say, in the judgment of all the race, means, not 'a series of states of consciousness,' but the subject of these states. Thought implies a thinker, and consciousness a being who is conscious. So the fact of sensation, emotion, desire, and willing, implies a real being who feels and wills. This is not only the common doctrine of the race, but is one avowed everywhere by Spencer himself. No one maintains more positively than he does, that in every manifestation some reality is manifested. It is upon the validity of this principle that his entire doctrine of the Unknowable is based. A series of states, then, implies one subject of the series, or as many distinct subjects as there are distinct states. Every thought, every feeling, and every act, implies a subject who thinks, a subject who feels, and a subject who wills. The series of states of consciousness which every one refers to the self, implies as many selves as there are states, or one self who is the common subject of the whole series. One of these hypotheses Spencer must adopt, no other one being conceivable. Of these two hypotheses, it would be an impeachment of his intelligence to say that he does not hold the latter. Mind, rational mind, whether finite or infinite, is not a series of states of any kind, but a free, self-conscious personality who thinks, feels, and acts. Spencer is well aware that a mind which he represents by the words, 'series of states of consciousness,' a mind as manifested in the creature called Man, has vast powers of thought, comprehension, and execution, and that 'every building,' St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and the Church of St. Peter in Rome for example, 'was built by some man.' How does he know, how can he know, that an infinite and eternal mind, God, whom he chooses to designate by the words, 'a series of states of consciousness,' did not 'build all things'! How does Spencer know but that 'behind all appearances,' and among the Unknowables, there may exist just such a reality as that? It is certainly true, that the sphere of the Unknown and Unknowable, Spencer has never traversed. We think that proper modesty should induce him to avoid the presumption of attempting to specify what realities do, and do not, exist there, and what is possible and impossible to such realities. There may be things there 'not dreamed of in his Philosophy.'

Character of Spencer's Argument.

Every one who will carefully examine the argument contained in the above extract, will not fail to perceive that this argument rests exclusively upon two assumptions—that the extent and limit of his conceptive faculty is the extent and limit of all reality, and that, he is qualified to inform us distinctly what would be possible and impossible to an infinite and eternal mind. Take away these, or either of these, assumptions, and the argument becomes perfectly inane and void of all consequence. Spencer cannot conceive how that 'an originating Mind,' represented by the words, 'series of states of consciousness,' can be the antecedent of such an effect as the evolution of the universe. From hence, he concludes that such effect cannot have such an antecedent. Now there are realities not a few, realities of which we can form no conceptions, and which must rank with us among the incomprehensibles, realities, however, of which, as objects of implied knowledge, we have very clear ideas and know to be real. We do not accept of the mere conceptive faculty of Spencer, or of any other man, as the measure of our ideas or knowledges, and more especially of realities and of the possibilities of realities.

But above all we do not credit Spencer and these New Philosophers with the capacity to determine what is possible and impossible with an infinite and eternal mind. If such a Mind does exist, and neither Spencer nor anybody else knows that He does not, then all objects and events, the vast and the minute alike, must be omnipresent to His 'eternal thought,' and all possibilities must be equally possible to him. Now the gist of Spencer's whole argument is this. The infinity of processes going on in the earth and in the universe, must surpass the possible superintendency and control of such a mind. In other words, Spencer has fully measured the capacities of such a mind, and found it utterly inadequate to the evolution of the universe. We judge that our philosopher has not yet 'found out the Almighty unto perfection,' and that he has fully evinced himself the disciple of a crazy Philosophy in the argument under consideration. We also fully agree with Bourne in the following statement: 'Surely science must be asleep and Philosophy at the lowest ebb, when such sheer nonsense as this is allowed to usurp unchallenged a prominent place in either.'

The Conceivable and Inconceivable, the Possible and Impossible, according to Spencer.

That the universe was evolved from a primal nebula, 'fiery-cloud,' or absolute chaos, into its present state of universal scientific order, by some power, is the fixed doctrine of Spencer and his associate advocates of the New Philosophy. All agree also that this evolution was caused and is controlled by an 'originating Mind,' a Mind infinite and perfect, a Mind possessed of infinite intelligence and almighty power, or by a blind force utterly void of intelligence and will. With Spencer and the New Philosophers processes so vast, so complicated, so infinitely multitudinous and varied, and with all so intelligently and so scientifically directed throughout, are utterly impossible to such a mind. They cannot conceive how such an effect should be the result of such an antecedent. On the other hand, they can readily conceive and fully explain how such infinitely complicated, multitudinous, and absolutely wise and scientific processes should be commenced and carried on, and perfected by some indefinable force, a force perfectly known, however, to be possessed of infinite blindness and absolute nescience. They cannot conceive how an infinity of facts of scientific order should be the result of infallible antecedent foresight. They can readily conceive, however, how, in the infinitely multiplied scientific processes of world-evolutions, infinite blindness supplied the place of omniscient foresight, and infinite nescience acted in perfect accordance with absolute science. Yes, without blinking, 'they can stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse and the lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself—emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in 'a fiery-cloud.' If 'shallow draughts' of real science 'intoxicate the brain,' what must be, the effect of 'drinking deep' into such a crazy Philosophy as this?

General Characteristics of the New Philosophy.

Tyndall and Spencer have furnished us with the data from which we may present a very clear statement of the essential characteristics of the New Philosophy. As Tyndall affirms, of 'the uncertainty of their data,' the principles and facts from which they reason, the advocates of this Philosophy are all distinctly aware, and to their deductions they themselves 'yield only a provisional assent.' The reason of this utter uncertainty is furnished us by Spencer. The facts professedly explained are known quantities, known phenomena. The principles by which these known facts are explained are 'quantities whose values can never be found.' Hence, in every deduction we have an equation in which one of 'the related terms' represents a known fact, and the other is 'absent from consciousness,' that is, represents an unknown quantity; or 'both terms are absent from the consciousness,' as when the value of unknown quantities, matter and motion, for example, 'is (professedly) ascertained in the terms of Force, whose value can never be found.' Matter, Motion, and Force,' are specifically set forth by Spencer and all other advocates of the New Philosophy as absolutely unknown quantities. Yet, through and from these three Unknowables, they obtain all their data for the explanation of the entire universe of phenomena, to wit, the Knowable and Known. In every deduction reached, therefore, at least 'one of the related terms is' (and must be) 'absent from the consciousness,' that is, must represent an unknown quantity. In such circumstances, Spencer truly affirms no relation is ascertainable. 'There can be no relation established,' he says, 'and therefore no thought framed, when one of the related terms is absent from the consciousness.'

Hence the strict accuracy of Tyndall's statement of the character of this New Philosophy. 'The speculative faculty,' he tells us, 'of which the Imagination forms so large a part, will nevertheless wander into regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be entirely shut out.' 'We' [the disciples of the New Philosophy] 'think' [what true philosophers never thought] 'that though the detailed analysis may be, and may for ever remain beyond us, general notions may be attainable.' 'It is only, however, the privileged spirits who know how to use their liberty without abusing it, who are able to surround imagination by the firm frontiers of reason that are likely to work with any profit here.' Every principle by which these 'privileged spirits' 'explain the universe,' that is, all phenomena, is a general notion obtained by 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so large a part,' and obtained 'in regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be entirely shut out'—regions from which, in the language of Tyndall, 'the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination' [all but this 'speculative faculty' in 'the privileged spirits'] 'retires in bewilderment.' The mission of the New Philosophy, as presented by 'the privileged spirits' themselves, is to explain the universe of phenomena, all that is knowable, by means of 'the general notions' obtained by 'the speculative faculty' in 'the palpable obscure,' 'where the hope of certainty would seem to be entirely shut out.' When this 'Divine Philosophy' shall have fully accomplished her mission, then these 'privileged spirits' assure us we shall have 'knowledge of the highest degree of generality,' 'the kind of knowledge that constitutes Philosophy proper,' or 'completely unified knowledge,' and shall 'have reached that limit which eternally divides science from nescience.' 'It is the inner works of the universe,' says Tyndall, 'which Science reverently uncovers; it is the study of these that she recommends as a discipline worthy of all acceptation.' It is exclusively by means of 'the general notions' designated—notions of the utter uncertainty of which those who set them forth are, as Tyndall assures us, distinctly aware, that 'the privileged spirits' 'reverently uncover' to us 'the inner works of the universe,' and reveal to us 'matter as devouring spirit and spontaneity,' and religion as Lunar Politics.

In examining this system, we find in it nothing new, with this exception—the explanation and elucidation of the Known through the Unknown. In this particular the disciples of the New Philosophy have the incontestable claim of perfect originality. From the advent of Protagoras up to that of Spencer and his associates, no school of Sceptics ever attempted a solution of the problem of Universal Being and its Laws. The Sceptics of the former schools had too much respect for self-consistency to pretend to explain that of which they were avowedly ignorant. They had too much respect for the intelligence of the race to make, before the world, the pretence that they could ascertain the value of unknown quantities in the terms of 'a quantity whose value can never be found.' It remained for the disciples of this New Philosophy to commit this absurdity in the presence of the intelligence of the nineteenth century. Hence we have formal explanations of the phenomena of the universe, by means of 'general notions' evolved by 'the speculative faculty of which the imagination forms so large a part,' from avowedly unknown quantities. When 'the inner works of the universe' have been 'reverently uncovered,' by means of such 'general notions,' we are gravely told that we have been located upon 'the limit which must for ever divide science from nescience.' In this one particular, and this only, no school in Philosophy will dispute the palm of originality with these 'privileged spirits.'

In evolving the system of Being and its Laws in conformity to a method so palpably absurd and self-contradictory, we should naturally expect to find the system itself combined from incompatible elements. As far as the element of self-contradiction is concerned, the New Philosophy stands alone. Error is never fully self-consistent. Yet thinkers, in the construction of systems, have, in ages past, made harmony of parts a fixed aim. To this essential characteristic of systems, the advocates of the New Philosophy seem to pay not the remotest regard. With them, 'a foolish consistency is the bugbear of weak minds.' In the element of self-contradiction, the bold assertion of the validity and compatibility of palpably self-contradictory dogmas, lies their 'great strength.' Who, before Spencer, ever constructed a treatise on the 'First Principles of Philosophy,' or on any fundamental subject, a treatise in which its two parts stand in palpable contradiction to one another, so contradictory that, if either is true, the other must be false? Who, before Spencer, ever set forth, in one part of his treatise, the deduction that the idea of God must be reckoned as 'a pseudo-idea,' because it implies 'self-existence,' or 'existence through all past time,' and then, in another part, affirmed that both self-existence, and existence during this same past eternity, must be affirmed of matter, motion, and force? Who, before him, ever did such a thing as to present the ideas of God, space, time, matter, motion, force, consciousness, and the soul, as representing objects utterly unknowable and unknown, objects of which we can frame no apprehensions which are not palpably self-contradictory and absurd, and then presented the avowedly unknown objects of three of these avowedly absurd apprehensions as constituting the universe, and furnishing the principles by which the known facts of this universe may be explained? Who before, ever, in fact and form, laid down the proposition, that no relation can be ascertained to exist between any two quantities when either of them is unknown, and then, in the most formal manner, affirmed that we may ascertain the value of two unknown quantities, matter and motion, in the terms of a third quantity, force, 'whose value can never be found,' and that when we have 'simulated the equations of all phenomena, until the complex symbols which formulate them are reduced to certain functions of this ultimate symbol,' 'force, whose value can never be found,' then 'we have reached that limit which eternally divides science from nescience'? Huxley promises to 'demonstrate to us,' that 'a unity of substantial composition does pervade the whole living world.' He then tells us absolutely, that we 'know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is.' In the face of this last assertion, he boldly affirms the validity of his demonstration. Who but an Anglo-Saxon that has had a severe training in the school of the New Philosophy would attempt, or avow the purpose, to 'demonstrate a unity of substantial composition' in all living bodies, while he avows himself absolutely ignorant of the real composition of every such body? Huxley affirms again, that 'it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit,' and in the presence of that affirmation, affirms absolutely that thought, and with it all mental operations, 'are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life.' Professor Maudsley affirms an ignorance equally absolute of matter and spirit, and then affirms the former to be the sole existing substance, the subject and cause of all mental phenomena. Mill goes into a most laboured argument to prove that nothing can be proven by argument. The advocates of the New Philosophy universally employ the mental faculties to prove the mental faculties to be fundamentally mendacious. We adduce these as examples of what everywhere obtains in the system under consideration.

Within the sphere of the New Philosophy, also, the practice of making the widest and most lawless leaps in logic appears to have been reduced to a science. Open at random any of the scientific treatises of this class of thinkers you please, treatises which bear upon 'Ultimate Religious,' or 'Scientific Ideas,' and you can hardly fail to light upon some wide sweeping deduction which has not the remotest conceivable connection with the premises from which the former was drawn. Huxley, for example, has reached this deduction, and validly so, we will grant, for the sake of the argument, 'Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life,' that is, 'the physical basis of life.' We further grant, what our scientist claims, that as far as chemical analysis can determine, the main constituent elements of protoplasm are 'carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.' In other words, to use the more specific language of Professor Agassiz, 'all life is from the egg,' and the known chemical constituents of the egg are as above stated. Such are the undisputed facts of the case. What have these facts to do with metaphysics or religion? No more, undeniably, than they have to do with astronomy, geology, or mathematics. When you have traced physical life back to protoplasm, or the egg, and have, as far as possible, determined the constituent elements of this compound, what has all this to do with the doctrine of the soul, with the problem of Ultimate Causation, with the doctrine of God, Duty, and Immortality? Huxley, however, bids us 'beware that in accepting these conclusions' [that all life is from the egg, and that the ascertained constituent elements of the egg, or of protoplasm, are 'carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen'], 'we are placing our feet on the rung of a ladder which, in most people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of heaven.' Logically the argument stands thus. Protoplasm is the physical basis of life, and the ascertained constituent elements of protoplasm are 'carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.' Therefore, all bodies are destitute of souls, and the doctrine of Immortality is a figment. We may safely challenge the world to adduce a wider and more lawless leap in logic than this. Will not these same scientists very soon assure us that the wrecks of our Atlantic steamers, and our violent sea-tempests, are all occasioned by the stretching of those electric cables along the bottom of the Atlantic ocean? A leap from a vitalized mass of 'carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,' over into the abyss of soul-annihilation, we will put that down to the credit of the New Philosophy. 'It may seem,' adds Huxley, and it does thus seem to all but the race who are 'mad with logic,' 'a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed. Put if, as I have endeavoured to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting place between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense, and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of all other vital phenomena.' The facts presented are the following. The physical basis of life is protoplasm, and dead protoplasm, in the process of nutrition, is converted into living protoplasm. The conclusion deduced is—All bodies are without souls; thought, feeling, and willing' are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life'; what we call the soul is a temporary something whose constituent elements are 'carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,' and all 'volumes on Divinity or school metaphysics' should be 'committed to the flames,' as containing 'nothing but sophistry and illusion.' The simple facts above presented constitute the only premises on which our scientist bases all his deductions in regard to 'the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity,' and the reduction of all forms of religious thought and enquiry to the sphere of 'Lunar Politics.' Now he might, with just as much real show of science, make the facts under consideration the exclusive basis of all calculations in regard to lunar eclipses, as to make them the basis of any deductions relative to the soul, God, duty, and immortality.

Professor Maudsley presents us with the results of a few interesting experiments made upon the bodies of decapitated frogs, and of pigeons deprived of brains. From the few facts gathered from such experiments, and others of no higher significance, he leaps at once to the conclusion that all bodies are destitute of souls, and that the universe is without a God.

One of the most common forms of false deduction among this class of thinkers is the fixed habit of inferring an identity of nature, from facts of mere coincidence and uniform sequence. Take the following case, as stated by Spencer. 'Each plant,' he says, 'owes the carbon and hydrogen of which it mainly consists, to the carbonic acid and water contained in the surrounding air and earth. Carbonic acid and water must, however, be decomposed before their carbon and hydrogen can be assimilated. To overcome the powerful affinities which hold their elements together, requires the expenditure of force; and this force is supplied by the sun. In what manner the decomposition is affected we do not know; but we know that when, under fit conditions, plants are exposed to the sun's rays, they give off oxygen and accumulate carbon and hydrogen. In darkness, this process ceases. Thus the irresistible inference is that the force by which plants abstract the materials of their tissues from surrounding inorganic compounds, the forces by which they grow and carry on their functions, are forces that previously existed as solar radiations.' 'The transformation of the unorganized contents of the egg into the organized chick,' he adds, 'is altogether a question of heat: withhold heat, and the process does not commence; supply heat, and it goes on while the temperature is maintained, but ceases when the egg is allowed to cool.' The deduction drawn from such facts is the identity of heat and vitality. As all 'animal life is immediately dependent on vegetable life,' he infers that 'the movements, external and internal, of the animal, are reappearances in new forms of a power absorbed by the plant under the shape of light and heat.' Let us, for a moment, examine the case of the egg, assuming heat and vitality, or life, to be identical. Infuse a certain degree of heat, that is, of life, into this egg, and it continues, as before, an 'unorganized' mass. Add a little more heat, that is, life, to this mass, and it becomes 'the organized chick.' Increase the degree of heat, that is, of life, and the egg becomes a cooked or dead mass which can never become a chick at all. Thus the condition of the development of the chick is the degree of life imparted to the egg. The same thing, heat or life, in one degree leaves the egg as it was before; in another degree, this same heat, or life, totally devitalizes the egg; and in another degree, this same heat, or life, develops the egg into a living creature. We find also that the immutable condition of the continuance of animal life, of its recuperation under exhaustion, and of the continued growth of the animal, is sleep, and that sleep is the most perfect when the darkness is most total. Have we not reasons as absolutely valid for identifying sleep and vitality, as Spencer has for identifying heat, or the solar rays, and life? Are death and life but different degrees of the same thing? Who but philosophers 'mad with logic' ever identify the conditions of given results with the results themselves? A condition of vision is light. He would justly incur the charge of being the advocate of a crazy Philosophy who should base upon this fact the deduction that vision and light are identical. Yet it is exclusively upon this vicious principle that Spencer and his school identify heat with animal life, and animal with mental vitality. The undeniable condition of animal vitality is heat the immutable condition of mental activity, or life, is physical vitality. Hence he affirms, that 'whoever duly weighs the evidence will see that nothing but an overwhelming bias in favour of a preconceived theory can explain the non-acceptance of the identification of vital and mental forces with the physical.' Spencer forgot to impart to us the wonderful discovery to which his inductions necessarily lead, namely, a specific disclosure of the nature of the soul. Epicurus assures us that the soul is constituted of a mass of 'round atoms' of the purest kind. According to Spencer, the secret about the nature of the soul is clearly revealed. The soul consists, not of a compound of 'round atoms,' but of solar rays, 'forces emanating from the sun.' If life and heat are identical, and animal life and mental vitality are the same, and all heat proceeds from the sun, then the nature of the soul is no longer a secret. It can be nothing but a combination of solar rays, or 'forces proceeding from the sun.'

Huxley, however, differs slightly from Spencer on this vital question. With the former, the exclusive basis of life is protoplasm, and protoplasm is constituted of a combination, not of solar rays, but of 'carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.' With him, consequently, the soul must be constituted, not of 'forces emanating from the sun,' but of atoms eliminated from 'carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,' and all mental action, such as thinking, feeling, and willing, must be 'the expression,' not of heat, or solar rays, but of 'molecular changes in the matter of life,' that is, of changes in the molecules which constitute protoplasm. Both of these scientists, in common with their entire school, affirm an identity of nature, where no facts but those of simple coincidence, or sequence, are present. There is no absurdity conceivable which may not be absolutely verified as a truth of science, if the validity of this principle be admitted. Yet the New Philosophy falls to pieces at once if the validity of this principle, as it must be, is denied.

We refer to but one other fundamental characteristic of the New Philosophy—the immutable custom of its advocates in drawing upon their imagination, or the speculative faculty, for essential facts when these do not exist. 'Admitting,' says Professor Maudsley; 'that vital transforming matter is at first derived from vital structure, it is evident that the external force and matter transformed does in time become transforming force, that is, vital. And if that takes place after the vital process has once commenced, is it, it may be asked, extravagant to suppose that a similar transformation might, at some period, have commenced the process, and may even now be doing so?' 'Huxley,' in the language of Bourne, 'tells us that protoplasm is the basis of life, and then says that life is the only known source of protoplasm. But since there is no life without protoplasm, and no protoplasm without life, the question of priority becomes the parallel of the famous enquiry whether the hen produces the egg, or the egg the hen. It becomes necessary to break the circle somewhere, and he tells us that if we could have been present when the earth manifested extraordinary conditions, we might have seen protoplasm produced from the inorganic. This, and the further declaration that there is no telling what chemistry may do yet, is all that Huxley has to offer. One 'might-have-been,' and one 'may-be,' is the support of the great conclusion. Yet with Huxley, and as he affirms with his school, 'the golden rule' in science is 'give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted.' In the face of that rule himself, Professor Maudsley and their associates construct their entire system of being and life, together with 'their explanation of the universe,' not upon known facts, these being admitted to be totally wanting, but wholly upon an imagined 'might-have-been' and ' may-be.'

The doctrines of Evolution, Spontaneous Generation, and Development, as set forth by Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and their associates, as these authors affirm, have no other basis than a series of propositions in which the value of two unknown quantities, matter and motion, are ascertained and expressed in the terms of a third quantity, force, 'whose value can never be found.' In the construction of their system, whenever principles or facts are wanted, these are furnished by 'the speculative faculty of which the imagination forms so large a part.' The exigences of their system require, for the evolution of the universe, a lapse of ages as far exceeding that indicated by the facts of Geology as the Geological age exceeds the limits of that of man, and the eternity past of which, according to the New Philosophy, we can know nothing, presents a period sufficiently extended to honour any drafts 'for the development of species.' Then matter, lying in the realm of the Unknowable, is subject to any drafts which 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so large a part,' may make upon that substance to fill out the demands of 'the theory of pangenesis.' Behind these lies 'Force, whose value can never be found,' 'a fact which affords the speculative faculty,' 'which will wander into regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be entirely shut out,' this unknown and unknowable Force, we say, furnishes for the speculative faculty, in the employ of the 'privileged spirits,' all the potencies requisite to account for all facts lying between and including 'the fiery cloud' and the universe that now is. Finally, behind all lies the credulity of Unbelief—a credulity which has been maddened by the wild and lawless speculations of modern Sceptical thought, and has thereby been fully prepared to accept, as 'perfectly unified knowledge,' any absurdity which veils from the world the face of God and the truths of Religion. With these thinkers, in short, 'a vast possibility is itself a dynamic power'—an actually existing power sufficiently vast to account for all effects in the total absence of the agency of God. All these facts must be fully taken into the account if we would understand correctly the fixed method and character of the New Philosophy. If you enquire for the principles which lie at the basis of the system, in any of its essential forms, you will find those principles to be nothing but 'general notions' which 'the speculative faculty' has evolved in its 'wanderings into regions where the hope of certainty seems to be entirely shut out.' If you inquire for their facts, you will find that none whatever of actual and known occurrence are adduced. Instead of facts of this character—facts of spontaneous generation or actual transmutation of species, for example, we are simply told that during the unmeasurable eternity past, and on account of special conditions of the material elements, such facts may have occurred, that in the unknown regions of the earth such events may be now occurring, and that no one can determine the future revelations of chemistry. If you directly question these men, you will find, as Tyndall admits and affirms, that none are more distinctly conscious than they of 'the uncertainty of their data,' and that 'to their own deductions they themselves yield only a provisional assent.' Yet they claim that through these deductions 'we have reached that limit which eternally divides science from nescience.' On the authority of these unverified and lawless deductions, we are dogmatically required to surrender our faith in God, in the redeemer of the race, and to rank all religious thought and enquiry with Lunar Politics. 'It is indeed significant,' says Dr. Beals, one of the greatest scientists of the age, 'if, as seems to be the case at this time in England, an investigator cannot be allowed to remark that facts which he has demonstrated, and phenomena which he has observed, render it impossible for him to assent at present to the dogma that life is a mode of ordinary force, without being held up by some who entertain opinions at variance with his own as a person who desires to stop or retard investigation, who disbelieves in the correlation of physical forces, and in the established truths of science.' A precisely similar complaint was uttered some time since by Professor Agassiz, of the treatment which himself and others who agreed with him, were receiving from the advocates of the New Philosophy in America. The generation lies in the very near future who will regard with unutterable wonder the fact that such a system as this so-called New Philosophy—a system based upon no valid principles, verified only by imagined facts, and constituted only of parts and elements, each of which is incompatible with every other, ever had a place even in the scientific thought of the present century.

Concluding Reflections.

We have now completed our criticisms of the diverse Philosophies which, in ages past, have occupied human thought. In our survey of these systems, a fundamental statement made in the General Introduction has been fully verified, namely, that among all peoples who have attempted to solve the problem of Ontology, and Ultimate Causation, a certain fixed and scientifically determinable number of systems have been developed; that all of these systems, among all peoples, and in all ages, rest upon the same essential principles, are constituted of the same essential elements, are constructed throughout in conformity with the same fixed method, and, consequently, everywhere and in all ages, are possessed of the same essential characteristics. In all these peculiarities, the Idealisms of Vayasa, Kapila, and Gautama Buddha, are identical with those of Pythagoras, Zeno of Elea, Plotinus of Egypt, Bruno of Italy, and Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel of Germany. An identity precisely similar, an identity of principle, matter, method, and form, obtains between the Materialism of Kanada and of the Buddhist Schools, and that of Democritus, Epicurus, Hobbes, Priestley, Condilac, Comte, and Buchner. In the same sense, Hume, Spencer, Huxley, and all modern Sceptics, are unimproved and unmodified editions of Protagoras and Pyrrho. The reason is obvious and undeniable. All realities known to mind, all objects actually represented or representable in human thought, and consequently, all data for human thinking, whether reflective or unreflective, common or philosophical, are comprehended under four categories, viz., Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space. Beyond the range of these four realities human thought can never reach. All thought and enquiry must pertain to these realities, their nature, attributes, properties, and relations. In all minds in common, there exist common and immutably fixed apprehensions of these four realities. In all minds, too, there exist common and fixed convictions in regard to these realities, convictions which, as lying at the basis of all enquiry and reasoning, 'remain proof against all grounds and arguments,' and that for the reason, that for the subversion of these convictions, no 'grounds nor arguments' can be adduced which possess the degrees of absolute certitude possessed by said convictions. Reason as we will about these realities, make what assumptions and reach what deductions we may in regard to them, our apprehensions and convictions in respect to them remain, in all respects, just what they were before.

Here we notice the fundamentally diverse relations which what is called science sustains to the multitudinous forms of opinion and belief which, from time to time, obtain currency in the world, on the one hand, and to these original and universal intuitive apprehensions and convictions on the other. The former, when once corrected by science, are for ever displaced from human thought and regard. Christendom, for example, is no more likely to return to the ancient belief, that the earth is a vast plain, and the centre of the universe, than it is to regard Aesop's Fables as a record of veritable facts. On the other hand, when the apprehensions and convictions under consideration have been seemingly subverted by apparently valid 'grounds and arguments,' Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, are to universal mind, the same realities that they were before, and our essential apprehensions and convictions in respect to them occupy the same identical place in human thought and regard as at the beginning. There is but one conceivable explanation which can be given of these undeniable and fundamental facts. In the former case, real error is subverted by true science. In the latter, the sophistical deductions of false science are corrected and subverted by original and universal intuition, which must be valid for truth, or the Intelligence itself must be 'a liar from the beginning.' Were these apprehensions and convictions mere opinions and beliefs, which happen to obtain universal assent, and not forms of absolute knowledge, true science would as effectually subvert them, and banish them from human thought and regard, as it has done with the opinions and beliefs above referred to.

But the mind, from its nature and laws, is not satisfied with knowledge in its unreflective forms, but immutably desires to answer to itself, in distinct and reflective forms, the questions, what do I, and what can I, know? and have all its knowledges, in all its forms, reduced to system. To accomplish these results is the end and aim of all science. When we move the great problems of Being and Ultimate Causation, we find ourselves within the sphere of Philosophy proper. Science and Philosophy are immutable wants of universal human nature, and rational mind will never rest until all the problems falling within the proper spheres of Science and Philosophy are satisfactorily solved. As none but the four realities above designated are represented, or representable, in human thought, all the problems of Science and Philosophy must have a fixed and exclusive reference to these realities, their nature, properties, attributes, and relations. In its attempts to solve the problem of Being and its Laws, there are four, and only four, positions which the mind can assume, and hence, four, and but four, general systems of Philosophy are possible—that of Realism, that of Idealism, that of Materialism, and that of Scepticism. Let us, for a moment, consider these in the order designated.

The Number and Genesis of all Possible Systems of Philosophy Designated.

1. When it 'begins to philosophize,' the mind may deliberately consent to be controlled in all its inductions and deductions by the Intelligence, and to accept as the basis of said inductions and deductions, the data actually furnished by universal and necessary intuition, and as thus furnished. In doing this the mind locates itself within the sphere of Realism proper, and accepts, as the basis of all its inductions and deductions, of Matter, Spirit, Time and Space, as knowable and known realities. The necessary result of scientific thought and enquiry resting upon such data will be the affirmed existence of a scientifically organized material universe, peopled by endlessly diversified forms of vitalized existences, vegetable and animal, irrational and rational, a universe organized and controlled by a personal God. In this universe man, in distinction from all other vitalized forms of being around him, appears as endowed with an immortal, rational, spiritual, and moral nature, which subjects him to Moral Law, and renders him consciously responsible for his actions as right or wrong. No one does, or can, doubt, that if Philosophy, in all its inductions and deductions, absolutely conforms to the dicta of the Intelligence, and to the data which universal and absolute intuition furnishes, all these deductions will and must be reached. It depends upon the will, however, to determine whether absolute fidelity to the Intelligence shall, or shall not, be maintained, in the construction of systems of Philosophy. From the data actually furnished by intuition, there may be an arbitrary selection between the classes of facts presented, and systems may be constructed from the class elected to the exclusion of all others. As the number of classes is limited, so there can be but a given number of systems opposed to Realism. This leads us to remark:

2. That in its infidelity to the Intelligence, the mind may, by a miscalled 'scientific Scepticism to which it voluntarily determines itself, compel itself to treat as nothing but a prejudice, innate, indeed, and con-natural, yet nothing but a prejudice,' the doctrine 'that there exist things without us,' and may arbitrarily assume spirit, or its operations, thought, for example, to constitute the sole and exclusive forms of real existence. In making this assumption, all philosophic induction and deduction is necessarily located within the exclusive sphere of Idealism. In this sphere a like arbitrary selection must be made between four opposite sub-systems, Ideal Dualism, Subjective Idealism, Pantheism, and Pure Idealism. According to the election thus arbitrarily made, philosophic induction and deduction must move round in a circle, and always in the same identical circle, with Kant, Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel, as the case may be.

3. By an opposite form of 'scientific Scepticism, to which the mind voluntarily determines itself,' it may arbitrarily assume Matter to be the only knowable and really existing entity, and thus locate all philosophic thought and deduction within the sphere of Materialism, in which case it must blindly move round in the same dull and monotonous circle with Kanada, Epicurus, Hobbes and Condillac.

4. Or, finally, by the same act of 'scientific Scepticism to which the mind voluntarily determines itself,' it may assume that it can have no valid knowledge of Matter, Spirit, Time, or Space, and that nothing is, or can be known but phenomena, mere appearances in which no realities appear. All philosophic thought and enquiry are thus arbitrarily located within 'the palpable obscure' of Scepticism, and with Protagoras and Pyrrho, we profess to 'know this only, that we nothing know.' If, with Spencer, and his co-thinkers of the New Philosophy, we attempt to explain the universe of phenomena by means of equations in which the value of two unknown and unknowable quantities, Matter and Motion, are professedly ascertained by the terms of Force, 'a quantity whose value can never be found,' we simply reveal ourselves to the world as the advocates and expounders of a crazy Philosophy.

Necessary Logical Consequences of the above Facts.

It must become demonstrably evident to every reflecting mind, that while Realism rests throughout upon a strictly scientific basis, that while it accepts as real nothing but what is affirmed to be such by universal, necessary, and absolute intuition, and does accept of all that is thus affirmed, and that while all its deductions are the necessary consequences of the data thus furnished, every one of the other systems has no other basis than mere lawless and arbitrary assumption, for the validity of which no real reasons whatever can be urged—lawless assumption that not only stands opposed to universal, necessary, and absolute intuition, but is directly and openly confronted by the assumptions of each of the other systems—assumptions whose claims, to say the least, are just as valid as this. No philosopher can present a show of a reason why the assumption which lies at the basis of Idealism, in all its forms, has higher claims to the prerogative of a principle in science, than is possessed by that of Materialism or Scepticism, and much more by the basis principle of Realism.

While the fixed Method of Realism absolutely accords throughout with that which obtains in all the Inductive Sciences, and gives being and form to such sciences, that adopted by all the other systems under consideration is utterly subversive of science in all its forms, leaving Ontology and Ultimate Causation out of account. Who, when he enters upon the study of Astronomy or any of the Inductive Sciences, 'puts himself into a state of not-knowing,' 'assumes all his previous knowledge to be uncertain,' or 'voluntarily determines himself to a [so-called] scientific Scepticism' in regard to classes of facts affirmed as real by absolute and universal intuition? Can a method, which is undeniably subversive of all the Inductive Sciences, be the only valid Method in Philosophy? Such undeniably is the immutable character of the fixed method of Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism. Carry the real method of any one of these systems into any one of the Inductive Sciences, and you utterly subvert all its principles, facts, and deductions. As long as the method of all these systems did control physical as well as philosophic thought and enquiry, the Inductive Sciences not only did not exist, but their existence was impossible, and the race believed the earth to be a vast plain and the centre of the universe. Let this method be reintroduced into these sciences, and throughout their wide domain 'chaos would come again.' How long will this method have dominion in the sphere of Cosmology and Ultimate Causation? As long as it does, chaos will rule here.

While Realism thus accords, in its principles, method and facts, with the laws of induction and deduction which obtain in real science in all its forms, and while it determines the principles and methods which must obtain in all the sciences, science does receive, and can receive, no benefit whatever from any of these partial systems. When you have gone the round of Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism, and have fully comprehended their principles, methods, and deductions, you have not obtained a ray of light to guide you in your enquiries in any one of the other sciences, pure or mixed. On the other hand if you would make any progress at all in any of these sciences, you will be necessitated to renounce the principles and methods to which you have been habituated in the schools of Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism. The very principles which you were there taught to repudiate, you will be here required to adopt as the basis of all valid inductions and deductions; the very apprehensions and convictions which you were there required to 'compel yourself to treat as nothing but a prejudice,' you will be here required to accept as representing absolute truths of science; deductions which you were there taught to accept as having absolute validity for truth, you will be here required to repudiate as senseless sophisms; and systems which you were there taught to regard as absolute knowledge systematized, you will be here required to repudiate as logical fictions. In all the Inductive Sciences, for example, the faculty of External Perception is universally accepted as having the same absolute authority for external that Consciousness has for internal facts. Idealism and Scepticism repudiate the former faculty, and represent it as the exclusive organ of illusory appearances. Universally the principles and methods of these systems are absolute antagonisms to those which obtain in all the other sciences. Hence it is that long discipline in the schools of Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism generates a fixed habit of deducing the wildest and most absurd conclusions from the facts presented in the inductive sciences. Who but an individual whose mind, through the lawless methods of these schools, had become habituated to wild assumptions and infinite leaps in logic, would ever dream that Physiology is any more likely to supereede Metaphysics, than it is to supplant Astronomy or Geometry; that thinking is not merely conditioned upon, but identical with, 'molecular changes in the matter of life;' that 'emotions are nothing but the susceptibility of vascular neurine to ideas,' that all mental phenomena are explicable through equations in which the value of two unknown quantities, Matter and Motion, are ascertained through the terms of a third quantity, Force, 'whose value can never be found,' and that the particles which once constituted the primal nebula or 'fiery cloud,' when they come into certain combinations, begin to think, feel, and will, always conceiving themselves to be an absolute spirit or unity when they are nothing but a material compound? If science shall long continue in these schools, and shall become fully imbued with their principles, methods, and spirit, the common sense of the race will be necessitated to vote her into a straight jacket.

The Influence of these Systems upon the Race, should their Dominion become Universal.

The advocates of these systems, those especially who rank under the New Philosophy, are very sanguine in respect to the speedy and permanent triumph of their principles over universal mind. This 'assurance of hope' is thus expressed, as we have before shown, by Huxley. 'As surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action.' Let us conceive this fond hope to be realized. What will be the condition of the race then? On this subject, our calculations may be based upon the most thoroughly tested facts of experience. For the last 2,500 years, at least three-fifths of the race have been under the supreme dominion of these philosophies. What have been the results here? Certainly anything but intellectual, moral, and physical growth and development. About 250,000,000 of these peoples are ruled by a distant Christian nation of less than 40,000,000. The great empire of China is absolutely powerless against an invading army of 50,000 disciplined troops from any Christian nation on earth. Under 'the shadows of death' which hang over all these peoples, civil liberty, public, social, domestic, and individual morality are almost or quite unknown. Think of the universal sentiment which obtains, without exception, among all these peoples, in regard to the idea of continued existence. The common desire and hope of all these peoples is to attain to a state of absolute unconsciousness. The end for which Philosophy is studied, and all religious observances are performed, is to assure the eternal termination of the burden of thinking, feeling, and acting. Buddhism is the faith of two-fifths of the race, and kings and queens, and princes and princesses, holding this faith, leave their bodies, at death, to be devoured by vultures and jackals, and this for the exclusive purpose of rendering their final annihilation sure. The most gloomy of all the Oriental religions was that of Egypt, which affirmed the immortality of the soul. Under the belief that the soul remained unconscious in the body until its decay, that people embalmed their dead, believing that thereby at least one thousand years of unconsciousness was insured to departed friends. Thus, for twenty-five centuries, and among three-fifths of the race, have these philosophies death-blighted the very idea of continued conscious existence.

Among the Greeks and Romans, and all along down the lapse of ages to our own times, these philosophies have, as far as their influence has extended, induced this same sentiment in regard to conscious existence. Nor among the disciples of these philosophers in our own time has the death-cloud been lifted from the idea of perpetuated conscious being. Byron, the poet of modern Buddhism, has, in the name of his school, denounced conscious being as a 'black curse;' and the secret of his fascinating influence among unbelievers is, unquestionably, his dark and gloomy representations of conscious existence. The central aim of Huxley, in his celebrated address 'On the Physical Basis of Life,' was, not only to take from us our God and our religion, but to extinguish totally all expectation of continued existence after death. Had his argument been a success, had he induced an absolute assurance of annihilation at death, there is not a shadow of doubt but that, by the disciples of the New Philosophy throughout the world, he would have been hailed as the Gautama Buddha of the nineteenth century, such a blight has this modern Philosophy cast over the very idea of continued conscious existence. The trifling and flippant manner in which Huxley speaks of the final loss of 'this intellectual being, those thoughts that wander through eternity,' clearly evinces how utterly valueless his Philosophy has rendered the doctrine of Immortality in his regard. 'And what do we know of that "spirit,"' he exclaims, 'over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like that which was heard at the death of Pan?' Of course our philosopher has no tears to shed over the loss of that the value of which his Philosophy has blighted in his regard. It is very different with the Christian, however, whose divine religion has opened upon his spirit the vista of eternal fruition. Huxley has thus expressed his idea of existence at its best estate. 'We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.' If this is all that existence means, and all that we are permitted to hope for, and this is all if this Philosophy is true, then we wonder not that these Sceptics even joyfully part with the hope of an eternal existence. We cease to wonder also that the advocates of this Philosophy, in accordance with the teaching of their ancient predecessors, are now speaking commendably of suicide, and have invented a euphoneous name for this form of more than saintly virtue. The real end of these philosophers in respect to existence present and future has been thus written out by one of their own poets, to whose sentiments not a solitary known dissent has ever been expressed by a single advocate of the New Philosophy.

''Cessation is true rest,

And sleep for them oppressed;

And not to be, were best.

'Annihilation is

A better state than this;

Better than woe or bliss.

'The thought is dread; the thing

Is death without its sting—

An overshadowing.'

No one can read aright the intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature of mind, and then think of what this New Philosophy, in common with Materialism and Idealism, robs the soul, without perceiving at once that the result of a belief of such doctrines must be the sentiment of Gautama Buddha, that 'all existence is evil,' and that the supreme object of desire is 'Nirvana,' or the total cessation of conscious being. This is what these philosophers are really, though not intentionally, aiming at, and this is the necessary tendency and result of their doctrines, viz., to induce among the remaining two-fifths of the race forms of belief which will and must render, with universal humanity, annihilation the supreme object of human desire. There is no denying the fact, that should these men accomplish the end to which their whole being is devoted, all the song of the entire race will be:

'Annihilation is

A better state than this;

Better than woe or bliss.'

You cannot take from the rational mind its God, its religion, its moral principles and its hopes of immortal fruition, without leaving that mind so dark and desolate that, in its regard, existence will become 'a black curse.' The men who are presenting to the world these soulless and godless philosophies, ought to learn from their own experience of their influence that their systems will and must, while mind remains what it is, sit as nightmares upon the breasts of all who embrace their ghastly doctrines, everywhere inducing one and the same supreme desire—the rest of annihilation.

The reader will recollect the testimony of Buchner in regard to the value of the knowledge which his Philosophy imparts, a form of knowledge which does not repay the labour expended in its acquisition, and which, when acquired, it would be best, as an ancient poet affirms, were the thing possible, to exchange for absolute nescience. The late John Stuart Mill has left behind him his autobiography. In this work we meet with one memorable passage, which fully discloses the immutable tendency of the doctrines and principles which he was advocating. In the year 1826, 'it occurred to me,' he tells us, 'to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely effected at this very instant, would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me; the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end has ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for. At first I hoped the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. I awoke to a renewed consciousness of the woful fact. I carried it with me into all companies, into all occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it. For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and thicker. The lines in Coleridge's "Dejection"—I was not then acquainted with them—exactly describe my case:

"'A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,

A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,

Which finds no natural outlet or relief

In word, or sigh, or tear."

Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone of all writers I have found a true description of what I felt, were often in my thoughts, not at this time—for I had never read them—but in a later period of the same mental malady:

"'Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,

And hope without an object cannot live."

In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I fancied it, and I doubt not that many others have passed through a similar state; but the idosyncrasies of my education had given to the general phenomenon a special character, which made it seem the natural effect of causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove. I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year.' From this state of deep gloom he was finally recovered, as he informs us, 'to a state of enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness,' a recovery occasioned, however, not by a discovery that he had taken a wrong view of facts, but by a course of reading and action which diverted attention from these facts. Why did the aspect of the world and of existence, the aspect which his Philosophy imparts to all objects of thought, induce in the mind of this philosopher that sense of utter hopeless, agonizing desolation? But one answer can be given to this question. That Philosophy, when clearly apprehended, and reflected upon in its essential principles and deductions, has an intrinsic adaptation to induce this identical state and none other. Hume affirmed, that the deductions to which his Philosophy conducted his mind, 'surprised and affrighted him,' and induced him to regard himself 'the most wretched man that ever existed.' In view of the deductions to which his Philosophy conducted him, Voltaire expressed the wish 'that he had never been born.' Byron thus expresses the inward and hopeless desolation which his unbelief had induced in his own mind:

'And dost thou ask what secret woe

I hear, corroding joy and youth,

That bids me loath my present state,

And fly from all I prized the most?

'It is that settled, ceaseless gloom,

The fabled Hebrew prophet bore,

That will not look beyond the tomb,

But cannot hope for rest before.'

The following extract from the speech of Theodore Christlieb, D.D., of Bonn, Prussia, delivered before the Evangelical Alliance in New York, demands special notice in this connection, as it fully confirms what we have elsewhere stated in regard to the present status of philosophic thought in Germany, on the one hand, and to the actual influence of these godless philosophies on the other. Speaking of the opponents of Christianity he says:

'Finally, we may embarrass these opponents by inquiring as to the positive and solid results of their speculations. We are very far from wishing to deny the general merits of Philosophy. But we ask: "Where are the tangible results arrived at by the Philosophy which is hostile to Christianity, and which alone we are considering here?" Has it solved finally any fundamental question? How have the different systems, during their various changes, struggled with and overthrown one another, while the simple Gospel remains—"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to day, and for ever"? Or is it possible that mere philosophical speculation could be its own aim, apart from any useful result? No; every science which is not scientia ad praxim—i.e., which does not bear fruit for our life—is inwardly unhealthy and no longer nourishes, but only puffs up the spirit. And what is the present condition of Philosophy? Since the systems of absolute Idealism have utterly broken down, and the reaction against them has led men into the slough of Materialism, Philosophy is at a loss. The one party loudly cries that we must return to the old teacher, Kant; others wearily labour to arouse some interest by means of historical representations of past systems, by excursions into the history of literature or into the natural scientific research of the day. Others, however—and these it is who most attract the world's attention—draw from all that has gone before an awful conclusion, and before the astonished world hoist the flag, or rather let me say the distress signal, of the most extreme pessimism. Schopenhauer sees in all existence nothing but misery and suffering, and can find true happiness only in self-dissolution into an absolutely empty Nothing, the Nirvana of the Buddhists. And Edward von Hartmann, who in his rapidly sold book on the "Philosophy of the Unconscious," exhibits to us the workings of this great "Unconscious" in the corporeal and spiritual world, declares it to be a mistake that the world should ever have sprung into existence at all, or have been created by a self-conscious God. All hope of happiness in this or in another stage of the world's history is, according to Hartmann, a pure illusion. Before us stands the servile age of mankind, in which, after all hope has died away, our race "finally abandons all claim to positive happiness and only yearns for absolute painlessness, for the Nothing, Nirvana." Thus far have our most recent philosophers advanced. On the tree of knowledge they now show us with strange aptitude the seductively beautiful and variegated tints of unknown tokens of still despair and utter hopelessness, which with select eloquence once more proclaim: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' Are not such views, I boldly ask, the most striking proof that it is only that which Divine Revelation gives and promises to man which makes his life worth living? Here again we clearly see that the faith of the Christian is, in the last resort, the only star-banner of hope amid the gloom of our existence; aye, the only protection of our moral dignity. Boldly, my Christian friends, let us attack our opponents on this weak point, which is fitted more than any other to discredit un-Christian Philosophy in the eyes of all who feel their deeper needs. Let us show the world that it is not Christianity, but the anti-Christian Philosophy which finally degrades the dignity of man; that this idea in its fulness flourishes only on the soil of Divine Revelation; that it is only possible as a deduction from the Christian conception of God, and only to be realized by the Christian plan of salvation; and hence that any unbelieving subtraction from the fundamental Biblical views of God and divine destiny of man must lead to an idea of man and the mundane process which most deeply degrades us in our capacity of spiritual and natural beings. For in all naturalistic and pantheistic systems what is the world's history but "the Golgotha of the Absolute Spirit, the fearfully tragic slaughter-house in which all individual life and happiness is sacrificed, only that the development of the universe may go forward undisturbed" (Hegel), and the philosophers who march behind may be able to mark and admire the rhythmic movement of the "Idea" through theses, antitheses, and syntheses? Vainly do we dream of man's personal and living value, and nourish a living hope; and inexorable is the dilemma which we see before us; either to receive Him who says "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," or, rejecting Him, to choose our portion with those other spirits, the most honest of whom must needs declare, "I am the Way, the Truth, and—Death!"'

In three papers read before the American Association for the promotion of Science, at its anniversary in Maine, some years since, papers read by thinkers of this school, we have a striking illustration of the 'settled, ceaseless gloom' which these Philosophies throw over the future, in the minds of those who embrace them. According to the first paper, all of life, at no very distant day, is to cease, throughout the solar system at least; through the perpetual darkness, ice, and death, induced by the extinguishment of the light of the sun. According to the second, all life will be extinguished on the Western Continent by a permanent death, induced by the clearing off of our forests. According to the third paper, universal death will, before long, if from no other cause, be induced by the certain destruction of all our fruits, vegetables, cereals, and all other means of life, 'by the bugs.' That these men were serious in what they uttered, there can be no doubt. That they were thereby revealing to the nation and the world the mental states necessarily induced by their Philosophy, when embraced as true, they were not aware. It is no wonder that a German Philosopher, after a long schooling in the belief of these godless systems, made this confession to one of our foreign ambassadors, who had found in a fixed faith in the Christian Religion the true and proper life of the soul. 'I would give all the world,' said this philosopher, 'if I could believe as you do; if I could have faith in the encircling presence and the guardian care of a personal God whom I could call my Father. But my Philosophy has taken from me the possibility of believing.' If man had not a soul, a moral and spiritual nature, you might take from him, as these anti-Christian philosophers are endeavouring to do, his reasons and convictions in respect to Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, in respect to the visible and mental universe; you might subvert his morals, draw a veil between him and the face of God, and eclipse all his immortal hopes, and do him no essential harm. With a soul, and the moral and spiritual nature which he has, you cannot perfect his faith in these godless Philosophies, without spreading over the face of his soul the pallor of the second death, and rendering the faith of Buddhism universal, 'that all existence is evil,' and that 'Nirvana' is the only object of rational hope and desire.

The Future of these Godless Philosophies.

The common expectation of the advocates of all systems true and false is the final triumph of their principles and doctrines over all opposition. 'Truth is mighty, and must prevail.' To doubt this is equivalent to the absurdity that error rests upon a firmer basis than truth. Truth is not for any man, or class of men, not for any single age, but for universal humanity in all ages. The nature of mind is so correlative to truth in all its forms, that the highest perfection of our nature requires a final solution of the great problem of Being and its laws. Nor will human thought and enquiry rest until this end is attained. He that has found a vital truth has discovered that which is to universal mind a priceless treasure. When the problem of Ontology and Ultimate Causation shall have been really solved, and the validity of that solution shall have been scientifically verified, a plane will have been determined, to the level of which universal humanity will hereafter be elevated. The advocates of the New Philosophy would demonstrate themselves unworthy to represent any system at all, if they were less sanguine than they are of the ultimate universal triumph of their principles and doctrines. But what are the prospects before us? Are we to anticipate the general prevalence of Materialism, Idealism, or Scepticism, now presented to the world under a false guise, as the New Philosophy?

In our reasoning upon this subject, we shall leave out of account the three-fifths of the race where the doctrines and principles of these systems constitute the religion of the people, and are imposed upon them by despotic authority. We shall speak of the power of these principles and doctrines to command popular belief among peoples where all systems are open to rigid scientific scrutiny. We must bear in mind here, what has been absolutely verified in former parts of this Treatise, that Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism, miscalled the New Philosophy, as now presented to the world, have, in their principles, methods, deductions, and affirmed proofs, presented nothing whatever that is really new. All these systems in their entireness and perfection of development, have, during the more than twenty centuries past, been presented, at diverse periods, first to the inhabitants of Greece and Rome, and then to all peoples in Christendom, and in all cases with the same final results. In all cases they have followed each other in the same order, Idealism first, then Materialism, then Scepticism, and a final return to former beliefs. In no instance has either system, for any considerable period, controlled scientific thought, much less popular belief. In every instance, each system in its turn has been presented to the world as the New Philosophy, as a primal development of eternal truth, of which the race had never heard before, and which embraced in itself 'all wisdom and all knowledge.' After commanding the wonder of many, and the real faith of none, and after veiling from multitudes the face of God and his truth, the system has vanished from thought, to be remembered only as a bewildering dream of false science, and never again to reappear among the same people, unless it be after the lapse of many centuries, when it could again be presented as the New Philosophy. Such, undeniably, has been the veritable history of each of these Philosophies in ages past. What other destiny can await these systems in the future? Will 'the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action'? He must be a poor student in the history of Philosophy, and must be stupidly ignorant of rational mind, who can expect that this New Philosophy, this ignis fatuus, which has so often, in ages past, shed its lurid glare upon the night visions of humanity, and then gone out amid the swamp-fogs of error by which it was originated, shall become the future 'Light of the World.' No, Huxley, we shall hold fast to our immortal hopes and 'everlasting consolations,' and the world will soon return to reason, notwithstanding the prophecy of yourself and associates, that 'the advancing tide of matter,' or any other tide which these godless Philosophies can raise, shall 'drown our souls,' and locate our divine religion in the sphere of 'Lunar Politics.' The future will reveal, as the past has done, the fact, that whatever system shall fall upon this religion, will fall upon the rock of truth, and will be broken there.

We must also bear in mind, in this connection, that the main source of the power which the unbelief of this age has with the public mind, is to be found in the undeniable fact that such thinkers as Spencer reason with the strictest logical integrity from premises, the validity of which is admitted by our leading Christian philosophers and theologians. It has often been truly said that in England, for example, the weight of valid argument is, not as it should be, with the advocates of natural and Christian theism, but with the Sceptics. This will always be the case as long as the Philosophies of Christendom remain in their present status. As long as it is admitted, for example, that we have no real or valid, but only a relative knowledge of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, the deduction of Hume, Spencer, Huxley, Emerson, and their school of thinkers, that the idea of an absolute Religion, such as Christianity is, if true at all, is as absurd as is the idea of an absolute system of Lunar Politics, will command the assent of all who reason with logical integrity. It evinces, not respect for logical truth, but a want of logical integrity in us, when we lay down premises and then censure thinkers who draw from them the only deductions which our own data logically yield. Supposing we grant, with Mansel and others, that all our 'Ultimate Religious Ideas' are self-contradictory and absurd. In that case, we simply evince our want of logical integrity, if we do not, with Mill and Spencer, class those ideas as 'pseudo-ideas.' The reason, and the only reason, why religious and Christian faith has place anywhere in Christendom to-day is the fact that among the masses of educated and uneducated minds, original and absolute intuition is perpetually correcting, subverting, and giving the lie to the wild deductions of our false Philosophies. The mass of mankind, 'the contradictions of science falsely so-called,' notwithstanding, do believe, and will believe, and ought to believe, that they do know 'the things that are made,' and that 'ever since the creation of the world, the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead: so that they' (all unbelievers) 'are without excuse.' When thinkers 'compel themselves to treat as nothing but a prejudice, innate, indeed, and con-natural, yet as nothing but a prejudice,' original, absolute, and universal, intuitions of any class, they can give being and system to nothing but lawless and godless Philosophies-Philosophies which none can embrace, and maintain logical integrity, without an utter subversion of all their moral and religious ideas. When Christian philosophers and theologians shall come back to these intuitions, and vindicate for them all in common, as may readily be done, not a mere relative, but absolute validity for truth, they will then inflict upon all these Godless Philosophies a deadly wound which can never be healed.

When we received our appointment, about forty-seven years since, as Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, we made this definite statement to one of our associates, that the central problem of the present age, that upon the solution of which the true answers to all questions relative to Ontology and Ultimate Causation depend, pertains wholly to the question relative to the validity of the human Intelligence as a faculty of knowledge in respect to Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, and especially in the sphere of external perception. If it be admitted and verified upon strictly scientific grounds, that the Intelligence is, relative to these realities, a faculty, and they to it objects of real and valid knowledge, then, as none will pretend to deny, the problem of Ontology and Ultimate Causation is solved, and Realism, and with it, Theism, stands revealed as resting upon an absolutely scientific basis. If, on the other hand, the Intelligence relative to all or a part of these realities, shall be ascertained to be a faculty of knowledge in its mere relative forms, then Realism and Theism are baseless systems, and Idealism, Materialism, or Scepticism, must be true. Positive systems must have a positive basis. Hence, from the time designated to the present, a fundamental aim with us has been the ascertainment and application of the undeniably scientific criteria of valid knowledge, the criteria which distinguish real knowledge from mere opinions, beliefs and conjectures on the one hand, and forms of mere relative knowledge on the other; and finally, the absolute criteria by which valid Principles are to be distinguished from mere Assumptions and General Notions in science. Another fixed aim has been to render perfectly plain to the apprehensions of all pupils the real distinction between the á priori, or Pure, and the à posteriori, or Inductive Sciences, to demonstrate the fact, that while all the principles of all the sciences are really identical, the facts of the former class are objects of reason-ideas, and those of the latter, of external and internal perception; that all the facts of both classes are equally the objects of original, absolute, and universal, intuition, and, therefore, of equal authority in science. Our next object has been to render so distinct, that the pupil must correctly apprehend, the principles, facts, and method of Realism, as distinguished from those which peculiarize Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism, in all their forms, and thus to render, in the strictest sense, demonstratively evident to his mind, that while the method, principles, facts, and deductions of Realism accord throughout with the strictest demands of absolute science, each of the other systems has no other basis than mere assumption, and a partial induction of real facts; that it is constructed throughout in accordance with a palpably false method; that its deductions can have not one of the essential characteristics of scientific verities; and that the system itself can have place but among 'pseudo-ideas,' and logical fictions. Of this fact, from nearly thirty years of experience, we are absolutely assured, that when, in all our literary institutions, scholars shall be thus taught, there will be no more peril of their embracing, or seeking to embrace any of these godless Philosophies, than there will be that they shall devoutly seek to be infected with the leprosy; that all in common, whatever their prior beliefs may have been, who leave such institutions, will be as absolutely assured, that Realism must be true, and these systems false, as they will be, that the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of its two sides, and that we shall have just as much reason to apprehend, that in the public regard, 'the advancing tide of matter will drown our souls,' as there will be that the advancing tides of the Atlantic Ocean will drown the moon.

What are the undeniable facts of the case? In all schools of Philosophy in all ages, as well as by the rest of mankind, it is admitted and affirmed, that in all minds in common there is an absolute consciousness of a knowledge direct and immediate of the Self as an interior subject exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, and of the Not-self as an exterior object, having real extension and form, and of Space and Time as absolutely necessary and implied realities—that in all minds in common there exist, in all essential particulars, the same identical apprehensions and convictions in respect to these four realities—and that these apprehensions and convictions can no more be changed, modified, or subverted, by any 'grounds and arguments' which science can adduce, than can the universal and necessary conviction, that things equal to the same thing, are equal to one another. Here, as Cicero has well observed, we find ourselves in the presence of a fixed law of nature, an immutable law of thought in universal mind, a law which must be admitted as of absolute authority in science, or the laws of nature in their highest forms, the immutable laws of rational thought, must be affirmed to be a lie. Such apprehensions and convictions must, undeniably, be accepted as having absolute validity for truth, or their mendaciousness must be rendered demonstrably evident. On what conditions are such demonstrations conceivably possible? On that exclusively which we have so often expressed before, namely, a ground of higher and more absolute certitude than characterizes these apprehensions and convictions, must be adduced, a ground from which their mendaciousness necessarily follows, that is, some proposition of the validity of which we are and must be more absolutely assured than we are, or can be, of our own personal existence, and of the fact that the material world is directly and immediately before us as possessed of real extension and form. This is palpably the least that can rationally be required of all who impeach the validity of these intuitions. Will any philosopher of any school, when confronted with such a requirement, attempt to designate any such proposition? No one ever has professed, or ever will profess, that he has found any such proposition. He would, in the just judgment of the race, dementate himself, if he should profess that he has discovered any such 'grounds or arguments.' We must, then, admit, not the relative but real validity of our knowledge of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, or openly admit, that we 'compel ourselves,' ' when we begin to philosophize,' to treat as a lie the known and acknowledged laws of nature, the immutable and necessary laws of the Universal Intelligence. So demonstrably manifest will true Philosophy render the fact, that every one of these godless systems is 'science falsely so called.' When their baselessness has once been fully exposed, they will, one and all, 'be dissolved, and like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind.'

APPENDIX.

—o—

CHAPTER I.

HOW IT IS THAT PROFESSEDLY SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE NOT UNFREQUENTLY REPRESENTS NO IDEAS OF ANY KIND WHATEVER.

Hegel was a voluminous author, and all his works were upon one and the same theme, his peculiar system of Philosophy. Nor have his great talents ever been doubted. Yet, when upon his death-bed, he remarked that he expected little as the results of the influence of his system, and assigned for his apprehension this reason: 'But one man living or dead has understood me, and he has misunderstood me.' 'God knows,' said Richter of a book of his own, 'that I did mean something when I wrote that book. But what I did mean God only knows, for I have forgotten.' We not unfrequently meet with whole paragraphs and pages in professedly scientific works, paragraphs of the meaning of which neither the author, nor anybody else, has, or can have, any knowledge. Obscurity is the common characteristic of the teachings of the advocates of false science. What is peculiar here is the fact that in the schools of such sciences, the profoundest obscurity is commonly understood to indicate and express the profoundest wisdom. We hold the opposite doctrine. Language, among all peoples, has taken essential form from common apprehensions of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space. When any individual has clear and distinct apprehensions of any of these realities, he will seldom find it difficult to express his thoughts in such forms of speech as to be intelligible to all intelligent thinkers. When language seems to eclipse rather than reveal thought, the reason, with very few exceptions, is that no real thoughts existed to be eclipsed or represented. Our present concern, however, is with the causes of the eclipse of thought by means of language, or with the reasons why it is that all real meaning so frequently vanishes out of, and particularly from, the language of professedly scientific thought. Among these causes we designate the following:

SECTION I.

AN ATTEMPT TO REPRESENT MENTAL OPERATIONS AS MATERIAL FACTS.

One of the most common causes to which we refer is this, the attempt of scientists to explain material phenomena as facts or operations of mind. When individuals speak of thought, feeling, and willing, as phenomena of mind, and those of extension and form, and other primary and secondary material qualities, as properties of matter, we readily understand them. But when they attempt to tell how matter thinks, feels, and wills, we feel as if we were standing on our heads, and were attempting to walk with our brains. Language becomes more and more misty, until all meaning passes out of it. What meaning, for example, is there in such language as the following, language in which an attempt is made to represent mental states as material phenomena? 'Remembrances,' Professor Tait tells us, 'are fossil percepts.' He first defines force as 'that which produces or resists motion,' and then tells us that 'force modified by the brain appears as volition, cognition, and feeling.' Who can misapprehend mental phenomena now? 'The highest functions of the nervous system, those to which the hemispherical ganglia minister,' says Professor Maudsley, 'are the functions of intelligence, of emotion, and of will.' Again he says, 'I hold emotion to mean the special sensibility of the vasicular neurine to ideas.' Again, 'As the spinal cord reacts to its impressions in excito-motor action, and as the sensory centres react to their impressions in sensoy-motor action, so, after the complex interworking and combination of ideas in the hemispherical ganglia, there is, in like manner, a reaction or desire of determination of energy outward, in accordance with the fundamental property of organic structure to seek what is beneficial and shun what is hurtful to it. It is this property of tissue that gives the impulse which, when guided by intelligence' (that is, 'the highest functions of the nervous system'), 'we call volition.' Once more, 'In every nerve-cell there is memory, and not only so, but there is memory in every organic element of the body.' 'Memory,' he says, 'is the organic registration of the effects of impressions, the organization of experience, and to recollect is to revive this experience—to call the organized residue into functional activity.' 'When an idea or mental state becomes perfectly organized, it is revived without consciousness, just as an habitual movement does in our bodily activity.' The report came to us in America, across the ocean, some years since, that the disciples of the New Philosophy had made a new discovery of wondrous interest. They had, with their microscope and scalpel, in the dissection of a dead man's brains, and of those departments of the nervous system 'to which the hemispherical ganglia minister,' actually discovered the identical processes by which matter thinks, and feels, and wills. In the above extract, and many others equally to the point that might be given, we have the records of those discoveries, records which, in hot haste, followed those reports across the 'Big Waters.' These affirmed discoveries throw about as much light upon mental phenomena, as a discovery which a farmer in Ontario County, New York, affirmed himself, more than fifty years since, to have made, did throw upon the phenomena of matter. We speak of a fact of actual occurrence. This farmer, with a deep glow upon his countenance, approached a class-mate of ours and exclaimed: 'I have made a discovery, sir, a discovery in Philosophy; a discovery, also, which is wholly original with myself. No philosopher ever thought of it before. Nor can you find any account of the fact in any of the books. I can tell you why the sun is hotter when he sets at night than he is when he rises in the morning. The reason is this. The sun, as you know, always sets in the ocean. Now when he is passing, during the night, round through those deep waters, and especially under the ice around the North Pole, he becomes cooled, whereas, in his passage through the atmosphere, during the day, he gets heated up again. That, sir, is the reason why the sun is cooler when he rises in the morning than he is when he sets at night.' That farmer never wrote a book, and hence it falls upon us, at this late day, to rescue his discovery from oblivion. We put it to the world, and that in sober earnestness, whether this discovery does not throw as much light upon physical phenomena, as that made by the disciples of 'The New Philosophy' does upon those of mind. Professor Maudsley, before he gets through with his 'exploitations,' copies the example of Huxley, and other scientists of the same school, by scientifically throwing himself from a perpendicular to a horizontal position, that is, by asserting himself absolutely ignorant of the subject-matter of which he treats. 'We know not,' he says, 'and perhaps never shall know, what mind is.' How, then, does he, or can he, know that the operations of this unknown and unknowable substratum, mind, are the phenomena of another unknown and unknowable substratum, matter? All the disciples of this 'New Philosophy' agree in this, that they know nothing of mind or matter. In this they are indisputably right. Their wrong consists in their boastfully dogmatizing about what they profess to 'know, only this, that they nothing know.'

We give, as another example of 'the art of sinking' into the palpable obscure in the use of language, the following attempt of Spencer to explain facts of mind, as the result of the interaction of 'matter, motion, and force,' the following exposé of what he calls the will. 'On passing,' he says, 'from compound reflex actions to those actions so highly compounded as to be imperfectly reflex—on passing from the organically, determined psychical changes which take place with extreme rapidity, to the psychical changes which, not being organically determined, take place with some deliberation, and therefore consciously, we pass to a kind of mental action, which is one of Memory, Reason, Feeling, or Will, according to the side of it we look at.'

'When the automical action,' he says again, 'becomes involved and varied in kind, and severally so infrequent, as no longer to be performed with unhesitating precision—when, after the reception of one of the more complex impressions, the appropriate motor changes become nascent, but are prevented from passing into immediate action by the antagonism of certain other nascent motor changes appropriate to some nearly allied impression; there is constituted a state of consciousness which, when it finally issues in action, displays what we term volition.'

'An immense number of psychical states,' he says again, 'are partially aroused, some which unite with the original impression in exciting the action, while the rest combine as excitors of an opposite action; and when, eventually, from their greater number or intensity, the first out-balance the others, the interpretation is that, as an accumulated stimulus, they become sufficiently strong to make the nascent motor changes pass into actual motor changes.' Who can fail now to understand Spencer's doctrine of the Will?

SECTION II.

THE ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN FACTS AND PROPERTIES OF MATTER AS PHENOMENA OF MIND.

Words just as full, or void, of meaning do philosophers employ when they attempt to express and explain facts of matter as phenomena of mind. Material objects, in the universe around us, are thus defined by Kant, and in this definition all Idealists agree. 'Space and Time are the pure forms of them, Sensation in general the matter.' I perceive before me, for example, a mountain, and ask our Transcendental philosopher what it is. 'Space and Time,' he replies, 'are the pure form of the object, Sensation the matter.' Do we not now understand perfectly what a mountain is? 'Matter,' as defined by Kant and philosophers of the Transcendental School, 'is one of the conceptions of reflection, which is laid at the foundation of every other reflection, and is inseparably connected with the use of the understanding.' 'Perception,' says our author, 'is the empirical consciousness, that is, such a one as that wherein sensation is at the same time.' The author now attempts to tell us just how sensation, which is an exclusively mental state, and as such, utterly void of extension and form, appears in the consciousness as an exclusively exterior object existing in space and time, and having extension and form. 'Phenomena,' he says, 'as objects of perception, are not pure (merely formal) intuition, like space and time (for these cannot be perceived at all in themselves). They contain in themselves, therefore, besides the intuition, also the matter for an object in general (whereby something existing in space or time is represented), that is, the real of the sensation as mere subjective representation, through which we can be conscious only that the subject is affected, and which we refer to an object in general. Now a gradual change from empirical consciousness to pure is possible, when the real thereof entirely disappears, and a merely formal consciousness (à priori) remains over: consequently a synthesis likewise of the generation of the quantity of a sensation from its origin the pure intuition = 0, to an arbitrary quantity of it. Now, as sensation in itself is no objective representation at all, and neither the intuition of space nor of time is met with in it, no extensive quantity indeed, but still a quantity will belong to it (and, in fact, by means of the apprehension of this, in which the empirical consciousness in a certain time, from nothing = 0 can increase to its given measure, consequently an intensive quantity), to which sensation, as corresponding to all the objects of perception, in as far as this contains sensation, intensive quantity, that is to say, a degree of influence over sense must be attributed.' Who does not perceive now how sensation, a formless mental state, becomes to the consciousness, the visible universe around us? When these philosophers speak of Matter and Spirit, Time and Space, as revealed to their own, and to the universal Intelligence, they use language perfectly intelligible, and their thoughts are worthy of consideration. But when they attempt to manufacture the visible universe out of a formless mental state, and tell us just how the Intelligence belies all exterior and interior facts, they must encircle themselves, and their thoughts, and their words, and all things visible and invisible, finite and infinite, in the 'palpable obscure.'

SECTION III.

ASSUMING THAT WHICH CAN BE CONCEIVED OF BUT AS AN ATTRIBUTE OF SOME KNOWN SUBSTANCE, AS IN ITSELF A REAL EXISTING THING, AND THE SUBSTANCE OF REALITIES AS ACTUALLY MANIFESTED TO THE MIND.

Another cause of the meaningless use of language, a cause which can issue in no other result, arises from assuming that which is, and can be, apprehended but as an attribute of some specific substance, to be a reality distinct and separate in itself, and the substance and principle of realities as actually represented to the mind. Knowledge, thought, for example, can be conceived of but as an attribute of a personal thinker. Suppose now, that we assume thought, without subject or object, other than itself, to be the only reality, and attempt to explain all the facts of external and internal perception on that hypothesis, and to tell what Time, Space, Matter and Spirit, the Finite and Infinite are, as being in themselves nothing but ideas. We shall, of necessity, find our utterances, like those of Richter and Hegel, so utterly void of intelligible content, that all who 'understand us will misunderstand us,' and we ourselves shall be as ignorant of the real meaning of the words we use as others are. We here give an example of such an attempt, an example taken from the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, a very ably conducted periodical, which is wholly devoted to Pure Idealism. The extract is from an article, entitled 'The Finite and the Infinite,' an article the object of which is to tell us just what God and nature are in themselves. We may also challenge the world to find among all the productions of Hegel and the Tubingen School, a more clear and satisfactory exposition. Now to the extract: 'God is not the Infinite, but the Infinite one; He is not self-existence in general, but the self-existent Singular. The dialectical evolution of Being through Negation after bringing us to the abstract Universal—the Infinite and the Finite, or Self and its Other—leads beyond this to Spirit or Personality—the concrete Universal—as the absolute thought and fact. The Universe is the equality of the Finite and the Infinite; so far as there is definite Being there is Infinite Being; or, there is only one Reality, the singleness of self-existence. But this is rather a single manifold from a single one; the extension and intension are coincident; but just from this coincidence and equality it results that there is a self-identical. Many rather than a self-identical One. What is present is, therefore, Otherness in general, or a universal Being-for-Other, which, because it is a single Being-for-Other, is more properly Being-for-One. That is, the Singleness of the determination sublates the Otherness. The Universal is necessarily for-One, but it is not for Another; the One for which it is, is only itself. That is, the One is for-itself just because that which is for-it is nothing other than itself. To try another statement, Thought, or Reason, is the implicit or In-Itself of Nature; or, if one chooses, Nature is the explicit or Out-of-Itself of Thought; for the Universal is just this Inward-and-Outward, and as much one as the other. Thought, then, is the existence in-itself, Nature is existence for-itself, or objectivated to Thought, and Spirit is the whole truth of existence, at once in-itself and for-itself.'

In the School of Pure Idealism in Concord, Mass., this question was propounded, and received very profound discussion, namely, 'What is reality?' After much deep thought had been expended upon the subject, Dr. Alcott proposed a definition which received the rapturous applause of the whole school. 'Reality,' said the Doctor 'is the Thingness of the Here.' Who will make any further enquiry after the real now? According to this definition, the unreal would be the Non-thingness of the Nowhere.

The absolute impossibility of explaining the universe, on the hypothesis that thought alone is real, without all meaning dropping out of the language employed in the representation, is fully verified by Ueberweg's vain attempt to expound the system of Hegel. The general definition of the system is remotely intelligible, namely, 'Absolute knowledge recognizes thought and Being as identical (or, as Hegel expresses himself, in the preface to his "Philosophy of Right"), the rational as real and the real as rational.' But when our historian attempts to expound the system in detail, neither himself, nor any other being in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, can tell us at all what is meant to be expressed. Take, in illustration, the following fundamental statements. 'According to this system, finite things are not (as in the system of Subjective Idealism) simply phenomena for us, existing only in our consciousness, but are phenomena per se by their very nature, i.e., things having the ground of their being not in themselves, but in the universal Divine idea. The absolute reason is revealed in nature and spirit (mind), since it not only underlies both, as their substance, but also as rational Subject, returns through them—by means of progressive development from the lowest to the highest stages—from its state of self-alienation to itself. Philosophy is the science of the absolute. Since it is thinking consideration of the self-unfolding of the absolute reason, it has for its necessary form the dialectical method, which reproduces in the consciousness of the thinking subject the spontaneous movement of the object (content) of thought. The absolute reason alienates, externalizes itself, becomes the other of itself, in nature, and returns from this its otherness, or self-estrangement, into itself in spirit.' 'The Philosophy of Spirit has three parts—the doctrines of subjective, of objective, and of absolute spirit. Subjective Spirit is the form of relation to itself, or spirit to which the ideal totality of its Idea, i.e., of its conception, becomes inwardly real. Objective Spirit is spirit in the form of reality, reality being here understood in the sense of a world to be brought into being by spirit, and indeed thus brought forth, and in which freedom exists in the form of present necessity. Absolute Spirit is spirit in the absolute, independent, and eternally self-producing unity of its objectivity and its ideality or its conception, or spirit in its absolute truth.' 'The Idea emits nature from itself bypassing over into its other [Anderssein]. Nature strives to recover its lost union with the Idea; this union is recovered in spirit, which is the goal and end of nature.' 'To Nothing, Being stands in the double relation of identity and difference, although the difference cannot be expressed or specified. The identity (in the midst of diversity) of Being and Nothing, gives rise to a new and higher conception, which is the higher unity of both, viz., the conception of Becoming.' 'Quality, in its character as being determination— determination which is, in distinction from the negation contained in it, but distinguished from it's Reality; but the negation is no longer the abstract nothing, but alterity, the being other. The being of quality, as such, in opposition to its relation to some Other, is its being per se [Ausichsein]. Something becomes Other-thing because otherness is a moment in something, and this other which it becomes, as a new something, becomes in turn still other; but this new progress in infinitum is arrested by the contradiction that the finite is at once something, and the other corresponding to this something; and the contradiction is removed by the consideration, in passing, over into its other only comes together with itself, or becomes the other of that other; this relation of something to itself in passing over into its other, and in its other, is the true infinitude, the restoration of being as negation of negation, or being-for-self [independent being].' Essence is sublated being, or being mediated with itself, reflected into itself by negation. 'The conception is the unity of being and essence, the truth of substance, the Free, as independent [fursichseiende] substantial power.' 'In the realization of the End, Aim, the conception declares itself as the intrinsic [au sich seiende] essence of the Objective.' 'Nature is the idea in the form of otherness, or self-alienation. It is the reflex of spirit, the absolute in its immediate definite being [Dasein].' 'The death of mere immediate, particular life is the birth of Spirit. Spirit is the being with-self [Bersichsein] of the Idea, or the Idea returning from its self-alienation to self. Its development the gradual advance from natural determinateness to freedom. Its momenta are subjective, objective, and absolute spirit.'

Such language is void of meaning for the sole reason that in its use there is an attempt to represent, in words, what can, by no possibility, be represented in thought. Mill supposed that he had expressed great truths when he defined matter as 'a permanent possibility of sensation,' and mind as 'a series of feelings with a background of possibilities of feeling.' He expressed no real meaning, however, because we can no more represent, in thought, matter and spirit to be mere subjective possibilities, than we can really think the universe as, not only contained in, but created by, space.

We will give another extract in which Bruno Bauer, a celebrated German author, gives us, from the Hegelean standpoint, his explanation of the origin of the Four Gospels. These histories, we are informed, were not supposed by their authors to be records of facts, or of fictitious apprehensions, but were, in such men, 'the spontaneous efflorescence of the innermost religious consciousness of the age. The writers did not even profess to themselves to record facts, nor did they pretend to make other people think they were recording facts.' Under the strong action of the religious consciousness, on the other hand, they wrote down what, for the time, seemed real to their minds, and all this without thinking they were recording facts, or intending to write fiction. The process by which all this occurred, our Hegelean philosopher thus explains. 'The religious spirit is that disruption of the self-consciousness in which the essential definiteness of the same steps over against the consciousness as a power separate from it. Before this power the self-consciousness must naturally lose itself; for it has therein cast out its own contents out of itself, and so far as it can still sustain itself as a Me for itself, it feels itself before that power as nothing, so it must regard the same as the nothing of its own self. Nevertheless, the Me as self-consciousness cannot entirely lose itself—in its subjective secular thought, filled with moral ends, and its willing, it still maintains its freedom; and into this freedom also the religious consciousness and the historical development of the same are involuntarily drawn. Both the religious consciousness and free self-consciousness thus come in contact, to interpenetration, without which the first could be neither individually living nor capable of an historical growth. But so as this livingness and growth, after their first contact, become the subject of religious reflection, they are again torn from the self-consciousness, they step before the consciousness as the deed of another, and now also, necessarily, the interposition which had placed them in the self-consciousness as its own movement, becomes a machinery whose hands are guided by another world.' Will 'men who have been so often deceived,' have any confidence in the Gospel records after reading the above 'exploitations'? Our author is absolutely assured that they will not. 'See,' he exclaims, 'how they (the theologians) stand there; how the theological hate glows from their eyes. Ha! would they grasp the thunder? Miserable mortals! well that it was not given to you.', 'Now, after the above exploitations, ask them whether they really think their Jesuitism can hold on? whether they believe that their deception and lying will endure for ever? When the time comes that their falsehood must be a conscious and determined lie, then their judo meat is no longer far off.'

We are indebted to Professor Stowe's 'History of the Books of the Bible' for the above extracts. In each of the above citations we have fair examples of the perspicuity of the writings of Transcendental philosophers. As they all in common attempt to represent in words what can, by no possibility, be represented in thought, the language they employ must be void of real meaning, which must be true of all thinkers who confound such palpable opposites as Spirit and Matter, and endeavour to represent mental facts as phenomena of Matter, or material facts as phenomena of Spirit. We have no faculties which can form apprehensions of matter as thinking, feeling, and willing, or of mind, or thought, as making real to itself a non-existing material universe. When philosophers attempt to represent, by words, such 'exploitations,' which they, themselves, cannot represent to themselves in thought, all real meaning will, of course, drop out of language which professedly represents such non-thoughts to the world. We can, in words, speak of space and time as non-realities, as unknown and unknowable existences, or as laws of thought. The fact that such forms of words are without meaning is demonstrably evident from the fact, that by no mental faculty, or by all the faculties combined, can we represent in thought what is seemingly affirmed in words. It is high time that philosophers were told in sober earnest, when they tell us that a parcel of molecules combined from 'the fiery cloud,' employ themselves in thinking, feeling, and willing, and occupy themselves in developing the sciences, pure and mixed, with the solution of the great problems of universal being and its laws, all the while thinking themselves absolute spiritual unities, when they are nothing but masses of material atoms; or when these same philosophers tell how pure spirit, or pure thought, divides itself as subject and object, affirms absolutely that each is a real unity, distinct and separate from, and utterly unlike the other, constructs from itself a material, on the one hand, and a spiritual universe, on the other—it is high time that such men were, in sober earnest, told by the world that they are 'a race mad with logic, and feeding the mind with chimeras,' and in all their presentations 'he that was harking didna ken what he that was speakin' was gabbling about, and he that was speakin' didna ken what he was saying himsel.'

Similar unmeaningness, and that for the reason under consideration, attaches to not a few of the modern professed elucidations of the doctrine of force. Force is a relative term, always representing some specific attribute of some specific subject, implying, like knowledge, a subject and correlated object. Force, as an attribute of a given subject, implies in it power to produce certain specific changes of state in its object. That object may be itself a relatively resisting or co-operative force, or a mere susceptibility. Mind, through its threefold activities of thought, feeling, and willing, is a force. There is a thought-force, a will-force, and a sensitive, emotive, and desire force. The mental faculties are forces relatively to each other, thought exciting emotion, and emotion re-acting upon thought, and each moving the will. All these faculties are forces also relative to the physical organization, and, through it, relative to physical objects around us. Matter, too, is a force relative to mind, awaking thought, moving sensation, and limiting the force of the will. Material objects, also, are forces relative to each other. There is the force of attraction, repulsion, resistance, and chemical affinity, for example. When we talk of force, and the correlation or conservation of forces, and speak of them just as they are actually revealed, that is, as attributes of specific substances, we ourselves understand the meaning of the words we employ, and are readily understood by others. But when individuals begin to speak and think of this attribute, as being itself, not matter, nor spirit, but an independent entity, or as an exclusive attribute of either of these substances, then, in talking of force, and the correlation or conservation of forces, we are soon found using 'great swelling words of vanity,' which are utterly meaningless to ourselves and to all the world. To listen to the prattle of scientists on this subject is about as confusing and bewildering, and unintelligible as it would be to be located in a world-menagerie where every beast, and bird, and insect, was, simultaneously with every other, making all the noise possible. Babel, in the matter of intelligibility, is as the common spelling book, compared with the confused and contradictory utterances of these men, a clear proof that they do not understand themselves, nor are understood by each other. In the National Convention for the Promotion of Science, for example, Professor B—— tells us 'that the only idea which we have, or can have, of force is connected with something tangible, that which we can handle, measure, and weigh, and that if this fact shall conduct us to Materialism we must accept of the deduction.' Accepting of this exposition, we must dismiss for ever the idea of will-force, thought-force, and emotion-force. We must never say again that 'Knowledge is power.' Others tell us with the same assurance that all force is exclusively spiritual. Professor H—— assures us that each original and primary particle of matter is the exclusive resultant of 'two spiritual forces meeting in counter agency.' How intelligible is such a statement! What light it throws upon the nature of matter! Taking the idea that all force is spiritual as valid, we must affirm that there is no force whatever in the earthquake, in the tornado, in the sweeping conflagration, in the thunder-bolt, and in the cannon-ball flying across the battle-field. Professor T—— assures us that 'force is that which produces or resists motion,' and then affirms that 'the cause of motion must itself be motion.' Here motion and force become identical and an actual entity. Hence he affirms that as light, heat, electricity, and magnetism produce motion, they must themselves be 'modes of motion.'

Professor W—— affirms that the so-called particles of matter are only 'localized centres of force,' that 'matter is essentially force, and nothing but force;' that 'matter, as popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically inconceivable.' Conceive now of space as utterly empty and void of all material and spiritual substances. Then conceive of an infinity of 'localized centres of force,' and call this the material universe. What an intelligible conception we have obtained. 'Matter,' says another, Professor B——, 'finds space by virtue of its forces, but does not occupy it.' Space, then, may be 'filled full,' but not occupied at all. According to this idea, we can have, indeed, an infinite number of forms of force, all of the same kind, all existing together in the same place, each one completely filling the place, and yet that place as completely unoccupied as if nothing whatever existed there. Again, 'Force' is used to express 'the cause of motion,' then 'to indicate motion itself, and finally to express the effect of motion.' In a lecture on the Correlation of the Vital and Physical Forces, this same Professor B——, of Yale College, says, 'By potential energy is therefore meant attraction, and by actual energy motion. It is in this latter sense that we shall use the word force in this lecture.' 'Nerve-force,' he says, 'is undeniably motion.' Again he says, 'What can produce motion but motion itself? Into what can motion be converted but motion?' The same class of thinkers who identify force and motion, identify the latter, and consequently the former, with heat. 'No other cause than motion can be found for the heat that is produced.' 'Heat,' says Murphy, 'is a form of motion.' 'Heat has been considered in this essay,' says Grove, 'as itself motion.' Again he says, 'Cold is motion.' Spencer treats of the 'Correlation between heat and motion,' and Tyndall of 'Heat as a mode of motion.' Heat, cold, motion, and force are, therefore, identical. Each, also, is an entity, and as such, is neither matter nor spirit, nor time nor space, nor, Buchner and the Materialists aside, an attribute of either. Vital force, Professor B—— assures us, 'is the sum of the energies of a living body,' 'is a compound,' 'is a result.' 'Chemistry,' he says, 'teaches that thought-force, like muscle-force, comes from food, and demonstrates that the force evolved by the brain, like that produced by muscle, comes not from the disintegration of its own tissue, but is the converted energy of burning carbon.' What form of demonstration will not next proceed from the Laboratory of the Professor of Physiological Chemistry in Yale College? 'Can we longer doubt, then,' asks our professor, that the brain is a machine for the conversion of energy? Can we longer refuse to believe that even thought is in some mysterious way correlated to the other natural forces, and this even in the face of the fact that it has never been measured?' May we not expect that the Chemistry which has already demonstrated that 'thought-force' 'is the converted energy of burning carbon,' will yet teach us how to 'measure' thought, if not by the yard-stick, by some form of chemical measurement?

Such is the doctrine of Force as set forth by 'the advanced thinkers,' 'the privileged spirits,' as the disciples of the New Philosophy choose to call themselves. Speaking of this class, and of himself as one of them, Tyndall truly says: 'Ambiguity in the use of the term "force" has been for some time more and more creeping upon us.' It would seem as if this ambiguity was now sitting as a nightmare upon the breast of the system referred to. If the term, as employed by these 'advanced thinkers' represents any apprehension that has place in any mind, we would be thankful to any privileged, or unprivileged spirit, who will inform us what that apprehension is. The ambiguity under consideration appears to us to be not at all an accidental, but a necessary result of the causes which induced it. Were these 'advanced thinkers' to speak of mental and material forces, and were they to class these as will forces, thought forces, desire forces, attracting and repelling forces, heat and cold forces, nerve and brain forces, moving and static forces, however we might be pleased or displeased with their classifications, we should understand them. But when they take from us spirit, matter, time, and space, casting all these over into 'the Trans-Alpine regions' of the Unknowable, and thus take from us all realities whose existence, attributes and relations constitute the exclusive objects of thought, and when they select a term never before employed but to represent, not an existing entity at all, but attributes of known entities; when, in the use of this term, they represent its object as the sole existing entity, requiring us to regard it as a something which 'fills space without occupying it,' which is never moved, but is motion itself; which is never hot or cold, but heat and cold both together; which never magnetizes or electrifies anything, but is magnetism and electricity both together; which thinks, and feels, and wills, in the absence of all material or mental brains, and without being real matter or spirit either; when they talk in this manner, as they undeniably do, we fail to understand them, because they do not understand themselves. What is, what can be, this force, about which these 'privileged spirits' speak and write so much? Do you not understand the matter, reader? Force is force. That is just what it is. Is it something material? Matter cannot be conceived as a real existence. Is it spiritual? No; that is also an inconceivable entity. What, then, is force? Do help me to conceive of it. Why, friend, I have just told you what it is. Force is force, and nothing else but force.

SECTION IV.

ASSUMING ALL REALITIES TO BE UNKNOWABLE AND UNKNOWN, AND THEN ATTEMPTING FROM THIS STANDPOINT TO EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE.

The next source and cause of the word-meaningless to which we refer, arise in connection with the Sceptical hypothesis, and consist in the attempt, after affirming all realities to be utterly unknown and unknowable, to solve the problem of Universal Being and its Laws, to explain especially the facts of the Phenomenal Universe. That we may fully understand the Sceptical principle, we must bear in mind that according to the Transcendental and Sceptical Philosophy, as expressly set forth by their leading expounders, the terms 'phenomenon' and 'appearance' mean illusory appearance. When they say that all our world-knowledge, necessary ideas included, is phenomenal, is mere appearance, they mean that such knowledge is illusory, that is, that it represents realities, not as they are, but as they are not, in themselves. So when we attempt to cognize appearances, the same intelligence which gives us appearances, illusions, for realities, will give us nothing but appearances, illusions, for appearances. Nothing, not even appearances, or illusions, can be known as they are in themselves. This is the necessary deduction from the principle under consideration. All that science can really do, according to this hypothesis, as Professor Lewes, who holds the sceptical hypothesis without being a Sceptic, has shown, is to explain one appearance, or illusion, by another, this by a third, and so on for ever.

The reader is now fully prepared to understand the Sceptical formula as set forth and affirmed to be true by Spencer, to wit, 'All our knowledge is exclusively phenomenal, mere appearance, that is, illusion,' and 'the reality existing behind all appearance is, and ever must be, unknown.' In the presence of this formula, Spencer has attempted, in his voluminous works, to give us, not science in the only sense possible according to this formula, that is, the explanation of one appearance, or illusion, by another, but the real science of real being and its laws. The real problem which he is attempting to solve, as all thinkers will admit, may be thus stated. Given all realities, even appearances, or illusions, as utterly unknown and unknowable, to deduce from thence a valid science of real universal being, its actual facts and veritable laws, to explain especially the phenomenal universe, through the relations of unknown quantities, or objects, existing behind all phenomena.

In the solution of this problem, Spencer has, to 'appearance,' made some progress. By an illusion which we have already exposed, he has discovered the validity of the basis assumption of Pure Idealism, to wit, 'that being and knowing are one and identical.' By another discovery, that is, appearance, or illusion, he has cognized as a reality, space, which he affirms to be exterior to mind and knowing, and would continue to exist, even if mind and knowledge should cease to be. In one of his latest productions, he reaffirms the validity of this last discovery. Space, then, Spencer being our authority, is a reality in itself, an exterior reality, independent, as a reality, of knowledge, and consequently, not identical with 'knowing.'

With all his advantages for scientific induction and deduction, two forms of merit, it would seem, may be properly required of him—to wit, logical consecutiveness with the absence of self-contradiction, and clearness and distinctness of statement in the use of words. With his merits in the first particular, we have had to do in another department of this Treatise. Of his luminousness in the use of language, we will give a few short examples. 'The New Philosophy' has much to say about life, on the one hand, and evolution on the other. As the great expounder of this Philosophy, Spencer would of course be expected to give us very clear and definite apprehensions of the objects of these two central ideas. This he has attempted to do. Let us carefully contemplate first of all his definition of life—a definition which he reaches after a very protracted discussion, in which the definitions of various other authors are reviewed and rejected. 'The definition of Richerand,' he says, and says truly, '"Life is a collection of phenomena which succeed each other during a limited time in organized body," is liable to the fatal criticism that it equally applies to the decay which goes on after death.' The definition of De Blainville—'Life is the twofold inter-movement of composition and decomposition at once general and continuous,' our philosopher rejects as 'in some respects too narrow, and in other respects too wide.' Spencer's first definition, to which he is inclined, 'as one answering to the facts with tolerable precision,' is this: 'Life is the co-ordination of actions.' Whether Spencer or anybody else does or does not know what these words mean, can he, or anyone else tell whether in death, as well as in life, there are no 'co-ordinations of actions?' The definition which he has perfected, however, after the most elaborate discussion, is the following—a definition which he does not give at once in its entireness, but completes by adding part to part. The first part is thus given. 'Life is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive.' This he tells us, and truly so, 'is a formula which fails to call up an adequate conception.' In the next chapter, after sundry 'exploitations,' he adds, for the sake of 'calling up an adequate conception,' the following very significant (?) words, 'in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences.' 'Adding this all-important characteristic,' he says, 'our conception of Life becomes the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences.' The same 'adequate conception' he further on in the same chapter expresses in these words: 'Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.' Spencer repudiates the definition of Richerand because 'it is liable to the fatal criticism that it equally applies to the decay which goes on after death.' How is it with the definition under consideration? Two bodies are before us, one supposed to be living, and the other dead. Can Spencer prove to us that there is going on in one case and not in the other, the very combination of changes, co-existenees, and sequences designated in his definition? If there is any 'combination of changes' at all, and who will deny that there is? in both cases alike such 'combination' must be 'definite, simultaneous, and successive,' and must occur 'in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences.' All this cannot but be common to the two cases alike. But are not these changes homogeneous in one case, and 'heterogeneous' in the other? If so, can our scientist, or any other individual, tell us why and in what respects the changes produced by death are any more homogeneous, or any the less heterogeneous, than are those produced by the action of the life-principle? But who, on hearing this definition read, or on reading it himself, in ignorance of the thing intended to be defined, would even suspect that this is a definition of life, or of any other specific object actual or conceivable? The best that can be said of it is that it is a mass of dead words out of which all meaning is departed. Yet around this meaningless definition the entire Biology and Psychology of our author revolve, and nothing in these productions has, or can have, in reality, more meaning than is found in this definition. As no definite thing is furnished us in the definition, no definite deduction can be drawn from the non-entity laid at the basis of his system. Ex nihil nihil fit. The reason of all such indefiniteness is obvious. Our philosopher is endeavouring to explain known facts, or phenomena, by means of unknown quantities or causes. His premises consequently, and with these his deductions, must be void of meaning or void of validity. Let us now consider our philosopher's definition of Evolution, a definition which is also reached after a protracted and laboured discussion, and which he gives in italics, as we do. 'Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity through continuous differentiations and integrations.' Chaos, then, 'the fiery cloud,' or primal nebula, is the homogeneous, while order is the heterogeneous, the former indefinite and incoherent, and the latter definite and coherent. Is not the homogeneous if it really exists, as definite in itself as the heterogeneous? Our author, we must bear in mind, is speaking of that of which his ignorance is, by hypothesis, absolute. How can language be otherwise than meaningless, when an attempt is made to systematize the known through the unknowable?

Spencer is not so much of a world-builder as a world-evolutionist. The main object of his voluminous works, particularly his First Principles, Biology and Psychology, is to tell us just how the particles which constituted the Primal Nebula, by successive differentiations and disintegrations, passed out of their indefinite, incoherent homogeneous state, into their present definite, coherent heterogeneous conditions. As one who originally witnessed the whole process, and remembers all he saw, he simply informs us what the original quantities were, via, Matter, Motion, and Force, all given as unknown quantities, and how these unknown quantities commenced and perfected their infinite differentiations and disintegrations, until they developed the phenomenal universe, which has only an apparent existence, while 'the reality existing behind all appearance' [the reality assumed to be Matter, Motion, and Force, of which by hypothesis we know nothing], 'is and ever must be unknown.' By means of equations which determine the value of the two unknown quantities, Matter and Motion, 'in the terms' of Force, 'whose value can never be found,' he professes to tell us, not that 'the worlds were made by the word of God,' but how they took their present heterogeneous order, by necessary differentiations and disintegrations. He also descends to the minutest particulars, and tells us just how the unknown primal elements took form in all the developments of life, thought, feeling, and willing. Among the most important of all his revelations are his disclosures, not only of 'the way of the spirit,' but just 'how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child,' and just how all the members of the body 'in continuance are fashioned' there. We give as a fair example of his 'exploitations' in the wide field of Biology his formal account of the 'organization of the nerves.' We give this lengthy account for two reasons, as a fair example of the mad presumption of the New Philosophy, and also as an example equally striking of the meaningless use of language.

'When through undifferentiated tissue there has passed for the first time a wave of disturbance from some place where molecular motion is liberated, to some place where it is absorbed, the line of least resistance followed must be an indefinite and irregular one. Fully to understand the genesis of nerves, we must understand the physical actions which the this vague course into a definite channel, that becomes ever more permeable as it is more used. To aid our conceptions, we will, as before, take the rude analogy furnished by a row of bricks on end, which overthrow one another in succession. If such bricks on end have been adjusted so that their faces are all at right angles to the line of the series, the change will be propagated along them with the least hindrance, or, under certain conditions, with greater multiplication of the original impulse. For when so placed, the impact which each brick gives to the next, being exactly in the line of the series, will be wholly effective, but when otherwise placed it will not. If the bricks stand with their faces variously askew, each in falling will have a motion more or less diverging from the line of the series; and hence, only a part of its momentum will impel the next in the required direction. Now, though in the case of a series of molecules, the action can by no means be so simple, yet the same principle holds. The isomeric change of a molecule must diffuse a wave which is greater in some one direction than all others. If so, there are certain relative positions of molecules, such that each will receive the greatest amount of this wave from its predecessor, and will so receive it as most readily to produce a like change in itself. A series of molecules thus placed must stand in symmetrical relations to one another—polar relations—as it is not difficult to see that, as in the case of the bricks, any deviation, from symmetrical or polar relations will involve a proportionate deduction from the efficiency of the shock, and a diminution of the quantity of the molecular motion given out at the far end. But now, what is the indirect result when a wave of change passes along a line of molecules thus unsymmetrically placed? The direct result is, that the motion which is not passed by the unsymmetrically arranged molecules goes toward placing them symmetrically. Let us again consider what happens with our row of bricks. When one of these in falling comes against the next standing askew, its impact is given to the nearest angle of this next, and tends to give this next a motion round its axis. Further, when the next thus moved delivers its motion to its successor, it does this not through the angle on the side that was struck, but through the diagonally opposite angle, and, consequently, the reaction of its impact on its successor adds to the rotary motion already received. Hence the amount of force which it does not pass on, is the amount of force absorbed in turning toward parallelism with its neighbours. Similarly with the molecules. Each in falling into its isomeric attitude, and passing on the shock to its successor, stands in polar relation towards it, but which if the relation is not polar, is only partially passed on, some of it being taken up in moving the successor toward polar relation. One more consequence is to be observed. Every approach of the molecular toward symmetrical arrangement increases the amount of molecular motion transferred from one end of the series to the other. Suppose that the row of bricks, which were at first very much out of parallelism, have fallen, and that part of the motion given by each to the next has gone toward bringing their faces nearer to parallelism; and suppose, that without further changing their positions of bases, the bricks are severally restored to their vertical attitudes, then it will happen that if the serial overthrow of them is repeated, the actions, though the same as before in their kind, will not be the same as before in their degrees. Each brick, falling as it now does more in the line of the series, will deliver more of its momentum to the next, and less momentum will be taken up in moving toward parallelism with its neighbours. If, then, the analogy holds, it must happen that in the series of isomerically changing molecules, each transmitted wave of molecular motion is expended, partly in so altering the molecular attitude so as to render the series more permeable to future waves, and partly in setting up changes at the end of the series; that in proportion as less of it is absorbed in working this structural change, more of it is delivered at the far end, and greater effect produced there and that a final state is one in which the initial wave of molecular motion is transmitted without deduction, or rather without the addition of the molecular motion given out by the successive molecules of the series in their isomeric falls.

'From beginning to end, therefore, the development of nerve results from the passage of motion along the line of least resistance, and the reduction of it to a line of less and less resistance continually. The first opening of a route along which equilibrium is restored between a place where molecular motion is in excess and a place where it is in defect, comes within this formula. The production of a more continuous line of that peculiar 'colloid' best fitted to transmit the molecular motion also comes within this formula, as does likewise the making of this line thicker and more even. And the formula also covers that final process by which the line, having been formed, has its molecules brought into the polar order which least resists, and, indeed, facilitates the transmission of the wave.

'Otherwise, we may say that while each passage of a wave is the establishment of an equilibrium between two places in the organism, the formation of this line of easy transmission is an approach towards equilibrium between the structural arrangements of the line and the forces to which it is opposed; while its molecules are so arranged as to offer resistance to the passing wave, they are liable to be changed in position by the wave—they are out of equilibrium with the forces they are subject to. Each approach towards an attitude of equilibrium is a change towards diminished resistance. And so on until there are simultaneously reached the state of structural equilibrium and no resistance.

'Carrying with us these conceptions, we now pass from the genesis of nerves to the genesis of nervous systems. We will look at these in their successive stages of evolution.'

Let us suppose that the above passage, with the term nerves omitted, were submitted for the first time to any educated or uneducated mind, to the shrewdest thinker on earth, if you please. Would any such reader be able to form the remotest conception of the subject matter treated of? All that such individual would be able to say would be that there is nothing in 'the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth,' nothing whose existence, or organization, or character, he could conceive of as resulting from the process described. We have simply an elaborated passage of words and sentences, which express no meaning whatever. As a metaphysician and theologian, the author of this Treatise might be supposed to speak from prejudice in this case. Permit us, then, to cite the remarks of one whose ability to judge, and whose candour in judgment, will not be questioned, J. S. Jewell, M. D., Professor in Chicago Medical College. After citing most of the above passage, Professor Jewell says:

'We may remark that the account of the genesis of nervous systems is equally luminous and satisfactory. After you leave his chapters on the "unknowable" in his "First Principles," Spencer's mode of proceeding through biology and psychology is fairly represented by this extract. When soberly regarded, can anyone say they have ever met with a more fanciful, or artificial, or minute account of a process, the details of which are mostly beyond the power of the microscope, and of which, for this reason as well as others, we know almost nothing. Spencer has no trouble whatever in furnishing himself with an obedient "colloid." He then assumes imaginary motions springing up here and there, apart from any apparent cause, and then directs these imaginary "motions" along purely imaginary "lines of the least resistance," knocking down imaginary "rows of bricks," askew and otherwise, or anywise, and picking these "bricks" up again and again, and again knocking them down until they cease to be askew, and then ends with them, whether down or up we know not. But at this point "bricks" and ''molecules" disappear in their "lines" and "series," and a path having been established in his "colloid," a nerve emerges, as from a dissolving view, as the highway of "motions," nervous and mental, for the future.

'Spencer is a believer in the "correlation of the physical, vital, and mental forces;" and, moreover, is a believer in the doctrine of evolution from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous," from "simple chemical elements" to the "colloid," and from the "colloid" to all the "differentiated" tissues of the animal body—from the simple "chemical and physical forces" up to "life," and from "life" to "mind." In these two parallel series the terms are so related that the one above is wholly derived from the one next below. The two series would result thus:

'1. Simple elements = colloid = organism.

'2. Simple forces = vitality = mind.

'Spencer begins with his "series of bricks" as a "possible analogy." Doubtful at first, he waxes bolder as he proceeds. He soon slips over from "bricks" to "molecules," "knocks" his "molecules" about as easily as his "bricks," and soon calls his "possible analogy" by the strict and dignified name "formula" and begins to deduce "consequences," and "corollaries," attains an equilibrium, and emerges complacently with the specimen of "nerve," saying, "We now pass from the genesis of nerves to the genesis of nervous systems." And this is the scientific way in which, in Spencer's hands, "physical and chemical forces," "colloids," "motions," "lines of least resistance," etc., being given, do the work of vital forces. And this is the showing of a master in the school to which he belongs.'

Before ten years shall pass, we predict of Spencer's 'First Principles,' 'Biology,' and 'Psychology,' that instead of occupying the place some have claimed for them, they will be regarded by most as mere curiosities in respect to much that is peculiar to himself in them. The reason is obvious. The 'exploitations' of this author, and of his school, are the exclusive imaginings of 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so large a part,' imaginings, and 'general notions' pertaining to 'secret things,' not only 'in regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be shut out,' but where 'the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem.' Of 'the imaginary substances' thought to be found here, of their combinations and 'colloids,' and especially of their real relations to conscious facts, neither Spencer nor the disciples of his school can have any real apprehensions themselves, nor can their representations of these non-thinkables be thinkable with the public.

'The whole conception of the Phenomenal Cosmos,' says Masson, speaking of the doctrine that our knowledge is of phenomena only, and of the universal desire to know the realities which exist behind all appearance, 'is the development, by memory, imagination, and science, of this radical belief of the consciousness. It is this Phenomenal Cosmos that is figured as being, as far as speculation is concerned, in an infinity of the Unknowable; it is round the perimeter of this Phenomenal Cosmos that the Ontological beats everlastingly, and we seem to hear the roar of its obstinate silence.' We give the above as another example of 'the palpable obscure' in writing. If bathos and obscurity are synonymous with the sublime, the scientists of this age will furnish all the examples which will be needed for centuries to come. Many more examples might be cited from various authors, but these must suffice.

CHAPTER II.

INDICATIONS OF THE PLAN OF A WORK WHICH, FOR WANT OF TIME, WILL PROBABLY NEVER APPEAR.

We would here announce that we have long contemplated the preparation and publication of a volume on a very important theme—a volume whose title is formed from those of two other works, the one by Pope, entitled, 'The Art of Sinking in Poetry,' and the other by D'Israeli, entitled, 'Curiosities of Literature.' Our volume would be entitled, 'Curiosities of Science, or The Art of Sinking in Philosophy.' We have already before us specimens in sufficient number to constitute a large museum of wonderful curiosities—curiosities which ought to be collected, classified, and preserved for the instruction of mankind. That our readers may become possessed of some apprehensions of what would be the leading features of the important contents of this volume, were it to appear, we will designate a few of the very interesting curiosities which would be found in it.

In our museum, to keep up the figure first suggested, there will be in one large room a vast number of skeletons of the universe material and mental-skeletons formed by world-makers after they have taken God's handiwork all to pieces, and then put it together according to their own ideals. We shall then, after carefully inspecting these skeletons, clearly perceive how much more perfect the ideals of philosophers of certain schools are than is that of Infinity and Perfection. What will most deeply interest and instruct the enquirer about these skeletons will be the diverse materials of which they are constructed, while each one is presented by its advocates as the only real pattern after which 'all things were created and made.' According to one pattern it will appear, as a revelation of absolute truth, that all things were constituted out of 'imaginary substrata;' according to another, the entire system of universal nature was evolved from three unknowables—'Matter, Motion, and Force;' according to another, it will absolutely appear that the universe was developed from two unknown entities denominated 'Noumena;' according to another, it will be rendered demonstrably evident that the substance of this goodly universe was extracted wholly from a mysterious finite thing called the 'I' or the 'Me;' according to another, it will be rendered equally evident that all these elements were extracted from a still different something called the Infinite and Absolute; and finally, in the study of still another pattern, the enquirer will be absolutely assured that the substance of all things finite and infinite is constituted of elements extracted from pure thought. In the study of these so-called systems the enquirer will be perfectly convinced that while each is the absolute antagonism of every other, the evidence in favour of the validity of each is absolutely identical with that which absolutely affirms the exclusive claims of every other. The enquirer will thus find himself absolutely compelled to reject all these systems en masse, or hold each one of them as the exclusive embodiment of absolute truth.

In the profound study of these systems the enquirer will become most fully impressed with the ease and readiness with which 'the advanced thinkers' and 'privileged spirits' can 'construct the universe,' the thing always being done 'with that facility with which men are wont to sin.' In connection with each system a pamphlet will be furnished giving in detail the full process by which 'the material for the whole building' was collected, framed, and put together. By the time he has studied these systems in succession the enquirer will find himself to have become a perfected world-constructor. He will find that he has only to retire to his study, 'put himself into a state of not-knowing,' 'assume all his previous knowledge to be uncertain,' seat himself in a fixed posture, 'with his eyes fixed upon the end of his nose,' 'upon the point of his navel' or nowhere, and a world-system will rise up before him as the exclusive revelation of absolute truth. He has now only to give his system an imposing name, and verify it by a few obvious assumptions, and get it endorsed by a number of 'the advanced thinkers,' which can readily be done, and he will soon find himself occupying, in the regard of 'the weaker brethren,' the position of a fixed star in the high realm of 'philosophic space.'

Machines, also, of a great diversity of forms, will be presented—brain and nerve-machines actually possessing the powers and exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing—machines wholly constructed from 'carbonic acid, water, and ammonia,' or 'burning carbon.' The observer will also be shown the specific 'molecular changes' which constitute thought, feeling, and willing, and will be wonderfully entertained by noticing those specific changes in which 'thought makes a bull.' There will be, also, many cases illustrative of the manner in which 'the brain modifies force,' when the latter 'appears as volition, cognition, and feeling.' Our specimens of 'fossil precepts' and 'perfectly organized mental states,' and of the sensitive forms of the 'vesicular neurine which constitute emotion,' will be quite numerous. One entire room in the museum will be wholly occupied with the most wonderful specimens of granite boulders of flint, limestone, and crystal rock, of blocks of ice, and salted herring, etc., etc., which philosophers, in their thought-laboratories, have combined and consolidated wholly from elements extracted from pure ideas, and others of the same classes combined and consolidated from a peculiar essence extracted from mere sensation.

In the careful study of these and other forms of being and of life presented in this museum, the enquirer will find himself greatly enlightened in regard to the nature of the substrata of which the universe, material and mental, is constituted. From one standpoint, he will perceive demonstrative proof that nothing is real but matter, and that all mental phenomena are nothing but material manifestations. Then he will find himself at another standpoint, from whence the deduction will be absolute, that matter does not exist at all, that nothing is real but spirit, or pure thought. Then he will be conducted to another landing-place, from whence it will be equally manifest that we have, and can have, no valid knowledge whatever of matter, spirit, time, or space. Yet, he will be shown grounds for the absolute assurance, that wandering as 'a privileged spirit' in the sphere of the absolute Unknowable, he can attain 'general notions' by which he can explain the universe. There will, also, be shown a great many specimens of 'protoplasm,' 'the physical basis of life,' 'protoplasm' made up wholly of 'carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,' and yet constituted as exclusively of 'imaginary substrata.' A great many forms of life, too, will be shown, some of which are constituted wholly of 'imaginary substrata,' others of molecular congeries, and others still, as exclusively constituted of 'definite combinations of heterogeneous changes both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences.' There will be examples shown in which matter appears 'as a form of thought,' and others in which thought appears 'as a property of matter,' thus revealing definitely what thought and matter are.

We mention as of special interest another class of wonderful curiosities. There will be a great many human beings presented, human beings constituted wholly, body and soul, of a congeries of 'protoplasm,' living protoplasms, some of which have been developed chiefly from the dead protoplasm of dead mutton; others from the dead protoplasm of dead ham and eggs; others from the dead protoplasm of dead potatoes; and others still, their souls especially, from the dead protoplasm of dead larger.

There will be one very large room in this museum of curiosities, a room whose collections will possess a special interest for all who desire to attain a rank among 'the advanced thinkers' and 'privileged spirits' of this age. On the walls of this room, such enquirers will find, among other important matters, fully written out formulas, in the study of which they will become still more fully perfected in the art of system-making. With all the fundamental facts before them, facts furnished by the Universal Intelligence, and all in common presenting the same identical characteristics of genuineness, they will perceive with perfect distinctness just what classes to omit, and what to select, in order to obtain the materials for any system which they may desire to construct. If they desire to verify their omissions and selections, they will be rendered familiar with all the assumptions required for such purposes. If they shall desire to learn how to develop their system in minute detail, they will find there a sufficient number of plain examples from which they can learn just how 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so large a part,' operates in such details. In short, by a careful study of the above-mentioned formulas, every such enquirer will find himself perfectly skilled in the construction of all the systems about which 'the privileged spirits' employ themselves, and about which 'the weaker brethren' in their schools make so many bulls in science.

One entire room in this museum will be wholly occupied with a single presentation of central interest. In this room, to 'the speculative faculty, of which the imagination forms so large a part,' the entire 'Phenomenal Cosmos' will be visibly 'figured as being'—'in an infinity of the Unknowable.' 'Round the perimeter of this Phenomenal Cosmos,' 'the Ontological' will be distinctly visible, as 'beating everlastingly.' So loud and fearful will be the knocks of 'the Ontological' on the outer shell of 'the Phenomenal Cosmos,' that 'we shall seem to hear the roar of the obstinate silence' of this 'Phenomenal Cosmos.' To render the interest of this exhibition complete, the visitant will be furnished with a certain number of ear-trumpets manufactured by the most 'advanced thinkers' in 'the Speculative Schools, and manufactured expressly for this exhibition. With either of these trumpets at his ear, the visitant will not only seem to hear, but will actually 'hear the roar of the obstinate silence' of 'the Phenomenal Cosmos,' and in hearing will become possessed of an absolute knowledge of 'the Phenomenal Cosmos,' it being to his ear absolutely self-interpreted, with all realities which it implies. Placing one of these trumpets to his ear, 'the Phenomenal Cosmos,' 'through the roar of its obstinate silence,' will be absolutely self-interpreted, as being exclusively pure thought in a state of self-development, with a revelation equally absolute, that thought alone is real, even space and time being nothing but forms of thought.

Laying this down, and placing to his ear another of these trumpets, 'the Phenomenal Cosmos,' through the same 'roar of its obstinate silence,' will be absolutely self-interpreted to the visitant's mind, as the self-developed Infinite and Absolute, who alone has real being. With another trumpet to his ear, this same 'Phenomenal Cosmos' will, by the same 'roar of its obstinate silence,' interpret itself, with equal absoluteness, as being nothing but a self-developed 'finite' 'I myself I,' 'the Me' being the sole existence, matter, spirit, time and space being nothing but forms of 'the Me.'

Laying these down, and placing to his ear another trumpet, and this same 'Phenomenal Cosmos,' and through the same 'roar,' will be again most absolutely self-interpreted, as the ideal creation of two unknown and unknowable entities, 'noumena,'—a creation resulting from the mutual action and re-action of these two entities, they existing as the sole realities, time and space being nothing but 'subjective impressions.' Through another of these trumpets this same 'Phenomenal Cosmos,' and through the same 'roar,' will be as absolutely as before self-interpreted as an evolved development of three absolute Unknowables, 'Matter, Motion, and Force,' the value of the first two quantities being always ascertainable through the terms of the last, 'whose value can never be found.'

Placing still another trumpet to his ear, the enquirer will distinctly hear 'the Phenomenal Cosmos,' through 'the roar of its obstinate silence,' affirming itself most absolutely to be nothing but a material creation, a system of material atoms self-organized from a 'fiery cloud,' even mental phenomena, as thought, feeling, and willing, being nothing but 'the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life,' or the more specific results of 'burning carbon.'

After the visitant has laid aside all these ear-trumpets, and shall look again directly upon the scene before him, after he has again contemplated 'the Phenomenal Cosmos,' as it is 'being there in an infinity of the Unknowable,' and has seen 'the Cosmological beating everlastingly' round the perimeter of this 'Phenomenal Cosmos,' and has 'seemed to hear again the roar of its obstinate silence,' he will leave the room where 'the ultimate of ultimates' of 'the speculative thoughts' of 'the privileged spirits' are so fully illustrated,—he will leave this room, we say, with a more vivid impression than he ever had before of the exceeding shortness of 'the step from the sublime to the ridiculous.'

In the careful study of another class of formulas, carried out in full detail, in another room, such enquirers will become fully skilled in the art of 'working with profit' in the spheres of the absolutely unknown and unknowable, in the regions, for example, 'between the microscope limit and the true molecular limit,' where 'the poles of the atoms are arranged,' and 'that tendency is given to their powers' 'on which all subsequent action depends.' In 'regions where the hope of certainty would seem to be entirely shut out,' and from whence 'the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and diciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem,' they will learn how to 'attain general notions' by which they will fully explain, in the judgment of themselves and school, 'the weaker brethren' particularly, the entire universe.

Through another class of fully worked out formulas, the enquirers will be perfectly taught how to prove to the full satisfaction of all 'the weaker brethren,' that all our knowledge is exclusively of phenomena, 'mere illusory appearances,' and that the reality existing behind all appearance is, and ever must be, unknown, and then to demonstrate, that in the realm of the Unknowable, there can be no God, nothing but mere 'physical, chemical, and mechanical forces,' and all this without discovering the remotest appearance of contradiction in their dogmas.

In the study of certain special demonstrations, which are fully worked out on the walls of this room, these enquirers will be completely instructed in the use of certain forms of argument which 'the advanced thinkers' employ so much in the service of Sceptical thought. We refer to those demonstrations in which absolute proof is presented, that demonstration, and real proof, in every form, is impossible, that in every logical argument the conclusion is begged, and not proven. By such demonstrations these enquirers will come to 'know that they can nothing know,' and will thus know themselves, and be known to the world, 'the weaker brethren' especially, as possessed of the highest wisdom. They will then be instructed through other formulas fully worked out, just how, and by means of this absolute nescience of the objects of all ultimate religious and scientific ideas, such as God, space, time, matter, motion, force, consciousness, personal existence,' and all other realities, if any there be, to develop 'general notions' by which they can explain the phenomenal universe, and prove all things to be the exclusive result of 'physical, chemical, and mechanical' causation.

Among the most wonderful and profitable formulas fully worked out on these walls, wonderful and profitable in the judgment of 'the advanced thinkers,' and especially of 'the weaker brethren,' will be fully demonstrated equations in which the value of two unknown quantities, matter and motion, 'are ascertained in the terms of force, a quantity whose value can never be found,' equations in the light of which the phenomenal universe, mental and physical, become fully explicable from the material stand-point.

Right in front of these last-mentioned formulas will be found tables on which are located rows of bricks, standing on end, some 'at right angles to the line of the series,' and others 'askew,' and 'which overthrow one another in succession.' By carefully observing their overthrow in successive instances, these enquirers will come fully to understand, not only just 'how the bones do grow,' but the exact process of 'the genesis of the nerves,' and 'nervous systems,' 'in the womb of her that is with child.'

On the walls of this room will also be found detailed processes in the study of which these enquirers will be fully instructed in the art of verifying in their own and the judgment of 'the weaker brethren,' any theories in favour of which no decisive facts or valid arguments of any kind can be adduced. They will be made to see the prime importance of inventing for their theory first of all an imposing name, such as Evolution, Pangenesis, Development, or the New Philosophy. The next step will be to adduce the opinions of men, all presented as 'the advanced thinkers' of the age. The inventions of new names, such as 'colloids,' 'differentiations,' 'segregations,' 'correlation,' and 'conservation of force,' and the employment of common terms as representing new ideas, such as matter, motion, and force—such expedients will be shown to be of great service in the seeming verification of such theories. In direct attempts at verification the enquirer will learn to perceive the importance of adducing masses of facts, the more the better—facts equally compatible with his own and the theory which he denies, and urging these facts as demonstrating the validity of the former theory, such as the entire facts adduced by Darwin, the likeness of the protoplasm of man and other animals, diseases common to the two classes, 'variation of species,' 'conflict for existence,' etc. In the study of these formulas the enquirer will learn how, as occasion requires, to make all needed drafts, very heavy, if necessary, 'upon the scientific tolerance of the age,' upon time, upon matter in respect to its unknown and hereafter to be developed qualities, and upon the future of chemistry and physiology. The enquirer will learn the great importance of representing his theory as leading the van of the scientific movement of the age, and all who oppose it as the enemies of free and progressive thought. The enquirer will be fully taught in the study of these processes just how and when to employ the above-mentioned forms of seeming proof, and thus to 'make the worse appear the better reason.'

We mention but one other class of formulas which will be fully developed on the walls of this room. We refer to those in the study of which the enquirer will become most fully taught in the science of making leaps in logic. Everything here will be fully classified, so that the enquirer will clearly understand just when, from whence, in what direction, and to what point, the leap shall be made. We can specify but a few unclassified examples. One example in common use among 'the advanced thinkers' is this: On the conception of 'a vast possibility,' to assert absolutely the actual existence of a corresponding 'dynamic power.' Vast chasms may be readily leaped over by such an assumption as this. By simply assuming the existence in nature of an infinite dynamic power of self-organization, how easy it becomes to explain all material and mental facts without divine agency. Another form of leaping over difficulties in processes of 'discursive reasoning,' is to assume the certainty of future discoveries by means of such sciences as chemistry and physiology. In the absence of all facts to verify the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation, or of the power of matter to think, feel, and will, just assume that chemistry, careful experiment, and physiological research will as surely furnish the needful facts 'as the future grows out of past and present.' You may then present your hypothesis as an absolutely verified truth of science. By such leaps as these you may be certain of fully satisfying 'the advanced thinkers' and 'weaker brethren.'

Another of the leaps in scientific induction quite common with 'the privileged spirits'—leaps the character of which will be elucidated by many examples, is to infer, from an immaterial fact common to different classes of objects, an absolute identity in all particulars. 'All life is from the egg,' and the primal ovum in the case of man, animals, and plants even, is almost identical in size, form, and ascertainable chemical composition. Overlooking the fundamental facts that the being developed from every egg is immutably of the same class as its parents, and that, in man, a soul appears—a soul given by the Universal Intelligence as an immaterial entity; totally ignoring such fundamental facts, at least two deductions, by infinite leaps in logic, are drawn from the immaterial fact under consideration, that 'man must have been descended from some lower order,' on the one hand, and that, on the other, mind must be a material entity, all mental facts being but 'molecular changes in the matter of life.' By carefully studying this class of deductions the enquirer will clearly perceive how easy it is to verify any deductions which he may desire to reach. However fundamentally diverse any two cases may be, it will be always practicable to designate some particular fact or incident common to the two, and from hence to infer any form of identity he pleases.

We shall specify but one more among the many other classes of deductions of the kind under consideration, deductions whose character and principles are fully elucidated on the walls of this room. Facts are present, we will suppose, perfectly inexplicable on the theory you desire to verify, and as fully explicable by the opposite hypothesis, which must be true, if yours is false. At the same time, masses of facts are present, all of which are equally compatible with both theories. By utterly ignoring the former class, and claiming all the latter in favour of your own hypothesis, you will be sure to verify the latter to the full satisfaction of 'the advanced thinkers' and ' weaker brethren.' There are, fox example, two classes of facts which separate man, at an infinite remove from 'the lower orders,' when the idea of descent is under consideration—his soul, and the total absence throughout the wide domain of revealed existence of any intermediate forms intimating, in the remotest degree, the validity of the doctrine of Transmutation. At the same time, there is an infinity of facts which unquestionably would be as they are, were either this or the common hypothesis true. There is not a form of argument adduced by Transmutationists which has not its exclusive basis on facts of this second class. How modest and logical it is, not only to ignore the fundamental classes first designated, but to claim all those of the second kind in proof of the doctrine of Transmutation! By carefully studying examples given of deductions of the class now under consideration, the enquirer will become fully educated in the art of finding facts from which he can leap to any conclusions he may desire to reach. He will also, in connection with the other examples given, fully understand the secret of that wonderful power which 'the advanced thinkers' exercise over 'the weaker brethren.'

The enquirer, after he has fully acquainted himself with the curiosities - under consideration, will leave our Museum in one of two mental states—under an impression that these 'privileged spirits' 'are the men, and wisdom will die with them'—or that 'these advanced thinkers' are, what a poet of former ages affirmed them to be, 'a race mad with logic, and feeding the mind on chimeras.' In the former case he will be distinctly impressed that by 'his wisdom' he has come to know that all individual and material existence is an illusion, and that the Absolute Spirit is the sole reality; or that what is called the soul is a mere congeries of material molecules; or that spirit, matter, time, and space, 'with all that we inherit,' all lie within the sphere of the Unknowable, that 'this only can we know, that we nothing know,' and, as a final consequent, that all moral and religious concernment belongs to 'the palpable obscure' of 'Lunar Politics.' As an aspirant for notoriety, however, he will be qualified to 'become a mighty man, a man of renown,' by practising curious feats of sinking in science secundum artem.

In the latter case, he will not despair of Philosophy, but will retain an absolute assurance of the reality of Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space, and a consequent fixed faith in God, the Soul, Duty, Immortality, and Retribution, and as the sublime truths of science take full form before his mind, he will exclaim,—

'How charming is divine Philosophy!

Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,

Where no crude surfeit reigns.'

CHAPTER III.

THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY.

The fact that the great problems of existence, to which our attention has been directed—problems which all systems of Philosophy professedly solve—are, by the immutable laws of our being pressed upon the Intelligence for solution, implies that they are solvable problems, and that there is a system through which this fundamental want of universal human nature shall be fully met. Nor should the failures of past ages be regarded as presenting any reasons whatever for a cessation of enquiry, especially when we consider that the reasons for past failures have been fully ascertained, and the true method of science has been as fully developed. Every intelligent reader of the foregoing Treatise has, unquestionably, been impressed with the conviction, that the whole work has been developed with distinct reference to a somewhat peculiar and special system of Metaphysics. This impression is correct. The author does hold and teach a system of Mental Philosophy differing in essential particulars from any system which has hitherto been developed by any other author, a system which we, of course, regard as the true system. We should leave the present Treatise in an unfinished state, did we not clearly indicate the peculiar and special characteristics and method of this system. The accomplishment of this, the true result, is the object of the present chapter. In accomplishing this end, it will be necessary, first of all, to state definitely the essential characteristics of the true system, whatever it may be. Among these characteristics we designate the following:

Characteristics of the True System.

1. It will fully explain, and scientifically classify, all mental phenomena, and thus give an obviously full and correct Psychology.

2. It will determine and elucidate the nature, extent, limits, and spheres of all the sciences, determine and explain their principles and facts, and show the validity of their deductions.

3. It will clearly and fully solve all problems pertaining to Ontology and Ultimate Causation, and do this so as to fully satisfy the scientific wants of universal mind.

4. It will, in the last place, fully explain the errors of all other, and false systems, and vindicate for itself an exclusively scientific basis.

It is self-evident that the system which shall fully accomplish all these results must be regarded as the true, and only true system. In the judgment of the author of this Treatise, the system which we will now proceed to develop does possess fully all these characteristics.

General Classification and Division of all Mental Phenomena and Faculties.

It is now agreed by philosophers of all schools, that all mental phenomena take rank under three distinct and separate general classes, represented by the words Thinking, Feeling, and Willing, and that these three distinct and separate classes of phenomena imply a corresponding division of the mental faculties, represented by the terms Intellect or Intelligence, Sensibility or Sensitivity, and Will. As all now agree in the validity of this classification in both particulars, we shall add nothing in its verification, but shall proceed at once to a determination and elucidation of:

The Intellectual Faculties.

As in respect to the mental phenomena and faculties in general, so in regard to the Intelligence in particular, there are certain important respects in which all metaphysicians agree. All agree, for example, in separating the intellectual faculties into two distinct classes, as primary and secondary, the former furnishing the original and constituent elements of knowledge in all its forms, and the latter combining and arranging these elements into conceptions, judgments, etc. All agree, also, in designating these original elements by the term intuition, and the faculties which furnish said intuitions as the Intuitive Faculties. All agree, we remark once more, that next in order after intuitions, come conceptions, or notions, in which the elements furnished by intuition are combined into apprehensions of objects particular and general. So far the agreement among metaphysicians is strictly universal, and may be rationally accepted as true. But when we put the questions, What are these faculties, primary and secondary? What is their number? and What are their relations to one another, and each to all the others? here essential differences arise, differences which require the greatest possible circumspection in our psychological analyses and investigations. Let us see if we cannot discover a path which will, with absolute certainty, conduct us to the truth. We begin with—

The Primary Faculties.

On what conditions can we correctly determine the number and relations to one another of these Intuitive Faculties? As all the elements furnished by these faculties are found in the conceptions or notions in which said elements are combined, it is self-evident that we can scientifically discover and determine the number and relations of these Intuitive Faculties, but by a correct analysis and classification of the elements of intuition found in our conceptions. Suppose that the classes of articles which a given manufactory does and can produce are found and represented in a given depository. Correctly classify these articles, and you thus determine the diverse capabilities of that manufactory. Intuition in all its forms enters into and constitutes our conceptions. By a correct classification of these elements, and by it alone, we may determine the number, and kind, and mutual relations to one another of the diverse intuitive faculties of which the mind is possessed.

In contemplating our conceptions, we find that they all take rank under two general classes—subjective and objective; those which represent mind and its states, on the one hand, and matter and its forms on the other. In contemplating these two classes of conceptions, we find nothing whatever in common between them. There is not a single element in any mental, which has place in any material conception.

They are in all respects, on the other hand, opposites. The distinct and opposite elements which enter into, and constitute these two distinct and opposite classes of conceptions, imply the existence and action of two correspondingly distinct and separate faculties of original or intuitive perception, that of internal and that of external perception. The former we represent by the term Consciousness, or, in the language of Sir William Hamilton, Self-consciousness, and the latter by the term Sense.

When we go still further and contemplate any conception whatever, whether objective or subjective, we find it to be also constituted of two distinct and separate classes of elements, which always sustain the same fixed and immutable relations to one another. The one class is furnished exclusively by perception, external or internal as the case may be, and the other is always given as directly, immediately, and necessarily implied by what is perceived. Thus phenomena or qualities, whether external or internal, are given by the perceptive faculties, while the element represented by the term substance is not perceived, but apprehended as necessarily implied by phenomena or qualities which are perceived. On a careful consideration, it will be found that these two, and only these two classes of elements, ever appear in any conception; and these, the perceived and implied elements, are always present together in every conception. We have, then, three and only three faculties of original or primary knowledge, that of internal and that of external perception, and that of implied intuition. The perceptive faculties are denominated Consciousness or Self-consciousness, and Sense or External Perception, and the organ of implied knowledge we call Reason. Consciousness furnishes us with all mental or subjective, Sense with all external or objective phenomena, while, through Reason, we apprehend all realities implied by the phenomena or qualities which we do perceive—realities such as Substance, Cause, Time, and Space. On this undeniably correct and valid classification of the Primary Intellectual Faculties, we offer the following fundamental remarks and suggestions, to which very special attention is solicited.

General Remarks upon the above Classification of the Facts and Faculties of Primitive Intuition.

The Chronological and Logical Order of these Intuitions.

1. In the order of actual development in the Intelligence, it is perfectly evident that the perceived element is always originated in thought before the implied. This is absolutely evident from the fact that the latter is and can be known but as implied by the former. We must perceive phenomena before we can know what phenomena imply. On the other hand, we always do, and must, explain the perceived by the implied element. If we did not perceive phenomena, or qualities, substance could not be apprehended. If, on the other hand, substance did not exist, nothing would exist to be perceived, and consequently phenomena could not appear. These relations obtain universally between perceived and implied, that is, between contingent and necessary forms of knowledge. We always obtain the latter through the former, and, as a consequence, always explain the former by the latter.

Fundamental Errors of the Schools in respect to these Intuitions.

2. The school of Locke, and of Empiricism universally, admit of but two sources of original intuition, internal and external, perception, and, consequently, ignore and deny the existence of all forms of original implied knowledge. Here we have a fundamental error in Psychology. In every conception that can be adduced, the two classes of elements, the perceived and the implied, do, in fact, exist, and must, consequently,

have been given by original intuition. Empiricism, therefore, in all its forms, stands undeniably convicted of fundamental error.

Transcendentalism, in all its forms, on the other hand, admits and affirms the existence of the two classes of intuitions under consideration, viz, the perceived and implied, but reverses their chronological and logical order and relations, as above stated. According to its teachings, implied intuitions are in all cases originated in the Intelligence before perception, and determine the character of all perceived phenomena. If this was so, if substance, for example, was apprehended prior to, and independent of, phenomena, then the former might be conceived of and defined independently of the latter, just as the latter can be apprehended and defined independently of the former. But this is undeniably impossible. We can form no apprehension of substance, and give no definition of it, but as a specific form of implied knowledge, that is, as a reality implied by phenomena which we do perceive. Phenomena, then, must have been perceived before substance could have been apprehended at all, and our apprehension of each particular substance is, and must be, determined by the specific phenomena, or qualities, which are perceived. Transcendental- ism, then, like Empiricism, stands undeniably convicted of fundamental psychological error, and out of this one error grow all its false inductions and deductions, all its impeachments of human knowledge, and all its teachings in regard to the mere relativity of such knowledge. If, as this system affirms, all forms of implied or necessary knowledge spring up independently in the Intelligence, and that prior to all forms of perception external and internal, then, undeniably, such forms of intuition can have only a mere relative validity. If these merely relatively valid intuitions give form and character to all our perceptions, the same relativity will and must attach to phenomena, and all our knowledges, subjective and objective, can have no validity for truth. If, on the other hand, which is absolutely true, perception of actually existing qualities, that is, knowledge of such qualities, knowledge consciously direct, immediate and absolute, precedes and gives character to all forms of implied knowledge, then the Intelligence stands revealed to itself, not as a faculty of merely relative, but of real and absolute knowledge.

Each of the Primary Faculties has, within its own Exclusive Sphere, Equal and Absolute Authority for Truth.

3. As we have previously shown, each of the three Primary Faculties has a sphere peculiar and exclusive to itself. We now proceed to demonstrate that each of these faculties has, with every other, equal and absolute authority for truth within its own peculiar and exclusive sphere. Original intuition, in all its forms alike, must be admitted to have absolute authority for truth, until its mendaciousness has been demonstrated. To accomplish this, as has been often shown, some form of knowledge of undeniably higher certitude than the given intuition, and incompatible with it, must be adduced. This, we affirm, can by no possibility be done. Suppose, for example, we have, through Sense, as we undeniably do have, a perception consciously direct and immediate of the quality of some external object, the quality of extension, for example. How can the validity of such perception be disproved? Evidently, nothing in the form of disproof can be found outside the spheres of all the Primary Faculties, as here nothing is or can be known. Nor can any such form of knowledge be found within the sphere of this Faculty of External Perception; for Sense can give no form of perception of higher certitude than that which is consciously direct and immediate. Nor can one class of such perceptions contradict any other. The phenomena of vision cannot contradict those of touch, for example. So in all other cases. One perception may correct the judgment formed in view of a prior perception; but not the perception itself. Equally manifest is it, that we can find nothing in our subjective intuition of higher certitude than, or incompatible with, the one intuition under consideration. How can our intuitions of spirit contradict those of matter? No idea can be more absurd than is the idea that such contradiction can exist. Nor, we remark, finally, can any form of implied knowledge be more certain than, or contradictory to, that by which the former is implied. If the implied were contradictory to the perceived, the latter would not imply the former. No proposition, therefore, can have greater certitude than this, that each of the primary faculties has, equally with every other, absolute authority for truth, within its own exclusive sphere. We may assume, and compel ourselves to treat, either of these faculties, or all together, as mendacious. The validity of such impeachment, however, can never be verified upon scientific grounds; but must ever remain as a lawless assumption in science.

Fundamental Characteristics of all True and False Systems of Cosmology.

4. We are now prepared to state distinctly the fundamental characteristics which peculiarize and distinguish the true from every false System of Cosmology. The former will take into full account, and will include, all facts of primal intuition consciously direct and immediate, and all forms of knowledge necessarily implied by the facts designated. Such system does and must have a strictly scientific basis, and cannot but be constituted of adamantine facts. Every false system, on the other hand, will arbitrarily ignore, or repudiate as invalid, one or the other, or all in common, of these classes of intuition. Such system, whatever its form or name, can have no other basis than mere lawless assumption, and can have no higher claims to our regard than any other form of logical fiction.

The Secondary Intellectual Faculties.

The three Primary Faculties—Consciousness, Sense, and Reason, do, in fact, furnish us with the elements of all knowledge in all its forms. However complex, or remote from these original sources, any form of knowledge, or however true or false in itself any conception, notion, or apprehension may be, on a careful analysis of such forms of thought, they will be found to be constituted wholly of elements originally furnished by these Primary Faculties. The Secondary Faculties may combine and re-combine these elements, but can never originate any new element. The Primary Faculties we have already considered. Let us now turn our attention to the Secondary. Next after intuitions perceived and implied, as we have said, come conceptions or notions, in which the intuitional elements are combined and blended into apprehensions of particular objects, individual and general. We will, then, first of all consider these.

Conceptions, and the Faculty which they imply, that is, the Conceptive Faculty, or the Understanding.

Whenever the mind has a perception of any object, that is, of any phenomena or quality of any object, it does and must, through Reason, apprehend the reality implied by the quality perceived. When these two elements of thought are present in the mind, the Understanding, or Conceptive Faculty, must act by combining said elements into a conception or notion of a particular object. As other qualities of the same object are perceived, these with their implied elements, will be combined and blended into the original conception, until it becomes more or less complete. Thus all our conceptions were and must have been originated, no other method of origination being conceivable. In their primal forms all conceptions must, from the nature of the case, have represented individual objects and no others. A general, that is, specifical or generic conception combines the elements common to a certain class of individuals, and which are thus classed because they all, in common, possess these qualities. A characteristic or test conception represents those qualities which are common to all individuals of a specific class, and which belong to no individuals of any other class. When the question arises to what class of objects a given individual object belongs, the tests referred to are applied to determine such question. Abstract conceptions represent each perceived quality by itself, as whiteness, redness, roundness, etc., without reference to any particular objects in which such qualities are found. An Idea proper represents some one of the implied elements of thought, as Substance, Cause, Personal Identity, Time, Space, etc. The faculty which combines the elements of thought, into conceptions or notions, in all their forms, is called the Understanding or Conceptive Faculty. The organ of original implied knowledge, in all its forms, is, as we have before said, called Reason. Special attention is now requested to the following general reflections upon, and deductions from, the above analysis.

Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, the only Realities actually represented or representable in Human Thought.

All the elements which enter into and constitute all our apprehensions and forms of knowledge were, as we have shown, and as is undeniably true, furnished by the three Primary Faculties above elucidated. All the elements furnished by perception in all its forms, external and internal, are all included, as none will deny, in two classes—the one objective and the other subjective, the former furnishing us exclusively facts of mind, and the other as exclusively yielding only facts of external material forms. Such facts imply the existence of two, and only two classes of substances— substances represented by the term spirit, on the one hand, and matter on the other. Any individuals who should question the validity of this deduction must, to vindicate the truth of their doctrine, prove to us that we do have actual perceptions of other phenomena than the subjective and objective above designated—phenomena which consequently imply the existence of other realities than those which can be classed under the terms matter and spirit. No thinker will pretend to adduce any such phenomena. But matter and spirit imply, beside themselves, two, and only two realities—to wit, space and time. As all rational minds—those of our race we now refer to—do and must have, in the same essential forms, the two classes of perceptions under consideration, all such minds have, in reality, common apprehensions of, and common convictions in respect to, Matter, Spirit, Time, and Space. Nor can any other realities be represented in human thought, unless phenomena not furnished by external and internal perception can be designated, which is impossible.

Our Real Apprehensions of neither of these Realities can, by no possibility, be Self-contradictory or Absurd.

Ever since the era of Zeno the Eleatic, philosophers of certain schools have affirmed that our apprehensions of each of these realities are intrinsically self-contradictory and absurd, and, therefore, of impossible validity. As the idea of Space and Time are, each of them, absolutely simple ones, neither of them can possibly be self-contradictory. This is absolutely undeniable. How is it with our conceptions of body or matter, and of spirit? Our conceptions of each of these realities are constituted of two, and only two, classes of elements, those given by perception, and those implied by the phenomena actually perceived. How can a conception, constituted exclusively of such elements, be self-contradictory? On this condition only, that a fact perceived to be real must necessarily imply something which renders the occurrence of such fact impossible. This is, undeniably, as absurd as the dogma that perceived integrity always, and of necessity, implies absolute dishonesty. Nor can any one element furnished by perception imply the non-being of any other element furnished by the same faculty. From the immutable laws of the Intelligence, our apprehensions of the four realities under consideration can, by no possibility, be self-contradictory. When philosophers represent them as thus contradictory, we may know absolutely that they have, as we have shown that such are the facts of the case, put into these apprehensions elements which the unperverted Intelligence never did put there. It is just as impossible that our fundamental world-conceptions and necessary ideas should be self-contradictory, as it is, that absolute unity should contradict itself.

Fundamental Error of Spencer in regard to Conceptions.

According to Spencer, as we have seen, we can have no individual until after we have obtained general conceptions. To have a conception of an individual, he tells us, 'we must conceive it as this or that particular thing,' that is, as a member of a certain class of objects. We may safely challenge the world to adduce a more palpable form of psychological error than we have here. Whenever there is, through either of the perceptive faculties, a perception of any quality of any kind, there must be, through Reason, an apprehension of the form of substance implied by such quality. These two elements of thought being in the mind, viz., the perceived and the implied, the Understanding or Conceptive Faculty must combine these elements into a conception of a particular object. If but one single object should thus come before the mind, it must form a conception of said object. All primal conceptions must be of individuals, and all general conceptions must be constituted of elements perceived to exist in pre-formed individual conceptions. No facts of psychology can be more evident than these.

Real or Absolutely Valid Conceptions, as distinguished from those which have only a Relative Validity.

We can now readily appreciate the merits of the dogma that human knowledge, in no form, has anything more than a mere relative validity. The consciousness we have of the self, as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, is undeniably direct and immediate. Where is the ground for the dogma that such knowledge has only a relative validity? What form of knowledge can be real and absolute if this is not? Matter, on the other hand, we must bear in mind, sustains one relation, as the cause of our sensations, to the Sensibility, and quite another to the Intelligence, as the object of perception consciously direct and immediate. In its relations to the Sensitivity, and as the cause of our sensations, our knowledge of this substance must be indirect and mediate, and can have only a relative validity. As the object of perception consciously direct and immediate, however, our knowledge of this substance must have a real and absolute validity. As thus perceived, the elements of perception and conception are absolutely identical, and consciously so. To attribute to knowledge of such conscious forms a mere relative validity, is to confound all distinctions between knowledge in its representative and presentative, or in its indirect and mediate, and direct and immediate, forms, and to do this on the exclusive authority of naked and lawless assumption. The doctrine of the relativity of all our knowledge has no other origin than a wide and lawless leap in logic. A part of our knowledge, that which is consciously indirect and mediate, as is the case with our knowledge of matter through the medium of sensation, can have only a mere relative validity. From this mere fact, which none deny, there is a wide and lawless leap to the conclusion that knowledge in no form, not even that which is consciously direct and immediate, can have any higher validity. Hobbes is undeniably right in the assertion that no class of men are so habituated in the privilege of the absurd as philosophers.

Conceivability and Inconceivability as Tests of Truth.

Much is said in the schools on Conceivability and Inconceivability as tests of truth. A few statements, in addition to those formerly given on this subject, may be deemed in place in this connection. That is inconceivable in the absolute sense which can be apprehended through none of the intellectual faculties. Thus, for example, through none of its faculties can the mind represent to itself the non-reality of space or time, or an event without a cause; or phenomena without substance. Here inconceivability is, undeniably, an absolute test of truth, the opposite of the inconceivable being the palpable absurd. On the other hand, a reality may be utterly inconceivable through one faculty, and clearly apprehensible through another. The Understanding, for example, can form a conception of no object but upon the condition that two elements, the perceived and the implied, are given. The absolutely simple, such as are our ideas of space, time, substance, and cause, are, of course, wholly inconceivable through this faculty. To infer from hence, as many philosophers do, that we can, therefore, have no idea of these realities, is a palpable psychological error. Implied knowledge, in all its forms, is absolutely simple, and therefore inconceivable through the Understand- ing. To conclude from hence, that the objects of such forms of knowledge cannot be represented, and most clearly so, in thought in any form, is a palpable error. When the object of any form of implied knowledge comes before the mind of certain philosophers, they attempt, in the use of the same faculty by which they can and do conceive of a house or tree, to form a conception of this object, and failing, as they must do, in the attempt, they conclude most absurdly that such reality is inconceivable in the absolute sense, and therefore wholly unknowable. The entire doctrine of the Unknowable, as set forth by Kant, Spencer, and others, has no other basis, as we have formerly shown, than such an error as this. How often do we hear it said, that we can know phenomena, but cannot know substance? In knowing, as we do, qualities as they are, we do know substances as they must be; for, as qualities imply substance, the latter must be as the former, and the one is known as absolutely as the other.

On what Conditions can Matter be Identified with Spirit, or Spirit with Matter?

All substances representable in human thought are, as we have seen, comprehended under one or the other of two terms, matter and spirit, and all minds have, and must have, the same essential apprehensions of these two substances. On what conditions can one of these substances be identified with the other? On this condition exclusively, viz., the elements of which each is constituted must be demonstrated to be, in all essential respects, identical with those which enter into and constitute the other. If, on careful analysis, no common elements can be discovered between them, they can no more be represented in thought as identical in nature, than we can thus identify a circle with a square. Now it is, and for the reason stated, as incompatible opposites, that these substances are, undeniably, represented in universal thought. Whatever relations, in other respects, may exist between them, and however the states of one may be determined by the action of the other, the question of their identity, or non-identity, of nature, must be determined exclusively by a comparison of the elements of which they are severally constituted. The doctrine of Materialism, on the one hand, and of Idealism on the other, in respect to the identity of matter and spirit, involves, undeniably, this palpable absurdity, that absolute opposites are absolutely identical in nature.

How it is that all real Meaning so often drops out of Language as employed by the Schools.

When language represents thought just as it exists in the mind, then words have an intelligible meaning. But when language affirms or denies the opposite of what is and must be represented in thought, then, if such propositions are accepted as true, they will be of necessity meaningless, and we shall assent to we know not what. When Kant, for example, affirms space and time to have no existence as realities in themselves, and that they exist but as laws of thought, the mind can by no possibility represent to itself what is affirmed as true. The words employed, therefore, will be accepted as affirming what is false, or become utterly void of any intelligible meaning. So when opposites, as matter and spirit, God and nature, are affirmed to be identical, we must repudiate the assertion as false and absurd, or accept it as true, when the words represent no real meaning. Spencer affirms that what we are absolutely conscious of directly and immediately perceiving or knowing to be real is absolutely unknown and unknowable to us. The proposition must be repudiated as false and absurd, or the words unknowable and unknown must represent a meaning of which we can form no apprehension at all. Spencer absolutely assures us that mind, as we conceive of it, 'consists of a series of states of consciousness.' We can no more identify in thought, mind, on the one hand, and a series of conscious states of any kind, on the other, than we can thus identify something with nothing, or a circle with a square. Mind, as universally apprehended, is the subject of conscious states, not the states themselves.

The remarks above made have a special application to the doctrines of Realism, on the one hand, and of all opposite systems, on the other. The entire system of things, with all its principles, facts, and deductions, as presented by the system first designated, the Intelligence can clearly apprehend, and represent to itself as real and true. It is just as impossible for the mind, on the other hand, through any of its faculties, or all of them combined, to represent to itself any opposite system, and especially to represent it as true, as it is to represent to itself the non-being of space. Suppose I attempt to represent in thought the visible universe as being nothing but sensations inwardly perceived as external realities, that is, to identify 'the matter' of this universe, and consequently the universe itself, with sensation. Every one is and must be conscious that no such representation is possible. Suppose I attempt to represent all things visible and invisible, Matter, Spirit, Time and Space, as being identical with pure thought. Neither myself nor any other being has any capacity to make such a representation. I think of a mass of material molecules. Can I, in thought, identify any changes in this mass with thinking, feeling, and willing? I can no more do it than I can, at the same moment, think and not think at all. Can I identify, in thought, the universe as I behold it, with mere subjective modifications? Can I represent to myself, in thought, the self of which I am conscious, and the material forms around me, as realities unknowable and unknown? In other words, can I, in thought, make the distinction which Scepticism affirms to be real, between phenomena and the realities given in universal thought, as known through and implied by what we consciously perceive? Let any one carefully consult his consciousness, and he will find all such representations absolute impossibilities of thought. We can just as readily conceive, as we have said before, of empty space as exercising all mental functions, as conceive masses of material molecules as thinking, feeling, and willing. We can, in words, represent in full the systems of Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism: but we can no more think those systems than we can, in accordance with the old Persian system, really represent time to be the creator of the universe. We cannot think these systems, or represent them in thought as true, for the same reason that we cannot think space and time as identical with mere subjective representations, or think space and time to be no realities at all.

The Faculty of Judgment.

The existence of any two or more objects implies certain relations between them, as of likeness or unlikeness, resemblance or difference, for example. Whenever conceptions of such objects are induced in the mind, Reason, as the organ of implied knowledge, forms the idea of relations such as those referred to, and the objects apprehended are affirmed to be equal or unequal, alike or unlike, etc. Such affirmations are denominated judgments, and the faculty or function of the Intelligence which affirms relations of any kind is denominated the Judgment. Whenever a relation of any kind is affirmed to exist between conceptions, ideas, or objects of any kind, here we meet with the appropriate and exclusive action of this faculty. The Judgment is, consequently, the Logical Faculty of the mind, the exclusive organ of judging and reasoning in all their forms. As in every judgment a specific relation between two or more objects is affirmed, such affirmation implies the prior existence in thought of some corresponding Reason-idea. When we judge, for example, that A is equal or unequal to, like or unlike, or the cause of B, such judgment implies, of necessity, the pre-existence in thought of the Reason-ideas of equality and difference, likeness and unlikeness, or, of cause, as the case may be. Take away these ideas, and no such judgments are possible. Under the guidance of the ideas of resemblance and difference, the Judgment classifies objects as individuals, species, and genera, and performs all processes of generalization and abstraction. In all the sciences, the Judgment determines the principles, classes, subsumes facts under the principles, and finally determines the deductions which such principles and facts yield. All the sciences, as we have seen, rest upon the same essential principles, viz., judgments of necessary, intuitive, and self-evident validity. In the pure sciences, the facts, such as points, lines, and figures in space, and number and quantity in Mathematics, are given by pure and necessary intuition. In the mixed sciences, the facts are all given by perception, external and internal.

Principles in Science.

Judgments which have self-evident validity belong, and must belong, as we have before shown, to one of the four following classes: 1. Tautological judgments, as A = A, a judgment resting upon the idea that every object must be identical with, and equal to itself. Such judgments are of use in science but as marking the absurd, in which the same thing is affirmed and denied of the same thing, which equals the affirmation, that A is, and is not, identical with, or equal to, A. 2. Explicative judgments, in which the subject represents a given whole, and the predicate one of its essential parts or attributes, as in the judgment, All bodies have extension. Such judgments rest upon the idea, that every whole must include its essential parts or attributes, and are of special use in definitions and expositions, and in detecting the element of self-contradiction, as when an attribute is affirmed of a given object which is incompatible with our essential apprehensions of the object itself. 3. Implicative judgments, as when the subject represents a given fact, and the predicate, the reality necessarily implied by said fact. The positive axioms in science are all and exclusively of this character, the axioms, for example, Body implies Space, Succession implies Time, Events imply a Cause, Phenomena imply Substance, and Things being equal to the same thing implies their equality to one another. Such judgments have absolute authority as principles in science. 4. Incompatible judgments, as where the subject necessarily excludes the predicate. Such judgments as, A is not identical with, or equal to not-A, and It is impossible that the same object shall at the same time exist and not exist, are of this class. All negative axioms are of this character, and have, with Implicative judgments, equal and absolute authority in science. As no other relations are conceivable in which a strictly necessary relation does or can exist between the subject and predicate in any given judgment, all self-evident judgments, and, consequently, all principles in science, must belong to one or the other of these four classes. All valid sciences must rest exclusively upon such principles, and be constituted of real facts which must be ranked under such principles and deductions necessarily yielded by such principles and facts. False science, in all its forms, is based upon invalid principles, or assumptions, unreal, or unascertained facts, or illogical deductions, or upon all these, or a part of these, forms of error combined.

Facts of Science.

In all valid forms of argument the ultimate principle on which the whole process rests must be a principle of one or the other of the above classes of judgments, and such principle constitutes the real major premise in such argument. The judgments constituting the minor premise in every valid scientific argument will present the necessary relations between facts of necessary intuition, as in the pure sciences, or the perceived relations between facts of valid knowledge, as in the mixed sciences. Judgments of this latter class, the character of those of the former being too manifest to require elucidation, will all have the following characteristic. The subject and predicate of such judgment will be conceptions constituted exclusively of presentative intuitions, that is, of elements of knowledge consciously direct and immediate, and will affirm the relation necessarily implied by the nature of such conceptions. Take in illustration the judgment, A and B are each equal to C. If each of the three conceptions represented by these terms are, in fact, constituted exclusively of the intuitions designated, and the quality affirmed is directly and immediately perceived, or validly known to be real, then, and only then, has this judgment scientific validity for the deduction A and B are equal to one another. Such is the immutable character of the minor premise in every scientific argument.

Deductions which are Valid for Truth.

It is undeniable that every deduction necessarily yielded by premises of the character above described must be regarded as representing an absolute truth of science. Whenever any deduction is wanting in any of the above characteristics, it has no place in the sphere of science proper. All systems urged upon the public as sciences should be subjected to the most rigid scrutiny in the light of the principles above elucidated.

Error, how introduced into Thought, that of Science Especially.

It is perfectly evident that through the unperverted action of the Intelligence, error, in no form, can have place in human thought, and especially in the sphere of science. Pure Intelligence, from its nature and laws, can originate none but valid intuitions, conceptions, principles, facts and deductions, From whence, then, does error arise? Through the exclusive action of the other faculties, we answer, through the will and desire. During the progress of the battle of Waterloo, for example, Bonaparte, on taking a wide survey with his glass of the field of vision, discovered, at a distance of miles on his right, an object which attracted his special attention. Calling the attention of his staff to the object, the glass of every individual was turned in that direction. All perceived the object. The facts perceived, however, were unindicative, and presented no basis for a positive judgment in regard to the specific character of the object. All that the Intelligence did, or could, affirm, in such circumstances, was that there was some real object there, with no affirmation in regard to its specific character. In the same circumstances, however, individuals could, and did, guess, conjecture, and assume. Hence, some pronounced the object an orchard or forest; others, a mass of the people collected in consequence of the battle, while others pronounced the same object to be an army in motion. Here we have opinion, belief, or assumption, as opposed to valid knowledge. Assumptions, as forms of lawless thought, may take on a great diversity of forms. In instances not a few they occupy the place of principles in science, and proud systems of affirmed knowledge are reared up exclusively upon such rotten foundations. They quite as frequently occupy the place of truths, or deductions, of science, where nothing but mere opinions, beliefs, or conjectures should be entertained. When a given class of facts are equally compatible with two or more distinct and opposite hypotheses, one, to the exclusion of every other, may be assumed to have absolute scientific validity, and all the others be repudiated as erroneous. When, also, we remark once more, forms of belief, or conviction, are before us, all having identical characteristics of validity, a part of these may be arbitrarily assumed to be 'nothing but a prejudice,' and systems of being and its laws may be constructed out of the remainder. How shall we distinguish truth from error in such cases? We have, in former connections, answered this question. As a means of attaining the end we now have in view, the elucidation of the character and claims of Realism, we will refer to a few examples.

Principles of Science and Assumptions employed as Principles.

How, for example, may we distinguish principles of science from assumptions employed as principles? In all judgments which may be employed as real principles in science, as we have seen, the subject necessarily implies the predicate, or the subject and predicate mutually and necessarily exclude one another. Principles of this character determine what deductions, facts of a specific character, supposing them to exist, will yield, but determine nothing whatever in regard to the question whether such, or any other facts, do or do not exist. The opposite of a real principle in science is, in all cases, a conscious absurdity, whose validity is absolutely, and to every mental faculty, inconceivable. Take, as an example, the principle, Every event has a cause, or Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. In each of these propositions the subject, by intuitive necessity, implies the predicate. An event being given, we know, and cannot but know, that it did have, and must have had a cause. So if things do exist which are equal to the same things, we know absolutely that the former are, and must be, equal to one another. Yet neither of these judgments determines at all what events, or whether any, have occurred, or what or whether any things equal to the same things do or do not exist. All such questions are questions resting upon their own proper evidence. The opposite of each of these principles, also, is a conscious absurdity, whose validity is, to every mental faculty, inconceivable.

Contemplate now in contrast the assumption that lies at the basis of Materialism, on the one hand, and of Idealism, on the other, namely, that but one substance, or principle of all things, does or can exist. It is undeniable that there is no necessary connection whatever between the subject and predicate in this judgment, and consequently that it can have no claims to our regard as a necessary intuitive truth. At the same time it lawlessly determines that all existing substances must be either material or spiritual. At the same time this assumption is confronted by another and opposite one—to wit, that two substances, matter and spirit, may exist. The validity of this last is just as conceivably, and therefore probably true, as is the first assumption, and neither consequently has any place whatever as a principle in science.

Consider, in the next place, the necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge as announced by the various and opposite schools. As given in the school of Realism, it stands thus. Knowledge implies the real existence of a power, on the one hand, and of correlated objects of knowledge, on the other, and the subject and object in such relations that knowledge necessarily arises in consequence of this correlation. It is self-evident that when these conditions do obtain, real knowledge must arise. It is equally evident that this principle determines nothing whatever in regard to the question what specific capacities, or objects of knowledge, do exist, such questions being left, as they should be, to be determined by an appeal to conscious experience. At the same time a denial of this principle involves an absurdity. Take away the capacity, or object of knowledge, and knowledge is undeniably impossible. This principle, therefore, does and must have absolute intuitive and self-evident validity.

Contrast with this the hypotheses of Materialism, Idealism, and Scepticism. According to the system first designated, knowledge is possible but in its objective, and is actual in that form. The same condition is announced by Idealism in two forms—'a synthesis of being and knowing,' that is, that the subject and object of knowledge must be one and identical, or 'an identity of being and knowing,' that is, that knowledge and its object must be one and identical. The principle of Scepticism is that knowledge of reality, in every form, is alike impossible, and is, and can be real but of phenomena. It is perfectly evident that in the basis principle of each of these schools, the principle which must be true, or the system built upon it must be baseless, there is no necessary or intuitive connection whatever between the subject and predicate, that is, that neither principle is, what all valid principles in science must be, a self-evident truth. Yet each principle determines absolutely, what no valid principle does, the system built upon it, and presents that system as absolutely true. If you grant, for example, the assumption of Materialism, you must admit, without question, all the deductions of the system. If you grant the assumption of Idealism in either form, then a specific system must rise up before you as the only true one, the system, in all its facts, forms, and deductions, being begged in its basis assumption. If you grant the mere assumption of Scepticism, then all facts of perception, external and internal, together with all forms of implied knowledge, must be located in the exclusive sphere of the unknowable. Yet the basis—assumption of each of these schools is confronted by three other incompatible ones, and all in common having equal claims to our regard as principles in science. The principle of Materialism, for example, is openly confronted by the incompatible assumptions of Idealism, Scepticism, and Realism, and has no conceivable preference over either. No deduction has, or can have, more demonstrative certainty than this, that Materialism, Idealism, and Scepticism rest upon nothing but naked lawless assumptions—assumptions involving the vicious error of begging all the deductions based upon them. A careful application of the above criteria will enable every reflecting mind to distinguish between real principles in science and the lawless assumptions upon which imposing systems are so often erected.

Knowledge in its Real and Valid Forms as distinguished from all Forms of mere Opinion, Belief, Conjecture, etc.

Let us next consider the distinction between real knowledge and mere opinion, belief, conjecture, guessing, etc. We turn to the facts stated in regard to Bonaparte and his staff at Waterloo. There was one respect in which they all agreed, and had an equal and absolute certainty, viz., that some object was visible there. So far their apprehensions and convictions were immutable and absolute. The reason was that all in common were distinctly and absolutely conscious of a direct and immediate perception, and consequent knowledge, of said object. In regard to the question what the object was, here a difference of views obtained, and in all cases their views were consciously uncertain, and in most cases wrong. When the real character of the object was ascertained, most of the individuals referred to regarded themselves as having misjudged. In reality, however, none had judged at all, there having been in the facts actually perceived no ground for a positive judgment of any kind. All had assumed, and some were right and others wrong in their assumptions. In respect to the original perception, here was knowledge real and absolute, and therefore immutably fixed and unchangeable. In respect to the assumptions referred to, all was unfixed and subject to modification and change. There, consequently, were opinion, belief, conjecture, etc. The same characteris- tics distinguish real knowledge from mere opinion, belief, and conjecture, in all their forms. The former is fixed and immutable in its character, and attended with an absolute conscious certitude which cannot be weakened or displaced. Opinions and beliefs, like our dreams, are subject to perpetual changes and modifications, and may for ever be displaced from human thought and regard.

In the light of the above fundamental distinctions, all men do and must have an absolute certitude of the real validity of their knowledge of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space. Those who impeach the validity of that knowledge in all its forms, as the Sceptics do, make the universal consciousness, as Sir W. Hamilton truly says, 'a liar from the beginning.' Those who impeach that knowledge in its subjective or objective, and affirm its validity in the opposite forms, as all Materialists and Idealists do, make, by arbitrary assumption, fundamental distinctions, where an absolute identity of essential characteristics undeniably exists, and where that identity is universally admitted.

Assumptions in respect to Valid and Invalid Hypotheses.

A given class of facts are before us, facts for the character and occurrence of which a scientific explanation is required. They may be all in common, like the facts of electricity, equally explicable on two or more distinct and opposite hypotheses. In such case, as all must admit, no grounds whatever exist for the deduction that any one of these is true and the others false. Yet a positive assumption of this character may be, and often is, made in these identical circumstances. If, on the other hand, it is found that all these facts are fully explicable upon one given hypothesis and upon none other, then scientific integrity demands that this hypothesis be held as true, and all other incompatible ones as false. Yet, even here, one of these palpably false hypotheses may be assumed to be true, and the verified one to be false. Facts, it may be assumed, may exist, and no doubt do exist, and will be yet discovered, which will verify the former hypothesis and prove the latter false.

All the facts of the universe, as philosophers of all schools will freely admit, are fully and readily explicable on the Theistic hypothesis. This undeniable fact renders it undeniably evident that while this hypothesis cannot possibly be disproved, nor any form or degree of evidence be adduced against it, no form or degree of real proof, positive evidence, or even antecedent probability, can be adduced in favour of the dogma of Evolution by Natural Law. Yet this latter dogma is assumed and held up to the world as a verified truth of science, and the opposite hypothesis as a demonstrated absurdity, and all this while the most palpable and fundamental facts do exist, which are fully explicable on the latter hypothesis, and utterly inexplicable on the former.

Assumption within the Sphere of Valid and Invalid Deduction.

Many of the most important deductions in science must be based, not upon facts which we have observed ourselves, but upon those observed by others. Hence the fundamental importance of a clear understanding and rigid application of the laws of evidence. Here is a wide field for lawless assumption. Men may assume, at the outset of their enquiries, that certain doctrines, or facts, as miracles, for example, are absolutely incapable of being proved by any form or degree of evidence of any actual or conceivable kind. When a given deduction has been fully verified by undeniably valid proof, the evidence may be arbitrarily assumed to be insufficient, and the deduction repudiated. Under the influence of mere lawless assumption, no possible degree of proof will be admitted as adequate to verify one hypothesis, while the feeblest conceivable kind of evidence will be received as absolute proof of the desired hypothesis. The mere visible similarity of the ovum of man and other animals is, with Darwinians, absolute proof that man must have been descended, by natural law, 'from some lower order,' while the total absence of an infinity of facts which must exist were that theory true, and the admitted presence of multitudes of others which are of utter impossible explanation on their hypothesis, is no evidence at all against its validity. Mr. Huxley can readily present affirmed demonstrations in spheres where he affirms his own ignorance to be absolute, and can clearly perceive absolute verifications of fundamental dogmas in premises, the inadequacy of which to prove any such dogmas must, it would seem, he perfectly manifest to any candid mind. How clearly Professor Maudsley perceives, in the action of the body of a decapitated frog, absolute proof that men have no souls, that matter thinks, and feels, and wills; while he cannot perceive in the palpable and undeniable fact, that matter and spirit have no common elements, properties, and attributes, any evidence at all that they must be distinct and separate entities. Such is the omnipotence of assumption throughout the domain of common and scientific thought. Man is in error, not because his Intelligence is false to truth, but because of infidelity of Will to original and absolute intuition, and the immutable laws of truthful induction and deduction.

The Sentiment Induced in the Mind by Lawless Assumption.

A notorious liar, in answer to the question, how it was possible for him to detail known falsehoods with such apparent sincerity, made this reply. 'When I first manufacture such statements, I, of course, know and feel that they are all a lie. But when I have repeated the lie a few times, I come to feel that it is true, and always after that repeat the story under the influence of that sentiment.' In reply to a similar enquiry, a celebrated criminal lawyer, who had saved multitudes of villains from suffering their deserts, said that when most distinctly aware of the criminality of his client, and of the absoluteness of the proof adduced of his guilt, he always pleaded his cause under the full belief of his innocence, and indicated the process by which that belief was induced in his mind. He avowed the fact, that he often entered upon the process with the distinct intention of inducing in himself a sentiment and belief the opposite of what he knew to be true, and always succeeded in his endeavour. Here we are presented with a most important fact of human nature. Let an individual imagine any hypothesis whatever, in the domain of Ontology and Ultimate Causation; let him be distinctly aware that he knows of no facts at all by which that hypothesis can be verified even as a probable or possible truth. Yet, if he shall assume, or guess, that it is true, if he shall baptize it with some imposing name, and avow it before the world as the system of universal Being and its Laws, he will soon induce in himself an absolute sentiment, which he will be sure to assume as an honest belief, that this hypothesis is and must be true. Let, now, a number of leading thinkers adopt the theory just as this man has done, and with him openly avow their belief in it, and, by-and-by, without any evidence whatever, there will be a wide-spread sentiment, miscalled conviction, that this baseless hypothesis is an eternal verity. In such cases, the intellect is never really imposed upon. Such men must be more or less aware of 'the uncertainty of their data,' and never can yield to their deductions any more than a mere 'provisional assent.'

If you will ask any philosopher of the School of Idealism, Materialism, or Scepticism, or any advocate of the theory of Evolution, Spontaneous Generation, or Development, to give a specific statement of the real principles and facts on which he bases his deductions and affirms the validity of his theory, he will either be put to silence, or, if he is honest, he will avow, what Tyndall affirms to be true, of all these men, that he is distinctly aware of 'the uncertainty of his data,' that he himself yields to his deductions 'only a provisional assent,' and that neither his principles, facts, nor arguments have any avail to modify, change, or subvert in his own mind the original apprehensions and convictions which he, in common with all the race, has and cannot but have in respect to Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, and the absolute validity of our knowledge of these verities. Who in the present, and in all past ages, was a more absolute and scientifically confirmed Sceptic than David Hume? Yet, as Diderot records, this Anglo-Saxon Sceptic, when among the Atheists in Paris, 'avowed the conviction that a real Atheist did not exist.' When walking with Adam Ferguson on a clear and beautiful evening, our Sceptic thus exclaimed, 'O Adam! can anyone contemplate the wonders of that firmament and not believe that there is a God?' Here we have the real intellectual convictions which had a fixed and immovable place in the interior of that man's mind. The same is equally and absolutely true of all the classes of thinkers above referred to. The Idealist, for example, avowedly, 'when he begins to philosophize, puts himself into a state of not-knowing,' and 'assumes all his previous knowledge to be uncertain.' He then, by an arbitrary act of will, an act with which the Intelligence has and can have nothing to do, assumes that but one substance or principle of all things does exist,' and finally, that 'the condition of valid knowledge is a synthesis' or 'identity' 'of being and knowing.' All is a matter of Will, of arbitrary assumption for the validity of which not a solitary reason can be adduced. He has now, however, but two things to do, and his system is perfected—to 'compel himself to treat' the absolute, and universal, and irradicable intuition 'that there exist things without us as nothing but a prejudice'—and then to let 'the speculative faculty, of which the Imagination forms so large a part,' give form to the materials furnished by voluntary pre-determination. By a process identical in kind, one class of philosophers become Materialists, and others Sceptics, while all in common advocate the dogmas of Evolution, Spontaneous Generation, and Transmutation of Species. All the real integrity of belief which any of them are or can be possessed, consists exclusively in the sentiment of assurance which always attends the advocacy of assumptions, however baseless, and however fixed the inward conviction of their uncertainty may be. We give no such philosophers credit for intellectual or moral integrity in the sphere of scientific induction and deduction. Upon no consciously uncertain data, and through no deductions to which only 'a provisional assent' is or can be given, will thinkers of intellectual and moral integrity assault and endeavour to subvert the primal, necessary, and intuitive intellectual, moral, and religious convictions of the race, convictions which have given to the race all the civil liberty, civilization, and moral virtue which it does possess, convictions the subversion of which renders conscious existence, in the necessary regard of all rational beings, 'a black curse.'

Common Error in Regard to the Basis of Religious Faith.

Among the productions of leading religious writers, we not unfrequently meet with such statements as the following—statements which are the more dangerous because they present, as the whole truth, half-truths associated with fundamental error. 'Our Christian faith does not rest in argument, it cannot be counter-vailed by argument. It rests in personal experience. We believe in the Bible because it has been a light to our feet and a lamp to our path. We believe in prayer because by means of it we have held sweet communion with our Heavenly Father. We believe in Christ because He has spoken peace and pardon to our souls. We believe in God because we have dwelt in Him and He in us.' 'Christianity is its own best breakwater. We need not to defend it, but to use it; not to invent new nor furbish old arguments for its authority, but to disclose its power by manifesting its spirit; not to argue the credibility of Paul's conversion, but to demonstrate the certainty of our own.' It is very true that the experimental results of Christian faith are among the many sources of proof of the divinity of our religion. But what is the primal ground of that faith? What is requisite to impart to that faith permanence and power? Does not 'faith come by hearing?' Did Christ, when on earth, require men, in the absence of all proof that He had come from God, to believe in Him, and then learn, from the results of faith, that they had embraced, not a lie, but the truth? Did He not teach that but for the fact that men had proof of the divinity of His mission, disbelief in Him would have been 'without sin'? No unbeliever can do such fatal wrong to the cause of truth as the theologian who teaches men that the proper proof of the validity of our faith comes after we have believed, instead of lying, as a moveless rock, at the basis of that faith. Assumption, whether for or against religion, will, and from the laws of mind must, induce the sentiment of assurance above elucidated. All belief and disbelief, which do not rest upon rational conviction—conviction induced by valid proof, is alike irrational. The crowning glory of our Divine religion is the equal absoluteness of its proofs, in all their forms—of its divinity, proofs external, internal, and experimental. What is now imperiously demanded of Christian philosophers and theologians, is to render it demonstrably evident to the world that these godless philosophies have not, while our Divine religion has, a scientifically rational basis. The reason why Christian faith is now so weak, and our religion has such a feeble hold upon the public conscience, is the fact that public assurance, in the validity of the Theistic and Christian Evidences, has been so extensively unsettled by the seductive sophistries of false science, and the fundamental errors which have place in our accepted philosophies and theologies. When those sophistries and errors shall be fully exposed, and these Evidences shall stand out in cloudless sunlight before the world, then will Christian faith become as immovable as the eternal foundations on which it rests, and the influence of Christian truth be co-extensive with human thought.

Memory and the Imagination.

As all philosophers of all schools agree fully in the existence of the two faculties represented by the terms Memory and Imagination, and in distinguishing each of these from every other intellectual faculty, we need only refer to these to complete our enumeration of the faculties under consideration.

Recapitulation of the above Analysis of the Mental Faculties.

We have thus completed our analysis of the mental faculties. Of the general faculties we have designated three—the Intellect, the Sensibility, and the Will. The Intellectual faculties we have, in accordance with the teachings of all accepted philosophers, classed under two divisions—the Primary and Secondary. Of the Primary Intellectual Faculties we have, according to the above analysis, three—Consciousness, the faculty of internal, Sense, the faculty of external perception, and Reason, the organ of implied knowledge, the faculty which furnishes us with our ideas of Time, Space, Substance, Cause, Law, Order, Likeness and Unlikeness, Equality and Difference, Duty, Retribution, Infinity, and Perfection, etc. Of the Secondary Faculties we have found to exist the Understanding or Conceptive Faculty—the faculty which combines the elements furnished by the Primary Faculties into conceptions and notions in all their diversified forms—the Judgment which affirms the relations of all conceptions, ideas, and objects of thought, and thus originates all forms of judging and reasoning—Memory, or Associating Principle, by which experiences of the past are recalled in thought, and the Imagination, which blends the elements of thought furnished by the other faculties into harmony with pre-existing ideas, such as those of the beautiful, the grand, sublime, and their opposites.

Character of the System of Mental Science Indicated by the above Analysis.

The above analysis clearly indicates the character of the system of Mental Science held and taught by the author of this Treatise, the system which may be denominated Realism Proper. Among these characteristics we designate the following:

1. Its Completeness and Perfection.

There is not a mental faculty that can be named which has not a place in the system, nor one designated whose existence and character are not verified and marked by characteristic phenomena. At the basis of the threefold division of the Mental Powers, we find three, and only three, general classes of mental phenomena—thought, feeling, and willing, a classification the validity of which is now universally admitted. When we carefully analyze all forms of complex thought, we find them constituted of three, and only three, distinct and separate classes of Elements—those furnished by Consciousness, or internal perception, those furnished by Sense, or external perception, and those furnished by Reason, or the Organ of Implied Knowledge. None but these three classes of original intuition do anywhere, and all these do everywhere, appear. Thus, the correctness of our threefold division of the Primary Intellectual Faculties, as Consciousness, Sense, and Reason, is clearly and absolutely verified.

In regard to the Secondary Faculties, fundamental facts are presented which clearly determine the number of such faculties, and the peculiar and exclusive sphere of each. The conscious facts of conception, of judgment in its diversified forms, of memory, and of the creations of imagination, fully verify the existence of the four Secondary Faculties—Understanding, or the Notion-forming Power; the Judgment, or the Judging and Reasoning Faculty; Memory, or the Associating Principle; and the Imagination, or Idealistic Faculty. No facts known to mind indicate any other faculties than these, and every correct classification of conscious facts does absolutely imply the existence and action of just this specific number of essential faculties.

Take into account all the mental faculties above enumerated, and we find ourselves fully able to account for every fact of the universal and individual consciousness. Leave out any one of these faculties, and we shall find ourselves everywhere confronted with fundamental facts for the origin and character of which no account can be given. Leave out any one class of the facts adduced, and we shall be compelled to admit that we have psychologically erred, or that Consciousness is utterly mendacious. We are, therefore, fully justified in the deduction, that the system under consideration has all the characteristics of completeness and perfection that can be required.

2. This System fully Explains and Determines the Origin, Character, and Special and Peculiar Spheres of all the Sciences.

Equally perfect and complete is this system in its relation to the varied sciences in all their forms. The forms and relations of perceived and implied knowledge give being and form to the mixed, on the one hand, and the pure sciences, on the other. The relations between these forms of knowledge enable us to explain the origin and character of all the principles of all the sciences in all their forms, and to furnish infallible criteria by which we can distinguish such judgments from all assumptions which lie at the basis of all systems of false science. In the necessary facts of pure intuition which the forms of implied knowledge furnish, those pertaining to Time and Space, for example, we obtain all the facts in the pure, while the varied forms of perceived intuition furnish all the facts in the mixed, sciences. All the sciences thus appear as an harmonious sisterhood, all resting upon common principles, and each peculiarized from every other by palpable and special facts. Take away either the forms of knowledge under consideration, the perceived or implied, and the existence and character of the sciences in any of their forms become wholly inexplicable. If we had not, for example, these two forms of knowledge, the perceived and implied, how could we have the principles, Body implies Space; Succession, Time; Events, a Cause; Phenomena imply substance, and Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, principles in the absence of which science is impossible? Without these forms of knowledge, also, the facts which peculiarize the various sciences, pure and mixed, could not be furnished. Without these principles and facts no scientific deduction could be reached.

3. This System Explains the Origin and Character of Error in all its Forms, and furnishes Infallible Criteria by which Truth may be Distinguished from Error.

This system has equal merit in the fundamental expositions which it gives of the origin and character of error in all its forms, and in the infallible criteria which it furnishes by which truth and error in every form may be distinguished from one another. The intelligence, as the system demonstrates, cannot, from its nature and laws, err, either in its primal intuitions, in its conceptions as really constituted of such intuitions, or in its judgments relative to the relations of such conceptions. Error, consequently, can have place in the mind but through assumptions of will, assumptions which take on the form of opinion, belief, conjecture, guessing, or assumptions employed as principles or facts in science. But what are the criteria by which truth and error may be universally distinguished from one another? Take the two following criteria as examples—Knowledge consciously indirect and mediate, or representa- tive, such as are our apprehensions of all the secondary qualities of matter, such knowledge, with all that it necessarily implies, has, and can have, only relative validity for the reality and character of its objects, Knowledge, on the other hand, consciously direct and immediate, or presentative, such knowledge, with all that it intuitively and deductively implies, must have an absolute validity for the reality and character of its objects. The validity of the first criterion none will question. How is it with that of the second? How can the validity of such forms of knowledge be validly impeached? It is undeniable, that the Intelligence, in its proper action, can furnish nothing incompatible with knowledge in such forms. This would imply that the necessity, which controls the Intelligence, contradicts itself, than which a greater absurdity is inconceivable. Nor can any form of certitude be greater and more absolute than that which does and must characterize knowledge in this conscious form. Take another criterion of equal validity. Apprehensions and convictions which ever remain the same, and which can be subverted by no adducible 'grounds or arguments,' and which are always characterized by the same degrees of absolute conscious certitude, must be accepted as having absolute validity for the reality and character of their objects. The strict validity of this principle no candid mind will question. In the light of the above criteria, real knowledge may, in all cases, be clearly distinguished and separated from mere opinions, beliefs, conjectures, guesses, and lawless assumptions, in all their forms.

4. This System Absolutely Vindicates for Realism, in all its Forms, a Strictly Scientific Basis and Validity.

This system, we remark, in the next place, absolutely verifies for Realism throughout a strictly scientific basis and validity, and thus furnishes us with a demonstrated system of Ontology, Cosmology, and Ultimate Causation. There is not, as even philosophers of all schools admit, an individual of the race who is not absolutely conscious of a direct and immediate knowledge of mind, the Self, as exercising the functions of thought, feeling, and willing, of matter, the Not-self, as possessed of the qualities of real extension and form, and of time and space as necessary forms of existence in themselves, and as realities absolutely implied by fundamental facts of the interior and exterior consciousness. From the nature of the Secondary Faculties, Understanding and Judgment, all minds, being thus furnished with the same primal elements of knowledge, do, and must, become possessed of the same essential apprehensions and convictions in regard to Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space, apprehensions and convictions which must, in the particulars designated, ever remain absolutely the same and as absolutely irradicable. The reason is obvious. As the elements of all knowledge in all its forms are furnished exclusively by external and internal perceptions, and by the organ of implied knowledge, no other realities than these four under consideration can, by any possibility, be represented in human thought. As our ideas of time and space are absolutely simple ideas, and as our conceptions of spirit and matter are constituted exclusively of elements furnished by perception, and those implied by the same, it is absolutely impossible that these ideas and conceptions should be what some philosophers affirm them to be, self-contradictory. Nor can they be invalidated by any possible 'grounds and arguments.' This we affirm for two reasons. 1. It is undeniable, as all forms of primal intuition relate exclusively to these four realities, that no intuitions can be furnished by the Primary Faculties, which will contradict those which constitute the conceptions and ideas under consideration, no absurdity being greater than that which is involved in the idea, that any one primal intuition can contradict any other, when all do and must pertain, in the same form, to the same realities. 2. Outside these apprehensions and convictions, no form of thought incompatible with these can exist, a form of thought of the validity of which we can have a greater certainty than we do and must have of our knowledge of these realities. By every criteria, therefore, by which valid can be distinguished from invalid apprehensions and convictions, we are absolutely bound by the immutable laws of science to admit and affirm the absolute validity of our knowledge of Spirit, Matter, Time, and Space. Every true system of Ontology, therefore, will and must include these four realities, and none others but these. Nor did, or will, any real thinker ever admit the real and known existence of these four realities, and question the absolute validity of the hypothesis of Theism. Realism, therefore, and with it Theism, stands before the world as a strictly demonstrated system of absolute truth.

5. The above Analysis and Elucidation of the Mental Faculties render Demonstrably Evident the Fact that all Systems Opposed to Realism have no other Basis than Lawless Assumption.

The undeniable fact that Realism, and with it Theism, have, throughout, a strictly scientific basis, renders demonstrably evident the fact that all opposite systems must rest upon nothing but lawless assumption. Idealism denies the validity of knowledge in its external, Materialism, in its internal, form, and Scepticism in both forms. These denials give being and form to the systems referred to. As no one will pretend that either of these denials is self-evidently true, they must be verified by proof, or the systems themselves must be admitted to have no other foundations than mere lawless assumptions. We have abundantly demonstrated the fact that such denials can, by no possibility, be verified. Take, in illustration, the basis-principle of Idealism, that we do have a valid knowledge of mind, or of its operations, and do not, and cannot, know 'things without us,' that is, matter, with its properties, qualities, and attributes. What is the ground of the distinction here made between the validity of knowledge in its subjective and objective forms? This distinction has no self-evident validity, as all will admit. Nor can it be verified by an appeal to Consciousness; for consciousness is, undeniably, 'a liar from the beginning,' or knowledge in both forms is equally direct and immediate. The distinction can be made, as all Idealists admit, but by will-compulsion, 'compelling the mind to treat' 'innate, connatural' and 'irradicable' intuitions 'as nothing but a prejudice.' We have here a formal definition of assumption, and an open admission that nothing but assumption does lie at the basis of the system in all its forms. An assumption of an opposite nature lies visibly at the basis of Materialism in all its forms. The Intelligence can never, as it undeniably does, give matter and spirit as objects of knowledge consciously direct and immediate, and consequently of equal and absolute validity, and then affirm that knowledge of one of these substances is valid, and that of the other illusory. The mind has but one faculty which can make such a discrimination where no difference consciously exists, and that is the will. These systems, then, have, and can have, no other basis than mere will-assumption. The same, as we have before demonstrated, is the palpable character of all the other basis-principles of each of these systems. From the nature of the case, it must be so.

The basis-principle of Scepticism, in all its forms, is the dogma that we do know phenomena, but cannot know the substances to which said phenomena belong. This principle denies universally the validity of implied knowledge, and is equivalent to the absurdity that phenomena do not imply substance. If with perceived qualities and attributes, which must be the case, we do, and cannot but, apprehend and know their implied substances, then we cannot know phenomena without knowing the substances to which the former belong. As we have but one faculty which can affirm a distinction where the Intelligence affirms that no difference exists, so we have but one faculty that can affirm that phenomena do not imply substance, and that substances are not as their perceived and known qualities, and that is the Will.

Philosophers of the three schools under consideration, all in common, construct their systems of universal being and its laws, as they construct their houses, employing the Intelligence to suggest what may be done, while they, from the many ideals presented, arbitrarily select the locality, material, dimensions, and form of their building, and construct it accordingly. They forget that to construct a building after their own pleasure is one thing, and to interpret one already erected is quite another, and that their exclusive function, as philosophers, is not to construct the universe, but to interpret it as it is, and that in explaining 'the things that are made,' they are exclusively to employ the same faculties, and these in strict accordance with the same essential principles, as they would in interpreting a house already finished. In interpreting a finished building of any kind, they are to assume nothing not actually revealed in the structure, and to accept of all, whatever it may be, which they find there, and not to represent the building as their ideal would render it, but as its maker really constructed it. So of philosophers, as the interpreters of nature. When they shall consent to accept of principles, facts, and deductions, as the Intelligence furnishes them, to assume nothing not given, and accept of all that is given, and as given, and thus to 'hold the mirror up to nature,' and reveal her to the world as she is, and not as they would make her to appear, then will they be saved from their 'many blunders and foolish notions,' and not appear to the world as they now do, as vain disputers, and of all men the most disciplined in the privilege of absurdity. Much is gained to the cause of truth, when it stands revealed as a demonstrated verity, that all the godless Philosophies with which the morality and religion and well-being of the world have so long been blighted, have no other foundation than lawless assumption, and are constructed throughout in accordance with principles and methods which true science recognizes but to condemn.

Fundamental Errors in the Common Systems of Mental Science.

We are now prepared to state definitely the fundamental errors which have place in the common systems of mental science. Among such errors we designate the following.

1. All in common fail to Recognize the Element of Implied Knowledge and Reason as the Organ of such Knowledge.

There is, as we have shown, no complex form of thought which can be designated—a form of thought which is not constituted, and constituted exclusively, of two classes of elements—the perceived and the implied. We might, then, as properly attempt to explain such forms of thought without reference to Consciousness or Sense, as without reference to Reason as the organ of implied knowledge. If Reason is not recognized at all, or is not presented as one of the primary intellectual faculties, and as such, as the organ of implied elements of knowledge, no scientific explanation can be given, as we have shown, of any of our complex apprehensions, of the original principles of any of the sciences, or of the laws of scientific induction and deduction. Yet in no treatise on Mental Science hitherto originated, that of the author of this Treatise excepted, has Reason, if recognized at all, been presented as a primary faculty, and as such as the organ of Implied Knowledge. Hence the failure of such works to explain mental phenomena as they are.

2. Many of these Treatises fundamentally err in their Enumeration of the Mental Faculties.

A majority of these treatises, perhaps, err fundamentally in their enumeration of the Mental Faculties. Some, with Edwards and Thomas Brown, confound the Sensibility and Will, and thus allow but two instead of three general faculties—the Intellect, and Sensibility, or Will. Others omit Reason wholly, and thus, with the Materialists, allow but one primary faculty, External Perception, or, with Locke and others, only two—External and Internal Perception. Such authors confound conception with perception, representing Memory as mere perception recalled, and the Imagination as Memory recalling past perceptions in groups not apprehended before. As such treatises can give no account of principles in science, not being able to furnish the subjects and predicates of such judgments, they, what has been true ever since the era of Aristotle, confound general propositions with scientific principles. The views which such treatises give of the mental faculties are utterly confused and limited, and lead to no important results, unless erroneous, in any direction.

3. Others admit the Reality of the Reason, but by mislocating the Faculty, darken instead of elucidate the Science of Mind.

Treatises of more recent origin admit the existence of necessary ideas, and recognize the Reason as the organ of such ideas; but, by misplacing both the ideas and their faculty, eclipse and darken the whole science which they were intended to elucidate. We will take, in illustration, the classification of the intellectual faculties as given by Sir William Hamilton—to wit, External and Internal Perception, the latter being denominated Self-consciousness, Memory, Imagination, Comparison or Faculty of Relations, and Reason. Similar, in all essential respects, are the classifications of these faculties as given by Messrs. Hickok, Haven, Porter, and Upham. All agree in presenting Reason, not as a primary faculty at all, nor as the organ of implied knowledge in any form, but as the last of the secondary faculties. Some philosophers, with Kant and all others of the Transcendental School, represent Reason as acting prior to all the other faculties, and giving form and law to all their activity. We have, in former connections, sufficiently exposed the errors of this school. We shall now refer only to those philosophers who, in fact and form, locate Reason as the last of the secondary faculties. In all treatises of this class, Reason is represented as acting independently of the other faculties, and as independently originating ideas and knowledges of a peculiar kind, necessary ideas and forms of knowledge, for example. The other faculties, we are told, have to do with contingent ideas and forms of knowledge, while Reason, by direct intuition, apprehends necessary, infinite, and eternal truth, and especially 'existence in se.' Reason is represented, also, as the organ of moral, spiritual, and religious truths, and knowledge through Reason is contrasted with knowledge obtained through science, and especially through 'the Logical Understanding.' In regard to such systems of mental science, we urge special attention to the following fundamental facts and considerations.

(1.) Facts of Consciousness of the most palpable and decisive character absolutely imply that Reason is not one of the secondary, but one of the primary, faculties, and as such is not a source of independently derived, but exclusively of implied knowledge. Not a conception, or complex apprehension, or form of thought, can be designated, which is not exclusively, as we have said, constituted of two classes of elements, the perceived and the implied; the former furnished, as all admit, by perception, and the latter undeniably by Reason, as the organ of implied knowledge. If Reason were a secondary, and not a primary, faculty, in none of these complex forms of thought could any but the elements furnished by perception be found; whereas, in all such forms, the implied as well as the perceived elements are present, and the former are always given in this exclusive form, as implied by the latter. Nor can a Reason-idea be designated whose object is not given in the universal consciousness as implied by some object of perception, or contingent form of thought. Space, time, substance, cause proximate and ultimate, for example, are objects of Reason-ideas, and are all given as implied by facts of perception, and this fixed relation between perceived facts and the objects of Reason-ideas obtains in all cases that can be designated. No deduction can possibly be verified within the sphere of mental science if the sphere of Reason, as we have fixed it, in opposition to that assigned it in the treatises under consideration, is not to be accepted as a demonstrated truth of science. Here we might properly suspend further proof. For the sake of science, however, we proceed to present other aspects of this subject of fundamental interest.

(2.) While the doctrine which we maintain does enable us to determine, with scientific certainty, the number, character, and special spheres, of all the mental faculties, utter confusion, as well as fundamental error, is, by the systems under consideration, introduced into this whole subject.

As all the elements which enter into and constitute all complex forms of thought must, as Locke teaches, be furnished, according to all these systems, by external and internal perception, in no conception can any such element as substance, material, or personal, have place, and with no perceived fact or event can the objects of the ideas of cause, space, or time stand connected, there being no faculty given to originate such ideas, or even to suggest the necessary connection between perceived facts and the realities which the former imply. Every conception, we repeat, must, if Locke is right, be constituted exclusively of the elements furnished by the two perceptive faculties, or by one of them, as the case may be. Here, permit us to remark, we have the basis of the Sceptical deduction, that as no elements for conception are furnished by the primary faculties but the perceived, or phenomenal, nothing but phenomena can be to the mind the objects of valid knowledge. How the Empirical School, or any philosopher who locates Reason among the secondary faculties, especially as the last of these, can avoid that deduction, no thinker has yet been able to show us.

This deduction aside, however, what, permit us to ask, in the next place, can the Judgment, assuming such a faculty to exist, do with conceptions constituted exclusively of such elements? In the absence of the ideas of resemblance and difference, which have and can have being in thought but as elements of implied knowledge, this faculty cannot take the first step in the process of construction, classification, and generalization. Nor can this faculty have any principles in the light of which it can conduct any process of scientific enquiry or argument, all such principles being exclusively constituted, as we have seen, of the necessary relations between perceived and their implied forms of knowledge, and being of impossible existence in the absence of either of such forms. If, on the other hand, we give Reason the sphere to which we have assigned it, all such processes, together with the formation of conceptions, and all other forms of complex thought, just as given in the universal consciousness, become perfectly explicable.

If from the Judgment we turn to Memory and the Imagination, the former, from the nature of the case, can present nothing but recalled perceptions, and the latter can present nothing but facts of Memory lawlessly combined 'in groups which have no corresponding existences in nature.' In short, according to the necessary deductions from the principles of all such Philosophies, no scientific determinations can be had of the number, character, and special spheres of the mental, and especially of the intellectual, faculties, nor of our common or scientific processes of classification and reasoning. Give to Reason and Reason-ideas, on the other hand, the sphere to which we have assigned them, and the number, character, and spheres, of all the faculties become scientifically determinable, and the proper action of all the intellectual faculties in all departments of thought alike becomes clearly referable to perfectly determinable laws, laws whose absolute validity is self-evident. In such a case we can and shall have a science of mind, a science verified throughout by the strictest application of known scientific principles, and Logics in which we shall never be told that 'All negative and no affirmative propositions distribute the predicate'—in which mere contingent general judgments are mistaken for universal, necessary, and self-evident principles in science—and that every deduction in every argument involves a vicious begging of the question, arguments, in short, to demonstrate the invalidity of all proof by argument.

(3.) While the action of Reason, and of all the other intellectual faculties is, according to the system, we maintain, in the strictest accordance with determinable laws whose validity cannot be questioned, Reason, and with it the other faculties under consideration, according to the fundamental principles of these other treatises, is a perfectly lawless faculty. According to the united teachings of these systems, the perceptive faculties, the proper conditions being fulfilled, furnish us with all the elements of all world conceptions, judgments, memories, and imaginings. The secondary faculties indicated by these terms, take up these elements and do with them all that is possible, that use not being very scientific, of course, in the crippled and limited condition in which, by hypothesis, these faculties must act, nothing but random and lawless action being possible under such circumstances. Reason now comes in, and independently of all facts of perception, and by direct and immediate intuition, apprehends space and time. It then, in the same manner, looks off into infinite space and eternal duration, discerns there 'existence in se,' existence as substance, cause, personal identity, and God, with the law of duty, and other kindred truths. It is not taught in these treatises that Reason never acts until the other faculties have finished their work. This, however is taught, and implied in all the principles of these treatises, that Reason, as a faculty of original and immediate intuition, does thus originate all these forms of knowledge. What are the laws which govern this faculty? No philosopher of the class under consideration affirms it to be subject to law, or professes to determine the laws to which it is subject. Where are the criteria of valid knowledge by which we can verify the visions of this faculty, or distinguish its valid from its invalid visions, if it has such, or its valid visions from others which are given forth as forms of Reason-knowledge? No such criteria can be adduced, or are professedly adduced. Reason, we repeat, as presented in these treatises, is an utterly lawless faculty. If we refer to facts, we cannot fail to perceive, that from the nature of the case it must be so. If we recur to the teachings of these philosophers in respect to the most important objects of Reason-ideas, we shall find in those teachings 'confusion worse confounded.' According to some, thinkers of the highest eminence, our necessary apprehensions of God, for example, are nothing but 'a bundle of negations.' According to others, of equal authority, such apprehensions are nothing but a bundle of palpable contradictions. According to others, if not to a majority of this class of thinkers, knowledge, in all its forms, has and can have only a relative validity.

If we grant, as we cannot, the validity of such Reason-visions, who can verify for us the relations of such visions to the universe of perception? Perceptions and these ideas have, as we are taught, each class, an origin independent of the other, and as independently originated elements of thought they can have no necessary connection with one another. For aught that we can determine from the principles before us, the objects of these Reason-ideas, granting the existence of such objects, may, as Plato taught, lie a way off in a distant, and to us unapproachable, sphere, while perceived phenomena may afford us nothing more than a kind of 'bastard knowledge' of any reality as it is. There is no escaping such deductions but by a denial of the psychology which originates them. If, on the other hand, we assign Reason to the sphere of intuitively implied knowledge, then primal intuition in all its forms, together with all subsequent necessary procedures of the secondary faculties, may, as we have shown, by the application of criteria whose validity cannot be questioned, be demonstrated to have absolute validity for truth, and all these faculties be fully evinced as ever acting in conformity to laws whose validity is necessarily self-evident.

(4.) While, we remark finally, the facts, principles, and laws of induction and deduction, in all the sciences, are perfectly explicable, and while all the sciences can be verified as resting upon common principles, and as distinguished from one another by the special facts which each of them is intended to elucidate, and all can be thus presented as constituent parts of a great unified whole—while all this can be absolutely accomplished by the Philosophy taught in this Treatise, these other systems introduce the same confusion and contradiction into the sphere of the sciences that they do into that of the mental faculties.

Without self-evident and necessary principles, science in no form is possible, and all such principles take form and derive their absolute validity and authority from necessary relations between contingent and necessary forms of thought, that is, between knowledge in its perceived and implied forms. Take away either of these classes of elements, and, as we have shown, principles cannot exist. No explanation can be given of the relation between Reason-ideas and contingent or perceived forms of thought, and consequently of the existence and relations of the sciences, but by presenting Reason as a primary faculty, and as such, as the organ of implied knowledge. In this case, the sciences in their origin, processes, and relations throughout, become perfectly explicable.

In consequence of representing Reason, on the other hand, as an original and independent source of knowledge, we have, in reality, aside from the pure and mixed, two classes of sciences, each resting upon its own special and peculiar principles—that based upon Reason intuitions, on the one hand, and those resting upon the facts of perception on the other, the latter class being represented as constituting the sciences proper, and religion and science being consequently considered as having their abode in different and opposite spheres, and as resting upon no common ultimate principles. Hence the common habit of unbelievers, of representing science and religion, not only as strangers to each other, but as natural antagonisms; and of religionists of decrying Philosophy, theologians, in all such cases, doing what they can to inflict upon Christianity a deadly wound. Religion and science, in their relations to Philosophy, can never be rightly understood until it shall be made demonstrably evident, which may and will be done, that by the same principles on which we are, in view of a certain class of facts, required to admit the validity of the Copernican System, we are required, in view of other classes equally manifest and undeniable, to admit the Divine origin and authority of the Christian Religion, and that Religion has as valid a claim to a place within the circle of the sciences, as Astronomy or Natural Philosophy has. The varied sciences are distinguished and peculiarized from one another, not by their principles, these, in all essential forms, being common and identical, but by the peculiarity of the facts which each science is intended to elucidate. The facts pertaining to our moral and spiritual nature, in connection with those which relate to Ultimate Causation, as well as those which belong to the evidences of Christianity, are just as subject to scrutiny and elucidation through scientific principles, and just as reducible to such principles, as any other facts known to mind. Facts and doctrines revealed by inspiration of God are just as capable of scientific systematization and elucidation, as are any facts received through external or internal perception. Take away Reason as the faculty of implied knowledge, however, and then give it no place, or any place you please, in the sphere of thought, and all facts in common imply nothing, and the existence of any scientific principles of any kind, and consequently science itself in any form, becomes impossible. When the doctrines of science shall be fully understood, when the number and spheres of the sciences, together with their principles and laws of induction and deduction, shall have been clearly settled, it will be rendered demonstrably evident, that there is and can be no more danger of a collision between the science of religion, and science in any other form, than there is of a contradiction between the deductions of Astronomy and Geology, and that the ascertained doctrines of religion have as absolute a claim to our regard as scientific verities as any doctrine of any other science can have. Look at the following statement upon which we have commented in former connections. 'Of all antagonisms of belief,' says Spencer, 'the oldest, the widest, the most profound and important, is between Religion and Science. It commenced when the recognition of the simplest uniformities in surrounding things, set a limit to the previously universal fetishism. It shows itself everywhere throughout the domain of human knowledge.' Take now, the following statement of Rev. M. A. De W. Howe, D.D., one of the highest authorities in the Episcopal Church. 'There is not now an opinion held among natural philosophers which has withstood the test of fifty years' investigation by students of physical science, that is, in anybody's esteem, at variance with the word of God.' The same holds equally true of all opinions upon the written and monumental records of ancient nations. At the present time, there is not an opinion in respect to which the highest authorities in science are agreed, that is supposed at all to contradict any statement of the word of God. Such has been the undeniable result of the affirmed conflict under consideration. The only apparent conflict that does exist is between Religion and the universally admitted uncertain sciences. Not a single case has yet, in the united judgment of scientific men, been made out against Religion. The manifest deduction from these undeniable facts is this, either that in all antagonisms between Science and Religion, if any such have arisen, Religion has been right, and Science wrong; or that in all cases the real conflict has been exclusively between Religion and 'Science falsely so called,' the latter hypothesis being unquestionably true. As Science in its principles, facts, and deductions, shall come to be fully understood, not only will all even seeming antagonisms between Science and Religion disappear, but, in the language of the great German Psycicist before cited, 'the sciences universally will be understood as introductory to Christianity.'

The error of which we are speaking, the error which consists in such a mislocation of the real sphere of Reason, has done great injury to science, not only in rendering the existence of real scientific principles impossible, excepting as the necessary intuitions of the Intelligence force such principles into the sphere of scientific thought, but by taking away all criteria by which such principles are distinguishable from mere assumptions, on the one hand, and general propositions, on the other. Hence it is that we have certain sciences which do, in fact and form, rest upon valid scientific principles, such, for example, as the Pure Sciences in their entireness, and certain of the Mixed Sciences, such as Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Chemistry, etc. In other cases we have systems called Philosophies, the Philosophies of Being and its Laws, systems which stand out before the world, as having no other basis than mere assumptions, assumptions which not only have no place in human thought as self-evident truths, but which can, by no possibility, be verified at all. To this class, as we have rendered demonstrably evident, are the systems of Idealism in all its forms, Materialism and Scepticism, to be referred. Of the same character are all those treatises on the life of Jesus, given forth by such authors as Strauss and Renan, treatises based upon the avowed assumption that no miracle has ever occurred. Still another class of systems, now held before the world as constituting the New Philosophy, are developed with reference to no ultimate principles of any kind. If you will carefully examine the doctrines of Evolution, Spontaneous Generation, and Development, as presented by their advocates, for example, you will find nothing which takes on even the appearance of reference to ultimate principles of any kind. These doctrines, on the other hand, are, in their entireness, assured as true, are baptized with the imposing names which they bear, and presented to the world as the sciences, the New Philosophy of this progressive age. Why is this? Why is the distinction so obscure between Science and Logical Fiction, between mere hypotheses and sciences properly so-called? Why have we logics in which the idea of principles in science, excepting in the form of more general propositions, has no place? But one answer can be given to such enquiries. By a failure to recognize the existence of the element of implied knowledge in all complex forms of thought, and by a consequent ignorance of the existence of the faculty of Reason, or a total misapprehension of its exclusive sphere among the intellectual faculties, no facts are presented to account for principles in science, or to require their recognition, and no criteria are, or can be, given by which such principles are distinguishable from mere assumptions, or general propositions. Let us suppose that it is distinctly understood that real science, in all its forms, does and must rest ultimately upon principles which have self-evident validity, principles in which an intuitively necessary connection is perceived to exist between the subject and predicate of every such judgment, and that all theories not undeniably resting upon such principles must take rank as logical fictions. With this view of the necessary condition of the possibility of science in any form, and of the immutable characteristics of scientific principles, who would construct a philosophy of any kind, and especially a system of universal being and its laws, upon such an assumption as this, that but one substance, or principle of all things, does, or can, exist? Unless that assumption has self-evident and necessary validity, Materialism, on the one hand, and Idealism, on the other, have, and can have, no higher claims to our regard than any other logical fictions, for both systems do, in fact and form, rest upon this one assumption. Where is the self-evident and intuitively necessary connection between the subject and predicate in this proposition?

What powers of intuitive discernment have we—powers by which we can discern that such an assumption is even probably true? The same remarks are equally applicable to all the other assumptions of Idealism, such, for example, as those that the condition of valid knowledge is a synthesis or identity of being and knowing. No one can discern any necessary or even probable connection between the subject and predicate of any such judgments. Yet Idealism, Materialism, and Scepticism, in all their forms, rest upon no other foundations than such lawless assumptions. Why are such assumptions accepted as basis principles in the sphere of scientific thought? Why are our most imposing philosophies based upon such assumptions? Simply because the conditions of the possibility of principles, and the criteria by which such principles are distinguishable from assumptions and general propositions, have not been understood. If we grant as we must, or deny conscious facts as they are, if we grant that we have a faculty, the Reason, which, in connection with every perceived fact, gives us the reality which that fact necessarily implies, if we grant that these two classes of elements, the perceived and the implied, do and must enter into and constitute all our conceptions and complex forms of thought, we shall then clearly understand how it is that the Judgment, in affirming the intuitive and necessary relations between these two forms of thought, gives, and must give, us all valid principles in all real sciences, principles such as Body implies Space, Succession implies Time, Phenomena imply Substance, Events imply a cause, Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, etc. If we enquire why it is that such an intuitively necessary connection does exist between the subject and predicate in such judgments, the answer is ready. In all such cases the subject implies the predicate, or, as in the case of principles in their negative forms, the subject, on the ground of intuitive incompatibility, excludes the predicate. On further enquiry it will be found that all the valid sciences do, in fact and form, rest ultimately and wholly upon these two classes of principles, and that the existence of these principles is explicable but upon one exclusive hypothesis, that there exist three, instead of two, primary intellectual faculties—those of External and Internal Perception, and the Organ of intuitively Implied Knowledge. On this hypothesis we have a ready explanation of the existence and character of all our conceptions and complex forms of thought, of the principles, facts, and deductions in all the sciences, and of the criteria which distinguish valid scientific principles, in all their forms, from all kinds of assumptions and general propositions, and consequently all valid forms of science from 'all sciences falsely so-called.' On any other hypothesis, lawless assumption will continue to give form to our Philosophies, and Logical Fictions will occupy the High Places in the domain of the Sciences.

THE END.

SECOND APPENDIX ADDED.

INDEX

OF

PHILOSOPHERS AND PEOPLE IN HISTORY.

PAGES

AEschines 193

AEscylus 192

Agassiz 761-768, 781, 880, 886

Alcott, Dr. 911

Amaury 510

Anaxagoras 189, 235-242, 252, 254, 260,

261, 265, 293, 295, 297, 306,

414, 477, 803

Anaximander 234, 235, 260, 270, 621

Anaximenes 234, 235, 259

Anselm 483, 488, 500, 511-515

Aquinus, Thomas 499-501, 512

Aratus of Cilicia 193

Archimedes 699

Aristotle (384--322 B.C.) 120, 158, 175, 189, 190, 194, 195, 231, 233, 234, 236, 237, 240, 241, 252, 261, 279, 280, 285, 289, 293, 294, 306, 312, 314, 316, 331-354,

403, 476, 477, 488, 500, 540, 541, 542, 588, 658, 731, 765, 803, 833, 968

Augustine 476

Basil (early church father) 475

Bauer 913

Bacon, Rev. Leonard, D.D. 13-15

Bacon, Roger 502-512

Bacon, Sir Francis 334, 518-519, 545, 550-562, 568

578, 614, 701, 803, 833

Beals, Dr. 886

Berkeley 250, 578-9, 593-9, 605, 657, 667

Bonaparte, Napolian 952, 955

Bourne, B. P. 809, 876, 884

Bradley, Dr. 164

Brown, Thomas 968

Bruno of Italy 510, 624, 886, 913

Buchan 702

Buchner, Luis 702, 739-759, 796, 887, 917

Buddha, Gautama 9, 161-3, 182-7, 212, 270, 324,

454, 484, 506, 511, 519, 624, 627, 683, 702, 886, 893-4

Burmeister 759

Byron 183, 893, 896

Carlyle 700

Christieb, Theodore of Bonn D.D. 896

Chrysippus 365-368

Cicero 120, 234, 285, 360, 367, 402-3,

425, 516, 561, 803, 851, 903

Cinquez 759

Clarke, J. F. 162

Cleanthus 193

Cocker 192, 194, 235, 237, 241, 242, 245, 325, 367, 759

Coleridge 67, 68, 80, 93-7, 142, 144, 145,

220, 250, 377, 486, 492, 503, 504, 506, 540, 597, 616, 629, 633, 677, 678, 699, 700, 729, 851, 895, 896

Comte of Paris 270, 323, 324, 702, 722-9, 747,

752, 872, 878

Condillac 409, 587-9, 592, 594, 702, 889

Cotta 745

Cousin 6, 137, 200, 226, 579, 639, 708,

721, 735

Cudworth 234

Dana 763, 764, 781

Daniel, Prophet 232, 469, 545

Darwin, Charles 256, 270, 418, 420, 589, 747,

761-80, 787-92, 796, 799, 802,

884, 933, 957

De Blainville 920

Democritus (460--357 B.C.) 9, 252-8, 262, 270, 283, 323, 324,

357, 362, 409, 571, 592, 624, 702, 887

Des Cartes 255, 283, 503, 614-25, 699, 797

Dinant, David de 510

Diderot 589-92, 958

Diogenes 234, 237, 239, 250, 252, 360, 367, 379

D'Holbach 589-90

D'Israeli 927

Edwards, Jonathan 6, 968

Emerson, R. W. 66, 148, 250, 270, 411, 553, 700,

747, 783, 796, 809, 901

Epicurus (341--270 B.C.) 9, 157, 161, 252, 256-8, 283,

357-63, 370, 373, 374, 409, 511,

564-5, 592, 624, 702, 883, 887,

889

Empedocles 751

Eustathius 701

Ferguson, Adam 958

Ferrier, J. F. of Scotland 596-7, 700-1, 710-11, 717

Ficthe, Johan Gottlieb 113-4, 164-5, 168, 270, 323-4,

409, 496, 505-6, 624-6, 628, 637,

663-71, 683-4, 697, 702, 886, 889

Finney, Charles Grandison (1792-1875) 5, 7, 11, 688, 888, 889

Flourens, M. 765

Gassendi 562, 565

Gellius, Aurlus 192

Gerbert, Abbé 509

Giebel 756

Gorgius 264, 270, 291

Grove 917

Hamilton, Sir William 53, 78, 101, 103, 220, 238, 342,

365, 595, 602, 610, 633, 664, 669, 751, 807, 829, 836, 939, 955, 968

Haraclitus 259-61, 375

Harris, Samuel, D,D, 222

Hartmann, Edward Von 897

Haven 968

Haven, E. O. 13-15

Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich 52, 54, 97, 164, 168, 232, 243,

(1777-1831) 246-7, 270, 323-4, 406, 409,

496-7, 505-6, 549, 553, 624-9,

663-4, 681-6, 692-4, 697-702,

713, 717, 887, 889, 898, 905,

910-11, 913

Helvetius 589, 594

Herschel 757

Hickok 968

Homer 245, 286, 701

Howe, Rev. M. A. De W., D.D. 974

Hume, David

Irenaeus (early church father) 475

Jesus Christ 171, 422, 426, 429-436, 443,

451, 454-459, 462-480, 503,

679, 959-560, 984, 987

Jewell, J. S. M.D. 14-15, 925

John, Apostle 454, 460, 489, 490

John of Damascus 477

John the Baptist 459, 460

Johnson, Dr. 250

Jouffroy 282, 606

Kanada 9, 156-7, 161, 212, 252, 270, 283,

323-4, 409, 511, 519, 592, 624,

702, 887, 889

Kant, Immanuel 6, 62, 67-8, 73, 76, 86-7, 99, 106,

113, 120, 152-3, 160, 164, 168,

182, 212, 220, 248-50, 266, 270,

283, 323, 324, 347-8, 359, 376,

377, 383, 385, 387, 409, 494,

505-6, 516, 525-30, 536, 538, 548, 571-3, 579-84, 624-671, 682,

695-702, 710, 715, 783, 812-3,

816-7, 848, 886, 889, 897, 908,

947-8, 968

Kapila 9, 148-9, 151, 155, 168, 212, 266,

270, 283, 323-4, 398, 409, 494,

511, 519, 624, 627, 702, 886

Krug 144

Leucippus (500--400 B.C.) 252-3, 265, 357

Lewes 232, 237-41, 245, 247, 249-50,

255, 285, 316, 324, 360, 375, 379, 384-6, 405-6, 408, 510-11, 514,

549, 563, 588, 595, 597, 599,

604-5, 610, 618, 621, 671, 678,

684, 693-4, 919

Livingston, Dr. David 757-8

Locke, John 120, 160, 353, 568-608, 639, 803,

940, 968, 970

Longinus 193, 231

Malone 701

Mansel 798, 809-11, 825, 829, 837, 901

Martyr, Justin 475

Masson 926

Matthew 454, 462

Maudsley 546, 733-5, 738, 747, 796, 860-1,

880, 882, 884, 906-7

Metrodorus 262, 270

Mill, John Stuart 103, 121, 185, 250, 250, 342-3,

394, 397, 402, 411, 539, 542-3,

545, 553, 557-8, 580, 700, 702,

722-3, 726, 796, 880, 895, 901,

913

Moffat, Dr. 757-8

Mohammad 482, 509

Morrell 585

Moses 4, 231, 417, 418, 433, 454, 456,

457, 459, 460, 468, 469, 474

Murphy 917

Origen 476

Parmenides 244-54, 261, 265, 270, 306, 409

Paul 191, 193, 245, 402, 460, 471,

472, 474, 875, 960

Peter 457, 459, 460, 462 462, 489, 490

Philemon 193

Plato (428--347 B.C.) 120, 171, 189-90, 194, 234, 240,

247, 279, 280, 283, 289, 293-337,

344, 346, 347, 350, 352, 370-7,

299-405, 414, 416, 428, 476, 477,

488, 495, 504-6, 540, 577, 658,

676-9, 751, 803, 972

Plotinus 404-9, 476, 480, 506, 624, 632,

677, 679, 706, 886

Plutarch 194, 367-368

Pope 927

Polus 270

Porter 968

Priestly 587

Prodicus 264, 270

Protagoras 9, 120, 195, 228, 270, 281, 283,

376, 377, 385, 409, 439, 511, 601, 702, 796, 878, 887, 889

Pyrrho 9, 393, 397, 409, 511, 605, 617,

702, 796, 887, 889

Pythagoras 9, 234, 241-3, 254, 265, 270, 283,

409, 506, 511, 624, 679, 683, 702, 886

Raymond, M. 14-15

Renan 975

Richerand 920

Richter 905, 910

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 52, 94, 97, 138, 141, 143, 148, (1775-1854) 164, 168, 246, 267, 270, 323-4,

408-9, 496, 504-6, 510, 622,

624-8, 664, 671-84, 697, 702, 713, 887, 889

Schopenhauer 897

Schlegel 131

Schwegler 175, 271, 366-7, 478, 590, 623,

681, 684

Shakespeare 701

Simpson, Bishop 12

Smith, N. Payne 14-15

Socrates (470--400 B.C.) 120, 171, 189-94, 228-9, 235, 240, 247, 259, 264, 279-94, 312, 314,

339, 346-7, 365, 414, 439, 477,

490, 513, 606, 803

Solomon, King 11, 232, 468, 986

Sophecles 194, 286

Spencer, Herbert 62, 66, 72-3, 76, 81, 103, 121,

148, 185, 220, 223-4, 249-50, 270,

324, 359, 376, 385, 398, 411-12,

439, 514, 538-9, 553, 601, 652,

662, 702, 711, 723, 726-7, 747,

783, 786, 796-908, 917-26, 945-8,

974

Spinoza, Benedict 568, 614, 620-5, 671

Stewart, Dugald 9, 282, 589, 606

Stowe 914

Strauss 975

Tait 906