U'l <'\"-v 0£- —■ ^ — : ^2 ^g >REESE LIBRARY ' i/nJVERSITY 07 CALIFORNIA. L- — .: J Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/creatorcreationoOOhickrich Creator and Creation; OR, THE KNOWLEDGE IN THE REASON OF GOD AND HIS WORK. BY LAURENS P. HICKOK, D. D., LL. D. BOSTON: LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. New York : LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM. 1872. Hs Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, By LAURENS P. HICKOK, In the 0£&ce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 19 Spring Lane. 'UNIVEESITY^ PEEFACE. There must be some point from whence the Uni- verse may be observed, and the self-consistent whole be fully comprehenaedv ^ To a spiritual discernment from that point the Universe will be known as a Cos- mos of order and beauty, and such comprehensive knowing will be true wisdom. Intelligences from lower positions may be urging their way upward to^ wards this point of vision, and may be esteemed wise proportioned to their elevation ; but the impulse which, from any stair, urges to a higher, is, at least, a love of toisdam ; and so the spirit of true philosophy may be taking any step from the lowest to the high- est. But the wisdom here loved and sought must be more than a mere apprehension of facts, even the comprehension of facts in their essential unity. To merely get facts as they appear, and carefully classify them, may be called science ; but except as it shall be sought to know the facts in their necessary connec- 3 4 PREFACE. tions comprehensively, the so-called science will have in it nothing of philosophy. It will, moreover, be a delusive assumption to hold that Nature's intrinsic connections can be gained by experience, or by any logical deductions from experi- ence. Appearances will be found in uniform colloca- tions and invariable successions ; but the fact of uni- form appearances together in place will not warrant a logical conclusion of a substance in which they in- here, nor will the fact of appearances in an invariable order of sequence admit of the logical conclusion that they adhere together in a causal efficiency. Not less illogical must it be to rise from such assumed sub- stances and causes to one absolute substance or cause. Philosophy and Theology must alike be im- possible for any sense-attainment, or an understand- ing-judgment as a conclusion from sense. If we have not the faculty for an insight into experience which finds a deeper meaning than the mere appear- ance, then must we be incapable either to be wise or to love wisdom. And so also with Revelation as with Nature. An assumed Revelation may be studied, and its facts arranged with much learning ; but when a profound scepticism meets us, and drives us back of the facts, and asks for the validity of prophecy, and miracles, PREFACE. 5 and inspiration, and even for the being of a God who can foreknow, and work miracles, and inspire human messengers, we are thrown directly back upon these old assumptions of Nature's necessary connections. No sense-experience puts within the consciousness anything by which logic alone can enable us to know that which beyond Nature sup- ports and connects Nature ; and thus the logical understanding is driven helplessly to swing on the circle, of taking the Bible's God to make and hold together Nature, and then to take Nature's God to make and reveal the facts of the Bible. The student of the Bible allows himself to rest his faith, ultimate- ly, on nothing which has not first appeared in sense- experience ; physical science is pushing eagerly and earnestly her free inquiries ; many phenomena are encountered which run back into sceptical difficul- ties ; and seriously or mischievously these stumbling- blocks are thrown in the way of religious faith ; and then no theology, without a higher philosophy, can either pass on over them, or push them out of the path. We must recognize a higher spiritual faculty than sense-experience, as an organ for a spiritual philoso- phy, which shall abundantly comprehend and confirm our theology ; and therein may all scepticism be feirly 6 PREFACE. met and answered. The phenomena of Nature must be seen to be ordered by essential forces back of the appearances; and also faith in Theism must rest on truth known to be beyond Nature, and determining the order of Nature, though known by the insight of reason in Nature. So, seeing in experience what is conditional for it, we attain a comprehensive knowl- edge of Experience itself. And here only is the open- ing to a spiritual philosophy which may be competent to silence all sceptical cavilling with our theology. As far as is necessary or desirable, thfe metaphysic for such a philosophy has, some years since, been given in the Rational Psychology. The physical por- tion, necessary in the completion of such philosophy, has never yet been adequately presented even in outline. This is here attempted : and after a critical examination of the leading theories of modern philos- ophy, exposing the main point in which with most there is an utter, and in the best a partial, deficiency, and therein opening the sure process to the knowl- edge of an Absolute Creator, the Creation is itself speculatively contemplated in its essential Forces, and these determined in their necessary connections. These essential Forces have their determined con- nections in all the mechanism of Inorganic nature ; and then a life-power is contemplated as superinduced PREFACE. 7 by the Creator, which uses these essential mechanical forces in spontaneously upbuilding about itself, and for its own ends, the varied organic structures of the Vegetable and Animal kingdoms ; when a contem- plated endowment of animal sentient life with reason introduces man in the image of the Creator, and crowns the creative work with a Spiritual kingdom in Humanity which has dominion over all. The validity of the speculation, and the stability of its connections, must be determined in the compre- hensive unity and consistency with which it shuts phenomenal facts together in a universe, and the cer- tainty with which it puts the origin and consumma- tion of the universe in the Absolute Thought and Will of a Personal Creator. The importance to the present age, so unphilosophical and thus so sceptical, of a deeper interest in Speculative Philosophy can hardly be over-estimated ; and perhaps by what is here attempted, such interest may be somewhat quickened and extended. Amherst, 1872. CONTENTS. PART I. KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. CHAPTER I. PA6B KNOWLEDGE RESTRICTED *T0 THAT WHICH IS GAINED IN EXPERIENCE 18 1. Pure Empiricism in the Positive Philosophy 22 2. Empiricism as expounded by the Laws of Association. 29 3. Empiricism in the Philosophy op Common Sense. . . 39 4. Experience of Force given in Muscular Pressure. . 47 6. The Critical Philosophy 54 i. First Stage, Critic of Pure Reason 56 a. Second Stage, Science of Knowledge 59 iii. Third Stage, Science of Logic 66 CHAPTER 11. REASON COMPETENT TO KNOW AN OUTER CRE- ATION 81 1. The Essential Process to Thorough and Comprehen- sive Knowledge 82 2. Speculative Absurdities in Sense and Logic become Truth in the Reason 91 3. Distinction between knowing Thoughts and knowing Things 102 9 10 CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. REASON KNOWS THE CREATOR 106 1. A Creator must be Independent op ant Imposed Con- dition 107 2. The Finite Reason can prom Itselp know the Uni- versal 110 3. The Universal Reason is a Person 113 4. The Personality op Reason is also Absolute 115 i. His Being is Absolute 116 a. His Sovereignty is Absolute 117 in. His Agency is Absolute 119 iv. His Blessedness is Absolute 119 5. The Absolute Creator is Triune 121 6. Theism distinct prom all Forms op Pantheism. . . . 125 PART II. KNOWLEDGE OF CREATION. Design and Method. 131 CHAPTER I. SPACE AND TIME 133 1. There are many dipperent Kinds op Space 133 2. There are different Kinds op Time 135 3. The Constructions op Sense give Extension and Suc- cession only 136 4. The Logical Judgment gives Place and Period only. 137 5. The Reason only can know Space and Time 139 CONTENTS. 11 6. Sameness of Space and Time can be known only in tub Continuity of the Extension and Succession. . . . 141 7. This Continuity of Extension and Succession can only be known through some Permanent in Nature. . . 142 8. This Permanent may still admit of great Modifica- tions OF the one Space and the one Time 144 9. The Extension and Succession in the Substantial itself give, in the Reason, Absolutely one Space AND ONE Time 145 CHAPTER II. FORCE 147 1. Force determines Phenomena 147 2. The Elements op Force « 151 FIRST DIVISION. ANTAGONIST FORCE. 1. Creation of Force 156 2. It is competent for Force to affect any Sense- organ 161 3. Force determines Motion 164 ' i. Motion from simple excess of energy must be inces- sant, uniform, and rectilineal 167 ii. That motion which any superinduced force would give must be compounded with the motion which the original force already has 168 Hi. The- rate of motion must be directly as the dynamic force moving, and inversely as the static force moved 174 4. The Atom is constituted from the created Forces. . 176 5. Such constituted Atom has its own Nature 179 6. The Forces constituting the Atom determine what is its Inertia 181 7. The Atom determines Gravity 184 8. The Atom from its Constitution is a Magnet. .... 190 12 , CONTENTS. SECOND DIVISION. DIREMPTIVE FORCE. 1. The Constitution of the Diremptive Atom 195 2. Ethereal Atoms occasion Heat and Light 198 3. Ethereal Atojis are the Media of Cohesion 202 4. Molecules, reciprocally neutralizing their Forces IN Cohesion, determine Chemical Combinations. . . 201 6. Thermal Vibrations determine Solidity or Fluidity. 208 6. Heat and Peculiar Polarity determine Crystallogeny. 211 7. Heat-vibration determines Vaporization 216 8. Heat vibration determines Combustion 219 9. Superficial Magnetism, made free, determines Elec- tricity 222 i. Electricity as excited by Friction 225 a. Thermal Electricity 231 Hi. Electricity chemically excited 232 THIRD DIVISION. REVOLVING FORCE. 1. A Revolving Force determines the Universe and its Absolute Space and Time 237 2. The Revolving Force determines the Separ\tion and Distribution of the Universal Matter 246 3. Single and Compound Worlds 248 4. Systems op Worlds 251 5. The Revolving Force has determined several Phe- nomena otherwise inexplicable 255 i. Gradation in planetary density 255 a. Gradation of interplanetary spaces 256 Hi, Inclination of planetary orbits 256 iv. Periodic times and heliocentric movement 256 V. The orbits of the satellites should present greater irregularities than those of the planets 257 CONTENTS. 13 vi. Planetoids and Saturnian ring 260 vii. The same matter is co-extensive with the universe. 264 6. Comets come into the System from without 265 7. Geological Formations 270 8. From Facts found in the Universal Stellar Distri- bution, WE determine our Terrestrial Relative Position 274 CHAPTER III. LIFE 284 1. Life distinguished from Force, in that it deter- mines higher Unities 284 2. The Contemplation of an Agency competent to work Individualities 290 3. The Life-power is an Assimilative Agent 293 4. The Assimilative Agency must be elevated to an Organizing Agency 300 5. A higher Organizing Instinct works Sex-distinctions. 304 6. Sexual Propagation carries in it the Unity of Spe- cies ^ ^ . . . . 309 7. Not Sex-Instinct, but the Absolute Ideal, determines THE higher Unity of all Species 316 8. Organic Life terminates in Death 320 THE REIGN OF LIFE IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. Vegetable life purely instinctive, organizing direct from the mineral kingdom, in unconscious subserviency to the end of a superior Realm 325 THE REIGN OF SENSE IN THE ANIMAL IQNGDOM. The life-power from already prepared cellulose products in- stinctively builds up a nervous organism with ganglionic centres, thus giving occasion for conscious sentiency, em- pirical judgment, and brute-will 331 14 CONTENTS. THE EEIGN OF REASON IN HUMANITY. Reason, superinduced on sense, has dominion in its own right, secures a combined psychical and spiritual body, and in this determines Individuality, Identity, and Immortality, with prerogative of free personality in Art, Philosophy, Moral- ity, and Theology; and thereby Humanity becomes the crown and consummation of the Creator's work 339 \v^ or TBE ^ 'UNIVERSITT CREATOR AI^D CREATIOK GENERAL METHOD. The Creator determines the creation. In the order of thought and being the Creator, but in the order of our knowledge the creation, is prior. Knowledge be- gins in experience, but as the Creator never himself appears in human experience, if our knowledge must be restricted within experience, we of course can never know the Creator. At the outset we are thus thrown upon the necessity of finding and using an organ of knowledge which may carry us beyond all that is given in experience, or our very undertaking to recognize a Creator, and speculatively contemplate the originating of his work, must be an absurdity. But in the use of Reason as a distinct organ of tran- scendental knowledge, we may consis-tently attempt to attain a knowledge of the Creator ; following which, we may also consistently seek to know the work of creation in its incipiency, progress, and consunmaa- tion. 15 16 GENERAL METHOD. The following will thus be our General Method : — It will be requisite, in a First Part, to determine the extent of Knowledge within Experience ; to rec- ognize Reason as competent to carry our knowledge beyond experience ; and then by Reason, to attain the sure knowledge of a Being who may be an Absolute Creator. It will then belong to a Second Part to show that no one Space and one Time can be determined in common for all, without a knowledge of fixed force in place, and passing force in period ; to contemplate how such distinguishable forces may be originated, and by their multiplication and interaction a material Uni- verse ma}^ be consummated ; and then how the super- induction of a life-power may build up all the organ- isms of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the gift of Reason may elevate the animal to the human. The execution of the Plan must necessarily carry us up to the highest sphere of speculation ; and yet a careful insight will be found adequate to guide our way, and take us safely through all the mysteries neces- sary to be solved in the adventurous undertaking. PART I. KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. A LOGICAL proof for the Being of God is an im- possibility, in the sense that the very attempt to at- tain such proof involves a logical absurdity. It would be seeking for a primitive syllogism that might prove its major proposition. The first syllogism must neces- sarily assume its major premise. The being of the Creator must precede the being of the created Uni- verse, within which all sense-experience must be found and all logical data attained ; and hence this proof for the being of a Creator cannot come within the circum- scription of any logical syllogism. " No man hath seen God at any time," nor has any man seen that which contains God ; hence the being of God can never be distributed in the conclusion of a logical judgment. We shall need, in this First Part, three chapters. Chap. I. Knowledge limited within Experience. " II. Knowledge beyond Experience. " III. The carrying out of such knowledge to the Being of a Creator. 2 17 18 EafOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. CHAPTER I. KNOWLEDGE RESTRICTED TO THAT WHICH IS GAINED IN EXPERIENCE. Grecian thinking controlled the Ancient Philoso- phy. Other processes of thought were foreign, and continued separate, or at most were held subsidiary to this. The philosophic stem, divided into two main branches, flowering in Plato and Aristotle, and which at length • exhausted themselves, the one in New Pla- tonism, and the other in Aristotelian Scholasticism. It is not for our purpose important that we here note their peculiarities. Much of their spirit appears in Modern Philosophy, but it has been by infusion rather than genetic propagation, since no seed from either branch of the old was a germinating source for the vigorous and prolific new shoot. Modern Philosophy started in doubting, not for the sake of doubt, but that all doubting might be excluded from it. Even if amid otherwise universal doubt, one thing was indubitable — that there was thinking. Philosophy may throw itself upon conscious thought for life and deliverance from all doubt. Con- scious thinking immediately introduces self-conscious- ness, and thus thinking Being, and the test for the validity of the being is the clearness of the thought. KNOWLEDGE GAINED IN EXPERIENCE. 19 But the thought of a most perfect Being is a necessity as clear as the thought of self, and thus the being of God is as indubitable as my own being. As think- ing gives spiritual being, so sense gives material be- ing, and clear sense-perception must be valid, for the most perfect being could not make senses which were helplessly deceptive without thereby impeaching his perfection. Spirit and matter, thus known, were also known as wholly disparate and utterly intercom- municable, and their concordant occurrences were re- ferred to a " pre-established harmony ; " and all occa- sion for interaction was through the Deity, and known as " occasional cause." All distinct appearances were made modes and attributes of one Absolute Sub- stance, in which all further thought was lost, since out of this abyss there can be found no emergent traces. The absolute substance stood utterly helpless ; it could not move and strike, or, if stricken, it could make no rebound. Philosophy, then necessarily, turned all its thinking into the channel of experience. Sense opens to us all we know ; and Sensationalism, i. e.. Empiricism, is the source for all possible Human philosophizing. The well-known *' Essay on the Human Understanding " presents the clear outline of the general system. Mind is originally destitute of ideas innate or imparted, and stands utterly void. Its experience is from two sources; Sensation being an inlet from the outer world, and Reflection opening to what passes from the mind itself in its own exercises. We thus know 20 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. material qualities and mental exercises, aDd can form judgments by comparing, abstracting, and combining, what is thus given/ Reason is no faculty for origi- nal knowledge, but for inducing relative ideas and deducing concluded judgments. An abstraction of extended sensations gives place, and an abstraction of limits to place gives pure Space ; and so also an abstraction of successive sensations gives period, and an abstraction of all limits to period gives pure Time. The idea of substance was a riddle, for abstracting sense-qualities and exercises leaves only space and time, and yet the qualities need the substances to be in space and time. Ultimately the idea of Cause in- duced a similar perplexity. If denied to be attained in some supra-sensible manner, then the ideas of sub- stance and cause were necessarily inexplicable as hav- ing an}^ reality. Sense gives sequences, and Cause supposes a necessity of connection in the sequences, and this assumed idea of necessary connection was explained as being the factitious result of the fre- quent repetition of the experience. Other ideas tran- scending experience perplexed the empiricist from time to time, and received his solutions as plausi- bly as practicable, or else were left as mysteries for future elucidations, or as incapable of human cogni- tion. And here it may be allowed that experience does give a common highway of knowledge, in which, for a short distance, all walk together. We wake in con- sciousness through sensation, and continued percep- KNOWLEDGE GAINED IN EXPERIENCE. 21 tions perpetuate consciousness. Past perceptions may be made present recollections, and these may be sub- jected in reflection to analysis, comparison, abstrac- tion, and connection in judgments and general classi- fication ; and we may thus have each his sense-world ordered and arranged in his own experience, and each may say for himself what is, and what has been ; but when we inquire, Why thus ? and seek to know what must be, — no perception of sense, nor any logical judgment according to sense, can. find an answer. All is within experience, and there is no organ to look through and beyond experience, and thus conscious experience itself can have no explanation. No sense can perceive how it perceives, and hence there can be no possible interpretation of our knowing, nor any settling of the validity of that which appears in con- scious experience. Yea, the sense alone never seeks to rise above itself, and ask a reason for its own being and perceiving. That we irrepressibly have such in- quiries, and can never be restrained from starting them anew after every repulse, and yearn some way to get round and over our encountered difficulties in knowing truths eternal beyond experience, is an abun- dant proof that man has a higher faculty than sense and logical judgment ; and that some organ of intelli- gence is in humanity that the brute never had; and as it rises above sense in its inquiries, so must it be competent to go beyond sense in its knowledge, or its capacity for inquiring is worse than in vain to it. A sense-philosophy cannot satisfy, though such phi- 22 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. losophy has become nearly all-prevalent. It is in- teresting in itself, and for our present purpose neces- sary, that we note discriminatingly some of its most prominent theories in their variety. The notice taken of these theories will best sub- serve its purpose, if we disregard the order of time in which they were promulgated, and arrange them as they in themselves exhibit the promptings of reason more manifestly, though their authors recognized no distinct Faculty of Reason-, except in some of the last examples given. 1. Pure Empiricism in the Positive Philosophy. — In the early age, as history opens, it is quite in course to find that the observation of the changes and move- ments in the world around has induced the convic- tion that some power above nature has controlled the changes and motions, and that the gods, though keep- ing themselves concealed, are the great agents in working out the passing events. Their voices are heard in the thunder and the earthquake ; tempests and pestilences are the expressions of their displeas- ure; and prevalent health, prosperity, and fruitful- ness are the results of divine benignity. Longer experience, and with closer observation, as- signs the powers at work in the material changes to some occult efficiences within and about the objects themselves, and these secret forces and hidden enti- ties in nature are moving the dead matter of the world about, and in the directions of their own energy. The POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 23 Theologic faith fades out, and then the Metaphysic age dawns in human history. Subtle discussions, ab- stract reasonings, and ideal speculations, in a thou- sand varied and ingenious forms, occupy the attention of the strongest minds through long generations. But anon the metaphysic age passes as necessarily as had the theologic ; since sharpened observation had attained to clear and positive consciousness of the phenomenal world, and the wise have learned to dis- criminate between immediate perceptions and fancied notions, or fictitious ideals. If these occult notions have any real entity, they are beyond human knowl- edge, and outside of all conscious experience, and science learns to care nothing about them. The Positive age is thus a sure occurrence in its time, in which the superstitions of the theologic and the dreaming fictions of the metaphysic age have become merged and lost forever, as controlling matters of in- terest and attention, in the age of Positivism. The sages of humanity have now the grand work, uninter- ruptedly, to get and spread the light of positive sci- ence ; attaining, arranging, and classifying all that comes in to conscious experience. Humanity must needs have passed all these stages to the last, and, indeed, every individual mind has its theologic, meta- physic, and positive period, while in the last only, all illusions vanish, and true science prevails. The order of procedure in positive science is from the simple to the complex, till we reach and make clear all the complications of nature and human 24 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. society. The science of Sociology, in the family, the community, and the state, organizing all rela- tions and occupations, and overcoming the resist- ances of nature, and the selfish inclinations and ani- mal passions of the uncultivated races, finally intro- duces order, freedom, and social contentment, and opens the way to the indefinite development and progressive maturity and perfection of the human species. By a strange personal experience, a rehgious cul- tus was superinduced upon the positive science, which it is taught will harmonize all the family of man in universal unity, as if Humanity had become itself one great Being. The religious age, spontane- ous in its devotion, was originally exercised in feti- chism, worshipping any rock, tree., or animptil that fancy proposed. Then polytheism abounded ; fol- lowed by monotheism as the mind rose to higher unity, till ultimately the true, living, thinking, feeling, lov- ing. Humanity is the object and end of all worship ; and the greatest names of history, as manifestations of humanity, are worthy of a qualified homage. Positivism is thus in theory consistent with em- piricism, and a consequent of it. It attempts to carry out its own adopted dictum, that the human mind has no function that can make itself objective to itself. Any single sense may as well attempt to examine and expound itself, as the entire conscious- ness to attempt determining the validity of its reveal- ings. And yet with all this consistency in claim and POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 25 theory, its whole procedure evinces the presence and perpetual prompting of the function of Reason which it so peremptorily discards. If there were nothing but elements given in experience and their use in reflection, there could be no attempt to over- look experience, and determine how much it might know. Perception, and judgment according to per- ception, would go on just as occasion was given ; but from nowhere could come the impulse to examine ex- perience, and learn how far the consciousness might spread its light. The brute perceives in sense, and judges according to sense, as truly, and often as ex- actly, as the man ; but no animal ever manifested the capability or the curiosity to examine his experience, and determine the limits of his knowledge. That the Positivist is able to so emphatically assert his positiv- ism, carries in it a sure evidence that there is work- ing in him a higher intelligence than any sense-expe- rience can reach. And then there is, moreover, his constant assump- tion of Necessity and Law in nature, which can come from no element attainable in sensation. Experience may remember past observations, in the uniform com- bination of some qualities and invariable sequence of some events, and such order of experience may be transferred to an outer world, and called an order of nature ; but this would then be only a way that nature was seen to have, and not any necessary be- hest that nature is forced to obey. Law is more than the fact of order j it is an imposition from a 26 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. source that binds to order, and is a notion which only can flash in from a light that overshines expe- rience itself. And then Positivism has also its Religion with itb cultus of sacred ordinances and ritual ceremonies. True in form to its restriction of all knowledge to experience, its religion has no higher deity than Humanity, and its most sacred shrines are the names of the renowned men and women of the ages, to whom homages, and festivals, and votive offerings are dedicated, and the calendar months are named from the most eminent, and the days of the week from other illustrious benefactors ; yet even such a service could never be assumed as binding itself upon human observance, were there not in man a deeper claim than any sense can awaken. But be- cause social life is itself of the reason, and has its rights and duties, it reaches beyond the wants which make the cattle herd together, and thus the religion Positivism inculcates, born of social ties and sympa- thetic claims, would never have been even specula- tively instituted, were it not that already in the priest and the worshipper there is a spirit seeking supernatural communion, and binding bach from all finite good to an exhaustless source of eternal good- ness. While Positivism knows not its use of the rea- son, it still evinces the worJcing of the reason, and that it has been deeply quickened and prompted by reason. With the observed uniformities in experience, and POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 27 these in their connections taken as laws in nature, as if they were more than facts found, even as necessi- ties imposed, it is true the human mind may accu- mulate its observed facts, and physical science may sort and classify them endlessly as experience at- tains them, while all philosophic inquiry is held in abeyance. Yet will not the enterprise of reason be ever so satisfied or repressed. The faculty is there, though unrecognized, and its living energies will prompt speculative inquiries into these uniformities and invariable sequences of nature. Science itself soon learns that it can make its way with far greater facility, when it is helped to a ready anticipation of its probable hypotheses by a given direction to the course of its inductions. Thus both the spontaneous impulses of the faculty, and the wants of science, will combine to urge on philosophical investigations ; and humanity can never rest in barely perceiving and classifying the facts of experience, but must go be- yond the positive in sense, and attempt, at least, to know experience as universally and necessarily de- termined. The ages will be seeking for the reasons why its passing experiences are ever thus, and this is nothing other than finding the ultimate truths in the insight of reason itself Reason's insight is the last reason for anything, and man is never at rest till his clear insight and comprehending oversight sees beyond the facts, and finds the facts themselves to be reasonable. No matter how positive the man may be in the observed order of his facts, and that he has it 28 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. as the long experience of ages has given it ; he wants to know the long order, not merely as positive fact, but as imposed law ; and even the positivist himself talks freely of the laws of nature, and the obligations of society ; for no man's speech can satisfy his inward conviction, which does not carry in it the meaning, that there are a priori bonds on all the facts of na- ture and communings of society. It might thus have been anticipated, just as it oc- curs, that the reason should thrust up its irrepressible inquiries, and in ignorance of the source from whence the asking comes, the mind should set some lower faculty to the task of finding an answer. The sense and logical understanding are set to solve the prob- lems the reason propounds, and which will really amount to nothing else than asking reasons for a fact, and then giving another fact in answer. Experience cannot ask for itself, why itself is so : the reason makes the demand, and experience can as little answer as inquire to any purpose. When it has given one fact to explain others, which must be its only way, there is still the same thing to be gone over. The reason can never stand on any last fact, and cease her inquiries. She must get above the fact, and see through the fact a transcendental prin- ciple, and no empirical answer can be other than illu- sory. And yet, notwithstanding the manifest absur- dity of attaining any end in such a process, we shall constantly find modern philosophy very largely at work in the interpretation of experience by experi- EMPIRICISM BY LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 29 ence, and striving to grow wise, or at least evince its love of wisdom, by pushing the mystery of one iact back into another, till the remoteness quenches all further curiosity. The Positive Philosophy can never be truly positive, and attain and keep a fixed posi- tion, except by a perpetual delusion. 2. Empiricism as expounded by the Laws of Association. — While Positivism seeks to repress all attempts at explaining why nature has her uniformi- ties, and holds it enough to take experience as it is, and by careful study make the most of it, there have not been wanting other theories for accounting why experience is so orderly, even while admitting and strenuously teaching that our knowledge cannot transcend the sense-consciousness within which all experience must be. Assuming a Divine power out of and over all experience, it might be held as it variously had been, that this outside power did all the work of arranging, either by occasional interposi- tions, or by a pre-established harmony, or in an ori- ginal Divine Constitution ; while others dispensed with any outside agency, and said nature must have some relations, and as well those according with our own experience as any other, and we need only to con- sider all things as a " fortuitous concurrence ; " and still others, admitting the present mystery, proposed in all humility, from imbecility of faculties, to lie still and wait for future disclosures. All explanation was arbitrary, or fortuitous, or hopelessly impossible. 30 KNOWLEDGE OP A CREATOR. An independent and acute scrutiny ascertained the impossibility of determining the necessary connec- tions of cause and effect in experience, by any knowl- edge gained by experience. The sole purpose of any inquiry must be, not to know any such determined connections, but to explain why the human mind comes to deem the sequences in cause and effect to be necessarily connected. And the short statement of the explanation is the force of Habit. We find cer- tain sequences occui'ring so frequently in the same order, experience has them so often and for so long a time, that, although no connecting link comes with- in sensation, yet the frequent repetition induces an idea or semblance of such link, and this becomes a belief, a confirmed conviction, that there is such in- terlinking, and all originating in habit. The common- sense conviction, in this way, of the laws of experi- ence, becomes so controlling that no testimony of their miraculous violation ought, to influence us. But such strength of conviction was only subjective seeming, and not at all any known necessity in objective being. This the clear-sighted philosopher well knew, and on it was built, with logical consistency, an impregnable scepticism. Experic ce can account for the common conviction that the connections in nature are neces- sary, but no judgment in experience can possibly show any validity for the conviction that there is any such necessary connection. All reasoning from the connec- tions of cause and effect rest only upon the illusion EMPIRICISM BY LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 31 of habit, and never can be the confirmation of truth and knowledge. And now, closely allied to this, and indeed almost a carrying out of the same theory a little more cir- cumstantially and minutely, is that above announced as resting upon the law of Association. There is the same limiting of knowledge to experience, and in con- sistency with this, expounding our convictions of an outer world and its connections, and our assent to all necessary truths, on a similar subjective basis a little more completely worked out and systematically ar- ranged. This theory assumes that past sensations afford the sufficient occasion for expecting future sen- sations in certain conditions, and that the order of past experience becomes a law of association by which the expected future sensations in experience are regulated. The law of association is described in the various forms that former experiences have deter- mined for it, and these forms of applying the law of association sufficiently account for our belief of an external world, and its orderly arrangement in con- scious experience, though we can have no knowledge that such outer world is in existence. Thus any one may say of himself: A little reflec- tion teaches me that my current fleeting sensations are of little account in my conception of the existing world. around me, but that there are possible sensa- tions of innumerable variety, which under supposable conditions I deem I could at this moment experience, and it is to these possible sensations that I am obliged 32 KMOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. to turn, as important in awaking me to the concep- tion of an outer world. My actual sensations are transient, while these possibilities of sensations are permanent ; and in giving to them distinctive names, they come to be apprehended as distinctive things. In any group of such possible sensations I have asso- ciated the whole from some one that was an element in a former group of actual sensations, and this asso- ciative process has furnished the connections in all the quahties of the thing, and from a natural forget- fulness of the associative process, the thing is taken as having these fixed connections from necessity. These abiding things, therefore, and not the transient sensations, I associate in fixed orders of succession, just as I have found my transient sensations succeed- ing each other, and it is to these permanent possibili- ties of sensations that, in the obliviscence of the association, I apply my conviction of necessary con- nection as cause and effect, and thereby make up my world from these connected possibilities of sensations. I can, at will, withdraw myself from the transient sensations that have been given me, by closing my senses, or turning the organ another way, but I can- not put from me these permanent possibilities of sen- sations at will, since I deem them to be abiding through all my changes. I find others, moreover, manifesting their appre- hension, not of their transient sensations, but of these permanent possibilities of sensations, as if their ex- perience in this were in common with mine. In this EMPIRICISM BY LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 33 way there is for me, and for others in common with me, a world of possibilities of sensations connected according to laws, and which must so be taken by me as a world existing external to me and others. The actual sensations of the city of Calcutta must, in any case, be fleeting, but the permanent possibilities of sensation, on condition of my sailing up the Hoogly by daylight, must be my existing Calcutta, ordered and arranged according to applied laws of association for me and others. Matter, therefore, is to be taken as a permanent possibility of sensations, as it exists in our consciousness; and such material world we may know, and believe to be real, but no other world can be our world of experience. The permanent possibilities of sensations outlast all our changes, and will be for others when we are gone, just as they are now for other beings in common with our- selves. And as with the organic senses for matter, so with the inner sense for mind. The inner exer- cises may all in common be termed feelings, as they affect the consciousness ; and the actual feel- ings, like the actual sensations, arie transient, and little to be regarded as making up the known mental world; but the permanent possibilities of feelings must make up what 1 know as m}^ one perduring mind. The one capacity for permanent possibilities of feeling which may continue through reverie, or fainting, or sleep, or bodily dissolution, is what must be known as the perpetuation of myself There are 3 34 KNOWLEDGE OF A CEEATOR. some differences to be noticed between permanent possibilities of sensations and permanent possibilities of feelings, among which the most important is, that the former are possibilities to others as well as to myself, but the latter are a series of possibilities in my life to myself alone. But this permanency, as myself, may be determined as existing in other series of possible feeling, as otherselves also. Other figures of seeing and speaking possibilities I know, as I know my own seeing and speaking body ; and I am con- scious of modified bodily states followed by feelings, and these again followed by some outward conduct in myself. Now, the first as peculiar state of body, and the last as peculiar conduct, I cannot connect in my- self except as through the intermediate feelings. My body is naked, and I put on clothes ; my stomach is empty, and I take food ; but I connect the first two by the feeling of cold, and the last two by the feeling of hunger, only in my consciousness. I get, in the ob- servation of other seeing and speaking figures, the first and the last, but 1 do not get their intermediate feeling to connect them. Still, as I know their state of body and subsequent conduct to be as mine to- gether, I legitimately infer the middle link of feeling to be present, and connect the two in them, as it does and must in me, and thus that they are sentient beings as I am. They have bodies as mine, exhibit acts sig- nificant as mine, which indicate feeling as mine, and thus that they are otherselves as I am myself. So it is competent for me to know other series of feelings EMPIRICISM BY LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 35 than my own ; to know even a series that is super- human or divine, from knowing manifestations of superhuman or divine thought and feeling. I may con- ceive a thread of consciousness perpetuated through an unending series, and believe in an immortality. Mind, as a series of feelings, with the background of perpetuated possibilities of feeling, is, therefore, an object for our subjective consciousness, though we may not be able, and truly are not competent, to know such a world of spiritual beings actually existing. But there is one part of this knowledge, in subjec- tive experience, which the philosophy itself admits to be wholly inscrutable by any experience. I remem- ber the past parts of the series ; I may expect future parts; and thus the one myself is in all the series, past, present, and future. The mental series is in this peculiar. The material series is known only by others than itself, even by the mental, and by that alone ; but the mental lias its own thread of consciousness throughout, as a series which is aware of itself. Here, it is honestly recognized, that the theory faces an in- explicable mystery ; since it cannot be expounded to experience, how a past fact and a future fact can at once be a present fact. And here, the determining of a series, that shall know both its past and future to belong to a present self, is ingenuously left outside the theory, waiting some other means of solution. But this law of association is made to reach much further, and mediate a knowledge beyond the experi- ence of matter and of mind as given in the fact of 36 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. consciousness, even to the determining of intuitive knowledge in mathematics. The necessary truth of geometrical axioms and demonstrations is made to be a matter of experience, through the medium of associ- ation. And just as we did let slip the consciousness of the associative process, in the connection of the sensations in substances and attributes, causes and effects, and deemed thus the connections to be neces- sary and immediately known, so also in our oblivis- cence of our associations from experience in mathe- matical truths, do we deem their relations to be neces- sary, and our apprehensions of them immediate intui- tions. Thus we have found, invariabl}^, that two things put together with two other things have made four things, and in the expectation of any future process of so putting two and two things together, we over- look the association of it from our past experience, and then think that we immediately see the two and two things together to be four things. The knowl- edge that two and two make four is from no known necessity in the case, nor any intuition of a universal truth ; but only from association through former ex- perience, which associative process we overlook, and deem the relation between the two and two and the four to be an immediate intuition. If when two and two things had been put together in our past experience, there had always been, by some jugglery or miracle, another thing secretly interposed, so that the sum- ming up should have been five, then would the associative process have been accordingly in our EMPIRICISM BY LAWS OP ASSC^xxx^,. ^, ^ anticipated future additions of two — --^^ «-•- ^ passing the association we should have acquired the mathematical intuition that two and two are five. So again, our invariable experience has been, that on round bodies becoming cubes, they have ceased to be round, and that cubes becoming round, they have ceased to be cubes; or when bounded by straight lines, the invariable experience has been that more than two lines have been needed to make out the complete limitation ; and hence the association from such expe- rience puts the permanent possibilities of sensation after the same form, and letting fall from conscious- ness the association, we deem it to be an intuition, that there cannot be cubical spheres, nor spherical cubes, nor can two straight lines enclose a space. If our two eyes had been made invariably to give a cube with a sphere and a sphere with a cube, by some double vision in the consciousness; or had we never known two straight lines but as they appear together on a railroad track, when perspectively they approach each other on opposite sides of us; we should then have intuitively known that a cube must also be a sphere, and a sphere a cube, and that two straight lines must always enclose a space. The determining rule is the order of association according to former experience; and the permanent possibilities of sensa- tions take on the same order, and passing over the association, we have left to us the supposed immedi- ate intuition. And now this is very ingeniously wrought out, 38 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. strictly in accordance with the psychology that knowledge is limited by experience. It is no reproach to the philosophy, that the externality and necessity of" the uniform order of the objects of experience are only a subjective seeming, and no possible knowing ; nor is it any conviction of logical absurdity to show, that such laws of nature in experience would be only laws of meAtal association, and that the other men here are only other as men are in our dreams, and their manifestation of similar feelings and convictions with ours is only a doubling of the subjective seem- ing, as when we might dream others were dreaming as we dream ; for all this is understood from the start; and since the human mind cannot push its knowledge beyond what is given in conscious sensation, the entire credit which the philosopher asks should be accorded to him is, not that he has shown there is any outer world, but how experience may seem to be outward, and orderly arranged ; and that he has done this logi- cally, from the data given in experience alone. But the deep reproof to be applied to the philoso- phy is from another quarter. The inquiry it has made, and so logically answered, is what the rational mind cares nothing about. The whole business is a delusive play with fictions. The only inquiry made is, Why does our world of experience seem external and orderly connected? And the answer given is, That there are associations naturally, and even neces- sarily, generated by the order of our transient sensa- tions, which inevitably induce such seeming. But PHILOSOPHY OP COMMON SENSE. 39 when we admit all this, it is still of no interest to the philosophic mind. That asks yet, as from the first, Why this order of the primitive transient sensations, which has determined the association in the perma- nent possibilities of sensations ? May there not here be an insight to an outer and orderly material world? Reason stands knocking at this door, and cannot be deluded into any interest with the logic that may seem to be pleasing itself about any mere seeming. It will wait here till this door opens. 3. Empiricism in the Philosophy of Common Sense. — The Philosophy of Common Sense restricts all human knowledge to the elements given in con- scious experience ; yet in some of its varied theories it assumes much that stands out quite beyond all experience, and applies these universal truths in dif- ferent ways to relieve itself as it may from the dif- ficulties it encounters. At its inception, it rested mainly in the assumption that consciousness was valid and its testimony final, and consistently at- tempted by no speculation to go back of conscious- ness to find any confirmation for it. It sufficed it to say, that all scepticism must appeal to consciousness for the affirmation of its doubts, and if this were not valid, then its facts of doubting were as insecure as any facts immediately affirmed. Some sense may be so conditioned at times as to delude, but this would be corrected by other senses ; and some persons may be deceived in their experiences, but the normal ex- 40 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. perience of the many will prevailingly control ; and the collected, unbiassed decision of common experi- ence must be the ultimate criterion of truth. Com- mon consciousness, and logical judgments from the facts of consciousness, cover the entire field of our knowledge. Further reflection modified these assumptions of the validity of the facts immediately given in con- sciousness. It came generally to be admitted that all the senses did not alike give immediate knowl- edge of an outer world. Temperature and taste, odors and sounds, are rather feelings within us than any attributes of things without us, and are primari- ly our sensations, and only secondarily the qualities of matter. The sense of vision and of touch were held more directly to give the attributes of outer things, and from them it was assumed that we at- tained immediately the primary qualities of tlie ma- terial world. And yet, in these two senses, there came to be recognized quite a difference in the di- rectness of their knowledge. The nervous network of the organs of vision and of touch were taken as thoroughly interpenetrated and sufi"used by the liv- ing intelligent spirit, and here in the nerves, it was assumed, spirit and matter came physiologically in unity. Any impression on the organic nerve was thus held to be in immediate communication with spirit, and here the matter in contact was supposed to give over its essential attributes directly to the Bpirit's intelligence. And yet close reflection found PHILOSOPHY OP COMMON SENSE. 41 color in vision to come from outer things through the medium of light, and must thus be a primary quality of the light rather than of the illuminated body. -Ex- tension was in the color, and from the light ; and we could not thus attain directly the shapes of things, and only the shapes of colors which the light brings from the things. Two persons together do not see the same object in their vision of the sun, or a star ; nor indeed do the two eyes of the same person see together the same thing ; the two only see different mediate rays of light from the same thing. The primary qualities of the real thing, it thus comes to be admitted, must be sought solely from touch ; since only in the contact of the organ with the thing, can we immediately have its primary qual- ity given over to the sense. Solidity was thus held to be a primary quality of matter, intrinsically in its essence, and given to the consciousness in the expe- rience of its impenetrability by contact, and measured in amount by the comparative degrees of resistance. Extension also belongs to matter essentially, and is given over to the sense in touch, and measured by the extended nerve in the organ affected, relatively to other portions of the living body, in various ways of contact, as by the grasp of the hand, the sliding of the finger, or the sweep of the arm. The exter- nality of matter was also deemed to be immediately attained by touch ; but its outness was admitted as rather a relation between matter and mind, than a primary attribute of the matter itself. Thus common 42 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. sense \vas held to have matter face to face, and im- raediately to take these primary qualities from it into consciousness. The secondary qualities were allowed to be only affections in us, and to give to the con- sciousness only the mode in which outer things in indirect ways affected our organs. It might well be objected to any such theory of intuitive knowledge of matter, that the supposed extended spirit, in the extended nerve-organism, does not know any extension except in the affection. The eye has no knowledge of the expanded retina, except as the retina has its content for color ; nor does the hand know extension, nor solidity, till first the im- pressed nerve has its sensation. The spirit does not know extension because it is diffused, as supposed, through an extended network of nerve-fibres. The nerve is still between the outer matter and the mind, and it is the affection of the nerve only that the mind gets. The true answer, however, to such a theory of im- mediate knowledge by touch, is a direct denial. The thing in contact with the living nerve does not put over any part or attribute of itself into the nerve, and through that into the consciousness ; it can only affect the living nerve, and become a sensation ; and the quality of the thing is only the way in which it has qualified our sense, and not that any element of the thing has been immediately imparted. The claim that we immediately know its externality is an affirmation of its complete outness still, and that we PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE. 43 only know it in the affection produced. The most that may be said is, vve know the without by what is within ; the thing by the sensation ; and this can be no immediate knowledge. Even in contact, the whole thing is outside, and the affection only is given with- in, and .the outer can only be known through the medium of the inner. Herein is no intuitive knowl- edge by touch, any more than by any other organ. All sense-intuition is the putting of the affectitm and the intellect face to face in the consciousness, and not the thing and the intellect face to face as object and subject. The insight of reason reads the true meaning of the sense-symbols, and knows the thing in the symbol, and can intelligently expound the pri- mary qualities of extension and solidity ; but the sense without the reason-function knows nothing be- yond the quality, whether in touch or any other organ. But even with this assumption of immediate sense- knowing, the common sense was helpless to connect the qualities in any ordered experience, and fix the objects in any necessary connections, and knovv na- ture as a universe. The appearances come within, and flit over the field of consciousness, as the cloud- shadows chase each other over the landscape, and no sense-faculty can find any determining medium for connecting them in the order of their coming and departing. To meet this exigency, there has been the assumption of a higher sense-facult}^ than any organic perceiving, and the afiirming the human 44 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. mind to have an original constitutional endowment for apprehending the connections of sense-experi- ences. Like the organic senses, this higher sense is incompetent to overlook and comprehend itself, and expound its mode of knowing, and its most confident convictions are simply inexplicable mysteries, as if they were inspired revelations ; but the universal consent, in this common constitutional taking of uni- form combinations and sequences in experience as necessarily connected, is assumed to be as safe a reliance as the direct testimony of consciousness. This is expressed in the various ways of " primitive belief," " universal assent/' " dictates of common sense," in this eminent signification of a sense above organic perceiving ; and by this higher form of as- sumed sensevapprehension, they attain their remedy for admitted organic deficiencies. Such assumed higher sense is a common endowment of humanity ; and this may be cultivated to attain such judgments as follows : All objects of perception must be in space and time ; qualities must have their substance, and events must have their cause ; like qualities and events must have like substances and causes; na- ture's changes must be in orderly successions, and she can gain nothing new, and lose nothing old ; and others like to these. But such assumption, of some mysteriously work- ing-sense, is only the manifestation of the distinctive working of reason which has not been recognized by them, and for whose legitimate insight they have PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE. 45 ignorantly substitnted a fictitious foresight of proph- ecy. The assumed Seer has a new sense opened for these higher communications, and all inexpHcable and mysterious as they are, we come to put our faith in these revealings of truth beyond ordinary percep- tions in consciousness, and trust the surreptitious connections as giving to experience an orderly and necessary stability and uniformity. The whole is a mere fictitious psychological invention. There is yet a further method, when it is found that the human mind cannot rise in its knowledge above the relations given in experience, to open, by a logical process, a way for the exercise of faith, and therein to carry human belief quite beyond the pos- sibilities of human knowledge. We may ascend in our judgments from the conditioned to a conditioner, or determining condition, and this in an indefinite process, but can never reach an ultimate condition which has no determiner. And now this " law of the conditioned " is subjected to such logical process, and in the following form, for the admission of faith be- yond knowledge. There may be two contradictory propositions, neither of which can be conceived as true, and yet as contradictory opposites, from the logical law of the excluded middle, one of them must be true ; and then on the ground of such a conclusion, we may believe that to be true which can neither bo known nor conceived. And this is specially applied to two supersensible truths, the 46 KNOWLEDGE OP A CREATOR. coniieqtions of nature into a universal whole ; and the Being of a God above nature. Of the connections of cause and effect into one nature of things, we may so form a logical argument. Of any perceived phenomenon just occurred, we can- not conceive that it did not previously exist in some form. But we can neither conceive of its beginning with time, and thus to include absolutely all time, nor that it had no beginning, and thus runs back through infinite time. Such is the impotence of human thought. But a beginning with time and a non-begin- ning with time are contradictory opposites; and we must conclude of this phenomenon, that it has either beginning or non-beginning. Both cannot be true, but one must i we cannot conceive of either, nor possibly know either ; yet we must believe one or the other to be true. Our faith here may, and even must, run beyond all thought and knowledge. We may thus believe in the necessary and universal con- nections of cause and effect. And so in reference to the being of an Infinite and Absolute Deity. We may say of his omniscience, that it must require a mode of knowing that takes in all the connections of universal nature, but we cannot conceive it either as running through the in- finite successive changes, or as compassing the in- finite successions all at once. The first is the Infinite, the last is the Absolute, and both alike unthinkable and unknowable ; and yet by the logical law for con- tradictory opposites, as above, while both together FORCE FROM ^MUSCULAR PRESSURE. 47 cannot be, one of them must be. Our faculties are too limited to think or to know in this sphere, but logic opens it for human faith to enter. We must beheve that the Being who knows the universe is either an Infinite or an Absolute Being, though he cannot be both ; and our faith cannot find on which to fix. In these forms the philosophy of Common Sense exhausts all its expedients. It first assumes con- sciousness to be valid and sufficient in the aggre- gate of the senses ; then restricts immediate knowl- edge of the outer world to vision, and more specially to touch ; then imagines a fictitious, inspired, and prophetic sense, that forecasts the successions of nature ; and lastly, by logic, supports a faith that can rest on no thought, and can guide itself to a specific object by no possible reason. The whole absurdity and contradiction, in which this form of philosophizing ever issues, is from limiting all knowl- edge to what h given in experience. The unac- knowledged faculty of reason they have, and it prompts them to get speculative truth; but they put the lower faculties of sense and logic to the vain task of solving the questionings of reason, and of course in their neglect of reason the issue is folly. 4. Experience op Force given in Muscular Pres- sure. — This is a philosophy which begins in experi- ence, and affirms that all beyond experience is un- knowable, and yet assumes to know very far beyond 48 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. that which sense, and all logical deduction from it, could ever acquire. It is thus unwittingly using the Organ of Reason without giving credit for it. Its prime dicta are, that to think is to distinguish and find relations ; and thought can be conversant legiti- mately only with that which is relative; while the Infinite and the Absolute must to man be ever un- knowable. The theory may be given in the nar- rowest compass as follows : — The ongoing of nature is a process of evolution, the law of which is progression from the homogene- ous to the heterogeneous, yet perpetually making the heterogeneous more and more definite and co- herent. This is efi*ected through continuous differen- tiations and disintegrations. An indefinite number of homogeneous molecules in mass will differentiate and disintegrate, and the mass become more heter- ogeneous in its portions ; and yet these heterogeneous portions will become more and more definite and co- herent, till the mass of star-mist shall become sun and system. The explanation of this evolution may be thus given, in the closest outline. Passing the other senses and their given perceptions, even that of vision and its colored extensions, the sense of touch is taken ; and this not as tactual merely, whereby tem- perature may be attained, but as muscular pressure apprehending resistance. The muscles press and are pressed, in which we become conscious of co-existent resistances. Pressure with counter-pressure, at a given FORCE FROM MUSCULAR PRESSURE. 49 point, determines a position ; through continuous posi- tions, determines a line ; through contiguous positions, a surface ; and through surfaces in all directions, a solid. The correlation of muscular energy and equiv- alent resistance gives the knowledge of Force. The muscular tension is in consciousness ; the co-existent resistances come into the consciousness; and then these correlations of resistance are known as the mat- ter touching and touched, and which essentially is Force,.and immediately known in conscious experience. The force is not in the matter, the force is the matter. . Abstract the force, and Space remains ; the matter and the space differ, only as positions with and posi- tions without co-existing resistance differ. Matter is extended and resistant, and the resistance as solidity is the primary attribute. Space is extended and non-resistant, and extension is the primary attribute. When the resisting positions are given successively in an order of sequence not reversible, we know the occurrences to have a fixed series; and an abstrac- tion of the successive resistances leaves Time in the consciousness. Succession with non-resistance is Time. The change of matter through contiguous positions in successive moments is Motion ; and thus matter, space, and time are conjointly conditional for motion. The primary knowledge of motion is in the conscious change of position of our own muscles, and we mature this knowledge of motion when there is no muscular pressure, by at once cognizing the con- currence of space and time with the movement. 4 50 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. Force is in this the deepest element, change of posi- tion the next, and the concurrences of space and time complete the complex cognition. Matter and Motion are concretes ; Space and Time are abstracts. Relative Space and Time is that which stands re- lated to the matter in space and time, or which may- have been abstracted from space and time ; and the relative space and time are, thus, the forms of force, or matter. Absolute Space and Time is that vague notion of space and time, nascent in consciousness, as lying beyond all limits of relative space and time. The question is asked. Is the Absolute Space or the Absolute Time a form from some absolute exist- ence? which question is affirmed to be unanswer- able. And so also Relative Force is that which relates immediately to the experience of muscular energy. Absolute Force is that vague notion of force, nascent in consciousness, which is beyond all limited co-resistance to muscular pressure. The be- ing of Absolute Force, it is argued, is demanded from the persistence of consciousness itself Persistence in consciousness is the criterion of reality ; and we always rest satisfied that the thing is real, which, in appropriate conditions, persists in consciousness. Muscular pressure is not permanently persistent, and consciousness itself persists only as changing ap- pearances take place in consciousness. The purely simple, having no changes, could awaken no con- sciousness. When, then, muscular pressure with its co-resistance ceases, and all relative force is absent, FORCE FROM MUSCULAR PRESSURE. 51 consciousness itself must cease. But consciousness is persistent in the absence of muscular pressure and its co-resistance, for which sake, from the very- nature of consciousness, a persistent absolute force must be present. This is a priori postulated for the persistence of consciousness itselfj and it is the proud boast of this philosophy, that such postulate has been found by it to be a logical necessity for the continuance of consciousness. This persistent Ab- solute Force is thus affirmed to stand in its truth " deeper than de'monstration ; deeper than definite cognition ; deep as the very nature of mind. The sole truth which transcends experience by underly- ing it, is the persistence of Force." "To this an ultimate analysis brings us down, and from this a rational synthesis must build up." In this persistent absolute force we have the in- destructibility of matter, and the necessity for con- tinuous movement. The force is matter, and can be conceived as neither beginning nor ending, nor ceasing from evolution ; and here is the basis for a synthesis, as experience may find that the system of nature has been ordered. Absolute force is that universal force in which all changes and conversions of forces occur, and in which all is conserved and held in correlation. Matter is convertible into other matter, into spirit, and then again from spirit back into matter; and the universe of matter and mind is' but this universal correlative and persistent Force. A given series may illustrate the perpetual conver- 52 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. sions of force everywhere occurring. The moving force which swings the iron-tongue, and strikes the ringing chimes, is converted to the vibrations of the bell ; thence into undulations of the air ; and thence into sound in the ear ; and here the force is spiritual- ized into tune in the intellect, and then emotion in the sensibility, and then to some executive impulse in volition ; and now becomes converted into organic movement, as irritated nerve, and contracted muscle, and tension of sinews, and leverage of bones ; and thence goes out again in its endless round of cor- relative pressure through material changes. The myriad-sided movement is everywhere the pushed and pushing conversions and successions of recip- rocal and equivalent forces ; and nothing new comes iUj and nothing old drops out of the one Absolute Force. That is the ultimate of all analysis, and if there be anywhere, in or out, an originating Per- sonality, he must to man be unknowable. Of this entire speculation, it is important to note that, with no higher faculty than it recognizes, it would never have been attempted, and could never have been accomplished. Experience never attains force ; and sense-consciousness has neither interest nor capability to determine what may be the con- ditions of its own persistent being. Muscular exten- sion may push and be pushed in experience, and in every instance nervous irritability may have its pecu- liar sensation; but with no insight of reason the pecu- liar sensation is all that is brought within conscious- FORCE FROM MUSCULAR PRESSURE. 53 ness, and never the force that conditioned the conscious sensation. An appetitive impulse or a rational im- perative may consciously have prompted the muscular tensions ; but the feeling we have of these prompting activities is but the footprint of the spiritual force, which in darkness has previously passed onward. The force itself from appetite or obligation never comes into consciousness. The insight of reason into the facts of consciousness first gets the forces which give meaning to the facts. Even if it were possible to attain force from the experience of muscular pressure, we have no experi- ence which could give persistent absolute force. And if experience teaches that consciousness is persistent only as changes persistently go on within it, still not consciousness, but a higher authority, must determine for us that these persistent changes were necessary conditions for the consciousness, and that an absolute force was necessary for the changes. And then, again, even if we had the recognition of absolute force, and its conservatign, or persistency, and that all particular forces are correlative ; What use could we make of it in any philosophy which is to de- t^ermine the orderly development of nature in expe- rience ? We cannot say whether the absolute force is personal or not, nor whether itself is the product of personal intelligence and will ; all we know is a continual maze of reciprocal pushings and puUings, converting themselves from one form to another, and we can only watch and classify the changes as we 54 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. may i-n experience, with nothing to determine whence they come or whither they are tending. We may call the movement an " evolution," and say that expe- rience finds it to proceed from '^ the homogeneous to the heterogeneous " in ever widening multiplications, but we can cognize nothing of an involving that deter- mines the assumed evolving. The philosophy, even with this surreptitiously assumed force, can only ex- pect the future from the past, with no insight of what force itself is, which may help us to determine why the past has so been, or how the future must be. The upshot of all is still fact in experience, with no possible explanation of the fact; and no rational mind can satisfy itself by it. Keason must in phe- nomenal fact see the force, and what the force itself is, and in this it may expound the mechanics of mat- ter, the spontaneities of organic life, and find a pas- sage out beyond to the supernatural. 5. The Critical Philosophy. — It is peculiar to any mathematical judgment that a diagram may be constructed of pure points or lines, which shall pre- sent the truth intended as an immediate intuition in the diagram itself; and this truth in one diagram will be the same truth as universal for all diagrams of accordant constructed form. Thus I describe a line from one point to another, and at once in this I can see that the straight line is " the shortest " line that can be drawn between those points. And but this one diagram is needed to see from it that the same CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 55 must be true of all straight lines universally that may- be drawn between any two points. And as in this, so is intuition in all mathematical axioms and demon- strations. The new predicate to be attained, which in the case above is " the shortest," is seen from the diagram, and only needs to be put in the form of a judgment. But in a philosophical judgment the case is the opposite. I say, all qualities must have substance ; all events must have cause; and yet I can make no construction that will express the new predicate of substance or of cause, and cannot, thus, intuitively Bee the substance connecting the qualities, and the cause connecting the events, and thereby judge that they must universally so connect the qualities and the events. And yet, destitute of such capability of intuition, we are perpetually affirming, in philosophi- cal judgments as in mathematical, the conviction of universal truths. But when required to justify our philosophical universal judgments we find much diffi- culty. We cannot put them face to face with us as we do in the diagrams of geometry, and hence we cannot see how we get our new notions of substances and causes, nor how we may validly make universal predicates of them. This attained conviction that no consciousness, pure or empirical, could bring sub- stance and cause to appear within it, and consequent- ly, by no possibility, could the intuition give any necessary and universal connections of qualities and events in or by the substances and causes, opened at 56 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. once a wide door for scepticism in both philosophy and religion, and no efforts of empiricism could possi- bly close it. The Critical Philosophy, altogether the most remarkable of our age, started at just this point, and made it the burden of inquiry, " How are syn- thetic Judgments a priori possible ? " The " synthetic Judgment a priori " was the above philosophical Judgment as distinct from the mathe- matical, and the inquiry involved the necessity for a searching analysis of the entire process of knowing, that we might thereby attain to a knowledge of how we know. All such systems as we have heretoibre been examining were miserably partial and superficial, compared with the profound speculations of the Crit- ical Philosophy. The mode of knowing must regulate the objects known ; and in this way was attained what could come in to human consciousness, and how this could be ordered in human experience. The analysis took the human intelligence as it is, and found its highest capacities and functions. The Sense was found as capacity for receiving affections which must from somewhere be given ; and that primitively it has the two forms of Space and Time, as inclusive of its capacity for a universal re- ceptivity. This merely envisaged, or put its content face to face with the consciousness, and as thus fac- ulty for immediately representing gave its objects as Intuitions. These sense-intuitions were then found to be given over to the function of Judgment, that they might be CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 57 ordered into a consistent experience. This function of Judgment was found constituted with four primitive forms for ordering the Intuitions, distinguished as those of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Mode ; and these each subdivided into three subsidiary forms, making the well-known twelve Categories as the basis of the human Understanding. The intuitions become fashioned and connected in these forms as the chick in the egg, or the embryo in the womb, and hence they were named a priori Conceptions, as teeming with the intuitions given to them, from whence the ordered intuitions issue in their respective kinds and varieties of Judgments. Intuitions alone are blind ; conceptions alone are empty ; but the intuitions or- dered in the conceptions become intelligible objects in a consistently connected experience. And now, it is practicable, in the use of the a priori forms alone, to attain a universal scheme for all possi- ble human knowledge. The form of Time may be taken as generally inclusive of all intuitions, and so put into the pure conceptions as to give the pure schemes of all possible Judgments. This process was known as " the Schematism of the Understanding." First, the moments of time taken as continuous units and given to the category of Quantity, will come out in general schemes of its three varieties of Judgments. The moments connected in a series will give the scheme for Unity ; the unarrested flow of the series will give the scheme for Plurality ; and the exclusion of all limits to the series will give the 58 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. ' scheme for absolute Totality. These moments, again, put within the category of Quality, will give the schemes for all its varieties of Judgments. The mo- ments as content in the conception will give the scheme for Eeality ; as content withheld from the. cat- egory, the scheme for Negation; and as zero, where content meets a void of content, the scheme for Lim- itation. But more important for the connections in experience is the giving of time to the category of Relation. The perduring time will give scheme for Substantiality ; the successive time for Causality ; and coetaneous time the scheme for Reciprocity. In this way may be an d priori determination of all possible kinds and varieties of Judgments the human intelli- gence can have in experience, for the actual forms must be ordered according to these a priori schemes. It is, however, to be carefully noted that this is all from an analysis of empirical fact, and its a priori knowledge of experience is still a posteriori to the Intelligence that is to have the experience. The mind is a fact already made, and such a mind may so know ; but some other order of mind may be consti- tuted to know objects differently, perhaps directly contradictorily. The Critic of pure Reason has still no Absolute Reason for determining an absolutely and universally valid knowledge. The only specula- tive Reason recognized is a regulative Faculty, di- recting the search for the Absolute ; but inasmuch as no possible form of the Judgment can furnish a con- tent to its empty Ideals, so the critical Reason must CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 59 ever remain barren of all cognition of the Absolute. Man may know all of sense-appearance, and in the understanding may order this in an experience which he knows as nature, but he can never know the super- natural. And it is also to be noted, that some outer " thing in itself" must be assumed to give affection and con- tent to the sense-receptivity, or the sense can give nothing to the understanding that it may connect in the judgments of experience. This " thing in itself" was to the last insisted upon as necessary to be as- sumed in thought, though not it, and only the im- pressions from it, could be brought within conscious- ness. As thought only it was known as noumenon, and its imparted representative was phenomenon; the latter was the object as known, the former could never become object. ._ . A Second Stage of the Critical Philosophy, rejecting the noumenon, or " thing in itself," as confessedly beyond all consciousness, held it necessary to come to the knowledge of what knowing is, by a careful analysis of the knowing-process alone. It supposed itself to be truly the philosophy of the first stage more carefully analyzed, inasmuch as that had taught that the one " I think " must accompany every repre- sentation in consciousness, in order to preserve the unity of consciousness ; but when the Philosopher of the first stage somewhat indignantly and very emphatically discarded this interpretation, and in- 60 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. sisted on retaining the noumenon, the Philosopher of the second stage intrepidly took his own way, only insisting that it was plainly the way the first should have taken. Its explanation, in a very general form, is as follows : The multitude have their sense-representations, and put them in a connected experience, but they do not reflect on what they have done, and hence have no clear knowledge of their process of knowing. The speculative philosopher does not rest in this conscious- ness of common experience, but by careful reflection upon it brings it to a new and higher conscious- ness, in which he comes to know how he has the common conscious experience. A record of what is attained in this philosophic consciousness is " the Science of Knowledge." The common experience is under necessity, for the representations come from somewhere into the con- sciousness without being ordered by it; but the re- flection of the philosopher is wholly free, for he turns back upon his common experience from his own motion altogether, and voluntarily controls his own thinking. On going up to the dawning of any of his representa- tions in consciousness, he finds them to have been dependent on conditions which do not come within consciousness, and reflection is cut short, for he finds nothing further to turn back upon. But where re- flection can know nothing, philosophic contemplation of the rising representations in consciousness can cognize in them their determining conditions. The CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 61 knowing is beyond proof; back of all data in con- sciousness, even below consciousness itself; and yet a knowing absolutely sure and valid on which all con- scious perceiving and logical proving must them- selves rest for their validity, and which will subse- quently manifest itself as the affirmation of Absolute Reason. We must not lose sight, that the end of the Critical Philosophy is the attainment of a complete theory of knowledge ; and that as knowing is an activity, the philosophy takes the subjective stand-point, and seeks to determine the method of activity in the subject knowing. There may or may not be outer things; that is here no matter in question ; if there are, and they are known, they must be known by the activity of the subject knowing ; and whether outer things give their representation, or some other agent put them within the subject, it is still all the. same that the active subject alone can know them. When, then, the philosopher reflects on some conscious expe- rience, he finds intuitions there present in conscious- ness, and which come and stay there without his ordering, and yet they could not appear to him with- out his activity. A dead inactive consciousness could not envisage, and thus the activity must have been in order to the envisaging ; and this too beneath the con- sciousness, for the appearance is the last which any re- flection can go back to in the consciousness. Condi- tional for appearance in consciousness, was some pre- vious agency envisaging it. That activity must have 62 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. its law, or method of envisagement, already in and with it, or no ordered experience could be in conscious- ness; and thus conditional for conscious experience, must there be an activity with its possessed method or law. Rational contemplation cognizes that, on the necessary principle of " the sufficient reason," a cog- nizing activity and its possessed law must already be. This is solely activity ; living movement ; having per- manent essence and identity in its law of working, with no other substantiality ; and this is actual and real, and the only reality which the speculative con- templation can recognize. This is the true self, or ego, not yet conscious of its own being. The phi- losopher has cognition of it in contemplation, but it has not yet come to itself. The philosophic conscious- ness states it as already a doing; a deed-act, since its very essence is methodical activity ; and in it we have the ego equal to self; ego = ego. The ego's method of activity is self-limitation ; de- fining its own activity, and thus terminating itself in that which is not-self; the ego oppositing to itself a non-ego, since no intelligence can be without dis- tinction,, or limiting its activity in that which is some other. And in this the philosophic contem- plation posits a non-ego not = ego. The waking consciousness has in this a vague recognition of self and something other; and one more step completes the process. The confusion now is, that two opposites, ego and non-ego, strive for admission, and neither can be in consciousness CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 63 without the other ; and they are opposites, and it must needs be, as would seem, that one exclude the other. The necessary method of the activity is here coun- ter-movement from each side, and then the ego limits the non-ego, and the oscillation or return movement gives the non-ego limiting the ego. They are both now in full consciousness, discriminated each from each. The ego has found itself distinct from all that is not itself, and henceforth its activity is clear con- scious agency. When, in the full consciousness, the ego is taken as limiting itself in the non-ego, the occasion is given for the science of knowledge in its Theoretic Part. The philosopher sees that ail the work is by the one real activity, and that the non-ego is but a self-separation or reduplication of the ego, and the product of its essential method in self-limitation. The common unreflecting consciousness takes the ego as subject, and the non-ego as object, and holds them to be distinct in being, and the latter as external to the former. The philosopher thus, knowing the truth of the higher consciousness and the illusion of the lower common consciousness, can expound them both, and has in his contemplative position full opportunity to give a record of the entire process of Theoretic Knowledge. When, on the other hand, the ego is taken as lim- iting the non-ego by itself, the occasion is given for the science of knowledge in its Practical Part. The philosopher sees that in the being of the living activi- 64 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. ty with its essential law, there must be a prompting as a claim, or self-behest, to work out its whole method ; and that what it thus should do, it can and spontaneously will do ; and thus that, which poten- tially is in the ego, will become actually a reality from the ego ; and nature, and society, and state regulations must follow in their development. But still, with all the practical reality, it is a real within, and not external to. the ego ; and illusive as all is to the common consciousness, the philosopher cognizes the whole in its truth, that the knowing can have nothing outside of its own activity. The reality of the world came from fulfilling, that is, realizing the essential law in the ego, and is thus the product and creation from this essential moral order; and this eternal Moral Order is the eternal God ; creator, and governor of universal experience. There is nothing which does not 'Mive, and move, and have its being ^' in this essential, eternal Moral Order. We can apprehend none other, be compre- hended by none other, and truly need none other God. A necessary inquiry was left here unanswered. The philosopher stands outside the common conscious- ness, and contemplates it as a panorama before him. Is the philosopher Absolute Ego ? May there be many Absolutes ? or is there an absolute ego in- clusive of every ego and non-ego ? A very ingenious and elaborate speculation was here introduced, and held the Absolute to be essential CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 65 activity in an indifference-point between subject and object, and with the All potentially in itself in that point. As a living energy, the Absolute discedes from the point, projecting itself each way, and becoming on one hand subject and on the other object ; the subject and object thus standing to each other in con- sciousness as the two opposite poles of the one living energy — they identical in the Absolute, and the Ab- solute not in consciousness; but when projected as opposites, they were made distinct and definite in the consciousness, while the Absolute still remained be- neath consciousness, and could be recognized only in an " Intellectual Intuition." The law or method of activity is essentially intelligent, the Absolute having the Universal in its grasp originally, then disceding and distinguishing into subject and object, then har.- monizing or identifying the distinctions as subject and predicate in a judgment. There is thus the po- tential All in the Absolute, and by the perpetual sys- tem of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, this is succes- sively developed into the subjective and the objective, which are but two modes of view from opposite sides of one and the same life-energy, and of which there can be no more than two fundamental sciences, viz. : The Philosophy of Mind, in the self-consciousness of the subject ; and the Philosophy of Nature, in the life and movement of the objective world. But with all the enthusiasm which the brilliancy of this ^' Identity system " kindled in its many disciples at its first announcement, it soon fell outside the 5 66 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. onward flow of speculative thinking, and fixes no dis- tinct stage for itself in the continuous movement of the Critical Philosophy. The march went round it, and did not take this up into it. If the Absolute be one, how differentiate into the relative ? If it could eflPect this, it must be at the expense of itself, becom- ing a neutrum ; and even if held to be self-active, in distinction from an Absolute Substance, what advan- tage could come from this, since the Activity must be self-destructive? The piquant presentations of these weak points effectually excluded it, as a starting- point for attaining any advanced position. Such an Absolute, it was said, could give no reason for itself, but " came as if shot from a pistol." It was merely an occasion for identifying subject and object, and so /'only as the night, in which every cow looks black.'' The same self-opposites perpetually returned to iden- tity, " as if a painter took only opposite red and green to blend into all colors." The Author himself fre- quently modiBed his starting-point, and finally assumed for his Absolute a free personal Will. A third Stage, however, was soon attained by a speculation from a more profound principle, and car- ried to a more comprehensive result. So far as pure thinking is concerned, this last speculation leaves little else to be done, and little also of itself that needs to be done over. Its method of graded move- ment in the subjective ego is much after the manner of the second stage, and yet the movement begins CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 67 and concludes quite diiferently from the second or the first stage. It does not begin with a finite ego in common consciousness or philosophic contemplation, but the movement from the start is of the Absolute itself." A preliminary analysis of consciousness at- tains an absolute thought-process, from which, as causa sioi, the dialectic may begin thought and con- summate all thinking. The process, moreover, is of a logical instead of a moral order ; the logic develop- ing into ethic by the inward interest of systematic completeness, and not the pressure of duty. And still another point of difference obtains: Instead of the philosopher contemplating the process from the outside, and thus knowing objectively the subject knowing, it puts the organ within the process, and sees the entire consciousness in its own transparency. A very condensed statement of the whole will here be given. The preliminary analysis above mentioned, or rath- er a traverse of the whole movement in conscious- ness, is known as the Phenomenology of the Spirit. It takes the immediate sense-appearance, and in close scrutiny finds perpetually perplexing contradictions arising, the explanation of which carries the process after truth to successively higher and more comprehen- sive attainments. Every new statement of truth is seen, when examined, to have its remaining diflSculties requiring fuller elucidation. An outline of this chase of truth through consciousness is as follows : — When we attentively examine sense-appearances, 68 KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR. seeking to know just what truly is and abides in the consciousness, we find all else passing away but a permanently abiding " this " in the appearances ; and a little further care finds that with a permanent " this " there is also an abiding '' there " or a " now." Thus the immediate appearance may be a man, and yet anon the man has passed out, and a house, and then a tree, &c., appears in consciousness ; and yet of all there was a permanent "this here," as this here man, this here house, &c. And so, again, the imme- diate may be night and pass away, and the immediate is then morning, then noon,