OassEEi* Book_...:'.. THE INTUITIONS OF THE MIND INDUCTIVELY INVESTIGATED. EEV. JAMES M'COSH, LL.D., PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN QUEEN'S COLLE&E, BELFAST, AUTHOR OP 'THE METHOD OP THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT PHYSICAL AND MORAL,' AND JOINT AUTHOR OP 'TYPICAL PORMS AND SPECIAL ENDS IN CREATION.' LONDON: JOHN MUEEAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET. 1860. The right of Translation is reserved. < 51511* JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, PRINTER, LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN EIELDS. CONTENTS, INTRODUCTION. Page Aim of the Work and Method of Inquiry 1 fart tftrst GENERAL VIEW OF THE NATURE OF THE INTUITIVE CONVICTIONS OF THE MIND. BOOK I. GENERAL PROPOSITIONS REGARDING INTUITIONS. CHAPTER I. NEGATIVE PROPOSITIONS. Sect. I. No Innate Mental Images or Representations .... 13 Sect. II. No Innate, Abstract, or General Notions 16 Sect. III. No A Priori Forms imposed by the Mind on Objects 19 Sect. IV. The Intuitions are not immediately before Conscious- ness as Laws or Principles 21 CHAPTER II. POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. Sect. I. There are Intuitive Principles operating in the Mind . 23 Sect. II. The Native Convictions of the Mind are of the Nature of Perceptions or Intuitions 29 Sect. III. Intuitive Convictions rise on the Contemplation of Ob- jects presented or represented to the Mind 30 IV CONTENTS. Page Sect. IV. The Intuitions of the Mind are primarily directed to Individual Objects 31 Sect. V. The Individual Intuitive Convictions can be generalized into Maxims, and these are entitled to be represented as Phi- losophic Principles 33 BOOK II. CHARACTER OE INTUITIONS AND METHOD OF EMPLOYING THEM. CHAPTER I. MARICS AND PECULIARITIES OF INTUITIONS. Sect. I. Tests 37 Sect. II. Different Aspects of Intuitions, and their Theoretical Characters 41 Sect. III. Certain Misapprehensions in regard to the Character of Intuitive Convictions 55 Sect. IY. Certain Practical Characteristics 59 CHAPTER II. METHOD OF EMPLOYING- INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES. Sect. I. The Spontaneous and Reflex Use of Intuitive Principles 62 Sect. II. Sources of Error in Metaphysical Speculation . . , 69 Sect. III. Conditions of the Legitimacy of the Appeal to Intuitive Principles 76 Sect. IV. Method of Investigating and Interpreting our Intui- tions 85 Sect. V. What Explanation can be given of the Intuitions of the Mind 92 CHAPTER III. (SUPPLEMENTARY.) BRIEF CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPI- NIONS IN REGARD TO INTUITIVE TRUTHS 98 CONTENTS. $art Second PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OE THE INTUITIONS. BOOK I. PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. CHAPTER I. BODY AND SPIRIT. Page Sect. I. The Mind begins its Intelligent Acts with Knowledge. The Simple Cognitive Powers 119 Sect. II. Our Intuitive Cognitions of Body 122 Sect. III. Some Distinctions to be attended to in regard to our Cognition of Body 133 Sect. IV. The Qualities of Matter known by Intuition .... 145 Sect. V. Our Intuitive Cognition of Self or of Spirit 148 CHAPTER II. ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COaNITIONS. Sect. I. {Preliminary.) On the Nature of Abstraction and Gene- ralization 157 Sect. II. On Being 161 Sect. III. On Substance 164 Sect. IV. On Mode, Quality, Property, Essence 173 Sect. Y. On Personality 180 Sect. VI. On Extension 183 Sect. VII. On Number ~. 184 Sect. VIII. On Motion 185 Sect. IX. On Power 187 Sect. X. {Supplementary?) Tlie Various Kinds of Power known by Experience . 187 BOOK II. PRIMITIVE BELIEES. CHAPTER I. Their General Nature 196 VI CONTENTS. Page CHAPTER II. Time and Space 202 CHAPTER III. The Infinite 214 CHAPTER IV. The Extent, Tests, and Power of our Native Beliefs . 231 BOOK III. PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. CHAPTER I. Their General Nature, and a Classification of them . 236 CHAPTER II. RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED BY THE MIND. Sect. I. Relation of Identity 242 Sect. II. Relation of Whole and Parts 247 Sect. III. Relations of Space 250 Sect. IV. The Relations of Time 252 Sect. V. The Relations of Quantity 252 Sect. VI. The Relations of Resemblance 255 Sect. VII. Relations of Active Property 257 Sect. VIII. Relation of Cause and Effect 258 BOOK IV. MORAL CONVICTIONS. CHAPTER I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE MOTIVE AND MORAL POWERS. Sect. I. The Appetencies, the Will, and the Conscience . . . 279 Sect. II. {Supplementary) On the Beautiful 288 CHAPTER II. CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN THE EXERCISES OE CONSCIENCE. Sect. I. Convictions as to the Nature of Moral Good .... 290 Sect. II. On Sin and Error 297 Sect. III. Relation of Moral Good and Happiness 302 CONTENTS. VU Page CHAPTER III. The Fkeedom of the Will 308 fart ffijjirtr. INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE VARIOUS SCIENCES. BOOK I. METAPHYSICS. CHAPTER I. Metaphysics, Gnosiology, and Ontology 315 CHAPTER II. GNOSIOLOGY. Sect. I. On Knowledge 322 Sect. II. On the Origin of onr Knowledge and Ideas .... 326 Sect. III. Limits to our Knowledge, Ideas, and Beliefs .... 334 Sect. IV. Relation of Intuition and Experience 340 Sect. V. On the Necessity attached to our Primary Convictions . 345 Sect. VI. (Supplementary.) On the Distinctions between the Un- derstanding and the Reason ; between a priori and a posteriori Principles ; between Form and Matter; between Subjective and Objective; between the Logical and Chronological Order of Ideas ; between the Cause and Occasion of Innate Ideas . . 351 CHAPTER III. ONTOLOGY. Sect. I. On Knowing and Being 358 Sect. II. On Idealism 362 Sect. III. On Scepticism 374 Sect. IV. On the Conditioned and the Unconditioned .... 385 Sect. V. (Supplementary.) The Antinomies of Kant 388 Sect. VI. (Supplementary.) Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Me- taphysical System 390 Vlll CONTENTS. BOOK II. METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE SCIENCES. CHAPTER I. Page Distinction between the Demonstrative oe Formal and the Material or Inductive Sciences ..... r . 395 CHAPTER II. THE MENTAL SCIENCES. Sect. I. Classification of the Mental Sciences 400 Sect. II. Logic 402 Sect. III. Ethics 406 CHAPTER III. Mathematics 409 CHAPTER IV. Intuitive Principles involved in the Physical Sciences 415 CHAPTER V. APPLICATION TO THEOLOOY. Sect. I. Eaith and Reason 419 Sect. II. Natural Theology. The Theistic Argument .... 427 Sect. III. On the Immortality of the Soul 441 Sect. IV. Pantheism 446 Sect. V. Christian Divinity s 461 Sect. VI. Man as a Religious Being 476 Sect. VII. Rational Theology 480 Sect. VIII. Intuitional Theology 482 errata. Page 166, line 5 from foot, for " Abrici" read " Ulrici." Page 246, line 7 from head,/oj- " A is not A " read " A is not Not-A. INTUITIONS OP THE MIND. INTRODUCTION. AIM OF THE WOKE! AND METHOD OE INQUIRY. According to one class of speculators, the mind derives all its knowledge, judgments, maxims, from observation and experience. According to another class of thinkers, there are ideas, truths, principles, which originate in the native power, and are seen in the inward light of the mind. These last have been called by a great number of names, such as innate ideas, intuitions, necessary judgments, fundamental laws of belief, principles of common sense, first or primitive truths; and diverse have been the accounts given of them, and the uses to which they have been turned. This is a controversy which has been from the beginning, and which is ever being renewed in one form or other. It appears to me that this contest is now, and has ever been, characterized by an immense complication of confusion ; and confusion, as Bacon has remarked, is more difficult to rectify than open error. I am not, in this treatise, to plunge at once into a thicket, in which so many have lost themselves as they sought to find or cut a way through it. But my aim throughout is to ascertain what are the actual laws or principles in the mind denoted by these various B 2 INTRODUCTION. phrases, what is their mode of operation, what the rule which they follow, and the purpose which they are com- petent to serve. As the result, it will appear that there are in the mind such existences and powers as primary perceptions and fundamental laws of belief, but that they are very different in their nature from the account which is often given of them, and that they are by no means fitted to accomplish the ends to which they have been turned in metaphysical and theological speculation. I would as soon believe that there are no such agents as heat, che- mical affinity, and electricity in physical nature, as that there are no immediate perceptions and native-born con- victions in this mind of ours. I look indeed on the one kind of agents, like the other, to be among the deepest and most potent at work in this world, mental and ma- terial ; and yet the one class, like the other, while ope- rating every instant on soul or body, are apt to hide themselves from the view. Indeed they discover them- selves only by their effects, and their law can be de- tected only by a careful observation of its actings ; and it should be added, that both are capable of evil as well as good, and are to be carefully watched and guarded in the use which is made of them. The prejudice against native and necessary principles has arisen to a great extent from the extravagant account which has been rendered of them, and from the vain, the ambitious, and often pernicious purposes which they have been made to serve. It is to be hoped, that by a clear determination of their exact nature, and of the rules of their operation, and by a judicious exposition of the me- thod by which alone they can be discovered, and of the restrictions which should be laid on their employment, the feeling against them on the part of so many, philo- sophers and non-philosophers, may be dispelled; while INTRODUCTION. at the same time rash speculators are prevented from em- ploying them for the furthering of pretentious ends to which they have no legitimate reference. In inquiring into the evidence of their existence, into the place which they hold in the constitution of the mind, the laws by which they are guided, and the way in which they manifest themselves, I am to proceed throughout in the Method of Induction. I profess to prosecute the investigation in the way of the observation of facts — with an accompanying analysis and co-ordination, but still of facts, which have been carefully observed. It has often been shown that the method of induction admits, mutatis mutandis, of an application to the study of the human mind, as well as to that of the material universe. The difference in the application lies mainly in this, that in the one case we use self-consciousness, or the internal sense, whereas in the other we employ the external sense as the organ or instrument. I certainly do not propose to find out the intuitions of the mind by the bodily eye, aided or unaided by the microscope, nor discover their mode of operation by the blowpipe. They are in their nature spiritual, and so sense cannot touch them, nor see them, nor hear them, nor can the telescope in its widest range detect them. Still they are there in our mental nature j there is an eye of wider sweep than the telescope, and more searching than the microscope, ready to be directed towards them. By introspection we may look on them in operation ; by abstraction or analysis we may separate the essential peculiarity from the rough concrete presentations; and by generalization, rise to the law which they follow. But let me not be misunderstood. The method pur- sued, as it is not on the one hand to be confounded with an ambitious transcendentalism which declines to ask help from observation, so it is as little on the other hand b 2 4 INTRODUCTION. to be identified with a miserable sensational empiricism. I do not expect to discover what are the native princi- ples of the mind by a priori speculation, but neither do I profess by observation to lay or construct a foundation on which to rear fundamental truth. I am not, there- fore, to be lightly charged with a contradiction, as if I resorted to experience for a basis or ground of principles which I represent as original and independent. I em- ploy induction simply as a mean or method of finding laws which are prior to induction, otherwise induction could not find them. Experience is not supposed by me to furnish the ground of necessary truth ; all that it can do is to supply the facts which enable us to discover the truth, and that the truth is necessary. I allude to this objection, not with the view of formally meeting it here, but in order to show that it has not been overlooked, and then adjourn the discussion of it to its appropriate place. It will come out, in the course of our survey, that while there are regulative principles in the mind, operating al- together independently of any reflex notice we may take of them, and not depending for their authority on our induction of them, it is at the same time true that they can become known to us as general principles only by inward observation, and can be legitimately employed in philosophic speculation only on the condition of being rigidly inducted. By observation we may rise to the discovery of mental principles which do not in themselves depend on observation, but which have a place in our constitution anterior to our observation of them, and are there, as observation discovers, native, necessary, and uni- versal. In some respects, it is an unfortunate time for giving forth such a work to the world. Every age, like the seed, is at one and the same time the product of combined in- fluences in the past, and the germ of life for the future. INTRODUCTION. In this present age, two manner of principles, each of the character of a different parent, are struggling for the mastery ; the one earth-born, sensational, empirical, utili- tarian, deriving all ideas from the senses, and all know- able truth from man's limited experience, and holding that man can be swayed by no motives of a higher order than the wish to secure pleasure or avoid pain ; the other, if not heaven-born, at least cloud-born, being ideal, tran- scendental, pantheistic, attributing man's loftiest ideas to an inward light, appealing to principles which are dis- covered without the trouble of observation, and issuing in a belief in the good, instead of a belief in God. Each of these views has its keen partisans, either violently at- tacking one another, or regarding each other with silent contempt, while the great body of reading men are pro- fessedly indifferent, — those who claim to be neutral, how- ever, being all the while unconsciously in the service either of the one or other, commonly of the lower or earthly, just as those who profess to belong neither to God nor Mammon, do in fact belong to Mammon. What then can be expected of the reception of such a work in such an age ? A large body, even of the think- ing portion of the community, are prejudiced against all such discussions, as fruitless of good in every cir- cumstance, and in some forms productive of mischief. I suspect the great mass of those who call themselves prac- tical men, and the majority of those addicted to the study of the physical sciences, will be further prepossessed against this treatise as defending a doctrine which they thought had been long ago and for ever exploded by Locke. On the other hand, those most inclined to favour such pursuits are, for the most part, committed and pledged to extreme views, and can scarcely be expected to look with a favourable eye on a work which, pro- fessedly built on pure observation, declines to follow any 6 INTRODUCTION. school, — indeed, proclaims that as schools and sects, with their separate standpoints and watchwords, have long ago ceased in physical science, so it is time they should disappear in the field of mental science likewise ; that those who prosecute the study, calling no man master, may look, without prepossession, into the volume spread out before them in their own soul, and read it with the eye of consciousness. Nearly all confessed metaphysi- cians will assert that I am degrading high philosophy in making it submit to the method of induction, and that the restrictions which I would lay upon speculation must deprive it of its most fascinating charms ; while hundreds of eager youths, walking hopefully on the high a priori road, and expecting that the next turn — which they al- ready see not far in front — must open on the great ocean of absolute truth, will feel as if they were unmercifully stopped and turned back at the very time when the long looked-for scene was about to burst gloriously on their view. But regarded under some other aspects, this is an age in which such a work (I would on this account as well as many others it were only worthy of its subject) is espe- cially needed. Every nation awakened to intelligence must have a philosophy of some description. Whatever men may profess or affect, they cannot in fact do without it ; and if any age or nation, arrived at civilization, will not form or adopt a high and elevating philosophy, it will assuredly fall under the power of a low and a debasing one. It oftens happens that a profession of contempt for all metaphysics as being futile and unintelligible, is often an introduction to a discussion which is metaphy- sical without the parties knowing it (as the person in the Trench play had spoken prose all his life without being aware of it) j and of such metaphysics it will com- monly be found that they are futile and unintelligible INTRODUCTION. 7 enough. Often is Aristotle denounced in language bor- rowed from himself, and the Schoolmen are disparaged by those who are all the while using distinctions which they have cut with sharp chisel in the rock, never to be effaced. There are persons speaking with contempt of Plato, Des- cartes, Locke, and all the metaphysicians who are taking advantage of the great truths which they have discovered. I could easily show that in our very sermons from the pulpit, and orations in the senate, and pleadings at the bar, principles are ever and anon appealed to which have come from the heads of our deepest thinkers, in ages long gone by, and who may now be forgotten by all but a few antiquarians in philosophy. Natural science itself is, in the hands of its most advanced votaries, ever touching on the borders of metaphysics, and compelling our physicists to rest on certain fundamental convictions as to exten- sion and force. The truth is, in very proportion as ma- terial science advances, do thinking minds feel the need of something to go down deeper and mount up higher than the senses can do — of some means of settling those anxious questions which the mind is ever putting in re- gard to the soul, and the relation of the universe to God, and of a foundation on which the understanding can ultimately and confidently repose. Whatever the super- ficial may think, philosophy is an underlying power, of vast importance because of mighty influence. It is be- cause it is fundamental and radical, that it is unseen by the vulgar, who notice only what is above the surface. Let us see that the foundation be well laid, that the root be properly planted. That foundation must be secure which is founded in our mental constitution ; that is the proper root which is planted by our Maker. In determining the precise nature of the mental intui- tions, we may hope to be able to settle what they can do, and, as no less important, what they cannot do. Thus do 8 INTRODUCTION. I hope to contribute my little aid in elevating the low, and in bringing down the presumptuous tendencies of the age • thus would I raise the downward, and at the same time lower the proud look ; thus would I keep men from poring ever on the dust of the earth on the one hand, and on the other hand from attempting, Icarus-like, to mount in a flight which must issue in a lamentable fall. Thus would I seek to raise the view-position of some reckoned by themselves and others the wiser and more sober, who are digging for ever in the mere clay of ma- terial existence, and who, believing in nothing but what can be seen and touched, never rise to the contemplation of moral and spiritual, of immutable and eternal truth ; and thus too would I save the more promising of our intellectual youths from falling under the power of a boasting a priori intuitionalism, which is alluring them on by gilded clouds, which will turn out to be damp and chill after they have taken infinite pains to climb to them and to enter them. In Germany, in Britain, in the United States of Ame- rica, — alas ! France, with its finest minds ground down by a military despotism necessitated by an unprincipled democracy, has ceased to be a country of independent thought, and so cannot be named in such a connection, — thought is in a transition, and therefore a very restless state. In Germany, the high transcendental, intuitional, or dialectic method, has wrought itself out — has cropped out to the surface in thinness and brittleness ; and in the reaction, eminent professors are lecturing to half-empty benches ; and books which if published twenty years ago would have moved thought to its greatest depths, can now find little sale, few readers, and scarcely any believers ; while in the absence of a judicious philosophy, accepted and influential, a plausible materialism, acknowledging no existence but matter and force, is making consider- INTRODUCTION. able progress on the pretence of furnishing what the old metaphysics never yielded, something tangible and there- fore solid. In the English-speaking nations there coexists with the old experiential spirit engendered by Locke, and the sensational spirit imported from France, a deter- mined recoil, especially among certain musing and impul- sive youths, against Lockism, and sensationalism, and the bony and haggard forms of physicism, which have be- come denuded of all truth, intellectual, moral, and religi- ous, transcending sense and experience ; and there is strong tendency towards an idealism, which, all decked and ra- diant, is seeking to win them to its embrace. It is surely possible that there may be some disturbed by the din of these controversies, and shunning both extremes, who may be prepared to welcome an attempt to discover — not, certainly, all truth (which is precluded to the human mind), but, by a sure method — that of observation and facts — a sure foundation, laid by God himself, and on which other truths may be laid, and on which they may firmly rest. I would not have taken such pains (as I can say con- scientiously I have done) with this treatise, had I not been persuaded that it embodies important truth. At the same time I feel that in discussing so many and such abstruse topics, confusion and error may have crept in. My conviction indeed is very strong as to the accuracy of the general views unfolded in the First and Third of the three Parts into which the work is divided. There is more room for doubt and hesitation as to the discus- sions on the more particular topics in the Second Part. In regard to these, I would not only give — what indeed I know I cannot withhold — full freedom to others to differ from me, but I reserve to myself the right to improve, to modify, to correct, if need be, the views here set forth, should I receive new light on further reading and reflec- 10 INTRODUCTION. tion. I make this admission and claim this prerogative the more readily, as in doing so I may be in the better position to maintain that oversights and errors in these details will not be found after all to affect the general principles expounded in this volume, and their applica- tion to every form of speculation, philosophic and reli- gious. Note. — In thinking out this Work, I have made free but not unacknowledged use of the works of the great thinkers, both of ancient and modern times, both of the Continent and of Britain, who have pondered on these topics. Among later metaphysicians I have specially to acknowledge my obligations to the erudition, the unsur- passed logical power, and the profound observation, of the late Sir William Hamilton. I have also derived ad- vantage, in the discussion of certain points, from the wri- tings of living authors, British and Continental, who will be quoted or referred to at the proper places. In ma- king this acknowledgment, I do not profess to belong to the school of any eminent man of the past or present, nor to any school, except the one which will attend to nothing but facts. I claim to have so far caught the spirit of those who have gone before, as to be resolute to maintain my independence, and I have not scrupled to state wherein I differ from those whose writings have yielded me the most valuable thoughts and suggestions. I have so constructed the work as to put incidental discussions and criticisms in Chapters and Sections, Pre- liminary and Supplemental, printed in smaller type. PART FIRST. GENERAL VIEW OP THE NATURE OF THE INTUITIVE CONVICTIONS OF THE MIND. 13 BOOK I. GENERAL PROPOSITIONS REGARDING INTUITIONS. CHAPTER I. NEGATIVE PKOPOSITIONS. Sect. I. No Innate Mental Images ok, Represntations. The mind of man has the power of imaging or repre- senting, in old forms by the memory, or in new forms by the imagination, whatever it has at any time known or experienced. To this mental property the Aristotelian phrase ' phantasy/ in use till last century, and revived of late by Sir William Hamilton,* might be appropriately ap- plied, and then we should have the old term f phantasm ' (not ' phantom/ which might continue to denote the spec- tre) ready to designate the mental result, or the idea in consciousness. Having seen a given mountain, I can recall it at any time. Not only so, but I can put what I have experienced in an indefinite number of new shapes and colours. Having seen Mont Blanc, I can, when it pleases me, bring it up before me in all its bulk, supported by its snow-capped buttresses and flanked by its glancing glaciers ; but I can do more, I can picture a mountain covered, not with ice, but with silver, or a mountain * See his edition of Eeid's Works, p. 291. 14 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. reaching up to the moon. I can reproduce in like mode whatever has been brought under my notice by any of the other senses. I can recall and reconstruct the bodily sensations, — the sounds, the colours, the tastes, — which I have at any time experienced. Milton, when he wrote ' Paradise Lost/ had lost the power of beholding colours, but he had still the capacity of imaging them to him- self, or delineating them to others, as he did in his pic- ture of the garden of Eden. A late distinguished poet never had the sense of smell, except for one brief but enjoyable space, when it awoke as he stood in a garden with flowers ; but he must have been able ever after to realize what odours meant. It is to be carefully noted that this reproductive power reaches not only over all that has been acquired by the bodily senses, but over all that has been obtained by consciousness or the in- ward sense. I can recall the joys, the hopes, the sorrows, the fears, which at some former time may have moved my bosom. I can do more : I can picture myself, or picture others, in new and unheard-of scenes of gladness or of grief. Not only can I represent to myself the counte- nance of my friend, I can have an idea of his character and dispositions. I can form a mental picture of the out- ward scenes in which Shakspeare or Walter Scott place their heroes or heroines ; but I can also enter into their thoughts and feelings. But all these ideas, in the sense of phantasms, are re- productions of past experience in old forms or new dis- positions. He who has had the use of his eyes at any time, can ever after understand what is meant by the colour of scarlet, but the person born blind has not the most distant idea of it in the sense of image, and if pressed for an answer to the question what he supposes it to be, he can come no nearer the reality than the man mentioned by Locke, who likened it to the sound of a NEGATIVE PROPOSITIONS. 15 trumpet ; or than the blind boy of whom I have heard, who when asked whether he would prefer a lilac-coloured or a brown-coloured book, offered as a prize, decided for the lilac, as he supposed it must resemble the lilac-bush, whose odour had been so agreeable to him. Having experience of cogitations and sentiments of our own, we apprehend and appreciate those of others. Having a spiritual nature ourselves, we can form some idea of that Great Spirit in whose image we can claim to have been fashioned. But there may be attributes possessed by God of which we can form as little idea as the deaf man can of sounds, or the man without smell can of odours ; they may be attributes to which we possess nothing like, and which we may be incapable of representing even in imagination. Niebuhr, the traveller, had often brought before him in his old-age the scenes of Eastern lands, but it was because he had witnessed them in his youth ; and even we who have never been in those countries can so far understand the descriptions in his travels, because we have had the elements of them in our own experience ; but there may be scenes in heaven which it hath not en- tered into the heart of man to conceive, inasmuch as no- thing similar has passed under his notice in this lower world. Now the proposition advanced in this Section is that the soul is not born unto this world with a stock of such phantasms, ready to come out on occasions presented. I rather think that this is the sense in which the phrase is understood by those who give Locke the credit of exploding the doctrine of " innate ideas " for ever. Taking ' idea ' in the sense of ' image/ they say, what can be so unreasonable as to suppose that the mind comes into the world with such impressions ready to start forth, like writing with invisible ink, or like sun-pictures when exposed to certain chemical agencies. Locke, who 16 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. I suspect took 'idea' very much in the sense of mental image, or representation, may very possibly claim to have for ever set aside this view. But his credit in this respect is not very great after all. "For I rather think no philo- sopher of influence ever propounded such a doctrine, for- mally or explicitly. It is quite conceivable, indeed, that Plato might have consistently held some such doctrine. He might have maintained that the soul did come into the world with such ideas ; but then he would have as- cribed them to experience acquired in a previous state of existence. But Plato's doctrine of ideas, while I believe it, in many aspects of it, to be as true as it is sublime, is apt to run into myths and fancies in the expression, so that it is difficult to give a thoroughly consistent ex- position of it. By f idea ' he meant a pattern in or before the Divine Mind from all eternity ; and he supposes a course of philosophic abstraction to be quite as neces- sary as reminiscence to call up such ideas into conscious- ness. But whether the view which I am opposing has or has not been entertained by men of eminence, it is expe- dient to notice it, in order at the very commencement to remove it out of the way as an encumbrance. Sect. II. No Innate Abstract or General Notions. This proposition is not the same as that illustrated in last Section. A mental picture of a mountain is one thing, and a general notion of the class mountain is a very different thing. All our cognitions by the senses or the consciousness, and all our subsequent images of them in memory or imagination, are singular and concrete ; that is, they are of individual things, and of things with an aggregate of qualities. I can see or picture to myself an individual man of a certain form or character, but I cannot perceive nor adequately represent in the phantasy the class man. I can see or imagine a piece of magne- NEGATIVE PROPOSITIONS. 17 tized iron, but I cannot see or imagine the polarity of the iron apart from the iron. Still the mind has the high capacity of forming ab- stract and general notions. Out of the concrete it can form the abstract notion. I can see or image a lily only as with both a shape and colour, but I can in thought contemplate its whiteness apart from its form. Having seen a number of beasts with four limbs, I can think about a class of animals agreeing in this, that they are all quadrupeds. It appears then that the mental image and the abstract or general notion are not the same. The former is an exercise of the reproductive powers, recall- ing the old or putting the old in new collocations. The other is the result of an exercise of thought, separating the part from the whole, or contemplating an indefinite number of objects as possessing common qualities. If the one may be called the phantasm ; the other, in con- tradistinction, may be denominated the notion or concept ; or, to designate it more unequivocally, the logical notion or concept. But it is quite as true of the abstract and general no- tions, as of the mental representations of the individual, that they are not in the soul when it comes into the world. It has been the avowed doctrine of the great body of philosophers, that the mind starts with the sin- gular and the concrete. All our abstract notions are the result of a process in which we separate in thought the part from the whole ; say the quality, from the substance presenting itself with its qualities, — say transparency, con- templated apart from the transparent ice or glass. All our general notions are the product of a process in which we contemplate objects as possessing common attributes, — say philosophers, as men agreeing in this, that they are seekers of wisdom. It is, as I reckon it, the true merit of Locke that, in c 18 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. the second book of his Essay on the Human Under- standing, he shows how in the ideas we form of such ob- jects as space, time, substance, cause, and infinity, and in the general maxims employed in speculation, such as that " it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time," there is involved a process of the un- derstanding founded on a previous experience.* It will be acknowledged that the soul is not born into the world with such abstract ideas as those of hardness, or organic action, or life, nor such general notions as those of mine- ral, plant, animal. This is admitted by all. But it is equally true that the soul of the infant has not yet in an abstract or general form those ideas which certain meta- * Wherein lie the defects of Locke will come out as we advance (see more especially Part I. Book II. Chap. III., and Part III. Book I. Chap. II., sect, ii.) ; but I think he is invincible when he shows that chil- dren do not start with general maxims consciously before them, and that savages are not in possession of them. Thus, speaking of the maxim, "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," he says, " A great part of illiterate people and savages pass many years of their rational age without ever thinking on this and the like general propositions " (Essay, bk. i. ch. xi. s. 12). "There is no knowledge of these general and self- evident maxims in the mind till it comes to the exercise of reason " (ib., s. 14). Speaking of more particular self-evident propositions, which are assented to at first hearing, as that one and two are equal to three, he says, " They are known and assented to by those who are utterly ig- norant of these more general maxims, and so being earlier in the mind than those (as they are called) first principles, cannot owe to them the assent wherewith they are received at first hearing " (s. 20). " For though a child quickly assents to this proposition, that an apple is not fire, when he has got the ideas of these two different things distinctly im- printed on his mind, and has learned that the names apple and fire stand for them, yet it will be some years after, before the same child will assent to this proposition, that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be " (s. 23). " He that will say children join these general abstract speculations with their sucking-bottles and their rat- tles, may perhaps with justice be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth, than one of that age" (s. 25). "Such kind of general propositions are seldom men- tioned in the huts of Indians ; much less are they found in the thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the minds of naturals " (s. 27). NEGATIVE PROPOSITIONS. 19 physicians describe as innate, as those of the ego and the non-ego, extension and potency, mind and matter, cause and effect, infinity and moral good. We reach the ab- stract idea of hardness by specially fixing the attention on one of the qualities of body. In like manner it is ne- cessary, in order to attain the idea of space, to separate in thought the space from body known as occupying space. We get the idea of bodily substance by consider- ing the permanent being apart from that which changes in the bodies falling under our notice. It is one of the aims of this treatise to specify the way in which the mind gets these ideas in the concrete and singular. But for the present I am seeking to have rubbish removed, that there may be free space whereon to lay a foundation. And I think it of vast moment to have it admitted that every abstract notion implies a process of separation, that every general notion implies a process of comparison, and that both one and other proceed on a previous know- ledge which has come within the range of our conscious- ness. Sect. III. No a pmobi Forms imposed by the Mind on Objects. This proposition is laid down in opposition to a view which has been extensively and resolutely entertained of late years. Traces of it in a looser form may be detected at a much earlier date, but it may be regarded as for- mally introduced into philosophy by Kant, in his great work on the Kritick of Pure Reason. Suppose that the eyes, in every exercise of vision, were to start with a lens of a particular shape and colour, every object seen would take a predetermined form, and appear in a special hue. It is thus, according to Kant, that the mind sets out with certain forms which it imposes on phenomena, — that is, on appearances presenting themselves. In every pri- c 2 20 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. mary cognition the mind imposes two Forms, one of Space and another of Time, on the phenomena presented empi- rically or a posteriori. Again, in comparing its cogni- tions, it sets them in a number of frameworks, called Categories, such as that of Quantity, Quality, Relation (including Substance and Accident, Causality and Depen- dence), and Modality, which have a reality not objectively in things but subjectively in the mind. A yet higher for- mative power brings these categories into unity in three Ideas of Pure Reason, those of Substance, Interdepend- ence of Phenomena, and God, in which all objective re- ality has disappeared. These forms of the senses, cate- gories of the understanding, and ideas of pure reason, constitute the a priori as distinguished from the a poste- riori elements in the mental exercises. It would carry us prematurely into very deep topics, with very ramified connections, were I at this early stage to criticize this doctrine in all its extent and bearings. It must suffice for the present to affirm that so far as it declares that the mind in cognition gives to the object what is not in the object, it is an unnatural doctrine, and is fraught with far-reaching consequences of a perilous character. The doctrine which I hope to establish is that the intuitive or cognitive powers do not impose forms on the objects, but are simply the agents or instru- ments by which we are enabled to discover what is in the objects. The mind, in looking at a material object, does not superinduce extension on it, but it observes that it is in space and must be in space. It does not carry within it a chain wherewith to connect events by a law of causation, but it has a capacity to discover that events are so connected and must be so connected. The capa- city of cognition in the mind is not that of the bent mirror, to reflect the object under modified forms, but of the plane mirror, to reflect it as it is in its proper shape NEGATIVE PROPOSITIONS. 21 and colour. The truth is perceived by the mind, not formed ; it is cognized, and not created. There must of course be a correspondence between the subject, mind, and the object, material or mental, contemplated; but it is a correspondence whereby the one knows and the other is known. This seems to me to be our natural, intuitive, and necessary conviction, and he who departs from it is landed in thickening difficulties on every side, and in particular cannot possibly defend himself from the assaults of scepticism ; for if the mind can in respect of what it apprehends in the object create so much, why not suppose that it creates all ? If it can create the space in which the object is perceived, why not suppose that it can create the object itself? This was the conclusion drawn by Fichte, who, carrying out the principles of Kant a step further, made the whole supposed external object a mere projection of the mind. There is no satisfactory or consistent way of avoiding this consequence but by adhering to the natural doctrine, and holding that the mind is so constituted as to know the object as it is, un- der the aspects in which it is presented to it. Sect. IV. The Intuitions are not immediately before Consciousness as Laws or Principles. I am to labour to show, in coming Sections, that there are intuitive principles in the mind regulating cognitions, beliefs, and judgments, whether intellectual or moral. My present position is, that operating in the mind as native laws or rules, they are not, as such, before the conscious- ness. Every one speaks of there being in the mind capacities, powers, or faculties, such as the memory, or the imagina- tion, or the reason, yet no one is immediately conscious of these mental powers. We are conscious of remembering a given event, of imagining a given scene, of discovering 22 . GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. a given relation, but not of the mental power from which the acts proceed. Such considerations show that there may be operating in the mind faculties which do not fall directly under the internal eye. What is true of the facul- ties is true of the intuitive potencies of the mind. In- deed the intuitive principles of the mind are very closely related to the faculties. I have seldom however seen the precise relation between them distinctly pointed out. One class of investigators, such as Locke, treat of the faculties ; another class, such as the German metaphysi- cians who have ramified from Kant, of a priori principles in the mind ; while a third class, such as the Scottish school which has sprung from Reid, admit both into their system, but without explaining their connection. 1o me it appears that the intuitive or necessary principles of the mind are just the fundamental principles or regula- tive laws of the faculties. But without dwelling on this at present, it is enough to announce that the necessary principles, like the faculties of the mind, do not come immediately under the cognizance of consciousness. The individual actings do indeed fall directly under reflection or the internal sense. Thus we are conscious that the mind, on discovering a given effect, judges and decides that it must have a cause, and looks for a cause ; but it has not meanwhile before it the general principle that every effect has a cause, or the principle of causation expressly formalized. Being convinced that we exist, we cannot be made to believe that we do not exist ; but this is not because we have consciously before us the principle of contradiction, ' that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time.' It will be shown forthwith that we arrive reflexly at a know- ledge of the intuitive principle, which operates spontane- ously, by the observation and generalization of its in- dividual acts or energies. My present purpose is gained POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. 23 if it is shown that such metaphysical principles as causation and contradiction are not directly before con- sciousness as rules, laws, or principles. CHAPTER II, POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. Sect. I. There are Intuitive Principles operating in the Mind. I do not propose to bring a full or satisfactory proof of this assertion in this short Section ; the evidence will be found in the Second Part, in which our intuitive con- victions are unfolded and discussed in detail. All that I profess to do at this stage is, to announce and explain cer- tain positions which I hope to establish as we proceed, and answer some preliminary objections which are likely to occur to the English reader. To illustrate my meaning I must refer to certain convictions which I suppose to be intuitive, such as those regarding Space and Time, Sub- stance, Quality, Cause and Effect, and Moral Good; all of these will be treated in detail in subsequent parts of the volume. (1.) The first position I would lay down is that the mind must have something native or innate. The word innate is apt to be obnoxious to English ears ; it is as- sociated with views which Locke is supposed to have set aside for ever; and the revival of it will appear to some like the raising of a carcase from the grave to which it had been happily consigned. I have no partiality for a 24 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. phrase which has been employed to set forth doctrines which it will be one object of this Work to undermine. To the phrase ' innate ideas ' I take strong objections, which will come out as we advance. To the term ' innate/ if it were employed to qualify the proper noun, I see no objections; but if any are offended with it, the word ' native ' will serve our purpose as well. All that either phrase denotes is, that there is something — at present I do not say what — in man's soul at the time it is born. In this respect it is like the bodily substances which fall under our notice. These bodies are something and have something. This piece of iron which I hold in my hand is not a nonentity ; it is an existence ; it occupies space ; it resists pressure ; it has a colour. The soul of man is also an existence ; it knows ; it understands ; it grieves ; it rejoices. The capacity which it has of doing so may be described as native and original. In this respect it is like the bodily frame when it comes forth from the womb. That body is not all which it is afterwards to become. Yet it is not, even at this early stage, a nonentity ; it is not a nothing about to grow into something. Already that frame has a struc- ture, a form, and most wondrous properties. And just as little is the soul, when it awakes to consciousness, a nonentity ; even at this point, it is an existence, a some- thing, and is possessed of something which may be called innate or connate. Even on the supposition that it is like a surface of wax or a sheet of white paper, ready to receive whatever is im- pressed or written on it, it must have something inborn. If the mind have but a power of impressibility, it has in this something innate. The very wax and paper, in the inadequate illustration referred to, have capabilities, the capacity of taking something on them, and retaining it. But such comparisons have all a misleading tendency. POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. 25 Surely the mind has something more than a mere recep- tivity ! It is not a mere surface, on which matter may reflect itself as on a mirror: our consciousness testifies that, in comparison with matter, it is active ; that it has an original, and an originating potency. (2.) A second position may be maintained ; that this something has rules, laws, or properties. Matter, with all its endowments, inorganic and organic, is regulated by laws which it is the office of physical and physiological science to discover. All the powers or properties of ma- terial substance have rules of action ; for example, gravi- tation and chemical affinity have regulations which can be expressed in quantitative proportions. That mind also has properties, is shown by its action; and surely these properties do not act capriciously or lawlessly. There are rules involved in the very constitution of the active pro- perties, and these rules are not beyond the possibility of being discovered and expressed. The senses indeed can- not detect them, but they may be found out by internal observation. Nor does it appear that this law can be discovered immediately by consciousness, any more than the law of gravitation can be perceived by the eye. But the operations of the mental properties are under the eye of consciousness just as those of gravitation are under the senses ; and by careful observation, analysis, and ge- neralization, we may from the acts reach the laws of the acts. He who has reached the exact expression of our mental properties, is in possession of a law which is native or innate. (3.) As a third position, it is capable of being esta- blished that the mind has original perceptions, which ori- ginal perceptions may be described as intuitive. Every one will acknowledge that the mind has perceptions through the senses, and I shall endeavour to show, as we advance, that it has perceptions of the understanding 20 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. and of the moral faculty : some of these perceptions are, no doubt, secondary and derivative, but the secondary imply primary perceptions, and the derivative original ones. Thus perception of distance by the eye may be deri- vative: but it implies an original perception, by the eye, of a surface. It is by a process of reasoning that I know that the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled tri- angle is equal to the square of the other two sides : but this reasoning proceeds on certain axiomatic truths whose certainty is seen at once, as that "if equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal." Let it be observed that we are now in a region in which are loftier properties than those possessed by inert matter ; still these higher have rales as well as the lower or material properties. The original perceptions by sense, or reason, or moral power, have all their laws, which it should be the business of psychology or of metaphysics to discover and determine. These original perceptions may be represented as intui- tions inasmuch as they look immediately on the object or truth. The rules or laws which they obey may be de- scribed as intuitive principles ; it is the office of mental science to discover them by a process of introspection, abstraction, and comparison. (4.) It is possible to defend a fourth position, that the mind can discover necessary and universal truth. Not that I propose to substantiate this statement at this stage of our inquiries, still I may announce it, and show how it is not impossible to establish it. The mind declares that these two straight lines before it do not enclose a space. It does more : it declares of every other two straight lines conceived, that they cannot enclose a space. It says of these two straight lines, that if they proceed an inch without being nearer each other, that they will proceed an ell, a mile, or a myriad of miles, without being nearer ; nay, it declares of all such parallel POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. 27 lines, that they may be prolonged for ever without meet- ing. These are specimens of a large class of truths, which the mind perceives to be true, and necessarily true. There are logical truths — such as that whatever is predicated of a class may be predicated of all the mem- bers of the class, and moral truths — such as that sin is deserving of reprobation, which are also necessary and universal. But if the mind may — as I maintain that it can and does — rise to the discovery of such truths, it must be by native laws, the expression of which will give us metaphysical science, just as the expression of the laws which material phenomena obey gives us physical science. But it will be said that we discover all this by experi- ence. "We are not at this stage of inquiry in circum- stances to have the relation between intuition and expe- rience definitively pointed out. But (5.) It may be stated, as a fifth position, that the very acquisition of experience implies native laws or principles. So far from experience being able to account for innate principles, innate principles are required to account for the treasures of experience. For how is it that man is enabled to gather experience ? How is he different in this respect from the stock or the stone, from the vege- table or the brute, which can acquire no experience, at least no such experience ? Plainly because he is endowed with capacities for this end ; and these faculties must have some law or principle on which they proceed. Ex- perience, in the narrow sense, must mean, what we have personally noticed. Even in noticing this, there must be faculties, with principles involved in them, at work. But a personal experience would of itself be valueless to man ; it would not and could not enable him to rise from the known to the unknown, to argue from the past to the future. But man can from the known discover the un- known, from the past he can anticipate the future ; and 28 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. when he does so, he must proceed on some principle which is capable of exposition, and ought to be ex- pressed. And if man be capable, as I maintain he is, of reaching necessary and universal truth, he must proceed on principles which can never be derived from experience. Twenty times have we tried, and found that two straight lines do not enclose a space : this does not authorize us to affirm that they never can enclose a space, otherwise we might argue that, because we had seen a judge and his wig twenty times together, they must therefore be together through all eternity. A hundred times have I seen a spark kindle gunpowder : this does not entitle me to declare that it will do so the thousandth or the mil- lionth time, or wherever the spark and the gunpowder are found. The gathered knowledge and wisdom of man, and his power of prediction, thus imply more than experience : they presuppose faculties to enable him to gather experience, and in some cases involve necessary principles which enable him, and justify him, as he acts on his ability, to rise from a limited experience to an unlimited and necessary law. But it may be urged that we reach these results by reasoning. I reply that (6.) A sixth position may be established, that reasoning proceeds on principles which cannot be proved by reason- ing, but must be assumed, and assumed as seen intui- tively to be true. In all ratiocination there must be some- thing from which we argue. That from which we argue is the premiss, — in the Aristotelian analysis of argument, it is the two premisses. But as we go back and back, we must at length come to something which cannot be proven. That which cannot be proven must be assumed, but surely not assumed capriciously ; if assumed capri- ciously, it can yield no proper foundation, and if not assumed arbitrarily, it must be according to some rule POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. 29 or principle which should be expounded and stated by the metaphysician. How can we reason but from what we know ? and in going back we come to truths which we know directly, that is, by intuition, and the law of this intuition should be evolved. It might further be shown that there must be a mental principle involved — it is the Dictum in the Aristotelian account of reasoning ■ — in the process by which we connect the conclusion with the premisses ; for were there no such principle, the ratiocination would be arbitrary, and it would be vain for any man to endeavour to convince his neighbour, or even to try to keep himself consistent. Such considera- tions as these show that at the foundation of argument, and at every stage of the superstructure, there are mental principles involved which are either intuitive or depend on principles which are intuitive. Sect. II. The Native Convictions of the Mind are of the Nature of Perceptions or Intuitions. In some cases there are external objects presented; the mind looks upon them, and the conviction at once springs up. Thus it is that it knows immediately this particular body, this paper or table, as occupying space. In other cases it is something within the mind that is contemplated ; it is self in some particular exercise,— say thinking or feeling. In many instances the object pre- sented in the mind is the result of a prior mental process. Thus, having at a former time seen two straight lines, we now, in our' thinking moods, image or represent them ; and the mind, on the contemplation, proclaims at once that they cannot enclose a space. Or we have occasion to consider some particular voluntary sentiment of a fel- low-man, — say his cherishing malice against another man, and we proclaim it to be evil, condemnable. In this last instance the act contemplated is not, properly speaking, 30 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. under our immediate view, for it is in the breast of a neighbour, but it is represented to us in our minds, and looking on this representation the mind pronounces a decision. In every case these convictions seem to be of the nature of perceptions, that is, something is presented to us, and the cognition, belief, or judgment is formed. It is on this account that I have, in the title of this Trea- tise, chosen to call them Intuitions. As we advance, we shall find other distinctive characters, the expression of which yields other epithets ; but the term Intuitions, that is, perceptions formed by looking in upon objects, seems to bring out the original quality of the native convictions of the mind. Sect. III. Intuitive Convictions rise on the Contem- plation of Objects Presented or Represented to the mind. Metaphysicians have often given such an account of them as to leave the impression that the mind creates them independent of objects, or that, at the utmost, expe- rience furnishes merely the occasion, on the occurrence of which the mind fashions them by its own inherent power. I shall have occasion to show that the relation between the intuitive powers and objects is of a much closer and more dependent character than this account would lead us to suppose. In intuition we look into the object, we discover something in it, or belonging to it, or we discover a relation between it and some other ob- ject. Were the object taken away, the perception would be meaningless, indeed it would altogether cease. In- tuition is a perception of an object, and of something in it or pertaining to it. Perception, without something looked into, would be as contradictory as vision without an object seen, or touch without an object felt. In our cognitions we know objects, or qualities of objects, we POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. 31 know self as thinking, or body as extended. In belief we entertain a trust regarding certain objects that they are so and so, — of time, for example, that it can come to no end. In judgment we discover certain relations be- tween two or more objects, as that a mode implies a substance. Our intuitive convictions are thus not ideas, notions, judgments, formed apart from objects, but are in fact discoveries of something in objects, or relating to them.* Sect. IV. The Intuitions or the Mind are primarily DIRECTED TO INDIVIDUAL OBJECTS. I shall have occasion to show, when I come to distin- guish and classify the intuitions, that some are of the nature of cognitions and beliefs, while others are of the nature of judgments. But whatever be their distinctive nature, they always, as intuitions, primarily contemplate objects as individuals. If I know, or believe in anything, it is an existing thing, that is, as singular. If I form an intuitive judgment, that is, make a comparison, it is still in regard to two or more objects considered as singulars ; and so far as we pass beyond this, there is always, as I shall endeavour to show, a discursive process involved. A very different account is often given, if not formally, at least implicitly, of intuition or of intuitive reason. Man is represented as gazing immediately on the true, the beautiful, the good, meaning in the abstract, or in the general. It is admitted that there must be some sort of experience, some individual object presented as the occa- sion, but the mind, being thus roused into activity, is re- presented as contemplating, by direct vision, such things as space and time, substance and quality, cause and effect, the infinite, and moral good. I hope to be able to * Locke laid strong hold of the features specified in this Section and the last ; see infra, Part I. Book II. Chap. III. 82 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. show that this theory is altogether mistaken. Our ap- peal on this subject must be to the consciousness and the memory, and these give a very different account of the process which passes through the mind when it is employed about such objects. Intuitively the mind con- templates a particular body as occupying space and be- ing in space, and it is by a subsequent intellectual pro- cess, in which abstraction acts an important part, that the idea of space is formed. Intuitively the mind con- templates an event as happening in time, and then by a further process arrives at the notion of time. The mind has not intuitively an idea of cause or causation in the abstract, but discovering a given effect, it looks for a spe- cific cause. It does not form some sort of vague notion of a general infinite, but fixing its attention on some in- dividual thing, — such as space, or time, or God, — it is constrained to believe it to be infinite. The child has not formed to itself a refined idea of moral good, but contemplating a given action it proclaims it to be good or evil. The same remark holds good of the intuitive judgments of the mind, that is, when it compares two or more things, and proclaims them at once to agree or dis- agree. I do not, without a process of discursive thought, pronounce, or even understand, the general maxim that things which are equal to the same things are equal to one another, but on discovering that first one bush and then another bush are of the same height as my staff, I decide that the two bushes are equal to one another. It will be shown in next Section that the mind has the power of generalizing the individual cognitions or judg- ments of the intuitions, and in doing so it may arrive at most important truth. It will come out, too, that intui- tion may fasten on the general proposition and pronounce decisions in which it is involved. But in the formation of the general maxim, there is a process of logical thought POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. 33 involved for which the intuition is not responsible. It is only in the form of convictions regarding individuals presenting themselves that our intuitions manifest them- selves in all men — in children and savages for instance. The boy decides that the ball which he holds in his hand cannot be at the same time in the hand of some other boy who may pretend to have it ; but he has not meanwhile consciously before him the formula that it is impossible for the same body to be in two places at the same time. The individual conviction is in all men when the objects are pressed on their attention, the general maxim is the result of thought and especially of abstraction and ge- neralization. By drawing this distinction we are able to maintain that these intuitions are native and in all minds, and yet save ourselves from the absurdity in which so many metaphysicians land themselves when they speak of children or infants as employed in contem- plating the ego and the non-ego, personality, externality, subject, and object. The particular conviction is formed by all in a concrete form when the appropriate objects present themselves ; but the abstract formula is fashioned by those addicted to reflection, and is not even under- stood except by those whose minds are matured and cul- tivated. Sect. V. The Individual Intuitive Convictions can be Generalized into Maxims, and these are entitled to be represented as philosophic principles. The native principles in the soul are analogous to the physical laws operating in external nature. Both one and other act at all times, on the necessary conditions being supplied. Like the physiological processes of re- spiration and the circulation of the blood, the intuitions do not depend for their operation on any voluntary de- termination of the human mind, and they act whether D 34 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. we observe them or no ; indeed they often act best when we are taking no notice of them. We cannot command their exercise on the one hand, nor prohibit it on the other. A greater or less number of them are working in the soul at every waking moment of our existence. It is always to be remembered indeed that they are mental and not material laws; but, making allowance for this, they may be regarded as operating very much like the great physical or physiological laws of chemical affinity, or of nervous irritability, or of the reflex nervous system. As they act in an analogous manner, so they may be discovered in much the same way as the laws of the material universe, that is, by the method of induc- tion. The laws of matter are discovered by the observation and generalization of their individual operations. With the exception of a few metaphysicians of the schools of Schelling or Hegel, no one now maintains that these laws can be discovered by a priori speculation. Nor can they be detected by mere sense,-^-by eye, or touch, or ear ; no man ever yet saw, or touched, or heard, a law of nature. All that falls under the perception of the senses are individual facts, and those generally concrete or com- plex ; that is, the object is presented as exhibiting more than one quality at the same time, or the effect is the result of a variety of causes. In order to reach the law by an observation of the facts, there is need first of all of a judicious analysis, or, as Bacon calls it, the necessary " rejections and exclusions," or the separation and set- ting aside of the extraneous matter of the mixed pheno- menon; that is, the matter which does not belong to the law or agent we are seeking to discover. Having made these appropriate rejections, we now generalize the facts — that is, find out where they agree — and thus arrive at the discovery of the physical law. POSITIVE PROPOSITIONS. 35 It is in much the same way, mutatis mutandis, that we discover the laws of our original and native convic- tions. I boldly affirm that it is as impossible to deter- mine them as it is to settle the laws of the external uni- verse by a priori cogitation or logical division and dis- section. As they cannot be elaborated by speculation on the one hand, so neither do they fall under the immediate cognizance of consciousness on the other. All that comes under the consciousness is individual : it is an object now present ; it is the mind in some state or mode. But our modifications of mind at any given moment are always more or less complex ; that is, there is more than one property in exercise, though of course combined in the unity of the mind. But, by a sharp analysis, it is always possible to separate the different elements, and fix the attention exclusively on that which alone pertains to the law or property we are seeking to evolve. Exami- ning carefully the nature of the acts which seem to flow from the same principle, we generalize them ; and, if we do so accurately, we obtain the exact nature of the prin- ciple, and can embody it in a verbal expression. The principle thus discovered and enunciated is pro- perly a metaphysical one ; it is a truth above sense, a truth of mind, a truth of reason. It is different in its origin and authority from the general rules reached by experience, such as the law of gravitation, or the law of chemical affinity, or the law of the distribution of animals over the earth's surface. These latter are the mere ge- neralizations of an experience necessarily limited ; they hold good merely in the measure of our experience, and as experience can never reach all possible cases, so the rule can never be absolute ; we can never say that there may not be exceptions. Laws of the former kind are of a higher or deeper nature, they are the generalization of convictions carrying necessity with them, and a consequent d 2 36 GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. universality in their very nature. They are entitled to be regarded as in an especial sense philosophic princi- ples, being the ground to which we come when we follow any system of truth sufficiently far down, and competent to act as a basis on which to erect a superstructure of science. They are truths of our original constitution, having the sanction of Him who hath given us our con- stitution, and graven them there with His own finger. It is ever to be borne in mind, however, that the de- tection and exact expression of these intuitive principles is always a delicate and is often a most difficult opera- tion. Did they fall immediately under the eye of con- sciousness, the work would be a comparatively easy one ; we should only have to look within in order to see them. But all that consciousness can notice are their indivi- dual exercises mixed up one with another and with all other actings of the mind. It requires a microscopic eye, and much analytic skill, to detect the various fibres in the complex structure, and to follow each through its various windings and entanglements to its source. 37 BOOK II. CHARACTER OP INTUITIONS, AND METHOD OE EMPLOYING THEM. CHAPTER I. MARKS AND PECULIARITIES OF INTUITION. Sect. I. Tests. But how are we to distinguish a primitive conviction which does not need probation, and which we may not even doubt, from propositions which we are not required to believe till evidence is produced ? Are we entitled to appeal, when we please and as we please, to supposed first truths? Have we the privilege, when we wish to adhere to a favourite opinion, to declare that we see it to be true intuitively, and thus at once get rid of all objections, and of the necessity for even instituting an examination ? May we, when hard pressed, or defeated in argument, resort, as it suits us, to an original prin- ciple which we assume without evidence, and declare to be beyond the reach of refutation? It is one of the aims of this treatise to limit the confidence we put in our supposed intuitions, and lay a stringent restraint on the appeal to truths which are represented as above probation. There can be tests propounded sufficient to determine with precision what convictions are, and what 38 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. convictions are not, entitled to be regarded as intuitive, and these tests are such that they admit of an easy application, requiring only a moderate degree of careful consideration of the maxim proffered as claiming our assent. 1. The primary mark of intuitive truth is self- evidence. It must be evident, and it must have its evidence in the object. The mind, on the bare contemplation of the ob- ject, must see it to be so and so, must see it to be so at once, without requiring any foreign evidence or mediate proof. That the planet Mars is inhabited, or that it is not inhabited, is not a first truth, for it is not evident on the bare contemplation of the object. That the isle of Madagascar is inhabited, even this is not a primary con- viction ; we believe it because of secondary testimony. Nay, that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right-angles, is not a primitive judgment, for it needs other truths coming between to carry our conviction. But that there is an extended object before me when I look at a table or a wall, that I who look at these objects exist, and that two marbles added to two marbles here will be equal to two marbles added to two marbles there, — these are truths that are evident on the bare contemplation of the objects, and need no foreign facts, or considerations derived from any other quarter, to establish them. But it may be asked, can we certainly know what truths are self-evident? Are we not liable to be de- ceived, especially by education and prepossessions ? Have not some declared propositions to be self-evident, which have afterwards been positively disproved ? The reply is, that if we devote our minds earnestly to the object, we cannot readily go astray. No doubt, it is possible to fall into error in the application of this test, as in the application of any other; but this can take place only MARKS AND PECULIARITIES. 39 by negligence, by refusing to go round the object to which the conviction refers, and to look upon it as it is in itself, and in all its aspects. In specifying this test as the fundamental one, I do not mean that it can be applied without much and careful inspection. It is for- tunate that we have a secondary test to determine the presence of the primary characteristic. 2. Necessity is a secondary mark of intuitive truth. I am not inclined to fix on this as the original or essen- tial characteristic. I shrink from maintaining that a pro- position is true because we must believe it. A propo- sition is true as being true, and certain propositions are seen by us to be self-evidently true. I would not ground the evidence on the necessity of belief, but I would as- cribe the irresistible nature of the conviction to the self- evidence. As the necessity flows from the self-evidence, so it may become a test of it, and a test not difficult of application. When an object or truth is self-evident, necessity always attaches to our convictions regarding it. And according to the nature of the conviction, so is the ne- cessity attached. We shall see that some of the convic- tions are of the nature of knowledge, others of the na- ture of belief, a third class of the nature of judgments, in which we compare objects known or believed in. In the first our cognition is necessary, in the second our belief is necessary, in the third our judgment is neces- sary. I know self as an existing thing : this is a neces- sary cognition ; I must entertain it, and never can be driven from it. That space exceeds my widest imagina- tion of space : this is a necessary belief, I must believe it. That every effect has a cause : this is a necessary judg- ment ; I must decide in this way. Wherever there is such a conviction, it is a sign of an intuitive perception. Necessity too may be employed in a negative form, and 40 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. this is often the most decisive form. If I know imme- diately that there is an extended object before me in the book which I read, I cannot be made to know that there is not an extended object before me. If I must believe that time had no beginning, I cannot be made to believe that it has had a beginning. Necessitated as I am to decide that two parallel lines cannot meet, I cannot be made to decide that they can meet. Necessity as a test may thus assume two forms, and we may take the one best suited to our purpose at the time. In the use of a very little care and discernment, this test will settle for us as to any given truth, whether it is or is not self- evident. 3. Catholicity may be employed as a tertiary test. By catholicity is meant that the conviction is entertained by all men, or at least by all men possessed of intelli- gence, when the objects are presented. I am not in- clined to use this as a primary test. For in the first place it is not easy to ascertain, or at least to settle abso- lutely, what truths may claim this common consent of humanity ; and even though this were determined, still it might be urged in the second place that this does not prove that it is necessary or original, but simply that it is a native property, — like the appetite for food among all men, — and would still leave it possible for opponents to maintain that there may be intelligent beings in other worlds who accord no such assent, just as we can conceive beings in the other parts of the universe who have no craving for meat or drink. But while not inclined to use catholicity as a primary test, I think it may come in at times as an auxiliary one. Tor what is in all men, may most probably come from what is not only native, but necessary ; and must also in all probability be self- evident, or at least follow very directly from what is self- evident. Catholicity, when conjoined with necessity, may MARKS AND PECULIARITIES. 41 determine very readily and precisely whether a conviction is intuitive. Important purposes are served by the combination of these two tests : that is, necessity and catholicity. By the first we have a personal assurance which can never be shaken, and of which no one can deprive us. Though the whole world were to declare that we do not exist, or that a cruel action is good, we would not give up our own personal conviction in favour of their declara- tion. By the other principle we have confidence in addressing our fellow-men, for we know that there are grounds of thought common to them and to us, and to these we can appeal in reasoning with them. By the one I am enabled, yea, compelled, to hold by my per- sonality, and maintain my independence; by the other I am made to feel that I am one of a large family, every member of which has the same principles of belief as I myself have. The one gives me the argument from pri- vate judgment, the other the argument from common or catholic consent. The concurrence of the two should suffice to protect me from scepticism of every kind, whe- ther it relate to the world within or the world without, whether to physical or moral truths. These marks are as clear and as easily applied, and are quite as decisive for testing reason in its primary or intuitive exercise, as the syllogism is in testing reason in its secondary or derivative operation ; that is, as infer- ence or reasoning. Sect. II. Different Aspects of Intuitions, and their Theoretical Characters. Hitherto we have been approaching our subject by a somewhat winding path, catching glimpses of the posi- tion of the building, and of some of its principal turrets. We may now walk up directly to it, and take a survey 42 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. of its general form, and ascertain the mode of entering it, with the view of afterwards exploring its . apartments one by one. It will be found to present three sides, sides of one fabric, but each with its peculiarities. The intuitions may be considered first as laws, rules, principles regulating the original action and the primi- tive perceptions of the mind. Or secondly, they may be regarded as individual perceptions, or convictions mani- festing themselves in consciousness. Or thirdly, they may be contemplated as abstract notions, or general rules elaborated out of the individual exercises. We cannot have a distinct or adequate view of our intuitions un- less we carefully distinguish these the one from the other. The whole of the confusion, and the greater part of the errors, which have appeared in the discussions about innate ideas and a priori principles, have sprung from neglecting these distinctions, or from not carrying them out consistently. In each of these sides the in- tuitions present distinct characters, and many affirma- tions may be properly made of the original principles of the mind under one of these aspects, which would by no means hold good of the others. I. They may be contemplated as Laws, Rules, or Principles Guiding the Mind. Hence they have been called KOivai nrpokri'^reis, Koivai evvoiai, irpwrat, evvoiai, forms and regulative principles. Under this aspect (1.) They are native. Hence they have been called na- tural, innate, connate, implanted, constitutional. All these phrases point to the circumstance that they are not ac- quired by practice, nor the result of experience, but are in the mind naturally, as constituents of its very being, and involved in its higher exercises. In this respect they are analogous to universal gravitation and chemi- cal affinity, which are not produced in bodies as they operate, but are in the very nature of bodies, and the MAKKS AND PECULIARITIES. 43 springs of their action. It is thus — that is, by an original property of his being — that man is led to look on body as occupying space, on any given effect as having a cause, and on certain actions as being morally good or evil. (2.) They are reyultaive* They rule the mind in its original and primitive energies, both of thought and be- lief. They lead the mind, for example, on discovering a quality, to connect it with substance ; on contemplating time, to declare that it cannot have had a beginning ; and on having a vicious action brought before it, to decide that it is deserving of punishment. This characteristic is brought before us by the phrases so often applied to them, — forms, laws, rules, canons, and principles. They lead and guide the deeper mental action, just as the chemical and vital properties conduct and control the composition of bodies and the organization of plants. It is to be carefully noticed that, as regulative principles, they are not dependent, in themselves or in their ac- tion, on our observation of them ; indeed they must be guiding the mind before we can observe them ; still less are they dependent on the will of the possessor, which has merely an indirect control over them, and this only by bringing before the cognitive or representative powers of the mind the objects which evoke them. (3.) They are catholic, or common. That is, they are * The phrase Regulative has been used by Kant in Kr. d. r. Ver. transcen. Doc. der Urtheilskraft, ch. iii., where he speaks of certain principles as being constitutive and others regulative. The distinction proceeds on certain Kantian views, and cannot be admitted by any natural realist. Sir W. Hamilton has adopted the phrase Regulative (' Metaphysics,' Lect. 38), and agrees so far with Kant that he reckons many of the regulative principles of the mind, such as those about space and time and cause, as guaranteeing no objective reality. The phrase is a good one, but in adopting it, care must be taken to dissociate it from all the peculiarities of the Kantian and Hamiltonian philosophy. The regulative^principles guide the mind so as that it discovers what is in things, whereas, according to Kant, they guarantee nothing as to things. 44 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. in every human mind. Not that they are in all men as formalized principles ; under this aspect, as we shall see forthwith, they come before the minds of comparatively few. Some of them are perhaps not even manifested in all minds ; certainly some of them are not manifested, in their higher forms, in the souls of all. In infants some of them have not yet made their appearance, and among persons low in the scale of intelligence, they do not come out in their loftier exercises ; just as the plant does not come all at once into full flower, — just as the plant, in unfavourable circumstances, may never come into seed at all. Still the capacity is there, needing only favourable circumstances — that is, the appropriate objects pressed on the attention — to foster it into developed forms. Under this aspect, the epithets common, catholic, have been ap- plied to them ; they have been represented as the univer- sal attributes of humanity, and as belonging to man as man. But it is to be specially noticed that in this whole ge- neral view of them, they are not before consciousness as principles. They do indeed come out into conscious- ness, not however as laws, but as individual convictions. This negative characteristic has been often referred to when they have been spoken of as latent, occult, hiding themselves, as roots covered up in the substance of the soul, as foundations beneath the ground, as faculties re- quiring to be developed, and as evoked into exercise only on the occasion of experience. II. They may be contemplated as Convictions Mani- fested in Consciousness. Hence they are called espe- cially intuitions, spontaneous or natural convictions, in- nate ideas, and primitive beliefs and judgments. It is only under this aspect that we can directly apply to them the tests of intuition specified in last Section. Under what restriction they apply to our intuitions as regulative MARKS AND PECULIARITIES. 45 or as generalized principles may be afterwards pointed out. We have already in our survey gathered what are some of the characteristics of these our conscious convic- tions; still, what we before enounced will require to be formally stated in its proper place alongside of some other theoretical characteristics, to be now unfolded. (1.) Tliey are perceptions. This feature was caught and has been expressed by those who speak of them as percep- tions, apperceptions, senses, apprehensions, and who re- present them as seeing, looking, regarding, contemplating. (2.) They look at objects. Hence they have been re- presented as comprising knowledge, cognition, and dis- cernment. It is of the greater moment to bring out this characteristic, from the circumstance that they have often been too much dissociated from objects. In read- ing some of the exaggerated accounts of them, the im- pression is apt to be left that they are formed by the native power of the mind, independent of objects altoge- ther ; and even in more guarded statements, the presen- tation of objects is spoken of as merely the occasion on which they spring up.* In opposition to all this, I maintain that they are perceptions of objects, of objects themselves or something in objects. Sometimes the ob- jects are external to tfye mind, as when I intuitively look on body as extended or on space as having no limits. In other cases the objects are within the mind, as when I look on self, and discover that it has being and per- sonality, or on a certain representation in the mind, say of a benevolent action, which I discern to be good. Or the intuition may manifest itself in the form of judgments or comparisons ; but even in such, it is a perception of objects as having points of relation. It is the very nature of the regulative principles of the mind that they * This view is examined infra, Part III. Book I. Chap. II. sect, v., Supplementary. 46 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. lead us to look at objects, and to discover what is in them. (3.) They look at objects as singulars. In this re- spect they are analogous to the senses and consciousness, and have often been characterized as senses and as con- sciousnesses. This peculiarity has already been explained in a general way. (4.) They are immediate. That is, our minds, in in- tuition, gaze directly on the object. Hence they have been called feelings, — language which may be allowed if meant merely to express that they are analogous to feel- ing or touch as it feels or handles an object, but which is of a most misleading character if intended to signify that they are of the nature of emotions. Under this aspect they have been called visions, inspirations, revela- tions. Hence too the special name Intuitions applied to them, to denote that they see the object as it were face to face, and with nothing coming between to aid the view on the one hand, or obstruct it on the other. This character it is which affords what I have described as the primary test, that is, self-evidence. In the case of many objects, we cannot look on them directly. Thus we who live in the nineteenth century cannot be spectators of the events which happened in the first century. When dwelling in these islands, we cannot gaze on the Himalayas or Ancles ; we can contemplate such objects only indirectly, and through something else as a medium. But in every intuition we look at once on the corresponding object : it is thus we are conscious immediately of self in action ; thus that we gaze on body as occupying space ; thus that we regard space as un- bounded; thus that we regard a certain disposition as good or as evil. But to prevent misapprehension it is necessary here to offer an explanation. When I say that the object MAEKS AND PECULIARITIES. 47 is present, I do not mean by this that the object must be a bodily one, or one external to the mind. The ob- ject may quite as frequently be a mental as a material one. The object may even be represented, in a loose and inaccurate sense, as an absent one. Thus I may pro- nounce of an event which happened far away, in India, that it must have had a cause, and of a deed of self-sacri- fice, done a thousand years ago, that it must have been good. But then it is not, properly speaking, to the dis- tant event that the intuition looks, but to the representa- tion of it in the mind. It is only mediately, through the representation, that the intuition can refer to the actual occurrence, and this on the supposition that the repre- sentation is correct ; and if the representation be errone- ous, or even mutilated, or imperfect, it cannot be legi- timately applied to the event. Correctly speaking, the object is always present when the intuition gazes on it ; it is either a bodily object immediately before the mind, or it is a presentation or representation within the mind itself. (5.) There is a conviction of necessity attached to every one of tliem. Hence they have been described as irresis- tible, unavoidable, compelling belief, and not admitting of doubt or dispute. We have already had this character under our notice, and it may yet come before us in its applications, and in regard to the supposed diversity in the necessity as attached to different convictions, and it is not needful to enter more minutely into its nature in this general survey. It should be carefully noticed that the necessity attaches itself directly only to our in- dividual perceptions. The general formula carries with it no such conviction till it is shown that it has been correctly formed. There may be legitimate doubts and disputes as to many proposed philosophic maxims, as to whether they are or are not correct. Still, as will be 48 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. shown, the necessity being in the singulars, goes up into the universals on the condition of the universal being pro- perly formed. (6.) They are original and independent. Hence they have been called first, primary, or primitive truths, and been described as origins, ap^al, or original principles, seeds, roots, and starting-points, and characterized as un- derived, independent, self-sufficient. The mind sponta- neously starts with such, it sets out from them, and in doing so, feels that it has need of no probation or foreign support of any kind. A large body of our convictions, even of the surest, are derived ; they are dependent on something else. Thus we are dependent for our historical information on the testimony of our fellow- men ; for our belief in the great mysteries opened in the Bible, on the testimony of God ; for our conviction of the propositions in the Sixth Book of Euclid, on the prefixed axioms, and on the propositions in the other five books, and generally for the last conclu- sion of a chain of reasoning, on all the links which have preceded. But in intuition, or, as it may be called, intui- tive reason, our conviction hangs on nothing else. That the whole, orange or earth, is equal to the sum of its several parts, is a truth which depends on no other. There may be many asseverations to which we do not give our assent till evidence of some kind is furnished. There may be true propositions from which we withhold our concurrence till they are proven. Very possibly there may be inhabitants on that other side of the moon which no human eye has seen, but I wait for evidence before I give a decision one way or another. It seems very certain that there have been volcanoes in the moon, but men did not give their credence till traces of eruptive formations were discovered by the telescope. But there are propositions which do not require proof, even as they MARKS AND PECULIARITIES. 49 do not admit of proof, and yet our conviction of them > to say the least of it, is as strong as of the truths most firmly established by probation. There are some ap- prehensions, some propositions, in regard to which the mind sees that it needs mediate proof in order to con- vince it that they imply a reality or a truth ; but there are others, in regard to which it sees that they have in themselves all that is needful to gain onr assent. There are some truths for which reason demands support before it will give its adhesion to them ; there are others, in regard to which reason says, that they do not require to be borne up by any external evidence. It is not because of any defect in the veracity of intuitive truths, that they do not admit of probation ; it is rather because of the fullness and strength of their veracity. It is, in a sense, owing to a deficiency in certain truths, or rather, a deficiency in our minds with respect to them, that they require something to lean on. Thus it is because of some defect or perplexity in the truth (to us), that mathemati- cians cannot solve, except approximately, the problem of three bodies attracting each other. It is because of the self-sufficiency of certain truths, such as that the think- ing me exists, and that extended bodies exist, and that gratitude is a virtue, it is because our minds are so con- stituted as to see them at once, that they require no proof; we need no other light in which to see them, they shine in their own light. But let us properly understand and limit this account given of them ; when they are said to be independent, it does not mean that they are independent of objects : we have before seen that our intuitions are perceptions of or regarding objects. (6.) Some of them are catholic, — that is, in all men. Hence they have been described as common ideas and notions. We have seen that as regulative powers they E 50 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. are in all men, without exception. But all of them do not, therefore, come forth in actual energies ; many of them in their developed and manifested form are the re- sult of growth, and some of them seem to lie dormant in many minds from the want of proper fostering circum- stances. Still, there are some of them, such as the intui- tion of self and the intuition of body in space, which are formed by all men in their individual and concrete form. III. They may be contemplated as Notions or Prin- ciples FORMED BY ABSTRACTION AND GENERALIZATION. Under this aspect they are irpwra vorj^ara, natures judicia, a priori notions, definitions, maxims, and axioms. Thus considered they cannot be represented as com- mon or universal in the sense of being in all men. If we look to the hundreds of millions of human beings on the face of the earth, including infants, children, savages and the unreflecting masses, there is but a very small minority of the family of man who have ever had such notions or maxims before them. Every human being, if he sees an object before him, will refuse to give his as- sent to the assertion that this object does not exist; but how few beyond the limited circle of professed metaphy- sicians have ever had consciously before them the princi- ple that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time. Millions of men, women, and children are every hour acting on the intuition of causation — are taking food, for example, in the belief that it will nourish them, though they never have had the principle consciously before them, and know not so much as that there is a principle of causation. But under this view, (1.) The General Maxim is Necessary, on the condition of the generalization out of the individual convictions being properly formed. It is to be constantly kept in mind, that MARKS AND PECULIARITIES. 51 the necessity attaches in the first instance to the singular conviction looking to its objects. But the necessity being in the individuals, may be made to go up into the general, provided the general has been legitimately drawn from the individuals. With this proviso, a very important one however, the maxim is not only true, it is necessarily true, it cannot be otherwise. If any one were to lay down the principle that " everything must have a cause," he would not be announcing a necessary truth j for while there is a necessary conviction in every exercise of mind regarding causation, he has not seized it properly, nor expressed it correctly. But if the maxim that " every- thing which begins to be must have a cause" be, as I maintain it is, the proper generalization of the peculiarity of the individual conviction, it may be regarded as a ne- cessary one. In this respect it differs from the general laws of nature reached by observation ; as for example, that hydrogen chemically combines with oxygen in the proportion of one to eight. We cannot, from the bare contemplation of hydrogen and oxygen, say that they must unite in any particular proportion, or that they shall unite at all. The law is reached by the pure obser- vation of particular cases, and these, however many, are still limited in number ; for all the particular cases, that is, of the mutual action of hydrogen and oxygen in the universe, never can fall under our notice. The law may, after all, be a mere modification of a higher and wider law ; there may be exceptions to it in other worlds ; it is in no sense absolutely or universally certain. But on the bare contemplation of two given straight lines, I perceive, without any succession of trials, that they cannot enclose a space. I perceive that this would be true of any other two straight lines that could fall under my notice, and thus I reach the general maxim that no two straight lines can enclose a space, a maxim admitting of excep- e 2 52 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. tions at no time and at no place. In regard to the one class of general truths, I have formed a law from a neces- sarily limited, out of an indefinite number of cases. In regard to the other, our generalizations are of convictions in our own mind, each of which carries necessity in it. In order to the formation of the latter, we have not to go out in search of external instances in the mental or material world, nor to number and to weigh such ; we have all the elements in each of our convictions ; and if we generalize properly, by what in some cases is an easy, but in others a somewhat difficult process, we reach general truths, which have the same necessity as the individual convic- tions. (2.) They are Universal, Immutable, Eternal: only however on the same condition as they are necessary, that is, on the understanding that the general maxim is duly fashioned out of the individual convictions. But here it will be necessary to distinguish between two applications of the word 'universal' which have often been confounded. Sometimes a principle is called universal because it is in all men or avowed by all men. I have in this treatise adopted the word 'catholic/ or 'common,' to express this property of intuition. But when we say a truth is universal, we may mean that it is universally true, that is, admits of no exceptions, and it is in this latter appli- cation I use the word ' universal.' Universality in this sense follows from necessity; the maxim which is ne- cessarily, must be universally, true.* It is only in this * That a truth is accepted by common or catholic consent, and that it is without exception, are not the same, though they have often been confounded under the one epithet 'universal.' Sir W. Hamilton says (Note A. p. 754, Reid's Works), "Necessity and universality may be re- garded as coincident ; for when a belief is necessary, it is, eo ipso, univer- sal ; and that a belief is universal is a certain index that it must be ne- cessary (see Leibnitz, 'Nouveaux Essais,' lib. i. s. 4)." Hamilton means by universality, universality of belief; which also Leibnitz means in the passage referred to — the language he uses is, " consentement universel." MARKS AND PECULIARITIES. 53 meaning that the term can be applied to the maxims which express in a general form the law of our intuitive convictions. Such maxims admit of exceptions at no time and in no place. They are true in our own land, but they are true also in other lands ; true in our world, they are true in all other worlds ; true in all ages of time, they are equally true through all eternity. Hence they have been called expressively unchangeable, imperishable, and eternal truths. (3.) They are fundamental. Hence they have been described as radical, as grounds or foundations, and called fundamental laws of thought and belief. They are the truths we come to, when we analyze a discussion into its elements. We may even set out with them in ar- gument or in speculation, provided we have adequately generalized them. All demonstrated and derived truths will be found, if we pursue them sufficiently far down, to be resting on such fundamental truths. In controver- sies on profound topics, especially in theology and meta- physics, those who engage in them feel themselves ever coming down to a ground beneath which they cannot get. In searching into the structure of argument, we find, But it is surely conceivable (I do not say, actual), that a conviction might be necessary to one man and not to all men ; and there are in fact beliefs in man, which are universal, such as that the sun will rise tomorrow, which are not necessary. Kant used 'universal' in the sense of 'true without exception,' and very properly remarks, that the necessity and universality belong inseparably to each other, but that sometimes the one arid some- times the other test admits of the easier or more effective application. " ISTothwendigkeit und strenge Allgemeinheit sind also sichere Xenn- zeichen einer Erkenntniss a priori, und gehoren auch unzertrennlich zu einander. Weil es aber im Gebrauche derselben bisweilen leichter ist, die empirische Beschranktheit derselben, als die Zufalligkeit in den Ur- theilen, oder es auch mannigmal einleuchtender ist, die unbeschrankte Allgemeinheit, die wir einem Urtheile beilegen, als die JSTothwendigkeit desselben zu zeigen, so ist rathsam, sich gedachter beider Kriterien, deren jedes fur sich unfehlbar ist, abgesondert zu bedienen " (K. d. r. V., Einleit. Auf. 2. Werke, bd. ii. p. 697 : Bosenkranz). 54 CHARACTER OF TNTUITIONS. as we follow it from conclusion to premiss, hanging on a premiss which is self-supporting. The sceptic is ever compelling the philosopher to go down to these depths. The dogmatist, in building his structure, is entitled to start with them as assumptions, — he must be the more careful that what he builds on be really the rock. On them other truths may rest, but they themselves rest on none. There may ever be an appeal to them, but there can never be an appeal from them. Now in order to avoid confusion, and the error which springs from confusion, it is essential that we go round these three sides of this shield of truth, that we read what is on each, and carefully distinguish the inscriptions. If any one having occasion to employ intuition neglect to do this, he will ever be liable to affirm of the intuition under one aspect, what is true of it only in another, or to turn the wrong side towards the weapons of the as- sailant while he keeps the wrong side towards himself. When we are required to speak of them distinctively, our intuitions under the first aspect may be called native laws or regulative principles ; under the second aspect, native, spontaneous, or necessary convictions ; under the third aspect, universal truths or formalized maxims. As Innate or Regulative Principles they are in all men at all ages ; but it is wrong to represent them as being before the consciousness, as being immediately under our notice, as capable of being discovered without abstrac- tion or generalization, or observation, or trouble of any kind. It is wrong to represent them as ideas in the Lockian sense of the term, that is, as apprehensions be- fore consciousness. As Spontaneous Convictions they are immediately under the eye of consciousness, but there they are not in the form of philosophic principles, nor can we say of MARKS AND PECULIARITIES. 55 every one of them they appear in all men, and from their earliest infancy. As Universal Truths or General Maxims they are in an especial sense philosophic principles, but then as such they are known only to comparatively few ; they can be appealed to in argument only on the condition that their law has been gathered by induction, and carefully ex- pressed, and while there can be no dispute as to the spontaneous convictions, there may be disputes as to whether they have been properly generalized.* At the same time these are after all only the di- verse aspects of one great general fact, and they have relations all to each, and each to all. There is , first a mind with its native capacities, each with its rule of ac- tion. In due time these come out into action, some of them at an earlier, and some of them at a later date, on the appropriate objects being presented, and the actions are before consciousness. As being before consciousness we can observe them by reflection, and discover the na- ture of the law which has all along been in the mind, and in its very constitution. Sect. III. Certain Misapprehensions in regard to the Character of Intuitive Convictions. Looking on the above as the properties and marks of the intuitive convictions of the mind, we see that a wrong account is often given of them. 1. It is wrong to represent them as unaccountable feelings, as blind instincts, as unreasonable impulses. They have nothing whatever of the nature of those feel- ings or emotions which raise up excitement within us, and attach us to certain objects, and draw us away from * In writing this Section, I have kept before me throughout Hamil- ton's famous Note A, and have freely borrowed from it. But Hamilton has not distinguished between these Three Aspects of Common Sense. 56 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. others. Nor should they be put under the same head as the instincts which prompt us to crave for food when we are hungry, or which lead the dog to follow his mas- ter. In such cases the parties obey an impulse, which is not accompanied with knowledge or judgment of any kind, whereas in the perceptions of intuition there is always knowledge involved, and this the most certain of all, immediate knowledge, and in many of them there is judgment looking directly on the objects compared. So far from being unreasonable, they involve a primary exercise of reason superior to all secondary or derivative processes, which ever depend on the primary, and are often inferior in certainty, and can, in no circumstances, rise higher than the fountain from which they have flowed. 2. It is wrong to represent man, so far as he yields to these convictions, as being under some sort of stern and relentless fatality which compels him to go, without yielding him light of any kind. No doubt they con- strain -him to acknowledge the existence of certain ob- jects, and the certainty of special truths ; but this, not by denying him light, but by affording him the fullest conceivable light, such light that he cannot possibly mistake the object or wander from the path. No doubt he cannot have mediate proof, but it is because he has what the faculties which judge of proof declare to be vastly higher, immediate evidence, or self-evidence. We need no secondary proof, for we have primary, to con- vince us that two parallel lines can never meet. Our intuitions do not compel us against the reason, but they convince us in the highest exercise of reason, and they lead us not against, but by the assent of our clearest and profoundest intelligence. No man is ever, even in his most wayward moods, spontaneously tempted to complain because bound to yield to these convictions. MARKS AND PECULIARITIES. 57 When he reflects on their nature, he should rejoice be- cause such is his constitution that he is led to follow and obey them. 3. It is wrong to represent these self-evident truths as being truths merely to the individual, or truths merely to man, or beings constituted like man. There are some who speak and write as if what is truth to one man might not be truth to another man ; as if what is truth to mankind might not be truth to other intelligent beings.* This account might be correct if the convic- tions were borne in upon the mind by a blind natural impulse. Bat what we perceive by an original intuition * It is not easy to determine the precise philosophy of the S ophists, if indeed they had a philosophy. The doctrine of Heraclitus was that all is and is not ; that while it does come into being, it forthwith ceases to be. Protagoras, proceeding on this doctrine, declared, &r]pen or table when I press my hand upon it. In the interpreta- tion of the intuition, it is essential to inquire what, if any, is the sort of object to the existence of which it testifies. These two are different from yet another, and a third in- quiry : Does, or does not, the intuition speak the truth ? Is it not possible that it may deceive us ? I am anxious to avoid this question for the present, and defer it till we have got an answer to the two prior ones, — What is the nature of the intuitions ? and what the precise object looked at ? — questions which will be settled as we examine the intuitions in order. The question as to what saith the intuition, is not the same as the question as to whether the intuition should be trusted. It is expedient to de- termine precisely what the witness says, before we inquire whether he does or does not speak the truth ; and so we adjourn this last question to the close of our survey. In questioning the witness, it will be necessary, when a testimony is given in favour of a reality independent 88 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. of the contemplative mind, to determine very precisely what is the sort of reality. In particular the question should be put, Is the attestation in behalf of an inde- pendent thing, or merely of the quality of a thing, or of the relation between one thing and another, or what else ? For example, self-consciousness seems to testify in behalf of self as an individual existence, and sense-perception seems to assert of bodily objects that they have a sepa- rate being ; but when the mind contemplates thinking, or solidity, or potency, though it undoubtedly affirms of them that they are real, it does not look on them as se- parate entities, as this paper or as this book is. The mind declares that moral excellence is a reality, and not a figment ; but it does not attribute the same sort of reality to it as it does to the man who possesses moral excellence. The mind seems to me to declare that there is a reality in space and time, but we may land ourselves in innumerable difficulties if we make rash assertions as to the kind of reality we give them. Unless we draw such distinctions, we may altogether misunderstand the testimony given, and then be tempted to charge the blunders, which our own hastiness has committed, on our mental constitution. And yet these are distinctions which are altogether lost sight of by those who juggle with the phrases 'objective' and 'subjective.' Even in our most sub- jective exercises, as when the mind is thinking of one of its own states, there is always an object known, namely, self; and when we say that such a thing has an objec- tive existence, we may mean a great many different things which should be carefully distinguished.* The meaning and importance of these cautions may best be comprehended by giving examples of the evil which has arisen from neglecting them. Kant laboured * On Subjective and Objective, sec Part III. Book I. Chap. II. sect, v., Supplementary. METHOD OF APPLICATION. 89 to determine more critically than had been done before, the nature of the mind's convictions regarding space, time, and causation, and he stood up resolutely for their reality; but then it was a merely subjective reality — a reality in the mind. Time and space are represented by him as forms under which we cognize all phenomena presented to the senses, and cause and effect is a cate- gory under which events are arranged by the under- standing. Now, in examining this theory, I start with inquiring, What do our native convictions say in regard to these subjects ? Are they satisfied when it is said that time and space and causation have no existence out of the mind? They seem to me, on the contrary, to declare that time and space have a reality out of the mind, and independent of the mind, quite as much as the phenomena which we discover in space and time, and that cause and effect have an existence quite as much as the events which they connect. No doubt I may deny the trustworthiness of my intuitive convictions as attesting the existence of external being, but immedi- ately after, some one, proceeding a step further in the same direction, will deny the trustworthiness of all their other testimonies, till we are landed in a scepticism which sets aside the reality, subjective as well as ob- jective. This is an illustration of evil arising from a refusal to listen to our convictions. Mistakes have also arisen from neglecting the distinctions between the kinds, of testi- mony. M. Cousin finds fault, very properly, with Kant, for not allowing an objective existence to substance and causation, and other truths attested by reason. But then he does not institute a patient inquiry into the nature of the reality which the mind gives to such things as sub- stance and cause and moral good ; and he argues as if these must have the same sort of reality as the individual 90 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. soul has, or as an individual acting causally has, or as a good man has; and he has thus been led to argue at once, from our idea of objective substance to God as absolute substance, from creature effect to God as the Supreme Cause, and from the idea of moral good to the existence of a good God, — a mode of argument which I cannot but regard as inconclusive and highly unsatisfac- tory, the more so as it operates, with other considera- tions, to lead him to represent God as a cause which must create.* By steadily adhering to this method of induction, and attending to such cautions, we may surely hope to be able to ascertain something as to the original principles of the mind, and determine likewise what are the truths guaranteed by them : and this, I apprehend, is the main work which metaphysics should attempt. In regard to systems not built upon inductive psycho- logical proof, I confess that to me they are all very much alike ; they differ only in respect of the intellectual tem- perament of the individual constructing them, or the influences under which he has been nurtured. The man of genius, like Schelling, will create an ingenious theory, beautiful as the golden locks of the setting sun ; the man of vigorous intellect, like Hegel, will erect a fabric which looks as coherent as a palace of ice : but until they can * See a summary of his admirable review of Kant, Prem. Ser. torn. v. lee. viii. In Prem. Ser. torn. ii. lee. vii., viii., xiv., xxii., he labours to show that the ideas of the true, the beautiful, the good, imply the existence of a God who is the true, the beautiful, the good ; and in Deux. Ser. torn. i. lee. iv., v., that the Unite implies the infinite, that the effect implies a cause, and the cause an effect. In these last lectures he had spoken of God as necessarily creating. In Fragments Philoso- phiques, Aver, de la trois. ed., he withdraws the language ' necessity of creation,' as not sufficiently reverent towards the Creator ; but he ad- heres to the meaning, "Or en Dieu surtout la force est adequate a la substance, et la force divine est toujours en acte ; Dieu est done esscn- tiellemcnt actif et createur." METHOD OF APPLICATION. 91 be shown to be founded on the inherent principles of the mind, or to be built up of materials thence derived, I wrap myself up in philosophic doubt, as not being sure whether they may disappear while I am gazing on them. Nor am I to be seduced into an admiration of such imposing systems by the plea often urged in their behalf, that they furnish a gymnasium for the exercise of the intellect. I acknowledge that one of the very highest ad- vantages of study of every description is to be found in the vigour imparted to the mind which pursues it. But whatever may have been the difficulty in the days of the schoolmen, it is not necessary now to resort to fruitless a priori speculation, in order to find an arena in which to exercise the intellect. Nay, I am convinced that when the research conducts to no solid results, it will weary the mind without strengthening it ; the effort will be like that of one who beateth the air, and activity will always be followed by exhaustion, by dissatisfaction, and an un- willingness to make further exertion. Labour, it is true, is its own reward ; but if there be no other reward, there will be the want of the needful incentive. The vigour im- parted is only one of the incidental effects which follow when labour is undertaken in the hope of securing substan- tial fruits. Nor is it to be forgotten that these speculations, though fruitless of good, are not fruitless of evil. In the struggles thus engendered there are other powers of the mind tried as well as the understanding ; there are often sad agonizings of the feelings, of the faith, and indeed of the whole soul, which feels as if the foundation on which it previously stood had been removed and none other supplied, and as if it had in consequence to sink for ever ; or as if it were doomed to move for ever onward without reaching a termination, while all retreat has been cut off behind. In these wrestlings I fear that many wounds are inflicted, which continue long to rankle and 92 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. often terminate in something worse than the dissolution of the bodily organism, for they end in the loss of faith and of peace, in cases in which they do not issue in im- morality, in scepticism, or in blasphemy. Any sentiment of admiration which might be excited by the display of mental power and learning on the part of the speculators, is counteracted in my mind by more painful associations than the Quaker poet connected with the sound of the drum. " I hate that drum's discordant sound, Parading round and round and round ; To me it talks of ravaged plains, And burning towns and ruined swains, And mangled limbs and dying groans, And widows' tears and orphans' moans, And all that Misery's hand bestows To fill the catalogue of human woes." These exercises, I suspect, resemble not so much those of the gymnasium, as of the ancient gladiatorial shows, in which no doubt there were many brilliant feats per- formed, but in which also members were mutilated, and the heart's-blood of many a brave man shed. I fear that in not a few cases generous and courageous youths have entered the lists, to lose in the contest all creed, all re- ligious, and in some cases, all moral principle, and with these all peace and all stability. " I see before me the gladiator lie, He leans upon his hand — his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony ; And his drooped head sinks gradually low : And through his side the last drops ebbing slow From the big gash, fall heavy one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower. And now The arena swims around him — he is gone." Sect. V. "What Explanation can be given of the Intuitions of the Mind ? As we are about forthwith to ask the Intuitions to METHOD OF APPLICATION. 93 give an account of themselves, it may be as well to have it settled what sort of information we may expect to draw from them. Our intuitions are at once the clearest and the dark- est objects which the mind can contemplate; constituting the intellectual sense by which we get all our original knowledge, it is found to be a painful and arduous work to turn back the eye upon itself. Truths seen by intui- tion shine in their own light, like the luminary of clay, and any attempt to make them clearer is like " going out with a taper to see the sun/' and yet when we would look steadily on them our eye is apt to be blenched. In another respect too they are like the sun — they shine the brightest when we get the first glance at them, and if we continue to gaze, they appear dim and dark to our op- pressed vision. And yet it is only by reflexly looking on them as they shine, that we can expect to be able to de- termine their form and dimensions. There are senses in which they cannot, there are senses in which they can be explained. I. 1. They cannot be explained in the sense of being rendered intelligible to any one naturally without them. He who is born blind cannot be made to see colours by help of a microscope or telescope, nor could the most vivid description give him any idea of them. In like manner, if there were a human being without the intui- tions, he could not be made to understand the objects which they reveal : he who does not see them when he opens his eyes, will never be enabled to behold them by any logical process of explanation or definition. If men were without the native capacity of perceiving extension, or power of discerning moral good, it would be impossi- ble by any description or argument to convey the dim- mest idea of them. This is one reason why the subject of our original perceptions has been felt to be so very 94 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. mysterious. It is seen that human discussion can do nothing in clearing them up, and that if it attempt to do so, it is only " darkening counsel by words without knowledge. " But all this dazzling of our eye arises not from any darkness enveloping them, but from the very brightness of the light in which they shine. 2. They cannot be explained in the sense of being re- solved into simpler elements. In physical science we can gain important information regarding many objects, by resolving them into their constituents ; even there however we come to simple substances which cannot be decomposed. In mental science we can explain many phenomena by explicating the processes involved in the formation of them ; thus, in regard to the perception of distance by the eye, we can show what are the original endowments of the sense of sight, and what are the ac- quisitions of experience ; and in regard to reasoning, we can point out the relation of premisses and conclusion. But in the process of decomposition we must come to simple properties which admit of no analysis. The in- tuitive principles of the mind are the simple powers to which we owe all our original cognitions : he who would attempt to cut these atoms will find the edge of his ana- lysis bent back and blunted, as the razor is when it is applied to the rock. 3. They cannot be explained in the sense of being re- ferred to higher principles from which they derive their authority. Some phenomena, both material and mental, can be thus shown to hang on higher truths : the move- ments of the planets and of the moon up in the sky, are dependent on the law of gravitation, and on the colloca- tion of the several bodies. We may lawfully and pro- fitably seek out for the authority on which certain of our apprehensions or cognitions rest : we may trace the steps, for example, by which we are led to believe that Julius METHOD OF APPLICATION. 95 Caesar lived, or that Jesus Christ died and rose again, or those by which we come to be assured that the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the other two sides. But in all such regres- sions we must at last come back to something original, and having its authority in itself. For some things we must have a foundation, but we do not seek for a foundation for everything. It was the idea that everything must lean on something else, which led the Indians to place the earth on the back of an ele- phant, and to make the elephant stand on a tortoise. I use this as a mere illustration. It is quite true that most truths known to us stand on other truths. But we come at last to truths which stand on nothing else. The mind does not feel on this account that the truths are less stable \ it is convinced as to certain truths that they need something else to lean on ; but of certain truths it sees that they bear up other truths and yet themselves need no support beyond or beneath them ; and it sees that these are the truths which are the firmest and the most secure. He who would go beyond them is going further back than the beginning ; he who would go fur- ther down is trying to get beneath the foundation. II. But there are senses in which an account or an explanation can be given of them. 1. Negative definitions may be given of them. The knowledge which we have of the objects being in its very nature the simplest of all knowledge, we cannot make it simpler. But if any one mistakes in regard to the objects, and says that they possess qualities which we know do not belong them, then we can correct him. We can by reason of our intimate knowledge of the objects make an indefinite number of negative assertions regard- ing them. Thus, we can affirm of self perceiving that it is different from the body perceived, of extension that it 96 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. is not the same as consciousness or intelligence, of space and time that they can have no bounds, of moral excel- lence that it is not the same as the pleasurable, and of vice that it is not the same as the painful. These nega- tive propositions may be made to face error from what- ever quarter it makes its hostile assaults. 2. Their peculiarity may be brought out by abstrac- tion. Not that their nature may be explained to one who is not already cognizant of them. But the native cogni- zance which the mind has of them is concrete, is mixed. Several intuitions are mingled in one act, or our intui- tive perceptions are bound up with our derivative or ex- periential exercises. As long as our reflex knowledge is of this character, it is indistinct and confused, and we are ever liable to fall into error when we make affirma- tions regarding it ; for what we assert of the whole, or of every one of the parts, may be true only of some or of one of the parts. But by analysis we can make the given intuitions stand forth separately to the view, just as by experiment in physical science we can separate the agencies of nature which usually work in combina- tion, — separate, for example, in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, the power which draws a body to the earth from the resistance .given to it in ordinary circumstances by the atmosphere. Looking at it thus, we can distin- guish and express its peculiarity. Not that this expres- sion could convey any meaning to one without the intui- tion, but to one with the intuition the meaning flashes immediately on the vision. Naturally, there is never a knowledge of not-self without a co-existing knowledge of self, but by abstraction we can separate the two and look at each by itself; and when we describe the not- self as extended or in motion, or the self as conscious and intelligent, an apprehension at once starts up in the mind corresponding to the object. METHOD OF APPLICATION. 97 3. The nature of the object intuitively known can be specified. Not indeed that it could be apprehended by- one without the proper perception, but to one with the corresponding intuition its nature can be distinctly stated. Thus we can, in intelligent language, describe the ex- tension of body as its being contained in space and oc- cupying space, and virtue as the approvable quality of voluntary actions of intelligent beings, and the mind at once understands what is meant to be affirmed of the objects. 4. We may generalize or classify the intuitions of the mind.* Fixing by abstraction on certain common qualities, we may then, by generalization, place all those possessing them into one class. We may fix on the more marked and decided points of resemblance, with their implied differences, and this will give us the Grand Divisions. We may then divide and subdivide, accord- ing to other, and minor, but still important points of resemblance and difference, in due ordination and subor- dination. In this Treatise we classify the intuitions ac- cording to what they look at and discover, as I. The True. II. The Good. I. The True. 1. Primitive Cognitions. 2. Primitive Beliefs. 3. Primitive Judgments. The justification of this arrangement can be found only in its embracing all the phenomena, and of this the reader must judge as we proceed with the exposition. I speak of our intuitions as looking to the true and the good, and the true and the good thus perceived have a reality, but this is not to be understood as a reality of the same sort as is possessed by individual things, which * Locke says truly, that if we include all self-evident propositions, principles will be almost infinite (Essay, book ii. ch. vii. s. 10). Hence tlie need of generalizing them. H 93 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. may be true or good. They have a reality, not as indi- vidual entities, but as common qualities, which should be expressed by a common epithet. But the qualities always imply individual objects, in which they inhere. And wherever the qualities of knowledge and moral excellence are to be found in the creature they are but emanations from the Creator. The streams, if we follow them, will lead us up to the Fountain. It will be seen that our intuitive convictions, whether they relate to the true or the good, all conduct us to Him who is emphati- cally the True and the Good. CHAPTER III. (supplementary.) BRIEF CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS IN REGARD TO INTUITIVE TRUTHS. I. The Pee-Soceatic Schools oe Geeece. — The Greek phi- losophers who nourished in the sixth and fifth centuries before Christ, if they did not exactly discuss, did, at least, start the ques- tion of man's native power of intuition. The Ionian School, founded by Thales, and continued by Anaxiniander, Anaximenes, Anaxago- ras, and others, dwelling among material elements, found only the mutable and the fleeting ; till at length it was laid down systema- tically by Heraclitus, that all things were in a state of perpetual flux, under the power of an ever-kindling and ever-extinguishing fire. Running to the opposite extreme, the Eleatic School, of which Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno were the most illus- trious masters, appealed altogether from sense (ato-^o-t?) and opinion (So£a) to reason (Aoyos) ; fixed its attention on the abiding nature of things beneath all mutation ; dived into profound, but over-subtle, and often confused and quibbling disquisitions re- garding Being; and ended by making all things so fixed that change and motion became impossible. It was in the very midst of the collision of these sects that Socrates was reared. Pro- fessing to have only a practical aim in view, he yet, in putting CRITICAL REVIEW OE OPINIONS. 99 down the opposition to that end, indulged in all the subtlety of a Greek intellect, and thus stimulated the dialectic spirit of his pupil Plato, who sought to harmonize the fleeting and the fixed. II. Plato. — It would be altogether a mistake to suppose, as some have done, that Plato is for ever inquiring into the origin of ideas in the mind, like the metaphysicians who came after Des- cartes and Locke. His aim was of a character loftier and wider, but more' unattainable by the cogitation of one thinker, or indeed by cogitation at all. Nor was it his object to discover the abso- lute, as if he had been reared in the schools of Schelling or Hegel. His grand aim was to discover the real (to 6v) and the abiding, amidst the illusions of sense and the mutations of things. And in following this end he sought prematurely to determine questions which can be settled only by a long course of patient induction, carried on by a succession of observers of the world without and the world within. But in the search he started many deep views of God, of man, and of the world, which have been established by the Bible, and by inductive mental and physical science. 1. He everywhere proceeds on the doctrine that man is possessed of a power of reason (Xoyos, or vovs, or v6r]>)? ovcria oWcos ovcra ij/V)(rj? Kv^epvYj-qi fiovai Oearrj vio ^prjraf 7repl rjv to ttjs aXrjOovs eTncrTrjfArjs yevos tovtov e^et rov to-kov (Phsedrus, 58). He thus prepared the way for the extravagancies of the JSTeoplatonist School of Plotinus and Proclus, who reckoned the mind as in its loftiest state when under an s intuition or ecstasy, which looks on the One and the Good, and who found, I believe, the gazing idle and unprofitable enough. III. Aristotle. — His views, if not so grand as those of Plato, are much more sober and definite. He has specified most of the separate characteristics of intuition, but I have not been able to find how he reconciles his several statements. 1. He has a power, or faculty, called Nous, which he represents as concerned with the principles of thought and being : 'O vovs eori irepl raca, nor hnvT^px), but vovs, which has to do with the principles of science : Kziirerai vovv eTvat twv dpx&v (Eth. Nic. vi. 6: ed. Michelet). 2. He fixes on self-evidence and independence as tests of what he calls first truths and prin- ciples. First truths are those whose credit is not through others, but of themselves. "Eoti S' aXyOrj fxkv Kal irp^ra to, fxr) Si' irepwv dAAa Si avToiV e^ovTa rrjv 7r lcttlv ov Set yap eV rats eVto-nyftovt/cats dp^ais hrvCyyrtio-Qai to Sta ti, a\)C tKacrTrjv roiv apywv avrrjv kolO* eavTYjv eti/ai -ma-T-qv (Top. i. 1 : ed. Waitz). 3. He fixes on necessity as a test, and represents the truths as eternal. Thus he speaks of necessary principles, and of their being inherent in things: Et ovv eoriv rj dTroSei/cri/o) hn(jTr)pvt) e£ avay koximv apyoiv (o yap hzlo'Tarai, ov Svvaruv aAAoos e^euv), ra Se /#apra (Eth. Nic. vi. 3). 4. It is a CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 101 favourite maxim with him that everything cannot be proven. He says that all science is not demonstrative, that the science of things immediate is undemonstrable ; for as all demonstration is from things prior, we must, at last, arrive at things immediate which are not demonstrable : 'H/xeis8e a/xev ovre Trdcrav hrurTr)i)sqv d7ro8eiKTLKr]v €lvou, dXXd rrjv rwv d/JLecrow dvairoSeLKrov- kcu tov& otl dvay- kolov, avepov et yap avdyKrj fxkv liricrTacrO at tol irporcpa koll e£ S>v r) aVo- 8ei£is, licrrarat Se 7tot€ tol dfxecra, raw aVa7roSeiKTa dvdyia] eivai (Anal. Post. i. 3) ; see also i. 22, where he says there must be principles of demonstration, twv dirohd^eoiv otl aVdy/07 dp^ds etvat. He speaks of science and demonstration carrying us to intuition, vovs (i. 23). 5. He draws the distinction between two classes of truths. "We believe all things, either through syllogism or from induction, diravTa yap irLOTtvofiev r) 8id crvXXoyicrfJLOv r) i£ hraywyrjs (Anal. Prior, ii. 23). To nature, the syllogism is the prior and the more known ; but to us, that which is through induction is the more palpable : t;cret (lev ovv 7rpoT£pos kcu yi/copi/xorrepos 6 Sua tov fiicrov crvXXoyLcrfios, rjfxtv 8' evapyecrrepos 6 81a Trjs €7ray coyrjv (XTOjxoiv Karrjyopov [xeva ap^ai tlvai tu)V yevcov. 7raA.1v S\ 7T(os av Set Tavras dp^as v7roA.a/3etv ov paStov etVetv. For this statement he gives reasons, which lead him to the conclusion that the universals which are predicated of individuals are princi- ples in the ratio of their universality, and that the very highest generalizations must be emphatically principles : T-qv //,ev yap dpxw oet Kat rrjv alriav elvat 7rapa ra 7rpay/xara KaL SvvacrOai etvat Xtopt^o/xeV??!/ avTiov tolovtov Si rt 7rapa to kol(? eKaoroi/ etvat Sid rt av tis V7ro\d/3oL, 7r\r)v on KaOoXov /caT^yopetrat Kat Kara iravrow ; aXXd pjr\v, el Sid tovto, ra fidXXov KaOoXov fidXXov Qeriov dp^ds. wore ap^at ra irp^r av elrjcrav yevrj (ii. 3. 15). There are points of connection not brought out in this statement. But we are not rashly to charge Aristotle with an inconsistency. I believe that his statement as to first truths and syllogism, and his state- ment as to the universality of induction, are both true. But he has not drawn the distinction between first principles as forms in the mind, and as individual convictions, and as laws got by in- duction ; nor has he seen how the self-evidence and necessity, being in the singulars, goes up into the universals when (but only when) the induction is properly formed. IV. Descartes seized on a large body of important truth in regard to innate ideas. 1. He saw that they were of the nature of powers or faculties ready to operate, but needing to be called forth. " Lorsque je dis que quelque idee est nee avec nous, ou qu'elle est naturellement empreinte en nos ames, je n'entends pas qu'elle se presente toujours a notre pensee, car ainsi il n'y en aurait aucune ; mais j'entends seulement que nous avons en nous- memes la faculte de la produire " (Trois Objec. Eep. Obj. 10). See other passages to the same effect, quoted by Mr. Veitch, Trans, of Med., etc., pp. 207-208. 2. He had a glimpse, but confused, of the test of self-evidence, which he unhappily represents as clear- ness. " Toutes les choses que nous concevons clairement et dis- tinctement sont vraies de la facon dont nous les concevons " (Med. AbregiV). He thus explains clearness and distinctness: "J'ap- CRITICAL REVIEW OP OPINIONS. 103 pelle claire celle qui est presente et manifeste a un esprit attentif j de meme que nous disons voir clairement les objets, lorsqu'etant presents a nos ) r eux ils agissent assez fort sur eux, et qu'ils sont disposes a les regarder ; et distincte, celle qui est tenement precise et differente de toutes les autres, qu'elle ne comprend ea soi que ce qui paroit manifesternent a celui qui la considere comme il faut" (Prin. Phil. i. 45). 3. He sees that they assume the shape of common notions. 4. These are represented as eternal truths of intelligence. " Lorsque nous pensons qu'on ne sauroit faire quelque chose de rien, nous ne croyons point que cette proposition soit une chose qui existe ou la propriete de quelque chose, mais nous la prenons pour une certaine verite eternelle qui a son siege en notre pensee, et que Ton nomme une notion commune ou une maxime ; tout de meme quand on dit qu'il est impossible qu'une meme chose soit et ne soit pas en meme temps, que ce qui a ete fait ne peut n'etre pas fait, que celui qui pense ne peut manquer d'etre ou d'exister pendant qu'il pense, et quantite d'autres sem- blables, ce sont seulement des verites, et non pas des choses qui soient hors de notre pensee, et il y en a un si grand nombre de telles qu'il seroit malaise de les denombrer" (Prin. Phil. i. 49). 5. He discovers that they come forth into consciousness ; hence he calls them innate ideas, and defines idea : " Cette forme de chacune de nos pensees par la perception immediate de laquelle nous avons connaissance de ces memes pensees" (Eep. aux Deux Object.). But there is confusion throughout, in the view which he takes and in his mode of expression. 1. He gives no account of the relation between the faculty on the one hand, and the idea or common notion on the other. He does not see that abstraction and gene- ralization are necessary in order to reach the abstract and general idea. 2. The test of self-evidence is not well expressed ; in this respect he is inferior to Locke. The clearness and distinctness of an idea is, to say the least of it, a very ambiguous phrase, for in some senses of the word we may have a very clear idea of an ima- ginary object, or a distinct idea of a falsehood. 3. That there is confusion in his view is evident from the circumstance that he often states that these truths are not equally admitted by all, be- cause they are opposed to the prejudices of some. He speaks of persons " qui out imprime de longue main des opinions en leur creance, qui etaient contraires a quelques-unes de ces verites" (Prin. i. 50). 4. He expects far too much from a bare contem- plation of the principles or causes of things. " Mais l'ordre que j'ai tenu en ceci a ete tel : premierement, j'ai tache de trouver en general les principes ou premieres causes de tout ce qui est ou 104 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. qui peut etre dans le monde, sans rien considerer pour cet effet que Dieu seul qui l'a cree, ni les tirer d'ailleurs que de certaines semences de verites qui sont naturellement en nos ames. Apres cela, j'ai examine quels etaient les premiers et les plus ordinaires effets qu'on pouvait deduire de ces causes ; et il me semble que par la j'ai trouve des cieux, des astres, une terre, et meme sur la terre de'l'eau, de l'air, etc." (Meth. P. vi.). Y. Locke has, in his account of the Human Understanding, both a sensational or rather an experiential element, and a rational element. Eagerly bent on establishing his favourite position that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection, he has not blended these elements very successfully, nor been at much pains to show their consistency. In France they took the sensational element, and overlooked the other. The Arians and Socinians of Britain seized eagerly on the rational element. In his unmeasured condemnation of innate ideas in the First Book of his Essay, he seems to deny truths which he openly defends or incidentally allows in other parts of the work. 1. He gives a high place to reason. Thus, in replying to Stillingfleet, he says : — " Reason, as standing for true and clear principles, and also as standing for clear and fair deductions from those principles, I have not wholly omitted ; as is manifest from what I have said of self-evident pro- positions, intuitive knowledge, and demonstration, in other parts of my Essay." Speaking of self-evident propositions: — ""Whe- ther they come in view of the mind earlier or later, this is true of them, that they are all known by their native evidence, are wholly independent, receive no light, nor are capable of any proof one from another " (see Rogers's Essays, Locke, p. 47). 2. He gives an important place to intuition. 3. He fixes on self-evi- dence as the mark of intuition. " Sometimes the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas immediately by them- selves, without the intervention of any other ; and this I think we may call intuitive knowledge. Erom this the mind is at no pains of proving or examining, but perceives the truth, as the eye doth light, only by being directed towards it." " This kind of know- ledge is the clearest and most certain that human frailty is capable of. This part of knowledge is irresistible, and, like bright sunshine, forces itself immediately to be perceived as soon as ever the miud turns its view that way, and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, but the mind is presently filled with the clear light of it." "He that demands a greater certainty th an this, demands he knows not what, and shows only that he has a mind to be a sceptic without being able to be so " (Essay, bk. iv. ch. CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 105 ii. sect. 1; see also book iv. chap. xvii. sect. 4). Among truths known intuitively, " we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence" (bk. iv. ch. iii. sect. 21); and "man knows by an intuitive certainty that bare nothing can no more produce any real Being than it can be equal to two right-angles " (bk. iv. ch. x. sect. 3). 4. He is obliged at times to appeal to necessity of conception. Thus, in arguing with Stillingfleet : — " The idea of beginning to be, is necessarily connected with the idea of some operation ; and the idea of operation with the idea of something operating, which we call a cause." " The idea of a right-angled triangle necessarily carries with it an equality of its angles to two right ones ; nor can we conceive this relation, this connection of these two ideas, to be possibly mutable " (Essay, bk. iv. ch. iii. sect. 29). He speaks of certain and universal knowledge as having "necessary connection," " necessary co-existence," "necessary de- pendence" (see Webb on the Intellectualism of Locke, P. iii.) 5. He sees that intuitive general maxims are all derived from particulars. This follows from his general maxim that the mind begins with particulars. " The ideas first in the mind, 'tis evident, are those of particular things, from which by slow degrees the understanding proceeds to some few general ones " (bk. iv. ch. vii. sect. 9). "In particulars our knowledge begins, and so spreads itself by degrees to generals" (bk. iv. ch. vii. sect. 11). Follow- ing out this view, he speaks of the general propositions being " not innate but collected from a preceding acquaintance and re- flection on particular instances. These when observing men have made them, unobserving men when they are proposed to them cannot refuse their assent to" (bk. i. ch. ii. sect. 21). 6. He saw clearly — what Kant never saw — that the mind rises to uni- versal propositions by looking at things, and the nature of things. " Had they examined the ways whereby men come to the know- ledge of many universal truths, they would have found them to result in the minds of men from the being of things themselves when duly considered, and that they were discovered by the appli- cation of those faculties which were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them when duly employed about them (bk. i. ch. iv. sect. 25). But, on the other hand, Locke has^omitted or controverted cer- tain great truths. 1. He imagines that when he has disproved innate ideas in the sense of phantasms, and general notions, he has therefore disproved them in every sense. 2. He does not see that the intuition which he acknowledges, must have a rule, law, or principle, which may be described as innate, inasmuch as it is in 106 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. the mind prior to all experience. 3. Misled by his theory of the mind looking at ideas and not at things, he represents intui- tion as concerned solely with the comparison of ideas. This was noticed by the Bishop of , in a letter dated Johns- toun, October 26, 1697, to Locke's friend, Mr. Molyneux :— " To me it seems that, according to Mr. Locke, I cannot be said to know anything except there be two ideas in my mind, and all the knowledge I have must be concerning the relation these two ideas have to one another, and that I can be certain of nothing- else, which in my opinion excludes all certainty of sense and of single ideas, all certainty of consciousness, such as willing, con- ceiving, believing, knowing, etc., and, as he confesses, all certainty of faith, and, lastly, all certainty of remembrance of which I have formerly demonstrated as soon as I have forgot or do not actually think of the demonstration" (Letters between Locke and Moly- neux). Eeid refers to Locke's notion that belief or knowledge consists in a perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, and characterizes it " as one of the main pillars of modern scepticism." "I say a sensation exists, and I think I under- stand clearly what I mean. But you want to make the thing clearer, and for that end tell me that there is an agreement be- tween the idea of that sensation and the idea of existence. To speak freely, this conveys to me no light, but darkness. I can conceive no otherwise of it than as an odd and obscure circumlo- cution. I conclude then that the belief which accompanies sensa- tion and memory is a simple act of the mind which cannot be defined" (Works, p. 107). 4. He does not see the peculiar nature of intuitive maxims. Lie perceives that they are got by general- ization — the great truth overlooked by the special supporters of innate ideas ; but he fails to observe that they are the general- ization of primitive cognitions and truths, which carry with them self- evidence and necessity. VI. Leibnitz had profound but, in some respects, extravagant views of necessary truths. 1. He sees that they have a place in the mind, as habitudes, dispositions, aptitudes, faculties. " Les connaissances ou les verites, en tant qu'elles sont en nous, quand meme on n'y pense point, sont des habitudes ou des dispositions " (Nouv. Essais, Opera, p. 213fc ed. Erdmann). At the same place he calls them ' aptitudes.' " Lorsqu'on dit que les notions innees sont implicitement dans l'esprit, cela doit signifier senlement, qu'il a la faculte de les connaitre" (p. 212). 2. "Leibnitz has the honour of first explicitly enouncing the criterion of necessity, and Kant of first fully applying it to the phenomena. In nothing CRITICAL REVIEW OE OPINIONS. 107 has Kant been more successful than in this under consideration." So says Hamilton (Eeid's Works, p. 323). The remark seems cor- rect ; but it should be added that Aristotle, as has been shown, ex- pressly fixed on necessity, while others appealed to it ; even Locke speaks of knowledge as " irresistible," and of "necessary relations." Leibnitz draws more decidedly than had been done before, the distinction between necessary and eternal truths and truths of experience (p. 209). 3. Because of the natural faculty and "pre- formation," the ideas tend to come into consciousness in a special form. " II y a toujours une disposition particuliere a Taction, et a une action plutot qu'a l'autre " (p. 223). He illustrates this by supposing that in the marble there might be veins which marked out a particular figure, say that of Hercules preferably to others. "Mais s'il y avoit des veines dans la pierre, qui marquassent la figure d'Hercule preferablement a d'autres figures, cette pierre y seroit plus determined, et Hercule y seroit comme inne en quelque facon" (p. 196). 4. He represents the intellect itself as a source of ideas. To the maxim " Nihil est in intellectu quod nonfuerit in sensu" he adds, "nisi ipse intellectus" The expression is not very explicit. He explains it : — " Or l'ame renferme l'etre, la sub- stance, Tun, le meme, la cause, la perception, le raisonnement, et quantite d'autres notions." Eut he is surely wrong in identifying these with Locke's ideas of reflection (p. 223). 5. He sees that there is need of more than spontaneity, that there is need of some intellectual process, in order to discover the general truth. " Les maximes innees ne paroissent que par l'attention qu'on leur donne " (p. 213). But, — 1. He separates necessary truth from things, and making them altogether mental, he led the way to that subjective tendency which was carried so far by Kant. 2. He does not distinguish between the necessary principle as a disposi- tion unconsciously in the mind, and a general maxim discovered by a process. 3. He does not see that the general maxim is reached by generalizing the individual necessary truths. VII. Bustier's principal treatise is on ' Premieres Verites.' He saw : — 1. That there was in the mind an original law, which he characterizes as a ' disposition.' 2. He speaks of it as coming forth in common and uniform judgments among all men or the greater part. 3. He sees that it does not thus come forth till mature age, and till men come to the use of reason. These three points are all brought out in the following sentence. " J'entends ici par le Sens Commtjn, la disposition que la nature a mise dans tous les hommes, ou manifestement dans la plupart d'entre eux, pour leur faire porter, quand ils ont atteint l'usage de la raison, 108 CHARACTER 01 INTUITIONS. mi jugement commim et uniforme sur des objets differents du sen- timent intime de leur propre perception : jugement qui n'est point la consequence d'aucun principe anterieur" (p. i. c. v.)- 4. He specifies several important practical characteristics of first truths. " (1.) Le premier de ces caracfceres est qu'elles soient si claires, que quand on entreprend de les prouver ou de les attaquer, on ne le puisse faire que par des propositions qui manifestement ne sont ni plus claires ni plus certaines. (2.) D'etre si universellement re- cues parmi les hommes en tout temps, en tous lieux, et par toutes sortes d'esprits, que ceux qui les attaquent se trouvent, dans le genre humain, etre manifestement moms d'un contre cent, ou meme contre mille. (3.) D'etre si fortement imprimees dans nous, que nous y conformions notre conduite, malgre les rafnnenients de ceux qui imaginent des opinions contraires, et qui eux-memes agissent conformement, non a leurs opinions imaginees, mais aux premieres verites universellement recues" (p. i. c. vii.). It does not appear however that (1) he fixed explicitly on their deeper qualities of self-evidence and necessity, nor (2) showed the rela- tion between iheir individual and general form. VII. Eeid's great merit lies in establishing certain principles of Common Sense, such as those of substance and quality, cause and effect, and moral good, as against the scepticism of Hume. He does not profess to give an exhaustive account of these prin- ciples, nor to enter minutely into their distinctive character and mode of operation, but in conducting his proper work, he has mentioned nearly all their distinctive qualities. 1. He represents them as being in the nature of man : thus he speaks of " an origi- nal principle of our constitution" (p. 121), and calls them "original and natural judgments," as "part of that furniture which Nature hath given to the human understanding," as " the inspiration of the Almighty" and "a part of our constitution " (p. 209, Works : Hamilton's edition). 2. He represents the mind as having a sense or perception of them ; and on the one hand avoids the error of Locke, who regards intuition as concerned solely with a comparison of ideas, and he does not on the other hand fall into that of Kant, who looks on them as mere forms in the mind. 3. He follows Locke in fixing on self-evidence as a decisive test. " We ascribe to reason two offices, or two degrees. The first is to judge of things self-evident; the second, to draw conclusions that are not self-evident from those that are. The first of these is the province, and the sole province, of common sense, and there- fore it coincides with reason in its whole extent, and is only an- other name for one branch or one degree of reason" (p. 425: see CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 109 also p. 422). 4. He specifies necessity as a mark. "By the con- stitution of our nature we are under a necessity of assent to them" (p. 130). He speaks of a certain truth " being a necessary truth, and therefore no object of sense." " It is not that things which begin to exist commonly have a cause, or even that they al- ways in fact have a cause, but that they must have a cause and cannot begin to exist without a cause" (p. 455 : see also pp. 521, 456). Yet he has not a steady apprehension of necessity as a test, for he says: — " I resolve for my own part always to pay a great regard to the dictates of common sense, and not to depart from them without absolute necessity" (p. 113), as if necessity did not preclude our departing from them. 5. He characterizes them as universal ; thus he appeals to the " universal consent of mankind ; not of philosophers only, but of the rude and unlearned vulgar" (p. 456). His positive errors on this subject are not many, but he has not seen the fall truth, and he has fallen into several oversights. 1. By neglecting a rigid use of tests, he has described some truths as first principles, into which there enters an experiential element. Thus, for example, " that there is life and intelligence in our fellow- men," "that certain features of the countenance, sounds of the voice, and gestures of the body, indicate certain thoughts and dis- positions of the mind" (p. 448), and that "there is a certain re- gard due to human testimony in matters of fact, and even to hu- man authority in matters of opinion" (450) ; and "that in the phenomena of Nature, what is to be will probably be like to what has been in similar circumstances" (451). A rigid application of the tests of self-evidence and necessity, would have shown that these were not first principles. 2. He is not careful to distin- guish between the Spontaneous and Keflex use of common sense. He uses legitimately the argument from common sense against Hume, but in philosophy we must use the reflex principle care- fully expressed, whereas Beid often appeals in a loose way to the spontaneous conviction. And here I may take the opportunity of stating my conviction (and this notwithstanding Sir "W. Hamilton's defence of it in Note A) that the phrase ' common-sense ' is an unfortunate, because a loose and ambiguous one. Common sense (besides its use by Aristotle, see Hamilton's Note A) has two meanings in ordinary discourse. It may signify, first, that unac- quired, unbought, untaught sagacity, which certain men have by nature, and which other men never could acquire, even though they were subjected to the process mentioned by Solomon (Prov. xxvii. 22), and brayed in a mortar. Or it may signify the commu- 1 1 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. nis sensus, or the perceptions and judgments which are common to all men. It is only in this latter sense that the argument from common sense is a philosophic one ; that is, only on the condition that the appeal be to convictions which are in all men ; and fur- ther, that there has been a systematic exposition of them. Eeid did make a most legitimate use of the argument from common sense, appealing to convictions in all men, and bringing out to view, and expressing with greater or less accuracy, the principles in- volved in these convictions. But then he has also taken advantage of the first meaning of the phrase; he represents the strength of these original judgments as good sense (p. 209) : he appeals from philosophy to common sense ; and in order to counteract the im- pression left by the high intellectual abilities of Hume, he showed that those who opposed Hume were not such fools after all, but had the good sense and shrewdness of mankind on their side (see p. 127, etc., with foot-notes of Hamilton). This has led many to suppose that the argument of Eeid and Beattie is alto- gether an address to the vulgar. In this way, what seemed at the time a very dexterous use of a two-edged sword, has turned against those who employed it, and injustice has been done to the Scottish School of philosophers, who do make a proper use of the argument from common sense. 3. He does not see how to recon- cile the doctrine (of Locke) that all maxims appear in conscious- ness as particulars, with his own doctrine of there being principles in the constitution of the mind, and there coming forth in general propositions. IX. Kant has, next to Locke, exercised the greatest influence on modern speculation. As a general rule, the one dwells upon and magnifies the truths which the. other overlooks. Kant is a reaction against Locke. He carries out, in his own logical way, certain principles which had grown up in the schools of Descartes, Leibnitz, and "Wolf. 1. He sees more clearly, and explains more fully than ever had been done before, that the a priori principles are in the mind in the character of forms, or rules, prior to their being called forth or exercised. Thus, speaking of our intuition of space, he says it must be ready a priori in the mind, that is, before any perception of objects. "Die Form derselben muss zu ihnen insgesammt im Gemiithe a priori bereit liegen und daher abgesondert von aller Empfinduug konnen betrachtet wer- den" (Werke, bd. ii. p. 32 : ed. Eosenkranz). The mind has not only Intuitions of Space and Time to impose on phenomena or presentations, it has Categories of Quantity, Quality, Eelation, Modality, to impose on its cognitions ; and Ideas of Substance, CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. Ill Totality of Phenomena, and Deity, to impose on the judgments reached by the Categories. 2. He maintains that the forms of the sensibility, and the categories of the understanding, have all a reference to objects of experience, real or possible ; this, in fact, is their use ; without this they would be meaningless. The ideas of pure reason do, however, refer to the comparisons of the under- standing, and not to objects, and fruitless speculation arises from supposing that they refer to objects ; and there may, also, be an undue use of the forms of sense and the categories of the under- standing, but in themselves they refer to objects of possible ex- perience (Kr. d. r. Yern., Trans. Dial.). 3. He proposes in his great work, the Kritik of Pure Keason, to give an inventory, in systematic order, of the a priori principles in the mind. "Denn es ist nichts als das Inventarium aller unserer Besitze durch reine Vernunft, systematisch geordnet" (Vorrede zu erst. Auf.). He seeks for an organon, which would be a compendium of the principles according to which a priori cognitions would be ob- tained. " Ein Organon der reinen Vernunft wiirde ein InbegrifF derjenigen Principien seyn,. nach denen alle reine Erkentnisse a priori konnen erworben und wirklich zu Stande gebracht werden" (Einleit.). 4. He uses systematically the tests of Necessity and Universality, meaning by Universality the Universality of the Truth (see supra, p. 43, foot-note). But, on the other hand, he has fallen into the grossest mis- apprehensions regarding the nature of the a priori principles of reason. 1. He maintains that the mind can have no intuition of things. All that it can know are mere presentations or pheno- mena. It is all true that the Eorms of Sense and the Categories relate to objects of possible experience, but then experience does not give us a knowledge of things. " Es sind demnach die Gegen- stande der Erfahrung niemals an sich selbst." Speaking even of self-consciousness he says, it does not know self as it exists : " Und selbst ist die innere und sinnliche Anschauung unseres Gemiiths (als Gegenstandes des Bewusstseyns) . . . auch nicht das eigentliche Selbst, so wie es an sich existirt" (Bd. ii. p. 389). He thus separates the intuitions of the mind altogether from things. 2. He makes our a priori Intuitions impose on phenomena the forms of Space and Time, which have no existence out of the mind. The categories are frameworks for binding conceptions into judgments. The ideas of pure reason reduce the judgments to unity, but have no re- ference to objects ; and if we suppose them to have, we are landed in illusion and contradictions. By this system he makes much ideal which we are naturally led to regard as real, and thus pre- 112 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. pared the way for Eichte, who made the whole ideal. 3. His Method of discovering the a priori principles of the mind is not the Inductive, but the Critical. Eeason is called to undertake the task of self-examination, which may secure its righteous claims, not in an arbitrary way, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. " Eine Aufforderung an die Yernunft, das beschwerlichste aller ihrer Geschafte, namlich das der Selbst- erkenntniss aufs JNeue zu ubernehmen und einen Gerichtshof einzusetzen, der sie bei ihren gerechten Anspriichen sichere, da- gegen aber alle grundlose Anmaassungen nicht durchMachtspriiche sondern nach ihren ewigen und unwandelbaren Gesetzen " (Yor. z. erst. Auf). Eeason was thus set on criticizing itself according to laws of its own, and a succession of speculators set out each with what he alleged to be the laws of reason, but no two of them agreed as to what the laws of reason were, or what the standard by which to test them, and conclusions were reached which were evidently most irrational. X. Dugald Stewart delighted to look on our intuitions under the aspect of " Fundamental Laws of Human Belief" (Elem. vol. ii. ch. i.). 1. He sees that they are of the nature of laws in the mind. 2. He sees that they are natural, original, and fundamental. 3. He sees that they are involved in the facul- ties. Hence he calls them " elements of reason" (Elem. vol. ii. p. 49 : Ham. edit.) ; he would identify them with the exercise of our reasoning powers, and speaks of them as component elements, without which the faculty of reasoning is inconceivable and im- possible (p. 39). It may be added that while he never formally appeals to necessity, he is obliged to use it incidentally. Thus " every man is impressed with an irresistible conviction that all his sensations, thoughts, and volitions belong to one and the same being" (Elem. vol. i. p. 47); and "we are impressed with an irresistible conviction of our personal identity" (Essays, p. 59). Speaking of causes, in the metaphysical meaning of the word, he says, the " word cause expresses something which is supposed to be necessarily connected with the change" (Elem. vol. i. p. 97). In looking on them as " fundamental laws," and in avoiding the ambiguity of the phrase " common sense," he has gone beyond Keid, but otherwise he has not thrown much light on them. He is in great confusion from not discovering how it is that " the elements of reason" may become general maxims, axioms, or prin- ciples. XI. De. Thomas Brown has demonstrated, with great in- genuity, that our belief in the invariableness of cause and effect CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 113 cannot be had from experience (Cause and Effect, partiii. sect. 3). He has also shown that the belief in our personal identity is in- tuitive (Lect. 13). When he comes to our intuitions, he speaks of them as "principles of thought;" as "primary universal intui- tious of direct belief;" as " being felt intuitively, universally, imme- diately, irresistibly ;" as " an internal, never-ceasing voice from the Creator and Preserver of our being ;" as " omnipotent, like their Author;" and " such that it is impossible for us to doubt them" (Lect. 13). These are fine expressions, but his view of them is meagre after all, and a retrogression from the Scottish School. He makes no inquiry into their nature, laws, or tests. XII. M. Cousin has given throughout all his philosophical works, clear and beautiful expositions of the elements of reason. 1. It is a favourite doctrine that reason looks at truths, eternal, universal, and absolute ; truths, not to the individual or the race, but to all intelligences. 2. He uses, most successfully, the tests of necessity and universality, in order to distinguish the truths of reason from other truths. 3. He has distinguished between the spontaneous and reflective form of the truths of reasons (see supra, p. 62). 4. He has shown that primitive truths are all at first in- dividual. " C'est un fait qu'il ne faut pas oublier, et qu'on oublie beaucoup trop souvent, que nos jugements sont d'abord des juge- ments particuliers et determines, et que c'est sous cette forme d'un jugement particulier et determine que font leur premiere apparition toutes les verites universelles et necessaires " (ser. ii. t. iii. lee. 19; see also ser. i. t. i. progr. ; t. ii. progr. lee. ii.-iv., xi.). But on the other hand, he has given an exaggerated account of the power of human reason, and has not seen that induction is necessary in order to the discovery of necessary truth in its general form. 1. He uses unhappy and unguarded language in speaking of reason. His favourite epithet as applied to it is 'impersonal;' language which has a correct meaning inasmuch as the truth is not to the person but to all intelligences, but is often so employed as, with- out his intending it, to come very close to those pantheistic systems which identify the Divine and human reason (see ser. ii. lee. v.). 2. His reduction of the ideas of reason to three is full of confusion. The first idea is supposed to be unity, sub- stance, cause, perfect, infinite, eternal ; the second, multiple, qua- lity, effect, imperfect, finite, bounded ; and the third, the relation of the other two. It is to confound the things which manifestly differ, to make unity, cause, good, infinite indentical. The business of the metaphysician should be to observe each of these carefully, and bring out their peculiarities and their differences. 3. He 114 CHARACTER OF INTUITIONS. does not see how it is that the general maxim is formed out of the particulars. He says that abstraction, " saisit immediatement ce que le premier objet soumis a son observation renferme de general" (ser. i. t. i. lee. xi.). He does not see that in order to the formation of the general law there is need of a process, often delicate and laborious, of observation, abstraction, and gene- ralization. XIII. Sir William Hamilton's Note A, appended to his edition of Eeid's Works, is the most important contribution made in this century to the science of first truths. 1. He has there specified nearly every important character of our intuitive con- victions, and attached to them an appropriate nomenclature. 2. He has shown that the argument from common sense is one strictly scientific and eminently philosophic. 3. He has with unsurpassed erudition brought testimonies in behalf of the prin- ciples of common sense from the writings of the eminent thinkers of all ages and countries. But on the other hand : — 1. He fails to draw the distinction between common sense as an aggregate of laws in the mind, as convictions in consciousness, and as gene- ralized maxims. Thus the confusion of the spontaneous cognition and its generalized form appears in such passages as the follow- ing : — " The primitive cognitions seem to leap ready from the womb of reason, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter ; some- times the mind places them at the commencement of its opera- tions in order to have a point of support and a fixed basis without which the operations would be impossible; sometimes they form in a certain sort the crowning, the consummation of all the intellectual operations" (Metaphysics, Lect. 38). 2. He does not properly appreciate the circumstance that intuitive convictions all look to singulars, and that there is need of induc- tion to reach the general truth. He supposes that the general truth is revealed at once to consciousness. " Philosophy is the development and application of the constitutive and normal truths which consciousness immediately reveals." " Philosophy is thus wholly dependent on consciousness" (Eeid's Works, p. 746). It is true that philosophy is dependent on consciousness, but it is dependent also on abstraction and generalization. He calls ulti- mate, primary, and universal principles, facts of consciousness (Metaphysics, Lect. 15). 3. His method is not the Inductive, but that of Critical Analysis introduced by Kant (Met, Lect. 29). 4. He fails to observe that the mind in intuition looks at ob- jects. He makes the mind's conviction in regard to such objects as space, substance, cause, and infinity, to be impotencies, and CRITICAL REVIEW OF OPINIONS. 115 their laws to be laws of thought and not of things (Append, to Discussions on Phil.). The error of such views will come out as we advance. I have endeavoured to expose it in the appendix to 'Method of Divine Government,' in an article in the 'North British Beview,' for August, 1857, and an article in the ' Dublin University Magazine,' for August, 1859. XIV. Dr. Whewell has done great service at once to the physi- cal sciences and to metaphysics, by showing, in his ' Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,' — 1. That the former proceed upon and im- ply principles not got from experience ; that geometry and arith- metic depend on first truths regarding space, time, and number ; and mechanical science on intuitions regarding force, matter, etc. 2. He has exhibited these principles in instructive forms, an- nouncing them in their deeper and wider character under the designation of fundamental ideas, and then presenting them under the name of conceptions in the more specific shapes in which they become available in the particular sciences : thus, in mechanical science the fundamental idea of cause becomes the conception of force. But then he has injured his great work: — 1. By fol- lowing the Kantian doctrine of forms, and supposing that the mental ideas "impose" and "superinduce" on the objects some- thing not in the objects, whereas they merely enable us to arrive at what is in the objects. 2. He also fails to show that the ideas or maxims in the general form in which alone they are available in science, are got by induction. 3. The phraseology which he employs is unfortunate, it is ' fundamental ideas ' and 1 conceptions.' The word ' idea' has been used in so many different senses by different writers, by Plato, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and Hegel, that it is perhaps expedient to abandon it altogether in strict philosophic writing ; it is certainly not expedient to use it, as Whewell does, in a new application. The word ' conception ' stands in classical English both for the phantasm, or image, and the logical notion — certain later metaphysicians would restrict it to the logical notion ; and there is no propriety in using it to signify an a priori law. 4. He has damaged the general accep- tance of his principles, which seem to me to be as true as they are often profound, by making a number of truths a priori which are evidently got from experience : thus he makes the law of action and reaction, and the laws of motion generally, self-evident and necessary. i 2 PART SECOND. PARTICULAR EXAMINATION OF THE INTUITIONS. %. 119 BOOK I. PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. CHAPTER I. BODY AND SPIRIT. Sect. I. The Mind begins its Intelligent Acts with Knowledge. The Simple Cognitive Powers. It is a favourite position in the views expounded in this treatise, that the mind begins its acts of intelligence with knowledge. This is not the common representation. x\ccording to a very ancient doctrine, the mind has, prior to the acquisition of knowledge, a stock of ideas out of itself, or in itself, at which it looks, and its primary exer- cises consist in contemplating or in forming these ideas. This view, with no pretensions to precision in the state- ment of it, was a prevalent one in ancient Greece, in the scholastic ages, and in the earlier stages of modern phi- losophy. It seems to me to be the view which was ha- bitually entertained by Descartes and Locke. In later times, the mind was supposed to commence with impres- sions of some kind. This view may be regarded as in- troduced formally into philosophy by Hume, who opens his 'Treatise on Human Nature' by declaring that all the perceptions of the mind are impressions and ideas ; that impressions come first, and that ideas are the faint images of them. This view has evidently a materialistic ten- 120 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. dency. Literally, an impression can be produced only on a material substance, and it is not easy to determine precisely what is meant by the phrase when it is used metaphorically. This impression theory is the one adopted by the French Sensational School, and by the physiologists of this country. In Germany the influence exercised by Kant's Kritik of Pure Reason has made the general account to be that the mind starts with pre- sentations, and not with things, with phenomena in the sense of appearances, which 'phenomena' are but modifi- cations of Hume's 'impressions,' and of the 'ideas' of the ancients. Now it appears to me that all these accounts, consciousness being witness, are imperfect, and by their defects erroneous. The mind is not conscious of these impressions preceding the knowledge which it has im- mediately of self, and the objects falling under the notice of the senses. Nor can it be legitimately shown how the mind can ever rise from ideas, impressions, phenomena, to the knowledge of things. The followers of Locke have always felt the difficulty of showing how the mind from mere ideas could reach external realities. Hume designedly represented the original exercises of the mind as being mere impressions, in order to undermine the very foundations of knowledge. Though Kant acknow- ledged a reality beneath the presentations, beyond the phenomena, those who followed out his views found the reality disappearing more and more, till at length it va- nished altogether, leaving only a concatenated series of mental forms. There is no effectual or consistent way of avoiding these consequences but by falling back on the natural system, and maintaining that the mind in its intelligent acts starts with knowledge. But let not the statement be misunderstood. I do not mean that the mind com- mences with abstract knowledge, or general knowledge, BODY AND SPIRIT. 121 or indeed with systematized knowledge of any descrip- tion. It acquires first a knowledge of individual things as they are presented to it and to its knowing faculties, and it is out of this that all its arranged knowledge is formed by a subsequent exercise of the understanding. ' K From the concrete the mind fashions the abstract, by separating in thought a part from the whole, a quality from the object. Starting with the particular, the mind reaches the general by observing the points of agree- ment. From premisses involving knowledge, it can arrive at other propositions also containing knowledge. It seems clear to me, that if the mind had not know- ledge in the foundation, it never could have knowledge in the superstructure reared ; but finding knowledge in its first intelligent exercises, it can thence, by the pro- cesses of abstraction, generalization, and reasoning, reach further and higher knowledge. The mind is endowed with at least two simple cog- nitive powers, — sense-perception and self-consciousness. Both are cognitive in their nature, and look on and re- veal to us existing things ; the one, material objects pre- sented to us through the bodily senses, and the other, self in a particular state or exercise. It is altogether inadequate language to represent these faculties as giving us an idea, or an impression, or an apprehension, or a notion, or a conception, or looking on unknown appear- ances, they give us knowledge of objects under aspects presented to us. No other language is equal to express the full mental action of which we are conscious. In this Book it is my aim to seek out, to analyze, and expose to the view the convictions that are involved in the exercise of these two powers. I shall begin with our cognitions in their more concrete form, and then dwell more specially on the cognitions discovered by ab- straction to be involved in these. 122 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS, Sect. II. Our Intuitive Cognitions of Body. We are following the plainest dictates of conscious- ness, we avoid a thousand difficulties, and we get a solid ground on which to rest and to build, when we maintain that the mind in its first exercises acquires knowledge ; not indeed scientific or arranged, not of qualities of ob- jects and classes of objects, but still knowledge — the knowledge of things presenting themselves, and as they present themselves; which knowledge, individual and concrete, is the foundation of all other knowledge, ab- stract, general, and deductive. In particular, the mind is so constituted as to attain a knowledge of body, or of material objects. It is through the bodily organism that the intelligence of man attains its knowledge of all material objects be- yond. This is true of the infant mind ; it is true also of the mature mind. We may assert something more than this regarding the organism. It is not only the medium through which we know all bodily objects beyond itself, it is itself an object primarily known ; nay, I am inclined to think that, along with the objects immediately affect- ing it, it is the only object originally known. Intuitively man seems to know nothing beyond his own organism, and objects immediately affecting it ; in all further know- ledge there is a process of inference proceeding on a ga- thered experience. This theory seems to me to explain all the facts, and it delivers us from many perplexities. Let us go over the senses one by one, with a view of determining what seems to be the original information supplied by each. In the sense of smell, the objects immediately perceived are the nostrils as affected; it is only by experience that we know that there is an object beyond, from which the smell proceeds, and it is only by science that we know that odorous particles have pro- BODY, 123 ceeded from that object. In hearing, our primary per- ceptions seem to be of the ear as affected; that there is a sounding body we learn by further observation, and that there are vibrations between it and the ear we are told by scientific research. In taste, it is originally the palate as affected by what we feel by another sense to be a tangible body, which body science tells us must be in a liquid state. In touch proper, there is a sensation of a particular part of the frame as affected by we know not what, but which we may discover by experiential obser- vation. It is the same with all the impressions we have by the sense of temperature, the sense of titillation, the sense of shuddering, the sense of the creeping of the flesh, the sense of lightness or of weight, and the like organic affections, usually but improperly attributed to touch. In regard to all these senses, it seems highly probable that our original and primitive perceptions are simply of the organism as affected by something unknown, so far as intuition is concerned. But there are other two senses which furnish, I am inclined to think, a new and further kind of information. The sense of touch, when the phrase is used in a loose sense, is a complex one, em- bracing a considerable number and variety of senses, which have not been scientifically classified, and which, perhaps, cannot be so till we have a more thorough physiology of the nerves. Certain it is that there is a locomotive energy and a muscular sense entirely different from feeling, or such affections as those of heat and cold. The soul of man instinctively wills to move the arm ; an action is produced in a motor nerve, which sets in motion a muscle, with probably an attached set of bones, and the intimation of such a movement having taken place is conveyed to the brain by a sensor nerve. As the result of this complex physiological process, we come to know that there is something beyond our organism ; we know an object out of our organism hindering the movement 124 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. of the organ and resisting our energy.* It is more dif- ficult to determine what is the original perception by sight. It must certainly be of a coloured surface affecting the felt organism. The boy born blind, when his sight was restored by an operation by Cheselden, felt as if every object " touched his eyes, as what he felt did his skin." I think it probable that the coloured surface per- ceived as affecting the living organism, is seen as in the direction of the felt and localized sentient organ, neither behind it, nor at the side, but at what distance we know not till other senses and a gathered experience come to our aid. Such seems to be our original knowledge, re- ceived through the various senses as inlets. But we are not to understand that the mind receives sensations and information only from one sense at a time. In order to have a full view of the actual state of things, we must remember that man, at every instant of his waking existence, is getting organic feelings and percep- tions from a number of these sources ; say at one and the same time from the sense of heat, from the sense of taste in * The following is the account given by Muller (trans, by Baly, p. 1080) : — " First, the child governs the movements of its limbs, and thus perceives that they are instruments subject to the use and govern- ment of its internal ' self,' while the resistance which it meets with around is not subject to its will, and therefore gives it the idea of an absolute exterior. Secondly, the child will perceive a difference in the sensations produced according as two parts of its own body touch each other, or as one part of its body only meets with resistance from with- out. In the first instance, where one arm, for example, touches the other, the resistance is offered by a part of the child's own body, and the limb thus giving the resistance becomes the subject of sensation as well as the other. The two limbs are in this case external objects of perception, and percipient at the same time. In the second instance, the resisting body will be represented to the mind as something ex- ternal and foreign to the living body, and not subject to the internal self. Thus will arise in the mind of the child the idea of a resistance which one part of its own body can offer to other parts of its body, and at the same time the idea of a resistance offered to its body by an absolute exterior. In this way is gained the idea of an external world as the cause of sensations." BODY AND SPIRIT. 125 the mouth, from the sense of hearing, the sense of sight — suppose of a portion of our own body and of the walls of the apartment in which we sit, and from the muscular sense — say of the chair on which we sit, or the floor on which we stand. Our whole conscious state at any given time is thus a very complex, or rather, a concrete one. There is in it at all times a sense of the living body as extended, and, I may add, as ours. This is a sense which human beings, infant and mature, carry with them every instant of their waking existence, perhaps in a low state even in their times of sleep. " This consciousness of our own corporeal existence is the standard by which we estimate in our sense of touch the extension of all resisting bo- dies/'* Along with this there will always be in our waking moments a sense of something extra-organic but affecting the organism, such as the surface before the eye, or the object which supports us. But the vividness of the impression made, or some decisive act of the will in order to accomplish a desired end, will at times centre the mind's regards in a special manner on some one of the objects made known by the senses. Thus, a violent pain in an organ will absorb the whole attention on it- self; or a vivid colour will draw out the mind towards the coloured object. By these concentrations of intelligence we obtain a more special acquaintance with the nature of the objects presenting themselves. It is thus only that the special senses fulfil their full function, and impart information abiding with us beyond the moment when the action takes place. Such seems to be our original stock of knowledge ac- quired by sense. It is as yet within very narrow limits, within our frames, and a sphere immediately in contact, f * Miiller's Physiology, translated by Baly, p. 1081. t " We perceive and can perceive nothing but what is relative to the organ." (Hamilton, foot-note to Eeid, p. 247). 126 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. We reach a wider knowledge by remembering what we have thus obtained, by subjecting it to processes of ab- straction and generalization, and drawing inferences from it. Our information is especially enlarged and consoli- dated, by combining the information got from several of the senses, which are all intended to assist each other. In particular, the two intellectual senses par excellence, sight and the muscular sense, are fitted to aid each other and all the other senses. By sight we know merely a co- loured surface ; by the muscular sense we may come to know that the object with a superficies has three dimen- sions and is impenetrable, — we may know the object to be the same by our seeing upon it the hand which feels the pressure. By sight we know not how far the co- loured surface is from our organism; by inferences founded on gathered information from the muscular sense, we come to know how far it is from us, whether an inch or many feet or yards. By the muscular sense we know solid objects only as pressing themselves immediately on our organism ; by sight we see objects — which sight does not declare to be solid but which a combined experience declares must be solid — thousands or millions of miles away. By inferences from various senses united, we know that this taste is from a certain kind of food, that this smell is from a rose or lily, that this sound is from a human voice or a musical instrument. Thus our knowledge, commencing with the organism and objects affecting it, may extend to objects at a great distance, and clothe them with qualities which are not perceived as immediately belonging to them. We know that this blue surface seen indistinctly is a bay of the ocean fifty miles off, and that this brilliant spark up in the blue concave, is a solid body, radiating light hundreds of mil- lions of miles away. Let us analyse what is involved in this intuitive know- ledge. BODY. 127 I. We know the object as existing or having be- ing. This is a necessary conviction, attached to, or rather, composing an essential part of our concrete cognition of every material object presented to us, be it our own frame, or of things external to our frame ; whether this hard table or stone, or this yielding water, or even this vapoury mist, or this fleeting cloud. We look on each of the objects thus presented to us, in our organism or be- yond it, as having an existence, a being, a reality. Every one understands these phrases ; they cannot be made simpler or more intelligible by an explanation. We un- derstand them because they express a mental fact which every one has experienced. We may talk of what we contemplate in sense-perception being nothing but an impression, an appearance, an idea, but we can never be made to give our assent to any such statements. However ingenious the arguments which may be adduced in favour of the objects of our sense-perceptions being mere illusions, we find that after listening to them, and allowing to them all the weight that is possible, we still look upon bodies as realities next time they present themselves. The rea- son, is we know them to be realities, by a native cogni- tion which can never be overcome. II. In our primitive cognitions, we know objects as having an existence independent of the contemplative mind. We know the object as separate from ourselves. We do not create it when we perceive it, nor does it cease to exist because we have ceased to contemplate it. All this is involved in our very cognition of the object, and he who would deny this is setting aside our very primitive knowledge, and he who would argue against this, will never be able to convince us in fact, because he is opposing a fundamental conviction which will work whenever the object is presented.* * The convictions referred to in these paragraphs, set aside at once 128 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. III. We know the object as having an abiding exist- ence. This is a truth which requires to be stated with not a few explanations and cautions. I can merely give a hint of what is meant, and reserve the fuller discussion of it till I come to speak of substance, in the next chap- ter. I have already affirmed that every material object has an existence abiding, in this sense, that our contem- plation did not create it, nor will it cease to exist because our attention is not directed towards it. But this is not all : we apprehend that this thing has an abiding being in itself. Our intuition indeed does not say, as to this being, how or when it came to be there, nor whether nor in what circumstances it may cease ; for information on such topics we must go to other quarters. But when the question is started, we must decide that this thing had a being prior to our perceiving it, unless indeed it so happened that it was produced by a power capable of doing so at the very time our senses alighted on it, and that it will continue to exist after we have ceased to re- gard it, unless indeed something interpose to destroy it. But enough for the present of this somewhat difficult discussion. IV. In our primitive cognition of body there is in- volved a knowledge of outness or externality.* We the doctrine of Kaut, that the mind in the intuition of sense, takes cognizance of phenomena in the sense -of appearances. They should also modify the doctrine of Hamilton. " Our knowledge of qualities or phenomena is necessarily relative, for these exist only as they exist in relation to our faculties." (Foot-note to Reid, p. 323.) It is a tru- ism that we can know objects merely as our faculties enable us to know them ; but the question is, What is the nature and extent of the know- ledge which our faculties furnish ? I admit that whatever external ob- jects we know, we know in a relation to us. But I hold that man and his faculties are so constituted as to know things (with being) exer- cising qualities, and to know qualities as existing separate from and in- dependent of our cognition of them. * "Perception involves in every instance the notion of externality, or outness" (D. .Stewart, Essays, }>. 419). BODY, 129 know the object perceived, be it the organism or the object affecting the organism, as not in the mind, as out of the mind. In regard to some of the objects perceived by us we may be in doubt as to whether they are in the organism or beyond it, but we are always sure that they are extra-mental. This is a conviction from which, we can never be driven by any power of will or force of cir- cumstances. It is at the foundation of the judgments to be afterwards specified as to the distinctions between the self and the not-self, the ego and the non-ego. % V. In all our knowledge through the senses we know the object as extended. I am inclined to think that this knowledge in the concrete is involved even in such per- ceptions as those of smell, taste, hearing, and feeling, and the allied affections of temperature and titillation. In all these we intuitively know the organism as out of the mind, as extended, and as localized. At every waking moment we have sensations from more than one sense, and we must know the organs affected as out of each other and in different places. f It is acknowledged that the primitive * The convictions spoken of in these paragraphs set aside all forms of idealism in sense-perception. Berkeley says that, so far as matter is concerned, " esse est percipi." I hold, that according to onr intuitive conviction, the thing which we perceive must exist before we can per- ceive it, and that we perceive it as an extended tiling independent and out of the contemplative mind. Mchte represents the external thing as a creation or projection of the perceiving mind. But the mind in knowing the self as perceiving, knows that it is an external thing that is perceived, and cannot be made to think otherwise. Pro- fessor Terrier bases his fabric of demonstrated idealism on the propo- sition, the object of knowledge " always is, and must be, the object with the addition of oneself, — object plus subject, — thing, or thought, meeum" (Inst, of Metaph. prop. ii.). If this proposition professes to be a statement of fact, I deny that the fact of consciousness is properly stated. If it professes to be a first truth, I deny that it ought to be assumed in this particular form. JN"o doubt we always know self at the same time that we know an external object by sense-perception, but we know the external object as separate from and independent of self. We might as well deny that we know the object at all, as deny that we know it to have an existence distinct from self. t Hamilton says, " An extension is apprehended in the apprehension K 130 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. knowledge got in this way is very bare and limited, and without those perceived relationships and distinctions which become associated with it in our future life. But imperfect though it be, it must ever involve the occupa- tion of space. The other two senses furnish more express information, the eye giving a coloured surface of a de- fined form, and the muscular sense extension in three dimensions. It should be noticed that in our knowledge of extra-organic objects, whether by the eye or the mus- cular sense, we know them as situated in a certain place in reference to our organism, which we have already so far localized and distributed in space, and which henceforth we use as a centre for direction and distance. VI. We know the objects as affecting us. I have al- ready said that we know them as independent of us. This is an important truth. But it is equally true and equally important that these objects are made known to us as somehow having an influence on us. The or- ganic object is capable of affecting our minds, and the extra-organic object affects the organism which affects the mind. Upon this cognition are founded certain judg- ments as to the relations of the object known to the knowing mind. In particular, VII. In certain, if not in all, of our original cognitions through the senses we know the objects as exercising potency or property. This is denied in theory by many who are yet found to admit it inadvertently when they tell us that we can know matter only by its properties : for what, I ask, are properties but powers to act in a certain way? But still it is dogmatically asserted, that whatever we may know about material objects, we can of the reciprocal externality of all sensations" (Appendix to Eeid, p. 885). Again, " In the consciousness of sensations relatively localized and reciprocally external, we have a veritable apprehension and conse- quently an immediate perception of the affected organism, as extended, divided, figured, etc." (ib. p. 884). BODY. 131 never know that they have power ; we cannot see power, they say. nor hear power, nor touch power. In oppo- sition to these confident assertions, I lay down the very opposite dogma, that we cannot see body, or touch, or even hear, or taste, or smell body, except as affecting us, that is, having a power in reference to us. When an extra-organic body resists our muscular energy,* what is it doing but affecting our organism in a certain way ? The very coloured surface revealed through sight, is known to us as affecting, that is, having an influence over, our organism. But there is more than this, — the organism is known as having power to affect the cog- nitive self. The muscular effort resisted, the visual or- gans impressed by the coloured surface, are known as pro- ducing an effect on the mind. The organs affected m smell, in taste, in temperature, in hearing, in feeling, are all known as rousing the mind into cognitive activity. It might be further maintained, even in regard to those senses which do not immediately reveal anything extra- organic, that they seem to point to some unknown cause of the affection known ; but it is better to postpone the discussion of this question till it can be discussed fully. But in regard to the two senses which reveal objects be- yond the bodily frame, and in regard to all the senses so far as they make known our frame to us, there is an intuitive conviction of potency wrapped up in all our cog- nitions. But it will be vehemently urged that it is most pre- * Locke says that impenetrability, or, as he prefers calling it, as haying less of a negative meaning, solidity, seems the " idea most inti- mately connected with and essential to body, so as nowhere else to be found or imagined, but only in matter ;" and he adds, we " find it in- separably inherent in body wherever or however modified ;" and in explaining this, he says of bodies, that " they do by an unsurmountable force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them " (Essay, ii. iv. 1). K 2 132 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. posterous to assert that we know all this by the senses. Upon this I remark that the phrase by the senses is am- biguous. If by senses be meant the mere bodily or- ganism, — the eye, the ears, the nerves, and the brain, — I affirm that we know, and can know, nothing by this mere bodily part ; that so far from knowing potency or extension, we do not know even colour, or taste, or smell. But if by the senses be meant the mind exercised in sense-perception, summoned into activity by the organ- ism, and contemplating cognitively the external world, then I maintain that we do know, and this intuitively, external objects as influencing us — that is, exercising powers in reference to us. I ask those who would doubt of this doctrine, of what it is that they suppose the mind to be cognizant in sense-perception. If they say, a mere sensation or impression in the mind, I reply that this is not consistent with the revelation of con- sciousness, which announces plainly that what we know is something extra-mental. If they say, with Kant, a mere phenomenon in the sense of appearance, then I reply that this too is inconsistent with consciousness, which declares that we know the thing. But if we know the thing, we must know something about it. If they say they know it as having extension and form, I grasp at the admission, and ask them to consider how high the knowledge thus allowed, involving at one and the same time space, and an object occupying space, and so much of space. Surely those who acknowledge this much may be prepared to confess further that the mind which in perception is capable of knowing an object as occu- pying space, is also capable of knowing the same object as exercising power in regard to us.* We have only to * " C'est la raison, et la raison seule, qui connait, et connait le monde ; et elle nc le connait d'abord qu'a titre de cause ; il n'est d'abord pour nous que la cause des phenomenes sensitifs que nous ne pouvous nou* rapporter a nous-memes ; et nous ne rechercherions pas Cette BODY. 133 examine the state of mind involved in all our cognitions of matter, to discover that there is involved in it a know- ledge both of extension and of property. Such seem to be some of the principal of our cog- nitions through the senses ; and I have sought to evolve them by an analysis proceeding on a careful observation of their nature. Sect. III. Some Distinctions to be Attended to in Regard to our Cognition of Body. It is a fundamental position with the author of this treatise that we ought to look on all our primitive cog- nitions as guaranteeing a reality. In particular we are to look on each of our sense-perceptions as pointing to a corresponding extra-mental object. But in order to be able to maintain this doctrine with even the appearance of plausibility, it is necessary to attend to certain dis- tinctions. cause, par consequent nous ne la trouverions pas, si notre raison n'etait pourvue du prineipe de causalite, si nous pouvions supposer qu'un phe- nomene peut commencer a apparaitre sur le theatre de la conscience, du temps ou de l'espace, sans qu'il ait une cause. Done le prineipe de causalite, je ne crains pas de le dire, est le pere du monde exterieur, loin qu'il soit possible de Ten tirer, et de le faire venir de la sensation." So says M. Cousin in criticizing Locke (Deux. Ser. torn. iii. lee. 19). This is not far from the truth. There is reason or intelligence involved in our knowledge of the external world, and there is causality in this knowledge. The mind knows the external thing as a cause — it must know it in other characters as well, in particular it must know it as extended — still, it knows it as a cause. But except in the mode of development,, this doctrine does not differ so much from that of Locke as Cousin imagines. Locke derives the materials of all our ideas from sensation and experience. He derives our idea of cause from both these sources. But then the mind, in the formation of its ideas, proceeds intel- ligently, reasonably. There is intelligence, according to Locke, in sen- sation, and in comparing certain ideas the mind perceives their agree- ment immediately by intuition. Locke's account of the full pheno- menon does not seem to me satisfactory, or very congruously wrought out ; but it is quite as near the truth as that of Cousin, who calls sen- sation the chronological condition, and reason the logical principle (See this distinction examined, infra, Part III. Bk. I. Ch. II. sect, v.), 134 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. I. There is the Distinction between our Original and Acquired Perceptions. In standing up for the trustworthiness of our perceptions, I always mean our original perceptions, proceeding from the primitive prin- ciples of the mind, and having the sanction of Him who gave us our constitution. The perceptions acquired by inference, or other intellectual processes grounded on experience, will have a corresponding reality only when these processes have been validly conducted. I have endeavoured in last Section to give an approxi- mately correct account of what seem to be our original perceptions through the various senses. But to our primitive stock we add others, and in doing so we em- ploy rules derived from the generalizations of experience, and deductive reasoning in applying them to given cases. It has been all but universally acknowledged, since the days of Berkeley, that the perception of distance is not an original endowment of the sense of sight in human beings, but that we come to determine it by a gathered observation. As the result of experience, we lay down such rules as these : that an object with whose form we are familiar, — such as a watch, — if seen with a faint colour and outline, and with a smaller disc in comparison with other known objects in the field of view, must be more distant than when seen with a better defined figure and a more vivid colour and a fuller form. We lay it down as another rule, that when a number of objects inter- vene between us and a scene on which we are looking, — say a mountain, — it must be at a considerable distance. Such rules formed by us are found approximately cor- rect, and useful in ordinary cases, and at every instant at which our eyes are open they conduct us to a knowledge which carries us far beyond our primitive perceptions. But then it is to be noticed that error may creep into our acquired perceptions. We may reckon a rule as BODY. 135 universal which has many exceptions, and may make an application of it to a wrong case. It will not be difficult to show that all the supposed deception of the senses is to be traced to the wrong inferences which we draw in our acquired perceptions. Almost all forms of idealism — the system which sup- poses certain of our supposed cognitions to be creations of the mind, and all forms of scepticism — the system which would set aside all our cognitions, plead the deceitful - ness of the senses. Our senses are not to be trusted in some things, says the idealist, and we are to determine by reason when they are to be trusted. Our senses de- lude us in some things, says the sceptic, and we may therefore distrust them in all. It is of vast moment to stop these errors at the point at which they flow out, by showing that the senses, meaning our original percep- tions through the senses, can all be trusted in regard to the special testimony which they furnish. But how, it is asked, does the stick in the water, felt to be straight by the sense of touch, seem crooked to the sense of sight ? The answer is, that the knowledge of the shape of an object does not primarily fall under the sense of sight, and that when we determine whether a stick is or is not straight, by the sense of sight, it is by a process of inference in which we have laid down the rule that objects that give a certain figure before the eye are crooked, a rule correct enough for common cases, but not applicable to cases in which the rays of light are re- fracted in passing from one medium to another. Why does a boy seem a man, and a man a giant in a mist, whereas if you clear away the mist, both are instantly re- duced to their proper dimensions ? An answer can ea- sily be given. We have laid down the rule that an object seen so dimly must be distant ; but an object appearing of such dimensions at a distance must be large : and the 1 36 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. phenomenon is felt to be a deception only by those who are not accustomed to move in the mist. Why does a mountain, viewed across an arm of the sea, seem near, while the same mountain, seen at an equal distance be- yond an undulated country studded with houses and trees, will seem very remote ? The answer is not that the eye has deceived us, but that we have made a mis- taken application of a rule usually correct, that an object must be near when few objects intervene between us and it ; and it is to be noticed that those who are accus- tomed to look across sheets of water, commit no such mistakes, for they have acquired other means of measur- ing distance. Again, we have found it true in cases so many, that we cannot number them, that when we are at rest and the image of an object, say a carriage, passes across the vision, the object must be in motion. That rule is accurate in all cases similar to those from which it was derived ; but it fails the landsman when, feeling as if he were at rest in the ship, he infers that the shore is moving away from the vessel. In all such cases we see that it is not the senses, that is, the natural and original perceptions of the senses having the authority of God, which deceive us, but rules formed by ourselves, and il- legitimately applied. It may be observed that the same experience which enables us to gather the rules, may enable us to ascertain the limits of the rules, and the ex- ceptions. It is only the landsman who is deceived into the thought that the shore is moving ; the seaman has modified the rule, or rather, he realizes the idea that he himself is moving, and he is not deceived for one instant. Supposing this to be the correct account, we may stand up for the trustworthiness of all our intuitive perceptions, at least when the organism and the mind are in a healthy state. Even in cases in which the organism is diseased, the error lies commonly, perhaps always, in a wrong in- BODY. 137 ference.* When our visual organs are distempered, we mav seem to see a solid figure before us which touch tells us has no reality ; but the fact is, all that we intuitively see is a coloured surface, whether in or out of the organ- ism, whether solid or aerial, we know not intuitively. We hear a sound which we interpret as coming from a voice where no living being can be, but the interpretation is our own : all that our nature declares is, that there is an affection of our auditory organs. The visions, the ima- ginary sounds, touches, and smells, felt by persons whose organs are diseased, or excited by strong mental fancy within — just as they would be by an object without, are, after all, inferences from what are in themselves mere or- ganic affections. In the greater number of such cases, there is a means of detecting the error occasioned by dis- ease in one of the organs, by other organs not distem- pered. At the same time I am not inclined to deny that there may be cases in which the brain is so disorgan- ized, and the mind so deranged, that the person is given up for life to hopeless delusion. We are now within the * Aristotle had an apprehension of what I am convinced will turn out to be the true account of these seeming errors of the senses. (See his Treatise on the Soul, b. iii., c. i., iii., vi.) He says the perception, by a sense, of things peculiar to that sense, is true, or involves the small- est amount of error. But when such objects are perceived in their ac- cidents (that is, as to things not falling peculiarly under that sense), there is room for falsehood ; when, for instance, something is said to be white there is no falsehood, but when the object is said to be this or that (if the white thing is said to be Cleon), (cf. iii., i. 7), there may be falsehood. *H aLa8r]ais roav p,ev Ibicov dXijdrjs iariv fj otl oXi^lcttov e^ovo-a to yjsevdos. Bevrepov 8e rod o~vp^ej3r]KevaL ravra- Kal ivravOa fj8rj ivde^raL bia^evbeadaf otl [iev yap Xevkov, ov -^revherai, el 8e tovto to Xcvkov rj aXXo tl yj/evbeTai (iii.j hi., 12 : ed. Trendelenburg). 'AXV &aivep to opdv Tovldlov aXr)6es, el S' avdpa>7ros to XevKov fj p.7], ovx. dXrjdes alel (ib. vi. 7). Aristotle saw that the difficulties might be cleared up, by attending to what each sense testifies, and separating the associated imaginations and opi- nions or judgments. The full explanation, however, could not be given till Berkeley led men to distinguish between the original and acquired perceptions of the senses, by showing that the knowledge of distance by the eye, is an acquisition. 138 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. range of phenomena which carry us into the deepest mysteries of our world, and have a connection with man's liability to disease, and the existence of sin. II. There is the Distinction between Sensation and Perception. It may be laid down as a general fact, that every given state of man's mind is concrete ; that is, in the one act there are elements which may be separated at other times, or which may be separated by analysis. Thus in purely mental action, there may at one and the same moment be an exercise of the intelligence, of feeling, and of will ; in one act we may comprehend that our friend is in distress, may feel grieved in conse- quence, and resolve to take steps to relieve him. In like manner all the mental affections excited by the action of the bodily senses are concrete. What is thus mixed up in one concrete act, can be separated by analysis, and ought for important ends to be so separated : indeed the sepa- ration is often made for us naturally, for we have now one portion, and now another of the combined state. In particular, it is of great moment in philosophy to distin- guish between the sensations and perceptions which are always mixed up together. Perception is the knowledge of the object presenting itself to the senses, whether in the organism or beyond it. Sensation is the feeling associated, — the feeling of the organism. These two always coexist.* There is never the knowledge without an organic feeling, never a feeling of the organism without a cognitive apprehen- sion of it. These sensations differ widely from each other, as our consciousness testifies ; some of them being pleasant, some painful ; others indifferent as to pleasure * Reid represents the sensation being " followed by a perception of the object ;" on which Hamilton remarks, " that sensation proper pre- cedes perception proper is a false assumption ; they are simultaneous elements of the same indivisible energy" (Heid's Works, p. 186: see also p. 853). BODY. 139 and pain, but still with a feeling. Some we call ex- citing, others dull ; some we designate as warm, others as cold ; and for most of them we have no name what- ever, — indeed they so run into each other that it would be difficult to discriminate them by a specific nomen- clature. The perceptions, again, are as numerous and varied as the knowledge we have by all the senses. Now these two ever mix themselves up with each other. The sensation of the odour mingles with the apprehension of the nostrils ; the flavour of the food is joined with the recognition of the palate ; the agreeableness or disagree- ableness of the sound comes in with the knowledge of the ear as affected ; and the organ which we know as feeling has an associated sensation. There is an organic sensation conjoined even with the knowledge we have of the extra-organic object affecting our muscular sense or our visual organism. This sensation may be little noticed because the attention is fixed on the object; still it is always there, as we may discover by a careful introspection of the combined mental affection. But this leads me to notice that in the concrete men- tal state sometimes the perception or the knowledge is the more prominent, whereas at other times the sensa- tion is the predominant. There is a difference indeed of the senses in this respect. Thus in the senses of taste, smell, touch proper, and the allied senses of tem- perature, titillation, shuddering, and flesh-creeping, the sensation is the prevailing element. These may be regarded as the lower and the more animal senses, in which the attention is largely absorbed in self. In hear- ing, so far as the original perceptions are concerned, the sensation is still the predominant affection; but as we come to know the sounding bodies, our attention is often directed almost exclusively to the object. Thus as we are listening to a person speaking we lose sight of the 140 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. hearing ear, and think only of what is said. Still, when the sounds are unpleasant, or when they are peculiarly pleasant, as in music, it is the sensation that absorbs the attention. In the muscular sense it is the resisting ob- ject that is most noticed. In sight the colour is largely (but not exclusively, as will be shown forthwith) a sen- sational, whereas the spread-out surface is the perceptive element. In many of our acts of vision there is a nice balancing of the two, the colour and the form being alike noticed ; in others the colour, by its gorgeousness, ab- sorbs the whole mental energy; while in a third class the colour-sensation is lost sight of, and we are conscious of scarcely anything more than the form. And here I am tempted to remark that in the lower forms, both of nature and of the fine arts, it is the colour which is the more striking characteristic ; and children, and persons low in the scale of intelligence, feel a peculiar delight in such objects. As we rise, in nature to the common her- baceous plants, and in art to flower-painting, there is often a union of the beauty, both of colour and of form. When we mount to the highest plants, as to the trees of the forest, and to the animal creation and the human form, and in art to historical painting, varied colouring disappears, that higher minds may gaze with undivided attention on objective forms characterized by high propor- tions, or full of life or suggestive of character. It should not be omitted that the mind can at anv time fix its attention more specially on one of these, and then the other will very much disappear from the field of view. Sometimes this is done for us spontaneously, by the vividness of the sensation on the one hand, or by the interest which collects around the external object on the other. Sometimes the concentration is effected by a strong act of will, fixing the mind's regards on one or other in order to gain a special end. Thus we may BODY. 141 yield ourselves entirely to a luscious strain of music, or we may be absorbed in thought about some object, so as scarcely to notice the sounds. Under ear-ache we may have the whole energy of the mind concentred on the pain, and be able to attend to nothing else ; or we may be so interested in a discourse or a topic of thought as scarcely to feel the torture. But while the two ever coexist, — sometimes with the one prevailing and sometimes with the other predomi- nant, and sometimes with the two nicely balanced, it is of importance to distinguish them. Every man of sense draws the distinction between the music and the mu- sical instrument, between the ear-ache and his ear. The metaphysician should also draw the distinction, — indeed it is essential that he do so. The two were given for different ends. Our perceptions are the main means of supplying us with knowledge, whereas our sensations are meant to increase our enjoyment, to stimulate to ex- ertion, to give warning, or perhaps to inflict penalties. We must beware, both philosophically and practically, of confounding our sensations and our perceptions, our feelings and our cognitions. In the confounding of the two we have another circumstance leading men to charge their senses with deception. This will appear more fully when we come to notice another set of dis- tinctions. III. There are Distinctions between the Objects Known. There is the distinction between the organic object and the object beyond the organism. There is the more delicate distinction between the objects imme- diately known as extra-organic and objects inferred as affecting the organism but themselves unknown. Let me explain these distinctions. We have seen that in some of the senses the proper object of perception is the organism itself. In two others 142 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. it is beyond the organism. Let us consider these two classes in order. In the first class all that we know immediately is the organism as affected. But if affected, it must be affected by something. It is in one state this instant, and it will be in another state the next. The intuitive con- viction of causation — to be afterwards discussed — con- strains us to look for an agent to produce the effect. And where is this agent to be found? In the organism, or beyond the organism? I am certain, in regard to some of our organic affections, that intuition says nothing on this special point. This is the case with our sense of smell, our taste and touch, and sense of temperature, — and I think also, though with some hesitation, of the sense of hearing. The intuitive conviction of cause and effect does indeed intimate that there must be a cause, but as to where that cause is to be found we must trust to experience, which tells us that the cause is in some cases to be found in the organism itself, and in other cases in an agent beyond, — such as odorous particles, sapid bodies, heat, undulations from a sounding body, or a solid object applied to our nerves of touch. In all cases the affection of sense and the conviction of cause combined are sufficient to prompt us to look round for an agent. The senses act as monitors, and most im- portant monitors they are, of powers working in our bodily frames, and in the physical universe around us. I believe that every one of our senses gives us intimation of powers, — such as floating particles, light, and heat, which are among the most powerful agencies conducting the processes of the material world. Still these are un- known to our senses, and we become aware of their ex- istence merely as causes of known effects. As to what odours, sounds, flavours, heat, and, we may add, light and colours are, our intuitions are silent, and their na- BODY. 143 ture is to be determined by observation, — indeed can be determined only by elaborate scientific research. It should be added, that while science has ascertained much about them, it has not, in its latest advances, been able to settle what is the exact nature of such agents as heat, light, and colour. Let us turn now to the other class of senses, which give us a knowledge of extra-organic objects. By the muscular sense we know an object as extended in three dimensions, and as resisting our effort. We have thus a knowledge of objects extended, and exercising dyna- mic energy beyond the little world of self. The sense of sight presents peculiar difficulties in this connection. It seems to me clearly to look at an extended surface, not part of our organism, but affecting it. But what are we to make of colour ? It is the greatest diffi- culty which the metaphysician meets with in the investi- gation of the senses. The mind knows the perceived object to be in its nature extended; but do we also know it as in its very nature coloured ? If so, is there colour in the object as there is extension? The follow- ing is the solution which I am inclined to offer of this difficult subject. The sense of colour may be regarded as intermediate between those senses in which we per- ceive an extra-organic object, and those other senses which reveal merely the organism as affected, but whether by agents within or beyond the organism we know not. In the sense of colour, we primarily know only the or- ganism as affected, but we are intuitively led, at the same time, to look on what thus affects our organism as not in the organism, but as in the extended surface in which it is seen. But beyond this, that is beyond colour being an extra-organic cause of an organic af- fection, we know nothing of its nature by intuition. IF this account be correct, we see that our sense of co- 144 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. lour is different, on the one hand, from our know- ledge of our sensations of heat, or smell, or taste, for we clo not know whether these are within or beyond the frame, while we do know that colour is out of ourselves in a surface ; and different, too, on the other hand, from the knowledge of the extended surface and the impene- trability which are revealed directly by the sight and muscular sense, whereas we do not know what colour is. Hence arises, if I do not mistake, that peculiar conviction regarding colour which has so puzzled metaphysicians. The sense of colour combines, in closest union, the sen- sation and the perception, the organic affection and the extra- organic. I confess I have always fondly clung to the idea that, sooner or later, colour will be found by physical investigation to have a reality, I do not say of what kind, in every material object.* By help of such distinctions as these, we may defend the validity of all our native convictions through the senses. In doing so, it will be observed that we stand up for the trustworthiness of our original, but not ne- cessarily of our acquired perceptions; that we stand up for a reality corresponding to our perceptions proper, but not therefore to our associated sensations ; and that we stand up for a reality, be it organic, or extra-organic, or both, corresponding to each particular sense as for itself, but not a reality for any one sense of precisely the same kind as the reality for the others. The senses can be supposed to deceive us, when the organism and mind are in a sound state, only when we overlook one or other or all of these distinctions. * I have, in 'Typical Forms and Special Ends,' by J. M'Cosh and Geo. Dickie (p. 165, 2nd ed.), pointed to a number of phenomena, which seem to show that colour is a reality in the object, which reality is made known to us by means of the reflection of the beam by the colour. When the undivided beam falls on the green leaves of a plant, the green beam is reflected and reaches our eye, and the red is absorbed, not to be lost, but to come out in russet bark, or red flower, or berry. BODY. 145 Sect. IV. The Qualities of Matter known by Intuition. The distinctions unfolded in last Section seem to be the all-important ones, in order to enable us to defend the trustworthiness of our sense-perceptions. I have not, in that Section, made mention of the famous distinction between the Primary and Secondary Qualities of Matter, because, so far as it is fitted to clear up and establish the validity of the senses, it is embraced in those which we have drawn, and which are fitted, in my opinion, to bring out the whole truth in a fuller and more distinct manner. But it will be necessary, for other philosophic ends, to draw a distinction between the qualities of matter which are primitively known, and others which may become known by induction or scientific research. The qualities of matter known to intuition may be divided into three classes : — those which relate to space ; those which one body exercises in reference to another ; those which body exercises in reference to the sensitive and perceiving mind. Let it be observed, in regard to all of these, that the quality in the body always relates to something else, so passive and dependent is body on something out of itself. I. There are the Qualities of Matter by which it occu- pies Space and is contained in Space, that is, Extension. We have this knowledge, I believe, through each of our senses; for in each of our senses we know the corre- sponding organs as extended and out of each other, and through two of the senses we know objects beyond our bodily frame as extended. Hamilton represents exten- sion as a necessary constituent of our notion of Matter, and evolves it from "two catholic conditions of matter ; (I.) the occupying space, and (II.) the being contained in space. Of these, the former affords (A) Trinal Exten- sion, explicated again into (i.) Divisibility, (n.) Size, con- L 146 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. taining under it Density or Rarity, (in.) Figure, and (B) Ultimate Incompressibility ; while the latter gives (A) Mobility, and (B) Situation. Neglecting subordination, we have thus eight proximate attributes; 1, Extension; 2, Divisibility; 3, Size; 4, Density or Rarity ; 5, Figure ; 6, Incompressibility absolute ; 7, Mobility ; 8, Situation."* II. The Qualities which one body exercises in reference to another ; in other words, the Properties or Forces of matter. I have expended much labour in vain if I have not shown, in previous Sections, that here we have a necessary conviction. In the visual and locomotive senses, we know an extra-organic object as affecting us and our organism. All this seems to be involved in our perception, and to be a native conviction of the mind, to which it is ever prompted, and from which it can never be delivered. Not only so, we are ever led to look for a producing cause, even of our purely organic affections in the ear and palate and nostrils. A knowledge of power, and a conviction of power being in exercise, is thus involved in our very perceptions through the senses. Adhering to these views, we must set aside at once two opposite doctrines which have had the support each of a number of eminent metaphysicians or metaphysical speculators. The one is that matter is known as possess- ing no other quality than extension. This error origi- nated with Descartes,f and has prevailed extensively among those metaphysicians who have felt his influence. But the view is opposed to that intuition which repre- sents all matter as having and exercising energy. On the other side, there are speculators who maintain that all the phenomena of matter can be explained by suppo- * Hamilton's Beid, Note D, p. 848. t "L'espace ou le lieu intcrieur et le corps qui est compris en cet espace, ne sont diffcrcnts aussi que par notre pensee. Car, en effet la memo etendue en longueur, largeur et profondeur qui constituc l'espace constituc le corps" (Des. Med. p. ii. 10). BODY. 147 sing it to possess potency. This mistake sprang from Leibnitz, who supposed that the universe of matter (and of mind) was composed of monads having power, and to which the mind imparted the relation of space.* But the dynamical theory of body, so far as it denies the ex- istence of space, and body as occupying space, is ut- terly inconsistent with that fundamental conviction, of which the mind can never be shorn, which declares that the matter which has force must be extended, and that the force exercised is a force in a body in one part of space, over another body in a different part of space. III. There is the influence, that is, power, which the bodily organs have over the mind. I feel that I must speak with great caution on this topic. Neither physio- logy nor psychology has been able to throw any light on the particular way in which body affects mind. The theories which have been introduced, — such as that of Occasional Causes by the disciples of Descartes, and of Pre-established Harmony by Leibnitz, and of impressions by modern physiologists, — have only increased, instead of removing the difficulties. We cannot say whether the organism affects the knowing mind immediately or me- diately. We cannot say whether it has power in itself, or whether the power may not lie in some other agent working in the organ. We cannot say whether the power lies exclusively in the organ, or, as is more probable, in the organ and mind combined. Scientific research has thrown no light on these mysteries, and intuition should not pretend to settle these questions. Still intuition seems to me to say, that connected with the organism * Leibnitz held that bodies are endowed with some sort of active force. " Les corps sont doues de quelque force active." This force may be called life. " C'est une realite immaterielle, indivisible et indestructi- ble : il en met partout dans le corps croyant qu'il n'y a point de partie de la masse on. il n'y ait un corps organise, doue de quelque perception ou d'une maniere d'ame (Op. p. 694: ed. Erdmann). That he looked upon space as a relation will come out below. L 2 148 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. there is power of some kind to call forth mental ac- tion. Such seem to be the qualities of matter which we know by intuition. But even in regard to these, experi- ence is ever adding to our knowledge, which we arrange and systematize by induction and science. Whatever other qualities of matter — if there be such — may become known to us, are discovered by experience. I have put the qualification if there be such, because in fact we do not know whether all the other qualities of body be not modifications of those we have named. We are made aware of such agents as heat, light, electricity, magnetism, but it is an unsettled question whether they are bodies or (as is more probable) affections of body, implying forces of a peculiar character. These are questions which can be determined only by physical science, proceeding in the method of induction. Sect. V. Our Intuitive Cognition of Self or of Spirit. It is very probable (though it can never be positively proven) that the first knowledge acquired by the mind is of our own bodily frame, through the sensitive organism — a view which does not imply that, apart altogether from such perceptions, the spirit would not have ope- rated. But whatever may be the theory formed on this speculative subject, it is certain that whenever or how- ever the mind is aroused into an act of intelligence, there is always involved in the exercise a knowledge of self. Coexisting with every intelligent act of mind there is always a self-consciousness. But let it be carefully observed that this knowledge is not of an abstract being or substance, or of an ego, or of an essence, but of the concrete self in the particular state in which it may be, with the particular thoughts, sensations, or purposes, which it may be entertaining at the time. Let us ob- SPIRIT. 149 serve, and seek to evolve, what is involved in the cognition of self. I. We know self as having being, existence. The knowledge we have in self-consciousness, which is asso- ciated with every intelligent act, is not of an impression, as Hume would say, nor of a mere quality or attribute, as certain of the Scottish metaphysicians* would affirm, nor of a phenomenon, in the sense of appearance, as Kantf supposes, but of a thing or reality. In affirming this, we are bringing out and expressing what is embraced in our primitive cognition. No account which falls short of this can be regarded as a full exhibition of the facts falling under our eye when we look within. If any man main- * The Scottish School generally maintains that we do not know mind and body, but only the qualities of them. Eeid indeed says, "_ Every man is conscious of a thinking principle, or mind, in himself" (Works, p. 217). Campbell, in his ' Philosophy of Bhetoric,' speaks of con- sciousness being concerned with "the existence of mind itself, and its actual feelings, etc." (b. i. c. v. p. ii.). But this language is not free from ambiguity. Heid says that " sensation suggests to us both a faculty and a mind, and not only suggests the notion of them, but creates a belief of their existence ; " and he defends the use of the word * suggest,' which I reckon a very unfortunate one in such an applica- tion (Works, pp. 110-111). This view is carried out and elaborated by D. Stewart : " It is not matter or body which I perceive by my senses, but only extension, figure, colour, and certain other qualities, which the constitution of my nature leads me to refer to something which is extended, figured, and coloured. The case is precisely similar with respect to mind. We are not immediately conscious of its existence, but we are conscious of sensation, thought, and volition, operations which imply the existence of something which feels, thinks, and wills " (Elem. vol. i. p. 46). See also vol. ii. p. 41, and Phil. Essays, p. 58, f Kant holds that the inner sense gives no intuition of the soul as an object. • " Der innere Sinn, vermittelst dessen das G-emuth sich selbst, oder seinen inneren Zustand anschaut, giebt zwar keine An- schauung von der Seele selbst, als einem Object" (Kv. d. r. V. p. 34). He speaks of the subject envisaging itself, not as it is, but as it appears : "Da es denn sich selbst anschaut, nicht wie es sich unmittelbar selbst- thatig vorstellen wiirde, sondern nach der Art wie es von innem afEcirt wird, folglich wie es sich erscheint, nicht wie es ist" (Zw. Aufg. p. 718). He says that by the inner sense we know the subject self as phenome- non, and not as it is in itself : "Was die innere Anschauung betrifft, 150 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. tains that all that we can discover is a mere idea, impres- sion, phenomenon, or quality of an unknown thing, I ask him for his evidence, and he must, in replying, call in the internal sense, and I can then show him that this sense, or cognitive power (for it is not a sense except in an abusive application of the term), declares that we know a something, or thing with a positive existence. This is a knowledge which cannot be explained, nor defined in the sense of being resolved into anything simpler or founded on anything deeper. It is a simple element implied in every intelligent act, and not derived from any other act or exercise. It is a basis on which other knowledge may be reared, and not a superstructure standing on another foundation. As it is a primitive, so it is a necessary conviction. We cannot by any other supposed knowledge undermine or set aside this fundamental knowledge. We cannot be made by any process of speculation or ratiocination to believe that we have not being. The process of reason- ing which would set aside this cognition can plead no principle stronger than the conviction which we have in favour of the reality of self. In saying that we know self as possessed of being, we do not mean to affirm that we know all about self, or about our spiritual nature. There are mysteries about self, and about everything else we know, sufficient to awe every truly wise man into humility. All that is meant is, that, whatever may be unknown, we always know unser eigenes Subject nur als Erscheinung, nicht aber nacli dem, was es an sich selbst ist, erkennen" (ib. p. 850). Mr. Mansel has done great service to philosophy by maintaining so clearly and resolutely, in his 'Prolegomena Logica,' and the article on 'Metaphysics' in the 'Ency- clopaedia Britannica,' that we intuitively know self. "I am imme- diately conscious of myself seeing and hearing, willing and thinking" (Prol. Log. p. 129). Hamilton speaks of our being conscious every moment of our existence, and of the ego as a " self-subsistent entity" (Metaph. Lect. 19), SPIRIT. 151 being whenever we know any of the objects presented to us from within or from without. This subject will be resumed in a more special manner in next Chapter. II. We know self as not depending for its existence on our observation of it. Of course we can know self only when we know self; our knowledge of self exists not till we have the knowledge, and it exists only so long as we have the knowledge. But when we come to know self, we know it as already existing, and we do not look on its continued existence as depending on our recogni- tion of it. III. We know self as being in itself an abiding exist- ence. Not that we are to stretch this conviction so far as to believe in the self-existence of mind, or in its eter- nal existence. We believe certainly in the permanence of mind independent of our cognition of it, and amidst all the shiftings and variations of its states. Yet this does not imply that there never was a time when self was non-existing. Eor aught this conviction says, there may have been a time when self came into existence — another conviction assures us that when it did, it must have had a cause. It must be added that this conviction does not go the length of assuring us that mind must exist for ever, or that it must exist after the dissolution of the body. It does indeed seem to say that, if it shall cease to exist, it must be in virtue of some cause adequate to destroy it ; and it helps to produce and strengthen the feeling which the dying man cherishes when he looks on the soul as likely to abide when the body is dead. But as to whether the dissolution of the bodily frame is a sufficient cause of the decease of the soul, — as to whether it may abide when the bodily frame is disorganized, — this is a question to be settled not altogether by intuition, but by a number of other considerations, and more particu- larly by the conviction that God will call us into judg- 152 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. ment at last, and is most definitely settled, after all, by the inspired declarations of the Word of God. But it is pleasant to observe that there is an original conviction altogether in unison with this derivative belief, a convic- tion leading us to look on self as permanent unless there be a cause working adequate to its dissolution. According to the views presented under these heads, the existence of self is a position to be assumed, and not to be proven. It does not need proof, and no proof should be offered ; no mediate evidence could possibly be clearer than the truth which it is brought to support. It has been keenly disputed how we are to understand the " Cogito, ergo sum," of Descartes. Are we to regard it as a process of reasoning ? If it be so, it is either a pe- titio principii, or its conclusiveness may be doubted. If the cogito be understood as embracing ego, that is, be understood as ego cogito, then the ego is evidently in- volved in it, is in fact assumed. If it means anything short of this, then it might be difficult to establish the accuracy of the inference ; thus, if the cogito does not embrace the ego, it is not clear that the conclusion fol- lows.* Or are we to regard the statement as a sort of primitive judgment, not implying mediate reasoning or a middle term?f Taken in this sense, I would reckon that the connection between thought and existence is in- volved in our knowledge of self as existing, rather than that the knowledge of self issues from the perception of the connection between thought and personal existence. Or are we to look on the expression as simply a mode of * Kant lias a powerful criticism of the " Cogito, ergo sum," considered as an argument, in his Paralogismen d. r. Vern. in the Kritik. t In answering the objections of Gassendi, Descartes says : " Cum advertimus nos esse res cogitantes, prima quaedam notio est quae et nullo syllogismo concluditur ; neque etiam quis dicit ' Ego cogito, ergo sura, siveexisto,' existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit, sed tanquam rem per se not am simplici mentis intuitu agnoscit." See the subject discussed by Cousin, Prem. Ser. torn. i. lee. vi. SPIRIT. 153 stating an assumption ? In this case the word ergo, the usual symbol of reasoning, comes in awkwardly; and besides, the truth to be assumed is not the complex judgment, cogito, ergo sum, but the fact revealed at once to consciousness of ego cogitans* This primitive cog- nition may be the ground of a number of judgments, but it is to reverse the order of things entirely to make any one of these judgments the ground of the cognitions. The cognitions which have been unfolded in this Chap- ter, form, when memory begins to be exercised, the ground of our recognition of our personal identity, and lead us to believe in a self which abideth amid all changes of thought and mood and feeling. This subject will be resumed by us under the head of Primitive Judgments. IV. We know self as exercising potency. We have seen that we know it as having being; we know it further as having active being. W"e know it as acting, we know it as being acted on, we know it as the source of action. f Even in sense- perception we know it as being acted on from without, — nay, we know it as itself acting in producing the result. So far as we know ob- jects acting on it, we know it as capable of being in- fluenced, — in other words, as having a capacity of a particular description. So far as we know it acting in producing changes in itself or other things, we know it * " C'est par une meme perception de notre anie que nous eprouvons le sentiment intime et de notre pensee et de notre existence" (Buffier, Prem. Ver. p. i. c. i.). t Sir W. Hamilton admits all I am pleading for. " I know myself as a force in energy, the not-self as a counter-force in energy " (Note D, p. 666, of Ap. to Reid). And again : " We have a perception proper, of the secundo-primary quality, of resistance in an extra-organic force as an immediate cognition" (p. 883). Is this statement an essential part of his doctrine, or an incidental admission ? If part of his system, it should modify the view he has given elsewhere of our conviction of power as being a mere impotency (see Appendix to Discuss.). If it be inadvertent, it is a proof that truth will come out of honest men, in spite of the errors of their system. 154 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. as a potency, as having power. When we recollect, when we fondly dwell on a particular scene, when we fix the thoughts on a particular object, we are exercising power, and by consciousness we know that we are doing so. When in consequence of coming to know of events bearing upon us personally, — say of some blessing about to descend, or calamity about to befall, — we rejoice or grieve, we experience an effect. This conscious potency is especially felt in all exercises of the will, whether it be directed to the mental action which we wish to stay or quicken, or the bodily organism which we purpose to move. I demur, indeed, to the view maintained by some philosophers of eminence, that our idea of power is obtained exclusively from the consciousness of the power of will over the muscles. But I am persuaded that our most vivid conviction of power is derived from the influence of the will both on bodily and mental ac- tion,* and that the influence of the will on the organism is what enables us to connect mental with bodily action. But here it will be necessary to offer an explanation to save ourselves from obvious difficulties, which many have not seen their way to overcome. We shall find, under another head, that while we believe intuitively that every effect has a cause, we do not know by intuition what the cause is apart from experience; and that while we are convinced that the cause produces the effect, it is only by experience we know what the effect is. It follows that we do not know intuitively what or how many * This is substantially the view of Locke, who says, " Bodies by our senses do not afford us so clear and distinct an idea of active power as we have from reflection on the operations of our own mind." In de- riving our idea of Power from Sensation and Reflection, he supposes the mind to be actively and intelligently exercised. " Whatever change is observed, the mind must collect a power somewhere to make that change" (Essay, ii. xxi. 4). But Locke has omitted to inquire what it is in the mind which insists that it must collect a cause wherever there is a change. SPIRIT. 155 powers must concur to produce a given effect. This qualification will be found to have a great significance imparted to it by the circumstance to be afterwards noticed, that in order to most creature effects there is need of a concurrence of causes, or of a concause. When I will to move my arm, I know that the will is one of the elements in producing the effect, but I do not know, till physiology tells me, how many others must co-operate. It follows that one of the elements of a complex cause may act and no effect follow, because one part of the con- cause is absent. I may will to take a cheerful view of every- thing, and yet not be able owing to the rise of gloomy thoughts. I may will to move my arm and yet the arm may not move, because paralysis has cut off the concur- rence of the organism. This subject will again come before us under various aspects. V. We know the knowing mind to be different from the material object known, whether this be the organism as affected or the object affecting it. Not that we know by intuition wherein the difference lies ; not that we are in a position to say whether they may not, after all, have points of resemblance, and a mutual dependence, and a reciprocal influence, — on these points our only guide is a gathered experience. But in every act in which we know a bodily object, we know it to be dif- ferent from self, and self to be different from it. This is a conviction which we can never lose, and of which no sophistry can deprive us. We carry it with us at all times, and wherever we go. It makes it impossible for any man to confound himself with the universe, or the universe with him. Man may mistake one external ob- ject for another, but it is not possible that he should mistake an external object for himself, or identify himself with any other object. This conviction is thus a means, as shall be shown later in the treatise, of delivering us 15G PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. from the more common forms of idealism, and from every form of pantheism. VI. We know self in every one of its states, as these pass before self-consciousness. And herein lies an im- portant difference between the knowledge we have of mind and the greater portion of the knowledge we have acquired of the material universe. The knowledge which we have of matter by intuition is extremely limited. What we thus know, indeed, is supremely valuable, as the ground on which we erect all our other information ; still it is in itself very narrow, being confined to an ac- quaintance with our organism as extended and as ex- ercising an influence on the mind, and to objects imme- diately in contact with it. Most even of the knowledge which we have of our organism, and of objects in contact with it, is derivative ; and there is a process of inference in all that we know of objects at a distance, — of sun, moon, stars, of hills, rivers, valleys, — and of the persons and countenances and conversations of our friends. But in regard to our own minds, we know all the individual facts directly and intuitively. We gaze at once on the mind thinking, imagining, feeling, resolving. In this view it may be safely said that we know more of certain of the states and of the action of mind than we know of the whole material universe, even in this age of advanced science. It should be added, in order to save the remark from appearing to some incredibly extravagant, that while we thus know spontaneously so much about the workings of the mind, the majority of men think far more about their objective than their subjective knowledge. It should be further added, that while we are ever growing, more than people who have not thought on the subject imagine, in the knowledge of our mental affections, yet there are greater difficulties in adding to our original stock in the mental than in the material world. ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 157 It is the office of psychology, as a science, to observe wherein the states of mind which fall under conscious- ness agree and wherein they differ, and to endeavour to arrange and classify them. In conducting this its work, all the facts are discovered by consciousness as an intuitive faculty. Our sensations, our perceptions, our elaborated thoughts, our moral cognitions, our emotions, oar wishes, our volitions, and all our necessary convictions, are under our immediate view. But it is to be carefully observed that the classification is a work of discursive, and not of intuitive thought. We know our thoughts and feelings, but not as thoughts or feelings. As to how we are to arrange them, and as to what is the best classification of our mental states, this is a question not for intuition, but for mental science, looking to the facts which conscious- ness makes known. We are conscious, not of faculties, but merely of individual energies, which we compare and arrange under certain heads as faculties. It is impor- tant to state here once more that we are conscious of the intuitions of the mind as individual energies, and not as abstract forms or general laws. CHAPTER II. ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. Sect. I. (Preliminary) On the Nature oe Abstraction and Generalization. As abstraction and generalization perform so important a part in the formation of the a priori notions and maxims out of the concrete and individual convictions, it will be necessary to explain the nature of these processes, the more so as a defective account has often been given of them. 158 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. It is very generally acknowledged that man's mind begins with the concrete, and thence reaches the abstract, that is, that it first knows or contemplates an object with the qualities presenting themselves, and that it afterwards learns to consider the object apart from any particular quality, or the quality apart from the object. The statement now made, does not imply that man's pri- mary knowledge is complex. The complex is not the same as the concrete. In complex knowledge man has mingled several cogni- tions which are simple ; but to man the concrete is the simple. His primary knowledge is of objects with certain qualities which he may subsequently be able to separate and distinguish. Thus by the eye he gets a knowledge of the bodies before him as at one and the same time extended and coloured. By the muscular sense, or locomotive energy, he knows objects as extended, movable, and resisting energy. It is a curious circumstance that when the me- mory recalls an object, it always presents it in the concrete, that is, with qualities which can be separated. "We cannot even ima- gine an object except in the concrete ; we cannot picture to our- selves an extended surface without giving it colour of some kind, and we cannot imagine a colour except on an extended surface. With this primary knowledge and these representations in pos- session, the mind proceeds to abstract, and is urged to do so by a native intellectual impulse. It can separate in thought the quali- ties from the object, or one quality from another, say the colour from the form. Abstraction may be considered in a wider or in a narrower sense. It may be regarded, in an extended sense, as that opera- tion of mind, in which, to use the language of Whately, " we draw off and contemplate separately any part of an object presented to the mind, disregarding the rest" (Logic Anal. Out.). In this more general sense the parts may exist separately as well as the whole ; thus, having seen a judge with his wig, we can not only separate in thought the wig from the judge, but the wig can in fact be separated from the wearer. In a narrower sense, abstrac- tion is that operation of mind in which we contemplate the quality of an object separately from the object. "An abstract name," says Mr. Mill (Logic, b. i. c. ii.), " is a name which stands for an attri- bute of a thing." In this sense the part separated in thought can- not be separated from the object in fact. Colour may be thought ' of (not seen or imagined) apart from an extended body, but cannot exist apart from a coloured object. It is a very common impression that our abstractions are in no sense realities. I wish at this early stage of the investigations to ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 159 be prosecuted in this treatise, to set myself against this view, which has sometimes been positively expressed, but is far more fre- quently underlying and implied in statements and arguments without being formally announced. I lay down a very different position, that if the concrete be real, and the abstraction be pro- perly made, the abstract thing, that is, the thing contemplated in the abstraction, will also be real. I may never have seen a bird without wings, but I can consider the wings apart from the bird, and I am sure that the wings have as real an existence as the bird itself. This will be admitted at once in regard to all such cases as this, in which I can in fact separate the pinions from the body of the fowl. But I go a step further, and maintain, that even in cases in which the part abstracted cannot be separated in reality from the whole, still it is to be considered as real. It may not have, or be capable of having, an independent reality, but still it has a re- ality. I can think of gravitation apart from a given body, or from the chemical affinity of that body ; and in doing so I do not sup- pose that it can exist apart from body ; still the gravitation has an existence just as much as the body has, it has not a reality inde- pendent of the body, but it has a reality in the body, as a quality of it. The same remark might be applied to, and will hold good of, any other abstraction. No doubt if the original concrete object be imaginary, the abstraction formed from it may be the same ; I can separate in thought the beauty of Venus from Venus herself; and of course, as Venus is ideal, so also is her beauty. But when the object is real, and I abstract or separately contemplate what has been known in the real, then, as the concrete object is real, so is also the part or quality abstracted real ; not that it may be a real- ity capable of subsisting in itself, but still a reality in the object as a quality of it. I reckon it of the utmost moment to make this remark. The view here presented saves us on the one hand from an extreme Healism, which would attribute an independent reality to every quality abstracted, which would for example represent beauty as a separate thing, like a beautiful scene in nature, and on the other hand, from what is more important in our present inquiry, from regarding it as a nonentity, or at the utmost as a mere form or cre- ation of the mind.* ~\Ve are ever hearing the phrase repeated a * " Concreta vere res sint, abstracta non sunt res sed rerum modi ; modi autem nihil aliud sunt quam relationes rei ad intellectum sen appa- rendi facilitates" (Leibnitz de Stilo Philos. : Nizolii Op. p. 63). In this as in other matters, Leibnitz introduced a subjective tendency,which came forth in full manifestation only in a later age. 160 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. " mere abstraction ; " and the language is applied to such objects as space, time, beauty, and even truth and moral good. In opposi- tion to such views, I maintain that abstraction is not necessarily- concerned about fictions or illusions. Abstractions are not, as they have often been represented, the attenuated ghosts of de- parted quantities ; they may rather be represented as the very skeleton of the body, not capable of action alone, but still an im- portant existence in the body, acting with its covering of flesh and skin. Abstraction is not only a lofty intellectual exercise, it is in a sense a cognitive act, and when the concrete object looked at is real, it will give us, if properly conducted, a reality in the part se- parated. As to whether this part is or is not capable of a sepa- rate existence, this depends on the nature of -the original concrete cognition. Generalization is dependent on abstraction, and arises out of it. In generalization we contemplate an indefinite number of objects as possessing a common attribute or attributes. A general notion is a notion of these objects. This expressed in language is a com- mon term, which therefore stands for an indefinite number of ob- jects, for all that possess the common quality or qualities. As abstractions are formed out of concretes, so generalizations are formed out of individuals or singulars. It has been very generally allowed by philosophers that the mind begins with the knowledge of individual objects or scenes presented to it. Among these objects it may, by its "comparative faculty, discover resem- blances. In some cases the comparison is preceded by an ab- straction of the qualities in respect of which the objects are alike ; in other cases it may be perceived at once that there is a resem- blance, and the abstraction of the points of resemblance may follow. In all cases, both the discovery of resemblance and ab- straction are needful to generalization, in which we put in a class, and usually call by a common name, the objects thought to re- semble each other in certain respects, and so far as the} r resemble each other. 1 am prepared to lay down in regard to generalization a pro- position similar to that which I am inclined to enforce in regard to abstraction. When the individuals are real, the generaliza- tion has also a reality; that is, there is a reality in the class. True, I may constitute a class from imaginary individuals, — say a class of griffins, or a class of mermaids, or a class of ghosts. In such a case the" general is as unreal as the singular. But if my generalization is from real objects ; if it is a generalization made of objects in nature, say of marbles, or reptiles, or cruciferous ANALYSTS OP OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 161 plants, or even of objects of human workmanship, such as chairs, or houses, or churches, then the intellectual product has also a reality involved. I do not mean to say that the general exists, or can exist, as an individual thing, like the singulars which it em- braces, — that the class crocodile has the same sort of existence as the individual crocodile. — but I maintain that it has a reality in the common attributes possessed by the objects. • In abstraction, the reality may be simply that of an attribute in an individual object. In generalization, it is the possession of a common attribute by an indefinite number of objects. The com- position of marble is a fact quite as much, though not exactly of the same sort, as the limestone itself. The possession of cold blood, and of the three heart-compartments, is a reality quite as much as the individual crocodile is. The possession of four cross petals is a real thing, just as a particular wild mustard-plant is. The structure and adaptation to a practical use of chair, house, and church, are not fictitious any more than this chair, or this house, or this church is. This account preserves us on the one hand from an extravagant realism, which would give to the universal the same sort of reality as the singular ; and on the other, from an extreme conceptualism or nominalism, which would place the reality solely in the conception of the mind, or in the name. The class has a reality, but it is simply in the possession of common qualities by an indefinite number of objects. According to this view, abstraction and generalization are pro- cesses of a very high order ; they are, in fact, essential to philoso- phy, quite as much so, indeed, as Plato and the Schoolmen supposed; without them we can never reach the truths on which the higher forms of wisdom gaze. They always pre-suppose, indeed, that something has been given them ; but, acting upon this, they turn it to most important purposes, and if they start with realities and are properly conducted, they are ever in the region of realities, and of realities of the highest kind. We shall see as we advance that all philosophic notions and maxims are the results of these processes, some of them being abstractions, and others being also of the nature .of generalizations. Sect. II. On Being. But what can be said of Being? Verily, little can be said of it. The mistake of metaphysicians lies in their saying too much ; and they have made assertions which have, and can have, no meaning, and landed themselves M 162 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. in self-created mysteries or in contradictions. So little can be affirmed of Being, not because of the complexity of the idea, but because of its simplicity; we can find nothing simpler into which to resolve it. We have come to ultimate truth, and there is really no deeper foundation on which to rest it. There is no light behind in which to show it in vivid outline. In the concrete every one has the cognition of Being, just as every man has a skeleton in his frame. But the common mind is apt to turn away from the abstract idea, as it does from an anatomical preparation ; or ra- ther, it feels as if such attenuated notions belong to the regions of ghosts, where " Entity and quiddity, The ghosts of defunct bodies, fly." All that the metaphysician can do is to appeal to the perception which all men form, to separate this from the others with which it is joined, and make it stand out singly and simply, that it may shine and be seen in its own light, and with this the mind will be satisfied : — " Who thinks of asking if the sun is light, Observing that it lightens ?" Those who attempt anything more, and to peer into the object, will find that the light darkens as they gaze upon it. " When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves — air, into which they va- nished." I allow that the abstract notion of Being is one which the mind is not inclined spontaneously to fashion. As to many other abstractions, it is led naturally to form them ; they are framed for it, or it is compelled by the circumstances in which it is placed to frame them. Thus I see a man with a black coat one day, and with a grey coat the next, and I cannot but separate the colour from ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 163 the object. Bat in such high abstractions as Being, that which we contemplate is never, in fact, separated from any one thing. Still Being is an abstraction which we are constrained to make for philosophic purposes, and it was, in fact, formed so early as the age of the specu- lators of the Eleatic School. It is the one thing to be found objectively in all our knowledge. Hence in all our abstractions it is that which remains ; in the ascending process of generalization it is the summum genus. This does not prove that Being can exist apart from a special mode of existence, or the exercise of some quality. Nor does it prove that Ave can know Being se- parate from a concrete existence. I hold the one as well as the other of these to be impossible. But in all know- ledge we know what we know as having existence, which is Being. I cannot give my adhesion to the opinion of those who speak so strongly of man being incapacitated to know Being. I have already intimated my dissent from the Kantian doctrine that we do not know things, but ap- pearances ; and even from the theory of those Scottish metaphysicians who affirm that we do not know things, but qualities. What we know is the thing manifesting itself to us, — is the thing exercising particular qualities. But then it is confidently asserted that we do not know the " thing in itself." The language, I rather think, is unmeaning ; but if it has a meaning, it is incorrect. I do not believe that there is any such thing in existence as Being in itself, or that man can even so much as imagine it : and if this be so, it is clear that we cannot know it, and desirable that we should not suppose that we know it. Of this I 'am sure, that those Neo-Pla- tonists who professed to be able to rise to the discovery of Being in itself (which could only be the abstract idea of Being), and to be employed in gazing on it, had m 2 164 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. miserably bare and most unprofitable matter of medi- tation, whether for intellectual, or moral, or religious ends. But if any mean to deny that we can know Being as it is, I maintain in opposition to them, and I appeal to consciousness to confirm me when I say, that we immediately know Being in every act of cognition. But then we are told that we cannot know the mystery of Being.* I am under a strong impression that specu- lators have attached a much greater amount of mystery to this simple subject than really belongs to it. Of this I am sure, that much of the obscurity which has col- lected around it has sprung from the confused discus- sions of metaphysicians, who have laboured to explain what needs no explanation to our intelligence, or to get a basis on which to build what stands securely on its own foundation. I do indeed most fully admit that there may be much about Being which we do not know ; much about Being generally, much about every indi- vidual Being, unknown to us and unknowable in this world. Still I do affirm that we know so much of Being, and that any further knowledge conveyed to us would not set aside our present knowledge, but would simply enlarge it. Sect. III. On Substance. All that the metaphysician can do in regard to sub- * Kant everywhere speaks of our not knowing the "Ding an sich." See in the Kritik of Pure Eeason (Antin. d. r. Y. Abs. vi.). M. Cousin allows to Kant that we have not a consciousness of our proper nature, otherwise, he says, that the abysses and mysteries of existence would all be known ; but to save himself from the Kantian consequences, he calls in reason to give us a conviction of self and personal identity : — " Nul de nous n'a conscience de sa propre nature, sans quoi les abimes de l'existence seraient faciles a sonder, les mysteres de lame nous scraient parfaitement connus." " L'identite personnels est une con- viction de la raison " (ser. ii. lee. xviii.). It were surely both simpler and wiser to suppose that there is intelligence in consciousness, and that this intelligent consciousness knows self. ANxVLYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 165 stance is to show that our cognition of it is original and fundamental, and to evolve what is contained in the cognition. He should not attempt to prove how it is so and so (the Store of Aristotle), but he may show that it is so and so (the on of Aristotle). He could not give the dimmest idea of it to one who had not already the know- ledge, but he may separate it by analysis from the other cognitions with which it is combined, and make it stand out fully to the view. He may so weigh and measure it as to show its extent and boundary, and deliver it from those crudities in which speculators have incrusted it. The following is the best analysis I am able to furnish. I. In all knowledge of substance there is involved Being or Existence, not of being in the abstract, but of something in being. This we have seen is an essential element in our cognition, both of mind and body. The mind starts with knowledge, and with the knowledge of things as having being. This is the foundation, the ne- cessary foundation, of all other exercises. If the mind did not begin with knowledge, it could not end w r ith knowledge. In particular, if it had not knowledge in the concrete, it never could get knowledge in the abstract. If there were not a knowledge of things in the premisses with which w T e set out, there never could be such a know- ledge in the conclusion. But having knowledge, obtained by intuition, to set out with, we find that when we proceed legitimately — that is, according to the laws of thought — in our discursive exercises, we have always reality in the conclusion. II. In all knowledge of substance there is involved Active Power. We cannot know self, or the mind that knows, except as active, that is, exerting power, or as being affected. Nor can we know material objects except as exercising or suffering an influence — that is a certain kind of power. They become known to us as having a 166 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. power either upon ourselves or upon other objects, and we express this when we say that we know matter by its properties. This is a doctrine which has been opposed by a large school of metaphysicians that have felt directly or indi- rectly the influence of Descartes, who represented exten- sion as the essence of matter. This oversight has marred their whole speculations, and landed them in innumer- able difficulties. For not finding power in our original cognitions, they have either with the sceptic Hume denied that we have any such cognition, or they have with Kant made it a form which the mind imposes on objects. Still a large amount of authority can be pleaded in behalf of the doctrine, that power is involved in our idea of sub- stance. It is the expressed view of Locke. It is main- tained by Leibnitz with all the ingenuity of his specula- tive genius. Even Kant acknowledges (though from the subjective character which he ascribes to our intuitive convictions, he can turn it to no profitable account) that cause is involved in our idea of substance.* It has been incidentally admitted by many who have theoretically de- nied it. III. There is involved in our knowledge of substance a conviction of its having a Permanence.! This proposi- tion must be very guardedly stated. By being loosely and inaccurately announced, it has led to very erroneous and * Locke says that " powers make a great part of our complex ideas of substances ". (Essay ii. xxiii. 7-10). Leibnitz says, "Jusqu'ici rien n'a mieux marque la substance que la puissance d'agir " (Op. p. 460). The language of Kant is, " Diese Causalitat fiihrt auf den Begriff der Handlung, diese auf den Begriff der Kraft und dadurch aufdeu Begriff der Substanz." " Wo Handlung mithin Thiitigkeit und Kraft ist, da ist auch Substanz" (Werke, pp. 172, 173). "Die Substanz in Eaume kennen wir nur durch Krafte " (p. 218). See also Abrici System der Logik, Th. i. 5, where are some profound views of power. t Speaking of such qualities as hardness, Beid says : — " They were real qualities before they were perceived by touch, and continue to be so when they are not perceived ; for if any man will affirm that dia- ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 167 dangerous doctrines. But there is a truth here, if we could only properly apprehend and express it. A substance is not a spectre which appeared when we began to see it, and which may cease to exist when we have ceased to view it. This conviction is at the basis of the belief in the abiding nature of every existing thing, amid all the changes which it may undergo. However a piece of mat- ter may be beat or cut mechanically, we do not believe it to be destroyed. However it may be evaporated or de- composed by heat or chemical processes, we are not con- vinced that it is annihilated. When the moisture on the earth disappears, we do not therefore conclude that it has vanished into nothing ; we look for it in a new form, and our expectation is gratified when we discover it in the vapour of the atmosphere or the cloud. When fuel is put on the fire it gradually disappears from the view, but we inquire for it elsewhere, and find it in the ashes and in the smoke. Our conviction of the abiding nature of self is still more deeply rooted and fixed. We believe in its continuance amid all the changes of thought and sen- sation, mood and feeling, lethargy and activity. But while there is all this in our apprehension of sub- stance, there is not more than this, and the errors have arisen from supposing that there is more. In particular, our conviction does not require us to believe either in the necessary existence of every substance or in its indestructibility. Our intuition does not say whether it has or has not been created, whether it does or does monds were not hard till they were handled, who would reason with him ?" " Our sensations suggest to us a sentient being or mind to which they belong, a sentient being which hath a permanent exist- ence, although the sensations are transient and of short duration, a being which is still the same while its sensations and other opera- tions are varied ten thousand ways " (Reid's Works, pp. 120, 122). The word suggest, taken from Berkeley and from Locke, was appropriate enough as used by idealists, but comes awkwardly from Heid. The word should have been know. 16S PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. not need the Divine power to maintain and uphold it, whether it may or may not be destroyed. It does not entitle us to affirm that matter must ever have existed, or must, if formed, have been fashioned out of pre-existing materials. Nor does it say how long it has existed, or how long it will exist. An analogous intuitive convic- tion — that of cause — says that if produced, it must have been produced by a cause ; that if destroyed, it must be by a power independent of itself. Hence we cannot assert positively, when we see a substance, say a piece of burned coal, disappearing from our view, that it must still exist, for in the operation of combustion there may have been a power to destroy it ; all that we can affirm is, that the substance did not vanish of itself. All that our in- tuition guarantees is, that in itself substance has perma- nence, and that if destroyed, it must be by something ah extra. By this limitation we are saved at once from certain pernicious consequences which were drawn from the doc- trine of Descartes. According to him, a substance is that which subsists of itself, which has no need of anything from without in order to its existence.* Proceeding on this definition, Spinoza laboured to show that there was and could be only one substance, of which everything is an attribute or a mode. The school of Descartes sought to save themselves from this pantheistic consequence by various devices. It is not to our present purpose to in- quire whether these were or were not successful, as in accordance with the principles of Descartes. To me it appears that we must amend the definition of Descartes, * " Per substantiam niliil aliud intelligere possumus, quam rem quas ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum. Et quidem substan- tia quae nulla plane re indigeat, unica tantum potest intellige, nempe Deus. Alias vero omnes non nisi ope concursus Dei existcre posse percipimus" (Prin. Phil., p. i. 51). He speaks of created substances " quod sint res qua) solo Dei concursu egent ad existendum " (ib. 52). ANALYSIS OF OUR PRTMTIVE COONITIONS. 169 and reject the definition of Spinoza, and then all the con- clusions founded on them must fall to the ground. " I understand," says Spinoza, " by substance, that which is in itself, and conceived by itself; that is to say, that of which the concept can be formed without hav- ing need of the concept of any other thing."* There is a whole aggregate of things jumbled in this definition. That which is in itself is one thing, that which is con- ceived by itself is another thing, which is not even neces- sarily the same as that which is given as an explanation, viz. that of which a concept can be formed without having need of the concept of any other thing. I object to our conviction in regard to substance being called a concept, a phrase denoting an abstract or general notion formed by a discursive process of the understanding ; the conviction is an intuition. The intuition says of every substance that it is a thing or reality, but it does not say whence the reality proceeded. It says that substance has power, but it does not say whence that power. No doubt a substance is a thing known (not merely conceived) in itself, but the same may be said of space and time, and everything apprehended intuitively. Having removed this definition out of the way, as not the expression of our intuitive knowledge, we leave the whole pantheism of Spi- noza without a foundation. I am certain that our native conviction as to substance gives no countenance to pan- theism of any kind. Our intuition says that substance has being, but it does not say whether it is dependent or independent being. It says that it has power, but it does not say that it is underived, or whence it is derived. It says that it has permanence, but does not say that it has not been created, and that it cannot be destroyed. * " Per substantiam intelligo id quod in se est et per se concipitur ; hoc est id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei a quo formari debeat " (Ethices p. i. def. 3 : ed. Bruder). 170 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. According to the account now given, self or spirit must be a substance. We know it as having being, we know it as having power and permanence. While it has all these, it is to be studiously noticed that we do not know it to have all, or indeed any, of these independently. For aught our intuition says, it may be dependent for all of these on the creative power or concurrent power of God. Not only so, it may, for anything our intuition intimates, be dependent for some of these on its association with the bodily organism in this present state of things. If we wish to settle these questions, we must look to other circumstances and considerations. Many metaphysicians have felt greater difficulty in al- lowing that matter is a substance. But explaining sub- stance as has been done in this Section, it is entitled to be so regarded. It too has being, power, and endurance. We can deny this only by refusing to follow our native convictions. But in standing up for the substantial na- ture of body, it is still more necessary than in the case of spirit, to bear in mind the qualifications under which we make the statement. We cannot affirm of matter that it has derived its characteristics from no source indepen- dent of itself. Nor can we declare of it that it can sub- sist of itself, and independent of the co-operating power of mind, that is, the Divine Mind. We are stretching intuition altogether beyond its province, if we make it pronounce oracular decisions on any such questions. But are mind and matter different substances? I reply that there are certain positions on this subject which can be defended against all opposition. First, in the cognition of the knowing mind, which ever co-exists with our cognition of matter, we always know the two to be different. When we look at these hills we have ever an accompanying cognition of self as looking at the hills, and we know the hills to be different from self, and self ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 171 to be different from the hills. Secondly, we know that the very things by which substance is characterized — ex- istence, potency, and permanence — are not the same in the case of mind and body. Thus the being of mind is not the same with that of matter, nor are the powers of mind the same with those of matter, nor does the per- manence of body depend on human beings observing it, nor can it be shown that the permanence of mind de- pends on the permanence of the bodily frame. With these proofs or presumptions in our favour, we may surely throw the onus probandi of proving that they are the same substance on our opponents. But, thirdly, all at- tempts to resolve mind into matter, or matter into mind, have utterly failed. If we deny that matter has an exist- ence independent of the contemplative mind, we are trampling on one of the intuitions of our nature. Those who resolve mind into matter always overlook the very essential qualities of the knowing, the conscious, the thinking, the moral, the responsible soul. We are thus entitled, from all we can know of substance, to declare them to be different substances. As to whether they may not, after all, have some unity in the view of higher intelligences, who take a deeper view of substance, this is a question which we need not start, for we cannot settle it, and the unity is one which we can never discover nor comprehend. It is enough for us that they are different substances in all the characteristics of substance known to us. Sir W v Hamilton* remarks that the word 'substance' (substantia) may be " viewed as derived from subsistendo, and as meaning ens per se subsistens (ovata, in Greek) ; * or it may be viewed as the basis of attributes, in which sense it may be regarded as derived from substando, and id quod substat accidentibus ; like the Greek, vttogtclo-ls, * Metapk., Lect. 8., where are admirable definitions of terms. 172 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. vTTo/cel/jLevov. In either case it will, however, signify the same thing, viewed in a different aspect." With this latter statement I cannot concur. In the first of these senses there is such a thing as a substance, and its character- istics can be specified. But I can see no evidence what- ever for the existence of any such thing as a substance in the other sense, that is, as a substratum lying in and beyond, or standing under, all that comes under our im- mediate knowledge.* There is no topic on which there has been a greater amount of unintelligible language em- ployed than on this. We know, it is said, only qualities, * " If any one will examine himself concerning liis notion of pure substance in general, he will find that he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us ; which qualities are commonly called accidents" (Locke, Essay ii. xxiii. 23). His view is thus fully expounded in his ' Letter to Stillingfleet:' — " Your Lordship well expresses it, — We find that we can have no true conception of any modes or accide.iLs, but we must conceive a substratum or subject toher ein they are; i.e. that they cannot exist or subsist of themselves. Hence the mind perceives their necessary connection with inherence or being sup- ported ; which being a relative idea, superadded to the red colour in a cherry, or to thinking in a man, the mind frames the correlative idea of a support. For I never denied that the mind could frame to itself ideas of relation, but have showed the quite contrary in my chapters about relation. .But because a relation cannot be founded on nothing, or be the relation of nothing, and the thing here related as a supporter or support is not represented to the mind by any clear and distinct idea, therefore the obscure, indistinct, vague idea of thing or something is all that is left to be the positive idea which has the relation of a sup- port or substratum to modes or accidents ; and that general undeter- mined idea of something is by the abstraction of the mind derived also from the simple ideas of Sensation and Reflection ; and thus the mind, from the positive simple ideas got by sensation or reflection, comes to the general relative idea of substance ; which without these posi- tive simple ideas it could never have." I have quoted this passage because it lets us see fully what Locke's precise theory is, and what are its defects. The mind gets all its ideas from sensation and reflec- tion, but in comparing ideas it discovers necessary relations. Among these is substance, of which the idea is very obscure. Still the mind is led to suppose that there is such a thing acting as a support or sub- sti ■fi/.u m. ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 173 but we are constrained by reason, or by common sense, to believe in a something in which thev inhere. Or qualities, it is said, fall under sense, while substance is known by vous, or reason. Others, proceeding on these admissions, maintain that qualities alone being known, we mar doubt whether there is such a thin & as sub- stance, and may certainly affirm that we can never know it. Xow in opposition to all this style of thinking and writing, which has prevailed to so great an extent since the days of Locke, I maintain that we never know qua- lities without also knowing substance. Qualities, as qualities distinct from substances, are as much unknown to us as substance distinct from qualities. We shall show in next Section that we know both in one concrete act. We know qualities as qualities of a real thing, hav- ing being and power and permanence. Sect. IT. Ox Mode, Quality, Property, Essence. Two great truths press themselves on the reflecting mind when it contemplates this world of ours. One of these, the more obvious, is the mutability of all mundane objects. Xo thing seems to be enduring, all appears to be fluctuating. This has been a favourite view of poets, to whom it has furnished a succession of kaleidoscope pictures ; moralists and divines have dwelt upon it, in order to allure us to seek for something more stable than this world can furnish ; and even libertines have turned it to their own use, and exhorted us to catch the enjoyment while it passes, to shoot the bird on the wing : " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Philosophies have been built on this doctrine of the fluctuation of all things. Heraclitus of Ephesus taught that all things are in a perpetual flux ; that we cannot enter the same stream twice ; whereon Cratylus rebuked him, and showed that we cannot do so once.* But there is another truth * Aristotle, Met. iii. y. 6. 174 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. which has a no less important, indeed a deeper place in the nature of things. In the midst of all these mutations objects have, after all, a permanence. Ever changing, they are yet all the while ever the same. Per- sons of deeper thought, or at least more addicted to ab- straction, looking beneath the changing surface, dwell on this permanence, which they discover to be like the fixed mountain — while the changes are merely like the colours that pass over its surface ; and some have so magnified it as to make it set aside the mutability. The Eleatics carried their doctrine so far as to maintain the oneness and unchangeableness of all being. The founder of the school, Xenophanes, identified this immutable oneness with the Divine Being. His disciple, Parmenides, dege- nerating in religious faith, though superior to the master in logical power, narrowed this unity into metaphysi- cal being. Zeno, who followed, showed his subtlety by pointing out the difficulties in which they are involved who maintain the existence of multiplicity and motion. The expansive mind of Plato wrestled with both these extremes, and sought by his doctrine of supra-sensible ideas, and an exuberance of subtleties, to establish a doctrine of being not inconsistent with multiplicity and change. In modern times Descartes and Spinoza have magnified the importance of Substance quite as much as the Eleatics did Being, while the great mass of physicists, and all the speculators of the Sensational School never get deeper than the fleeting and the phenomenal. The wise, and the only proper course, is to assume both, to assume both as first truths. No attempt should be made to support either by mediate proof; each car- ries with it its own evidence. Neither can be set aside by any sophistical reasoning founded on the other. It is the business of philosophy not to attempt to discard either, but rather to give the proper account of each, when they will be seen not to be inconsistent. The doc- ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 17 5 trine of the permanence of objects is founded on being and substance. We must take a view of the other truth in this Section. Every substance, we have seen, is known as having being, power, and endurance. But every terrestrial sub- stance is at. the same time known as changing. Self changes as we look in upon it; the material world changes as we look out upon it. No attempt should be made to explain how the two can co-exist, the permanent and the changeable. For mind and body are known at one and the same time as both. The one is quite as much known, and therefore quite as conceivable ever after- wards, as the other ; and there can be no difficulty (what- ever metaphysicians may ingeniously urge in opposition) in conceiving of their compatibility, since they were ever known to exist together. It is one of the permanent characters, both of mind and body, that they are ever known as changing. Their liability to change is an ele- ment in their very nature. Now the appropriate term to express the given state of any one substance is Mode ; or if we wish a convenient change of phraseology, Modi- Jlcaiion, State, or Condition. From this account we see in what sense it is that substance implies mode, and mode implies substance. Mode implies substance, not only inasmuch as a state must be the state of something, but inasmuch as mode is the state of a substance liable to change, and so ca- pable of manifesting itself in more than one phase. Substance implies mode, inasmuch as it must always be in a certain state, and is liable to be in different states. The maxim is more than a verbal one, more than a truism, more than an identical (analytic) judg- ment involved in the terms ; it is a judgment affirming a truth intuitively discovered by the mind when looking at the things (a synthetic judgment a priori.) 170 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. Every object is known not only as having being, but is known as having a certain being or nature. That which is thus manifested to us may be something com- mon to this one thing with other things, or it may be something peculiar to the thing itself. Every particular substance known, is known as at least having* being and potency and an abiding nature, and is known also as possessing peculiar or distinguishing attributes. That by which the object is thus known to us as in itself, or as acting, may be called a quality of the substance. Sir W. Hamilton speaks of the qualities of substance as " its aptitudes and manners of existence and of action."* But let us properly understand the relation of the two, substance and quality. The two are ever known in one concrete act. Thus when at a given moment we know self as rejoicing, we do not know the self as separate, or the rejoicing as separate, but Ave grasp the self and the rejoicing at once. Bat then it is necessary for many purposes to distinguish between them, and we do so by analysis ; indeed, the analysis is in a sense done for us naturally. Eor while self is rejoicing to-day, it may be grieving to-morrow. To express the distinction it is need- ful to have a nomenclature, and so we distinguish be- tween the substance and the quality. Not that the sub- stance can ever exist without the quality, or the quality without the substance. On the contrary, the one im- plies the other. The substance must always have at least the qualities by which all substance is characterized, and it may have many others. The qualities must always be qualities of a thing having these characteristics. The maxim that the substance implies the quality, is thus a proposition of the same character as that the substance implies the mode. The word ' substance' may be used cither as an abstract * Metaph., Lect. viii. ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 177 or a general term. As- an abstract term it designates the thing as having the characteristics of substance, which I believe to be existence, potency, and continuance. As a general term it denotes all those things which have the characteristics of substance. Quality, too, may be employed as an abstract or a general term. As an ab- stract term it denotes that in any given substance by which it acts or manifests itself. As a general term it denotes all the manifestations or actions of a substance. Some of these qualities are found in all substance : such are the characteristics of substance of which I have so often spoken. Others are peculiar to certain substances, or manifest themselves in certain substances at certain times. Particular qualities are known by us intuitively to be in mind or matter. Thus we know consciousness, personality, thought, and will, as in mind ; while we know extension and incom possibility as being in matter ; these may appropriately be styled Essential Qualities of spirit and body. Other qualities are discovered by expe- rience. Both mind and body may have qualities which can never be known by us. As to the qualities which become known to us by experience, and the qualities concealed from us, we can never know whether any of them are, or are not, essential either to body or mind. If this view be correct, we see that a wrong account is often given of substance and qualities, and the relation be- tween them. Thus it is very common to say that substance is a thing behind the qualities or underneath them, act- ing as a substratum, basis, ground, or support. All such language is in its very nature metaphorical ; the analogy is of the most distant kind, and may have a misleading character. The substance is the very thing itself, consi- dered in a certain aspect, and the qualities are its action or manifestation. Again, it is frequently said that quali- ties are known, whereas substance cannot be known, or N 178 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. if known, known only by some deeper or more transcen- dental principle of the mind. Now I hold that we never know quality except as the quality of a substance, and that we know both equally in one undivided act. This a somewhat less mystical or mysterious account than that commonly given by metaphysicians, but is, as it appears to me, in strict accordance with the revelations of consci- ousness. I have said that the term 'quality' expresses all in the substance by which it acts or manifests itself. That in substance which acts, is power, and in all substance (we have seen) is power. The term Property, which signi- fies peculiar quality, might, I think, in accordance with a usage to which it has of late been approximating more and more, be appropriated to express the powers of any given substance, as the power of thinking or feeling in mind, or of gravity or chemical affinity in body. To vary the phraseology, the word Faculty may be employed when we speak of mental powers, and Force when we speak of material powers. It is the business of science to de- termine by observation and generalization, the powers or properties of mind and body. Another phrase with the ideas involved in it requires to be explained here, and that is Essence. It is a very mystical word, and a whole aggregate of foolish specula- tion has clustered round it. Still it may have a mean- ing. As applied logically to classes of objects, it has a sig- nification which can be precisely fixed ; it denotes the common quality or qualities which are found in all the members of the class. Thus the possession of four limbs is the essence of the class quadruped. It is to be re- membered that when the class is one of what some logi- cians call Kinds, it is impossible to specify all the com- mon qualities which go to constitute it. Thus we cannot tell all the attributes which go to make up such natural ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 179 classes as those of metal, dog, or rose. All that we can do is to specify some of the more marked, which are signs of others. But for such logical purposes the phrase 'com- mon attribute ' or ' differentia 'is the better, and is more frequently employed. It is in metaphysics that the word ' essence' is supposed to have a place. Thus the question is often put, What is the essence of mind ? or What is the essence of body ? or What is the essence of this individual mind, or of this piece of clay or chalk? Now we can answer such a question as this, only when we are allowed to draw distinctions and offer explanations. First, we may allowably conceive that every one object, and every class of objects, has an aggregate of things which go to con- stitute it, and we may with perfect propriety refer to such an "essence as possibly or probably existing,* but always on the distinct condition forthwith to be specified more formally, that we do not speak of the essence as something which can be known by us in all its totality. Secondly, there are some things which we know to be- long to the essence of certain objects ; thus we know that being, power, and permanence, are essential to all substance, and that certain qualities belong to mind, and certain qualities, such as extension and incoin pos- sibility, to body. But we must ever guard against the idea that there may not be other qualities also essential to these objects. For, Thirdly, the essence of a thing, at least in its totality, must always be unknown to man. How many things are united in body or mind, or in any individual mind or material object, this can never be ascertained by human observation or ingenuity. In this sense it is proper in us to speak of the essence of things * Locke, ' Letter to Stillingfleet,' takes Essences " to be in everything that internal constitution, or frame, or modification of the Substance, which God, in his wisdom and good pleasure, thinks fit to give to every particular creature when he gives it a being ; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist." N 2 180 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. as being unknown to man ; meaning thereby, not that we cannot know the substance, which I maintain we do know, or that we cannot know some of the qualities which go to make up the essence, but merely that we cannot know what precisely constitutes the essence in its entire- ness. But, Fourthly, we are not warranted to maintain that there must be something lying further in than the qualities we know, and that this one thing is entitled to be regarded as the essence of the object. We have no ground whatever for believing that there must be, or that there is, something more internal or central than the sub- stance and quality which we know. True, there are pro- bably occult qualities, even in those objects with which we are most intimately acquainted, but we are not there- fore warranted to conclude that what is concealed must differ in nature or in kind from what is revealed, or that it is in any way more necessary to the existence or the continuance of the object. I have a shrewd suspicion that there is a vast amount of unmeaning talk in the language which is employed on this special subject by metaphysicians, who would see something which the vul- gar cannot discern, whereas they should be contented with pointing to what all men perceive. It is quite con- ceivable, and perfectly possible, that though we should know all about any given terrestrial or material object, we should after all not fall in with anything more my- sterious or deep than those wonders which come every day under our notice in the world without, or the world within us. Sect. V. On Personality. Our perception of personality is closely connected with our knowledge of being, but there is more in personality than in being. We know material objects as having existence, but we have a special apprehension in regard ANALYSTS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 181 to self beyond what we have in regard to material ob- jects. * Like every other simple perception, it cannot be defined, but it may be brought out to separate view by abstraction ; and consciousness (with memory) will re- cognize it as one of the cognitions which it had seen before in company with others. We express this con- viction when we say we are persons. The abstract idea is one not likely to be spontaneously formed. The infant, the child, the savage, are not in the habit of making any such analysis of consciousness, nor are the great body of mankind at the trouble of asserting their own existence. Such a proposition, with its subject and predicate, will be formed only after philosophy has taken a shape, — probably only after sophistry and scepticism have been attacking our original convictions. It is only the metaphysician who will ever take the trouble of af- firming that he exists, and the wise metaphysician will refrain from going further and trying to prove that he exists. Yet it is a conviction which the mind ever carries with it ; it is one of the high characteristics of humanity. In- animate matter is without it. The brute shows that he is tending towards it, yet can have it only in an incipient degree. It is the very essence of the man's individuality, * " This self-personality, like all other simple and immediate presen- tations, is indefinable ; but it is so, because it is superior to definition. It can be analyzed into no simpler elements, for it is itself the simplest of all ; it can be made no clearer by description or comparison, for it is revealed to us in all the clearness of an original intuition, of which description and comparison can furnish only faint and partial resem- blances " (Mansel, ' Prolegomena Logica,' p. 129 ; see also Art. Met. in Encyc. Brit. p. 618, 619, etc.). It was the greatest of all the oversights of Kant that he did not give personality a place among the intuitions of the mind, to which it was entitled quite as much as space and time. Held in by no primary belief in personality, those who came after, such as Fiehte, Schelling, and Hegel, wandered out into a wide waste of Pantheism. Taking with them no belief in the personality of self, they never could reach personality in God. 182 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. and is one of the main elements in his sense of inde- pendence, in his sense of freedom, in his sense of re- sponsibility. As possessing it, man feels that he is inde- pendent of physical nature ; independent of all creature intelligences ; independent, in a sense, of God, against whom, alas ! he may rebel, and to whom he must for certain give an account. It is a conviction to be used and not abused. It would certainly be abused were it to seduce man to isolate himself from the objects around him, to try to become independent of the provisions made to aid his weakness in physical nature, or to sepa- rate himself from his brothers or sisters of humanity; and still more were it to tempt him to rebel against God. It is properly used when, under the guidance of moral law, it is leading him, not to be ever floating on with the stream, but at times to be standing up in the midst of it and acting as a rampart in its current, or as a martyr seeking to stem the tide of corruption, or Pro- metheus-like, rising up, not against the true God, but against the false gods who rule in Olympus. Powers hostile to the progress of humanity have sought to sub- due this principle. Absolutism would crush it, and make man live for some dominant end, political or ec- clesiastical. Pantheism would dissipate it till man be- came relaxed and lost all individuality, as he moves listlessly in a hot and hazy atmosphere. It is this con- viction which makes man feel that he is not a mere bubble on the surface of being, blown up in one chance agitation, and about to be absorbed in another. It keeps man from being lost, — lost in physical nature, lost in the crowd of human beings, or lost in the ocean of being ; he is, after and amidst all, a person. As such he has a part to perform, an end to serve, a work to do, a destiny to work out, and an account to render. ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 183 Sect. VI. On Extension. The knowledge of extension is involved in every exer- cise of sense-perception, even as the knowledge of per- sonality is implied in every exercise of self-consciousness. We certainly cannot exercise the senses of sight and muscular energy, — we cannot, I believe, perceive through any of the senses, — without knowing the object, be it the organism or something affecting the organism, as pos- sessing extension — always along w T ith other qualities. This, then, is historically the origin of our idea of exten- sion or space, — that is, we have a perception of it in every cognition of body. But in this primitive know- ledge we do not apprehend it as distinct from body. It is an extended and a coloured surface, wdiich we know through the eye ; it is an extended body capable of resisting us, which we know through the muscular sense and locomotive energy; it is a set of organs localized and out of each other, that we know by the other senses. But by an easy intellectual act we can separate the extension from the impenetrability and the associated sensations. We are greatly aided in our apprehensions of empty space by certain exercises of sense-perception. For we have experience ever presenting itself of two bodies seen or felt, with nothing between obvious to the senses. True, scientific research shows that the interval is not a pure vacuum, that there is air, or ether, between the bodies ; still it is in our apprehension a void, — that is, a space, with no perceived body to fill it. We are thus led to an apprehension of space as different from body occupying space. We are not to look on the ex- tension thus reached as an illusion, a nonentity," or as nothing. If we know, as I maintain we do, body in space, the space must have an existence (I do not saj what sort of existence), just as much as the body has. 184 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. But when we separately contemplate the extension, we are contemplating a reality just as verily as when we perceive the body. It will not do to dismiss space sum- marily by describing it as a mere abstraction ; in order to our apprehension of it there is need of abstraction, but it is an abstraction of a real part from a real whole. To this cognition of space, and to every apprehension of it, there is attached a number of intuitive beliefs. It is the business of the metaphysician to unfold these in an inductive manner, and point out and determine their nature and laws as precisely as possible. This falls to be done in another Book of this Treatise, to which therefore I adjourn the further discussion of space, as it embraces a larger faith than it does of a cognitive element in our apprehension of it. Sect. VII. On Number. We seem to derive our knowledge of number from our cognition of being, and especially from our cognition of self as a person. We know self as one object; we also know other and external objects as singulars. Already then have we number in the concrete, involved in this our primary knowledge.* Every object known, and espe- cially self, is known as one. Every other object known, is known as another one. If we know self as one, then the external object which is known as different from self, is known as a second one. The mind can now think of one object, and of one object + another object, or of two, and of one object + another object + another ob- * Aristotle places number among the sensibles perceived by tlie com- mon sense (De An. ii. 6 ; iii. 1). He says each sense perceives unity : endo-Tr) yap ev alaQnai aio-Oqo-Ls (iii. 1. 5 : ed. Trend.). Descartes makes number perceived by us in all perceptions of body (Prin. p. i. 69). Locke says of Unity or One, "Every object our senses are employed about, every idea in our understandings, every thought of our minds, brings this idea along with it" (Essay ii. xvi. 1). Burner says that the knowledge that I exist, I am, I think, is in a sense the same as, or at leant includes this, I am one (Prem. Ver. p. ii. 10). ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 185 ject, or of three. It can then, by a process of abstrac- tion, separate the numbers from the objects, in order to their separate consideration. Not that it supposes for one instant that numbers can exist apart from objects, but it can separately contemplate them. One cannot exist apart from one object, or two from two objects, but the mind can think about the one or the two apart from the peculiarity of the objects. Its judgments and its conclusions in all such cases, if conducted according to the laws of thought, will apply to objects ; that is,- all its judgments regarding one, two, or a thousand, will apply to a corresponding number of objects. Having obtained in this way a knowledge of numbers in the concrete, and numbers in the abstract, the mind is prepared to discover relations among numbers in a manner to be afterwards specified in the book on Primitive Judgments. But before leaving our present topic, it may be proper to state that the mind has no such conviction of the ex- istence of numbers separate from the objects numbered, as it has of space, distinct from the objects in space, or as it has of time, distinct from the events which happen in time ; nor has it any intuitive belief as to the necessary infinity of objects or of numbers. True, it can set no limit to the number of objects, but it is not compelled to believe that there can be no limits, as it is constrained to believe that there can be no bounds to space or to time. Sect. VIII. On Motion. Our perception of motion is, as it appears to me, intui- tive. But it supposes more than sense, or sense-percep- tion, in the narrow sense of the term. It is probable that we have an apprehension of change of place, from the movement of our intuitively localized organs, — say from a member of the body being moved by the locomo- tive energy, as when I lift my arm ; this perception will be 186 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. especially apt to arise when we move the hand along or- gans to which a place has been given. Or we may ap- prehend an extra-organic body by the touch or muscular sense, and by the same sense feel our hand or some other extra-organic body passing over it. We may also get the perception by the sense of sight. The child touching another part of the body by its hand, will see the image of its hand moving to perform the act. Besides, the " image of our own body occupies, in nearly all pictures on our retina, regularly some determinate space in the upper, middle, or lower part of the field of vision;" it re- mains constant while the other images are seen moving.* There is more here however than immediate cognition. There is a brief exercise of memory ; we must, at the same time that we perceive the body as now in one place, remember that it was formerly in another place. There is an exercise too of comparison in noticing the relation between the object in respect of the place in which it has been, and the place in w^hich it now is. And upon our discovering change of any kind in the motion, the intui- tion of cause comes in to declare that there must have been active power at work. This is one of those cases which will come before us more and more frequently as we advance, in which cognitions, beliefs, and judg- ments mingle together ; and yet the act can scarcely be described as complex, except in this sense, that on other occasions some of the parts can exist separately or in other combinations. The circumstance that these other elements conjoin in our conviction as to motion, will bring the subject before us in other parts of the Treatise. * (Miiller's Physiology : trans, by Baly, p. 1083.) Aristotle places motion, like number, among the common sensibles, Descartes among the properties perceived in every perception of body (see places in last note), and Locke among the primary qualities of bodies, which are al- ways in them (ii. viii. 22). See some profound observations on motion in ' Logische Untersuchungen v. Trendelenburg,' b. i. iv. ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 187 Sect. IX. On Power. I have been labouring to show, in the last Chapter and in this, that power is involved in our knowledge of sub- stance. We can never know either self, or bodies beyond self, except as exercising influence or potency. Not that we are to suppose that we have thus by intuition an ab- stract or a general idea of power : all that we have is a knowledge of a given substance acting. This seems the only doctrine in accordance with the revelations of con- sciousness. It is involved in the common statement that we cannot know substance except by its properties ; for what are properties but powers acting when the needful conditions are supplied ? I reckon it as an oversight in a great body of metaphysicians that they have been afraid to ascribe our apprehension of power to intuition. In consequence of this neglect, some never get the idea of power, but merely of succession, within the bare limits of experience, which can never entitle us to argue that the world must have proceeded from Divine Power; others have been obliged to find cause, not in any perception of the mind as it looks on things, but in some form im- posed by the mind on objects; while a considerable number hesitate and vacillate in their account, repre- senting it now as an original conviction, and now as an acquisition of experience. Wherever there is power in act, there is an effect. But the discovery of the relation between cause and effect cannot be discovered, except by an exercise of judgment. The discussion of the nature of our conviction of Power will be resumed under the head of Primitive Judgments. Sect. X. (Supplementary.) The various Kinds or Power known by Experience. We are led by the cognitive nature of the mind to look on sub- stance as necessarily possessing potency, but it is after all by ex- 188 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. perience that we have to determine the nature of the power exer- cised by any particular substance. Experience shows us that all potency is not of the same description. The precise nature of the power residing in any one substance is to be ascertained by a generalization of its individual operations. Though it does not fall within our precise province, yet it may help to clear up some important metaphysical questions, if we particularize some of the kinds of potency made known by experience. I. Force in Inanimate Objects. — In order to the exercise of this potency there is need of two or more bodies in a particular relation to each other. A simple body existing alone in the uni- verse, and in a state of isolation, that is, in no relatiou to any other body, could exercise no active power whatever. Indeed, the power of a body seems to be a power to influence some other body, or some other substance. It seems also to be a law of the action of bodies that when any one body acts on another, that other acts on it. In all bodily causation there is thus mutual action ; and experience seems to show that the action of each of the bodies is equal to that of the other. It is the aim of the phy- sical sciences to determine the nature and measure of this reci- procal operation. According to this account there is need, in order to material action, of two or more bodies. When these bodies are in such a relation as suits their several properties, action takes place, and an effect is produced. It follows that cause — meaning by cause the invariable and unconditional cause, that which of itself will produce the effect, and ever produce the effect —must always be more or less complex; it always implies two or more bodies in a particular relation to each other. The effect will always be found to be of the same complex character, will always be found to consist of the bodies which acted as a cause, being in some way changed. To illustrate what I mean:— Let us suppose that we have two material substances to experiment with, salt and water. Place the two out of relation to each other, and no effect will be produced. Bring them into contact, and action will commence. The salt acts on the water, and the water on the salt. The cause, properly speaking, of this action is not the salt alone, or the water alone, but the salt and water in a particular relation. This is the true cause, productive and necessary ; the cause which, wherever it exists, will tend to produce the same effect, and in fact produce it, except when counteracted by other forces. The effect is also dual, and it is to be found in the very substances which acted as the cause ; it is not to be found in the salt, or in the water, or in ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 189 a third substance, but in the salt and water in a new and different state. This is the invariable effect which will be for ever pro- duced by the same cause. Such seems to be the nature of material causation and effectua- tion. In all cases the cause is dual, or plural, as is also the effect ; and the bodies which acted as the cause are the bodies acted on in the effect. I am persuaded that the well-known law of action and reaction proceeds on this circumstance, which is also intimately connected with the polar action of substances. In the common statements as to cause and effect there is only one of the elements of the complex cause or complex effect mentioned, the other being- omitted because it does not seem needful to express it. Thus we speak of the salt as the cause, making the water of a particular taste as the effect. But there is an omission in all such state- ments, which require to be completed by calling in the missing part, when we profess to give a thoroughly accurate and philo- sophic account of the process. There are cases in which the com- plexity of the cause or of the effect is not so evident as in the example I have given. Thus, if a picture were to fall upon a table and break it, we would say in loose language that the fall of the picture was the cause of the breaking of the table. But when the full cause is spread out, it is seen to be the picture falling with a par- ticular force, and striking the table in a particular direction, while the effect consists not in the breaking of the table merely, but also in the picture losing a portion of its momentum. We have but to reflect for a very little to see and be prepared to acknowledge that in all gravitating action, in all chemical, in all magnetic and electric, there is the co-operation of two or more bodies, and that the cause consists of the bodies in one state and the effects of the same bodies in a different state.* II. Vital Powee. — The attempts which have been made to determine wherein life consists cannot be said to have as yet been crowned with anything like success. There is every reason to think that there is a vital power so far different from the mecha- nical or chemical, but science has not yet ascertained its nature and its laws. So far as we have glimpses of its mode of opera- tion, it seems to involve a complexity of agents. One part of the cell acts on another, or one cell acts on another, or it acts on ex- ternal matter, and whatever acts is being acted on. A curious question is here started, What is the nature of the power involved in vegetable and animal reproduction ? This * This subject is illustrated, ' Method of Divine Government,' b. ii. c. i. 190 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. is a subject still involved in great mystery, but there are ob- vious and well-ascertained facts which go to establish a general doctrine. First, there is a duality in all vital reproduction. In certain portions of the vegetable kingdom, the reproductive powers are in different organs, in others they are on different plants. In the animal creation the reproductive organs are commonly in different individuals, which must therefore pair in order to the production of young. This is an example in a higher scale, and in a more patent form, of that duality in causation which we traced already in inanimate creation, and which makes all physical creation so depen- dent on arrangements which have been made by the Creator of all things. Secondly, there is a positive and adequate power in the dual parentage to produce the offspring as an effect. No living crea- ture can proceed except from a parent of its own kind, no vegeta- ble or animal can spring from a vegetable or animal inferior to itself in the order of beings. This is one of the best established generalizations of natural history, and it has not been shaken by any of the attempts which have been made to find exceptions to it, certainly not by the analogies which have been urged against it, derived from objects totally different. The whole of the true analogies of Nature, that is, those derived from objects really cor- related, show that every substance or aggregate of substances producing an effect, as it must have power to produce the effect, so it must have power to produce an effect of that par- ticular kind ; indeed we cannot conceive that a cause should pro- duce an effect of a higher nature than itself. The parents seem to be endowed with a power to produce an offspring " after their kind," that is, of the same species and no other. There is no power on the part of an inferior plant to produce a higher, on the part of a vegetable to produce an animal, or on the part of an inferior animal to produce a higher. In particular, human beings with in- telligences, and such only, — certainly not apes or monkeys, — can have an offspring possessed of reasonable and responsible souls. This doctrine brings reproduction under laws analogous to those laws of causation which reign in other departments of Nature. The particular mode of the operation of the power has not been and may never be fully determined, but that there is power required, special in kind and adequate in amount, seems to be established on amply sufficient evidence. This doctrine opens to us a glimpse of the deep foundation which the law that the offspring must be of the same species as the parent, has in the very constitution ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 191 of things, and in the nature of the power that operates in the uni- verse. III. Bectpkocal Action of Mind and Body. — That the two have been so constituted as that the bodily organism acts on mind, while mind is also capable of operating on the organism, this seems to me to be the most satisfactory as it is certainly the simplest ac- count which can be given of the connection. But let us properly understand what, on such a supposition, is the precise cause. It is a complex one in every case ; it is the mind and the body in a parti- cular relation to each other. The coexistence of the two is neces- sary to any effect being produced, and the effect is the result of the two operating and co-operating. Thus in all perception through the senses there is a cerebral power and there is mental power, and without both there will be no result, no object perceived. There seems also to be a duality in the effect : there is certainly a mental effect, for the mind now perceives ; and the cerebral mass, in the very act of producing mental action, may undergo a change ; thus there seems to be a fatigue and exhaustion produced in the or- ganism by the very act of perceiving an immense number of objects within a brief time, as when we travel a great distance by railway, and this can be accounted for by supposing that the organism is af- fected by the action which has taken place. There is a similar duality of power in all those cases in which the action begins from the mind, as when we will to move the arm, and the arm moves. Here the concurrence of two factors is necessary in order to the result : there is a volition, and a nicely adjusted organism in a healthy state; and if either were wanting, the effect would not follow. Possibly, as there is a dua- lity in the cause, there may also be a duality in the effect, and the next mental state may be so far modified by the joint bodily and mental exertion ; but I have to add, that it is just as^ possible that we may have here come into the region of pure mental causa- tion, in which, as we shall see forthwith, there is no such com- plexity. In a vast amount of the results of which we are conscious, the concurrence and co-operation both of mental and cerebral potency are required in order to action. Thus it has been proven that a healthy state of the brain is requisite in order^ to our remember- ing or even imagining sensible objects ; for in certain derange- ments of the brain the person cannot image an object with a figure. In all such cases the main cause is to be found in the mind ; still the body has a part to play, and if it does not co-ope- rate, the effect is not produced. In all those actions in which there 192 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. is the active operation of the bodily organism, in order to a men- tal effect, it seems probable that the mental act, or rather the joint act, produces also an effect on the bodily organism which has been in action. In all mental emotion there seems to be involved the active co-operation of a bodily organism, and there is always a reaction on the organism, often in wearying and deranging it, at least when the feeling, say fear or sorrow, is excited by the con- templation of evil. Even in the exercises of the intellect there seems to be a concurrence of organic agency necessary, and there is always a lassitude following long and continuous intellectual efforts. I have sometimes thought that a certain organic state is necessary in order to our very volitions ; and hence our incapacity to form a fixed purpose in certain states of the body, and the weariness which follows a long stretch of attention, even when this has been accompanied with no bodily exertions. I am aware that the account now given of the reciprocal action of mind and body, is exposed to a great amount of questioning. Thus, it will be asked, How does mind act on body, and body on mind ? To this I reply by a counter- question, "What is meant by ' How ' ? If nothing more be meant than simply the occurrence of the facts, then I answer that psychological and physiological re- search has discovered some of the facts, and may possibly detect more, and may very probably never be able to discover the whole. If something more than this be intended, then I ask, "What is in- tended ? If it be expected that we find out some mysterious bond between mind and body, I answer that there is no reason to think that there is any such bond, and that if there did exist such a bond, and we could discover it, it would only increase instead of lessening the mystery. The most reasonable and the most simple view is that spirit and body have been so constituted, that is, have had such a nature imparted to them, that they mutually influence each other, and co-operate to produce a joint result. IV. Mental Action. — We are not to suppose that purely mental is in every respect the same as material action. There is a sense in which every given body is inert and passive, it is active only so far as it is acted on. In this respect there is a wide dif- ference between material and mental power. Material causation implies the presence of two or more bodies, whereas mental causa- tion requires the presence of only one — the self-acting mind. I can think, feel, will, without requiring any external object (always perhaps excepting the organism, in the subordinate sense already referred to) to co-operate with me. The oldest definition of mind handed down to us, embodies a great truth when it describes it as I ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 193 that which moves itself. It can set a train of thought a-going, and modify an existing train by a power within itself. This is one of the prerogatives of mind, eminently characterizing it, and at once distinguishing it from sluggish and passive matter. But while there is self-acting power within the mind itself, there is a sort of duality or plurality even in mental action. What is the cause of any given state, say of the grief I may be feeling at this present time ? I have just heard of the death of a particular individual known to me, and the intelligence apprehended is, no doubt, part of the cause ; but it is not the whole of it, for the same news may have been comprehended by another person without producing any such effect. In the unconditional cause there must be included not only the immediate intelligence as apprehended by me, but the affection which I acquired in former years for the individual, and even my original susceptibility of friendship and of grief; the concurrence of all these is necessary in order to this particular state under which I am now labouring. Even here, too, we may discover a kind of duality in the effect, for the result of my cherishing grief at this time is to deepen my affection for my friend, and even to increase my original capacity for affection and sorrow. Y. Causation Est the Will. — We have seen that mental ac- tion differs widely from material. And we are not to suppose that every mental action is the same in kind as every other. Every fa- culty of the mind indeed has its own rule and mode of operation, which it is the office of psychological science to ascertain. In particular, causation in the will may differ from causation in other mental action. I am prepared indeed to maintain that our volitions are not ab- solutely beyond the law of causation. If I rightly interpret my intuition on the subject of causation, it leads me to look for a cause of our very volitions as well as of our intellectual acts. Be- sides, as a matter of fact, there have been predictions of voluntary acts, say of crimes, as accurate as of physical events, such as births or deaths. On such grounds as these I am inclined to say that causation must have some sort of place in the will as in all other creature-action. But causation in regard to the will may be of a totally different character from causation in acts of intelligence or feeling. While our intuition seems to me to say that causation has a place even in voluntary acts, it does not say what is the nature of that causation ; this is to be determined by an inductive inquiry into the operations of our voluntary acts. And here we are a O 194 PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. once met by the fact that man has free will. This fact cannot set aside the other fact that our volitions are caused ; but as both are facts, the one must be so stated as to be seen not to be incon- sistent with the other. And when we contemplate our volitions by the light of consciousness, we discover at once that causation does not operate in the will as it does in the material universe, or even in our intellectual and emotional actions. Here, I believe, lies the key which is to explain the enigma of the consistency of man's free will and the Divine Sovereignty. We may not be able to find the key, but we can tell the place where it lies. VI. Divine Cassation. — I shrink from entering minutely into the consideration of the action of causation within the Divine Mind. It is evidently a subject which stretches far beyond human dis- cussion or comprehension. But it appears very evident that we are led to look on God as a Substance, having power in himself and the cause of effects produced. Indeed it is from the effects in the universe, and proceeding on an intuitive principle, that we argue that there is a cause above the world. The nature of the causa- tion is in every case to be determined by an inductive investigation of facts, and not by a priori speculation. Such an inquiry will soon convince us that causation in the acts of God is not of the same kind as causation in the operations of created objects. In particular there is no need, as in physical nature, of any co-opera- tion in order to the Divine workmanship. " He spake, and it was done : he commanded, and it stood fast." " He said, Let there be light : and there was light." Not only so, but in the original opera- tion of God in the universe, there must have been the exercise of a power, to which we see nothing similar in the actions of any created object. Man cannot create anything absolutely new ; he cannot create a new power or property : he can merely modify the old powers ; and even this, so far as the external world is concerned, he can do simply by using the power laid up for him in the brain ; and all the changes which take place, fall out according to the agencies of Nature. But it is different with God, who must at first have created all things out of nothing ; that is, there was a power to create in him, and this power he chose in his infinite wisdom and goodness to exert. Metaphysicians have often used very absurd language about man's incapacity so much as to conceive of creation. It is quite true that man himself can perform nothing similar to creation, but still he can conceive of it. He can suppose that there was a time when there was no created object, and he can then conceive a world springing into being. He cannot indeed believe that this ANALYSIS OF OUR PRIMITIVE COGNITIONS. 195 world started into being without a producing cause, but he is not compelled to believe that it was effected in the same manner as we form a new object, that is, out of pre-existing matter. "When I am led, as I am led on good evidence, to look on this world as being produced by God, I can conceive it caused by an immediate exer- cise of his power. I am not necessarily led to believe that it must have been formed out of Himself or out of any pre-existing sub- stance ; it may have been made not out of Himself, but by Him- self, by the power that is in Him. Nor am I led to look upon the forces now in the world as existing in some other form in God : to suppose this is to forget that the mode of the operation of causa- tion varies in the case of every order of beings, and to insist that the power exercised by God must be exerted in the same way as creature potency. The mode of the operation of causation when God creates, is quite as accordant with our intuitive belief as the manner in which the forces operate in the mental or material world. And here I take occasion to remark that the pantheistic doc- trine which maintains that the world must have been drawn out of the Divine Substance, of which therefore it participates, re- ceives no sanction whatever from the primary beliefs of the mind. It is simply a rash and unfounded inference from certain ex- periential facts which are true of the creature, but may have no application to the Creator. Whatever evidence it may profess to advance, it cannot plead intuition ; and I may have occasion to show elsewhere that there are intuitions directly opposed to it, especi- ally that intuition which I have of self as a separate intelligence. There is another and a kindred topic which here opens to the view, but from the minute discussion of which I draw back. I am led to believe that God is a substance, and an unchanging sub- stance, unchanging in the character of His voluntary acts. We have prool that He is a Being of essential holiness, benevolence, and truth, and we further believe that He never will or can do an unrighteous act. On what ground do we cling to this belief ? It seems to be founded on the conviction that there may be, that there is, an unchanging substance possessed of moral excellence which never- can and never will be defiled by sin, and are we not thus, and this lawfully and properly, carrying up the law of substance and cause to the Divine Being, and making it guarantee for us the eternal righteousness of God ? O 2 196 BOOK II. PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. CHAPTER I. THEIE GENEEAL NATUEE. Our primary cognitions and beliefs are very intimately connected, and they run almost insensibly into each other. Yet they may be distinguished. The word ' cog- nition/ when we find it needful to separate it from faith, might be confined in strictness to those mental energies in which the mind looks on an object now present, — say on a body perceived by the senses, or on self in a par- ticular state, or on a representation in the mind ; and then ' faith ' would be applied to all those exercises in which we believe — we can only use a synonymous word when we describe a simple mode of mind — in the exist- ence of an object not now before us, and under imme- diate inspection. Philosophers have drawn the distinction between Pre- sentative and Representative Knowledge. In the former the object is present at the time, — we perceive it, we feel it, we are conscious of it as now and here and under our inspection. In Representative Knowledge there is an object now present^ representing an absent object. Thus I may have an image or conception of Venice, with its decaying beauty, and this is now pre- GENERAL NATURE OF PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. 197 sent, and under the eye of consciousness ; but it repre- sents something absent and distant, of the existence of which I am at the same time convinced. When I was ac- tually in Venice, and gazed on its churches and palaces rising out of the waters, there would be no propriety in saying that I believed in the existence of the city,— the correct phrase is that I knew it to exist. I know, too, that I have at this moment an idea of "Venice • but as Venice itself is not before me, the proper expression of my conviction is that I believe in its existence. I maintain that whenever we have passed beyond Pre- sentative Knowledge, and are assured of the reality of an absent object, there faith — it may be in a very simple form, but still real faith — has entered as an element. So far as I am conscious of an imaging of the past, or a judging of it, or a reasoning about it, my mental state is cognition ; but so far as I am convinced of the exist- ence of the absent object, my state of mind is belief.* * The distinction between Preservative and Representative Know- ledge is drawn by Hamilton in bis edition of Reid, Note B. Tbe view given by me in the text seems to be in accordance with such language as the following, used by him in Metaph. Lect. 12: " Properly speak- ing, we know only the actual and the present, and all real knowledge is an immediate knowledge. "What is said to be mediately known is in truth not known to be, but only believed to be." Speaking of memory, he says : " It is not a knowledge of the past at all, but a knowledge of the present and a belief of the past." Consistently or inconsistently, he says that "belief always precedes knowledge" (Lect. 3). Speaking of the external world, he says : " We believe it to exist, only because we are immediately cognizant of it as existing" (Reid, p. 750). With this I concur. But I cannot agree with what follows, where he seems to found our knowledge on a belief, and represents our knowing that we know as founded on a belief prior to or deeper than, knowledge. " If asked indeed, How do we know that we know it? . . . how do we know that this object is not a mere mode of mind illusively presented to us as a mode of matter ? then indeed we must reply that we do not (?) in propriety Jcnoio that what we are compelled to perceive as not-self is not a perception of self, and that we can only on reflection believe such to be the case, in reliance on the original necessity of so believing im- posed on us by our nature." 198 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS: In such examples the faith is of a low order, and need not be distinguished from knowledge, except for the purposes of rigid science ; but still faith is there, and there in its essential character; and he who would know what faith is, must view it in these lower forms, " which exist more simple in their elements," as well as in the higher, just as he who would know the nature of the plant or animal must study it in the lichen or zoophyte. These are the incipient movements of a mental power which is capable of rising to the greatest heights of earth, and looking up to the heaven above, which can call before it all time, and go forth even into the eter- nity beyond. Already do we see how it joins on to cognition, and mingles with it. Faith, as the telescope, shows objects which unaided sense cannot discern, but still there is personal knowledge, an eye to guarantee the accuracy of the vision. We have immediate know- ledge always with us, we have self in a particular state or exercise ; but rising from this, we believe in an object which is absent, — in the loftier energies of faith we be- lieve in objects which we have never seen, and which we never can see in this world. According to this account we are said to know our- selves, and the objects presented to the senses and the representations (always however as presentations) in the mind, but to believe in objects which we have seen in time past, but which are not now present, and in objects which we have never seen, and very specially in objects which we can never fully know, such as an Infinite God. The mind seems to begin not with faith, but with cog- nition. It sets out with the knowledge of an external object presented to it, and with a knowledge of self contemplating that object. I cannot, then, agree with those who maintain that faith — I mean natural faith — must precede knowledge. I hold that knowledge, psy- THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 199 chologically considered, appears first, and then faith. But around our original cognition there grows and clusters a body of primitive beliefs which go out far beyond our personal knowledge. Knowledge is, after all, the root ; but from this stable and more earthly ground there spring beliefs which mount in living power and in lovely form and colour toward the sky.* The two differ psychologically, and there are impor- tant philosophic ends to be served by distinguishing be- tween them ; but after all it is more important to fix our attention on their points of agreement and coincidence. The belief has a basis of cognition, the cognition has a superstructure of beliefs. In a sense we know space, for it is present to us ; certainly body occupying space is ever before the senses, but when we look on space as having no bounds, w r e are beyond the territory of cog- nition, we are in the region of faith. The one convic- tion, equally with the other, carries within itself its autho- rity and validity. No man is entitled to restrict him- self to cognitions, and refuse to attend or to yield to the beliefs which he is also led to entertain by the very constitution of his mind. No man can do so, in fact. Every man must act upon his native beliefs as well as upon his cognitions. He requires no external conside- ration to lead him to trust in the one any more than in the other, for each has its sufficiency in itself. He * There were profound discussions in the scholastic ages as to the separate provinces of faith and knowledge or reason, but it was in regard to matters of religion, and specially of revelation, including Church authority. Anselm gave the first, or deeper place, to faith, and Abelard to knowledge. But there was confusion in the controversy, owing to its not being determined psychologically what is the precise difference of knowledge and faith, and of reason and faith. In every exercise of mind about the great objects and truths of religion, there must be both cognitive and faith (psychological) elements embraced, and reason always comprises faith when it refers to the existence of objects. The relation of faith and reason will fall to be discussed in the last Chapter of this Volume. 200 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS : who would weakly giv-e up his native faiths because as- saults are made on them, and doggedly resolve to yield to nothing but immediate cognitions,, will find that the sceptic who has driven him from the beliefs will go on to attack the cognitions likewise, and that he can de- fend the cognitions only on grounds which might have enabled him to stand by his credences likewise. On the other hand, I grieve over the attempts, for the last age or two, of a school of thinkers who labour to prove that the understanding or the speculative reason leads to scep- ticism and nihilism, and then appeal to faith to save us from the abyss before us. I have no toleration for those who tell us with a sigh, too often of affectation, that they are very sorry that knowledge or reason leads to contra- dictions and insoluble doubts, from which they are long- ing to be delivered by some mysterious faith. It is time to put an end to this worse than civil strife, to this set- ting of one part of the soul against another. I do not be- lieve that the understanding, or the reason, or any other power of the mind, lands us in scepticism. Each cogni- tive faculty conducts in its own way to its own truths. The intelligence and the faith are not conflicting, but conspiring elements. I am sure that the criticism which has attacked the knowledge, would, if followed out, be no less formidable in its assaults on the belief. In these pages I am endeavouring to show how they concur and co-operate, being almost always associated in one con- crete act, which we analyze merely for scientific ends.* * Kant laboured to demonstrate that the Speculative Eeason lands us in contradictions, and was not given us in order to reach objective truth; but then he called in a Practical Eeason, which guaranteed a moral law, a God, and immortality. See the ' Methodenlehre ' in the ' Kritik.' Jacobi admitted, far too readily, to Kant and Fichte, that speculation and philosophy led to scepticism, but he fell back on Faith (Glaube) or Sentiment (Gefuhl), which he represented as a Revelation (OJfenbarung). See his ' David Hume : Ueber den Glauben,' and ' Ja- cobi an Fichte,' He has given views of intuition and of faith as true THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 201 But while we must yield to our intuitive beliefs as well as perceptions, we are not therefore to suppose that our faiths are beyond inspection and above examination. They are liable to be tried, and should at times be tried, by the very same tests as our cognitions. We are not to allow ourselves, without examination and without re- view, to yield to whatever may suggest itself to our own minds, or be recommended to us by others, as a primi- tive belief. We must try the spirits, whether they are of God. In nothing is man so apt to run into excess and extravagance, into folly and error, as yielding to plausible beliefs. The tendency of faith is upwards, but it needs weights and plummets to hold it down, lest it mount into a region of thin air, and there burst and dissolve. Fortunately we have a ready means at hand of trying our constitutional beliefs, and determining for us when as they are beautiful ; but he has not unfolded the precise nature of faith, nor seen its relation to the understanding. Even Fichte, after trying to show that knowledge ( Wissen) leads to an absolute idealism, in which we know not whether our very thought may not be a dream, resorts to Faith (Glaube), and allows an appeal to the Heart (Herz) (Bestimmung des Menschen, Buch iii. Glaube). Sir W. Hamilton main- tains that " all that we know is phenomenal of the unknown " (Discuss, p. 644, 2nd ed.), and that " the knowledge of Nothing is the principle or result of all true philosophy" (p. 609), but delights to recognize a faith which looks beyond ; of which faith, however, he gives no account. " We are warned," he says, " from recognizing the domain of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith." And he adds, " And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something uncondi- tioned, beyond the sphere of all comprehensive reality" (p. 15). Ever since the days of Schleiermacher, there has been a body of theologians who in the very same spirit admit that the existence of God cannot be established by human intelligence, and who call in a God-consciousness, or a faith, to reveal God to us. I admit that intuition and faith have their part to act, but so also has the understanding. (See infra, Part III. Book II. Chap. V.) For an account of the German systems, see Michelet, ' Entwickelungsgeschichte ;' £halybaus, Hist. Entwick. d. Specul. Philos. von Kant bis Hegel ; Willm, Hist. Phil. Allemande, and Morell's limpidly clear 'History of Speculative Philosophy.' 202 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. they should be disallowed, and when they should be al- lowed to flow out freely. Are they self-evident? Are they necessary, so necessary that we cannot believe the opposite ? Are they universal ? These three questions, searchingly asked and honestly answered, will settle for us whether we ought or whether we ought not to follow a belief proffered to our acceptance. We are at liberty to employ a belief in argument, appeal, and speculation, only under the same conditions as a cognition ; that is, having shown that it is a constitutional one, we must further determine more accurately its nature and law, its extent and limits. Thus, and thus only, can we hope on the one hand to be kept from mistaking our own fancies, misapprehensions, wishes, or prejudices, for pri- mitive and heaven-born beliefs, and on the other hand be justified in appealing to the faiths which have the sanction of our constitution, and the God who gave us our constitution, and in using them as a basis on which to rear a fabric of philosophical, or ethical, or theological truths. CHAPTER II. TIME AND SPACE. Of space in the concrete we have an immediate know- ledge ; that is, by the senses, certainly by some of them, such as the touch and the sight, most probably by all of them, we know bodies, say our own bodily organism as extended, that is, as occupying space. By abstraction we can fix our attention on the space as distinct from associated qualities, and by inward reflection we can gather what are the convictions attached. These con- TTME AND SPACE. 203 victions pass beyond knowledge proper, and become be- liefs, that is, convictions in regard to something which we do not immediately know, nay, which we may never be able to know. With time, also, we have an immediate acquaintance. In sense-perception and self-consciousness we know a particular object or mental state as now present. Our consciousness is continuous ; speedily does immediate consciousness slide into memory ; the present becomes past, and is remembered as past. The child's organism is now in a state of pain ; immediately after the pain is gone, but the pain of the past is remembered, and re- membered as being past. Already, then, there is the idea of time always in the concrete. We remember some- thing as having been under our consciousness in the past. By abstraction we can then think of the time as different from the event remembered in time ; and by introspec- tion we can ascertain the nature of the attached convic- tions. Many of these are of the nature of faiths going far beyond what is, or ever can be, immediately known. Space and time mingle with all our perceptions. Yet after all we can say little about them ; all that we can do as metaphysicians is to analyze and express our ori- ginal convictions. It belongs to the mathematician to evolve deductively what is involved in certain of them. In unfolding the necessary convictions we may make the following affirmations. I. Time and space have a reality independent of the percipient mind, and out of the percipient mind. The intelligence does not create them, it discovers them, and it discovers them as having an existence independent of the mind contemplating them, as having this existence whether the mind contemplates them or no, and an ex- istence out of and beyond the mind as it thinks of them. He who denies this is in the very act setting aside one 204 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. of the clearest of native principles, and has left himself no stand-point from which he can repel any proposal suggested to himself or offered by another, to set aside any other conviction, or all other convictions. If some one affirm that space has no objective existence, he leaves it competent for any other coming after him, to maintain that the objects perceived in space have no reality. He who allows that time may have no reality except in the contemplative mind, will find himself greatly troubled to answer the sceptic, when he insists that the events in time are quite as unreal as the time is in which they are per- ceived as having occurred. There is only one sure and consistent mode of avoiding these troublesome and dan- gerous consequences, and that is by standing up for the veracity of all our fundamental perceptions, and, among others, of our convictions regarding the reality of space and time. According to Kant, space and time are the forms given by the mind to the phenomena which are presented through the senses, and are not to be considered as having anything more than a subjective existence. It is one of the most fatal heresies — that is, dogmas opposed to the revelations of consciousness — ever introduced into philosophy, and it lies at the basis of all the aberrations in the school of speculation which followed. For those who were taught that the mind could create the space and time, soon learned to suppose that the mind could also create the objects and events cognized as in space and time, till the whole external universe became ideal, and all reality was supposed to lie in a series of con- nected mental forms. He who would arrest the stream, must seek to stop it at the place whence it flowed out j otherwise all his efforts will be ineffectual.* * Dr. Thomas Brown, in an article on Villers, ' Philosophie de Kant,' in No. 2 (1803) of the ' Edinburgh Eeview,' dwells on this. TIME AND SPACE. 205 II. Space and time are continuous, that is, they ex- tend out, flow on, without break, separation, or interrup- tion. In this respect they are different, from matter or body, which may be broken into parts, and the parts separated from each other. But there can be no gaps in space, no cessation in time. This is one of several circumstances which has made space and time to be classed together. Yet while they may be grouped under one head, they are not identical, and they have their points of difference. In particular, space has three dimensions, — length, breadth, and depth ; " The truth of space and of the world being to our reasoning scepti- cism the same, we cannot deny space and admit the reality of sensible objects." D. Stewart, after affirming that the idea of space " is mani- festly accompanied with an irresistible conviction that space is necesr sarily existent, and that its annihilation is impossible," adds, "to call this proposition in question, is to open a door to universal scepti- cism" (Disser. p. 597). In our day we find the greatest opponent of the Dialectic of Hegel who has appeared, taking the same view. " Hier- nach sind Raum und Zeit etwas Subjectives und zwar nach Kant etwas nur Subjectives. Wenn dies folgt, so verfluchtet sich damit die ganze Weltansicht in Erscheinung, und Erscheinung ist yom Scheine nicht weit entfernt. "Wenn Raum und Zeit nur und ausschliessend Subjectives sind, so drangt sich allenthalben diese Zuthat ein. Wie die Luftschicht zwischen dem Auge und dem Gegenstande, wirft sie auf alles eine fremde Trubung ; denn alles erscheint in Eaum und Zeit, die nur aus uns geboren sind. Wir erkennen nun nichts an sich ; denn die YerstandesbegrifFe haben (nach Kant) nur Anwendung durch diese Eormen der Anschauung und die Yernunftbegriffe suchen wieder nur eine Einheit fur die Yerstandeserkenntniss. Wie wollen wir uns von dem Zauberkreise losen, da er vielmehr unser eigenstes Wesen est ? " (Trendelenburg, ' Logische Untersuchungen,' b. i. v.). Sir W. Hamilton agrees with Kant as to the a priori idea of space, and to avoid the difficulties calls in an a posteriori notion : — " We have a twofold cogni- tion of space ; (a) an a priori or native imagination of it in general, as •a necessary condition of the possibility of thought ; and (b) under that an a posteriori or adventitious percept of it, in particular as contingently apprehended in this or that complexus of sensations" (Eeid's Works, p. 882). "In this I venture a step beyond E-eid and Stewart, no less than beyond Kant" (p. 126). A simpler and a more natural account of the relations between a priori and a posteriori would bring these two notions to a unity. 206 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. that is, we may contemplate it as extending along any given line, as spreading out in a surface, or as going out in all directions. Time again has only succession, or priority and posteriority. We often apply to time lan- guage derived from space, and we represent time as a line, and speak of it as being only in one direction. But it is to be remembered that such language is used me- taphorically, and has no literal meaning as applied to time. Still it points to a truth, and specifies a difference between space and time.* But in regard to their ex- tension or flow, both are continuous, and spread out or run on without a possible division. But it will be urged, that the question is often discussed as to whether space and time are infinitely divisible, and that certain mathematicians maintain that they have demonstrated the infinite divisibility of space. In look- ing at this question, it is desirable first of all to have it settled in what sense extension is capable of division. We cannot divide space in the sense in which we divide matter. In dividing body we separate one part of it from another, so as to leave a space between. We can thus divide an apple, and keep one part of it in our hand, and put the other in our mouth. But we cannot thus separate or isolate space apart from space. In the sense of separation, we cannot with propriety speak of the infinite divisibility of space, for it is not divisible at all, * It lias been asked why the mind gives three dimensions to space and only one to time. Those who regard space and time as the crea- tion of the mind, may amuse themselves with answering this question. There is profound sense in the following remarks of Sir J. Herschel, in his 'Review of Whewell' (Essays, p. 202) : — "The reason, we con- ceive, why we apprehend things without us, is that they are without ' us. We take it for granted that they exist in space, because they do so exist, and because such their existence is a matter of direct per- ception, which can neither be explained in words nor contravened in imagination; because, in short, space is a reality." " That which has parts, proportions, and susceptibilities of exact measurement, must be a ' thing.' " TIME AND SPACE. 207 either finitely or infinitely. The same remark holds good of time. The mind declares that the separation of space from space, or of time from time, is impossible in the nature of things.* There may however be relations discovered both in space and time. We can conceive of less or more of ex- tension, and of proportions between the less and the more ; the one may be twice or ten times as much as the other. All this we are allowed, nay necessitated, to think. The science which treats of quantity, that is, mathematics, has specially to do with their relations. There may be little or no impropriety in calling these proportions parts, provided we do not misunderstand the language we employ, or understand it as implying that between two spaces there can be an interval in which there is no space. What is meant by the infinite division of space seems to be, that fixing our thoughts on any given section or proportion of space, say the thousandth part of an inch, we are at liberty to conceive of the half of it, and again of the half of the quotient, and so on indefinitely as far as may serve our purpose or we may choose. Some of these subjects will be resumed when we come to consider those primitive judgments which relate to quantity. But before leaving the subject immediately before us, it is of importance to have it noticed that our convictions say nothing whatever on (what is a very different matter from the divisibility of space, though the two have often been confounded) the infinite divisibility of matter. This latter is a question which can be settled by nothing but experience ; experience at this present stage of science says nothing whatever on the subject, and I suspect will never be able to settle it on one side or other. There might be limits to man's capacity of dividing body which * This view is developed with great acuteness in Gillespie's Neces- sary Existence of Deity ' (Exam. Antith. Kefut. p. iii.). 208 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. would not be limits to other beings, and whether there could be any limits to a Being of Infinite Power is a question which it transcends our faculties to answer, and which therefore we should not attempt to answer. But the difficulty has been started, are space and time made up of parts ? and if so, are infinite time and space made up of parts ? To this I reply, first and decisively, that we cannot conceive them as made up of partitions, or separable parts, as an apple or an orange is, or as the earth is, or the sun is. But then, secondly, we can conceive proportion in space and time, and if we take any of these proportional sections, and divide it into two, thought will compel us to say that the two must make up the whole. In this sense the parts make up the whole, that is, the subsections make up the section. If the question be ex- tended beyond this, and it be asked, Is infinite space made up of parts ? I answer, that as we can have no ade- quate notion of infinite space, so we cannot be expected to answer all the questions which may be put regarding it. It is certain that neither infinite space nor finite space is made up of separable parts. We can speak in- telligibly of proportions in finite space, and determine their relations to each other and the whole. I tremble to speak of the proportions of infinite space, lest I be using language which has or can have no proper mean- ing, and the signification attached to which by me or others might be altogether inapplicable to such a subject. Still there are propositions which we might intelligibly use. It is self-evident that any proportion of space must be less than infinite space. And if infinite space can be conceived as having proportions, and we could conceive all these proportions, then these proportions would be equal to the whole. But as we cannot adequately con- ceive the whole, so neither can we conceive of the propor- tions of the whole. We are in a region dark and path- TIME AlsD SPACE. 209 less and directionless, and we may as well draw back at once, for nothing is to be gained by advancing.* We are on the verge of another subject, to which we must turn. III. Space and time have and can have no limits. Nor is this a mere negative proposition, as some have declared it to be ; it is a positive affirmation that to whatever point we go, in reality or in imagination, there must be a space and time beyond. Nor is it, as it has been represented, an impotency of mind. It is not a mere incapacity to conceive that when we go a certain length back or for- ward in time, or out into space, there time and space should cease. It is a conviction of a positive kind, that beyond these points, or beyond any other space conceiva- ble, there must still be time and space. This, as will be shown more fully forthwith, is a truth self-evident, neces- sary, universal. If we were carried out to the utmost point to which the furthest-seeing telescope can reach, or beyond this as far as imagination can range, we should confidently stretch forth our hand into an outer region, believing that there must be space into which it might enter, and that if it were hindered, it must be by body occupying space. There is more than this embraced in our native con- viction, We are constrained to believe, as to the space and time which we know in part, and which we are con- strained to regard as beyond our power of imagination, that they are such that no addition could be made to them. This is a further and a most important element in our conviction. We intuitively know space and time: with this we start. Looking to the space and time which we * " Non igitur respondere curabimus iis, qui quserunt an si daretur linea infinita, ejus media pars esset etiam infinita ; vel an numerus in- finitus sit par anve impar ; et talia ; quia de iis nulli videntur debere cogitare nisi quiinentem suam infinitam esse arbitrantur" (Descartes, Prin. p. i. 26) . 210 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. thus know, we are constrained to regard them as ever go- ing beyond our image of them. But we do more, we are convinced that they are such in their very nature, that no farther space and time could be added to them. Join these elements together, and so far as I can discover by reflection on the operations of my own mind, we have the conception and belief which the mind of man is able to attain as to the infinity of space and time. But we are already in the heart of the subject of the in- finite, to which a separate Section must be allotted. In this Section we have yet to take up certain difficulties which press on us when we contemplate space and time. We may have occasion to show> at a later part of this work, that our very cognitions often land us in mysteries, that is, in propositions to which we must assent, but which have bearings which we cannot comprehend. To a still greater extent is it of the nature of faith ever to be going oat into darkness. For the truths believed in may not be fully comprehended in themselves, and their relations may be altogether beyond our ken. It should be frankly acknowledged that we are landed in mysteries which the human intellect cannot explicate, whenever we inquire beyond the narrow limits within which our convictions restrain us. But it is of all courses the most foolish and suicidal to urge the difficulties connected with space arid time as a reason for setting aside our intuitive convic- tions respecting them, say in regard to their reality. Doubtless we are landed in some perplexities by allow- ing that they are real, but we are landed in more hope- less difficulties and in far more serious consequences, when we deny their reality ; and there is this important differ- ence between the cases, that in the one the difficulties arise from the nature of the subject, whereas in the other they are created by our own unwarranted affirmations and speculations. TIME AND SPACE. 211 But what are space and time ? is the question that will be pressed on us. To this I reply, that it is true of them, as of the objects of every other intuitive conviction, that we cannot explain them except by referring to our ori- ginal perception. All that has been attempted in this Section is to bring out clearly what is involved in the perception. But it will be asked, Are they substances, are they modes, or are they relations ? To this I reply, that these questions relate not so much to the nature of space or time as the classification of them, and that they are not to be classified with substances, modes, or rela- tions.* We cannot call them substances, for we do not know that they have power or action. Nor can we call them modes, for we have no intuitive knowledge of any substance in which they inhere. And they are certainly more than relations of one thing to another, for we know no two or more things which by their relation could yield space and time. They are not then to be arranged with such cognitions as these. They seem indeed to be en- titled to be put in a class by themselves, and resemble substances, modes, relations, only in that they are exist- ences, entities, realities. Certain mystical divines and philosophers are accus- tomed to speak of space and time as having no reality to * Leibnitz held space and time to be relations given to objects by the mind. " Je tenois l'E space pour quelque de pueement eelatie, comme le Temps ; pour un oedee de coexistences, comme le Temps est un oedee de successions" (Op. p. 752. See also pp. 756, 769, 461). He speaks of space and time as being " rapports," and as " ideal." Leib- nitz thus prepared the way for the more systematic doctrine of Kant. Samuel Clarke argues powerfully that space and time are realities, but makes them attributes, properties, or modes, of an eternal substance (see his Letters to Leibnitz). D. Stewart, with his usual wisdom, says that " space is neither a substance, nor an accident, nor a relation;" add- ing, " But it does not follow from this that it is nothing objective " (Dissert, p. 596). p 2 212 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. the Divine mind. It follows, I think, that if they have no reality to the God who knows all truth, they can, pro- perly speaking, have no reality at all. If our convictions testify (as I have endeavoured to show) that they have a reality, it follows, I think, that they have a reality to the Divine mind. Again, there are some who talk of an Eternal Now : — " Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an Eternal ~Now does ever last." These verses of Cowley embody, as definitely as can be clone, a view which has often been floating in the state- ments of divines in speaking of God and Eternity and Time. But the language has either no meaning, or if it has, it lands us in hopeless contradictions. It would have been very different if divines had con- tented themselves with stating that they do not know how space and time stand related to the Divine mind. We are here in the midst of a mystery, which we have no faculties to clear up. We know that space and time exist ; we know on sufficient evidence that God exists : but we have no means of knowing how space and time stand related to God. The view taken by Sir Isaac Newton, — " Deus durat semper et adest ubique, et, ex- istendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium ccnsti- tuit,"* — is certainly a grand one, but I doubt much whether human intelligence can dictatorially affirm that it is as true as it is sublime. It is by placing the subject beyond the human facul- ties that we are able to meet an objection urged with great logical power by Kant, and usually thought to be insuperable.f If space and time be real and infinite, then we have two infinites ; and if God be also infinite, our difficulties are increased. For it is absurd, if not * Scholium at close of Phil. JNat. Prin. Math. t Kr. d. r. Vera., Die transcen. Aesthet. TIME AND SPACE. 213 contradictory, to suppose that there can be two infinite things — that God can be infinite while space and time are also infinites. Now to this I might without the pos- sibility of a positive refutation, urge that there may, for aught w^e know, be nothing inconsistent in supposing that there are two things, as space and time, the one unbounded and the other without beginning or end, and that there can even be nothing contradictory in sup- posing that space and time on the one hand, and God on the other, may have infinite attributes. They could be held as contradictory only in the supposition that the ex- istence of unbounded space and unending time were, in the nature of things, inconsistent with the existence of an infinite God ; which it may safely be said can never be proven. As to how they could subsist together, is a question we are not obliged to answer, for we must be- lieve many separate truths, each on its evidence, without being able to trace a connection, or being able so much as to say that there is a lioio between them. But I plant myself on far firmer ground, when I maintain, secondly, that while I believe that space and time are infinite, and that God is infinite, I am not necessarily obliged to hold that the infinity of space and time is independent of the infinity of God. Who will venture to affirm that the statement we have quoted from the great Newton may not be true ? Who will venture to affirm that space and time, being dependent on God, may not stand in a rela- tion to God, which is altogether indefinable and utterly inconceivable by us ? True we are constrained to believe that space and time have an existence independent of us, but we are not compelled to believe that they have an existence independent of everything else, and least of all independent of God. In such a subject, where we have no light from intuition or from experience to guide us, true wisdom shows itself in refusing to assert or dogma- 214 THE INFINITE. tize, or eyen to speculate ; and when it has observed this rule for itself, it is the better able to rebuke doubt and scepticism, when they would bring forth their difficulties from regions which are beyond the reach of human knowledge. CHAPTER III. THE INFINITE. The subject now opening before us is a profound one in itself, and has exercised the profoundest minds ever since thought began the attempt to solve the problems of the universe. All that I profess to do is to endeavour to discover by induction what is the mind's conviction in regard to infinity. A priori cogitation is not to be tole- rated in its proffered determinations of what our idea of Infinity should be or must be. Logical dissection and division, instead of aiding, may only lead us into hopeless difficulties. Lofty generalizations embracing all other ob- jects, may have no application to an object which from its very nature must be sui generis. This belief, like every other, will be found to grow out of a cognition, and to have an apprehension or concep- tion as a body round which it gathers. Yet it should be admitted as Preliminary, that we cannot form an adequate idea or conception of an infinite object.* It is a favourite po- sition of certain British philosophers, that the mind of man can form no conception of the infinite, or that the * I regard this truth, as established by Locke (Essay ii. xvii). Sir W. Hamilton has overthrown those gigantic systems which proceed on an opposite view (see his 'Philosophy of the Unconditioned'). At the THE INFINITE. 215 conception is at best negative. There is a great truth, but we shall show that there is also a fatal oversight, in this statement. First, it may be admitted that the mind can form no apprehension of the infinite, in the sense of image or phantasm. In saying so, I do not mean merely that we cannot construct a mental picture of the infinite as an at- tribute. Of no quality can the mind fashion a picture ; it cannot have a mental representation of transparency, apart from a transparent substance, and just as little can it picture to itself infinity apart from an infinite duration, or infinite extension, or an infinite God. But it is not in this sense simply that the mind cannot apprehend the infinite, it cannot have before it an apprehension of an infinite object, say of an infinite space, or an infinite God. For to image a thing in our mind is to give it an extent and a boundary. When we would image unli- mited space, we swell out an immense volume, but it has after all a boundary, commonly a spherical one. When we would picture unlimited time, we let out an immense line behind and before, but the rope is after all cut at both ends. When we would represent to ourselves al- mighty power, we call up some given act of God, say creating or annihilating the universe ; but after all, the work has a measure, and may be finished. In the sense of image, then, the mind cannot have any proper appre- hension of infinity as an attribute, or of an infinite object. But apprehension may be considered as an act of the understanding as well as a mere act of the phantasy. We can conceive, we can think about much, which we cannot image. We can meditate and reason about such same time I do not think that either Locke or Hamilton has given a full exposition of the mind's intuitive conviction respecting infinity. Mr. Calderwood opposes the views of Hamilton, but is obliged to admit that we have not an adequate conception of the infinite (see ' Philoso- phy of the Infinite'). 216 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. things as law, government, duty, religion, while yet we can form no mental picture of them. The grand ques- tion in this discussion is, Can we form an intellectual notion of an infinite object, say of an infinite God ? And T feel constrained to admit and maintain that human in- telligence can form no proper or adequate conception of an infinite existence. By what process can it be sup- posed to construct such a conception ? Certainly not by abstraction, for abstraction separates, takes away, dimi- nishes. It is just as certain that it cannot compass this end by generalization, for generalization merely groups objects by attributes known, and unless we have infi- nity first in the individual, we cannot have it in the ge- neral. Nor can we reach it by addition, multiplication, composition ; these will give the enlarged, but not the unlimited : a distance of a quintillion of quintillions of years, or ages, has as distinct a boundary as an ell or an inch. Nor can the understanding attain it by a pro- cess of ratiocination, for unless the infinite were in the premiss, no canon of reasoning would justify its having a place in the conclusion. If the intelligence does not find the infinite in the perception with which it sets out, it never could fashion it by cutting or carving, by construc- tion or supraposition. But it may be said that we have an apprehension, or conception, or perception of the infinite by intuition. I am about to show that we have a conviction in regard to infinity of a very deep and positive character. But I am at present arguing that this does not take the shape of an adequate mental representation or logical notion. What is its nature is to be determined solely by a pro- cess of inward observation, and this I am now endea- vouring to conduct. I. We have an intuitive belief in regard to the infinity of certain objects. Let me endeavour to unfold it. I THE INFINITE. 217 have allowed that we cannot have an idea of infinite space or time, in the sense of imaging, picturing, or re- presenting them. Stretch itself as it may, the imaging power of the mind can never go beyond an expansion, with a boundary, commonly a globe or sphere of which self is the centre, and duration stretching along like a. line, but with a beginning and an end. In respect then of the mental picture or representation, the apprehension is merely of the very large or the very long, but still of the finite, of what might be called the indefinite, but not the infinite. But any account of our conviction as to in- finity which goes no further, leaves out the main, the peculiar element. The sailor is not led by any native instinct to believe that the ocean has no bottom, simply because in letting down the sounding-line he has not reached the ground. When the astronomer has gauged space as far as his telescope can penetrate, he finds that there are still stars and clusters of stars, but he is not necessitated to believe that there must be star after star on and for ever. The geologist in going down from layer to layer still finds signs of the existence of a pre- vious earth, but he is not obliged to conclude that there must have been stratum before stratum from all eternity. But man is constrained to believe that whatever be the point of space or time to which his eye or his thoughts may reach, there must be a space and time beyond. Whence this belief of the mind on space and time being presented to it? Whence this necessity of thought or belief? This is* the very phenomenon to be accounted for ; and yet the British school of metaphysicians can scarcely be said to have contemplated it seriously or steadfastly with the view of unfolding the depth of mean- ing embraced in it.* It implies that to whatever point * Locke was prevented by the defects of his theory and his antipathy to innate ideas from developing all that is in our conviction of infi- 518 OF ATTENTION. understood by referring to the statement in §. 29, viz. That, previous to experience, we are unable to refer sounds to any particular external cause.— The sound itself never gives us any direct and immediate indication of the place, or distance, or direction of the sonorous body. It is only by experience, it is only by the association of place with sound, that the latter becomes an indication of the former. Now, supposing the ventriloquist to possess a delicate ear, which is implied in his ability to mimick sounds, he soon learns by careful observation the difference, which change of place causes in the same sound. Having in this way ascertained the sounds, which, in consequence of the asso- ciations men have formed, are appropriate to any particu- lar distance, direction, or object, it is evident, whenever he exactly or very nearly imitates such sounds, that they must appear to his audience to come from such distance, object, or direction. One part of the art, however, con- sists in controlling the attention of the persons present, and in directing that attention to some particular place by a remark, motion, or in some other method. If, for in- stance, the sound is to come from under a tumbler or hat, the performer finds it important to have their attention di- rected to that particular object, which gives a fine oppor- tunity for the exercise of all those associations, which they have formed with any sound coming from a very confined place. All, then, that remains for him to do, is, to give his voice a dull modulation and on a low key, which we know from our experience to be the character of confined sounds. Then there seems to be a voice speaking under a tumbler or hat ; and if any person should, either inten- tionally or unintentionally, lift these articles up, the ven- triloquist immediately utters himself on a higher key, like a person, who had been very much confined, on being re- admitted into the free and open air. In all these cases, both of legerdemain and of ventriloquism, a great deal depends on the skill of the performer, in directing the at- tention of those, who witness the exhibition, to some par ticular object, or in diverting their attention from it ; but in sleights of hand there is the still more difficult art o f OF ATTENTION. 219 performing feats so rapidly as absolutely to prevent the de- gree of attention requisite for memory. §. 179. Whether the mind can attend to more than one object at the same time. In connection with what has already been said, we are in some degree prepared to consider the question, Whether the mind can attend to more than one thing at one and the same instant ? The question can perhaps be stated more clearly thus ; — Whether we can attend at one and the same instant to objects, which we can attend to separately ? This question does not admit of a direct ap- peal to the fact, and, therefore, cannot be decided with perfect confidence ; but the opinion, that we cannot attend to more than one object at a time has been thought by most of those, who have carefully examined the subject, to be far the most reasonable and philosophical. It is true, there are many cases, where the mind appears to exert dif- ferent acts of attention at once. But when we consider the astonishing rapidity of our thoughts, it is obvious, that these cases may be explained without supposing the men- tal acts in question to be co-existent. The instances of mental rapidity, which have been brought forward already, apply here, and are to be kept in recollection. It is a point well and satisfactorily ascertained by such facts as we have alluded to, that it is possible for the mind to exert different acts of attention in an interval of time so short, as to produce the same sensible effect or appear to be the same, as if they had been exerted at one and the same mo- ment. This is proved in particular by what was said of equilibrists, performers at the circus, rope-dancers, and acts of legerdemain. As, therefore, we never can prove by any direct evidence, that the mind actually attends to different objects at one and the same time, but merely that it appears to, we justly draw the conclusion, that it does not thus attend to them, because that appearance can be accounted for by facts, which are well established. That is to say, it can be accounted for sufficiently well by what we have seen and known of the rapidity of the mind's op- 220 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. when our intelligence is directed towards it. We can- not be made to believe otherwise, or that there is a limit to immensity and duration. It is, when properly under- stood, universal. The image, it is true, of space or time, formed by the boy or savage, may be very contracted. The widest space of which he has had any experience may be the glorious dome spread over his head in the sky, and his imagination may be able to go very little beyond the visible heavens or the distant hills which bound his view, still he is sure that beyond there must be something, an " outer infinite," and perhaps he will be eager to know what is beyond his horizon. His idea of time, as a positive picture, may extend no further than the date of the oldest story which his grandfather has told him ; but he is sure that at that point duration did not begin, and he may be interested to know what hap- pened before. " Heaven lies about us in our infancy. Hence in a season of calm weather, Though, inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." But this is not all that is contained in our conviction. We are constrained to believe, in regard to the objects which we look upon as infinite, that they are incapable of augmentation. Here, as in every apprehension which we have of infinity, the imaging power of the mind fails and must fail ; still Ave have an image and an intellectual conception — say, an image with a notion of extension, or duration, or Deity. Or we represent to ourselves the Divine Being, with certain attributes, — say, as wise or as good, — and our belief as to Him and these attributes THE INFINITE. 221 is, that he cannot be wiser or better. This aspect may be appropriately designated as the Perfect. This is the conviction of the Perfect, of which many profound phi- losophers make so much, but not more, as I think, than they are entitled to do ; though they have not, as it ap- pears to me, always given the correct account of the na- ture and of the genesis of the notion.* We think of God as having all his attributes such that no addition could be made to them : and we call such attributes His perfections. In regard, indeed, to the moral perfections of Deity, it is this expressive word Perfect, rather than infinite, which expresses the conviction which we are led to entertain in regard, for example, to the wisdom, or benevolence, or righteousness of God. This, too, seems a native conviction of the mind. It needs, indeed, a certain matter provided for it, and to which it may adhere. In a positive shape it springs up late, and grows slowly in all minds to which it is not ex- ternally given by education, out of the Bible or other- wise. Still it is there in the mind as a tendency, placing * In musing on divine things, the thought occurred to Anselni that it might be possible to find a single argument which would of itself prove that there is a G-od, and that he is the Supreme G-ood. Man, he says, is able to form a conception of something than which nothing greater can be conceived ; and this conception, he argues, implies the existence of a corresponding being (Proslogion). A similar argument occurred to Descartes. He found in himself the idea of a Perfect being ; and he argues that in this idea the existence of the Being is comprised, as the equality of the three angles to two right-angles is comprised in the idea of a triangle (Meth. p. 4, etc.). Leibnitz acknowledges that the argument is valid, provided he is allowed to supply a missing link, and to show that it is possible that Grod should exist (Op. p. 273). It may be doubted whether these arguments for the Divine existence, derived from the mere idea of the Perfect, are valid, independent of external facts. But these eminent men are right in saying that the mind has some conception and conviction as to the perfect ; and these combine, with the observation of traces of design, to enable us to construct an argument for the Divine existence. In our day, M. Cousin maintains that the mind has the idea of the perfect, which he employs in his theistic argument, Ser. ii. t. ii. 222 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. before every man some sort of " Idea " in the Platonic sense ; a model, or beau ideal, which he is ever prompted to strive after, while he is made to feel that he has not reached it. It is this impulse, I apprehend, which makes even the heathens speak of their gods, or at least their supreme God, as ineffably good and immortal; — their actual conceptions of his excellence and duration may be extremely inadequate, still they will not allow that there could be any increase made to his attributes ; and, under fostering circumstances, the conviction will come out in a more decided form. When the object is brought under our notice we see that it is perfect, that it must be per- fect, and that it cannot be otherwise. The faith is uni- versal, but the conception takes the form which may be given it by the education or the intellectual strength and growth of the individual. But it will be urged that these two views or sides of infinity are inconsistent. According to the one, infinity is something to which something can be ever added; whereas, according to the other, it is something to which nothing can be added. But in this, as in every other case of apparent or alleged contradiction among our ori- ginal perceptions, the inconsistency vanishes on a careful inspection of the precise nature of the convictions. The infinite is something beyond our image or notion ; but it is not something beyond the infinite itself. It is some- thing which admits of no increase, but that something is not the imperfect notion we form, and which we know to be imperfect. The two are not contradictory, but the one is supplementary to the other. They cannot how- ever be represented as the complement the one of the other ; for while they make up such an apprehension as the finite mind of man can form, they do not make up . the infinite itself, which is confessedly far beyond. The first of these views tends to humble us, as showing how THE INFINITE. 223 far our creature impotency is below Creator Power. The other has rather a tendency to elevate us, by showing a perfect exemplar, which is indeed far above us, but to which we may ever look up. The Perfect shines above us like the sun in the heavens, distant and unapproach- able, dazzling and blinding as we would gaze on it, but still our eye is ever turned up towards it, and we feel that it is a blessed thing that there is such a light, and that we are permitted to walk in it and rejoice in it. II. We believe in infinite space and time, and in the possibility of infinite substance or being. After what has been already said of space and time we need not dwell on the first of these positions. But in believing in the infinity of extension and duration, we believe that there may possibly be infinite substance dwelling in them. I am not satisfied that our intuitive convictions go beyond this, or that they of themselves, apart from auxiliary considerations, guarantee the existence of infi- nite substance. I am sure they do not give any au- thority to the doctrine held by so many of the ancient Greek philosophers, that material substance is eternal : we can easily believe matter to have been brought into existence at some point in time by a power adequate to produce it. It does not appear to me that we are constrained by our convictions on this special subject, taken apart from all other evidence, to believe in the existence of an eternal or omnipresent God. Herein I have always thought that the argument a priori, or intuitive, in behalf of the Divine existence fails. There is a link wanting which shows that the proof is not apodictic or demonstrative, that it is not founded on truths which are self-evident throughout, as is, for ex- ample, the proposition that the opposite angles made by the intersection of two straight lines are equal. We have, and can have, no demonstrative evidence of other 224 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. truths to which the mind cleaves most resolutely, — as, for example, that we ever had a sister, or brother, or friend, or that we were ever favoured to sit under the shelter of a father's wisdom, or the dews of a mother's tenderness. There is need of other considerations, and particularly of an experiential element, in the form of certain obvious facts, to prove the existence of a Being dwelling in infinite time and space, and possessed of infinite power and goodness. I may have occasion to show that when the patent facts and the native convic- tions are brought together, the certainty is of the very highest order short of demonstration, which it falls be- neath only so far as not absolutely to preclude the pos- sibility of doubt when the fool is determined to say in his heart, "There is no God." It- would be premature and out of place to bring forward in array these com- bined considerations at this stage of our inquiries, and to show how the order and adaptation in nature are evidence of a designing and planning mind, — how these effects in nature evoke the intuition which demands that there be a cause,— how our convictions of moral obli- gation imply a law, the embodiment of the nature of a lawgiver, — and how all these unite to establish the existence of a living Being intelligent and holy. But it is to our present purpose to show how these individually, and in their union and co-operation, fall in with, and exactly suit, our intuition regarding time and space. For I think it may be admitted that there is an emptiness, if I may so speak, about pure space and time. We know not, in fact, of a space or time without a substantial existence in them. I do indeed maintain, on the ground of irradicable conviction, that we must believe them to be independent of ourselves contem- plating them, or of material objects placed in them. Hut the mind has a difficulty in conceiving of them as THE INFINITE. 225 altogether separate and independent entities. It is from this cause, I am convinced, that so many philosophers represent them as mere relations of things rather than things, or as forms given to objects by the mind, or as mere conditions of existence. These are very incorrect representations ; still the very fact that they have been advanced is an evidence of the difficulty which the mind experiences in grasping the realities of empty space and time, which do look as if they were voids to be filled up. Independent of us, they scarcely look as if they were independent of a substantial existence. I am not pre- pared to affirm with S. Clarke, that they are modes of substance, but I have little to say against another state- ment of the same author, that "they are immediate and necessary consequences of the existence of God, and that without them his Eternity and Ubiquity would be taken away ;" or the statement of Newton, that " God consti- tutes time and space." The mind feels as if there w T ere something a-wanting, till it learns of One to occupy the vacuum ; but it is met and gratified in every one of its intellectual and moral intuitions when it is brought to know Him who inhabiteth eternity and immensity, and filleth them with living and life-giving fulness. III. We look on infinity as an attribute of some ob- ject supposed to exist. Infinity is not to be regarded as a substance, or a distinct entity ; we do not reckon it as an independent something, but Ave attribute it to something which has existence. It is the more neces- sary to make this remark from the circumstance that metaphysicians are very much tempted to give an inde- pendent being to abstractions, and often write about the infinite in such a way as to make their readers look upon them as separate entities. I stand up for the re- ality of mfinity, but I claim for it a reality simply as an attribute. It is regarded intuitively as an attribute of 226 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. expansion and duration. But the mind is not satisfied that it has got the whole truth till it looks on it as an attribute of God, and of his glorious perfections. IV. We have a conception of the objects which we believe to be infinite, I have admitted that this notion is not adequate ; in short, it is not a notion of infinity. Still the mind has a notion in regard to the infinite. On this, as a basis, the belief stands ; round this, as a body, the belief gathers, as the atmosphere does round the earth. First, there must always be a notion of an existing thing, say space or time ; or, as far more con- ceivable, a living and an intelligent God. The mind labours to heighten, deepen, widen, this notion on every side. Still it is within limits : but it can inquire what is beyond. It can do more : it can look out on what is beyond. It can do yet more : it knows that there is something beyond, and perceives somewhat of it. It perceives, for example, that far as it has gone in space, there is a space beyond ; far as it has gone in time, there is a time beyond; much as it has conceived of God, there is, after all, more of the Divine perfections. There is thus a clear conception of an object ; there is thus, too, a conception of this same object being beyond, and still further. The belief attaches to this conception, and declares that this thing conceived, this thing conceived as still beyond, is a reality, and that it is such that it can- not be increased. My readers must consult their own consciousness as to whether the account now given of the nature and genesis of our conviction is the correct one. This notion, with its adhering belief, is a mental phe- nomenon which we have a word to express. We can subject it to logical processes ; it comes in, like all our perceptions, in the concrete, — it is something, say space, time, or Deity, we apprehend as infinite ; but we can ab- stract the infinite from the object regarded as infinite, THE INFINITE. 227 and form the abstract idea of infinity. We can general- ize it, and use it as a predicate; thus we can talk of space and time and God as being infinite. We can ut- ter judgments regarding it, as that the infinite God is in every given place; there is no place of which we may not say, " Surely the Lord is in this place." We can even reason about it ; thus we can infer that this puny effort of man, set against the recorded will of God, shall most certainly be frustrated by His Infinite power. Keeping within the limits prescribed by the nature of the convic- tions, man can speak about the infinite and be intelligi- ble, he can legitimately employ it in argument, and he can muse upon it and find it to be among the most en- nobling and precious of themes.* # It should be carefully observed that according to this account, in- finite is not a separate or an independently existing thing, but the at- tribute of a thing, — very possibly an attribute of an attribute of an existing thing. It is of something, say of space, or of the attribute of something, say of the power of God, that we predicate that they are in- finite. This certainly implies that no space can be added to infinite space, but does not imply that space, because it is infinite, must contain all existence, must comprise, say wisdom and goodness. It implies that God cannot be more righteous than he is, but does not involve that his righteousness or even that Ms being must embrace all being. Mr. Mansel, in the ' Limits of Religious Thought Examined,' 3rd ed. p. 46, quotes the language of Hegel : " What kind of an Absolute Being is that which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil in- cluded? " and refers to Schelling, Schleiermacher, and Parker, as hold- ing similar views. I am sure that the mind is not shut up into any such doctrine by its native convictions. Against such a view the artil- lery of Hamilton and Mansel tells with irresistible power. They have shown most conclusively that such a notion involves inextricable confu- sion and hopeless contradictions. I freely abandon such a conception to them, to tear it to pieces with their remorseless logic. But I decidedly demur to the statement of Mr. Mansel, " that which is conceived as absolute and infinite must be conceived as containing within itself the sum, not only of all actual, but of all possible modes of being." I have nothing here to say as to the absolute, but I do affirm that we have a conception as to the infinite, the perfect — I do not say of 'the infinite, the perfect — which does not imply this consequence, and that we can both think and speak of infinity without falling into contradictions. But Mr. Mansel says (p. 335) that my view (as partially expounded in Ap- Q 228 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. And yet it is true all the while that the notion is engulfed in mystery ; it is but a small lamp of light hanging in (to us) circumambient darkness. It is of all things the most preposterous in certain speculators to set out with the idea of the infinite without a previous induction of its nature, and thence proceed, consecutively or deductively, to draw out a body of philosophy or the- ology. Such men have lost themselves in attempting to voyage an " unreal, vast, unbounded deep of horrible con- fusion ;" and yet they would seek to pilot others, only to conduct them into darker gloom and more inextricable straits, and, in the end, bottomless abysses. The account we have given of the conception and belief, shows how narrow the limits within which man can make intelligible assertions ; how strait the road in which he must walk, if he would not lose himself in wilderness and bog. He who passes these bounds is talking without a meaning ; he who would start with the notion of the absolute, and thence construct a system embracing God, the world, and man, will without fail land himself in helpless and hope- pendix to ' Method of Divine Government,' and in an Article on " In- tuitionalism and the Limits to Religious Thought" in the 'North British Review' for February, 1859), differs from that of Sir W. Hamilton ra- ther in language than in substance, and that it is not opposed to any principle of the 'Philosophy of the Conditioned.' I rejoice to believe this, as I would rather agree with Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel than with any metaphysicians of the past or present age. But whether I agree with them or not, I must hold it to be quite possible to muse and reason about the attribute 'infinite,' as it is in fact conceived and be- lieved in by the mind, without falling into the difficulties in which the German supporters of the absolute have involved themselves, and that we can think of God and write about God as infinite, without being compelled by any logical necessity to look upon Him as embracing all existence, or to reckon it impossible or inconceivable that He should create a world and living agents different from Himself. We cannot conceive that God's power should be increased, but we can conceive it exercised in creating beings possessed of power. We cannot conceive His goodness to be enlarged, but we can, without a contradiction, con- ceive Him creating other beings also good. Nor are we by this con- THE INFINITE. 229 less contradictions — the necessary consequent, and the appropriate punishment, of his folly and presumption.* The nature of man's conviction in regard to infinity, is fitted to impress us, at one and the same time, with the strength and the weakness of human intelligence, which is powerful in that it can apprehend so much, but fee- ble in that it can apprehend no more. The idea enter- tained is felt to be inadequate, but this is one of its ex- cellencies, that it is felt to be inadequate ; for it would indeed be lamentably deficient if it did not acknowledge of itself that it falls infinitely beneath the magnitude of the object. The mind is led by an inward tendency to stretch its ideas wider and wider, but is made to know at the most extreme point which it has reached that there is something further on. It is thus impelled to be ever striving after something which it has not yet reached, and to look beyond the limits of time into eternity be- yond, in which there is the prospect of a noble occupa- tion in beholding, through ages which can come to no end, and a space which has no bounds, the manifesta- tions of a might and an excellence of which we can never know all, but of which we may ever know more. It is an idea which would ever allure us up towards a God of ception shut up to the conclusion that the creature-power or creature- excellence might be added to the Divine power and goodness, and thus make it greater. To all quibbles proceeding in this line, I say that for aught I know it may not be possible they should be added, or that if added they should increase the Divine perfections ; and no reply could be given, drawn either from intuition or experience, the only lights to which I can allow an appeal. * It is at this point that Sir W. Hamilton has done such unspeakable service to Philosophy in his ' Philosophy of the Unconditioned,' and Mr. Mansel to Theology, in his 'Limits of Religious Thought,' by dis- pelling and scattering for ever the Philosophy of the Absolute, and the Theology which issued from that dark thunder- cloud, bulking so large to the eye, and sending forth terrific lightnings, with bellowing sounds and dreadful tempests, which brooded so long over Germany, and has been hovering on our shores and those of the United States of America, 230 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. infinite perfection, and yet make us feel more and more impressively the higher we ascend, that we are, after all, infinitely beneath Him. Man's capacity to form such an idea is a proof that he was formed by an infinite God, and in the image of an infinite God; his incapacity in spite of all his efforts to form a higher idea, is fitted to show us how wide the space and how impassable the gulf which separates man as finite from God the infinite. They are in error who conclude that they cannot know an Infinite God, but they are equally in error who sup- pose that they can reach a perfect knowledge of Him. There is a sense in which he may be described as the unknown God, for no human intellect can come to know all the attributes of God, or even know all about any one of his perfections ; but there is a sense in which he is emphatically the known God, inasmuch as he has been pleased to manifest and reveal himself, and every human being is required to attain a clear and positive, though at the same time a necessarily inadequate knowledge of him. It is true, on the one hand, that the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood from the things which are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; but it is equally true, on the other, that we cannot by searching find out God, that we cannot find out the Almighty unto perfection. The wide finite, with its horizon ever widening as we ascend, should call forth our admiration, our adoration, and our love ; the wider infinite, which is round about, and into which we can only gaze as we often gaze into the deep sky, should impress us with a feeling of awe in reference to Him who fills it all, and a feeling of humility in refer- ence to ourselves who can know so little. He who dwells in infinity is at once a God who re- veals and a God who conceals himself. We can know, but we can know only in part. The knowledge which THE INFINITE. 231 we can attain is the clearest, and yet the obscurest of all our knowledge. A child, a savage, can acquire a certain acquaintance with Him, while neither sage nor angel can rise to a full comprehension of Him. God may be truly described as the Being of whom we know the most, in- asmuch as His works are ever pressing themselves upon our attention, and we behold more of His ways than of the ways of any other ; and yet He is the Being of whom we know the least, inasmuch as we know comparatively less of His whole nature than we do of ourselves, or of our fellow-men, or of any object falling under our senses. They who know the least of Him have in this the most valuable of all knowledge ; they who know the most, know but little after all of His glorious perfections. Let us prize what knowledge we have, but feel meanwhile that our knowledge is comparative ignorance. They who know little of Him may feel as if they knew much ; they who know much will always feel that they know little. The most limited knowledge of Him should be felt to be pre- cious, but this mainly as an encouragement to seek know- ledge higher and yet higher, without limit and without end. They who in earth or heaven know the most, know that they know little after all ; -but they know that they may know more and more of Him throughout eternal ages. CHAPTER IV. THE EXTENT, TESTS, AND POWER OF OUR NATIVE BELIEFS. The above are some of the principal — I will not ven- ture to say that they are the whole — of our native be- liefs. As they grow upon our native convictions, so they 232 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. attach themselves to our primitive judgments, in most of which there is more or less of the faith-element, that is, belief in the existence of an object not directly known. There is belief, for instance, involved in the judgment that this effect has a cause, which cause may be un- known. There is belief, too, exercised in certain of our moral judgments, as when we believe in the integrity of a good man, or trust in the Word of God, even when His Providence seems in opposition. But these are topics which will fall to be discussed specially in subse- quent Books. It is scarcely necessary to remark that faith is an af- fection of mind, not limited to our primary convictions. Faith collects round our observational knowledge and even around the conclusions reached by inference. We believe — the course of Nature being unchanged by its Author — that the seed cast into the ground in spring will yield a return in autumn, that the sun will rise to- morrow as he has done to-day, and that the planet Saturn a year hence will be found in the very place calculated for us by the astronomer. We exercise faith, every one of us, in listening to the testimony of credible witnesses, and faith is in one of its liveliest forms when it becomes trust in the ability, the excellence, and the love of a fellow-crea- ture. Our highest faiths are those in which there is a mix- ture of the observational and intuitional elements, the observational supplying the object, and the intuitional imparting to them a profundity and a power as resting on an immovable foundation and going out into the vast and unbounded. In particular, when God has been re- vealed, faith ever clusters round Him as its appropriate object. There are canons whereby to try the trustworthiness of our belief. First, so far as our intuitive beliefs are con- cerned, these are the general tests of intuition. Take our THEIR EXTENT AND TESTS. 233 belief in the infinite. We have to ask, Is the truth be- lieved in self-evident, or does it lean on something else ? Is it necessary ? Can we believe that space and time and the Being dwelling in them have limits ? Is it universal, that is, do men ever practically believe that they can come to the verge of time and space ? Such queries as these will settle for us at once what beliefs are original and fundamental. We should put these questions to every belief that may suggest itself to our own minds. We are entitled to put them to every belief which may be pressed on us by others. Then, secondly, as to our deri- vative or observational beliefs, there are the ordinary rules of evidence as enunciated in works of special or applied logic, or as stated in books on the particular departments of knowledge, or, more frequently, as caught up by com- mon experience, and incorporated into the good sense of mankind. In no such case are we to believe without proof being supplied, and we are entitled and required to examine the evidence. Thirdly, as to mixed cases in which our faith proceeds partly on intuition, and partly on observation ; our business is carefully to separate the two, and to judge each by its appropriate tests. In the use of such rules as these, while led to yield to the faith sanctioned by our rational nature, we shall at the same time be saved from those extravagant credences which are recommended to us by unauthorized authority, by mysticism which has confused itself, by superstition, by bigotry, by fanaticism, by pride, or by passion. Looked at under one aspect, faith might be considered as so far a weakness cleaving to man, for where he has faith, other and higher beings may have immediate know- ledge. But when contemplated under other aspects, it is an element of vast strength. In heaven, much of what is faith here, will be brightened into sight, but even in heaven faith abideth. Our faiths widen indefinitely the 234 PRIMITIVE BELIEFS. sphere of our convictions, they surround our solid cogni- tions with an atmosphere in which it is bracing and exhi- larating to walk, which no doubt has its mists and clouds, but has also a kindling and irradiating capacity, and may be warmed into the fervour, and reflect the very light of heaven in a thousand varied colours. He who would tear off from the mind its proper beliefs, would in the very act be shearing it of one of its principal glories. What a power even in our earthly faiths, as when men sow in the assurance that they will reap after a long sea- son, and labour in the confidence of a reward at a far distance ! What an efficacy in the trust which the child reposes in the parent, which the scholar puts in his mas- ter, which the soldier places in his General, and which the lover commits to the person beloved ! These are among the chief potencies which have been moving man- kind to good, or, alas ! to evil. By the sharpness of its vision it discovers an outlet where sense thought that the way was shut in and closed. Difficulties give way as it ad- vances, and impossibilities to prudence speedily become accomplishments before the might and energy of faith. To it we owe the greatest achievements which mankind have effected in art, in travel, in conquest ; setting out in search of the unseen, they have made it seen and pal- pable. It was thus that Columbus persevered till the long hoped-for country burst on his view; it is always thus that men discover new lands and new worlds outside those previously known. But faith has ever a tendency to go out with strong pinions into infinity, which it feels to be its proper element. It has a telescopic power, whereby it looks on vast and remote objects, and beholds them as near and at hand. There is a constancy in its course and a steadiness in its progress, because its eye is fixed on a pole-star far above our earth. How lofty its mien as it moves on, looking THEIR POWER. 235 upward and onward, and not downward and backward, with an eye kindled by the brilliancy of the object at which it looks ! Hence its power, a power drawn from the attraction of the world above. No element in all nature so potent. The lightning cannot move with the same velocity • light does not travel so quick from the sun to the earth, as faith does from earth to heaven. It heaves up, as by an irresistible hydrostatic pressure, the load which would press on the bosom. It glows like the heat, it burns like the fire, and obstacles are consumed before its devouring progress. Persecution coming like the wind to extinguish it, only fans it into a brighter flame. The proper object of faith is, after all, the Divine Being. Time and space and infinity seem empty and dead and cold, till faith fills them with the Divine presence, quick- ens them with the Divine life, and warms them with the Divine love. When thus grounded, how stable ! firmer than sense can ever be, for the objects at which it looks are more abiding. " The things which are seen are tem- poral, but the things which are unseen are eternal." When thus fixed, the soul is at rest, as secure in Him to whom it adheres. When thus directed, all its acts, even the meanest, become noble, being sanctified by the Divine end which they contemplate. All doubts are now decided on the right side by eternity being cast into the scale. When thus associated, its might is irresistible. It carries with it, and this according to the measure of it, the power of God. It is, no doubt, weak in that it leans, but it is strong in that it leans on the arm of the Omni- potent. It is a creature impotency which makes us lay hold of the Creator's power. 236 BOOK III. PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. CHAPTER I. THEIE GENERAL NATURE, AND A CLASSIFICATION OF THEM. The mind of man has a set of Simple Cognitive — called by Sir William Hamilton Presentative — Powers, such as Sense-Perception and Self-Consciousness, by which it knows objects before it. From these we obtain our Pri- mitive Cognitions. It has also a set of Reproductive Powers, such as the Memory and the Imagination, by w 7 hich it recalls the past in old forms or in new disposi- tions. Out of them arise many of our Eaiths, as in the existence of objects which fell under our notice in time past, and in an infinity surpassing our utmost powers of imagination. But the mind has also a Power of Com- parison, by which it perceives Relations and forms Judg- ments. Our Primitive Judgments are formed from our Primi- tive Cognitions and Primitive Beliefs. On comparing two or more objects known or believed in,* we discover * A judgment is usually defined as a comparison of two notions. Upon which Mr. J. S. Mill remarks, that "propositions (except where the mind itself is the subject treated of) are not assertions respecting our ideas of things, but assertions respecting things themselves," add- ing, " My belief has not reference to the ideas, it has reference to the GENERAL NATURE OF PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. 237 that they bear a necessary relation to each other. The necessity of the relation arises from the nature of the things. We discover that objects have a certain rela- tion because of the nature of the objects, as these be- come known to us, or as we have been led to believe them to be ; and whenever we are led to discover a ne- cessary relation, it is because we have such an acquaint- ance as to observe that there is a relation implied in their very nature. It should be added, that because of our limited and imperfect acquaintance with things, there may be many necessary relations which are altogether unknown to us, even among objects which are so far known. In accepting this account, we are saved from the ex- travagant positions taken up by many metaphysicians as to the a priori judgments of the mind, which they re- present as fashioned by a power of reason independent of things, whereas they are formed on the contemplation of things, and of the nature of things so far as appre- hended. Such questions as the following are often put by ingenious minds : — How is it that two straight lines cannot enclose a space ? How is it that time appears like a line stretching behind and before, whereas the analogous thing, space, extends in three dimensions ? The proper reply is, that all this follows from the very nature of space and time. And if the question be put, How do we know that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, and things" (Logic, i. v. 1). There is force in the criticism, yet it does not give the exact truth. In propositions about extra-mental objects, we are not comparing the two notions as states of mind ; so far as lo- gicians hare proceeded on this view, they have fallen into confusion and error. But still, while it is true that our predications are made, not in regard to our notions, but of things, it is in regard to things apprehended, or of which we have a notion, as Mr. Mill admits: "In order to believe that gold is yellow, I must indeed have the idea of gold and the idea of yellow, and something having reference to those ideas must take place in my mind." 238 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS : that time lias length without breadth ? the answer is, that all this is involved in our primary knowledge of space and time. No other answer can be given ; no other answer should be attempted. Our primitive judgments pro- ceed on our primitive cognitions and beliefs, which again are founded on the nature of things, as we are consti- tuted to discover it. It will be necessary at this place to examine a very common representation that the mind begins with judg- ments, rather than the knowledge of individual things, and that there is judgment or comparison in all know- ledge. According to Locke, knowledge is nothing but the perception of the connection and agreement, or dis- agreement and repugnancy, of any two ideas. Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel maintain that in every cog- nitive act there is judgment. In opposition to Locke, I hold that the mind does not commence with ideas and the comparison of ideas, but with the knowledge of things, of which it can ever after form ideas, and which it is able to compare. I reckon it impossible for the mind, from mere ideas not comprising knowledge, or from the comparison of such ideas, ever to rise to know- ledge, to the knowledge of things. The system of Locke is at this point involved in difficulties from which it can- not be delivered by those who hold, as he did, that man can reach a knowledge of objects. The only consistent issue of such a doctrine is an idealism which maintains that the mind can never get beyond its own circle or globe, and is there engaged for ever 'in the contemplation and comparison of its own ideas, in regard to which it never can be certain whether they have any external re- ality corresponding to them. If the view of Hamilton and Mansel were slightly modified, or were otherwise ex- pressed, I am not sure that I should widely dissent from it. I acknowledge that every intuitive cognition may THEIR. GENERAL NATURE. 239 furnish the matter and supply the ground for a judg- ment. Thus, out of the knowledge of a stone as before me, I can form the judgment " This stone is now pre- sent," by an analysis of the concrete cognition. The knowledge of self as thinking enables me, as I distin- guish between the ego and the particular thought, and observe the relation of the two, to affirm, "I think." Nay, I believe that every primary cognition may entitle me, by an easy abstraction and comparison, to frame a number of primary judgments. Thus, the cognition of the stone enables me to say, " This stone exists ;" " This stone is here;" and if the perception be by the eye, " This stone is extended;" and if it be by the muscular sense, " This stone resists pressure ;" while the cognition of self as perceiving the stone, enables me to affirm, " I perceive the stone ;" " I exist " " I perceive." The two, indeed — our primary cognitions and beliefs on the one hand, and our primary judgments on the other — are in- timately connected. Every cognition furnishes the ma- terials of a judgment ; and a judgment possible, I do not say actual, is involved in every cognition. As the rela- tion is implied in the nature of the individual objects, and the judgment proceeds on the knowledge of the na- ture of the objects, so the two, in fact, may be all but simultaneous, and it may scarcely be necessary to distin- guish them, except for rigidly exact philosophic pur- poses.* Still it is the cognition which comes first, and * According to Locke, " Perception is the first operation of all our intellectual faculties, and the inlet of all knowledge into our minds" (Essay, ii. x. 15). According to the view I take, perception is know- ledge. According to Locke, " Knowledge is nothing but the Percep- tion of the Connection and Agreement, or Disagreement and [Repug- nancy of any of our ideas" (iv. i. 1). Hamilton says, — " Consciousness is primarily a judgment or affirmation of existence. Again, conscious- ness is not merely the affirmation of naked existence, but the affirma- tion of a certain qualified or determinate existence" (Metaph. Lect. 24 See also Notes to Eeid's Works, pp. 243, 275). Mr. Mansel says,— 240 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. forms the basis on which the judgments are founded ; in the case of the primitive judgments, directly founded. It should be frankly admitted that what is given in primary cognition, is in itself of the vaguest and most valueless character till abstraction and comparison are brought to bear upon it. Still our cognitions and beliefs furnish the materials of all that the discursive understanding weaves into such rich and often complicated forms. It is to be carefully observed that our primitive cogni- tions and beliefs being of realities, all the intellectual pro- cesses properly founded on them must relate to realities also. If what we proceed on be unreal, that which we reach by a logical process may also be unreal. If space and time, for example, have, as some suppose, no reality independent of the contemplative mind, then all the relations of space and time as unfolded in mathematical demonstrations, must also be regarded as unreal in the same sense. On the other hand, if space and time have (as I maintain) an existence irrespective of the mind thinking about them, then all the necessary relations drawn from our knowledge may also be regarded as having a reality independent of the mind reflecting on them. Not that they are to be supposed to have an existence as individuals, or indepen- dent of the things related : they have precisely such a rea- lity as we are intuitively led to believe them to have ; that is, they exist as necessary relations of the separate things. " It may be laid down as a general Canon of Psychology, that every act of consciousness, intuitive or discursive, is comprised in a conviction of the presence of its object, either internally in the mind, or externally in space. The result of every such act may thus be generally stated in the proposition, ' This is here.'" To this statement I have scarcely any objection to take, the more especially as he goes on to distinguish between such a psychological judgment and a logical one. " The former is the judgment of a relation between the conscious subject and the im- mediate object of consciousness. The latter is the judgment of a rela- tion which two objects of thought bear to each other" (Proleg. Lo- gica, oh. ii.). I prefer saying that what he calls a psychological judg- ment is a cognition, which may be explicated into a judgment, which judgment will be a logical one. THEIR GENERAL NATURE. 241 It may be as well to announce here generally, what will be shown specially at every stage as we advance, that all the primitive judgments of the mind are individual. The mind does not in its spontaneous operations declare that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, but upon being satisfied that a certain thing exists, it at once sets aside the thought or assertion that it does not exist. It does not affirm in a general proposition that no two lines can enclose a space ; but it says, these two lines cannot enclose a space: and it would say the same of every other two lines. It does not metaphysically an- nounce that every quality implies a substance, that every effect must have a cause, but it declares of this property contemplated that it implies a substance, and of this given effect that it must have had a cause. It is out of these individual judgments that the general maxim is ob- tained by a process of generalization. But then it is to be observed that it is not a generalization of an outward experience, — which must always be limited, and never can furnish ground for a necessary and universal proposition, but of inward and immediate judgments of the mind, which carry in them the conviction of necessity, which necessity therefore will attach itself to the general maxim, on the condition of our having properly performed the process of generalization. It is necessary for our purposes to classify the pri- mary judgments pronounced by the mind; but this is by no means an easy tasL An arrangement may however serve very important ends, even though it be not thoroughly exhaustive, and altogether unobjectionable. The following is to be regarded simply as the best which I have been able to draw out, and may be accepted as a provisional one till a better be furnished.* The mind * Locke speaks of relations as being infinite, and mentions only a few. He specifies Cause and Effect, Time, Place, Identity and Diversity, Pro- R 242 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. seems capable of noticing intuitively at least the following relations : — Those of (I.) Identity and Difference ; (II.) Whole and Parts ; (III.) Space • (IV.) Time ; (V.) Quantity; (VI.) Re- semblance ; (VII.) Active Property ; (VIII.) Cause and Effect. CHAPTER II. RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSEKVED BY THE MIND. Sect. I. Relation of Identity. We have seen that every object known by us is known as having being ; I do not say an independent being, but a separate and individual being. This being continuing in the object constitutes its identity. This identity every object has as long as it exists, and this whether the identity does or does not become known to us or to any other created being. An object has identity not because the identity is known to us ; but an object having con- tinued being, and therefore identity, intelligent beings may come to discover it. We are so constituted as to be able to know being, — -that is, that the object known to us possesses being, — and we look on the object as retain- ing that being as long as it exists. We are prepared to portion, and Moral Relations (Essay, ii. xxviii.). Hume mentions Re- semblance, Identity, Space and Time, Quantity, Degree, Contrariety, Cause and Effect. Kant's Categories are : — (I.) Quantity ; containing Unity, Plurality, Totality ; (II.) Quality ; containing Reality, Negation, Limitation; (III.) Relation; comprising Inherence and Subsistence, Cau- sality and* Dependence, Community of Agent and Patient ; (IV.) Mo- dality ; under which are Possibility and Impossibility, Existence and Non-Existence, Necessity and Contingence. Dr. Brown arranges them as those of — (I.) Co-existence ; embracing Position, Resemblance or Dif- ference, Proportion, Degree, Comprehension ; (II.) Succession ; contain- ing Causal and Casual Priority. DELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 243 decide then that if we ever fall in with this object again, it will have retained its identity. We may fall in with the same object again without discovering it to be the same, because of a defect of memory, or because the ob- ject was disguised in a crowd. But in regard to certain objects, we cannot avoid observing the sameness, and cannot be deceived in pronouncing them the same. So far as self is concerned, we discover the identity intuitively as we look on the objects presented in self- consciousness and memory. We have an immediate knowledge of self in every exercise of consciousness. We have a recollection of self in some particular state in every exercise of memory. The mind has thus before it, at every waking moment, a knowledge of a present self; and in every exercise of memory it has a past self; and in looking at and comparing the two, it at once proclaim sthe identity. It will be observed that here, as in every other case, the judgment throws us back on cognition and belief; the necessary facts on which the mind pronounces the necessary judgment, are furnished in the exercise of consciousness and memory. In regard to objects external to the mind we have no such intuitive means of discovering an identity. Our original perceptions do not extend even to the identity of our bodily frame. Every particle of matter in the body may be changed in seven years, as physiologists tell us, in perfect accordance with our intuitive percep- tions. We may be without a body in the state between death and the resurrection, and may receive an entirely new and spiritual body in heaven, and yet retain all the while our identity and feeling of identity. And in the case of extra-organic objects there is always a possibility of doubt as to whether what we perceive now is the same object as fell under our notice at some previous time. The infant, prompted by his instinct as to the 11 2 244 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. continuance of being, and making a wrong application of it, will often be inclined to discover identity where there is only resemblance, and will be apt, for example, to look on every man he meets ,with as his father. As he advances in life he will be led to pay more regard to differences. As to when there is a sufficient amount of resemblance to denote a sameness, this is to be deter- mined solely by the laws of experiential evidence. In some cases, as when we recognize our friends and fami- liar objects, there is moral certainty; in other cases there is probability, less or greater, according to the proof which is perceived or can be adduced.* The intuitive judgments are always individual, and are pronounced on the objects being presented. When generalized, they take the form of such metaphysical maxims as these : — " It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time." "Everything preserves its identity as long as it exists." "We are sure that we are the same beings as we were since con- sciousness began, and must continue the same as long as consciousness exists." The above are judgments pronounced on individual * These views determine the light in which we should look on as ' pretty ' a controversy as ever raged in metaphysics or out of it, as to whether two things in every respect alike — say two drops of water — would or would not be identical. Leibnitz held that each thing differed from every other by an internal principle of distinction, and that no individuals could be alike in every respect ; and that if they were, they could have no principle of individuation (Op. p. 277). Kant criticized this view, and urged that even though they were in every respect alike, they would differ as being in different parts of space (Werke, Bd. ii. p. 217). The common representation was that they would differ nu- merically. I am not sure that any of these accounts is correct. It is quite conceivable that there might be two things in every respect alike, except in their individual being. It is not their existence in different parts of space which constitutes their diffrence, but as different in their being they exist in different parts of space. They have a dis- tinct being, not because they are numerically different, but they are nu- merically distinct because they have a distinct being. RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 245 objects contemplated. Under the same head there fall to be placed predications which the mind makes at once and intuitively in regard to relations which have been previously perceived and sanctioned by the mind. Suppose that, on the ground of experience, we become convinced that no reptile is warm-blooded ; the mind, on the bare contemplation of the notions, will at once and intuitively declare that no warm-blooded animal can be a reptile. In all such cases it is presupposed that there is a previously discovered relation. It is possible that the mind may have been deceived, and that the relation does not exist in fact; and in this case the judgment pronounced according to the law of identity would also be wrong as a matter of fact. Thus if a proposition were given that 'no mammal is warm-blooded/ the mind would pronounce that no ' warm-blooded auimal can be a mammal.' The error, however, would lie not in the law of thought, but in the original proposition furnished. This is the proper place to explain the famous dis- tinction drawn by Kant between Analytic and Synthetic Judgments. Analytic Judgments are those in which the predicate is involved in the very notion which con- stitutes the subject ; as when we say that ' an island is surrounded with water/ ' a king has authority to rule/ 'the moral law should be obeyed.' All such judgments are said, in the nomenclature of the Kantian school, to be a priori. We have come to entertain certain appre- hensions in regard to island, king, and moral law, and now we pronounce a set of judgments on the bare con- templation of these, and involved in them by the law of identity. The judgments involved in the general law of identity, the analytic judgments of Kant, are repre- sented by Sir W. Hamilton as capable of being resolved into three specific laws. " 1 . The Law, Principle, or Axiom 240 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. of Identity, which, in regard to the same thing, imme- diately or directly enjoins the affirmation of it with it- self, and mediately or indirectly prohibits its negation : (A is A). 2. The Law, etc., of Contradiction (properly Non- Contradiction), which in regard to contradictories explicitly enjoining their reciprocal negation, implicitly prohibits their reciprocal affirmation : (A is not A). In other words, contradictories are thought as existences incompatible at the same time, as at once mutually exclusive. 3. The Law, etc., of Excluded Middle or Third, which declares that whilst contradictories are only two, everything, if explicitly thought, must be thought as of these, either the one or the other : (A is either B or not B). In different terms : — Affirmation and Negation of the same thing, in the same respect, have no conceivable medium; whilst anything actually may, and virtually must, be either affirmed or denied of anything. In other words : — Every predicate is true or false of every subject ; or contradictories are thought as impossible, but at the same time one or other as necessary.""* These laws have a great importance in Formal Logic. Being carried out and applied in special forms, they show what may be drawn from any proposi- tion or set of propositions given, and they keep thought consistent with itself. Synthetic (as distinguished from Analytic) Judgments are those in which the predicate affirms or denies some- thing more than is embraced in the subject : as when we say ' gold is yellow/ ' body gravitates/ ' sin will be punished.' Some of these judgments are a posteriori; that is, we reach them by experience. Others of them are said to be a priori ; that is, the mind, on the bare contemplation of the notions, at once pronounces the agreement or disagreement. As examples, there are the * Metaph. vol. ii. append, ii. RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 247 mathematical axioms, such as that two straight lines can- not enclose a space ; and metaphysical principles, such as that every effect must have a cause. In this Section, I have given Sir W. Hamilton's analysis of Identical or Analytic Judgments. In the remaining Sections, I am to endeavour to unfold the Synthetic Judgments a priori. Sect. II. Relation of Whole and Parts. It is a fundamental principle of this treatise that the mind begins with the concrete, — a truth which should always go along with the other, which has, however, been more frequently noticed, that it begins with the individual. Being thus furnished with the concrete in its primary knowledge and beliefs, — and we may add, imaginations, — the mind can consider a part of the con- crete whole separate from the other parts. In doing so, it is much aided by the circumstance that the concrete whole seldom comes round in all its entireness. The child sees a man with a hat to-day and without his hat to-morrow, and is thus the better enabled to form a no- tion of the hat apart from the man that wore it. In all abstraction there is judgment or comparison ; that is, we discover a relation between two objects con- templated. We contemplate a concrete whole, and we contemplate a pai$, and observe a relation of the part as a part of the whole. It should be admitted that, with- out any exercise of comparison, we are capable of imaging a part of a whole, in cases where the part can be sepa- rated ; thus, having seen a man on horseback, I can easily picture to myself the man separately or the horse separately, without thinking of any relation between them ; but in such processes there is no exercise of ab- straction. Abstraction is eminently an intellectual ope- ration. In it we contemplate a part as part of a whole, 248 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. say a quality as a quality of a substance ; for example, transparency as a quality of ice, or of some other sub- stance. In all such exercises there is involved a Cor- relative Power. This power may be called Compre- hension, inasmuch as it contemplates the whole in its relation to the parts ; or Abstraction, inasmuch as it con- templates the part as part of a whole ; and the Faculty of Analysis and Synthesis, inasmuch as it contemplates the two in correlation, — the parts and the whole. There is, if I do not mistake, intuition involved in every exer- cise of this power. The operations of the intuition are always singular, but they may be generalized, and being so, they will give us the following as involved in Ab- straction. 1. The Abstract implies the Concrete. This arises from the very nature of abstraction. When an object is before it in the concrete, the mind can separate a quality from the object, and one quality from another. It can distinguish, for example, between a man taken as a whole, and any one quality of his, such as bodily strength ; and distinguish between any one quality and another, as between his bodily strength and intellectual power, between his intellectual faculties and his feelings, and between any one feeling, such as joy, and any other feeling, such as sorrow. But we are not to suppose that, while we can thus distinguish between a whole and its parts, between an object and its qualities, between one quality and another, therefore the part can exist independent of the whole, or the quality of its object. Every abstracted quality implies some concrete object from which it has been separated in thought. 2. When the Concrete is Real, the Abstract is also Real. In this respect there is a truth in the now ex- ploded doctrine of realism. Abstraction, if it proceeds on a reality and is properly conducted, ever conducts to RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 249 realities. It is thus a most important intellectual exer- cise for the discovery of truth, enabling us to discover the permanent amidst the fleeting, the real amidst the phenomenal. As I look on a piece of magnetized iron, I know it to be a real existence, and I think of it as having a certain form, and of its attracting certain ob- jects, and I must believe that this figure is a reality quite as much as the iron which has the form, and that the at- tractive power is not a mere fiction, any more than the iron of which it is a property. But it is to be carefully observed that this abstract thing, while it has an exist- ence, has not necessarily an independent existence. We have already seen that when it is a quality it must always be the quality of a substance. Beauty is certainly re- ality, but it has no existence apart from a beautiful person or scene, of whom or of which it is an attribute. A philosopher, says Kant, was asked, What is the weight of smoke? and he answered, — Substract the weight of the ashes from the weight of the fuel burned, and we have the weight of smoke. At the basis of this judg- ment is the intuitive maxim that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. The individual intuitive judgments which the mind pronounces on looking at whole and parts may perhaps be all generalized into two principles. (1.) The parts make up the whole. (2.) The whole is equal to the sum of its parts. From the first of these we may derive the rules, that the abstract part is involved in the concrete whole, and that the abstract, as part of a real concrete thing, is also a real. From the first we have the rule that the parts are less than the whole, and from the second the maxim that the whole is greater than the parts. It is of importance to have such maxims as these accurately enunciated in mathematical demonstration and logical and metaphysical science. Spontaneously, how- ever, the mind does not form any such maxims, which are 250 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. merely the generalized expression of its individual judg- ments. Still the maxim is underlying many of our thoughts in all departments of investigation. Thus, in Natural History it urges us to seek for a classification in which all the members of any subdivision will make up the whole. It impels the chemist to look out for all the ele- ments which go to constitute the compound substance. In psychology and metaphysics it prompts us to analyze a concrete mental state into parts, and insists that in the synthesis the parts be equal to the whole. In logic it demands, as a rule of division, that the members make up the class, and is involved in all those processes in which we infer (in subalternation) that what is true of all must be true of some ; or (in disjunctive division) that what is true of one of two alternatives (A and B), and is not true of one (A), must be true of the other (B). In most of such cases the more prominent elements are got from ex- perience ; in some of them, other intuitions act the more important part ; but in all of them there are intuitions of whole and parts underlying the mental processes, — unconsciously and covertly, no doubt, but still capable of being brought out to view for scientific purposes. Sect. III. Relations of Space. I have endeavoured to show that the mind in sense- perception has a knowledge of objects as occupying space, and that round these original cognitions there gather certain native beliefs. Upon the contemplation of the objects thus apprehended, the mind is led at once and necessarily to pronounce certain judgments. They may be arranged as follows i — 1. There are all the mathematical axioms which relate to limited extension, such as, " The shortest distance be- tween any two points is a straight line ;" " Two straight RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 251 lines cannot enclose a space ;" " Two straight lines which when produced the shortest possible distance are not nearer each other, will not, if produced ever so far, ap- proach nearer each other ;" " Ail right-angles are equal to one another." Under the same head are to be placed the postulates involved in the definitions and in the pro- positions founded on them, such as the following, put in the form of maxims: — " A straight line may be drawn from any one point to any other point ;" "A straight line may be produced to any length in a straight line;" "There may be such a figure as a circle, that is, a plane figure such that all straight lines drawn from a certain point within the figure are equal to one another ;" and that " A circle may be described from any centre at any distance from that centre." I shall have occasion, in speaking of the application of the principles laid down in this treatise to mathematics, to return to axioms, and shall then show that the intuitive judgments pronounced by the mind in regard to the relations of space are all individual, and that the form assumed by them in the axioms of geome- try is the result of the generalization, not indeed of an outward experience, but of the individual decisions of the mind. 2. There are certain axioms in regard to motion, such as that "All motion is in space;" "All motion is from one part of space to another;" "All motion is by an ob- ject in space ;" "A body in passing from one part of space to another must pass through the whole interme- diate space." 3. There are the primitive truths which arise from the relation of objects to space, such as " That body occupies space ;" " That body is contained in space ;" " That body occupies a certain portion of space;" and thus "That body has a defined figure." But what, it may be asked, do our intuitive convictions say as to the relation of mind 252 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. and space? I am inclined to think that our intuition declares of spirit, that it must be in space. It is clear, too, that so far as mind acts on body, it must act on body as in space, say in making that body move in space. But beyond this, I am persuaded that we have no means of knowing the relations which mind and space bear to each other. As to whether spirit does or does not occupy space, this is a subject on which intuition seems to say nothing, and I suspect that experience says as little. 4. There are certain metaphysical judgments as to space, such as " Space is continuous •" " Space cannot be divided in the sense of its parts being separated ;" and all those derived from the infinity of space, such as that " Space has no limits;" "Any line may be infinitely pro- longed in space." Sect. IV. The Relations of Time. The apprehension of time is given in every exercise of memory ; we remember the event as having happened in time past. Round this primary conviction there collect a number of beliefs. When time thus apprehended is contemplated by us, we are led, from the very nature of the object, to make certain affirmations and denials. It declares that " Time is continuous ;" that " Time cannot be divided into separable parts ;" and that " Time has no limits/' The mind also declares of every event that it happens in time. Sect. V. The Relations op Quantity. These are equivalent to the relations of proportion re- ferred to by Locke, and the relations of proportion and degree mentioned by Brown ; they are the relations of less and more. The mind, in discovering them, proceeds upon the knowledge previously acquired of objects as being singulars, that is, units ; it is upon a succession / 1 RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 253 of units coming before it that the judgment is pro- nounced. It also very frequently proceeds on other re- lations which have been previously discovered ; on per- ceiving, for instance, that objects resemble each other in respect of space, time, and property, we may notice that they have less or more of the common thing in re- spect of which they agree. It is to this intuition I refer the power which the mind has of discovering the relation of simple numbers. A very high authority on this subject has given a some- what different account. Dr. Whewell refers our concep- tion of number to the sense of successiveness, or, as I would render it, the faculty which discovers the relations of Time. " The conception of number appears to re- quire the exercise of the sense of succession. At first sight indeed we seem to apprehend number without any act of memory, or any reference to time; for ex- ample, we look at a horse, and see that his legs are four, and this we seem to do at once without reckoning them. But it is not difficult to see that this seeming instanta- neousness of the perception of small numbers is an illu- sion. This resembles the many other cases in which we perform short and easy acts so rapidly and familiarly that we are unconscious of them, as in the acts of seeing, and articulating our words. And this is the more manifest since we begin our acquaintance with number by count- ing even the smallest numbers. Children, and very rude savages, must use an effort to reckon even their five fin- gers, and find a difficulty in going further. And persons have been known who were able by habit, or by peculiar natural aptitude, to count by dozens as rapidly as com- mon persons can by units. We may conclude therefore that when we appear to catch a small number by a single glance of the eye, we do, in fact, count the units of it in a regular though very brief succession. To count requires 254 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. an act of memory; of this we are sensible when we count very slowly, as when we reckon the strokes of a church clock, for in such a case we may forget in the in- tervals of the strokes, and miscount. Now it will not be doubted that the nature of the process in counting is the same, whether we count fast or slow. There is no defi- nite speed of reckoning at which the faculties which it requires are changed, and therefore memory, which is re- quisite in some cases, must be so in all." I entirely con- cur with this statement. I am convinced that the per- ception of the relations of time, is presupposed in our discerning the relations of number. But there may be more required. Dr. Whewell appends a foot-note, " If any one holds number to be apprehended by a direct act of intuition, as space and time are, this view will not disturb the other doctrines delivered in the text."* I believe that one, or unity, is involved in our primary cognition of ob- jects. Not that I think it necessary to call in a special intuition in order to our being able to count or number ; but I believe that, besides the exercise of memory, and the discovery of the relations of the succession in time, there must be the general power of discovering the rela- tions of quantity : we must be able, not only to go over the units, but further, to discover the relations of the units and of their combinations. To this faculty I refer all those operations in which we discover equality, or difference, or proportions of any kind, in numbers. The mental capacity is greatly aided, and its intuitive perceptions are put in a position to act more readily and extensively, through the divisions and notations by tens in our modern arithmetic ; every ten, every hundred, every thousand, and so on, comes to be regarded as a unit, and the judgments in regard to units are made to reach numbers indefinitely large. These * 'Philosophy of Inductive Sciences,' II. ix. 4. RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 255 numerical judgments admit of an application to exten- sion in space. Fixing on a certain length, superficies or solid, as a unit, we form judgments which embrace lines or surfaces or solids never actually measured. I am persuaded that, even in its common and practical operations, — as, for example, in the measurement of dis- tance by the eye, — the mind fixes on some known and familiar length as its standard, and estimates larger space by this. Ever since Descartes conceived the method of expressing curve lines and surfaces by means of equations, mathematics may be said to be concerned with quantity as their summum genus. The judgments as intuitive are all individual, but they can be generalized, when they will assume such forms as the " Common Notions," so far as they relate to quantity, prefixed by Euclid to his Elements. " Things which are equal to the same are equal to one another." " If equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal." " If equals be taken from equals, the remain- ders are equal." " If equals be added to unequals, the wholes are unequal." " If equals be taken from unequals, the remainders are unequal." " Things which are double the same thing are equal to one another." " Things which are half the same thing are equal to one another." Sect. VI. The Relations of Resemblance. It has been generally acknowledged that man's pri- mary knowledge is of individual objects : not that he as yet knows them to be individual ; it is only after he has been able to form general notions that he draws the dis- tinction, and finds that what he first knew was singular. What is meant is, that the boy does not begin with a no- tion of man, or woman, or humanity in general, but with a knowledge of a particular man, say his father, or a par- ticular woman, say his mother ; and it is only as other men and other women come under his notice, and he 256 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. observes their points of agreement, that he is able to rise to the general notion of man, or woman, or humankind. In the mental processes involved in generalization, the most important part is the observational one. When we discover, for example, the resemblances of plants, and proceed to group them into species, genera, and orders, the operation is one of induction and comparison. There is no necessity of thought involved in the law that roses have five petals, or that fishes are cold-blooded, or indeed in any of the laws of natural history. Still there are laws of thought which have a place in the generalizing process. 1. The universal implies the singular. The mind pro- nounces this judgment when it looks at the nature of the individuals and the generals. The universal is not some- thing independent of the singulars, prior to the singu- lars, or above the singulars. A general notion is the notion of an indefinite number of objects possessing a common attribute or attributes. It is clear, therefore, that the general proceeds on and presupposes indivi- duals. If there were no individuals, there would be no general ; and if the individuals were to cease, the general would likewise cease. If there were no individual roses, there would be no such thing as a class of plants called roses. 2. When the singulars are real, the universal is also real ; always, of course, on the supposition that the ge- neralization has been properly made. There exists, we shall suppose, in nature, a number of objects possessing common attributes, we have observed their points of re- semblance, and put them in a class : has, or has not, the class an existence ? In reply, I say that the genus has an existence and a reality as well as the individual objects. An indefinite number of animals chew the cud, and are called ruminant; the class ruminant has an existence RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 257 quite as much as the individual animals. But let us ob- serve what sort of reality the class has ; it is a reality merely in the individuals, and in the possession of com- mon qualities by these individuals. 3. Whatever is predicated of a class may be predi- cated of all the members of the class ; and vice versa, whatever is predicated of all the members of a class may be predicated of the class. This is a self-evident and ne- cessary proposition. It is pronounced by the mind in an individual form whenever it contemplates the relation of a class and the members of the class ; thus, if the ge- neral maxim be discovered or allowed, that all reptiles are cold-blooded, and the further fact be given or ascer- tained that the crocodile is a reptile, the conclusion is pronounced that the crocodile is cold-blooded. We shall discover, when we come to apply these gene- ral principles, that the laws mentioned in this Section play an important part in Logic, and have a place in the Notion, in the Judgment, and in Reasoning. Sect. VII. Relations oe Active Property. I have been striving to prove that we cannot know either self or body acting on self, except as possessing property. On looking at the properties of objects, the mind at once pronounces certain decisions. These, like all our other intuitive judgments, have a reference, in the first instance, to the individual case presented, but may be made universal by a process of generalization. Thus, the mind declares, " this property implies a sub- stance," "this substance will exercise a property." The abstract truths will seldom be formally enunciated, but, as regulative principles, they underlie our common thoughts, and we proceed on them, even when entirely unaware of their nature or of their existence. Every ac- tion or manifestation we intuitively regard as the action s 258 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. or exhibition of a something having a substantial being. On falling in with a new substance, say an aerolite just dropped from the heavens, we know not indeed what its properties are, but we are sure that it has properties, and we make an attempt to discover them. Sect. VIII. Relation of Cause and Effect. All our primitive judgments carry us back to primitive cognitions and beliefs, that is, they are pronounced by the mind as it looks to objects intuitively known or ne- cessarily believed in. The judgment which affirms that the cause must produce its effect, and that the effect has resulted from a cause, proceeds from and is grounded on a cognition which has already passed under our notice, the intuitive knowledge of substance exercising power. It will appear, as we advance, that those who overlook or deny the mind's primary knowledge of power, can give no adequate or satisfactory account of the nature or meaning of the causal judgment. It will be needful to show here, first of all, that the judgment is not derived from the generalizations of out- ward experience. As we do so, it will be necessary to state, though it will not be necessary to dwell on it after the enunciations which have been so often repeated, that our conviction is not of a general truth, but relates solely to individual facts presented to or contemplated by the mind. Our original judgment is not that every cause has an effect, and that every effect has a cause, proposi- tions which will not be admitted and cannot be under- stood till the words 'cause' and 'effect,' terms very abstract and general, be explained, — but it is that this thing having power, may produce an effect, and that this thing apprehended as a new thing or as having been changed must have had a cause. In proceeding to prove that the mental conviction, thus RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 259 understood, is not derived from experience, I am dis- posed to admit at once that observation might, without any original intuition, lead to a loose general belief in cause and effect. On seeing two events in frequent juxtaposition, we might be disposed when we see the one to think of the other by the ordinary law of association, and when we see the one to expect the other, as the re- sult of a process of generalization. This I freely admit; but I maintain, at the same time, that the intuitive con- viction is, in fact, one powerful means of making us asso- ciate cause and effect so naturally in our minds, and to generalize our experience of causation. Any experiential conviction would necessarily want certain essential ele- ments ever found in our conviction regarding causation. First, it would not, as being the result of generaliza- tion, operate at so early a period of life as our belief in cause and effect evidently does. The causal belief is as strong in infancy as in mature life or in old-age, is as strong among savages as in civilized countries in which scientific observation has made the greatest advances. True, savage nations have not a belief in the uniformity of nature, which is a result (as shall be shown further on) of observation ; they discover events which are thought to have no cause in nature, but then they seek for a cause beyond nature. Now, if the conviction of causa- tion were like the belief in the uniformity of nature, a principle derived from induction, — which must necessarily be a large induction, — it would be difficult to account for its existence and its invariable operation in the earliest stages of individual life and of society. I admit that all this merely proves that there is a native instinct or in- clination prompting us to rise from an effect to a cause, and by no means justifies us in standing up for a neces- sary conviction. Secondly, it would scarcely account for the universality s 2 260 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. of the belief among men brought up in such various countries and situations, attached to such different sects and creeds, and under the influence of all kinds of whim and caprice. This can be most satisfactorily explained by supposing that there is a native principle at work, in- clining and guiding all men. Such a consideration, I allow, does not show that the conviction is a fundamental one, nor would I urge it as in itself a positive proof of the existence even of a native instinct : still it is a strong presumption. Indeed the theory which supposes that there is some original impulse or inclination, is the only one which can give a full explanation of all the beliefs which man cherishes, and the judgments which he ever pronounces. Thirdly, it would not account for the fundamental and necessary character of the judgment. This is the con- clusive circumstance, of which the others are to be re- garded as merely corroborations. No possible length or uniformity could or should give this necessity of convic- tion to the judgment. We might have seen A and B, this stone and that stone, this star and that star, this man and that man together, a thousand, or a million, or a billion of times, and without our ever having seen them separate, but this would not and ought not to necessitate us to believe that they have been for ever together, and shall be for ever together, and must be for ever together. No doubt, it would lead us, when we fell in with the one to look for the other, and we would wonder if the one presented itself without the other ; still, it is possible for us to conceive, and, on evidence being produced, to be- lieve, that there may be the one without the other. It was long supposed that all metals are comparatively heavy, but while every one was astonished at the fact, no one was prepared to deny it, when it was shown by Davy that potassium floated on water. Down to a very RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 261 recent date civilized men had never seen a black swan, yet no naturalist was ever so presumptuous as to affirm that there never could be such an animal ; and when black swans were discovered in Australia, scientific men, no doubt, wondered, but never went so far as to deny the fact. A very wide and uniform experience would justify a general expectation, but not a necessary conviction; and this experience is liable to be disturbed at any time by a new occurrence inconsistent with what has been previously known to us. But the belief in the connec- tion between cause and effect is of a totally different character. We can believe that two things which have been united since creation began, may never be united again while creation lasts ; but we never can be made to believe, or rather, think, judge, or decide (for this is the right expression) that a change can take place without a cause. We can believe that night and day might hence- forth be disconnected, and that from and after this day or some other day there would only be perpetual day or perpetual night on the earth ; but we could never be made to decide that, the causes which produced day and night being the same, there ever could be any other effect than day or night. We could believe, on suffi- cient evidence, that the sun might not rise on our earth to-morrow, but we never could be made to judge that, the sun and earth and all other things necessary to the sun rising on our earth abiding as they are, the lu- minary of clay should not run his round as usual. We see at once that there is a difference between the judg- ment of the mind in the two cases ; in the case in which we have before us a mere conjunction sanctioned by a wide and invariable induction, and that in which we have an effect, and connect it with its cause. The one belief can be overcome, and should be overcome at any time by a new and inconsistent fact coming under our 262 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. observation ; whereas, in regard to the other, we are con- fident that it never can be modified or set aside, and we feel that it ought not to be overborne. It is to be carefully noticed that while we have a na- tive and necessary conviction, it does not announce what effect any given cause must produce, or what is the cause of any given effect. On an effect presenting itself to our notice, we believe that it must have a cause, but what the cause is, is to be determined, after all, by observa- tion. On discovering a new substance, say a metal, we anticipate that it will act in some particular way on the needful conditions being supplied ; but how it will act, chemically or magnetically, or in reference to any other agent, we cannot predict beforehand. It is of the utmost moment that we ever take this view of the intuitive prin- ciple when we would use it in speculation, and that we should distinctly know what it cannot do, as well as what it can do. It is meant to be a regulative principle un- derlying and guiding our inquiries, but it is not intended to supersede experience. On the contrary, it is when an effect or a cause is presented, that the intuitive principle begins to operate, and constrains us to look for a cause or an effect. And as to what the precise cause or effect may be, even this is not announced by the conviction, but is to be discovered by experience ; that is, having discovered that a substance has operated in a certain way in time past, we are sure that it will so operate again ; and having found that a particular effect has pro- ceeded from a certain cause, we are sure, on the same effect presenting itself, that it must have come from the same cause. It thus appears that intuition and experi- ence combine, each meanwhile having its own province, in all the judgments which we pronounce as to the mode of the operation of any given cause, or the cause of any given effect. It is our special business, in what remains RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 263 of this Section, to determine in an inductive manner what is involved in our conviction of cause and effect, and the relation between them. I. Cause implies a Substance with Potency. This doctrine was explicitly stated and defended by Leibnitz, and has been incidentally admitted by many who have not been prepared to adhere to the general view.* We never know of a causal influence being exercised, except by an object having being and substantial existence. We decide, and must decide, that every effect proceeds from one or more substances having potency. If a tree is felled to the ground, if the salt we saw dry a minute ago is now melted, if a limb of man or animal is broken, we not only look for a cause, but we look for a cause in something that had being and property, say in the wind blowing on the tree, or in water mingling with the salt, or in a blow being inflicted by a stick, or other hard substance, on the limb. When we discover effects pro- duced by light, heat, electricity, or similar agents, whose precise nature has not been discovered, we regard them either as separate substances, or if this seems (as it does) highly improbable, we regard them as properties or affec- tions of substances. If this world be an effect, we look for its cause in a Being possessed of power. And this, I may remark in passing, seems to be the reason why we do not place Time and Space under the law of causation. Causes operate and effects take place in time and space, but we are not led to look on dura- tion and place producing effects, or being themselves affected by any agents. We talk, indeed, of time effect- ing mighty changes, say in elevating or abrading the earth's surface, or in revolutionizing society, and chang- ing men's opinions and sentiments ; but the language is elliptical, and it means, when the steps are fully un- # See supra, pp. 147, 166. 264 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. folded, that powers residing in substances produce effects when time is allowed them. So far as we know, or can know, of time or space, we look on them as unchanged and unchangeable, though it would be presumptuous in us to affirm that they can in no way be affected or in- fluenced by the Divine Power. II. Power residing in substance is exercised when the needful conditions are supplied. All creature power is conditioned and limited : it is a power to produce a cer- tain particular effect. Commonly, if not invariably, there is need, as has been shown in treating of Power, of the concurrence of two or more agencies in order to action, and there will be operation only when there is co-opera- tion. The very power of God is in a sense qualified, it is guided by that which should ever direct it, by His Will, which is holy and benevolent. But confining our atten- tion to creature power, mental or material, it has always a rule, or defined mode of action, and can act only in a particular way, and to a certain extent. That which is necessary to the exercise of power in a substance may be called the conditions, and it is only on the conditions being supplied that power is exercised. A magnet has a power of attracting iron, but it is only when iron is within reach that the property is active. There is a sense, and an important sense, in which power may be said to be in the substance, to be inhe- rent in the substance, to constitute, indeed, an element in the nature of the substance. In this sense the power of the substance is always the same; that is, the same substance will always act in the same way on the condi- tions being supplied. Allotropism may seem an exception, but it is so only in appearance ; for when phosphorus pro- duces one effect in one state, and another effect in another state, it is because of some change produced by heat, or electricity, or some other agent ; and that the power RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 265 continues the same, is evident from the circumstance'that when the substance is brought back from its allotropic state, it exercises the same power as it did at first, a clear proof that in the allotropic state it was simply put under new conditions. It appears from these statements that there may be perfect propriety in speaking of latent power, that is, of a power not in action because the conditions needful to its operation are not supplied. Nay, it is pos- sible, I do not say probable, that there are properties both of mind and matter which are usually occult, and only appear in action on rare occasions. Nay, some have supposed that the soul has capacities which are altogether dormant here (like the capacity of the dumb to learn lan- guages if only they had hearing), and are to be awakened into life only on the conditions needful to their exercise being presented in the world to come. III. There must be an adequacy or sufficiency of power to produce the effect. We not only look for a cause, but for a competent cause. Experience, it is true, and experience alone, can tell us what is a sufficient cause, as it alone can inform us what is the cause. Still there seems to be an inherent conviction of the mind which leads us, in looking for a cause, to make the cause equal to the work which it accomplishes. Powers differ in kind, and they differ in degree. There is need, for instance, of more than human power to create a sub- stance out of nothing. There is need of more than the power residing in material substance to produce thought and emotion and will. The ant which carries a seed of grain, is not competent, like man, to carry a sack of corn; and the strength of man is inadequate to raise a weight which can be lifted with ease by a steam-engine. The lily can reproduce a lily after its kind, but cannot produce a pine or an oak. These facts, I am aware, can be known only by observation. But underneath all our ex- 266 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. periential knowledge there is a necessary principle which constrains us, when we discover an effect, to look not only for a cause, but a cause with the kind of power which is fitted to produce the kind of effect, and to pro- portion the extent of the power to the extent of the effect. This original principle is the source of a number of most important derivative ones; as, when we have found a substance exercising a certain sort of power, we antici- pate that it will always exercise the same sort of power, and when we have found it exercising a certain amount of force, we expect that it will always be fit for the same, — of course, always on the necessary conditions being furnished. Thus, having found that our minds can fol- low a train of reasoning, we are sure that they will al- ways be able to do so, — of course, on the supposition that the bodily organism needful to mental operation in man is not in a state of derangement. The amount of force which drives a ball a certain distance to-day, we are sure will drive it to the same distance to-morrow. If a de- finite weight of oxygen has been ascertained chemically to unite with a certain definite weight of hydrogen, we are sure it will ever do so ; and if we find the very same amount of oxygen not drawing to it the same amount of hydrogen, we argue that there must have been some change in the conditions of the oxygen. It is acknow- ledged that in such judgments there is and must be an experiential element, which in spontaneous thought is ever the more prominent, — it is ever the one about which the mind is most anxious, as being the only doubt- ful one ; still there is also a necessary principle, which is overlooked only because it is indisputable and inva- riable. Rising from earthly to heavenly things, we look on God, who has produced works in which are traces of such large power and admirable wisdom, as a Being possessed of power and wisdom corresponding to the RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 267 effects we discover, and as capable, whenever he may see fit, of producing works distinguished by the same lofty characteristics. IV. There is a necessary relation between the cause and the effect, arising from the necessity of the cause to produce the effect when the conditions are furnished. The principles laid down in preceding Sections seem to me to establish this truth, and so to clear up the subject round which the discussions regarding causation have chiefly turned since the days of Hume. Perverting and turning to his own purposes the views regarding sensa- tion which had been maintained by Locke and other metaphysicians, the great sceptic represents the mind as starting with impressions; and it seems to me certain that, were there nothing beyond this in the original in- tuitions of the mind, it would be impossible to show how it could ever reach the knowledge of realities. Many of the opponents of Hume have not seen, or, at least, have not adopted the proper method of meeting him. Kant supposes the mind to start with phenomena, and not with things ; and when he subsequently calls in a cate- gory of cause and effect, it is avowed that it cannot ap- ply to things, but simply to phenomena. Dr. Thomas Brown saw clearly that our belief in cause and effect is intuitive, and so far his views are sound, and most eloquently and forcibly illustrated; but, supposing the mind to start with mere sensations, and not with the knowledge of things, and things possessing power, he never reached adequate views of the relation between the cause and the effect. Differing widely from Hume as to the nature of the mental principle which leads us to be- lieve in the connection between cause and effect, he re- gards the objective connection as merely invariable ante- cedence and consequence. In sustaining this tenet he wastes an immense amount of ingenuity in showing that 268 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. there is nothing, no link of any kind, between the cause and the effect. True I say, and I maintain that, except in the way of loose metaphor, no one ever asserted that there was. But in all this argument he blinks the main question, — and yet it is ever, as appears from chance ex- pressions, pressing itself on him, — which is not as to what is between the cause and effect, but what is there in the cause to produce the effect. If he had supposed the mind to begin with the cognition of self and of body exercising power, he would have found more in the relation than the mere invariability of the succession : he would have discovered a power in the substance or substances act- ing as the cause, and that the invariableness, so far from being the primary circumstance, was a necessary conse- quence of this. The invariability then carries us back to a more im- portant circumstance, to the power which is intuitively known to be in substance. When the substances have the conditions furnished, they act, and effects must follow. The acting substances in the relation need- ful to their action is thus the true cause, the uncondi- tional cause (to use a phrase of Mr. J. S. Mill's), the in- variable cause ever followed by its proper and peculiar effects. This view however lends no sanction whatever to the rash statements of M. Cousin, who speaks about its being necessary for God to create. True, creation must follow if he put forth the volition, but then he has a will to exert or withhold the creating act. Creation must spring into being if he will it, but to will it is an clement (always along with power) in that cause of which a created object is the effect. The same remark holds good, within certain limitations, of the acts of man : when he wills it, certain effects follow, as when he wills to lift the arm, the arm must move if the organs be in a healthy condition ; but in this and all similar cases, RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 269 while the effect is necessary, it is on the presupposition of a cause in which will and free will is an essential element. In other cases the effects follow from a power in substance, acting, so far as man can know, without any exercise of will. When I hear of the death of a friend, and a torrent of grief flows into my bosom, or when a spark falls on gunpowder, and an explosion fol- lows, there is no exercise of creature will, (though there may possibly be a concurrence of the Divine Will neces- sary to all creature action) ; but whether there be or be not room for free will in the cause or substances acting, there is a necessary connection between these substances acting (with or without free will) and their proper effect. The mind, in contemplating the relation between cause and effect, declares the relation to be necessary, and can- not be made to believe otherwise, and decides that it is a necessity arising from the power intuitively known as in the substance. It is to reverse the proper order of things to resolve the necessity into the invariableness : the invariableness is the result of a necessity arising from the potency of substance. V. An effect is known as either a new substance, or as a change in a previously existing substance. The production of a new substance, or even of a new power, property, or capacity in an old substance, is altogether beyond human power ; it is probably beyond all creature power. It seems to be the special prerogative of God to create out of nothing. A large induction seems to inform us that, in creating substances, he imparted to them all their qualities and properties ; and man can as little add to the powers in the substances, as he can add to the substances in the universe. Another kind of effect, and the one which alone falls under our common observation, consists in a previously existing substance being put in a new state : this is the only effect which can be produced 270 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. by any modification of physical action, as by mechanical or chemical action ; nay, it is the only effect which can be produced by mental action or human action of any description. Taking advantage of natural powers, we may find a body in one condition and put it in another j or, accommodating ourselves to mental laws, we may pro- duce changes in our own state of mind : but here our power terminates. We are informed of all this by an enlarged experience rather than by intuition ; but our primary conviction seems to say, that as every cause is found in a substance, so every effect is also in a substance, which may, as induction shows, be either a totally new substance, or a substance undergoing some modification. From this doctrine of causation, there follow several corollaries of no little consequence in the settlement of speculative questions. 1. When the effect is real, that is, a real thing or substance, the cause must also be real, that is, a real thing or substance produced or changed. No doubt, it is quite possible for man, endowed as he is with the power of imagination as well as cognition, to conjure up a fanciful effect, say to fancy that some mysterious power is exer- cising a malign influence upon him, and in such a case the cause must be as imaginary as the effect (though even here the intuitive law of causation will constrain him to seek for producing power in some human or angelic being, in some star or animal) ; but if the effect be a thing in actual existence, the cause must also be in actual existence. Taking this view with us, we see how those metaphysicians who suppose that the mind primitively knows only phenomena, can never satisfactorily go be- yond a phenomenology, or reach a God who has any other sort of existence than the phenomena, and the mental laws which bind them. But if the world be a reality, if mind be a real thing, and body a real thing, and RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED . 271 the heavens and earth be real things, and if they be effects of power which must of necessity be supra-mun- dane, then the constitutional laws of the mind insist that the cause must also be real, and is to be found in a Being possessed of the adequate and competent power. 2. The mind is not necessitated to seek for an endless series of causes. As the doctrine of causation is some- times stated, it might appear as if we were required, in following the chain of cause and effect, to go back ad in- finitum. It is said, in a loose way, that every object must have a cause; and then, as this cause must also have a cause, it might seem as if we were compelled to go on for ever from one link to another. In particular, it might appear as if we could never legitimately argue from the law of causation in favour of this world being caused ; for, if the law of cause and effect be universal, then we must seek for a cause, not only of the world, but of the Being who made the world ; and if it be not uni- versal, then it is conceivable that this world may be one of the things which are not caused. This is an objection urged with great confidence by Kant ; and a large school of metaphysicians seem to think that it is fatal to any argument in favour of the Divine existence derived from human intelligence, as in every such argument the law of causation must enter as an element. Kant endeavours to escape from the dismal consequences in which he felt himself being engulfed, by declaring that the law of cause and effect, which thus required an infinite regressus, was a law of thought and not of things, and by calling in a moral argument (which argument has again been assailed by the very objections which Kant directed against the speculative argument — for if our intelligence be a delusion, why may not our moral convictions also be so ?) ; while a large body of thinkers have appealed to some sort of mysterious faith which will not submit to 272 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. be examined or even expressed. But, with all deference to these bold asseverations, I maintain that if only this Cosmos can be shown to bear marks of being an effect, the argument from causation can carry us up to a supra- mundane cause, while it does not require us to go back to a cause of that cause. All inquiry into causation conducts us to substance ; but it does not compel us to go on further, or to go on for ever. The law of causality does insist that the world, as an effect, must have a cause in a Being possessing power ; and if, in inquiring into the nature of that Being, we find reason to believe that He or it must be an effect, it would insist on us going on to look out for a further cause. But if, on the other hand, we find no signs of that Being who made the world being an effect, our intuition regarding causation would be entirely satisfied in looking on that Being as uncaused, as self- existent, as having power in Himself. It thus appears that this difficulty, which has puzzled so many, has arisen entirely from a misapprehension and perversion of the law of causation, commencing with Hume, and presented in a new form by Kant. It is removed at once by an inductive investigation of our cognition of power, and of our judgment regarding causation.* * It is a circumstance worthy of being noted that the powerful mind of Kant, in his chase after an Unconditioned, represented by him as ideal, finds a progressus or a regressus of some kind or other in time, in space, in matter, in cause, in the possible or actual, but admits fully and explicitly that in regard to substance the reason has no ground to proceed regressively with conditions. Iu regard to causality we have a series of causes which go back unendingly, the unconditioned being the absolute totality of the series. But in substance there is no such regressus. "Was die Kategorien des.realen Verhaltnisses unter den Erscheinungen anlangt, so schickt sich die Kategorie der Substanz mit ihren Accidenzen nicht zu einer transscendentalen Idee, d. i. die Vcrnunft hat keinen Grund, in Ansehung ihrer, regressiv auf Bedin- gungen zu gehen." (Kr. d. r. Vera., p. 328.) We have only to con- nect this doctrine of substance, not necessarily calling, according to the principles of reason, for a regressus, with his admission that substance PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. 273 3. By observing and classifying the effects, we may obtain a knowledge of the substances from which the effects proceed. Powers residing in substances differ in kind and in degree in different substances. The power of creation differs from the power of simply producing changes in what already exists. Power in spiritual beings differs from power in inanimate creation. Even when the power is the same in kind, it may differ in degree in different individuals. Now it is by a careful observation and generalization of its actings, and of the effects that follow, that we are enabled to gather our chief knowledge of substance. In conducting such an investigation in a scientific manner, we put in one class, and usually de- signate by a common name, the acts which are alike in their main features, and argue legitimately that there is a faculty in the substance to produce these effects. It is thus from a classification of the actings of natural sub- stances that we seek to rise to a knowledge of the pro- perties general and specific of body. It is thus that we observe and generalize the acts of the mind, and so en- deavour to ascertain its faculties. It is thus, that from a careful generalization of the acts of God, the theo- logian attempts to give something like — he should pro- fess to do no more — a systematic account of his Attri- butes. All this does not imply, though some are ever telling us that it does, that we are dividing the unity of the soul, or the unity of God. In proceeding in this inductive manner we are taking the only plan available to us of becoming acquainted with those powers or attri- butes which constitute an essential element in the human soul and in the Divine Mind. involves power (see supra, p. 166 foot-note) to be able to maintain, and this without falling into any contradiction, that the effects seen in nature of a power above nature, argue a substance having power, for which we are not required to seek for a cause. * T 274 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. 4. By combined intuition and experience we may often be enabled to argue that effects of a particular description imply causes of a particular kind and degree. Intuition insists that not only there be a cause of the effect^ but that the cause be sufficient. Experience then comes in to give us information as to certain effects coming from certain causes or substances, and not coming from certain others. We do not expect inani- mate objects to produce the effects that flow from the plant, nor the plant to accomplish what is done by the animal, nor body to effect what can be done by mind. A very wide induction informs us that order and adapta- tion come from a being capable of contemplating means and end, and are not to be looked for from material forces operating blindly and unintelligently. All this may not, it is true, be intuitive or apodictic, but it is the result of a large and uniform observation, and it connects itself with a primary conviction which demands an adequacy in the cause, and is satisfied when it is directed to a Supreme Intelligence, the source of all the system and utility to be found in the universe. 5. The intuitive conviction gives no sanction whatever to the maxims that like can only act on like, or like only proceed from like, or that the effect must resemble the cause. All these proceed from narrow views of cause, making that universal which holds good only in certain cases. Like things do influence each other, but unlike things also exercise a mutual affection, as when acid acts on an alkali. The offspring of plants and animals do resemble their parents ; but there are effects which are in no way like their cause, as when the sun's heat makes the ice to melt. By laying down such maxims, philosophers landed themselves in innumerable diffi- culties ; they could not allow that body could influence mind, or mind body, or conceive how it was possible for RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 275 the physical universe to proceed from a spiritual God ; and they helped, with other Cartesian principles, to shut up Spinoza into a pantheism which would admit of only one substance. But such maxims have no foundation in intuition, and they are contradicted by experience. The maxim is not, the cause and effect must be alike, but that the cause must be competent to produce the effect. 6. It is not a sufficiently accurate expression of the principle of causation when it is said that like causes in like circumstances will produce like effects. When the law is announced in this vague form, we lose ourselves in determining what amount of resemblance there must be in the causes and in the effects, and in estimating the relative importance of the causes and of the circum- stances, A philosophical account of the cause must specify the likeness necessary, and embrace the circum- stances. We must therefore bring in substance and the power in substance acting according to a rule. Every created substance is endowed with power of a certain kind and amount, which will act, on the needful condi- tions being supplied ; and the correct statement is, that the same substances, acting in the same relation, will always produce the same effects. 7. Our intuitive conviction is not of the uniformity or continuance of the course of nature. This is the vague shape in which the principle appears in the works of Reid and Stewart. " God," says the former, " hath im- planted in human minds an original principle, by which we believe and expect the continuance of the course of nature, and the continuance of those connections which we have observed in time past" (Works, p. 198). " We attend to every conjunction of things which presents itself, and expect the continuance of that conjunction." This is far too loose a form in which to present the maxim ; indeed it is altogether incorrect, and mav land 276 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. us, if logically followed out, in very serious consequences. Instead of having a belief in the permanence or con- tinuance of the course of things, the great body of man- kind — nearly all in the earlier and simpler ages of society, and almost all who live beyond the pale of the countries in which physical science is cultivated — look upon this world as liable to constant interferences on the part of supernatural agencies, in cases in which they clo not regard events as being produced by chance or caprice. It is vain, therefore, to speak of the belief in the uniformity of nature as a self-evident, a necessary, or a universal principle.* Besides, if we have an intuitive belief in the perma- nence of nature, it will be impossible to prove that nature was created, or that there can be any miracles or in- terference with the agencies of nature by a supernatural power ; for no evidence adduced in behalf of creation or divine interposition could ever be so strong as the ne- cessary belief in direct opposition to it. .But the fact is, that all such maxims as that the course of things is uni- * Mr. J. S. Mill is successful in showing (Logic, bk. iii. ch. xvi.) that man's belief in the uniformity of nature is the result of experience, that it is entertained only by the educated and civilized few, and that even among such it has been of slow growth. But Mr. Mill has fallen into a glaring ' fallacy of confusion ' in confounding our belief in causation with our belief in the uniformity of nature. The distinction was before him, at least for an instant, when, speaking of the irregularities of nature, he says: "Such phenomena were commonly, in that early stage of human knowledge, ascribed to the direct intervention of the will of some supermitural being, and therefore still to a cause. This shows the strong tendency of the human mind to ascribe every pheno- menon to some cause or other." It is of this tendency that I affirm that it is native, and irresistible. He tells us that one "accustomed to abstraction and analysis, who will fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, when his imagination has once learned to entertain the notion, find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one, for instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may succeed one another at random, without any fixed law ; nor can anything in our experience, or in our mental nature, constitute a sufficient or indeed t any reason for believing that this is RELATIONS INTUITIVELY OBSERVED. 277 form, and that like may be expected in like circumstances, are the result, not of any fundamental principle of in- telligence, but of experience ; and the same experience which determines how far they are true must determine also how they are to be understood, how they are mo- dified, and what are the exceptions to them. Natural science proves that while the usual rule is that all plants and animals proceed from parents of the same kind, there must yet have been a time or times when new species appeared on the earth by a supernatural power, or at least a power not at work in the present processes of nature. The world as a whole bears marks of being an effect, and there must have been a time when it was pro- duced by a power above itself. In the inspired writings we have evidence of works being done by Moses and the Prophets, by Jesus and the Apostles, surpassing the power of man or of physical nature. All this is incon- sistent with a belief in the absolute uniformity of the course of nature, but it is quite in harmony with the in- tuitive conviction. If the world be an effect, we seek for nowhere the case." I have remarked on this elsewhere (Method of Divine Government, p. 528). "This statement about fixed laws is ambiguous. If by fixed law be meant simply order and uniformity among physical events, the statement is true. But if meant to signify an event without a cause, material or mental, the statement is contra- dicted by our ' mental nature,' which impels U3 to seek for a cause of every event. He is right in affirming that ' experience ' cannot autho- rize such a belief ; but it is just as certain that our ' mental nature ' constrains us to entertain it: and surely if there be laws in physical nature, there may also be trustworthy laws in our mental nature." There is the same confusion of two different things in the following passage. " The uniformity in the succession of events, otherwise called the law of causation, must be received not as the law of the universe, but of that portion of it only which is within the range of our means of sure observation, with a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases." I freely admit all this in regard to the order observable every- where in our Cosmos ; there may or may not be a similar uniformity in the regions of space beyond. But our mental nature will not allow us to think, judge, or believe (these, and not ' conceive,' which is am- biguous, are the proper phrases), that in this our world, or in any other world, there can be an event without a cause. 278 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS. a cause above the world ; if the new species of animated beings cannot have been produced by natural agencies, we call in a supernatural cause ; if the miracles of Scrip- ture cannot be accounted for by human power, we call in Divine Power ; and we feel, meanwhile, that so far from our native convictions being violated, they are gratified to the full when they learn of the events, otherwise inex- plicable, being referred to causes adequate to produce them. It thus appears that those difficulties which have been propounded so pompously about the impossibility of proving that there can have been a cause above na- ture producing the effects in nature, or of establishing a miraculous interposition with the course of things, all proceed on defective and erroneous views of causation, and at once disappear when the nature of our conviction is inductively investigated and correctly expressed.* * It is not to my present purpose to enter on the subject of miracles, but it does fall in with the topics discussed in the text to remark, that there is nothing in a miracle opposed to any intuition of the mind, — certainly nothing opposed to our intuition as to cause. Hume, the sceptic, takes all sorts of objections to miracles, and the evidence by which they are supported, but he does not maintain that a miracle is impossible. It is "experience," according to him, "which assures us of the laws of nature " (Essay on Miracles) ; and I hold that the same experience shows us effects in nature which constrain us, according to the intuitive law of causation, to argue a Power above nature, which Power is an adequate cause of any miracle which may be attested by proper evidence. Dr. Thomas Brown has shown very satisfactorily that a miracle, with the Divine Power as its cause, is not in- consistent with our intuitive belief in causation (Cause and Effect, note E). Ever since Fichte published his ' Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung,' there have been persons in Germany who represent it as impossible for God to perform a miracle. This may be a necessary consequence of those false assumptions regarding our knowing only self, which landed Fichte in an incongruous pantheism, in which he at one time represents the JEgo as the All-including God, as the "moral order;" and at another time represents God as the All, and absorbing the JEgo. But it can plead in its behalf no principle in the constitution of man's mind, — no principle either natural or necessary. The result at which we have arrived is, that the question of the occurrence of miracles is to be determined by the ordfnary laws of evidence. 279 BOOK IV. MORAL CONVICTIONS. CHAPTER -I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE MOTIVE AND MORAL POWERS. Sect. I. The Appetencies, the Will, and the Con- science. The relation between the innate principles, or the funda- mental laws of the mind, on the one hand, and the facul- ties of the mind on the other, has seldom been properly understood. The former seem to me to be the rules of the operation of the latter. I have in the first three Books endeavoured to unfold the main primary principles regulating those faculties which have been called the Understanding, or the Intellectual or Gnostic or Cogni- tive Powers j or, better still, the Cognitive and Contem- plative, so as to embrace the Imagination, which can scarcely be called a Cognitive but is certainly a Contem- plative Power. But in all classifications of the powers of the mind which have the least pretensions to com- pleteness, there has been a recognition of another class, under the name of the Will, or the Peelings, or the Erective or Motive Powers ; they may perhaps be best designated as the Motive and Moral Powers, so as to embrace unequivocally the functions of the conscience. 280 MORAL CONVICTIONS. I am in this Chapter to take a glance at this class of powers, and afterwards seek to ascertain the fundamental principles involved in them. They are at least three in number, the Appetencies, — including the Emotions, — the Will, and the Conscience. I. There are the native Appetencies of the Mind leading to Emotions. Man is so constituted that he is capable of being swayed in will, and so in action, by cer- tain motives, that is, by the contemplation of certain ob- jects or ends, while others do not influence him. It would serve many important ends to have a classifica- tion of these, that is, of the springs of human will and action. To endeavour to give a complete and exhaustive list of these, that is, of the categories of man's moral nature, would, I am aware, be quite as bold an effort as that so often made to determine the categories of the understanding. Such a classification would at the best be very imperfect in the first instance. But, even though only provisionally correct, it might accomplish some use- ful purposes. In the absence of any arrangement sanc- tioned by metaphysicians generally, it must suffice to mention here some of the principal motives which very obviously sway the will and impel to action. 1. Mankind are evidently inclined, involuntarily and voluntarily, to exercise every native power, — the senses, the memory, the imagination, the power of language, the various rational powers, such as abstraction, comparison, causality, the emotional, voluntary, and moral capacities. A vast portion of human activity proceeds from no higher and from no lower source than this. As the lamb frisks, and the colt gambols, and as the child is in perpetual rotation, so man's internal powers are for ever impel- ling him to exertion, independent altogether of any ex- ternal object, or even of any further internal ends to be gained. MOTIVE AND MORAL POWERS. 281 2. Whatever is contemplated as capable of securing pleasure is felt to be desirable, and whatever is appre- hended as likely to inflict pain is avoided. This is so very obvious a swaying power with human beings that it has been noticed, and commonly greatly exaggerated, in every account which has been given of man's active and moral nature. The mistake of the vulgar, and especially of the sensational systems, is that they have represented pleasure and pain as the sole contemplated ends by which man is or can be swayed. It is our object in these pa- ragraphs to show that man can be influenced by other motives better and worse, 3. There are certain appetencies in man, bodily and mental, which crave for gratification, and this indepen- dent of the pleasure to be secured by their indulgence. Of this description are the appetites of hunger, thirst, and sex, and the mental tendencies to seek for knowledge, es- teem, society, power, property. These appetencies may connect themselves with the other two classes already specified, but still they are different. They will tend to act as natural inclinations, but still they look towards particular external objects. We may come to gratify them for the sake of the pleasure, but in the first instance we seek the objects for their own sakes, and it is in seek- ing the objects we obtain gratification. They operate to some extent in the breasts of all, and they come to exer- cise a fearfully controlling and grasping power over the minds of multitudes. 4. Man is impelled by an inward principle, more or less , powerful in the case of different individuals, and varying widely in the objects desired, to seek for the beautiful in inanimate or in animate objects, in grand or lovely scenes in nature, in statues, paintings, buildings, fine composition in prose or poetry, and in the counte- nances or forms of man or woman. 282 MORAL CONVICTIONS. 5. It is not to be omitted that the moral power in man is not only (as I hope to show) a knowing and judg- ing faculty, it has a prompting energy, and leads us, when a corrupt will does not interfere, to such acts as the worship of God and beneficence to man, done be- cause they are right. 6. Whatever is felt to-be appetible for ourselves we may wish that others should enjoy, while we may desire that they should be preserved from all that is unappeti- ble, such as restraint and pain and sin. Man is so con- stituted as to be stirred to desire and prompted to ac- tion by the contemplation of other beings to whom he is related, such as God when he knows Him, and his fel- low-men, more especially certain of his fellow-men, such as his countrymen and kindred, and those who have be- stowed favours upon him. I must ever set myself against the miserably degrading doctrine of those who repre- sent man as utterly selfish in his constitution, and capable of being swayed by no other considerations than those which promise pleasurable gratifications to be realized by himself. He may, by a hardening process of sin, make himself thus selfish, but in his original nature he is ca- pable of being swayed by a great number and variety of other motives, and among others by attachments to man as man, or to particular men or women, and by sym- pathy for persons in trouble. In whatever way we may classify them, these, or such as these, are the motives by which man is naturally swayed. Upon these native and primary principles of action, others, acquired and secondary, come to be grafted. Thus money, not originally desired for its own sake, may come to be coveted as fitted to gratify the love of property, the love of power, or the love of pleasure. Or a particular fellow-man, at first indifferent, comes to be avoided, because he seems inclined to thwart us in MOTIVE AND MORAL POWERS. 283 some of our favourite ends, such as the acquisition of wealth or of fame. It is a peculiarity of our nature that these secondary principles may become primary ones, and prompt us to seek, for their own sakes, objects which were at first coveted solely because they tended to promote further ends. The appetencies, native and acquired, stir up Emotion, which is called forth by an apprehension of objects as fitted to gratify or to disappoint these appetencies. Let us call whatever accords with them the Appetible, and what- ever runs counter to them the Inappetible ; then the law is that the appetible, when in prospect, calls forth hope, and when realized, joy ; whereas the inappetible, when in prospect, excites fear, and when realized, sorrow. It is always to be taken into account that the emotive suscepti- bility is naturally stronger in some minds than in others, is stronger at one period of life, or even one day or hour, than another; but making due allowance for this vari- able element, the intensity of feeling is determined by the strength of the motive principle, its native strength or its acquired strength, and by the extent of the appe- tible or inappetible embraced within the mental appre- hension of the object or end fitted to gratify or disap- point the appetency. There are thus three elements determining the emotion, and these varying in the case of different individuals, and of the same individual at different times. There is the emotional susceptibility, depending largely on the state of the brain or particular organs of it. There is the mental appetency, natural or acquired. There is the mental apprehension of an object or event as tending to content or gratify the appetence. By these elements we can explain all the feelings and much of the activity of humanity. We have here the key to unlock a door through which we may see what rules the passions of men and women, often so very capricious, 284 MORAL CONVICTIONS. and apparently contradictory. This deep affection, long cherished, or this burst of sudden anger or joy or grief, reveals to the observant eye the deep moving principle of the inner soul. It should be observed that while the mind is impelled by such appetencies towards certain objects, it has not necessarily before it the general principle by which it is actuated, nor indeed a general idea of any description. It contemplates an individual object as about to give it pleasure, or about to add to its power or fame, and it at once longs for it without generalizing its aim. Here, as in other cases which have passed under our notice, the mind is actuated by principles which are not before the consciousness as principles. The emotions stirred up by these appetencies are cha- racterized by two marked features ; one is a drawing to- wards the object that is appetible, and a drawing away from what is inappetible ; and the other is a lively ex- citement — whence the name emotions. Thus, in fear we have an apprehension of some evil as about to befall us or those in whom we feel an interest, and we shrink from the object ; whereas, in hope, we have an idea of an event as about to bring good, and we, as it were, reach toward it. While thus longing or shrinking, the mind is all the while in a quickened and moved state. II. There is the Will. The powers I have been speak- ing of rush on to their ends instinctively and blindly. The native power goes on to action, the appetite claims indulgence, the dominant passion embraces its object, each according to its nature. But these activities and propensities are often inconsistent the one with the other. The intellect would set out on high pursuits, but is op- posed by some grovelling a*ppctite, or the man would wish to acquire fame, but, in doing so, finds that he cannot accumulate property as he might otherwise do. Is man MOTIVE AND MORAL POWERS. 285 condemned to be the slave of these appetencies ? yielding to the one which happens to assail hirn, or obeying the strongest when they are competing or clashing. It is probable that this is the condition of the brute creatures, and would be the state of man did he not possesss a higher power. That power is the Will. Properly speaking, the will does not furnish incitements, inducement, or motives ; these come from the appetencies which we have just been considering. It is the province of the Will, seated above them, to sanction or restrain them when they present themselves, and to decide among them when they are competing with each other for the mastery. We have seen that the characteristic property of emotion is attachment or repugnance, with associated excitement. The distinguishing quality of will is choice or rejection. Inducements being held out, the mind, in the exercise of will, sanctions or refuses; it assumes a number of forms, in all of which there is the element of choice. If the object is present, we positively choose it or adopt it ; if the object is absent, we wish for it ; if it is to be obtained by some exertion on our part, we form a resolution to take the steps necessary to procure it. III. There is the Conscience. It is the special func- tion of this power to say when a particular appetency should be allowed and when it should be restrained ; in doing so, it addresses itself to the will. The conscience thus claims to be above, not only our natural appetencies, bat above the will, which ought to yield as soon as the decision of conscience is given ; not that it can set itself altogether above nature, not that it should set itself above nature ; it is its office to sit in judgment on appetencies which are natural or may be acquired, and it works through free will as an essential element of our nature. But, as Bishop Butler has shown, it is of the nature of our constitution that it pronounces judgments for the will 286 MORAL CONVICTIONS. and upon the appetencies. Let us endeavour to unfold the nature of this moral power. It will be seen that, though not identical with, it is so far analogous to the intellectual powers. 1 . The conscience is of the nature of a cognitive power. It is analogous in this respect to the faculties of sense and self-consciousness. Not that it makes known any individual object, as the senses do when they show this table or that chair, or as self-consciousness does, when it discloses self in a particular state, say as musing or as hoping : it reveals to us merely certain qualities of objects otherwise known, that is, known by perception and self- consciousness ; it lets us know, for example, of certain voluntary states of ourselves or of others, that they are good or that they are evil. Making known no new sub- stance or independent existence, it does reveal to us a quality of all souls possessed of intelligence and free will ; it was this property of the conscience that was seized by Shaftesbury and by Francis Hutcheson, when they called this power the moral sense. The phrase was adopted by them, I suspect, to make their system tally with that of Locke, who admitted an external and internal sense, to which they now added a moral sense. It was, in some respects, an unfortunate phrase, as it seemed to degrade the moral power in man to the rank of a bodily faculty, or to make it dependent on bodily organization. But it is fitted to bring out one feature of man's nature, that by which he is able to -detect a certain quality in the acts of all intelligent beings.* 2. There are beliefs involved in the exercise of the moral power. These beliefs are very closely connected * See some valuable remarks in note F, appended to Mansel's ' Pro- legomena Logica.' " It appears that a power of discerning right and wrong in individual acts must be allowed as the presentative basis, without which no system of Moral Philosophy is possible." See also Art. Metaph. in Encyo. 13rit. MOTIVE AND MORAL POWERS. 287 with the cognitions, from which indeed it is scarcely ne- cessary to distinguish them, except for certain purposes of philosophic accuracy. The phrase moral cognitions might be confined to those mental exercises in which the action which w T e pronounce good or bad is our own, fall- ing immediately under consciousness, and we pronounce it to be good or bad, whereas our moral beliefs extend much further, and refer to acts not immediately under the introspective power, as when we believe that benevo- lence is good everywhere, and that God is good and has been good and shall be good to all eternity. I am in- clined to regard our moral cognitions as the basis of our moral beliefs. We seem first to have a necessary convic- tion in regard to the moral nature of our own actions, and thence we arise to convictions which look to moral qualities, which, being apprehended by us, we declare to be good or evil, wherever they are to be found, and whoever may be the possessor. 3. Judgments are involved in the exercise of this moral power. These proceed on our original cognitions and beliefs. Discerning in certain agents moral qualities, we can discover relations involved in the comparison of these qualities one with another, and with other objects and qualities. Our moral, like our intellectual cognitions and beliefs, furnish matter for innumerable judgments. Thus* in looking at the relation in which man stands to God, we affirm that we ought to obey the Divine com- mands. Or, looking to a certain deed and to the painful consequences to which it has led, we say the sin merits the suffering. It is the special office of ethical science to generalize and express the cognitions, beliefs, and judgments of the moral power, and to derive rules from them by which to judge of actions. 4. Our apprehension of moral good and evil is accom- panied with appetency and emotion. The conscience, in 288 MORAL CONVICTIONS. fact, partakes of the nature both of a cognitive and a motive power ; it knows certain qualities in objects, and, as it recognizes them, it looks on them as appetible or inappetible, and is moved towards them or away from them. Hence the conscience is not only a judge, it is a spring of action, and prompts us, if we would but obey it, to seek certain ends, and carefully to avoid others. Sect. II. [Supplementary .) On the Beautiful. A reference is here made to this subject mainly with the view of showing that, while the appreciation of beauty is a native feel- ing, it is not to be regarded as a necessary principle. We are cer- tainly led by strong natural inclination to contemplate certain ob- jects with special feelings of attachment and admiration. The science which seeks to catch and formalize these feelings, and to judge by the rules thence drawn of objects in nature and in art, has been called ^Esthetics, but might perhaps be more appropri- ately termed Kalology, or Kallisophy, that is, the science of the Fair or Lovely. It may be doubted however whether we have any such necessary convictions in regard to beauty as we have in regard to certain fundamental intellectual truths and moral quali- - ties. Our knowledge and belief regarding objects presented to sense and consciousness amount to this, that they have an exist- ence independent of the mind contemplating them, and that they would and must have the same existence to all minds endowed with the capacity of becoming acquainted with them. Again, in pronouncing certain judgments, the mind declares not only that there is a relation, but that the relation is necessary. But, in looking on an attractive object, while led to delight in it as ]ovely, we are not constrained to believe that it must be beautiful, inde- pendent of our feeling regarding it, and that it must appear beau- tiful to all beings. I must believe that the sun exists as an ex- tended body, independent of the structure of my eye or mind, and that it would be apprehended as an extended body by any inhabi- tant of Mars or Jupiter endowed with the capacity to perceive the object. I must believe that ingratitude is a sin, not only on the earth, but everywhere, in the planet Saturn or the star Sirius, in heaven or in hell, and that all beings endowed with moral capa- city must see it in the same light ; but I am not necessitated to believe that the objects which appear beautiful to me, or to all men, have a beauty independent of the mind that contemplates MOTIVE AND MORAL POWERS. 289 them, and that all other minds, or even that all minds endowed with the sense of beauty, must view them in precisely the same light. "We find, in fact, that the music which is felt by some to be so pleasant and exciting, has no charms whatever to others. We could easily enough believe, if evidence were furnished to us, that the colours which appear so lovely to our eyes, have no attrac- tion whatever to the inhabitants of another planet. Not only so, we can conceive that the very order and proportions which awaken so deep an interest in our minds, might be contemplated with no feeling of admiration by beings endowed with a different mental constitution. At the same time it should be acknowledged that there seem to be qualities which must have an excellence altogether independent of the mind which views them. It is an opinion which goes as far back as the time of Plato, and has ever since been widely enter- tained, that beauty of forms consists in some sort of proportion or harmony,* which may admit of a mathematical expression ; and later and more scientific research is altogether in its favour. It is now established that complementary colours, that is, colours which when combined make up the full beam, are felt to be beau- tiful when seen simultaneously ; that is, the mind is made to de- light in the unities of nature. At the basis of music there are certain fixed ratios : and in poetry of every description there are measures and correspondencies. Pythagoras has often been ridi- culed for his doctrine of the music of the spheres ; and probably his views were sufficiently mystical and fanciful, but the latest science shows that there is a harmony in all nature, — in its forms, its forces, and its motions. The higher unorganized, and all orga- nized objects, take definite forms which are often regulated by mathematical laws. The forces of nature can be estimated in numbers, and light and heat seem to go in undulations, or at least by intervals, while the movements of the great bodies in nature are periodical.f Such facts as these seem to show that, at the basis of beauty, there may very probably be principles which are necessary, eternal, and altogether independent of the individual mind, or even of the general mind of humanity. But over them all the mind seems to spread a colour and a lustre which we can- * See fine Platonic speculations in M'Vicar, 'On the Beautiful, the Picturesque, the Sublime,' and the ' Philosophy of the Beautiful ;' and in Blackie's ' Beauty, with Plato's Doctrine of the Beautiful ;' as well as in Ruskin's ' Modern Painters,' vol. ii. f The harmonies in nature, in respect of Colour, Number, Form, etc., are illustrated in ' Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation.' U 290 MORAL CONVICTIONS. not regard as necessary, and which may not be universal ; or which, if universal, can have become so only by the appointment of the one God, who Himself delights, and would also lead us to delight in the unity and harmony which run through all his works. It is quite possible that, so far as there are eternal principles lying at the basis of certain forms of beauty, they may only be modifications of the eternal principles of truth. Other kinds of beauty ally themselves more closely with the morally good. There is a beauty in all truly virtuous and benefi- cent actions of the creature, and, above all, of the Great Creator. Whatever seems to proceed from love or from kindness, such as peace and plenty and diffused happiness, is apt to collect a feeling of loveliness around it. The question is started, May not the principles which underlie these forms of beauty be modifications of the eternal principles of right and wrong ? In the pages of all writers who have meditated profoundly on this subject, will be found such utterances as these : — " The beau- tiful is always true ;" " The beautiful is ever good." Alas ! the only exception to this last maxim is to be found in certain human beings, in which guilt has destroyed the holy, but left as yet, and for a time, the lovely, which however will in due time lose its lustre. But there is truth involved in these maxims, and I have sometimes thought that it lies in this, that at the basis of beauty there are eternal principles, modifications of the true and the good, over which the mind casts a colour and a clothing. The God who made us hath given us a nature which throws a halo and a radiance round certain kinds of everlasting verities and moral qualities, with the view of rendering them attractive, and gathering our affections about them. CHAPTER II. CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN THE EXERCISES OF CONSCIENCE. Sect. I. Convictions as to the Nature of Moral Good. Still deeper interests are involved in our being able to show that there is an immutable and eternal morality than even in our proving that there is immutable and CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 291 eternal truth. But after having laboured at such length to demonstrate that there are native and necessary prin- ciples involved in the intellectual exercises of the mind, it will not be needful to take such pains to show that there are similar convictions of a moral character. The mind is led by its very nature and constitution to perceive that there is an indelible distinction between good and evil, just as there is an indelible distinction between truth and falsehood. It finds that every substance has potency ; that the species implies the individual ; but it also de- clares that to give every one his due is good, and must be good, and that it is wrong in children to neglect their parents, and in God's creatures to forget their Creator. Let me endeavour to bring out and express some of the principal moral convictions of the mind. I. The moral quality is not given to the action by the mind contemplating it. It is not a colour thrown over the object by the mental eye which perceives it, but is a real quality of the object, is there prior to its being per- ceived, and is in the object whether it is perceived or not. It is not our perception and approbation that render a benevolent action good ; but we perceive its excellence and approve of it because it is good. It follows that II. Moral good is moral good to all intelligences so high in the scale of being as to be able to discern it. I lay down this position in order to guard against the idea that moral excellence is something depending on the peculiar constitution of man, and that it is allowable to suppose that there may be intelligent beings in other worlds to whom virtue does not appear as virtue. Such a view seems altogether inconsistent with our intuitive convictions, and would effectually undermine the founda- tions of morality. It is allowable to suppose that there may be beings in other worlds who see no beauty in the colours or in the shapes and proportions which we so u 2 292 MORAL CONVICTIONS. much admire ; but I cannot admit that there are any in- telligent and responsible beings who look on malevolence as a virtue or justice as a sin.* III. Moral good lays an obligation on us to attend to it. This sense, or rather, conviction of obligation, is one of the peculiarities, is indeed the chief peculiarity, of our moral perceptions. Herein do our moral convictions, whether of the nature of cognitions, beliefs, or judgments, differ from the intellectual convictions which have passed under our notice in the previous parts of this treatise. That a straight line is the shortest between two points, this I am constrained to decide w r hen my attention is called to the subject, but I know of no duty thence arising, no affection which I should thereon cherish, no action which I ought to do. Bat when I am led to believe that there is a good God who made me and upholds me, the mind declares that it is and must be good to love and obey that Being, and that there is an obligation lying on me to do so. This is expressed by such phrases as Beov, duly, rigid, ought, obligation, the convictions embodied in which cannot be accounted for on any utilitarian hypo- thesis. It is shown that a particular action readily within our power will tend to promote the happiness of an in- dividual or of society. The mind's apprehension of this is one thing, and the conviction that we ought to do it is an entirely different thing, and the two should never be confounded. But the conscience is not only a cognitive, it is a mo- tive power. This conviction of obligation distinguishes * Tlie systems which represent man's moral faculty as a mere feeling or sentiment, such as the systems of Adam Smith, of Thomas Brown, of Sir James Mackintosh, are chargeable with two defects: — First, the theory does not come up to the full mental facts, which embrace perception, or knowledge, and judgment, as well as emotion ; and, as a consequence, secondly, they make it appear as if virtue might arise from the peculiar constitution or temperament of the race. CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 293 it at once from the other motive as it does from the other cognitive powers. The inducements addressed to man's sense of duty are altogether different from those addressed to the other appetencies of the mind. The love of plea- sure, of fame, and of activity, do all hold out allurements to man, but none of them carries with it a binding obli- gation. When we follow them we have no sense of merit ; when we decline them we have no sense of guilt. It is different when our moral convictions say that a particular line of conduct should be pursued. We feel now not only that we may do it, but that we should do it, and that if we neglect to do it, we are guilty of sin. Hence arises the great ethical doctrine, expounded in so mas- terly a manner by Bishop Butler, that the conscience is supreme ; that is, supreme among the other moving powers. Just as appetite craves for food, and the love of society for social intercourse, so the conscience directs to certain conduct, but with this difference, that it de- clares itself superior to the others. It carries with it its authority, and asserts its claims, and is prepared to de- nounce us if we disregard them. IV. The conscience points to an authority above itself. It is supreme as within the mind, but it is not absolutely supreme. It claims to be superior to all other motives, such as the love of pleasure, and even to such motives as intellectual improvement ; but it seems to point to a power above the mind altogether. At the same time it does riot seem to announce what is the nature of the ob- ject which it would prompt us to seek after. In this re- spect it is like some of our intellectual intuitions, which impel us to look round for something which they do not themselves reveal. Thus, intuitive causality constrains us when we discover an effect to look for a cause, but does not specify what the cause is. In like manner our moral faculty seems to me to point to some power, principle, 294 MORAL CONVICTIONS. or being, it says not what, above itself. It does not claim for itself that it is infallible, that it is sufficient, that it is independent. It bows to something which has authority; it acknowledges a standard which is and must be right ; it looks up for sanction and guidance. It says that it ought to yield to no earthly power; but it does not affirm of itself that it can never mistake, and that there is no authority to which it should submit. On the con- trary, it often finds itself in difficulty and perplexity, and feels that it should look round and up for a light, and it is sure that there is such a light. What is thus unknown to the intuition itself, but which, notwithstanding, it is ever seeking, is revealed by other processes. V. This obligation, when we are led to believe in a Supreme Being, takes the form of law ; and we believe that we are under law to God. Our moral convictions do not, so it seems to me, of themselves compel us to believe in the existence of God. I am persuaded, how- ever, that like most of our deeper intuitions (as I hope subsequently to show) they do point upwards to God. And whenever we do, by combined intuition and the ob- vious facts of experience, reach God, the God who gave us all our endowments, and therefore our moral consti- tution, the mind traces up the obligation under which it lies to Him. The expression of this inward conviction now is not that we are under obligation to an unknown power, but under law, and under law to God. It is thus indeed we get the peculiar idea of moral government and moral law, not from sense, nor from pleasure, nor from utility, but from conscience constraining us to feel obli- gation, and combined intuition and experience leading us to trace up that law to God as the Being who -sanctions it. Till this object is reached, our moral intuition is felt to be vague, indefinite ; it is craving for something which it feels to be wanting; but when God is found, as Lie CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 295 cannot fail to be found when we are in search of Him, then the intuition is satisfied, and ever after connects the law with the lawgiver. VI. Moral good is perceived as having desert, as ap- provable and rewardable. This, too, is a peculiar idea, derived from the moral power in man, and cannot have been derived from, as it cannot be resolved into, any modification of pleasure, or pain, or sensation of any- kind. We are convinced in regard to every good action that it is meritorious ; we give to it oar approbation, and we look for encouragement and reward. This con- viction operates with other considerations in leading us to look to God as the Governor of this World, and as ready to uphold and defend the right. There are times when our expectations on this subject are disappointed, and when we see deeds of moral heroism only landing him who performs them in opprobrium and suffering. Still, even in such cases, our instincts keep firm, in spite of all appearances to the contrary ; and we believe that, sooner or later, in this world or the world to come, the deeds will meet with their appropriate reward. VII. Moral good lies in the region of the will. By this I mean that every truly virtuous act must be a voluntary one. In saying so, I clo not mean to assert that every morally good act must be a volition contem- plating or performing some outward deed. The will of man exists in other forms than in a resolution to act. Wherever there is choice, I hold that there is will. Whenever I. adopt any particular object presented, or prefer any one object to another, there is choice. There is also the exercise of choice, and therefore of will, in all cases in which we deliberately reject any object or proposal made to us. I hold then that there is choice — not only in volition, or resolution, or the final determi- nation to act, — there is choice in wish or in voluntary 296 MORAL CONVICTIONS. aversion. When we wish that God's name may be hal- lowed, that our friends may prosper and be in health, there is will. These wishes and volitions and rejections may unite themselves with any one of our feelings, and even with our intellectual exercises. Using will in this wide sense, I say that it is the region, and the exclusive region, of moral good. It is in voluntary acts that the conscience discerns a moral quality, and it is upon such acts, and no others, that it pronounces its decisions. We shall see forthwith that the will, in all its proper acts, is free ; and it is upon acts which we were free to per- form, but from which also we were free to abstain, that all the judgments of conscience are declared. VIII. Moral Good is a quality of certain actions pro- ceeding from Free Will. I have been urging that moral good is not a creation of the mind when contemplating actions or affections, but that it has an actual existence. But let us understand what is the precise nature of the reality. In order to express the reality, some are in the habit of saying that morality has an objective and not a mere subjective existence. But this language is not fitted to bring out the full truth, and may leave an erro- neous impression, as if moral excellence had an existence as a separate object, like a stone or a mountain. It has an existence, but merely as a quality of free acts of in- telligent beings. IX. The moral quality of action cannot be resolved into anything simpler. The mind discerns it at once, as the eye sees a surface and the muscular sense feels pres- sure. If any man asks us, What is extension ? we bid him exercise his bodily senses. If any man asks us, What is virtue? I bid him exercise his conscience in looking at a good action. No attempt should be made to give a positive definition of virtue. Any proffered definition will either be erroneous, or it will be a mere CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 297 identical proposition. If we say that virtue consists in happiness, or in utility, or in beneficial tendency, all such accounts are utterly wrong, for they leave out the main elements, the obligation, the imperativeness of moral law, the desert, the approvableness, the reward- ableness. If we introduce such phrases as the following, and say that virtue is binding, that it is right, good; we are, after all, only saying that virtue is virtue. All that can be done by moral science on this particular point is, to exhibit fully the distinctive features, so that the conscience may recognize them, to bring out the law or principle, and embody it in suitable expressions. Sect. II. On Sin and Error. I have been arguing that our intellectual and moral intuitions are all necessary and universal. This doctrine however must not be so stated as to imply that it is impossible for man to fall into error, or for the con- science to come to a false decision, or for human beings to commit sin. That men do, in fact, fall into error is evident from this single circumstance, that scarcely two persons can be brought to accord in opinion, even on points of im- portance. In regard, indeed, to necessary truths, there are certain restrictions laid on the mind. No man who considers the subject can be made to believe that two straight lines will enclose a space. Still, even in regard to such truths, the mind has a capacity of ignorance and of error; it. may refuse to consider them, and, mistaking their nature, it may make statements inconsistent with them without knowing it. Those who have gone through the demonstrations of Euclid are constrained to believe the truth of every proposition, but the truths have never so much as been presented to the minds of the great majority of mankind, and many persons might easily be 298 MORAL CONVICTIONS. persuaded that the angles of certain triangles are equal to less or to more than two right-angles. But whatever the restrictions laid on our liability to error in necessary truth, there seem to be no limits to man's exposure to mistakes in other matters. There is boundless room for them in all conclusions which are dependent on expe- riential evidence, especially when that evidence is of a cumulative character. In all such matters the mind may refuse to look at the evidence, or it may take only what is favourable to one side, and may arrive at most er- roneous and preposterous results. This liability to error is apt to appear in all affairs in which we are under the influence of pride or party spirit, or a prejudiced and biassed disposition; in short, wherever there is moral evil swaying the will, and leading it to look on evidence in a partial spirit. If I were immediately cognizant of the heart of a good man, and could see the springs that move him to benevolence and self-sacrifice, I should be constrained to approve of him ; but I may be prejudiced against him, and I shall twist and torture facts till I bring myself to believe that he is doing all this from a deep designing selfishness. The topic does not come within my proper scope, but I cannot keep from giving it as my decided conviction, that while ignorance may arise from the limited nature of our faculties and from a limited means of knowledge, positive error does in every case proceed directly or indirectly from a corrupted will, leading us to pronounce a hasty judgment without evi- dence, or to seek partial evidence on the side to which our inclinations lean. A thoroughly pure and candid will would, in my opinion, preserve man, even with his present limited faculties, not indeed from ignorance on many points, but from all possibility of positive mistakes. But the question may be asked, How is the existence of sin, and of wrong decisions of the conscience, consistent CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 299 with the necessity which attaches to our moral convic- tions ? The difficulty can easily be removed so far as the existence of sin is concerned ; for sin must ever proceed from the region of the will, which is free to do good, but also free to do evil. It may be necessary for the conscience to decide in a certain manner, but it is not necessary that the will should do what the conscience commands. And it is to the influence exercised by a dis- obedient will upon the conscience that I attribute all the errors in its decisions. In whatever way we may recon- cile them, these two facts can each be established on abundant evidence : the one, that in the primitive exer- cises of conscience there is a conviction of necessity ; the other is, that the conscience is liable to manifold perver- sions. Care must be taken not to state the two so as to make the one appear to be inconsistent with the other ; both can be so enunciated as to make all seeming con- tradiction vanish. As to the exact nature of the neces- sity of conviction, and the ground which it covers, this is to be determined, like its existence, by an observation of the conviction itself. If we look directly and fairly at moral excellence, the mind must declare it to be good. But then first the mind may refuse to look at it at all, and secondly, it may not regard it in the right light. If we look upon the living and the true God in the proper aspect, we must acknowledge that we owe Him love and obedience ; but then we may refuse to look upon Him, we may contrive to live without God, and God may not be in all our thoughts ; or we may fashion to ourselves a Deity with a degraded nature, making Him. one altoge- ther like unto ourselves, and then the proper awe and af- fection will no longer rise in our bosoms. It is to be taken into account that, while our decisions upon the acts presented may be intuitively certain, yet that the acts are not intuitively presented, and may be 300 MORAL CONVICTIONS. very inaccurately presented. The conscience, it is to be remembered, is a reflex faculty, judging of objects pre- sented to it by the other powers, and the representation given it may be incorrect. The liability to deception and perversion is increased by the circumstance that the states of mind with which our voluntary acts are mixed up are of a very complicated character. There is room in this way for giving a wrong account of our actual state of mind at any given moment. I contribute a sum of money to relieve a person in distress ; I may do so from a variety of motives • but I am naturally led by self-love to look on the motive as good, and then I cherish a feel- ing of self-approbation, in which I should by no means have been justified had I taken a searching view of the whole mental state. Again, I find a neighbour doing the very same act, and I am led by jealousy to attribute selfish motives to him, and I condemn him in a judgment in which I may be equally unwarranted. By such se- ductions as these the mind may become utterly perverted in the representations which it gives, and in the conse- quent moral judgments which it pronounces. In the case of these perversions of the conscience, as in the case of the errors of the understanding (as we have previously seen), the evil is to be traced to the will refusing to give obedience to its proper law, and cojrjuring up a series of deceptions to excuse and defend itself. The intuition is after all there, but it is difficult in a mind perverted by a corrupt and prejudiced will to put it in a positioivto act aright. In order to this, it may be needful to have a Divine Law revealed, and this applied by a teaching and quickening Spirit from above. We are already in the heart of the subject of Sin, a topic which academic moralists studiously avoid, but which must be carefully looked at by those who would give a correct account of our moral constitution. In re- CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 301 ferring to it here, I do not profess to be able to give an explanation of the origin of sin under the government of God, whose power is Almighty, and who shows that he hates sin. This seems to be a mystery which human reason cannot clear up. The topic certainly does not fall within the scope of our present investigation. I have here simply to consider sin in its reference to our moral convictions. I. The conscience declares that sin is a reality. It is a reality of the very same description as moral good. It is not a separate entity, like a plant or an animal, but it is a quality of certain voluntary acts. I lay down this position in opposition to those who would represent sin as a mere privation or a negation. I never can bring myself to believe that deceit and envy and malice and ungodliness and lust, are merely the absence of certain qualities ; they imply the presence of real qualities in the will of those who cherish the affections and commit the deeds. II. Sin is a quality of voluntary acts. It always re- sides in some mental affection or act in which there is the exercise of free will. The guilt of the sin thus always lies with him who commits it. He cannot throw the blame on any other, for he has himself given his consent to it. Others may have seduced him into it, and in that case the criminality of having tempted him lies with them ; but then the sin of having yielded to the tempta- tion and having done the wicked deed lies with himself, he can devolve it on no other. III. Our moral convictions declare that sin is of evil desert, condemnable, punishable. This conviction is of precisely an opposite character to that which we enter- tain in regard to good affection and action. We declare the sin to have in itself evil desert; we condemn it in consequence, and we say of it, that it should be dis- 302 MORAL CONVICTIONS. couraged, nay, punished. The very ideas, so full of meaning, involved in these mental convictions, are native, original, and necessary. We cannot get them from mere sensations of pleasure or pain, or from any intellectual operation whatever ; and yet we are constrained to take this view of sin wherever it is pressed fairly upon our notice. It is this conviction that stirs up and keeps alive a sense of guilt and apprehension of punishment in the breast of every sinner. It is found even among chil- dren, and among the rudest and most ignorant savages, who are urged thereby to try some means of avoiding or averting the wrath of God, and who are prepared in con- sequence to listen to the parent, or teacher, or mission- ary, when he speaks of the desert of sin, and points to a Saviour who suffered in our room and stead, and so made reconciliation for transgressors. Sect. III. Relation of Moral Good and Happiness. These two have a number of points of connection and correspondence. Much of moral good consists in the voluntary promotion of happiness, and the diminution of pain in a world in which there is such a liability to suf- fering. A very large number of human virtues, and of vices too, take their origin from man's capacity of plea- sure and pain ; and in a state of things in which there was no possibility of increasing felicity, or removing misery, many of this world's virtues would altogether disappear. Still the two, while they have many interest- ing points of affinity, are not to be identified. In par- ticular, we are not to resolve virtue into a mere tendency to promote the pleasure of the individual or happiness of the race. There seems to me to be certain great truths which the mind perceives at once, in regard to the con- nection of the two. I. The good is good altogether independent of the CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 303 pleasure it may bring. There is a good which does not immediately contemplate the production of happiness. Such, for example, are love to God, the glorifying of God, and the hallowing of His name : these have no re- spect, in our entertaining and cherishing them, to an aug- mentation of the Divine felicity. No doubt such an act or spirit may, by reflection of light, tend to brighten our own felicity ; but this is an indirect effect, which follows only where we cherish the temper and perform the cor- responding work in the idea that it is right. We do deeds of justice to the distant, to the departed, and the dead, who never may be conscious of what we have per- formed. Even in regard to services done with the view of promoting the happiness of the individual, or of the community, we are made to feel that, if happiness be good, the benevolence which leads us to seek the happi- ness of others is still better, is alone morally good. In all cases the conscience constrains us to decide that vir- tue is good, whether it does or does not contemplate the production of pleasure. II. Our moral constitution declares that we ought to promote the happiness of all who are susceptible of hap- piness. The only plausible form of the utilitarian theory of morals is that elaborated by Bentham, who says that we ought to promote the greatest happiness of the great- est number. But why ought we to do so ? Whence gel we the should, the obligation, the duty ? Why should I seek the happiness of any other being than myself ? why the happiness of a great number, or of the greatest num- ber ? why the happiness even of any one individual be- yond the unit of self? If the advocates of the " greatest happiness " principle will only answer this question tho- roughly, they must call in a moral principle, or take re- fuge in a system against which our whole nature rebels, in a theory which says that we are not required to do 304 MORAL CONVICTIONS. more than look after our own gratifications. The very ad- vocates of the greatest happiness theory are thus con- strained, if they will only adhere to their view, to call in an ethical principle, and this will be found, if they exa- mine it, to require more from man than that he should further the felicity of others.* But while it covers vastly more ground, it certainly includes this, that we are bound, as much as in us lies, to promote the welfare of * Mr. J. S. Mill gives up Paley as an expounder, of utilitarianism (Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 460), and allows, as to Bentham, " that there were large deficiencies and hiatuses in his scheme of human nature " (p. 462). To whom then are we to look, if we would examine a system which assumes such different shapes ; which now takes the form of a selfish system whose principle is that every man should seek his own happiness, now the form of a benevolent system, which says that a man should promote the happiness of the greatest number ? In the first of these forms it is at once set aside by an appeal to our nature, and to feelings which Mr. Mill admits to be in our nature. In the second of these forms, that taken by Bentham and Mill, there is a principle of in- tuitive morals surreptitiously admitted, that we should look to the hap- piness of others as well as our own. Mr. Mill says, ' ' The matter in de- bate is what is right, — not whether what is right ought to be done " (p. 460). This is not a full or accurate account of the matter in debate. One question in debate is, Can the utilitarian theory account for our con- viction as to right and wrong, merit and guilt ? I hold that it cannot. The higher class of utilitarians seem to trace these convictions to the association of ideas proceeding on our feelings of pleasure and pain. Thus Mr. Mill says (vol. i. p. 137), " The idea of the pain of another is naturally painful ; the idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable. From this fact in our natural constitution, all our affec- tions, both of love and aversion, towards human beings, in so far as they are different from those we entertain towards mere inanimate objects which are pleasant or disagreeable to us, are held by the best teachers of the theory of utility to originate. In this, the unselfish part of our nature, lies a foundation, even independently of inculcation from with- out, for the generation of moral feelings." Let it be observed that this makes the very unselfish part of our nature stand on a selfish basis. "The idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable," that is, to ourselves. I hold that we are led to love our fellow-creatures indepen- dently of its being pleasant to ourselves ; and that it is when we love them that the affection is found to be pleasant, by the appointment of the Author of our constitution, who thus prompts us to benevolence, and rewards us for cherishing it. The theory does not account for our benevolent feelings, and it fails still more when it would account for our CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 305 all who are capable of having their miserv alleviated or their felicity enhanced. III. Our moral convictions affirm that moral good should meet with happiness. They seem to declare that this is in itself appropriate and good ; and when we are led to believe in the existence of a good God. we are sure that He will seek to secure this end. Experience, no doubt, shows many things in seeming opposition to this, moral eonvictions. I admit that it might give some explanation of cer- tain accompaniments, bnt it can give no account of the conviction of •' ought," " obligation," " duty." •"•'merit.''' " desert.'' "guilt." A second question in debate is. Can the utilitarian show that anything is " right" ? that there is truly anything such that it " ought to be done " ? Suppose some sensationalist or sceptic were to maintain, as against the utilita- that he was not bound to promote this happiness of the greatest number, how would the advocate of the greatest happiness principle re- ply bo him : Consistently, he could appeal only to these personal feel- ings of pleasure and pain : and if he appealed to anything deeper., it must be to the very moral principle whose existence he denies. There is a third question in debate, which will be more easily determined after we have settled the other two. For when it is shown that man Las convictions as to moral good and evil, and that these require him to do certain acts and abstain from others, we may be the better prepared to admit, as . : certain of these acts, that they do not conteni- the promotion of happiness. Thus, to love God is good, and to re- ruse to any one his due affection and gratitude for favours seems to be evil, independently of the happiness of the creature or Creator being thereby augmented or diminished. A. fourth question is, Does utility afford a good test and measure of virtue and vice ? It is foreign to the scope of this treatise to enter on this question, but I may remark that the ultimate appeal to :, lit " and "' duty " being taken away, and the appeal, in the last resource, being to pleasure and pain, utilitarian- ism will not train men to deeds of self-sacrifice, and those who have embraced it will ever be tempted to give way on great emergencies, and v : yield and equivocate when they should at all hazards resist the evil. And it has been shown again and again, that it is beyond the capa- city of man to foresee the results of acts., or even to discern the ten- dency of certain acta lone in complicated circumstances. But, omit- ting this, it is to my present purpose to call on my readers to notice the theory of an independent morality, and of moral conviction, admits and embraces all that is true in utilitarianism. It affirms that we ought to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number ; and in regard to all questions bearing on happiness, the conscience requires us to weigh consequences and to look to long issues and results. X 306 MORAL CONVICTIONS. shows many crushed with misfortune and wrung with agony, who are far more virtuous than those who are in the enjoyment of health and prosperity. But our inward convictions guide us to the right conclusions in spite of these apparently contradictory results of outward obser- vation. They lead us to believe that they who are thus afflicted are after all suffering no injustice, inasmuch as they have sinned against heaven, and to expect that the wicked will not be allowed to pass unpunished. And since we do not discover a full retribution in this world, they lead us to look forward to a day of judgment, in which all the inequalities and seeming incongruities of this present dispensation will be rectified in appearance as well as in reality, and the justice of God's moral go- vernment fully vindicated. IV. Our moral convictions declare that sin merits pain as a punishment. There is as close a connection between sin and pain as there is between virtue and happiness. There may indeed be happiness, and there may be suffer- ing, where there is neither virtue nor the opposite, as, for example, among the brute creation ; but wherever there is virtue, we decide that it merits happiness, and wherever there is sin, that it deserves suffering, and we are led to anticipate that the proper consequences will follow under the government of a good and a holy God. But as the intellectual intuition of causation, while it constrains us to look for a cause, does not make known the precise cause, so our moral conviction of merit, while it leads us to look for the punishment of sin, does not specify where, or when, or how the penalty is to be inflicted : all that it intimates is that it should and shall come. This convic tion keeps alive in the breasts of the wicked at least an occasional fear of punishment, even in the midst of the greatest outward prosperity, and points very emphatically, if not very distinctly, to a day of judgment and of righ- CONVICTIONS INVOLVED IN CONSCIENCE. 307 teous retribution. But as this instinct does not supply the object, it is quite possible that a wrong one may be presented by the baser fears of the heart, or by a degraded superstition, and the final judgment may be thought of as a petty assize, and the judge be regarded as gratifying a personal revenge, and heaven be contem- plated as an elysium of sensual joys, arid hell as a place of vulgar torture. Still the conviction does demand its object, and when the moral sense is refined, it feels that the account given in Scripture of a judgment day, and of a heaven of light, and a hell of darkness, is in thorough correspondence with the intuition which God has planted in our mental constitution. But in contemplating and in harmonizing such truths as these, Natural Ethics finds itself in difficulties : it starts questions which it cannot answer ; it raises doubts which it cannot dispel. We see on the one hand that God will be led to punish sin, that he " will by no means clear the guilty." But we have evidence, on the other hand, that he delights supremely in the happiness of his crea- tures. How then can God be just and yet the justifler of the ungodly ? Intuitive Ethics conducts us to a yawn- ing chasm, but shows no bridge across ; while we are led most anxiously to long for one, and almost to expect that one will appear. It leads us to a place where we have no light, but where we are led to cry out for a light be- cause of the very thickness of the darkness. How grate- ful should we be when a light is vouchsafed from heaven to show us that the gulf is spanned, and to disclose the way by which it may be crossed ! 308 MORAL CONVICTIONS. CHAPTER III. THE EKEEDOM OF THE WILL. We have seen that conscience pronounces its decisions on acts of the will. Not only so, its judgments proceed on the supposition that the will is in the proper exercise of its full functions ; in other w r ords, that the will is free. In every act of will there is an essential freedom, of which the mind is conscious. The possession of a free will is thus one of the elements which go to constitute man a moral and responsible agent. The will is free. In saying so, I mean to assert, not mere- ly that it is free to act as it pleases, — indeed it may often be hindered from action, as when I will to move my arm, and it refuses to obey because of paralysis. I claim for it an anterior and a higher power, a power in the mind to choose, and, when it chooses, a consciousness that it might choose otherwise. This truth is revealed to us by immediate conscious- ness, and is not to be set aside by any other truth what- ever. It is a first truth equal to the highest, to no one of which will it ever yield. It cannot be set aside by any other truth whatever, nor even by any other first truth, and certainly by no derived truth. Whatever other proposition is true, this is true also, that man's will is free. If there be any other truth apparently inconsistent with it, care must be taken so to express it that it may not be truly contradictory. It is a truth which may be expressed in words. It is so expressed when we say the mind has in itself the power of choice. But it cannot be drawn from any deeper fact, or resolved into any anterior principle. Any at- tempts to reduce it to simpler elements, will only perplex and confuse the whole subject. Thus, that which is free, THE FREEDOM OE THE WILL. 309 is often supposed to be uncaused ; whereas the uncaused for aught I know, might, if there could be such a thing in creation, not be free. It is from the exercise of will that we get our very idea of freedom. As we survey the external world, including even our own bodily frame, we find it bound in the chain of physical causation, in which every movement of an object is determined from with- out. Even our very intellectual and emotive states are under laws of association and potencies which control them. It is in the sanctuary of the will that freedom alone is to be found. So much is clear, so very clear that any attempts to make it clearer will only darken it. The difficulties which encompass this subject do not arise from free will itself, but from its connection with other truths. First, there is the Divine Foreknowledge and the Divine Sovereignty, doctrines which recommend themselves to high reason, and which are found in the Word of God. Secondly, there is the appearance of causation in the mind, even in its voluntary acts. The attempt to reconcile these with creature freedom has engaged the subtlest and perplexed the clearest minds since men began to ask the how, the why, and the wherefore. It is my humble but decided opinion that the human understanding cannot thoroughly clear up the subject. I certainly do not profess to be able to throw light upon it. I must content myself with re- marking on some of the more prevalent theories, and ex- pounding the view which seems to me to be upon the whole the most satisfactory. Among the speculative thinkers of the present day there are two favourite modes by which they try to ex- tricate themselves from the difficulties which beset the subject. One was introduced by Kant, who has been followed by a long train of theologians and metaphysi- cians. According to this view, the mind knows only 310 MORAL CONVICTIONS. phenomena, and not things, and the law of cause and effect is a mental framework giving a form to our know- ledge of phenomena. It applies therefore to phenomena, and not to things, which, for aught we know, or can know in this world, may or may not obey the law of causation. Kant acknowledges that we are led by the speculative principles of the mind to look on even the will as under the dominion of cause, but then it is quite conceivable that the thing itself may after all be free, and we are led to believe it to be free by the Prac- tical Reason. Now I have to remark, first of all, on this theory, that it must be taken in its entirety. We are not at liberty (as some would do) to adopt it so far merely as it may suit our purpose, and refuse the very foundation on which it is built. We must, in particular, admit as a fundamental principle that we can never know things, and that causation has no respect whatever to things, but is a mere subjective principle of the mind. But I have failed in one of the main ends of this treatise if I have not succeeded in showing that the mind has knowledge of things in its primary exercises, that we know objects as having potency, and that the law of cause and effect refers to such objects. If we deny this, we are denying certain of the intuitions of the mind in certain of their clearest enunciations ; and if we deny them in one of their declarations, why not in others ? and if we deny one set, why not every other set ? till at last we know not what to believe and what to disbelieve. Those who believe that the mind can come to the knowledge of things, and that they discover power in things, cannot resort to this theory. A more prevalent doctrine among those who hold firmly by the freedom of the will, is that causation does not ex- tend to the production of volitions. Thus, M. Cousin maintains that we obtain our very idea of causes from THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 311 the exercise of will, which may be a cause, but cannot be an effect. The difficulties in the way of this theory arise, first, from the nature of our intuition in regard to cause, and, secondly, from certain facts which seem to show that there is causation in the will. The question is, first, whether causation reaches over our volitions, as it does over our other mental acts. A man does a male- volent or a benevolent deed : when this fact is presented, the question is, Do we, or do we not, look for a cause in the previous character and disposition of the individual, combined possibly with the circumstances in which he was placed ? Do we not anticipate of the man thoroughly just, that he will ever do just acts ? | We are sure in re- gard to the good God that He will, and ever must be, good. ) To confirm all this we have, secondly, facts, sta- tistical facts. Knowing that if causes keep the same, the same effects will follow, men draw out statistics of vo- luntary acts, which turn out to be quite as correct as sta- tistics of the weather, or of the mortality of man. The number of thefts and murders that will be committed in a country next year, and the number of letters which will be posted, can be determined as accurately as the num- ber of births or deaths. The facts cannot be denied, and they proceed on the principles of a sameness of causes producing a sameness of effects, which causes embrace voluntary acts. To avoid these difficulties, I am inclined to admit that antecedent circumstances do act causally on the will. But at the same time I maintain that cause operates in a very different way upon the will from that in which it acts in other departments of nature. The mind has and must have the power of free choice : so says consciousness. But consciousness does not say, and cannot say, what antece- dent circumstances of an internal character have swayed the will. These causes certainly do not operate as causes 312 MORAL CONVICTIONS. operate in physical nature, or as causes operate in our intellectual being. I have shown that cause in the mind is not of the same character as cause in physical nature. I believe that cause as operating on the will is of a dif- ferent character from cause as acting in the intellectual or emotive parts of our nature. It is here, I believe, — that is, in the peculiar nature of cause as operating on the will, ■ — that the means of clearing up this subject, and effect- ing a reconciliation between the seeming incongruities, are to be found.* But I do not say that man can find them, for I am convinced he cannot penetrate this region and determine the nature and mode of operation of the power which sways the will. We can point to the place where must lie the means of clearing up the mystery, but then we cannot reach that place. It is the region where operate the agencies which come between God and the will of his rational and responsible creatures. Well may we pause here, and lay our hands on our mouths, as we say in our hearts, " Once have I spoken, but I will not answer ; yea, twice, but I will proceed no further." * Some of my critics, most respected by me, such as the late Sir W. Hamilton, Dr. Fitzgerald, Bishop of Cork, Dr. Ulrici, of Halle, and Mr. Mansel, have publicly or privately taken exception to the doctrine maintained in the ' Method of Divine Government' as to there being both freedom and a peculiar sort of causation in the will. I have in that work, and now more fully in this, given the view which seems sanctioned by our constitution. But I do shrink, on so tangled a sub- ject, from controversy, believing that I can throw no new light on it. I must ever hold most resolutely to the fundamental doctrine of the freedom of the will. But I will listen most willingly to any one who can give a better account — that is, more in accordance with our consti- tution — of the expectation that the thoroughly good being will conti- nue good, and of the possibility of giving statistics in anticipation of voluntary actions. PART THIRD. INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES AND THE VARIOUS SCIENCES. 315 BOOK I. METAPHYSICS. CHAPTER I. METAPHYSICS, GNOSIOLOGY, AND ONTOLOGY. The phrase Metaphysics is believed to have taken its rise from the title given to one of the treatises of Ari- stotle. There is no reason to think that the name was given to the work referred to by the author. It does not even appear that it was meant to denote the nature of the contents. Andronicus, it is said, inscribed on the manuscripts, Ta fiera ra Qvaitcd, to intimate that these books were to follow the physical treatises.* In the writings of Aristotle this department is called, not Meta- physics, but the First Philosophy. Metaphysical speculation is usually supposed, and, I be- lieve, correctly, to have originated with the Eleatics, who nourished 450 or 500 years before our era. Separating from the physiologists, that is, physical speculators, of the Ionian School, they directed their attention to the dicta of inward reason. Going far below what they represented as the illusions of the senses, they sought to penetrate * On the title, see Bonitz, ' Conimentarius ' appended to his edition of the Metaphysics. See also M'Mahon's translation of the Meta- physics, p. 1., where Clemens Alexandrinus and Philoponns are quoted as giving a different view from the common one. 316 METAPHYSICS. the mystery of being. With them all things were one, and this incapable of motion or of change. Metaphysics are treated, along with all other topics, by Plato, under the somewhat unfortunate name of Dia- lectics, which has nearly the same meaning as Speculative Philosophy has in modern times, only the former meant discussion in conversation, the latter discussion in the head or in books. According to Plato, it was the science which treated of the one Real Being (to Sv) and the Real Good. This one Real Being was not with him, as with the Eleatics, inconsistent with the existence of the many. It embraced the inquiry into the nature of the Good and the Beautiful, and expounded the Eternal Ideas which had been in or before the Divine Mind from all eternity, to the contemplation of which man's soul could rise by cogitation, because it had been formed in the Divine image, and in which the sensible universe partici- pated, thereby having a stability in the midst of its mu- tability.* According to Aristotle, the "First Philosophy treats of entity so far forth as it is entity, and of quiddity or the nature of a thing, and of that which is universally in- herent, so far as it is in entity. He argues that if there were not some substance (oiarla) other than those that exist in nature, then physics would be the first science, but if there be an eternal and unmovable sub- stance, then there must be a prior science to treat of it, and this is to be honoured as the first and highest philo- sophy. But the inquiry into entity is in fact an inquiry into causes, or what makes a thing to be what it is ; and he shows that such an investigation conducts to four causes : (1) the Formal (ttjv ovalav /cat, to tl t)v elvau) ; (2) the Material (rrjv v\r)v kclI to viTOKeiybevov) ; (3) the Effi- * It is scarcely necessary to refer to Archer Butler's account of Plato, in Hist, of Anc. Phil., as the finest in our language. METAPHYSICS, GN0SI0L0GY, AND ONTOLOGY. 317 cient (oOev 7) dpxn tv s KLvr\aews) ; (4) the Final (to ov eve/cev icai to ayadov).^ From the bent of his genius, Bacon was no way ad- dicted to metaphysics, but he allots it a separate and a most important place. He says that Physics regards what is. .wholly immersed in matter and movable, sap- posing only existence and natural necessity, whereas Me- taphysics regards what is more abstracted and fixed, and supposes also mind and idea. To be more particu- lar, he represents physics as inquiring into the efficient and material cause, and metaphysics into the formal and final, f The two largest metaphysical treatises, of Descartes are entitled ' Meditations on the First Philosophy ' and 6 Principles of Philosophy.' He says that the first part of philosophy is " Metaphysics, in which are contained the principles of knowledge, among which are found the explication of the principal attributes of God, of the im- materiality of the soul, and of all the clear and simple notions that are in us." He represents Philosophy as a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk.J In the Wolfian School which proposed to systematize the scattered philosophy of Leibnitz, Metaphysics was asked to deal with three grand topics, — God, the World, and the Soul, — and should aim to construct a Rational Theology, a Rational Physics, and a Rational Psychology. Kant takes up this view of Metaphysics, but labours to show that the speculative reason cannot construct any- one of these three sciences. The only available meta- physics, according to him, is a Criticism of the Reason, unfolding its a priori elements. He arrives at the con- * Metaph. i. 3, 1, compared with iii. 1, v. 1, 3. f De Augmentis, iii. 4. % Prin. Phil. Epis. Autli. 318 METAPHYSICS. elusion that all the operations of the Speculative Reason are mere subjective exercises, which imply no objective reality, and admit of no application to things; and he saves himself from scepticism by a criticism of the Prac- tical Reason, which guarantees the existence of God, Freedom, and Immortality.* In the schools which ramified from Kant, Metaphysics is represented as being a systematic search after the Ab- solute, — after Absolute Being, its nature and its method of development. And what are we to make of Metaphysics in our own country ? It is clear that she has lost, and, I suspect, for ever, the position once allowed her, when she stood at the head of all secular knowledge, and claimed to be equal, or all but equal, in rank, to theology itself. " Time was," says Kant,f " when she was the queen of all the sciences ; and if we take the will for the deed, she certainly de- serves, so far as regards the high importance of her ob- ject-matter, this title of honour. Now it is the fashion to heap contempt and scorn upon her, and the matron mourns, forlorn and forsaken, like Hecuba." Some seem inclined to treat her very much as they treat those dejure sovereigns wandering over Europe, whom no country will take as de facto sovereigns, that is, they give her all out- ward honour, but no authority. Others are prepared to set aside her claims very summarily. The multitudes who set value on nothing but what can be counted in money, never allow themselves to speak of metaphysics except with a sneer. The ever-increasing number of persons who read but who are indisposed to think, com- plain that philosophy is not so interesting as the new novel, or the pictorial history, which is quite as exciting and quite as untrue as the novel. The physicist who has * Sec Metkodenlehre, in Kr. d. r. Vera, f Kritik, translated by Mciklejolin, p. xvii. METAPHYSICS, GN0SI0L0GY, AND ONTOLOGY. 319 kept a register of the heat of the atmosphere at nine o'clock in the morning for the last five years, and the na- turalist who has discovered a plant or insect distinguished from all hitherto known species by an additional spot, cannot conceal their contempt for a department of in- quiry which deals with objects which cannot be seen nor handled, weighed nor measured. In the face of all this scorn I boldly affirm that Meta- physics are not exploded, and that they never will be ex- ploded. But if they are to keep or regain a place in this country, they must submit to lower their pretensions, and secure that the performance be in some measure equal to the profession made. In particular, they must confine themselves to a field which is open to human investiga- tion, and which can be overtaken. Looking to the philo- sophies to which I have just been referring, we see that some have ascribed to it far too wide a province, allotting to it inquiries which in modern times have been happily distributed, owing to the advance in the division of la- bour, to a great number of sciences. The nature of things without and within us, their causes and properties and modes of operation, these are to be determined only by a great number and variety of inductive sciences^ each prosecuted in its own way. Others again have allotted to it investigations which must ever be futile, either be- cause they are meaningless, or because they are beyond the human faculties. Thus it is vain for man to seek after Being in itself, or the One in itself, because there is no such thing anywhere but in the brain of the metaphysi- cian, who does not comprehend what sort of realities ab- stractions have ; and as to the Absolute, if it has a signi- fication at all, it is an object beyond the grasp of man's rea- son. But is there no field of inquiry left open to Metaphy sics? I believe that there is, and that in this field those who are competent for the arduous work of digging in it may 320 METAPHYSICS. find treasures of the highest value. . Dugald Stewart has noticed "the extraordinary change which has gradually and insensibly taken place, since the publication of Locke's Essay, in the meaning of the word Metaphysics, a word formerly appropriated to the ontology and pneumatology of the schools, but now understood as equally applicable to all those inquiries which have for their object to trace the various branches of human knowledge to the first principles in the constitution of our nature/'* This is an approximation to a proper account of the science. I am inclined to define Metaphysics as The Science which Inquires into the Original or Intuitive Con- victions or the Mind, with a view or Generalizing and Expressing them, and also oe Determining WHAT ARE THE OBJECTS REVEALED BY THEM. Ill prOS6- cuting the investigation, it must first be the aim of the inquirer to observe the phenomena, primarily and mainly by direct consciousness or immediate introspection, but secondarily, and often as satisfactorily, by examining the expression of the inward convictions in the conversation and writings of mankind. As he observes, he must be care- ful by analysis to separate the intuitions from the asso- ciated mental states, and to distinguish between one kind of intuition and another ; and he must also endeavour to classify them, and to put them in rigidly exact formulae. What he thus reaches, if the process has been properly conducted, he is entitled to regard as first, or fundamental, or philosophic principles. In this investigation he will sometimes have to look more to the subjective, and at other times more to the objective side ; or, in other words, sometimes more to the knowing powers, and at other times more to the objects known. So far as the science looks at the first, it may be called Gnosiology ; f so far * Dissertation, p. 475. f Hamilton speaks of some older treatises, which afford a name not METAPHYSICS, GNOSIOLOGY, AND ONTOLOGY. 321 as it looks to the second, it may be called Ontology; which two may be regarded as subordinate departments of Metaphysics. This treatise professes to be one on Metaphysics throughout. In the Chapters which follow this, I am to single out Knowing and Being for more special consideration. The province thus allotted to Metaphysics is quite a denned one. It is not the science of all truth, but it is the science of an important department, — it is the science of fundamental truth. It should not venture to ascertain the nature of all knowledge, Divine and human; it should be satisfied if it can find what are the original knowing powers of man. It should not pretend to settle the na- ture of all being, or the whole nature of any one being • but it would try to find what we can know of certain kinds of being by intuition. It should not presume to discover all causes, — which are to be discovered only par- tially by all the sciences, — but it should expound the na- ture of our original conviction regarding causation. It should not start with the Absolute, and thence derive all dependent existence ; but, as I will show, it is competent to prove that our convictions, aided by obvious facts, lead us to believe in an Infinite Being. It has a field in which it is perfectly competent to discover truth. The body of truth thus reached constitutes, in a special sense, philo- sophy; and 'philosophical' is an epithet which maybe applied to every inquiry which reaches it in the last re- sort, or which begins with it and uses it. It is to be valued, like all other truth, for its own sake, and because truth is the nutriment of the intellect, for which it craves, and by which, as it feeds on it, it is strengthened. The principles at which it looks are involved, as I am to show in next Book, in all the deeper sciences, in all mental unsuitable for a nomology of cognitions, viz. Gnosiology, or Gnosto- logia (Met. Lect. 7). Y 322 METAPHYSICS. sciences, in mathematics, and even in certain departments of physical science ; and it is desirable, not only for the sake of metaphysics itself, but for their sakes, to have these principles accurately expounded, in order that other departments of knowledge may be delivered from discus- sions which are to them encumbrances, and have their foundations distinctly laid and firmly settled. It is a science in which progress may be made from age to age by the united action of successive labourers observing, distinguishing, arranging, and devising an appropriate nomenclature. Like every other science which has to do with facts, it must be conducted in the Inductive Me- thod,* in which observation is the first process, and the last process, and the main process throughout; the pro- cess with which we start, and the process by which we advance all along, and at the close test all that is done ; but in which, at the same time, analysis and generaliza- tion are employed as instruments, always working, how- ever, on facts observed. It is true that metaphysics reach truth which is independent of any observation of ours, but it is truth which we can discover only by induction. CHAPTER II. GNOSIOLOGY. Sect. I. On Knowledge. What is Science (EwLarrifirj)? is the question put by Socrates in Plato's subtle dialogue of Thesetetus. But # "if e ver our philosophy concerning the human mind is carried so far as to deserve the name of science, which ought never to be despaired of, it must be by observing facts, reducing them to general rules, and drawing just conclusions from them." (Eeid's Works, p. 122.) GNOSIOLOGY. 323 the word c science ' has two meanings. In one sense it can be defined. It is knowledge arranged, correlated, or systematized. In this sense we speak of astronomy, ge- ology, logic, and other sciences. But the word had, at least in Greek, another signification, and meant simply knowledge ; and we may suppose the question to be put, What is Knowledge ? To this the reply must be, that we cannot positively define knowledge so as to make it in- telligible to one who did not know it otherwise. Still we can, by analysis, separate it from other things with which it is associated, — such as sensations, emotions, and fan- cies, — and make it stand out distinctly to the view of those who are already conscious of it. The science which thus unfolds the nature of knowledge may be called Gno- siology, or Gnosilogy (from yvaa-is and xdyos). I prefer this to Epistemology, which would signify the science of arranged knowledge. This science should be prosecuted in the same method as every other which has to do with facts, that is, in the Inductive. Its main office is to inquire into the nature of the knowing powers, to determine the mode of the operation of each, and the amount, and what is equally important, the kind, of knowledge which each is fitted to impart. This is what I have been doing all throughout this treatise. I am not to recapitulate the processes here. Yet it will be necessary to show, in a few sentences, how the method followed and the results reached have a bear- ing on Gnosiology. Commencing with sense-perception, I drew the distinction between our original and acquired perceptions, and endeavoured to ascertain what are our primary perceptions through the various senses, and also pointed out the difference between sensation and percep- tion. Proceeding to self-consciousness, I sought to esti- mate the primary knowledge which we have of self as acting or exercising some property. Coming to the re- y 2 324 METAPHYSICS. productive powers, I showed that here the faith element appears, and I pointed out the relation in which faith and cognition stand to each other, and unfolded the convic- tions which we have in regard to space, time, and the in- finite. Looking to the objects thus made known or be- lieved in, the mind pronounces a set of judgments, and I drew out a classification of these, and sought to unfold their nature. But the mind has not only the capacity of discovering the true, it has a power of discovering the good; and I was at pains to show wherein our moral convictions are analogous to our intellectual convictions, and wherein they differ from them. From this statement it appears that the metaphysician, in prosecuting his pursuits, should be able to distinguish (1) between our cognitions and certain associated states; (2) between one kind of conviction and another; and (3) between our original and acquired convictions. Al- most all errors, excesses, and defects in philosophy have proceeded from overlooking or mistaking these all-essen- tial differences. Thus some confound their sensations, or their feelings, or their inferences, or even their fancies, with their primary knowledge. Some imagine that our primitive convictions must all be alike in every respect, and that what is affirmed legitimately of one may be af- firmed of any other, or of all ; that, for example, our pri- mitive cognitions and moral convictions, all disclose the same sort of reality as is to be found in the perceptions of sense. Again, it is by failing to distinguish between the convictions guaranteed by our constitution and those reached by experience, that persons have been led to sup- pose that their senses or faculties deceive them. In Plato's dialogue, Socrates is represented as ex- posing all the answers given by Thesetetus, but without explicitly furnishing one of his own. • He shows first, that science is not sense-perception (atadrjacs). It is true that GNOSIOLOGY. 325 all knowledge is not derived from this source ; but a cer- tain portion is, — though in order to estimate it exactly, we must be careful to separate from it associated sensa- tions, and stand up only for the positive veracity of con- stitutional convictions. He shows, secondly, that science is not opinion or judgment (Sofa d\rjOris). Yet, by judg- ment on materials supplied, we can and do reach truth, and have criteria — as will be shown in next paragraph — by which to test it. He then shows that science cannot consist in judgment with a rational process {fiera xdyov) accompanying it. It is admitted that no rational process can add to the force of truth, but analysis and explication can settle for us wherein lies the force of truth. But the question is here started, Can there be a cri- terion of truth ? The inquiry has commonly been made by those who seek for an absolute law, or for one short and easy rule, which may at once determine for us as to every given or supposable asseveration, whether it is or is not true. Now it may be confidently asserted that such a criterion is not discoverable by man, nor can he so much as know whether it is possible in the nature of things, or available to any other intelligences. But I have laboured to show that there are tests of primitive truth not very difficult of application ; these tests are self-evidence and necessity, and, as auxiliary to these, catholicity. Again, of that portion of fundamental truth which may be ranked under the head of Analytic Judg- ments a priori, there are very stringent tests in the Laws of Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle. Some very definite rules for testing Synthetic Judgments a priori may be found in the maxims which have been enunciated in treating of the various classes of Primi- tive Judgments. As to experiential truth, there are in many departments tests quite sufficient for all practical purposes, but these are so many that they cannot be 326 METAPHYSICS. numbered. Each advanced science* and art has its own rules of evidence, quite competent to determine for it what is truth in its own department and within fields open to man's observation. But there can be no rule found by the physicist, or devised by the metaphysicist, to determine all questions, or questions beyond the range of man's observation, — as, for example, whether the Dog-star is or is not inhabited, or as to whether there are other substances in the universe besides mind and matter. Sect. II. On the Origin of our Knowledge and Ideas. We must now enter upon the inquiries in which Locke and five or six friends who met inliis chamber in Oxford found themselves involved, and which issued twenty years afterwards in the famous ' Essay on the Human Understanding.' Starting with a far different topic, they found themselves quickly at a stand, and it came into the thoughts of Locke that before entering " upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to ex- amine our own abilities, and see what objects our un- derstandings were or were not fitted to deal with." It follows from the account given in the preceding pages that man's knowledge is derived from Four Sources. First, we obtain knowledge from sensation, or rather, sense-perception. Such is the knowledge we have of body, and of body extended and resisting pressure, and of our organism as affcting us, or as being affected with smells, tastes, sounds, and colours. Secondly, we obtain knowledge from self-conscious- ness. Such is the knowledge we have of self, and of its * It is scarcely necessary to say, that we have admirable rules and tests, in regard to the Inductive Sciences, in Mill's 'Logic,' and in regard to the Social Sciences, in Sir G. C. Lewis's ' Treatise on the Methods of Observation and Eeasoning in Politics.' GNOSIOLOGY. 327 modes, actions, and affections, — say, as thinking, feeling, resolving. I am convinced that from these two sources we obtain not all our knowledge, but all the knowledge we have of separately existing objects. We do not know, and we cannot, as will be shown forthwith, so much as conceive of a distinctly existing thing, excepting in so far as we have become acquainted with it by means of sensation and reflection, or of materials thus derived. Here Locke held by a great truth, though he did not see how to limit it on the one hand, nor what truths required to be added to it on the other. For man has other sources of knowledge. Thirdly, by a farther Cognitive or Faith ^exercise we discover Qualities and Relations in objects which have become known by the senses external and internal. Of this description are the ideas which the mind forms of such objects as space, time, the infinite, the relation between cause and effect, and moral good. There is a wide difference between this Third Class and the Second, though the two have often been confounded. In self- consciousness we look simply at what is passing within, and as it passes within. But the mind has a capacity of discovering further qualities and relations among the objects which have been revealed to it by sensation and consciousness. This third kind of knowledge seems to be what is referred to by those who represent the mind or intellect itself as a source of ideas. But this account can be admitted only on its being understood that the mind notices these qualities and relations as in objects which have been made known by sensation and reflection. Fourthly, the mind can reach truth necessary and universal, that is, universally true. This may be regarded as knowledge, and it is knowledge which goes far beyond that derived from the other sources. We are sure that 328 METAPHYSICS. these two straight lines which go parallel for the smallest possible space, may be extended infinitely, without being ever nearer each other. We are certain that gratitude and holy love, which are good here, must be good all through the wide universe. But this fourth kind of cog- nition is not independent of the other three kinds. All the necessary truth we can reach bears a reference to objects which have become known directly, or by a dis- cursive process through perception and consciousness, either to these objects, as primarily known, or to the qualities and relations in them discovered by a further cognitive or faith process. The knowledge attained from the first three sources is, as I have repeatedly had occa- sion to remark, all concrete and individual. But we discern a necessity in certain portions of the individual knowledge or convictions, and we can proceed to gene- ralize these; and so far as we abstract and generalize properly, we are sure that what is true of the singular is true also of the universal ; that what is true of these two lines is true of every set of lines exactly like them which we could contemplate ; that what is true of this effect, namely, that it must have a cause, is true of every other, that is, if we have accurately determined it to be an effect. By this process we reach universal truth, of which we know that it must hold good in all times and at all places. Such seem to be the sources of human knowledge. We can add to the original stock got from all these quar- ters. Thus, we can add to what we have through the senses by observing other and new objects. We can know more of our minds by carefully noting their ac- tions. The mind, too, can rise to clearer and nobler views of intellectual and moral qualities by meditating on the proper objects and themes. We can widen and consolidate our acquaintance with necessary and univer- GN0SI0L0GY. 329 sal truth by a careful inspection and generalization of our individual convictions. The question of the origin of our ideas is substantially the same with that of the sources of our knowledge ; but in discussing this second question, it is of all things es- sential to have it fixed what is meant by ' idea.' Plato, with whom the term originated as a philosophic one, meant those eternal patterns which have been in or be- fore the Divine mind from all eternity, which the works of nature participate in to some extent, and to the con- templation of which the mind of man can rise by abstrac- tion and philosophic meditation. Descartes meant by it whatever is before the mind in every sort of mental ap- prehension. Locke tells us that he denotes by the phrase all that the schoolmen designated both by the phantasm and the universal notion. Kant applied the phrase to the ideas of substance, totality of phenomena, and God, reached by the reason as a regulative faculty going out beyond the province of experience and objective reality. Hegel is for ever dwelling on an absolute idea, which he identifies with God, and represents as ever unfolding it- self out of nothing into being, subjective and objective. Using the phrase in the Platonic sense, it is scarcely re- levant to inquire into the origin of our ideas ; it is clear however that Plato represented our recognition of eter- nal ideas as a high intellectual exercise, originating in the inborn power of the mind, and awakened by inward cogitation and reminiscence. In the Kantian and He- gelian systems the idea is supposed to be discerned by reason ; Kant giving it no existence except in the mind, and Hegel giving it an existence both objective and sub- jective, but identifying the reason with the idea, and the objective with the subjective. Using the phrase in the Cartesian and Lockian sense, we can inquire into the origin of our ideas. 330 METAPHYSICS. In accordance with modern usage in the English tongue, it might be as well perhaps to employ the word 'idea' to denote the reproduced image or representation in the mind, and the abstract and general notion. Thus explained, it would exclude our original cognitions on the one hand, and also the regulative principles of the mind on the other. An idea, in this sense, would always be a reproduction in an old form, or more commonly in a new form, of what has first been known. We first know objects, external or internal; and then we may have them called up in whole or in part, magnified or diminished, or mixed and compounded in an infinite va- riety of ways; or, by an intellectual process, we may contemplate one of their attributes separately, or group them into classes. Our ideas, in this sense, are ever dependent on our cognitions ; we cannot have an idea, either as an image or a notion, of which the materials have not been furnished by the various cognitive powers, primary and secondary. It is always to be remembered that by increase and decrease, by intellectual abstraction and generalization, our ideas may go far beyond our knowledge ; still, as our ideas in the last resort depend on our knowledge, they must be drawn from the same quarters. When the question is put then as to the origin of our ideas, we are thrown back on the Four Sources from which all our knowledge is derived. So far as our ideas of distinctly existing objects are concerned, they are all got ultimately from the outward and inward senses : to this extent the doctrine of Locke is unassail- able. We cannot imagine or think of any other kind of existence than matter and mind, with space and time, though, for aught we know, there may be other sub- stances and beings in the universe with a far different nature. But then we are led by our cognitive and faith powers, intellectual and moral, to clothe the objects, thus GN0SI0L0GY. 331 known, with qualities and relations which cannot be per- ceived either by sensation or reflection. It is not by one or other of these, or by both combined, that I come to believe that space and time are infinite, that this effect must proceed from a cause, that this benevolent action is good, and that this falsehood is a sin ; nor is it by either or by both that I can rise to the conviction that the effect is for ever tied to its cause, and that lying must be a sin in all time and in all eternity. The principle "Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu" has been ascribed to Aristotle, but most certainly without foundation, as the great Peripatetic everywhere calls in intuition in the last resort, and is ever coming to truth which he represents as self-evident and necessary. The maxim has been fathered, I do not know on what authority, on the Stoics. It is assuredly not the principle adopted by Locke, who is so often represented as favouring it • for the great English philosopher ever traces our ideas, not to one, but to two sources, and de- lights to derive many of our ideas from reflection. It is however the fundamental principle of that school in France and in Britain which has been called Sensational. There are three very flagrant oversights in the theory of those who derive all our ideas from sensation. First, there is an omission of all such ideas as we have of spirit and of the qualities of spirit, such as rationality, free will, personality. Secondly, there is a neglect or a wrong ac- count of all the further cognitive exercises of the mind by which it comes to apprehend such objects as infi- nite time, moral good, merit, and responsibility. Thirdly, there is a denial, or at least oversight, of the mind's deep convictions as to necessary and universal truth. Sensa- tionalism, followed out logically to its consequences, would represent the mind as incapable of conceiving of a spi- ritual God, or of being convinced of the indelible dis- 332 METAPHYSICS. tinction between good and evil ; and make it illegitimate to argue from the effects in the world in favour of the existence of a First Cause. Locke is ever to be distinguished from those who de- rive all our ideas from the senses. He takes great pains to show that a vast number of the most important ideas which the mind of man can form, are got from reflec- tion on the operations of our own minds. His precise doctrine is that the materials of the ideas which man caii entertain, come in by two inlets, sensation and reflec- tion ; that they are first perceived by the mind, and then retained ; and that they are subsequently turned into a great variety of new shapes by the faculties of dis- cernment, comparison, abstraction, composition, and the power of discovering moral relations. The ideas being thus obtained, he supposes that the mind can perceive agreements and disagreements among them. In parti- cular, it is endowed with a power of intuition, by which it at once perceives the agreement and disagreement of certain ideas, discovers these to be in the very nature of ideas, and necessary. Such being the views of Locke, they are as different from those of the Sensationalists on the one hand, as they are from those of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Kant on the other. Indeed the most careless reader cannot go through the 'Essay on the Human Understanding ' without discovering that, if Locke has a strong sensational, he has also a rational side. He will allow no ideas to be in the mind except those which can be shown to spring from one or other of the inlets, and yet he resolutely maintains that, with these ideas before it, the mind may perceive truth at once ; he thinks that morality is capable of demonstra- tion, and in religion he is decidedly rationalistic. So far, it appears to me, we can easily ascertain the views of Locke. It is more difficult to determine how far he sup- GNOSIOLOGY. 333 posed the mind to be capable of modifying or adding to the materials derived from the outward and inward senses. It is quite clear that he represents the mind as having the power to perceive and compound and divide these ideas, and discover resemblances and other rela- tions ; but there are passages in which, consistently or inconsistently, he speaks of the mind having something more suggested to it, or superinducing something higher.* Confining our attention to the points which are clear, I think we may discover — not certainly such grave errors as in the doctrines of the sensationalists, but still — several oversights. First, he overlooks the cognitions and be- liefs involved in the exercises with which the mind starts. This has arisen, to a great extent, from his attaching himself to the theory that the mind begins not with knowledge, but with ideas, which are first perceived by the mind, and then compared, upon which comparison it is that the mind reaches knowledge. He has never set himself to inquire what is involved in the sensation and reflection which give us our ideas. He takes no notice of intuition enabling us to look directly at the very thing, and of our intuition of extension, and of a cognitive self- consciousness, and of the beliefs gathering round space and time and the infinite. Secondly, he has not given a distinct place and a sufficient prominence to the ideas got from the mind observing certain qualities and rela- tions in objects made known by sensation and reflection. The defects of his system, in not giving an adequate ac- count of our idea of moral good, which he gets from our * Locke speaks of certain ideas being ' suggested ' to the mind by the senses (a phraseology adopted by Eeid and Stewart), ' Essay,' ii. vii. 9 ; and of ' relation ' as " not contained in the real existence of things, but extraneous and superinduced," ii. xxv. 8. (See "Webb on 'Intellectual- ism of Locke,' v.) He maintains that morality is capable of demonstra- tion, iii. ii. 16, etc. For other passages illustrative of Locke's precise views supra, pp. 18, 31, 104-106, 133, 154, 166, 172 (especially), 218,239. SS4 METAPHYSICS. sensations of pleasure and pain, with a law of God su- perinduced, without so much as his trying to prove how we are hound, on his system, to obey that law, was perceived at an early date by British writers, who ad- hered to him as closely as possible ; and Shaftesbury and Hutcheson called in a Moral Sense (as an addition to Locke's outward and inward sense) ; while Bishop Butler called in conscience, which he characterized as a " principle of reflection. " Thirdly, he has not inquired what are the laws involved in the Intuition to which he appeals in the fourth book of his Essay as giving us the most certain of all our knowledge. Had he developed the nature of intuition, and the principles involved, with the same care as he has expounded the experiential ele- ment, his system would have been at once and effectually saved from the fearful results in which it issued in France, where his name was used to support doctrines which he would have repudiated with deep indignation. He is right in saying that the mind has not consciously before it in spontaneous action such speculative principles as that " Whatever is is," or moral maxims in a formalized shape ; but he has failed to perceive that such principles as these are the rules of our intuitions, and that they can be discovered by a reflex process of generalization. It is but justice to Locke to say that he acknowledges ne- cessary truth, but it does not form a part of his general theory : his professed followers have abandoned it ; and sceptics have shown that he cannot reach it in consistency with his system. Sect. III. Limits to our Knowledge, Ideas, and Beliefs. It is instructive to find that not a few of the most pro- found philosophers with which our world has been ho- noured, have been prone to dwell on the limits to man's GNOSIOLOGY. 335 capacity. The truth is, it is always the smallest minds which are most apt to be swollen with the wind engen- dered by their own vanity. The intellects which have gone out with greatest power to the furthest limits, are those which feel most keenly the barriers by which hu- man thought is bounded. The minds which have set out on the widest excursions, and which have taken the boldest flights, are those that know best that there is a wider region lying beyond, which is altogether inaccessible to man. It was the peculiarly wise man of the Hebrews who said, "No man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." The Greek sage by emphasis declared that, if he excelled others, it was only in this, that he knew nothing. It was the avowed object of the sagacious Locke to teach man the length of his tether, which, we may remark, those feel most who attempt to get away from it. Reid laboured to restrain the pride of philosophy, and to bring men back to a common sense, in respect of which the peasant and philosopher are alike. It was the design of Kant's great work to show how little speculative reason can ac- complish. In our own day we have had Sir W. Hamilton showing, with unsurpassed logical power, within what narrow bounds the thought of man is restrained. We have already in our survey gathered the materials for enabling us to settle the general question, in which however are several special questions which should be carefully separated. 1 . What . are the limits to man's power of acquiring knowledge? The answer is, that he cannot know, at least in this world, any substance or separate existence other than those revealed by sense and consciousness. There may be, very probably there are, in the universe, other substances besides matter and spirit, other exist- ences which are not substances, as well as space and time, 336 METAPHYSICS. but these must ever remain unknown to us in this world. Again, he can never know any qualities or relations among the objects thus revealed to the outward and in- ward sense, except in so far as we have special faculties of knowledge ; and the number and the nature of these are to be ascertained by a process of induction, and by no other process either easier or more difficult. This is what has been attempted in this treatise, it may be sup- posed with only partial success in the execution, but, it is confidently believed, in the right method. A more diffi- cult process need not be resorted to, and would conduct us only into ever-thickening intricacies; and an easier method is not available in the investigation of the facts of nature, in this, nor, indeed, in any other department. After unfolding what seems to be in our primitive cogni- tions, I gave some account of the primitive faiths which gather round them, and classified the relations which the mind can discover, and unfolded the moral convictions which we are led to form. Such are the limits to man's original capacity, of which there are decisive tests in self- evidence, necessity, and catholicity. Within these limits man has a wide field in which to expatiate ; a field, indeed, which he can never thoroughly explore, but in which he may discover more and more. What he may discover, and what he may never be able to discover, are to be determined by the separate sciences, each in its own department. Thus, what he can find out of mind, of its various powers and original convictions, is to be determined by the various branches of mental science. What he can ascertain by the senses, aided by instruments, must be settled by the physical sciences. 2. The limits to man's capacity of knowledge being as- certained, it is easy to determine the limits to his power of forming ideas. The materials must all be got from the four sources of knowledge which have been pointed GN0S10L0GY. 337 out. There are two classes of powers employed in en- larging and modifying these. The one is the imagination, which can decrease, as when on seeing a man it can form the idea of a dwarf; and increase, as when it can form the idea of a giant ; or divide, as when it sees a man it can form an image of his head ; or compound, as when it puts a hundred hands on man, and forms the idea of a Briareus. The mind can further discover a number of relations among the objects primitively known. These I have endeavoured to classify. In particular, the mind can out of the concrete form innumerable abstracts, and from the singulars construct an indefinite number of uni- versal . It should be observed that man's power of ima- gination and correlation extends over his moral convic- tions as well as his intellectual cognitions. Thus, he can clothe the hero of a romance in various kinds of moral excellence of which we have discovered the rudiments in ourselves or others, and perceive relations among the mo- ral properties which have fallen under his notice. These are the limits to man's capacity of forming ideas, deter- mined first by his powers of cognition and secondly by his powers of belief and correlation. 3. Our beliefs, it is evident, may go beyond our cog- nitions. Nay, there is a sense in which they go beyond our very phantasms or notions. Still there are stringent limits set to them in our very nature and constitution. Thus, we can never believe anything in opposition to self- evident and necessary truths. In regard to at least some of these truths, we cannot so much as imagine them to be false. Thus, we cannot conceive that we ourselves while we exist should at the same time not exist. There are beliefs which are in our very mental make and frame, and which are altogether beyond our voluntary power. If we except these, however, our power of possible belief is wide as our capacity of forming ideas. If it is asked 338 METAPHYSICS. what we should believe within these limits ? the answer is, only what has evidence to plead in its behalf, what has self-evidence or mediate evidence. Metaphysics, with its tests, can determine what truths are to be received on their own authority ; as to the kind and amount of evidence required in derivative truth, this can be settled only by the canons of the special departments of investi- gation, historical or physical. But do our beliefs ever go beyond our ideas ? This is a very curious question, and different persons will be disposed to give different answers to it. It is quite clear that we can, and do, believe in much of which we can form no adequate conception in the sense of mental image; thus, we believe in the existence of an infinite God, who is not picturable in the imagination. But the more difficult question is, Can or should we believe in aught of which we have no apprehension of any kind ? I am inclined to think that there is always a conception of some sort at the basis of every belief; and that when there is no positive conception, then faith ought to cease, and must cease. But this doctrine is liable to misappre- hension unless certain very important modifications and explanations be conjoined. It seems clear to me that every belief must be a belief in something of which we have some sort of conception. A belief in nothing would not deserve to be called a belief, and a belief in something of which we have no apprehen- sion would be equivalent to a belief in nothing. But it will be urged that every man must believe in certain great truths regarding eternity, of which he has no con- ception, and that the Christian in particular has such a truth in which he firmly believes, in the doctrine of the Trinity. Still, I maintain that even in such a case there is an apprehension or conception. Thus, in regard to in- finity, we apprehend space or time, or God, who inhabits GNOSIOLOGY. 339 all space and time, stretching away further and further ; but far as we go, we apprehend and believe that there is and must be a space, a time, a living Being beyond. Or we apprehend a spiritual God, with attributes, say of power and love ; and we strive to conceive of Him, and of these perfections ; and we believe of Him and His power and goodness that they transcend all our feeble attempts at comprehension. In every supposable case of belief we have an apprehension of some kind. A traveller tells us that he saw in Africa some strange monster which he cannot describe so as to enable us to comprehend it; we understand this man's language, and if we have reason to look upon him as trustworthy, we believe his state- ment ; but still our belief goes upon our apprehension. An inspired writer tells us something about there being three persons in one God ; and, having evidence of his inspiration, we believe him : but even here there is an apprehension ; there is a conception of the God of truth as revealing the truth. There is more i this revelation is contained in words of which we form some sort of appre- hension. Thus, we are told that Jesus Christ is God } that he became man ; and yet we discover that he is somehow or other different from God the Father. Thus in all our beliefs there seems to be a conception of some- thing, and of something real and existing; but still it may be of something conceived by us as having qualities which pass beyond our comprehension, or qualities of which we have no comprehension. Some of these conceptions, with their attached beliefs, are those which raise up within us the feeling of the sublime, and are, of all others, the most fitted to elevate the soul of man. Need I add that it is possible for us to believe in truths which we cannot reconcile with other truths of sense or understanding. It is wrong in us, indeed, to believe in a proposition unsupported by evi- 25 2 340 METAPHYSICS. dence; but when it is thus sustained, and when especially it is seen to have the sanction of God, then the mind as- serts its prerogative of belief, even when the truth tran- scends all sense, all personal, all human experience, nay, even when it is encompassed with darkness and difficul- ties on every side. Faith feels that it is in its highest exercise, when founding on the authority of God, it be- lieves not indeed in contradictions (which it can never do), but in truths which it cannot reconcile with the appear- ances of things, or with other truths which the reason sanctions. Sect. IV. Relation of Intuition and Experience. We must now dive into the subject whose depths the great Teutonic metaphysician sought to sound ; not that Kant spoke much of it in the intercourse with his friends, but he was for ever pondering on it as he sat in his ba- chelor domicile, as he paced forward and backward in his favourite walk in the suburbs of Konigsberg, as he lec- tured to his class, or elaborated his published writings. The general question embraces several special ones, which must be carefully distinguished. In seeking to settle these, we must always have it fixed in our minds in what sense we employ the word ' experience ;' for the phrase may be understood in narrower or in wider significations. It may be confined to the outward fact known or appre- hended, or it may also embrace the inward consciousness. It may mean mere personal experience, or it may contain the whole gathered experience of mankind. It has been employed to stand for the experience of sense, and it has been so enlarged as to comprise all that we can know or feel by any or all of our cognitive powers, such as con- sciousness and conscience. In this Section I use it to express all that comes into consciousness ; for, properly speaking, there is no experience till the fact is appre- GNOSIOLOGY. 341 hended within. Taken in this sense, it would be nearer the truth, that is, would embrace a larger portion of truth, were we to say that our knowledge and ideas are drawn from the experience of consciousness, rather than from the experience of sense. We cannot reproduce things in idea, we cannot generalize any conglomerate of facts till they have been in consciousness, into which however they must have come by a cognitive power, which is therefore the true source of knowledge. When I limit the phrase ' experience ' to a particular class of ap- prehended facts, I will give notice by an epithet or ex- planatory clause. If it be needful to fix steadily in how wide a sense we use ' experience,' it is still more essential to determine under what particular aspect we view intui- tion, when we would consider its relations to experience. We have seen, in an earlier part of this Treatise (Part I. Bk. II. Ch. I. s. ii.), that Intuition may be contemplated under three general aspects, — as a body of regulative principles, as spontaneous convictions, and as generalized maxims. Under each of these, Experience stands in a different relation to Intuition. I. Let us consider the relation of Experience to Intui- tion, considered as a body of Regulative Principles. In this sense intuition, being native and original, is prior to experience of every kind, personal or general. So far from depending on what we have passed through, our in- tuitions are a powerful means of prompting to the ac- quisition of experience ; for, being in the mind as natural inclinations and aptitudes, they are ever instigating to action. All of them seek for objects, and are gratified when the proper objects are presented. Just as the eye was given us to see, and light is felt to be pleasant to the eyes, so the cognitive powers were given us in order to lead us to the acquisition of knowledge, and they are pleased when knowledge is furnished. Our belief as to 342 METAPHYSICS. the boundlessness of space is ever alluring us to explore it in earth and sea, and in the deep expanse of heaven ; and our belief in time without beginning and without end, is ever tempting us to go back through all the years which human history opens to us, and, beyond these, through all the ages which geology discloses, and to look forward, as far as human foresight and Bible prophecy may enable us, into the dim events of the future. Thus too our minds delight to discover substances acting ac- cording to their properties, and plants and animals developing according to the life that is in them, to find species and genera in the whole organic kingdoms, to trace mathematical relations corresponding to our higher intellectual cravings among all the objects presenting themselves on the earth and in the starry heavens, and to rise from near effects to remote causes in space and time. Nor is it to be omitted that our moral convictions prompt us to look for, and when we have found him, to look up to a Moral Governor of the universe, and to anticipate of him that he will be ready to support the innocent sufferer, and to punish the wicked. It should be added, that in experience we are ever finding a gratifying exemplifica- tion of our native tendencies, and a satisfying corrobo- ration of our intuitive expectations. We expect a cause to turn up for this mysterious occurrence ; we are disap- pointed at first, but in due time it appears. We antici- pate that this secret deed of villany will be detected and exposed; and so we are amazed for a season when we hear of the perpetrator flattered by the world, and seemingly favoured in the providence of God ; but our moral convic- tions are vindicated when the wicked man is at last caught in the net which had all along been weaving for him, and all his ill-gotten spoils are made to add to the weight of his ignominy, and to embitter his disgrace. II. Let us consider the relation of Experience to our GNOSIOLOGY. 343 Intuitive Convictions as these are manifested in Conscious- ness. We have now a more complicated series of cir- cumstances to look at and to weigh. Under this head we cannot speak of intuition and experience as being op- posed ; every conviction, be it of sense or consciousness, of the understanding or of conscience, is an experience. It is in itself an experience, and it is an experience which can be generalized. So far, all is clear enough. The difficulty and the con- fusion arise when we contemplate the relation of experi- ence to the forthcoming of the regulative principle into action, and into consciousness. There is a sense in which experience is required in order to such manifestation. Thus, in some cases the mental intuition is called forth by an external stimulus ; it is thus that our knowledge of body is evoked by an action of the bodily senses. It is to be observed however, in regard to all such cases, that it is scarcely correct to represent the intuition as de- pending on experience ; it depends, no doubt, on an out- ward stimulus as an essential part of the concause, but the action can scarcely be called experience, for there is nothing in consciousness till the intuition is in energy. The proper statement is that there must be the concur- rence of an outward action, in order to the rise of the in- ward conviction. Again, it is a fact that all our intui- tions relate, directly or indirectly, to objects which have become known by sensation and reflection, in the sense explained in the two preceding Sections. But in esti- mating this circumstance, it is to be remembered that sensation and reflection are themselves intuitions, and comprise very deep convictions. Once more, there are cases in which the intuition is called into exercise by the representations or apprehensions that have risen up in the mind. This is the case with all our primitive be- liefs, judgments, and moral convictions : they all depend 344 METAPHYSICS, on previous cognitions, and our judgments may further depend on beliefs. Thus it is when we contemplate an object as extended, and an event as happening in time, that our intuitive convictions as to space and time spring up ; it is when we consider two straight lines, that we proclaim that they cannot enclose a space. Thus it is when we look to objects grouped into classes, that we declare that whatever is predicated of the class may be predicated of all the members of the class. Thus it is when we look to certain voluntary acts of intelligent beings, that we regard them as good or evil, rewardable or punishable. In regard then to all intellectual beliefs and judgments, and to all moral cognitions, beliefs, and judgments, there must always be an experience on which they proceed. But, in making this statement, let it be ob- served first, that the experience may not be one of sense. Thus, our moral convictions proceed, not on an outward sensation, but on a voluntary action being presented to the moral power. It is to be further taken into account that the beliefs and judgments may often proceed on an experience which is itself intuitive. I proceed upon an intuitive conviction regarding time when I declare it to be infinite, and on an intuitive knowledge of extension, when I affirm that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It thus appears, in regard to our spon- taneous convictions, that there is no proper opposition be- tween experience and intuition • that we must bew T are of making sweeping declarations in the idea that they will apply to all instances j that in most cases there is a com- plex co-operation of the two ; and that we must consider each class of cases separately, in order to determine what is the precise nature of the relation. III. Let us consider the relation of Experience to our Generalized Intuitions. To reach these, experience is always necessary, is indeed an indispensable condition. GN0SI0L0GY. 345 The maxim is just the generalization of the experiences. But let us keep a steady apprehension of the distinction between the generalizations fashioned from two different sorts of experience. One kind of general maxim is ob- tained from facts external and internal which may have fallen under our notice, no matter how, through our own experience or the experience or authority of others. Thus, we have discovered that the positive poles of magnets re- pel each other ; that dicotyledonous plants are exogenous ; and that ideas which have at any time co-existed tend to recall each other. But the mind can reach a higher order of maxims ; I may give as examples, that two parallel lines cannot meet ; that every quality implies a substance, and that sin is of evil desert. This second class of axioms implies a generalization equally with the other, but it is from a very different sort of singulars. Of the first class of maxims we may be able to say that they seem to be true within the cosmos open to our observation ; but whe- ther they hold good in all parts of the universe, we cannot dogmatically affirm. Thus, there may be metals in other worlds which follow very different magnetic laws, and there may be intelligent beings in them whose ideas fol- low a different order of association from those with which we are acquainted on earth ; but it is as certain in those other worlds as in this, that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts, and that ungodliness is a sin. Sect. V. On the Necessity Attached to our Primary Convictions. We have seen throughout the whole of this Treatise that a conviction of necessity attaches to all our original cognitions, beliefs, and judgments, both intellectual and moral. But we may find ourselves in hopeless perplexi- ties, or even in a network of contradictions, unless we determine precisely to what it is that the necessity ad- 346 METAPHYSICS. heres. The proper account is, that the necessity covers the ground which the conviction occupies, — neither less nor more. We may err, either by contracting it within a narrower, or stretching it over a wider surface. It fol- lows that if we would determine how far the necessity extends, we must carefully and exactly ascertain what is the nature of the native conviction, and what are the ob- jects at which it looks. Beginning with our Cognitions, the conviction is that the object exists at the time we perceive it, and has the qualities we discover in it. This implies, according to the law of identity (in the form of non-contradiction), that it is not possible that it should not be existing, and not in possession of these qualities at the time it falls under our notice. But it does not imply that the object has a necessary or an eternal existence. It does not imply that the object must have existed in all other, or in any other, circumstances. For aught our conviction says, the ob- ject in other positions, or with a different set of pre- existing causes, might not have existed at all, or might have had a different set of qualities. But while the ne- cessity does not reach further, it always extends as far as the perception : thus it demands that body be regarded by us as extended and as resisting pressure, that self be looked on as capable of such qualities as thought and feel- ing, and that the properties of body and mind are not produced by our contemplation of them. Coming now to our original Beliefs and Judgments, it has been shown, as to the Beliefs, that while they pro- ceed on our Cognitions, they go beyond them, go beyond the now and the present, — declaring, for instance, of time and space, that they must transcend our widest phan- tasms or conceptions of them, and that they are such that no space or time could be added to them. And as far as the conviction goes, so far does the necessity extend. GN0SI0L0GY. 347 The necessity attached to our Judgments is in like man- ner exactly coincident with them. These imply objects on which they are pronounced. At the same time the judgment, with its adhering necessity, has a regard not to the objects directly, but to the relation of the objects. These objects may be real or they may be imaginary. I may pronounce* Chimborazo to be higher than Mont Blanc, but I may also affirm of a mountain 100,000 feet high that it is higher than one 50,000 feet high. As to whether the objects are or are not real, this is a question to be settled by our cognitions and beliefs, ori- ginal and acquired, and by inferences from them. But it is to be carefully observed, that even when the object is imaginary, the judgment proceeds on a cognition of the elements of the objects. Thus, having known what is the size of a man, we affirm of a giant, who* is greater than a common man, that he is greater than a dwarf, who is smaller than ordinary humanity. Still, the neces- sity in the judgment does not of itself imply the existence of the objects, still less any necessary existence ; all that it proclaims is, that the objects might exist out of mate- rials which have fallen under our notice, and that the objects, being so and so, must have such a relation. In a sense, then, our judgments are hypothetical ; the ob- jects being so, must have a particular connection. There may be, or there may never have been, two exactly pa- rallel lines : what our intuitive judgment declares is, that if there be such, they can never meet. A similar remark may be made of every other class of primitive judgments. There may or there may not be a sea in the moon ; but if there be, its waters must be extended, and can resist pressure. There may or there may not be in- habitants in the planet Jupiter ; but if there be, they must have been created by a power competent to the opera- tion. It is on this account, I suppose, that such truths 348 METAPHYSICS. have been called abstract or hypothetical, inasmuch as they deal with abstract relations, not implying the exist- ence of the things. But it is to be borne in mind, that when the objects exist, the judgments, with their accom- panying necessity, apply to them. It holds good also of our Moral Perceptions, that the necessity is as wide as our conviction, but no wider. It implies that the good or evil is a real quality of certain voluntary acts of ours, and this whether we view it or not, and independent of the view we take of it. It involves that certain actions are good or evil, whenever or wherever they are performed, in this land or other lands, in this world or other worlds. Rising beyond cognitions and beliefs, the mind can pronounce moral judgments on certain acts ap- prehended by it. These judgments do not imply the ex- istence of the objects ; but the decision will apply to the realities, if there be such. Thus, there may or may not be ungodliness or ingratitude in the planet Saturn; but if there be such a thing, we declare that it must be evil and condemnable. It is to be noted that our moral con- victions do not imply that we shall certainly practise the good, or that all must be morally good which men declare to be so. As soon as our original cognition or belief assures us of the existence of an object with certain qualities, or as a judgment affirms a necessary relation, the law of iden- tity comes- into operation, and insists on our keeping truth consistent with itself; and in particular, the law of non- contradiction restricts us from thinking or believing the opposite of the truth apprehended. When we know that self exists, we cannot be made to think that self does not exist. Constrained to look on time as without limits, we at once deny that it can have limits. Deciding that every effect has a cause, we cannot be made to believe that it has not had a cause. We have a conviction that murder GN0S10L0GY. 349 is a crime, and cannot be made to decide that it is not. We have this necessity in two forms as a test of funda- mental truth ; in its original or positive, and also in a ne- gative form, founded on the law of non-contradiction. In no case can the conviction be wrought in us that what we intuitively know or believe to exist does not exist, or that the contradictory of a primitive judgment can possibly be true. A different impression might be left by an account often given. A distinction has been drawn between self- evident truths which relate to matters of fact, such as that body exists and that self exists, and necessary truths, such as that a quality implies a substance, and that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Of the latter it is supposed that we cannot conceive or think the opposite, whereas it is supposed that we can of the former. But there is con- fusion in this representation. Thus, it is said that we can easily conceive that the self of which we are conscious might never have existed. The statement is correct, but it does not go to establish the general doctrine. For our intuition is not that self must have existed in all possible circumstances, but it is that it exists with certain qualities at the time we contemplate it. We may think a great many things about it, but the exact opposite we cannot be made to think or believe ; in this respect our cogni- tions are on the same footing as our judgments, and all our intuitions are alike. And this leads me to specify with precision what it is that we cannot do in regard to necessary truth. A common account is that we cannot conceive the contra- dictory of such a truth. But the word ' conceive' is am- biguous, and in itself means nothing more than ' ap- prehend/ or even than ' imagine ; and it is not mere ap- prehension or imagination that we use as a test. The exact account is that we cannot realize in consciousness 350 METAPHYSICS. the exact opposite of the intuitive conviction, whatever that be; that whatever we know intuitively as existing, we cannot be made not to know as existing ; whatever we intuitively believe, we cannot be made not to believe ; and when we discover an agreement, we cannot be made to judge that there is not an agreement.* The test of neces- sity thus employed admits of an application at once easy and certain. It should be noticed that the conviction of necessity follows conviction wherever it is found. In what is tech- nically called demonstrative or apodictic reasoning, all the new steps are seen to be true intuitively, and the necessity goes through the whole process step by step. Thus the necessity adheres not only to the axioms of Eu- clid, but goes on to the last proposition of the last book. It is the same in all other sciences which are demonstra- tive, as Ethics and Logic are to a limited extent ; the ne- cessity adheres to whatever is drawn from first truths by intuitive principles. It is needful to add, that in mixed processes, in which there is both intuition and experience in the results reached, the necessity sticks merely to the in- tuitive part, and does not guarantee the whole. I suppose there is no doubt of the accuracy of the mathematical demonstrations employed by Fourier in his disquisitions about heat, but there are disputes as to some of the as- sumptions on which his calculations proceed. We have here a source of errors. In processes into which intuition enters, but is only one of the elements, persons allot to the whole a certainty which can be claimed only in behalf of one of the parts. * There are acute and profound remarks on the various kinds of ne- cessity of thought in Mansel's Proleg. Log. GNOSIOLOGY. 351 Sect. VI. (Supplementally .) On the Distinctions between the Understanding and the .Reason ; between a priori and a posteriori Principles ; between Form and Mat- ter; between Subjective and Objective ; between the Logical and Chronological Order oe Ideas; be- tween the Cause and Occasion of Innate Ideas. We are now in circumstances to examine certain distinctions which have been drawn by the supporters of innate ideas, or in- tuitive reason, mainly in order to reconcile their views with the claims of experience. I. There is the Distinction between the Understanding and the Reason. — Milton draws the distinction between reason ' intuitive' and ' discursive.' Beattie and Beid represent Eeason as having two degrees : in the former, reason sees the truth at once ; in the other, it reaches it by a process. There is evidently ground for these distinctions. Bat the distinction I am now to examine was first drawn in a formal manner by Kant, and has since assumed divers shapes in Germany and in this country. According to Kant, the mind has three general intellectual powers, the Sense, the Un- derstanding (Ver stand), and the Eeason (Vernunft) ; the Sense giving us presentations, or phenomena ; the Understanding bind- ing these by categories ; and the Eeason bringing the judgments of the Understanding to unity by three Ideas — of Substance, Totality of Phenomena, and Deity — which are especially the Ideas of Beason. The distinction was introduced among the English-speaking nations by Coleridge, who however modified it. " Eeason," says he, " is the power of universal and necessary convictions, the source and substance of truths above sense, and having their evidence in themselves. Its presence is always marked by the necessity of the positions affirmed" (Aids to Eeflection, i. 168). It has become an accepted distinction among a certain class of metaphysicians and divines all over Europe and the English-speaking people of the great American continent. These parties commonly illustrate their views in some such way as the following. The mind, they say, must have some power by which it gazes immediately on the true and the good. But sense, which looks only to the phenome- nal and fluctuating, cannot enable us to do so. As little can the logical understanding, whose province it is to generalize the phe- nomena of sense, mount into so high a sphere. We must there- fore bring in a transcendental power — call it Eeason, or Intellectual Intuition, or Faith, or Peeling — to account for the mind's capacity 352 METAPHYSICS. of discovering the universal and the necessary, and of gazing at once on eternal Truth and Goodness, on the Infinite and the Ab- solute. Now there is great and important truth aimed at and meant to be set forth in this language. The speculators of France, who de- rive all our notions from sense, and those of Britain, who draw all our maxims from experience, are overlooking the most won- drous properties of the soul, which has principles at once deeper and higher than sense, and the faculty which compounds and com- pares the material supplied by sense. And if by Eeason is meant the aggregate of Eegulative Principles, I have no objections to the phrase, and to certain important applications of it, but then we must keep carefully in view the mode in which these principles operate. We may mark the following errors, or oversights, in the school referred to. (1.) Intuitive Eeason is not, properly speaking, op- posed to Sense, but is involved in certain exercises of sense. There is knowledge, and this intuitive, in all sense-perception. It may be proper indeed to draw the distinction between the two elements which are indissolubly wrapt up in the one concrete act. Kant endeavoured to do so, but gave a perversely erroneous account when he represented intuition as giving to objects the forms of space and time ; whereas intuition simply enables us to discover that bodies are in space, and events in time. There is certainly a high intuitional capacity involved in every exercise of mind which takes in extension or regards objects as exercising property. And then it is altogether wrong to represent sense as the one original source of experiential knowledge, which is derived from conscious- ness as well as from perception through the senses.. (2.) It is wrong to represent Intuitive Eeason as opposed to the Under- standing. There is intuitive reason involved in certain exercises of the understanding, as when we infer that what is true of a given class must be true of each of the members of the class. Nor is it to be forgotten that the understanding can abstract and generalize upon a great deal more than the objects of sense ; it can do so upon the materials supplied by consciousness, and by all the fur- ther convictions of the mind, such as the conscience. (3.) It is wrong to represent the mind as gazing immediately and intuitively on the true or the good, upon the necessary or the universal. It can indeed rise to the conception of these, but, in order to its doing so, it has to engage in abstraction and generalization, which makes the truth gained no longer a truth of pure reason, but of reason and understanding combined. It is not consistent with the GNOSIOLOGY. 353 natural history of the mind to represent it as at once rising to the contemplation of some ideal of the fair and good, which it is able to look at when the spirit is not agitated by passion or bedimmed by earthliness. We are undoubtedly led by native taste to admire the beautiful, but it is when embodied in a lovely object. "We are constrained, in spite of a rebellious will, to approve of the good, but it is when a good action, or rather, a good being performing a good action, is presented to the mind. The general ideas of the true, the fair, and the good, do not spring up intuitively in the mind, but are fashioned out of intuitive elements by those addicted to reflection. (4.) It is preposterously wrong to suppose that the mind can employ intuitive convictions in philosophic or religious speculations without any associated exercise of the logical under- standing. Not being immediately conscious of the Regulative Prin- ciples of the mind, we cannot employ them in discussion till we have first inquired into their nature by induction, and embodied their ruk in a clear definition or a precise axiom. II. Distinction between 'a Priori' and 'a Posteriori ' Principles. — Prior to the time of David Hume, the phrase a priori was applied to the procedure from principle to consequent, and from cause to effect, using the word cause in a wider and looser sense than in these times ; while the word a posteriori was employed to characterize the procedure from consequent to antecedent, or from effect to cause.* Since the publication of Hume's philosophic works, and more especially since the 'Kritik of Pure Reason' came to have such extensive influence, a priori denotes whatever is supposed to be in the mind prior to experience ; and a posteriori whatever has been acquired by experience. The distinction thus indicated and desig- nated may be admitted without allowing that it probes the subject to its depths, and certainly without admitting all the views usually asso- ciated with it. Even in regard to knowledge acquired by experience, I maintain that, prior to its acquisition, the mind has the power of acquiring it. The bodily frame has certainly the organs of sense prior to seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, or smelling. The mind has certainly the capacity of perception before it actually observes any external object, and the power of comparison before it can no- tice relations. And, in acknowledging the distinction, we must ever protest against the idea that any universal or necessary truth can be discerned by the mind without a process of a posteriori in- * Cudworth's language is, " The abstract universal rationes, 'reasons,' are that higher station of the mind, from whence, looking down upon individual things, it hath a commanding view of them, and, as it were, a priori comprehends or knows them" (Immut. Mor. i. iii. 2). 2 A 354 METAPHYSICS, duction and arrangement. So far as the phrase is applied to ge- neral maxims, it should be on the understanding that they have been drawn by a logical process out of the individual a priori con- victions. Closely allied to the question of a priori truth is the question, Can there be an a priori science ? This is a topic which will come more fully before us in certain of the Chapters of the next Book. There is a sense in which certain sciences are a priori, that is, the principles of them are in the constitution of the mind, and are ready to manifest themselves in individual acts. In another sense there can be no a priori science, for science employs general prin- ciples, and there are no such principles known a priori. But there are sciences, the ground-principles of which are not the generaliza- tions of a gathered experience, but of the necessary decisions of the mind, and these sciences may be called a priori with perfect pro- priety, provided always that it be understood, that while the gene- ral law is in the mind prior to its manifestation, it is discovered by us only through the generalization of its individual exercises. III. Distinction between Form and Mattee. — This phrase- ology was introduced by Aristotle, who represented everything as having in itself both matter (v\yj) and form (eTSos). It had a new signification given to it by Kant, who supposes that the mind sup- plies from its own furniture a form to impose on the matter pre- sented from without. The form thus corresponds to the a priori ele- ment, and the matter to the a posteriori. But the view thus given of the relation in which the knowing mind stands to the known object is altogether a mistaken one. It supposes that the mind in cognition adds an element from its own resources, whereas it is simply so constituted as to know what is in the object. This doc- trine needs only to be carried out consequentially to sap the foun- dations of all knowledge, — for if the mind may contribute from its own stores one element, why not another ? why not all the ele- ments ? In fact, Kant did, by this distinction, open the way to all those later speculations which represent the whole universe of be- ing as an ideal construction. There can, I think, be no impropriety in speaking of the original principles of the mind as forms or rules, but they are forms merely as are the rules of grammar, which do not add anything to correct speaking and writing, but are merely the expression of the laws which they follow. As to the word ' matter,' it has either no meaning in such an application, or a mean- ing of a misleading character. IV. Distinction between Subjective and Objective. — The word ' subject ' lias a diversity of meaning in the English language. GN0S10L0GY. 355 In logic it denotes the term of which predication is made; in common discourse, it means the topic about which affirmations are made ; and in metaphysics, the mind contemplating an object. The term ' object ' too is not without its ambiguity. Sometimes it stands for a thing contemplated by the mind, and sometimes for a thing con- sidered in itself, and often it denotes the aim or end which the mind has in any of its pursuits. I am afraid it will be impossible, in common discourse, to deprive the phrases of any one of these vari- ous significations. The adjectives ' subjective ' and ' objective ' have not had such a variety of meaning, and the nouns ' subject ' and ' object,' when used together, in philosophic discussion, should be limited so as to be exactly coincident with them. They should, in my opinion, never be used except as correlative phrases ; the terms l subject ' and ' subjective ' being employed to designate, not the mind in itself, but the mind as contemplating a thing ; and the terms ' object ' and ' objective ' to denote, not a thing in itself, but a thing as contemplated by the mind. It is clear that if the phrases were employed in this sense when used at the same time, we should be saved an immense amount of word- warfare, in which subject and object, subjective and objective act so prominent a part. We should Be prevented from speaking, as is so often done, of the mind as subject or subjective, except when it is looking at some- thing, or of the thing as an object or objective, except when it is contemplated by a thinking mind. We would also know at once what is meant when it is said that the subject implies the object, and the object the subject. It does not mean that the existence of mind implies an external thing to contemplate it, or that a thing, as such, implies a mind to consider it ; it signifies simply that the one implies the other, as the husband implies the wife and the wife a husband, from which we cannot argue that every man must have a wife and every woman a husband, but merely that when the man is a husband, he must have a wife, and when the woman is a wife, she must have a husband. The subjective implies the objective merely in the sense that when the mind is contemplating a thing, it must be contemplating it, and that when a thing is contemplated, it must be contemplated by a contemplative mind. With a large school of metaphysicians and divines the words subjective and objective are used in a Kantian sense, and are made, without the persons employing them being aware of it, to briug in the whole peculiarities of the critical philosophy. In the philosophy which has germinated from Kant, the subject mind is supposed to have a formative power, and the object thing is supposed to be a thing, or phenomenon, plus a shape or a colour given it by the 2 a 2 356 METAPHYSICS. mind. Proceeding on this view, the phrase ' subjective' comes to express that which is contributed by the mind in cognition. Thus by a juggling use of these phrases, persons are being involved, without their having the least suspicion of it, in a philosophy which makes it impossible for us ever to know things except un- der aspects twisted and distorted no man can tell how far from the reality. "We can be saved from this only by using them as correlatives, and insisting when we do so that the subjective mind is so constituted as to know the object as it is under the aspects presented. Y. Logical and Chronological Order of Ideas. — Sir W. Hamilton quotes a saying of Patricius, " Cognitio omnis a mente primam originem, a sensibus exordium habet primum." The dis- tinction is deep in Kant, and has been fully and skilfully elabo- rated by M. Cousin. It is said that there are ever two factors in the formation of our a priori ideas, reason and experience ; and that logically reason is first, whereas chronologically experience comes first. The distinction is not clearly nor happily drawn by such phraseology. For it is difficult to understand what is meant by ' origin' as distinguished from ' beginning ;' and what is meant by ' logical ' in such an application ; it cannot mean, according to the rules of formal logic, it must mean, according to reason ; and then comes in the important fact that reason and experience are not, properly speaking, opposed. The distinction, however, points to a truth, inasmuch as our intuitions, as mental faculties, laws, or tendencies, are in the mind prior to the exercise of them. There is a difficulty, however, in apprehending what is meant by the logical or reason element being first, but not chronologically. The intuition as a law is in the mind prior, chronologically, to the ex- perience of it. The individual exhibition of the conviction and the experience of it come chronologically together. It is true, how- ever, in the fullest sense, that an experience is necessary in order to our being able to present the necessary conviction in the form of an abstract definition or general maxim. This distinction con- nects itself with another, which I am now to examine. VI. Distinction between Eeason as the Cause, and Sense and Experience as the Occasion.* — It is allowed that, apart * Cudworth refers to ideas of a high kind, which he admits are " most commonly excited and awakened occasionally from the appulse of out- ward objects knocking at the doors of the senses," and complains of men not distinguishing "betwixt the outward occasion, or invitation, of these cogitations, and the immediate active or productive cause of them " (Immiit. Mor. iv. ii. 2). GNOSIOLOGY. 357 from sense and experience, the mind cannot have any ideas ; still, it is not experience which produces our necessary ideas, it is merely the occasion of them, the true cause being the reason. Thus, with- out an exercise of sense, there could be no idea of space in the mind ; but then the operation is merely the occasion on which the idea of space is produced by an inherent mental energy. Aloof from a special event, there could be no idea of time ; but then it is affirmed that upon an event becoming apprehended, the idea of time, already potentially in the mind, is ready to spring up. With- out the observation of contiguous concurrences, there could be no idea of cause ; but on such being presented, the mind is found to be already in possession of an idea of cause by which to bind them in a necessary connection. Till some human action is pre- sented, there could be no idea of moral good ; but on a benevolent action being apprehended, the idea of moral good is ready to spring up. There is important truth which this account is intended to ex- press, but it es no t bring it out accurately. It is not so easy to settle precisely the difference between cause and occasion : the occasion is, in fact, one of the elements of unconditional cause, or rather, concause, which produces the effect. In regard to the original faculty or law of the mind, it is undoubtedly the main element of the complex cause which issues in a spontaneous in- tuitive conviction. But there is need of a concurrence of circum- stances in order to this faculty operating. But instead of con- fusedly binding all these up in the one expression ' occasion,' it is better to spread them out individually, when it will be found that each acts in its own way. Thus we should show that an action of the organism is needful to call our intuition of sense -perception into exercise. We should show, too, that an apprehension of an object or objects is needed, in order to call into action our in- tuitions as to the infinity of time, and eternal relations, and moral good ; and then we may see that this apprehension may not have been got from sense, and that in our primary cognition of the object there- may have been intuition, — thus, it is because we in- tuitively know every object as having being, that we declare its identity of being at different times. Again, in respect to the ge- neralized maxim, or notion, the account is fitted to leave a very erroneous impression, for it makes it appear as if it were upon the occasion of the presentation of a material object, that there springs up the abstract idea of space, and of an event becoming known, that there arises the idea of time, or of a succession of events being apprehended, that the mind forms an idea of cause. It is all true 358 METAPHYSICS. that there must be experience in order to the construction of the abstract or general notion, but the notion is formed, after all, by the ordinary process of abstraction and generalization. CHAPTER III. ONTOLOGY. Sect. I. On Knowing and Being. These are topics which the subtle Greek mind delight- ed to discuss from the time that reflective thought was first awakened within it, — that is, from at least five hun- dred years before the Christian era. I confess I should like to have been present when they were handled on that morning when Socrates, as yet little more than a boy, met the aged Parmenides, so venerable with his noble aspect and hoary locks, and Zeno, tall and elegant, and in the vigour of his strength, in the house of Pythodorus, in the Cerameicus, beyond the walls at Athens.* At the same time I fear that, after all, I could have got little more than a glimpse of the meaning of the interlocutors. It is clear that even Socrates himself is not sure whether he is listening to solid argument, or losing himself among verbal disquisitions and dialectic sophistries. And who will venture to make intelligible to a modern mind — even to a Teutonic mind — the arguments by which Parme- nides and Zeno prove that Being is One, and the impos- sibility of Non-Being ; or translate with a meaning, into any other tongue, the subtleties of those Dialogues, such as Parmenides and the Sophist, in which Plato makes his speakers discourse of the One and of the Existing? The grand error of all these disputations arises from * Sec the opening of the Parmenides of Plato. ONTOLOGY. 359 those who conduct them imagining that truth lies at the bottom of the well, whereas it is at the surface ; and in going past the pure waters at the top, they have only gone down into mud and mire. We are knowing, and knowing being, at every waking hour of our existence, and all that the philosopher can do is to observe them, to separate each from the other, and from all with which it is associated, and to give it a right expression. But the ancient Greeks, followed by modern metaphysicians, imagined that they could do more, and so have done in- finitely less. They have tried to get a more solid founda- tion for what rests on itself, and so have made that in- secure which is felt to be stable. They have laboured to make that clearer which is already clear, and have thus darkened the subject by assertions which have no mean- ing. They have explained what might be used to ex- plain other truths, but which itself neither requires nor admits of explanation, and so have only landed and lost themselves in distinctions which proceed on no differences in the nature of things, and in mysteries of their own creation. Knowing, in the concrete, is a perpetual mental exer- cise, ever under the eye of consciousness ; and we can by an intellectual act separate it from its object, and contemplate it in the abstract. In all acts of knowledge we know Being in the concrete ; that is, we know things as existing, and we can separate in thought the thing from our knowledge of it, and the thing as existing from all else which we may know about the thing. The sci- ence which treats of Being, or Existence, is Ontology. In a loose sense, every real science, — that is, every science which treats of existing objects, — might be called an on- tological science. But every one sees that it would be preposterous to represent astronomy and geology and agriculture as departments of ontology, for these sciences 300 METAPHYSICS, treat not so much of the mere being of objects gene- rally, as of certain qualities and laws of special classes of objects. We must therefore confine the science within more stringent limits. If we define Ontology as the science of what we know of things intuitively, we are giving it a precise field, which can be taken in from the waste, and cultivated. Gnosiology and Ontology may be treated to a great extent together in a Metaphysics which unfolds, as has been attempted in this treatise, the ori- ginal convictions of the mind. Still they can be distin- guished, and the distinction between them should be steadily kept in view. The one seeks to find what are our original powers, the other to determine what we know of things by these powers. In order to reach this second end, we must go over, one by one, the various classes of objects known by our in- tuitive powers ; but this not, as in Gnosiology, to deter- mine what the power is, but what is the object which it looks at. I have been seeking to accomplish the one as well as the other of these all throughout this treatise. By simple cognitive, or presentative powers (as Hamilton calls them), we know objects in the singular and in the concrete : by consciousness we know self as having being, and capable of thought and feeling; by perception we know body as extended and resisting pressure ; and by both we know self and not-self as having an existence independent of the contemplative mind. By the repro- ductive powers we are led to believe in the past event recalled by memory as real, that is, as having occurred in time past ; and round space, known in the concrete in perception, and time, known with the event in reminis- cence, there gather a number of beliefs which can be as- certained and expressed. Among the objects thus known or believed in, — and it should be added, imagined out of the materials supplied by the cognitive and reproduc- ONTOLOGY. 361 tive powers, — the mind can discern necessary relations, that is, arising from the very nature of the objects. The mind, too, is led to know and believe in a moral excel- lence in the voluntary acts of intelligent beings, and to discover the bearings and relations of moral good and evil. Such a survey as this enables us to determine what are the kinds of reality which the mind is able to discover. In sense-perception and consciousness it is a real thing, known as having certain qualities. In our beliefs, too, we look to a real thing having attributes. We believe, we must believe, space and time to have an existence, not as mere forms of thought, but altogether independent of the contemplative mind, Our judgments may or may not look to a reality, for we may discover relations among imaginary as well as among actual objects. But when the objects are real the relations discovered are also real, — not indeed independent realities, but real relations in the actual objects. The reality discovered by the moral power lies in a quality of certain voluntary acts performed by persons possessed of conscience and free will. We thus see how such an inspection settles for us not only that there is a reality, but what is the sort of reality; whether a present or an absent reality, whether an inde- pendent reality or a reality in objects. Thus we maintain that abstract and general notions have a reality when the objects from which they are drawn are real ; but we are not to understand, as Plato's language would lead us to believe, that they have a reality independent in some in- telligible world. The relations of quantity treated of in mathematics have a reality, but it is only in space and time, and in bodies as occupying space and existing in time. Cause and effect have a reality independent of the mind which observes them ; but this is, after all, in the substances which act and are acted on. Moral good and 3C2 METAPHYSICS. sin are certainly both real, but their actuality is in the dispositions of responsible beings. But it will be urged that all this proceeds on the idea that our original convictions can be trusted. I might maintain, in reply, that whether our convictions can be confided in or not, it is at least a matter of speculative interest to determine what our convictions say. But I do hold that our original convictions must be held as a sufficient guarantee of the truths for which they vouch. The objections which may be advanced against this view will be answered in the Sections that follow, on Idealism and Scepticism. It will be seen that, so far as they have any plausibility, they are all removed when we take along with us accurate conceptions of what it is that our ori- ginal convictions depone to. Sect. II. On Idealism. Two questions here press themselves on us, and seem to raise up clouds in which dimly-seen objects look like spectres. I. Does the subject never add to the object something not in the object? Does the eye, in looking at a scene, never impart a colour to it, a glow or a gloom? The mirth is not in the merry peal, nor the melancholy in the funereal toll of the bell, nor is the music in the flute or organ, but in the soul which rings and breathes and beats in harmony with the external movements. The view dif- fers according to the point from which men take it, ac- cording to men's natural or acquired temperaments, tastes, and characters, and according to the circumstances in which they are placed. How different the estimate which is formed of a neighbour's character, according as he who judges is swayed by kindness or malignity, by charity or suspicion ! The scene varies according to the humour in which we happen to be, quite as much as it changes ONTOLOGY. 363 according to the light or atmosphere in which we survey it. Hope gladdens everything as if it were seen under an Italian sky, whereas disappointment wraps it in mist and cloud. Joy steeps all the landscape in its own rich colours, whereas sorrow wraps it as in the sable dress of mourning. Do not such facts, known to all observers of human nature, and dwelt on by poets as being largely their stock-in-trade, prove that in all our ideas, views, no- tions, opinions, there is a subjective element no less po- tent than the objective ? And if there be,' what limits are we to set it ? Is our metaphysical philosophy agreed with itself on this subject ? Or, with all its refinements, can it draw a decided line which will for ever separate the one from the other? 1. All knowledge through the senses is accompanied with an organic feeling, that is, a sensation. Our im- mediate acquaintance with the external world is always through the organism, and is therefore associated and combined with organic affections pleasing or displeasing. Certain sounds are felt to be harsh or grating, others are relished as being sweet or melodious or harmonious. Some colours/in themselves or in their associations, are felt to be glaring or discordant, while others are enjoyed as being agreeable or exciting. In short, every sense-perception is accompanied with a sensation, the perception being the knowledge, and the sensation the organic affection felt by the conscious mind as present in the organism. He who is no philosopher, finds little difficulty in distinguishing the two in practice ; and it ought not to be difficult for the man who is a philosopher to distinguish the two in theory. Every man can distinguish the sugar in itself from the sweet flavour which we have in our mouth when we taste it, or the tooth and gum from the toothache which is wrench- ing them ; and the metaphysician is only giving a philo- sophic expression to a natural difference when he distin- guishes between sensation and perception. 364 METAPHYSICS. 2. Certain mental representations are accompanied with emotion. Thus the apprehension of evil^as about to come on us or those whom we love, raises up fear ; the contem- plation of good, on the other hand, as likely to accrue to us or those in whom we feel an interest, excites hope. This is only one example of the kind of emotions which attach themselves to all mental pictures of objects, as hav- ing brought, or as now bringing, or as likely to bring pleasure or pain, or any other sort of good or evil, and which steep the objects in their own waters, and impart to them their peculiar hue. Hence the gloom cast over scenes fair enough in themselves — as by a dark shadow the effect of the interposition of a gloomy self obstructing the light ; hence the splendour poured over perhaps the very same scenes at other times — as by light streaming through our feelings, as through stained glass or irradi- ated clouds. Hence the pleasure we feel in certain con- templations, and the pain called forth by others. Hence the fear that depresses^ that arrests all energy, and at last sinks its victim ; hence the hope which buoys up, which cheers and leads to deeds of daring and of heroism. But while the two are blended in one mental affection in the mind, it is not difficult, after all, to distinguish between the object known, and the accompanying emotion ; between the trumpet sounding, and the martial spirit excited by it ; between the canvas and oil of Titian, and the feeling which his ascending Mary raises within us, glowing and attractive as the splendours of the dying day ; between our friend as he is in himself, and the deep and tender regard which we must entertain towards him. 3. Certain ideas are associated with other ideas which raise emotions. It does not concern us at present to ex- plain the nature of the laws which govern the succession of our ideas. It is certain that ideas which have at any time been together in our mind, either simultaneously ONTOLOGY. 365 or successively, in a concrete or complex state, will tend to produce the one the other or the others ; and an idea which has no emotion attached, may come notwithstand- ing to raise up feeling through the idea with which it is associated, and which never can come without sentiment. Thermopylae, Bannockburn, and Waterloo, look uninter- esting enough places to the eye, and to those who may be ignorant of the scenes transacted there, but the spots and the very names stir up feeling like a war-trumpet in the breasts of all who know that freedom was there de- livered from menacing tyranny. Thus it is that the buds and blossoms of spring, and the prattle of boys and girls, call forth a hope as fresh and lively as they themselves are. Thus it is that the leaves of autumn — gorgeous though they be in colouring, and the graveyard where our forefathers sleep — clothed though it be all over with green grass, incline to musing and to sadness. But neither is it very difficult to distinguish between an apprehension or representation and its associated feeling, to separate between the primrose and the buoyant emotion which bursts forth on the contemplation of it, between the grave of a sister and the sorrowful tenderness which it evokes. 4. The mind of the mature man cannot look on any one object without viewing it in a number of relations. A house presented to an infant may be nothing but a coloured surface with a certain outline j to the mature man it is known as a house possibly, with a loved dweller with- in. An apple falling to the ground is known intuitively simply as an object in motion ; but by the educated man it is known as a vegetable fruit falling to the ground in obedience to what seems a universal law of matter. Does not the mind, in such cases, add to the object relations imposed by itself? To this I answer, that all that the mind does, is to add to its original a further knowledge of relations discovered in the objects themselves. The 366 METAPHYSICS. object before us is not merely a coloured shape, it is a house, and as a house we are entitled to regard it. The apple falling to the ground is in fact a fruit obeying a power of gravitation. The letters of a book are to the infant mere black strokes ; to the child learning to read they are figures, signs of sound ; to the grown man or woman they are signs of thoughts or feelings, addressed by a writer to a reader : but the truth is, the letters are real things under all these aspects, real strokes, real signs of sound and sense. So far as we proceed accurately, according to the laws of thought using experience, and are employed in discovering the actual relations of things, the conceptions reached imply a reality quite as much as the intuitions with which the mind starts. I am not prepared to say that these are all, but they are the more important of the natural influences which operate to colour or enlarge our knowledge. The Author of our nature certainly means us to add to our knowledge by observation, and to graft the acquired on the original stock ; and he has superinduced these attached sensations, and made the very laws of our nature to call in associated thoughts and feelings in order to intensify and elevate our enjoyment, and in some cases to be a prognostic of evil, which should ever be associated with offence and dis- gust. So far as music gives us more pleasure than wire vibrations ; — so far as a Swiss valley, guarded by Mont Blanc, or Mont Cervin, or the Jungfrau, is finer than an accumulation of grass, trees, stones, and snow ; — so far as the spot where a great and a good man was born, is more stimulating than would be the uninteresting hut, which is all the bodily sense perceives, — we owe it to the beneficence of God, who has made us sensitive as well as cognitive beings. So far as we are led to shrink from baser scenes, it is by a provision which is intended to keep us back from what might issue in pain or in sin. It ONTOLOGY. 367 should be added that while this is no doubt the original intent of these peculiarities of our constitution, they may, in the voluntary and sinful abuse of them, become a se- duction to evil, and a scourge to inflict the keenest misery. They may lead man, through a misgoverned imagina- tion, to paint in glowing colours a fictitious object, and then pursue it, when he " Sees full before him, gliding without tread, An image with a glory round its head ; This shade he worships for its golden hues, And makes (not knowing) that which he pursues." Thus it is that the mind irradiates with a romantic tinge objects unworthy in themselves, and then goes on to love them and delight in them. Man may thus come, too, to be haunted by spectres of his own creation, to be mocked by his own shadow seen across some of the deeper gorges of the earth, and striding opposite as he himself moves. Thus it is that there are to us, for our gratification, glow- ing colours, burnishing what are in themselves only mists and damps, and spanning the heavens above us with a bow of hope, assuring us that these waters which threaten will not overwhelm us; thus it is, too, that there are hideous mock suns personating the very brightest light which God has planted in these heavens. Still the man of good sense and of simple honesty will find no difficulty in distinguishing practically between things which I have been seeking to separate theoretically in this Section. II. But is not an imperfect knowledge an erroneous, a delusive knowledge ? A rock seen in outline between us and the sky, seems like a man's face ; as we approach it, the features, chin, nose, and brow vanish, and we dis- cover it to be an unshapely mass. To the common ap- prehension the sky lqoks concave, with a sprinkling of stars sparkling at night like diamonds on its surface, and it is only further consideration which brings us to regard 368 METAPHYSICS. it as a vast expanse, in which great luminaries are mov- ing. The boy feels as if he might mount to the moon, and bring it down ; and as if he could hold the sun in his hands like an orange, provided it did not burn him. In such instances our further experience on earth sets aside our first beliefs ; and is it not possible that many of the favourite opinions entertained by all men on earth may be set aside by the wider and ever widening expe- rience of heaven ? Is it not conceivable that the very strongest and most universal convictions of humankind may seem altogether erroneous to beings in a different constitution of things, and with other principles of know- ledge and belief? 1. I answer that many of the inferences we draw from our original and acquired knowledge, and the applications we make of it, are erroneous. It is ascertained, for in- stance, that absolute size, distance, and direction, are not original endowments of the sense of sight ; all that we intuitively perceive by the eye is a coloured surface. It follows that when we are judging of the magnitude or locality of objects, we are drawing inferences from our original perceptions. We found these conclusions on rules which are correct enough for ordinary cases, or cases similar to those from which they were derived, but which may be altogether wrong or deceptive when ap- plied to other or peculiar cases. We are not warranted to allege that our intuitive perceptions through the senses deceive us : we have been led astray by rules laid down by ourselves ; and further knowledge enables us to cor- rect them, or rather, to show under what restrictions they hold good. But the increase of knowledge does not set aside the primary knowledge ; on the contrary, it might be shown that it proceeds on the qriginal stock. I am inclined to think that all the errors into which we fall are of a similar character. We draw rash in- ONTOLOGY, 369 ferences from our real knowledge, original or acquired, and then charge our errors on our constitutions. Still more frequently we illegitimately extend rules correct enough in themselves to cases to which they do not apply. In some of these instances the generalizations we form, or the conclusions we draw, may serve some good end, even though they cannot be regarded as positively true. Thus we suppose the sky to be a concave sphere ; thus, too, scientific men of the most rigidly positive class are obliged, when referring to the last resources of decomposition, to call in indivisible particles, molecules, monads, or atoms. But these are mere suppositions to aid our con^eptive power, and enable us to think or talk intelligibly of ob- jects of which we have no intuitive, and, in the latter case, no certain knowledge whatsoever. These convictions cannot be described as primary or fundamental, and we can easily deliver ourselves from both the one and the other. In such cases, increase of knowledge constrains us to modify or correct some of the conclusions illegitimately drawn from data which are sound. 2. I answer, that further knowledge is ever adding to our original or acquired stock, but does not set it aside. Were we to look upon our knowledge as being absolute and perfect, we should, in the very act, be falling into error ; we should be drawing a conclusion unwar- ranted by facts. I am convinced that much of the sup- posed illusion into which we fall arises from this cause. YTe suppose that we know all about an object, whereas we may know it, after all, only under one aspect, or in the exercise of but a very few of its many and varied pro- perties ; but, imagining w^e know its whole nature, we set about constructing theories regarding it, and pointing out its relation to all other objects. I acknowledge that such speculations may be set aside by further knowledge, even as they would be seen all along to be erroneous by 2 B 370 METAPHYSICS. persons of higher intelligence. Those who imagine that they have cleared up all the mysteries of the Divine na- ture and decrees, of the soul of man and the nature of spirit or of body, may be astonished and humbled to find, when they reach the land of brighter light, how crude their theories have been. But their mistakes have arisen, not from their constitutions or their experience deceiv- ing them, but from the unwarrantable additions made by their own ingenuity. But so far as our knowledge pro- ceeds from intuition, and is guaranteed by our nature and constitution, it will be found that further knowledge, na- tural or supernatural, imparted in this life or the life to come, serves only to enlarge our original stock, and make it more solid and congruous. The new aspects now pre- sented will not be inconsistent with the old, but will rather enable us to make a more extended use of them. Here we see as in a glass darkly ; still, what we see is a correct representation, so far as it goes; and what we are to discover in a clearer light, may often be the full linea- ments and features of what we saw here so very obscurely. All existing objects may be represented as polygons, — ■ some perhaps with a hundred sides, some with a thousand, and the Supreme Being with an infinite number - y and of these man may see only a few, perhaps half-a-dozen or a dozen ; still, what he sees is real. The knowledge may not be sufficient to enable him to construct the mathematics of the figure, or to discover all the relations of side to side and side to centre ; still, what he sees are real sides of the very thing ; and if we could see other sides, or all the sides, it would not even modify this first knowledge, it would simply enlarge it. Conceive a savage, just taught to read simple words of one or two syllables, poring over the pages of a full Bible, which a missionary has presented to him. A few chap- ters in Genesis or John is all he has read or can yet read. ONTOLOGY. 371 What he has thus learned is truth, and if he keep to what he has read and understood, he has committed no error. But mingled with this there may be supposi- tions, guesses, conclusions, expectations, as to the general contents of the book, and associated with the whole, su- perinduced feelings of wonder or awe, and these, were he to open them up, would in all probability appear sufficiently ludicrous to one who has perused the whole volume. It appears to me that the wisest man in this world stands in relation to the whole body of truth in very much the same relation as the savage does to the truth in the Bible. Let this wise man, if he would de- serve the name, keep to what he does know, and he is on safe ground ; but if he begins to speculate beyond, his conjectures will in all probability appear most" preposte- rous to higher intelligences, and his most confident as- sertions may turn out to be contradictions. Still, when he keeps wdthin the precincts of knowledge given in in- tuition or acquired by experience, what is revealed to him is as certain as it is valuable, valuable in itself, and va- luable as the foundation on which further ^acquisitions may be built, without limits and without end. I do believe that in the region, wherever it be, to which man is carried after death, new objects will be disclosed to him which he could not so much as conceive on earth ; and the very objects which he knew before, divine or created, will be seen clothed with new qualities, as different from any which have come under his notice when on earth, as colours are to the man born blind but whose eyes are opened, or as musical sounds are to the man whose ears have been unstopped, and that these new kinds of know- ledge will open new sources of enjoyment, ever-during and ever-increasing, but all this without any of our ge- nuine earthly knowledge or experience being nullified or cancelled. 2 b 2 372 METAPHYSICS. We are now in circumstances to judge of idealism. But let us first speak of the ideal spirit. It is truly an elevated and an elevating one, if at all restrained within proper limits. There are elements in human nature fitted and intended to produce and foster it. It is meant that sensations should warm our knowledge into a glow, that feelings should buoy up our intellectual notions into a higher region than they themselves can reach, and that our colder apprehensions should be linked to others which are more fervent. The glory thus cast around ob- jects, commonplace enough it may be in themselves, ren- ders them more lovable and beloved. The melody which the ear gives to the sound, increases our interest in the thought or sentiment uttered, and turns, if I may so speak, prose into poetry. The ideal spirit may be an in- centive to glorious enterprise; it steeps the country be- fore us — mountain, vale, sea, and island — in sunlight, and thus allures us to explore it. It is especially eleva- ting when it takes a moral direction, when it places be- fore us a high model to which we ever look, and to which we would become assimilated, and sets us forth amidst sacrifices made, to accomplish some high end reaching forth far in time or into eternity. Still, it is of the utmost moment that the person steadily draw the distinction between our knowledge of the object and the light in which we view it. Without this, the unrestrained spirit will be apt to break forth into extravagance, which will end in a collapse and a reaction ; foolish hopes will be ex- cited which can never be gratified, and when this comes to be realized, the issue is the blackest disappointment, not unfrequently ennui, apathy, and chagrin, — at times, sourness, bitterness, or despair. While we can with truth say so much of the ideal spirit, I can bestow no such commendation on idealism as a philosophic system, that is, the system which would ONTOLOGY. 373 raise our associated sentiments to the rank of cognitions. I allow that it is vastly superior to sensationalism, which acknowledges only the visible and the tangible ; but, in making this allowance, it is proper to add that, on the principle that extremes meet, it sometimes happens that there are persons atone and the same time sensational- ists and idealists, believing only in the physical, and yet not believing the physical to be real.* But, speaking of idealism in itself, it is an unphilosophic system, and, in the end, has a dangerous tendency. Its radical vice lies in maintaining that certain things, which we intuitively know or believe to be real, are not real. I say, certain things ; for were it to deny that all things are real, it would be scepticism. Idealism draws back from such an issue with shuddering. But, affirming the reality of certain objects, with palpable inconsistency it will not admit the existence of other objects equally guaranteed by our constitution. This inconsistency will pursue the system remorselessly as an avenger. Idealism commonly begins by declaring that external objects have no such reality as we suppose them to have, and then it is driven or led in the next age or in the pages of the next speculator to avow that they have no reality at all. At this stage it will still make lofty pretensions to a realism founded, not on the exter- nal phenomenon, but on the internal idea. But the logi- cal necessity speedily chases the system from this refuge, and constrains the succeeding speculator to admit that self is not as it seems, or that it exists only as it is felt, or when it is felt ; and the terrible consequence cannot be avoided, that we cannot know whether there be objects before us or no, or whether there be an eye or a mind to perceive them. There is no way of avoiding this black and blank scepticism but by standing up for the trust- worthiness of all our original intuitions, and formally * See a review of Mr. Mill, infra, Sect. VI. 374 METAPHYSICS. maintaining that there is a reality wherever our intuitions declare that there is. The idealist has indeed a truth, which he weaves into the body of his system, but that truth is misapprehended and perverted. There are impressions and inferences ever mingling, naturally or inadvertently, lawfully or un- lawfully, with our knowledge ; and he confounds these, when it is his business, as a professed philosopher, to dis- tinguish them in theory, as men of common sense ever distinguish them in practice. His system is not clearness, but confusion. He has dived below the surface, but has not, after all, gone down to the bottom so as to see all, and his view of the deep is more obscure than if he had remained above. Amazed or enraptured with the dis- covery of certain facts immediately below that which is patent to the vulgar eye, he looks on them as the main or sole facts, and henceforth overlooks all the superficial ones, forgetting that it is true in philosophy, as in geo- logy, that the rock strata which jut out into the most prominent peaks are those which, if we follow them, dive down the deepest. He has sought to attain a higher position, but has stopped halfway, and his views, after all, are not so clear as those obtained further down, and they are certainly much more confusing than those which he might have had, had he reached the clear height above all dimming influence ; they are at best like those which the traveller gets on cloudy days when he has climbed a certain elevation up the Alps, and, in the midway mists, catches occasional glimpses of the green valleys below him, and of the imposing mountain-tops and sky yet far above him. Sect. III. On Scepticism. Scepticism may assume a variety of forms, which how- ever differ only in some being more thorough-going than ONTOLOGY. 375 others, some denying the veracity of certain of our cogni- tions, others denying the trustworthiness of all. Like most kinds of folly, it commonly does not reach its last stage at once, but advances step by step. Some philosopher of eminence sets aside one of our intuitions, and then an advancing thinker, impelled by logical consistency, or by the sharpness of his mind, or by levity, or wantonness, or by the love of paradox or of notoriety, shows how on the same ground we may deny them all. It was thus that Berkeley, in denying the substantial existence of body, prepared the way for Hume, who denied the sub- stantial existence of spirit; and thus that Kant, in af- firming that space and time had no existence out of the mind, opened a path for Eichte when he declared that the external object in space might also be the creation of the mind ; and for Schelling and Hegel when they made mind and matter, creator and creature, all and alike ideal.* I have already discussed scepticism disguised as idealism ; I am now to offer a few remarks on an avowed scepticism. Let us understand precisely how far a sceptic may go. In doing so it is essential to remember the distinction between the spontaneous and reflex use of our intuitions. Under the first of these aspects they not only claim au- thority, they secure concurrence and obedience. Every man knows that he has a bodily frame, and believes that it exists in space, and that if he would go in the nearest way to a given point, he must walk in a straight line. Doubt and denial are possible only in regard to the re- flex statement of intuitive principles. Every man is in * It is thus that the speculations of Professor Ferrier as to our cog- nition of the external world being the cognition of the object plus self, is holding out a great temptation to some vain and conceited youth to go a little further in the same direction, and maintain that all truth, all reasoning, that our very belief in God, are mixed up with some subjec- tive element, are, in short, object or truth mecum. 376 METAPHYSICS. fact convinced that he has a solid bodily frame, and that the nearest way to a particular place is a straight line ; but it is possible for him, if he chooses, to deny the pro- positions in which these truths are conveyed ; it is quite competent for him speculatively to assert that he has not a body, and that the shortest road to a given point is a crooked line. And this leads me to point out in what respects scep- ticism may be allowable, and wherein it may even be be- neficial. The dogmatist often lays down and employs for purposes lawful and unlawful, principles represented as indisputable, which have not tlje sanction of our constitu- tion, or which may be expressed in a form only partially or approximately correct. Great interests may often be involved in having these principles doubted or disputed. Without this we may find, before we are aware of it, great moral or religious truths assaulted or undermined ; or we may set up for defence of the citadel of truth a crazy and insecure turret, which is a positive weakness, and which, as it falls, may give an easier inlet to the enemy. This then is the special mission of the sceptic : it is to lay a restraint on the dogmatist ; at times, if need be, to assail or to lash him. It would be wrong to affirm that the scepticism of Hume has not cleared the philo- sophic atmosphere of many weakening and deleterious influences which had been gathering for centuries. The great sin of scepticism lies in this, that it attacks indis- criminately the good and the evil, and would destroy both as by a consuming fire. But surely there may be a means of securing all the good ends which scepticism has produced, without the accompanying destruction of the good. Socrates seems to me to have succeeded in this, when he attacked the pretentious systems of his age, at the same time that he held resolutely by every great moral and spiritual truth. Let it be admitted that ONTOLOGY. A 377 our spontaneous convictions guarantee a truth, but let it be avowed at the same time that any given philosophic expression of them is fallible, and may be doubted, disputed, and denied. Let it be understood, as to every philosophic principle proffered, that we are entitled, nay, in duty bound, to examine it before we assent to it, and that the burden of establishing that it is a thorough trans- cript of the law in the mind lies on him who employs it. By this simple rule, rigidly enforced and scrupulously followed, we might have all the benefits which have arisen from the sittings of scepticism, without its fearful throes, and its destructions — terrible as those of a battle-field — of noble credences and inspiring hopes. But what are we to do with the sceptic, that is, with one who speculatively denies intuitive truth ? 1. There are some things which we ought not to do with him. We should not waste our precious feeling in professing to sympathize with him, as if he were practically troubled with doubts as to the existence of himself, or his friends, or his enemies, or his food, or his money, or his earthly interests ; for in respect of all these he is quite as firm a believer as the man who comes to convince him with an apparatus of argument. Nor need we be at the trouble of appointing a guard to watch him lest he run against a carriage, or step into a river, or fall over a precipice. For whatever he may pro- fess to us or to himself, he believes in the existence of the carriage, the river, and the precipice, and has a salu- tary awe of their perilous power. Nor w r ould there be any propriety in declaring him mad, and sending him to Bedlam, for he only pretends to have lost his senses, or rather, never to have had them, and in his simulation has over-acted his part, and gone beyond the madman, who never sets himself against intuitive truth.* * M. Morel was asked to examine a prisoner who pretended to be 378 ' METAPHYSICS. 2. There are some things which we cannot do with the sceptic, and therefore should not attempt to do. We cannot answer him by argument, that is, mediate proof; for this, if followed sufficiently far back, will conduct us to a principle which cannot be proven, and which there- fore the sceptic will deny. It can scarcely be regarded as a complete refutation to demonstrate that his sceptical denials are inconsistent with certain affirmations made by him ; for he may admit the inconsistencies, and then found his argument against the possibility of discovering truth on the circumstance that he and every other must inevitably fall into contradictions. It is not even a con- futation when it is shown that his scepticism is suicidal, or violates the law of contradiction, for he may find no position so suited to him as that which maintains that all knowledge is contradictory. Still there are some things which we can do for or with the sceptic. I. We may make use of any admissions avowed by him or incidentally made, in order to shut him up into truths which he denies. Sometimes we may be able to show that the truth which he allows implies the truth which he disallows. In other cases we can ask him on what principle or ground he assents to certain truths ; and when we have his answer, we may be able to show how, on the same grounds, he must admit other propositions. Thus we ask the Berkeleian on what ground he admits the ex- istence of the subject mind ; and, whatever it be, we may show that the same ground supports the doctrine of the deranged, and asked him how old he was ; to which the prisoner re- plied, " 245 francs, 35 centimes, 124 carriages," etc. To the same ques- tion, more distinctly asked, he replied, "5 metres, 75 centimetres." "When asked how long he had been deranged, he answered, "Cats, always cats." M. Morel at once proclaimed his madness to be simu- lated, and states, — " In their extreme aberrations, in their most furious delirium, madmen do not confound what it is impossible for the most ex- travagant logic to confound." (See 'Physiological Journal,' Oct. 1857.) ONTOLOGY. 379 existence of the object matter. Thus too we may ask how it is that Kant admits the existence of a thing behind the phenomenon, and by help of this process prove that the phenomenon is the thing. If Fichte admit an ego, or a self, or a belief, it is competent to proceed there- on to show that we are thereby constrained to believe in the existence of objects out of self and independent of our belief.* This argumentum ad hominem is perfectly allowable. We can say to him, If yon admit this, you must also admit that. If he is so guarded and stinted in his admissions as to say that he allows this merely prac- tically and not theoretically or absolutely, we are entitled to demand of him that he believe that practically. Thus, if he admit practically that he has at any time had (what Hume allows at the outset) an impression, or idea, we may show him that he should also admit practically that he has an abiding and an identical self, and that he contem- plates objects out of him, and independent of him, and, as more important, that he should admit practically that he is a responsible being, and must give account of him- self. Should he try to save himself, by declaring that he believes the first, or second, or third of those truths, only because obliged to do so, we may show that there is a similar necessity requiring him to believe the rest. This is a telling argument, which has been used with great skill and power by many of the opponents of scep- ticism in all ages. It is emphatically an argumentum ad hominem, for it is one which may be used not merely against a particular individual, but with men as men, with every man. No man but admits something, and * It is thus that when Professor Ferrier declares that we know the object mecum, we can show that on the same ground, whatever it be, he should admit an object independent of the me. He says (Scottish Philosophy, pp. 19, 20) that " no man in his senses could require a proof that it [that is, real existence] is." I am glad of this appeal. A man's senses tell us that the stone before us has an existence independent of the contemplative mind. 380 METAPHYSICS. that something may be employed to make him admit something else. It can be shown that he who doubts believes, that he who denies affirms, and that he who doubts or denies that he doubts or denies, is in the very act making an affirmation. Such a process goes at least to shut the mouth of the sceptic, for if he open his month, it is to let out a weapon which you can turn against him. His only refuge is in a thorough-going scepticism, which affirms that man's supposed knowledge is contradictory, and that all argument is delusive. You can at least in- sist on this scepticism that it remain silent, and not ad- vance arguments which are inconsistent with that judg- ment or belief to which it would appeal. II. We can carefully explain the nature of a primitive conviction. The method referred to under last head is one which we may quite legitimately employ in dealing with the sophist or the caviller, we may always kill him with his own weapons. But we have a more satisfactory mode of dealing with the truth-seeking and the truth- loving. We can ask them to examine the nature of the convictions to which we invite them to yield. 1. It can be shown that the mind declares of itself that its primitive perceptions contain knowledge. I do not urge this as a mediate proof, or a new and indepen- dent proof, it is simply the statement of a fact, that the mind, in contemplating its original convictions, affirms that there is knowledge in them. As to some of its states, it finds that they contain sensations, sentiments, imaginations, but in every one of them, at the same time, a cognition of self, and in certain of them a cognition of an object or truth external to self and independent of it. It is to these that we ask consent without the aid of further evidence. 2. It may be shown that the intuitive principles of the mind are native, catholic, necessary. It is not truth merely ONTOLOGY. 381 to the individual man, but to all men ; not merely to all men, but to all intelligent beings. It is certain not only to me but to all beings throughout the universe who have capacity to understand it, that if two straight lines pro- ceed an inch without coming nearer, they will proceed a million of miles without coming nearer, and not only is the wilful infliction of pain a sin on earth, it is a sin in every other part of the universe. 3. The mind declares of certain truths that they need no other truth to support them. There are cases in which it feels that it needs evidence in order to gain its assent. It does not allow that there was such a man as David, king of Israel, or Philip, king of Macedon, till proof is brought forward. It may remain in doubt as to what truth there is in the poetical accounts of the siege of Troy, because no valid evidence is produced. But it draws a distinction between these cases and others in which it needs no evidence. When it is asserted that the moon is inhabited, the mind asks proof, but it asks none when it is affirmed that I am the same person yes- terday as I was to-day. It is conceivable that the first of these assertions might be substantiated by evidence which would command our assent, but it would not, after all, be a more rational assent than that which we give at once to the other. 4. The mind knows self-evident truth to be the most certain of all truths. What is it that the sceptic de- mands ? It is all-important to put this question, and to fix him down to a specific answer. Does he demand proof or argument ? Then it implies that he would be satisfied with argument. But it can be shown him that in argument there is a first principle involved, the depen- dence of conclusion on premisses, and in the last resort we come to a premiss not admitting of probation. But surely he who admits argument must admit all that is in 382 METAPHYSICS. argument ; but as to the premiss with which we set out, it is not less evident, it is more evident than the conclu- sion. It is so far a weakness in a proposition, or rather, of our mind in reference to it, that we do not see it to be true or false immediately. The mind declares that the most certain of all truths are those which are seen to be true at once and in themselves. III. It can be shown that there- is a congruity and consistency among the original and derivative convictions of the mind. This is not urged as if it were an inde- pendent and unassailable demonstration. It is conceiv- able that the power from which human power derives its power might have made all men liable to a deception, incapable of being ever detected, in consequence of its being carefully provided that no inconsistencies should creep in. This is certainly possible, though it is by no means probable, according at least to our laws of judg- ment. For, if this power be a Being possessed of good- ness and truth, it is not conceivable that he should form any creature liable to be deceived : and, if it be a capri- cious or malignant power, it is by no means probable that all the deceptions would turn out to be congruous : here or there would come out an original conviction in manifest contradiction to another original conviction, or a derivative principle openly inconsistent with both. The consistency of the parts is thus a sort of corroboration of the truth of each part and of the whole. To give only two examples. It is by intuition I have endeavoured to show that the intellect, on discovering an effect, looks for cause, and it always finds, in fact, that for every effect there is a cause ; and as it finds this again and again, in an extended and invariable experience, it has in this, not a primary proof, but a secondary confirmation of its in- tuition. Again, we expect that sin will not go unpunished ; from time to time we find it punished in this life, and are ONTOLOGY. 383 thus strengthened in our convictions that it will all be punished at last. All the intuitions have such corrobo- rations in the daily experience of every man, and these are felt to give a satisfaction to the mind.* IV. When we reach the great truth, that there is a righteous God, we can plead the Divine veracity in favour of the trustworthiness of the intuitive convictions planted by Him in our constitution. Not that even this consi- deration can be adduced as a primary or an absolute proof ; for it is only on the supposition that a God exists that it can be legitimately employed, and our conviction of the Divine existence presupposes a confidence in the veracity of our intuitions and arguments founded on them. But this truth, being once admitted, becomes henceforth the keystone which keeps all the separate and indepen- dent parts of our constitution in one compact and stable whole, which can never be broken down, but will be felt to be the stronger the greater the weight that is laid upon it. V. No truths, recognized by the mind as such, can be shown to be contradictory. In this line of thought a sound metaphysics may accomplish some good ends. Scep- * Speaking of primary convictions Of the mind, Hamilton says : " They are many, they are in authority co-ordinatej and their testimony is clear and precise. It is therefore competent for us to view them in correla- tion ; to compare their declarations ; and to consider whether they con- tradict, and, by contradicting, invalidate each other. This mutual con- tradiction is possible in two ways. 1st, It may be that the primary data themselves are directly or immediately contradictory of each other. 2nd, It may be that they are mediately or indirectly contradictory, inasmuch as the consequences to which they necessarily lead, and for the truth and falsehood of which they are therefore responsible, are mutually repug- nant. By evincing either of these, the veracity of consciousness will be disproved ; for, in either case, consciousness is shown to be inconsistent with itself, and consequently inconsistent with the unity of truth. But by no other process of demonstration, is this possible." He adds, "No at- tempt to show that the data of consciousness are (either in themselves or in their necessary consequences) mutually contradictory has yet suc- ceeded " (Eeid's Works, pp. 745, 746). 384 METAPHYSICS. tics have laboured — and others not sceptics have done their best to aid them — to prove that certain proposi- tions approved of by the mind are contradictory. But in this attempt they have failed, as can be shown, I be- lieve, of every case in which they have tried.* It can be proved, in regard to the opposed propositions, that, in some cases, they have no meaning ; that, in other cases, the mind pronounces in favour of neither the one nor the other ; that, in several cases, the propositions seem to be contradictory only because improperly stated, and when they are properly enunciated, the difficulty disappears j and that, in the remaining cases, there is merely a diffi- culty in proposing a positive reconciliation of the propo- sitions, but no real inconsistency. There is little risk of scepticism producing any injuri- ous influence in the common business of life. The reason is, that circumstances ever pressing on the attention con- strain men to proceed on their spontaneous principles, which are sound, even when the speculative principles are altogether infidel. He who is hungry will partake of food, he who sees an offensive weapon about to strike him will avoid it, even though he be not prepared to avow, as a philosopher, that there are any such gross things as bread or iron in the universe, or though he may doubt, as a metaphysician, whether food be fitted to nourish, or a sword to kill him. It is not in such urgent matters of animal comfort and temporal interest that scepticism is w T ont to manifest itself, but in far different subjects, and especially in leading persons to doubt of the great truths of morality and religion, the practical action in which is more under the control of the will. Even here there will be times when the spontaneous belief or impulse will overmaster the speculative unbelief, as when moral indig- nation, implying a belief in the reality of sin, is excited * See an examination of Kant's attempt, infra, Sect. V. ONTOLOGY. 385 by a mean or dishonest action, or when disease has seized us, and death seems in hard pursuit, and threatens to hurry us to the judgment-seat. Such circumstances as these will call forth the action of conscience, in spite of all efforts to repress it. But when there is nothing of this description to arouse the native feeling, unbelief may succeed in keeping us very much out of the way of all that would call the internal sentiment into activity, and for days, or weeks, or months together it may seldom arise to utter a protest or create a disturbance of any de- scription ; and, even when the deeper moral or religious powers come forth to assert their authority, there may be a vigorous, and, so far, a successful warfare waged with them ; that is, they may be so far repressed as not to command the will, or lead to any practical operation. Hence the evil of scepticism, in chilling the ardour of youth, and confirming the hardness of age, in repressing every noble aspiration and every high effort, while it leaves the soul the servant or slave of the lower, the sen- sual, the ambitious, the proud, or the selfish impulses of the heart. Sect. IV. On the Conditioned and the Unconditioned. Leibnitz complained of the Electress of Brandenburg that she asked the why of the why. There are some truths in regard to which we are not warranted to ask the why. They shine in their own light ; and we feel that we need no light, and we ask no light, wherewith to see them, and any light we might seek to aid us would be felt only as an encumbrance. In all such cases the mind asks no why, and is amazed when the why is asked; and feels that it can give no answer, and ought not to attempt an answer. Other truths can be known only mediately, or by means of some other truth coming between as evi- dence. I need no mediate proof to convince me that I 2 c 386 METAPHYSICS. exist, or that I hold an object in my hand which I call a pen ; but I need evidence to convince me that there are inhabitants in India, or that there is a cycle of spots pre- sented in the sun's rotation. In regard to this class of truths I am entitled — nay, required — to ask the why. Not only so ; if the truth urged as evidence is not self-evident, I may ask the why of the why, and the why of that why, on and on, till we come to a self-evident truth, when the why becomes unintelligible. Now we may say of the one class of truths that they depend (to us) on no con- dition, and call them Unconditioned ; whereas we must call the other Conditioned, for we require another truth as a condition of our assenting to them. But this is not precisely what is meant, or all that is meant, by conditioned and unconditioned in philosophic nomenclature. We find that not only does one truth de- pend on another as evidence to our minds, but one thing as an existence depends on another. Everything falling under our notice on earth is dependent on some other thing as its cause. All physical events proceed from a concurrence of previous circumstances. All animated beings come from a parentage. But is everything that exists thus a dependent link in a chain which hangs on nothing? There are intellectual instincts which recoil from such a thought. There are intuitions which, pro- ceeding on facts ever pressing themselves on the atten- tion, lead to a very different result. By our intuitive conviction in regard to substance we are introduced to that which has power of itself. True, we discover that all mundane substances, spiritual and material, have in fact been originated, and have proceeded from something anterior to them. But then our intuition presses us on, and we seekjbr a cause of that cause which is farthest removed from our view. Pursuing various lines, external and internal, we arrive at a substance which has no mark ONTOLOGY. 387 of being an effect ; to a substance who is the cause, and, as such, the intelligent cause, of all the order and adapta- tion of one thing to another in the universe ; who is the founder of the moral power within us, and the sanctioner of the moral law to which it looks, and who seems to be that Infinite Existence to which our faith in infinity is ever pointing ; and now the mind in all its intuitions is satisfied. The intuitive belief as to power in substance is satisfied ; the intuitive belief in the adequacy of the cause to produce its effects is satisfied ; the native moral conviction is satisfied ; and the belief in infinity is satis- fied. True, every step in this process is not intuitive or demonstrative ; there may be more than one experiential link in the chain; but the intuitive convictions enter very largely, and when experience has furnished its quota, they are gratified, and feel as if they had nothing to de- mand beyond this One Substance possessed of all power and of all perfection. If we would avoid the utmost possible confusion of thought, we must distinguish between these two kinds of conditioned and unconditioned; the one referring to hu- man knowledge, and the discussion of it falling properly under Gnosiology ; the other to existence, and so falling under Ontology. The conditional, in respect of know- ledge, does, if we pursue the conditioned sufficiently far, conduct at last to primary truths, which are to us uncon- ditioned. These are the first truths which we have been seeking to seize and express in this treatise. We cannot be made to think or believe that these primary truths should not be positive truths, and regarded as truths by all other beings capable of comprehending them as well as ourselves. But it is to be carefully remarked, and ever allowed, that some of those truths which are ori- ginal and independent to us, may be seen by higher in- telligences to be dependent on, or to be necessarily inter- 38S METAPHYSICS. linked with, other truths. We may by patient induction ascertain what are to us unconditioned truths; but it would be presumptuous in us to pretend to determine what truths are so in themselves, and are seen to be such by the omniscient God. Again, as to conditioned and unconditioned existence, it is quite clear that nothing falls under our notice in this world which is absolutely uncon- ditioned. But the intuitive convictions of the mind, pro- ceeding on a few obvious facts, lead us by an easy pro- cess to an unconditioned Being, — that is, whose existence depends on no other. But the question is started, Can we conceive of the Unconditioned? Of truth unconditioned to us we can conceive : it is the generalization of those truths on which we are ever falling back in the last resort. But can we conceive of unconditioned existence ? I find no difficulty in doing so. My intellectual and moral convictions are not satisfied till I do so. But is not our conception, after all, merely negative? I admit that my conception of un- conditioned is negative, is a conception merely of the removing of a restriction ; and I am not aware that we have any intuitive conviction as to unconditioned such as we have in regard to infinite. But pursuing every one of our native convictions, cognitive, fiducial, moral, they conduct us to a positive conception of a Being from whom all conditions are removed, and whose existence and perfections are themselves un derived, while they are the source of all power and excellence in the creature. Sect. V. {Supplementary .) The Antinomies ojf Kant. Kant tries to show that the speculative reason conducts to pro- positions which are contradictory of each other (Kritik d. r. Vern. p. 338). It follows that it cannot be trusted in any of its enun- ciations. Kant extricates himself from the practical difficulties in which he was thereby involved by declaring that the speculative reason was not given to lead us to positive objective truth, and by ONTOLOGY. 389 appealing from it to the practical reason. It is however always competent to the sceptic to maintain that, if the speculative reason deceive us, so also inay the practical reason. The doctrine which I hold is, that the reason does not lead directly nor consequentially to any such contradictions. In regard to some of the counter-pro- positions, Reason seems to me to say nothing on the one side or the other. In regard to others, there seem to be intuitive convictions but the contradiction arises from an erroneous exposition or ex- pression of them. It is of course easy, on such abstruse subjects, to construct a series of propositions which may seem to be contra- dictory, or in reality be contradictory, if they have a meaning at all. But these propositions will be found not to be the expression of the actual decisions of the mind. Let us examine the contra- dictions which are supposed to be sanctioned by reason. I am to content myself with looking at the propositions themselves, with- out entering on the elaborate demonstrations of them by Kant, These demonstrations proceed on the peculiar Kantian principles in regard to phenomena, space, time, and the nature of the relations which the mind can discover, and these I have been seeking to undermine all throughout this treatise. It will be enough here to show that Eeason sanctions no contradictions on the topics to which Kant refers. FIBST ANTINOMY. The world has a beginning in The world has no beginning in time, and is limited in regard to time, and no limits in space, but space. is in regard to both infinite. Now upon this I have to remark, first, that, as to the ' world,' we have, so far as I can discover, no intuition whatever. AYe have merely an intuition as to certain things in the world, or, it may be, out of the world.. Our reason does declare that space and time are infinite, but it does not declare whether the world is or is not infi- nite in extent and duration. We shall find under another anti- nomy what is our conviction as to God. Eeason does not declare that space or time, or the Grod who inhabits them, must be finite. SECOND ANTINOMY. Every composite substance con- No composite thing can consist sists of simple parts, and all that of simple parts, and there cannot exists must either be simple or exist in the world any simple sub- composed of simple parts. stance. Our reason says nothing as to whether things are or are not made up of simple substances. Experience cannot settle the ques- 390 METAPHYSICS. tion started by Kant in one way or other. "We find certain things composite : these we know are made up of parts ; but we cannot say how far the decomposition may extend, or what is the nature of the furthest elements reached. THIRD ANTINOMY. Causality, according to the laws There is no such thing as free- of nature, is not the only causa- dom, but everything in the world lity operating to originate the phe- happens according to the laws of nomena of the world ; to account nature, for the phenomena we must have a causality of freedom. Here I think reason does sanction two sets of facts. One is the existence of freedom ; the other is the universal prevalence of some sort of causation, which may differ however in every different kind of object. These may be so stated as to be contradictory. But our convictions in themselves involve no contradiction : it is im- possible to show that they do by the law of contradiction, which is that A is not Not- A. " There is some sort of causation even in vo- luntary acts ;" and " the will is free :" no one can show that these two propositions are contradictory. FOURTH ANTINOMY. There exists in the world, or in An absolutely necessary being connection with it, as a part or as does not exist, either in the world the cause of it, an absolutely ne- or out of it, as the cause of the ccssary being. world. Our reason seems to say that time and space must have ever existed, and must exist. When a God is found, by an easy process the mind is led by intuition to trace up these effects in nature to Him as the underived substance. No contradictory proposition can be established either by reason or experience. A little patient investigation of our actual intuitions will show that all these contradictions, of which the Kantians and Hegelians make so much, are not in our constitutions, but in the ingenious structures fashioned by metaphysicians to support their theories. Sect. VI. [Supplementary.) Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Metaphysical System. By far the ablest opponent of intuitive truth in this country in our day is Mr. John iStuart Mill. It will be necessary to examine his own metaphysical system. I speak thus because he has in fact ONTOLOGY. 391 a metaphysics underlying his whole logical disquisitions. He says, indeed, in the introduction to his Logic, that " with the original data or ultimate premisses of our knowledge, with their number or nature, the mode in which they are obtained, or the tests by which they may be distinguished, logic in a direct way has, in the sense in which I conceive the same, nothing to do." Yet Mr. Mill is ever and anon diving down into these very topics, and uttering very decided opinions as to our knowledge of mind and body, as to the foundation of reasoning and demonstrative evidence, and as to our belief in causation. This I exceedingly regret ; the more so that his logic in topics remote from first principles is distinguished for masterly exposition, for great clearness, and practical utility.* If it be answered that a thorough logic cannot be constructed without building on the foundations which metaphysics supply, then I have to regret that Mr. Mill's metaphysics should be so defective. His philosophy might seem to be that of Locke, but in fact it omits many truths to which Locke gave prominence, as, for example, the high function of intuition. Mr. Mill's metaphy- sical system is that of the age and circle in which he was trained ; it is derived in part from Dr. Brown, and his own father, Mr. James Mill, and to a greater extent from M. Comte. The only satisfactory metaphysical admission of Mr. Mill is, " Whatever is known to us by consciousness is known beyond the possibility of question" (4th edit. Logic, Introd. p. 6). What does this admission amount to ? First, as to self, or mind, he says, " But what this being is, although it is myself, I have no know- ledge, other than the series of its states of consciousness." As to body, he says the reasonable opinion is that it is the "hidden ex- ternal cause to which we refer our sensations" (Logic, i. iii. 8). Sensation is our only primary mental operation in regard to an external world, and perception is discarded " as an obscure word" (compare Dissertations, vol. i. p. 94). " There is not the slightest reason for believing that what we call the sensible qualities of the object are a type of anything inherent in itself, or bear any affinity to its own nature." " Why should matter resemble our sensa- tions ?" (Logic, i. iii. 7). Speaking of bodies, and our feelings or * Mr. BMd, in his very able work on the ' Primary Principles of Reasoning,' chap, iii., has examined Mr. Mill's Attributive theory of reasoning, and has shown that when he puts the major premiss in the form of "Attribute A is a mark of Attribute- B," it means that "the class of things that possess A also possess B," and that we have thus the Dictum which he so much disparages brought in surreptitiously. 392 METAPHYSICS. states of consciousness, he says, " The bodies, or external objects which excite certain of these feelings, together with the powers or properties whereby they excite them ; these being included rather in compliance with common opinion, and because their ex- istence is taken for granted in the common language, from which I cannot deviate, than because the recognition of such powers or properties as real existences appears to be warranted by a sound philosophy." It is curious to see how extremes meet. Mr. Mill seems in every way the opponent of the Kantian school. Yet he quotes with approbation and evident delight the words of Sir W. Hamilton, " All that we know is therefore phenomenal, — pheno- menal of the unknown" (i. iii., 5). I have to ask my readers to compare this philosophic system with the account I have submitted in this treatise, and judge for themselves in the light of consciousness. He admits that whatever is known by consciousness is beyond possibility of question ; but I hold that by consciousness we know much more than he admits. He allows that we know Feelings — the favourite but most inade- quate language of the French Sensationalists, and of Brown. I maintain that our consciousness is of Self as Feeling, and not of Feelings separate from Self. If he ask me to define Self, which I maintain that we thus know, I ask him to define Feeling, which he acknowledges that we thus know. It will then be seen that neither can be defined, because both are original perceptions of consciousness. He admits as indisputable only what we are conscious of. I maintain that we must admit all we intuitively know, and that we know body immediately. Mr. Mill, following Brown, maintains that we know body by inference, as the cause of what we feel. Brown can get the inference ; for he holds reso- lutely by the doctrine that we intuitively believe that every effect has a cause ; and discovering phenomena in us which have no cause in us, he seeks for a cause without us. This process would, I think, leave the external world an unknown thing, and could never give us a knowledge of extension (which not being in the effect we could not place in the cause ;) still we might thus argue that an external world existed. But how can Mr. Mill, who denies intui- tive causation, get the external world at all ? Where, indeed, is he to get even his causation as an experiential law ? For in a mind shut up darkly from all direct knowledge of anything beyond, the most common phenomena must be sensations and feelings of which we can never discover $ cause, or know that they have a cause. I agree with an able critic (' National Eeview,' Oct. 1859), that the logical result of such a system is painfully blank. Kant saved ONTOLOGY. 393 himself from the consequences of his speculative system by calling in the Practical Eeason, and Hamilton accomplished the same end by calling in Faith. I think that these great men were entitled to appeal to our moral convictions and to our necessary faiths. These I hold to be beyond dispute, no less than our consciousness or our feelings. But Mr. Mill makes no such appeal to save him from the void ; and he avoids expressing any opinion as to the great fundamental religious truths which men have in all ages in- tertwined with their ethical principles, and from which they have derived their brightest hopes and deepest assurances. He is silent on these subjects, as if on the one hand unwilling to deny them, and as if he felt on the other hand that by his miserably defective philosophic principles he had left himself no ground on which to build them. Mr. Mill's derivative logic is admirable ; but it is difficult to find to what the final appeal is to be. " There is no appeal from the human faculties generally ; but there is an appeal from one faculty to another, from the judging faculty to those which take cognizance of fact, the faculties of sense and consciousness" (iii. xxi. 1). This would seem to make sense and consciousness the final appeal. But all that sense gives, according to him, is an un- known cause of feelings, and all that consciousness gives is a series of feelings. He says, very properly, that we should make "the opinion agree with the fact ;" but he seems to leave us no means of getting at any other facts than floating feelings. I have already noticed his defective account of our moral percep- tion (see supra, p. 304), and of our belief in causation (p. 276), and I may yet have occasion to refer to his theory of mathematical axioms. It now only remains at this place to show that he has given an utterly erroneous account of the tests or criteria of pri- mitive or fundamental truth. He is obliged, as for himself, to ad- mit some sort of test : we must admit, he says, " all that is known by consciousness;" and he says there is "no appeal from the hu- man faculties generally." I do regret that he has never patiently set himself to inquire what is the knowledge given by " conscious- ness," and in the testimonies of the " faculties generally." This would have led him to truths which he ignores, or contemptuously sets aside. He examines the views of the defenders of necessary truth on the supposition that the test of such truth is that " the negation of it is not only false but inconceivable " (Logic, ii. v. 6). He then uses the word " inconceivable " in all its ambiguity of meaning. By " conceivable " he often means that which we can apprehend, or of which we may have an idea, in the sense of an image, 394 METAPHYSICS. " "When we have often seen or thought of two things together, and have never in any one instance either seen or thought of them separately, there is, by the primary law of association, an increas- ing difficulty, which may in the end become insuperable, of conceiv- ing the two things apart." He then proceeds to snow that what is inconceivable by one man is conceivable by another ; that what is inconceivable in one age may become conceivable the next. " There was a time when men of the most cultivated intellects, and the most emancipated from the dominion of early prejudice, would not credit the existence of antipodes " (iii. v. 6). I acknowledge that the tests of intuition have often been loosely stated, and that they have also been illegitimately applied ; just as the laws of de- rivative logic have been. But they have seldom or never been put in the ambiguous form in which Mr. Mill understands them, and it is only in such a form that they could ever be supposed to cover such beliefs as the rejection of the rotundity of the earth. The tests of intuition can be clearly enunciated, and can be so used as to settle for us what is intuitive truth. It is not the power of conception that should be used as a test, but it is self-evidence with necessity, — the necessity of cognition, if the intuition be a cognition ; the necessity of belief, if it be a belief; the necessity of judgment, if it be a judgment. There was a time w T hen even edu- cated men felt a difficulty in conceiving the antipodes, because it seemed contrary, not to intuition, but to their limited experience ; but surely no one knowing anything of philosophy, or of what he was speaking, would have maintained, at any time, that it was self- evident that the earth could not be round, and that it was impos- sible, in any circumstances, to believe the opposite. The tests of intuition, clearly announced and rigidly applied, give their sanc- tion only to such truths as all men have spontaneously assented to in all ages. 395 BOOK II. METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE VARIOUS SCIENCES. CHAPTER I. DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE DEMONSTRATIVE OE FORMAL AND THE MATERIAL OR INDUCTIVE SCI- ENCES. The distinction between them is so obvious that it has been very generally acknowledged. Every one sees the difference between such sciences as mathematics and the •Aristotelian logic on the one hand, and zoology and botany on the other. Different accounts however have been given of the grounds of the distinction. Here, as in so many of the other topics which have fallen under our notice, there has been much confusion, issuing in partial truth and positive error. Thus, it is often said that the one class has to do exclusively with abstract truth, and the other with facts which it seeks to classify and arrange. But there are generalizations, and there- fore abstractions, in all science ; and if there be any truth in the account given in this treatise, even the sciences which proceed on intuition have to commence with facts which they generalize. Again, the one class is said to be concerned with a priori and the other with a posteriori truth. But then truth can be available in such sciences 396 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN only in a general form, and in order to reach the general truth there must be a process of induction. Still there is truth in both these statements. All that is necessary is to explicate it clearly, and make it stand out separate from associated errors. One class of sciences have evidently to do throughout with facts which they seek to correlate by observing the relations among them, say of form, of property, or of cause and effect. When these facts are external, the sciences are material, such as physiology and chemistry and geology. If the facts be internal, then we have the science of psychology, with its several subdivisions. In these sciences the inquirer always starts with individual facts, but he aims to discover resemblances or other rela- tions, to abstract the points of correlation, and at last to arrive at general laws or causes ever rising in generality. The other class of sciences, if there be any accuracy in the fundamental principles of this work, must also, begin with facts, but they are facts of a different order. The investigator seizes on the original convictions of the mind on the given set of objects, discovers their rule, or' the principle involved in them, by a process of abstraction and generalization, and then constructs his science by combining them, and carrying them out deductively. I am to show, in the Chapters which follow, that this is what is done in the science of mathematics, and to some extent also in logic and ethics. The distinction between the two is thus sufficiently marked. Both must start with facts, but the one starts with the individual convictions, which are native, original, and necessary — or, to speak more accurately, with the facts and truths thus revealed, — and formalizing the princi- ples involved in them, it adopts these as its fundamental maxims, and is now ready to begin its proper work of combining its truths and deducing consequences. The DEMONSTRATIVE AND INDUCTIVE SCIENCES. 397 sciences which use only such principles are very properly called apodictic, or demonstrative. They may also be called, in an especial sense, abstract sciences, inasmuch as they deal with principles in an abstract form. Logic is frequently called formal, because it proceeds on such rules ; and the appellation might be applied to other sci- ences, such as ethics, and even mathematics. But it is not to be forgotten, that, after all, these sciences do start from facts, though from facts of a particular kind, and if there be any dispute as to their fundamental principles, the appeal must be to these facts, that is, to the original convictions of the mind. These facts have all a convic- tion of necessity in them, and on the condition that they be properly generalized, the necessity goes up with each case into the general axiom, and all the truths may be represented as Necessary Truths. The maxims with which these sciences start are all generalizations of our primitive cognitions, beliefs, or judgments, and these with the furthest deductions reached have all a reference to objects, and these are the particular kind of objects con- templated in the original conviction. The propositions of geometry have a reference to space. The maxims of ethics have a reference to voluntary actions. Logical for- mulae have a reference to the notions of the mind and the objects apprehended in these notions. We may at any time apply the abstract deductions of any of these sciences to cases which fulfil the conditions. They are all true, necessarily true, of their corresponding objects. Thus all the conclusions of mathematics in regard to the ellipse must hold good of the planets, so far as they move in an elliptic orbit. The special rules of the syllogism must hold good of our reasoning about every sort of things. It is to be remembered, however, that most of the axioms of the sciences are generalizations, not so much of our primitive cognitions or beliefs, as of our primitive 398 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN judgments, and these, while they have a reference to ob- jects, may have a reference to such merely potentially. There may be no such thing as a perfectly elliptic curve in the planetary movements ■ still, even in such cases, the abstract truth has a respect to a possible ellipse mathe- matically correct. And here the question is started, How can demonstra- tion be carried so far in certain departments, while in others it can proceed only a very little way? To this it must be answered, first, in a general way, that demonstration, as proceeding on intuition, is possible only in those de- partments in which we have intuition, and in these only so far as the special intuition will carry us. In mathe- matics we have the necessary relations of space, time, number, and quantity to proceed on. The simplicity of the objects allows of great accuracy of expression, which again admits, and all but necessitates, great clearness of notion and comprehension, and thus error is rendered all but impossible, except from the grossest carelessness. An encouragement is given to the prosecution of mathe- matical deduction, by the circumstance that the truths reached admit of an application to so many departments of nature which in respect of form, time, and quantity are constructed on rigidly mathematical principles. In formal logic too, and in ethics, the laws of thought and of our moral convictions being detected and rigidly ex- pressed, may be carried out to a considerable length by rigid deduction. In mechanics and dynamics the intui- tion of mind regarding force may admit of a very limited union of demonstration with experiment. But in cases in which the intuition is of a very bare character, the number of relations which can be discovered is necessarily very limited. Thus the relation of identity can afford little matter for demonstration. Again, when the intui- tion mixes itself closelv with other mental acts, it is diffl- DEMONSTRATIVE AND INDUCTIVE SCIENCES. 399 cult to reach its precise rule, or get a rule sufficiently clear and definite for demonstration. Thus, our intuition as to cause, the causes being so often dual or plural, does not admit of so satisfactory deduction as our mathema- tical intuitions. Yet further, demonstration, however far it might be carried in an abstract form, admits of few applications to nature when the circumstances become very complicated. Mathematics can determine very de- finitely what will be the path of a body when it is at- tracted by only one other, but it can settle the problem of three bodies only approximately. Formal Logic is greatly hampered by the complexity of thought and the variety of the objects of thought, and a demonstrative ethics becomes valueless in the complicated affairs of hu- man life. By far the greater number of the phenomena of nature within and without us, are so involved and in- tricate that the abstract truths of intuition and demon- stration admit of no application to them. In the other class of sciences the inquirer begins with facts, these not being the necessary convictions of the mind. He has first and mainly to observe them care- fully, and, if need be, to work experiments so as to elicit them fully, and discover the special action of each agent working in the complex operation ; and he aims by the " necessary exclusions," and by co-ordination, to reach a general law or a general cause. This law, however, has in it no necessity, and no absolute universality, or universality beyond the know T able cosmos. Having reached the law, the science is satisfied in regard to that department of facts. At the same time it may employ the law as a means to further ends ; say, by deduction to ascertain unknown facts, or to reach some further law. These deduced particulars, or laws, can of course have only the certainty of the law from which they are drawn, and this only on the condition that the derivation is pro- 400 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN perly made. The truths in these departments of know- ledge are all Experiential or Contingent. It should be noticed that some sciences are of a mixed character, partaking of the nature of both classes. Of this description are mechanics, astronomy, and optics, in each of which there is a union of the generalization of outward facts with the generalization of the intuitive convictions of the mind regarding space, number, and force. In ethics too there is an observation of the cha- racters and circumstances of men, combined with original moral principle. Logic, taken in a large sense, may be considered as not only the science of the generalized ope- rations of thought, but of the laws of thought as applied, say, to necessary truth in demonstration, and to contin- gent truth in induction. Nor should it be omitted that in most sciences there are metaphysical principles involved, though these are seldom noticed by physical inquirers. In the Chapters which immediately follow, I am to refer first to the sci- ences in which intuition and demonstration are the all- important instruments, and then to those departments of knowledge in which intuition enters, often tacit and un- seen, as an element. CHAPTER II. THE MENTAL SCIENCES. Sect. I. Classification of the Mental Sciences. Already five mental sciences have emerged, and these will come each to be subdivided into special departments as the study makes progress. There is Psychology, which inquires into the operations THE MENTAL SCIENCES. 401 of the mind of man with the view of discovering its laws and its faculties. The founder of this science is un- doubtedly Aristotle in ancient times. Locke may be de- scribed as its second founder in modern times. It is a science throughout of facts and the co-ordination of facts. As a whole, it has made a gradual progress since its origin in Greece, and its second rise in the seventeenth century. There is Logic. There were helps and preparations towards its construction in the discussions of earlier spe- culators, but Aristotle may be regarded as the founder of this science also. In modern times it has had a spe- cial province allotted to it by Kant, who defined it as the science of the laws of the understanding and of the reason. Those who do not acknowledge the distinction, as drawn by Kant, between the understanding and the reason, but who adopt Kant's general view of Logic, de- scribe it as the Science of the Laws of Thought. It should seek first to seize the laws of thought as in the mind of man, but its main office is to analyze and formalize and apply them. There is the science of Ethics. The founder of it is undoubtedly Socrates. It is the science of the laws of the Morally Good. It should endeavour to seize the laws of man's moral nature, especially of the conscience, and thence proceed, as its more particular work, to analyze them into forms or rules, and apply them to the peculia- rities of human character and the specialties of human life. There should be a science whose object-matter is the law T s of the feelings. Already have we a science for an important part of this general subject, the science of ^Esthetics, which would determine the laws of the beau- tiful. But we should have a science seeking to discover the laws of the feelings generally, and to trace them in their influence, as directed to various classes of objects 2 n 402 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN within and without us. Plato is entitled to be regarded as the founder of this science, from his frequent and often profound inquiries into the nature of the to koKov, or ' the fair.' I am inclined to call this scarcely formed science Kalology, or Kallisophy. There is the science of Metaphysics. In some of its inquiries it appeared earlier than any of the others, going back to the age of the Eleatics. Yet it will be one of the latest to come to any degree of perfection, owing to the subtle and deeply seated nature of the objects at which it looks. It has generally had far too wide and ambitious a province allotted to it. I have sought in this treatise to confine it to a special field, and defined it as the science of the intuitive convictions of the mind, and made the science of knowledge and the science of being as two compartments of it. Its office is by induction to determine what are the laws of the intuitions, and to re- duce them to general expressions. It cannot attain any- thing like a scientific form, till psychology has made some progress, and taught us to distinguish between in- tuition and associated and allied states of mind. Sect. II. Logic. I am disposed to define Logic as the Science of the Laws of Discursive Thought. It presupposes that cer- tain materials are supplied to the mind, say, by sense and self-consciousness, and by the reproductive powers bring- ing them before the mind even when the objects are not present. Thought works on these materials discursively, that is, from something given it draws or derives some- thing else. In doing so it follows certain laws. It is the office of Logic to seize these laws, and to derive rules from them which may guide and guard thought in its va- rious applications. Logic is described by those who take much the same THE MENTAL SCIENCES. 403 view of it as I do, as an a priori science. But this ac- count cannot be allowed to pass without an explanation. It may be called an a priori science, inasmuch as it deals with laws which are in the mental constitution prior to all experience. But in another sense it is not an a priori science, nor can there be an a priori science, for there is no department in which general laws can be discovered independent of experience. While the laws of thought are a priori, we cannot discover them a priori. It is quite conceivable, indeed, that man might have been so framed that he could discover the laws of thought by immediate consciousness or intuition. His mental constitution might have been such as to enable him at once to enunciate the laws of contradiction and excluded middle, and the Dictum de omni et nullo. But it is very evident that man has not been so constituted by his Maker. The only method available to us of discovering the laws of thought, is to observe their spontaneous operations, separate by analysis the invariable from the accidental, and by a process of induction collect the law from its individual acts. Logic thus throws us back on Psychology, and on an inductive psychology, not indeed to justify the laws, but to discover them. Not that psychology and logic are iden- tical, or that they should be mixed up with one another. Psychology, in treating of the operations of the mind gene- rally, will fall in with thought, and will seek by classifi- cation to discover the faculties of thought, and these are specially the comparative or correlative powers. It will seek even to discover in a general way the laws involved in thought. But when it has gone so far in this direc- tion, it will stop. It does not make a very minute analysis of these laws, it does not seek to present them in all pos- sible forms, it does not make an application of them to discursive investigation. It leaves this to logic as its spe- 2 d 2 404 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN cial province. Nor should logic enter generally into the nature of the human mind, its faculties and laws. It should confine itself to one single department. Nor does it in this department seek to investigate faculties and their mode of operation. It looks at the human mind merely with the view of discovering the laws involved in the discursive exercises, and when it has detected them, it puts them in convenient formulae, and applies them to all various discursive investigations. If psychology were in a more perfect state, it would save logic from nearly all psychological inquiry by handing over to it certain truths which it might at once adopt, and use for its own special purposes. Logic has points of relation to metaphysics. Certain of the fundamental principles of logic are intuitive. These must fall under the province of metaphysics, which should generalize them out of their individual operations and express them, and show what is their precise nature in the human constitution, and their objective validity, and the relation in which they stand to the other intui- tive principles, and to the experiential exercises of the mind. But having finished this work, it hands over these principles to logic, to make a more specific use of them by presenting them in divers formulae, and follow- ing them out in discursive investigation. On the other hand, logic does not consider these intuitive principles as intuitive. If they are admitted, it does not care whether they are intuitive or experiential ; it does not trouble itself to inquire about their origin, foundation, or guarantee, or their relation to other exercises of the mind. But while logic is not to be confounded with psychology or with metaphysics, yet in all disputes as to its fundamental principles, it is necessarily thrown back on both. In particular the disputes as to the na- ture of the abstract and general notion, and all the dis- THE MENTAL SCIENCES. 405 cussions in the present day as to whether the predicate ought or ought not to be qualified, as to whether the dictum is or is not the ultimate expression of the uni- versal law of, reasoning, are to be settled by psycholo- gical and metaphysical investigation. From a very old date, Logic is represented as having to do with the Notion, with Judgment, and Reasoning. Its special province is to discover the laws of thought involved in each of these, to formalize and apply them. The investigations pursued in this treatise have brought out a number of truths capable of furnishing principles in each of these departments. But it would carry us into another science altogether, were I to proceed in this treatise to specify the logical applications of metaphy- sical truth. In addition to the Universal Logic discovering and applying the laws of thought, whatever be the objects, there may also be a Particular Logic unfolding the laws of discursive thought as addressed to particular classes of objects. Under this head such subjects as demonstra- tive and probable evidence, induction, and analogy would be discussed. In this eminently practical department, metaphysics should be able to show, in every branch of inquiry, what principles are intuitive, — by the tests which I have so often specified, — and, by consequence, what must be made to rest on experience.* * I am aware that there are some who deny that there can be such a department of logic. Logic, they say, has to do with thought, and not with objects, and can take no cognizance of the difference of ob- jects. I admit that logic has to do with the laws of thought, and not with the nature of objects. But then thought has always a reference, avowed or tacit, to objects. There is a subtle error lying here iu the account given of universal logic by Kant, who says that it makes ab- straction of all content of the cognition (Kritik, Trans. Logik). It is all true that logic looks to the thought, but it is also true that thought has a content. The difference between universal and particular logic lies in this, that the former looks to thought, whatever be the content, 406 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN Sect. III. Ethics. Ethics is in every respect an analogous science to Lo- gic. The difference lies in the difference of the matters with which they deal, the one aiming to find the laws of discursive truth, the other the nature of moral good ; the one seeking to attain its end by generalizing the opera- tions of thought, the other by generalizing the exercises of the motive and moral powers of man. Ethics, like Logics, is in a sense an a priori science ; it finds and it employs principles which are valid independent of our experience. In another sense, it is a posteriori, inas- much as these principles and their laws can be discovered by us only through observation of their individual mani- festations ; and thus far it is dependent on an inductive psychology. We must begin with inquiring, Quid est? and then we find that the thing reached relates to the Quid oportet ? It is the special office of ethics to ascer- tain what is involved in the oportet, and apply its for- mulas to the conduct of responsible beings. It has to look to three special classes of objects, in order to discover the laws which it employs. It has to look to the motives addressed to the mind, with the view of gaining its consent, and, it may be, of inducing it to form a determination to act. It has to look to the will or the mind deciding upon the motives addressed to it. Further, and specially, it has to look to the conscience and the latter to thought, directed to special classes of content. This leads me to point out another error which has crept into the Kantian Logic from the Kantian Metaphysics. It is that the laws of thought are mere forms in the mind. True, they are rules in the mind, but they are rules which refer to objects, and they do not give the objects anything that is not in them. True, all discursive thought implies ma- terials supplied to it. If fable or error be given it, what it reaches may also be fabulous or erroneous. But on the other hand, if it start with fact or with truth, and proceed according to logical laws, all that it peaches will also be real and true. THE MENTAL SCIENCES. 407 intimating to the will when it should yield to motives addressed to it, and when it should resist. The mind discerns moral good as a quality of certain voluntary acts, and it pronounces a number of decisions in regard to moral good in itself, and these can be abstracted into definitions or generalized into laws which are the funda- mental principles of the science. The mind too has a set of primitive judgments, which it forms in regard to the connection of moral good and happiness, and these can also be made to assume a general form. The general principles thus obtained can be put, by analysis, into an immense number of specific forms, to suit special purposes scientific or practical. They can be put in the form of ethical principles, to meet prevalent errors, such as those of the utilitarian or of the sensationalist. Or, again, they can take the form of general or specific precepts, such as, " Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart ;" " Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbour's." In regard to the will, our intuitive convictions declare that in all moral action the deed must be voluntary, and the will must be free. But a science of ethics fitted to serve any useful pur- pose cannot be constructed from the mere native convic- tions of the mind. We do obtain a few most important general principles from this source exclusively, and these underlie the whole science, and bear up every part of it. But, in order to serve the ends intended by it, ethics must settle what are the duties of different classes of persons, according to the relation in which they stand to each other, such as rulers and subjects, parents and children, masters and servants ; and what the path which indivi- duals should follow in certain circumstances, it may be, very difficult and perplexing. In consequence of the af- fairs of human life being very complicated, demonstration can be carried but a very little way in ethics. In order 408 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN to be able to enunciate general principles for our guid- ance, or to promulgate useful precepts, the ethical inquirer must condescend to come down from his a priori heights to the level in which mankind live and walk and work. Even in the most practical departments of ethical science, the grand fundamental laws of our moral constitution must ever be the guiding principles, but we have to con- sider their application to an almost infinite variety of earthly positions and human character. In these investigations metaphysics, were it diligently to cultivate its own field, and confine itself to it, should be able greatly to serve the science of ethics. It should be in a position to show what is the nature of our intui- tions, how these intuitions differ from one another, where- in our intellectual differ from our moral intuitions, and what sort of objective reality each class of our intuitions guarantees, and it should show how we may draw the general law out of the individual convictions. But meta- physics and ethics are not, after all, the same science, nor should ethics be regarded as a branch of metaphysics, nor should metaphysics profess to be able to construct an ethical science. Some of the fundamental principles of ethics are certainly metaphysical, but ethics consists mainly in the construction of a science on these principles as a basis. Of all the sciences, ethics is that which comes into closest relationship with Christianity and the Word of God. The reason is obvious. It deals with the law and the very character of God ; it deals with man as under law, and with man as having broken the law. It thus prepares us, if it faithfully fulfil its functions, to be- lieve in a religion which shows us how the sinner can be reconciled to God. When the great doctrine of the Atone- ment is embraced, a new and most important element is introduced into ethics. It should no longer be a science MATHEMATICS. 409 constructed, on the one hand for pure beings, nor on the other for persons who must ever be kept at a distance from God. This new reconciling and gracious element turns a pagan into a Christian ethics ; it turns a cold and legal, into a warm and evangelical obedience. CHAPTER III. MATHEMATICS. It has been shown by Kant that the axioms of geometry are synthetic and not analytic judgments.* Thus, in the axiom, " Two straight lines cannot enclose a space," the predication that " they cannot enclose a space," is not contained in the bare notion of " two straight lines." Start- ing with axioms which involve more than analytic judg- ments, we are reaching throughout the demonstration more than identical truth. The propositions in the books of Euclid are all evolved out of the definitions and axioms, but are not identical with them, or with one another. The question is keenly agitated as to axioms, whether they are or are not the result of the generalizations of experience. It will be found here, as in so many other questions which have passed under our notice, that there is truth on both sides, error on both sides, and confusion in the whole controversy, which is to be cleared up by an exact expression of the mental operation involved in pass- ing the judgment. A mathematic axiom, being a ge- neral maxim, is the result of a process of generalization. If we look to what has passed within our minds, we shall * Kritik d. r. Vera., p, 143. Mr. Mansel (Proleg. Log., p. 93) main- tains that suck axioms as that "Things which are equal to the same are equal to each other " are analytic. But does not this confound equality vith identity ? 410 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN find that it has been by the contemplation of individual instances that the mind has attained to the comprehension and the conviction of the general proposition, that " If equals be added, the sums are equal." The boy under- stands this best when he is in circumstances to use his marbles, or his apples. The youth who is finding his way through Euclid does not feel that the axiom adds in the least to the cogency of the reasoning ; on the contrary, it is rather the case before him that enables him to compre- hend the axiom and to acknowledge its truth. But it does not follow that the axiom is a mere gene- ralization of an ordinary or an outward experience. It is not by trying two straight rods ten, twenty, or a thousand times that we arrive at the general proposition that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, and thence conclude as to two given lines presented to us that it is impossible they should enclose a space. It is certainly not by placing two rods parallel to each other, and lengthening them more and more, and then measuring their distance to see if they are approaching that we reach the axiom that two parallel lines will never meet, and thence be convinced as to any given set of like lines that they will never come nearer each other. Place before us two new substauces, and we cannot tell beforehand whether they will or will not chemically combine ; but on the bare contempla- tion of two straight lines, we declare they cannot con- tain a space ; and of two parallel lines, that they can never meet.* * Mr. Mill maintains (Logic, ii. v. 4, 5) that the proposition, " Two straight lines cannot enclose a space," is a generalization from observa- tion, " an induction from the evidence of the senses." That observation is needed I have shown in this treatise ; but there is intuition in the observation. That there is generalization in the general maxim I have also shown ; but it is not a generalization of outward instances. Ob- servation can of itself tell us that these two lines before us do not en- close a space, and that any other couplets of lines examined by us MATHEMATICS. 411 Iii mathematical truth the mind, upon the objects be- ing presented to its contemplation, at once and intuitively pronounces the judgment. It conceives two straight lines, and decides that they cannot be made to enclose a space. What is true of this case is seen to be true of this other case, and of every other, and of all cases. There is thus generalization in the formation of the axiom, but it is a generalization of the individual intuitive judge- ments of the mind. Hence arises the distinction between the axioms of mathematics and the general laws reached by observation. If we have properly generalized the in- dividual conviction, the necessity that is in the individual twenty, or a hundred, or a thousand, do not enclose a space ; but expe- rience can say no more without passing beyond its province. An intel- lectual generalization of such experience might allow us to affirm that very probably no two lines enclose a space on the earth, but could never entitle us to maintain that two lines could not enclose a space in the constellation Orion. Mr. Mill, in order to account for the necessity which attaches to such convictions, refers to the circumstance that geo- metrical forms admit of being distinctly painted in the imagination, so that we have " mental pictures of all possible combinations of lines and angles." We might ask him what he makes of algebraic and analytic demonstrations of every kind, where there is no such power of imagina- tion and yet the same necessity. But without dwelling on this, I would have it remarked that in the very theory which he devises to show that the whole is a process of experience, he is appealing to what no expe- rience can ever compass, " to all possible combinations of lines and angles." Intuitive thought, proceeding on intuitive perceptions of space, may tell us the "possible combinations " of geometrical figures, but this cannot be done by observation, by sense, or imagination. Sup- posing, he says, that two straight lines after diverging could again con- verge, " we can transport ourselves thither in imagination, and can frame a mental image of the appearance which one or both of the lines must present at that point, which we may rely on as being precisely si- milar to the reality." Most freely do I admit all this. We may ' rely ' on it, but surely it is not experience but thought which tells us what must be at that point, and that it is a ' reality.' The very line of remark which he is pursuing might have shown him that the discovery of ne- cessary spatial and quantitative relations is a judgment in which the mind looks upon objects intuitively known, and now presented, or more fre- quently represented to the mind. 412 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN goes up into the general, which embraces all the indivi- duals, and the axiom is necessarily true, and true to all beings. But we can never be sure that there may not somewhere be an exception to experiential laws. We are sure that two straight lines cannot enclose a space in any planet, or star, or world, that ever existed or shall exist. But it is quite possible that there may be horned animals which are not ruminant, or white crows in some of the planets ; and that there may come a time when the law of gravitation shall no longer operate. In the case of our intuitive convictions regarding space, number, and quantity, the simplicity of the objects makes it easy for us to seize the principle, and to put it in proper formulae, which can scarcely fail to be accurately made, Hence these convictions came to be expressed in ge- neral forms, in what were then called Common Notions, at a very early age of the history of intellectual cul- ture. The disputes among mathematicians in regard to axioms, relate not to their certainty and universality, but to the forms in which they ought to be put, and as to whether what some regard as first truths may not be demonstrated from prior truths. Such, for instance, is the dispute as to how the axioms and demonstrations as to parallel lines should be best constructed. But in re- gard to our convictions of extension, number, and quan- tity, it is not difficult to gather the regulating principle out of the individual judgment, and the expression is commonly accurate. It is different with other of our original convictions, such as those which relate to cause and effect ; the greater complexity of the objects renders it more difficult to seize on the principle involved, and there is greater room for dispute as to any given formula whether it is an exact expression of the facts. Another interesting and still disputed topic in the metaphysics of mathematics, relates to the nature and MATHEMATICS. 413 value of Definitions. Mathematical definitions seem to me to be formalized primitive cognitions or beliefs regarding space, number, and quantity. In their formation there is a process of abstraction involved. A point is defined " po- sition, without magnitude ;" there is no such point, there can be no such point. " A line is length without breadth ;" there was never such a line drawn by pen or diamond point. But the mind in its analysis is sharper than steel or diamond. It can contemplate position without taking extension into view. It can reason about the length of a line without regarding the breadth. In all these defini- tions there is abstraction, but I must ever protest against the notion that an abstraction is necessarily something unreal. If the concrete be real, the part of it separated by abstraction must likewise be real. The position of the point is a reality, and so also is the length of a line ; they are not independent realities, and capable of exist- ing alone and apart, but still they are realities, and when the mind contemplates them separately, it contemplates realities. So far as it reasons about them accurately, ac- cording to the laws of thought, the conclusions arrived at will also relate to realities, not independent realities, but realities of the same nature as those with which we started in our original definitions. Thus whatever conclusions are arrived at in regard to lines, or circles, or ellipses, will apply to all objects, so far as we consider them as hav- ing length, or a circular or elliptic form. We find, in fact, that the conclusions reached in mathematics do hold true of all bodies in earth or sky, so far as we find them oc- cupying space, or having numerical relations. If this view be correct, we see how inadequate is the representation of those who, like D. Stewart and Mr. J. S. Mill, represent mathematical definitions as merely hypothetical, and represent the whole consistency and necessity as being between a supposition and the conse- 414 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN quences drawn from it.* This is to overlook the con- crete cognitions or beliefs from which the definition is derived. It is likewise to overlook the fact that these refer to objects, and the further fact that the abstractions from the concretes also imply a reality. This theory also fails to account for the circumstance that the con- clusions reached in mathematics admit of an application to the settlement of so many questions in astronomy, and in other departments of natural philosophy. Thus, what is demonstrated of the conic sections by Apollonius, is found true in the orbits of the planets and comets, as revealed by modern discovery. All this can at once be explained if we suppose that the mind starts with cogni- tions and beliefs, that it abstracts from these, and dis- covers relations among the things thus abstracted : the reality that was in the original conviction, goes on to the farthest conclusion. I am inclined to look on the primitive cognitions as constituting, properly speaking, the foundation of mathe- matics. The mind, looking at the things under the clear and distinct aspects in which they are set before it by abstraction, discovers relations between them, and can draw deductions from the combination. In this process the mind proceeds spontaneously, without thinking of the general principle involved in the reasoning. It finds that A is equal to B, and B to C, and it at once con- ludes that A is equal to C. It does not feel that in order to reach this conclusion it needs any generalized maxim, such as that " Things which are equal to the same things are equal to one another." The reasoning appears clear anterior to the general principle being announced ; and when the principle is announced, it does not seem to add to the force of the ratiocination. It does not, in fact, add to the cogency of the argument ; it is merely the * Stewart's Elem. vol. ii. p. 53. Mill's Logic, ii. v. 1. THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 415 expression of the general principle on which it proceeds. Still, it serves many important scientific purposes, as Locke and Stewart admit, to have this general principle expressed in the form of an axiom.* It allows the re- flective mind to dwell on the general principle underly- ing the spontaneous conviction ; by its clearness it en- ables us to test the ratiocination ; and it shows what those must be prepared to disprove who would dispute or deny the conclusion. If this view be correct, the abstracted cognitions or beliefs in the definitions constitute the proper foundation of mathematical demonstration, while the axioms being the generalizations of our primitive judg- ments pronounced on looking at the things defined, are the links which bind together the parts of the super- structure added, f CHAPTER IV. INTUITIVE PRINCIPLES INVOLVED LN THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. These sciences must ever be conducted in the method of induction, with sense and artificial instruments as the agents of observation. But almost all these sciences do at times go down to first principles, and the inquirer is obliged, in the last resort, to appeal to what the mind * Locke's Essay, iv. vii 11. Stewart's Elements, vol. ii. p. 25. t There is truth, then, in a statement of D. Stewart: "The doc- trine which I have been attempting to establish, so far from degrading axioms from that rank which Dr. Reid would assign them, tends to identify them still more than he has done, with the exercise of our reasoning powers ; inasmuch as instead of comparing them with the data, on the accuracy of which that of our conclusion necessarily de- pends, it considers them as the vinculo which give coherence to all the particular links of the chain ; or (to vary the metaphor) as component elements, without which the faculty of reasoning is inconceivable and impossible" (Elements, vol. ii. p. 38). 416 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN sees to be true. At the same time, it is not the special business of these sciences to inquire into the nature or guarantee of ultimate truths ; this it leaves very properly to metaphysicians, who should be prepared to announce laws of intuition, which the physicist might profitably em- ploy to suit his purposes. They might be more profit- ably employed in such a work, which lies exclusively within their own province, than in pursuing speculative ends which can never be attained by human reason. In all the sciences which meet in their researches with regular forms, and correlated numbers, and constant or periodical motion, — such as mechanical science, statics and dynamics, and certain departments of astronomy, optics, and thermotics, — mathematics have an important part to act, and they come in with all their intuitive axioms and demonstrations. On these I need not dwell further. I leave them, to refer to those sciences in which intuition enters otherwise than in a mathematical form. Most, if not all, of our intuitive convictions enter, in a tacit way, into physical investigation. Thus, the con- viction as to the identity of being leads us to chase the substance through the various forms it may assume, and constrains even those who are most opposed to hypotheses, to speak of ultimate molecules or atoms, which change not with changing circumstances. The intuition of whole and parts prompts us to seek for the missing part after we have found certain parts which have been separated by analysis, and it constrains us to look on the abstract as implying the concrete. Our intuitions as to space make the physicist certain, when he sees body now in one place and again in another, that it must have passed through the whole intermediate space ; and it should prevent him from ever giving in to the theory which re- presents matter as consisting merely of points of force ; these points cannot, properly speaking, be unextended, THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 417 and there must always be space between. Our convic- tion as to time assures us that there can be no break in it, and that when we fall in with the same object at two different times, it must have existed the whole inter* vening time. Our intuitions as to quantity, or to num- ber and proportion, enter more or less formally into all natural investigation. Oar intuition as to generalization insists that, in division, the subclasses should make up the class. Our conviction as to substance and property prompts us, when we discover a new object, to look out for the exercise of its properties; and leads the physicist, when he meets with such agencies as electricity and gal- vanism, to declare that they must either be separate sub- stances (which is very improbable), or properties or states of substances. Finally, the fundamental law of causality directs us to seek for a cause to every effect. The phy- sical investigator, engrossed with external facts, and seeking to clear them up, will seldom so much as observe these fundamental principles, which are unconsciously guiding him ; and only on rare occasions will he find it necessary to make a formal appeal to them. Still, there will be times when those most prejudiced against metaphysics will be tempted or compelled to fall back on them, when going down to the depths of a deep subject, or when hard pressed by an opponent. It often happens that, when they do so, their expression of the principle is sufficiently awkward and blundering ; and I think they have reason to complain of the metaphysician that he has been wasting his ingenuity in unprofitable and unattain- able pursuits, and has done so little to aid physical inves- tigation in a matter in which he might have lent it effec- tual aid. It has been shown by Dr. Whewell, in his great work on the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, that each kind of science has its special fundamental idea at its 2 E 418 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN basis, and he classifies the sciences according to the ideas which regulate them. The phrase "ideas" does not seem a good one to express the intuitive convictions of the mind, either in their spontaneous exercises or formal enunciation, and I think he is altogether wrong in sup- posing that these ideas " superinduce " on the facts some- thing not in the facts. But he has in that work deve- loped great truths, which physical investigators were al- most universally overlooking. I do not mean to follow him in his elaborate exposition of the ideas and concep- tions involved in the various sciences; I must content myself with showing how certain intuitive principles en- ter into special sciences. There is a class of .sciences which proceed on our in- tuition as to the resemblances among objects and classes. These have been called the classificatory sciences by Whe- well ; they embrace zoology and botany, and mineralogy so far as it is not a branch of chemistry, and geology so far as it deals with organisms. In all these the mind is guided and guarded by our convictions regarding individuals, classes, genera, and species. Another class of sciences have underlying them our conviction as to substance and property ; of this description is chemistry, and the sciences which treat of electricity and magnetism and the cognate agencies. A number of sciences pro- ceed on the conviction as to causation ; such are all de- partments of natural philosophy, as it seeks to determine the laws which regulate force ; and such too is geology, so far as it strives to find the circumstances and agencies which have brought the earth's surface to its present state. In physiology too there is an inquiry after the properties, be they mechanical or chemical or vital, which have brought the organism into the state in which we find it. The metaphysician should in no case pretend to be THEOLOGY. 419 able to construct any department of natural science ; but, keeping within his own province, it is competent for him to furnish an expression of the fundamental principles of cognition, belief, and thought, and the physicist might then be able to use them under the forms which are best suited to his special purposes. CHAPTER V. APPLICATION TO THEOLOGY. Sect. I. Faith and Reason. The word Faith is used in various senses, some of them sufficiently wide and loose, and others extremely narrow and stringent. But there is a common mental property to which the phrase points in all its shades of meaning. This quality cannot be positively defined; but we may bring out in clear relief its peculiarity as known to consciousness, and show what it is not by distinguish- ing it from other exercises of mind. It is that operation of soul in which we are convinced of the existence of what is not before us, of what is not under sense or any other directly cognitive power. It is a native energy of the mind, quite as much as knowledge is, or conception is, or imagination is, or feeling is. Every human being entertains, and must entertain, faith of some kind. He who would insist on always having immediate knowledge, must needs go out of the world, for he is unfit for this world, and yet he believes in no other. It is in consequence of possessing the general capacity that man is enabled to entertain specific forms of faith. By a native principle he is led to believe in that of which he can have no adequate conception, — in the infinity of 2 e 2 420 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN space and time ; and, on evidence of His existence being presented, in the infinity of God. This enables him to rise to a faith in all those great religious verities which God has been pleased to reveal. There is faith, always along with other exercises, in- volved in nearly every act of human intelligence. There is faith, I acknowledge of a simple kind, even in the very acts of memory, for in every exercise of memory we be- lieve in that which is not before us. In many, indeed in most of our judgments, there is faith implied, as when on seeing an effect we look for an unseen cause. There may be faith wrapped up even in the very operations of in- ference, as when from data before us we infer something not before us ; as when we see the tide ebbing now, and argue that it will be flowing so many hours after ; or, as when Columbus reasoned himself into the belief that there was a world lying far to the west of the lands known to civilized men. Not in any way psychologically different from these exercises of faith is that which leads us to believe in the testimony of others, a kind of belief to which the word Faith has often been specially appropriated. I am not inclined, with some, to look on this faith in testimony as originating in any intuitive or necessary conviction. I think it indeed very likely that there is a native tendency in children to give credit to the narratives told them by those whom they love or esteem ; but this is not of the nature of a fundamental or irresistible conviction. Our common and settled belief in testimony is the result of observation, induction, and reasoning. We have found by experience that we can trust our fellow-men, at least some of our fellow-men. In all this there is inference proceeding on an induction, the issue being not a faith in all men, or in all statements, but a belief in certain men and in certain narratives. THEOLOGY. 421 When we rise from faith in man to faith — I mean na- tural faith — in God, there are the same elements with certain new ones. The new ones arise from the convic- tions regarding morality and infinity which attach them- selves to the good, the omnipresent, and eternal God. We believe that this omniscient God must know the truth ; that this infinitely righteous God is incapable of false- hood. At the same time this faith is not without reason, for what are our intuitions about infinity and goodness but primary exercises of reason ? This faith is not even without reasoning, for I am inclined to think that there is a single link of ratiocination in that mental exercise by w T hich we rise from the works of God to God the worker, and there is certainly deduction implied in the process by which we reach the conclusion that the decla- ration of this God of truth must be true. The word Reason has been employed in as great a diversity of significations as the term Faith. Sometimes it stands for the faculty which reasons or draws inferences. With other writers, reason, as distinguished from the understanding, denotes the power which sees necessary truth at once, without an intermediate process. With certain English writers it stands for that aggregate of qualities (unspecified) which distinguishes man from brutes. Very often it is a general name for intelligence, or for the cognitive powers of man. When persons com- pare or contrast the exercises of reason with those of faith, they should be careful to understand for themselves, and to signify to others, the senses in which they employ the phrase. In the remarks which I have to offer, I use it as embracing every form of human intelligence, and I at- tach particular epithets to it when I refer to certain more special exercises. It is wrong to represent faith as in itself opposed to reason in any of its forms. Faith may go far beyond 422 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN intelligence, but it is not in itself repugnant to it. There is belief involved in all kinds of intelligence except the primary ones, those in which we look on the object as now present ; and in all the higher exercises of reason there is a large faith-element which could be taken out of reason only with the certain penalty that reason would be stripped of all its soaring capacities. What could cog- nition say of duration, expansion, substance, causation, beauty, moral good, infinity, God, if faith were denied its proper scope, and forbidden to take excursions in its na- tive element? But if reason is not independent of faith, so neither is faith to proceed without reason. In particular, it would be far wrong to insist on any one believing in the exist- ence of any object, or in any truth, without a warrant. True, the mind is led to believe in much intuitively, but it is because the objects or verities are self-evident, and reflexly can stand the tests of intuition. And in all cases in which we have not this self-evidence, it is entitled to demand mediate evidence, and should not concede cre- dence till this is furnished. It is not indeed justified in insisting that all darkness be dispelled, but it is aban- doning its prerogative when it declines to demand that light be afforded ; either direct light, which is the most satisfactory, or reflected light, where direct light is una- vailable, as it is in by far the greater number of instances. An allowable faith has thus ever the sanction of reason, and in some cases it is the issue of a consequential rea- soning. Faith is thus liable to be tested, even as reason is ; nor are we at liberty to lay reason aside on the pre- tence of following a faith which will not allow itself to be examined. Where the truth is alleged to be intuitive, it must submit to be tried by the marks of original convic- tions. Where it professes to be the conclusion of reason- ing, the process may be subjected to the crucible of the THEOLOGY. 423 logic of inference. Where it claims to be the result of a gathered experience, it must be prepared to stand an exa- mination by the canons of induction. It is not good either for reason or faith that it should " be alone." The former is in itself hard, bony, angular ; and, unmarried to the other, is apt to become opiniona- tive, obstinate, and dogmatic; the latter, without her partner to lean on, would be facile, weak, and impulsive. The one is a help-meet provided for the other, and let there be no divorce of the firmer from the more flexible, or the more devout and affectionate from the more con- siderate and resolute. When faith has evidence, intuitive or derivative, in its favour, by all means let us follow it, and this however far on it may lead us, however high it may lift us. As a general practical rule, we are to yield to what has fair prima facie evidence in its behalf, without waiting till every objection is removed. Those who act thus will find as they advance that difficulties are removed, and fur- ther light furnished. This is easily explained. It arises from the knowledge of the subject and of its relations which is being acquired, and from the suggestions flow- ing in upon a mind whose intellectual senses are open to receive knowledge. Thus children, confiding in the in- formation conveyed by parents whose veracity they have reason to trust, and pupils believing, on the testimony of a judicious master, in the utility of branches of know- ledge which are at present felt to be irksome, will find as they make progress that confirmations ever come in to strengthen their primary trust. In like manner those who follow such light as they have in religious matters, will find further light as they grow in an acquaintance, speculative and practical, with the truths to which they are thus brought into closer propinquity. Those who allow the star set up in the sky to guide them, will fall 4.24 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN in with more formal testimonies to direct them as they go on, and will at last reach the very spot where truth — it may be in humble guise — is waiting to gratify their vision and to receive their homage. On the other hand, those who refuse or decline to act on the evidence sup- plied, may find themselves landed in hopeless darkness. The rationale of this can also be given. They have re- fused to follow light, and in the very act they have given offence to the conscience, which will fill the soul with re- proaches whenever the attention is forced upon the ob- ject, from which, therefore, the mind will ever be tempted to turn away as from a personal enemy, whose presence reminds us of ill usage in the past, and possible mis- chief for the future. Hence, I suspect, the unwilling- ness of many to consider even the claims of religion, whose initiatory evidence they have refused to look at, and the further evidence of which is therefore denied them. They have turned away from the object, and to look upon it produces only irritation, and so they cannot see it, as they might have clone, under its pleasant and its profitable aspects, and at length it is associated in their minds with humiliation and bitterness. There is but one way of delivering themselves from this unbelief and its ever widening shadows, and this too many of them are unwilling to submit to ; they must come, like the Apostle Thomas, to the very place of intercourse which they ori- ginally avoided, and there a gracious invitation will be given them to search the object round and round, and in every part, till, as they find unmistakable marks, every doubt vanishes, and they exclaim, " My Lord and my God." We see the difference between the two classes. The one class, under the influence of pride, have turned their backs on the light, and they have the shadow caused by their obstruction of it before them, and they go out into the darkness and are lost. Whereas the other and THEOLOGY. 425 wiser class keep the light before them, and they leave their shadow behind them, and they go on towards the light, and as they approach nearer, the shadow lessens, till as they stand immediately under it, and look up to it, all blackness and darkness are dispelled. But on the other hand, we should not place ourselves for one hour under the guidance of a faith which has no evidence to furnish. There cannot be a more perilous advice than that which has been given by certain parties to the doubting and inquiring, when they exhort them to force themselves to believe, when as yet they feel that they have no convincing evidence, or to profess a creed in order to get one as they fall in with evidence in ad- vancing. It will be seen at once wherein this case dif- fers from the other previously put. In the one we walk with reason from the beginning, though we do not just know whither it may lead us ; in the other we are with- out reason from the beginning, and cannot expect reason to aid us in our difficulties. In the one we set out with light, and wait for more ; in the other we set out with- out light, and necessarily at random, and if we fall in with light, it must be by the purest accident. There cannot, as it appears to me, be a more likely means of leading faith into temptation, than by counselling her to yield to the first party who pays address to her ; for speedily rinding herself deceived, she may refuse to put confidence in any other ; or, being seduced or debauched, she loses all purity of discernment, and runs from one lover to another, and the issue is commonly either a scoff- ing infidelity or a restless flitting from creed to creed, and from one observance to another, and not unfre- quently a ridiculous combination of the two, and the soul is taking refuge in, and seeking repose under the nearest and most imposing superstition, in order to avoid a blank and horrid scepticism. 426 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN There is indeed a sense in which there may be said to be an opposition between faith and reason ; but it is as there may be an inconsistency between one dictate of reason and another. There occur times and circum- stances, in the life of every one, when reasons are ad- dressed to the intelligence in favour of inconsistent courses, and when the reasonable man decides, it is in favour of the one for which the reasons are the strongest. So there may also be times when man is required to be- lieve, in opposition to many appeals to the sense, and even to the understanding. But in all such cases reason in a higher sense comes to the aid of faith, and an- nounces that we ought to believe in spite of the appear- ances of mere sense, and of a quibbling intellect. It is further to be taken into account that there are truths to be believed which are not and cannot be reached by any native shrewdness of intelligence, or by the consecutive deductions of reasoning. Of this de- scription are some of our convictions as to infinity. Of a similar character are many of the doctrines which God has reVealed in His Word. In regard to some of these, not only is a deductive reasoning incapable of de- monstrating them, reason in its highest degree is inca- pable of fully comprehending them. When it labours to do so, it is encompassed in darkness, and finds itself utterly at a loss as it would seek to reconcile them with other truths sanctioned by reason or experience. But still, even here, faith is not without reason ; for in regard to certain of these truths, the intuitive reason which commands us to believe in them is above all derivative reason ; and in regard to truths revealed to us superna- turally by God, reason calls on us implicitly to submit to them as to an intelligence which cannot err. Reason always demands that we should have evidence, imme- diate or mediate, in order to believe ; but it does not in- THEOLOGY. 427 sist that the truth be completely within the comprehen- sion of the reason, or unclouded by mystery of any de- scription. Faith has ever the support of reason; yet it goes far beyond reason, and embraces much which is far beyond the conceptions of the intellect in its widest grasp and excursions. It is because man has a natural capacity of faith in the unseen and unknown, that he is able to cherish a faith in the supernatural truths of God's Word. It is because he has the natural gift of faith, that he is capable of rising to the supernatural grace. Sect. II. Natural Theology. The Theistic Argument. The idea of God, the belief in God, may be justly represented as native to man. We are led to it by the circumstances in which we are placed calling into energy mental principles which are natural to all. Man does not require to go in search of it : it comes to him. He has only to be waiting for it and disposed to receive it, and it will be pressed on him from every quarter ; it springs up spontaneously, as the plant or animal does from its germ ; it will well up from the depths of his heart ; or it will shine on him from the works of nature, as light does from the sun. But, while the conviction is natural, this does not prove that it is simple, original, unresolvable, unaccountable. The knowledge of distance by the eye is undoubtedly natural to man ; there is a provision made in the orga- nism for its attainment, and all who have an eye acquire it ; yet it is not original, but the result of a variety of processes, physiological and psychological, which can be pointed out.. Our conviction as to God seems to me to be of a like nature ; it is not a single instinct incapable of analysis, but is the proper issue of a number of simple principles, all tending to one point. Such being its na- ture, the process admits of explicit statement and satis- factory defence. 428 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN Among metaphysicians of the present day it is a very common opinion that our belief in God is intuitive. In particular this is the view set forth by a school in Ger- many and in this country, which allows to Kant that the speculative reason can find or devise no valid argument in favour of the Divine existence. Left without mediate proof, they have called in a special cognition, intuition, or feeling, under the name of ' God-consciousness ' or ' Di- vine Faith/ If there be any validity in the conditions laid down in this treatise, as to the logic of intuition, those who advocate this view may be called on to show that such an intuition exists ; that it is original — that is, incapable of being resolved into anything else ; and fun- damental — that iSj leaning on nothing else. It may be further demanded that they explain the precise law, that is rule of the intuition's operation. Is it of the nature of an intellectual cognition, or is it a mere feeling, or is it a faith ? What, in particular, is the precise object which it perceives and which it reveals, and how much is re- vealed regarding that object ? Is God revealed as a be- ing, or a person, or a substance? Is he revealed as a power or a cause ? or is he revealed simply as a life ? Is he revealed as a living God ? or as an infinite God ? or as a holy, that is, sin-hating God ? It behoves those who invoke a separate intuition to reply to such questions as these, in a way that is at least approximately correct ; and, in giving the answers, it will be needful to reconcile the replies with the known facts of history, and, in parti- cular, with the degraded views which have been enter- tained, in most countries, of the Divine Being. If it be a partial or mutilated God that is revealed, — say, a bare ab- straction without qualities, or a brute force, or a vague life or activity, — we are left, after all, to depend on other processes when we would clothe him with perfections. If, on the other hand, it be a full-orbed light, shining in THEOLOGY. 429 all the glory of wisdom and excellence and infinity that is hung out in the firmament before the mental eye, the question will have to be answered, How have the great body of mankind come to see Him in such distorted shapes and in such dark or hideous colours ? I am not convinced that we are obliged to call in a separate intuition to discover and guarantee the Divine existence. I agree, with the majority of philosophers and divines in all ages, that the common intelligence, com- bined with our moral perceptions and an obvious expe- rience, lead to a belief in God and his chief attributes. But in the process there may be, and there commonly is, a variety of elements conspiring.* In particular, there are both experiential and a priori elements. I. There are facts involved. These become known to man in the ordinary exercise of his faculties of knowledge. In observing them, he discovers phenomena which bear all the marks of being effects. Everywhere are there traces of plan and purpose ; heterogeneous elements and diverse agencies conspire to the accomplishment of one end. They are made, for example, in the organs of plants and of animals, to take typical forms, which it is- interesting to the eye, or rather, the intellect, to contem- plate, and which look as if they were built up by a skil- ful and tasteful architect. Then every member of the animal body has a purpose to serve, and is so constructed as to promote, not merely the being, but the well-being of the whole. Even in the soul itself there are traces of structure and design. Man's faculties are suited to one another, and to the state of things in which he is placed ; the eye seems given him to see, and the memory to re- * The whole theistic argument is expounded with admirable judg- ment in Buchanan's ' Faith in God, etc.' There is vigorous thinking in Dove's ' Logic of the Christian Faith.' It is not necessary to do more than refer to the Burnett Prize Essays, by Thompson, Tulloch, Orr, etc. 430 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN member, and the laws of the association of his ideas are suited to his position, and his disposition to generalize and his capacity of grouping enable him to arrange into classes, in due subordination, the infinite details of na- ture. If once it be admitted that these are effects, it will not be difficult to prove that they do not proceed from the ordinary powers working in the cosmos. No doubt there are natural agencies operating in the production of every natural phenomenon which may be pressed into the theistic argument ; but the agencies are acting only as they operate in the works of human skill, which are most unequivocally evidential of design. In the con- struction and movements of a chronometer there is no- thing, after all, but natural bodies, and the action of mechanical forces, but there is room for the discovery of high purpose in the collocation and concurrence of the various parts to serve an evident end. It is in the same way that we are led to see traces of design in the works of nature ; we see physical agents made to combine and work to accomplish what is obviously an intended effect. Just as in the construction of a timepiece we discern traces of an effect not produced by the mere mechanical' laws of the parts, so in the construction of the eye we find marks of plan and adaptation which do not proceed from the potency of the coats and humours and muscles and nerves, but which must come from a power above them, and using natural agencies merely as a means to accomplish its end. Facts illustrative of order and adaptation furnish the stock of the common treatises of Natural Theology. Most important ends are served by having them advanced in great number and variety. For not only do they give a religious direction to physical science, not only do they help the devotion of those who are already believers, not only do they confirm the conviction already pro- THEOLOGY. 431 duced, — they tend to produce the conviction. I am aware that there are intuitions involved in the process, and in particular the intuition of causation. But the in- tuitions are called forth by facts. It is the trace of ef- fects which evokes the intuition of causality. A son of the desert being asked how he came to believe that a God existed, replied, that he knew it as he knew from traces on the sand that a beast or a man had passed. By all means then let works unfolding marks of design in the universe be multiplied, and let each take up its own department and yield its peculiar contribution. Nor let it be urged that one case is as good as a thousand or a million. There are, I admit, single cases which are decisive, — such, for example, is the construction of the eye, — but in all these the adaptations are numerous, and they should be carefully unfolded. It is by the number and diversity of instances that the possibility of doubt is precluded. The single trace of a foot in the desert might scarcely have seemed conclusive to the sa- vage; the presence of many would have settled the ques- tion beyond all dispute. It is the multiplicity and variety of traces that show so clearly and satisfactorily that na- ture is the effect of construction. It is a happily ordered circumstance that every man has evidence, and evidence in proportion to the extent of his knowledge. The com- mon man, the peasant, the artisan, is furnished with abundance of traces in the portions of nature which fall under his immediate inspection, — in the revolving seasons, in the grass and grain, in the instincts and organs of animals, in his own bodily frame, in the pro- vision made for his wants, and the events of an over- ruling Providence, now encouraging and now punishing him. The man of science, according as he widens his sphere, finds further evidences ; and in proportion as he penetrates deeper, he falls in with more recondite proofs. 432 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN I cannot then agree with those metaphysicians who look on the presentation of instances, or at least the multipli- cation of them, as useless, and who would have writers on Natural Theology to be threading their way for ever among the intricacies of abstract discussion. The fact is, in order to a spontaneous conviction, we do not require to have the mental principle enunciated. The unsophisti- cated mind will have the belief produced more readily and effectually by reading such a work as that of Paley, than by the subtlest exposition of the metaphysics of the argument. Still, there is a metaphysical principle involved, and this should be brought out in every professedly scien- tific statement of the complete argument. The belief will spring up of its own accord when the facts are pre- sented, and this whether the mental law is or is not formalized and expressed ; but those who would review the conviction must have the mental principle as well as the facts unfolded, and it is the office of metaphysics to furnish it to natural theology. II. The principle of causation is involved. The object being offered, the intuition is ready to act. The object presented is an effect, and the intuition demands a cause. It may be admitted that there is a possibility of doubt as to whether the phenomenon is an effect. It is conceiv- able that the stones, lime, wood, and slates might, without any power beyond themselves, have met to form the house in which I dwell ; and it is equally conceivable that the flesh, bones, skin, ligaments of the human frame, might also have congregated into my bodily frame without any higher power contriving their harmony. This link of the argument is not intuitive. The evidence is just so much short of demonstration as to allow the possibility of doubt. But it is a probability, a moral certainty of the highest order. It is quite as certain that the eye is THEOLOGY. 433 a construction, as that a watch is so, or a house is so, or a steam-engine is so. This being admitted, the pheno- menon comes under the mental law, and we are neces- sitated to believe, that this, being an effect, must have a cause. It may be demanded of those who profess to expound the whole argument, and who appeal to the principle of causation, that they should specify the nature of the prin- ciple and show wherein lies its validity. If they derive it from an extended experience, it will always be compe- tent for the sceptic to urge that the widest experience of human science and of history cannot justify the univer- sality of the law. True, in this world every effect seems to have a cause, but our experience in the cosmos does not entitle us to go beyond it, as we must do, when we seek a cause of the cosmos. Hence the importance, if we would bind firmly the ligaments of the theistic argu- ment together, of showing that the principle of causa- tion is a primary one, prior to experience and above it. It may be further required of those who appeal to the principle, that they unfold its precise nature. In doing so they will find that every joint of the reasoning is firm, and capable of repelling all the weapons which have been directed against it. It is an essential part of the internal law that it re- quires the cause to be adequate to produce the effect ; it must be a power to produce the effect, the given effect.* Here again an experiential element must, I should sup- pose, enter. Experience must tell us what the precise effect is. Experience, too, must tell us that there is no power in the common agencies of nature, without an ar- rangement made for them, to run into these typical forms and beneficent collocations. The intuition, meanwhile, # I have endeavoured to establish the positions here used, P. II. B. III. C. II. s. 8. 2f 434 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN insists not only on a cause, but a competent cause for this effect, and for every separate effect, and for the whole effect in its beautiful co-ordination and harmonious ad- justment. Our idea of the cause thus grows and accu- mulates with our idea of the extent of the effect, till at last it is felt to be far beyond human comprehension. It is an essential element of the law of causation that if the effect be a real thing, the cause must also be real quite as much so as the effect. Hence the importance of adhering to the doctrine of natural realism as opposed to idealism. For when the effect is supposed to be in part or altogether a creation of the contemplative mind, the cause is apt to be regarded in the same ideal light. It is of the nature of the law of causation that it looks for the cause in a substance, in an existing thing having power and capable of action. The intuition does not say what the nature of the substance must be : it says, how- ever, that it must be a substance with a power commen- surate with the effect. And what is the effect ? It is an harmonious adjustment, a union of agency, a combina- tion of effort far beyond our power of comprehension, and the cause, whatever it be, must reside in an existence com- petent for all this. So far the mental principle, proceed- ing on very obvious facts, can carry us. Perhaps it can conduct us no further without the aid of other intuitions employing other facts. But in guiding us so far it has fulfilled its function and discharged an important office in God's service. It will be observed that the principle of causation, while it constrains us to seek for a power in a substance, does not, when properly interpreted, necessitate us to look for an infinite series of causes. The intuition is satisfied when it reaches a Being with power adequate to the whole effect ; and if, on the contemplation of the nature of that Being, we find no marks of His being an effect, the intui- THEOLOGY. 435 tion makes no call on us to go further. It feels restless indeed till it attains this point. As long as it is mount- ing the chain, it is compelled to go on ; it feels that it can- not stop, and yet is confidently looking for a termination ; but when it reaches the All- Powerful Being, it stays in comfort, as feeling that it has reached an unmovable rest- ing-place. III. Other intuitions take hold of other facts, and confirm the argument, and clothe the Divine Being with a variety of perfections. The argument is a cumulative one. It gets materials from a great number and diver- sity of quarters, indeed from every quarter. It is the business of natural theology as a science to spread out these, and of metaphysics to give an exact expression to the intuitive elements. (1.) There is the conviction which we have of self as a being, intelligent, thinking, loving, willing. It is the know- ledge which we have of ourselves as spiritual beings which suggests the idea of God who is a spirit. Those who, like Hobbes, or like the French Sensationalists, make sen- sation the only inlet of knowledge and ideas, can never consistently reach a spiritual God. The possession of a soul by us justifies us in regarding God as a being with intelligence and personality. We are constrained to look for an adequate cause of the marks of design in the uni- verse, and we cannot rest till we call in a Designing Mind. Besides, this self is an important part of the effect, and we look for intelligence as alone capable of producing in- telligence. Our idea of the Great Original Cause of all things is thus at one and the same time enlarged and rendered more definite. (2.) I have shown that man has a very peculiar class of intuitive convictions bearing on the subject of moral good. In particular, every one has a conscience, which declares that there is an indelible distinction between 2 p 2 436 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN good and evil. Surely the God who implanted that con- science must himself love the good which it would lead us to love, and hate the evil which it would impel us to hate. This moral power in man manifests itself in lead- ing us to cherish a conviction of obligation to a law above itself, independent of itself and of the mind which looks to it, and having authority or right to enjoin and forbid. I shall not go the length of positively affirming that this binding law of itself implies a lawgiver, but I do main- tain that the mind feels something wanting till it hears of a Moral Governor who is ever ruling, and is ready to re- ward and punish. (3.) The mind has a strong conviction that there is an infinite existence. Space and time are conceived by them- selves as unbounded, and wherever they are, there may be substance dwelling in them. But infinite extension and duration, and our belief regarding them, are felt to be void and empty till we are able to place in them infinite substance with infinite attributes ; but when it has done so, the mind feels that it has found the wanting truth, and is satisfied supremely and to the full. Thus it is that I would build up the cumulative idea. But I would have it remarked that what I have sought to construct so systematically, is spontaneously reared in a much more irregular or piecemeal manner; that which I have placed first coming last ; or, in too many cases, very important elements, such as the recognition of the high spirituality and holiness, or even the unity of the Divine plan and personality, being altogether omitted, so as to exhibit a partial, or broken, or distorted image ; or the whole may happily be reared at once by the strong intuitive energy, evoked and trained by a Christian edu- cation. Several advantages arise from giving this account of the genesis of the conviction. The argument thus built THEOLOGY. 437 postulates no new or peculiar intuitions other than those which guide us in all thought of a lofty or a profound character. Our appeal is to the universal principles of humanity, on which all men act in other matters, and which they are not at liberty summarily to discard when it would constrain them to believe in a Great and Good Being, the Author of their own being and of the universe. It embraces the same mixture of elements, experiential and intuitive, as is found in the arguments which carry conviction in the more important transactions of life. It carries with it the sanction of our constitution, and yet allows observation to contribute out of its ever-accumu- lating stores. When ingenious men make the inference demonstrative, it holds out incitements to other ingenious men to detect weaknesses and breaks in the links of the chain. When there is a loose appeal to consciousness or faith, there is always a possibility of persons urging in reply, * You may have such a sentiment, and I allow you freely to indulge it, but do not impose it on me ;' or more frequently this vague feeling may be satisfied with a God as vague and empty as itself. If the account given above be correct, then the grounds of our belief can be spread out, and the argument defended, the experiential ele- ments by the logic of induction, and the mental elements by the logic of intuition ; and the whole pressed home, in an appeal which no one is at liberty to decline to look at or to accept. The account given shows how the argument may be resisted. The conviction springs up naturally, but not necessarily. Men may overcome it, being led into a la- byrinth of sophistry from which they discover no outlet, or, more frequently, being hardened by an encouraged pnde, or sensualized by a course of vice. An atheist is a phenomenon which rarely presents itself ; and when it does, it is to be viewed with a feeling of humiliation and 438 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN compassion. It may be allowed, I think, that there have been persons who have strived hard to persuade them- selves that there is no God, and have so far succeeded that they are troubled with the conviction only at some of the more lucid or awful moments of their lives. We see how man is responsible for his belief in God. Were the argument altogether apodictic, there would be no possibility of doubt, and therefore no room for the consent or dissent of the will. But the argument being moral, and not demonstrative, there is room for the exer- cise of an evil heart in rejecting it, and therefore of a candid spirit in falling in cheerfully with it. The account given shows not only how we can build up on defensible grounds the argument for the Divine existence, but also how we can construct a defence of His more peculiar perfections, such as His goodness, justice, and infinity. Those who describe the whole process as one of feeling, are apt to take a very light and loose view of the Divine Being; they talk of Him as mere power, or mere activity, or mere life. But when we give a wiser and juster view of the conviction, we see that the same considerations which lead us to believe in his existence also constrain us to believe in his unbending righteous- ness and his spotless holiness. Following out the theory, we can account for the low, the unworthy, the perverted representations taken and given of the Divine character. W T hen the higher intui- tions of the mind are not called into exercise by proper training and the appropriate objects, they lie, to a great extent, dormant, and so God, or the gods, come to be largely stripped of spiritual or moral qualities. As men's minds became barbarized and narrowed, their attention was confined to a very limited class of objects as being the proper effects of the Divine power. God came to be contemplated not as the author of creation, or as the THEOLOGY. 439 actor in it throughout, but as an agent merely in certain portions of it, which were contemplated with peculiar wonder or fear; and as these portions were viewed as inconsistent with each other, there arose gods many and lords many. The doctrine of the unity of God, and of the spirituality of God, being lost sight of, the gods came to be multiplied indefinitely, according as it suited the impulses, the fears, the superstitions of the votaries, or the interests of the priests and their temple. The dis- tinction between God and His works being lost sight of, distorted traditions, and baseless fables and myths, the natural expression of human wants and wishes, clustered in ever-increasing intensity round the gods, and their places of worship, and certain awful spots in nature, or mysterious agents operating in it ; and these were handed down from mother to son, ever growing in waywardness and strength. In the history of religion we have two classes of phenomena to be accounted for by those who would give an explanation of the nature and genesis of the religious conviction. We have an all but universal belief in a God, or in gods, with nearly as universal a degradation of the character of Deity. The double phe- nomenon can be explained only by supposing that there are native religious tendencies in the mind, ever working but ever liable to be abused and perverted, and requiring to be called forth into healthy exercise by the presenta- tion of suitable objects, and indeed to be guided and di- rected by a standard revelation. We see how the conviction is to be called out, strength- ened and refined. It is by the presentation of objects fitted to awaken the intuitions into energy and to keep them in proper exercise. The idea of a moral and spiri- tual God is to be aroused and kept alive by the atten- tion being directed to moral and spiritual truths. This is what is done, in the best of all modes — in the concrete 440 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN mode, in the Word of God — which ought therefore to be thrown open to children at an early age. This is what is done in a religions training, conducted according to the Word of God. A God who is at once Light and Love is set before us, and he is represented as revealed to fallen man in the face of his Son ; holy precepts are enjoined by Him as the guardian of duty ; and thus is generation after generation reared, the child being trained by the parent, and the child becoming the parent in order to train the child. Natural Theology is also fitted to con- firm and widen this conception among the comparatively few who may be expected to study it. According as men are taught to look on their own nature as spiritual, so will they be disposed to look on God as a Spirit ; and accord- ing as they are educated to look on the conscience as an un defeasible property of humanity, so will they be led to look on God as essentially holy. Still it is only, I believe, by an abiding written revelation that the truth can be made patent to the great mass of mankind, or saved from perversion by the fancies, the foolish speculations, and the infidelity of the educated. Only thus can we get light admitted into the dwelling of the poor man, and into the heart of the busy man of the world, and only thus get it handed down from age to age. I am aware that even though the Bible were withdrawn, the religious conceptions would go down, in lands which had once enjoyed its light, to the next age in comparative purity. But as generations succeeded which had not been trained in its lessons, I am convinced that the great mass of the people would speedily lapse into some degraded worship, probably of the Mormon type, and that the philosophers, pursuing their own favourite ideas, would exercise little influence, certainly little influence for good, and care little to put forth what little they have over an unthinking mul- titude, who would appreciate their distant and refined THEOLOGY. 441 speculations only by evincing at times their shrewd sense of their practical absurdity. It is by a permanent Lumi- nary being kept up in the sky that we expect light to be so diffused over our world that all men may behold it, and walk in it, and see objects in it. Sect. III. On the Immortality of the Soul. The doctrine of the soul's immortality cannot be esta- blished by rigid demonstration any more than that of the Divine existence. But in the one as in the other there are necessary principles involved, which look to obvious facts, and issue in a conviction which maybe de- scribed as natural. The expounded argument is the ex- pression of processes which are spontaneous. It draws materials from a variety of quarters and admits of accu- mulation. No one of the elements is in itself conclusive, but in the whole there is a high probability quite entitled to demand belief and practical action. There are three intuitive elements involved. I. There is the intuition of self as a being, a substance, a spiritual substance. Every one is immediately conscious of a self different from the material objects which press themselves on his notice, and of the action of mental at- tributes in no way resembling the properties of matter, of lofty thoughts and far-ranging imaginations and high moral sentiments, of lively and fervent emotions and of a power of choice and fixed resolution. The circumstance that the bodily organism is dissolved at death is no proof that these qualities or the existence in which they inhere shall perish. We see the body die, but we never see the spirit die. We know that the soul has existed ; we have no evidence that it ceases to exist. The burden of proof may legitimately be laid on those who maintain that it does. The soul exists as a substance, and will continue to exist unless destroyed by a power from without capable 442 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN of producing this special effect. I doubt whether the argument can be stretched further. It is possible to con- ceive that the dissolution of the body may be an adequate cause of the destruction of the soul, and the idea could not be repelled by any positive demonstration. It could only be urged in reply that there is no necessary connec- tion between the breaking-up of the bodily organism and the death of the soul, and that the soul is convinced that it may look on in the midst of the struggles of the ma- terial dissolution and survive when they are ended. And here it is worthy of being noticed that we have no experience of any one thing being absolutely annihi- lated. Man knows no such thing even among material objects. He casts wood into the fire, and the existing combination of its elements is destroyed, but the elements themselves are not lost ; one part has gone down into the ashes, another has gone up into the air, and not one particle has perished. What is true of material particles is no less true of physical forces. Man cannot create a physical force, and as little can he destroy it ; if it be in a statical state, he may bring it forth into a dynamical one ; if it be in activity, he may contrive to counteract it; but he cannot create it on the one hand, not put it out of ex- istence on the other. The force which came from the sun to the plants in the form of heat in the geological age of the coal-formation is not lost ; it was received by the ve- getable organisms, it was laid up in the strata of the earth, and is ready to burst forth, on the needful conditions be- ing supplied, in fire and flame, and be a source of mecha- nical force in steam. And if no material particle is ever lost, and no physical force lost, is it consistent with the analogy of nature to suppose that mental force is lost ? If mind is extinguished on the dissolution of the body, it is the only force known to us as being absolutely anni- hilated, and yet it looks and feels as if it were the most imperishable of them all- THEOLOGY. 443 II. There is the conviction of moral obligation and re- sponsibility pointing to a judgment day and a state of righteous retribution. The argument built on this ground is felt by many strong minds to be the strongest of all. Kant, so severe in his criticism of the psychological ar- gument, yields to the moral one. Chalmers fondly dwells on it as the one which actually carries weight with man- kind. It proceeds on the existence of a moral faculty ; but its validity does not depend on any peculiar view which may be taken by us of the moral powers in man. It is enough that man be acknowledged to be under mo- ral obligation — under moral law : that law is imperative — it commands and it forbids : it is a supreme law — claim- ing authority over all faculties and affections, over in particular all voluntary desires and acts. This law in the heart points to a lawgiver who hath planted it in our constitution, and who sanctions and upholds it. Upon our recognizing God as lawgiver, the conscience an- nounces that we are accountable to him ; " so then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." But if we are to give account to God, there must be a day of reckoning to arrive — in this life, or, if not in this life, in the life to come. He who hath appointed the law must needs be judge ; He who has appointed it so authorita- tively, and proclaimed it so publicly, must needs inquire whether it has or has not been obeyed. But this judicial work is not fully discharged in this present state of things, and therefore we look for another. There are times when God seems to set up a throne of judgment on the earth, and call men before it. There are ever and anon instruc- tive examples of studiously concealed wickedness being brought to light and exposed ; of the arm of violence be- ing arrested, when the blow was about to descend ; and of the deceitful man being caught in the net which he laid for others. These cases however are not uniform, or without palpable exceptions ; they are corroborations of 444 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN our moral decisions, but they do not come fully up to the demands of our constitution, which is thereby only strengthened in the conviction and expectation that what is only partial here will, at last, be universal. Our moral nature, giving these general intimations as to the world at large, seems to carry a more special mes- sage to every man, — that he must submit to the judge. This is a feeling which may lie very much dormant in many states of the existence of man ; as when he is en- grossed with business, or absorbed in schemes of earthly ambition; but it seizes many a quiet moment to insi- nuate the truth committed to it ; it awakes with terrible power in the state of relaxation which succeeds the fever heat of the evil propensities ; it issues its lightning flashes in the dark hour of disappointment ; it raises its sharp voice in the stillness of the sick chamber ; and gives forth foreboding utterances, which few dare despise when they realize the thought that the time of their departure is at hand. I am not seeking to disturb men by dreams in the night, which have no corresponding realities in the day; I am not raising up ghosts in the darkness to frighten men, as if they were children, into a salutary fear ; I am asking them to read what is graven, as by a chisel on a rock, oh the constitution and heart of all men. The conscience in this life is the anticipation of the arch- angel's trumpet summoning all men to the judgment, and in the other world may become the worm that never dies, and the fire that is not quenched. III. There is the intuition of personality guaranteeing that the self that lives and sins and the self to be judged is the same being. I am not advancing this as a primary proof that this self must abide after death; I urge it simply to prove that, if the soul outlives the body, it must carry with it its essential personality. The soul which lives after death is the same as lived before. I have previously noticed the circumstance that there THEOLOGY. 445 is nothing lost in this world. In particular, the soul carries with it the conviction that it should abide. This feeling being perverted has led to a doctrine which has been widely entertained in various ages and nations, that the spirit passes from body to body. But in this doctrine of transmigration there is a serious mistake, arising from materialistic ideas, that is, from attaching to the soul ideas which have a meaning only when applied to bodily force. It is easy to conceive of physical force migrating from body to body, losing meanwhile none of its essential qualities. But in supposing that mind thus travels we are obliged to strip it of one of its essential attributes : we suppose that it has a different consciousness in its different habi- tations, and thus deprive it of an abiding personality. It is curious to notice that a similar error has made its ap- pearance of late among a class of thinkers who profess to be looking into great depths, but in so doing have over- looked a truth near at hand. According to the panthe- istic doctrine of these times, the soul at the separation from the body goes out as it were into a great ocean of spiritual existence. This doctrine is also materialistic. We can conceive of air thus rushing into air, and of a bucketful of water losing itself in a river ; and why ? be- cause neither air nor water ever had a separate and con- scious personality. The soul as long as it exists must retain its personality as an essential property, and must carry it along with it wherever it goes. The moral con- viction clusters round this personal self. The being who is judged, and saved or condemned, is the same who sinned and continued in his sin, or who believed and was justified when on earth. Upon these arguments others grow which have more or less of force. There is, for example, the shrinking from annihilation, the longing for immortality, — a feeling which seems to guarantee the veracity of the expectation che- 446 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN rished. Then there are affections, pure and holy, spring- ing up on earth but not allowed to be gratified on earth, but we may hope to have satisfied to the full in heaven. There are attachments and profitable friendships firmly clenched only to be violently snapped asunder by the stroke of death, but which we expect to have renewed in a place where there are no breaches. Do not those swell- ing feelings which agitate the bosoms of friends when one of them is summoned away seem to show that these di- vided waters are yet to meet ? Then we see from time to time intellectual powers cultivated to the utmost, but blasted in the flower when they seemed to promise a large fruit. May we not believe that in a universe in which nothing is made in vain, and nothing of God's workman- ship lost, these powers have been nurtured to serve some great and good end in a future state of existence? These facts combined seem to show that there are means insti- tuted in this world which have their full consummation in the world to come. Sect. IV. Pantheism. Pantheism has some qualities to recommend it to our favourable regard, especially when it is viewed at a dis- tance. To be able to reduce the multiplicity in the uni- verse to unity may seem to be about the highest achieve- ment of human ingenuity, and the end to which every separate science points. To represent every existing thing as a modification of the one God seems to account on the one hand for the variety which we find in nature, and on the other hand for the wonderful mutual connec- tion and dependence of all the parts. The system fosters the admiration which the enlightened mind feels in the contemplation of the beauties of nature and art, and thus falls in readily with those assthetic feelings which become stronger in every nation as it advances in refinement and THEOLOGY. 447 civilization. It allows too of the outpouring of some of the devout sentiments of our nature. It leads us to con- nect God with his works, and makes us feel as if our ad- miration of beauty were an act of devotion paid to God, of whom this beauty, whether it proceed from the forces of nature or the ingenuity of man, is an exhibition. If it does not compel us to fall on our knees in prayer, it at least encourages praise, for what is all this admiration, whether merely heaving in the breast or expressed in glowing lan- guage, of the loveliness and grace of the objects around and above us, and of the order and harmony of the powers in nature, but just a hymn of praise to Him who lives and acts in them and indeed constitutes them? Pantheism calls forth and fosters these feelings because of the truth which it has retained, — truth often left out or rejected in certain mechanical systems of nature, in which, to use the strong language of Thomas Carlyle, God is represented as " sitting as it were apart, and guiding it, and seeing it go." As embracing these truths it can use, though often in a hypocritical sense, the profoundest phraseology of the Bible, and speak of God as incarnate in his works and especially in man. But it must be added, that there are other considerations which recommend pantheism to not a few. Under some of its forms it fosters the deepest; pride ; as, for instance, in the system of Spinoza, where man is represented as a mode of Deity, and in that of Hegel, where human intelligence is represented as identical with the Divine. Under every form it delivers mankind from a sense of personal respon- sibility to God, who may call his intelligent creatures to ac- count ; and from all sense of guilt and fear of punishment in a future life. Being a modification of Deity, we are not called to cherish any deep sense of dependence on Him, and we have no motive to pray to Him ; more especially as His whole procedure is an eternal flow in a predeter- 448 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN mined channel beyond the control of our prayers. No doubt we are liable, even according to this system, to be, not exactly punished, but exposed to suffering if we pur- sue certain courses ; but all this does not imply that we have given offence to a living being, that we have raised up by our conduct a holy indignation in the breast of any one, or that we shall have to appear at last at a throne of judgment. What we have to bear (this is the sort of spirit which Carlyle has caught from feeding on the German pantheists), let us bear in a spirit of manly pride, as know- ing that we cannot by any entreaties influence a power whose movements are fixed from eternity. And as to the world to come, doubtless there is such a world, but there God is as unperson al as He is here, and we become like Him by casting off our supposed personality, and, like the burst bubble, become swallowed up and lost in the awful ocean of Being, out of which we were blown to float for one brief hour as a spectacle on the surface. These are the considerations which have recommended it to some of the best and some of the worst principles of our nature. It is needful to examine it, and yet it is difficult to do so, for, Proteus-like, it takes a new shape as we seize it, cloud-like it eludes us as we would grasp it. Few of those attached to it have ever attempted to give it a defined shape, and most of those who have attacked it have had no fixed or conceded points from which to assail it, and the weapons that they shoot neither wound nor slay. " They fight in vain : the shadows which they destroy spring up again in a moment, like the heroes in Valhalla, again to be able to amuse themselves in blood- less conflicts." There have been very exaggerated statements made as to the extent of the prevalence of pantheism, and this both by its foes and its friends. Some, in a sensitive apprehension of it, have discovered it in systems which THEOLOGY. 449 have not avowed it, and in which there is an open ac- knowledgment of the existence of a personal God. The historians of philosophy of the school of Hegel discover pantheism, even in the Hegelian form, in almost every system of philosophy, Asiatic or Grecian. I grant that in the great majority of the^)opu)ar superstitions and pagan philosophies there has been no sharp line of demarcation drawn between God and his works, and in most of them there is supposed to be some matter coeval with God, and independent of him. This arises certainly not from an elevating, but from a degrading tendency in the human mind, which has a difficulty in conceiving of a spiritual God, the creator of all things. Acknowledging that this confounding of God and his works is nearly universal in all systems of religion or philosophy not derived directly or indirectly from revelation, I am per- suaded that comparatively few have allowed themselves to sink so far in the bogs of metaphysics as not to look on God as a person, or to believe that God is in no way distinct from his works. The number of avowed pan- theists must ever be very few, fewer than belong to Budd- hism, Brahminism, Mahometanism, or even Mormonism, and they are to be found exclusively in the narrow circle of the refined and the idle. The creed is of far too subtle and cobweb a texture to stand the rude jerks and the storms of common life. It has assumed an immense number of shapes, if shape it can be said to have, whose very nature is to be shape- less. The following seem to be the more decided. 1. There is Material Pantheism. According to this, it is the mere matter of the universe, with its forces, its life, its thought, as the result of organism, which consti- tutes the One All, that may be called God. This is the lowest sort of pantheism, indeed it scarcely deserves the name, for it has no proper unity amidst the diversity. Yet 2 G 450 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN I suspect it is, after all, the most prevalent among those who are inclined to pantheism in this country or in Prance, and in the extreme left of the school of Hegel, — and this has as many supporters in Germany as the higher forms have. It has something to recommend it to vulgar minds, which dislike a living God, and*yet are not prepared to give up all belief in Deity. It admits nothing but what can be made patent to sense, and yet it has a way of deceiving itself, by speaking of the aggregate of material existences as if they were one existence, capable of some- thing like order and intelligence. 2. There is Organic or Vital Pantheism. The diffi- culty which we have in defining life, or in apprehending it, holds out a temptation to many to explain all things by it, which, in fact, is to explain the ignotum per ignotius. All nature, they say, is full of life ; and this statement is doubtless true, if by life is meant simply activity. The old Cartesian doctrine, according to which matter is mere extension, and is in itself utterly sluggish and inert, can- not stand in the midst of the discoveries of modern science, which show us the chemical, electric, and calorific forces all characterized by incessant activity. But while matter is active in a sense, this does not show that any one par- ticle of it, or that the material world as a whole, has life, meaning organic life. The mystical view that nature is a plant, an animal, or an organism, appeared in various forms of Platonism ; the equally unintelligible idea that all nature has life, comes out in the writings of certain physical speculators of the school of Schelling, and has passed over into the poetry and the poetical prose of this country, and in all cases tends to substitute some sort of impersonal power for a personal God. 3. There is the One Substance Pantheism. Persons begin first by declaring that the material universe is the body, and God the soul. This is an error, for God acts THEOLOGY. 451 independent of the universe, which is his creation. It is not, however, pantheism ; for persons may hold this view, and yet maintain that the two are distinct. It however prepares the way for pantheism, which maintains that there is a spiritual power acting in the material form, the two being all the while one substance. We owe the introduction of this system, as a system, to Spinoza, who tried to found on certain views of Descartes as to the nature of substance. According to this shy, thought- bewildered man, there is but one substance, which sub- stance has attributes which the mind can conceive as its essence and modes, being the affections of the substance. This substance is infinite, a part of it is substance finite, and man is such a part of the Divine Substance. This system has been set forth in his Ethics in a terrible array of confused and confusing definitions, axioms, and de- monstrations, in which things that should be distin- guished are confounded, and propositions that should be proven are unconsciously assumed. Perhaps no one, except Spinoza, ever held his precise doctrine ; but it was eagerly grasped at by those who, towards the end of last century, were seeking to introduce pantheism in a more shadowy form. It might be shown, in opposition to it, that whatever considerations are urged to prove that there is one substance, may be employed to prove that there must be two. 4. There is Ideal Pantheism. It is the issue reached in the course of ages by a process of philosophical specu- lation, starting with improper assumptions, and con- ducted in a wrong method by persons of consecutive and systematic minds, who will follow out their favourite notions, however preposterous the conclusions to which they lead. Kant began with making time and space subjective forms, and Fichte went on to make matter and God himself a subjective creation of the mind. Schelling 2 g2 452 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN sought to eD large the system by making mind and matter, God and the universe, at one and the same time ideal and real, — ideal on the one side, and real on the other ; and Hegel came forward with an artificial dialectic, to show how nothing could become something, and how God becomes conscious in humanity. These systems differ widely ; indeed some of them are absolutely inconsistent with the others. In particular, an ideal pantheism is incompatible with a materialistic, organic, or substantial pantheism. Yet among those who are inclined to these views there is a constant propensity, when attacked, to flee from the one to the other. When we prove that there is a material world, they assert that this external world intellectualized is God ; and again, when we prove that there are laws, typical forms, ideas, above the mechanism of nature, they solemnly announce that these objectified constitute the universe. But we cannot allow the system thus to transmigrate from body to body ; I insist on its abiding in some one of its shapes while we subject it to examination. In the course of our extensive survey we have attained principles quite sufficient to exorcize it, whatever be the form which it assumes. It will be in- structive to find that the intuitions of the mind, while they conduct, with the aid of obvious facts, to a belief in the Divine existence, are utterly inconsistent with pantheism. 1. Pantheism is inconsistent with the intuitive know- ledge which we have both of mind and matter. The universe cannot all be matter, for we are conscious of ourselves possessing thought and intelligence, and of planning, designing, and executing in the exercise of free will. It cannot be a mere organism, for we see material objects which are beneath the organic state, and we are conscious of souls which are above it. It cannot be one substance, for we are as sure that there are two substances as that there is one. It cannot be all idea, or THEOLOGY. 453 mere idea, for we are cognizant of the object as well as of the thought ; and ordinary experience, with the laws of thought building on it, carries us from object to object, from quality to substance, and from effect to cause, the one being real as much as the other. 2. Pantheism is inconsistent with the consciousness of self, with the belief in our personality. It may seem a doctrine at once simple and sublime to represent the uni- verse as e/ Ev Kol nrav, but it is inconsistent with one of the earliest and most irradicable of our primary convictions. If it can be shown that there are two or more persons, it follows that all is not one, that all is not God. Accord- ing to every scheme of pantheism, I, as a part of the universe, am part of God, part of the whole which con- stitutes God. In all consciousness of self we know our- selves as persons ; in all knowledge of other objects we know them as different from ourselves, and ourselves as different from them. Every man is convinced of this ; no man can be made to think otherwise. If there be a God, then, as all His works proclaim, He must be dif- ferent from at least one part of His works, He must be different from me. In the construction of his artificial system of a priori forms, Kant most unfortunately omitted the knowledge of a personal self, and thus speculation, in the hands of his successors, was allowed to flow out into a dreary waste of pantheism. When we restore the conviction of the separate existence of self, and the belief in our continued personality to its proper place, we are rearing an effective barrier in the way of the possible in- troduction of any system in which man can be identified with God or with anything else. 3. Pantheism is inconsistent with man's possession of a will, and a free will. It is the circumstance that man is possessed of a distinct will which suggests the idea that God is not a mere law or principle, but a person 454 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN with a power of voluntary determination. It is in con- sequence of his possessing an inherent and positive free- dom that man is led to look upon God as also free, and this in a higher and more absolute sense, inasmuch as there can be nothing to lay restraint upon His liberty. May we not go a step further, and maintain that the pos- session of voluntary power and freedom on the part of man, is not only fitted to suggest, but is a proof, that the God from whom they proceeded has a will, and that this will is free ? It is not easy to determine, as to certain forms of pantheism, whether they attribute free will to God, or in what sense they affirm or deny it. The doctrine of Hegel, that God awoke to consciousness, and acquired a will in the consciousness and will of man, seems to me to be ut- terly inconsistent with the essential principles of reason, which requires that the cause be adequate to produce the effect. But what adequacy can there be in a power with- out will to produce will ? All forms of pantheism which do not ascribe a separate will to God are liable to the objection that they suppose God to produce in man a free will not possessed by Himself from eternity. If the other alternative be taken, and will be ascribed to Deity, then have we two wills in the universe, the will of God and the will of man, and it follows that all is not one in any intelligible sense, for we have now two distinct wills, which may run counter to each other. Whatever be the philosophic system adopted, we have, as matter of fact, the hundred of millions of distinct wills possessed by human beings. These separate wills show by one pro- cess that God must have a distinct will, and by another process that there must be more than one will in the universe, and both conclusions are inconsistent with a system which says all is one. 4. Our sense of accountability to God as Judge is in- consistent with pantheism. There is in man, we have THEOLOGY. 455 seen, a native principle, which leads him to distinguish between good and evil, which indicates not unobscurely that the evil will be punished, and points to One ready to inflict the penalty. Natural religion, it is true, can say little as to the time and manner of the judgment, but it does announce that the sustainer of the moral law must, among other offices, exercise that of Judge. But the feeling with which we look at the judgment plainly inti- mates that we must submit to the trial in our individual capacity. It is utterly inconsistent with the sentiment to suppose that, prior to the final judgment, man is to be absorbed into Deity. God, as Judge, must be distinct from the persons judged, and we who are judged must be the same as those who committed the deeds. In particular, they who sinned, and they only, are liable to punishment. We have only to follow out the doctrine of persona] responsibility to find it setting aside every form of pantheism. Having thus inquired into the truth of pantheism, we are now at liberty to look at its consequences.* And this, it may be remarked, seems to me to be the proper order in which to proceed in all investigation. The ar- gument from consequences may very properly make us suspicious of a doctrine, but cannot absolutely disprove it. It may be one of the very objects of those who pro- pound an erroneous dogma, to deliver us from the fear of God and the obligations of morality, and they are to be met by proving, not that their opinions are injurious, but that they are unsound. But when we have first shown that a doctrine is untrue, we may then point out the evil consequences which flow from it. It will be found, in fact, that the true always leads to beneficent, and the false to pernicious results. This does not seem * There are fine remarks on the Pantheistic spirit in the First Essay of Bayne's ' Christian Life.' 456 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN to arise, as some have supposed, from the true and the good, from the false and the wicked, being identical, but rather from the pre-ordained connection instituted be- tween them by Him who hath marked His approbation of the true and the good by making them yield happy fruits, and hath branded the false with His disapproba- tion by causing it to be followed by a train of disastrous consequences. In weighing the results to which the system leads, I would not wish to be indiscriminate in the censure be- stowed ; I by no means charge it with leading to every sort of evil. As containing some important elements of truth, it may, under some aspects, have rather an elevat- ing tendency, more especially when compared with those systems in which God is separated altogether from the universe, and made an idle spectator of its mechanism, or those other and superstitious systems in„which he is pictured as guilty of favouritism and caprice. But in comparing it with an enlightened theism, in comparing it with revelation, which it would set aside, it is charge- able with certain very grave consequences. It is supposed to be one of the special advantages of the system that, teaching us to discover God in all his works, it leads us to cherish a perpetual affection towards Him. But in this representation there is as grievous a misunderstanding of the character of man as there is of the character of God. It proceeds on a mistaken view of emotion, and of the objects which call it forth. The sentiment raised by inanimate beauty is a mere aesthetic feeling, and has nothing in it of love, in the adequate sense of the term. The feeling with which we contem- plate a lovely natural scene, such as Loch Lomond or the Trossachs, or a great monument, such as that of Rauch at Berlin, or that of Canova at Vienna, or of Thorwaldsen at Lucerne, is not that required of us when we con tern- THEOLOGY. 4o7 plate the Divine Being. Then it may be doubted whe- ther any abstract truth or general principle is fitted to kindle emotion. Analysis and classification are intended to deepen and amplify our intellectual conceptions, but are by no means fitted to rouse feeling. It is not by dwelling on the grand ideas of the lovely and the good that sentiment is evoked, but by the contemplation of a lovely object or a good individual. These ideas may serve to widen our views and raise our minds above a weak superstition, but they are not fitted nor intended, by Him who hath given us the capacity to form them, to create and cherish affection in our bosoms. It is when a lovely object, a fine statue or painting, is presented, that feelings of admiration are called forth; and in like man- ner, it is when a person supposed to be possessed of good or amiable qualities is brought under our notice that we are led to love him. It follows that in very proportion as we take away the individuality of God, we make it more and more difficult for man to love him; and if we strip Him of personality altogether, we make it impossible for the human heart to cherish any affection towards Him. Hence we find that the pantheist, when he w r ould create a passing feeling of gratitude or affection towards the God of his system, is obliged to personify him. Were he to look upon God as a mere principle of law or order, as a procession of processes, he would find his heart con- tinuing cold and blank as he contemplated Him, and so he uses a species of deception, or yields to a delusion, and represents Him as having consciousness and life, nay, as the only consciousness and the absolute life. In this way he may succeed in exciting a sort of mystic feel- ing, radiant as the evening sky ; but as the body of the luminary, which alone can keep up the glow, is gone, it soon sinks into darkness. Even when the feeling is warm- est, there is an idea ever pressing itself on the mind, that 458 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN the whole representation is fictitious, and hence the glow produced has as little of permanence, and exercises as little control over the practice, as that called forth by a theatrical show or the scenes of a novel. Failing as it does in this its supposed advantage, the system is chargeable with stripping religion of all those severe truths and elevating sentiments which practically influence the minds of men for good. The feeling of personality having been destroyed so far as it is possible for an artificial system to destroy it, he who has imbibed the spirit of pantheism will not be distinguished by much determination, activity, or practical philanthropy. The energetic and devoted character of Fichte may seem to be an example to the contrary ; but, as Archdeacon Hare remarks, " To form a correct judgment concerning the tendency of any doctrine, we should rather look at the fruit it bears in the disciples than in the teacher. For he only made it, they are made by it." We see the true influence of pantheism in the indolent and dreamy character of the Brahmins and Buddhists of the East. It is scarcely conceivable that there should arise among pantheists a great reformer, an energetic philanthropist, a self-devoted martyr. Along with personality there must depart all feelings of responsibility, all sense of obligation, all consciousness of guilt, all apprehension of a judgment- day ; and when these are gone, there can re- main no very acute perception of the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil. This feeling is promoted by the representations given of the eternal ideas, processes, and laws, which are supposed to move on in one everlasting stream, raising up, bearing along with them, and turning to their own use, every event, the important and the unimportant, the evil and the good. Viewed in this light, evil comes to be esteemed the lesser good, or rather, as merely the lesser good for the pre- TEEOLOGI. 459 : for in the end it may come to be the greater, or the very greatest good. It is a necessary tenet of this system that the evil equally with the good is a part of G:d, — some one speaks of the "good as God's right hand, and the evil as the left."' It is vain to suppose that under such a system God can seriously purpose to punish the sin. or that he can so much as condemn it. Those who are thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the system, will be led first of all to excuse evil in themselves, and then they will be led to palliate it in others. One of the issues will be very perverted views :: contemporaneous society and of past history. The resj msibility :: the individual will be lost sight of in the contemplation of the vast processes and sweeping s which move Kke gigantic wheels, apparently as well without as with individual effort ; and crime, espe- cially brilliant and successful crime, will be spoken of with little or no condemnation, because regarded as a step neces^: :: great and good results. Xor is it to be forgotten that pantheism, in nearly all its forms (if not in all), rejects the doctrine of the immortality of the sou], at least of a personal immortality. Oar personality in this life is an illusion, or rather, a delusion, and at death the Irception ceases, and the reality commences in the soul being swallowed up in the all-absorbing One, and lost in its individuality, as the river is when it flows into the ocean. It should be the grand aim and the holy jffiee ;: religion to raise the downward teudencies and to lay a restraint on the evil propensities of huma- md this it ::.n do only by the holy truths which it proclaim and the 5 7~_:-s;.crificiEg sentiments which it calls forth. But so far from providing or fostering these, iieism seems rather to remove them out of the way, or destroy their force : and instead of stemming the » . . . . ° strean :: evil, it rather sails along with it, and helps to sw d its waters. 4G0 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN Such, if I do not mistake, is the influence of pan- theism on the individuals who are under its sway. Equally pernicious would be its influence upon any coun- try in which it might prevail to any great extent. It is foolish indeed to expect or to fear that the majority of any people will ever attach themselves to so mystical, and yet, withal, so artificial a system. The great body of mankind must — happily or unhappily — be far too much engrossed with realities, will be far too eagerly bent on seeking calculable gains, and exposed to far too many real sorrows, to allow of their wandering into this land of dreams and shadows. But if ever pantheism should come to be favourably received or extensively adopted among those addicted to reflection, or possessed of abundant leisure, in any modern nation, the effect on the character of the people would be most pernicious. It would necessitate an immediate revival of the old distinction, done away with by Christianity, of an eso- teric doctrine for the thinking few, and an exoteric doc-, trine for the unthinking many. The inner doctrine of the select class would be an airy pantheism scarcely differing from a blank atheism, and the outer doctrine of the multitude would be a hero-worship, a nature- worship, or an idol-worship ; in short, some description of creature-worship, with all its degrading tendencies. All this would take place without any attempt on the part of the learned to restrain the evil ; nay, the learned would join in the evil and encourage it ; and this wor- ship would be defended by them as a homage paid to the part of the One All as representative of the whole. They would acknowledge that the mass of the people are incapable of seeing any such meaning ; but then, it is by this very circumstance that they themselves are separated from the vulgar, who must necessarily be doomed to act without knowing the significance of their THEOLOGY. 461 acts. " Posterity," says Jacobi, " will not wonder, if in the desert of unbelief, men raise serpents and pray to golden calves once more, and if in this serpent and calf service philosophers tend the altars." In such a state of things it is evident we should have the idle and the educated classes proud, haughty, self-righteous, mostly pleasure-loving and dissolute, and the great body of the people abandoned — without any serious attempt, being made to elevate them — to the grossest darkness and the most grovelling superstition, relieved only by a love of imposing spectacles which impress the senses or excite the imagination ; while now and then, and here and there, we should have some earnest or malicious sceptic attacking the hypocrisy of the one class and the ignorance of the other, and troubling both, without being able to improve either by supply- ing anything more solid or satisfying. So far as I can see, the more advanced nations of modern Europe are to be saved from such an issue only by the active and earnest propagation of Scriptural light. Sect. V. Christian Divinity. It has been found in all ages, that there are intimate points of affinity between Metaphysics, that is, our gene- ralized intuitions, and Theology, that is, the systematized expression of the concrete and scattered truths of reve- lation. In the first speculations of mankind theology and philosophy are inclissolubly intertwined in what has been called Theosophy. At a very early age of the Church of Christ, the Eastern theosophies and certain forms of Platonism became associated with Bible doc- trine. This arose partly from the circumstance that a number of eminent Christian Fathers had, prior to their conversion to Christianity, been attached to philosophy, Asiatic or Grecian ; and partly, I am convinced, by the 462 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN fact that there had been wrought, even into the pagan philosophic systems, a large body of truth, either spring- ing from the native convictions systematized by the inherent sagacity of the mind, or derived from a tradi- tion which had kept afloat a remnant of primitive truth. Platonism, in particular, had many interesting points of correspondence with Christianity. The lofty genius of Plato, nurtured in Eastern as well as Western learning, and drinking deeply of the moral spirit of Socrates, had succeeded in seizing on some of those great natural truths which come closest to Inspired Revelation. In the scholastic ages the logical forms of Aristotle were employed to mould into a certain shape every known truth of religion (as well as of secular knowledge), and may be traced at this day in not a few distinctions and technical phrases of theology. In modern times famous divines and schools of divinity have delighted to couch their expositions of doctrine, and their defences of Christianity, in accordance with the favourite prin- ciples and often in the very nomenclature of particular philosophers of eminence. The influence of Descartes is visible in the rigid, dogmatic, and deductive method of not a few theological treatises of the second half of the seventeenth century. Even the philosophy of Locke, though possessing little affinity to the profounder truths of Christianity or sympathy with them, may be detected as regulating the defences of religion, and the manner in which it was recommended during last century, — as when it is shown us that experience, external or internal, is in favour of Christianity, and that piety promotes the hap- piness of the possessor. The speech of those who talk much of a moral sense " bewray eth " them, and shows that they have taken their views directly or indirectly from Shaftesbury or Hutcheson. In the United States of America the metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards were THEOLOGY. 463 incorporated for two or three ages with New England theology. The formidable nomenclature and the brist- ling distinctions of Kant, as also the subtle and glowing intuitionalism of Schleiermacher (the two being often mixed incongruously together) may be traced in almost every theological work published in Germany for the last half-century, and come out in the writings of not a few British and American divines who have felt the im- pulse of the great Teutonic invasion of thought. The airy spirit of Coleridge has been caught by a consider- able body of English divines of high literary reputation. It may be doubted whether religion has not, on the whole, been injured to a greater extent than it has been benefited by its close association with philosophy. The gnosticism of the East introduced the earliest formida- ble heresies into the Christian Church, and drew manv away from the simplicity of the truth into mystic specu- lations. In the writings of Origen, and others of a kin- dred spirit, the statements of the Word were thought to be of little value in their literal interpretation, and are sublimated into gorgeous theories, constructed in a region of gilded clouds. No doubt many of those who thus in- troduced the gentile philosophy into the religion of Jesus, imagined that they might thereby benefit Christianity, but in fact they corrupted it, — quite as much as those who with like intentions introduced pagan rites into Christian worship, and pagan statues into Christian temples. In the medieval ages the scholastic bandages, when they did not positively strangle the vital truths, did yet set them in so rigid a shape as to injure the life, and made them re- pulsive to many souls which might have been attracted by the same truths presented in a so much more rounded and flexible and altogether natural form in the pages of the iving Word. The professed demonstrations and deduc- tions, conducted in the mathematical mode of Descartes 464 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN and Samuel Clarke, were guilty of many a paralogism, and this often tempted shrewd men to doubt of the whole system which had been supported by such brittle but- tresses. The philosophies of Locke and of Hutcheson could not appreciate one-half of the great soul of Chris- tianity; the sanctifying truths of revelation assumed a clipped, a bare, and a dry appearance in the pages of those whose appeal was to sense, and in whose view happiness is the greatest good. Edwards had undoubtedly a spirit of angelic brightness and depth of penetration, yet it may be doubted whether certain profound and mysterious doctrines of Christianity are most expediently defended by being identified with his speculations as to necessity and original sin. The theologies which have ramified from the trunk of Kant, or sprouted from the germ of Schleiermacher have laboured to move Christianity from the old foundation of faith in the testimony of God, on to a new ground in the Practical Reason, or a God-con- sciousness ; and the issue is that those who have felt their influence have been seeking to construct each one a reli- gion for himself, retaining only so much of revealed truth as may please his heart and fancy or suit his purpose. The school of Coleridge has experienced how difficult it is to serve two such masters as religion and literature, and in its airy excursions has had a tendency to fly off' from some of those truths — such as the Inspiration of Scripture and the Atonement of Christ — to which unso- phisticated minds have ever clung most resolutely as feel- ing that their soul's peace is involved in them. Can no method be devised of making philosophy and theology co-operate without their being confounded ? In particular, is there no way by which religion may call in philosophy to her aid in fighting her battles against error, and yet prevent the powerful and ambitious ally from set- tling in her country and lording it over it? The following THEOLOGY. 465 rules might at once guide and guard religio-philosophic speculation. I. Metaphysics have important negative purposes to serve in theology. 1. Sound metaphysics may be employed to meet un- sound metaphysics. When Scriptural truths are assailed on professedly philosophic grounds, by philosophy may these foundations be examined. Thus some object to the Scriptures that they represent God as cherishing moral indignation against sin ; their views may be counteracted by showing that, if we are entitled to argue from our mental nature that God is a good God, we are authorized on the same ground to look upon him as hating iniquity. If it be maintained that the Scripture doctrines are not to be believed because they land us in speculative diffi- culties, and cannot be fully comprehended, philosophy is at hand to show that the truths which are most fully be- lieved by us, such as those relating to being, cause, in- finity, to the growth of the plant and of the animal, and even to such agents as heat, light, and electricity, all go out into mystery.* But in performing this office of expulsion, philosophy should not be allowed to take the place which had been usurped by the power which it has driven out. What I mean may be illustrated thus. Certain doctrines regarding necessity and free will have found their way into theology, and wrought not a little mischief. Some have given such an account of man's freedom as to make him indepen- dent of God, and to set aside the Scripture doctrine of his being enslaved by the influence of sin. At the oppo- site extreme some have gone so far as to deny to man all proper freedom of will, and some have identified their doctrine of an iron necessity with the Bible doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty. Both of these extreme errors may * See ' Glauben unci Wissen,' von Dr. H. Ulrlci. 2 H 466 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN be removed, as I think, by a judicious exposition of the true facts of human nature, by proving on the one hand that there is a causation sui generis in the human will, and by showing on the other hand that consciousness tes- tifies to an essential freedom in every genuine exercise of the voluntary power in man. But when this end has been accomplished, let metaphysics henceforth retire into its own territory, and let not the peculiar views which we may entertain in regard to the will, or the precise psycho- logical nature of freedom, be allowed to rule in Divinity proper, and to overawe the honest interpretation of Scrip- ture, according to exegetical principles. 2. Metaphysics may be pre-eminently useful in keeping metaphysics in their own place. For it is the tendency of metaphysics to be ever pressing beyond their own do- main, and encroaching on their neighbour's territory, — • sometimes avowedly and as claiming a right, more fre- quently in a covert manner, denying that they are meta- physics, to which they may even profess an antipathy ; — but under whatever pretext they come, if they propose to settle in theology, they must be driven out as intruders. Metaphysics have a very important province — notall truths, but first truths — and to that province they must be con- fined. No one will now tolerate for a moment any claims which they may put forth to construct a natural philoso- phy, a botany, or a chemistry. A primary philosophy may do some little in the way of setting fast the foundations of these sciences, but they must be built up by materials got from other quarters. And just as little is it capable of rearing a theology, and determining every question which may be started as to God and man and nature, and their reticulated mutual relations. History, the his- tory of all ages and countries, gives a testimony as de- cided as it is uniform, that human reason is incapable of forming a religion which can stand the tests of reason THEOLOGY. 467 and meet the felt wants of man. He who would con- struct a physical science must go to the volume of nature ; he w T ho would construct a theology must go to the volume of revelation. It is no disparagement to metaphysical science that it cannot do what it is the province of other sciences to accomplish. It is no disparagement to geo- metry that it cannot draw out a system of anatomy, nor in any way to the discredit of chemistry that it cannot build up a science of geology. Nor is it any degrada- tion to speculative philosophy that it cannot rear a sci- ence of Divinity. Each science, like a planet, has its own orbit, and when it keeps to this it has good purposes to serve ; but if it passes beyond, it will fail to accomplish its proper ends, and may come into destructive collision with other powers. " We do not enlarge the sciences," says Kant, "but disfigure them, when we suffer their bounda- ries to run into one another." He who would seek for a quickening religion among the maxims of philosophy, is, as Bacon says, seeking the living among the dead, and must ever come back wdth an aching heart and a feeling of disappointment. A wise metaphysics, which know r s its own place, which is the place of principles, will find it to be for its interest — indeed absolutely essential to the pre- servation of its influence, and the protection of its own territory, in the present day, when it has so many enemies — to rebuke every attempt which may be made by its less prudent but more ardent supporters to make it intrude into the province of other sciences. II. Metaphysics, without entering Theology, may lend it some aid. 1. It may show that the difficulties and mysteries which meet us in theology are the same as those which come up in metaphysics, being those which arise from the limitation of our faculties, and the imperfection of our knowledge. " No difficulty," says Sir W. Hamilton, 2 h 2 468 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN "emerges in theology, which has not previously emerged in philosophy." The difficulties of Revealed Religion chiefly congregate round the doctrines of the Trinity, of the De- crees of God, and Original Sin. The difficulties of the first arise simply from the mystery which attaches to this, but also to every other doctrine regarding the Divine Na- ture; we can understand so much, but learn of vastly more, beyond our comprehension. Those who would doubt of the triune nature of God because they cannot fully com- pass it, will find themselves landed in precisely the same difficulties when they would fathom the infinity, or in- deed any of the perfections of God. The difficulties which may spring from the doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty are no other than the old ones which philosophers have met with from the beginning, as they sought to reconcile freedom with causation. The doctrine of Original Sin does raise up difficulties, and may seem to bear hard against the character of the Creator ; but an analogous insoluble problem presents itself in Natural Religion. How has sin been permitted under the government of a God at once Omnipotent and Good? Nay, it is the very same difficulty which presses on us when we ask the question, How does it happen that all human beings, left though they be to the freedom of their own will, do in fact begin to sin as they begin to act for them- selves? He who would answer this question and not avoid it, must come to an original sin, encompassed with all the difficulties of the Bible doctrine ; but if he dis- card Christianity, he has no relief from the evil, he has no light to set over against the darkness. Metaphysics are competent to demonstrate that no man can deliver himself from these difficulties by fleeing from Christianity to what may be represented as a Rational Theism. 2. Metaphysics may furnish not a few evidences in favour of Christianity. Thus it supplies the main ele- THEOLOGY. 469 ments in the proof of those great doctrines which the Word of God presupposes, such as the existence of the infinity and unity, of God, and the immortality of the soul, and 3 judgment-day, — truths very much lost sight of in heathenism, and the prominence given to which in the Jewish Scriptures is a proof of their being di- vinely inspired, All works of Natural Theology pro- perly constructed have a tendency to strengthen the foundations of Christianity. In particular, the inductive investigation of the moral faculty in man may yield a number of evidences in favour of the Divine origin of our religion. The conscience declares that there is an indeli iuction between good and evil, and conducts d easy process to the conviction, that God approves rood and hates the evil. The moral power points to a law. holy, just, and good, a law which all men have broken, and which no nation shut out from supernatural light, and no pagan philosophy, has ever exhibited in its purity. When that law shines forth in the Word, and when, in particular, it is manifested in the character of the God-Alan, the conclusion is forced on us that those who make it thus shine upon us in its brightness, must : had an express vision from heaven. The consci- ence, rightly interpreted, declares that all men have .-d. and so given offence to God. The same moral :r indicates, not obscurely, that sin deserves to be ished, and points to God as ready to inflict the pe- nalty. Great service, as it appears to me, is -rendered to Christianity, when it is shown, by means of an inquiry the nature of conscience, that these are truths of Datura] religion. Foi being once established on an in- asis, they prepare us to welcome the grand ioctrine of Revealed Religion, that the Word has be- : flesh, and tabernacled on the earth, suffering in sinner's room and stead, and thus opening a way by 470 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN which sinful man may be restored to the favour and image of a sin-hating God. Verily those rationalists or intuitionalists who would set aside or explain away the doctrine of the sinner being reconciled by the blood of Jesus, are overlooking what is about the deepest and strongest conviction of moral reason or intuition in the breast of man. In these, and in a variety of other ways, illustrated by such writers as Pascal, Butler, and Chal- mers,* a sound philosophy may show us light shining through chinks upon us in the darkness, to allure us to look out for the great luminary which God has made to shine upon our world. 3. Metaphysics can give a philosophic method and manner to the treatment of theological topics. It may do so without intruding beyond its province, or intro- ducing any of its peculiarities. It may appear in its mode and in the results, without troubling us with all the processes. How often does it happen, in theological dis- cussions, that there are laboured attempts to prove what need not and cannot be proven, while other propositions, which ought to be demonstrated, are left unsupported ! How often are derivative propositions left without a sup- port, while primary principles are made to lean on se- condary ones ! A mind trained to philosophy will avoid these errors ; as knowing what propositions require not probation, and how to make such shine in their own light, and generally, how to build up an argument of original and derived truth consecutively from the foundation. But are metaphysics to be absolutely precluded from entering the domain of divinity proper ? If a philoso- * The intimations of conscience were long neglected in the philo- sophies and speculative theologies of Germany, which in this respect were behind those of Britain. A better tone was commenced by Julius Miiller, in his great work on ' Sin ;' and of late we have, in 'Die Christ- liche Dogmatik vom Standpunkte des Gewisscns, von Dr. Schenkel,' an admirable account of the relation of the conscience to God. THEOLOGY. 471 pbic thought occur to a youth iu the freshness of his observation, or to an old man in the ripeness of his wis- dom, is he not to be allowed to bring it into the temple, and lay it on the altar, because these are too sacred ? In reply, I observe that, III. Metaphysics are to be allowed to enter theology only under certain conditions. 1. The metaphysical principle advanced must be shown to be sanctioned by the very constitution of the mind, and by Him who has granted it to us. It is thus only that we can lay an arrest on fancy, conceit, and preju- dice, and prevent persons, when pushed hard for a de- fence, from taking refuge in a principle which they de- clare to be above argument. There are truths above pro- bation, but there are no truths above examination, and the truths above proof are those which bear inspection the best. If persons appeal to first principles, avowedly or unavowedly, the burden lies on them of showing that the principles they employ are first truths. Those who adopt this rule for themselves are entitled to insist that those who oppose them, or oppose religion, should sub- mit to the same restrictions. It may certainly be de- manded of those who set themselves against Christianity, or airy of its peculiar doctrines, on professedly philoso- phic grounds, that they show that their objections are founded on principles which are fundamental, and not drawn from the prejudices of the heart or the pet opi- nions of some small knot of thinkers. 2. The precise nature of the fundamental principle employed must be specified, so far at least as it is brought to bear on the topic discussed. For it is quite possible that the principle, though in itself a legitimate one, may be illegitimately employed, and how can this be ascertained except by a precise enunciation of its rule ? Thus, I believe that there is a principle of causation ope- 472 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN rating in all creature-action, even, I believe, in acts of the will ; but then it would be wrong to infer from this that the mode of causal action is the same in our volun- tary as in physical, or even as in our intellectual nature. Yet, again and again have writers maintained that man must be a machine, because the principle of causation is universally operative, even in the will, as is shown by predictions founded on statistics which can be given forth as to crimes and other voluntary acts. The fallacy at once appears when we properly interpret the principle of causation, which announces indeed that every event has a cause, but leaves the nature of that cause to be determined by experience, which shows that causation in the will is entirely different from causation in other action. Some go to the other extreme, and insist that the possession of freedom by man is inconsistent with the universal reign of causation. This misapprehension may be removed by a correct exposition of the intuitive principle of freedom, which affirms indeed of every action of the will that it is free, but says nothing, and can say nothing, as to whether it is or is not caused. These are illustrations of the way in which a philosophic principle, sound in itself, may issue in illegitimate consequences because its rule has not been ascertained. I have so far limited the rule as to say that the intui- tive principle employed must be precisely enunciated, so far at least as it is brought to bear on the topic we are discussing. This is all that can be legitimately insisted on. Every time that we argue that an effect has a cause, or that a quality implies a substance, we may not be bound rigidly to announce the formula. But in all per- plexing questions and doubtful references, the law must be given in express terms, for it is quite possible that it may not admit of a legitimate application to the case before us. fortunately the questions in which such THEOLOGY. 473 rigid accuracy requires to be insisted on are compara- tively few. Unfortunately for the theologian it so hap- pens that among these are the very questions which fall to be discussed in deeper divinity. The rule is that the principle must be correctly expressed so far as it relates to the topic to which it is applied, and if it is possible that an expression in part may be an inaccurate one, there is no help for it, the law must be fully and rigidly unfolded. But it will be urged that such a caution must often necessitate the inappropriate discussion of a metaphysi- cal question in the midst of a theological exposition. I admit that this shows that the introduction of metaphy- sics into theology has its difficulties and inconveniences. Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the practice by many theologians of laying hold, without examination, of a supposed philosophic principle which serves their end, using it to help their immediate purpose, and then pass- ing on to another topic, which is treated in the same manner. All ingenuous minds feel this method to be most confusing and uncomfortable ; even the professed metaphysician will often be stirred up to oppose it, as the metaphysics may not be his own. If metaphysics . are to venture into the theological field, let them come in openly and not furtively, and let them conform to the rules of the logic of intuition. And if the investigations thus necessitated cannot come in gracefully in the heart of a Scriptural exposition, let them be handed over to an appendix, or appear in a separate treatise, the merits of which will be more readily ascertained from the circum- stance that the philosophical stands out separate from the religious element. This leads to another rule. 3. There must be a careful separation of the Scriptural truth from the supposed metaphysical principle employed to illustrate or defend it. The great body of practical 4/4 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN thinkers, especially in England, have ever entertained, and this not without grounds to go on, a suspicion of meta- physical theology. In the exposition of the doctrines of the Bible, not only in sermons, but in practical divinity, the introduction of metaphysical discussions may be de- clined with great wisdom, except when the metaphysical objections of opponents necessitate it. The great body, even of thinking men, will be vastly more pleased, and in a still higher degree more profited, by clear statement and spontaneous reasoning, than by abstruse discussions. A calm reverence for Scripture, a careful collation of pas- sages, an enlarged acquaintance with the whole volume, sound sense, clear statement, direct argument, in which there is but a link or two between the first premiss and the final conclusion, a knowledge of human character in its practical operations, and, above all, genuine faith, an attach- ment to the truth, and a love to God and man, will do vastly more than metaphysical subtlety or lengthened deduction, in explaining, enforcing, and defending Divine truth. But are metaphysics therefore to be absolutely banished from theology ? I lay down no such stringent rule ; the very objections of the heretic and the rationalist, and the cavils of the infidel and the scoffer, compel divines, whe- ther they will or no, to enter the regions of metaphysics. The God who gives to all men their gifts, is to be praised because he has raised up from time to time persons of great intellectual stature, who have defended the grand essen- tial doctrines of Christianity in learned and elaborate phi- losophical treatises. Philosophy should acknowledge that some of the works of which she has most cause to be proud were constructed with the avowed design of de- fending the foundations or strengthening the fortresses of religion. But in professedly theological works there should be a studious distinction drawn between the philosophy and THEOLOGY. 475 the religion. This is needful, in order that we may satis- factorily examine both, and be able on the one hand to determine whether the author has laid hold of a correct metaphysical principle, and been legitimately applying it ; and, on the other hand, to view the religious doctrine apart from the philosophic speculation. The caution now enforced will not forbid philosophy from attempting to aid religion, to furnish to it evidences, to confirm its doc- trines, and systematize its scattered truths ; but it will secure that the two be not confounded ; in particular, that philosophy do not represent itself as religion but as me- taphysics ; that it do not claim for its speculations the authority of the Bible or of God, or advance them as an essential part of religion, or place them on the same level as the truths of the Divine Word ; and, above all, that it do not make religion lean upon them, so that if they should break down religion would be supposed to have suffered a defeat. The rule laid down demands that the two be seen to be different. Not that it should insist that they be dis- cussed in separate treatises, or each in separate chapters of one treatise ; this might look too like that formal ac- curacy of demeanour and character which often conceals the worst inaccuracies. But it rigidly exacts that the two be distinguished in the mind of the writer, and that the discussion be conducted so that the difference cannot be lost sight of by the most careless reader ; so that the philosophy may be recognized simply as philosophy, and the religion be seen to be independent of the philosophy ■ and so that, should the philosophy be set aside by new systems, the religion may remain entire and uninjured. Bishop Butler, I may remark, has set a noble example in this respect both in his ' Analogy ' and in his ' Ser- mons :' his philosophy, whether employed in illustration or defence, is always so brought forward that it can never 476 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN be confounded with the religious truth, which it is meant to aid, and never to injure. As neighbours, the two may- have much pleasant and profitable communion, and many interchanges of good offices ; but still, they should keep their separate domiciles ; without this there will sooner or later be misunderstandings, jarring, and disputes, and in the end suspicions and cruel separations. These restrictions, I am aware, lay the axe to the root of many a tree which those who planted it will be un- willing to see cut down ; but they are necessary to the clearing of a dreadfully intertangled forest, and to allow the trees which are entitled to remain to have free breath- ing-space, and thus attain their full growth, and stand out in their proper form. Sect. VI. Man as a Religious Being. There is a sense in which man is certainly not a reli- gious being. He is inclined to avoid God, and to live unmindful of Him ; and when constrained to look at His purity, his eyes are so dazzled that he pays Him a blinded and superstitious prostration. When left to himself, he has ever been degrading the Divine nature and character, and whether blessed or not with a supernatural revelation, he has ever been breaking the commandments of God. But there is a sense in which man is a religious being. All nations have had a religion of some kind, and the number of professed atheists is so small that some have doubted whether there has ever been such a monster as a sincere atheist. The Psalmist seems to give the true account when he describes the fool as saying in his heart there is no God. There are intuitions, processes of thought, natural observations, and deep feelings, which all tend, even when restrained and degraded, towards a conviction of the existence of a Supernatural Being, to a faith in Him or a fear of Him, to adoration, and a sense THEOLOGY. 477 of responsibility. Every deeper intuition of the soul goes out towards God. Created being, as we follow it down, is felt to be fixed and permanent only in uncreated being. The objects around us are felt to be so fleeting that our conviction of reality is satisfied only when we reach self-existent substance. Our conviction of sub- stance is not content till it conies to One who has all power in himself. Infinite time and space are felt, after all, to be only infinite emptiness till we fill them up with a living and loving Being. All the beautiful relationships in nature, all the order in respect of form, time, and quantity, all the adaptations of means to end, seem but the scattered rays from an original and central wisdom. The impulse which prompts us to search after causes will not cease its cravings till it carries us up to a first cause in a self-acting substance. Earthly beauty is so evanes- cent that we rejoice to learn that there is a Divine beauty of which the other is but a flickering reflection. Our moral convictions especially mount towards God as their proper sphere, their source, and their home. Our sense of obligation connects us by stronger than physical bonds with Him who is the author of our moral nature, the sanctioner of the moral law, and who is at last to be our judge. I do not go so far as to say that any one of these does of itself prove the Divine existence. I do not even affirm that all of them together would enable us to con- struct a logical argument in behalf of the being of God. These intuitions are expected to look to certain very ob- vious facts pressing themselves on the attention of all ; but I maintain that, being thus stimulated and supported, they do lead to certain deep feelings and impressions in the minds of all, and to a most reasonable belief in God. Every one of them, like the plant, is sending down roots towards this ground, is shooting out points towards this light. We feel that this world has no stability till we 478 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN make it rest on God. In particular, we feel as to our- selves that we are in a state of dependence ; as having derived our being from another ; as needing a supply for our ever-craving wants ; as having our destiny swayed by events arranged without consulting us ; as being ever under an eye that inspects us ; and as having at last to appear at a judgment-seat ; and we cannot be satisfied till we learn that we hang on a Great Central Power and Light, round which we should revolve, as the earth does round the sun. These convictions, and the feelings growing on them, are deep down in the bosoms of all ; and like waters which have descended from the heavens and penetrated into the hills, they will ever tend to burst out, and if re- strained in their legitimate channels, they will find vent in others. Ever craving for something, they will be in pain and uneasiness till the appropriate object is. presented. Their cry indeed will often be like the infant's cry in the night, a cry in the darkness for something unknown. And as the appetite of hunger in its eagerness may lead us to grasp at a sad mixture of food and earth, nay, of food and poison when it is presented, so our natural religious faith may often be taken in with a sad medley of truth and error, of earnest godliness, and debasing su- perstition. Still, while they eagerly devour such, they will not be satisfied therewith, but, feeling restless and trou- bled, they will still crave for something, they know not what, and look for a remedy to their experienced ills. It follows from this account that these instincts and feelings may be perverted and abused. Man is allured, not compelled, to be religious. True piety is always a holy act, to which there is the consent of the will. Man, if he is bent upon it, may become unbelieving or su- perstitious. As having committed sin, he will ever be prompted, like Cain, to go out from the presence of the THEOLOGY. 479 Lord, and to strain after a forgetfulness of Him. Or, as oppressed with a secret consciousness of sin, and as un- able to look on the holiness of God, he will ever be tempted to form a gocl to his own taste, and who may not dazzle and blind him by the brightness of his purity. The majority of mankind flit between these two states ; between a stubborn forgetfulness of God and desire to be independent of Him, and a superstitious prostration before a gocl, or more frequently gods, fashioned by them according to the crude cravings and cherished wishes of their hearts. Bat in this state of half-conscious sin there is a power- ful intuition awakened, and though to a large extent blind, and to some extent incapable of hearing, it will at times cry terribly for its object. There will rise up a conscience of guilt and an apprehension of an unknown clanger, like the sullen roar of ocean waves evidently at hand, but not seen in a murky and stormy night ; and this will be followed by an anxious though possibly very ignorant and perplexed looking round for a way of escape. While men are engrossed with the cares and climbings and fears and gratifications of this world, these apprehensions may to a large extent be suppressed ; still they are there deep clown in the heart, and at times they will breathe out in yearnings after some help, to come we know not whence, or burst forth in dreadful cries and alarms ; or if these natural outlets be closed by a cherished unbelief, it will only be to make the re- strained feelings spread like a disease and burn like an internal fire. It is this sentiment which keeps alive a sense of sin and a fear of God and of a judgment-day among all nations, and which so far prepares the heathen to listen to the tidings of a provided Saviour. But this instinct may likewise be misled, because of its blindness, and may be directed to objects which seem fitted to 480 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN gratify it, but which in the end disappoint it. It may tempt the man who is moved by it to picture God as a vindictive being, or it may prompt to acts of laceration, supposed to be fitted to appease the anger of God. Still, the anxious spirit, even after the most horrid and excru- ciating acts have been performed, will not be satisfied, for it will still be in doubt whether, after all, that terrible God be pacified. These sentiments and cravings will always feel that there is nothing to meet them in a de- istic or rationalistic creed, and that there is nothing to give them peace in pagan ritual and sacrifices. I believe they can be met, and gratified, and brought to compo- sure only by the view, presented in the Word, of God reconciling man to Himself by the blood of His Son. Sect. VII. Rational Theology. Attempts have often been made, by persons professing a great respect for Christianity, to construct a religious creed by human reason ; sometimes using ' reason ' in the larger and looser sense, to stand for all the intellectual powers, together with the moral faculty, and sometimes confining it to the mere logical understanding. It is not proposed to discard the Bible, but to found the doctrines believed in on a rational basis ; and most commonly all tenets are rejected, or at least omitted, which cannot be thus supported. In this country this theology usually borrowed largely from Locke, and appealed much to ex- perience and man's desire to secure happiness. In Ger- many it proceeded on the fundamental principles of the critical philosophy of Kant, and especially on certain a priori notions of the sufficiency of virtue. Its oversights are many and glaring. 1 . While professing to appeal to human nature, it has commonly overlooked some of the very deepest intuitions and the most characteristic feelings of the soul, such as THEOLOGY. 481 the sense of sin and the terror of a sin-hating and sin- punishing God. These have been studiously omitted, because they are palpably and uncompromisingly opposed to the self-righteous, self-sufficient spirit which the builders of the system wish to be allowed to cherish. 2. There have been not a few gaps and flaws in the structures reared. These have proceeded from the deter- mined purpose of the builders to erect a system of theo- logy without accepting aid from Divine authority. They have been triumphantly pointed out with a sneer by the sceptic, who show's that objections can be taken to many of the pretended demonstrations of religious truths, as, for example, to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and all that depends on that doctrine in regard to the world to come. By all means let the analogies and illus- trations which may be drawn from nature in favour of such doctrines be urged, but the truths rest, after all, most securely on the authority of God. The rational the- ology, which w r ould move them from this foundation, is in every respect most irrational. 3. It errs most egregiously in casting aside the truths of the Word, which are most suited to the deeper wants of man, such as those which tell us of reconciliation through the Son of God, of the work of converting grace, and of restoration to communion with God. These doctrines cannot be discovered by human reason in its highest or deepest researches, yet they are the truths which when revealed commend themselves most forcibly to the heart of man. 4. It has been powerless in calling forth deep feeling, in rousing the soul to enthusiasm and devotedness, or in urging it on to deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice. The heart of man, especially at those times w 7 hen it is awed by a sense of the Divine majesty and purity, or struck with a sense of its own sinfulness, or elevated by aspira- 2 I 482 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN tions after a holier state, has ever turned away from it with abhorrence and scorn. Sect. VIII. Intuitional Theology. The icy and rigid rationalism of last age has dissolved in the heat of a warmer season, and of late we have had a time of wading deep in melted matter ; and now we are in an atmosphere of sultriness and dimness, of hazi- ness and dreaminess. It is universally acknowledged that the logical processes of definition and reasoning can do little in religion ; and those who, in days bygone, would have appealed to such forms, are in these times betaking themselves to something livelier, — to Peeling, Belief, Inspiration, — or, in one word, to Intuition, which looks at the truth or object at once, and through no in- terfering process or dimming medium. In last age, cer- tain of our " excelsior" youths were like to be starved in cold ; in this age, they are in greater danger of having the seeds of a wasting disease fostered by lukewarm damps and gilded vapours. The clearest views they show are those which we ob- tain by gazing immediately on the object. Have not, they ask, the seers and sages of our w r orld, poetic and philosophic, seen further than other men by direct, and not by reflected or introspective vision ? Does not our own consciousness witness that we get the furthest-reach- ing glimpses when we are wholly engrossed in looking out at things, without being at the trouble to analyze our thoughts ? There are moments when all thinkers, or certain thinkers, have seen further than in their usual moods ; and this by overlooking all interposing objects, and gazing full on the truth. Some seem to have expe- rienced ecstatic states, in which, being lifted above them- selves and the earth, and carried — whether in the body or out of the body they know not — into the third heavens, THEOLOGY. 483 they behold things which it is not possible for man to utter. An entranced minute of such bursting revelation is worth, they say, hours or years of your logically con- catenated thought. The soul is then carried as to a great height, above the clouds that rise from the damps of earth, like unto Mount Teneriffe, from which ardent gazers thought they saw land lying to the far west ages before the practical Columbus actually set foot on Ame- rica. As there are sounds, such as the sighings of the stream, heard in the stillness of evening, which are not audible in the bustle of the day, so there are voices heard in certain quieter moods of the mind which cannot be discerned when the soul is being agitated by discussion and ratiocination. As there are states of our atmosphere in which remote objects seern near, as there are days in which we can look far down into the ocean and behold its treasures, as the night shows us heavenly lights which are invisible in the glare of common day, so there are day moods and night moods in which we look into great depths, and see the dim as distinct, and behold truths glittering like gems, and brilliant as constellations. At these times it looks as if a veil or cloud were removed, and we see, as it were by polarized light, the inward constitution of things which usually expose but their tame outside ; and we gaze on naked truth without the robe which it commonly wears, but which conceals what is infinitely more lovely than itself. Our eye can then look on pure light without being blinded by it ; and we stand face to face with truth and beauty and goodness, and, in a sense, with God Himself. This is a view very often presented in the present day; and it should be admitted at once that it is by spon- taneous, and not by reflective thought, that the mind at- tains its clearest and most penetrating visions of things. Our mental powers operate spontaneously, and act most 2 i 2 434 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN faithfully when we are taking no notice of them, but are influenced by a simple desire to discover the truth ; when the mind is in its best exercises, the interposition of me- taphysical introspection and syllogistic formulae would tend only to dim the clearness of the view. It may be allowed farther, that there are times in every man's thinking when great truths come suddenly upon him ; times when he feels as if he were emerging at once from a tunnel into the light of day. These are states to be cherished, and not curbed. But it is of vast moment that we understand their precise nature, and the value to be attached to them, and the restrictions to be laid upon the confidence we put in them. I. In these visions, clear or profound, there are com- monly other processes besides simple intuition. Almost always there is involved in them the gathered wisdom of long and varied and ripened experience ; very often there are analyses more or less refined, generalizations of a narrower or wider scope ; and not unfrequently ratioci- nations, passing so rapidly, that the processes are not only not analyzed, they are not even observed. When Archimedes broke out into such ecstasy on discovering a law of hydrostatics ; when the thought flashed on the mind of Newton that the power which draws an apple to the ground is that which holds the moon in her sphere ; when Franklin identified the sparks produced by rubbing certain substances on the earth with the lightning of heaven ; when it occurred to Watt that the steam which moved the lid of a kettle might be turned to a great mechanical purpose ; when the Abbe Hauy, in gathering up the fragments of a crystal which had accidentally fallen from his hands, surmised that all crystals were de- rived from a few primitive forms ; when Oken, on looking at the bleached skull of a deer in the Hartz Forest, ex- claimed, " This is a vertebrate column !" every one ac- THEOLOGY. 485 knowledges that there was vastly more than intuitional power involved : there were presupposed large original talents of a peculiar kind in each case, habits of scientific research, and long courses of systematic training and ob- servation; while at the instant there were the highest powers of comparison and computation in exercise. It will be readily allowed that there was a similar combi- nation of native gift, of accumulated experience, and con- nected ratiocination, implied in the discoveries made by Adam Smith and others in political and social science. But I go a step further, and maintain that the grand views of moral and religious truth which burst on the vision of our greatest philosophers were the result of rays coming from a thousand scattered points. When Socrates unfolded to an age and nation deprived of the light of revelation such elevated doctrines regarding a superin- tending Providence, and the intimate relation between virtue and happiness ; when Plato showed that man par- ticipated in the Divine intelligence, and that the forms of nature partook of the ideas or patterns which had been in or before the Divine Mind from all eternity; when Leibnitz developed his grand theory of a pre-established harmony running through the mental and material uni- verse, — there were in active exercise profound reflection, long observation of human nature and of the ways of God, searching analyses, and a cultivated moral vision. I am sure that there is a similar union involved in those far-reaching glimpses which more obscure men have had, at their better moments, of great moral or spiritual veri- ties regarding the nature of man, and the character and dealings of God. The leap of waters at the cataract of Niagara is on the instant, yet it is not, after all, a simple process : antece- dent to it there have been rains falling from heaven, and these gathered into a river, and acquiring momentum as 486 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN they move on, and a precipitous cliff formed for their de- scent ; and in the fall, water, rock, and atmosphere mingle their separate influences. The flash of lightning across the sky is instantaneous, yet it is the produce of long meteorological operations, in which probably air, mois- ture, sunlight, electricity, and an attracting object, have each had its part ; and it is only on the whole gathering to an overflow that the convulsive effect is produced. There must have been a similar collection of strength, and combination of scattered influences, in those sudden leaps which certain minds have taken ; as when Augus- tine abandoned paganism, and Luther left ritualism; and there are the same in those movements of the spirit of man in which it penetrates to immense distances without our being able to follow it through all the intermediate space, and illumines as it passes the densest masses of darkness. It is the business of physical science to ex- plain the one set of processes, and it shows that they are the result of a conspiracy of agencies. It is the office of psychological science to explain the other set of opera- tions, and it can show that there is involved in them a variety of original and acquired endowments. A number of different rays have met in the production of this pure white light. The views are so wide-ranging, because all the inlets of the mind are open to receive impressions. II. In all these higher visions there is apt to be a mix- ture of error. The glittering lustre in which the objects are seen is apt to dazzle the eye, and prevent it from taking too narrow an inspection. The rapidity of the mental process is favourable to the concealment of hasti- ness of inference, to which we are led by the influence of inferior motives, acting like concealed iron upon the ship's compass. With the desire to discover the truth there may be united the personal vanity or the idiosyn- crasies of the individual, or the prejudices of the pledged THEOLOGY. 487 partisan, or the proud and self-righteous temper, or a spirit of contradiction. How often does it happen, in such cases, that the conceits of the fancy or the wishes of the heart are attributed to the reason, that high feeling is mistaken for high wisdom, that what is dark is sup- posed to be deep, that what is lovely is supposed to be holy ! In the region to which they have betaken them- selves, objects seem gigantic because perceived in the mist, as they look through the openings in which persons mistake gilded clouds for sunlit islands, or for moun- tains based on the earth and piercing the sky. Besides the error which may be in the original vision, there are apt to be additional mistakes when the indi- vidual would unfold it and put it into language. As Aurora Leigh says : — " It may be, perhaps, Such have not settled long and deep enough In trance, to attain to clairvoyance ; and still The memory mixes with the vision, spoils And works it turbid." The intuitionalist often has a genuine feeling; and when he confines himself to a simple description, his statement, if not altogether free from error, may be a correct tran- script of what has passed in his own mind, and may have as vivifying an influence upon others as it has had upon himself. The glow which radiates from such men as Cole- ridge, when tracing the correspondences between subject and object, or Wordsworth, as he sketches the feelings awakened by the forms and aspects of nature, or Ruskin, as we gaze with him on the higher works of art, steeps all attendant miuds in its own splendours, — as the gorgeous evening sun burnishes all objects, clouds as well as land- scapes, in its own rich hues. The intuitionalist ever suc- ceeds best in poetry, or in prose which is of the character of poetry, and might, if the father of it chose, be wedded 488 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN to immortal verse. But when lie attempts, as he often does, a systematic exposition, scientific, or logical, or phi- losophical, or theological, of his sentiments, there may now, with the errors of the original writing, be mingled the mistakes that arise from an unfaithful transcription. Every one knows that to feel and to analyze the feeling are two very different exercises ; and it often happens that those who feel the most intensely, and even those who think the most profoundly, are the least capacitated for unfolding the process to others. In attempting to do so, they often mix it up with other elements, and the product is a conglomerate, in which truth and error are banded together without the possibility of separating them. In unwinding the threads, they have tangled them ; and they become the more hopelessly entangled the greater the strength which they exert in unravelling them. The pool may, or quite as possibly may not, have been ori- ginally pure; it has certainly been rendered altogether turbid by the mud stirred up in the attempt to explore it. As the author of 'Hours with the Mystics' says, " This intuitional metal, in its native state, is mere fluent, formless quicksilver ; to make it definite and serviceable, you must fix it by an alloy : but then, alas ! it is pure Reason no longer ; and, so far from being universal truth, receives a countless variety of shapes, according to the temperament, culture, or philosophic party of the indi- vidual thinker." These visions, raptures, and ecstasies are most apt to appear in philosophy and theology ; and it is there they work most mischief. The intuitionalist is ever placing things in their wrong category, dividing the things which should be joined, or mixing the things which should be separated. His analogies overlook differences ; his dis- tinctions set aside resemblances. His limitations are like the mad attempts of Xerxes to chain the ocean. His THEOLOGY. 489 definitions are like the boundings of a cloud — while he is pointing to them they are changed ; indeed his whole method is like a project to make roads and run fences in cloudland. In metaphysics, he represents as essences what are in fact nothing but attenuated ghosts, created by his own oppressed vision as it looks into darkness. The Neo-Platonists pretended to see the One and the Good by ecstasy ; what they saw was merely an abstract quality separated from the concrete object. They tried to raise up emotion by the contemplation of the skeleton attribute, but in this they did and could not succeed ; for it is not by abstraction that feeling is excited, but by the presentation of an individual and living reality. The at- tempt in the present age, by certain metaphysical specu- lators, to*call forth feeling by the presentation of the True, the Beautiful, the Good, must terminate in a simi- lar failure. It is not by the contemplation of truth, but of the God of truth ; not by the contemplation of loveli- ness, but of the God of loveliness ; not by the contem- plation of the good, but of the good God, that feelings of adoration and love are called forth and gratified. There are still greater perils attending the indulgence of these inspirations in matters of religion. The intui- tionalist is tempted to ascribe to some higher influence the idea which arises simply from the law of association or organic impulse; to attribute to intuition what is mere floating sentiment ; to pure reason what is the product of habit or of passion ; nay, to God Himself what springs from the fallible human heart. The height to which the soul is carried in these elevations is apt to have a dizzying influence ; ' and not a few have fallen when they seemed to themselves to be standing most secure. Some, pre- tending to a heavenly mission, have yielded at once to the temptation which the true Messenger withstood ; and, without a promise of one to bear them up in their pre- 490 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN sumption, have cast themselves down from the pinnacle to which they were elevated, and been lost amidst the laughter of men. Some have claimed for their own con- ceits the inspiration of Heaven ; and have come to deify their own imaginations, and to sanctify their schemes of ambition, by representing them as formed under the sanction of God. III. The error is to be detected by a careful reflex ex- amination of the spontaneous process of intuition, or, what is more frequent, of the intuition with certain con- joined elements. That error may creep into these visions and raptures, is evident from the circumstance, that scarcely any two inspirationalists agree even when pre- tending to have revelations on the same point ; and when they do concur, it is evidently because of the^dominant authority of some great master. How, then, are we to decide among the claims of the rival sages, or seers, or doctors, or schools ? Plainly by inquiring which of them, if any, are in fact under the influence of a native intui- tion ; and this is to be done by an inductive inquiry into the nature of our intuitions, and by trying the proposed dogma or feeling by the tests, thus discovered, of intuition. In no other department of human investigation, except speculative philosophy and theology, will an indiscriminate appeal to intuition or feeling be allowed in the present day. Mathematics admit of no such loose methods of procedure. The fundamental principles of that science are, no doubt, founded on intuition ; but then it is on intuitions carefully enunciated and formalized, and the whole superstructure is banded by rigid logical deduction. Physical science will not tolerate any such anticipations, except at times in the way of suggesting hypotheses, to be immediately tried by a rigid induction of facts, and accepted or rejected only as they can stand the test. In political science there is a necessity for the weighing of THEOLOGY. 491 conflicting principles, and room for clearness of head and far-seeing sagacity; but in these op'erations mere intuition has a small share, and is not allowed to pass till it is carefully sifted. It is surely high time that intuition were prevented from careering without restraint in the fields of philosophy and theology, and that rules were laid down, not for absolutely restraining it, but for confining it within its legitimate province. The sole corrective of the evil, the only means of se- parating the error from the truth, is to be found in a cool reflex examination of the spontaneous process. This is needed, even when the idea is one which has occurred to our own minds ; to protect them from the self-deception to which all are liable, to provide them with a safety-lamp when they would enter dark subterranean passages ; or with a chart when they would venture on a sea of specu- lation ; or with a compass to tell the direction when they would go out beyond the measured and fenced ground of thought into a waste, above which clouds for ever hover, and where are precipices over which multitudes are for ever falling. Needed to guard us even in our personal musings, it will surely be acknowledged that it is still more necessary when others demand our assent to their proffered vision, lest what we pick up be " Like cast-off nosegays picked up on the road, The worse for being warm." Not that this review of the spontaneous thought should set out with the fixed purpose of rejecting all that has been suggested; on the contrary, it should retain and carefully cherish all that may be good, and cast away only what cannot stand a sifting inspection. But the test- ing, in order to accomplish these ends, must proceed on certain principles. So far as the spontaneous exercise professes to be guided by an induction of facts, it must be tried by the canons of the logic of induction. So far 492 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN as it involves ratiocination, the approved rules of reason- ing must determine its validity. So far as it claims to be intuitional, metaphysical science is entitled to demand that the principle involved be shown to be in the very constitution of the mind, self-evident, necessary, univer- sal; and further, that its determinate rule be specified and formalized, so that we may see whether it covers the case in hand. In moral subjects, first thoughts are often the best, be- cause formed prior to the calculations of selfishness. They may not, however, always be the best ; for they may proceed from passion, which in fallen man is as, spontaneous and quite as quick as any moral impulse. As a general rule, neither the first nor the second thoughts are the best ; but the last thoughts of a studious course of reflection, in which both first and second thoughts are reviewed, that which is good in each being preserved, and that which is evil rejected. The same remark holds good of the exercises of the intellect. The first views of the truth are frequently the freshest and the justest. It has been remarked, that the first view of the new-born infant discloses a resemblance to father or mother which the subsequent growth of the child effaces ; and there is often a similar power of penetration in the first glance of the intellectual eye, directed towards a truth presented for the first time : the prominent features are then caught on the instant, and correspondences are detected which disappear on a more familiar acquaintance, being lost sight of among other qualities. But while these original glimpses are often very precious, and are to be carefully noted and registered, it is equally true that first impressions often contain large mixture of error. At these times of intense rapture and ardent longing, the mind seizes eagerly on what presents itself, and is incapable of drawing distinc- tions, and may utterly neglect other aspects, which are THEOLOGY. 493 only to be detected by longer and more familiar acquaint- ance. Hence the need of cool reflection to come after, and retain only what can be justified by the rules of logic. As the first looks of the infant reveal features which are subsequently lost sight of, so the last look of the dying will call up once more likenesses which had escaped our notice in the interval. Let there be a similar holding of all the true analogies — caught in the first look — in those last looks, which, after many a survey, we cherish and retain for ever of the objects which excite our interests and claim our regards. IV. In order to give the intuitions in the disordered soul of man a religious direction, there is need of a very special Object to evoke, to harmonize, and centre them. Had man's nature been limpidly pure, I suppose he would have risen at once and spontaneously to the con- templation of God, and that his soul would have reposed w T ith satisfaction on Him. Bat man ever feels, when he would thus mount, that there is a downward drag, when he w r ould draw nigh to God that there is a repulsion, and he knows not what to do in order to reconciliation, and he either betakes himself to various sorts of supposed paci- fications, but is left in painful uncertainty as to whether they can accomplish his ends, or he allows himself to sink into a godless indifference. In order to the resto- ration of peace, and to his heart being drawn forth to- wards God, there is need of some Reconciler being dis- closed to the view ; and this is what is so aptly provided in the Eternal Logos becoming flesh and working out a salvation. But in order that this Object be recognized, he must come before us with the authority of God ; and in order to our being able to look to him, he must be set before us in such a way that we can readily and clearly see Him. It is thus that Jesus Christ comes be- fore us, attested by prophecy and by miracle, thus that he 494 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN is presented to us in the Word as in a glass. We have now the Object fitted to call forth the deeper moral in- tuitions into play, and to gratify them each and all to the full. We can now look to God, revealed in the face of his Son, without being scared or prostrated ; and as we gaze, the pent-up and imprisoned religious affections are set free. The sense of sin, which before so bound the heart in icy hardness, is melted as by genial heat, and repentance bursts forth in copious streams to relieve the soul. Faith feels that it can repose on a pacified God, and love clasps and embraces Him who is now seen to be chiefest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. Need I add, that in order that the Object presented accomplish those ends he must be a real object. Were he a mere picture, or a fable, or a myth, the soul would be driven back by the idea ever pressed on it, that this is, after all, an illusion. The understanding would rebel against the imposture which had been tried upon it ; and the faith would veer round by a polar reaction to a har- dened scepticism ; and the intuitions would refuse to appear on the idle summons given them; and the soul would in sulkiness, as it were, retreat into a dim cavern where it has only a flickering light, but from which it is morbidly indisposed to pass into the sunshine without. It is, as I reckon it, a happy result of the development of principles in this treatise, that it shows how we must still go to the Word of God for our religion. All at- tempts hitherto made to construct a religion indepen- dent of Scripture have turned out acknowledged failures : the systems reared cannot stand a sifting examination by reason, and have been utterly powerless on human cha- racter. There was an expectation, long cherished by many, that something better than the old Christianity of the Bible, literally interpreted, might come out of the great German philosophic systems of Kant and Fichte, THEOLOGY. 495 Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher ; but these hopes have been doomed to acknowledged disappointment. The idea was fondly cherished by some that certain men of literary genius, who had caught more or less of the spirit of the German Metaphysics, such as Coleridge, and Goethe, and Carlyle, must have something new and pro- found to satisfy the soul in its deeper cravings, could they only be induced to utter it. Coleridge has played out his tune, sweet and irregular as the harp of iEolus, and all men perceive that he never had anything to meet the deeper wants of humanity, except what he got from the songs of Zion. It has long been clear, in regard to Goethe, and is now being seen in regard to Carlyle, that neither of them ever had anything positive to furnish in religion, and that all they had to utter was blankly ne- gative, and I rather think that the last hope of drawing anything soul-satisfying from these quarters has vanished from the minds of those who have been most impressed by their genius. I freely acknowledge, as to some of the eminent men I have referred to, that they have given profound expositions of some of the deeper principles and feelings of the soul, and have thus furnished a con- tribution to philosophy and incidentally benefited the- ology. In particular, it may be admitted of a school of intuitionalist divines who have felt the influence of the Teutonic speculations, that they have called attention to foundations and impulses in our nature, which a narrow artificial theology — made up of coagulated abstracts of the supposed Christian system — had overlooked ; but which, as these men have shown, had not been lost sight of in actual and living Christianity. The school has erred not in the positive views which the members of it have un- folded, but in what they have omitted and scornfully denied. In particular, they have lost sight of one of the deepest and most ineradicable of all our intuitions ; they 496 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN have taken no notice of that sense of sin and apprehen- sion of God and of a judgment-day which make men feel dissatisfied with every form of natural religion, and bring them in helplessness to the Crucified Saviour and the written Word.* Intuitionalism has had its trial in the age now passing away as rationalism had in the previous one, and both have been found utterly insufficient. Ra- tionalism reared a structure with regular walls and well- fitted gates, but the soul has ever felt it to be desolate as a prison. Intuitionalism has raised up a showy sum- mer palace, but it is utterly and manifestly unfitted to withstand the winds and colds of winter. There are some who imagine that we may now discard the Bible, and yet retain all the light and assurance and comfort which it has diffused. There were persons in the last century who thought they could dispense with the Scriptures, and yet retain among the people their high morality. The generation which had been piously educated did in many cases keep up to the high standard of morality; but the generation which succeeded, edu- cated in mere morality, thought they had outgrown the rigid morality of their fathers, as these fathers had out- lived the rigid orthodoxy of their fathers ; and the race which was reared to be moral, turned out fearfully im- moral. Men had cut down the tree on which the flowers grew, expecting they would still flourish, and were as- tonished when they faded. In the day which has now reached its noon, the corresponding class of thinkers are under a deep impression that there is need of feeling in order to incite to a living morality, and so must have * In particular, Mr. Maurice, drawing from the schools in Germany which nourished prior to the later inquiries into Sin and Conscience, has, while developing some of the airier of our mental aspirations, over- looked the deeper convictions of the moral power, and thus been led to discard the Scripture doctrine of Atonement. There are important re- marks in Rigg's ' Anglican Theology.' THEOLOGY. 497 sentiment, by all means and above all things a warm and glowing sentiment. But still they would rise above the inspired Word, and leave it behind, foolishly imagin- ing that they may have a continuance of the diffused fervour, without the body from which the heat radiates. The issue of such an experiment is certain, and is already beginning to show itself. The race reared under such influences will go a step further in the direction in which they have been led, and will have no difficulty in dis- carding the feelings which are left without a basis, till we have a generation without creed, and without any sem- blance of piety, real or pretended. The evening sky, im- mediately after the sun has sunk, may be as lovely and gorgeous as when he was above the horizon ; but it is only the child who will cherish the imagination, that after the illuminating body has gone the glow will not soon fade into gloom. V. A theology which looks merely to that portion of Divine truth which is addressed to our intuitions must be very vague, loose, and unsatisfactory. If compelled to decide between a rationalistic and intuitional religion, I would infinitely prefer the latter, just as I would choose an idealistic view of nature rather than a materialistic or sensational or mechanical. But I am not bound to make a selection. It is all true that a logical divinity has ever been felt to be harsh and crabbed, and that there has been nothing in it to gain our deeper convictions or win our regards. But it is as true that intuitional theology gives mere cloudland, in which all is vapoury and hazy at the best, and in which we are at last apt to be drenched in rain and tempest. If the one looks so unattractive, as dyked so rigidly into rectilinear and rectangular figures, disregardful of all natural height and hollow, the other is a territory in an unmeasured and unenclosed waste. In religion, in all its beneficent forms, especially in re- 2 K 498 METAPHYSICAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN ligion as set forth in the Bible, all the deeper principles and higher faculties of the soul are addressed, and, being combined, they keep each other in their proper position, while each fulfils its function the better by having the co-operation of the others. True religion certainly calls forth the intuitional power in its highest intensity, but it gives exercise to other powers of the soul. If there be need of an immediate reason to gaze on higher truth, and appreciate it, there is also a use for the logical under- standing in examining and weighing the evidence, in dis- tinguishing one truth from another, and in keeping truth consistent with itself; and there is a place for the affec- tions as they collect an interest around it. Nor is it to be forgotten that the will, or the choosing and resolving faculty, has a very special work to do in following out the obligations lying on us in the discharge of duties, which are an essential part of religion, andreact upon our whole intellectual and moral nature ; " by works faith is made perfect." It is all true that a performance of duty with- out respect to God and godliness, will become empty for- malism or self-righteous phariseeism, but it is just as certain that a mere gazing intuitionalism will end in idle musing, wasting itself and so dying out. It was never meant thai any one of the members of our psychical frame should act apart from the others in religious exercises, just as it is not intended that one limb of the body should act without the others, or that the eye should act without the ear, or the taste without the touch. In a sound piety the various powers act in combination, like the various elements — heat, colour, and chemical — of the sunbeam, and they are to be separated only for scientific ends by a scientific process. True, there may, even in natural operations, be a preponder- ance of one of the elements above the others, for the ac- complishment of special ends ; still, they are never alto- THEOLOGY. 499 gether separated ; and if studiously kept apart, or if cer- tain of them be allowed to gather to excess, their action may become deleterious, or they may burst out in a de- structive discharge. In particular, the contemplative ele- ment, if unduly fostered (like a plant in a stove), and dis- severed from rigid thought and a resolute will, must issue in a mystic creed and a life of day-dreams. Revelation calls forth all the powers of the soul. The light of the Word, like the light of the sun, is one, but it has, after all, a number of elements, such as narrative, example, de- scription, type, argument, appeal, exhortation, warning, precept, promise, presentations, and representations, in prose and poetry, each fitted to evoke a corresponding- power in our souls, and to draw it forth in a proper di- rection, and give it the proper hue ; and piety is in the healthiest and loveliest state when every essential prin- ciple of our constitution is exercised in due measure and proper proportion. VI. In a living piety the intuitions have a very impor- tant place, being always associated with other mental exercises. All the deeper convictions of our nature rest on the objects which are presented in a living religion ; indeed they can be satisfied with nothing else. The self- existent being, the self-subsistent substance, the inherent power, the loveliness, the love, the righteousness, the truthfulness of God, these, not in their abstract forms (which are far too like skeletons to delight the eye), but as embodied in full form in a Living Being, are objects on which the soul would gaze with rapture in its pure and unclouded moments ; it would turn towards them as towards an attractive light ; it reposes upon them as upon a mountain whose foundations can never be moved ; and it expands towards them as towards the expanse of heaven, with its still stars away in the depths. We have never reached the proper objects of religion, nor even the 500 INTUITIONAL THEOLOGY. region in which they dwell, if intuition has not been bear- ing up the soul. In our highest exercises of rapt devo- tion, other operations, though still present in their results, may disappear in their 'processes, to allow the soul to gaze without distraction, immediately, and, as it were, face to face, on God who is a Spirit, on God who is Light, on God who is Love. 501 INDEX. Abelard, 199. Abstraction and Abstract Notion, 16-19, 50-55, 68, 96, 103, 114, 157-161, 247-250, 413. Esthetics, 401, 446. Analysis, 248. Analytic Judgments, 245-247, 325, 409. Anselm, 199, 221. Antinomies of Kant, 388-390. Appetencies, 279-284, 287, 406. Apriori,l9-2l, 34-35, 111, 115, 317, 353-354, 395, 403, 406, 428-429, 453. Aristotle, 13, 57, 66, 100-102, 137, 184, 186, 316-317, 331, 354, 401, 462. Atonement, 307, 408, 464, 466, 480, 481, 493, 496. Axioms, Mathematical, 50, 64. 68, 247, 249, 250-251, 255^ 409-415. Bacon, 1, 75, 317, 467. Beattie, 110, 351. Beauty, 288-290, 456, 477. Being, 121, 149, 161-164, 165, 477. Berkeley, 81, 129, 167, 375. Body, 126-133, 170, 441-442, 452. Brown, Thomas, 112-113, 204, 242, 252, 278, 292. Burner, 107-108, 153, 184. Butler, 285, 293, 470, 475. Calderwood, 215. Campbell, 149. Carlyle, 447, 448, 495. Categories of Kant, 20, 110-112, 242. Catholicity as a Test of Truth, 40, 41, 43, 49, 52-53, 107, 109, 220, 380. Cause and Causation, 20, 23, 73, 79, 89-90, 109, 112, 113,- 187-195, 258-278, 310-311, 316-317, 342, 353, 356-357, 390, 392, 417-418, 433-435, 471-472, 477. Chalmers, 443, 470. Classification, 418 (see Generali- zation). Clarke, Samuel, 67, 211, 225, 464. Coleridge, 351-353, 463-464, 487,495. Colour, 124, 140, 143, 144. Common Sense, 55, 109-110, 112, 114. Conscience, 285-288, 301-302, 385, 406-407, 435, 436, 443- 444,470, 496. Consciousness, 21-23, 42, 44-50, 85-86, 88, 114, 121, 148- 157, 340-341, 360, 392-393, 452-453. Contradiction, Principle of, 66, 246, 325, 346, 348-350. Contradictions, supposed, in Hu- man Eeason, 60-61, 200, 212- 213, 218-219, 222-223, 227, 271-273, 382-384, 388-390. Cousin, 62-63, 89-90, 113-114, 132-133, 164, 221, 268, 310- 311. Criterion of Truth, 325-326. Cudworth, 57, 353, 356. Definitions, 50, 66, 93-97, 412- 415. Demonstration, 350, 395-400, 438. 502 INDEX. Descartes, 7, 79, 99, 102-104, 115, 119, 146, 152, 166, 168, 174, 184, 186, 209, 221, 317, 329, 450, 451,462. Design in Nature, 429-432, 435, 477. Edwards, Jonathan, 462-463, 464. Eleatic School, 98, 163, 174, 315- 316, 358,402. Emotions, 283-284, 364-365, 456-457, 498. Essence, 178-180. Ethics, 64, 66-67, 70, 74, 279- 307, 350, 400, 406-409. Excluded Middle, Law of, 246, 325. Experience, 4, 27-28, 104, 232, 258-262, 274, 305-306, 325- 326, 340-345, 353-354, 356- 358, 396-400, 410-412, 429- 433, 437, 477. Externality, 128. Faculties of the Mind, 21-23, 72- 73, 236, 279-288, 351, 360. Faith, 196-202, 286-287, 327, 337-340, 341-342, 346, 348- 350, 361-362, 393, 419-427, 428. Ferrier, Professor, 129,375, 379. Fichte, 21, 75, 81, 112, 129, 181, 201, 278, 375, 379, 451, 458, 494. Forms given by the Mind, 19-21, 110-112, 354, 453. Fundamental Principles, 38, 53, 112, 115. Generalization and General No- tion, 16-19, 32-36, 50-55, 62-71, 97,103,114,157-161, 255-257, 258-259, 409-412. Gillespie, 207. Gnosticism, 463. Gnosiology, 320-362, 387 (see Goethe, 495. Hamilton, Sir William, 10, 13, 43, 52-53, 55, 106-107, 109, 114-115, 125,127-128, 129- 130, 138,145-146, 153, 171- 173,197,201,205, 214, 217- 219, 227-229, 238-240, 245- 247, 312, 320-321, 356, 360, 383, 467. Hegel, 75, 81, 115, 181, 227, 329, 375, 447, 449, 450, 452, 495. Heraclitus, 57, 98, 173. Herschel, Sir J., 206. Hobbes, 435. Hume, 81, 108-110, 119, 149, 166, 242, 272, 278, 353, 375, 376. ' Idea, 1, 13, 15, 99, 115, 119, 329-340, 418. Idealism, 5, 9, 129, 135, 363- 375, 451-452. Identity, 242-247, 325, 416. Immortality of the Soid, 441-446. Individuals, 29-36, 45-46, 68, 105, 110, 113, 114, 240-241, 244, 248. Induction, 3-4, 101-102, 112, 114, 322-324, 423, 491. Infinite, 32, 59, 113, 114, 208- 210, 214-231, 436, 477. Innate Ideas, 1, 15, 23-29, 42, 54, 103, 329-337. Intuition, 29-36, 42,44-50, 85- 87, 104, 340-345, 351-353, 437, 439, 482^500. Intuitional Theology, 470, 482- 500. Ionian School, 98. Jacobi, 84, 200-201, 461. Judgments, Primitive, 236-242, 287, 346-350. Kalologv, 401-402. Kant, 19-21, 22, 43, 52-53, 65, 88-90, 105, 106-107, 108, 110-112, 115, 127, 128, 149, 152, 164, 166, 181, 204-205, 212, 242, 244, 245, 271-273, 309-310, 317, 329, 351, 353, INDEX, 503 354-356, 375, 379, 388-390, 401, 405-406, 409, 443, 451, 453. 463, 464, 467, 480,494. Kidd, Mr., 391. Knowledge, 38, 106, 119-122, 126-133, 148-157, 196-200, 3:22-336, 346, 358-362, 362- 374, 387. Leibnitz, 52, 106, 107, 147, 159, 166, 211, 221, 244, 385,485. Locke, 7, 9, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23,31, 97, 99,107,115,120- 121, 131, 132-133, 154, 167, 172-173, 179, 184, 186, 214, 217-218, 238-240, 241, 252, 329-335, 401, 415, 462,464, 480. Logic, 64, 66, 82, 250, 257, 351, 390-393, 400, 401, 402-405, 422-423, 437,497-498. Mackintosh, Sir James, 292. Mathematics, 64, 68, 74, 255, 396-398, 409-415. Mansel, Mr., 149-150, 181, 227- 229, 238-240, 286, 409. Maurice, Mr., 496. Maxims. IS, 32-36, 50-55, 64- 66, 106, 114, 344-345, 409- 415. Metaphysics, 6-7, 64-97, 315- 394, 402, 404, 408,416, 461- 476. Mill, Mr. J. S., 158, 236-237, 268, 276-277, 304-305, 326, 373. 390-394, 410-411, 413. Miracles, 276-278, 493. Mode. 173-175. Moral Good, 23. 32, 58, 59, 66- 67,88,290-297,302-307,342, 348, 357,361,393,407, 435- 438, 439, 443-444, 458-459, 477. Motion, 185-186, 251. Necessary Truth, 4, 26, 39-40,47, 50-53*, 56, 59, 100, 105, 107, 109, 111, 112, 113, 219-220, 260-262, 267-268, 298-299, 327-328, 345-350, 353, 380, 390, 394, 397. Neo-Platonists, 100, 163, 489. Newton, Sir Isaac, 67, 212, 213, 225. Notion (see Abstraction and Gene- ralization). Number, 115, 184-185, 253-254. Obligation, Moral, 292-295, 404- 305, 443-444, 454-455, 459, 476-480. Ontology, 315-316, 321, 358- 388. Original Principles, 48, 58, 63. Original Sense-perceptions, 122- 126, 134-138. Pantheism, 166-169, 275, 446- 461. Pain, 306-307. Perfect, 220-221. Permanence of Substance, 128, 151, 166-169, 442-445. Personality and Personal Identity, 112, 113, 180-182, 444-445, 448, 453, 457. Phantasm and Phantasy, 13, 105, 115, 215. Phenomenal Theory of Knowledge, 19-20, 127-128, 163, 204, 270. Philosophy, 6-7, 33-36, 82, 316- 319, 464-476. Plato, 7, 16, 57, 66, 99-100, 115, 174, 289, 310, 324-325, 329, 358, 361, 450, 460-461, 485. Physical Sciences, 250, 415-419. Power, 130-133, 146-148, 153- 155, 165-166, 178, 187-195, 257-258, 263-265 (see Cause). ProDerties, 178, 257-258, 417- 418. Psychology, 400-404. Quality, 20, 23, 113, 145-148, 176-178. Quantity, 20, 66, 252-255, 417. Rationalism, 468, 470, 480-482. 504 INDEX. w« Keason, 20, 56, 72, 73, 104, 108, 110-112, 113, 199, 351, 353, 419-427,498. Reasoning, 28-29, 66, 405, 492. Reflex use of Intuition, 62-69, 109, 113, 490-492. Regulative Principles, 25, 33, 34, 42-43, 54, 59, 341-342. Reid, 22, 108-110, 138, 149, 166, 167, 275, 322, 351. Relations, 250-278, 365-366. Resemblance, 255-257 (see Gene- ralization). Responsibility (see Obligation). Revelation, 439, 440, 461-476, 482-498. Scepticism, 135-137, 374-385. Schelling, 75, 181, 375, 451-452, 495. Schenkel, 470. Schleiermacher, 201, 227, 463, 464, 495. Schoolmen, 7, 462-463. Self, Knowledge of, 58, 148-157, 243, 435, 441-442, 452-453. Self-Evidence, 38, 56, 59-60, 100, 102, 103, 104, 108, 219, 381. Sensation, 138-141, 324-325, 363. Sensationalism, 5, 9, 57, 120, 331-332, 435. Senses, 86-87, 122-144, 353, 357. Sense-Perception, 86-87, 121, 134-145, 324, 325, 326, 353, 363. Shaftesbury, 286, 462. Sin, 297-302, 360-361, 470, 478-482, 496. Singulars (see Individuals). Socrates, 57, 66, 324-325, 358, 401, 462, 485. Sophists, 57, 66. Space, 20, 23, 32, 67, 88-89, 114, 115, 202-214, 215-223, 250- 252, 262, 357, 360-361, 389, 416. Spinoza, 74, 79, 81, 168-169, 174, 447, 451. Spirit, 148-157, 170-171, 251- 252, 435, 441-446, 452-453. Spontaneous Convictions, 44-50, 54, 56, 59, 62-69, 82, 109, 113, 114, 342-344, 357,490. Stewart, D., 112, 128, 149, 205- 211, 275, 320, 413, 415. Subjective and Objective, 354-35 6. Substance, 20, 23, 66-67, 89-90, 110, 113, 164-180, 263, 268, 416-418, 450-451, 477. Synthesis, 248. Synthetic Judgments, 245-247, 325, 409. Superstition, 438, 457, 461, 478- 480. Testimony, 420. Tests of Intuition, 37-41, 68, 109, 113, 231-233, 325, 326, 393, 394, 422, 492. Theistic Argument, 271-273,388, 427-441. Theology, 70, 74, 383, 461-476, 482-498. Time, 20, 23, 32, 67, 88, 89, 114, 115, 200-214, 222-225, 252, 263, 357, 360, 361, 389,417. Trendelenburg, 186, 205. Ulrici, 166, 465. Unconditioned, 272, 385-388. Understanding, 72-73, 351-353. UnLjrmity of Nature, 259, 275- 278. Unity, 113. Universal Truth, 26-27, 52-53, 50-55,57,111,113,291,321- 328, 353, 380-381. Utilitarianism, 303-305. Whately, 158. Whewell,Dr., 115, 253-254,417- 418. Whole and Parts, 247, 416. Will, 284-285, 295-296, 308- 312, 390, 406, 453-454, 465, 471-472. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Sept. 2004 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 I I&, m ■ wm HI «