iji n n_jv_n. REESE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 1 APR 19 1893 Accessions No. & I O $q. Class No. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM " A PHILOSOPHY of belief, I do not mean of religious belief exclusively, or even principally, but of all belief, has yet to be constructed. I do not know that its foundations are yet laid." The Religion of Humanity, an address delivered at the Church Congress by Right Hon. Arthur Balfour. "The conscious realisation in tlie mind of an individual man of a philosophy or philosophical system must of course depend upon the actual intellectual develop- ment of that individual. The ultimate interpretation of self-conscious life and the universe which prevails among thinking men in any age or country thus depends upon the degree in which the spiritual faculties originallu latent in each of us are then and there drawn forth into conscious exercise. When the higher spiritual faculties are left in their latency, as at birth, then the prevalent philosophy tends to a self -contradictory scientific Agnosticism and to theological nescience" (Professor A. Campbell Fraser). Faith is the correlative of feeling, intelligence, and will, and reflective reasoning therefrom. " Moreover, an honest attempt to comprehend the universe in the light of its really ultimate concep- tions is the most arduous enterprise in which a person can engage. Its even partial success requires a completeness in the verifying mental experience which cannot be attained and sustained without the fatigue which is inseparable from reflection; and again our human individuality necessarily withdraws each of us from the centre to a side view of the universal reality." "What are all the sciences but the organised fruits of man's physical and metaphysical experiences?" Presupposed to be essentially or ultimately reason- able, together with the conclusions or inferences, inductive and deductive, that lie reflectively draios therefrom. " Enfeeblement of reason sometimes walks hand in hand with worship of mere intellect." Locke, as the spokesman of the eighteenth century, was unconsciously led towards a narrow and incomplete con- ception of man and of his insight of things. "Emotion, thought, moral self- determination, and spiritual reasoning therefrom, these are the spiritual factors of philosophy, for on all these does the comprehensive settlement of philosophical questions depend. It is these that are the key to a metaphysical interpretation of the universe from the human point of view. ' These are the fountain light of all our day, the master-light of all our seeing.' Any philosophy which represents man only as ending in sense and empirical (or phenomenal) understanding, and as generalising only according to sense (impressions), must contain the seeds of nescience through its oversight of the larger human life that is due to the factors of our spiritual experience." " Life, Love, Light these are symbols by which the mind apprehends the inexpressible central law, wings on which it broods over the unfathomed dee]). Men will differ only in the several names which they will give it, according to that ruling element in their several natures which gives them their contact with Divine things. To have been fascinated by one of these vague symbols, to have made it the summary of all thought, and to have insisted on it even to monotony, has before now been recognised as the mark not of barrenness or ineffectually but of an intellect deeply spiritual." PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM THE RATIONALE OR PHILOSOPHY OF BELIEF BY u^fc*. P. F. FITZGERALD AUTHOR OF "ESSAY ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS" AND "A TREATISE ON THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON." " I had rather not see another new face for a year, unless it were the face that shall make all things new." EMERSON'S Letters from England. " I should utterly have fainted, but that I believe verily to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." Ps. xxvii. 13. UNIVERSITY j^UFQg^ LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO. LIMITED. 1890. Z^e rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved. PEEFACE. MY one object in addressing the public in each one of my works has been to show that our reflective self- consciousness of the faculties, or attributes of Being, is not only as legitimately the subject-matter of science as are the physical forces, but that, as the condition of all science, it claims the title of the science of sciences. For even in our trusting, or believing in the evidence of our senses, the exercise of the fundamental rational concepts of the under- standing is involved, they in fact constituting our understanding. Therefore we need not hesitate to follow the sense- transcending lead of our emotional, intellectual, and moral faculties, pointing as they do to the haven or heaven of our desire. " Psychical laws are more radical than physical laws." It is psychical laws, and not mere physical laws of movement, that must furnish the ground of a philosophical theory of evolution. 75 CHESTER SQUARE, LONDON, S.W. CONTENTS. Principles of Mental Representation i Sufficient Cause ....... 7 Sanity, Rationality ........ 8 Self-Conscious Personality ...... 9 Efficient Cause . . . . . . . .10 Final Cause . . . . . . . .10 Sufficient Reason . . . . . . .12 The Ideal or Eidolon of Worthship . . . . . 13 Determinism according to Ideal Choice . . . .15 Substitution of Similars . . . . . . .16 Mutual or Reciprocal Selection . . . . .17 Being Pivotal Fact of the Universe . . . . .19 Sufficient Reason for Faith, Love, and Hope . . .26 Judgment and Reasoning . . . . . .29 Logic 29, 30 The Word the Expression of Reason . . . -33 The Neurotic Diagram . . . . . . -41 Unity of the Ego 45 Will 46 Truth is to Type or its Ideal 48 Infinite and Finite Personality . . . . .50 The Judgments of Pure Reason apply to all Beings, even to the Supreme as such . . . . . 52 Love is the Fulfilling of the Law 53 Marriages that are made in Heaven .... 54 Relation of Thought to Being 55 The Subject of Consciousness . . . . . .56 Extra- Consciousness, Subjectivity of Pleasure and Pain . 57 The Three Irreducible Facts of Being . . . -59 viii CONTENTS. PAGE Sensorial Impressions ' . . . . . .61 Knowledge only consists of what we consciously realise . 63 Apperception Conscience . . . . . .64 Energy and Evolution are Individual . . . .66 The Principle of Polarity . . . . . . .66 The Restful Sense of Soul Completion . . . .89 Justice and Virtue Individuality . . . . 9 1 Love alone confers Happiness upon Man . . . 93 Thought ......... 95 Duty and Happiness . . . . . . .96 Categories of Thought . . . . . . .97 Tests of Truth 99 Laws . . . . . . . . .101 Correlations . . . . . . . . .102 Essential Qualities . . . . . . .104 Final Cause, Conscious Content of Being . . . .107 Spiritual Impressions . . . . . . .no Polarity or Duality . . . . . . . .112 Man's Oracle is within him. He reads his destiny in the Abstract Ultimate Principles of Reason . . 1 1 5 Imagination . . . . . . . . .116 Union of True Complementaries . . . . 1 1 7 Reason is Personal as well as Love . . . . .119 Love human and Divine Spirituality of True Love . . 121 Complementary Beings . . . . . . .123 Idiosyncrasies require to be balanced . . . .126 Stability of Union on what it depends . . . .127 Abstract Generalisations . . . . . .128 Right and Wrong. Evil the Shadow of Liberty . . 129 Identification of Philosophy with Religion . . .130 Happiness; Love the fulfilling of the Law . . . 133 Cause and Effect . . . . . . .142 Invisible Realities . . . . . . .144 The Instinct of the Duality of Being . . . .145 Order of Nature and Reason . . . . . .146 Conditions of Finite Being and Finite Knowledge . 149 True Freedom . . . . . . . 151 The Inviolable Sense of Personality . . . . .152 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM IN my former works on Metaphysics, entitled respec- tively " An Essay on the Philosophy of Self-Con- sciousness" and "A Treatise on the Principle of Sufficient Reason," I have endeavoured to show the rationality of Faith, Love, and Hope. The last work on which I have been engaged, has for its object the exhibition of the genesis of the fundamental concepts of the human understanding ; but illness having impeded its publication, I am now offering to the public the introduction to it, as affording a resume, or concise statement of my theory of thought, or spontaneous mental representation, together with my notion of reflective abstract cogni- tion, and sense - transcending speculative inference therefrom. Stated in a tabular form, my theory of the prin- ciples of mental representation stands thus : The idea or notion is of Being, which is apperceived in reflection on the three faculties, whose mental representations constitute the Principles of Thought, i.e., the faculties of A 2 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. Feeling Intelligence and Will (which is logically (which is the con- (which is the con- the consciousness sciousness or sense sciousness of pur or sense of of relativity of pose or sense of Being). Being). tendency of Being). These assuming in reflection the forms of Sufficient Cause. Efficient Cause. Final Cause. Through which we have Perception. Apprehension. Comprehension. The synthesis of these fundamental modes in re- flective conception is Apperception, which is of the whole Ego, Self, or Subject- Object; out of which arises the logical or rational Principle of Sufficient Keason, which requires the satisfaction of our whole Being for perfect Faith, Love, and Hope to be possible, and affords answers to the all-embracing questions, What ? How ? Why ? i.e., To what class does a thing or object belong? How is it related to my Being ? Why, or to what end, am I so affected ? These must necessarily be consistent one with another, and non- contradictory of the principles of causality arrived at in reflective self-consciousness. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 3 The content of consciousness is thus seen to be the sense of Being, or feeling, the sense of relativity of Being, or of the identity of cause and effect, and the sense of the tendency of Being, or of spontaneous self- determination in action; whilst i\\Q function of con- sciousness is the recognition or perception of similars, the apprehension of causative relations, and the com- prehension of purpose in others through intuition of the good for Being. Thus only through the develop- ment of self-consciousness is the evolution of the human spirit accomplished, the law of its evolution being the fulfilment or realisation of the reflective Ideals of Truth to Being, harmony with Being, and Goodness, or action beneficent to Being. The objection to Metaphysics, that has hitherto been deemed unanswerable is, that the primary fun- damental beliefs or axioms of reason have themselves no foundation in facts, physical, physiological, or psychological, being mere philosophical assumptions, or forms of thought, or mental representation, to which no realities correspond. Now, what I have endeavoured to show is, that the actual substance or hypostasis of thought is Being the Being of the individual Ego presenting in every case the datum, or standpoint, of rational judgment and inference, or of mental representation. Natural or necessary representation being of the subjective facts of feel- ing, intelligence of causality, and will, which are seen in reflection to be the a priori grounds of the inductions or general ideas of reason ratiocination rf T7-WTX7 tff) GTT"V 4 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. being always in the ratio of Being, or relative to Being, which is the measure of subject- object mental representation. " Homo mensura" was one of the earliest doctrines of the Greeks. Thus on the temple of the Delphian Apollo it was written, " Know thy- self," that being the condition of all positive or direct knowledge. What other test of reality have we, I confidently ask, than the witness of our own feelings and intelligence of causality ? and what cue to purpose in action but our own ? Affection involves the idea of substance, and the effect is of the nature of the cause. It is out of the simple essential elements of self- love, social and divine, that our idea of duty, or what ought to be done as in obedience to the Makers' design in our creation, and in the creation of the universe, is evolved. " Gefuhl ist alles," said Goethe. Self-neglect is suicidal. "Want of sympathy with kind is idiotic, and indifference to, or conscious defi- ance of, the Divine order or will is wickedness. A theory of Idealism : must, of course, treat of the genesis of the ideas of reason, which in their abstract form, or as abstracted in reflection from Being, or its experiences, constitute the abiding ideals of the truth, beauty, or harmony, and moral purpose in 1 "Reflective thought is subjective reaction upon the multiplicity of experience that passively accrues." The idea of causality arises from the interaction of spirit with the. material organism when the appercep- tive or synthetic activity of consciousness is at work. Thus are the mentally constructed world and the real world or world of actual experience correlated. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 5 action, in which the Supreme Ideal of perfection of Being consists, and which is the standard under which the life of a cultured, or fairly-evolved human being is normally conducted. The faith, love, and hope of a rational Being have indeed no other ulti- mate ground but these characteristic attributes of Being. Thence only do we predicate justice and benevolence of the Supreme or Prototypal Being, or the rationally and so necessarily postulated Sufficient Cause of the universe. Inconsistency with reality i.e., unreality is logically not or ^on-Being, and self-delusion is obviously the admitted sign of irra- tionality or folly ; as action contrary to good feel- ing, and real knowledge, is always regarded as con- temptible, because immoral ; for as approbation is the sentiment attendant upon goodness, so immorality arouses in us the sense of disapprobation, or righteous indignation. Mental representations are now known to have a vital basis in the vital presentations of the nervous system, with its peripheral, or afferent nerves of per- ception, its sensorial centre, and motor centre con- nected with the muscular system, these conditioning our sensibility, and the grasping of similars in images according to personality, together with the activity of the efferent nerves, or nerves of cona- tion, or self-determination for the carrying out of the will upon these wait memory and imaginative representations, together with our judgments, and reasoning therefrom. The world of logic is the 6 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. world of rational inference from the facts of our experience. Thus the three elements of real Being, i.e., ist, The sense of personal power ; 2nd, Intellection of rela- tivity, with concomitant attraction or love for similars ; and 3rd, Benevolent volition, 1 constitute the rationale of the categories of Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Cause, under which we recognise Being, understand casuality, and determine ourselves in action, the material frameworks of time and space effectively completing our mental representations. Dr. Munster- berg says, " The physical, series of nervous events bears the whole of the causal strain." The three fundamental and two subsidiary internal senses, Memory and Imagination, answer to the five external senses of our physical organism : (i.) Perception, which is accompanied by { (2.) Memory of former impressions, and ( (3.) Imaginative objectification. (4.) Apprehension. (5.) Comprehension. As each external sense has its respective physical function, so each of the spiritual senses has its allotted psychical office. By the word apperception is understood the result 1 Mr. G. Romanes, in his " Mental Evolution in Man," speaks of the transition in the mind of the child from " receptual, or non-conceptual ideation, to conceptual ideation," of which Self-consciousness is the required condition, being equally observable in the evolution of the race. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 7 of the combined activity of the working and reflective forces, the representation, as a whole, of the five faculties of the soul. As real Being is, however, itself indivisible (the abstraction of its attributes being only a device for facilitating thought, as numerals are), it is only by reflection on the sub- ject-object that we can arrive at a Sufficient Keason for any faith that is in us. The only absolute truth for us is the Self-evident. Real Perception, as opposed to phenomenal, or sense perception, is the act by which we recognise Being, or Existence in some way similar to our own, Sufficient for only through its relation to us, is it know- Cause - able by us. It proceeds upon the Principle of Suffi- cient Cause for a spiritual, or real effect produced in us. A table, chair, or stone causes us no spiritual emotion, but only sensation, which is but molecular motion. Hallucinations result merely from either disorderly physiological or psychological conditions of our nervous system ; but for true perception, a sufficient, or noumenal cause, is required, conditions not being vera causse. Noumenal, or intelligent Being may be made mani- fest to us through both physical and spiritual signs, for we recognise emotions in others by certain indications in their countenances of emotions we have ourselves experienced, or of sensations which different physical elements excite in our sensorium. Our capability of being intoxicated, or poisoned through the introduc- tion into the brain of foreign material substances 8 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. makes sad havoc with its orderly, or normal activity, which can be thus either paralysed or over-stimulated. Still, as our experience, or the experience of the race, has shown us, these are but passing states of dis- orderly consciousness, ceasing with the morbid state of the nervous tissue, produced by abnormal physical growths, or decays, or by spiritual impressions of too overwhelming a kind. The normal function of the brain is orderly mental representation, which acts evolutionally upon it, whereas stoppage means dis- order, as does also the disassociation of the three elements of thought. It seems a truism that the absence of reason, or irrationality, is insanity ; but if it indeed be so, how Sanity seldom are any of us perfectly sane ? " If Rationality. each of ug had Qur Deserts," says Shake- speare, "who of us would escape a whipping?" But even if the whipping be administered, ii'liich it invariably is, in some form or another, what a quantity of unconscious unreason do we still go on exhibiting ! Were the Supreme Directing Power ever irrational, how could we understand anything ? seeing that all appeal to our understanding is through our faculty of reasoning, which is always from our emotions, our static intellect, and our will, just as we reason concerning the nature of a material object from the evidence of one or all of our external senses. Only the rational is intelligently experienced by us, or can leave a lasting impression with us. " Philo- sophy," said Descartes, " takes the form of a reflec- A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 9 lively reasoned criticism of internal experience." The being that possesses reason naturally, or by the necessity of its nature, recognises reason in a design, comprehends its final cause, or moral pur- pose, and in such recognition sees involved the existence of an Intelligent Designer or Noumenon both wisdom and goodness being the attributes of personality. We only gradually advance more or less, each one of us, into the light of Self- Conscious Personality, and only then do we realise true self-possession, J . Self-Con- Or possess our soul in peace. Professor sciousper- Campbell Fraser says : "This self-conscious life, between birth and death, is virtually our uni- verse for each of us, knoivable by each (only) under certain (peculiar) conditions." Eeason is the efficient cause and explanation of the prevalence of law and order in nature, just as it is the explanation of all our constructive activities, social co-ordinations, and poli- tical constitutions. Thus also the world of sense and natural agents presupposes the constant agency of a rational Creator : natural, as well as supernatural, or spiritual, evolution testifying to the immanence in the creation of Supreme Eeason, and the purpose of a perfect or benevolent will. Matter appears to be the condition of the manifestation of reason, revealing as it does an underlying spiritual Substance, or Per- sonality, one attribute of personality answering to another as " deep unto deep." Thus only to man, out of all the animal creation, are the power, the wisdom, and io A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. the goodness of God manifest through the self- reflective reason, with which He has Himself en- dowed us. Apprehension is the act by which we recognise relations, primarily between the Subject or Self and Efficient external objects, and secondarily the rela- tion of one thing to another, or of a thing to a person, or of one person to another person. It proceeds upon the Principle of Efficient Cause; for an immediate effect can only be produced by the mutual action and reaction of essentially asso- ciated, though it may be unconsciously, associated, factors. Efficient Causation holds an intermediate place between the Principle of Sufficient, and that of Final Cause ; the relative minor or objective relation being the link between the two, which stand to- wards each other in the same relation as do the major premiss and the conclusion of a syllogism. No good thing can be attained, unless the right means for its attainment are employed, and it is obvious that unless there is an intimately conceived, already designed, end to be attained, no adjustment of means would be possible. Comprehension is that act by which we recognise the essential tendency of Being. It pro- Final Cause. * ceeds upon the Principle of Final Cause, or normal intention, or intuitive purpose in action. Since everything we do is invariably with the purpose of satisfaction, or the supposed satisfaction, A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. n of Being, we cannot rationally infer a purpose other than this in the activity of other Beings or in the Divine activity. And as perfect satisfaction argues a perfect Being, the ultimate aim of reflective reason must of necessity be the endeavour after subjective perfection of Being, by means of the culture of the reason or understanding, and the search for general information, as also through sedulously acting always up to the degree of moral enlightenment which we have already attained ; for, as Jesus taught, only those who do the will of the Father, as far as they already know it, are capable of receiving a noble doctrine. In vain does the sower scatter seed upon the hard high-road, or upon too superficial a soil ; and even when the soil is favourable, the rain must fall upon it and the sun must shine on it ; and, in the case of human character, the ploughshares of adversity must upheave it. But it is only in reflective self-consciousness, that the mind abstractly conceives causation, sufficient, efficient, and final; for apperception concerns man's emotional, intellectual, and moral nature, hence only can he state to ivhat class an object belongs, lioiv it stands in relation to himself, and why, or with what purpose, it acts or happens. When we speak of the will of God as happening to us, it is not that we regard it as haphazard, but because we are powerless to contravene it. Still He has placed a witness to His goodness within us in the Principles of Thought. 12 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. By a Sufficient Eeason for any judgment, or for Sufficient an y inference drawn therefrom, is under- stood the synchronous corroboration of the three normally represented principles of causality : (i.) Being, or perceived Sufficient Essential imme- diate causality. (2.) Eelativity of Being, or apprehended efficient mediate causality. (3.) Tendency of Being, or comprehended final causality, i.e., rational purpose compre- hended in all noumenal activity. The Principle of Sufficient Eeason is therefore the test of the validity of our opinions, and of the wor- thiness of our actions and character. Seeing the vast amount of enjoyment there is in life, Pessimism seems a doctrine without a sufficient reason ; but did the life of man end here, Optimism would be equally so, because of the amount of suffering experienced in it. The simple understanding seeks only Cause. It is the reflective principle of apperception, or self- consciousness in man that makes him ask for a Sufficient Reason for the existence of any thing, Being, or event; the Sufficient Eeason always being the satisfaction, fulfilment, or actualisation of self- conscious Being. The rationale of this, that, and the other, being by the terms its relativity to, conformity, or corre- spondence with the nature of Being as such, or A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 13 per se. A sufficient reason is one that satisfies the whole of our nature : the heart (feeling), intelligence (understanding of causality), and the typical will (which is the desire for the best for Being, or the perfection of Being). A right course is one that leads to a good end. " This is the Ideal, or Eidolon of worthship (value or trustworthiness) which is of sufficient causality to sustain the superstructures of science and philosophy." It is by the fundamental Eidolon of r J " Worthship. axioms of reason that individual opinions or suppositions are tested. The mode in which things appear to each of us is, however, strictly relative to our individual faculties, conditioned as they are by our particular neurotic diagram. Logical representation is necessary representation, as being typically rational representation, the correlate of the neural presenta- tions of causality. It is the intuitive internal sense of Ideal Perfection that produces yearnings yearn- ings for love, human and divine, yearnings for certain knowledge, absolute faith, and the concomitant hope of love and faith. The pivotal ideas of evolution are first made manifest in the instinctive straining after progress. It is in choosing between his own various instincts and impulses that man exhibits what we call free- will. The question is on each occasion, What is his really proper line of self-determination ? Shall im- mediately pleasurable sensation or emotion prevail over our intelligence of Sufficient and Final Causes, 14 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. over truth to the nature and destiny of noumenal or spiritual Being ? No gain of comfort in our sensations or of immediate enjoyment of emotion can result in the really best for Being if the moral laws of benevolence and duty towards our Creator be left out of account. It is from the co-ordination of the three principles of causality that we arrive in reflection at the sense-transcending inferences con- cerning the whence and whither of man, as also at answering the wherefore of our sufferings here. If perfection of Being is the goal, " surely the way is good leading to this ! " Want and suffering are the stimulants to mental or rational activity. Qui veut la Jin, veut les moyens. It is quite as logical to inquire, What will be ? or what was rational ? as to inquire into The must be . . . isofEeflec- what it is rational now to do. Hence we say, This is what must happen, or have happened. Our statement of the freedom of the will may thus be made : "I can now choose to do what I conceive as right or reasonable, however strong may be my inclination to act unreasonably" But it is only when I stop to reflect on the con- sequences of any course of action, that I am likely to represent to myself the irrationality of it. Con- sequently Eeflection is the true seat of conscience, or the sense of duty as opposed to mere persistence of inclination, &c. " Freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law, and the moral law is the ratio cognosccndi of freedom." A strictly rational inter- A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 15 pretation is a disinterested interpretation, because it relates to pure Being as such, not to you or me in particular. Kant said of the moral law that it is the sure and only sufficient evidence of freedom, and that the test of goodness as a motive, is whether that motive could be adopted as a universal principle of action. Man's evolution lies in the evolution within his mind of the fundamental truths of reason, i.e. ,. of the three principles of causality, and in that of the reflective principle of Sufficient Reason, which is the Principle of Personality. Absolute determinism is incompatible with the sense of duty or responsibility, or the logical exis- tence of the word ought. Our reflections may be but shallow, still they give rise to am. T> i according some sort of ideal of Bem^ ; and it is to t< ideal 7 7 i i 7 Choice. this, our own ideal to which we ought to be true, it being our duty to our Maker to be true to the actual sense of Being, with which He has endowed us. It may be that we have but one poor talent, but we are none the less obliged by conscience or the sense of responsibility to our Maker to be true to this, i.e., to exercise it. It is true that our choice lies between rational judg- ment and irrational inclination; but it must be remembered that individual judgment is the result of an inherited neurotic diagram, modified by the social medium to which the mental organism has been subsequently exposed in the course of its evolu- tion. Hence my theory of the perennial requirement 16 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. of an eternal spiritual counterpart or opposite. Hence, le besoin d'aimer, the yearning of the lonely soul for its complement. Were it not for our intuition of causality, belief in the existence of an external object would not be possible. This intuition arises in us out of our own power to produce effects, hence we infer that there must exist power as Sufficient Cause for the pro- duction of an effect upon us. Mere physical force is not the synonym for power which invokes intelli- gence of result, and purpose. In all knowledge of substance, whether spiritual or material, there is involved knowledge of designing, adapting power. Wisdom is the sense of relativity, and goodness is action according to power and wisdom. Self-evident conceptions are necessary conceptions, and what is cognised in self is recognised wherever it appears or is exhibited. Eational satisfaction is of the needs of feeling, of intellection, and of the moral sense or sense of justice and benevolence. These are our standards of judgment and of conduct, but, weak and ignorant as we are, one of the chief requirements of reason is the frequent suspension of judgment when evidence is insufficient. Only in reflection do we consciously realise and idealise our experiences, ideals being abstracted from our own experiences together with those Substitution of similars o f the race. A Supreme Beinsj is revealed (see Jevons). * p to the mind solely by reflective conceptual recognition, or necessary logical "substitution of A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 17 similars." TTe recognise immediately in sense and perception a physical organism like our own, from its similarity to our own material organism, and we recognise the passions of anger or joy through their signs in the distortion of the features, or in the placid sweetness of their expression, w r e ourselves having experienced like nervous modifications of our attitude and countenance. Thus in reflective con- templation of the attributes of power, wisdom, and goodness manifested in our own Being, we rationally assume the existence of, or substitute, a similar Being only Supreme, Prototypal, and Absolute, instead of relative and finite, such as we are, to account for our relative existence and for our notion, or rational idea of the universe, physical and spiritual. To Him alone, we attribute the perfect equilibrium of the attributes of Being, in which perfection of Being consists. In our own dual or sexual crea- tion, " which is the supreme form of the prin- ciple of polarity which pervades both the spiritual and material universe," we behold the Divine pro- vision for our approaching somewhat nearer to the required equilibrium : opposite polarities being neces- sary complements of each other's existence. " True love is the outcome of complementary character- istics." All relation is primarily conceived by us as with our own Being, and secondarily as between other persons, or different things. The sexes are correla- tive. The first" exercise of the intellect is differen- B 1 8 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. tiative : through feeling we have the intuition of relation between real cause and effect, as opposed to A condition conditional existences. Only a baby can is not a cause. upon it, or with a table that is pushed against it ; for by the terms of the two propositions, these articles are incapable of malice towards it, being only the condi- tions of its being hurt, not the real designing causes of its suffering. In the case of an earthquake or of the fall of a house, the law of gravity is referred by the adult to the Constructor of the Cosmos to account for the earthquake, and in the other case some finite Being is asked to explain the negligence or folly that has occa- sioned our being hurt ; for well-being is intuitively assumed to be the object of the order of the universe, and of the conduct of men ; only the moral maniac delights in the sufferings of others, only the fool in his own, unless they are undergone voluntarily for the gaining of a higher good, or nobler and truer happiness. The substitution of similars, or necessary or logical representation of a similar cause for a similar effect, is the natural intuition of the human understanding with regard to the existence of other spirits or rational Beings, whilst material external objects are revealed to man through his own physical organism, which conditions his spiritual evolution, and thus fits him for ultimate blessedness. Through reflection on our own Being, in its various A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 19 aspects and modifications, we are able to ?*e-cognise similar modifications of Being in the relations of human history and biography. The correlate of the idea of right is that of duty. There is certainly nothing to be wondered at in the prevalence of Agnosticism amongst those who neglect the culture of reflective introspec- Being> the tion, for the idea or conception of Being as Slhe an abstract notion, only arises out of reflec- tion on the three faculties represented in the prin- ciples of thought, i.e., feeling, intelligence, and will. These are what we call the attributes of Being : its properties, or qualities, as we say of material sub- stances. The idea of attribute involves that of a spiritual subject, as physical properties suppose a material object of thought, or mental representation. Thus Hegel speaks of the identity of thought and Being : thought consisting of the representations of the modifications of our own Being in feeling, i i Though* intelligence, and will, as also in sensation, Represents Being. psychologically speaking. Thus, when we say, " I think this a clever performance," it is as if we said, " I fed its effects (for only through the operation of things upon our faculties do we know anything), and am consequently induced by it to certain particular modes of feeling, thought, or action." The nature of any fact is not known in its full reality unless we know it in all its relations to the system of the universe, or, to repeat Spinoza's expression, " Sub specie teternitatis" as regarded in 20 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. the light of eternity. The proof of belief in a doctrine is acting up to it, or in accordance with it. Carlyle speaks of " living in the burning light of Infinity and Eternity." It is the type or ideal stan- dard of Being which the generalisations of reason reflect, and hold up to us as the abstract standard or " Counsel of Perfection," to which we, and all others have to conform. It is the attributes of Being that furnish the categories of thought. " The categories of thought are the primary moulds into which thought is cast " (Laing). Reason holds the scales, giving each part of our Being its due ; egoity, or self-reverence, being pro- perly balanced by sympathy or altruity, the combina- tion of both of these, together with adoration of the Divine will, in thought and action constitutes our duty to God, He having so ordained the constitution of our reason, that the moral sense or categorical im- perative of action witnesses to His own goodness or benevolence towards all Beings. As the major premiss of a syllogism contains its conclusion, so the Idea of Being involves that of the end, or aim of the activity of Being viz., the con- servation of the integrity of Being. Evolution, which is through the relativity of subject to object, and the converse, represents the means to the end of perfection of Being. The interaction of Rational . . Conscious- subject and object is in this wise : Ine action of the object upon the subject evolves passion, or emotion in the subject, and A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 21 the reaction of the subject upon the object evolves moral volition, when reflective reason is brought to bear upon the problems of life. Reflective reason in its recognition of similarity and " substitution of similars " is the mother of the sciences ; in its repre- sentation of equivalence, correspondence, symmetry, and proportion of parts to a whole, it is the fosterer of the arts, and in its logical insistence on action being in accordance with these intuitions, so as to fulfil the Divine order in the universe, it is the source of the moral sense, or sense of Justice. " Eational activity, or activity in conformity with the law of the world, is directed to the attainment of the greatest possible happiness for one's self Life andits and the ivhole world" ("Life," by Count ^^* Lyof Tolstoi, p. 139). The subject of all reasoning is the subject- object of apperception, or reflective self- consciousness. " The object of all courses of reason- ing determines the order in which the separate trains of thought must be arranged." Man studies life only in order that it may become better" " Those men who have advanced humanity have not abandoned the aim of reasoning." " What I really know is the Buffering which I fear and hate, and the pleasures and joys which I desire the consciousness of suffering and of enjoyment, and of aspirations towards good- ness is the chief sign of human life." " I cannot imagine life otherwise than as a striving from evil towards good." " The chief definition of life, which is its aspiration toivards happiness } is discovered 22 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. only in the consciousness of man " (Tolstoi). " At the awakening of his intelligent consciousness (reflec- tive reason) man regards his past conception of life as a mere animal existence, or one in which his whole idea of duty lay in the exercise of his profession or business. Man's real life begins only with the appearance of rational consciousness." " The whole of man's complicated, seething activity, his traffick- ing, his science, and his arts, is for the most part only the thronging of the unintelligent crowd about the doors of life, who go away after being jostled there, under the full conviction that they have been of the assembly" (Tolstoi). If, as Jesus said, " we cannot cast out Beelzebub by Beelzebub," so also, from our conception of the moral law, we cannot but impute goodness or holi- ness to our Creator. If all professed Agnostics were suddenly deprived of reason, they would then, and only then, be justified in asserting that they know nothing. Are not persons who understand nothing called idiots or madmen ? "I reflect, therefore I know that I exist / know that I know " (Descartes' Axiom). The general term things includes the physical con- ditions of Being, or sensitive presentations in our mental representations, as time, space, and extended bodies. Our own material frame is properly used in connection with the word existence as opposing the outer world to the inner, ontological, essential, or real world of life. Only pure Being is enduring, A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 23 because it is of the essence of the Prototypal Being, " begotten, not made." Matter is the Proteus, ever shifting in form, and so apparently dissolving. Existences are merely pheno- menal, passing away like images in a dream. Sensible consciousness and sub-consciousness are liable to be interfered with by disease of physiological tissue, they not forming a part of the essential, enduring substance of the spiritual representations which re- flective reason apperceptively re-represents. " Being alone endures ; intervals of time, of one minute or 50,000 years, are indistinguishable by it, because for it, time does not exist" Noumenal, or real Being alone gives intelligibility to the external Cosmos or material order, of which the only rationally con- ceivable raison d'etre is for the evolution and manifestation of the power, wisdom, and goodness of Spiritual Being ; the struggle with matter in its various forms being the school for the development of rationality in finite spiritual beings, through which the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Supreme Prototypal Being, by the logical substitution of simi- lars, becomes more and more revealed to, and partici- pated in, by us. Seeing that each one's own Being is the only thing positively, instead of indirectly, or inferentially, known to any one of us, how can we arrive by logical induc- tion at faith in the existence and essential nature of the Supreme Being if we decline to reflect on our own Being ? For w r hat is all objective knowledge but re- 24 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. cognition of similarity and difference to our cognised self, or Ego ? No one is surprised at a person's igno- rance of the science of chemistry, if he has not studied the subject, or at a man's ignorance of, or incapacity for, the art of music, when he has an uncultivated ear and hand. Why, then, are people to expect the science of metaphysics, or ontology, obviously the deepest of the sciences, to be anything but mysterious to a person who neglects the culture of reflection, and of the reflective self -knowledge, which has been endeavoured after by the ancients, alike of the East, and of the West, as the touchstone of the validity of all other information that can possibly be reached only our own human nature affording a sufficient rea- son for our faith, our love, or our hope of a happier future? How but through using the faculty of sight do we even see the glorious sun ? the image to man of the splendeur de Dieu, by which Henri IV. asseve- rated his assertions. And can a man be expected to recognise the activity of an intelligent powerful Moral Being in the creation, if he has neither reflected on his own Being, or on Being in the abstract, as the one source of power, wisdom, and goodness ? As we know in this world that further knowledge of any subject does not entail, or mean the contradiction of what we already know, so it is with regard to our actual knowledge of the attributes of our own spiritual, noumenal, or real Being, together with our compara- tive knowledge of other beings, and our superlative A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 25 knowledge of the Supreme Being. It is not rational, i.e., according to our experience in Being, to suppose that we shall ignore elsewhere what we have known, loved, or hoped for here. Above all, how can the two that are the complements of each others Being forget each other ? This would be no resurrection of our true selves, but like a fairy-tale metamor- phose of a woman into a cat. The passage from one extreme of climate to another may disorganise our physical system, and so dislocate our mental repre- sentations for a time ; but we do not find, as a rule, that the passage from one country, or district of govern- ment, to another permanently disturbs our spiritual relations with those we love and honour, or develops in us a desire for lovelessness, ignorance, and wicked- ness, immorality or unhappiness. Why, then, should our passage to another star essentially affect our spiritual nature, although the external circumstances there may subsequently prove more rapidly furthering to our spiritual evolution ? " God," says Locke, " when He makes the prophet, does not unmake the man." The Being of man, or the existence of man apart from relation to a Supreme Absolute Being, is unthinkable. Relationship implies obligation to sympathy or kindness, particularly in the measure of the kindness or goodness shown to us by another. Who, then, has been so good to us as the " Author of all good things " ? When sense, or sensuality, takes the lead of soul, or spirituality, we have a degraded Being, one out Of THf UNIVERSITY ^ CAI ir 26 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. of whom the virtue or spiritual essence has departed. Marriages contracted through the lust of the eye and the pride of life are of the earth, earthy, and conse- quently cannot be supposed to be held binding in a world, " where dwelleth righteousness," they being in no way in harmony with real Being or morality, how- ever respected by, and dear to, conventionality they may be here. Small wonder is it that priests, or spiritually -minded men of various religions, have sought refuge from such ties in the cloister. As to women, they have chiefly been driven to the convent by their relations, so that the estates of the family might remain unencumbered by them ; therefore we cannot give them much credit for spirituality in the matter, most of their actions, whilst in a state of bondage, being more like those of serfs, than like such as behoved the better half of man. It is now being maintained by scientists that Naturalism, or Secularism, is a sufficient basis for morality. What I am endeavouring to show is, that this is untenable and that in man's rational or spiritual nature alone, is found a sufficient basis for morality, the duty of purity being involved in man's apprehension of relativity to a Supreme Creative Being, who has absolutely, or in perfection, the attributes of Being, which, although possessed by us only in a finite, sufficient limited, imperfect, and physically condi- FaiTh, n L f ove, "tioned degree, yet constitute us the spiritual and Hope. ' offspring of the ^faj. of Spirits. The only Sufficient Keason for faith in the Supreme Being Ideal Mind; Pm- A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 27 is the rational evidence of things unseen by the eye of sense, but which are " the substance of things hoped for." The reflective ideal of mind hinges upon sponta- neous feeling, intelligence, and will, which are psycho- logical facts, iust as seeing, hearing and ' J smelling are physiological facts. As we must have a reason for the faith that is in us, so we must have a reason for our love, and for our hope, unless we wish to forego being rational creatures. Thus reflective inference takes its stand upon the actual nature of Being. Pure reason has only to do with the attributes or qualities, which are the indications of pure Being, of which Reflective matter is only the condition of manifesta- g^etic tion. What reflective Eeason claims as Thou & ht - her own, is inference, or conclusions, from judg- ments arrived at through the association of the elements, or principles, of thought, which I have enumerated under the heads of perception, appre- hension, and comprehension. Apperception is the reflective perception of the whole of Being in the indivisibility of the subject-object which is the object involved in all perception, apprehension, and com- prehension, all argument being from it, inasmuch as it is the one datum for all inference of reason, just as the five physical senses are called into play exhaustively to perceive a sensible object. It is the internal 1, or Ego, that perceives, apprehends, and comprehends respectively the Sufficient Cause, the 28 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. Efficient Cause, and the Final Cause of whatever is in question, arriving through the triform Causal Principle at the apperception of the Sufficient Eeason of our Faith, Love, and Hope, in ourselves, in our rational compeers, and, above all, in our Creator, Preserver, and continual Benefactor. Feelings, ideas, and desires that are contradictory of the rational ideal of Being are like the house spoken of in the New Testament, which, being built upon the sand, the winds beat on it, and the waves washed it away, leaving no trace of it behind, because of its hav- ing no real place, or place of enduring fulfilment in the universe. Such feelings, ideas, and desires are but arbitrary tricks of fancy, sometimes seem- ingly charming, but not really beautiful, because not in harmony with spiritual or real Being, whilst oftener they are monstrous and hideous travesties of it. The only really Efficient Cause of true Love, or spiritual attraction, and for a certain hope of joy in another and happier state of Being, is the actual experience of the perfect joy of sympathy, in this life, in which lies the perfect fulfilment of our own self-conscious Being, from its being made ivhole or holy through union with its correlative spirit ; and in the reflective deduction therefrom of the nature of our destiny from the nature of the Creator, the pure and Holy Being in whom we live, and move, and have our being ; and Faith, in Whom is the substance of things hoped for. In Him there is no shadow of change, no possibility of self-contradiction, so that we A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 29 may " rest in the Lord," sure that " He will give us our heart's desire," He Himself having so constituted us that we must fain desire completeness, which is holiness of Being one-sidedness, or partiality of judg- ment, constituting injustice, or imperfection of Being. Judgment, and reasoning therefrom, cannot be conducted apart from the association of the Ideas of Causality in combined introspective self- . . . Judgment reflection. '' Ernes Mannes Memung ist andKeason. ing. keine Memung, wir mtissen horen beide " (Inscription over the entrance of Rathhaus at Frank- fort). The sense perceptions must be supplemented by an actually active intellectual element, before they can yield any true perception ; therefore sensation alone, is not true consciousness, but only the sub- consciousness, or the unreflective imaginative con- sciousness of the lower animal. A sensation . . Sensation. involves chronological and spatial relations, commonly called time and place. The conditions of sensation are physical or material. We intellectually assign the sensation, actually experienced, to the action upon our nervous organism of some material object. For a physical effect, a physical cause is postulated. Psychological consciousness, as opposed to ontological or spiritual consciousness, represents psysiological or phenomenal causation, as well as noumenal or real causation our sensational as well as our emotional experiences, the latter, alas ! being often so fatally conditioned by the former. The word "necessity'* is simply a logical term applying only to ontological 30 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. or spiritual concepts, as opposed to passing or acci- dental sensations ; but in the early history of the race, as in Fetishism, Polytheism, and Judaism, we find the idea of a Supreme Being confused with Anthropology, or the conception of the animal form of man. Sensation is the material on which the intellect works. Imagined sensations or hallucina- tions are the product of some neurosis initiated within the higher or lower nerve centres of him who expe- riences it. Out of them has arisen the common belief in apparitions or ghosts. The word " logic " essentially denotes the theory of argumentation. Pure logic treats of the rationale of thinking, i.e., of the avoidance of self-con- Lo^io. tradiction. Applied, or verbal logic has chiefly for its office the avoidance of mutually con- tradictory forms of speech. Self, or Being, is thus the standard of truth or reality of conception. John Venn, the logician, says : " The extraordinary variety of general conception and exposition of which logic has proved to be capable is now pretty well known. The illogical may scoff at this as a sign of chaotic uncertainty, but logicians rejoice at it as a proof of vitality and healthy growth." Inference is from the known to the unknown, by means of some point of relation or similarity between them. By inference is meant conclusion from evidence. To quote again from John Venn : " Mr. Spencer recognises the science of reasoning as subjective." Mr. Spencer uses the term " science of reasoning " as a department of psychology A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 31 in his " Principles of Psychology." Except under the influence of reflecting minds, the knowledge of the true order of the three laws of causality would hardly have been attained ; witness the hideous superstitions of the ignorant. The ideal of science is truth, or Sufficient Cause. The ideal of aesthetic, or emotion, is corresponding harmony, as Efficient Cause or means to the end, or Final Cause of goodness of existence, i.e., the best or most blessed for Being. Being is the pivotal fact of science ; Love, or the harmonious attraction of Beiogs for each other, is the typical emotion of Being, and goodness is the moral result of the religious sentiment, which is to us the key to the understanding of the Divine order of the universe. Thus equipped within, with the Ideals of Truth, Beauty or Harmony, and Goodness, should man de- scend into the arena of practical social life. It is the reflective ideal of Spiritual Evolution, which offers to us the rationale or rational solution or Sufficient Reason of our trials and struggles and sufferings in this poor little planet. This is the reading of "the riddle of the Sphinx," which, unless a man read, he must be torn to pieces. Logic is thus really the science of knoiving the before, and after, through the actual, or present. As Hegel said : " Thinking or knowing is one with Being ; " and the great utterance, " The logical pos- tulates are the predicates of God," is due to the same author ; for what is thought but the representation of the various modifications, aspects, or attributes of 32 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. our Being? A thing, or object of thought, realised out of our own consciousness of Being, is the in- conceivable by reason, as being a self-contradictory representation. The lower animals are in every way as far from being exhaustively comprehensible by us from their being below, or less than our own consciousness, as is the Supreme or Absolute Being, from being so infinitely above our own finite, con- ditioned consciousness ; and as only what is known through its relation or correspondence with our- selves or similarity to us in the lower animals is comprehensible by us, so only through that part of our nature which is related to the Divine, or Perfect Being, are we able to conceive and realise His existence. Only an intelligent and powerful Being can recognise power and intelligence exhibited in what he beholds around him, as only a benevolent Being can recognise benevolence in any creation, or arrangement. To the gnat, or the beetle, the order of the universe is not patent : for them no cosmos exists mental conception being, like physical concep- tion, " after its kind." Perfect mutual understanding is the result of mutual equivalence of nature, hence the correlation of spiritual counter-parts (Wahlver- wandschaften). Each man is what his ideals represent ; he cannot jump off his own shadow. In the writings (translated by Giles) of Chuang Tzu, the Chinese moralist after Confucius, and the reactionist against his Positivism or Secularism, there is the following interesting dis- A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 33 sertation on Keason, or " Tao," as it is rendered in the Chinese language. In the Chinese cosmogony Yu and Yang are the positive and negative principles from whose inter- action the visible universe results. Confucius said, "All that a fish wants is water; all that a man wants is Tao (Reason). In Tao life and death are one. A man said to JSTu Yu (by one authority reported to be a woman), 'You are old, and yet your countenance is like that of a child. How is this ? ' Nu Lu replied, ' I have learnt Tao.' ' (Emerson is said never to have lost his youthfulness of character.) " Could I get Tao by studying it ? " asked another. " I fear not," replied Nu Lu ; " you are not the sort of man ! There was Pu Liang, who had all the good qualities of a man of science, but not Tao." "Meng Lun," said Confucius, "has made an ad- vance towards Tao, wisdom, towards Tao, wherein there is no weeping nor gnashing of teeth. Tao may be attained, but cannot be received." As Emerson says, "To know a thing, you must get to it." In the New Testament we have, " This sort cometh not but by prayer and fasting." " Tao has its own evi- dences, its own laws." " Before heaven and earth were, Tao was. It has existed without change from all time." The long chain of proximate causes makes for finality in Reason ; they are the means to the beatitude of Beiog. Reason is that which informs all 34 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. creation. It is of all phenomena the ultimate cause, i.e., there is a Sufficient Reason for all existing pheno- mena in the nature, and requirements of self-con- scious Beings. The ivord is the embodiment of the notion, or idea. "It is the creation of the mind and the best The word evidence of existence. " But for the rational process of mental representation how should we know that we exist ? " Je pense, done fexiste" (Descartes). " The unknowable thing 'be- comes a thought under an idea of Reason which the ivord expresses, enabling us to communicate it to others, and to retain it ourselves as a symbol of a reality. " Language is in a manner the embodiment of Reason." " Many a word will be found to rest on some deep analogy of things natural and things spiritual, bringing these to illustrate each other, and to give an abiding form and body to both. " He who first discovered the relation was a poet " (Trench) a rela- tion meaning harmony, as that of musical notes, or as the analogy between a physical and spiritual storm, or upheaval. Language is the mirror of the inner living consciousness. The object is revealed to the subject through a mental synthesis of memories and images under the fundamental ideas of Reason. " The mind must bring with it the categories which make Nature intelligible." The mind, or rather Being, brings with it the idea of reality, by which it judges appearances. It also brings with it the sense of Relativity and of Finality. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 35 " Science seems to question Nature by an idea which it takes to Nature " (the idea of Being or of the modifications of Being). The question i i- i JBin0isthe is, What are the principles on which ex- Pivotal Science: all perience must be questioned, in order to Argument is * from Being. attain real knowledge ? Only the know- ledge of Being, and of what relates to Being, is real or intelligible to us. A madman's story, all sound and fury, signifying nothing, is deemed unreal. We cannot rationally believe contradictions of Beason, by the terms. St. John says, " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." " In Him was Light, and the Life was the Light of men." That is, Being is the Light of all our seeing. " I am that I am." " My name is I AM;" and in Him, the Supreme Ideal Being, we understand in some degree the great plan of the universe as the abode of rational spirits in different stages of evolution, all being prepared for communion with, and rejoicing in Him. The following quotations are from the Chinese book already cited : " There is a state, that of Tao (Reason), in which killing does not take away life, nor does the prolon- gation of existence add to the duration of life. Fu Yuh obtained it, and, as the Minister of Wu Sino 1 . * * O ' got the empire under his control, and now, charioted upon one constellation, and drawn by another, he has 36 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. been enrolled among the stars of Heaven as repre- senting Genius" " It is easy to be respectfully filial, but difficult to be affectionately filial the artificial is easier than the natural." " The Yellow Emperor said, * Perfect music first shapes itself according to a human standard, then it follows the lines of the Divine. I played as a man drawing inspiration from God ; the execution was punctilious, the expression sublime.' " Chuang Tzu. Of the existence of feeling we have the most inti- mate and immediate knowledge, for ive ourselves are feeling, as we say, " God is love," or Divine feeling. Emotion the ( T feel cold > means J am colcL ) " Feeling is IS A S pect a fact ; it is the most indubitable fact of all, of Feeling. ^ ^ Jj now l e( Jg e regts Qn fa Psychology takes this fact as the basic datum of its investigations, and must attempt to reduce all more complicated phenomena of psychic life to simple feeling " (Dr. Paul Carus). Impressionableness is another name for feeling. The physiological, as well as the psychological, con- dition of memory is that impressions be left on our physiological or psychological substance. The nerves of animals being centralised in the brain, their feel- ings form a multifarious unity which is called con- sciousness. The reflective consciousness of man, or apperceptive self-consciousness, is what distinguishes man from the lower creatures. When we speak of A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 37 spirit, we speak of enduring Being, or, as Emerson calls it, real Being, without any reference to the bodily forms in which it manifests itself, varying from the minute frame of the infant to the full- grown man varying no doubt still more in different stars. It is the spirit of man that looks for the fulfil- ment of its faith, love, and hope hereafter; the present exhibiting, partly through the weakness of the flesh, almost the reverse of the ideal of the perfect and the blessed life, even when the spirit is willing or prepared for it, excepting for some brief hours in which " The soul's delight takes fire, Face to face with its own desire," in the presence of its spiritual or eternal affinity. By the very term soul, it will be understood that I am speaking of the soul, or spirit's desire, not of the lusts of the flesh, of which it is spoken, " Earth to earth and dust to dust." When feeling, intelligence, and judgment are in perfect harmony through the correspondence of objective presentations with the triple ideal of these attributes of Being, and its con- ceptual representations of fulfilment of Being, or spiritual desire, then and there, in whatever place or state such fulfilment or perfect satisfaction of Being occurs, we are in Paradise or the place of happiness. Our idea of hell is a negative one, meaning the place where happiness is not. It is awful to realise with Schubert's " Der Wanderer," " Dort, wo du bist 38 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. nicht, dort 1st das Gliick." Shakespeare says : " It is sad to have happiness dawn upon us first in the eyes of others." It is obvious from this that, according to the opinion of the present day, Shakespeare lagged far behind George Eliot and Carlyle in nobility of sentiment ; only we must remember that in Shake- speare's day the doctrine of loving one's neighbour so much better than oneself had not yet been broached. Perhaps if the old-world lesson of not sacrificing others to ourselves, were thoroughly learnt first, it would be better, as it would be acting upon the principle of "being just before we are generous." Walter Scott says of love, " And Heaven itself de- scends in love, for love is Heaven, and Heaven is love." Count L. Tolstoi says, in his work entitled " Life," " Man possesses in the depth of his soul an inefface- able demand that his life shall be happy, and have a rational meaning." " The time will come when a rational consciousness will outgrow false doctrines, and man will come to a halt in the midst of life, and demand explanations." " I desire happiness, I desire life, I desire rational sense, but in myself, and in all who surround me, there is evil, death, and incohe- rence. How am I to live ? What am I to do ? " " As there is no contradiction in the seed, which sends forth a shoot and then dies, so, on the awaken- ing of the rational sense in man, there is no contra- diction, but only the birth of a new Being, of a new relationship of the rational sense to the animal " A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 39 (Idem). "All we know in the world, we know only because that which we know is consonant with the laws of that reason which is indubitably known to us." " There is no measuring without a measure." " The most important knowledge to man is the knowledge or elucidation of the law of reason, to which, for our hap2iiness, our animal personality must be subservient. It is evident that the know- ledge of this law he can nowhere procure, except where it is revealed to him, in his rational conscious- ness." " We know fully only our own life, our aspiration for happiness, and the reason which points us to that happiness " (Count Lyof Tolstoi). " JRea- son is represented by the law of organism in our- selves and the lower animals. We recognise in them the same striving towards happiness " (Idem). The happiness, or bien-etre of man differs from that of lower animals, in that it means for him the fulfil- ment of the Ideals of Reason as Faith, or trust in the integrity of spiritual Beings; Love, or the sense of harmonious relations between the subject and spiri- tual objects ; and Hope in their goodness and unchangeableness ; above all, in the goodness and unchangeableness of the Supreme Being, the Father of Spirits. " The true life of man, from ivhich he forms for himself an Idea of every other life, is the aspiration towards happiness attainable by the subjection of his personality to the law of reason. It is only in the 40 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. increasing attainment of happiness by submission to reason that what constitutes the real life of man consists." " Man will never understand a life of which he is unconscious. "We know (certainly and only) the law of our rational consciousness, which we must fulfil." " In the real life of man, body and matter, the two forms or modes of existence bound up with his life, furnish him with implements and materials for his work, but not the work itself." It is in the spiritual union, and communion which we call love, arising out of the attraction of like for like, that true joy consists, whilst the perfect rest and trust in which happiness lies is to be found only in the adoring acceptance of the Divine "Will. Count Tolstoi continues : " Life is a striving to- wards good ; a striving towards good is life. Thus all men have understood, do understand, and always will understand life." " The common herd of un- thinking men, believe the welfare of man to lie in the welfare of his animal part. False science excludes the conception of happiness from the definition of life, agreeing with the error of the masses in seeing the happiness of life only in animal welfare." " Rational consciousness includes Individuality in itself, but individuality does not always include in itself rational consciousness." "Man's rational con- sciousness shows him that the satisfaction of his animal individuality cannot constitute his happiness ; therefore his life draws him irresistibly towards the happiness that is peculiar to him, and does not A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 41 become confused with his animal individuality. 1 ' " The sole actuality of happiness for him being only of such a sort as may be satisfied by his rational " (i.e., reflective) "consciousness" ("Life," by Count Lyof Tolstoi). " Eational consciousness requires that our actuality should be directed to striving for the happiness of others, as well as for our own." All reflective reasoning is based on a complete assent of all the faculties, or through their repre- sentation of the presentations or modifica- The Neuro- tions of the nervous system, owing to the 1 impressions made on the individual brain of the reasoner from without, and to the consequent reflex activity of the same. Each person has his special neurotic diagram, or cerebro - nervous conformation, such as it has been transmitted to him from his ancestors, and as it has been subsequently modified or evolved through the peculiar social medium in which his early and later youth has been passed. An individual to whom the scientific, aesthetic, and moral senses have been feebly transmitted is as in- sensible to aesthetic, intellectual, and ethical senti- ments, and as little able to appreciate emotional, intellectual, and moral truths, as a person born colour-blind or devoid of an ear for music is able to appreciate the exquisite beauty of aesthetically 1 "In Aristotle's 'Polities' we learn that the object of all action is happiness ; not understood in a hedonistic sense, but as the complete development of man's higher nature, conditioned by the modera- tion, and within certain limits, by the satisfaction of his lower impulses." 42 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. combined colours or the harmony of melodious strains. Such as these can scarcely be said to have awakened to the life of emotion, intellection, and moral purpose in this state of Being ; whilst, again, there are other natures open to all noble enthusiasms for the true, the beautiful or harmonious, and the good, which to the undeveloped are sealed fountains. Some indi- viduals in different families and countries seem " sur- vivals " of a barbaric past, but eternity is long enough for the evolution of each and all of us ; but as reflective reason is what distinguishes man from the brute, surely the sooner it is cultivated the better, the absence of it resulting in moral misery to the individual himself, and all with whom he is concerned. Our inherited " neurotic diagram" (see Cyples) constitutes the fatal part of our destiny. Hence the personal equation has always to be made in the case of every judgment expressed concerning the blame worthiness of any individual, in the case of the wise, as well as in that of the foolish ; for although the foolish constantly sport the opinions and wise sayings of others, their own foolishness must never be left out of account in our inferences from their so- called expressions, which are more truly parottings of the real expressions of feeling, intelligence, and will. Nor is even the wise man altogether, and always wise and good, being of mortal, as well as celestial parentage. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 43 If it were not for the law of the association of the three fundamental ideas of reason, called by , J The normal Professor Wundt the law of reason and consequent, there would be nothing but a perpetual kaleidoscopic change of feelings, an ever- transforming present, without past or future. In such case, there could be no abiding sense of relativity, and so of trustworthy judgment, no ground for our Faith and Love, and their con- comitant Hope, of ultimate blessedness. The three associated ideas of causality, when combined in re- flection, give clearness and stability to feeling, just as sounds regulated by the laws of harmony, remain in our memory, and as definitions of things are fixed upon the mind by articulated speech, or words. Comprehending the causes of an emotion, its suit- ability or compatibility with our whole nature, we realise it as an abiding possession. We can only properly think of what is a possible, or proper object of thought. Fancies and divagations are not thought, properly so called. Special certainty is conditioned by individual reason. Logical or abstract certainty is ideal, just as in speech, logical and grammatical, a matwe rational concept alone being truth to reason, is said to be necessarily conceived; the fundamental concepts of the understanding being the only basis of demonstration. 1 With the 1 These factors of the human understanding have a fact-ual basis of re-presentation in the normal presentations of the nervous system, as also in the re-representations of reflective introspection. 44 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. evolution of reason comes the solution of rational problems. Science deals with the general principles of reason. The truths of reason are self-evident. Boethius calls a maxim, "Maxima propositio." All definition comes from experience. An arbitrary proposition or an alogical sentence or paralogism is not convertible into a self-evident proposition ; why, then, should we accept it? Evidence being rational, axioms, like other general propositions, result from the reflective elaboration of particular experiences. Axioms relating to our corporeal or material experiences are called physical truths ; spiritual or ontological axioms are called meta- physical. In the treatise on Natural Philosophy by Pro- fessors Thomson and Tait, it is remarked that " physical axioms are axiomatic to those only who have sufficient knowledge of the action of physical causes to enable them to see at once their necessary truth." " A ploughboy," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, " cannot form a conception of the axiom, that action and reaction are equal and opposite thus it is with a priori ethical truths." " An a priori system of absolute political ethics is a system, under which men of like natures, severally so constituted" (or evolved), " as spontaneously to refrain from tres- passing, may work together without friction, and with the greatest advantage to each and all." As " the system of Ideal Mechanics is indispensable for the guidance of real mechanics," so it is with regard A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 45 to social aiid political ethics. It is from abstract Ideals that we reason in reflection. " In attention, the real Being, the noumenal, not the phenomenal Ego, gains the ascendancy Uni ty f over the complex of its presentational (or i neural) life, asserting the principle of its oneness, which is its own nature." Each separate cerebral hemisphere contributes an element of content to our simple consciousness of affectional, intellectual, and active purpose. 1 The unity is of the underlying spiritual consciousness ; but when the cerebral centre is diseased, this is, alas ! suspended. "A mans opinion is ivhat his entire systematic representations have made it ; " hence St. Paul says, Whatever is honest, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, think on these things. Admitting that the mind is an organisation existing in intimate parallelism with the neural orga- nisation by a pre-established harmony, we cannot from this single fact reduce either to the other. The products of the sense - transcending apperceptional synthesis have an objective realisation in the idea of Deity, the Ideal Being, the Ente possibile of Eosmini that is, the Being rationally or logically conceivable, and conceived as possibly existing this conception differing altogether in kind from physical seeing, which is conditioned in its exercise by the actual state of the sense-organs of the individual. But in our present state of Being both our physical and 1 Schopenhauer and Professor Wundt resume the whole of mental representation in will. 46 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. cerebral powers are intermittent, as in sleep, they being deciduous, and secondary to the real Being of the spirit, by which man stands related to the Supreme Being, the Father of all finite rational beings, whose knowledge of Him is the fruit of reflective reason, His peculiar gift to them. Spiritual unity lies deeper than the functional unity of the nervous system, to which mind, or conscious mental representation, or thought is related, which therefore wavers in its action through its affiliation with an unstable physical system. In the order of presentation, Being is first, as also in the order of Noumenal knowledge, the sense of Being meaning the consciousness of Will. emotional existence and power ; next conies intelligence of relativity, or of relation to other Beings ; and then will, or autonomous ten- dency to action for the conservation of the integ- rity, or supposed perfection of Being. Emphatically will is the orientation, or determination of the rational mind to a statically conceived or intuitively given end ; the natural organic, automatic self-determination for self-preservation being the physical basis of morals. Seeing that reflection is upon given facts of our nature, such as the sense of Being, the sense of the relativity of Being, and the sense of tendency of Being from which the ideas of causality are derived, it can bring with it no contradiction of natural science any more than it can of ontology, or metaphysics. Did reflection contradict common A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 47 sense, modifications of our emotional (as opposed to sensation), intellectual, and moral or spiritual being, could indeed have no place amongst the sciences ; for all speculative or metaphysical truths are as directly abstracted from the actual facts of our psychological experiences, as physiological and physical truths are from our sensible experiences ; and all inferences as to our whence, and whither, are drawn from them in introspective reflection on the nature of our own Being, and that of all other rational, or similar beings with whom we are directly or indirectly acquainted, through the reflective logical substitution of similars. Out of reflection, in the comparison of these, arises the categorisation of the rational principles of mental representation or thought, which are seen in expe- rience to be those of Being, relativity of Being, and final tendency of Rational Being, ansivering to the neural presentations of Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Causality. The last means always rational action, or action for the good or best for Being the Ding an sich und fur sich the relations existing between the subject and spiritual or metaphysical objects, em- phatically that of Love, constituting the Divinely- ordered means to that end. It is Love that makes life a path of light " Love is the path, and love the goal ; " but one is often minded, with Shelley, to say that a new name should be found for the new birth of the spirit into spiritual harmony, so that it may no longer be confounded with the lust of the flesh or sensuality. 48 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. Perhaps nothing can be more curious than to hear persons or things decried because they have the pro- perties peculiar to their kind or sort, seeing Type or its that, for a reproach to be logical, we should Ideal, to which GO- be able to assert 01 persons, or things that vernments c as well as they are wanting in the essential quality Individuals f J must Con- which constitutes them members of their form. own class or kind, which gives them a name and place in the world. Yet against Meta- physics it has been urged that, like the spider's web, it is woven out of OUT own Being, and therefore, strange to say, is charged with having no objective stability ! Certainly ontology, or Metaphysics is the science of the Substance or Substans of all direct or subjective cognition, and therefore obviously of all indirect or objective cognition or recognition of similars, in which spontaneous reason consists, just as in the reflective " substitution of similars " (see Jevons) lies the process of introspective reasoning from self -consciousness. The three fundamental principles of thought or laws of the understanding viz., the principles of Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Cause, in their syn- thesis in reflective reasoning, constitute the web and woof upon which all our experiences of imagi- native, emotional, intellectual, and moral impressions are broidered. They are, as it were, the skeleton, sustaining the ever-changing body of our imaginings and purposings, without which we should not be rational and speculative beings, seeing before and A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 49 after. We can no more doubt our intelligence of causality tlian we can doubt the existence of our own feelings and volitions ; the phenomena of feeling meaning effects produced upon us, just as our voli- tions are manifestations of the causal power of our own Being ; but how can their subjectivity be an argument against their validity, seeing that sub- jective, or self - evidence is the only valid evidence we can produce upon any question. Through the subject-object or Ego, through its feeling, intelligence, and will alone, are all objects conceived or conceiv- able by us. Logic has also been twitted with throwing no light upon the riddle of the Sphinx, viz., Whence comes man ? Where goes he ? What is the mean- Logic ig sup . ing of his troublous destiny here ? Why is he the victim of "a most outrageous fate " ? and when " a bare bodkin could put an end to his sufferings," why does he go on enduring them ? Logic is contemptuously said to have no mission but to maintain the principle of iden- tity, i.e., what is, is : A is A ; but it must not be forgotten that logic also involves the principle of contradiction : no A is not A ; and the principle of excluded middle : nothing can be at once A and not A. These fundamental premisses, in the reflec- tive synthesis, constitute the principle of Sufficient Reason for belief, making the solid ground of in- ductive and deductive conclusions. Most of the absurdities of private opinion, and even of so- D 50 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. called logic, lie in the unconscious breach of these postulates. Personality must exist in a perfect or infinite form in the Supreme Prototypal Creative Being, for Whom difficulties in the way of the execution of Infinite and . . Finite Per- His benevolent will cannot exist ; of Whom, sonality. temptations to evil-doing or evil-feeling, or ignorance of causality, cannot be predicated ; Who, as all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good, must be imper- sonated Benevolence or Love ; in Whom there can be no shadow of change. Whereas it is we that, as imperfect, are always " becoming," as Hegel said, or being evolved, as we now are through our struggle with material conditions, as also with our own idiosyn- crasy, until it is equilibriated through union with our counterpartal half, so that we may not be weighed in the balance, and found wanting, as it is the dual, or social unit only that can reflect, however faintly, the full-orbed perfection of the Prototypal Being, the Father of Spirits, Who was, and is, and is to come ; who, if the starry heavens were rolled up into a scroll and scorched to a cinder, as our own moon appears to be, would still exist, surrounded by the spirits of the just made perfect through great tribulation, not one tittle of His word or reason having passed away. Only the same Sufficient Reason could still be predicated for His creation of a new heaven and a new earth, namely, the existence, delectation, and ultimate perfection, or blessedness of self- conscious and God - conscious A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 51 beings ; the order of the external, automatic cosmos consisting in its strict relativity to intelligent, loving, and autonomous beings. Who then shall say that logical inference, or the necessary conclusions of reflective reason from the three combined principles of causality which constitute our reflective reason, contains no prophecy of a future destiny for man, when his emotions, intellect, and moral sense will receive perfect satisfaction or fulfilment ; for what is our dreamed-of heaven but the place of fulfilment of rational or Divinely-implanted desire ? Thus the Jewish Scripture says," " Oh, rest in the Lord, and He will give thee thy heart's desire." Well might Spinoza say that everything should be considered sub specie ceternitatis, in the light of the inferences of reflective reason, which are drawn from the nature of our spiritual or real Being, not from the caducous nature of our bodily animal organism ; and until this emphatic doctrine of reflective reason (i.e., the doctrine of the immortality of the soul) habitually controls the feelings, understanding, and activity of man, and is held to him as the ideal of duty, to bear it in mind from his childhood up, men will drink, and women will weep hysterically, involuntarily "sighing for what is not," for what they have not even a clear idea of, kicking against the pricks of a too outrageous fortune, which, unexplained, outrages their moral sense as well as their emotions and their understanding. Shall the creature be more just, 52 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. more wise, more benevolent than his Creator ? " Shall not the Judge of the whole earth do right ? " If a human being, for want of a child, adopted the child of another, and after having delicately bred and nurtured it, should cast it adrift and Ine Judg- pureRe f ason ne lpl ess upon the world, exposed to hard- ships with which he had rendered it unfit to cope, he would justly be pronounced a monster, i.e., a man wanting in humanity, or reason, disappointing the child's faith and hope in goodness. Why, and how, then, should we fear that the Maker should despise his masterpiece, and desert the reflecting spirit, that through large dis- course of reason sees before and after; and not vainly, but wisely or logically, sighs for what is not i.e., love, the love, wisdom, and goodness that are not manifested in perfection here ? The old Zoroastrians pronounced those who lived in tents accursed, and Abraham is praised for seeking an abiding city with lasting foundations, a city wherein dwelleth righteousness or order. Should we not also deem ourselves accursed in a world, where all that is given is taken away from us, were it not from rational intuition of a heavenly or abiding country, a Paradise far more perfect than the earthly one ? "I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten" (Joel ii. 25). John Stuart Mill, who maintained that if he were sent to hell for saying that eternal punishment was irrational as a punishment for finite shortcomings of A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 53 duty, to hell he would go rather than deny a logical judgment, learnt so to see the necessity of eternal Love, through his great affliction from the loss of his beloved wife, that he maintained Fulfilling of the Law. in his posthumous work the rationality of HOPE, or expectation of the attainment of the desire of our hearts as an integral part of our mental constitution, and consequently as a rational datum for inference of reflective reason, its office being to ?^e-represent synthetically the spontaneous representations of the modifications of our Being, which is what we call thinking, and to draw trans- cendental or sense-transcending inferences therefrom. As David said, " Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust Thee." This mode of mental representation being peculiar to man, " Homo mensura ; " we have no other standard of conception but Eeason. Epictetus said, " Have not the gods left the door open for you to leave this life when you please ? If the house smokes too much, we desert it." But Jesus taught us a better and a more truly logical way : The child who loves his father does not kill himself rather than endure his law, but trusts implicitly in the goodness or benevolence of that law ; therefore man in like manner should endure unto the end, natu- rally trusting that for such enduring, great will be the reward this is the standpoint of all religions. The Efficient Cause of evolution is the relativity of the object to the subject. Only through the con- stant action and interaction of the one upon the other, 54 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. does evolution towards the Final Cause of our Being take place. Thus is the wholeness or perfection of our Being accomplished. Perfection is becoming. always after its kind ; the perfection of the (Hegel.) J logically postulated Absolute Being never Heaven 1 being possibly attained by the relative or finite Being, and only as opposite extremes balance one another, man and woman united in per- fect sympathy together faintly reflect the fulness of the Divine Being. " Give us of thy fulness, Lord," says the Psalmist, " for with Thee is the fountain of life." " WHAT is IT THAT I WANT, MY GOD ? " says a Norwegian song, the refrain of which consists in the sad words, " And the sun went down ! " It is wholeness of Being through union with its counter- partal soul for which each human spirit, even though it may be unconsciously, yearns. This is the lesson of reflective reason. The tradition that man was first created alone, and that it was not found for his good or his happiness to be alone, bears upon this point. Epictetus says, " When we give a cow good pasture, we do not expect chewed grass returned to us, but milk" The pure milk of the Word, or reason, is what God expects of us. A marriage may truly be said to be " made in Marriage heaven," when each of the contracting parties has really found his or her eternal complement in the other. Well has it been said, that " once to love truly is never to love again." A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 55 " Die Kosen, sie bliilien jedwedes Jahr, Die Liebe bliiht einmal, und dann nimmermehr." As no two persons, or two minds, are exactly alike, so when two beings are exactly comple- mentary to each other's spirituality, through the com- plicated character of the marvellous combination of qualities requisite to bring about and sustain such a conjunction, there can be no conceivable substi- tute found for it. " To say that true marriage is in its nature divine, is only another way of saying that true conjugal love is of necessity eternal" The Lord, ivhose it is to give us ideals, does not con- tradict His own ideas. Two hearts that feel as one, responding to each other's thoughts, must be eternally one in spirit. " What grows out of the body perishes with the body. Love has little to do with it, for Love is of the soul." Daily Telegraph, i$ih Decem- ber (Robert Buchanan). Mr. Montgomery says, "The perplexing question of the relation of thought to Being is the essential point on which, in its various phases, the . r ' Relation of contention of modern thought is turning." Thought to Noiv this is a question to which the present work attempts to offer the key. The existences of the earth, man, the universe, and even of God, are gathered up into a logical whole in reflective reason- ing. " La raison suffisante," meaning " La raison suffisante a tout comprendre, parcequ'elle comprend tout." Being is Being. Matter is not noumenal Being. Nothing is at once Being and not Being. 56 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. Matter is only a condition of the evolution of finite Being. Our possession of the general principles of rational demonstration and of their synthesis in the principle of Sufficient Reason is strictly relative to our own Being, which is the one strictly - known POSITIVE : the positive being the necessary ground of the comparative, and the superlative concepts. This alone enables us to understand the world in which we live, and through analogy of judgment and inference, to embrace even the myriad stars in one comprehensive view of what we call the universe. It is the pre-established harmony, or relation, between the subject and object of representation, which pre- vents solitary monadism, or imprisonment in self; and arms us with the power of the spontaneous recog- nition of similars, and of the logical substitution of similars in reflective reasoning. The mind or understanding is linked together with the nervous system by subjective causality, so as to furnish the principle of Sufficient Reason The Subject of conscious- tor l"aitri, Love, and Hope, \\nere there is ness. an impression made, there must exist some- thing to receive the impression, and something in- telligent to have made, or calculated an impression on us. To take no note of this is simply to ignore essen- tial logical implications, such as those of inborn sense : as the sense of cold implies the sense of absence of heat, and the sense of darkness, the felt absence of light. It would certainly be a curious basis for any sort of doctrine or inference of reason, to A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 57 ignore these truths of the understanding. "Whether a result of the intimate agglutination of sensorial particulars or a product of the synthetical activity of the intellect, re-synthesised mental content must refer to something beyond sensible consciousness, to its sub-stans or support." Thus it is obvious that the subject that possesses and controls the contents of consciousness must be of a sense-transcending nature. This is the subject which is endued with permanency , efficiency, and a sense of final tendency or will-power. Directly the soul leaves the body, the body begins to dissolve into its physical elements. No valid science of psychical phenomena can dis- pense with a constant reference to realistic implica- tions, i.e., implications of a real or nou- E xtra-Con- menal Being behind phenomenal conscious- fi ness. Physical science, even in its most abstruse ma- thematical flights, confines itself to the investigation of time and space relations, or of sense-compelled natu- ralistic percepts ; but the realistic implication is of the Being who perceives, apprehends, and compre- hends, the Originator of the efforts of the wonders of science, and the Imposer of the categorical im- perative of Duty. " Kepresentative psychical marks make up the conscious realisation of native individual sense." No marks can be understood without refer- ence to that, of which they are marks or indications. Psychical manifestations imply therefore an extra- conscious or real Being, the substans of the varjdng phenomena of consciousness, and of the interruptions 58 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. to consciousness, as in fainting or the distorted con- sciousness of madness. " Pleasure and pain are ' quotes ' or qualities of all presentations of the psychic life, as we know it. Subjectivity is easier to grasp in the region Subjectivity of Pleasure oi pleasure and pain than on any other and Pain ; r * hence the ground." But subi'ectivity is in fact not Hedonistic & J J School of so much of the matter, or that of which Philosophy. rises into consciousness, as it is of the reflective form of it. The action of nerves is the objective condition of mentality, which is subjective- ness. The cerebro-nervous system is the physio- logical basis of mentality ; when this is dislocated in any individual case, mental confusion ensues. Indifference is the state of neutrality between pleasure and pain. Here, by the terms, impres- sions are very faint, and so ineffective. u Pleasure is the mental side of efficiency and expansion. Pain is the mental representation of contraction, or lack of efficiency of Being." Sorrow is a form of self-pity, as well as of pity for others, just as joy may be either the result of gratified egoity, or of satisfied altruity, or of adoring gratitude to the Joy- Giver for perfect happiness. Alike egoity, altruity, and the religious aspiration after Deity and duty must be fulfilled, for the complete satisfaction of finite rational Being. Besides physical pain and pleasure, there exist emotional, intellectual, and moral pain and pleasure. We have aching hearts, as well as aching heads, and distracted heads as well as saddened hearts. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 59 Constrained attention upon intellectual problems partakes of the nature of physical fatigue. The moment sometimes comes when we say, " I can no more ; " and so deeply are our physique and morale interwoven, that when the heart breaks, the brain becomes a ruin. We have, as might be expected, a far deeper sense of enjoyment from the exercise of our spiritual essential faculties than from the grati- fication of our physiological or organic needs. It is in activity, not in passivity, that life rejoices. Even the representation of tragedies is said to be enjoyed, because we are made thereby to feel alive at the very core of our Being. The nature of Feeling does not admit of intellectual definition, intelligence only revealing to us its cause or causes ; only what is felt is really known, as also must be the sacred enthusiasm of duty, which is in its origin a part of the religious sentiment. Feeling, Intelligence, and Will are the three irreducible facts or elements of the pivotal fact of Being, from them arise self-love, sympathy, and love divine. The being located in irreducible . Facts of the such a place or point 01 space is a small Pivotal Fact of Being. matter; the question is, "_hst-ce que Ion y aime toujours ? ou est-ce que Ton s'y hait tou- jours?" In the one state of feeling w r e have Heaven, in the other Hell. The inferences of re- flective or transcendental reason can never be wrong whilst they are logically drawn from noumenal data, i.e., are true to the nature of our spiritual or 60 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. real Being ; but in parotting a received doctrine, or traditional belief, we are apt to leave out of account some one or other of the elements, or attributes of Being, whereas right judgment depends on the fair and the full representation and satisfaction of them all. Excitement, as the arousing of emotion, intellec- tion, or volition, is so far pleasurable that it makes us realise our own essentially enduring and identical Being. The ennuye seeks excitement for excitement's sake, the unemotional seeks sensation for sensation's sake. Emotional activity, intellectual activity, and causative or will activity are all pleasurable arous- ings of consciousness : " 'Tis life of which our nerves are scant." What wonder that man aspires, as does the flame, ever upwards, seeing that mental evolution is the law of his Being I Superstition is but the first, or rudimental, form of the religious sentiment, as con- ventionality is the first step to moral sentiment. I hold "the missing link" to be discovered in the merely sensual or animal man : the man not born a^ain to O the spirit, at least of conventional honour, if not to that of virtue and Divine aspiration after immortality. Pain and pleasure are incompatible states. Hence a present state of pain or suffering is associated with painful memories, and a present state of bliss or joy is associated with the recollection of former states of joy. Thus works of imagination appeal to our painful or pleasurable experiences, aspirations, and anticipa- A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 61 tions. If we have not such, what meaning has poetry or art for us ? If, like the French Margot, we only love the clink of money, even Nature has no charms for us. Ni le cri de Talouette, ni le chant du rossignol, make any appeal to the worshippers of Mammon. A state of consciousness gets all its definitions from previous representations in memory, which, of course, are coloured by our present state of con- sciousness. Byron says " Joy's remembrance is no longer joy, Whilst sorrow's memory is a sorrow still." This is only true of a person who is unhappy in the present. For the sorrowful heart will echo past sor- rows, but has no echo of a past joy ; and in this world of vicissitude, this valley of the shadow of death, is not our sincerest pleasure fraught with some pain of memory or of fearful anticipation ? Only through the peace which passeth this world's understanding or explanation that is to say, only through the peace that springs from faith, love, and hope in God can we know the rest of security even for the joy of spiritual love ; for hope is its cradle and despair is its grave. " It would seem as if the brain were like a very deli- cate photograph plate, which takes accurate impres- sions of all perceptions, whether we notice Sensorial them or not, and stores them up, ready to be reproduced whenever stronger impres- sions are dormant, and memory, by some strange caprice, breathes on the plate." " Perception, however caused, whether by outward stimulation of real objects, 62 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. or by former perceptions revived by memory, sends a stream of energy through the sense area, which, like a river divided into numerous channels, by expanding fertilises the intellectual area ; and conversely, the process is reversed when what we call will is excited, and the numerous small currents of the intellectual area are concentrated by an effort of attention, and sent along the proper nerve-channels to the motor centres, whose function it is to produce the desired movement." " This mechanical explanation leaves entirely untouched the real essence and origin of the intellectual faculties" (Samuel Laing, "A Modern Zoroastrian "). The ontological or metaphysical expla- nation of final cause or raison d'etre of the existence of the mechanism itself is a strictly rational one, i.e., one standing in essential relation to pure or spiritual Being, to which our corporeal frame and nervous system is rationally considered as strictly subser- vient. This is the triumph seen in martyrdom for love, divine and human. 1 Physical energy constitutes the fulcrum upon which our power to affect the physical world hinges. Keflectively regarded, it also appears to us as a condition of, or means to, our spiritual evolution, which is chiefly effected through suffering, together with the exercise of moral voli- tion. As we carry within us the ideal of perfec- tion of Being, or beatitude, as the Final Cause of 1 Professor Huxley says in the Nineteenth Century (January 1890), when writing on the natural inequality of men, " Eeligions are the inevitable products of the human mind, which generates the priest and the prophet, as it generates the faithful." A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 63 Being, we are naturally roused to astonishment, curi- osity, and even indignation, at the feeling of misery in ourselves, or at beholding it in others. We are thus compelled to make every effort of intelligence and will to avoid suffering and to attain to perfec- tion of Being, which is Happiness. For we can but inquire, " Is there no Divine, or perfect order in the universe, answering to the postulates of Eeason ? " the categories of the understanding or the laws of thought equally enforcing upon us the idea of a Sufficient or Omnipotent Cause for our Being, our relations or similarity to whom constitutes the Effi- cient Cause of our being " lords of the creation," with the sense of an immortal destiny. " I think the thoughts of God," said the great French astronomer. Reflection sets the seal of realisation on the know- ledge derived from our experiences in spontaneous perception, apprehension, and comprehen- OurKnow . sion. Consequently, the man who does not exercise his high prerogative of reflection does not, and cannot, be said, or expected really to know anything, for he does not know that he knows it. In reflection we see how all objects derive their worth to us from the cosmical order of things, and the spiritual ground of our sense- transcending or Ideal conclusions. Truth is the correlative of feeling, intelligence, and will. But alas ! not only our perceptual, but also our conceptual or reflective representations are liable to modifications through degradation of our tissues and muscular 64 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. system, because they are involved in the actual status of the physical basis of our mental or spiritual repre- sentation. This is the true tragedy of man's life here below. " The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak/' It is not from our physical mechanism, but from our real, or spiritual Being that the inferences of reason are deduced. This is what Giordano Bruno means when he says, " For I reason with none other than a natural soul," for reflective reason draws its inferences from this (see L. Williams's translation of " Gli Eroici Furori," by Giordano Bruno). Apperception or internal perception is the special act by which knowledge of states of consciousness Appercep- becomes possible. In reflection we know conscious-*' tnat we know - Like tnose of external per- ceptive, the inferences, internal, reflective, conceptive, or apperceptive, are immediate, direct. Only immediate physical pain is incompatible with the natural sweet peace and rest of faith and love, although patience and hope may lead us triumph- antly through it to the peace of God, which passes carnal understanding. Clew-science is the first- fruit of being " born again to the spirit" of reflective reason. It is the revelation of reason that truth to Being, to relativity Conscience God^fthin* * Being, to tendency or finality of Being, is what is required of us by our Creator, is our duty to Him. Shakespeare says, " He who to himself is true, can ne'er be false to any other man." Truth to self means truth to our emotional, intel- A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 65 lectual, and moral nature, or rather truth to typical or ideal human nature. Only from the reflective synthesis of these can a rational idea of Deity, and so of duty, be induced or inducted. This in- duction from experienced emotion, intellection, and pure volition, is the standpoint of transcendental or sense-transcending reason. The idea of obliga- tion, or duty, obviously or rationally refers to a person other than ourselves, that other person being the object of it, as we are ourselves the subject of it, a relation having necessarily two terms all duty is to God, whether that of proper self- regard, or of brotherly sympathy. The only rational idea of duty is what Jesus represented it to be, " Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is per- fect." That our Heavenly Father or Creator has Himself attached a sense of peace or satisfaction to the fulfilment of, or obedience to the moral or spiritual order of His universe is obvious from the psychological fact that "it is so" with us. 1 Even the observance of a merely mechanical or physical order has a strange attraction for human nature as such ; but this last can of course degenerate into our becoming the slaves of habit and routine, and making a fetish of external rules and ceremonies, of which Jesus said, "The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive." Ceremonial may become far- cical, when it is not the expression of real feeling 1 Just as Christians speak of the peace of God " that passeth under- standing," the ancients spoke of the peace of the mens sibi conscia recti. E 66 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. or real faith; but it is nonsensical, more than farcical nihilism, when it contradicts Self -consciousness in denying the validity of the fundamental necessary concepts of reason, such as the postulation of a Suffi- cient Cause, or one adequate to the production of a given effect, or that evolution involves involution, these being identical propositions. If all energy were brought down to one uniform dead level of a common average, as the Socialist would have it, no further life, work, or emotion would exist. It is Being per se, the one Ding an sich, which Energy and ^ s ^ ne bject of all evolution ; and Being is f^ind strictly individual. Inequality of individual endowment is the very source of the pro- gress of societies, the higher status of the one con- stituting the present ideal of the lower individual or society. It is not a question of the quality or quantity of work accomplished by any one, but a question of WHA.T each man is himself, and is becom- ing, so as to be fit for a nobler sphere in the life beyond the grave. "Everything," said Spinoza, " must be contemplated sub specie ceternitatis" "As it is by polar forces that the material world "ThePrin- is built up, so the principle of polarity Polarity" manifests itself everywhere as the funda- DuaiLineor mental condition both of the material and Polarity; spiritual universe " (Laing). Like attract- hence the V 0/ As ei iration le * n un ^^ e ? equally and oppositely in both of Love. kingdoms, definite structure always imply- ing polarity. If attraction existed alone, all would A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 67 come to a deadlock ; and if repulsion alone held sway, chaos would reign. For the play of electricity, one body must be negative to the other's positive. " The law of polarity appears as a general law, under which, as the simple and absolute become differentiated by evolution into the complex and manifold, it does so under the condition of develop- ing contrasts, which, although apparently antago- nistic, it is only by their co- existence and mutual balance that harmony and order is possible " (Laing). Herbert Spencer says: "As from the antagonistic social tendencies man's emotions always create, there always results, not a medium state, but a rhythm between opposite states now the one greatly pre- ponderating, and presently by reaction [the reaction of extremes] there comes a preponderance of the other. The one force or tendency is not a con- tinuity unless counterbalanced by the other force or tendency." Perpetual motion is thus arrived at by sustained action and reaction, " equal and oppo- site." Hence the infinite variety, unstaled by custom, of true lovers' joys. " As life develops from simpler into more complex forms, it does so under the law of developing con- trasts or opposite polarities, which are necessary complements of each other's existence. As we ascend in the scale of life, we find existing the polarity of male and female " (Laing). When two of opposite sex and complementary natures are united, great is the advantage they have 68 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. over the single individual in the struggle for life. La vie a deux est plus facile que la vie a un ; not as being duplicates, but as being supplements the one of the other ; contrapposto e compenso Tuno all' altro. " The harmonious union of two highly- evolved personalities makes ideal perfection, but there must be identity or equality of essence (Entity or Being) developing itself in opposite directions for real suitability." It is contrast that produces reaction, resulting in constant and most delectable and vivid surprises ; The Law of ^his * s true -^ ove ' " uns taled by custom." Contrast. j t k e Ego, therefore, remains isolated from the closest of all intimacies, it sinks into a groove leading to the slough of doubt and despond. The union of our common mental activity, through which we then and there understand each other, is based on its essential connection with a common type of physical or neural organism. The union of the very high and very low types of humanity is infertile. It is the give and take between two contrasted personalities, mutually or equally suited, that reveals, even to ourselves, our own best nature. When the disciples recognised Christ in the apparent stranger that walked with them from Emmaus, it was because of the glowing of their hearts within them, of their sympathy with Him. " In the union of a perfectly matched man and woman each finds in each the explanation of their diversified being." Diversity of function does not prevent equivalence of being. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 69 Count Leo Tolstoi says in his " Anna Karenine : " " Sa physionomie, calme et passive, semblait refle'ter une ame elevee. II la reconnut, et une joie illumina son visage ; il ne pouvait s'y tromper : une seul creature humaine personifiait pour lui la lumiere de la vie. Ld, dans cette voiture, qui s'eloignait, etait la reponse a 1'enigme de 1'existence qui 1'avait tourmente si peniblement." "'Twas but a little while we loved; then the whole world was our own ; " for " the desire of our desires " is fulfilled, the means to the end of joy of life is actualised. Robert Browning sings in his last poem, as the fruit of his matured years and wisdom " All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee, All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem, In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea ; Breath and bloom, shade and shine wonder, wealth, and, how far above them ! Truth (abiding reality) that's brighter than gem, Trust that's purer than pearl, Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, all were for me In the kiss of one girl."~R. BROWNING. This last line seems to " smack of bar-room ameni- ties," but the limiting the kissing to one girl removes it to the sphere of spiritual love, of which alone fidelity can be predicated. " I am wrapt in blaze, Creation's lord, of heaven and earth Lord, whole and sole, by a minute's birth Through the love in a girl." R. BROWNING, Asolando. 70 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. " It is thyself, mine own self s better part ; Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart ; My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim ; My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim." SHAKESPEARE, Comedy of Errors. " M'appar sulla tomba qual sogno di speme, Quei giorni d'amor che vivemmo insieme." Browning says, "No dreams are worth waking/' because what God has prepared for us, far surpasses our wildest imaginings. " Your resistless fact, leap of mans quickened heart." Once aware that your regard claimed what his heart holds, woke, as from its sward the flower passion, the dormant idea. " The positive and negative principles," said Rung Lino, " influence, act upon, and regulate each other ; hence loves and hates, and hence the inter- Elective i^Adapta- course ^ * ne sexes " (Chuang Tsu). Chuang Tsu says again, " Men value the phenomena of which the senses make them conscious, but not the phenomena of the senses themselves." It is indeed strange that we should be struck with the beauty of flowers, with the strength and cunning of animals, and with the stupendousness of insensible nature, and yet fail to be struck with the wonderful adaptation of the external cosmos to our sensitive organism, and to the inner or spiritual world of reflective Beings, who are pleasurably, or painfully affected by all these things, and who are so constituted as instinctively to inquire concerning the origin and Author of these things as well as of their own exist- ence. The logical or scientific basis of love and A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 71 morality is the constitution of man's menial or spiritual nature. What agrees with, or satisfies this, is a due relationship one commensurate with reality. Then we have the perfection of vitality life in completeness. Then do life and the universe and its Creator seem good indeed, or actually to us, as producing the desired effect upon us, i.e., the effect we have been made to anticipate. Then do we yearn to bring the happiness of others up to the ideal standard to which we have ourselves attained, " hav- ing no more grudges in our hearts," as Mahomet promised his faithful. As Sir John Lubbock remarks, " There can be no more ungracious saying than ' It is too good to be true ! ' ' God's power of satisfying the creature He has created, far surpasses our own fancies. Eden is found again, wherever two complementary spirits have met and are united, so that the world cannot come in between them. With regard to the religious element in the ceremony of marriage, how can any two spirits enter into the rest and joy of perfect mutual love without kneeling in gratitude to the Father of Spirits and committing themselves and their happiness to the Giver of all perfect gifts ? The law of polarity, or of opposite and equal attraction between spiritual complementaries, finds expression in the exclamation, " Sei, wie du g iritual bist, du bist mein all, in Zeit und Ewigkeit " ^ s ! (Whatever else thou art, my all in all art of Polarit7 ' thou, both now and in eternity). " Du bist der 72 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. Himmel mir bestimmt " (" Du Meine Seele " song Schumann). Hence the boundless satisfaction of true love, which can never be realised in successive infi- delities, only suited to the uncertain life of the lower animals. Why did they love ? Because he was he, and she was she. Attractions are proportional to destinies. The dove is not a fitting mate for the eagle. There must be similarity of kind and equivalence of worth, for suitability to exist. The person who feels no attrac- tions, personal, scientific, or moral, plods Attractions. along the beaten track where he finds himself, without even the ideal of imitation of similars ; which is the one ideal of the commonplace, and thus isolated, he lapses out of the social stratum in which he was born, and falls lower and lower towards the level of the dangerous or criminal classes. If a man be not an original thinker, the least and the best he can do is to follow suit with his peers. As a child imitates, so do most of the commonplace. To feel spiritual objective attraction is as natural to man as to feel physical hunger and thirst ; but whether we eat or we drink, or whatsoever Objective -. Spiritual we do, we are bound to do all to the glory Attraction. of God ; that is to say, in obedience to the reason with which He has distinguished us from the lower animals, as considering whether the result of our actions will be for the real best for Being the best for our spiritual or real Being or a mere momentary gratification through our senses. We A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 73 love, or are attracted by persons according to the relation of similarity, equivalent correspondence, or harmony, in which they stand to us ; whilst if we believe them to be antagonistic to us, or feel them to be deadening to our vitality or spiritual life, we are repelled and shocked by them quite as much as if they attack us with stones or staves ; and if we give ourselves up to such a feeling without regard to morality, we are led to hate them, i.e., to wish their extinction, so that we may be relieved from the dis- tress they occasion us. Thus Christ said, " He who hateth his brother is a murderer." But hatred is not a feeling indulged in by the philosopher or wisdom- loving Being, knowing that tout comprendre est tout pardonner, and that a man is still a fit subject for benevolent pity, whether he be friend or foe to us. It has been my ambition, in my work on " A New Theory of Idealism," to logically answer the ques- tions which have so much exercised the mind of the public of late, i.e., ist, " Is human life worth living? " 2nd, " Is marriage a failure ? " 3rd, " How is the battle of life to be conducted ? " Strange to say, the fact of life being a struggle has been disputed by some in the late newspaper correspondence on these subjects, on the ground that they themselves enjoy bicycling and like pretty scenery ! as the kitten licks its lips at the sight of milk. The question as to whether life is worth living must logically be placed under the first principle of thought or normal mental representation, i.e., the 74 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. category of Sufficient Cause, which concerns the real nature of Being, or of Being as such ; so we have to ask, " What is the characteristic of man's nature specially ? " The second question comes under the second principle of thought, i.e., that of Efficient Cause ; so the question stands, " In what relation does the conjugal object stand to the subject ? or how does marriage affect the destiny of man ? " Whilst the third question, " How is the battle of life to be conducted ? " comes under the third principle of thought, i.e., that of Final Cause, and we find ourselves asking " What is the aim, end, or goal of man ? " In order that the human intellect may be satis- fied, or rest content in any essential judgment, these three modes of the intuitive representation of the modifications of the attributes or aspects of Being, viz., feeling, intelligence, and will, must be clearly understood and reflectively comprehended. For, in the first place, if any confusion be allowed to exist between our respective estimates of brute nature and of insect life, and that of human or spiritual Being, no rational solution of the question can be expected, seeing that the datum upon which all reasoning, inductive, or deductive, proceeds is the nature of personality, i.e., of noumenal, self-conscious, or spiritual Being, as opposed to the mere phenomenal automatic existence of the lower animals. I use the word automatic, as opposed to autonomous self-direc- tion. Also noumenal or spiritual Being is always A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 75 conceived of by us (again as contrasted with that of the lower animals) through its enduring or per- manent nature, although it may be temporarily modified and conditioned in its activity in this planet by what St. Paul called " this body of death," or by what has been scientifically denominated " a sentient mechanism," adapted to carry out the life of a finite being in this planet of Tellus. Be it observed that St. Paul looked to our being clothed upon with a more glorious body io a future state of existence. 1 Even here our material frame is inces- santly changing. Thus, then, the first question ought rather to be, " Is this telluric life worth living to a spiritual being?" And the answer which would universally be given by reflective persons such as Shakespeare represents his Hamlet to have been is obviously, "No, certainly not," as regarded per se, but also decidedly, " Yes, quite so," when only re- garded as a preliminary school of training for another and a better world. Still it is only by those who reverently and clearly grasp the principle, " Qui veut la Jin, veut les moyens," that it can be fully and unhesitatingly accepted at each and every step over what Sydney Smith called " the burning marl of life." With regard to the second question, " Is marriage a failure ? " the answer to this logically depends upon 1 We can even afford to grant Darwin's and Grant Allen's hypothesis, that men were originally protected by a covering of hair, such as a certain tribe in Japan have now. 76 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. the nature of the relation between the subject and the object concerned in it; and seeing that no two persons are exactly similar, and that therefore only one can be a perfect match to another, to be mated and not matched must needs be a failure. It is surely then not to be wondered at, that few marriages are a perfect success. Now, what I have attempted to exhibit throughout my work on the ideals of the emotions, the intellect, and the will is, that the conjugal relation is an essentially correlative one. Given the man, the existence of the woman is also given, and the con- verse ; human marriage being founded on the comple- mental nature of the two individual beings who enter into conjugal union. Amongst the lower animals it is enough that the sex is complementary. It being a truism of psychological science that the subject is only logically revealed to itself through the object, which, by calling its faculties into play, as it were, actualises the subject ; it is also true that only by the constant, continuous, complemen- tary action and reaction of subject and object that the characteristically human powers of feeling, in- telligence, and will are fully educed or evolved. Each idiosyncrasy requires by the term to be supple- mented or complemented by its opposite, or other ; so that what is wanting in the development of the one or the other as to the threefold attributes of per- sonality, may be supplied and fortified by the spiritual and physical correlate. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 77 Thus only can equilibrium be attained by finite creatures; and thus also it is only through the joy- giving union of counterparts that the reflective con- ception of the perfect goodness or perfection of the absolute Prototypal Being can be arrived at by any individual human being. For only thus is the per- fect goodness or benevolence of God fully revealed to us. " Shall those in the pit praise Thee, Lord ?" Is it out of the depths of spiritual isolation that the sweet incense of praise can arise ? Is not solitude, like despair, to a being so deeply and intimately social as man the destined social unit ? Milton represents Adam standing between Eve and the Supreme Being, lest her sense of the Divine power should be too awful and too overwhelming to her to admit of her approach to the Father. Yet did not Dante describe woman in the person of Beatrice as drawing man first to herself, so as to teach him thus through perfect human love for the one nearer and dearer than all to love the invisible Father, and re- cognise His love for His spiritual offspring ? But if woman teaches man to love, man teaches woman justice : " Fiat justitia ruat coelum," justice involv- ing strength of intellect and will, wbich are more or less conditioned by physical strength. Lastly, there remains the third question, Why is there such contention between our physical and our spiritual nature or interests ? And the answer is Obviously because our spiritual evolution is condi- tioned and aided by that conflict. For matter can 78 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. only be rationally regarded as subservient to, and as ministering to spirit, sensation being but the medium of emotional feeling. Thus the question, Why is life such a struggle ? becomes rather, With what weapons is the battle of life to be fought ? since fought it must be. Now the answer to this remodelled question is that defensive weapons are the only ones needed, those namely, that are enumerated by St. Paul, and chief among these is the shield of faith, the one all-powerful weapon in life's warfare faith in the Creator and Joy- Giver, which can only mean faith that all is for the best, that " all things are working together for good," and that we shall ultimately enter into the joy of our Lord, which is the rest of love eternal ; and love is as the breastplate in the battle of life, so also only on the heart of love can the anchor of hope be struck. Love is at once the path and the goal ; through it is the fulfilment of the moral laws. " As-tu de 1'Ideal, mon frere ? Ou, es-tu pret a renoncer a ce que fut le reve secret, Tesperance consolatrice de chacun de nous, meme de ceux qui n'en ont jamais parld?" Do you feel no sadness when happy lovers whisper to each other soft and low ? Have you no faith in a Heavenly Father ; no hope in His love, which, by the very nature of love, can but have benevolent ends in all the mysteries of His Providence ? If not, what must have been your past, how devoid of love, " orphaned of the earthly love and heavenly," and what can your present lead A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 79 you to expect in the future ? No one can suffer without hope, who has once known the boundless tenderness of real love ; but, alas ! how can we be saved from doubt of what we have not ourselves experienced ? For knowledge is but experience, our own, or that of others endorsed by our own positive, although it may be more limited, experience and reflective judgment. As the external life is one of sensation, so the inner life is one of emotion, whether it be in the form of simple spontaneous spiritual attraction or that of reflective desire, both of which are accompanied by intellection of their causes, and by the reflective draw- ing of conclusions as to consequences or necessary results from recognised causality. 1 The facts of our vital experience in Being, and the fundamental prin- ciples of reason, which are correlate with these, con- stitute " the light of all our seeing ; " self-cognition, whether intuitive or reflective, being the condition of all recognition of similars, as of all logical deliberate " substitution of similars " (Jevons). 2 To accept as realities the physical facts that fire burns and water drowns, i.e., that both of these physical elements, although useful in many ways to man, can become dangerous or fatal to his physical life, leading to the rational conclusion that fire and water are good ser- 1 Dr. Theodore Lipps calls these the " Grand thatsachen des Seelen- lebens." 2 The fundamental axiom of morals, " Do unto others as you would be done by," is a case of the " substitution of similars." 8o A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. vants but bad masters, and then to ignore or deny the facts of man's spiritual nature, or his intuitive tendency to act for the conservation or true welfare of Being, as such, is surely most irrational. For to lose sight of the fundamental law of self-con- servation or self-reverence, is not only fatal to the individual himself, but also harmful to all others in different degrees, according to the different orders and degrees of relationship in which a man stands towards them ; for what measure would he then have of their rational requirements of him ? If he like to be down-trodden and despitefully used, he must conclude that others like it also : again, seeing that we can only predicate the goodness or benevolence of God, from the existence of practical reason in our- selves, the unmindful ness of the moral nature of man seems like madness. " I have been the friend of all men," said a dying Persian king, mentioned by one of the Greek historians, " why then should I doubt that God will be my friend?" And just as it is folly to leave the physical senses uncul- tured, so it is trebly folly not to endeavour to train aright the spiritual faculties of faith, love, and hope ; for to believe irrationally, to love irrationally, and to hope irrationally, are fatal to man's best and truest interests, both here and hereafter. And as it is now a postulate of psychical science that each thing is seen by each person only through the medium of his own personal impressions, emotional and intellectual, and from his consequent judgment therefrom, which is A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 8t necessarily in accordance with the mode of thought peculiar to each one's idiosyncrasy of representa- tion, modified as the personality is by heredity and subsequent external influences ; great must be the need of voluntary reflective self -culture, as well as a good early education to assist us in feeling, thinking, and acting rightly ! " Nemo dat quod non habet." We call a man who has no moral sense " a good for nothing." What matters it how fast or how commodiously we travel if it be not towards the true goal of Being ? l For actual evolution to take place, no solitary self -culture will suffice. There must exist the involuntary action and reaction of one living spirit upon another, as steel must be struck against flint for the spark of light to be produced, all reflection being upon actual experience of feeling, intelligence, and will. Thus true reflection on love, can only come of related and mingled lives, and only in the positive experience of bliss can the certain hope of eternal blessedness that is caused by the perfect joy of love arise in us in the second birth of the Spirit, which can have no other root but faith in God and in His unextinguishable good- ness. All inference being from experience, had perfect bliss never been experienced here, what pre- 1 Mr. Grant Allen says : " If we can trust all that is reported of them, ants have already reached the goal set before us as a delightful one by socialist philosophers, in which the individual is absolutely sacrificed in every way to the needs of the community." Now, as man differs from ants in respect of introspective reflection, and the consequent anticipation of a future and happier life, the rule of the ants cannot be his. 82 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. dication could have been made concerning it for tlie future ? When faith in God and His goodness wanes, so necessarily do also love and hope. "Let us eat, drink, and be merry," that is all that then remains to be said. There is, however, a faint survival of our ideal of beatitude in the forlorn endeavour to be merry, when love and hope are gone. It is only by being true to the light of reflective reason, the light which " cometh down from the Father of lights," and through the practice that makes perfect, that we are enabled to draw unhesitating, broad, and general inferences as to the destiny of man upon the reflective principle of Sufficient Reason, which is furnished by the introspective synthesis of the three categories of causality presented in feeling, intelligence, and will, conditioned in their exhibition by the nervous or physiological system. These are positive data, which contain their own conclusions. The phenomena of our own consciousness compel us to ask for a cause, and, says Dr. Flint : " If we could once admit that there be anything" (I do not say any Being) " uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for anything." Power of feeling, and of inspiring feeling Egoity intelligence of relativity, and con- sequent sympathies altruity and religious practice, i.e., action according to the order of pure Being, as established by the Deity in rational Being morality are the three essential elements of Being the pri- mordial sources of the principles of our understand A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 83 ing, or of the categories of mental representation. As our vital experience determines the forms of our spon- taneous mental representations, so do the reflectively considered forms of thought categorise our experi- ences under the cosmic order of Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Causation. Mental facts are determined by the order of a certain set of physical processes, i.e., the physiological conditions on which sensation depends. The basis of logic is metaphysical or ontological, and the reflective sciences of morality and theology are introspectively arrived at through reflection on the Subject- Object, which involves recognition of First and Final Causality. Herbert Spencer says : " We cannot carry on an inquiry concerning Causa- tion without inevitably committing ourselves to the hypothesis of a First Absolute Cause." Thus " the logical formulae are the predicates of God" (Hegel). For it is by introspective observations of the modi- fications of our own Being, through the affections of our nervous system, that we trace the genesis of the fundamental ideas of reason in our own emotional, intellectual, and moral states. But alas ! whilst we are clad in " this vile body," accidental and hereditary deteriorations of the nervous system often trouble and confuse normal mental representation, and the sweet bells jangle out of tune when Reason ceases to hold her sway ; hypnotised patients are also instances of this suppressed S(3//*-consciousness. No definition of anything can proceed upon nega- tives. Joy, which is the positive sense of Being, is 84 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. more positively instructive than sorrow. Even to conceive negation there must be positive conception of some reality. Suffering itself is caused in us by the negation of the joy of life we need so much, and therefore rationally expect. Unreality is the absence of truth, lovelessness the absence of harmony, injus- tice the absence of goodness^ The type, or ideal of Being, of which our under- standing consists, is characterised by feeling, intelli- gence, and moral will ; will for the conservation of Being, as opposed to the evil, or defective will, which seeks the lesion and destruction of Being ; as the fox of ^Esop's fable, which, having lost its own tail, recommended all other foxes to cut off theirs. " We define life outside ourselves, only as we know it in ourselves, as a striving after good " (Tolstoi). By good we understand the best, the summum bonum. An individual, or person, wanting in any one of the three normal aspects, or manifestations of Being, is as much a monster in the spiritual world, as a calf with two heads or three legs is in the physical world ; only that spiritual monstrosity is far more dread- ful, as it is farther-reaching in its consequences to others. " If each man did not desire his own hap- piness separately, he could not perceive anything separately, could never have understood anything living" (Tolstoi). To be without feeling is to be without the primary foundation of morality ; and to be without intelligence of causality also renders true morality impossible. A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 85 The internal bond of cause and effect, is only known to man through his rational reflective self-conscious- ness. The external bond between cause and effect, is merely that of Efficient Causation, which treats only of the relation between things not of their Sufficient, nor of their Final Cause, but only of their action and reaction upon one another. Science is of the special la philosophic envisage le tout Hence the name given to those who devote themselves to its study, viz., lovers of wisdom, of understanding, of ideal knowledge for its own sake. One class of mind, that of the scientist, desires above all to know the exact truth upon some par- ticular subject; another class, that of the poet or artist, par excellence, aspires to grasp the har- monious or beautiful, both in physical and spiritual nature. The poet, as Browning says, teaches "the music of man and maid ; " whilst the third repre- sentative class of humanity is bent upon carrying out practically the good or best for Being such are the moralists and philanthropists. Each of these three classes, in order to be power- fully effective, or completely representative men, must look through nature and human nature up to Nature's God, whose Being is the Ideal or Pattern of all ex- cellence, Who is the true Living Source of real Ideality; for it is in giving man the reflective sense of Ideal Being, that God has revealed Himself to him, and marked him with His seal or effigy as the crown of creation. Spiritual Being is the test of all truth, 86 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. all beauty, all lightness ; only in relation to real Being can we conceive anything. " Only after having fixed upon an immovable point as a centre, can a region or surrounding district be described. Having reflectively realised in what my happiness (or bien- etre) consists, I shall be in a condition to recognise in what consist the life and happiness of other beings. But the happiness or life of other beings, I cannot in any way know without having acknow- ledged my own. Observations upon other beings striving towards the aims which were' unknown to me, constituting semblances of that happiness, the striving after which, I know in myself, can explain nothing to me, but can certainly hide from me my true knowledge of life. Hence observation begins when life is already known. Without a confession that this striving after good which man feels within himself is life, and an image of all life, no study of life is possible, and no observation of life is prac- ticable. I know that the claim of each Being is his own happiness, because I know myself as an indi- vidual striving after happiness"- re-cognition being of the cognised (Appendix to " Life" Tolstoi). Keflective obedience to the moral law lies in leaving no part or attribute of human nature completely un- developed, herein lies the true ministry of education and the duty of subsequent self-culture. Nevertheless, from the very force of the Divine law or order of idiosyncrasy, no finite Being standing alone is perfectly equilibriated, or has perfectly- A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 87 balanced faculties, but rather is chronically in the state of defective equilibrium, which of itself tends to error, evil, and distress. Such spirits are " wan- dering shapeless flames," not representing Being in its integrity as a perfect circle, full-orbed. " A bachelor ! " exclaims Grant Allen, " self-centred 1 the root of all evil, if people would but see it ! " But as in physical nature, one law is often met by the counterbalancing influence of another law, so in spiritual nature the law of idiosyncrasy has its counter- balancing influence in that of sex. Male and female created He humanity ; the balance that cannot exist in the finite individual, has been divinely furnished by the union of the two complementary natures. " Marriage involves the highest ideal, for the well- assorted union of the two in one, gives a more com- plete equilibrium and reconciliation of opposites, than can be attained by the single individual, who must always remain more or less within the sphere of the polarity of his, or her respective sex " (Laing), " har- mony or perfection depending on the due balance of the opposite qualities " (Ibid.) ; an identity or equality of essence with development in different directions, presenting the state of mobile equilibrium which is at once more free, and more enduring than any con- dition of stable equilibrium could possibly be. Now whilst these positive realities of our Being assert themselves in us, it is simply ludicrous to flourish the banner of Agnosticism, or nonsensical nescience, regarding Being, and the relativity of 83 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. Being, or the tendency of Being to seek the best for Being. To pretend to delight in toil and trouble without a happy end in view is, as though one should assert that the black shadow was the reality, instead of the sun or light-dispensing substance. For love, or the sense of spiritual relativity, answers in the spiritual sphere to light or motion in the material world, just as obtusity, or absence of feeling answers to density and darkness. Where love, the light of life and of the heart, reigns supreme, " the shadow on the dial only proves the presence of the sun," but where love is not, the soul is shrouded in a darkness " that can be felt." I was once shown into a room lighted wholly by luminiferous or phosphoric paper, and the one thing there that struck me, besides the sad subduedness of the light, was the utter absence of shadow. This reminded me of the fool's paradise, whose denizens move in a like ghostly or unreal atmosphere of so- called gaiety, or make-believe of joy, feeling nothing deeply or truly, and therefore proclaiming that life has no shadows in it. Of course, if we never go up, there is certainly no fear of our ever going down, and he, who knows not real joy, can scarce know sorrow. Certain it is, also, that without a substance being present to reflect, refract, or absorb the sun's rays, there can be no shadow thrown ; yet he who mis- takes the shadow, which answers to doubt in the intellectual world, for the real substance of thought, is truly most pitiable. George Eliot remarked that A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 89 " it is strange how little pity is felt for wrong ideas, they being the sources of so much evil." It is from existence and not from non-existence that we argue. Yet a positively felt need within us, say of physical food, suggests to us, through our intelligence of relativity or efficient causation, that something must exist having efficiency of affinity with our constitution, to build up and support our physical organism. In like manner, when suffering from spiritual loneliness, and tbe depressed vitality that the sense of forlornness brings with it, and com- paring our then sad state of Being to the cheerful- ness we experience when with congenial, and there- fore sympathetic, fellow - creatures, and above all, with our soul's delight, our best beloved, we argue tbat our spiritual requirement is emphatically that of sympathy. Accordingly, in order to lessen, or do away with the dissatisfaction with which we regard life in isolation, we seek friendly companionship the next best thing to " Love," "the Lord TheRestful of all," who comes imsought, wnbought, a soui e com- monarch to His own. For the sense of pletlon - loneliness is never truly extinguished ; the need of a closer and more intimate communion ever remains in us, as a sad sense of unappeased longing, until our soul's true correlate appears. Tennyson, in one of his latest poems, "Happy, or the Leper's Bride," says : " In the name of the everlasting God, I will live and die with you. This wall of solid flesh, that comes between your soul and mine, Will vanish, and give place to the beauty that endures The beauty that endures on the spiritual height, 90 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. When we shall stand transfigured, like Christ on Hermon hill, And moving each to music, soul in soul and light in light, Shall flash through one another in a moment, as we will. If you be dead, then I am dead, who only live for you. .... I hear a death-bed angel whisper ' Hope.' The miserable have no medicine, but only hope." Swedenborg taught that the just, even dead or passed beyond this world, cannot realise the full blessedness of heaven until they have each their mate. Patience is involved in rational hope together with the converse. There is an order in self- fulfilment. The fruit plucked too early is immature. Tout vient a point a qui sait attendre. "Mitra Nirvana, Nirvana of my eyes, still I walk in dreams. For that time, though past, still lives for me that alone is the reality in which I live ; waking exist- ence where that is not, is but a pale dream. The clouds which veiled the future, and us from each other were pierced in a moment when, in a lightning-flash, we found that we were what we had been searching for through life and the world " (Sanskrit poem). " No second morn has ever shone for me, All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee ; Once having drunk of that divinest gladness, How could I face the empty world again ? " " Soul of my soul ! supreme and strong, Together we can do no wrong Apart, no right." " My life is blessed with thoughts of thee for ever and for ever." " His image persisted through everything as a vague background of her consciousness. Hencefor- ward a part of her life, a factor in her life's history " (Grant Allen). A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 91 The universe is rationally conceived as the habitat of Being. " The ideas of reason give unity to our multifarious cognitions." " Keason sets a man upon that sole path which opens y^tu e eand to him afar off the indubitable immor- tality of life, and its happiness " (Tolstoi). We recognise the Divine ideas in the universe for the sufficient reason that we reflectively cognise our own. Through reflection is self-possession, in which human dignity consists. We must first know ourselves, to be able to be true to ourselves, and only by being true to ourselves can we fulfil the functions for which we are designed. Justice is the result of the com- plementary action of the three faculties of the soul, each faculty keeping its own place in executing its appointed function. According to Plato, justice lies in the equipoise of the different principles of our nature. "The true nature of a thing is i n dividu- another word for its virtue." When the ahty * virtue, or essence, of a perfume is exhausted, we throw it away. " Disease is in the soul when any of its parts do not conform to the nature of the whole. We must be rational if we would be men " (Ferrier). To be irrational is to be less than man. " If rational consciousness does not drive a man, with his will, or against it, to the only true path of life, then the suffering which flows from error will so drive him." The good is the perfection of our nature; the desire for the good is our common point of agreement ; but we are mostly ignorant of wherein it truly lies. 92 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. Thought and reason cannot be separated from self- consciousness. " Without the knowledge of myself as separate from everything else, I should know nothing of any other life." " Generalisation of re- flective reason is always of the facts of individual experience." " Thy life is my life, with its aspira- tions for happiness, but it is also an illustration of similar Beings, if I am normally constituted." " A man must believe in his wings, and soar where they bear him " (Tolstoi). " Men, as one rational whole, are driving towards the same happiness." " The Ego which reflects, is as a cord, on which the various consciousnesses which follow each other in point of time are strung." Can I regard this rational consciousness as only a reflec- tion of something unnecessary, and superfluous ? That in which the consciousness of the true life of man resides, is not affected by time, or space, or by temporary lapses of terrestrial consciousness. " More powerfully and convincingly than through either reason or history, and from quite a different source, as it were, does the aspiration of man's heart reveal itself to him, impelling him to immediate happiness, to that very activity which his reason has pointed out to him, and which is expressed in his heart ~by love " (Tolstoi). " There are wants of our real life, as well as of our animal personality. In the satisfaction of the mere conditions of existence, the wants of our true life must not be forgotten." " When we devote all our mind to a recognised A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 93 animal want, animal desires rule us, hiding from us our true wants as human beings." " The weeds of our thickly-grown vices have stifled the germs of true life in us." " What is required is not renuncia- tion of individuality, but its subjection to rational consciousness" ("Life," p. 153, Tolstoi). "It is neither possible nor necessary to renounce individu- ality, and a man may, and ought, to make use of the given conditions of life, but he must not look upon these conditions as the end and aim of life. All men know from the earliest years of their childhood that, in addition to the happiness of the animal per- son, there is another and better happiness of life. Not a something or other that must be sought some- where, that is promised at some time, but the happi- ness which is familiar to man in the feeling of Love 11 (Tolstoi). " Love is the only reasonable activity of man." "Love is the sole legitimate manifestation Lovealone of rational life. Love is activity, directed Harness to the good for Being." " If a man decide upon Man< that it is better for him to refrain from the demands of the smallest present love in the name of a future and deferred manifestation of love, then he deceives either himself or others, and loves no one, but him- self alone." (Only he who is faithful in little will be faithful in much.) " The possibility of true love begins only when a man has comprehended that the satisfaction of his animality is not happiness ; only then will all the sap of his life pass into the one 94 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. ennobling shoot of genuine love. People who do not know what real life is, call merely existing living." Lust is not love. " The various carnal desires of man are but weeds resembling love. Men even prefer at first these weeds, which stifle the one shoot of real life, which they trample down, and begin to rear another shoot from the weeds, calling it love. Then the same men, or others, say, ' All this is non- sense, folly, sentimentality/ Love needs but one thing, that men should not hide from it the sun of reason, which alone will promote its growth. How long will men continue to gratify the desires of this perishing existence, and thereby deprive themselves of the possibility of the only happiness in life Love ? " " The mood of love presents itself to those who do not understand life, not as an essential point in human life, but as an accidental frame of mind. Whereas it is love that gives the greatest possible happiness to man, thus solving all the contradic- tions of life." Like a key made for this one lock alone, man finds in his own soul a feeling which not only solves the contradictions of life, but finds in these very contradictions a possibility of manifesting itself ("Life," p. 166, Tolstoi). There is no happiness different from or opposed to virtue. " The good is the supreme category of the universe." " True Being and the good are iden- tical.' 1 " Love, as the source of joy and the ful- filment of the law, is the conciliation of virtue and happiness." Love is the source of all energy. Tolstoi A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 95 says, " Ce qu'il nous importe de savoir, c'est le but de la vie et notre place dans 1'ensemble des choses." It is love in all its degrees that reveals this to us. It is Thought which brings the mind into relation with the Supreme Being. 1 The Pyrrhonic scepticism was founded on the relativity of all know- .,.., IT- 1*1 i Thought. ledge to the individual thinker, but this was not, in fact a rational ground for doubt. " Quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipients" "The life contrary to nature and reason is wrong, because it makes us miss the designed end" " Happiness is the end for which all beings live. 19 The life accord- ing to the spirit is the life natural to man, as dis- tinguished from the brute. " Homo mensura." Man being the measure, we regard or judge of everything in relation to him. A Sufficient Cause and a Final Cause always imply intelligence ; hence resentment is felt at a vicious will. " Feeling is the essential constituent of happiness. Our thirst for knowledge, love, and goodness being appeased, we are happy, content, or satisfied" " Nous ne souffrons alors plus de la nostalgic du bonheur." We no longer ask, " What is the meaning of life?" or " Is life worth living ? " Plotinus recommended self -reflection, or the study of our thoughts, as the highest duty. " All instances are instances of something the some- thing is an idea of reason." " Our whole know- 1 " Thoughts are the inchoate but plastic material of Theology. Theology cannot be divorced from its root in the spirit and conscience of man." 96 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. ledge of outward things is based entirely on our ideas " (Ferrier). " Ideas are elicited into conscious- ness on the occasion of some outward impression, or some impression on the imagination" " Self- consciousness exhausts the meaning of the universe as an object of thought or possible mental repre- sentation." " The principles of reason are as uni- versal as Being is naturally conceived to be." Morality means practice or action according to Being ; consequently the ultimate ratio of man's duty Duty and ^ s %ity> Altruity or Sympathy, and theo- Happiness. pg^ Love thy neighbour as thyself, and adore the Lord thy God with all thy powers of feeling, intelligence, and will," was Christ's estimate of human duty. " L'amour est 1'ultima ratio de toutes choses." " Nothing is so inspiring, nothing so restrain- ing, as love." Aristotle says, "It is not difficult to see the identity of essence and end.' 9 Evolution is from potentiality to actuality of Being. " God is the Eternal Self-thinking Reason" (Aristotle). " All sub- ordinate ends are means to the chief good." Love, or spiritual harmony, is the goal of evolution, the summum bonum, beatification. Man's true enjoy- ment lies in the exercise of his faculties, and, as Aristotle says, "in the midst of favourable external conditions" " The action of reason upon passion is the field of morality" (Aristotle). "The happi- ness of any being must be intimately connected with the functions it has to discharge." The Stoics taught that man has Jirst to conform himself to the A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 97 law of his own nature ; secondly, to the law of society ; and thirdly, to the law of Providence, answering to self- love, social, and divine, meaning an entire voluntary compliance with, as well as submission to, the will of the Creator. The temper of mind which constitutes virtue is threefold, i.e., right feeling, right thinking, and right action, or self-determina- tion according to Keason. " The Stoical apathy meant freedom from perturbation, not from passion controlled by reason." When Kant shocked the world by adding to his statement of the existence of definite, necessary, or natural forms of thought the nota-bene , , Of the Gate that because we are compelled to repre- gn-iesof 7 Thought. sent things to ourselves under these forms or categories of the understanding, that is no proof that they correspond with reality," he broached a sophistry more astounding than had ever been heard before, seeing that we unhesitatingly proceed in all our actions upon the principle of Sufficient Reason adducing the trustworthiness of our external and internal senses, for whatever we believe, feel, and do (to be, to suffer, and to do constituting our grammatical formula of consciousness), seeing that we produce the effects ive desire from so trusting to our senses corrected by our reason. How, then, can we pretend to question the validity of that same Eeason ? If, as we are now told by M. Taine and Compagnie, we may not trust the reality of our own Being, it follows, of course, that we cannot trust the G 98 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. representations of Being, or of its elements : feeling, intelligence, and will, of which our consciousness consists. But seeing that these very doctrinaires feed their bodies, and carry their intelligence and wills into effect, i.e., show themselves to be sufficient causes by the effects they produce, their nihilistic dogmas naturally appear nonsensical to us, and our faith in Being, our own, and theirs, remains unshaken, although doubt, scepticism, or cynicism, may be their mode of expressing themselves. The mind proceeds according to the same method in apperception or reflective contemplation of the Subject- Object as it does in spontaneous perception in postulating Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Caus- ality, and thus logically predicating an Intellectual, Absolute, and Benevolent Cause, as the rational explanation of our own relative and moral Being, an infinite origin for the manifold of finite sentient beings, who is also the Creator and adapter of the physical conditions under which they live and move and have their Being. To what, or rather to whom, are we to attribute our endowment of a moral sense or benevolent purpose in action, if not to a Being who is Himself benevolence or love, as well as power, and wisdom, seeing that our reason has its only standing-place, or starting-point for in- ference, in our oivn Being or experience in Being ? Is it not the flat contradiction of reason to pretend to believe that order exists without an intelligent, benevolent Ordainer of Order, seeing what disorder A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 99 our own affairs fall into when we do not bring intelligence to bear on them, or when that order has not benevolent purpose for its end, which we know to be the idea of typical Being. Well-Being is un- deniably the aim of our own will, and it is this intuition of reason, springing from the psychological fact of our own instinctive action for the conservation and delectation of Being, and our rational induction therefrom, which alone enables us to predicate the good- will of our Creator, on the principle of the logical substitution of a similar cause for a similar effect. " Through your own fatherhood read God's heart." "Although the self is usually not a prominent or explicit portion of a direct perception, yet when we see a tree, a brain is implicit, a retina is implicit, and the act of seeing by a subject is implied" Even for the representation of the past, the present Testg of self is present in clear ideation. " The idea Truth ' / is interchangeable with that of force or cause, as also with that of intelligent or Sufficient Causation." The one test of truth is, " Do OUT conclusions work?" as the test of our faith is, "Do we act upon it? " Another test of truth is, "Does it Jit in with other knowledge positively possessed by us ? " How do we know anything of the laws of Nature except through the experience of mankind ? " We have faith in facts ; " thus we have faith in causality through our being able to produce effects, and through our being equally affected by other objects. Power is the necessary consistent outcome of Being. Knowledge ioo A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. is the elaboration of the data yielded by the nature of things. " Action, proper or intelligent, is reaction to an external or an internal stimulus." Co-exist- ence with another soul may induce cravings un- dreamt of by the Subject- Object when alone." Love makes a man desire so to act that it may be well with all. " Only in loving is the spirit truly alive." " The internal state of one being in sympathy and harmony with another possesses a radiatory force, resulting in another state of that other being." Love is the most joyful activity of life. Reflective reason represents our own modes of causality. The com- bined dual reflection of complementary beings affords necessarily a more complete image or archetype of human nature than does that of a lop-sided or idiosyncratic development. " The sequences of ob- served cause and effect are Nature's promises ; " and when they seem to fail, our intelligence fails also. " Always " is our expression of the trustworthi- ness of cause and effect, as also of the logical prin- ciple of Identity and of the uniformity of Nature. Our primitive representations are those of the imagination, ivhen reason has operated upon these, they pass into knowledge. " One man can only enter into the spirit of another through sympathy." " To regard God as a being like ourselves may be called noumorphic ; " but is not all spiritual re-cognition a perception of similarity or apprehension of noumenal relativity, and hence equally noumorphic ? Although it is through our own physical frame that we re- A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 101 cognise our own kind directly, it is through our own spiritual Being that we recognise the Father of Spirits indirectly, and logically, through the reflec- tive " substitution of similars." The laws of our spiritual nature, as well as those of our physical nature, have to be attended to and respected. We hear a great deal about unhealthy bodies, but the word insanity or unhealthiness of mind is only used in very extreme cases. To have a right to pass judgment on others, one ought to have, and be true to, a high intellectual and moral standard. A comple- mentary, sympathetically-united pair can better with- stand being acted upon from without by trying and painful circumstances than can the solitary mind convulsed with unbalanced emotions. The bliss of a satisfying spiritual union is of itself a tonic bracing us for the battle of life. " The reaction of one thing upon another is the consistent result of its own specific nature" (Lotze). " Thus both do fasten upon what's the main, And so their life and vigour do maintain." " A universal system of law unites together all beings and regulates their mutual communication" (Lotze). " The state of one element contains a call to the other to change its condition if one is to be affected by the other " (Ibid.). " The function of philosophy is the clearing up of conceptions." " Ce qu'il nous faut ce sont des ide'es claires " (Descartes). " dEsthetical, intellectual, and moral ideals repre- 102 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. sent judgments according to abstract universal laws. " We are forced to conceive of an Infinite Being, of whom all finite beings are the cherished outcome." " Reciprocation of internal states can only proceed from a vital mutual relationship, derived from the common substance from which they spring." " I should have loved thee less, loved I not virtue (i.e., obedience to the Creator) more." A relationship consisting of two factors, one of which cannot be mentioned without implying the existence of the other, is termed a corre- Correlations. . . }) lation. By the expression " son, a lather is understood, or necessarily represented in thought ; by that of " husband," a wife, and so forth. Each finds in each the explanation of each other. The completion of humanity, presented in the union of man and woman, cannot be singly represented logically or ideally by one of either sex. It is in their correlation that the rational representation of Being, and therefore of the Ideal Being, is ren- dered possible. A rational creature can rationally trust in the existence of Him who has so consti- tuted our understanding that to know ourselves to be created is equally to know that our Creator must exist. " Self-consciousness is the category through which we think everything else. It is the category that determines existence, that is the most adequate to determine it." Once having arrived at the con- ception of God through reflective reason, it follows, of course, as St. Paul says, that the knowledge of God A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 103 arid of the life eternal are identical, it being the only conceivable justification of all our sufferings here. " Self- verification, or self-evidence, is the ultimate appeal of reason." Where will you find a m;m so all- sided that he can build out of his own conscious- ness, or reflection, or research, a symmetrical idea of the Divine nature which has all the elements of Being in proportion and balance ? There are causes more than your volition by which you are governed. " Your inherited organic nature, its hungers and its attractions, will fulfil your destiny in spite of you, and over you, as well as through you : hence the need of a counter-check " (H. W. Beecher). " The man's mind seeks that which shall feed its strongest facul- ties, and, drawing out these elements, he leaves all others. For men's minds are magnets, and each one's magnet draws those things for which there is attraction for him individually." " Love," says Coleridge, " is the sense of the in- sufficiency of the Self for the Self' 1 Love is an 1 Sir John Lubbock says, in. second part of u The Pleasures of Life," " The origin of love has exercised philosophers almost as much as the origin of evil," and he proceeds to quote Aristophanes, who says, " The making one of two is the healing of the state of man, and when the one finds his other half, the pair are lost in amazement of love and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a minute. They will pass their whole lives together, yet they could not explain what they desire of one another ; for the intense yearning which each of them has toward the other, does not appear to be the desire of lovers' intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires, but of which she has only an obscure and doubtful presentiment." Now, it has been my chief object in all my works to explain or give the rationale of this desire, as being the yearning for fulness or completeness, or equilibrium of Being. 104 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. activity which has for its end and aim happiness. Happiness is the reward of love. As chemical affinities assert themselves, so also do spiritual affi- nities (Wahlvenvandscliaften). Therefore life is a desert, when uncheered by human love and unsup- ported by religion, or Divine love. Were it not for some one, whom it would be. possible to eternally love, what would a future state be ? " Love is a beneficial activity, giving happiness to the person loved and to the one who loves." The peculiar combination of essential qualities which has drawn two souls to each other here, will Essential necessarily attract them to each other for Quahiies. e y er? anc [ everywhere, so that if the memo- ries peculiar to earth fail them, their individual entity will still be recognised : at all events, each will recognise their joy -giver under their Creator's law, or according to His design. The physical conditioning of the order of their several generation is probably the occasion of their idiosyncratic development ; but who shall declare the generation of finite individu- ality any more than comprehend Infinite Personality ? What we do know is, that in reflective reason, " man has wings to soar, without which he never w^ould have mounted on high, and would not have beheld the abyss." But man must be born again to the Spirit for true love, faith, and hope to be possible to him ; for faith must be spiritual, love must be spiritual, and hope must be spiritual. Meanwhile the existence of the fact of idiosyncrasy A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 105 is unassailable, and the requirement of each of the complementary spirits for each other, and their con- sequent mutual attraction, is an equally indisputable fact. Only what gives to each of us fulness or the sense of completeness of Being, can communicate to us perfect joy of life for evermore in the presence of an approving Creator, who thus, His design being accomplished through the happiness of His rational creatures, sees that " His work is good." And can we doubt the rational assurances of St. John's revelation that God has prepared a rest (Nirwana) or state of blessedness for all who in due time arrive at understanding His law, and act in loving obedience to Him an everlasting habitation, where " there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain " ? As Jesus said, " What man is there of you whom, if his son ask bread, will give him a stone ? How much more, then, shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?" Surely the all- wise, all-powerful, and all-benevolent Father has in store for us a " house beautiful," amid His many mansions in the skies, where the " fitness of things " (taught by Cudworth and his school) will be fulfilled or revealed. " The ultimate fact of knowledge is neither pure Object nor pure Subject," l " although the world is intelligised through the Self, and intelligised by 1 The doctrine of Protagoras was not a pure Subjectivism, but "an objective and realistic Relativism." "Hegelian or Rosminian Idealism is extremely realistic." 106 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. the Self." Philosophy, with its subsidiary sciences, is but the interpreter of the facts of human ex- perience. Reason only represents the modifications of Being. We see in the history of the Reformation that that great movement could not have taken place by the quiet influence of a sober, studious Melancthon alone ; it required also the burning energy of a fiery Luther to spread the doctrine like a conflagration. Giordai.o Bruno says, " To inflame others we must ourselves be inflamed." Thus also without our counterpartal oppo- site we are weak and helpless, because we only take a one-sided view of life, and of our relations to other beings, whom our complementary spirit helps us to understand. A one-sided judgment is a half-truth : a sound judgment involving the equal action of all the intuitions of truth. Some may be found to say that they are quite happy without a complementary, or guardian, spirit. Thus also we were assured that many of the Negro slaves were happy in their slavery. In fact, it requires evolution of feeling and of ideality to perceive that we are not happy. " L'etre prend sa place au monde selon sa capacite de soufirir du manque de I'ldeal." I will at least be bold to say that, without the many-sided capacity resulting from the union of complementary souls for sympathy, they are not so likely to make others happy. As the final rational source or cause of activity is the instinctive pursuit of the good for Being, which is, reflectively viewed, the endeavour after its A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 107 highest and best realisation, so the efficacious means to this end is love or harmony with typical or spiritual beings, and above all, with the Prototypal Being. The good for Being is only attained through self-love, social, and divine, or say self- reverence, social regard, and adoration of the Divine Will or of the Supreme Being love having been defined by Spinoza as^o?/ caused by another being. It has been truly said that the word goodness applies to the end or final cause of action, and that of Tightness to the means to that end. FinalCause The pursuit of the best for Being is in- SSSrf' stinctive, necessitated, fatal ; our choice lies ] in the selection of the means to it. Kant called metaphysics the science of a priori conceptions. Metaphysical notions accordingly are true, even if not (at once) " confirmed by practical experience." Thus it is with the " ought to be " of ethics, and with man's rational forecast of ultimate beatitude. Locke, speaking of evidence, says : " The evidence is as great as we can desire, being as certain to us as our pleasure and pain, i.e., happiness or misery, beyond which we have no concernment, either of knowledge or being." Such an assurance of the existence of things without us is sufficient to direct us in the attaining of the good, and avoiding the evil, which is caused by them, which is the important concern- ment we have in being made acquainted with them. To quote Professor W. James : " Only what stirs us is realised. The question is, what does this io8 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. stirring, this exciting power, this interest consist in, which some objects have ? Which are those inti- mate relations with our life ivhich give reality to it?" "The whole history of human thought is but an unfinished attempt to answer these questions. For ivfiat have'men been trying to find out, since men were men, but just these things : Where do our true interests lie f Which relations shall we call the intimate and real ones? Which things shall we call living realities, and which not ? " These are the questions treated of alike in each of my three works. Many writers have expounded scientific truths logically, and also ethical verities ; whereas the imaginative descriptions of the poets have seemed hitherto to suffice as a notice of the supreme form of both physical and spiritual attrac- tion, which is emphatically called love ; but seeing that it is the one relation, or rather correlation, in which both present and eternal felicity is concerned, seeing that through this nearest and dearest of relations, two solitary, and so forlorn, individualities are built up into the " strong, beautiful, and free " social unit strong through the union of complementary charac- teristics, beautiful because of their harmony, and free from all grudges, envyings, and malevolence, by reason of their own perfect happiness or perfection of Being and grateful adoration of the Supreme Being, it has not seemed to me to be a superfluous endeavour to strive to give to conjugal love (meaning thereby what Shakespeare calls "the true marriage of A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 109 souls") its real place in the essential interests, being, and destiny of man. As Milton says, we need not despair of the high bidding of the Eternal being accomplished, whether any of us. fall vanquished in " the fight of life for light," or not. It is a question of ""what profiteth our own soul." St. Paul says : If a man give his body to be burned and all his goods to the poor, and hath not charity, what profiteth it his own soul ? And again it may be said : Though a man, through sustained mental application, may invent a steam- engine or a telephone, what shall it profit his own soul on the day of moral reckoning ? For this is man's real ground of responsibility to his Maker. In spite of the jeerings to which Christians have been exposed on the subject of seeking their own salvation, the Father of the universe, like an earthly parent, is rationally supposed to hold dear the blessedness of each of His children, and, like an earthly parent, He wills not that they should be careless of it ; neither doth He " willingly afflict them." He does not afflict them for the pleasure of seeing them broken with anguish and sick with "hope deferred." His chasten- ings are but to fit us all for ultimate happiness, seeing that for the disobedient, the unjust, the dis- orderly, the malevolent, happiness is impossible and unattainable until evil ways are repented of, and goodness is pursued both for its own beautiful sake and because of its being the law of the Creator that we should do so. Salvation is from lovelessness to love no A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. or joy of being, from ignorance to knowledge of causes, from injustice or cruelty to goodness or benevolence. It is to the spiritual obverse, or spiritual im- pression made upon us by another's personality, that Spiritual heed must be given in making a judgment impressions. of character> The nar d-hearted will always leave us chilled, in spite of the fine sentiments they may politely parrot ; the inane, after all said, and done, will leave no satisfactory impression upon our intel- lect, and the lawless, immoral nature will leave us with a scared sense of insecurity in our dealings with them, and alas ! also with others. " We must take in the personal and concrete, as a direct immediate language, not a mediate language, or one which has to be translated into the notional or abstract before it means anything." Still it is the typical attributes of Being which constitute the Ideal we are ever seeking to realise, both objectively and subjectively : and well The Ideal. J J J J ' may those who never find them in their own familiar friends bewail the unreality of persons and nothingness of things. It is through the intui- tion of Ideal Being, " que nous demandons au monde le mot de son enigme," that which each one desires to realise. " L' Hymen sublime, L'Idylle eternelle." "Est ce pour le tombeau qu'un jour on nous fit naitre? Et qui nous a menes a ce but effrayant ? Est-ce done pour cela que nous avons tant aime ? Et longuement cherche le vrai, le beau, et le bien ? Et que tant d Ideal en nousfut enferme't" A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. in St. Paul exclaims, " Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" Tennyson calls the body "this house, with all its hateful needs, no cleaner than the beast." May we not also cry, " Who shall deliver me from this heavily - handicapped idiosyncrasy of Being? What shall enable me to attain equili- brium?" What but the divinely-ordained counter- partal complement and supplement of our fatally finite one-sided Being? Spite of all the altruist may say, it is not merely the abstract realisation, but the subjective actualisation of the Ideal that we each of us require. " There is a world in each poor heart's domain Of sense and action." Of which it may logically be predicated "If all mankind were safe in Heaven, And I condemned to linger on a lonely earth, I could not be content, in contemplation of the happy sky, Dwelling with rapture on their gain, my dearth forgotten In their blessedness. Ah, no ! I too would share that perfect state." SOPHY SINGLETON. The altruist, forgetting that Deontology is the synthesis of Egoity and Altruity, falls into the absurd by being " plus royaliste que le roi." Certainly Napoleon I. did not shrink from holocausts of sacri- fice being offered up to him ; but surely the just man would recoil from this oriental expression of devotion from a fellow-creature, " I am your sacrifice ; " and " many a domestic tyrant would recoil from demand- ing wholesale the sacrifice of feeling, intelligence, and ii2 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. will which he or she extorts piecemeal from their ill- fated family." I say ill-fated, rather than unhappy, because it requires the capability of the conception of V ideal manque to knoiv that you are unhappy. Seeing that thought is a process consisting of the use of our faculties of feeling, intelligence, and will, each requiring to be equally represented for the evolution of a complete idea, and thus for the repre- sentation of the ivhole idea of Being to be possible it requires, by the terms, a whole, or complete Being to be present for ideal human nature to be fully represented, and for this the social unit alone is adequate. A highly-developed brain may sustain a highly- complex consciousness, but it is only at the point of highest physiological activity that we find the psycho- logical basis of a full consciousness. And this is never to be found in any finite individual ; each one fails or is deficient somewhere. No one person's health of body and mind is absolutely sound or perfect. Polarity represents perpetual motion or conflict with alternate victories between two forms of energy. The complementary pair lead not the life of the lotus-eater. The angel of Love, like the angel Polarity or that visited the pool of Bethesda, stirs up the waters of life, so that they may not stagnate. Thus is life made full of delightful sur- prises, which recreate instead of depressing the vita- lity and the faculties of each of the truly wedded pair. " Together, too, they fight the foe." The A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 113 ancient Devil was man's liypostatised ideal of a thoroughly antagonistic Being. Hence we are dis- posed to call such persons a devil whenever we come across them. " Pleat seeks an equilibrium by passing from hot to cold ; no work can be got out of it in the reverse way ; " heat being the positive, cold the negation of heat. Thus it is that one member of the conjugal pair must represent the positive, and the other the negative pole of Being with regard to each other ; one must possess more spontaneous energy, and the other must be more receptive than impulsive. For spontaneous action to be realised, there must be, to a certain extent, a passive recipient of it ; and for the negative character to be educed, id must be stirred up by a more positive one. " Two of a trade never agree ; " and two persons rather below par in spontaneous energy, thrust upon each other for life, would on]y cool to extinction of life. To boast of ourselves that we have no indi- viduality or idiosyncrasy would be absurd upon the face of it. The bias towards the superactivity of one faculty which constitutes character is always at the expense of another ; and thus the equilibrium of feel- ing, intelligence, and will, in which wholeness, holiness, or perfection of Being lies, is failed of being attained. Thus the law of polarity is the key to the order of both the physical and spiritual universe. The positive argues the negative, and vice versd ; a negation argues a positively existent. As religion is the expression of the absolute by the relative, so is true conjugal love H ii 4 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. the supreme expression of the attraction of spiritual equivalents of the perfect correlation of finite beings ; each instinctively seeking perfection or completion through union with their opposite, as a chemical force rushes to its affinity. A thing, or object of thought, must be either more, or less than man, to be self- sufficient, self-poised, or self-existent. The principle of polarity is therefore the principle of duality, which must be recognised as the fundamental condition of the universe. Hence the "joy of life," through the sense of fulness, wholeness, or perfection of Being, is only actually experienced in the union of true lovers. What wonder, then, that their songs of praise fill such a large place in literature ? Hence Plotinus says there are three who have the vision of the ideal the poet, the saint, and the lover their dream and their vision is alike of harmony. Poetry, and the arts, and sciences, bear witness to the fact of the adaptation of one thing to another, and so of the primordial design that instituted the universe. "The improvement in the condition of women," says Samuel Laing, " has brought about a corre- sponding improvement in the male sex, for the polarity between the tivo has come to be the most intimate and far-reaching influence of modern life." Polarity or contrast reaches its highest development in the highest civilisation, i.e., the truest and the most spiritually cultured of the human race. Art is but the mimicry of the most supreme achievements of A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. 115 nature. As Emerson says, " The tender grace of an exquisitely sympathetic emotion becomes stereotyped into what is called good form in manners." The mind of man does away ivith the hypothesis of accident, and the good for Being is the logically regarded end to which all things are work- ing. " Knowledge dwells in heads replete is within with thoughts of other men" (Cowper). read's his The knowledge of self is but a running the Abstract Ultimate accompaniment to all our other knowledge Principles of Reason. of man, God, and the universe. It is through and along with this knowledge, that all other know- ledge is taken in. Self-consciousness is the thread on which the pearls of knowledge are strung. The apprehension of relativity is the fundamental neces- sity to which all finite intelligence is subject in the acquisition of knowledge. Moral purpose is mind- purpose or rational purpose, i.e., purpose relating to Being, to wit, the German expression, " Ich hatt'es nicht libel gemeint," " I did not mean any harm." Evil-doing is a form of insanity of mind, indicating a partial action of some one particular faculty, as in hypnotism ; a hypnotised person is not a moral agent. 1 Thought is a syllogism of which the conclu- sion is contained in the major premiss. "The term 1 " Order is ideal," says Lotze. " The purpose of the world is the production of happiness." Teleology is a part of order. "Teleology impresses an order on things not themselves produced ad hoc " (Lotze). " The Ideal is the heat that keeps all things fluid, and forms them anew at every moment." " Divine life may be represented in ours through an immanent Ideal." n6 A PROTEST AGAINST AGNOSTICISM. mental activity, if retained, has to be construed as signifying not anything happening within the conscious content itself, but the full p]ay of all that part of our extra-conscious psycho or extra- physiological Being, from which such sense-trans- cending conscious content is the supreme emanation " (E. Montgomery). The subject without an object cannot actualise itself, or its capacities ; and even in reflection, it is on the impressions made upon us from without that we reflect, and ideally realise, referring them to the same categories of causality as in spon- taneous representations. " Knowledge is the mirror of the world to us, but it is also a process by us " (Lotze). Imagination has been defined as the capacity of evoking intuitive representations ; yet the formation of generic images is distinct from abstraction. However, it can never free itself from the logic of facts except under the form of mere fancy, which is also built on modified representations of actual presentations. The postulates of reason are not mere assumptions or suppositions. This must be the meaning of Sir Isaac Newton's " Hypothesi non fmgo." " To clear the mind of all prepossessions (or a priori ideas) would be to clear the mind of itself. All science is built on implicit trust in the fundamental prepossessions with which we are fur- nished, which, unless used vigorously, we cannot be said to have a mind."