UNIVERSITY CF CALIFCR: AT LOS AMGELES '"^«-/'-i , %J ■h yi/n. —i RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY; OB, THE SUBJECTIVE IDEA AND OBJECTIVE LAW OF ALL INTELLIGENCE. BY LAUEENS P. HICKOK, D.D., A NE\7 AXD REVISED EDITION mSON, BLAKEMAX, TAYLOR & CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO. 1872. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by LAURENS P. HICKOK.D.D.- In the Clerk's Office of tlie District Court of the United b^ates, for tho Northern District of New York. sterkottped bt Smith & MoDouqal 82 & 84 Beekmaa-st. s * •. '■. ^1 «• . .1 -'.i D". 5 '\l2.v a PEEFA C E. " It is neither necessary nor possible that all men should be PHILOSOPHERS." A spontaneous intelligence begins in childhood, and is altogether absorbed in the experience of the varied phenomena of the senses. In this respect, most men perpetuate their chiluliood through life, and never rise above a spontaneous intelligence. They perceive that which appears in the light of the common consciousness, and de- duce more or less practical conclusions from experience; but a few minds only of a generation turn themselves back upon consciousness itself, and reflect upon what and how expei-ience must be, and make the conditioning jjrinciples of all intelligence the subject of patient and profound inves- tigation. The capability to rise into the higher light of a purely philosophical consciousness, and become familiar with a priori principles and transcendental demonstrations, de- pends so entii'ely upon the free energizing of the spiritual and the self-controlling of the rational in man, that it be- comes a vain hope to find but few in an age to whom such a position is attainable, and for whom such exercises in pure thought possess any interest. No one, Avho would explain the process or present the results of his investigation in this field, should expect the mviltitude to give any attention to his communication ; yet the ready sympathy of all who are engaged in these common studies, and the recijirocations of a deep and serene interest in every kindred spirit, may give 30916';' IV PREFACE. confidence to any one who has his message to deliver, that if he will but give it utterance in clear voice he shall in such " fit audience find though few." A perfect philosophy must be universally comprehensive. False principles and wrong processes necessitate an erro- neous philosophy ; while partial principi^s and processes of demonstration, though not false, must yet give a defective philosophy. If we use no element other than truth, and thus avoid a false system ; still, until we have comprehended all its truth, we have not attained to the perfected system of science. It would, doubtless, be an arrogant assumption for any one, at the present age, to afiirm that from his stand- point all truth may be discovered and a full encyclopedia of science may from thence be ensphered. Each thinker attains a portion only of all truth, and as it is viewed from his posi- tion ; and it can only be from the collected attainments of many, that we gradually mount to higher stations and reach to more comprehensive conclusions. Not the man, but thinking humanity, is the true philosopher. Tiie tributary streams of ages go to make up the full flow of philosophic thinking, and at length this may j^our itself into what yet, to finite intelligence, shall ever be a shoreless ocean. The preparation and publication of this work has been under the full influence of these considerations. It is not expected that it will be of any interest to the many ; sufii- cient quite, if it reach and occupy the minds of the few, and I^ropagate its recij^rocations of free thought through the growing number of such as can and do familiarize them- selves in purely rational demonstrations. Nor has it been deemed that there is here a perfected and universally com- prehensive philosophy ; though it is believed that the true direction is here taken, and it is also hoped that some pro- gress has been gained, towards the ultimate attainment of that position from which the complete science of all sc-icnces, if ever to be consummated, must at length be perfected. It is intended only as a contribution to the common current of PREFACE. V rational philosophic speculation, and is silently cast into the stream of thought to flow on with it if found to be conge- nial, or to be thrown ashore if it prove only as a foreign cumbering di'ift upon its surface. Thus far was the Preface to the original form of the Rational Psychology. In its pi-esent form regard has been taken to the growing acquaintance of the thinking mind with these speculations, and also to the demand that more attention be given to their study in the higher classes of our colleges. Some modifications have thus been made of par- ticular parts, but not in the general method. This had been too comprehensiA'ely thought out to admit of any change. Rational psychology must give the accordant idea and law through all the functions of intelligence in the sense, the understanding and the reason. But in the determination of such necessity, it is not now needed that there be a formal laying of the groundwork, and we thus dispense with what "was given in Book First, and avoid the undesii-able division of the work into two books. The acquired familiai-ity with pure cognitions pei'raits also the passing by of such parts as were designed merely to facilitate the ready nse of such cog- nitions, specially the relations of space and time to phenom- ena and of each to the other, and also remarks in several places designed only to show the distinction of view in this work from Aristotle, Kant, and others. In the application of the results of psychology to on- tology, aj^pended to each part, there has been a more spe- cific appropriation of the proof for real being as belonging respectively to the sense and to the understanding. For the clearer conceptions of physical substance and cause, and more especially of the origination of nature from the Abso- lute Creator, the conception of force as the basis for all philosophical thought in the understanding, and as the essence of all material being, has also been more carefully and completely presented. Many minor modifications have, VI PREFACE. moreover, frequently been made, designed to improve the work in clearness and completeness. The complaint of obscurity from pecuharity of style and terms arises from the nature of the speculation, and nothing but more familiarity with this field of thinking can make any presentation by language to be perspicuous. No words will put the thoughts over into the empty and passive mind, but the mind must come to the language with some previous preparation in its habits of thinking to enable it to discern and take the thought there contained. To the familiar mind the work is not open to the criticism of obscurity, either from style or terminology. The vague reproaches in the charges of transcendentalism and German speculation need no other reply than the emphatic affirmation that whatever danger or error there may be in transcendentalism or Ger- manism, these are not to be overcome by any timid ignoring or any valorous denouncing of them. They are to be put down in no other manner than by fairly meeting and fully refuting or correcting them in their own methods. The Avork has done more than was anticipated for it in awaking and directing thought, and it is given in this re- vised form from the conviction that its use is still needed to the same ends, and especially as a text or reference book in the higher philosophical instruction of our colleges. Union Colleoe, 1861. CONTENTS. *~*~* PAoa Introdtjction 13 1. What Rational Psychology is 14 2. The Ends to which the Conclusions of Rational Psychology may be subservient 26 KATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. GHNEEAL ilETHOD 1 I PART I. THE SElSrSE. DEFnmroNS akd Specifio Method 17 CHAPTER I. THE SENSE IN ITS SUBJECTIVE IDEA. FIRST DIVISION. THE IDEA IN THE PURE IXTTTITION. § I.— The ATTAINilENT OF AN A PRIORI POSITION 81 1. The Primitive Intuition for all Phenomena of an External Sense 84 2. The Primitive Intuition for all Phenomena of an Internal Sense 86 § IL — The Process of an a priori coNSTRrcTioN of Real Form IN Pure Space and Time 91 1. The Construction of Real Form in Pure Space 93 2. The Construction of Real Form in Pure Time 95 § m. — The PRnnTivE Elements of all possible Forms in Pure Space and Time 93 1. Unity 99 2. Plurality 101 3. Totalitv 102 Vm CONTENTS. PAOK § lY. — The Unity of Self-Consciousness 105 1. More than Simple Act 106 2. More than Unity of Conjoining Agency 106 3. More than Unity of Agency and Unity of Consciousness 110 SECOND DIVISION. THE IDEA IX THE EMPIRICAL INTUITION. § I. — The Attainment of an a priobi Position through a Pro- LEPSIS 117 § XL — The Primitive Elements of all Possible Anticipation OF Appearance in the Sense 120 1. Eeality 122 2. Particularity 123 3. Peculiarity 124 § m. — The a priori Determination of what Diversity there must be in all Quality 127 1. Intensive 129 2. Extensive 130 3. Protensive. 131 § lY. — ^The Construction of the Homogeneous Diversity of all possible Quality into Form 132 1. Diversity as Intensive 1 35 2. Diversity as Extensive 136 3. Diversity as Protensive 138 § y. — The Con^clusive Determination of the Sense in its Sub- jective Idea 143 Other representations of the Sense 145 CHAPTER II. THE SENSE IN ITS OBJECTIVE LAW. § L — Transcendental Science is conditioned upon a Law in THE Facts conformed to an a priori Idea 154 § 11. — The Colligation of Facts 159 1. Facts connected ynth Obscure Perception 161 2. The Relative Capabilities of the different Organs of Sense. ... 166 3. Deceptive Appearance. IH CONTENTS. IX PAOB § III. — TuE Consilience of Facts 184 Drawing and Painting 186 Spy-Glass and Engraved Figures 191 Perspective and Dioramic Kepresentatious 192 APPENDIX TO THE SENSE. An Ontological Demonstration of the Valid Being of the Phe- nomenal Idl 1. Of the Inner Phenomena 198 2. Of the Outer Phenomena 200 P AET II. THE TJNr)IDRST^!^]Sr33II>rG-. I. The Necessity for a Higher Intellectual Agency than ant IN THE Sense 203 IL The Exposition of this Higher Agency as Understanding. . 207 CHAPTER I. THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS SUBJECTIVE IDEA. § I. — The Understanding necessarily Discursive 213 § II. — Space and Time the necessary Media for Determining Connection through a Discursus 221 § HI. — Space and Time exclude all Deterjiined Experience EXCEPT through THE CONNECTIONS OF THE NOTIONAL 227 1. The Phenomena only may be given, and we may attempt to Construct their Places and Periods by tbem 228 2. The one TV'hole of Space and of Time may be assumed, and the Attempt made to Determine Phenomenal Places and Periods by them 230 3. The Supposition that perhaps a Notional Connective lor the Phenomena may determine these Phenomena in their Places and Periods in the whole of Space and of Time, and so may give both the Phenomena and their Space and Time in an Objective Experience 237 X CONTENTS. PASS § rv. — The Primitite Elemexts of the Operation op Con'nt;o- TION, GIVING A POSSIBLE EXPERIENCE DETERMINED IN SPACE AND Time 238 1. In Space : Substance and Accidence 239 2. In Time : as having Three Modes:— 243 Perpetual Time : Source and Event 246 Successive Time : Cause and Effect 249 Simultaneous Time : Action and Reaction 252 § v. — Some op the a priori Principles in a Nature of Things. 256 1. Substance: giving Permanence, Impenetrability, Inertia, etc. 258 2. Cause : giving a Cliange in Things, a Train of Events, etc 267 3. Action and Reaction : giving Co-existence, Concomitance, etc. 278 § TI. — False Systems of a Universal Nature Exposed in their Delusive a priori Conditions 282 1. "\Vhen the Phenomenal is Elevated to a Notional in the Un- derstanding 286 2. "When the Notional i.? Degraded to a Vague Phenomenal, or entirely Excluded 310 CHAPTER II. THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS OBJECTIVE LAW. § I. — Space and Time each as a whole 330 ^ II. — The Determination of Experience in one whole op Space and of Time * 332 1, Experience in Universal Space 333 2. Experience in Universal Time 340 § III. — The Determination of an Experience in its Particular Places and Periods 346 1. Particular Determination of Places in Space 347 . 2. Particular Determination of Periods in Time 352 APPENDIX TO THE UNDERSTANDING. An Ontological Demonstration of the Valid Being of the Notional : . 370 1. Idealism against Materialism 374 2. Materialism against Idealism 376 3. Accordance of Consciousness and Reason against Pyrrlionism. 380 CONTENTS. XI PART III. THE REASO N". PAOT lEsFuNcnoN AND Province of the Reason , ss'j CHAPTER I. THE REASON IN ITS SUBJECTIVE IDEA. § I. — The Attainment of the Absolute, as an a prioei Posi- tion FOB THE Reason 397 8 11. — The Determination of Personality to the Absolute 411 Primitive Elements of Comprehension : — 1. Pure Spontaneity 415 2. Pure Autonomy 420 3. Pure Liberty 438 § III. — The a priori CoMPREHENSio>r of Nature in the Pure Personality of tile Absolute 446 CHAPTER II. the reason in its objective law. Finite and Absolute Personality 461 § I. — The Facts of a Comprehending Reason which come within the Compass of a Finite Personality 468 1. ^Esthetic Facts 472 2. Mathematical Facts 476 3. Philosophical Facts 430 4. Psychological Facts 483 5. Ethical Facts 484 § II. — The Facts of a Comprehending Reason^ which come within the Compass of an Absolute Personality 507 1. Facts Evincive of a Universal Recognition of an Absolute Per- sonality 510 2. The Fact of a Comprehendiii"- Oporntinn for Fniversal Nature is only by the Compass of this Absolute Personality 529 XU CONTENTS. APPENDIX TO THE REASON. PAGB An Ontological Demonsteation of the Valid Being op the Supernatural 540 1. The Valid Being of the Soul 640 2. The Valid Existence of God 542 3. The Validity of the Soul's Immortality 542 INTRODUCTION, -oOCO- PsYCHOLOGY is the Science of Mind. Empirical Psj- chology attains the facts of mind and arranges them in a system. The elements are solely the facts given in experi- ence, and the criterion of their reaUty is the clear testimony of consciousness. When, between any number of minds there is an alleged contradiction of consciousness, the umpire is found in the general consciousness of mankind. What this general consciousness is, may be attained in vari- ous ways ; from the languages, laws, manners and customs, proverbial sayings, literature and history of the race ; and a fair appeal and decision here must be final, for any fact excluded thereby must be altei'um genus^ and should also be excluded from the philosophical system. Such an appeal to general consciousness may properly be termed the tribu- nal of Common Sense. national Psychology is a very different process for attaining to a Science of Mind, and lies originally in a very different field from experience, although it ultimately brings all its attainments witliin an expeiience. As this is the specific subject designed for present investigation, it is im- portant as preUminary thereto, that we attain a clear appre- hension of what it is ; and it may also be of advantage to 14 INTRODUCTION. examine some of the ends to which it may be applied, and thus beforehand see some of the uses to which it may be made subservient. I. An explanation of what Rational Psychology is. In iliia science, we pass from tne lacis oi experience wholly out beyond it, and seek for the rationale of experi- ence itself in the necessary and universal principles which must be conditional for all facts of a possible experience. We seek to determine how it is possible for an experience to be, from those a priori conditions which render all the functions of an intellectual agency themselves intelligible. In the conclusions of this science it becomes competent for us to affirm, not as from mere experience we may, that this is- — but, from these necessary and univei'sal principles, that this must he. The intellect is itself investigated and known through the principles which must necessarily control all its agency, and thereby the intellect itself is expounded in its constituent functions and laws of oi^eration. An illustration of what such a Science of Mind is, may be given by a reference to other things as subjects of rational comprehension. Whatever may be placed in the double aspect of its empirical facts and its conditional prin- ciples, may be used for such a purpose. Thus Astronomy has its sublime and astonishing facts, gathered through a long period of patient and careful observation. Experience has been competent to attain the appearances and move- ments of the heavenly bodies ; the satellites of some of the planets, and their relations to their primaries ; the apparent changes of figure and place in some, and the occasional tran- sits or occultations of others. The general relations of dif- WHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. 15 ferent portions of our solar system have in this way been found ; the sun put in its place at the center, the planets put in their places in their orbits around it, with the direction, distance, and time of periodical revolution accurately deter- mined. A complete diagram of the solar system may thus be made from the results of experience alone, and all that belongs to formal Astronomy be finished. In this process, through experience, we are competent to affirm, so the solar system is. But if now, on the other hand, beyond experi- ence, we may somehow attain to the cognition of an invisi- ble force, Avhich must work through the system directly as the quantity of matter and inversely as the squares of the distance, we shall be competent to take this as an a priori principle, determining experience itself, and quite independ- ently of all observation may affirm, so the solar system must be. Again, I take a body of a triangular form, and by accu- rate mensuration find that any two of its sides are together greater than the third side. Another triangular body, of diiferent size and proportion of its sides, is also accurately measured, and the same fact is again found. The mensura- tion of the first did not help to the attainment of the fact in the last, but an experiment only ascertained that so it is. Repeated experiments may have been made of a vast num- ber of triangular forms, isosceles, right-angled, and scalene, and of them all, at last, T may make the same affirmation, this is ; but from experience I am not warranted to include any thing else than so it is, and in so many cases as the experiment has reached. When, however, I construct for myself a triangle in pure space, and intuitively perceive the relations of its sides, I do not need any experiment, but can 16 INTKODUCTION. make this intuition valid universally, and affirm for all possi- ble triangles, so the facts must be. Such everywhere is the distinction between an empirical and a rational process. In the one we have the facts as they appear ; in the other, we have the conditioning princi- ple which determines their appearance, and which makes our experience of them possible. And now, the human mind, as an intelligent and free agent, may as readily as any other subject, admit of an investigation under each of these aspects. Facts as given in experience, and those arranged in an orderly system as they appear in consciousness, consti- tute Pyschology in that important division which we have denominated Empirical: and those principles which give the necessary and universal laws to experience, and by which intelligence itself is alone made intelligible, are the elements for a higher Psychological Science which we term Rational. So far as this science is made to proceed, it wUl give an exposition of the human mind not merely in the facts of experience, but in the more adequate and compre- hensive manner, according to the necessary laws of its being and action as a free intelligence. It will, moreover, afford a position from which we may overlook the whole field of possible human science, and determine a complete circumscription to our experience ; demonstrating what is possible, and the validity of that which is real. In it is the science of all sciences, inasmuch as it gives an exposition of Intelligence itself. Such, also, is truly a transcendental philosophy inasmuch as it transcends experience, and goes up to those necessary sources from which all possible experience must originate ; but not transcendental in that sense in which the name has ■V\IIAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 18. 1"? become a derision and reproach by tlie perversion of those who have assumed it and dishonored it, and with wliom it has been a transcending of all light and meaning, and going off into a region of mere dreams and shadows. A true transcendental philosojAy d^'ells perpetually in the purest light, and sustains itself by the soundest demonstrations ; nor is it practicable, by any other method of investigation, to draw a clear hue between empiricism and science, assumption and demonstration, facts which appear to be and princi})les which must be. Pure Mathematics, and, in a different field, pure Physics also, proceed in the firm and sure steps of a demonstrated science, because they go out utterly beyond all appearance, and attain their elements from a region transcending all that ex23erience can reach. They deal with the necessary and the universal, and hence, as resting upon that which must control all experience and make it possible, it can never occur that any facts in experience should come in contradic- tion to them. Nor can any thmg assumed to be philosophy and attempting to pass itself off as science, and least of all psychological science, take the high road of a sound and vahd demonstration, except it shall both start from and lay its course by, the stern demand and rigid rule of necessary principles. True science must be both supported and dii-ected by those ultimate truths, which are self-aflSrmed in their own light, and which both must be, and must everywhere and evermore be. An empirical system may defend itself and maintain its integrity against all that shall assail it from within ; but where the skeptic resolutely goes out beyond those assumptions which are conditional for it, and calls in question the stability of its very foundation, it 18 I XTR O D UCTI O N. is utterly helpless. Thus, the telescope brings distant objects within the reach of observation, and thereby vastly enlarges the sphere of vision. By its aid we may go on in the addition of one newly discovered phenomenon to another in the broad fields of space, and enlarge the system embraced in experimental astronomy to the maximmn of power which may be attained for onr glasses. We need have no other solicitude for the validity of our system as empirical, save only in the assurance of a correct observa- tion. If any doubts spring up within the facts of our science, we can repeat the observation at pleasure and dispel them. But when, at length, we encounter the skeptic who will not shut himself up Avithin our condi- tioning assumption of the validity of telescopic observation, and seriously questions the correctness of this whole man- ner of appearances, and of seeing new objects through magnifying glasses, most surely we shall avail nothing in attempting to cure this skepticism by multiplying our experiments and makmg such objects to appear through the telescope, nor even by forcing the skeptic to the con- sciousness that he sees them there himself He is assailing the system from a point utterly beyond all the facts of observation, and with fatal effect disturbing the integrity of astronomical science in its very foundation, and must needs be met m the very point of his doubts and forced to the conviction that the laws of telescopic vision are valid. And surely this can not be done by looking through the telescope, nor even by taking it to pieces and subjecting all its parts to careful inspection. We shall be obliged to attain those optical princi]iles which are conditional for all making of telescopes, and thus know how telescopic AVHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. 19 rision is possible in its own conditioning laws, and deter- mine wliat must he by a rational demonstration, and in this process only can we force such an assailing skepticism from its position. As is the telescOpe an instrmnent for the eye, so is the eye, and all the organism of sense, an instrument for the intellect. While we are sohcitous about the facts as tliey appear in the sense merely, Ave shall find no difficulty in building up our empirical system and maintaining the vali- dity of om* philosophy. Yea, if we Avish to take the mental organism itself in pieces and examine its varied phenomena, and put all together again according to observed connections and relationships, an empirical psy- chology may be thus readily attained, and a system of mental science completed. But when we meet with a skepticism which plants its objections back of all experi- ence, and doubts altogether about this whole matter of appearance in the senses, then are we doing absolutely nothing for science except as we also go back of experi- ence, and by a rigid transcendental demonstration deter- mine from the conditioning principles of all intelligence how experience in the senses is possible to be ; and then, by this, also demonstrate in the facts their validity, inasmuch as they are found actually to be, what from their condition- ing laws it has already been seen that they must be. Tliere is a skepticism which resolutely and perseveringly questions all validity of experience, and doubts the whole testimony of consciousness relatively to the reality of all being ; yea, that founds itself upon an alleged contradiction of reason and consciousness, and thereby demonstrates the necessity of absolute and universal skepticism ; and while to such all 20 INTKODUCTION. experience must be a mere seeming to he, with no reality, this can certainly never be cured by any repetition of appearances merely as they seem to be. A solid basis for science is here attainable by no other possible process than through the insight and conclusions of a Rational Psycho- logy, The want is both seen and felt, that something not of experience should be given, by which to demon- strate the validity of experience; nor wiU thinking minds be long deeply interested in any speculations which do not attempt, at least, to go up to the original and condi- tionino- sources of all knowledfije. The history of philosophy furnishes here ample instruc- tion. Those investigations only which have sought to rise to their conditioniug principles, in reference to the subject in hand, have laid any very strong grasp upon the philo- sophical mind, or fixed the attention of thinkuig men for any long period. More especially is this true in reference to aU philosophy which subjects the human mind to examin- ation, and gives its theory for expounding man's intellectual and moral agency. If the whole be left to repose upon the mere affirmations of common sense, and thus the whole science be circumscribed by the limits of general experience in consciousness, it can not meet this philosophical want, and will not hold the interest of philosophical minds. The point of all dangerous skepticism is wholly out of and beyond the experience in which common sense originates, and if this is not at all sought for, and the effort, at least, made to reach this point and demohsh ihe skepticism, the influence of the work must be limited to those minds which have not yet seen the difficulty, and felt the need of a higher demonstration. Thus, whatever the subject undei WHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. 21 examination may be, the skepticism which endangers it as a philosophy will ever lie at its fomidation, and can only be met by going back of its facts and giving validity to its conditioning principles ; and such studies as are directed to such a priori principles will alone possess any philosophical interest. This is the very spirit of the far-famed Socratic method of philosophizing, and in this lies its influence and its inter- est. By a series of skillful interrogatories, Socrates forced the disciple back to the elementary principles of the subject imder discussion, and made him to seek some conditionins; truth, clear in its own light, and on which all subsequent deductions inight be seen to be safely dej^endent. The scholar was in this way made cautious and docile, and the sophist was driven to expose his own ignorance amid all his shallow pretensions. Plato, the most illustrious of his disciples, and the world's great teacher in phUosoj^hy, still more thoroughly piirsued science w^ to her primitive sources. The Litellectual Idea was taken as the archetype and ^?^forming essence, and only in this could facts be made intelligible, and by this only could nature be interpreted. Aristotle, in succession, no less rigidly forced philosoi^hy upward to the science of first principles. His investiga- tions regarded the modes in which nature manifests hei'self in facts and phenomena, rather than the inherent forces and laws which condition her development ; yet it is only through these conditioning laws that any portion of nature can be adequately expounded. He sought rathei" to reduce science to its logical elements, and to find here the condi- tioning sources of all correct concluding in judgments. These sages of antiquity have held their power over the 22 INTRODUCTION. philosophic thinking of ages, and their voice has penetrated through more than twenty centuries, and is still distinct to teach all who have ears to hear. The dialectical conflicts of the school-men, long exer- cised the minds of men in the most subtle and often empty speculations, and ultimately exhausted all the resources of syllogistic disputation, and wearied the world with its abstract terms and dry logical distinctions. Descartes sought to bring oack philosoj^hy again to the study of things in their first j^rmciples. The germ of his system lies.in the following extract: " It is absurd to suppose that which thinks not to be in the very time in which it thinks. And hence this cognition — Ithink^ therefore I am — ^is the fii'st and most certain which may occur to any one philoso- phizing in order." Thought, as the essence of spirit, and extension as the essence of matter, make up the universe of being, and as oj^posites and incommunicable in their own nature, are brought and held together in communion through the doctrine of " di\'ine assistance." Spinoza iden- tified thought and extension in a higher substance, and made all modes of spiritual and material being only a mani- fested development of this higher existence. Leibnitz sub- limated all being into indivisible atoms, and as thus indis- tinguishable by any outer, they must be distinguished each from each by an inner peculiarity, and which, analagous to mind, is a faculty of representing. Every atom with its inner representation-force Avas thus a monad, and Avhen rep resenting in unconsciousness, is matter ; when partially con- scious, is animal ; when in full self-consciousness, is human soul ; and the Absolute ]\[onad arranges all the representa- tions through a " preestablished harmony." WHAT RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 18. 23 Lord Bacon, also, as the great modern expounder of Inductive Philosophy, urges to the investigation of nature not in scattered and isolated facts, but in their inherent laws Avhich bind them together in systematic unity. An intellectual analysis into foct and law, matter and form, must be made through all subjects of science, and thus nature must be dissolved, not chemically by fire, but intel- lectually as by a divine fire. And Locke, again, turned his inquiry to primitive sources that he might accurately cir- cumscribe the entire field of human knowledge. While he has laid the foundation for only a very partial philosophy in the rejection of all a priori knowledge, yet from the force and clearness of his investigation of sensation and experi- ence, he has for more than a century and a half held sway over much the larger portion of the philosophic mind of Britain and America. Out of tliis system have arisen the idealism of Berkely, the vibration theory of Hartley, the materialism of Diderot and Helvetius, the universal skepti- cism of Hume, and, for the counteraction of the last, the common sense basis for all philosophy as assiimed by Reid and most of the Scotch Metaphysicians. And once more only, it may emphatically be said that for more than half a century the deep and strong current of German thought has been impelled and directed in its course by the profound critical investigations of Kant, rela- tive to the origin and validity of all knowledge. He says, " Up to this time it has been received that all our cognition must regulate itself according to the objects; yet all attempts to make out something a pi'iori by neans of con- ceptions concerning such, whereby our cognit-ons would be extended, have proved under this supposition abortiv" 24 INTRODUCTION. Let it be once, therefore, tried whether we do not succeed better in the problems of metaphysics, when we admit that the objects must reguhite themselves according to our cog- nitions." This reversed order of investigation is the pecu- liarity of the Critical Philosophy, and is analogous to that change in the stand-point for all investigation which occurred ill astronomy, when the sun Avas put in the center of the system and the observer carried around it, instead of the spectator being himself at rest and the sun revolving. And we need to add merely this remark, that in general, whether as disciples or opponents of Kant, the thinking mind in Germany, and of those who have been aroused by German speculations, have found the interest of the investi- gations to lie in the ^leep and earnest search after determin- ing principles. Nor is this fact at all discredited by the querulous complaints and captious reproaches from such as find the ground of these speculations too high for the atten- tion they have given to them, since there is at least the interest to have seemed to have formed a judgment about that which they have not as yet at all comprehended. The prevailing system of metajihysics must necessarily strongly affect all cotemporary physical investigation, and very much mold all natural science after its own forms. All philosophy must strike its roots in the reason, and its first principles must be found or assumed from beyond the empirical, and entirely within the transcendental. The physical can find no law of exposition save in the metaphys- ical. It is in this field that the foundations of all systematic philosophy must be laid, for if these are assumptions solely, their concl isions, whether salutary or dangerous, can neither be sustained nor refuted by other assumi)tion8. "WHAT KATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IS. 25 Assumption and counter-assumption may forever stand, the one over against the other, and there shall be no force in either to demoHsh its opposite. We must be able to g'^ over into its metaphysical region, and secure liere a legiti- mate possession, or Ave can never give to our assumed science authority in its own right to eject the intruding skeptic, nor forbid that he should any where at pleasure erect his fortifications in hostility. An empirical system, standing upon assumptions, can at the best only maintain itself in possession while its original right remains unques- tioned. When the title-deeds are contested in the grounds of their valid authority, it can not avail to produce any of the declarations and statements within them, but we must confirm their legitimacy by somethmg beyond the instru- ment itself, and hold possession from the evidence that they reach back and take hold on the original powers of sover- eignty. The most incorrigible skepticism may remain utterly i;ndisturbed in any philosophy, except as it is com- petent to give to its first pi-inciples a sound and clear a priori demonstration. And here we would remark, that it enters into the very essence of Rational Psychology, to make this a priori inves- tigation of the human intellect ; to attain the idea of intel- ligence, trom the conditions which make an intellectual agency possible, and thereby determine how, if there be intelligence, it must be both in function and operation ; and then find the facts which shall evince that such intellectual agency is not only possible as idea in void thought, but is also actual as valid being in reality. Such an attainment in psychological science, may open the way to the determina- tion of the validity of all science, inasmuch as in this pro- 2fl INTEODUCTION. cess "we attain the very laws of human intelligence itself, and may tnerefore use our position for determining the valid being of the objects given through such an intellectual agency. And tliis introduces another prehminary topic for examination, to which we will now turn our attention. II. The exds to which the coxclusioxs of Rational Psychology may be rendered subservient. Rational Psychology is itself a science, and complete in its own department. It gives the Mind, through all its functions of intellectual agency, in the conditioning laws which control all its operations and interpret all its pro- cesses of knowledge ; and when thus completed it has filled its own measure and answered its own end. But interest- ing as is this Science of the Mind, and worthy to be pur- sued for its own sake, and competent to give satisfaction even when resting within its own conclusions, yet is there the opportunity of starting from its results, and making its conclusions subservient to further adA'ances. It may be rendered directly instrumental in the solution of some of the most interesting and difficult problems within the whole* compass of the sciences. Indeed, through no other process is it practicable to obtain a position, from whence some of the highest points in })hilosophy may be brought Avithin the range of direct examination. There are many questions, involving the highest specula- tive and practical interests of mankind, which stand pre- cisely in this condition, that they receive a ready assent in the common conviction, and control the universal conduct of the world ; and yet when this universal assent is care- fully examined, and the effort is made to trace the con vie- USES OF 11 A T I O X A L PSYCHOLOGY. 2? tioii lip to its original ground, it is found to rest whouy upon assumption. All attempts to elucidate the correotuc&s and to settle the validity of such convictions, are souu found to he utterly impracticable except through some pro- cess of a rational investigation. All experimental processes must faU, for the point of difficulty lies beyond experiment, even in that "which is conditional that there maybe any experience. The attempt to forestall all such inquiry by affirming that such convictions are themselves ultimate facts, and not possible to be made any clearer by any eflorts toward a higher investigation, inasmuch as these convic- tions are themselves the highest point of possible attain- ment, can not afford any satisfoction to philosophy, since it is really but affirming that all philosophy and science are impossibilities, and all knowledge is but a resting at last on mere arbitrary foundations. AU that can be done is to say that so it appears, and as appearance gives this conviction which is our ultimate fact, we affii'm that so it is / and here we must stojj short in all attempts to rise to any higher position where we may further affirm so it jnust be. When any one speculatively doubts the vaUdity of these facts in experience, or even assumes to have proAed them to be fal- lacious, there is nothing that can at all be answered, except stUl to urge this fact of universal behef fi'om connnou sense, includmg the skeptic himself, and there rest as having reached the ultimate point of human attainment, and leave the skeptic to his doubts if he must still be so pliilosophical, and so little under the dominion of common sense, as to have them. The empirical philosopher and the reasoning skeptic, it is quite manifest, may here stand the one over against the other in jierpetual contradiction, hopeless of all ;8 INTRODUCTIOX. ''^conciliation and agreement. Their respective positions perpetuate the everlasting contiiet of two counter-assump- tions ; one, that the convictions of common sense are iilti- raate ; the other, that reason goes beyond all experience, or at least goes against it and falsifies its convictions. On his 01A^l premises each may maintain his own conclu- sions, and yet neither can go back to the assumption of his antagonist, and obtain a final triumph by demolishing it. And now, some of these very questions may be brought within the scope of a clear examination, from the position to which a Rational Psychology reaches. Having gained its own end, and given the human intellect as determined in a demonstrated science, it may be used for the further pur- pose of settling the conflicts of these coimter-assumptions ; nor will it be practicable to make any thing else svtbservient to such a desirable issue. And it may subserve the double purpose of illustrating the great importance of a strictly transcendental philosophy, and by overlooking the field in general give a better preparation for our future exploration thereof, if we here make a particular and somewhat extended reference to some of the more important of these questions, in the exact order in which they stand related to the conclusions of a Rational Psychology. I. The objects given in sense are out of, and in some cases at a distance from, the knowing agent. This is especially true of the objects given by the sense of smell, of hearing, and of sight. One will suffice for the illustra- tion of all, and as the better adapted to a clear exemplifica- tion we will take the object as given in vision. The prob- lem which jihilosophy has felt herself called upon to solve is this : How may the intellect know that which is out of, USES OF KATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 29 and at a distance from, itself? The general admission has been that in some way the object must affect the sensible organ l)y impulse. An impression is thereby made upon, or an affection produced Avithin the organism, which by its nervous susceptibility perpetuates the affection and commu- nicates it to the brain, and through the brain the affection is carried up to the point of its communication with the intel- ligent spirit, and there m the secret j^enetralium of the sjjirit's dwellmg-place a junction is formed between the inyading impulse and the receiving intellect, the mind thereby attains its knowledge of the object, and the pro- cess of perception is completed. But, inasmuch as nothing can act except where it is, and when it is ; and the object is not where the point of the mind's receiving agency is, but sometimes at a great distance therefrom ; it follows that there must at this point of perception be some representa- tive of the distant object. This representative is what is directly perceived, and by it the distant object is made known. Such a theoiy modified in minor particulars by different philosophers, induced the necessary conclusion that all knowledge of an outer world is mediate, through re^jre- sentatives of its objects, and never direct as an immediate perception of the objects themselves. In the investigations to which this theory of representa- tive perception of objects was subjected, many perplexing queries arose, and different j^hilosphers answered them, each in his own way, as he best could. What is this representative of the outer object — a spiritual or a material being? Is it an image of the object as excerpt and detached from it ? or originated in the brain ? or in the intellect? or in some media between the object and the so I N T F. O D U C T I O N" . organ ? Does tte representative at all exist "when the mind is unconscious of the percejition ? May it not be a direct creation and infused into the mind by divine agency? Yea, may not these representatives be in the Deity, and identical with the divine essence, and that thus, according to the theory of Malebranche, " Ave see all things in God ?" But however these connected queries may have been answered, the general doctrine of perception remained, that not the object but some representative thereof was immediately given to the sense. From this a two-fold skepticism naturally arose, one or the other face being presented according to the side on which the theorv was carried oiit to its issue. On one side, this theory of mediate perception gave occasion for a skepticism in reference to the reality of all external objects. How can the correctness of our percep- tions be at all determined ? If we say the representative is like the object, it can be only a mere assumption, inasmuch as no comparison can be instituted between them, for the representative only is given ; and if by any means the object could be attained for a comparison, then would the representative and aU comparison with it be wholly super- fluous. Yea, inasmuch as the representatives are all that the intellect possesses, how is it j^ossible that Ave may know that any thing other than the representatiA^es reaUy exist ? The representative is indeed the only object in conscious- ness. Berkeley's argument is still more stringently draAATi. All that can be knoAvn is through the mediate representa- tions of sensation ; and all that can come within conscious- ness is the sensation itself; and this sensation as wholly mental can have no likeness to any material objective being. USES OF RATIOXAL PSYCHOLOGY. 31 To sujjpose that mental sensations and material objects can resemble each other would confoimd mind and matter together. The conclusion, in liis o^oi language, necessarily follows : "The existence of a body out of a mind perceiv- ing it is not only impossible and a contradiction in terms, but were it possible and even real, it were impossible that the mind should ever know it." This conclusion of Bishop Berkeley was not at all the offspring of a religious skepticism. By giving up the knowledge of an outer material world and holding on to the knowledge of an inner mental world, he assumed that the skepticism in religion, which follows so readily and in his \"iew so necessarily from the theory that inert matter can become a mental idea, was wholly avoided. By exclud- ing all knowledge of matter he thought to save the knowl- edge of the soul, and thereby a firm ground for the doc- trines and duties and innnortal hopes of religion. And thus it was that on this side, the doctrine of mediate per- ception terminated in Idealism — or, more correctly, Sensa- tio7ialis)n — which denies all knowledge of the reality of objective being, save as it exists in the sensations of the mind itself. On the other side, this theory j^i-oduced to its issue attains to a skepticism stiU more startling. The impres- sion made by the outer object, and acting upon the nicely arranged organism of the sense, puts in motion the animal spirits or gives vibration to the nervous and cerebral fila- ments, and thereby propagates its peculiar motions and manifestations onward to the sensorium, in wliich the sen- sation becomes perfected in a complete ]ierception. But, inasmuch as no motion extending throughout anv material 32 I >' T n D r c T I X . organization may at all propagate its movemeut bevond ■vrhat is material in the organic sphere, so there can be no possible projection of anv representation of the object by such motion out of the organism and into some supposed spiritual receptacle, "vrhich as without parts must be utterly incompetent to receive or transmit any representation by impulse. The representative of the outer object can never be carried beyond the sphere of the material organization, and therefore all perception by means of this representation must be completed somewhere within the material organ- ization itself. All perception is perfected in the subtle, refined, yet stiE material organism. An impinging force from without conmiunicates its impulse to the material arrangements within, and in the peculiar modification thus given to these organic particles, there originate perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. Various explanations may be made Lq reference to the manner how, but all spiritual agency is excluded, from the necessity that impulses and motions must be wholly material. '• Consciousness itself," says Hobbes, " is the agitation of our internal organism, deter- mined by the unknown motions of a supposed outer world." Thought is the product of sublimated and skilLtully arranged particles of matter put in motion by the representative of some outer object. To reverse the process, and begin with the completed perception tracing it backwards, wiU also arrive at the same conclusion after the manner of Diderot and the school of the French Encyclopedists. Every cog- nition when canned back in its ultimate analysis must resolve itself into some sensible representation ; that which produced this representation in the sense must have come trithin the orgauization from some external impression or USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 33 affection ; and thus all which may ever be in possession of the intellect, and which is not wholly a chimera, must be able to again be attached to its own original archetyjie Thus on tliis side philosophy is forced to JIaferkdis)n, the doubtmg of all but material being. And here we may say, that the rational psychology of sense may be made subservient to the demonstration of all that sense gives to us. Spiritual acts and material quaUties can be proved truly to appear. The sense can give no men- tal essence nor material substance, and from its psychology we can prove the being of neither ; but we may demon- strate a true appearance of mental exercises and material qualities and events. n. There is a more important end in the destruction of a still deeper skepticism to which the results of this science may be apphed, and which will be disclosed in the follow- ing remarks : The sense is a medium for perception in which are given the cpiahties of an outer, and the exercises of an inner world. Colors, somids, tastes, etc., are revealed in con- sciousness through sensation ; and thinking, feeling, choos- ing, etc., are also revealed in consciousness through an inner sense. All these accidents of an outer world of matter and an umer world of mind, as given in perception, may be demonstrated as realities from the results of rational psychology in its determination of the laws of perception. But, Avhile much is attained for science in demonstrating the validity of our perceptions, there are stiU more important regions beyond, yet insecurely held in possession by philos- ophy. "We have thus the reality of the thinking, but not tl e tliinker ; the reality of color, but not the thing colored. 2* •*i INTRODUCTION. The accidents are known but not that in Avliioli the acci- dents inhere. All qualities as given in sense stand discon- nected, and can not by perception alone be put together in their existence as the common properties of one and the same subject. I perceive a redness, a fragrance, a silky smoothness ; but I do not perceive through sense tliat in Avhich they all inhere as one tiling — the rose — so that I can say I perceive the rose as a thing in itself, and then more- over perceive that the rose is red, fragrant, smooth, etc. I perceive in the inner sense that there is a thinking, feel- ing, and choosing ; but I do not perceive the mind, and then perceive this one mind to think, feel, and choose. It is only through a discursive judgment that I can connect them in one common subject ; and the sense does not judge, it only perceives. It may be made valid for real qualities and events., but it can never attain substances and causes. And noAV, it is by these notions of substance and cause that VTQ can extend our knowledge at all beyond the mere isolated quahties as they appear in sense. TVe pxit the sev- eral qualities, not merely into one group as in the same place, but into one substance as existing in the same thing ; and also the events, not merely as successive in a time, but as originating in one cause as the same source. And when we thus connect quahties and events as jyerceived, in their notions of substance and cause as understood, we may then greatly extend our knowledge in several ways. Had we the ficulty of perception through sense alone, we could merely attain the 7>ref?/crt?es of qualifies, as less and more, like and unlike, outer and inner, antecedent and consequent, etc., and which stand only in the conjunctions of space and time ; but by the faculty of the understanding which con- USES OF RATIONAL PSYCUOLOGY. 33 nects qualities as existing in things, -we attain these qnali- ties as the predicates of substances, and thereby a great enlargement of judgment is effected. Thus, in my notion of substance in which the qualities inhere, I have the concei^tion of bodi/ / and by simple reflection uj^on this conception I can say that all bodies must have extension, figure, i^ositiou, diWsibility, impene- trability, etc., as primary qualities. And in the same way, in my notion of cause, I have the conception of an agent^ and by merely reflecting upon this conception I may say that all agents must have force, activity, passivity, etc., as their primary attributes. And in this I have not mere predicates of qualities, but predicates of things. And then, moreover, I may add to such thmgs, aU the qualities which the perceptions of the sense can attain, as their secondary qualities. Thus of some body — gold — in addition to the primary qualities coimnon to all bodies, I may say from the perceptions of sense, that it is yellow, fusible, malleable, soluble in aqua regia, etc. ; and of some agent — the sun — that it has not only the primary attributes common to all agents, but also that it imparts hght and heat, melts Avax, hardens clay, converts liquids into vapor, etc. In this way I may enlarge my knowledge of things as far as I may extend my perceptions, and know not merely apjiearances as perceived, but things as understood. And much further still ; I may say that like substances have like qualities ; and that like causes produce like effects ; and may then classify nature through all her genera, species and varieties; and also by an induction of similar facts conspiring to one end, may deduce general laws, and thus extend my conclusions 36 INTKODUCTION. not only to embrace what I liaA'e perceived, but all that it is jDossible sliould be perceived in nature. Here is the basis of Inductive Science. I assume this uniformity in the substances and causes of the universe, and thus conceive of nature as bound in harmony by uni- versal laws, and have then no difficulty in concluding from what is, to what will be ; and from what I have perceived, to what perception could any where give in any experi- ence. I may take some hj^othesis, and using this for the time as if it were the true law of nature, I go out to exam- ine and question nature through all her works. If I find her answers quite contradictory to my hypothesis, I throw it away as worthless and false; but if I find her answers in conformity with my hypothesis, it is hj-jjothesis no longer, but a veritable law of nature, by which she is henceforth to ])e interpreted througli all her secret chambers. I may, again, be observing the casual facts of nature as they arise promiscuously around me, and with the conviction that there is some law of order though wholly as yet undiscov- ered, there may from some conspiring incidents perhaps, a thought sudden as inspiration flash upon my inind, in which the whole complexity of fiicts is put at once in clear and systematic unity. So Harvey, amid the promiscuous facts of anatomical dissection, notices the valves which open and close within the different chambers of the heart, and as the concurring facts appear, that these valves are so arranged that they may admit the blood coming froin the veins, and then Avith every pulsation send it through the lungs and onward to the arteries ; instantaneously, the fact of the circulation of the blood in the animal system, and the law for it, are clearly apprehended. So, also, the falling apple USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. Ti might, as is sometimes said it tlid, suggest to Xewton's wakeful thought the universal action of gravitation. That force of attraction which brought the aj^ple to the earth, manifestly reaches much higher than to the bough from which it fell ; why not then to the height of tlie aii', and hold to the earth its surrounding atmosphere ? Why not to the moon, and control her changes ? Yea, why not act from the sun through all the system, and hold each planet in its orbit ? A careful mduction confirms the supposition, and determines the ratio of the force, and at once the law of gravitation is assumed to jjervade the miiverse. The revolutions of the furthest planet and the wandering of the most eccentric comet are subjected to its control. But here, the grand inquiry essential for all kuov>'ledge, both in the particular things of experience and the general judgments of induction, is to be made and answered. How shaU these notions of substance and cause be verified ? It is not suflicient that the perception has been j^lain, nor that we have been careful to secure a broad induction of facts before we have defined the particular thing, or deduced the general law. Such considerations are impor- tant merely in reference to the modus opeixindl, and the determination of the correctness of the process. AVe need to go back of the process, and examine the conditioning principle. How do we attain the validity of substance and cause ? How do we determine their miiformity ? By what right do we assume that nature has universal laws ? That in a large induction of facts such an order has been found, wiU not be ground suflicient to conclude, therefore, this order is necessary and universal — experience has been thus hitherto, therefore it must be such evermore. Exp(!ri- 309167 INTRODUCTION. ence itself is based upon the connections of substances and causes, inasmuch as without them, all perception is only of the isolated and fleeting qualities and events with nothing to connect such in a unity of nature ; and here we have not only assumed them for connecting qualities into things, but also have assumed their uniformity for connectmg things in a general law of nature. Have we, then, a firm groimd on which to stand, when we thus attempt to go out beyond the pro\ ince of the sense ? The grand question is, how come we by the notions of substances and causes ? and especially, how come we by their perpetual order of connec- tion ? The results of reflection ; the truth of experience ; the validity of all thinking in judgments ; and the entii'e superstructure of inductive science ; all rest entirely upon the answer which may be given to such a comj^rehensive inquiry. If we can find a firm foimdation on which to rest an afiirmative in this matter, then is a science of experience and of nature possible ; if not, the most that is within our reach is probabiUty and belief, and the whole region of Natural Philosophy is open to the skeptic. But from the philosophy of sensation, according to the system of Locke, no such foundation can be attained. Sen- sation is the medium for attaining qualities ; and by com- paring, abstracting, or combining these, we may attain such predicates as greater and less, even and odd, likeness and unlikeness, etc., in which the subject must always be the quality accordhig to its modifications ; but certainly, no such modification of the quality can attain to a subject for it, and jjut the quaUty in a judgment as the predicate of such subject. The substance and cause are not at all given iu the sensation, and can not possibly come mthin the light of USES OF RATIONAL 1SYCH0L0GY. 39 oonsciousness ; and it Avoukl be AvhoUy an illusion to sup- j)ose that because in our thinking we have the notions of substance and cause vnth the qualities perceived by sense, therefore they have been given in the qualities as perceived, and taken by an abstraction out of tliem. They are no modifications of, nor abstractions from, the qualities and events as perceived through sensation \ but are themselves the conditional grounds for all qualities and sources for all events, and are wholly out of and beyond all that can be made to appear m our consciousness. And yet, takuig this illusion as a reality, and assuming thence that substances and causes are given in sensation and taken by abstraction from it, this philosophy is forced to convict itself of the further absurdity, that what is given in sensa- tion may be taken as a universal law reaching beyond what has been jjerceived, and determining how that must be which has not been jjerceived ; inasmuch as it assumes a universal uniformity of their qualities and eflects, in the like substances and causes. Hume, resting upon the basis of the philosophy of sen- sation, saw tliis inconsequence very clearly, and established a skepticism thereon utterly unpregnable to any attacks from this philosophy. All that can be known is given ia sensation ; and this is solely " impressions," or the less dis- tinct " ideas," which are the copies of the impressions in reflection. These " impressions," which include all our primary sensations, and in which we have all the qualities of an outer world and all the exercises of the mental world, may follow consecutively, and in these sequences we may determine an antecedent and consequent, but the mere sequence is all that is given. No reflection upon ftU INTKOr)UCTIO>f. tie sequence can attain to any causal nexus which neces- sitates this order of antecedents and consequents. Such sequences are and have been together, but in this there is no possible ground for the conclusion that they loill he, much less that they must be together hereafter. This elRciency, as necessary connection, is not in the " impres- sion" as attained in sensation, and hence no reflection can attain to causation as the "idea" or copy thereof This most acute of all skeptics both saw and admitted the fact, that the human mind in some way attained the seeming conviction that this connection was a neces- sary one ; and yet, as manifestly such could not be given in sensation, and therefore could not be knowl- edge, he quite ingeniously and as lahUosophically as the system of sensation wUl admit, attempts to account for such conviction. It is solely the residt of habit, from the frequent repetition of the impression of the sequences. We become accustomed to such an order of sequences, and the repetition at length makes so vivid an im- pression that it becomes a settled "beUef" that it is necessaiy and universaL But the philosopher who has investigated the grounds of this belief, plainly sees that it is wholly destitute of all validity. It is a mere per- suasion induced by habit only, and from the very sources of all knoAvledge in sensation this must be utterly excluded. Skepticism may here take up its position unmolested at the very basis of all reasoning from effect to cause, and in the very foundations of the Inductive Philosophy. It is not possible that we should know nature to have any laws in her successions ; we can at tlie most have only persuasion and behef, and the philospher sees that this USES OF RATIONAL PSYOHOLOGY. 43 is all induced solely hj a mere repetition of a particular order of sequences. Precisely the same philosophizing in reference to sub- stances induces the skepticism of any permanency in the being, as above of any necessity in the order of events. The substance is as impossible to be given in sensation as is the cause. We have such qualities grouped together, and it may in the same way be explained that inasmuch as we have so often seen them together, we come at length to the conviction that they are necessarily together, and that there is some common permanent substance in which they inhere. The philosopher knows that there are only the qualities of redness, fragrance, softness, etc., together in the sensation, and that the substance which we call a rose is nothing but the grouping of the mere quahties in the sense. These qualities of matter and the exercises of mind, as given in perception, are pei-petually arising and departing in the sense, and have no other ground of connection than " a divine constitution." The qualities appear, perpetuated in certain groups ; and the exercises appear, prolonged through certain series ; but sense can give no permanent substratum, and all knowledge that there is a permanent body, or a perduring mind, is alike impossible. The demonstration which we may gain from the psychology of the Sense goes, thus, but a little way in effectually overthrowing the skepticism of either Sensation- alism or Materialism, for while it proves that perception gives real phenomena, it leaves the whole question in doubt whether the mental exercises have any abiding source, or the material quahties any permanent substance. There may 42 IXTRODUCTION. be veritable organic sensations, but that can detennine nothing about an outward world of material substances as object beyond jjhenomena. But a more incorrigible skepticism still results from this theory when comprehensively examined and intrepidly prosecuted to its legitimate conclusions. It is the testi- mony in the convictions of imiversal consciousness that "we perceive immediately the external objects themselves. Every man is con\'inced that it is the outer object, and not some representative of it, wliich he perceives. The knowl- edge that the object is out of myself, and other than myself, and thus a reaUty not siibjective merely, is the testimony of common sense every where. All minds, that of philoso- phers as weU as common people, are shut up to the testi- mony of consciousness for a direct and immediate percep- tion of the outward object. The skeptic himself admits, yea, insists upon this, and founds upon it the necessary con- clusions of his skepticism, rendered the more in\incible thereby from the contradiction which foUows. For when the unexamined conductions of consciousness, as direct for the immediate perception of an outer world, are brought to the test of philosophical investigation as above, the demonstration comes out flill, sound, and clear, that all such immediate knowledge is impossible. The veiy sensation through which the knowledge is given is wholly mental, and at the most can be determined as only represen- tative of the object, and not that it is that object itself. It is not possible to affirm beyond the immediateness of the organic sensation ; and all that can directly be known is, that the mind has such sensations, and this it may deem to be a perception of an outward object, but the reason attains USES or RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 43 tke irrefragable conclusiou that the sensation only, and not the object as external, can be immediately in the conscious- ness. A demonstration of reason, thus, concludes du'ectly against the testimony of universal consciousness. And now, where are we as intelligent beings ? Consciousness contradicts reason ; the reason belies consciousness. They are each indeiDeudent sources of himian knowledge ; unhes- itating conviction must follow a clear decision of either ; and yet here they openly and flatly contradict each other. The nature of man as intelligent, stands out a self-contra- diction. From the very light which is A\'itliin us, we are made to conclude that light itself to be darkness, and thus all ground for knowledge in any way is self-anniliilated. The truth of our intellectual nature is itself falsehood, and there remains nothing other than to doubt universally. This is the dreadful, but from the pliilosophy of representa- tion in sensation, the unavoidable conclusion of Da\'id Hume ; and here we come out to a necessary Universal Skepticism. Reid, more especially to counteract the last, but equally as defensive against all the above forms of skepticism, intro, duces here his theory based on the assumj^tions of common sense. Rejecting all notion of any representation in percep- tion, and imputing all such conclusions to the wandei'ing and delusive speculations of philosophy, he takes the uni- versal decision of common consciousness on this subject to be true — that we immediately know the outer material world in the perceptions of sensation ; and forestalls all con- tradiction, by denying all validity to any speculations which attempt to reach back beyond such decisions of universal consciousness. "Wiser than all philosophy ; higher than all 44 INTRODUCTION. speculations of tlie reason ; further back than any deto ca- strations can be allowed as valid ; this decision of conimon sense is the first thing given, the ulthnate truth in which all philosophy must begin, and on which all demonstration must be dependent, and which is never to be disputed. He thus saves liimself from all skepticism as above, in any of its forms, by denying their fundamental assumption of a mediate perception, and assuming that the human mtellect was so made as to know the outer world immediately. Here, then, are two counter-assumiJtions standing one over asrainst the other, nor can one demoUsh or be demol- ished by the other. One assumes that sensation can be none other than a representative of the object in perception ; the other assumes that sensation gives the outer object immediately; and here they both stand on their ultimate positions. Neither can attempt to go back of their assumed idtimate truths, neither will admit that the assump- tions of the other are clear in their own light and self- affirmed ; and thus neither may fortify his own position nor assail the opposite, and each can stand upon his ovm ground and defy all the logical and metaphysical artillery of his antagonist. And now, surely nothing can avail here, that only attempts to sharpen the senses, or exactly to apprehend appearances. These notions of substance and cause can never be made to appear. No possible functions of the sense can reach them. Unless we can transcend all know!, edge from sensation, and attain to these notions as AvhoUy new conceptions in reflection, and verify them in the higher functions of an understanding as having a valid reality of being, we can not exclude the skeptic from his logical right USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 45 to doubt whether permanent mind or matter exists, or whether even he must not doubt imiversally. This, then, is a further use to which we may, perhaps, in the end find the results of Rational Psychology to he subservient. If we can come to the knowledge of the understanding in its con- ditioning laws of operation, and determine to the intellect, in its process of thinking in judgments, an equal vahdity as before in its process of perception ; then may we from such results demonstrate also the validity of their being for the substances and causes of the understanding, as before for the phenomena of the sense. And such verification of the being of sixbstances and causes, and their unifi)rmity as uni- versal laws in the connections of natiu-e, will be an annihila- tion of all skepticism of mind or matter, and do away with all apparent conflict between conscioxisness and reason. And most surely such a consummation is hopeless, in any other manner than through an a lyriori method of investigation. in. A more serious difticulty than any which we have yet encountered remains still behind, and needs to be ob\'iated. The following order of thought will bring this difliculty to light, and disclose the use Avhich may be made of the results in Rational Psychology for its removal. In the circumscription of all knowledge to that which is given in sensation and the modifications wliich may be made thereof in reflection, the necessary and universal connections of cause and eflTect are left to rest wholly upon assumption. Hume is manifestly consistent with the fundamental princi- ple of the philosophy of sensation, in denying to human knowledge any thing in cause and eftect beyond simple antecedent and consequent. No science can be based upon the universal laws of nature, for it is impossible from this 46 INTRODUCTION. philosophy to go any further tlian probability when it is assumed that nature has any universal laws. Hume recog- nizes the flict that the human mind does, in some way, attain the conviction that the events in nature have a neces- sary connection, and that the order of this connection is uniform and invariable. Tliis conviction is far from knowl- edge, and is at bottom only credulity, growing out of the frequent repetition of the sequences in our experience, and therefore a belief from habit merely ; yet does it become complete and controlling, and impossible to be counteracted by any thing but the most irrefragable demonstration. Hume's argument against the possibility of proof for a miracle as an interruption of the order of nature, the neces- sary connection of which has such complete conviction in the human mind, is really unanswerable njDon any empirical grounds. There must ever be a stronger conviction against the miracle than there can be persuasion for it. Tlie sup- posed interposition of a God out of nature, who for good reasons interrupts the order of nature, is wholly gratuitous on the ground of this philosophy, inasmuch as all argumen- tation fi'om the connections of cause and effect must be wholly inadequate to conclude upon the existence of such a being. The conviction that a God is, can at the most rise no higher, and be deduced from nothing other than the conviction that nature is uniform in her sequences ; and then, to assume a Deity whose existence might make a mir acle possible can surely have little weight with the philoso- pher, who very distinctly sees that both the Deity and the miracle must rest upon contradictory data; the existence of the Deity upon an argument from the invariable and unbroken order of causation, and the miracle itself a fa^t USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 41 which is a direct subversion of this invariable order. Such skepticism in reference to all pretences that miracles have been wrought is utterly incorrigible, except tli rough some other discipline than that which may I'e administered by any eni2:)irical philosophy. The skei)t.!cism is legitimate from the premises ; the sophistry lias been on the side of euch as have kept the philosophy and yet attempted to answer the skeptic. But this skepticism in regard to miracles, and to the being of a God who might work miracles, siistained by the controlling conviction that the order of nature is uniform, and yet the conviction so controlling demon- strably only a credulous illusion, becomes a demonstrated pantheism or a demonstrated atheism, in sevei'al processes of argumentation from the partial premises of different philosophies. The philosophy of sensation has ever tended directly on towards universal materialism, and ultimately through fatalism to blank atheism. With Locke, there was the distinct and clear admission, that while sensation was passive in the reception of objects from without, yet was there an active princiijle for reflection within ; and that these active faculties constructed a multitude of complex and abstract ideas out of the materials furnislied by the senses. And yet, inasmuch as reflection could have nothing to do beyond merely elaborating that which was given in the senses, it must necessarily have confined its whole work to that which was wholly within the real forms of space and time. Its tendency to MateriaUsm and Fatalism may be correctly traced in England through Hartley, Priestley, Darwin, and others. But in France, the more marked issue appears. Condillac so modified reflection as to make it the 43 INTRODUCTION. mere self-consciousness of the feeling given in. sensation ; and then shows that every faculty — attention, memory, comparison, judgment, and even the will and all our emotions — may be accounted for as modified and " trans- formed sensations." The passage from this was easy and sure to a complete matei'ial mechanism in all the phenomena of our inner being, until it attained its compound of Materi- ahsm, Fatalism, and Atheism in the conclusions of d'Hol- bach, D'Alembert, and the French Encyclopedia, where man appears as only a combination of material organiza- tions ; his intellectual being the mere development of neces- sitated sensations ; his morality the impulse of self-gratifi- cation ; his immortality going oiit in the dissolution of his bodily organism ; and his God the mere personification of nature in her blmd operations, which a diseased fancy and a superstitious fear had elevated to universal dominion. On the other hand, the philosophy of rationalism has tended towards absolute Idealism, and ultimately to Ideal Pantheism in the opposite direction. With Kant, in his speculative philosophy, there is reality given in sensation, and here is truly all the material of knowledge ; but this can come into our cognition in no other manner than according to t\iQ formal conditions of our subjective being. All, therefore, that we can know is the phenomenal only, and as these phenomena are connected and generalized into a Soul, a Universe, and a Deity, they are but the modifica- tions of the material given in sense reflected through the regulative forms of the subjective understanding and the reason. "VVe can not demonstrate that there is any objetv tive being as the correlative of our formal thought, nor can we demonstrate that there is not such objective valid USES OF KATI05iAL PSYCHOLOGY. 49 reality. Ontology, in reference to the Soul, Xature, and God, must be left to opinion and faith, and can never become science. Phenomena are, as vahd realities ; but what they are in themselves, and only as our formal facul- ties represent them in our own subjective apprehension, no philosophy can possibly determine. The way Avas thus open for Fichte to deny the reality which had been assumed here for the phenomenal, and to show that the phenomenal was as truly a reflection in th? laws of our subjective being, as in Kant's philosophy had been proved for the Soul, Xature, and the Deity. Thus, instead of -admitting with Kant, the being of our formal subjective intellect and the reality of the objective phenom- enal matter, Fichte contends that the last is mere opinion and can not be demonstrated science, and that thus only our formal subjective being is that with which we must begin, and on which all philosophy must rest. And now, by the mere process of thought, the way is to be shoAvn from this subjectiA^e being alone, out to all our ideas of the universal and the absolute. The subjective, as self or Ego, by thinking, attains to that which limits itself by the laws of its own being, and wholly prevents the action from going out uninterruptedly and losing itself in the infinite ; and such necessary limitations in our activity we take cognizance of, objectify in our consciousness, and deenj them to be the phenomena of an outer world. Another step is then taken, by recalling our activity from these limitations in our thinking wliich we have made to be outward phenom- ena, and thus in reflection we come to apprehend our own activity and attain the contents of our consciousness, and here determine that the mind itself is the Avhole sphere of 3 50 INTRODUCTION. Its operations, and that its activity can do no more than to objectify its own Kmitation in its own laws, and then come back and find itself as the subject of its own acts and the object of its own consciousness. All possible theoretic or speculative knowledge is thus wholly subjective, and embraced within the sphere of the Ego only. Schelling transcends the subject and the object in Fichte's philosophy, and assumes an absolute Ego as the pri- mal self-existent being. Out of this, by one act of a di- remptive or disparting movement, both the subject and object are simultaneously given. This absolute being is quite back of all that can appear in consciousness, and can be known only in a purely "intellectual intuition," but which in a determined logical movement develops itself into the unconscious world of 7iature / the conscious world of mind ; and finally, to the knowledge that all of nature and humanity are but the products of tliis logical movement, and wliich self-knowledge of the all-embracing movement gives the developed Deity. As the acorn has within it potentially the mature oak, or as the e(^g is potentially the complete fowl, so it may be illustrated has Schelling's absolute being potentially within it the Avorld of nature, of humanity, and of a self-conscious, all-embracing Deity. The Hving force in the acorn, or the egg, is not the oak or the fowl, but it may be contemplated as passing out in a determined developing movement, and when in utter unconsciousness, the successive statements in the process are the growth of nature ; so far as it may be conceived that it has come to feel its own movement, it has the sentient life of the animal; and when this self-feeling has come through reflection to a discriminating self-conscious- USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 51 ness, the development has reached to the stating of hn inan- ity. When tliis further comes to know itself as the all- embracing source of nature and humanity, and that it iden- tifies in itself all of the objective and subjective being in the universe, the true Godhead is evolved and the realized Deity is therein attained. But even this identification of the subjective and the objective in the absolute is still so far thoroughly objective, in that the developing process is contemplated as taking place before us ; we are looking on this living movement, and the whole result in nature, humanity, and evolved deity stands out fiice to face with us ; and thus with both Fichte and Schelling there is an unresolved duahsra. The Ecjo develops itself before a spectator who is wholly outside of the process and altogether inexplicable by the philosophy. Whence comes, and where goes, and who is this observer that looks on both subject and object and the hving process evolvincr them ? Here Hegel interposes his method and we have a modifi- cation of the critical philosophy which completely exhausts all analysis and abstraction and consummates its entire mis- sion. Tills living process is taken as a thinking movement and assumed to be a pure logical act exclusive of any sub- sisting actor, and then instead of standing outside and look- ing on, we are made to stand in and identify ourselves with the movement. There is no outside spectator, but solely an inner witness ; and this inner eve does not look forward and forecast, but solely opens in consciousness to the present position. Wliat is successively given is retained, and the last is so combined or " suppressed" in the former, that the successive statements are posited in perpetually riper and 52 INTRODUCTION. niaturer being as the development progresses. This whole dialectical process is most profoimdly and elaboi'ately expo- sed, and the World, Man, and God are successively given to recognition as the seeing eye opens upon the different stages of the logical movement. But when we make this philosophy to awake from its dream of development, and ascertain its results, it must per- force find that it has ensphered all things in a transcen- dental pantheism. Thinking and being are the same. The process of creating is the order of logical thought. Every object is an ideal product, and nature and humanity are but the development of the one living process of think- ing, the aggregate and consummation of which becomes the completed Deity. A i^hilosophy exclusively based upon either the objective or the subjective is necessarily partial in its very beginning, and miist eventuate when carried to its legitimate issue, in one-sided and therefore erroneous conclusions. The philo- sophical speculation on either side must follow some law of order, and if it be the law impressed upon the objective in its development of cause and effect, it must ultimately absorb all things within the workings of a mechanical neces- sity ; and if it be the law which directs the subjective devel- opment of thought, it must in the end involve all things within the rigid conclusions of a logical fiitality. A com- prehensive survey of both, readily determines what must be the landing place of each. Let the objective be the starting point, and the observed facts in their law of experience must give direction to all Investigation. In following out such investigations, physi- cal science will be greatly promoted ; the laws of cause and USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. f3 effect in astronomy, chemistry, physiology, geology, otc._. will be followed out to their furthest traces in human obser- vation ; and practical utility and social expediency will b^ the groimd-springs of human action. But such a pliiloso- phy has at length only to open the eyes and look around from its position to determine its oavh interests, and it must find itself fast bound Anthin the chain of a fixed causation, and shut up within the prison of nature hopeless of all dehverance. Without some salient point in nature, fi'om which, saltu mortall, we may fiiirly project our philosophy beyond nature, then must our wliole being j^erforce content itself to abide within nature, and take the destiny of nature ; and the man must recognize himself and all that is about him, as separate links in the same indefinite chain of coming and departing events, each in its destined place fulfilling its OAvn mission, and all constituting a progressive series of necessitated siiccessions which is both unalterable and inter- minable. We can know nothing beyond nature, we must conclude that there is nothing beyond nature to be known. The positivism of Auguste Comte is the natural and neces- sary result. And here, let it be most gravely inquired, if there be not some long-standing and far-fiimed theories in metaphysics among us, which must infallibly terminate in the above con- clusions, whenever they shall be resolutely pushed onward to their consequences. A philosophy which includes in the same category of causation the changes in matter and the originations in mind, though it may use the qualifWng terms of a natural and moral necessity, but which still do not mark any discrimination in the connections but only in the things connected, must, unavoidably find itself within the o4 INTRODUCTION". charmed circle out of which there can be no escaping. It is not possible that such a theory can vindicate for the human soul in its immortality, nor for the Deity in his eternity, the possession of any attributes which may rise above, or reach beyond, the interminable conditions in the linked series of a fixed causation. An assumed God of nature must be but nature still, evermore stretching the chain onward. Let, on the other hand, the subjective be the starting- point, and the logical order of thinkmg in judgments must be the !aw for our whole process of philosophizing. And here, doubtless, great progress will be made in intellectual science ; and the most abstract thoughts, and fine-spun dis- tinctions, and broadest generahzations, and most subtle analyses, will be distinctly seized by the hiunan imderstand- ing, and carried out to the most profound demonstrations. But such a philosophy, again, has only to lift its eyes from its minute and critical examination of the goings-on of sub- jective thought within, and look out upon the bearings of its course, and it must find itself plunging into an abyss of abstractions empty, and bottomless ; from which there is no escape until itself, the soul, nature, and God are all lost together in an Ideahsm which ultimately vanishes in nihUity. So long as anything remains, the laws of thought must be there, and they a.ve as rigid in their consecutive develop- ments as the fixed ongoings in the successions of nature, and mi;st bind the soul and the Deity within the same logical necessities. But even these exist only f\-om sufferance, and must be as truly ideal as the thoughts induced by them ; and thus both law and logical process of thought, together with all of nature and the absolute to which they had USES OF RATIONAL PSYCUOLOGY. 65 attained, await only that sweeping abstraction which abol- ishes the whole ideal vision forever. There are two other methods taken in dealing with this question of finding an Absolute Deity, neither of which can bring any relief against speculative skej^ticism, and yet both are frequently used with much confidence ; these are Eclec- ticism and Mysticism. Eclecticism anticipates that there will be found truth more or less in all methods of philosophizing, though often- times partial, obscured, and distorted, and it essays to sift this truth from the error, and with this pure residuum of all systems build up the only and altogether true. And now, imdoubtedly it may so far be yielded to such a theory as to admit that few philosophical systems can be wholly wrong ; that truth from any one must be consistent with the truths of all others ; and that the only and altogether true system of philosophy must be competent to find a place within its comprehension for all philosophical truth ; and also, that if all the truths of all philosojihical systems were discriminated from the errors of all, and this in combination with all other truth was harmoniously bound up in one system, it would be a true comprehensive philosophy. But how shall we go on with this sifting process, and detect all pure truth and take it out from all other systems ? Certainly this can in no other manner be done than in first having already some system of our own and taking our stand upon it, and applying its law of construction to comprehend all that is true m all others, and thereby vindicate its own right to be and to take that which demolishes others in building up itself It can not be allowed that the true sys- tem shall be some arbitrary patch-work by selecting and 56 IlfTKODUCTION. appropriatir.g assumed truths here and there, but it must have its own law of construction which can of rio-ht claim all truth, because it can put all in its own place and legiti- mate its possession by a universal and harmonious colliga- tion. Eclecticism can not thus beg^in its work of takinsr truths from other systems, excej^t by already possessing and })ringing with it its own comprehensive law to vindicate its title to what it takes, and not by arrogantly plundering what it may covet. This is the professed theory of Cousin, and he holds that in all correlative objects, the knowing of one gives in that the knowledsre of the other. The knowledg^e of the finite and of the relative gives at once the knowledge of the mfinite and the absolute. To know finite causes is there- fore at the same time to know an infinite cause, and to know relative causes is thereby to know an absolute cause ; and the knowledge of the relative and the absolute cause, gives also, at the same time, the knowledge of the differ- ence between them. He thus conditions all things upon an absolute cause, and afiirms that as cause it must of necessity go out into effect, though he assumes that the absolute cause is not all exhausted in the effect. The universe, it is affirmed, is as necessary to the Deity as the Deity is to the universe. Tlie assumed absolute cause is made at once a conditioned cause, and as truly necessitated to nature as the cause is to its effect in nature. An inevitable pantheism is also involved, for nature is but the absolute produced for- ward into its effect, and if it does not exhaust the absolute, it is yet so far forth a portion of the absolute cause pro- duced onward into nature as effect. It is, therefore, aside from its unphilosophic assumption of the knowledge of the USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 57 absolute in the relative merely because the absolute is suggested by the relative, still as truly fataUstic aud pan- theistic as any system which it has been assumed to sup- plant. Mysticisrn wholly despairs of any help in reaching to the supernatural and finding the being and attributes of God by any intellectual process. Suppressing all specula- tion, the Mystic relies wholly on internal impulses and mys- terious impressions. From the inner prompting of his own immortal spirit, he verily believes that there is living and conscious being within the dark region of the supernatural, but he distrusts all proifered help from philosophy and leaves the intellect to work out its problems in physics, and weave its syllogisms in dialectics, and vainly to exercise itself in the endless speculations of metaphysics. He may study nature in the facts of experience, but he wiU not think nor reason any further. He turns to some inward illumination, and confides in some suddenly imparted senti- ment or impulsive feehng Avhich avUI convey to him an immediate knowledge of the mysterious spirit-world. This may take on very varied forms of working. It may be the philosoi)liical mysticism of Jacobi, where all is made to rest upon an ultimate and absolute feeling of belief, and in which this ultimate faith-principle is taken up and its work- ings attempted rationally to be accounted for, and all its results subjected to an exceedingly elegant, ingenious, and extended analysis : or it may be the enthusiastic impulses of Peter the Hermit : or the fanatic persistence of Ignatius Loyola ; or the credulous revealings of Fox's inner light ; or the profound rhapsodies of Jacob Boehme. The inmie- diate organ of knowledge in all is an inner and inexplicable 3* 58 INTRODUCTION. feeling of faith, with, wliicli the intellect can have little com- munion, and whose process of revealing is as mysterious as the beings it reveals. Without questiordng how and whence the revelation is to come, or at all testing by the judgment the inspiration when given, the man turns himself reverently toward the dark unknown, and in silent contemplation waits with con- fiding expectation for the message to be dehvered or the vision to appear. The excited workings of his own sj^irit transfer then- products to this dim region of the supernatu- ral and his inner S}nnpathies and imaginings become to him objective reahties, and the spirit-land is made to be the scene of such ghostly communings as abound in the credu- lous experiences of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Xor are aU these illusions wholly empty cliimeras. They have their actual being in the inner Hfe and spu'it of the man himself, and come as a reflection from that which has been a true possession in the immortal soul. As possessing any objec- tive significance and value they are wholly meaningless and worthless, but subjectively read and interpreted, they con- tain a very important lesson for philosophy to study and dX2:)ound. But while there may be reflections and indices of much that is true in our subjective feeling and experi- ence, yet can we never rely upon this inner working as any Inspiration or revelation from the supernatural world. They have their whole origin and characteristic from the interior life of the deluded man, and are to be interpreted as wholly that which comes from him and not any thing that comes to him. A divine message through some form of supernatural inspiration will never leave its vindication to mere credulity, but will always have such a stamp and seal USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 59 npon it as must cany to the reason the full conviction of Heaven's authority. There may also be noticed that -n-hich has become an English form of German Trancendentalism^ and which has its modifications in the "vvritinsfs of distino-uished names both in Great Britain and America. Without going jiro- foimdly mto the speculations of the leading German think- ers or adopting their method, and indeed rejecting their complete subjective idealism, there is a retaining of the entire theory of a development from some supposed and assumed absolute source, and that this development is through an interminable process according to an internal and determined law of movement. Xature is not a medley of shiftmg phenomena, but an orderly unfolding of events according to an inner and fixed law of progress. Rising above the pliilosophy of sensation, and clearly aware of the empty and dead mechanism in which that philosophy must terminate, it admits of Hving forces and laws in nature, and strenuously contends for the authority and validity of philo- sophical investigations and demonstrations in reference to this orderly and progressive development. Xature is no longer viewed merely in the husk and dead shell of the phe- nomenal, but hving powers are ajiprehended as working beneath and ever imfolding new forms of beauty, and perpet- ually progressing in its perfectibility. The laws of thought and intelligence have their counterpart in the laws of nature and humanity, and the Avorld of matter and of mind move on correlatively in parallel lines, with even step, and never- ending progression. In all this science finds order, har- mony, truth, and beauty. Life and gladness abound; and \vhere disorder appears, it is only the result of a higher 60 INTRODUCTION. order, for all its evils and distress teach lessons of wisdom or touch sensibilities and sympathies whose gushing emo- tions we could not afford to have missed. Nothing on the whole can be wrong ; the progressive march of nature and humanity is as straight and rapid as possible. But here is the terminus of all thought and philosophy. The living force and work in nature, the determined progress of humanity in taste, and social refinement, and political order, and philosophical truth ; these give themes of never-failing interest ; but all beyond, the supernatural world, the being of a personal God and His moral government, the fiiture immortality revealed and the divine plan of preparing sinful men for it, and His purposes of penal retribution in it ; these are gratuitous assumptions, unphilosoi^hical and indemon" strable. Science can attain to nothing beyond the correllar tive laws in nature and humanity, and any absolute person- ality must be inconceivable and impossible, and thus all inspiration and miraculous intervention is incredible. Inspi- ration can only be a fuller impartation to some favored sage of the universal reason, and who thus becomes the Seer and Prophet of his age, and whose oracles may live in the religious veneration of posterity until the rising reason in the race has transcended their import, when humanity again needs its new Prophet and may expect in the order of prog- ress its new revelations. This Transcendentalism is only partial, and its stand- point is wholly within nature. It transcends the phenom- enal of the sense fairly and philosophically, and such is its deservedly great praise. But to it the supernatural is utter darkness. Not the mere absence of light but the absence of all being ; the darkness of entire negation. For it nature USES OF RATigXAL PSYCHOLOGY. C)\ and humanity run on their perpetual correspondencies, and if there be aught whicli they do not fill it must be an utter void. It is for its adherents the part of wisdom to suppress the aspirations of the free and immortal within tliem, for this can be only the workings of a delusive hope or an instinctive fear, and the sure precursor of superstition or fanaticism. The reason as an organ for knowing the super- natural is discarded, and yet the philosopher calls himself a Rationalist ! He shuts himself hopelessly within nature and humanity, and yet calls himself a Transcendentalist ! He has so far transcended the mere phenomenal that he can give imity to nature and correspondence between nature and humanity, but he recognizes no function for transcend- ing nature and comprehending both nature and humanity in a personal Deity. Humanity to him is in and of nature, and all the correspondencies between humanity and nature are in the necessary logical connections of the former and the physical connections of cause and effect in the latter. There is to him no free power of origination and self-direc- tion any where. Humanity is on its parallel progress with nature, each with its destined order of development and fixed laws of movement. The world without is truly the counterpart of the intellectual world within, and here the philosopher is perpetually finding analogies, correlatives, and correspondencies, and delighting himself with the won- derful traces of harmony and beauty between them. But that which is truly free, personal, and immortal in the spirit, this philosophy wholly ignores, and between this and nature there is often the imperative for contrast and conflict. The necessities of the natural and the responsibilities of the spiritual can not be held as analogous Avithout perpetual C2 INTEODtrCTION. * absurdities and contradictions. The self-conscious and self- active can not be made to run parallel with the caused and necessitated, without introducing shocking deformities and painful discords. And precisely in this is the ready explanation of what so perpetually appears in all the writings of this modern transcendental school. In its partiality and incompleteness, it must often give unequal representations ; the correlation in the intellectual subjective and the physical objective will give truth, the coritrast in the free and spiritual subjective and the material objective must give absurdity. Hence we have at one time, so much life, vigor, clearness and depth of originality, that we stand admiring and delighted ; at another time, the whole is equivocal, ambiguous, and so obscurely enigmatical, that one man deems it the veracioiis though mysterious responses of an oracle, and another the ravings of a lunatic ; again, we have comparisons so gro- tesque and ludicrous, that we can not choose but snnle ; and then, so profane and irreverent a blending of the natural and the spiritual, the human and the divine, that we ought indignantly to frown. The human, which it can loiow, is so often represented in the phraseology of the di%dne, which it assumes not to know, that the whole speech becomes utterly impertinent, and often shockingly blasphemous. The posi- tion is wholly within nature, and it is denied that there may be any projection of the intellect beyond nature, and thus if any thing be said of the supernatural it must refer to the laws of the natural, and if any attributes of Divinity are mentioned they must apply to some of the aggregates of humanity. And hence, that mixture of the meaning and the meaningless, the expressed and the inexpressible, which USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. d'.i BO abounds through the speculations and teachings of thi=^ philosophy. Here and there gleams of light so bright and pure break out from masses of mist and, clouds, as to seem ahnost like flashes of inspiration ; and then come forced analogies so strange and wild, as to seem rather the ravings of madness. But with all the interest which this pliilosophy would seek to inspire for the inner life of natm-e, and the faith it would cherish for the progress of humanity, it still termir- ates wholly within the conditions of those laws, which bind the thinking in logical sequences and outward events in necessitated successions. The Universe, the Soul, and the Deity, are all circumscribed within the iron chain of a fixed order of progress. The chain, though endless, is yet one. From the first, if any first can be, no link is independent of the others, but one exists for all and all for each, and all proper personality is impossible. The Deity is tlie inner force and law, wliich is operating as logical thought in humanity and as causation in physical nature ; and by an intestine necessity works out the perpetual development, orderly, incessantly, irresistibly ; yet wholly destitute alike of feeling, of foresight, and of freedom. Hence those glowing and sometimes truly sublime representations of the deep, mysterious, silent, and eternal working of this power within and around us. All things working on, and together working out their own destiny ; and the changeless law peiwading the whole is the God of the whole, and there is no God beyond and above this. And now, verily, it can but little subserve the good cause, to meet this highest foi'm of Infidelity with ridicule, bird names, and reproachful epithets. The system is the 64 INTEODUCTIOX. product of severe and earnest thonglit, and has much of pure and high truth embraced withm it. It will never permit itself to be laughed out of countenance, nor can it be beaten down by denunciation. Nature has fixed con- nections and established laws, and her inner causality is working out for herself an orderly and progressive develop- ment. It is a great attainment for any philosoj^hy to have followed up the road of truth and science thus for, and to Lave settled the laws of nature's dcA'clopment upon the basis of a rational demonstration. It is the only way in which the errors originating in the limited philosophy of sensation can be met and redressed. But, while it is to its credit, that it goes thus far, yet it is itself but an incom- plete and partial philosophy, and terminates in greater difficulties and deeper errors than those which it has removed. The evil is not in what this system embraces, but from what it excludes. What we need is a hardy and complete philosophy which will not stop within nature's Temjile and worship only amid the products of her agency and under the authority of her laws and principles. "We need from within nature, whence our knowledge must begin, some point for firm footing so high that we may overlook, and truly cast our vision beyond nature, and find an absolute and free Being who has given existence to, and who controls nature. The mind must be disciplined and the intellectual vision purified and exercised until it may cleai'ly discern a sharp outline, discriminating liberty in personality from physical causation not only, but from instinctive impulses, and constitutional inclinations, and undirected spontaneity, and unhindered agency in one direction. A personality must be found, with a capability USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 65 to originate objective and substantial being from witliin himself; and to put forth his creations as otlier than, and quite distinct from, his own benig ; and Avho both in exist- ence and agency shall be wholly unconditioned by any higher causation ; and whose line of operation shall be determined by nothing from within his work, but wholly from an imperative out of and independent of his work, and given altogether in his own absolute being. This is essential to the idea of a personal, underived, and inde- pendent Deity ; and except as we cognize the actual exist- ence of such an absolute person, we can possibly worship none other than an " unknown God." It is not suiRcient that we leaj) to the conclusion, as is mostly done in all our popular treatises on Natural Theol- ogy, and thus attain only the assumptio?i of the existence of such a Being — because such Avill very well relieve the want which we feel in our speculations to find a permanent rest- ing place to our regressus in the tracing xip of the series of conditioned effects fi-om conditioning causes, and whence also we may begin to trace down the flowing stream of events as independent of any higher source — inasmuch as in this manner we can possibly attain to no higher than an hypothetical Deity. Our want is satisfied by such an hypo- thesis, and the being of nature is explained by such a suppo- sition ; but that there is actually such a God, is in this way, wholly supposititious and indemonstrable. The true idea of a God is first to be attained, viz., a being who may originate universal nature from himself, and not be himself a compo- nent or an included element, but who, though originating nature, in his personality still stands forth beyond and inde- pendent of it, and at his pleasure operates upon and withm 06 IXTEODUCTION. it ; and then this idea realized in this, that having in an a priori demonstration determined how it is possible thus to comprehend nature, we should look at nature and find there the correlative and thus the demonstrative of this idea in act- ual existence. The Beingc whom we seek to know is tran- scendental in the highest degree. He transcends all appear- ance in sensation, inasmuch as He can never be made a content of the sense and constructed into an object in con- sciousness. He also transcends all the notions in substance and cause in the understanding, inasmuch as wliile they only connect qualities and events in nature, he himself is the author of those substances and causes, and thus comprehends in his own being the very substance in its causality of all the pheomena of nature, and is thus wholly out of and beyond all the things given in the judgments of our understanding. The only faculty competent to reach and know the objective existence of such a Being must rise higher than merely to construct within limits in space and time, as does the intellect in sense ; and higher than merely to connect such constructions in a nature of things, as does the intellect in the understanding ; even that which can comprehend nature itself in an origination from liberty, and a consummation in the final ends of a free and absolute Per- sonality ; and which can possibly belong only to the fimc- tions of the reason. God is not phenomenon, nor substance and cause connecting phenomena : He is beyond all this, for this is nature only arid is God's creature. He thus as truly transcends the understanding as He does the sense, and can not possibly become ol)jectively known by any logical pro- cess but by the higher faculty of the reason. All philoso- phy is most absui-dly denominated Rationalism, which USES OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 67 makes its ultimate conclusions to be in nature, and denies that there is any thing which may be known as the super, natural. It is a RationaHsm discarding the very organ and faculty of reason itself. And here it becomes highly important to note, that some of the strongest entrenchments of skepticism both in philos- ophy and religion — some of the most elaborate defences of all Infidelity — are now in process of erection upon this high ground. Whether named Liberalism, Neologism, Rational- ism, or Transcendentalism ; its foundation is here, and the superstructure is going up on this basis. And true philoso- phy has not accomplished her work and fulfilled the end of her mission, until she has utterly and forever demohshed this entire foundation. It were a reproach to philosophy and theology to delay the final conquest of all this region, which from the days of Moses by the gift of divine author- ity, and from the days of Plato by the right of original dis- covery, has been the domain of truth, religion, and science ; and which only by a lawless usurpation has seemed to have passed into the hands of aliens. Every mind which has worked its way up to these heights of human thought, well knows that in this pure region there is a broad and fan- inheritance for philosophy, and which it is incumbent on her to explore, to j^ossess, and to cultivate. If some who have been there, growing giddy from the height or dazzled by excess of the brightness, have taken wrong positions and run folse hues, their errors are surely not to be redressed by ridicule nor railing from those who stand below, but effectually in nothing short of girding up the loins, and ascending to the same heights, and making so accurate a survey as shall give the right to subvert their 68 INTRODUCTION. false positions and abolish their wrong landmarks. Er. ror any where, when brought within the grasp of truth, is easily crushed, but never can the hand of truth be laid upon those errors in high places, except as some shall go up in her name, and take a final stand upon this last and highest point where science and skepticism may grapple in conflict. And certainly, the only possible method of finding such a position is from the final results of a Rational Psychology, which haying given the laws of intelligence in the functions of the sense and the -understaning, now completes its work in the attainment of the conditional laws of the faculty of the reason ; and by knowing the reason in its law, may thus lav the foundation for demonstratins: the vahd beinw of the Soul in its liberty, and of God in His absolute Personality, which can possibly be objects for the faculty of the reason alone. A true and comprehensive Rational Psychology is a necessary preliminaiy to all demonstrations in Ontology, and the subversion of skepticism by giving a position which commands the whole ground of its fundamental assump- tions. From all tlie foregoing considerations it is now manifest that Rational Psychology may subserve the purposes of science in three distinct departments, by affording a position from which skepticism in relation to the valid being of the objects given in each, may be met and counteracted. TTe have thus three distinct fields for our investigation, and in (^ach of which lie some of the most important questions fundamental for all science. We need to determine the conditioning principles of perception in setisation / as the basis of an argument for demonstrating, that the objects USES OF RATIONAL PSTCIIOLOGT. 69 given in the sense as single qualities and exercises are real appearances. We need, moreover, to determine the condi- tioning principles of ailjudr/nients in the understand uiff / as the ground for demonstrating that the real phenomena given in sense are connected m substances and causes and thus become a nature of thmgs, and which is also a valid reality. And then, lastly, we need to determine the condi- tioning principles of all comprehension of a nature of things in the faculty of the reason ; as the ground for a demonstration that the Soul in its hberty, and that the Deity in His personality, are valid existences. The Psy- chology terminates in the science of the facultias of the sense, the understandmg, and the reason ; and when this is made the basis of a further demonstration for the vaHd being of the objects thus given, the science becomes Ontol- ogy- In this may be seen an outline of .the work which is here proposed to be accomplished. The course lies in the direc- tion toward the highest attainments of thought to which the human mmd may elevate itself. So far forth as our positions shall be taken in thoue a priori demonstrations which are given ia the necessary and universal laws of intel- ligence, wo may compel the convictions of even skepticism itself, and settle the rights and substantiate the claims of science to all her possessions. This is not the place to affirm the competency to put these topics in the clear light of ^\\ a priori demonstration; bat we are about to make the attempt, in all humility and with some sense of the mag- nitude and difficulty of the task, to explore how far we may find ground, and how firm it may be, for putting up our 70 INTKODUCTION. intellectual buildings, and securing a completed structure of human science. Is the hiiman mind shut up to faith on all subjects ? or are there some paths which lead to scietice f So far as the present attempt can avail, the sequel must determine to which alternative wo are left. RATIOXAL PSYCHOLOGY. --heno7ne)ion . The states and acts of the mind apprehended in the internal sense, as truly as the objects apprehended in the extei'nal sense, and which have position or shape in space, are phe* 18 THESENSE. noraena ; since they all appear in consciousness and are thus perceived. We as truly perceive a thought or an emotion, as we do a color or a sound. The phenomenon has its 7nat- ter and its form. The matter is the content which is given from somewhere in the sensibility ; and the form is that modification of the matter which permits that it may be classified, or ordered in particular relationships with other phenomena. The capacity for receiving the content, as matter for a phenomenon, is sensihility. The affection induced by the reception of the content in the sensibility is sensation. In *his we include the affection particularly which pi-ecedes per- ception, and is conditional for it. The eye or the ear, as orcran of sensibility, may be affected in a content from some- where given, as by the rays of Ught or the imdulations of the air, and this impression or affection is it precisely, which AV3 mean by sensation, and which is the condition for the inteUestual apprehension and perception. There is, also, an afiection of the inner state which may succeed the percep- tion, and for which the perception is conditional. The per- ceived landscape, or music, etc., may affect the inner state agreeably or otherwise, and such affection, if called a sensa- tion, should be distinguished from the result of an organic affection. We might call the organic sensibility the Sen- sorium^ and the sensibility of the inner state the Sensory / and the products or affections in the first, sensations ; and those in the last, emotions ; and the distinction would be sufficiently marked. But in the case of knowledge through sense, we have occasion only for a reference to that which p7-ecedes perception, and shall not need here, therefore, to recognize any such distinction. SPECIFIC METHOD. <9 The faculty for giving form to the matter in tlje sensa- tion is the Imagination. It is the faculty which conjoins and defines — the constructing faculty — and is a peculiar intellectual process, which may hereafter in our work be better disclosed. It is sufficient here to say, that while this is essentially the same operation that gives form to the material already in sensation, and that which constructs form in pure space ; i. e., it is the same agency which gives roundness to the rincr or the wheel in sensation, as that which constructs the roundness of a mathematical circle in pure space ; yet is the term Imagination more appropri- ately applied to the latter than the former. The last is purely the work of the intellect, and thus wholly from imar gination; the first has been conditioned in its intellectual agency by the content in sensation. They may be distin- guished as an act of attention^ and an act of imagination. An object which is void of aU content in sensation, and has only its limits constructed in space or time, is termed pure ^ while such object as has a content in the sense is termed empirical. Thus, any mathematical diagram is pure object ; and any color, or weight, or sound, etc., is empirical object. Intuition is an immediate beholding; and is pure intuition when the lx?holding is in reference to a pure object, and empirical intuition when the beholding is in reference to an empirical object. Thus, the immediate beholding of three times three mathematical jjoints in space • • • to be nine, is a j>ure intuition ; but tlie immediate beholding of three times three material balls, or counters, to be nine balls or counters, is an empirical intuition. Inas- much as the whole field in which the objects are given in the sense is to be examined, we shall have occasion to make 80 THESENSE. a Division in tliis j^art of our work, and attain the subjec- tive idea of the process in the sense in the constrnction and apprehension ai pure objects, and also of empirical objects. And here we are ready to give the Specific Method of our process of Rational Psychology for the faculty of the Sense. We isolate this fi-om all the other functions for knowing, and must in our first Chapter, from an a 2y'^iori position, attain the subjective Idea of how perception in sense is possible ; and, as this must include both the form in the apprehension and the content in the sensation, so there must be the ttco Divisions, the Idea in the pm*e Intuition, and the Idea in the empii-ical Intuition. In a second Chap- ter, we must attain an objective Law in the facts of percep- tion, and determine the correlation of this Idea and Law. "We may then give the outline of an Ontological Demon- stration, CHAPTER I. TIIE SENSE IX ITS SUBJECTI\rE IDEA. FIRST DIVISION. THE IDEA IN THE PURE INTUITION. SECTION I. THE ATTAINMENT OF AN A PRIORI POSITION »«*» All human knowledge begins in experience. Except phenomena are given in the sense, and the intellect quick- ened into activity in perception, it can exert neither the faculty of the understanding nor the reason, but the human mind remains a void and no cognition is possible. We must begin our intellectual action in sensation. But experi- ence can include the real and the limited only, while there are cognitions of the strictly necessary and universal ; and thus is it manifest that our intellectual agency, which begins in the perceptions of the sense, is not confined to experience merely. All Mathematical Axioms, at least, are h priori cognitions, independent of power, not deduciblc fi-om any data in experience, but including all possible experience, and in their own light seen to be necessary and universal. That a straight line is the shortest which can join any two points; 4* 83 THESE XSEINITSIDEA. that no two straight lines can enclose a space ; that any two sides of a triangle must together be greater than a third side, etc., are cognitions not possible to be given in exijeri- ence, for no experience comprehends them while they include all possible experience. They are no product of power, for they condition all power in their own necessity of being ; they are no deduction from facts, for they are inclusive of universal facts. We shall in our progress find wide regions of necessary truth, as independent of the experience given in sensation as mathematical axioms, and which the human mind may possess as cognitions ; and thus the fact is plain, that while the intellect begins its agency in the functions of the sense, it yet subsequently attains cognitions which are altogether beyond every pos- sible empirical apprehension. And, here, our first care is to lay open a plain passage from the phenomenal to the transcendental, and attain a position upon such a prioi^i cognitions as shall snbserve our main design in a Rational Psychology, and by such a pro- cess as shall admit of clear and satisfactory examination at every step ; and thus, having taken our position out from experience, we may proceed to the jjliilosophical investiga- tion of how experience must be. The Intellect may not take a leajD in the dark out of the world of sense in which its agency begins into tiie pure region of rational cognitions, but must be competent t expound to itself and to others how it has reached its start- ing point in a transcendental philoso])hy. A surreptitious passage is, also, equally as inadmissible as a blind and pre- sumptuous leap to the necessary aiid the universal. Dog- matism may arbitrarily assume, or sophisti*y may wrap itself AN A PRIORI POSITION ATTAINED. 83 in specious fallacies stealthily to take, the ground on Avhich is to be buUt a rational philosophy, but in no such way shall we establish a title for science, or dispossess the skeptic of the territory he has usurped. We must be able first to trace jur pathway out from, and be competent to return again to the familiar region of the phenomenal, and to deterxTiine its bearings and distances from the purely intellec- tual. We shall thus readily determine, that though subse- qi:ently attained by us, yet is the necessary and the univer- sal the truly j^rimitive region. In the process of our intel- lectual acquirement the empirical is first, but in the order of conditioned relations the empirical is last. In this point of view the distinction made betAveen a logical and a chrono- logical order is significant. As logical condition the neces- sary and the universal are before the conditioned and the partial ; the possible before the actual, the mtellectual before the phenomenal. Just as in the work of nature the germ precedes the plant ; the embryo is before the adult ; the cause antecedent to the efiect. Yet as in nature, empiri- cally apprehended, we are forced to reverse the process, so is it also in Empirical Psychology. In learning nature in experience we do not first find ourseh^es at the original sources of her secret operations, but quite xv^on the outside of all her products. We can not look on and watch the l^rogress of her mysterious developments, as the work goes onward from the central salient point to its consummation ; but we must retrace, as we may, what has been done by following back the print of her footsteps. Thus, in the intellectual operations, we first find the phenomenal as already given, and then go back to the intellectual ; we have first the fact, and then we search out the principle ; 84 THESENSEINITSIDEA. first the knowledge, then the scientific conditions by which it was possible Ave should know. Thus the first is last, and the last is first. With the phenomenal in possession it is incumbent, first, to find our way out to the purely intellec- tual, and having attained the transcendental position, there note that though chronologically last fi3und, yet that logi- cally it was first, and necessarily conditional for the phe- nomenal from whence we started. Commencing with the phenomenal, the process wHl be to make an abstraction of all that has come into conscious- ness through sensation, and thereby find that which was prior to, and conditional for, the perception. When the matter shall be taken away, the real form will remain ; and when that which gave reality to the form is taken away, the possible or pure form only is left, and this pure form separ- ated into its pure diversity is the jyi'hnitice intuition. I. The primitive intuition for all plienotnena of an ex- ternal sense. — Whatever object we may apprehend in an experience — a house, tree, mountain, etc., — it is for the sense ; and as phenomenal, an assemblage of single qualities only. We now take any such object — a house — and pro- ceed to make abstraction of the several phenomena which any organs of sense have given in the perception. Color has appeared, and we now exclude it ; smoothness or rough- ness, hard or soft, weight or resistance, as they have been given, we now take aAvay ; and so also of sounds, odors, tastes, or any qualities of any possible function of the sense, we now remove ; and thus make a complete abstraction of all content which the entire sensibility may haA e received. We shall have still remaining the void place which had been occupied by the qualities now abstracted. This remains for AN A PRIORI POSITION ATTAINED 85 the intellect alone, and is as uotliing in the experience; but for the intellect it remains immovable and indestructible. It remains in defiance of all further attempts to a more com- plete abstraction in that place. It is the rea\fo7'm of that object fi'om which the content has now been utterly taken away. But, although we have taken away all content of sense, and can not go further and take away the place, still have we not taken aAvay all product of the intellect. There is a defined and hmited place, a constructed form which has real outline and shape, and Ave may intellectually proceed fur- ther in this direction Avith our abstraction, and take away that which limits and defines this void place, and thus anni- hilate that in which its unity and wholeness exists. We have then a void which is limitless, undefined, unconjoined into any total, and whi<^.h is simply a pure intuition of Avhat is possible for form and content. In this abstraction of all content and all form, and thus the removal of all that can come into any outer experience, we have taken away that which can be common to us with others, and have left only a limitless void, Avhicli, as similar in each, lies distinct in each one's consciousness who has made the complete abstraction. There are as many limit- less voids as there are subjective consciousnesses in which the content and form has been taken away. They can not now, in the absence of all outer object, commune Avith each other, but each one is shut in Avithin his OAvn limitless A-oid in his OAvn consciousness. Still, each one can proceed with a further abstraction. The void in each is limitless, but it is etill in unity. Every part is a concrete Avith every other part. The abstraction may proceed to take aAvay that 86 THE SENSEI NITS IDEA. which holds all parts in connection to all others, and we shall have left a limitless void, wholly unconstructed in unity, and standing in the subjective consciousness as so many contiguous void points, wliich do not coalesce together. The limitless void is a manifold of void limits, which stand only as pure hmits, without any limited. And here it is impossible that we should carry the abstrac- tion further in any direction. As the condition that a sense should be in which the phenomenal may be given in any ex- tension as real form, there must be, as its back-groimd in the consciousness, this manilbldness of void points. Take this awa}', and no place can be made in which the phenomenal can appear in real form. Attempt to take this away, and you are stopped in the very absurdity of the process ; the void limit must still be, even in the very point from whence it is assumed to have been abstracted. This is pure space as given in a prm^7^ye hitultion. When I have in conscious- ness a mathematical line, circle, or other diagram, I have such mathematical figure in ^>?rwiitive intuition for all the phenomena of an AN 1 TRIORI POSITION ATTAINED. S7 internal sense. — In the light of consciousness we discrimin. ate betwee'i one mental exercise and another, and thereby distinguish all the diflerent products of our mental func- tions, such as thoughts, emotions, purposes, etc. These are quite diiferent phenomena in kind -Vcm all such as appear externally in space, and must therefore have their pure form originated in some different prbnitive intuition. We may take any phi;nomena as they come and depart in our inner consciousness and thus produce changes in the internal state. It may be a train of thought as passing in consciousness. As one thought comes and departs for ihe introduction of another, the ajiprehension of them nmst be in succession, and the consciousness possesses them as sequences in a series. If then we abstract the phenomenal thoughts in the train and thus take away all the content in these suc- cessions, there will remain the instants in which each stood in the series, and which will in connection give a void pe- riod that liad been occupied by the passmg thoughts now abstracted. This abides for the intellect only, and resists * all efforts that it should be taken away. It is a real form for the contant taken away, and is itself quite indestructible. And so to the same end, we may take any passing phe- nomena of the external senses. As apprehended by the In- tellect, they affect the internal state as does a passing t.iought, and as the perception of one phenomenon passes and another arises in consciousness, the inner sense is deter- mined as successive in its affections, and this content must fill a period in the inner sense as truly as a place in the ex. ttrnal sense. If then we make an entire abstraction of the phenomena perceived, and thus also of the perceptions as affecting the interna' state^ we shall have the successions in 88 THESENSEINITSIDEA. the instants in wliicli they occnrred, and which, as limited by their beginning and terminating, is a void period as the real form, in the internal sense, and which in the absti'action of the content is itself left indestructible. AVliile, however, we have taken away all phenomenal content and can not go further and take away the duration in the period, still may we carrv tlio intellectual abstr.ictiou to a further degree. We may take away the liiuits vrliic;h begin and terminate the i)eriod, and thus annihilate that which gives to it individ- uality and definitencss, and there will then be duration lim- itless ajul intlcfinite, and standing out as the bare possibihty of what may be limited into for.'ual periods and filled by phenomenal successions. In this removal of all content and form from the dura- tion, we have taken away that which can give a common duration to ourselves with others, and can now only each one have his own duration in his own consciousness. The successions go on in his own internal sense, and no one can commune with the successions gomg on in aucuher's con- sciousness. Still may each one caiTy the abstraction to a more full degree. The duration m each is limitless but still a duration in a connected sequence. The sequences are aU concrete and the series a perpetual continuity. We may then take away that which connects the sequences in con- tinued series, and we shall have not only an emptiness of all phenomena imd limitation, but an exclusion of all coalescing of the instants, and only these instants in their diversitv and manifoldness Avill remain, as the bare possil)ility of what may be combined into continuous dm-ation and constructed into successive periods. No further abstraction is possible, for all attempt to take away the instant and have that which AN A r E I O R I POSITION A T T A I X E D . 89 is empty of all instants in which some instant miglit again stand is an absm-dity. Here then is pm-e time as given in a primitive intuition, and which is conditional for all arith- metical number as given in a pure intuition. Pure time in the prunitive intuition is thus a necessary and imiversal rational cognition, attained chronologically by experience and yet conditional for experience, and more cer- tain than any appeaiMince in experience can be. Inasmuch as all phenomena must be given in an external or an internal sense ; and pure space is the primitive intuition for all possible phenomena of an external sense which must have place, and pure time is the primitive intuition for all possible phenomena of an internal sense which must have period ; we have in pure space and time the primitive mtui- tion for all possible phenomena. And as we haxe taken pure space as one transcendental position, Me may now also take 23urc time as another, satisfied that they ai . both given in an a priori cognition, and that they give to us the possi- bility for all the real forms in which the intellect can order any appearance in the sense. Now, it is altogether true, that the faculty of the sense can not overlook and in an a priori manner examine itself, and go back and take up positions out of itself; and if we had no other ficulty than that of perception in sensation, and the capabihty of abstracting comparing and combining what had been given in sensation, most certainly we could attain no transcendental positions. It would be hke asking the eye to see itself, or the touch to feel itself; thus demand- ing that experience should bring itself witliin its own cii'- cumscription and by subjecting itself to its own action liter. ally experience itself But certainly we encounter no such 4 90 TIIESEXSEINITSIDEA. absuixlity when we assume a faculty higher thau that of the sense, and which is competent to make the very conditions of sense its objects of cognition ; and that the possesson of such higher faculty is not mere assumption, beside the dejuoustration which will be given in its proper place, wo have already sutticient evidence in the above results. If aU cognition must be of that only which is first given i'a the sensation, then certainly the primitive intuition of pure space and time must be an impossibility. When we have taken away the content of sense we should have no possible cognition left. Space and time would be not only void, but it would be a void of space and of time ; and the intuition that pure space and time were prior to the content put within thuni, and conditional for the possibility that such content should appear, would be preposterous. It would be making the sense cognize that which is prior to, and condi- tional for, its D v\'n action. Pure space and time are never an api:?c;arance in sense, nor ai all a part of what is given in sense, and the fact that we cognize them at aU is the evi- dence of a higher faculty than sense, and especially that we cognize them to be necessarily aad universally conditional for all percejjtion in sense. We are making no assumptions merely, and sianding upon no mere chimeras, when we take up our position, m the primitive intuition, upon the a liriori cognitions of pure space and time. That they are the primitive forms for all possible phenomena, that they are a priori to, and condi- tional for, all phenomena, is seen in their necessity and imiversality. CONSTRUCTION OF FORM. 91 SECTION II. THE PROCESS OF AN A PRIORI CONSTRUCTION OP REAL FORM IN PURE SPACE AND TIME. Space aud time are given in the intuition. They are immediately beheld, and this irrespective of any content in the sensibihty, and are thus pure Intuition ; and as prior to any real foi-ms, and only conditional for all possible forms of figure and period, they are lyrimitive Intuition. As pm-ely in the primitive intuition, they are wholly limitless, aud void of any conjunction in unity, having themselves no figure nor period, and having within themselves no figure nor period, but only a pure diversity in which any possible conjimction of definite figures and periods may, in some way, be effected. We now begin our work from this transcendental position, and our first business is to determine the process by which a conjunction may be erfected, and real forms be constructed in pm"e space and time. ^Uthough Ave have come from the phenomenal in sense out to this pure condition for all tliat may be phenomena, by abstracting all that has been given in the sensibility and the intellectual agency, yet can abstraction be of no further avail. We now seek, not the process of attauiing a real form by beginning with some phenomenon, and taking away its content ia the sensibility thereby leaving its void form in the intellect, which would be but an empirical process ; but we Degin at the other extreme of the process, and seek to construct cur real forms from the formless and limitless space au tim3 as given in the primitive intuition, and in this a priori process determine how a construction of real 92 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. forms in space and time is possible ; and thereby for what- ever is, a determination d priori how it must have been, and for all that is to be, how only it is possible that it should be. And here, with space and time as given in the primitive intuition, where all is mere diversity without any conjunc- tion in unity, and therefore wholly limitless and indefinite — where all jjossible position, shape and period may be, but where no fixed position, defined figure, and limited period yet is — it is manifest that nothing can apjiear as real form in any uitellectual apprehension, except as in some way this real form be constructed as product withm this primitive intuition. As utterly void of all construction and product, pure space and time must ever so remain, except as invaded by some constructing agency, which shall conjoin what is diverse, and limit what is indefinite, and thereby produce real bounded and united forms within the void mtnition. Pure space and time are not agents that may collect them- selves into definite and discriminate portions of each, and affix jirecise hmits withi*?. thamselves, by which their parts may possess outline and ^ach become one whole figure in space or period in time. Some agency ab extra must make such conjunctions, and give such limits. But the primitive intuition is no agent for constructing, producing, and limit- ing ; this is a mere immediate beholding of what is, and no producer of it. Thus, as no constructed real form is in pure sj)ace and time, the primitive intuition can nevsr of itself attain such real form. The intellectual agency as imagina- tion, or form constructor, which Coleridge calls the eisem- plastic po'icer, from etg evrrXdrreiv to shape in:o (^(\ must introduce itself within the void, and produce Its real forms CONSTRUCTION OF FOEM. 93 for its own subjec ive apprehension. The primitive intui- tions of space and time can never take real form within themselves, and which may be apprehended as definite figure and period, except through such intellectual con- struction. We wall, therefore, look minutely to this entire process of an intellectual construction of real forms in pure space and time, inasmuch as in this will be found the subjective idea of the sense in the pure intuition. In this section we will give this agency in its restilts only, and reserve for con- sideration in future sections the more profound and difficult Avork of attammg the a iwiori princi2)les of the process. I. The construction of real forms hi pure space. — Let there be an intellectual agency given, which may come within the field of the primitive intuition m pure space, and exert its constructive faculty therein, and let us notice what must be its results. In the spontaneity of its own functions it moves through the void in pure space, constantly within the mtuition, and is thus perpetually and directly beheld in all its. progress. In the as yet uncollected diversity in pure space, this agency is in the field of the primitive intuition, and at that point in the diversity of pure space a position is taken. The void is no longer empty. A point is made to stand distinctly in the intuition, and is a limit as beginning or starting-point in the process. As this agency moves onward there are perpetually new positions attained, and new points made to stand out prominently and precisely in the intuition. So far as this agency goes in its spontaneity, it has brought the diverse points through which it passed into a conjunction, and made its own pathway precise and plain by collecting mto itself the points as conti.nious con- M THESENSEINITSIDEA. tiguity. Here, then, is a definite, real form as product oi the intellectual agency. There is the hmit or starting-point, as beginning ; the perpetuated product in the continuous points all conjoined in the progressive moA'ement ; and there is the limit, as terminating point of this agency ; and here first arises in the intuition a completed product, and a defi- nite real form — the mathematical line — appears. Pure space is no longer void diversity as given in the primitive intuition, but a conjunction of some of the diversity has been efiected, and a line as one whole in its unity is cog- nized. This is wholly a product of the productive imagina- tion and has subjective reality only, hence as void of all empirical content it is pnire object, and is cognized in pure intuition ; but, as being real form produced in pure space, there is more than the mere diversity in the primitive intui- tion. And now, nothing hinders, that such an intellectual agency may be possible in its going forth to the construc- tion of all possible forms in pure space. Right Hnes, and lines which shall be joined in their terminations in all possi- ble relative directions, and thus holding between them all possible angles, and which may enclose all possible rectilin- ear figures, may be constructed. Curved lines, and of all possible cii'cularity and modification of curvature, and meet- ing in the construction of all possible curAalinear angles and figures, and the blending of right and curved lines in all possible modifications of mutual relationship in angle and shape, may be produced from all possible positions in pure space. All the real forms possible in pure space are thus of practicable production in a pure intuition. In the particu- lar is given the universal, and it is an a p>riori cognition, CONSTRUCTIOX OF FORM. 95 that as one pure object may be thus conGtvucted, so it ;s competent that all the real forms which pure space may receive can in the same way be constructed. And as such construction may be, so also it is an a jyrioi'i cognition that, if at all, thus they miisf be constructed. The primitive intuition can give the diversity in its unconjoined manifold- ness only ; and if any conjunction, in the unity of a definite real form as pure object, be effected, it must be through the constructmg agency of some eisemplastic or form-producing faculty. The pure object must be given to the pure intui- tion, by some intellectual agency constructing it within the field of its immediate beholding. TTe have in this way the process of an intellectual agency, or productive imagination, which results in an a prw7'i possibility for all real forms in pure space. II. T/ie eonstmiction of real Jv^ms in pure time, — Time as pure in the primitive intuition, is like pure space utterly unconjomed and indefinite. It is conditional for all possible periods, but as yet it is wholly a diversity of instants, and no definite and limited period has been given within it. The intuition can not construct, but only immediately be- hold what may be constructed. The same intellectual agent as productive imagination before noticed, but in a somewhat modified view of the agency, must construct the real form as pure period within the primitive intuition. As time is the primitive intuition for the internal sense, and all deter- mination of succession in time rests upon the determination of changes in the inner state, so all construction ol' period must demand that the inner state be, in some way, continu- ousxy modified in its aflfection. x\nd tliat this modified affection, as change of the inner state may be determined, it 96 TIIESENSEIXITSIDEA. must be mad'3 tc stand in a relationship in the intuition to some pei'manent. Mere movement can not determine suc- cession, but only movement in reference to somewhat that is permanent ; and as the period to be constructed is pm'e, so the permanent must be in the pure intuition also. And r ow, all the above requisites may be attained in the follow- uig way, and are wholly impracticable in any other manner. Let the intellectual agency be conceived as moving along a 23ul'e line in space. This line is itself a permanent in the intuition, and every point in the line is a permanent, and as the intellectual agency passes along the line within the im- mediate field of the intuition, the movement as change of place gives continuous modification to the inner state, and this succession of afiection in the internal sense is the deter- mination that a time is passing. The movement is that which is here alone regarded, and not the line as product of the movement. This intell<.ctual agency is commenced at a given point in the line, and at that given point the aflfection in the inner state begins, and as the movement passes on- w^ard the inner state is continuously modified, until at length the movement termmates in another point in the line and the modification in the inner state ceases. At each contigu- cr.s point in the line there has been a coincident modification of the inner state, as the intellectual movement passed along from instant to histaut in the intuition, and in each modifica- tion of the inner state a moment of time has passed, and thus successively from the commencement to the termina- tion of the mo\'ing agency, and thereby a definite period has been constructed, in which the instants have been conjoined in unity by the movement and limited on each side as a complete whole. COXSTKUCTIO>' OF FORM. 97 Tliis is more than mere diversity in the primitive intui- tion of time, since a real conjunction of the diverse instants has been effected and a completed hniit set to it, and thus a real foi'm produced ; but inasmuch as there is no content of the sensibiUty it is pure object only, and existing merely in the subjective intuition. And here, it is jjlain, that nothijig hinders the construction of all possible periods that may be in time, of all possible varieties of duration. Tlie primitive intuition gives the diversity of time in its indefiniteness, and the productive imagination may move on in any extension of a line of instants and give its modifications to the inner state, and thereby its definite succession of moments, and in this Avay its pure periods as real forms in time to any possi- ble degree that such pure periods can be in time. And as all possible periods may be so constructed, so also it is an a priori cognition that if any is constructed at all it must be in this manner. The primitive intuition can not construct, but an agency must move within it, and conjoin what is diverse in its raanifoldness into one completed product, and which may thus be intuitively seen in its definiteness, and its distinctness from all other constructed periods. With pure space and tune in the prunitive intuition open to an mtellectual constructing agency, all possible fig- m'es in space and periods in tune may become pure objects in the subjective intuition. And this is the only possible method of attaining real forms from the primitive intuition I can have no hne in pure space, except as by my construe tive agency I draw the Une ; and no other figure in pure space, except as through the same agency I describe that figure ; nor can I have any period in pure time, except as through an hitellectual agency I successivjely affect my uiner 5 98 THESEXSEINITSIDEA. State, and in the conjunction of the instants construct the period. In this manner may all possible real forms in pure space and time be given in a pure intuition, but in no other manner can any real form be effected. We have thus a con- ditioning principle, rationally determined, that all possible pure objects m space and time must he constructed by an intellectual agency. Let it here be noted that pure space and time in the primitive intuition offer nothing to invite, to guide or to hin- der an intellectual constructing agency. In the spontaneity of the productive imagination, all possible real forms may be thus given. This result being attained it is demanded that its process be subjected to a much deeper analysis, and in which many points of difficult explanation must be care- fully examined. To this we proceed in the next section. SECTION III THE PRIMirrVE ELEMENTS OF ALL POSSIBLE FORMS IN PURE SPACE AND TIME. The diversity of points in space and of instants in time as given in the primitive intuition is Avholly subjective, and lying for each one in his inner consciousness. The intellect- ual agency moves for each within the same inner conscious ness subjectively, and thus both the primitive intuition of space and time and the constructing intellectual agency are conditional for the comj»letion of all real foi'ms, and without both of which no faculty of sense, or function for appre- hending phenomena, could be. The subjective pure form PKIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONJUNCTION. 99 and the objective empirical content must alike stand con- structed in consciousness, and the elements in one will he the elements in both. In attaining these primitive elements for constructing forms we shall be able to determine for them that they inust be, and that so many must be, and thus both their necessity and completeness. There must be the Primitive Intelleo- tual Operation, and this must have its specific Primitive Elements, and which we here proceed to attain. "We have already examined the general process for the possibility of real form in pure space and time, and found that as the primitive intuition does not construct, an intel- lectual agency must construct the pure object. This is done by conjoining that which was before diverse and unlimited in the primitive intuition, and bringing it by this agency into a completed and defined pure object. Thus all figiires in space and all j^eriods in time may be constructed. This, then, is the intellectual operation to be here specially con- sidered, that we may attain the a priori elements which enter into the process. It is properly a constructing agency, and as this is effected by conjoining what before was uncon- joined or diverse, it is the work of conjunction that we are to examine, and see what are the elements conditional for it. What are the primitive elements in the operation of conjunction f 1. In the primitive intuition of pure space and time nothing is conjoined, and thus no product can be cognized because nothing is produced. Such possible product is the result of a constructive agency, and this must be effected hj conjunction. And now, what must he the first element in the a pi'iori operation of conjunction f This may be 100 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. determined by an immediate beholding in pure space and time. The intellectual agency in conjunction must not merely move Avithin the primitive intuition. If there were only a mere passing in pure space and time no result could remain, for no line as its pathway would be left by the movement. It would be a mere passing through the void intuition, leaving it still to be void, when the movement had wholly transpired. It must, then, be an agency which can take up and collect within itself this diversity in the primitive intuition as it passes along through it. One point in pure space assumed as a position, and made the starting-point or commencing limit of the movement, must not be left as it was before it had been so assumed, but must be con- joined to the point next assmned as position, and this also to another, and thus onward to the point which becomes the terminating limit of the intellectual movement. If I take up any number of diverse objects one by one, and throw away the first when I take the next, no possible accumulation can result, because no product can be thus generated. Merely to repeat one, one, one, would not be to count ; but that any number should be generated in the pro- cess, the first one must be retained and conjoined with the succeeding one, and tlius conjoined they 'are no longer diverse as one, one, but the first is produced into the second making them together to be two, and this product of two is then produced mto the next one, making all together to be three, and thus onward through all the progressing agency until it terminates. So in the diversity given in pure space and time, the agency must collect and conjoin within itself in its own movement the diverse points in PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONJUNCTION. 101 3pace or instants in time, and in this conjunction only can there be product as a line or a succession. The agency col- lects within itself what it takes up in passing, and thus only is it intelligent agency. And now, as this may be to any degree possible in pure space and time, and for any possible amount and modifica- tion of figure and period, so also thus it must be for any and every figure or period that shall become product there in. Such a conjunction of what is diverse in the primitive intuition is a universal necessity for all possible product in space and time, and is hence an a jyrioi'i cognition. All possible experience must be regulated by it, and conform to it. But this conjoining process is a strictly uniti?ig process — it unifies the diverse as given in the primitive intuition, and thus pure space and time remain no longer a diversity but a unity where this intellectual agency has passed, and only where it has passed. In the passing it has collected into itself and thereby united what it has taken uji, and all this is done in the immediate intuition and is thus directly beheld. It needs no demonstration, it is already intuition. The first element, therefore, in all processes of conjunction and thus in all products as real forms in space and time, as found by an d jyriori cognition, is Unity. 2. As this conjoining process goes on, that which it has taken up and gathered within itself, being no longer diverse but conjoined, becomes a collection or synthesis, /. e., a diversity i?i unity — and which is the precise conception of a rmdtiplicity. A number of diverse points in space, merely as they stand in their diversity, may be said to be many (multi), inasmuch as it is possible they may be conjoined ; but it is by their conjunction, or implication one in an- 102 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. other, as the product of an intellectual agency, that we come to the cognition that it is other than many, it is the many united (multi impliciti). As the least that is possi- ble in the conception of unity is that of one conjoined to one (unus et plus), which is pliu'ality ; and this admits of any possible increase (unus et plus, duo et plus, tres et plus, etc.), and is stUl plurality ; this expresses the concej)tion more completely than multiplicty. It is so many and morej and thus though a unity yet an incomplete process with stUl the agency going on in its work of conjunction. Such, it is d jrriori seen, must be true in all construction of real forms in pure space and time. The agency must commence with a position as a starting-point, and move to another position conjoining it to the first, and in this is unity • and as it is one and more (unus et plus), and as yet indeterminate ho'N^ much more, inasmuch as the imiting process is not yet com- pleted, it must be a plurality. All conjunction must stand thus in the pure intuition, as a begun but incomplete pro- duct so long as the agency is in progress, and thus having within itself the element of Plurality. 3. The unity in a plurality, though a condition for all real form in pure space and time, yet is not all that is condi- tional. The diversity in the primitive intuition is not there- by a unit, though in unity. Tlie terminating limit is not yet given, and thus it can not be said yet what the completed real form shall be. It is in the process of construction, but all possible form yet beyond what has been constructed still remains in the primitive intuition, and thus open to the con- structing intellectual agency, and thereby forbidding that we should say more than that there is the unity in a plural- ity. There must come the termination of the agency, and PRIMITIVE ET, KMEXTS OF COX JUNCTION. 103 the intellect must cease to collect any more of the diversity into itself, and thereby aflBx a terminating limit to the con- junction, and thus define what has been united on all sides, and then first arises a completed pure object as entire pro- duct in space and time. This unity in the plurality com- pleted, becomes then a whole, cutting itself off from all that is not included within its own circumscription, and standmg out in the j^ure intuition as a real form, definite in its own constructed totality. All real form must possess a total of the plurahty in unity, and thus a third primitive element is Totality. It is now manifest that while no real form in space and time can possess less than the elements of unitrj., plurality.^ and totality • so likewise can no pure object possess more than these three primitive elements. The whole process of construction, for either figure in space or period in time, as the intellectual agency enters uj^on it and goes on to its com- pletion, can demand nothing less nor more, than that it take up the diverse, and give unity in a plurality which shall ulti- mately possess totaUty. Here, therefore, are all the possible elements of all possible conjunction in j)ure space and time. Xow of all possible real form thus constructed m pure space and time, whether it be that of figure or period, we may say that it possesses a Quantity. Quantity is thus the general term which is to express all possible real form in pure space and time ; and of all possible quantity there may be a priori predicated of it, that it must possess unity, plu- rality, and totality. It can not possibly be made intelligible, except all the three primitive predicates, as above, belong to it. In the process above pursued, we may see not only that our faculty of judgment has so many forms, giving so many 104 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. primitive concejitions : but icJ^y it lias, viz., that a rational cognition in pure space and time, through a direct intuition, determines that all possible intellectual construction of quan- tity onust have so many and no more elements. It is not possible that any intellect should give quantity in pure space and time in any other process or through any other elemen- tary conditions. All 2:)ossible experience of shapes in space and successions in time must conform thereto, and so far from attaining them by an analysis of any of our intellec- tual functions, we determine them to be universally neces- sary for all intellectual construction of objects in conscious- ness. "We have in the above, attained all that is necessary in the determination of the jirocess of conjunction and of the result in a definite and completed form as quantity. But a work equally as necessary and quite as abstruse yet remams to be accomplished, viz. : What is conditional for the intel- lectual agency that it may be competent to such a conjoining operation ? Except as this inquiry shall receive a satisfac- tory answer, we have brought the subject of Rational Psy- chology through but half its difficult way to the attainment of the sense in its subjective idea, as necessary to be acquired 'under the first division of the intuition. Tliis, then, will form the subject of another section, the determination d %yriori of what is necessary in the intellect^ in order that it may operate such results in the product of a completed pure quantity. THE ITNITT or SELF-CONSCIOUS>rESS. 105 SECTION IV. THE UNITY OF S E L F - C O N S C I O U S N E S 8 . Ihe Unity found as a first element in the operation of conjuiiction, and which is conditional for the jDroduction of all quantity, is itself also a product. The collecting into itself the diverse points and instants in pure space and time, as its agency passes over the primitive intuition, is the pecu- liar Avork of the intellect, and such collection into itself becomes a conjunction in unity, whereby a quantity is first generated in the intuition. Such unity can be no }/i'oduct of the primitive intuition, but only of a constructing agency which performs its work within it, thereby giving real form within pure space and time. But what is conditional in this intellectual agency itself^ that it may be competent to such a work of conjoining a diversity in unity ? It is manifest that if such agency were in itself diverse, and its movement a repetition of single and disjoined acts, that it could make no collection, and eifect no conjunction, and thus could produce no unity in the primitive intuition. An agency which was as manifold as the diverse points and instants in pure space and time, and thus only an act in its own point or instant, would possess no capacity for passing over from one point or instant to another, and collecting them continuously into a quantity. The agency must, there- fore, itself possess a higher unity than that which it pro- duces in pure space and time ; and it is only this possession of the higher unity that can make the unity in the conjunc- tion as product to be possible. And now, the demand is, 5* 106 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. that we attain as an a priori cognition, what is conditional for this Idgher xmi^y of the intellectual agency. 1. It must be co'tnpetent to more than the simple act.-^ In order to any conjunction in unity thei'e must be perpetu- ated movement ; but the simple act can effect no movement. If it were a constant repetition of itself, it would still result in no movement. It would be merely an act in one point, and a repetition of the act in another point, and thus only an alternating agency and not a moving agency. It would be simply origination and extinction in the same point, and this repeated in any diversity of points could not conjoin them. The oscillations of any number of pendulums in diverse sjjaces occurring in alternation, can not conjoin those spaces, inasmuch as the agency arises and finishes in its own space, and does not pass on to collect into itself that which is diverse from its own. As simple act, however perpetually repeated and m whatever diversity, can not be a movement through the diversity, it can not, therefore, j^roduce any con- junction in unity. In order to this it must be a perpetu- ated agency, and though successive in the diverse points and instants yet itself in unity throixgh the whole operation. In this manner only can the agency conjoin that which is diverse through Avhich it passes, and construct a real form as product of its movement, and leave it as a result within a pure intuition. We will call this condition — The Vanity of the conjoining axjency. 2. There inust be more than the unity of conjoining agency. — An agency in unity throughout, moving through the diverse points and instants in pure space and time, and performing its work in conjoining the diverse points and instants in unity, could not yet accomplish anything towarcjl UNITY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 107 giving its products as real forms to the appreliensiou, when the operation went on in darkness. A mere blind move- ment could make no product to appear, and hence its whole work would yet be as nothing. The perpetuated move- ment must be itself in the Hght, and the whole process of conjunction go on in the light, and thereby its product be put altogether in the light, or the whole movement of the agency must be in vain, and its results hidden from all pos- sibihty of a revelation. And here we must determine what Consciousness- is to subserve, in this process, toward the apprehension of the pure object; for this light of which we are here speaking is the very thing we mean by consciousness. This has cer- tainly been very variously described, doubtless very differ- ently conceived, and not seldom very much misconceived. If we wUl allow the conception to fashion itself under the analogies of an inward illumination rather than as an agent, or any faculty of an agent, or any act of such faculty, we shall come the nearest to the reality. When the spontane- ous agency of the intellect, as productive imagination, has conjoined the diversity in the primitive intuition in unity, and thereby constructed the pure form as its product, no further action is necessary to be supposed. The whole pro- cess of the construction, and the completed product, all stand out in the mind's own light, and such illumination will be available to reveal what has been done, and to show the product. The j^ure object is jjut within this light, and thus the mind possesses it in its own illumination, and this is the same as to say that the object stands in consciousness. Not as an act, but as a light ; not as a maker — for that is the province of the intellectual agency — but rather as a re- 108 THE SE^sTSE IN ITS IDEA, vealer : after such analogies shall vre doubtless best con- ceive of consciousness, and which may thus be termed " the light of all our seeing." In this conception, the difficidty of cognizing consciousness and determining precisely and affirmatively what it is, becomes very obvious. It may be competent to evince for itself that it is, while it is not com- petent that it should give any representation of itself deter- mining what it is. All the intellectual constructions as pro- ducts appear in consciousness, but we have no circumscrib- ing agency and light out of consciousness, by which con- sciousness may itself be made to appear. It is that inward illumination in which all that is therein constructed may appear, while itself is a Hght too pure and transparent to admit that it should be seen. And further, with this conception of consciousness, it is also manifest that it must possess unity. Were the con- joining operation to be at this point or instant in one light of a consciousness, and in a diverse point or mstant in an- other light of a consciousness, the former manifestation would be separate from the latter, and no perpetuated ap- pearance of a pure form could be effected. There would be a separate revealing for each moment of the constructing agency, and in this way only a flashing and extinction of light which would be a diverse consciousness for each point or instant of space and time, and in this conception, no con- tinuity of process nor perpetuity of appearance would be possible. The hght of consciousness in which the conjunc- tion is effected must be throughout in unity or neither the construction nor the apprehension can be completed. And liere, let us go back to our first d priori position in the primitive intuition. When we made abstraction of all UNITY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 109 that had been given in the sensibility, and thus left the real form of the phenomenon ; and then made abstraction of the real form as definite figure or period, and also took away all connection of the diverse points and instants, and thus left the primitive form of space and time in their hmitless and miconstructed diversity ; we did not extinguish any light in which either the phenomenon, or the real form, or the con- nected diversity had appeared. That light still remahis and gives us the hmitless diversity of pure space and time, which no abstraction can remove. It is now, it is true, wholly subjective, and exists in the primitive intuition only, and so far has significancy only for that mind within which the primitive intuition is ; but it is there as a light revealing a pure diversity, in which nothing is needed but new con- structions to be given, and real forms and phenomenal con- tent again appear. This light of the primitive intuition is essentially one in its own unity, for it has the limitless diver- sity of space and time beneath it, and all agency that may operate to conjoin, and all products that may be conjoined in pure space and time, must be illuminated and revealed thereby. That original faculty of the primitive intuition, which /.s^ when all that has been given to it has been taken from it — which must a priori have been in order to that ex- perience of the phenomenal which was abstracted from it — that, essentially, is in the subjective being, as conditional for the possibility of apprehending any thing which the pro- ductive imagination may construct, or the affection in the sensibihty may present, for phenomena. This one illumina- tion, which as primitive intuition gives pure space and time, as pure intuition gives all real forms constructed, and as empirical uituition gives all that is phenomenal, is the one 110 THK SENSE IN ITS IDEA. constant and perpetual light of consciousness revealing all that in any way is put within it. And this self-sameness of light, in which all that may be constructed must appear, we will term — the Unity of consciousness. 3. There must be more than the unity of the conjoining agency and the unity of consciousness. — Were the agency td be in unity, and the consciousness also in unity, yet if the agency and the consciousness were diverse the product con- structed by the intellect could not appear in the conscious- ness. The agency might conjoin, but it would be in dark- ness ; and the consciousness might stand as a light, but it would possess nothing that might appear. The intellect would act with its back to the mirror, the mirror would be incompetent to envisage for itself the products in the plane of its own surface. Both the agency constructing and the consciousness revealing must be in unity, and thus what the intellect constructs that also the consciousness reveals in the same subject. And this unity of intellectual action and conscious reveal ing is not only necessary as condition that the construction and the revelation may be given in one subject, but also necessary that there should be any intellectual construction at all. The primitive intuition of pure space and time must give all diversity in whicli the conjunction of real forms can be effected, and therefore, to the productive imagination, it were impossible that any pure object should be attaine except as constructed in that diversity which is in unity with itself, inasmuch as otherwise there can be no pure form witliin which it miffht consti'uct the real form. The same light of an intuition, which gives the diverse points and instants in the pure space and time, must also give the con- UNITY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. Ill structing agency through all its process of conjoining, and also give its product as completed pure object. And here, this one subject, in which is the unity of both constructing agency and revealmg consciousness, may be termed the self ; and thus this unity of agency and of envis- agement will be a unity in the self, and may be termed — the Unity of self -consciousness. In order to the jDossibllity of a conjunction in imity of that which is diverse in the primitive intuition of pure space and time, and thus in order to any possible apprehension of quantity, the unity of self-consciousness is necessary ; and in which is comprehended the tmity of the agency, the unity of the consciousness, and the unity of both in the same sub- ject as a self It might here be competent, perhaps, to push the a priori analysis of cory unction into another department higher up, and investigate what are the primitive types con- ditionuiir all constructions of reo;ular forms from the diver- sity in the primitive intuition, and what thus would give an a priori scheme^ as it were, for the regulation of the intel- lect, as j)i"oductive imagination, in constructing its diagrams as pure objects in space and time, and thereby the more effectually determine Avhat the imagination must be in its primitive sources ; but for all the purposes of attaining to the sense in its subjective idea in the pure intuition, the. diversity given in the points and instants of pure space and time as wholly unconjoiued and hmitless, and yet which may be conjoined and limited in all possible figures and periods, is in itself sufficient ; for it enables us to give an a ^wiori examination of the 'whole process of conjunction, both in what is conditional in the result itself as quantity, and in the constructing and revealing agency as self-consciousness 112 TUE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. It should further, as a caution, be here added, that not the mtellectual agency is self, nor the revealing conscious- ness is self, but their unity is in that which we here term, the self. We are not here in a condition to investigate any thing at all relatively to a common subject for the agency and the light in which the consti'ucted product appears. This belongs wholly to the next part in the faculty of the understanding. This much only is it here necessary to determine, that for the possibility of all conjunction as giv- ing a quantity in space and time, the agency conjoining and the consciousness revealing must stand together in unity, and which we term the unity of 5e(/^-consciousness, though we do not here determine any thing about this self, as com- mon subject for the imagination and the intuition, the con- structing agency and the envisaging consciousness. From the progress we havq now made, and the position to which we have here attained, in the rational cognition of self-consciousness, it is competent to answer several queries, and settle some important doubtful matters, in reference to the process of perception ; and which, except for such an a priori investigation, must hereafter be as they have here- tofore been, inexplicable mysteries. We will here indicate the questions and their solution in a cursory manner. Thus, it is quite explicable why the constructed product should become an object. — The constructing agency has put limits, and thus given definite outline, to what is now a pre- cise quantity in pure space and time, and thus space and time are no longer void, unconjoined, and limitless, but possess a completed form as figure pr period, and this directly within the intuition as having its unity in a self. This definite form is thus thrown face to face, directly rXlTT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 11?: before tlie self in its intuition, and is thus an object to the apprehension (obvius jaciens). The object, as ^:>i<>t, is in the imagination only, and thus wholly subjective and that which seems / but still a real form for any possible content that might be given in the sensibility, and when filled by such content as its matter, becomes phenomenon as per- ceived object, and which then appears. And further, it may be manifest how this is my object. The constructing agency and the light in which it is revealed have their unity in ray self, and hence both the conjunction and the envisaging are mine ; and as in this process the product is given and apprehended as object, it becomes both an object to me inasmuch as it is thrown before me, and m,y object inasmuch as it is my construction and my presenta- tion. I myself can have no pure object Avhich I do not by my productive imagination construct, and which also I do -lot construct in my consciousness ; and both because I my- self construct, and I myself envisage, it becomes that I ray- self have a pure object. It is also manifest why pure objects in space and time must be wholly incommunicable. — The primitive intuition is wholly subjective; the conjoining and the envisaging are both also Avholly suljjective ; and thus the pure object is object only in my subject. The line T draw, the circle or other figure I describe, the period 'vthich I limit, become pure oljjects only to me, and can not themselves be communi- cated to any other subject. The communication can only be by symbols, and inducing that the agency and Ught in unity in a diverse self should construct and reveal similar pure objects, in his subjective apprehension. The possibility of the communing in my pure objects by another subject 114 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. would demand that this diverse subject should be competent to envisage the seJf in which is my imagination and my con- sciousness united ; and then, such other self could " search my heart, and try my reins." As if two mirrors were self conscious, they could only subjectively envisage without the possibility of communication among themselves, but the self which might envisage them, could well see all that was in them. We may further learn why the self can not become object to itself. — Only that which may be constructed in the primi- tive intuition of pure space and time can become object. The agency as process of conjoining may go on within the primitive intuition, and the pure product as quantity con- structed may also stand out in the consciousness ; but the self in which the conjoining agency and revealing conscious- ness have their unity must of course lie back of the primi- tive intuition, and can not be brought by any construction within any of the conjunctions that its diverse points and instants may receive. The primitive forms of space and time are conditional for all real forms that may be con- structed within them, and this can be only of figure and period, but the self can not be subjected to such conditions, and can not therefore become olyect. That the self should become object would demand that we should see through, and not merely that which is in, the envisaging mirror. It may also be disclosed, here, how we may come to the conviction tJict a self is, Avhile we can not yet determine at all ichat the self is. — What the self is we can not licre at all determine, inasmuch as all the intellectual agency which we have yet attained is simply that of conjoining in unity and constructing the forms for phenomena, while the self can not UNITY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 115 be phenomenon nor be constructed in the shapes of space or the successions of time. But the conviction that a self is originates fairly in this that the unity of constructing agency and revealing con- sciousness is conditional for all possible pure objects. Our agency, as intellectual, must be in perpetuated unity ; our revealings in consciousness, must be in a unity of conscious- ness ; and both intellect and consciousness must be in unity; and thus a higher subject as self must be, though we are not yet prepared to say any thing about it, for a merely con- joining agency can do nothing with it. Finally, it may be explained in what way ice awake in self-consciousness. — The spontaneous agency (no matter here whether we include the content in the sensibility or not for our present purpose as an example) constructs its pro- duct in space and time, and this becomes an object in con- sciousness. This produced object is distinct from the con- structing agency (and more especially so when the matter m the sensibility is given), and both it and the process of its construction are in the immediate intuition, and thus in the light of consciousness they are diverse from each other. The agency and the consciousness are referred in their unity to one self, which is the unity of self-conscious- ness, but the object can not be so referred ; that is other than self, a not-self ,' and this discrimination between what is from self and what is from not-self is the fiidinff of my- self In proportion as such discrimination is absent, in infancy, in syncope, delirium, somnambulism, or high men- tal excitement and j^assionafe absorption, the man has lost himself; is beside himself; not self-conscious. We have now attained the Idea of the Sense in the 2'>ure 116 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA.. Intuition. It is hence quite competent to state how a pure sense may be which may give pure objects in a conscious- ness. A primitive uituition must have pure space and time in its Hmitless diversity, as primitive form for all possible real form which may be given in space and time. An intellec- tual agency, as productive hnagination, must construct these real forms by conjoining the diverse in pure space and time; the process to which result must possess the three elements of a unity ^ inducing a plurality^ and which is completed ia a totality y thus giving a definite quantity as product. But in order to the possibihty for- such conjoining agency there must be the unity of the agency, the unity of the conscious- ness, and the unity of both agency and consciousness in the same self, and which is the unity of self -consciousness. In this way a pure object in space and time may be determined as my object. The whole may be concisely expressed in the following a priori formula, viz. : All possible pure object must be conjoined by the intellect in the prhnitive intuition^ under the unity of self-consciousness. All this is an idea of the faculty of the sense as wholly pure from all content in the sensibility, and thus wholly subjective ; and the pure objects are given iucommunicably to any other subject than that in which is the agency and the consciousness. It remains, in order to the completed idea of the sense, that we attain the Idea in the empirical Intuition^ which will now introduce the Second Division. SECOND DIVISION. THE IDEA IN THE EMPIRICAL INTUITION, SECTION I. THE ATTAINMENT OF AN A PRIORI POSITION THROUGH A PROLEPSIS. All intuition is an immediate beholding. In the prinii' live intuition we immediately behold space and time as pure diversity. In t\iQ pure intuition we immediately behold any definite figures or periods constructed in pure sj^ace and time. When a content in the sensibility gives the matter for some phenomenon as quality, and this is brought di- rectly within the light of consciousness, this also we imme- diately behold ; but inasmuch as this is empirical and not pure object ; so the distinction is made for it by calling it empirical intuition. In all perception of objects in the sense this content in the sensibility is given, and as the qual- ity of the phenomenon, its a priori investigation is as neces- sary to a complete idea of the sense as the process of its construction mto form. This,' therefore, is the design of the present Division, to attain the subjective Idea of the Sense in the empirical Intuition. 118 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. The first requisition is that we attain a determinate tran- scendental position from which an a priori exammation may be had, and in which all our conclusions shall carry with them the demonstrations of universaUty and necessity. "We should wholly fail of attaining such a position through a process of abstraction, as before for the primitive intuition of space and time. An abstraction of all content from the sensibility would be a void of all matter for phenomena, and thus the nihility of all empirical intuition. An empty or- ganism of sense gives no condition for any intellectual ope- ration, as does the pure diversity of space and time in the pi'imitive intuition for the construction of pure figure and period. We are then forced to some other method of at- taining a position back of all experience, from whence to attain those conditional prhiciples which make the experi- ence of perceived phenomena possible. That there should be some content in the sensibility in order to sensation, and thus a condition given for empirical intuition, is at once seen to be a universal necessity. An aaticipation of such content in general, as condition for any and all perception of phenomena, and in the conception of which an occasion may be given for determining what intellectual operation is necessary universally for bringing such anticipated content under an empirical intuition, will give to us our determuied a priori position. Such a gen- eral anticipation of content in the sensibility, as conditional for all possible empirical intuition, will put us at once above all experience in the sense, and give to us an occasion for investigating the w^hole ground of possibility for bringing such content within the light of consciousness and thereby making it to be a perceived definite phenomenon. We A PKIORI. POSITION BY A PROLEPSIS. 119 shall ill tills be restricted to no partial orgauism of the sen- sibility, but whether there be five or fifty sources of or- ganic sensation, and each of these organs be coni[)etent to receive cuntcnt of a thousand- fold variety, stUl the same conditional principles for bringing any and all under an em- pirical intuition must be universally necessary. We start from this general anticiijation of content, and in it deter- mine what is universally necessary that it may be possible to appear as phenomenon in consciousness, and in this we attain an a priori subjective idea of the entire process of empirical mtuition. The position is attained not by an abstraction but by an antlcijMtlon. Such an anticipation was by the old Greek philosophers termed a Prolepsis (Trp6/>i7]ipig), and we here use it as inckisive of mere content in general for all possible phenomena. It will be necessary to determine how it is possible to bruig this content in general into qualities distinct one from another, and also how to order this distinct quality into deji- nite forms, so that one phenomenon may be both distinct in quality from all others, and definite in its own form, as appearing in the consciousness. We shall thus have the conditions of two separate processes of an intellectual agency to investigate, viz., that of distinguishing the con- tent, and that of constructing the distinguished quality into a definite form. We shall in tliis have the subjective Idea of all perception of phenomena, both as distinct in quality and definite in form ; and this is inclusive of the entire intel- lectual operation which is conditional for all possibility of complete empirical intuition, or, as the same thing, clear perception of phenomena in the sense. The idea of thi operation of CON JVNcnoy! has already been attained 'in the 120 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. bringing of pure space and time into definite figure and period, and it remains, here, that we investigate the primi- tive elements of the operation of distinction ; and then that we show how the primitive elements of conjunction, alr( ady attained in pure intuition, apply also to empu'ieal intuii.ion, or the perceiving of phenomena. SECTION II. THE PRI^SnTIVE ELEMENTS OF ALL POSSIBLE ANTICIPATION OF APPEARANCE IN THE SENSE. Sensibility is the capacity of bemg affected by the pres- ence of some content which is from somewhere given to it. The affection is a sensation, and answers to the content by which it has been induced. It may thus be manifold in its diversity according to the diversity in aU possible content which may affect the sensibility. As many diverse organs as may be given for the functions of the sense, so great must be the possible diversity of the kinds of content that may be received ; and as diverse as the im^yressions given induc- ing in each organ its diversity of affection, so much may be the possible diversity of the varieties of content that may be received. Thus, the eye as organ, may receive one kind of content, and the ear as diverse organ another kind, etc., and tlius the kinds be diversified through all possible organs. The eye again may receive its content of all possible diver- sities, inducing all possible diversity in its sensation, and the ear and all other possible organs in the same manner, and thus there may be a diversity of varieties in the sensation PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF DISTIXCTION. 121 through all possible content. The diverse organs wUl give diverse kinds, and the diverse affections in the same organ, and this through all possible organs, will give the diverse varieties possible. AU possible diversity of sensation may thus be given in an anticipation of aU possible content in the sense. The prolepsis in the sense is that of a imiversal anticipa- tion of content in all possible kinds and varieties ; inclusive not only of that which conditions our human perception, but of all possible perception of phenomena in any sense. And of this xmiversal prolepsis of content we now deter- mine that it may have all possible diversity of kind and variety, and thus be wholly undiscriminated and undistin- guished. The sensibility may give aU possible diversity of content in all the kinds and varieties of sensation, but the sensation completed is ail that the functions of the organic sensibiUty can accomplish. The sensibihty distinguishes nothing, but only gives content in its diversity which must be distinguished by an intellectual agency. Were there no other functions than those in the sensibUitv, nothmsj could be determined in its own distinct appearance, but aU must remain in the chaotic confusion of undiscriminated diverse sensation. An intellectual agency must first brood over the chaos, or no one kind or variety can come out in its distinct- ness in the consciousness. An agency is demanded which may distinguish amid the kinds and varieties in the sensation. The intellectual agency in distinguishing must perform a different work from that already examined in constructing, and tliis process of distinguishing needs now to be as cai'e- ftilly investigated as has before been effected for tlie process t)f constructing definite forms in pure space and time. In 6 122 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. construction, the work performed was that of a conjoining in ixnity ; in distinction, the worlc performed is a discrimin- ating in an individuahty. The one attains forms in conjunc- tion, the other attains appearances in distinction ; one pro- duces its object by collecting the diversity into it, the other finds its object by excludmg all diversity from it. Thi? Operation of Distinction is that which we now proceed to examine, that we may attain all the primitive elements which must be fomid within it. 1. Om- universal anticipation is inclusive of all possible content in a sensibility, whether of an outer or an inner sense, and of all possible kinds and varieties ; and as thus wholly undiscriminated, it demands that what is to be a precise appearance in the consciousness, should be com. pletely distinguished in its sensation from all others. Con- tent must first be given to the sensibility, and by discrimin- ating and excluding all diversity from it, that content is found in its own distinct phenomenal quaUty in the con- sciousness. A void sensibility can ofi'er nothing to be dis- tinguished, and the sensibility has itself no function for pro- ducing content within itself, and thus from somewhere other than itself must the content come. The intellectual agency as distinguishing operation has first to be supplied with a sensation, which must be induced by some content afiecting the sensibility ; and the apprehending of this involves a dis- criminating it from non-sensation, and thiis a determining that the sensibility is not void. The distinction here is between content and a void, sensation and non-sensation ; and this intellectual taking up of some content is henceforth in the process an exclusion of all non-content from the apprehending agency, and "the determination that some of PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF DISTINCTION. 123 all possible diversity of sensation appears in the conscious- ness. There is something as opposed to notliing which appears, and in this distinction of appearance from non- appearance in the consciousness is first attamed the concep- tion of a phenomenal reality. Some matter now stands ii the consciousness, which has been found by the agency tha discriminates sensation from non-sensation ; and this is th; first element in the operation of distinction, viz.. Reality. 2. It must be manifest that a completed work of dis tinction is not given in this, that some content as opjjosed to non-sensation appears. It may be any one of all possible realities in appearance, and in order to its precise determin- ation in the consciousness, it must be competent to deny of this that which may be in all other appearances beside this. That it is real appearance is a determined distinction from non-appearance only, and it needs further to be determined as distinction from all other possible appearances. The intellectual agency must, therefore, proceed in its distin- guishing work, and exclude from this appearance all other possible appearances, and thus affirm for it the absence of aU other reality than that which is its own. To effect such further distinction, ah other diversity must be cut off from this reality, and stand over against this as other than, and the contrary of, this. All other realities excluded from this determines their distinction from this, and thereby particu- larizes this in the discrimination of all others apart from this. This denying of that which is in any other possible reality to be in this present apprehended I'eality excludes all other reality, and makes this a discriminated particular. "We have, therefore, in this further j^rocess of distinction, 124 THE SEXSE IN ITS IDEA. added to the element of reality, this second element of Par- ticularity. 3. That we have distinguished the real fi'om the non- real, and also the particular from the universal, has not yet completed the work of distinction. We may be able to affirm of any real appearance that it is not any other appear- ance, and this will be but negative determination. To say of some appearance, this is not color, nor sound, nor taste, etc., and in reference to variety, this is not redness, nor greenness, nor whiteness, etc., and so also of the intenaal phenomena, tliis is not thought, nor volition, nor grief, nor joy, etc., and to carry this discrimination so far as to deny all other and thus particularize this, would still only be to affirm what it is not. It discriminates and thus determines negatively, but finds nothing positively. It is preparatory to a completed distinction, but is not the consummation of the work. The distinguishing agency must now advance to an individualizing of this particular reality in its own appearance. It must affirm more tlian what it is not, even what it is ; more than what is excluded from it, even that which is included in it. Tliat must positively be found in it which is not in any other reality, and thus it must separate itself positively, and not merely negatively from all reality but itself, that it may aj)pear in consciousness havmg its own peculiar phenomenal variety. This will add to tlie ele- ments of reality anpearance and reality ; on the other is a precisely disci'iminated appearance and reality ; and this, it is manifest, may vary in amount from the least possible degree of that reality which can appear, up to the highest possible which can be given in an appearance. This difference of degree possible is a diver- sity in the anticipation, and includes all possible diversity of that reality ; and as it is a diversity throughout in the same reality, it has similarity and not contrariety. It is thus a homogeneous diversity. And inasmuch as the amount is determined from the given sensation as degree of affec- tion in the sensibility, it is a homogeneous diversity which should be characterized by a term expressive of its genesis. The amount of the pressure as heaviness, or of the color as brightness, is as the intensity of affection in the sensibility ; the intensity of the sensation giving the amount in appear- ance, and thus having a homogeneous diversity fi'om the point of no sensation up to the given sensation. We may, then, as characteristic of this homogeneous diversity, term it a diversity as Intensive. 2. Though as reality, the quality may have a homogene- ous diversity only as intensive, and thus through all its amount, yet in another point of view a homogeneous diver- sity is in another manner given. The quality, as that of an external sense may occupy more or less of space. The con- tent given in sensation thus considered stands in space as the homogeneous through all the place it occupies, and it becomes tiius a diversity in the empirical intuition precisely as pure space is a diversity in the primitive intuition. The reality is homogeneous in the same place that the pure sjjace is homogeneous, and thus has a diversity of itself in every A PRIORI DIVERSITY IN QUALITY. 131 point of space in that place. Quality, thus, may be homo- geneously diverse in place; and as characteristic of this specific diversity, as it fills more or less extended place, we will term it diversity as Extensive. 3. Quality may have diversity intensive and extensive, not only, but also in another manner there may be homo- geneity through a diversity. The reality as appearance is given during the continuance of the sensation. So long as the content in the sensibility afiects this sensibility in the same manner, the sensation is similar and homogeneous throughout, and thus the homogeneous reality occupies the same succession of instants in pure time for the empirical intuition, that the pure period does in the pure intuition. As the instants in the pure period are homogeneous and diverse, so the reahty occupying this period is throughout homogeneous, and in each instant diverse. The reality is homogeneous in the same period that the pure time is homo- geneous, and thus has a diversity of itself in every instant of the time it fills. Quality may thus be homogeneously diverse in time ; and as descriptive of this manner of homo- geneous diversity we may term it the Protensive. Now an intellectual agency must distinguish the hetero- geneous, and conjoi)i the homogeneous diversity. And this conjunction of the homogeneous will give form to that matter, which has been distinguished in the heterogeneo^is diversity. 132 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. SECTION lY. THE COXSTETJCITON" OF THE HOMOGEXEOUS DITERSITT OF ALL POSSIBLE QUALITY LNTO FOEiT. There are two main questions which may be asked con- cerning any anticipated content in sensation, and which must be answered as conditional for all distinct and definite appearance in consciousness. The first is — WTiat is the quahty ? The process for arriving at an answer to this, has ah'eady been indicated. It must be through the oper- ation of Distinction. The intellect as discriminatinor aarent must take up the sensation and determine it in its reahty, particularity, and peculiarity ; and such agency places it in its o^vn precise distinctness of quaUty immediately in the Ught of consciousness, and capacitates us to say directly what it is. Thus far it is properly obser\'ation, and this determining of quality in its distinctness is all that observa- tion can accomplish. A second question is — Hoio mitch is the quality ? The process to the attainment of an answer here is by a difierent operation than that of distinction altogether. The quality is contemplated as having quantity, and the intellectual agency is to be employed in determming how much quantity. And now, in our first Division in this Chaptex, we attained the a priori process for the production of all pure quantity through a conjunction in unity, the application of which to the distinct quaUty must be our only method for detei-min- ing how much it is. All quantity has its quality, and all qualit)- has a quantity. The only quality which any quantity CONJUNCTION OF QUALITY INTO FORM. 1^3 may have is, that it is extended ; and, as all extension is determined only by a conjoining agency, so both the quan- tity and its quality are given in the same constructing oper- ation. A conjoining act gives both a quantity and also that the quantity has extension. There is, therefore, in the deter- mination of quantity no ojDeration of distinction demanded, for its precise quality is given in giving itself There is nothing to be discriminated in extension itself as a quality, but only that it be determined whether the extension be pure or empirical. But not thus with the quality. The agency which dis- crimmates this, and thus gives it precisely and distinctly in the consciousness, has not accomplished the whole work demanded. The operation of distinction has given quality only, and quality has quantity which no distinguishing agency can detennine. In addition to the operation of dis- tinction there must also be the operation of conjunction. "While, therefore, we could finish our work in the construe^ tion of quantity by one operation of conjunction, in relation to quahty we must apply both operations. To find the pre- cise quality, what it is, we must distinguish ; and then, to find how much it is, we must conjoin. The distinguishing process has been already given ; we have here to apply the conjoining process. This will demand a constructing pro- cess in a three-fold order of operation, inasmuch as the homogeneous diversity to be constructed is three-fold. The question, Hoav much is the quality ? may mean. How much as Intensive, as Extensive, or as Protensivef i. e., how much in the sensation ? how much in space ? and how much in time ? Only in the answers to these three inquiries, do we exhaust the quantity which is to be found in all quality. 134 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. The operation in distinction we have said to be Observation ^ we shall now find the operation in conjunction to be Atten- Hon. Attention not only extends the intellect to the con- tent in sensation, but includes the operation then performed in constructing it, and which puts the form of the content in clear consciousness. The applying of the intellect to the content in sensation may be by an act of the will, or it may be spontaneous, as must have been the first agency in child- hood, and as often is in adult life. But the attending act {ad tendo) is the intellect stretching or extending over^ and thus circumscribing or constructing the content in its com- plete form; and this is none other than the operation of conjimctiou in unity. In pure space and time the definite form as quantity is to be constructed by an intellectual agency in its sponta- neity, moving over the diversity in its manifoldness and con- joming it in unity. The same work must also be efiected for the content in sensation through its three-fold diversity as intensive, extensive, and protensive. The difference is only in this, that the pure diagrams in space and time must be constructed according to some scheme in the productive imagination ; but the empirical forms must be constructed according to the content as given in the sensation ; the work of construction is precisely the same in both — the conjunc- tion of the diversity in a unity ^ plurality y and totality — and thereby giving completeness to the quantity of the qual' ity already distinguished. The act of observation is thus to give distinctness to quality ; and the act of attention is to g[\e defniteness to quantity: in observing, we distinguish it from all other quality; in attending, we limit it in its own quantity : in the first, we get the distinct quality of the CONJUNCTION OF QUALITY INTO FOKM.135 phenomenon ; in the last we get the definite form of the phenomenon. We will now at once give the latter process in its three-fold application to the homogeneous diversity. 1. The diversity as intensive is given wholly within the sensibility, and is the manifoldness of degree from no sensa- tion upward to the intensity of any given sensation. In order to attain the form of the quality as to how much in amount, this diversity in the sensation must be conjoined in unity into one total quantity. The intellect, as construct- ing agency, must commence from zero in the sensation, and conjoin the diverse degrees of intensity through all their multiplicity up to and terminating in the degree that Umits the intensity of the given sensation, and such completed product is the quantity, or form in mtensity, of that given quality. Such construction, as attending agency, brings the quantity of the intensity into immediate consciousness, and we i>erceive how much in amount the quahty is. Thus, I have the sensation of a pressure^ and by obser- vation I distinguish the sensation a* heaviness. By atten- tion I go over and conjoin the diversity from no heaviness up to the intensity of pressure as given in sensation, and I perceive there is so much weight. So also, I have a sensation which in distinction I ob- serve to be sound, and in further discrimination I observe that there is a great variety of sounds, and this is the ut- most which any distinguishing agency can here accomplish. But I attend to these various sounds, and thus construct their quantity, and I at once perceive their various degrees of intensity, and can now discriminate by other faculties, which need not here be noticed, what is going on in these 136 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. sounds and binding them in unison as a definite liarmoay into their tune. So, with an anticipated content in the organ of vision inducing sensation, I discriminate and observe light ; and at different times distinguish the peculiarities of sunlight from moonshine. Here is the comjjletion of what appears from observation. But I attend in a constructing agency and conjoin the degrees of intensity in the sunlight, and again in the moon-light, and I thus perceive hov^ much light in both sejjarately, and can now determine that it requires so many thousand times the intensity of the moonlight to equal the intensity of the sunhght. Thus of any inward sensation ; I distinguish, and ob- serve myself to be grieved ; I construct the degrees of in- tensity in attention, and determine the amount of my grief. Thus in all diversity as intensive, the operation of dis- tinction can give only the quality in its peculiarity ; the ope- ration of conjunction must be conditional for bringing the amount of the quality into consciousness. Except as this conjoining agency goes through the entire diversity of the sensation, it is impossible that the quantity of the quality should be perceived. 2. The diversity as extensive is the manifoldness of the points in the content of sensation, as occupj-ing so much space. The precise quality having been discriminated, the question is, not how much as intensive, but how great as extensive ? The matter ha^ang been determined in distinct observation, the form must be determined hi definite atten tion. A conjoining agency must pass over these diverse points and bi-ing them in unity in the same manner as be- fore shown in pure space, with this difference only, that in CONJUNCTION OF QUALITY INTO FOKM. 13"/ pure space the constructing agency is guided in its work by some scheme in the imagination, but in the anticipated con- tent it must be conditioned by the sensation. This con- struction completed, determines the form of tlie quality as figure in space. Thus I anticipate a given sensation in a resistance to touch, which as precisely distinguished I term the quality of solidity. "Without determining the form as intensity, i. e., how hard it is ; I only seek the form as extension, how large it is. I must pass my organ of touch over the matter and bring it successively in the sensation, and the attending agency must construct the whole by joining the diverse points in unity and thereby give definite limits to this sohd- ity ; and then affirm the quality to be of such a figure, and to fill so much of space. The matter has thus a definite form, as so great extension. So again, with an anticipated content in the eye, as organ of the sensibility, which in distinguishing I term color ; and in further observation I attain the varieties of the color, say now specifically green and white. I must now ap})ly a con- structing agency, and in attention I conjoin the greenness into figure, and determine the magnitude and outlines of a verdant court-yard ; and I conjoin also the whiteness, and determine the size and proportions of the dwelling-house, and its position relatively to the outlines of the yard in which it stands. I have thus brought the matter, as quality in sensation, into definite form. Thus with all quality that can have extension. Distinc- tion gives the quality, conjunction determines how great a space it occupies ; nor can the form as extensive otherwise be determined. Without observation the consciousness 138 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. would be " void," and without attention the quality in con- sciousness would be " without form." Sensation may be perfected, but it is utter chaos except as an intelligent spirit, in its distinguishing and conjoining agency, broods over it. 3. The diversity as protensive is in the manifoldness of the successive instants through which the appearance as quality is prolonged. Of any distinct quality, we may enquire, not merely, how much ? as intensive ; nor how great ? as extensive ; but also, how long ? as protensive it endures. And for the determination of this, the same pro- cess of conjunction in an attending agency is necessary as in the construction of period in pure time, except that the con- joinmg agency is conditioned to the sensation in its begin- ning and determination, and not to any scheme of the imagi- nation. Thus an anticipated sensation in the ear, as organ of the sensibility, may be taken and distinguished as sound. I do not now enquire how loud, nor how distant it may be, but only how long does it continue ? I attend to the passing affection of my inner state, and conjoin the instants from the beginning to the termination, or to any given instant in the prolongation of the sensation, and thus determine the period which the sound occupies ; and thereby affirm that it has endured so long. And in the same way, for the form of all jiossible quality for duration in time ; my attending agency must conjoin the diversity, and thereby construct the definite period. And now, in these three diversities, as the manifoldness of degree, of extent, and of duration, all possible quantity which any qtiality may possess may be constructed, and thus all possible form be determined for all matter. Inten- CONJUNCTIOX OF QUALITY IX TO FOE 31. 139 sity in the sensibility, extension in space, and prolongation in tune include all possible mensurations of quantity. If we would term motion and force to be qualities, their determin- ation will be included in the above methods of conjoining in unity ; for the motion must be measured as so much exten- sion occupying so much time in passing, and the force as so much intensity of resistance or so much motion produced ; all of which have their diversities as above, and may as above be all conjoined and made to appear in an attending agency. There can be no other possible quantities in any quality, and the form as giving definiteness to the matter can not be determined in any other possible manner. We may thus give the a priori condition for constructing all possible quality into form, viz. : that the intellect in atten- tion must conjoin the diversity as conditioned by the sensa- tion, — whether as intensive, extensive, or protensive — in unity, plurality, and totality. The concise form of express- ing it is — that the attention must produce the form in aU possible quality. There are a few a priori cognitions involved in what has been here attained, which it may be of importance to notice in this place. 1 . Inasmuch as all constructions of form must take place singly, and thus no two forms can be in process of construc- tion together, it follows that an accurate and exact compar- ative mensuration of quantity can not be effected in atten- tion simply. In pure space I may construct two cu-cles, and in sensation I may have the matter for two rmgs which I construct into form, but I can not exactly compare the two constructing operations together in either case, and say that the two circles or the two rings are of precisely the same 140 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. quantity. In the above cases I may come near to exactness^ though precisely how near I can not determine, for I have no capabiUty of constructing the diversity which their dif- ference in quantity contains. In many other cases, the degrees of exactness may be necessarily much wider apart, especially when the contents must be given in dilFerent senses, or in the same organ at different times. Thus with the precise difference in the extension of a quantity as seen and as in the touch, or of the degrees of heat or of weight at two different experiences, their comparative quantity must be still less accurately given in attention simply. If I know that the circles, as above, have been constructed by the circumvolution of two lines of the same extent, the judgment at once decides that they must be equal ; but a difficulty would here again occur, how shall any attending agency simj^ly be competent to determine the exact equality of the two lines ? But, if now I may bring the forms in both cases to one common standard, I may then determine their equality, or the difference between them exactly. Thus if I may apply the same material line as diameter to the two rings successively, or the same index to the two experi- ences of heat ; their comparison in this common application may determine their equality, or amount of inequality. We may thus a ^^^'iori see the necessity for em2:)irical standards of mensuration, and the principles on which we must move to attain them. Their exactness can be made an approxim- ation to tlie perfection of an intuition, by so much as the mechanical execution and practical application of the com- mon measure can be perfect. It is easy to see how the experiment, if not mtuitively perfect, may yet be iar more nearly exact than any construction in attention simply. CONJUNCTION OF QUALITY INTO FORM. 141 Thus for the various degrees of mtensity in diiFerent senses organically, we have photometers, thermometers, barome- ters, balances, etc. ; and for extension in space, rods or chains to determine length, with gallons, bushels and gaug- ing rods to determine capacity ; and for duration in time the various chronometers, as dials, hour-glasses, clocks, watches, etc. In no one of these diversities in quantity can any mensuration be absolute, but only as a reference com- parative mth some common standard. 2. It is a priori manifest that all quantity may be divisi- ble beyond any possible experience, both in amount, extent, and duration. The intensity may be any amount of all pos- sible degrees at any place and in any time. A given amount of light, or of heat, may thus be diminished in the same place to any assignable degree, and yet the space in extent be still a plenum ; nor can this be so far carried in any experiment, that it may not be conceived as yet possible to go further in the exhaustion, without at all inducing a vacuum in any portion of the space. And as in amount, so also in extent ; the diversity in the quality is as the diver- sity in space, and hence no given diminution may be, which is not also capable of a further diminution. And the same again in duration ; the diversity in the duration of the quality is as the diversity in time, and hence no given con- traction of a period can be, wliich may not also be still fur- ther contracted. The process of divisibility, thus, in all quantity, is truly infinite. It can not be cairied out to a limit which has not yet a hmit beyond. 3. While the heterogeneous diversity may come within the operation of distinction, it is only the homogeneous diversity that may come within the operation of conjunc 142 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. tion. The heterosreneous in Jcind must be a content for the sensibiUty in different organs, and the constructing agency can not thus conjoin the diverse kinds in unity. A sound and an odor can not be conjoined in unity so as to give a total, nor either of these with a color. And the heterogene- ous in variety must be at different times or in different places in the same organ, and therefore incompetent to be conjoined in unity. A distinct bitter and sweet taste, frag- rant and fetid odor, or a red and blue color, can not be con- joined in unity. The place or period which both occupy may be conjoined, or there may be a blending of the hetero- geneous, as in the rainbow ; and the whole, as undistin- guished quality, constructed into form. So also, and for similar reasons, the dififerent orders of homogeneous diver- sity can not be constructed in unity. The degrees of inten- sity may not be conjoined in one form with the points in space, nor with the instants in time; though the same quality may separately admit of a conjunction, in all the orders of homogeneous diversity. A redness or a hardness may have degrees of intensity, figure in extension, and dur- ation in time ; but all these must be constructed in separate acts of attention. OTHBR EEPRESENTATIONS OF THE SENSE. 143 SECTION V. THE CONCLUSIVE DETERMINATION OF THE SENSE IN ITS SUBJECTIVE IDEA. From an a priori position we have now passed in review the whole field of the sense in its ideal possibility. The operation of Conjunction for the construction of pure figure and period in space and time has been completely expounded, and all definite forms which may occupy space and time determined as possible. Other forms for phenom- ena, than such as may be constructed in space and time, can not be ; nor can these be constructed otherwise than through the process of conjunction in unity, plurality, and totality. By an a 2^^'iori anticipation of content in general for the sensibility, the operation of Distinction, for the pre- cise quality of any phenomenon which can be given through sensation, has also been fully exposed, and thereby the pos- sibility of all distinct qualities determined. There can not be other content for phenomena than that given in sensation, and this can not otherwise be discriminated than through the process of distinction in reality, particularity, and pecu- liarity. By attaining all the a priori orders of a homogene- ous diversity of which quality is capable, as the intensive, the extensive, and the protensive, and the ojieration of con- junction in its applicability to them all, we have, moreover, determined the possibility of ordering sensation in all the forms which the matter for phenomena may assume. Quality can have no forms but those of quantity, and these can be only of amount, extent, and duration ; nor can these be 144 THE SENSE IN ITS IDEA. Otherwise constructed than through the process of conjimo- tion, as before determmed in the pure intuition. In these several a priori conclusions is involved the complete idea of all perception of phenomena in its possi- bility. An empirical intuition is thus possible. Phenomena may be given, as aj^pearance distinct and definite in con- sciousness, in this manner. A Faculty of Sense may so be, and perceive objects. And if objects are given in space and time, as appearance in consciousness, it must be through this same process now d ^j/Yori determined. The compre- hensive ^fo•r;?^^ove another, nor in point of fact do we perceive the period of the quality in one organ, more readily nor more perfectly than in another. We induce also the facts connected with the perception of Intensity in sensation. And here, again, manifestly the facts are that I can perceive degrees in the amount of the quaUty, as well when given in one organ of the sense as in another. The organ of vision or of touch has capacity for an intellectual constructing of figure in space, when all other organs are destitute of all that can capacitate for such an operation ; but this does not give capacity for an intellec- 170 THVSENSEINITSLAW. tual construction of the degree in intensity, or amount, for the sensation in the eye or the touch any more readily or completely than for the sensation in the smell or the taste. I can as well perceive how much sweet or hitter there is in intensity, as I can how much redness, or hardness there is. And this fact manifestly comes within our hypothesis, inas- much as all construction of intensity, or amount, must be of one measure in all quality, simply as a conjunction of degrees from void sensation up to the given intensity, and this as truly for quality in taste as for quality in \'ision. One organ has no prerogative over another, but each equally gives its content over to the attending agency, that the limits of its amount may be constructed for, and thus be brought within, the light of consciousness. Here, then, we have a very broad field of most interest- ing facts, all held in complete colligation by our ideal hypothesis. In all operations of conjunction the form is given in perception precisely proportioned to the capacity of the organ for giving the diverse sensation to the mtellect that it may be so conjoined in unity. The organs of vision and touch give figure in space, anil they alone, inasmiich as no other organ gives the diverse in extension as content in the sensation. But all organs alike give phenomena in the forms of time and amount, because they all alike have the diverse instants of duration, and diverse degrees of inten- sity, in their own sensation as content, and which, in each, the intellect may alike construct within their respective limits. The ideal hypothesis and the actual law in all these facts are manifestly correlatives. The original conforma- tion of onv whole organization of the sense must have had its regulation in such an idea as its archetype. And in this COLLIGATION OF FACTS. 177 we may see the beauty and the truth of Plato's representa- tions, so little understood, so often by an emjjirieal perver sion misunderstood and then derided as a A'isionrcry fancy, viz., that the idea in the absolute reason — the Divine Idea — has been breathed into shapeless matter, and thus that which had otherwise been wholly amorphous and formless has put on order and beauty ; and this idea, as if it were an infused soul, has given vitality and unity. With all the wonderful elements in the organs of the sense, Iioav mani- festly as .inert and useless to all the ends of perception as the dust into which they ultimately crumble must they have been, had not their Almighty Maker put this original idea into them, as their upholding and ^nforraing law of combi- nation and functional operation. There is still another division, including many interesting facts, which it is important should be brought within the induction w^hich we are now making, and wliich may be given as — 3. Deceptive appearances. — There are many facts con- nected Avith deceptive appearances in the sense, and delu- sive phenomena as perceived, which are held in colligation by this same ideal hypothesis, and which must therefore have their actual law as its correlative, and which we will now proceed to bring within our induction. In this division the facts are rather connected -sWth the operation of conjoin- ing into form, than distinguishing the content, and yet so far as they have any connection with the quality perceived, they will confirm the conditions of the operation of distinc- tion for all perception of distinct qualities. There is, in these facts, an operation of conjunction effected, and thus form appears ; but because the operation has been other 8* 178 THESENSEINITSLAW. than the conditions of the content demanded, the form de- ceptively appears, and thus the perception is partially or Avholly an illusion. The facts are not of obscure, but of false perceptions. A distorted medium, or a partial sensOr tion, may condition the construction of the form that it shall be quite a false appearance. The ring of Saturn may ap- pear as two handles upon the opposite sides of the planet, from the conditions in which the content is given in the sen- sibility. The agency in attention may thus be led astray by some imperfection in the condition of the sensation. Thus, when in vision the content is received through a dense fog, or perhaps in the twilight, there may often be, not an indefinite appearance merely, but quite a deceptive and false perception. The content has not been spread upon the field of the sensibility with any sharpness of outline, and can not, even when carefully revolved upon the sensible spot, give any exact conditions for the constructing agency, and the operation of conjunction is thus left very much to some scheme of the imagination. The habits, temperament, sympathies, and emotions of the person may thus very much modify the shapes which the matter in sensation shall as- sume in their appearance, and may be of beautiful, or mon- strous, or grotesque and ludicrous illusions. The old story of the gay young lady and the superstitious curate, viewing the moon in company through a telescope, is quite in point. "Those two shadows," says the lady, "which stand side by side together are surely two haj^py lovers in affectionate conversation." " Ah ! I see," says the curate, " two lovers ! not at all ; th ■'y are the two steeples of a grand Cathedral." Personal experience and frequent observation may gather an indefinite number of effects of the same descri2)tion, COLLIGATION OF FACTS. 179 where the sensation has been constructed very degeptively through the influence of the imagination in its hopes or its fears. So with tlie fiicts connected with tricks of legerdemain, or sleight-of-hand, which are often of so marvelous a de- scription. The arrangement of surrounding objects, the lights and shades, manifestations and concealments, together with the attitudes and motions of the conjurer are so art- fully contrived and skillfully managed that the attending agency of the spectator is induced to move in a certain designed direction, and thereby to construct the intended forms, and which thus appear in the consciousness as verita- ble phenomena. From the sensation as partially given, the productive imagination is induced to construct such forms as may seem to fill up the chasms in the content, and all this so readily and unsuspectingly that the completed product in appearance is taken to be entire reality, and the cunning delusion becomes the supposed perception of the most sur- prising occurrences, and the deceptive wonders are related abroad as the facts of eye-witnesses. When, through feints and artful management, the intellectual agency is induced to construct such products as the operator intended, while the actual content in the sense as given is not discriminated from that which is merely supposed, the delusion will be com- plete, and the credulity partake of the sincere conviction which belongs to a genuine perception. The distinguishing operation has been incomplete, and the constructing opera- tion though complete, yet deceptive, and thereby the most marvelous prodigies, ludicrous absurdities, and startUng im- possibilities except as miraculous, become the strange per- ceptions of our oAvn eyes. The constructing agency of the 180 THESENSEINITSLAW. spectator has been the real conjurer, but as that has been artfully deluded in its work, the deception which it has been induced to practice upon itself is wholly overlooked, and the cheat is not detected. The vans of a wind-mill in motion, when the axle lies in such a direction to the eye that it is difficult to determine from the sensation merely which end of the shaft it is that is nearest to our position, may easily be made to turn in apj)arently opposite directions at pleasure. The vans may be arbitrarily constructed as now on this end of the shaft and again on the other end, and the vane is of course con- structed as at the opposite end of the shaft to that on which the vans are fixed, and thus the shaft appears to lie now in one direction, and again in a reversed direction. In every such change of construction, the movement of the vans must accord, and consequently if the attending act give them now this and now that position, their motion must appear in opposite directions alternately. The apparent motion is wholly controlled by the arbitrary construction, and the facts are thus in colligation by our hypothesis. So, again, with the waves running over the surface of the water according to the course of the wind, the con- structing operation in attention passes along with them, and it is quite difficult to escape from the conviction that the whole mass of water must be flowing in that direction. The wind may be blowing strongly up the current of a broad river, and the undulations transmit their forms rapidly upward, while the matter is passing downward ; the attention constructs these forms and gives them in appear- ance according to their succession, while the observation does not distinguish the matter which successively takes on COLLIGATION OF FACTS. 181 these forms, but leaves it to appear as the same matter con- stantly accompanying the same form, and thereby the entire river is deceptively perceived to be flowing backwards in its channel. But we look off upon some level meadow ^-ith its tail grass waving on the plain, or on the wide field of ripening grain — " That stoops its head when whirhvinds rave, And springs again in eddying wave, As each wild gust sweeps by ;" and the same form flows onward, and yet there om* percep- tion is not deluded. We are forced to distingnish the mat- ter as perpetually changing while the form moves along, from the present conviction that each oscillating top has its stalk permanently rooted in the earth, and this at once dissi- pates the illusion that both matter and form are moving on together. Tlie observation in its discrimination gives the matter as merely swinging to and fro in its place, as the " eddying wave " careers over the landscape, while the attending operation follows the forms it constructs; and thus the forms flow, while the matter only swmgs back and forth in our apprehension. The practiced mariner, after long acquaintance with the mountain wave, dissipates all delusion in the same manner. He has learned to distinguish the matter as not the same in the same passing wave, and thus to his perception the waves may run in any direction, while he still apprehends the steadily setting course of the tides and currents. Once more, only, under this division, we have the fiicts of deceptive appearances as they are given in cases of double- vision. The mtellectual agency is here playing the same 182 THESENSEINITSLAW. unnoticed delusion upon the appearance in consciousness as above. There is a content in both organs of vision, and fi'om some derangement in the ordinary harmony of the sensations in both, the attending agency constructs each in its own definite form, and thus two objects like to each other appear in the consciousness. Ordinarily, the muscles of the eyes give to each such a direction that the content is topically in each after the same arrangement in reference to the sensible spot, and both the distinguishing and the con- joining agency operate according to an identity in the con- tent of both the organs, and thus, make but one phenom- enon in consciousness ; but when any derangement from concussion, a brain-fever, or other cause arises, or when the organs are imperfectly subjected to the muscular action, or the sensation distorted as in strabismus, or again when the object is placed between the eyes and too near to permit the axis of each to concentrate upon it, the sensation may be a condition for a double construction, and thus all the phenomena of double-vision occur. The single eye could not probably give the conditions for double-vision ; at least in order that it might give such conditions, it would be necessary that its content so affect the sensibility as to induce a double attending operation. A double perception is effected in the same way through other organs. The touch of different fingers of the same liand, or on the opposite hands may give a deranged sensa- tion inducing a double operation, both of distinction and conjunction, and of course resulting in a double perception. One may be benumbed by cold, or a bruise, or there may be the crossing of two fingers with the object placed between them, and as the content in each may thus be COLLIGATION OF FACTS. 183 separately constructed, two objects will seem to be per- ceived. Double sounds may be given from the difierent state of the two organs presenting their sensations so modi- fied as to induce the sej^arate construction of both ; but inasmuch as the ear is without capacity for giving figure in space, the double operation could not give double object in shape. The doubling of the object as m reflection from a mirror in sight, or of an echo in soimd, is not properly a double perception, inasmuch as the content given du'ect and that iu reflection are really different, and their discrimina- tion must be efiected as in any difierence of content. \\Tiere the organ is not double the perception is not two- fold, though in single organs the sensations may vary from the same occasions at diflerent times, from some modifica- tions in the state of the sensibility. Thus the same odors, or the same food, or wine, may difier widely in the percep- tion in states of sickness from those of health. Under all the foregoing divisions, we have now taken many facts, and many more might be readily brought within our induction, and it is here quite evident that they are all readily bound up in our ideal hj-pothesis with which we commenced, and are thus brought into complete colliga- tion. All these facts have embodied within them one actual law of their being, and which law we now know to be in per- fect correlation with our assumed hyj^othesis as idea; and thus far we have a science of these facts, because we can expound them in their own law of being and ari'angement. And now, it would be safe, as an inductive science, t ) say here that our induction of facts has been suflSciently broad to warrant the deduction, that the law in these facts in the process of perception is the law for perception itself imiver- 184 THE SENSE IN ITS LAW. sally, and thus to conclude that all the facts which experi- ence may give us in any perceptions will be found in colliga- tion with those already attained. It is, however, competent to very much further corroborate such a conclusion, by what we have termed the Consilience of Facts^ and to which we will devote the next section, previously to any genei al deductions from the facts attained within the com- prehension of our hypothetical idea. SECTIONIII. THE CONSILIENCE OF FACTS. When facts, which have apparently a very remote bear- ing from each other, and which at first seem widely discon- nected, and would mduce the expectation that if they are ever made exjjlicable it must be from reasons and principles very diverse from each other, are yet found to leap together, as it were, in colligation with facts more manifestly allied, and which may have already been brought together in an induction, we have a case of what we here term the ConsiU- ence of Facts. The confidence m the general law thus deduced is augmented in proportion to tlie number of the facts and the distance whence they tlius jump together within the same hypothesis. An illustration of the force of such facts to corroborate the general law may be given in the example of the preces- sion of the equinoxes as leaping within the law of universal gravitation. Tlie longitude of the fixed stars, measured THE COKSILIENCE OF FACTS. 186 from the point where the sun's annual path cuts the equar tor, will from time to time change, if that point changes. Now the fact of such a change had been very early noticed by Hyparchus and observed by subsequent astronomers for uear two thousand years. But for such a fact, no explana- tion was found. The phenomenon appeared, but stood quite anomalous among the other facts of astronomy. But when Newton had made the grand discovery of the law of gravi- tion, and had apphed it to the explanation of many facts of planetary motion readily embraced within it, this remote and apparently wholly disconnected fact of the equinoctial precession was found very unexpectedly to leap within the same generahzation with the apparently much nearer allied phenomena in the heavens. The equatorial diameter of the earth is greater than its polar diameter from the aggrega^ tion of matter accumulated about the equatorial region through its diurnal revolution, and of course the action of gravity Avhich is as the quantity of matter must be thus modified. The disturbing force hereby induced is, when accurately calculated, precisely that which accounts for this change of point in the sun's annual path, and thereby solves the whole anomaly. The leaping of so remote and remark- able a fact within the same general law which had become readily applied to more obvious phenomena was an unan- swerable confirmation of the general law, since no mere casual coincidences could have resulted in such extended systematic connection. It was a most beautiful manifesta- tion of the comprehensiveness of the law and the harmony of its operation. And here facts may be found which leap within our ideal hypothesis for perception, quite as remote from the 186 THE SENSE IN ITS LAW. Others embraced as in the case of the precession of the equinoxes within the general law of gravitation, and though not as remarkable in themselves, yet tending as eftectually to corroborate the general law, within which they unex- pectedly come in consilience. Some of these facts we now proceed to include in our induction. The arts of drawing and painting have their facts which may readily be seen to come witliin this consUience of induc- tions. The two may be taken as one, in those respects in which both are designed to represent form as extension in space. The ideal creations in the mind of the artist, sub- jectively, are the product and proof of his genius ; but when he would give to these ideals an objective representa- tion, he is conditioned to just such a process of dehneation and coloring as he would be in representing some original actually existing in nature. His idea, as a landscape, a face, or a group of objects material, vegetable, and animal, must be drawn and painted in the same method of operation as if he were actually taking some copy from nature. Separate from the creative invention of his genius, he is necessarilv a copyist according to the conditions imposed by nature itself: and the completed product must be tested by its general conformity with these conditions of nature. If that which is put upon tlie canvas in its outline and coloring gives such an appearance as that ideal would if made to exist in nature, the operation is complete and the painter is perfect in his art. In the execution of this part of his work he must derive instruction from observation and practical experience. "Where the representation is to be made without the col- oring in its hghts and shades in painting, the result is ef- fected simply by drawing lines in a skillful manner to give TUE COXSILIEXCE OF FACTS. 187 the figures and proportions of nature ; and to see how exact the copy may thus be made, even in minute and veiy pecuUar expressions, we need merely to glance at some finished pro- duction in sketching or engraving in outhne. How is this surprising resemblance efiected ? Certainly by copying na- ture, in some way, and yet not at all in making the product itself like nature, but solely by inducmg the spectator him- self to construct such a product. In the picture there has been used nothing but certain lines with their curves and angles, while in nature, animate or inanimate, no lines are presented to the eye and only masses of color and combina- tions of light and shade. A definite portion of space is thus filled, and, as content in the sensibility, is the condition for perceiving the object. Xature uses no pencil or engraver's tool to make outlines. She puts the mass of colors into space, and fills a definite portion, and leaves that portion surroimded on all sides by an outer space beyond it. WTien this is received as the content in sensation, the attending agency moves over it, and thereby conjoins it in the unity of figure which is perceived as definite object. And now the same intellectual operation in the spectator must be secured by the work of the limner. The attending process must be conditioned to the same track in the pic- ture as in nature, and in this way the appearance is a repre- sentation of nature. But this is efl:ected not as nature ac- complishes it, by giving the whole mass of coloring termin- ating in exterior space on all sides, but simply by tracing that path in which the artist would have the spectator's at- tention move, by a simple line precisely where in nature the mass and the surrounding space meet together and limit each other. In this manner precisely the same construct- 188 THE SENSE IX ITS LAW. ing operation, and thus precisely the same form is se- cm'ed both in nature and art, and as the distinction of qual- ity is not here regarded, the sameness in form gives the likeness in rejDresentation. Nature's law is followed, rather than that nature's object is copied. The intellect in atten- tion is induced by art to move just where the content from nature would condition the movement. Hence the likeness often so very striking, from even a very few apt lines and nice touches. Here, certainly, are many interesting yet quite remote ficts leaping directly within the induction which we had before bound in colligation by our ideal hy- pothesis. And still further, when the painter pursues his work and would imitate nature not merely in outline, but completely in the whole mass of color, and thereby secure the same sensation as nature's own objects would, the facts in this case have also a like remarkable consiUence within the induc- tion before attained. The condition for constructing the figure of the object from nature is, that the masses of color shall fill their own places topically in the field of the sensibUity. The hmita- tions of the object in the surrounding sj^ace secure that the whole content in sensation shall observe this condition. But, as thus received, the outline is that of a plane superfi- cies merely. "Whether convex or concave, the outline is as of a plane surface only. Thus a sphere and a circle of equal diameters may either of them fill the same space ; a column will have the same boundaries in space as a board of equal length and breadth ; and each of these will also have the same outline as a concave body of equal longitudinal and lateral dimensions. Thus, also, of all angular forms ; THE CONSILIENCE OF FACTS. 189 a sqiiare when turned obliquely fills in space the outlines of a parallelogram ; a cube may have its visible sides in such a position as to fill, not equal squares, but oblong spaces ; a circle may have the outline of an ellipse by being turned obliquely in its plane, and when its plane is in the axis of ■"ision it may even become a straight hne in the appearance ; and a cone fills the space of a triangle. The limits of all these in space are, respectively, like each other. But in our experience a difference is perceived in al! these forms. TVe distinguish quite readily plane from spherical bodies, squares from parallelograms, and cubes from sohds of unequal sides. So, also, a small object neai to the eye may fill the same place in the sensibility as a much larger and proportionally more distant body : and yet in our experience we shall readily distinguish the near and the smaller fi-om the distant and the larger. The conditions for such an experience is what we need to find as explana- tory of the results. The content in the sensibilility must be so given that the peculiarity of forms and distance may be constructed. And when a careful examination is made of the facts, those conditions are readily found. When the outline, as given topically in the sensibility, is the same for difierent figures and distances, there are yet other condi- tions bv which the right construction is induced. The sphere and the circle may occupy the same place topically on the retina, and be alike revolved nicely over the sensible spot, and if nothing but bare outline be constructed, no dif- ference of figure could be perceived. But the sphere has, as a content in the sensibility, a diversity giving peculiar quality, as distinguishable from the content of the circle. The colors which give light and shade in the sphere are not 190 THE SENSE IX ITS LAW. In the circle. And thus is it with planes and convex or con- cave bodies, a board and a column, or a triangle and a cone, their contents differ ; and as these are distinguished, the at- tending' agency gives a differently constructed form, and thereby a perception of different figure. In painting, this difference of quality in hght and shade needs only to be sup- plied on the canvas, and the attention gives the form as in the lights and shades of nature. With distances, again, there is not only the difference of light and shade, but also of sharpness and prominence of outline in the sensibility between the near and the more distant, which are to be ob- served in distinction ; and as a still more remarkable condi- tion, the capacity of getting the different optic angles for the near and the more remote object, by the jiosition of the two organs in the different inclinations of their optic axes toward the object ; or, when still more distant, the different inclinations when the head is in one place, and when moved to the right or left and the axes there directed to the object. Such optic angle as larger or smaller, gives the object as nearer or more remote, and this is to be attended to in the conjunction. By thus distinguishing the content in its lights and shades, its intensity and sharpness of outline in the sen- sation as different for different distances, and constructing the different optic angles, the less for the more distant and the larger for the nearer object, distance is conditioned in the perception as readily as figure from light and shade alone. The eye comes thus to perceive figures, magnitudes, and distances, with a most surprising exactness. The con- ditions for perceiving different shapes when the outlines are the same, and different sizes and distances when all are on one plane of the retina as given in the sensation, ai-e thus THE CONSILIENCE OF FACTS. 191 made quite manifest. And that, tln-ough all their complica- tion and remoteness from the -other facts in om* induction, these do yet leaj) together within our hypothesis, gives great confirmation to the deduction of our universal law. That the conditions for distance, magnitude, and figure, have as above been correctly given is also manifest fi'om other facts, which also come leaping within the same induc- tion. Thus for distances and magnitudes we have the fol- lowing facts. When the eve receives its content in the sen- sibility through the medium of a spy-glass, the magnitude of the object is precisely in the ratio of the greater angle, which it is made to subtend through the more or less diver- gency given to the rays of Hght by the optic glass as a lens. The distance, also, is in the same ratio diminished. But if, now, Ave will invert the spy-glass and look at the same objects through the opposite end, the subtended angle is as much diminished as before it was enlarged, the objects are in the same ratio smaller, and also in the same ratio at a greater distance. It is not the intensity of the sensation or the sharpness of outline in the content, except as relatively in its own portions at the same time, for these may be exactly equal in the direct and the inverted spy-glass, but the constructing agency plots its distances and magnitudes from the angles which the objects subtend — the magnitudes directly, and the distances inversely. Relatively to figures^ we have the following facts. When some medium for transmittins: liarht ijives the con- tent in the sensibility a reversed location in the sensation, the outlines of the content become, of course, transposed to opposite sides throughout the whole field of the sensation. The reversed representation of the object must so appenr. 192 THESENSEINITSLAW. If, now, this object be a jDlane surface of homogeneous color throughout, the object as repr.esented will appear as a plane, and though reversed as to its sides yet equable upon its sur- face. But if the object thus transmitted have characters, as letters or emblems, upon the surface, and these charac- ters are in relief, standing out from the plane as in a coin or medal, the object wiU not only ajjpear reversed, but all the outlines of its characters also reversed, and the lights and shades of the reversed characters transposed to opposite sides. This induces a construction in attention which di- rectly reverses the characters in relief to engraved indenta- tions beneath the surface, and they so appear in perception. And if we substitute the die by which the coin was struck, with its figures as depressions from the surface, the revers- ins: of the outUnes of the hgrhts and shades gives the condi- tions for constructing convexities and not concavities, and thus the characters are perceived to be standing out in rehef upon the surface. The whole perception of figure is as the attending agency is conditioned, and thus leaping in all its facts within the same colligation of our hypothesis. And once more, only, when nature is exactly copied in these particulars as above by the pointer, the content given in sense conditions the sensation to be constructed as in nature, and thus the objects perceived in the painting appear as nature. We shall thus have this other remark- able consilience of all the facts of perspective and dioramio painting within our akeady very broad induction. The artist assumes a certain point, and arranges all his work in reference to it. The point in the painting is to be taken as the stand-point for perceiving the objects in nature, and the picture through all its several portions is made to stand at THE CONSILIENCE OF FACTS. 193 corresponding directions and angles from tliat ]K)int a^ in nature, and to receive such colors, and modifications of light and shade, and clearness or indistinctness of outline, as shall condition the like construction from the content given to the sensibility by the picture as would be given by tlie original designed to be represented. The quality upon the canvas is thus made to apj^ear standing out as in sj^ace witli all the fullness and hfe of reality. The rules of perspective pahiting are thus taken from nature, not in her real forms as in statuary and carving, but only in her colors and angular proportions and bearings fi'om the stand-point. The painter learns to separate nature as she is, from that which is given of her as content in sensation, and puts upon his canvas that precisely which is the counterpart to the sensation, and passes by all which the intellectual agency constructs in nature, leaving that operation to be effected in the same way as in nature from the conditions in tlie picture. In proportion to its perfection, the jiainting puts the same con- tent in the sense as nature would, and the distinsruishinof and conjoining operations of the intellect give the same qualities and forms to the consciousness, and tlius the pic- ture becomes the resemblance of nature. So, on the plane surfiice of his canvas the artist spreads out the conceptions of his genius before us. The sensibil- ity receives the content, and we observe and attend. The quality is distinguished, and the forms are conjoined. The lis:ht and shades through all the colorinfj, and the ficrures, magnitudes and distances over all the extension, are thus together constructed in consciousness, and give the percep- tions in all their distinctness and definiteness, and, as a whole, the designed scene in all its completeness. Perhaps 194 THE SENSE IN ITS LAW. it is the interior of some magnificent temple ; its massive architecture appears in all its grandeiir, comprising long ranges of columns and broad and high arches, extended aisles, ascending stair-ways, and lofty galleries, with all their beautiful proportions. A throng of persons in all their va- riety of height and figure, of attitude and costume are seen to crowd its courts and porches, sit upon the benches, or walk oAcr the tesselated pavements. "With the single ex- ception of motion the canvas gives all that nature does ; or rather without exception, it gives all that nature does in one instant of the sensation, and the intellectual ao:encv in its operation of distinction and conjunction puts within the light of consciousness the same appearance as Avould be conditioned by nature itself The rules of perspective, and of dioramic representation in art, are simply a transcript of the conditions in sensation for open vision. All the facts jump together into the same conclusion of our general law for perception, and both the consilience and the colligation of facts alike find their svstematic arrangement and ade- quate explanation in our assumed ideal hypothesis. * Perhaps it miglit now with safety be asserted, that no deduction of a general law from any induction of facts, could be more convincing, than that of the operation of dis- tinction and conjunction for all perception. As an inductive science, we might here affirm that we have an idea correla- tive to an actual law in the perceptions of the sense. But, oui- a priori investigation capacitates ffir a much higher ground of affirming this general law, than any induc- tion of facts can reach, however multiplied they may be. At the most they are yet partial, and can give only proba- bilities, not certainties, beyond the actual induction in the THE CONSILIENCE OP FACTS. 195 experience. In our a priori conclusions we demonstrated necessity and universality for our idea. We found that only in accordance with its conditions was any perception of phenomena possible. When we now find this d 2>riori idea to have its correlative in an actual law in the facts, we are fully warranted in affirming for this actual law a universal extension to all the facts of perception, upon the high ground of an already demonstrated necessity and universal- ity, and not merely as a deduction from a wide induction of particular facts. The a priori demonstration capacitates us to say, this actual law is so in the facts induced, not only ; and may be deduced as general law from this induction, not alone ; but much more than this, this actual law in the facts must have been as it is ; and it must extend to all the facts which any experience shall give in the perception of phe- nomena universally. We have a transcendental demonstra- tion of the universality of our law, as actually found in real colligation of facts. Here, then, we complete our science of Rational Psy- chology in reference to the Faculty of the Sense. We have attained its a priori Idea both for the pure and the empiri- cal intuition, and found it in this-^that content must be given in sensation, and that this must be distinguished in its matter, and conjoined in its form, as conditional for all possible phenomena in perception. This a p'iori idea has not only been attained as j!>wre thought, but we have as- sumed it hypothetically, and questioned actual experience largely under its direction, and have gathered a wide induc- tion of facts which are manifestly held in colligation by it, and from which it would be safe to make the deduction, that this law in the facts induced, as correlative with our 196 THE SENSE IN ITS LAM'. ideal hypothesis in which the facts have been bound up, is a general Law for all the further facts of perception that any experience may give to us. The correlation of idea and general law gives us in this a valid Inductive Science. But, inasmuch as all skepticism can not be thus excluded, be- cause the deduction of the law is yet from a partial induc- tion of facts, and also because the law is still only a fact, we have gone much further than a mere deduction from the partial, and have given to this law actually attained, the a priori demonstration of necessity and universality, in which we have Transcendental Science. A valid science of per- ception in the sense is hereby attained, and we may from it not only perceive phenomena, but philosophically expound the process of perceiving. "We not only may know as per- cipients of the phenomena know, but much more than this, we know how the perception is and tmfst be effected. We know the appearance not only, but the knoicing of that appearance. In this is science ; and from its a priori dem- onstration i8 transcendental science; and thus a ratio}ial^ and not merely an emjyirical or inductive Psychology. Here our work as appropriate to the first Part, would be terminated, inasmuch as the Psychology of the sense is here completed ; but, as we have before indicated, the conclusions of Rational Psychology give the data for the demonstrations of Ontology ; and as such a process of demonstration is of great importance, and leads to most interesting results in the determination of the valid being of the objects as known in that capacity which has been psychologically investigated, so we shall, in a separate form as an Appendix, give here an outline of the ontological de- monstration for the valid being of the objects — the phenom- ena inner and outer — as perceived in the faculty of the sense. APPENDIX TO THE SENSE. AN ONTOLOGlCAi DEMONSTRATION OF THE VALID BEING OF THE PHENOMENAL. -eOOO* The sense perceives, and perception is the apprehension of phenomena only. Internal phenomena as mental exer- cises and external phenomena as material quaUties are appre- hended, but the subjects of the exercises and qualities can not be cognized by any functions of distinction and conjunc- tion. Moreover, all that the sense can apprehend is only in and for the percipient himself. The affection in sensation is in my sensibihty, and the operations of distinction and con- junction are by my intellectual agency, and the phenomena distinguished and defined are for me only and not another, and as apprehended in the light of self-consciousness can permit no other percipient to commune with me in the same phenomena. We must have other functions than those of the sense or any possible abstractions or combina- tions of sensible phenomena, before there can be any one field of objects as common to all. "We are not here, therefore, to inquire for the valid being of that which is object to many, but only for that which is made object for each one, and we can not give the full 198 APPENDIX TO THE SENSE. demonstration against the Materialist and the Idealist, until we have investigated the higher function of the understand- ing, and foimd the Idea and Law for the cognition of per- manent substances and perduring causes. The inquiry is solely to this point: are the phenomena valid appearances in my consciousness, or only phantoms ? And the demonstra- tion goes at once to the affirmative answer. I. Valid being of the inner phenomena. — Within the primitive intuition of space and time as solely a diversity of points and instants, we have found that an intellectual agency enters and constructs pure figures and periods. The whole work is within an immediate beholding in the light of consciousness, and all the relations and proportions of such constructions may be made intuitive demonstrations over the whole field of pure mathematics. The internal state is here affected solely through an inner agency, and yet it is really aflTected. The constructing, the intuitively beholding, and the mathematically demonstrating are as real phenomena in the inner sense as when a content in organic sensibility is discriminated and constructed. Although the forms are destitute of any organic content in sensation, yet the agency constructing is not a mere seeming but a verita- ble appearing in consciousness. Wholly irrespective of any outer impression, the inner mental phenomena have a con- scious valid being. It can not invalidate this to urge that previous impres- sions had been made upon the sensibility, and that the aflected organ may make its own repetitions of forms and be the sole origin of the agency. Were there nothing but the organism acted on by outward impulses, the process of constructing forms would be wholly mechanical, and when VALID BEING OF THE PHENOlkfEXAL. 199 there was no impression from without tlien the organism must be quiescent. No mere organism could acquire sjion- taneous self-activity from having once been put in operation by external appliances. And besides, the pure forms are more complete than any organic impressions can attain. The mathematical circle, or cone, or other figure, constructed from the scheme of a line revolving about one of the ends or a right-angled triangle about one of the sides subtending the right-angle, etc., are perfect. So also with the ideal con- structions of the sculptor and painter. What artist can make diagrams or pictures as perfect as his ideals ? No mechanical copy ever equals the pure ideal form. While, then, the pure but perfect forms only seeTn to be, the agency constructing truly ajypears^ and as constructing agency is a valid phenomenon wholly independent of the organic sensa- • tion. This same demonstration of valid inner phenomena is cumulative in two other applications of the constructing process. We have taken the sensibility as general and wholly vacant, and by an anticipation of content have found the process for distinguishing and defining all possible con- tent, and that process which through a prolepsis results in a determined act of distinction in reality, particularity, and peculiarity, is itself a veritable appearing in consciousness. And so also in actual perception, the impression upon the organic sensibility may be complete in the sensation, but in this alone no perception is eifected. The content is yet a chaos for the consciousness except as intellectually elabora- ted into distinct quality and definite quantity, and the observing and attending agency is wholly mental, and the exercise fully in thf» consciousness, and thus truly appears. 200 APPENDIX TO THE SENSE. Both the construction of possible and of actual content give the constructing exercises as valid. There is thus abundant proof for the valid being of the mental phenomena. II. Valid being of the outer plienomena. — We may, on the other hand, demonstrate the valid being of the external phenomena, and show that they are not made by the organ itself nor by the intellectual agency within working upon l^he organism. It is admitted that there are many occur- rences of illusory phenomena, fontastic and chimerical. So with dreams, and the hideous forms which haunt the inebi'i- ate in fits of delirium tremens^ and the more questionable instances of ghost-seeing, Scottish second-sight, and mes- meric clairvoyance. There may be such mysterious seernr ing, where there is no real content in the sense as actually appearing. A vivid remembrance and spontaneous combi- nation of old impressions, strSng emotions controlling the constructing faculty, or perhaps the reflex action of the in- tellect working, as it were, upon the back part of the sensi- bility, and projecting wild and unregulated forms forward for the consciousness, may account for most, if not perhaps for all such illusory visions. There are moreover the super- natural visions of inspired pi'ophets and seers, where the content and construction were determined by a miraculous agency for revealing God's own purposes before the actual events. All such cases evince that there may be seeming visions and voices where no organic content is present. The skeptic may use such occurrences as data for conclud- ing against the validity of any phenomena. But while we may admit all such instances of fantastic or miraculous ap- pearance, and allow that they can be only an objectifying of our own inner agency, or of some miraculously spiritual VALID BEING OF THE PHENOMENAL. 201 agency working in us, yet can no amount of such cases at all disturb the positive demonstrations we may here make for valid objective phenomena. Aside from all such morbid or manifestly abnormal per- ceptions, we have the vastly preponderating amount of our organic perceptions in a manner that can be tested and their content clearly determined. By careful reflection, we can consciously detect the agency discriminating and conjoining a content that we can neither make nor unmake. We may turn away or obstruct the organ, and then the content can be neither retained nor anew supjjlied. We can again fitly direct the organ, and the content can neither be prevented nor expelled. We can consciously distinguish and construct this content, but can do this in no other way than according to its own determining conditions. In our anticipation of a content, this may be as we please, and the form may be constructed as we choose, but such arbitrary constructions can never be made other than empty ideals in the conscious- ness ; while with our organic content distinguished and de- fined, we can never abolish the consciousness that it has a real appearance, nor make it to put on for us a mere ideal seeming to be. There are, therefore, objective phenomena, valid and wholly independent of all subjective production. We thus demonstrate the phenomena of the sense to be both of the internal and external senses, and thus that there are phenomena which may be knoAvn as some, mental, and some, material. What the mind and the matter themselves are we can not here determine, for we have the psychology as yet only for perceiving phenomena, not at all for cogniz- ing substances and agents. That our knowledge begins in perception, and that our 9* 202 APPENDIX TO THE SEI^-gE. perceptions attain valid phenomena, may thus be demoiv strated ; but that any thing other than phenomenal, and that within our subjective sphere, can be real, the sense has no data for proving. How beings without our organs may know, we can not here determine. They could not have in consciousness heat and cold, sweet and bitter, fragrant and fetid smells, and must know them, if at all, wholly without their own experience ; as Omniscience must know Avhat re- morse to us is without His own experience of it. This phenomenal world of inner exercises and outer qualities, though single, isolated, and fleeting in all its per- ceived objects, and wholly in a perpetual flow, is yet a world of reality, and not mere dreams nor ideal semblances. The actual content in sensation distinguishes all phenomena in perception from spectral illusions, mental hallucinations, or credulous clairvoyance. It is knowledge valuable for its own sake, and worth more for the use hereafter to be made of it. Its full explanation is science begun, a first and nec- essary step toward science completed. Other and higher objects remain to be attained, but the higher are beyond at- tainment except as we avail ourselves of these here given. In this philosophy of the Sense, the door opens to more spacious and more splendid apartments, but we may by no means enter except through this fore-court of the Temple of Science. PART II. THE UNDERSTANDING. 'O^a^- I. THE NECESSITY FOR A HIGHER INTELLECTUAL AGENCY THAN ANY IN THE SENSE. Perception in the sense gives to us phenomena in real appearance, and not as mere fantastic illusion. But such phenomena are in the sense necessarily fleeting, isolated, and standing wholly in one self. The discriminating agency dis- tinguishes only the content given in the sensibility, and which is a perpetual coming and departing : the construct- ing agency conjoins this distinct content as quality sepa- rately, and thus in one form of its quality only as definite object at once ; and all this only for the self, in whose con- sciousness this distinguishing and conjoining operation is cai'ried on. Each phenomenon must thus occupy its own space and its OAvn time in the self-consciousness ; its appear- ance disjoined from all other phenomena, its place from all other places, and its period from all other periods, and the self-consciousness, in which the appearance, place, and period are, disjoined from every other self. From the very func- tions of the sense in their law of operation, it must be 204 THE UNDERSTANDING. wholly impracticable that it should give any thing other than definite phenomena, definite places, and definite peri- ods, as single parts of nature, space, and time, and can pos- sibly know nothing of any connection of these parts, as the components* of one whole. All parts are to the sense defi- nite totals, and the conception of a universe of nature, and a oneness of all space and of all time, is from any agency in the sense Avholly impracticable. One phenomenon has gone when another has come, and its place and period came and went with it, and the conjunctions in the departed have no connection to the conjunctions in the becoming ; and thus, neither phenomena, places, nor periods, take hold of each other in their arising and departing in the consciousness, nor connect themselves into one nature, one space, or one time. As in the perceiving self there can be no such whole of all phenomena, of all space, and of all time, much more must it be impracticable for the sense to give to different perceiving selves a participation in the same one whole of nature, of space, and of time ; inasmuch as neither self can have a whole of nature, space and time not only, but neither self can at all participate in any other's definite phenomeqa, places, and periods. In the sense, each one perceives for himself, and his phenomenon, figure in space, and period in time, are each his own only, and in which none other may jjarticipate. How come we, then, by such conceptions as one whole of all nature of which all definite phenomena are its parts, one whole of all space of which all definite places are but its parts, and one whole of all time of which all definite periods are but its parts ? Certainly by no functions of the sense. The operation of conjunction defines its object only HIGHER FACULTY THAX SENSE NECESSARY. 205 SO far as the conjunction in unity is carried, anc^then comes a hiatus separating the next conjunction in unity from it, whether of appearance, place, or time. If I construct a circle in the pure intuition, I know it as distinct from a triangle, as occupying a space, and as continuing a period ; but when that constructed circle has departed from the pure intuition, and I now construct a triangle in pure intuition, while I know the triangle as distinct from a circle and as having place and period, yet do I not know this triangle and that circle as having any connection with each other in themselves, their place, or their period. The circle, in its conception, place, and period, has altogether departed ; the triangle, in its conception, place, and period, has come in ; and a chasm, which no construction by a conjunction in unity can bridge over, separates them ; and my intuition can not determine that the conceived circle and triangle, and theii- places and periods, have each with each any con- nection. The being of the circle is gone, the place it occu- pied is gone, and the period it filled is gone ; and that the conceived triangle now come, and its place, and its period, have any connection in a whole of all conceived being and of all space and of all time with the conceived circle in its departed being, and place, and period, the intuition can have no possible functions for determining. And so, precisely, with the relation of a departed and a becoming phenomenon. The redness and its place and its period have all departed, and a whiteness in its place and period is now in its becom- ing ; but for the sense there is a chasm of nihility between the two, and an impossibility of saying that the redness and the whiteness are connected in one whole of nature, their places in one whole of all space, and their periods in one 206 THE UNDERSTANDING. whole of alt time. To the sense, every definite construction of a phenomenon in place and period, stands only in its own isolation. It can construct definite phenomena, in their dis- tinct quality, into difierent figures and periods definitely ; but it can only construct, and from one construction to another it can give no connection. Its definite phenomena it can not connect into one universe of nature ; its definite places, into one whole of space ; nor its definite periods, into one whole of time. Each intellect in self-consciousness must construct its own phenomena, and these will be perpetually departing and utterly disjoined from the becoming; and thus to no self-consciousness can there be in the sense any connection into one whole of nature, of space, and of time, nor can one self-consciousness in its constructions commune with any other self in its constructions. Were there no higher functions than the sense, phenomena in their places and periods would be a mere rhapsody of becoming and departing constructions, and in such a hap-hazard dance of appearances, that all conception of a connected whole of nature, of space, and of time, would be an impossibility. In order that we may know other than isolated phenomena in their separate places and periods, a higher faculty than that of conjunction in sense is necessary. FACULTY OF UNDERSTANDING E X PL A I N E D . 207 II. THE EXPOSITION OF TIHS HIGHER AGENCY AS UNDERSTANDING. The intellectual agency gives two different kinds of rela- tions in the consciousness. One kind is that which has already been considered in the sense as the operation of con- junction. The diverse elements are taken in their manifold- ness and conjoined in unity, so that they stand together within limits and become a total, and the bond which holds them in unity, is both different from, and external to, the ele- ments themselves. The elements are brought into juxta- position, and make a whole as an aggregate simply, and thus the relation is one of collocation only. When I con- struct a triangle in pure intuition, I merely conjoin the diversity within external limits, and the area of the triangle becomes a whole, simply in virtue of this external defining of the diverse points contained within the limits. So also in the construction of any phenomenon in its form, the same relationship of collocation only is effected. The content in the sensibility, as color in vision, is conjoined in attention, and thereby defined in its figure, and thus becomes a defi- nite whole as colored surface placed within outer hmits. Of this kind are all the relations of the sense, pure or empirical, inasmuch as the operation of conjunction can effect no other relationships, and this is the only operation in the sense which may give any relations. These may be termed Mathematical relations. Another kind of relationship is that where the elements 208 THE UXDEESTAXDIXQ. are held together by an inherent bond, and all coalesce in one whole, and which is thus not a mere asjiireoration and rela- tionship of collocation, but a relationship of coalition. AU the parts are reciprocally inter-dependent, and together con- stitute an organic total. Thus with the whole plant or ani- mal, the elements are not merely together in a mass, but there is an inner bond in which they all grow together The union is not local or periodical, but dynamical : and as distinguished from the former, we may term this kind Phil- osophical relations. A Judgment is a determined relationship between two or more cognitions, pne of which qualifies and is predicate^ the other of which is qualified and is suhject. "When in the possession of one cognition I can by an analysis take the other cognition from it, and predicate this latter of the former, it is an Analytical Judgment. Thus of the cogni- tion of a line, I need only an analysis of what is already contained in the cognition and I shall find the further cogni- tions of extension, divisibility, etc., and which I can predi- cate of the former cognition and say at once in an Analyti- cal Judgment, the line is extended ; is divisible, etc. The validity of such judgments is determined in the clearness of the analysis itself. It does not add anything to our knowl- edge, for we have only that in the judgment which we already possessed in the original cognition ; but the separate analvsis has made the orijnnal cosrnition more clear, although it has thus been not at all extended. "When, in some way other than from the cognition already possessed, I attain a new cognition in a determined relationship to a given one, and thus add something new as predicate of an old cognition, it is a Synthetical Judgment ; PACUI. TV OF UNDERSTANDING EXPLAINED. 2O0 and in this the cognition is extended over more than itf former ground. Thus the cognition of a phenomenon as color may not only be analyzed, and hence in an Analytical Judgment it may be affirmed that the color has place, has shape, has divisibility, etc., but that which no analysis can get from it, a farther obsei'vation in experience may find as new and add to it, and thus affirm in a Synthetical .Judg- ment, that the color is changed in its intensity, its place, its shape ; or it is in motion, is blended with the other colors, or is faded away, etc. The validity of this form of a Judg- ment depends wholly upon the valid attainment of the new coijnition. And precisely in this validity of the attainment of the new cognition to be predicated in a judgment as qualifying the old, as it differs in evidence between the Mathematical and the Philosophical i-elation, is the importance and neces- sity of the exposition of this higher agency as an under- standing. Mathematical relationships are given in the con- structions of the sense, and the operation of conjunction can give only such relations. The construction being effected, the relation of all particulars in the diagram stand open in the consciousness to an immediate beholding, and the new coffnition for an Extended Judgment is thus a direct intui- tion. The specific relation which exposes the new cognition, is seen in the construction ; and thus the synthetic judg- ment is manifestly valid. If I construct a circle in pure in- tuition, the relation of its radii is immediately seen in the construction itself, and the new conception of tquality thus attained is legitimately added in a synthetic judgment ; and so with all possible mathematical relations, whether pure or empirical. The process is synthetical, viz., the adding of 210 THE UNDERSTANDING. some new cognition in a judgment through all the process ; but this new cognition is always attained, iji an immediate intuition in the co7istr%icticn itself. An exact definition gives occasion for an affirmation of the exact relationship, and the same for a phenomenon in its empirical form as in a pure form in the primitive intuition. The judgment, though synthetical, is also intuitive. But this can not so be effiacted in philosophical relations. The new cognition is not one that admits of becoming at all an immediate intuition. There can be no construction effiicted in which it may be seen. I may construct the form of two colors in space, and in the construction see all the relations in space of the two phenomena, and thus affirm that one is square and the other is circular, one is without or within, above or below, larger or smaller, etc., and in time earlier or later, of longer or shorter continuance, etc., than the other. But I can not so construct any two phenomena, as to see in the construction that they both inhere in one ground, or that both originate in one source. The new con- ception is of an inner bond which will not allow of any con- struction, and can not thus become intuition. That in which the phenomena coalesce, and by virtue of which they are held in one whole, is altogether supersensual, inasmuch as it is wholly beyond the conditions of any conjunction in unity. That the redness and the smoothness are in one place and period, may be affirmed from the sight and the touch, and a construction may be made to represent them externally, by a painting; but that they inhere in one ground as their sub- ject, which we call a rose, we can not make to be immedi- ate intuition, because no construction can possibly give this supersensuous ground, Dr common sulyect, to bo immedi- FACULTY OF UNDERSTANDING EXPLAINED, 211 ately seen. That the phenomenon of heat, and that of evaporation, have a relation in their periods, and what that relation is, may be affirmed from a construction in the sense intuitively ; but that they are connected as source and con- sequence, by an inner bond of causality, can not be an intu- ition of the sense, inasmuch as no construction can possibly give this to be immediately seen. Philosopical relations are altogether of this supersensuous kind, and their inner bond, through which all coalesces in the unity of a whole, is be- yond the prj^cticability of any construction. The forms of space and time can have nothing in which it may be repre- sented. The philosophical relation always involves a new cogni- tion, which can not be attained by any analysis of the phe- nomena that are held in relationship by it, and thus the judgment is always synthetic. That the two phenomena are affirmed to be thus related is by reason only of this in- ner supersensual bond, and the adding of this in the judg- ment is an extension of the cognition, and as it is thus no product of an analysis, and as before seen is no possible in- tuition in any construction, it must somehow be attained in its own peculiar manner, and demand that for it a peculiar function should be supplied, other than any thing w^hich the faculty of the sense can give. As conjunction only puts together in collocation, while this gives internally a coali- tion ; the first a collection, this a connection ; I shall so dis- tinguish it as the operation of connection. And as the intellect conjoins in the sense, so its connecting agency be- longs to the faculty of the understanding. This faculty oj^ the understanding, as that which gives the relations of phe- nomena in their inherent grounds and sources, and tims 212 THE UNDERSTANDING. from being conjoined into isolated qualities they become known as connected into existing things, it is now our busi- ness fully to investigate. By this distinction of operation, as connecting and not constructing agent, we have wholly separated it from the faculty of the sense already examined, and in this isolation of being, the claim is, that we attain an a priori cognition of how it is possible that such an opera- tion of connection may be effected, and thus how an under- standing must be regulated in its functions if it is to have any synthetic judgments of philosojihical relations, and this wiU give the understanding in its Idea. It will then be necessary in another Chapter, to attain in the facts a .Law in actual operation, the precise correlative to this a priori idea, in which we shall have a valid science of the Under-, standing, as before of the Sense. We may then use these conclusions for an Ontological Demonstration of the valid being of the objects given in the Understanding. CHAPTER I. THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS SUBJECTIVE IDEA. SECTION I. THE UNDERSTANDING NECESSARILY DISCURSIVE. Conjunction gives definite form in space and time, and thus all conception of its products is of that which is brought directly under an intuition either pure or empirical. But such products can have no other relationship to each other in our knowledge, than that which belongs to the forms of space and time. They may be conjoined in space or time, but can not thus be known as connected in their own internal being. A dynamical connection can not be constructed, and can not, therefore, be accurately defined ; it can admit only of a description which shall suggest, not of a definition which shall make to appear. The bond which constitutes the relation is thought as inhei'ent in the cognition related, and thus while the related cognitions are constructed, the bond as their inherent connective is not and can not be constructed, but is a new cognition of a very peculiar kind. Thus two billiard balls may be constructed in space, and the meeting of the one in motion with the other at rest and the consequent displacement of the latter may be constructed in time, and the point in space and in 214: THE UNDEESTANDIXGI>' ITS IDEA. time of their actual contact may be given in an intuition by tbe construction ; but all this will not in the least serve to give the cognition of the dynamical bond, which we may in this case call impulse, that inherently connects the im- pinging of the first and the displacement of the last together. This cognition of impulse, here, is not only new numerically, but quite new genericaUy ; the cognition of the balls, and their contact, and their antecedent and conse- quent motion, all admitting of a construction and thus of an accurate definition in the immediate intuition, but the cog- nition of impulse not at all admitting of such construction, definition, and dii'ect intuition. It can only be thought, not perceived. Precisely thus, with all connection as ground y it can no more be constructed, than can the connection of impulse above given as source of t\\v displacement of the second ball. The form of the whiteness and that of the hardness of the ivory ball may be constructed in the \dsion and the touch, and both may be referred to the same place and the same period intuitively, and thus a definite conception of their relationship in space and time may be attained, but this will not at all serve to give the common ground in which both the whiteness and the hardness inhere, and which gives to them the relations of qualities in one thing. This last is a cognition as connection, and not at all as con- junction ; it is only thought, it can not be perceived. It belongs wholly to the understanding in its work of connec- tion, and can not be attained by the sense in its work of conjunction. And now, to distinguish this cognition of the bond as product of the operation of connection from the product in THE UNDERSTANDING DISCURSIVE. 215 the operatiou of conjunction, we must appropriate an exclu- sive term. The whiteness and hardness, the motion, con- tact, and disphicement of the billiard balls we call phenom- ena^ because they are made to immediately appear in a defi- nite construction. They may differ as quality comiected in their ground, and as event connected in their source ; but all are alike phenomena, inasmuch as each is made to appear, and all are given in the sense. The antithetic term to phe- nomenon, from the same Greek language, would be noume non ; but as this has been much less familiarly incorporated into the English language v e shall, at the expense of deriv- ation from another tongue, take an equivalent term for this antithesis from the Latin notio^ and caU this new conception which the understanding in its work of connection can alone supply, N'otion. This is to have its exclusive application in this work to this specific cognition — the bond of relation- ship as product of connection ; and never to be applied to any product of conjunction. Thus we shall not say a notion of hardness, whiteness, motion, contact, displacement, etc., all of which come under the term phenomenon ; but we shall say a notion of the ground, source, etc., for the con- nection of phenomena. Phenomena will be conjoined by phenomena, but can be connected only by the notion. The phenomenon is wholly in the sense, the notion is wholly in the understanding. The notion, as supplied in the understanding, is put un • der the phenomena as substratum in Avhich they inhere, or as source on which they depend ; and, as it is a peculiar operation of the intellect which receives this notion, and makes it to stand under the phenomena as their connectiou, so this function of the intellect, as faculty for connect'on, 216 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. is appropriately termed tJie wider&tandiny. The same intel- lect conjouts the diversity — and this is the faculty of the sense — which cofuiects the phenomena — and this is the fac- ulty of the understanding. This connecting of phenomena in then* grounds and sources by the understanduig is the act of thinking, and the j»roduct should be termed a philosophical or a logical judg- itient, distinguishing it from the process of conjoining in unity, which is the act of attending, and the j^roduct of which, as intuitively affirmed, is a mathematical judgment. Both are synthetic, inasmuch as both attain a ncAV cognition in which the relationship is given ; bi;t in one case, as the mathematical, the new cognition is attained by an immediate intuition in a construction ; and in the other, the philosophi- cal, the new cognition can not be constructed and thus can- not be intuition, but is wholly supplied as thought or notion in the understanding. This connecting of phenomena in their notion is pure thinking, when the phenomena are not given in the sense, but are merely the conceptions of phen- omena by a prolepsis or anticipation purely mental. The whole work is thus entirely intellectual. The anticipated content is constructed in the sense when there is no actual sensation, and is thus a conceived phenomenon only ; and the notion, as connective, is wholly supplied in the uudei*- standing as pure conception also ; and thus the whole pro- cess, though combining both intellectual conjunction and in- tellectual connection, is wholly a mental conception and therefore pure thinking. Empirical thinking is when real phenomena are thought as connected in their grounds or sources. Tliis last is j)roperly experience — the connecting of our perceived phenomena in their notions, as their ground THE UNDEESTANDIXG DISCURSIVE. 217 or source of being. When phenomena are thought as con- nected in their ground, the product is called a thing y when as connected in their source, the product is an event ; and when both thing and event are conceived simply as origina- ted being, they ave facts [facta, res gestce). This connecting of things and events may go on indefi- nitely, and when it is jiure thinking, the whole product is a train of thought / when empirical thinking, it is an order of experience. This thinking in judgments in the under- standing, it is manifest can never be made intuitive. The phenomenal cognitions may be constructed in their conjunc- tions of space and time, and their relationship of conjunc- tion be intuitively apprehended ; but the notional cognition can not be constructed, nor intuitively seen in any construc- tion, and thus the relationship of connection can not be in- tuitively apprehended. We can never so construct the whiteness and the hardness of the billiard ball as intuitively to see the ^'ound in wliich they are connected, nor so con- struct the impinging and the displacing as intuitively to see the source in one out of which the other springs. Our con- struction of the whiteness and hardness may give the round- ness in space, and we may thus call it a hall ; but this is still only quality and not ground. The qualities of white- ness and hardness and roundness are all thought as in one and the same ground, which we call ivory • but this ground, called ivory, is wholly supplied as a notion, and not at all as an intuition. So also, our construction of the impinging and the displacing may give succession in time, and we may thus call one antecedent and the other consequent, and the whole in combination sequence; but this also is still event, not source. The events of impinging, and displacing, and 10 218 THE UXDEKSTAXDIXG IN ITS IDEA. their sequence, are all thought as in oue point of connection, which is a source that Ave here call iuqndse ; but this source, called impulse, is whoUy supphed in the understanding as a notion, and not in the sense as an intuition. So must it ever be in aU thinking in the understanding, that the connective in the judgment can never be supplied by a construction and can thus never be made an intuition. The diSerence between the mathematical judgment that a straight line is the shortest that may be drawn between two points, and the philosophical judgment that the whiteness and hardness are quahties of the ivory, or that the displacement of the second ball by the first was from impulse, is at once palpa- ble. In the first, as mathematical judgment, we construct the cognitions and we intuitively see in our construction the new cognition of relationship, which we name the shortest / but in the other, we' can possibly make no construction that shall give intuitively the new cognition of relationship which we name the ivory as ground, or the impulse as source ; and from which connectives only can we form our philosophical judgment. In the philosophical judgment, we are obliged to receive the notion in the understanding, and then the relationship is always apprehended only by a disciirsus through that no- tion ; and thus the judgment is necessarily discursive, noti intuitive. We go from the whiteness to the hardness, in our connecting of these as qualities in a tiling, through the notion of ivory as common substratum ; and we go from the impinging to the displacing, in our connecting of these as events, through the notion of impulse as source in the antecedent for the origination of the consequent. The judg- ment can only be formed from the process of connection ; THE UNDERSTANDING DISCURSIVE. 219 and the connection can only be made in the notion ; and the notion is supplied by no possible intuition. We can thus connect, /. e., think in the understanding, in no other possi- ble manner than discursively. The understanding is faculty only for connecting, not for constructing ; for thinking, not for attending ; for discursively concluding, not for intuitively beholding. It attains philosophical or logical judgments, not mathematical axioms. Its judgments are truly depend- ent upon an d lyriori cognition, and are conditional for all experience. That I have the sensation of warmth may be given in the sense, and when, and how much ; but all this will be isolated sensation and not connected experience, except as I can connect that sensation with other sensa- tions in their common grounds and sources, and say the sun or the fire warms me. But in order to such judg- ment in experience that the sun warms me, I must assume the notions of both ground and source, and, discursively, through these conclude upon the judgment in experience. The experience does not and can not give the notion ; the notion is conditional for the connected experience. That the notion is conditional for all experience, as a connection of the phenomena into things, should be fully apprehendect, and may be very conclusively determined. Thus, I may have the definite and distinct qualities of a hardness, a coldness, a brittleness, a transparency, etc., as real phenomena in perception, but they are all necessarily, separate from each other as given in perception, and no con- junction can go any further than to give to each its com- plete form as phenomenon, and let them stand singly and separately in the consciousness. But when the understand. ing has its notion of a ground common to them all, the 220 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA, thinking may then connect them all in it by a discursua from one to another through it, and give to this notion as connective ground a name as thing, and of which the phen- omena will all be held in a judgment as common properties or qualities, and I may then say, the Ice is hard, is cold, etc. My perception in the sense has given the phenomena only ; my thinking in the understanding has given me all the sepa- rate phenomena to be connected in one thing ; but such a judgment that the one thing — Ice — contained in itself all these phenomena as its qualities, and which is essential to a proper experience of such qualities, could not be attained except I had first assumed this notion of a common ground, through which to make my discursus in thinking the phenom- ena respectively to inhere in it. So, in the same manner Imay perceive the phenomena of a liquidness, limpidness, fluidity, etc., and by a supplied notion as ground I may connect them as the properties of one thing and call it xoater ; and then again, I may perceive the phenomena of volatility, expansi- bility, elasticity, etc., and connect them in a common ground in the understanding and call it vapor ; and as the result, I shall have the three things with their respective qualities, as ice, water, and vapor. Neither of these things could have been given in a connected experience, but only the phenom- ena singly in perception, except as the understanding had been supplied with their notional connectives, and thought them in a judgment discursively thereby. But, still further, with these three things distinct in a judgment of experience, I may proceed in the understand- ing and supply a higher notional connective as common source for them all, and think these three things to have succes- sively come out of one and the same material substance, THE UNDERSTANDING DISCURSIVE. 221 which has now been ice, and now water, and now vapor, and thus on through all possible changes. But it is mani- fest that no such connection in this comprehensive judgment of an experience could have been effected except as first this higher notional, as common source, had been supplied in the understanding. And thus ever, in all our judgments of ex- perience, whether more or less comprehensive, the experi- ence does not give the connection, but the connection pro- duces the judgment of experience, and this rests wholly upon a supplied notional in the understanding. No possi- ble thinking in discursive judgments can be effected, and thus no experience can be, except through the use of a notion supplied in the understanding. The judgment can- not be in the sense, for the sense can not supply the notional, nor make the discursive connection through it ; but the judg- ment is according to the sense, for it must be the connection of only such phenomena as are given in the- sense. We may thus say of the understanding, that it is a higher fac- ulty than the sense, but though transcending the sense, it yet is a faculty judging according to the sense. It connects only what is first given in the sense. SECTION II. BPACH AND TIME THE NECESSARY MEDIA FOR DETERMINING CONNECTION THROUGH A DISCURSUS. Thinking is the intellectual operation of connecting the cognitions supplied in the sense through the cognitions sup- plied in the understanding. The sense-cognitions are of the 222 THE UNDERSTANDING IT ITS IDEA. phenomenal, the understanding-cognitions are of the no- tional. The intellectual process is ever from one sense-cog- nition to another by a discursus through an understanding- cognition, and the judgment resulting is wholly synthetical — adding the necessary connection of the phenomenal in the notional — and thereby giving universality to tlie ultimate judgment, as that all phenomena must stand in some ground, or must originate in some source. And the great question is — how verify this synthesis ? How show that the addi- tion of the notional as necessary and universal connective in such judgments is valid? All experience and all inductive science rest alike upon such synthetic judgments, and the former is wholly an illusion, and the latter a mere straining of speculations through a fictitious notional which can leave in the sieve only an empty ideal, except as this whole pro- cess of thinking in judgments may receive an a priori deter- mination. If we attempt to explain such necessary connection, as did Hume, through the frequency of observation in experi- ence, and thus that habit only mduces the conviction of neces- sary connection, we leave the judgment to rest upon mere credulity ; and all experience and all philosophical science stand upon no firmer basis than " a belief" engendered in " custom." If we say with Brown, that there are only the phenomena in a certain " invariable order of sequences," and that all conviction of necessaiy connection is from the constitution of the human mind alone, which is so made that by a ceaseless and infallible prophecy it simply foretells the coming of the consequent in the appearance of the ante- cedent, we leave again all validity to experience and induc- tive science wholly amid the mysteries of this constitutional MEDIA FOE DETERMINING A DISCUBSUS. 223 and instinctive prophesying. To take, with Reid, this neces- sary connection as the mere dictum of common sense, and make this an ultimate fact in Avhicli all experience and all philosophy must begin and back of which no investigation can reach, is to admit at once that experience and philosophy have only an assumed original, and that neither can possibly return back and examine the source in which it originates, nor expel the bane of skepticism from either the fountain or its streams. When we have demonstrated the reality of the phenom- ena by our foregoing d p7'iori process, still all the above methods of accounting for the conviction of the necessary connection of the phenomena leaves the whole as a mere matter of credulity or assumjjtion, and no thinking can ter- minate in a judgment that shall have any higher validity than mere opinion. The roundness, whiteness, hardness, etc., are vei'itable jDhenomena ; but that they are all con- nected by an inherence in one notion as their ground, and which we call " ivory," and are thus qualities in one thing, we may believe or hold as opinion but can never determine. The motion of one ball, and its contact with another, and the retardation in the first and displacement of the last ball are real phenomena ; but that the retardation and displace- ment are connected in one source with the motion and the contact which precede them, and which as connective notion we call " impulse," and thus that they are events held toge- ther by one agency, we may believe or opine, lint we can never know. And all philosophy founded upon any induc- tion of such facts, however broadly and carefully made, must also alike rest only upon mere opinion. We are in this position utterly precluded from all power of reply to thfit 221 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. skeptic who shall affirm that he has examined all these sources of a necessary connection, and has satisfied himself that their whole induced conviction is a mere mist and fog- bank deceptively rising OA'er a stagnant understanding, and which is utterly dissipated in thin air whenever the sunlight strikes upon it from above, or the ebb and flow of active thought agitates it from beneath. But, surely, the interest in the human mind for science, and the intellectual yearning for established truth will never permit an acquiescence in such desponding conclusions, until skepticism has itself become a demonstration ; and the only truth found to be this, that man can verify no truth ; and that the only foundation for science is at last seen to be self-contradiction and absurdity. TTie success in our d priori investigation of the sense, and our complete exposition of the operation of conjunction, should encourage to the same effort and anticipated result in the field of the understanding and the a pi^ioi'i explica^ tion of the operation of connection, and under the influence of so well grounded a hope the attempt to realize it should not be easily abandoned. We are not to take the under- standing-cognition upon trust, nor merely because we need it as our connective conditional for all possible thinking, and which can give for philosophy no other basis than an un- verified empiricism : nor are we to assume it merely as the condition and law of our subjective thinking, and thereby attain those splendid ideal systems of nature, the soul, and God, which have so highly distinguished the great mas- ters of modern German Metaphysics ; but which, denying any thing as legitimately in the possession of philosophy beyond the subjective process itself, have only issued, and for the future ever must only issue, in the emptiness of an MEDIA FOR DETERMINING A D I S C U R S U 8. 225 entirely misnamed Rationalism, and which at last is notliing else than the absurdity of a transcendental Pantheism. Subjective thinking and an objective experience diffl'r not in tills, that the sense-cognitions are not connected tli rough the understanding-cognitions, for this is conditional fc^r any connecting in discursive judgments whatever ; but they dif- fer in this, that in subjective thinking the intellectual opera- tion of connection creates its own judgments within the self, and only for the self who thinks them, while in objec- tive experience the whole process and its result in % judg- ment is conditioned by somewhat already existing other than the self, and the determination of this other existence in the judgment makes it to be objective to the self, and competent in the same way to be object to any otht-r self possible. One gives wholly an ideal, the other an actual thing in th • judgment. And, here the task which we are to accomj^lish lies directly before us, viz., that we attain the operation of connection itself in its primitive elements so completely, that we may determine how, and how only, an objective experience is possible. In this will be attained the entire functions of an imderstanding in its possibility, and will thus be the understandinsr in its Idea after which we are seeking. Sufficient has already been said to show that no deter- mination of connection can be reached through an intuitive process. The judgment is inclusive of somewhat not admit- ting of construction, and thus not possible to be brought under an immpdiate beholding. Conjunction is restricted to the field of the sense, and can by no means project itself within the field of the understanding, and thus it is utterly irr.practicable that an intuitive passage should ever be 10* 296 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. opened between them. Connection is wholly another work than conjunction, and intuitive affirmations wholly other cognitions than discursive judgments. No exposition nor use of the former can be of any significancy in determining the latter. The sense can not think nor give any exposition of the process of thinking. Conjunction which is for the sense, simply brings into collocation • connection, which is for thought in the understanding, requires an intrinsic coa- lition. One is function for cognizing juxtaposition, the other f^r cogcnizina: an inherent concretion. Since, therefore, all attempt of an a priori exposition by an intuitive process is wholly excluded, the alternative must be to take some media, if such may be found, by which it may discursively be determined how such objective connec- tion may be ; or which is the same thing, how an objective experience is possible. Such media must be common to both our subjective constructions of phenomena in the sense and our objective connection of them in an experience, or they can afford no occasion for a discursus from one to the other and consequently no determination of any connection having been eifected between them, Tliey must, moreover, be d priori conditional for both subjective construction and objective connection in an experience, inasmuch as our de- termination of such connection in experience is to be wholly d priori, and thus necessarily conditional for all objective connection. Only in such manner can any connection in an objective experience be possible. And now, such media may be found in Space and Time. We have already seen that all definite phenomena must have their definite place and their definite period, and thus that all construction of phenomena must be in a space and a time ; all subjective A NOTIONAL NECESSARY TO EXPERIENCE. 227 constructions thus must have a space and a time. On the Other hand, all objective things and events, as connection of phenomena in an experience, must be in space and time ; and thus all objective connection of phenomena must have a space and a time. Space and time are thus common to both a construction of phenomena in the sense, and a connection of phenomena into things and events as experience in the understanding. Space and time are also a priori, that is, they are necessary and universal conditions for both con- struction of phenomena and connection of things, dnd may thus be used in an d priori investigation. And now, the design is to show, in the use of space and time, how it may be determined that constructed phenomena may be con- nected into things and events in an order of objective expe- rience, and how only this may be done, and which will bo the Understanding in its Idea. SECTION III SPACE AND TIME EXCLUDE ALL DETERMINED EXPERIENCK EXCEPT THROUGH THE CONNECTIONS OF A NOTIONAL. ^ Experience is a determination of the apprehended phe- nomena to their particular places in one whole of space, and their particular periods in one whole of time. Except as the phenomena are apprehended there can be no experience, since nothing appears in the consciousness ; and when phe- nomena are apprehended, except they be determined to their places in the one space and their periods in the one time, 228 THK UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. there can be no experience, for there is nothing connected, but a rhapsody of coming and going appearances with no order or significancy. And now the cognitions of space and time enable us to determine, a priori^ that no connected experience in space and time can be except as the phenom- enal are connected thi'ough a notional in the undei'standing. 1. T/ie phenomena only may he given^ and we may at- tempt to construct their places in space and their periods in time by them. — We will show the necessary order of such a process, and that it can not result in any. determined experi- ence. When a content is given in the sensibility and this is conjoined into definite figure and period, there will then be cognized a phenomenon occupying a place and period. This first content may pass from the sensibility and other content be given in it, and this in turn may be conjoined into defi- nite figure and period, and kno\^Ti as phenomenon having place and period. Such repeated constructions may go on indefinitely, and so long as the construction which termin- ates the former shall conjoin itself to the construction which begins the latter, there will be a»continuation of place and period, and the particular place and period of the one may be determined relatively to the place and period of the other. Thus, I may construct a rod to the- extent of a yard, •and then, as that content passes, I may continue to construct a rope of five yards in length, and perhaps still light on may construct a chain ten yards long, and then I can very well determine that the rod, the rope, and the chain together are of such a length, and what the place of each is relatively to the others ; and so with the period. In the conjoining move- ment which constructed the rod there may have been one moment, and that of the rope five moments, and that of the NOTIONAL NECESSAKY TO EXPERIENCE. 229 chain ten moments, and then I can readily determme the period of the whole, and the relative periods and succes- eions of each with the others. Thus may it be with any number of constructions contiguous in place and continuous in period. But I can not in this at all determine what their places and periods are in the one space and the one time, and thus attain to any ordered experience. They are contiguous and continuous, but in what direction in the one space and what succession in the one time, I can by no possible extent or number of constructions determine any thing at all. If my constructing agency had terminated Avith the rod, and a chasm had intervened with no content and no construction and thus nothing in the consciousness, when I again awoke in the self-conscious agency of constructing the rope, and then again a chasm and a conscious constructing of the chain, I could by no conjunctions of the sense pass over these chasms and determine direction and distance of places or succession and duration of period between the phenomena. When the conjoining agency ceases, then conscious extension and dur- ation ceases, and all places and periods must stand isolated in themselves and have no determined relationship to each other nor to the one space and the one time. Experience can not so be constituted. And not only m the one space and one time for the self whose agency constructs, but more especially in reference to a common experience among many selves, all constructions of phenomena must be helpless. The uninterrupted constructions may give determined places and periods to phenomena relatively to each other for the subject constructing, but only for him and for no other in common with him. Even while his constructions are m one 230 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. place and one period in the continuity of the parts, this is only for him and • for no one in communion with him. So his phenomena have been, and in his construction of them so his places and periods have been, but what phenomena, places, and peiiods other constructing agencies may have had in consciousness, he can by no conjunctions of the sense de- termine. His phenomena in places and periods relatively to each other have been for Aim, and others' phenomena in their places and periods relatively to each other have been distmctively for them, and neither can say any thing what one has been relatively to the others, nor what all have been relatively to one whole of space and one whole of time. A universal order of exjjerience can never thus arise. So all philosophy that builds up itself on that which is furnished by sense, and stands only in the consciousness, must neces- sarily proceed. It can give a relative experience so far as perpetuated perception goes, but it can attain to no deter- mination of phenomena in their places and periods in any one whole of space and of time for itself, and much less in any one space and one time in common for all. 2. The one s^tace and one time may he assumed, and the attempt made to connect the phenomena and detern%ine their places and periods by them. — The process for such an at- tempted determination of experience has its one necessary order, and we may d priori see that this also must fail in all connection of phenomena. The cognition of space and time as a priori given in the sense, and wliich we have termed the primitive intuition, is that of a diversity of points and instants wholly unconnected and unlimited. It is that which is possible to become con- joined and constructed in limits, but as without conjunction WOTIONAL NECESSARY TO EXPERIENCE. 231 can be known only as pure diversity of points and instants. When conjoined by an intellectual operation the primitive intuition of space becomes pure figure, and that of time becomes pure period. In the sense, therefore, space and time can give no relationshi]) to phenomena, for they become figm*e and period only by the construction which gives place and duration to the phenomena. The phenomena, we have just seen, can not determine their places and periods in one space and one time, for they are distinct and isolate among themselves ; and so the primitive intuition of space and time can not determine the places and periods of phenomena, for there is nothing but the pm"e diversity without and beyond the jjlienomena. But .because in the understanding, through a process we are now forthwith in the next section to examine, the cogni- tions of space and time become that of concrete and con- nected wholes, it may be supposed that the separate and fleeting phenomena, in their distinct places and peiiods, may be so connected m the concrete one space and one tune as to determine an exj^erience thereby. It is thus space and time as given in the understanding, a concrete one space and one time, and not space and time as given in the sense, a pure diversity of points and instants, that we here cognize as the attempted medium for determining an experience. It is not difficult to think space and time in their total- ity, and to expound the process of the understanding in so doinor. This we will first attend to and then show its utter incom])etency for determining an experience in space and time. The cognition of Space as a total of all spaces is a^ tained by a process of pure thought in the understanding ; 232 THE UNDERSTAXDIXG IN ITS IDEA. not at all by a conjunction of places as in juxtaposition in the sense. A notional connectivu is assumed as everywhere pervading all places, and in this thought of an all-pervading connective, all possible places are brought into a coalition and made to belong tQ one concrete unmensity of all space. Not a conjoining act, which takes spaces as in the di\'erse and constructs them into a total space, but an all-pervading oonnecti^'e is thought as already in space, holding it in one universal immensity in itself as conditional that any place may be taken as within space. There can, thus, be no chasm as a void of space around any definite place, as must ever be with all constructions in the sense ; but this aU- pervaduig connective of spaces is a universal plenum to space, and therefore all j^laces are held by it as in the one whole of space, and readily determinable in direction and distance each from any other in the one whole. There can be no separation of spaces, inasmuch as the all-pervading connective ever holds space in one whole, and while divi- sions may appear in space, separations can not be made of space. The understanding-conception of sj^ace is not thus an aggregate of spaces in juxtaposition, but one concrete whole in its all-j^ervading connective, inseparable and im- movable both as a whole or in any interchange of its parts. Such notional connective into one immensity of all space gives to its conception in the understanding but one possir ble mode, viz., that of absolute i^ermanence. Every j^lace in space has its own permanent position, in reference to the one immensity of space and to all other places. The understanding-cognition of Time, also, as a total of %all periods, is attained in pure thought thus. A notional connective as ever-abiding is assumed to hold through all NOTIONAL NECESSARY TO E X P K R I E X C E . 233 periods, and thereby making all possible periods adhere to- gether in the one eternity of duration. This, again, is no f'onstrnction of a whole time out of diverse times conjoined in unity by bringing them in collocation, as in the sense; but the perduring connective of all periods already first holds all times in one Time, in order that any period may afterwards be taken as in the one whole of all time. There can, thus, be no chasms in time as if there were intervals in ■which is no time, thereby isolating definite periods m their own times, as in the sense ; but this all-abiding connective makes one eternity of time, and all possible periods to be in it, and each insepai'able from it, and determinable in succes- sion relatively to any other period. Time, thus, can not be sundered, but only things in time can be sundered in their difierent periods. Time in the understanding is not the conception of single, separate, and fleeting periods ; but an ever-abiding, all-embracing duration. The conception of time as one whole, is not like space restricted to one mode as permanence, but has three modes^ which, as given in pure thought, it is here important should be clearly api^rehended. When we take the conception of time in its ever-abiding connective, holding all periods within itself as the sanae perduring whole of all time, we have one mode of time which may be distinguished as the ^yerpetxiity of time. "When, again, we have the conception of this all-abiding connective holding all possible periods within itself as a series, such that no one can be reached except in the coming and departing of all periods which pre- cede it, we have another mode of time which may be dis- tinguished as the succession of time. And, lastly, when we 4 have the combined conceptions of the perpetuity and sue- 234 THE UXDEESTANDING IN IT^ IDEA. cession of time, such that in the perpetual, no period of the successive can be coetaneous with any other period, but that each stands for itself only in the same point of all time, and can thus only be in the same time with itself and not in the time of any other period, we have a third mode of time which we may designate the simultaneousness of time. These three, the perpetual, successive, and simultaneous, are all the possible modes of time, and are quite distinct each from each. The perpetuity of time, is the mode of perdur ing in all periods ; the succession of time, is the mode of a progressus through all periods ; and the simultaneousness of time, is the mode of a standing in its own position for every period. While in a sense-conception we should say as fleet- ing as time, in the understanding-conception of the first mode we say as lasting as time; while, again, in tlie sense, we have the alteration of time, in the understanding as second mode we have the continuance of time ; and, finally, while in the sense we have the indetenninateness of time in the understanding as the third mode we have the exact- ness of time. And now, with this attainment in the understanding of space and time in their universality, so that all places may be thought as in one time, and thus all places be determinable in direction and distance each from each in the one space, and all periods determinable in their succession and duration relatively to each other in the one time, it may be supposed that thus the phenomena given in sense can be determined to their places in space and their pei'iods in time. And so they might be, if they were but ideal conceptions as in our % thought of the modes of space and time. When I con- ceived of a rod, a chain, a rope, etc., as before, I should put KOTIONAL NECESSARY TO E X P E R I E N C E . 235 these conceived phenomena in some place of rdy understand- ing conception of all space as a whole, and thus in thought their direction and distance could be readily determined in the whole of all space. And so also in time, I sliould put the conception of their appearing in some j^eriod of my un- derstanding-conception of all time as a whole, and thus their ideal period could be readily determinable from all other periods in my thought of a whole of all time, as whether before or after, and how much in each case. . But, this would leave the whole to be subjective merely. It is my thought of space and of time as a whole, and my con- ception of the phenomena to be put in space and time, and their places and periods to be determined ; and their deter- mination is only ideal and subjective, for myself and with no possible significancy for any other self In this way no ob- jective experience can possibly be given, detei-mined in space and time. And, further, should it be assumed that each self has, as understanding-cognition, the same space and time each as a whole ; and that it is a law of thought that an understand- ing Avorking any where should attain to just such modes of space and time; — which must be mere assumption that every man's space and time is precisely every other man's space and time — yet could not the real phenomena, which each man should perceive, be determined to their places and periods in an objective experience. The same space and time would then be for each man, but his perceptions of phenomena would differ, and appear in different places and different periods, and each would have his own world for himself, with no community of common phenomena in the , same place and in the same period as others. The appear. 236 THE UNDEESTAXDING IN ITS IDEA. ing of the phtnoniena would deterraiue all the connections m space and time, and tliis would differ as the perceptions came and went with every individual. The j^ermanent mode of the one space, for all, could not determine the con- nections of the phenomena appearing in it, for aU ; inasmuch as while the phenomena were perceived, the space could not be perceived, but could only be thought. And so with the three modes of time, which it may here be conceded all might have alike, they could not determine the connections of the phenomena appearing in time to be perduring, suc- cessive, or contemporaneous ; for while the phenomena were perceived, the modes of time could only be thought, and can not be made to have phenomenal appearance. I can de- termine the place of one phenomenon arising in a lake and then sinking, compared with another phenomenon after. M'ards arising and sinking, and can tell their bearing and distance ; but this is because the lake is itself j^erceived, and connects and determines the places of the appearance ; but such is not space and time as a whole ; they are thought not perceived. While, then, it might be admitted that the understand- ing in pure thought could attain to the modes of space and time as each a whole, yet could not this possibly avail to connect the phenomena appearing in space and time and de- termine their places and periods in an objective experience. If all might have, from some inner law of thought, the same modes of space and time, this could not give to them a com- mon experience in perception ; for their ideal subjective space and time, though admitted to be the same in all, yet can be perceived by none, and only thought, and can not thus be any media for connecting and determining in their NOTIONAL NECESSABY TO E X P E R I E N C E . 237 places and periods, the phenomena which may be perceived by each. It is not necessary therefore to expose the as- sumption of a universal law of thought that would give to every understanding the same space and time from each one's own pure thinking, which resolves all into an arbitrary constitution of an understanding, and knows no reason for such a law rather than any other, and which involves the teacher of the doctrine in dogmatism and his disciples in credulity ; but we may pass it all by, since when admitted, it would be yet utterly in vain for all objective experience. 3. There remains only this other supposition possible, that perhaps a notional connective for the phenomena may determine these phenonnena in their places and periods in the whole of all space and of all time^ and so may give both the phenomena and their space and time in an objective exr perience. By using the conception of space and time as the media for ascertaining how an experience in space and time may be possible, we have now already excluded the two methods of Sensualism and Idealism, and found that neither the perception of phenomena, nor the thought of a whole of space and of time, can by any possibility give an experience determined in its connections in space and time. We are thus shut up to the one remaining process of con- ceiving a notional connective for the phenomena, which shall condition them in their appearance and thereby in their places and periods, and thus determine their connections in space and time objectively. When we have found that neither the phenomenal nor the assumed one space and one time can connect our perceptions into an ordered experience, there is nothing: left but a resort to the notional in tlie Un- derstanding. It is much to have here found the only possi- 238 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. ble medium of any determined passage from the sense to the imderstandiug, and to know that if made at all, it must be at this point and in this manner. Perceptions as phenome- nal can be brought into philosophical synthetic judgments, and thus into an order of experience, only through the no- tional. We will, in the next section, give the method of demon- strating d priori such a possible connection, and thus a pos- sible experience determined in space and time ; and in this will be exposed all the primitive Elements which enter into the operation of connection, and which give the functions of an miderstanding in its idea. SECTION IV. THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF THE OPERATION OF CONNEC- TION, GIVING A POSSIBLE EXPERIENCE DETERMINED IN SPACE AND TIME. But one possible method of connection now lies open. The phenomena must themselves be so connected in their grounds and sources of being, that every perception of them shall be conditioned by this notional ground to its place in space for each, and by this notional source to its period in time for each. It is now the design to show how, in this way, an experience determined in its connections in space and time is possible ; and in the process we shall attain the complete operation of Connection in all its primitive Ele- ments. P2IMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONNECTIOX. 239 JFii'st, we "will attain to a possible determination of experience in Space. Let there be the conception of a force in a place, which maintains its equilibrium about a central point and com- pletely fills a definite space, and which forbids all intrusion within its place except in its own expulsion from it, and we will here call that conception of force the space-filUng force. Its equUibrium every way upon its own center secures that it must remain steadfast in its own place, unless disturbed by some interfering force ah extra, and thus constancy and impenetrability are the necessary a priori modes of its being. This space-filling force is altogether a notion, and impossible that it should be other than an understanding-cognition, and yet it is manifest that it may be an occasion for phenomena as appearing iii consciousness. To the sensibility in an organ of touch it opposes a resistance to muscular pressure, and may thus furnish the content in sensation for compara- tive hardness or softness, smoothness or roughness, and for figure and motion as yielding to pressure. It may also give content to the sensibility in any other possible organization when the requisite conditions are supplied ; as through the light, colors ; and through the air, sounds ; and through an efliuvia of its own, smells ; and through a dissolving sapid- ity, tastes. It can not itself become appearance but thought only, and yet it may manifest itself through a sensibility in all possible quality, and while its mode of being in the im- derstanding is that of a force constant and impenetrable, its mode of being in the sense is that of its perceived quality in the manifold phenomena it occasions. The occasion for its own manifested mode of being in the sense is determined in its mode as given in the understanding, and this, when the 240 THE UXDERSTAXDING IX ITS IDEA. conditions are supplied, to any sensibility that may bring its content \vithin any self-consciousness. It thus determines its own content in all sensibility, as conditioning the con- structing agency, and secures its phenomena to be objective in each, and itself as ground, the same object to all. The place in which the conjoinmg agency must construct the figure of its jjhenomena in the vision or the touch, is the same in the same self-consciousness at every repetition of the construction, inasmuch as the space-filling force is con- st-'^nt in its place and constant as occasion for phenomenal '.content m the sensibility ; and for the same reasons, the place must be the same to all possible self-consciousness wdthin which the figure of the phenomena shall be con- structed. Whether, then, the content, be constantly in the sensibility or not — i. e., whether the eye be constantly in the direction of the object or not, or whether the touch be con- stantly upon it or not — the constant space-filhng force deter- mines the constructed phenomena to be in the same place at every appearance, and for every percipient. Not, then, as in the sense only, in which every phenom- enon must come and depart in its own appearance and dis- appearance and its own definite figure in place come and depai't with it, and thus the places be as isolate as the phe- nomena, with no possibility of deterinining them in one whole of all space ; but, with the coming and departing phe- nomena in the sense, we have here the space-filling force which occasions them conceived to be constant in the same place, and thereby determining the appearance to be in the same place, and this same place fixed in its one position in the one immensity of universal space. And, now, it matters not how many such space-filling forces be conceived as each PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONNECTION. 241 in its own place, and giving occasion each to its own phe- nomenal quality in the sense ; since all will be in a deter- minate relationship each to each in direction and distance in the one space which contains them all, and this also for all who shall perceive their phenomena. This determination of the relative bearing and distance of different objects in space from each other still, however, is conditioned on the same conception of the space-filling force being there present. If there be conceived any place in which there is no space-fill- ing force, then in that place there is nothing w^hich may oc- casion phenomenal content, and as nothing can there be perceived, so it is manifest that nothing of place can be de- termined. Such a chasm of all space-filling being would necessitate an utter void of all experience, and it could never be determined how broad such chasm is ; in what direction from each other the phenomena on each side of it were ; nor where in the one universal space such chasm, as a void of all being, was situated. A chasm of all being in void space, of a cubic yard, would as effectually cut off all experience on one side from all determinate relationship to any experience that mis^ht be on the other side, as would a void which might receive a thousand suns and their several rolling sys- tems. "Whether there may be such voids of all being in space or not, or whether all of being may be circumsphered by such a void space, is not at all affirmed or denied, here, but only this, that a determined experience in space can be possible so far forth only as a space is occupied by a space- filling force, gi\'ing occasion in its own constancy of being for constant phenomena to appear in the consciousness. The conception of a removal into a void space beyond all occasions for perceiving a phenomenal universe, ^\■uuld pre- 11 242 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. elude all possibility for determining the place in tlie iramen* sity of sj)ace which that universe occupies. Only as space is filled with that which, as understanding-cognition, is com- petent to furnish constant occasion for that which, as sense- cognition, may constantly appear, is it possible that any determination of space should be given in experience. Com- munication from one phenomenon to another, and thus from one determined place to another, can only be thought as possible where a plenum of being in space gives occasion for a continuous appearance from place to place. In this manner, and in this only, is it possible that expe- rience should be determined in space. A ground must be given in the space-filling notional for the construction of the continued phenomenal, and the space-filling ground will de- termine all its phenomena constructed in their definite places to be in the same place, and this, occasioning continued appearance, will determine its place in one universal space. But, it is now manifest that this space-filling force is the constant subsistence in which the phenomenal qualities in- here. The connection is that of subsistence and inherence. But this subsisting notional, which in the understanding is constant, is the same conception as that of Substance ; and the inhering phenomenal, Avhich, though having occasion for a continual appearing, may yet come and go in the sense, and may therefore be quality as accidentally inhering, is the con- co))tion of Accidence / and thus we have the a priori con- dition, that the determination of an experience in space rests upon the connection of subsistence and inherence, and which necessitates the being of Substance and Accidence. The first primitive Element in an operation of Connection is, therefore, that of Substance and Accidence. PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONNECTION. 243 "We will next examine how an experience determined in Thme is possible. All consciousness of time depends upon the modifica- tions of the internal state. Except as changes occur in the inner sense, it must be impossible to apprehend that a time is i^assing. This capability of the inner sense to be modi- fied lies already as primitive Intuition in the self, and the capacity of the intellectual agency to move over the inner sense and thus modify the internal state, makes it possible that a subjective time should be brought within conscious- ness and constructed into definite periods. Thus, I may conjoin the primitive diversity in space in unity and thereby construct a definite figure in space, as a mathematical line. The movement of my intellectual agency in such construc- tion would change the inner state, in the passing of the in- tellectual agency through the diverse points in the primitive intuition of space, and thereby give in the consciousness the apprehension that a time was passing. This, it is manifest, must be wholly subjective, and the consciousness for myself only that a time was passing, inasmuch as it would be only mi/ affection of inner state and by my intellectual action. Both the definite line as figure in space, and the definite period in time in which the constructing agency was passing, would be of no significancy except in mi/ self-consciousness. Every point in the diversity of space through which the conjoining agency passed may be conceived as that which the moving agency successively occupied, and as thus stand- ing in it, each point may be called an mstant of time ; and each interval from point to point may be conceived as that tln-ough which the intellectual agency in the construction of the line moved, and which may thus be called a moment of 244 THE UNDEKSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. time ; the diversity in the primitive intuition of time may thus be considered as instants or moments, according to a conception of the points in the inner state to be affected or a conception of the moving agency from one point to an- other. As the agency stands in the point it is an instant, as it moves fi"om the point it is a moment ; and as each mo- ment is a new modification of the internal state, there is a succession of affections going on in the inner sense, and thus the consciousness of a passing time. So long as my intellec- tual agency is thus passing from moment to moment a time is passing in ray consciousness which I may construct into a definite period ; but when my intellectual agency ceases, all apprehension of passing moments must cease, and I can be no longer conscious that a time is passing. If again my in- tellectual agency pass from moment to moment, and I con- struct again a definite period, this last can have no deter- minate relation to the former, for a chasm of all conscious- ness of a passing time separates- them, and it were impossi- ble that I should brmg them into any conjunction in self- consciousness. Every period, as subjective time, is thus separate from all other periods, and all determination of any period in relation to one whole of time is impossible. The pure sense can only give its pure periods as separate, and thus the conception of time in it can not be of the one time but the manifold times. And so also with respect to phenomena in their periods. When any content in the sense is constructed in a definite figure in space, the intellectual agency gives the instants as it stands in the diverse points and the moments as it passes from point to point, as it does in a pure construction, and thus there is the consciousness that a time is passing ; and PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OP CONNECTION. 245 when this is constructed in a definite period, it is known as the time in which the })henomenon appears in consciousness. But this phenomenon thus constructed is objective in this, tlmt the content in the sensibility has not been produced by the intellectual agency, and has only been constructed in its figure in space and its period in time by it. The quality, as real appearance, has from somewhere beside the agency of the self been given to it, and the agency of the self has constructed its form in space and time. Yet, while as real appearance the quality is objective, yet is the space and time in which it appears subjectim only. It has been constructed in its definite period by my agency only and as it has afiected my inner sense, and thus its period has no significancy ex- cept in my self-consciousness. When, therefore, I have con- structed one phenomenon in its period, and that phenomenon has passed, the constructing agency ceases and thus' the in- ternal state ceases to have any successive modifications, and thereby all consciousness that a time is passing becomes im- possible. "Where some new content in the sensibility is again constructed in its definite period, that phenomenon in its period is wholly separate from the former phenomenon in its period, and the chasm of all possible conjunction of time between them prevents all possibihty of determining their relationship in one time. Phenomena in the sense can not be cocrnized as in one time, but their times are manifold. How, then, may phenomena, in their definite separate peri- ods, be conceived as possible to be detei-mined in their i-ela- tionship in the universal objective time ? And here we an- swer, as before in reference to determination in Space, that it is possible only as the phenomena are themselves neces- sarily connected in their relations. How this may be in r©- 246 THE U XDEK STANDI XG IN ITS IDEA. ference to the three modes of Time, the perpetual successive and simultaneous, must now be explahied ; and such explan- ation completed will give to us the primitive Elements of the operation of connection, and thus complete the Idea of an Understanding. Each mode of time must be taken up sepa- rately, inasmuch as the manner of connection between the phenomenal and the notional must in each be different. 1 The a priori determination of an experience in perpet- ual Time. — ^The conception of a s}):ice-filling force giving occasion for continual phenomena, and which is substance with the phenomenal qualities inhering, is sufficient for de- ternuning a possible experience in space ; but though a nec- essary preHminary this is not sufficient for determining a possible experience in time. The substance being constant in place, and giving occasion for continual 2:)henomena in that place, is a sufficient condition for determining the bear- ing and distance in space of any other phenomenon, which may appear as inhering in its substance in its place, and which can be perceived in communion with the former phe- nomena. Such phenomena will be determined as in the same one objective space, and in their relative positions in that one space. A constant substance as of a star in the heavens, giving occasion for a continual phenomenal bright- ness in that constant place, is sufficient for determining that any other brightness in its place which may. appear in com- munion with it, is in the same universal space, and the 'bear- ings and distance which it has with the first may also be readily determined. But if that substance, constant in its place and occasion for continual phenomenal brightness, never give occasion for any alteration in its phenomenal brightness, all the change that would be possible to be PRIillTIVE ELEMENTS OF CONXECTIOX. 247 effected by it in the inner state would be the modification of appearance and disappearance, i. e., of perceiving and of not perceiving the brightness. When the organ was so di- rected as to receive the content and construct the plienome- non in space, a time would be ajjprehended as passing in self-consciousness, but when the content had gone from the sense and no constructing agency was modifying the inter- nal state, all apprehension of a passing time would be im- possible. The modification of inner state would be only that of consciousness of a time and that of no consciousness of a time, and this simply as the modifications occurred in the inner state of the subject-self perceiving and then not per- ceiving. That any such modification of internal state was occasioned by the substance and its phenomenal brightness could never be determined for any other self-conscious sub- ject, but only for the perceiving and non-perceiving subject- self, and hence the passing of any time in the self-conscious- ness must be subjective only. That there was any one uni- versal objective time, which must be the same in all subjects of self-consciousness, could not be thus determined. But, now, we will conceive that this space-fillmg force, constant in the same place, becomes somehow so modified inherently as to be occasion of continual phenomenon but yet phenomenon in alteration. The same substance gives occasion now for perceiving one quality as phenomenon in- hering in it, and again for perceiving another quality, and thus varvintj the mode in which the substance manifests it- self in the sense. The substance itself thus conditions its phenomena, and the conditioned variations of phenomena condition a modification of internal state, and thus of a pass- ing time in the self-conscious percipient ; and this not merely 248 TUE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. from the arbitrary attention given by the perceiving self, but must be the same in all perceiving subjects of a self- consciousness. The substance itself conditions the varia- tions in the phenomena perceived, and thus of tlie altera- tions of the inner sense and thereby of the apprehension of a passmg time, and this for all possible percipients of the va- ried phenomena; and, therefore, for all possible subjects of self-conscious apprehension of this passing time, it must be the same time and objective to them all. Moreover, this same substance perdures througli all modifications, and thus through all variations of its plienomena, and thereby deter- mines them all as they arise and depart still to inhere in the same substance ; and they, therefore, are all in continuous connection in their perpetual variations. The period of each varied plienomenon is connected in the one time through which the substance perdures, and thus all tlie periods of continuous varied phenomena are in the one perpetual time through which the one substance perdures, and this for all possible percipients of these varied phenomena in their varying periods. One perpetual time embraces all the periods which can come up in any experience of these varying phenomena, and thus this substance constant in place is not only space- filling, but perduring through all periods is also a time-filling substance. The determination of any phenomenon in this continuous variation, to its relative period with tlie periods of all other phenomena in the one perpetual time, is in this manner manifestly possible. Let all phenomena, as they come and depart in continuous alteration, be thought as the varied appearances of the same one perduring substance, and it is possible to determine their whole experience to its proper periods in the one perpetual time, and only in their PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONNECTION. 249 connection of phenomena can an experience be so deter- mined. And now, the connection here is manifestly still that of Bubsisteuce and inherence, inasmuch as it is substance and accidence still, but this connection is given in a modified manner, not as constant substance and accidence, but as per- duriiig substance and varying accidence. The qualities in- hering in the same substance alter, and thus the substance becomes in the thought perpetual source rather than con- stant ground of the phenomena; and the phenomena com- ing and departing are, in the thought, depending events rather than inhering qualities. The substance becomes the notion of source, and the accidence becomes the phenome- non of event, and the connection is that of origin and de- pendence^ rather than as before of subsistence and inhe- rence, We shall thus have the a p)riori element of connec- tion in time ;u be a modification of the element found in connection in sj^ace, and which though stUl substance and accidence, we may distinguish in its modified conception as Source and Event. The first primitive Element of connec- tion is, in Space, Substance, and Accidence; and this as still the same though modified in the conception is, in perpetual Time, Source and Ecent. 2. The d jyriori determination of an experience in succes- sive Time. — ^The perdurance of the time-filling force, as source for all the varying phenomena which as event depend upon it, would be sufficient for determining all their events in their several periods as occurring in the same perpetual time. The peiiod of one could not be when the period of another Avas, but the events must come up singly into the experience, and thus be alternate in every self-consciousness. 11* 250 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. But with no other conception than that of source and event as element of connection, it would be impossible to deter- mine any fixed order of succession in the one time for all percipients of the events, or precisely where in one progres- sus of all time the period of any event in our experience was. That the phenomena of fluidity, of congelation, and of vapor, may all be the alteied events from one source which I call watei', is sufficient to determine that when one is the other can not be, and thus that all must somehow be- long to one perpetual time, but if I have nothing further than the conception of the connection of origin and depend- ence, I can not determine these alternations of events to any fixed order of succession in their period. That the phenom- ena alternate with each other at hap-hazard must leave the alternations of their periods in an equally indeterminate rhapsody of a coming and departing time, and when all phe- nomena are thus conceived as simply alternating each with each in their perpetual sources, it were impossible to deter- mine that any experience was proceeding either backward or forward in time, or whether it were not a perpetual oscil- lation to and fro in time. There is no fixed point in the thought, and thus no determining of period as before and after in a whole of time. All experience, as it originates in one perduring source must be in one perpetual time, but as nothing determines the flow in time and only the alterna- tion of periods, it were impossible to determine any order of succession to our experience in time. But, if we will now conceive that a modification of the source gives the condition for the alteration of the event, and that this modification has a fixed order of progressus, such fixed order of modification in the thought will necessi- PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONNECTION, 261 tate the order in the varied phenomena, and give the capa- bility of determining the flow of experience in time and the relative position of any period in time in which the experi- ence occurs. Thus a substance, as water, may be an abid- ing source for the alternating phenomena of congelation, fluidity, steam, etc., but if Ave have the conception of source and event only, and thus the connection of origin and de- pendence alone, we can never determine from the mere alternations of events any order of progress, inasmuch as these alternations may be desultory, and go from fluidity to vapor or from fluidity to congelation with no necessary cou' nection in the order of the series, though always originating in the same perpetual source. Such alternations of phenom- ena would condition corresponding variations in the internal state of the percipient subject, and the period of each might be definitely constructed and apprehended as in the same perpetual time from the connection of all in the same per- during source of being ; yet these periods could not be de- termined in one progressive flow, but must conform to the alternating phenomena. There is nothing in the inner sense to determine the order of succession, except as some fixed thought be given as notional connection in the understand- ing. Let, therefore, the substance, water, be so modified as space-filling by combination with another distinguishable force, as caloric, that the congelation can not appear except imder such a given modification of the substance ; and thus also with the phenomena of fluidity, and of steam ; and at once a fixed order of succession in the phenomena is deter- minable, and thus also a fixed order in tlieir periods in the inner sense, and the series must proceed in accordance with the progressus of the modifying force, caloric. The percep- 252 THE CTNDEEST ANDIN G IN ITS IDEA. tion of the phenomena must be conditioned by the inherent modifications of their source. The determination of a fixed order of modifications in the thought will determine a fixed order of connection in the phenomena, and thus a fixed or- der in their periods and thereby a progressive flowing on in time. Some standard, as a perpetual on-going of modifica- tion of substance in the thought and of corresponding phe- nomena in the perception, must be taken, and it will render determinable in time the period of all possible varying phe- nomena that may be held in communion with it. If the series can only be a progessus and never a regressus ; as, for example, in the modifications of the expressed juice of the grape, through the saccharine, vinous, and acetous fermenta" tions ; or the order of the seasons ; then an order of suc- cessive time may be determined, and all possible periods in which the phenomena may appear may be determined in their relative positions in this successive time, but impossi ble in any other connection. This connection is that of efficiency and adherence^ inas- much as the modification of the source makes the variation of the phenomenon, and this as event is not mere sequence but necessary result as dynamical adherent. The substance thus is not mere source for an event, but an efficiency is thought to be in it which necessitates the kind of event, and thus the source becomes the exact conception of a Cause and the necessitated event is the precise conception of an Eflfect ; and we have thus, as condition for determining phe- nomena in successive time, a second primitive Element of connection as Cause and Effect. 3. The a priori determination of an experience in sirnxd- taneous Time. — The connection of origin and dependence PBIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONNECTION. 253 in the notion of source and phenomenon of event is suffi- cient for determining phenomena in perpetual time, and the connection of efficiency and adherence in the notion of cause and phenomenon of effect is sufficient for determining phe- nomena in a successive time ; but quite another element of connection must now be attained for determining phenom- ena in simultaneous time. The modified source as cause makes the event to be what it is as an effect, and as the modifications in the source proceed, such also is the necessi- tated succession of effects ; and as these phenomenal effects must modify the inner sense in the perception of them, so the periods of their appearing may be constructed and must be thought as in a fixed order of succession in time. But any number of such series of cause and effect may be con- ceived as passing on each in its own fixed order of progres- sus, and when the perception of these phenomenal effects is promiscuous from one series to another, it will be impossible fi'om the connections which only run up and down the sepa- rate series to think any connection in communion each with each, and thereby to determine that any of the phenomena in each are contemporaneous, or, as the same thing, are in simultaneous time. Each can be determined to its position in its period according to the connections in its own series, for the thought has fixed the order of the progressus in that direction up and down the succession, but no one series has fixed any order of progressus in another series, and it can not thus be said whether one event in one is before or after any event in another serit-s. The thought has no fixed con- nections athwart the series, and it is therefore impossible to determine the period of one in its time as having any rela- tion in time with the period in another. Thus, I may have 254 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. different modifications of the substance, water, giving the varied phenomena as successive events of congelation, fluid- ity, and steam, and when I think them as connection of cause and effect in a necessary order, I may determine the periods of each effect in their appearance in successive time. And, again, when I have the varied modifications of the substance, caloric, in the successive temperatures of cold, agreeable warmth, and hot, and think them in connection as cause and effect in a necessary order, I may determine the periods of such effects in my experience in successive time. But if, now, I can think no connection between the ice and the cold, the fluid and the agreeable warmth, the steam and the heat, I can never determine the contemporaneoiisness of cither, because I can only determine the period in each in their own successive time, but not at all determine the peri- ods in each to be simultaneous. Let, however, the conception of reciprocal modification be here entertained, so that the substance, water, modified by the caloric successively as cause for the effects of ice, liquidity, and steam, also modifies reciprocally the substance, caloric, as successively cause for the effects of cold, agreea- ble warmth, and heat ; and thus, that while water as modi- fied by caloric is the source of congelation, caloric so modi- fied by water is the source of cold, and thus on reciprocally through all successive effects in each : we shall thus, from this reciprocity of modification, determine a necessary con nection of effects in each, and that the period of the one must synchronize with the period of the other, and that the phenomena of the ice and the cold, the fluid and the warm, the steam and the hot, must be together simultaneously each with each. The series of effects, and thus their periods in PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF CONNECTION. 255 time, are connected as concurrent and concomitant, and the determination of the coetaneous in time is as readily made as before of the perpetual or successive in time. If every event in its series is not thus connected by a i-eciprocal effi- ciency with every other concurrent event in its series, it were wholly impossible to determine them to be contempo- raneous. All effects must be held in communion by a recip- rocal efficiency, as necessarily as in succession by a direct efficiency. And now, this last species of connection is that of re- ciprocity and coAerewce, inasmuch as the efficiency each way makes a mutual variation of the phenomena, and these as effects are not merely adherents as successive but coherents as in communion. The conception, therefore, of such recip- rocal causation is precisely .that of Action and Jieaction. This is the third primitive Element of connection. Through the media of Space and Time we have thus at- tamed all the primitive elements of connection, and which must be that of substance and accidence having the connec- tion of subsistence and inherence for determining an experi- ence in Space ; and which, for determining an expeiience in Time, becomes modified into source and event, liaving the connection of origin and dependence for perpetual time; into cause and effect, having the connection of efficiency and adherence for successive time ; and into action and re- action, having the connection of reciprocity and coherence for simultaneous time. No cognition of an experience de- termined in space and time can be, except as the phenome- nal in the sense is thought to be connected according to these primitive elements as the notional in the understand- ing. The operation of connection must, therefore, be imi- 256 THE UNDERSTANDIKG IN ITS IDEA.. versally conditioned upon the notions in an understanding of Substance as ground in space, and of Substance as source in time ; which last, as modified for succession, becomes Cause; and again modified for concomitance, becomes Re- ciprocal Causation. SECTION V. SOME OF THE A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IN A NATURE OP THINGS. As conditional for all determination of objects in Space and Time, the phenomena must inhere in their permanent substance, depend upon their perpetual source, adhere to their successive causes, and cohere by their recijDrocal influ- ences. It is not possible that the phenomena of the sense can be determined in space and time except as they are thus connected among themselves, and thus condition the order of their experience in the understanding ; and wherever there is such a determined order of experience, there must be real phenomena standing in their valid substances causes and counter-influences, and constituting througli such con- nections a svstematic and organized whole of things which we properly term, as distinct from all ideal connections in our subjective thinking, an objective world. Separate and fleeting appearances are connected in their sources as events, and in their reciprocities as concomitant occurrences, and this every-way connection in our expei'ience gives a nature of things^ and considered as a whole of all such connected things we term it Universal Nature. A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 257 This is the province of the Understanding, to talvo the perceptions of the sense and determine their connection in a judgment of a nature of things ; and except in such field of operation it is impossible tliat an understanding should effect any judgments. If there may be existence which is not subjected to the space and time-determmations, and not bound in the connections of substances causes and reciprocal influences, it must be held as utterly without signification for an understanding which can operate only in the connec- tions of the phenomenal througli the notional. Tlie super- natural is as nothing for an understanding judging accord- ing to the sense. It would be as preposterous to put the undei'standing to the work of determining the supernatural, as to put the sense to determining substances and causes which are wholly supersensible. If we have no faculty which may transcend the cognitions given in an understand- ing then, truly, must we be ever shut up within nature, and that any existence may lie beyond nature must be wholly inconceivable. But this whole field of nature, as of the conception of phenomena connected into a universal whole of all possible experience in space and time, is the legitimate province of the understanding, and all that is possible to be known of it must be contained in such discursive judgments. Having now attained the process for all such judgments through all the difterent methods of connection which are a priori pos- sible in an experience determined in space and time, and thereby explained how it is possible to verify the synthetical judgment in its addition of a new cognition of the notion; we may further take the conception of such verified judg- ments, and by an analysis of their conditions we may find 258 THE U ND ERST A XD IN G IN ITS IDEA- many predicates for an analytical judgment, which will give to us so many necessary and universal principles as condi- tions in a nature of things. This we will now proceed to accomplisli through each of the connective notions made use of in their methods of discursive connection, viz. : the Sub- stance, both as ground and source ; the Cause, as condition- ing changes ; and the Reci'pTOcal Agency, as conditioning concomitances. 1. Substance. — This, we have found, is a notion wholly supplied in the understanding ; impossible to be reached by the sense ; standing under all phenomena as their ground or source ; and yet which may be verified as objective being and not mere subjective notion, from the determniation in space and time which it gives to experience. As })ure con. ception in the imdei'standing it is ground for all quality and source for all event ; and as verified in a determined experi- ence, objectively, it is a space-filling force in its ground for all perceived quality, and a time-filling force in its source for all changing events. As no construction can place it in the light of consciousness, so no immediate intuition can take cognizance of it ; but through the media of space and of time, it has been a priori found to be a necessary condition for all determination of an experience in the relations of space and the relations of perpetual time ; and, therefore, wherever an experience determines itself in its relations in a whole of sj^ace, there must be a space-filling substance as pei'manent ground for the phenomena wliich appear un- changed in the same place; and wherever an experience determines itself in its relation to one perpetual time, there must be a time-filling substance as perduring source for the changing phenomena there occurring. A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 259 And here, if we will take the conception of this verified objective space-filling and time-enduring substance, and analyze it as connective notion for qualities in one space and events in one time, and thus standing as the substantial es- sence and thing in itself of material nature, and of which all perceived phenomena of quality and event are but the modes of its manifestation through the different organs of the sense, we shall in such analysis be able to find many d priori prmciples of nature, as the analytical elements and condi- tions without which a nature of things as given to an experience determined in space and time can not be. Let us, then, take the conception in the'first place, of sub. stance as S2:)ace-Jillin(/, and find the analytical content which must belong to it. Our analysis must be of that which is wholly supersensual, and not at all phenomenal but notional as the transcendental ground and condition for all phenom- ena ; and thus, an indispensable prerequisite to such analy- sis is a distinct conception of this imdei'Standing notion of a space-filling force. All conception of force involves action, but a mere pure act does not give the conception of force. Action in one direction, meeting no other action, could have nothing answering to the conception of force. Except as action meets action and thereby counter-action takes place, no generation of force is conceivable, and hence all conception of force is truly that of a product from an antagonism. It is not original pure act, but tlie resultant of pure counter-action. At the point of counter-agency, as pure notion in the under- Btanding, shall we first attain the conception of force as pure understanding-conception. Such a point becomes an occu- pied position in space and resisting all displacement, and to the extent to which the diverse points in a space are contig- 260 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. uously thus occupied by pure forces is there a fiUing of space, and a resistance to all foreign intrusion within such space. And here, with this conception of pure force as occupying a space, we have all that is now necessary to be considered as sufficient for the pure understanding-conception of a space- filling substance. This pure space-filhng force, as thing in itself, can not appear in the sense, but may very well be occasion that there should be phenomena in the sense. It may readily give content in the sensibility, and thus occasion different affections Avhich may be both distinguished and conjoined, and thus become distinct and definite phenomena. To the sensibility of the touch and muscular effort, it may give content for the phenomena of resistance, figure, super- ficial smoothness or roughness, hardness or softness, and weight or pressure, etc. And so, also, through the inter- vention of other media it may give content to vision ; to hearing, smelling, or tasting ; and this in all possible ways of sueh organs of sensibility becoming affected, according to the modifications internally of the space-filling force. The phenomena are thus the modes in whicli the one space- filHng force manifests itself through the perceptions of the sense. This permanently fills its space, and stands in its position, and is constant occasion for the like content in all organs of all sensibilities. It thus must determine its own place, and its relation to all other space-filling substances in their places, and become objective experience as the same thing in its place for all occasions when its phenomena are perceived, and for all subjects of the self-conscious percep- tions. If we had only the vague conception of substance and of cause as somehow standing under the qualities and be- A PKIOKI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 261 tween the events, we could not make any intelligible analysis of them, nor attain any a priori principles of nature from them. But the clear conception we may gain of force as of two counteracting activities, and the modifications that must occur when forces interfere with each other, lays open before us the whole intrinsic nature of substances and causes. They can not be constructed and thus be immediately beheld as mathematical figure, and therefore no analysis of them can be intuitive ; but they can be clearly thought, and such thought may have its complete analysis, and such analysis will give necessary principles in nature. And now, with this pure understanding-conception of the space-filling substance, it is quite manifest from a mere analysis thereof, that a permanent impeiietrabilitij must belong to it in the space which it occupies, and that this will be a valid index in the sense, that a space-filling sub- stance occupies the place into which the phenomena of another substance can not be introduced without a displace- ment of the phenomena already there appearing. The prin- ciple of impenetrabiUty must thus belong to a nature of things, and the conception of such impenetrability must be essential to the conviction that any phenomenon has sub- stantial objective reahty. The empirical determination of substance to its place may be thereby eifected when an im- penetrability -is perceived in that place, and the sameness of a substance may be determined for the sense when the same phenomena are occasioned from the same impenetrability. And so also inertia must be a first principle in matter. Tlie antagonisms which constitute the force in each point of space filled balance each other, and are thus at rest fi-om this mutual resistayice^ and so the matter must remain at rest 262 THE UNDE E ST ANDIN G I N I TS ID E A. except as impelled by tlieimj^act of some other material force. When thus impelled the antagonisms have a greater energy on one side, and must therefore move before this greater enei-gy and in the direction from it, and so the matter must continue to move till some outer material force be met to restore the equilibrium of the antagonist energies. Inertia is not inaction intrinsically, but intrmsic antagonist action self-balanced. The matter holds itself in its given state as a vis Inertim.' And again, that infinite divisibility is an a priori pre- dicate of all material substance is clear in an analytical judg- ment. The space-filling force is a point in the antagonism of a pure counteraction and has thus, as the mathematical point it occupies, position only and not magnitude. And the entb'e space filled by the substance is so filled only, as every point in the space is position for the point of an an- tagonism engendering force, and thus the substance is as divisible as the space which it fills. It is also manifest that the intensity of the counteraction is the measure of the force engendered in every point of the space filled, and therefore that the same space may yet be filled, while the quantity of the substance filling may difier in an infinite degree. Every point in the space may have its occupying force, and the in- tensity of the force may be from the point =0, onwards to an infinite amount. Substance is thus divisible without limit in two ways ; in the extent of space filled, and in the mtensity with which the same space is filled. The atom of matter is thus no possible phenomenon in the sense-concep- tion, but a notion in the understanding-conception. It is tlie force engendered in one point of pure counteraction, and while it may occupy space merely as simple position with- A PUIOEI rUlNCIPLES IN NATURE. 263 out extension, it yet may be of an infinite diversity in its intensity, and thus some one atom miglit have an intensity which should equal the aggregate atoms of a world. Not only infinite divisibility as diminution of space- filled, but also infinite divisibility as diminution of intensity in the same place, may be a priori predicated of all material being ; inasmuch as an evanishing in the same jslace may as truly pass through infinite degrees, as a dividing of the place may pass through infinite limits. In this respect, space and sub- stance differ in the thought : space is divisible only as extent ; substance is divisible both as extensive and as intensive. We may also, in the second place, analyze the conception of substance as time-filling, and determine some of its a priori principles in this direction. This same space-filling force indicating itself in its constant impenetrability, may be conceived as giving its content to the sensibility, and in this manner its phenomena to the perception, and these as changmg in their definite places, or as themselves changing in the same place ; and in either case a filling of time will bo determined. The moving of the phenomena from place to place in the perception must aflfect the inner state, and thus induce the consciousness that a time is passing ; and this may be conjoined into its definite periods, while the con- stancy of an impenetrability in the changing places of the phenomena will give a perduring substance through all these changes, and thus determine these definite periods to be in one perpetual time. Or, the changing of the phenomena in the same place must also affect the inner state by the per- ception, and thereby induce the consciousness that a time is passing ; and this may be conjoined in definite periods, and the constancy of the impenetrability will give the same sub- 264 THE UNDERSTANDI^TG IN ITS IDEA. stance as permanent source for the changed phenomena, and thus determine the definite periods to stand in the one per- petual time. In either case, therefore, the permanent sub- stance perdures through a time, and is thus time-fiUing. And now, inasmuch as the perpetuity of the one time is determined only by the j^erdurance of the one substance as source through all its changes, and that as the one time en- dures so the one source of all changes of phenomena must endure ; it follows, that the understanding can admit of nothing which is new to come into its conception. That which arises and departs is the phenomenal, and is new only as a sense-conception ; but it has come up from some per- during source, and when it has departed there has not been a void left in the understanding, for the substance still is, as the constant source for new phenomena ; and thus, for the understanding neither a coming nor departing can be, but a perpetuity of things endures. Origin from nothing, and extmction in nothing, are both inconceivable. It would be a void of aU being before and after the phenomenon ; or, a chasm of vacuity between phenomena ; which Avould cut ofi all possible connection in the determinations of the under- standing, and in the admission of which the understanding would annihilate its own functions. Neither nature nor time could be thought in their imity, nor that nature had any determinate position in time. This is, there- fore, an d 2)nori principle of nature — that no change of phenomena can arise from non-being, and vanish again into non-being, but must ever originate in some permanent source, and depart with that source still perduring. The old dictum of the ancient philosophers is peremptory, viz. : A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 265 " E niio, posse nil gignl ; In nilum, nil posse reverti." I "WTiether substance itself may begin, and thus the crea- tion of a thing in itself be eftected by that which is free personality and not a thing, is a question for quite another facult} than the understanding. So far as an action of the understanding can reach, it must be by bringing i)heuomena in discursive connections through the medium of the no- tional, and it were as absurd to attempt thinking phenomena into a natm-e of things without a permanent substance, as to attempt perceiving the shajjes of phenomena without place. The conception of the substance as notion in the under- standing is conditional for all function of an understanding ; and of course the inquiry, whence is the permanent sub- stance ? must transcend all action of the understanding as the faculty judging according to sense. The substance, as space-filling force, verified in the determination of an expe- rience to the space-relations, and the substance also as tune- filling force, verified in the determination of an experience to the time-relation of perpetuity, being given, the under- standing may use it for connecting a universe of nature in the immensity of one space and the eternity of one time; but, when it would transcend connections through this sub- stance, and inquire for an origin of the substance itself, it is abohshing the very notion which determines the immensity and the eternity in their oneness, and obhging itself to think another substance in another immensity and eternity, of which this system of nature in its space and time is but a modification. It is an understanding attempting to over- leap itself by issuing its agency outward into some higher understanding, and could even thus only employ itself in an 12 266 THE UXDERSTAXDING IN ITS IDEA. endless leaping from sphere to sphere, without the possibil- ity of resting in a final landing-ijlace. The perdurhig source of these changing phenomena is conceived to be before the first phenomenon, and to con- tinue still in the departure of the last, and thus to hold all the phenomena within one perpetuated duration, and neither begmuing nor ending nor at all exhausting itsell" in any of these perpetuated successions. The substance persists through aU modes of its manifestation without beginning or end, augmentation or diminution. The force in one point may be modified by any combmation of forces in other points, but the space-tilling force once given, its modifica- tions in any part can only occasion new phenomena in the sense, not any creations of new nor annihilations of old sub- stances. It is thus an d p/-iore principle of Xature, that within itself nothin(/ is created nor annUdlated ^ but itself remains the same whole through all its transformations. If any thing may be added to it, or taken from it, it must be by some ah extra interference ; and is, of course, the intro- duction of some supernatural agency which can have no conceivable significaucy in any Judgment of the Under- standing. And this conception of the permanency of the substance of nature, and the coming and departing of the phenomena of nature, discriminates between some other conceptions which are often confounded. The conception of change is that of any modification in the permanent substance ; the conception of alteration is that of the departing of one phe- nomenon and the arising of another ; and the conception of variation is that in which one phenomenon is made distinct from another. Thus the permanent substance changes and A PKIORI PKINCIPLES IN NATURE. 207 thereby alters its phenomena, and these phenomena vary one from the other. There can be no change but in a per- manent which neither alters nor varies. "We may change the mode of the same tiling, alter one thing for another, and vary diflerent things among themselves. We have also in this the conception of chance. It is the origination of phenomena from no permanent source. It is no positive judgment, but a negation of the connective conditional for all judgments, and assumes an origination from a void of all being. It is the absurdity of think- ing through the sense ; of discarding the notion and thus vacating the understanding, and yet attempting to account for the connections of phenomena. It is a negation of the law of thought itself, and thus such an experience of nature is an absurd and impossible conception. A Nature of things can not admit of Chance. 2. Cause. — This we have abeady found to be a primi- tive Element of connection and thus a primitive understand- ing-cognition, wholly supersensible, and yet possible to be verified as objective being in the determination of an expe- rience to successive time. We shall find a clear conception of cause to admit of an d priori analysis, which Avill give the predicates of a nature of things in an analytical judg- ment in several important particulars; and which, as in- volved in the connections of nature itself, must be the nec- essary and universal principles and coiKlitions of a nature of things. The first requisite is, the attaining of a clear and complete conception of Cause. No construction is pos- sible that it may be given in a definite intuition, but its con- ception must be wholly within the thought of the under- standing. 268 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. When we recur to our conception of substance, we have A force in every point of space which the substance occupies, and is thus si^ace-filling ; and a perduring through every instant of time that, as source for coming and departing phenomena, the substance continues and is thus time-filUng. This substance, as time-filling, is the conception of a modi- fication of the internal space-filling force so that as thus modified it becomes occasion for an altered content in the sensibility, and consequently of an altered phenomenon in perce]3tion ; and we say that the same thing has become changed. But, manifestly, this space-filling force as sub- stance will hold itself at rest in each point of its antagonism from the constancy of the balanced counteraction, and thus nature will hold itself in utter immobility and which is its hiertia throughout, if the force in one portion of space does not intrude upon the places occuj^ied by other forces ; or, which is the same thing, if one substance does not become combined with, or make an impulsion upon another sub- stance. When such cases occur, the combination of forces must work an inner modification of the antagonism in each point of counteraction, and thus necessitate altered contents for the sensibility and consequently altered phenomena'in the perception, and we shall have chemical changes ; and the impulsion of the forces must modify the intensities of the points of counteraction, and we shall have mechanical changes. In all such modifications of forces as space-filling, while the perduring impenetrability will indicate the sub- stance which is the permanent source of these altered phe- nomena, yet will tliat substance which obtrudes its modifica- tions upon this permanent source be a distinct concei)tion ; and it is this obtruding of one space-filling force upon an- A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 269 Other in its modifications which, jirecisely, is the conception of cause. All physical cause implies a duality of agency. Thus the permanent substance Avhich we conceive to have been constant in all the alternations of congelation, fluidity, vapor, etc., we conceive as the source of these alternating phenomena ; but the substance which has obtruded itself in its modifying force, and thus produced the changes in the permanent source, we conceive as the cause of these alter- uatmg phenomena. The substance, caloric, is combined Avith tlie substance, water, and thus as one space-filling force 80 modifying the other space-filling force, that in its various modifications the caloric is cause and the water is source now for congelation, again for fluidity, and again for vapor, etc., as chemical changes ; and the ivory of the billiard-ball at rest as space-filling substance has been so modified in its intensities of counter-agency at each point in the space it filled, by the obtrusion of the ivory of the moving ball upon its place, that the first has become source of continual dis- placement in the resulting movement, and the last has been the cause of such movement, as mechanical change. Thus in all cases of causation, the conception of a cause is that ol a space-filling force as one substance obtruding itself upon the place of another space-filling force as substance, and by the modifications induced securing chemical, mechanical, or other changes in the latter, which manifest themselves to the sense in the altered phenomena. It is, therefore, clearly involved in the very conception of a cause, that as the changes induced in the permanent source by the modifications of the cause pass along accord- ins to the conditions of the combination of the substance- cause M'ith the substance-source, so the altered phenomena 270 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. springing from these changes in their substance-source must pass on in the same conditioned succession. Tlie modifica- tion of the source by the cause is the condition for the altered phenomena, and this alteration of phenomena must correspond to the changes in the source. The perception can, therefore, be but in one order, and this conditioning of an ordered series of perceptions is an index of an ordering series of causation. When the phenomena in their succes- sions in the sense can be perceived in one order only, and not the reverse, then it is that an ordered series of changes is going on in the substance-source as conditioned by the combination with it of the substance-cause ; and in this may we determine an objective succession as distinct from mere successive appearance in the subject perceiving. There is in this an alteration of phenomena, and not a mere succes- sion of perceiving acts. Thus, when in a hemisphere of the heavens, I joerceive one star in succession after another, and as one passes from my sight another comes into vision, the perceiving agency is as truly successive and may be constructed into its defirt- ite periods as completely as if one star had been the condi- tion of my seeing the next, and thus on through the whole series. Merely such a succession in perceiving will deter- mine nothing in relation to an objective succession in the phenomena themselves ; but if I find I may reverse my or- der of perception, and see the same stars successively in a retracing of my series of perceptions, I then know that not the stars themselves are successive, but only my perception of them. But if I follow my perception of the tides as ebbing and flowing, and thus at any one point as rising and falling successively, and I can not perceive in an inverse A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IX NATURE. 271 order that the water is either rising or falHiig at pleasure ; I then determine that it is not a mere successive perceiving, but an objective succession in the phenomena themselves. And in this objective succession of phenomena, I shall have an index of a conditioning series of causes. And here, that I may determine the cause and the source of these succes- sive phenomena, I must be able to determine the objective reality of their substances, and in these, which is the cause and which is the source. I may very readily determine a perjjetual impenetrability in the rising and foiling water, and know that to be permanent source for the flow and ebb of the tide which appears ; but it may be much more difficult to determine that the force of the revolving moon modifies in combination Avith it the space-filling force of the substance water, and thus makes the latter to be source for the ebbing and flowing tide ; and yet except as I have so determined, though I may have determined that there is causation, yet have I not found what is the cause. I may very readily determine that the phenomena of saccharine, vinous, and ace- tous fermentation are objective alterations and not merely successive perceptions, for I can not vary the order of the perceptions; and I may also determine the source of these altered phenomena of the sugar, the wine, and the vinegar, by determining a permanent impenetrability constant in one substance through them all ; and though I have thus clearly determined that this substance-source must stand in combi- nation with some substance-cause and be modified thereby, yet it may be impossible for me to determine what that permanent space-filling force in its perpetual impenetrability is, Avhich is the substance-cause for these changes ; but until such is found, though some cause must be, yet what the cause is has not yet been determined. 272 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. That a cause is, lias a safe index in this — an ordered suc- cession of phenomena perceived in a determined series ; wliat a cause is, must be determined in this — a perpetual impene- trability that marks the substance, which by combining with the substance-source of the phenomena modifies its changes, and thus conditions its successions of phenomena. One sjiace-filling force can not impinge upon or combine with another, without so modifying it as to induce some changes in it, which must manifest themselves in the sense by some alteration of the phenomena, and this competency to so induce changes is the essential of causality, and Avhich we terra the pov^er^ or the efficiency of the cause, and which is the causal nexus, as notion in the understanding, for con- necting the successions in the j^henomena. If, then, we sometimes find the phenomena in the substance-cause and those of the substance-source to be together : we shall still determine that to be cause in which the efliciency is, and cog- nize it as necessarily first in the understanding-conception, though both may appear together in the sense. Thus I may first perceive a vapor, and then perceive a heat as phenom- enon of the notional caloric which causes the vapor ; and though I may perceive that the heat and the vapor are toge- ther in the sense, yet inasmuch as I determine the efficiency to be in the caloric of which the sensation of heat is phenomenon, I judge the heat to be truly first in order and the vapor to succeed it. And so, moreover, when I simply perceive vary- ing phenomena in some source, but can not perceive any phenomena of the substance-cause, the determination that there is an efficiency inducing these changes in the source is quite sufficient that I should judge some substance-cause to be present, although it does not manifest itself by any of its A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE, 273 own plicnomena in the sense, but only to tlie luulerstanding througli the changes which it is effecting in the source of these coining and departing phenomena. Thus, I may per- ceive the altered phenomena whicli magnetism is effecting in some substance-source, as the movement and disposition of the steel-filings after an ordered arrangement ; and though no phenomena mark the presence of the magnetic substance in the place where the steel-filings have been arranging themselves, yet my understanding at once concludes that some permanent space-filling force is present, and that the sharpening and perfecting of some organic sensibility might be sufl^cient to receive its content as a sensation, and capaci- tate the intellect to discriminate and construct it into a com- plete 2)henomenon. In my understanding, I therefore con- clude magnetism, and so also electricity, galvanism, ajid even gravitation, to be space-filling forces, although they manifest themselves to the sense in no other way, than by the altered phenomena which they produce in otlier sub- stances. The efficiency in any substance-cause may be conceived to lie in the substance as an inherent property, even when it is not in combination with any other space-filling force as actually inducing changes therein, and it is such conception that we mark by the term latent power, implying that it would induce changes were the occasion given for its com- bination with some other substance. We thus conceive the steel and flint as possessing the latent jjower to produce the spark, though no occasion of collision has occurred ; yet ought we not to hold such notion of latent power to be that of cause, but only that on occasion of their combination in collision, there would be cause, viz., a modification of the 12* 274 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. space-filling force. The steel and flint are no more cause for the spark than a chip and leather, except as brought in com- bination ; for without this the phenomenon of the spark can no more appear in the sense from one than from the other. An analysis of this conception of Cause will also expose some imjiortant distinctions in reference to occurring events which are often very confusedly apprehended. Thus, when I conceive of a series of causes and effects passing on in their order, and some phenomenon extraneous to this series and not at all accounted for in it comes suddenly in, and in- terrupts the process of thinking in its connections as going on in the experience, I term this intruding phenomenon a casual event, and perhaps, as if surprised by it, I say, it somehow so happened ; or, that it was an accident. The meaning is, not that any such occurrence has come without both its source and its cause as space-filling substance, but that its connection is quite in another series of cause and effect from that which we were then determining in an experience, and in proportion to the suddenness, supposed disconnection, and difiicult explanation of the intruding phenomenon is our surprise, and the mystery in which we leave the casual occurrence. When we follow the conception of connected phenom- ena in one source through their successions, as of the juice of the grape through its successive stages of fermentation, we have the judgment of a change in things. When Ave follow the conception through the successions of a series of caiises, we have the judgment of a train of events. Thus, in the return of the s\m from the winter solstice, and the dissolving of the snow and ice, and the overflow of the Btreams, and the deposition of organic remains upon the A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 275 fields, and their increased fruitfnlness, and the augmented business, wealth, population, etc., we have a successive com- ing out from different sources of new phenomena which we term events / and these are all conditioned in their order of occurrence by their series of causes, and we therefore say, that they occur in a train. These successions have no con- nection in one source, but the jihenomena vary the substance In which they originate with every step, and their connec- tion is only through a varied combination of substances, of which one becomes an occasion for the next, and thus on- ward through all the efficiency of the changes by their causes. And again, when we conceive the -antecedent not as the efficient, but only as a preparative occasional for an efficient, we may deem both the occasional and the efficient to be causes, but their distinction in the conception must be noted by some qualifying phraseology. Thus in the overflow of the streams as following the dissolving of the snow, the dissolving is only a preparative occasional for and not an efficient for the overflowing. The disengaging of the fluid by the dissolution of the congelation prepares the way for the efficiency of gravitation to come in combination and produce tlie overflowing; and then this overflowing is again a preparative occasional for the deposit of its sedi- ment, inasmuch as the quiet state of the waters which en- sues permits again gravitation as an efficient, to bring the suspended particles to the bottom. "We may mark this dis- tinction by calling the one an accasional cause, and the other an efficient cause ; and in many cases such distinction leads to very important philosophical consequences. The old scholastic distinctions are not unworthy of careful preft 276 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. ervation ; as causa causans^ causa causata., causa efficiens^ causa sine qua non^ etc. This clear conception of Cause gives opportunity for a further analysis, by which still more important a priori principles in a nature of things are determined. The con- ception oi fate is that of a cause in utter blindness; compe- tent to originate effects, and yet utterly without determina- tion of what the effect must be. It is a blind giant in its power, irresistible and inexorable, under which, the doc- trines of the Stoic become the highest wisdom, viz., that there is nothing to pray for and nothing to pray to ; nothing to be feared or hoped ; and the part of virtue is to receive all things in perfect equanimity, inasmuch as while some- thing must come, there can be no possible conditioning of what is to come. The cause is positive, but all conditioning of the effect in the cause is negative. The understanding has simply the connective of efficiency, and therefore it may determine that one thing shall make changes in other things, and successions of phenomena shall flow on ; but it has no connectives for judging what changes shall be induced, and thus no determination of what phenomena must appear. But if we will here analyze our conception of cause, we shall find a nature of things no more admitting of Fate than, as above seen, of Chance. The space-filling force as sub- stance in a nature of things already is, and the concej)tion of cause is the efficiency of one substance in combination with others to induce changes therein, and thus condition the phenomena which must appear in the sense. But the given combination, from the inherent forces of the space- filling substances as cause and source, can produce only a given modification, and thus a given change, and thus also a A PKIORI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 2V7 given phenomenon ; and every change must also be condi- tional for its next combination of substances, and thus on- ward in endless development, but with the inherent princi- ple in every succession as an intestine law of what every subsequent succession must be. In nature there can no more be a blind fatality of result, than there can be a rest- ing of causation. Both the cause must go out into effect, and must go out in such effect, and the whole is given in the germ as truly _ as any part in the past development. Causation has its connections in intelligible inherent law, and knows nothing of a blind Fate, Avhich would annihilate all function of an Understanding in Experience. Again, the conception of liberty is that which may pro- pose to itself as cause an alternative of ends, and go out in its agency for the one in the possession of an efficiency for its alternative. It is positive of agency and positive of con- ditions, but as having an alternative of conditions it is neg- ative of a necessitated order of effect. But in the causation of nature an alternative of conditions is an impossibility. No combination of space-filling forces can induce but one modification in any point of efficiency, and the cause must as necessarily go out into its own conditioned effect, as it must go out in effect at all. In Nature there can be no Liberty. And, lastly, the conception of a leap in nature would be that of passing from effect to effect without an intermediate efficiency, and thus in one stage of development reaching an advanced position without passing through the intermediate changes. Such a conception would break up all intelligil)le connection in nature, inasmuch as any cause which was effi- cient for other than its own effect must leave all iutermedi- 278 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. ate effects unconnected by any cause. Nature would have some changes which were not connected in any develop- ment of nature. A natiu-e of thii:gs can never admit of progress ^:>e/' saltum. 3. Action and Reaction. — This is another pure under- standing-conception, and may be verified in an objective reahty by the determination of an experience as cotempora- neous, or as occurrence of events simultaneously. A clear conception of this maimer of connection will also give oc- casion for a further analysis by means of which some other a priori principles of a nature of things may be obtained. The conception is that of two substances in combination or colUsion, which can not occur but it must modify the space-filhng force through every point of the space filled. But Avhile such modification must be made in one substance fi'om the combination, the combination must as sm'ely mod- ify the other substance, and thus the change must be recip- rocal. And this is not merely in single instances of combi- nation, but inasmuch as aU of a nature of things may be determined in the relations of one space and of one time in experience, it follows that all things as coexisting in space and time must stand in this reciprocal intercourse and com- munion each with each. TVere some one substance isolated from all reciprocity with all other substances, it could not be determined as in the same universal space and time with other things, and thus could not stand connected in the same experience. This mutual commerce between all portions of the co- existing universe gives the occasion for perceiving the phe- nomena of different substances in one order and then in a reverse order of perception. If, when the perception of A PRIOKI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 279 oik; phenomenon had passed, the phenomenon could not again be repeated m the sense, it would indicate that the modification in the substance which occasioned it had also passed, and a change had been induced which must now give occasion for the perception of some other phenomenon, and such succession w^ould indicate that the connections were those of cause and eifect, and could not admit of re- versed perceptions, inasmuch as all occasion for the prece- ding perception had wholly passed away. But when the apprehension of one phenomenon has passed and another has been apprehended, and then the ajjprehension of the first may be again repeated at pleasure, it manifests that the occasion for such phenomenon remains, and the order of ap- prehension each way is the index that the connection is that of reciprocal influence, not of cause and effect. When, therefore, all co-existing things reciprocally influence each other, such influence gives occasion for the same phenom- ena in each, so long as the modifications of any one does not make its changes in all. Thus, when the presence of the 8un acts and re-acts in the modifications of its light upon all, my perception in the organ of vision may be from one co- existing substance to another, in the phenomena thus occa- sioned, and in a reversed order of apprehension arbitrarily, and I determine them as contemporaneous ; but when the sun is withdrawn and such action and reaction ceases, and such modifications have passed away, and I can no longer pass in my apprehension from one thing to another, I can no longer determine their contemporaneousness, but only the successions that have passed since they all disappeared. With this conception of the reciprocity of influence throughout nature, and that no one thing can be changed in 280 THE i; N DEE STANDI XG IX ITS IDEA. its modifications but it has been acted upon by all, and that thus one portion of nature acts through every otlier portion whUe every other portion is also acting through it, we have the analytical judgment a priori^ aud thus a primitive prin- ciple of nature, that it can be no aggregcftion of particular things which are merely in apposition in space ; nor yet a mere concatenation of various series of things, in independ- ent lines of cause and effect ; but that while all have a per- petual source, and a conditioned order of succession, this warp of all lines of causation is also woven across with the con- necting woof of reciprocal influences, aud thus that nature has its complete contexture which may be held as one web of a determined experience, and which no more adheres continuously than it also coheres transversely. And, lastly, the conception of a vacuum^ is of a space destitute of any force as substantial som'ce, cause, or recip- rocal influence. It is the negation of aU being, and tlie affirmation of an utter vacuity in the midst of nature. And now such a void may be supposed, just as ideal space may be, but not at all consistently with a determined experience in space and time. If there is somewhere a rent in nature, which causation does not pass through, or action and reac- tion pass across ; then can not that chasm of vacuity be at all determined as any place in the one objective space, nor any period in the one objective time ; nor can the threads that may run along in it, or come up from it, be possibly determined as in tlie same one wliole of space and time with each other. The understanding has no connective notion by which to carry its thought across it, and once to sink into it would be to lose all possibility of coming out of it. The functions of an understanding would be lost in it. Nature A PRIORI PRINCIPLES IN NATURE. 281 not merely abhors but utterly forbids, within itself, a vacuum. With the phenomenal as sense-conception already given, we may now completely apprehend the Understanding in the entire province through which all its possible functions may operate, and in this we have attained the perfect Idea. Phenomena are given in their definite but also isolate singu- larity, and no possible function of the sense can connect them in an exjjerience as belonging to a universal nature. This must be a work exclusively for an understanding, which, by an operation of connection discursively through the notional, holds all nature to be one concrete of universal being. The possibility of determining the phenomenal in all the space and time-relations affords an d priori distinction between all subjective idealism and objective being ; for, except as phenomena stand connected in their constant sub- stance there can be no determination of them in the one immensity of space, and except as they stand also connected in their perpetual source, their successive cause, and their reciprocal influence, there can be no determination of them in the one eternity of time. A detennined experience in space and time is utterly impossible except through such connections. The media of space and of time give the occa- sion for a complete demonstration of the necessity of the notional as connective for the phenomenal, in order to any possible experience determined in space and time. From this a priori demonstration of the connection of all possible experience determined in space and time tlirough a notional as the being of things in themselves, we have the valid synthetical judgments in their universality and neces- sity of comprehension — that qualities must inhere in their 282 THE UXDERSTAXDING IN ITS IDEA. substances — events must depend on their sources — effects must adhere through their causes — and all concomitant phenomena must cohere in their reciprocal influences — and thus all of Nature be possible to become an experience determined in space and time. A perpetual unpenetrability will indicate the being of Substance, in its position in space and duration in time ; a continual and irreversible order of apprehension will mdicate the being of Cause ; and an order of apprehension reversible at pleasui-e will indicate the being of Reciprocal Influence. An Understanding thus, is a faculty for connecting phenomena in a determined experi- ence in space and time, through the notions of substance, cause, and reciprocal influence. The complete Idea concisely expressed is — The Under standing is Faculty for a univer- sally determined Experience in the connection of the ph&- nomenal through the notional. SECTION VI. FALSE SYSTEMS OF A UNIVERSAL NATURE EXPOSED IN THEIR DELUSIVE A PRIORI CONDITIONS. A COMPLETE idea of an understanding induces at once a conception of the true Intellectual System of the Universe. Its application to all false systems Avill enable us to detect their fillacies at the very point of their departure from the conditions of the understanding itself, and thereby to trace their self-contradictions and absurdities to the source in which they become unintelligible. It Avill be the conclusion of this first Chapter of the understanding when, in this sec- FALSE SYSTEMS OF XATUEE EXPOSED. 283 tion, ^ve have applied our idea of an understanding to several erroneous conceptions of a Universal System of Natm-e, and thereby exposed their fallacies in their a priori sources. From the earliest history of philosophy, we find the traces of a very earnest conflict perpetually occurring b& tween those who have restricted natm-e Avholly within tha phenomenal, and those who have affirmed a notional as alto- gether beyond the region of the phenomenal, and wholly supersensible. The authoiity of Plato settles the great anti- quity and the ardor of this contest. In the Sophista he affirms that " there seems to arise among them, in this dis- pute concerning beinff a kind of giant-battle." Guest. "The one party from the heavenly or unseen sphere draw all things down to Earth, just as the old giants grasped with their hands the rocks and oaks. Being ever in contact with such thino;s as these, thev affirm that that alone which offers touch and impact is real being. Hence they define matter and substance as the same, and as for any other things, should one maintain that the incorporeal truly is, they despise it altogether and will hear to nothing of the kind." T/ieat. " Hard fellows these of whom you speak. I think I have met with some of them." Guest. " Therefore it is that those who contend against them are very careful to draw their armor from the unseen sphere. These talk of " intelligibles" and " incorporeals," vehemently maintaining that they alone are real being. The " corporeals" of the other class, what they call truth and reality (viz., their rocks and oaks), these break up into atoms, thus showing that instead of bemg entitled to the name of essence or substance they are but ever-flowing and 284 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. changing appearance. Between these parties, O, Theatetus I there is waged a war that knows no end." Aristotle, though philosophizing more concerning the phenomenal than the notional, yet no less explicitly than Plato, teaches an essence supersensible; separable from all phenomena; a substance indissoluble and indestructible. And certainly, this ever- lasting battle between the sensualists and super-sensualists can never be composed to peace except by an a priori science. The impossibihty of an experience determined in space and time, except as the phenomena stand connected in their grounds and som'ces of being as substance, cause, and reciprocal agency, must be demonstrated, or we can never fully settle the controversy, and show that the phenomenal is the mode in the sense of that which, as thing itself, is the notional in the understanding. But this idea of an understanding determining experi- ence in space and time, is much further available for the exposing of many fallacies and phUosopliical delusions which have very much multiplied themselves about this oj^eration of connecting the phenomenal in universal judgments by the interposition of a notion in the understanding. The great difficulty, as before noticed, lies in the verification of a sjTithetiSal judgment. This is readily effected in all cases where, by a construction of the conception, we can bring all its relations within an intuition. But when we are to judge of existence and not of appearance y of things and not of qualities ; of inherent connections and not of external appo- sitions ; all construction in an intuition is out of the ques- tion. Our philosophical principle can not be made a mathe- matical axiom. The judgment is synthetical but necessarily discursive, and the only possible method for verifying its FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATUKE EXPOSED. 285 validity is by subjecting it to the demonsti'ation, that the con- nectives of the notional are a necessary condition for deter- mining all experience in one whole of space and of time. In this Ave have the true and complete idea of an under- standing. But these fallacies and delusions have originated from a method of philosophizing, that completely excluded all consideration of these necessary conditions. The nature of a discursive synthetical judgment was wholly overlooked, and thus, instead of applying all the force of an a priori intellectual investigation to the point of verifying the valid- ity of the notional and the conclusions in the judgments thus connected, there has arisen the various attempts to attain to a Universal System of Nature, sometimes by an analytical process ; sometimes by an arbitrary generaliza- tion ; sometimes by mere assumption on the ground of com- mon sense ; and sometimes by the arbitrary omnipotence of divine interpositions. The delusions we Avould hero seek to dispel may be found in the ambiguity, on one side, of using the phenome- nal as if it were a valid notional ; or, on the other side, explaining the notional in its use by only the characteristics of the phenomenal. One intellectualizes the phenomenon, and then philosophizes as if this were a true notion in the understanding; the other sensualizes the notion, and then proceeds as if no substratum in an imderstanding were at all necessary. The understanding is made to conjoin^ or the sense to connect y and from these opposite fallacies, phi- losophy has been involved in the grossest absurdities. Either Atheism or Pantheism must be the conclusion of all such processes of thinking in judgments, and it may be one as readily as the other. If the philosophy elevate the phe- 286 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. nomenal to a notional, it may keep out of sight that any supernatural connective is wanted ; or, in the manifest emp- tiness of all thinking without a verified notional, it may ar- bitrarily introduce the supernatural simply because it is wanted ; yet when so introduced as the connective in na- ture, it is impossible that its divinity should be any thing other than nature. It is not a little amusing to watch the delusions induced by this ambiguous use of the phenomenal and the notional, from the position we have now attained, and see how the philosophy is forced to balance itself by an amphiboly, in which the ball is made to play from hand to hand according to the delusion which it is obhged to practice upon itself. We will pass the varieties of these two ambiguous uses of the sense and the understanding before us, sufficiently ex- tended to detect their ever recurring fallacies ; and this not so much for our amusement as to expose the ambiguity and dispel the delusion it has occasioned. The first sublimates the phenomenal to a notional in the understanding, and the last degrades the notional to a phenomenal in the sense. By keeping this examination ever within the light of our a 'priori Idea for all possible thinking in judgments, the de- tection of the deceptive ambiguity will be readily eifected. 1. The general process of physical philosophy where the phenomenal is elevated into a notional for the understandr ing. The common conception of material being, as the start- ing point for philosophy in building up a System of the Universe under this general process, may be thus described. The material world as given in vision or by the touch is an extension in space, and by resistance to muscular pressure FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 287 is apprehended as impenetrable body. Tliis extended im- penetrable body is capable of successive divisibility up to the primitive particles of which the mass has been com- pounded, and such particles in their ultimate analysis are deemed to be the i)rimitive elements of material nature. As thus uncompounded, primitive and distinct, they are known as atoms. The phenomenal has in these atoms dis- appeared, inasmuch as the analysis has gone too far to per- mit that there should be a content in the sense, and that, which from its sublimation has passed out of the reach of the sensibility, is now taken to be valid thing in the thought. And here the first fallacy, the irpuTov ipevdog, is found. This sublimated phenomenal, as having passed from the sen- sibility, is no longer considered to be phenomenal, but is in- tellectuahzed into the essential being of matter as thing in itself. And now, with all matter given in its atomic elements, the labor of philosophically accounting for its combinations and systematic connections commences. How are these atoms combined in a body ? How are bodies brought into system ? How are systems held together as one universe ? Here is the salient point for many diversified modifications of this general process of philosophizing. A few of the more prominent will cursorily be noticed. (1.) There is an Atheistic scheme, according to Avhich an attempt has been made to build up a system of Nature, that dates far back among the earliest annnls of Grecian philosophizing, assigned to such names as Leucippus, Demo- critus, and Protagoras, but which can hardly claim to pos- sess more than a semblance of systematic philosojihy. The atoms were assumed to have not only position and hardness 288 THE UXDERSTAXDIXG IX ITS IDEA. but weight ; and thus a fall of all atoms in the void space gave to matter an original motion in space. With these primordial atoms in motion, it was deemed a necessary con- sequence that resistances, percussions, collisions, and attri- tions should ensue ; and thus aggregations of atoms would be induced, which would be bodies of diverse magnitudes, shapes, and movements in space. And inasmuch as such aggregations must take to themselves some position, and stand to each other in some relationship of figure, motion, density, etc. ; and as the present actual composition of na- ture is one among the indefinite number of possible arrange- ments ; it is only required that we admit the component atoms to have come together as they have, and this fortuit- ous concurrence has made nature what it is. There needed only primitive atoms enough, and their own weight put thera in motion, and the present system of the universe has come into its own arrangement, and quite as readily this as any other among all postible combinations. But aside from all questions of the origination of the atoms, and of their diffusion through the void, the false no- tional at once appears in the assumption of weight as an inherent property of the atoms, to give motion to them. The weight is solely phenomenal in the sense, but is surrep- titiously used as if it were an intrinsic force, and thus a notional in the understanding. The deficiency at once dis- closes itself when there is any attempt to determine from it how the atoms should come together, and how when aggre- gated they can have any cohesion. (2.) P^picurus, who lived amid the light diffused by the Socratic philosophy and the physical investigations of Aris- totle, modified the atomic theory of Democritus to meet FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 2S9 some very manifest difficulties. lie assumed the atoms to be immutable so that the weight and motion might have permanency, and that their number must be infinite, or in the infinite void a finite number must become dissipated and lost to each other in a disorderly movement. The void ofiers no resistance and the atoms must thus be precipitated with equal velocities and unvarying direction, and hence can no more come into conjunction than if each were falling in its own separate tube. Hence, Epicurus assumed an arbi- trary inner energy that occasionally made slight deviations from an even and perpendicular fall. These arbitrary de- flections aoro-refrate the atoms into an infinity of worlds sim- CHIT'S O •' ilar and dissimilar to our own, and amid the perpetual col- liding, repelling, and rebounding, Nature comes to have combinations of form, place, and motion which now belong to it. Here the Mse play of the weight of the atoms is noticed, and as the theory stands imbalanced the ball is changed into the-^mpty hand to restore the equilibrium. The weight is solely phenomenal though deceptively used as a notional, and when the philosophy rests upon it for aggregating the atoms, the whole turns awry, for the phenomenal weight has no conditioning directory. The amphibolous play gives the arbitrary deflection to the losing side, and the reel- ing thought is steadied to take the step which may bring the atoms in juxtaposition in divers places and quantities Here Epicurus stopped short ; but a next attempt for a dis- cursive judgment must have repeated the delusion. This arbitrary deflective energy was still phenomenal, like the flickering appearance of flame, or the zigzag motion of the lightning, and can possibly give nothing to stand under our 13 290 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. thinking. This fallacy of a false notional might everlast- ingly thus delude us, and we abide amid only the construc- tions of the sense though assuming to conclude in the phi- losophical judgments of the understanding. (3.) A modification of the use of the phenomenal for the notional is found in the physical system of the Stoics. Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, were the most noted among the founders of the philosophy of the Porch. Heraclitus flour- ished before the Socratic Ei'a, but many of his principles and conclusions were adopted by the Stoics. The incorporeal essences of Plato and Aristotle were rejected by the Stoics, and all ti'ue being was held to lie only in tlie corporeal. This was, however, made more compre- hensive than the atomic aggregates of Democritus or Epi- curus. To the phenomenal body of matter was ascribed both a passive and an active state. The weight and the inner deflective agencies of the Epicurean philosophers, the Stoical philosophy ascribed to matter in its active state. As abstract generalizations, a vacuum, place, time, and merely logical conclusions were incorporeal, but when cognized as definite particulars they were considered to be corporeal. A definite cubic foot in space rested permanently in itself and was thus passive, but it excluded all other extension from its place and was thus active, and the particular pure place was thus as truly body as the empirical content. The analysis of the phenomenal matter was not into th indivisible atoms, but into its quality and quantity. The quality was passive as the abiding, and the quantity was active as giving to itself limits and shape. The phenomenal properties were themselves body, and more than one body might occupy the same place at the same time. The hard- FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 291 ness of a cubic inch of gold, and the yellowness of it t\'ere both body, having content and form, passion and action, and yet both in the same place at once. The analysis was only of what appeared, but this as both content and form. The content was the passive side, and the form the active side, the first was matter and the last was spirit. But both the matter and spirit were in the one body, the spirit de- veloping bodily form, the matter being developed into fonn. Thus the seed can not be developed but by its active spirit, and the spirit can develope nothing except as in a material germ, and the body of the plant has both matter and spirit, the passive and the active. God and the soul are spirit, and in their activity the universe and humanity are developed in bodily form. God, as the informing word {oTrepiiarLKO^ Aoyof) of the universe, must reside in the matter of nature which He develops into bodily form, and in this constant development there is perpetual flow and change. This active, moreover, works in the passive, and in this non- resistance there can be no conditioning of the activity for there is no reciprocity of agency. It was not the chance of the Epicurean, as a deflective jihenomenon with no inherent efficiency ; nor the proper causality of two modifying no- tional substances ; but the Stoical Fate^ as an activity with no determining conditions to guide it. And yet such a peculiar analysis of the phenomenal and Its results brings at once into use the same play of a dehisive notional. Because, in constructing form, the intellect as constructing agent is active, it is here assumed the plienom- ' enal form is bodily activity, and this is assumed to give dynamical connections. But so soon as this is used for con- necting in judgments, the false notional betrays itself, and 292 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. the active as solely phenomenal must again be remanded to a further activity back of itself, and be compounded with mat- ter. AVe then attempt to think the active as developing the material into bodily form, but at once we lose our balance again, for the matter in which the active is, and on which it is to work, and out of which as source is to come all bodily forms is utterly passive ; a negation of all conditioning of the working, and leaving the active as mere blind Fate. But, as such a conception negates all intelligence and anni- hilates the xmderstanding itself, the speculative Stoic throws the ball once more back and makes the activity as spirit to be itself moved by a higher activity, and which is but the double absurdity of making fate to be fated. Here the stoical philosophy rested, on a blind activity unconditionally controlling gods, and men, and nature. There was a blind power back of the universal agent, standing behind the throne and controlhno- Jove himself. The whole was a vain attempt to think in the sense, and make discursive judg- ments by phenomenal analyses. (4.) Pythagoras Uved more than a hundred years before Socrates, and his name is connected with the earliest sys- tems of philosophy extant. It is quite evident that he had a very full acquaintance with the ancient Egyptian philoso- phy and sciences, and may perhaps in many things be taken as a representative of the Egyptian method of thinking. It is only from the writers of the Pythagorean school who lived immediately precedent to the time of Socrates, that we attain a knowledge of the Pythagorean doctrine ; as it is evidently from these that Plato and Aristotle drew . their descriptions of this philosophy. These were mainly Pliilo- FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 293 Inus, Eurytus, and Archytas, the first of which, more espe- ciall}^, gave shape to the Pythagorean system. Their whole system is clothed in a mathematical garb, and their conceptions of things are expressed in the formula of numbers. Their first principle is " that number is the essence of all things ;" and as all numbers have their com- binations, and their relations in such constructions in a gen- eral hai'mony, and also express the relations of tones and give the ratios of musical intervals, so a principle nearly equivalent to the above was, " that all things exist through harmony." But the real meaning clothed in this mathemati- cal dress is all we now need, in its most summary form, for the purpose of detecting another phase of that delusive am- phiboly before noticed between the phenomenal and the notional. The process of this philosophy was wholly analy- tical, but in a different direction from the Atomists, or the Stoics in the passive and active of bodies. The phenomenal alone was used in discursive thinking, and which must have induced for synthetical judgments some double nse of the phenomenal as a spurious notional ; and this it is our design here to expose. The analysis proceeded in this directjpn : taking the phenomenal body as having length, breadth, and thickness in space, we ' have, as a first analytical result, sur- faces ; and when we further analyze surfaces, we have lines; and when we analyze lines, we have ultimately points. Points, as the ultimate analysis, are atoms. But these atoms or points are only limits, and not Hmited. In order that there should be a finite or limited body, there must be the point with an interval terminated by another point. All bodies are thus originally points and intervals, or atoms separated by a vacuum. The one point in vacuo is an atom ; 294 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. two points, with their intervening vacuum, is a line ; three points and their interval, when not continuous, is a surface ; and fom* points, when any one is out of the plane of the other, is a solid. Here is the explanation in what way, " the essence of things is number," The unit is an atom; the dual, a line ; the triplicate, a surface ; and the quadruple, a solid. Definite numbers are also given for cubes, pentagons, hexagons, etc. The system of nature is constituted of these elements of atoms and intervals ; ^. e., of points and voids. These are the ultimate results of an analysis of all phenomena, and all being is thus taken as comj^ounded of atoms and the voids interposed. With these, the pliilosophy commences to con- nect its system of universal nature. A generalization of all atomic being, as including all existence, is termed the One ; and a generalization of the voids includes all the intervals interjacent to the atoms, and which is known as the Inexistent. The first One, standing in the infinite void, is known as the Odd ; and assumed as spontaneously tending to a self-hmitation by an inhaling of the circumjacent void within itself, which is called the insj)iration of the Infinite ; and tliis bringing of the infinite void into the One makes it to be compounded, extended, self-conscious, and all-compris- ing ; and is in this the supreme force and essence of the universe now called the odd-even — inasmuch as the limit- ing atom and the separating interval are now in unity within itself. Here now, as a triad, is in this odd-even the capacity for the beginning, the middle, and the end ; and as thus including the entire elements of being it becomes the All. The All is now competent to divide and separate itself inde- finitely by inlialing the void between the atoms, and thus FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 295 extending and limiting itself and thereby distinguisliing in self-consciousness ; and this limiting itself in its distinct and definite portions secures that it becomes Uranus, or the world. The difterent elements of nature — as fire, air, earth, water — are the products of diifereut compounds of atoms and intervals, and which have their expression in numbers ; and the arrangement of all was Avith a cube or a pyramid of fire, as the altar of the universe and the watch-tower of Jupiter, at the center ; and from which goes constantly out the flame which pervades and encloses the worlds, and con- stitutes the grand vortices in Avhich all the discriminated compounds of atoms and voids are kept perpetually moving about in their orbits. This movement was after the law of harmony, and supposed to be attended by sounds too sub- lime for mortal ears to hear, but which to the gods were the perpetually ravishing music of the spheres. Now, without inquiring into the genesis of the primary atoms, and which, by inhaling the void and thereby being rendered capable of self-conscious limitations, become mo- nads ; and not at all seeking the vaUdity of the generaliza- tion, which can give only an ideal unity to the atoms ^s the Supreme One, and an ideal combination of the one existent and the infinite inexistent as the odd-even or the all ; we only need to trace, in the light of the true idea of an under- standing, the ambiguity here involved, and all the delusion is at once exposed in its primary sources. The atom even as generalized to the universal One, is but the phenomenal carried beyond all perception and made a pure intuition ; and this, taken from the field of the sense, is assumed to have entered the field of the understanding and thereby a mere intuition is delusively used as a notion. But when 296 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. the thinking discursively commences, the false notional has no subsistency, and lience to save the fall, the ball must be thrown into the empty hand as a higher assumed notional, which is a force seeking after a self-conscious limitation. The atom has thus an mner causation which moves it, and in this way has become again phenomenon, and the inhaling or self-limiting energy has been put as the connecting no- tional. But this again, though assumed as the supreme governing force of the universe, inasmuch as it may act only upon the passive void which it inhales into itself has no force nor reaction, and thus can give no connection to the atoms. So soon therefore as the mundane force is to be used for connecting the combined atoms into a universe, to save the fall again the ball must be thrown forward as a newly as- sumed notional in the vortices of the central fire which is made to pervade the spheres, and to float them about in its gyrations. Here the Pythagorean system stops short, but it is quite as little self-balanced as before it commenced its delusive philosophizing ; for the next step upon the vortices must at once make them to be as truly phenomenal as the spheres which they carry about, and we must still seek another bal- ance-weight in some new notional which shall condition the gyrations of the flaming vortices. The j^hilosophy can not be completed, because an analysis of phenomena can never supply an understanding-cognition, as true notional connec- tive. ' (5.) Another modification of the atomic theory, to pro- vide for this defect in the impossibility of an ultimate analy- sis, is effected by Descartes ; and would fill up the void in the notional by at once interposing the supernatural. The FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 297 outline of the Cartesian physical philosophy is as follows : Material being has its essence in extension. All external phenomena are in some way qualities of extension, and thus only different modes of extended being, while the simple extension itself is the sole essence. This indefinite exten- sion, as the original essence of the material universe, is sepa- rable and moveable, and therefore capable of a division into definite parts. The first modification of material essence was the breaking up of this indefinite extension into angular portions, and which in the movement of their breaking up pressed against and were made to grind upon each other, and this attrition rounded the fractured parts into small spherical atoms. Interposed between these small spherical atoms, was every where the still finer dust Avhich worked off in the grinding. This finer dust is the first component element of nature, and the spherical atoms are the seco?id element. The original disruption of the mass and the consequent concussions occasioned whirls and eddies, in which the finer dust of the first element was carried about in different vor- tices ; and this prepares the way for the philosophical con- nection of the elements into a system, and which is thus effected. The fine dust of the first element, in its exceeding minuteness, thus whirling about, naturally tends in its motion toward the foci of the vortices in which it is carried around, and is thus subtracted from the matter of the second ele- ment, leaving the spherical atoms diffused through the heav- ens, and which, as thus cleansed from all the floathig dust, become the medium of liglit. The first element, so fir as carried into the foci of the vortices, becomes there condensed and steadfast in position except as turning about its own 13* 298 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. center, and tlius constitutes the different suns of the differ- ent vortical systems. And yet very much of this fine mat- ter of the fii'st element tended to cohere ere it reached the centers of the vortices, and such incipient coherences be- come a third element, more dense than the spherical atoms of light as the second element, and according to its different densities came together in masses at different points m the vortices from the sims at the center, and formed the planets and comets as they are carried about in their respective sys- tems. In process of time the larger vortices absorbed the smaller and controlled them in its own, and the satellites while carried about their primaries were all carried about in the great solar vortex ; and thus our solar system, and in like manner all other systems of the universe, became com- pletely estabhshed in then- bodies and their rev61utions. And now, all this, as in the Pythagorean system, is wholly phenomenal, so far as the being, figure, arrangement, and revolution of the material world is considered. Exten- sion is solely a sense-conception, and thus the very being of matter is given only in the sense, and the understanding supplies no notional at all as a connective. The Cartesian philosophy can know nothing of substance and cause as space-filling force existing in nature, and even the negative of substance as a vacuum is an impossible conception. Des- cartes thus reasons against the possibility of a vacuum — that if there were any such thing it might be measured, and all measure implies extension, and all extension is essential mat- ter, and thus no vacuum can be. And in this, precisely, is its peculiarity. Altogether unlike the Pythagorean philosophy, when it has analyzed the phenomenal and found its highest analytical predicate in the conception of extension, and de- WALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 290 nied that any extension can be a void but must be material essence, and thus wholly phenomenal ; it does not, like that, attempt to sublimate the phenomenal into a notional. Des- cartes had already provided for such want, in beforehand preparing for himself a connnective wholly supernatural, and which allowed that he should utterly dispense with all function of an understanding, and connect directly by the reason. The phenomenal is held together not through sub- stance and cause, but immediately by the Deity. Indeed, that the phenomenal can at all be known to be, depends upon ha ing first demonstrated the spiritual to be ; and all physical science originates in the previous science of Theol- ogy. This, so peculiar a method of building up a nature of things by making, its whole connective supernatural — and yet in such a way, as we shall see, that an amphiboly intro- duces its delusive play in another form though as really as in any of the preceding wliich has been noticed — demands that Ave carefully examine it, and be able to make a fair ex- position of its fallacies. Cartesianism, then, begins in universal doubt, and seeks for a first verified truth. In this very casting about for what may dispel all doubt, there is an action which may be called thought; and in this very thinking, there is an awak- ing in self-consciousness. Thus, in the thought itself, the mind becomes cognizant of its own being. Here, then, is the first truth for all possible science — ^I think, and in think- ing I cognize my own existence. " Cogito ergo sum." Having thus the existence of mind, and having found that this mind has many thoughts, which are named all as alike ideas, it makes clearness and distinctness the criterion of the truth of our ideas ; and then finds this one grand idea as 300 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA.* more obtrusive, absorbing, and unavoidable in the clearness of its presence than all others, viz., an all-perfect Infinite Being. Such an idea, so controlling and necessary, could not be in the mind from the mind itself nor from any other source, excej)t as it originates in the actual existence of this ail-perfect Being himself. The prominence, clearness, and necessity of the idea of a God is proof a priori of the actual existence of a God. Thus the thinking soul is, and God is. And now the sense gives us an outer world ; but the sense can verify nothing, and only make phcBomena to appear. But we have already cognized an all-perfect Being, and His veracity must be manifested in His works. The outer world, therefore, exists, or God has falsified His own veracity in making man the subject of perpetual and help- less deception. The truth that the outer world is, rests upon the truth that God is, and that His works do not deceive. In this way we come to the demonstration of an outer world as phenomenal reality. This outer world is then, in the last analysis, found to be extension ; and this, as the essence of all matter, is brought into its present arrangement as system of the universe, according to the foregoing process of the atoms in the vortices. Thought is the Cartesian essence of mind, and extension that of matter, and in these is included all possible being. They are utterly unlike, and can have no reciprocal com- munion with each other. No connection is to be thought between them, as if one could act upon or be affected by the other. The essence of matter is wholly inert ; thought only is active. And in this is the provision made for all the dynamical connections in nature. The breaking up of the FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 301 inert essence of matter, the attrition into the first and second elements, the vortical revolutions and the connections of finite mind with matter, are all resolved into the immediate interposition of the Deity. Tlie doctrine of " Divine Assist- ance " is made to account for all the movement and changes of nature. And here, so far as the physical connection of the phe- nomenal universe is regarded, this philosophy has the merit of a logical consistency. It does not as in the preceding, attempt by an analysis of material phenomena to attain a notional m the understanding, by Avhich to connect into a judgment a nature of things. The connective is supplied in another manner, and the supernatural is immediately in- troduced as the constituting force on which a system of nature depends. But, though not in the same direction as in the former theories, yet still from another quarter a simi- lar ambio;uitv is introduced, and a delusion is effected which is to be dispelled by applying the true idea of an under- standing. The false notional is not at all attempted from the material, but is derived fi'om the spiritual phenomenon. The whole Cartesian philosophy founds upon Thought, as its first given fact. The phenomenon of thinking induces consciousness, and this is made evidential of a self, or an Ego, which thinks. That I have self-consciousness in think- ing is taken as valid that I have in this, myself, as notional subject of thinking. Self-consciousness is sublimated into an understanding cognition of a permanent substance, as the causal source of thought. Here, then, is the first decep- tive ambiguity. The thinking in consciousness is wholly phenomenal ; and an analysis of the exercise in the thinking and of the thought as product, and one put as the subjeo 302 THE UXDERSTAXDING IN ITS IDEA. tive and the other as the objective, dehides into the comnC' tion that the snpersensual subject Ego is truly attained. And then the speculation is still further advanced, that inass- much as the analysis of the subjective can be carried no higher, therefore the Ego, as soul, is simple, indivisible, and immortal. But, inasmuch as the soul, which is thus surreptitiously assumed as the understanding cognition and permanent notional source for all thinking, can be source only for the thinldng as inner phenomenon, and not at all source for the phenomena of an outer world, and therefore no knowledge of a nature of things can be attained thi-ough such connec- tions ; the philosophy returns to the phenomenal thought, and demonstrates the being and connections of an outward nature of things by another and entirely independent pro- cess. One thought as product is separated in an analysis fi'om the thinking as intellectual activity, and because it is more prominent, absorbing, and necessary than all others, is taken to be more distinct and clear than any, and on this a<;count the most true and valid of any, viz., that of an All- Perfect Being ; and in this assumed validity of existence fi-om the necessity of the idea, the being and perfections of God are considered as a priori demonstrated. The phenom- enal in the inner sense is made available here, not merely for a notional source of thinking, as self or soul, but taking the though, as product, is made available for attaining immedi ately the supernatural as substantial ground for the thought; and the phenomenal is at once elevated to the divine. The sense is made to perform the functions of the reason. But inasmuch, again, as the philosophy needs only a physical substratum and connection, so this Deity, assumed PALSE SYSTEMS OF XATCRE EXPOSED. 303- to be from the clearness of the thought of the All-perfect, is used only as philosophical source for constituting a universal system of nature, and degraded to a mere physical force, as cause in an understanding cognition, for breaking up the original essence somehow unaccountably generated, and grinding it into its atomic elements, and whiling the subtle vortices which are to shape all things in their individual forms and systematic revolutions. While avoiding the absurdities of attaining its false notional connectives from a sublimation of the outer phenomena, it runs into even more gross fallacies and violent subreptions, in attem^^ting delu- sively to attain its notional connectives whoUy through a sublimation of the inner phenomena. The ambiguity of the phenomenal for the notional is the same as in the former theories examined, and the fallacy heightened in absurdity by elevating the phenomenal immediately to the supernatural, and then degrading the divinity of the supernatural to the bondage and perpetual serN-itude of the natural. The Deity is needed only for holding nature to its place. Malebranche simply carried forward Cartesianism to its ultimate results, without the addition of any important new principle ; and the necessity for supernatural interjiositions in nature became with him a completed doctrine of " Occa- sional causes," and the vision of all things in the Deity, and a resting of all evidence of the realitv of an outer world upon divine Revelation. (6.) Spinoza so far modified this philosophy in its founda- tion-principles as to make indeed a new system of the phy- sical imiverse. The two essences of thought and extension which had been conceived as so heterogeneous that they could not come into communion, and hence demanded 304 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. supernatural interpositions, were by Spinoza generalized and identified in a higher essence, vvliich was assumed as ultimate, indivisible, and eternally immutable, and thus the Absolute Substance. God is not a personality, acting accord- ing to the imi^eratives of reason in view of final ends ; but a simple essence, in the absoluteness of itis own being developing a nature of things in the perpetual unfolding of itself. Extension and thought are merely analytical concep- tions of this infinite substance in which they are identical. The absolute essence is both infinite thought and infinite extension, and thus all mind and all matter are but the modi- fied development and modes of existence of the All-Perfect Being. A supernatural interposition is not needed to con- stitute and hold together a nature of things ; the supernatu- ral is developed into nature itself. An unfolding Deity is the universe. And here Spinozism is unquestionably more j)hilosophi- cally consistent than Cai'tesianism. It does not attempt to explain nature by getting a supernatural d priori to it, and then absorbing all of nature in this supernatural ; but entirely reversing the process, it goes through nature up to the abso- lute substance, and then accounts for nature by eAolving it from the absolute. Both may be termed Pantheistic ; but Descartes's God is diffused as causality through nature, and Spinoza's God is the substance which in its own development becomes nature. But, in this last, there is the same ambig- uous use of the phenomenal for the notional — a delusive substitution of the functions of the sense for the functions of the understanding — and thus attempting to think in dis- cursive synthetical judgments with no valid medium through which to nmke the discursus, and therefore no FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 305 valid connection in which to legitimate the conclusion in a iudgmeat. The thought and extension are simply the suLlimations of the phenomenal, and not at all a valid notional supplied in the understanding ; and instead of vainly attempting to think them into a nature of things by the interposition of whirling vortices, which again are but interpositions of supernatural agency, the attempt, equally as vain, is made to think them into connection by a higher sublimation of the phenomenal, and assuming it to be a valid substance aa notion in the understanding, and then arbitrarily educing a nature of things from it, merely by a development of it. Let it be demanded to think in a judgment a connected order for this development, and all the philosophy of Si)inoza is wholly impotent. It will then require a further sublimation of this assumed notional as absolute substance, and which is no more space-filling force, as substance, cause, and reciprocal influence, than the phenomenal thought and extension them selves. It stops with this assumed substance, but it is a mere delusive stopping-place ; for philosophy as much demands an intelligent development of nature in a condi- tioning source, as a resting of nature upon an ultimate sub- stance. Only a true idea of an understanding verifying its notional in a determined experience in the space and time- relations can do this. (7.) The genius of Leibnitz, penetrating, powerful, and comprehensive beyond that of most philosophers, appre- hended clearly the difiiculties in the Cartesian system, and that they were still left unresolved in all the modifications of Spinozism ; and in a manner evincive of the superiority of his intellect, he set himself to work a reformation in the S06 THE UNDER STA:N-DIXG IN ITS IDEA. very first principles of this philosophizing. But, manifestly, from the want of a true idea of an understandins: in its operation of discursive connection, he only modified the sys- tem, but did not at all change the order of the thinking. It is still an attempt to sublimate the phenomenal to a notional, and to think a universal connection in a nature of things by only notionalizing the phenomenal. The acuteness and fer- tility of his mind is astonishing, but in the absence of the true light, it only changed the point of the delusive ambig- uity, and still retained all the false play of the deceptive amphiboly before noticed. The grand difficulty in the Cartesian system was the inertness of all physical essence. Caxisation could nowhere be used as a connective in nature itself, but must every where be superinduced upon nature, and thus perpetually demanding the supernatural. Nor did Spinoza's generaliza- tion of all thought and extension into the different modes of one assumed absolute substance help this difficulty. It gave a specious unity to nature, but provided for no intelli- gible exposition of the successive on-going in the changes of nature. A substantial ground was assumed, but because it was only a sublimation of the phenomenal, it could give no tinflerstandinsr-cofirnition of force as a cause for change in a space-filling substance, and which might thereby condition an alteration of the phenomena in the sense. This deficiency was to be supplied, and somehow the notion of causality introduced into nature. This is the leading interest in the Leibnitzian physics, and the stand-point from whence to take an examination of this philosophy ; and yet we shall find this causality to be merely an intellectualizing of the sense, FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. SO? though with much ingenmty, and giving much plausibility to the fallacy. The analysis of matter which Leibnitz assumed to be always given to us compounded, was the first step, and from this the atomic theory was necessarily adopted. The last analysis attained to an indivisible, indissoluble portion ; and this atom, as thus wholly nnextended and impossible to come imder any outward determination, can only be distin- guishable from other atoms in vii'tue of something within itself Hence the principle of " the indistinguishable" in matter by any thing external. But changes are perpetually occurring in the atoms, and some " sufficient cause" is to be found for them ; and as this can not be from any outer condi- tioning, but must be determined from the inner, and the inner can have nothing of extension or composition, so notliing is left but that it must be distinguishable in virtue of its inher- ent energy. A sort of representation-force, analogous to that which is an inherent property of mind, must be pos- sessed by all atoms, and in the modifications of this only can one atom be determined as distinguishable from all others. Thus, the atoms are not inert and passive, as with Democritus and Descartes, but possess an inherent energy as power of inward representation, and in virtue of this inner causality they are not dead atoms, but monads. Each has its own particular representation-force, and in this is its principle of identity ; and as each also is competent from this inner energy to represent all others within itself, every monad is competent to become a little world in itself and is " a microcosm." Some monads have their inner representa- tion-force in utter unconsciousness, and are the elements of material nature ; others are pai-tially awakened into con- 308 THE UN DERST A?r DIN G IN ITS IDEA. • sciousness, and have indistinct representations, and are the elements of animal spirits ; and others again have this inner energy developed into full and distinct consciousness, and are the elements of the rational human soul. God is the ABSOLUTE MONAD ; and His existence, we are forced from the laws and conditions of all thought to admit, and He stands as " sufficient reason" for the existence of all others. Thus, the elements for an intellectual system of the universe, all stand ready for a philosophical putting of a nature of things together. In this particular possession of inner representation- energy, the whole must give all possible phases of being, and in such universality of representation there must be "perfection." Inasmuch as essential monadic being can have no determined external relationship, but only inner representation, so space can be no a priori condition of na- ture, but wholly consequential upon its being and represen- tation. The representation-force is first, and space is pro- duced in the representation — as if to the mirror there was no outer, then the mirror must first be, and the represented space consequently produced within it. In such production of space there is, of course, occasion given for the position, figure, and relative bearings of all that the monad shall en- visage ; and this in the case of all monads ; and thus all things appear in space. But how is it that the relations correspond in time ? The energizing causality is wholly inward, and not that one monad can act outwardly upon another ; how, then, shall their separate and individual repre- sentations conform each to each ? This demanded, not the " the occasional causes " of Cartesianism which Avould re- quire a perpetual interposition for each case, but an original FALSE SYSTEMS OF li'ATURE EXPOSED. 309 arrangement which should harmonize all in their representa- tions forever. And here is introduced the doctrine of " a preestahlished harmony," in which all monadic representar tion-forces, as so many mirrors each repi-esenting the state of all the others, are made to tally precisely each with each. The entire universe of conscious and unconscious monads thus go on in their inner causal representations, not from any community of influences reciprocally among themselves, but orderly and successively in their periods from the wise arrangement of all in an original predetermination. With all our interest in such surj^rising creations of ge- nius, still how amusing to watch the double-play perpetually going on between the sense and the understanding ! The sense gives to us every thing compounded and thus con- fused ; and *he mere analysis of this, according to this method of philosophizing, takes it out of the* sense, and gives to us tlie things themselves in tlieir essential being in the understanding. Thus the atoms become things as understanding-cognitions ; and yet when we would thint them in discursive connections, we are forced further on- ward for our real notion of things, and must endow them with an inherent causal-energy. Then, inasmuch as it must be an analysis from sense, and we have analyzed the atom beyond all outer relation, we take the causal-energy fron; an analogy of what may be attained in an analysis of our inner phenomena, and make it to be a representation-force. And when we would use this as the medium for a discursive con- nection, it is wholly impotent, and we are again forced for- ward for our notional to an independent and unexplained pre-determination, which is the original connective for this harmony. The notional is ever throAvn forward, and when 310 THE UNDEEST AND IN G I N I TS I D E A. we essay to step upon it, it straightway fails altogether as a ground for the thinking, and the judgment is ever thrust forward into the void, hopeless of all support. It thus, also, makes every princii)le it uses delusive. The principle of " the indistinguishable " is found in the use which the understanding makes of this false notional throughout. The phenomenal is analyzed beyond all outer determinations, and as if now it were the substantial thing in itself, its dis- tmction from all others is to be found in the inner only. Diiference of identity can not be determined by place, for space itself is the product of a representation. The princi- ple of " sufficient cause " is for the same reason delusive, and no true notion of force can be conceived, but only har- monious representations. The representations can not coun- teract ; their opposition would be simply irregularity in time, as if the clock should not strike just when the hand points the hour. And finally, the principle of "preestab- lished harmony " leads to the same delusion, on the same account of a use of the false notional ; for this harmony is merely conformity of representations, not an agreement of interacting dynamical forces. The system is, after all, sim- ply the regulation for representing appearances, not the con- trol and arrangement of acting and resisting substances. It is no more a nature of things than the accordant reflections of two mirrors face to face. We will now give attention to the other method of phi- losophizing, viz. : 2. That widch degrades the notional to a vague phenom,' enaly or entirely dispenses with it. In tliis order of building up a physical system, nothing is permitted to enter as conception of valid being Avhich has FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 811 not been attained through the sense. A supposed superseu- sual is to be held as dehisoiy, and though accompanied by irresistible conviction can be determined as resting upon no valid basis. The philosophy of Locke in accounting for the origina- tion of ull our knowledge, is the source of all this order of philosophizing in physics. The elements of all knowledge and the essence of all being are given to us according to Locke, through two sources only, viz. : Sensation, giving to us that which is material element, and Reflection, giving to us that which is mental element. All our simj^le elementary knowledge is thus provided for. The simple elements, pas- sively received, may be in various ways modified through the activity of the mind itself, and thus known in various determined relations. The mind is competent, having at- tained the simple elements, to combine, compare, and ab- stract ; and through such mental operations we may know the elements as united, contrasted, and isolated. Hence our conceptions of double and single, even and odd, greater and less, higher and lower, general and pai'ticular, eto. All conceptions, not themselves elementary as given in the sense, are to be thus attained by a mental operation upon what is given in the sense ; and all such operation is confined within these three functions — combination, compar- ison, and abstraction. From what w^e have already gained in our former inves- tigation, it is manifest that all those immediate intuitions which are given in the definite constructions of the i)henom- ena of sense, may in this way be accounted for; h d the system of Locke greatly errs in its partiality and incom- pleteness, in supposing that any conceptions, condi ^ionaJ for 312 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. discursive synthetical judgments, can be thus attained. Conjunction may thus be effected, but not connection. Re- lationship in space, time, and amount, may thus be deter- mined ; but not the inner dynamical relationships of being itself. The notions of substance, cause, and reciprocal in- fluence, are no combinations, comparisons, nor abstractions of any sim})le elements attained in sense. Here is the grand defect of the sensualism of Locke. It would get along with only the functions of the sense. Sensation gives all phenomena ; reflection gives all the intuitive relations of phenomena ; and no distinction is i*ecognized between con- joining and connecting — mathematical and dynamical rela- tions — intuitive and discursive judgment*. Hence it would obtain the conceptions of cause and substance as it would those of likeness and difierence. The philosophy begins in the sense, as all knowledge must ; but it also ends in the sense, as no true philosophy can be permitted to do. In- stead of any intelligible dynamic connections, we have really only juxtapositions and sequences. All understand- ing-cognitions are forced to be, in some way, the determina- tions of sense. From this philosophy diverse theories have arisen in ref- erence to various topics of speculative interest, such as are designed to explain the manner of perception ; the founda- tion of moral obligation and responsibility ; and the capar bility of attaining the data for a natural theology ; but we have occasion now to consider such only as relate to a uni- versal nature of things. A few of the more prominent cases will be sufiicient to expose the illusion which comes in on this side, and show the deceptive ambiguity in the point FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 313 of degrading the notional to a mere phenomenal, as comiec- tive for a universal physical system. (1.) The first to be here noticed is the theory of David Hume. Whether the philosophy of Locke induced the skepticism of Hume, or whether the skepticism was itself congenial and the philosophy adopted as the means of justi- fying it, is not incumbent upon us here to decide. This much is clear, that he most acutely detected the skeptical tendencies of this philosophy, and as legitimately as intrep- idly pushed the issue to the entire subversion of all philoso- phy in physics and of all science in theology. Nature and Religion have no other foundations than such as must be laid in faith, and which in each case may easily be convicted of credulity ; and therefore to the consistent philosopher there is nothing so natural, so logically consequential, and thus nothing so noble, as to avow his doubts of them both. The process in Hume's philosophizing is very plain and direct from the premises given. Knowledge, as given direct through the perceptions of sense, is experience ; and all such sensible objects are termed " Impressions." The recalling of such impressions by the memory, or the anticipation of them in the imagination, he terms " Ideas." Tlie ideas are the copies of the impressions, but as secondary they must be more faint and indistinct than the primary perceptions. "We can have " impressions " of only that which is given in experience"; and no " ideas" in the memory or the imagina- tion wliich must not also be the copies of experience. These " impressions " and " ideas " are the mind's entire stock of original elements for aU knowledge ; and by the functions of combination, comparison, and abstraction, these elements may be brought into various propositions and 14 314 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. judgments ; and such modifications of them must consti tute the sum total of all that man can know. And now, " the relations of ideas," as given in the com- parisons and combinations of the mind, are demonstratively certain ; inasmuch as they are intuitive, or immediately be- held ; and in this field lie all the conclusions of mathematics. Here is exact science. But " matters of fiict " can not be made to stand together in any such relations, and can not therefore be brought within the demonstrations of science. How clearly, in all this, did Hume see that no intuitive process could legitimate a discursive judgment ! That any present fact in our experience should be connected with another fact which is to follow it, can not be made intuition ; and yet, by calling the last an effect of the first as its cause, we assume that there is a necessary connection, and then carry our convictions quite out of experience, and assume to de- termine how other facts and events must be, which have not at all been matters of experience, and perhaps are not yet at all in being. By what legitimate principles are such con- nections in judgments effected ? All a 2»'iori demonstra- tion, that such a connection must be in order that experi- ence should be determined in the space and time-relations, was unknown to Hume, and utterly impossible to be efiected by any philosophy based upon experience; and thus his skepticism in physical science stood impregnable. The ef- feet can not be immediately seen in the cause ; no possible construction can give an intuition from one to the other ; and thus there can not be any predetermination of what the consequent shall be from any thing given in the antecedent. All reasoning from effect to cause, or from cause to effect, is thus wholly an assumption. All that can be said for it, and FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATUEE EXPOSED. 315 th6 clearest explanation of any con\'iction attained through it, is simply resolved into the result which a repetition of experience induces in the mind. The philosophical explanation of the process is this ; a first experience of such connection was like all other experi- ence, an " impression" as a primary fact of sequence with- out any conception of necessity in the order of connection. Frequent rej^etition of the same sequence as " impression," induces its copy as " idea" in the memory, and this also is put as copy in the anticipations of the imagination ; and this copy as idea, faint at first, ultimately becomes strong and confident "belief" that such connections are necessary. The conception of cause is an " idea," as it is a copy of an " impression," and is thus a mere offspring of experience as truly as any other copy in the memory or the imagination. The experience has given the idea of cause ; cause has not determined the order of experience ; and hence all reasoning from causes, as any d. priori conditioning of nature, must be mere sophistry. Both Natural Philosophy, and Natural Theology are at once convicted of building a structure with- out a basis. And here we may detect the fallacy of the philosoj^hy in its very source, and dispel the delusion which has given so much speciousness to this skepticism, by applying our a priori idea of an understanding as function for connecting phenomena in a system of universal nature. And this fal- lacy will at once, in this light, be seen to lie in the ambi- guity of using the same cognition as both in the sense and in the understanding. Here the understanding-cognition is sensualized into the phenomenal, whereas in the former order of philosophizing, the sense-conce])tion was intelleC" 316 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. tualized into the notional. The "impression" is wholly of the sense, and is thus phenomenon only. The sequences of events are phenomenal sequences altogether, and they ac- count for our convictions of necessary connection simply through their repetition in experience. But no account is attempted for any necessary order in the events of nature itself. The connectives for phenomena into a cognition of a universal nature of things are themselves mere copies of the phenomenal. Cause and effect in their own necessary connections do not condition our experience, but the repeti- tions of our experience condition all our " ideas" of causa- tion. The same also'must have been true of the connectives of substance, and of reciprocal influence, as of cause ; only that the skepticism did not philosophize broad enough to encounter the necessity for their explanation. The notion in the understanding is degraded to a mere copy of the phe- nomenal in the sense, and gives to philosophy a nature of things which only seem to be connected in universal order and system, because the i^henomena as original "impres- sions" have in the sense had their juxtapositions and sequences. Nature is merely a mass of appearances, and not a connection of existences : a continuance of " impres- sions," and not a series of things. And without a true notional in the understanding, as djyt'iori demonstrated from the conditions of determining an experience in the space and time-relations, this is all to which philosophy could attain. Science could not go beyond sense. Mathematics only could be exact ; philosophy and theology must be opin- ion»and faith. All judgments of a nature of things must rest upon mere phantasms as the copies of those " impres- sions" which we deem them to connect ; and all the conclu* FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 317 sions of natural philosopliy and theology rest solely upon the credulity which our habitual experience has induced. The supercilious sneer of the skeptic springs spontaneously from his clear perception that both philosophy and religion have no foundation. (2.) Another example of this delusive method of discur- sive thinking is given in the philosophy of Brown. The understanding-cognition is degraded to a mere illusion of the sense, and then rejected as an empty figment. The order of nature in the connected series of cause and effect is reduced to a mere fact of invariable sequence, which the human mind is so made as unavoidably to anticipate. This entire theory of causation is expressed in the fol- lowing statement. According to Brown, simple invariable succession is the entire conception of cause and effect. The conception of power^ as some bond which connects the ante- cedent and the consequent, is affirmed by him to be an illu- sive phantom of the imagination ; and though common to all former philosophers with the vulgar, is yet a mere chimera. That an illusion of some third thing, called power, stands between the two sequences and connects them, he explains as having become a genei'al admission from various sources. The structure of language ; a false identity between a thing with and without a particular predicate, as if the sun shin- ing and the sun, or the man thinking and the man, were respectively the same ; and the imperfection of the sense which is perpetually finding higher antecedents ; all these are made to explain the fact that the delusive conception of power has become so common. Bat when the mind is disa- bused of this delusion, then the whole process of cause and effect ceases to be so mysterious and inexplicable. There is 318 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA.. no such mysterious something ever present in all sequences and never appearing, which has been called power, for con- necting them together. Such an illusion of an intervening connective does not help to explain our conception of cause and effect, but in truth gives another antecedent altogether more inexplicable than the phenomenon itself. Expel such a delusion, and then there remains simple invariable sequence. The whole real meaning of power is, therefore, this invariableness of succession. To say that a certain degree of heat applied to a metal will have its invariable consequent of Hquefaction ; or to say that a certain volition is invariably followed by muscular motion, is in each case the same as to say that the first has j^ower to produce the last, and which again is the same as to say the first is the cause of the last. Invariable- ness of sequence is the whole conception of power and of causation. Having thus taken away all intrinsic dynamical connection, the natural inquiry for the origin of this univer- sal conviction of invariable succession is met by catting, without any attempt at untying, the knot, and resolving the whole into an arbitrary constitution of the human mind. We are so made as necessarily to unbibe such a conviction. It is an instinct implanted in human nature, operating as an " internal revelation," and is " a voice of ceaseless and imer- ring prophecy." Locke had attempted to account for the genesis of such a conception as power, and thus for causation, from sensi- ble experience. But Brown, more clearly than Locke, saw the impossibility of attaining any proper conception of power as phenomenon in sense. Obedient to the philoso phy, therefore, since the conception of power can not come FALSE STSTE5IS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 319 from it, it is taken as wholly a delusion, and its reality dis- carded altogether. If it were at all possible to be used, he knows of no other method than by interposing it as another phenomenal antecedent to the effect, and thus merely per- plexing the matter without at all explaining it. It is made the mere shadow which coming events cast before them, and the mind from its conformation anticipates the consequent as wholly an unexplained prediction. The notional, as un- derstanding-cognition, is wholly abolished in the mere sense- cognition of an invariable sequence, and the conviction of such invariable order is an instinctive prophesying. But how impossible thus to attain to an intellectual sys- tem of universal nature ! The separate phenomena are as really independent of all inter-agency as the particles of dust floating in the sunlight, and simply have such an invariable order, but nothing which efficiently ^:)ro(?wce.9 it. Nature is a mere congeries of phenomena, and as destitute of all con- nection and reciprocal communion as the letters of the alphabet. (3.) There are two other modifications of tliis method of philosophizing, having an immediate reference to mental phenomena, and out of which have originated two theories for giving to the mind systematic unity ; and which are of the more interest for American psychologists, since their respective authors were divines of great distinction and high reputation in the religious community of New England while they lived, and their influence upon all metaphysical speculation will not cease with the generation that now suc- ceeds them. "We need have no reference to any theological doctrines to which these theories may have been applied, either for explanation, defense, or refutation ; nor to any 320 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. other religions or philosophical tenets of their authors, but solely to the methods in which mental phenomena are sought to be connected into a system in the Understanding. The first to which we "will here attend, though later in age, is the theory of the late Dr. Emmons, so venerable while living, and so much revered since his death. This theory has been familiarly called " the exercise scheme ;" and when referred to the true idea of an understanding as above attained, will be found to foll(jw that order of philosophizing which we are now considering — making the phenomenal to be the essential being, and wholly dispensing with the notional, or introducing an arbitrary and illusory figment. The outline of this theory is as follows : — The specific acts of thinking, feehng, loving, willing, etc., come within consciousness, and each one for the period of its duration is the soul in its essential beinof. There is no true substance which, as constant substratum or perpetual source, perma- nently exists, and that changes in its mode of being so as to occasion the altered events ; but when the thinking is, that is the soul ; and when that departs and a feeling or a willing is, the exercise is all there is of the being, and the soul exists as one and simple in every act. The voluntary exer- cises make the moral man, and all such acts in distinction from intellectual acts are known as the heart. " The heart consists in voluntary exercises, and voluntary exercises are moral agency." " There is no morally corrupt nature, dis- tinct from free voluntary sinful exercises." The phenom- enal is the sole l^ing of mind, and nothing is but that which is the exercise itself And here, with all existence wholly in the exercise and utterly exclusive of any substance which may be thought as FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 321 perpetual source for the exercises, the inquiry must arise — "Whence are these exercises ? Is there a void of all being between them, and thus does each, as essential existence, come up from a vacuity of all existence ? This would seem to be the necessary conclusion, since no substantial being is, which may perdure througli all the exercises. To escape from such a chasm of all being and an origination of the phenomenal being of the exercise utterly fi'om a void, as must follow when the notional is discarded and an under- standing is vacated, the supernatural is immediately inter- posed, and the exercise comes up as a direct production of the Deity. " Since all men are dependent agents, all their motions, exercises, or actions must originate from a Divine eflSciency. We can no more act than we can exist without the constant aid and influence of the Deity." The super- natural is thus made to take the place of the notional, and all the phenomena immediately originate in God, and are connected in unity by the direct efficiency of God. The human agency is the exercise itself, and the Divine agency is the efficient producer of it ; and thus it is affirmed that " human agency is always inseparably connected with Divine agency." " He not only prepared persons to act, but made them act." " There is no possible way in which He could dispose them to act right or wrong but only by producing risht or wronsr volitions in their hearts. And if He pro- duced their bad as w^ell as good volitions, then His agency was concerned in precisely the same manner in their Avrong as in their right actions." " His agency in making them act necessarily connects His agency and theirs together." The Divine efficiency is thus made to subserve all the purposes of the notional in an understanding, and the phenomenal 322 THE UNDERSTANDING IX ITS IDEA. exercises come up from it, and adhere together in a series bv it. But the dehisiveness of such a false connection in ^he understanding is at once exposed, when we step forwai'd upon it and trust our jDliilosophy to it. For all that we pos- sibly know is the phenomenal only, and all our conceptions must conform to the phenomenal, and although we have used the efficiency of the Deity as the origin and connective of all human exercises, yet must we now degrade this super- natural, used as a notional, at once to the phenomenal only. How may we conceive of the Divine agency in any other manner than as phenomenal exercise ? Divine efficiency in producing our exercises is but an exercise, single and simple in being as our own. This, in other connections of the theory, is fully admitted and even directly argued, though when fully apprehended in its bearings upon the j^hilosophy it shows its whole basis to be a mere delusion. The Divine efficiency is wholly ambiguous ; it has been used as a no- tional, but when we come to rest upon it, the fact that after all it is only the phenomenal beti'ays itself. God exists just as we exist, in exercises only. " There is no more difficulty in forming clear and just conceptions of God's power, wis- dom, goodness, and agency, than in forming clear and just conceptions of human power, wisdom, goodness, and agency. Power in God is of the same nature as power in man. Wis- dom in God is of the same nature as wisdom in man. Good ness in God is of the same nature as goodness in man. And free voluntary moral agency in God is of the same nature as free voluntary moral agency in man. To say that God's agency is diffiarcnt in nature from our own is as absurd as to say that His knowledge, His power, or His moral rectitude is FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 323 different from our own. , And to say this is to say that we have not, and can not have, any true knowledge of God." God's agency is as our own agency, with His whole exist- ence in the single exercise for the period of its duration ; phenomenal and fleeting from exercise to exercise ; so that we are just as far from all originating source and connecting efficiency of the exercises as before. TVe have deluded our- selves by the use of a divine efficiency, as if it were a legiti- mate notion as source and connecting cause for our human exercises ; but when we now come to rest upon it, Ave find it to be mere appearance and not being ; a sense-cognition of the phenomenal and not at all an understanding-cognition of the notional ; and the reeling philosophy must at once fall, or betake itself to some other and further advanced delusion of usins: the sense for the understandinor. Such a philosophy can not possibly attain to a conception of the efficiency it so much uses. It calls it Divine efficiency — Deity; but it is used only as an originating source and con- necting cause for human phenomenal acts. If it were validly attained it would be mere physical connective for the exer- cises ; but as ultimately apprehended, it means only a higher exercise single and isolated, and equally as devoid of all pos- sible conception of efficiency as the human exercise. There is no connective for mental action, either as human or Divine ; and the very notion of efficiency, to say nothing of a free personality and independent Deity, is a surreptitious taking of a passing phenomenon in its place. Such exercises could no more be determined as an experience in time, than tlie exercises of our dreams can be connected in the unity of existence with our wakinrj hours. The other theory belonging to the same process in pliilos- 324 THE TTN-DERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. ophizing, and the last which we sjiall here feel disposed to notice particularly, is that Avhich is advanced by Pres. Edwards, in answer to an objection against the doctrine of Original Sin. His acceptation of the docti'ine of original sin, in systematic theology, is that of an imputation of Adam's first transgression to all his posterity in this sense, that in all there is a " liableness or exposedness, in the divine judgment, to partake of the punishment of that sin." The objection which he conceives as being brought against such a doctrine is, "that such imputation is imjust and unreason- able, inasmuch as Adam and his posterity are not one and the same." The objection is removed by affirming just the opposite, viz., that Adam and his postei'ity are one and the same ; and then comes in the philosophical theory to which we here have reference, to show the identity of the race with the progenitor in the first transgression. "With such identity understood, the punishment is apprehended as both just and reasonable, inasmuch as their action is involved as truly as his act. But without any concern here with tlie theological doctrine, we look only at the philosophical theory to account for the personal identity of all with Adam. There is first a somewhat extensive reference to different analogies in the perpetuation of identity in other cases ; as of a tree a hundred years old, and that tree as it first sprang from the ground ; the adult body of forty years, with the body in its infancy ; the identity in one person of the body and the soul ; and perpetuated consciousness as throughout the same consciousness; after which comes a more explicit announcement of the theory. It is made to have a general application to the phenomena of both the material and the mental world. These phenomena are ever FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 325 separate and fleeting, and the difficulty is, as thus isolate, to account for their identity in any one thing. Thus we have the brightness of the moon shining in the clear evening sky, and that shining appears constant and in perpetual being. But when this is intellectually considered, it is manifest that nothing here is permanent ; but that all is only a repetition of coming and departing aj^pearance. The rays in one in- stant of the shining are not those of the next instant. A new effect comes into being with each successive moment of the shining, and this coming and departing of one new effect after another is the same in all its qualities ; in the gravity of the moon as in that of its shining ; and this also in the case of all the phenomena of an outer world. All nature is but a continual repetition of new creations. Noth- ing is for a moment the same, but its perpetuation is a con- tinual repetition of new products. That there is any per- petuity to any thing depends wholly upon perpetual crea- tions, and identity of object in any thing is an arbitrary estabhshment of the Deity. A divine constitution is given to nature in these incessant and orderly new creations. The sameness or identity of any thing, from time to time, con- sists solely in the keeping of an onward flow of these new products. Nothing is the same in nature from one period to another, but just as the flowing river is the same ; a con- tinual coming and departing of the new elements of which the thing is constituted. By the like arbitrary establishment of the Deity through a perpetual Divine efficiency, the personal identity of every human being is constituted. One mental phenomenon de- parts and another comes, jiist as the efficiency of God keeps on the perpetual series ; and inasmuch as this is the sole 326 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. ground of all personal identity, nothing hinders that thia perpetuated divine constitution should run on from one per- son to another, and up through all persons to their first pa- rent. No man would be the same from hour to hour, and on from year to year, except for this divine constitution ; and this may just as well give identity from age to age as from year to year, and to all individuals of the race as to all the phenomena in each individual. This is what gives to the human race its unity, and humanity is thus constituted one identity through all ages. The first transgression is therefore an act belonging to all, and, as sinful, throws its guilt and Uability to punishment upon all ; inasmuch as in this divine constitution an identity is perpetuated, making all to be truly one. How clearly is all this method of philosophizing based upon the principle of bringing in the conception of a super- natural to perform the part of a notional in the connections of the understanding. Phenomena are taken as the true being, and a divine efficiency connects them ; and this not only in nature but in personality ; and not only in one per- son but identifying all persons. How shall such an effi- ciency be attained except as a mere assumption ? How shall its own connections in any identity be determined ? How shall phenomena be determined in the experience as in one space and in one time, without shutting up this connecting divine efficiency also within the determinations of space and time ? The Deity must in this way be degraded to the phenomenal. And in the same manner may we detect the fallacies of all philosophizing, where the jjhenomenal is forced into the place of the only true being, and the no- tional is discarded ; or the supernatural is made to take its FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 32-' place, only in the very next step to be forced in subjection to the constructions of the sense. The phenomenal can never be connected into a system of nature and determined in an experience in space and time, by any false playing off of the conjunctions of the sense for the connections of the understanding ; nor by surreptitiously introducing a Divine efficiency, which can itself have no other predicates than the d priori elements of quantity. "We may, then, affirm the partiality, incompleteness, and thus the en-or of all philosophy which deludes itself by an ambiguity, on either side, of elevating the sense into the region of the understanding or of degrading the under- standing to the functions of the sense. An amphiboly nec- essarily follows, and the ball is tossed from one hand into the other, as every changing step destroys the balance thus vainly sought to be preserved. Certainly, with very few exceptions, philosophy from its earliest history has kept it- self one-sided on one or the other of these extremes ; and to help itself out of its difficulties, either natui-e has been made God or God has been made nature. The English mind has best maintained its balance, since the great lights of Grecian philosophy in Plato and Aristotle have been ob- scured or perverted, and this not so much from the clear and intelligent apprehension of the manner of doing it, as by an almost instinctive mother-wit or good judgment, sometimes called common-sense, which forbad the putting of all things upon either foot at once ; and feeling the awkwardness of ail such attempts, it has striven at least to make its philos- ophy stand on both feet. Cudworth has introduced his con- ception of " a 2^lf(''^fic power " into nature ; and this, though neither a space-filling substance nor a time-filling source j 328 THE UXDERSTANDING IN ITS IDEA. neither siiccessive cause nor simultaneous reciprocity ; yet, as a connective notional in an understanding, merely general and which might be made to accomplish what any occasion for its use should require, has preserved his intellectual sys- tem of the universe from falling into the gulf on either side, through an annihilation of the sense, or an emptiness of the miderstanding. It gave a real dynamical connection to the phenomenal universe, though with no possible determinate order a priori/ and his Avhole atomic contrivance is just so much surplusage, inasmuch as all notional connective is sup- phed in the ^'■j^lastic power^'' and the atoms become the mere " chips in the porridge," the philosophy being wholly made up without them. So, also, Xewton's good judgment, cleaving to facts rather than speculation, and taking these in their intellectual laws rather than merely observed appearances, kept both the constructions of the sense and the connections of the understanding in their proper spheres, and performing their proper services in the cognition of universal nature ; but without any apprehension of an a priori psychology, which gave to each their necessary and universal conditions. The notions of substance, cause, and reciprocal influence, were un- derstood to be the laws in nature, while the diagrams in pure space and time gave the intuitive forms for all phenomena ; and thus was a nature of things truly constituted, with no ambiguity of either the functions of the sense or those of the understanding. And so more emphatically witli the philosophical genius of Lord Bacon ; accurately distinguish- ing the laws and forms in nature, from all qualities and events m appearance ; and thus perfectly separating the work of the sense, from all operations of the understanding ; analyz- FALSE SYSTEMS OF NATURE EXPOSED. 329 ing nature intellectually and not chemically; it has estab- lished forever the highway of all inductive science, though all unconscious of an a ^^riori road which, in its misappre- hension, it aifected to despise as emptiness and absurdity. The ideaUsm it condemns is that which its own good judg- ment taught itself to shun — a mere arbitrary hypothesis ; not that which has its ideals in the conditional laws of all thought, and which must necessarily be iu nature, if nature herself may be subjected to a determined experience in space and time. We here complete the First Chapter of the Understand- ing, havmg attained it completely in its Idea, and also seen how, in the light of this idea, we may detect the errors of false and defective processes of philosophizing, in those very points where the fallacies originate ; because they are seen to depart from the primitive elements of all possible connection, and to violate the conditional principles of all thinking in discursive judgments, and thereby render them- selves helpless in all determination of an experience in space and time. But, as yet our attainment is only an Idea. CHAPTER II. CHE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS OBJECTIVE LAW. -•O-OO*- SECTION I. SPACE AND TIME, EACH AS A WHOLE. The Function of an Understanding is to so give connec- tion to the phenomena gained in the sense, that they may become an order of experience determined to their places in space and to their periods ia time. Our a priori idea of such function that may operate such a result, has been found to include the notion of cons-tant substance as ground for con- nection in space ; perduring substance as source for connec- tion in perpetual time, consecutive cause as efficiency for con- necting in successive time, and reciprocal cause as condition for connecting in simultaneous time. This is subjective Idea, or possible understanding only ; for demonstrative science it is still incumbent that Ave attain a Law in actual facts, the correlative of this idea, and in such determine the real operation of such a faculty. In eifecting this, we shall take our attained a priori idea for the present as hypothesis only, and will apply it to actual facts in a sufficiently broad induction to induce full conviction that our necessary and universal idea has its counterpart in a veritable laAV of intelligent action. We shall need to ONE SPACE AND ONE TIME. 331 gather facts in respect both to the determination of an experience in one whole of space and of time, and the determination of it to particular places and periods m this one whole of space and of time. It will be requisite tc appropriate a section to each. That we in fact do determine experience in both ways, if manifest from our forms of expression and the universal adap tations of language. We speak of a universal Space as inclu- sive of all spaces, and in which all experience is in the same one space. So, also, we speak of a universal Time inclusive of all times, comprising eternitas a joar^e ante and eternitas a •parte post^ and in which all experience of ourselves or others is embraced. We speak of space as one void expanse, Avhich in its immensity gives place for all phenomena; and of time as one open duration, in which is period for all events. We talk of the unfolding and unrolling of time ; that which has been as ali'eady spread out, that which now is as just opening, and that which is to come as yet shut up : and so also of the stream of time, all the parts of which pass any one point successively ; and of the ocean of time, which, as one all-embracing flood, bears all events along together. Space is thus a whole enclosing all spaces, and not an ever- growing conjunction of parts; and tune is one whole em- bracing all periods, and not an endless adjunct of portions of time. We speak, moreover, of experience determined in its particular places, as of the map of human experience in which all phenomena have their place ; and also determined in its particular periods, as of the chronicle of human experi- ence in which all events have their own order of occurrence. With the fact manifest in all forms of communication that we determine experience both in a whole of space and 332 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. of time, and each fact of experience to a particular place and period in this whole of space and of time ; we have this as the end of our present investigation, to answer the inquiry — How is this effected? Do the facts in the case show that such determination is made under a Law, which completely corresponds with our a j^nori Idea ? This we must make to be apparent, both as determination in oJie xohole of space and of time ; and as particular in place and period. SECTION" II THE DETERMINATION OF EXPERIENCE IN ONE "WHOLE 01* SPACE AND OF TIME. We will here make an induction of facts, which will be seen to come under the conditions of our hypothetical idea, viz., that we determine an experience to be in one universal space and time, through the connections of the phenoineiial in a notional. We will take an experience in space and an experience in time separately, inasmuch as the facts in each case must be of a different class and indicating a peculiar notional connective for each ; that of experience in universal space, conditioned upon the connection of space-filling sub- stance, and that of experience in universal time, conditioned upon the connection of time-enduring source. The substance is known as space-filling, by the apprehending of a constant impenetrability in the same place ; and as time-enduring, from the perduring of this impenetrability through its differ- ent places, or its altered phenomena in the same place. EXPERIENCE IN ONE SPACE AND TIME. 333 1. E.rperience in Universal Sjmce. — Let us first take the facts given in our j!>Mre intuitive reasoning. It would be the same in numbers as m the pure diagrams of points in space ; but the illustration Avill not be so perspicuous from the use of numbers, as from that of definite pure figures in space. "When I construct any diagram by my sole intellectual agency in self-consciousness, I have in the apprehension of the pure diagram necessarily the apprehension of a place also. Every repetition of the constructing of similar pure diagrams is necessarily connected with the apprehension of a place for each completed construction. Our facts, there- fore, may here be multiplied to the extent that we can have diflferent constructions of pure diagrams, all giving an appre- hension of a space in the fact of their ovm pure aijprehen- sion. But none of these pure spaces are deteraiined as in one universal space. One construction is produced and dis- missed after another and at different periods intervening, and as the pure diagram dej^artsfrom the self-consciousness, the place apprehended also departs with it ; inasmuch as neither the diagram nor the place had any significancy except in my subjective consciousness. We can by no means determine that these places are in one universal space, and only determine from the primitive unity of our self- consciousness, that they have been constructed and appre- hended by one self. There is no constant substance, as space-filling, whereby to determine constant sameness of place, and we do not, therefore, determine different con- structed pure diagrams in their places to be in one and the same universal space. Much less is it practicable to determine the pure dia^ 334 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. grams constructed in different self-conscious subjects and their apprehended spaces to be in one universal space. Tlie constructing agency is conditioned only by the scheme in the productive imagination in each subject ; and we do not determine one man's pure diagrams in space, to be in the same universal space with the places of another man's dia- grams. We can not say that the triangles, circles, etc., of one, are the same as those of another ; nor that they are together in the same one whole of all space ; inasmuch as there is no one space-filling substance, which occasions the constructions in all persons to be of one thing, and in one and the same place, and this in the one universal space. The law for constmction is here found, but the law for conneo tlon is utterly wanting ; and hence, while we have the intui- tion, we can have no judgment in the understanding, and while we have a subjective experience, as seeming phenom- ena, we can have no connection of these seeming jjhenom- ena into an experience determined in one universal space. We will next take facts in mere organic affections. — The organ of vision is the most ap2>ropriate, though sometimes facts of the same class may be foxmd in the organ of touch, or that of sound. It is practicable, by a pressure on the eye-ball, to attain changeable floating colors in our selt- consciousness, and which keep up their appearance for a longer or shorter period. We may construct them into figures more or less definite, and though often unlike any shapes of reality, they yet have their jilaces and relationships each to each. Some permanent organic defect or injury may make such affections j^ermanent, as in cases of clouded spots and rings in the sight, and moving appearances as if of some discoloration in the humor of the lens, known as EXPERIENCE IN ONE SPACE AND TIME. 335 voUtantes miiscqyidi ; or perha{)S, for a few moments after having turned the eye aside from an intense light ; or the dreadful phantoms of some brain affections, as in delirimn tremens. In all such phantasies, Ave have as truly the appre- hension of a place, as we have of the shades or colors which come and go as organic illusions ; but inasmuch as the affec- tion is simply organic, and having no significancy except for the self-conscious subject whose organ it is, such illusions and their places are as wholly subjective as the pure dia- grams of mathematics. They are not conditioned in their construction by any scheme in the productive imagination, but altogether from the affection in the internal state of the organ ; and as these change or are permanent from the state of the organ, and not from any occasion in a constant space- filling substance, so we never determine such places to be in one universal sjiace, nor that the places at different periods of the appearance are the same ])laces. And much less do we determine the places, in all the different self-conscious sub- jects of such affections, to be in the same universal space. The occasion for a construction in figure is given, because the conditional law of all conjunction in imity is here ; but the conditions for a connection in the judgment of an under- standing are not here given, and we can bring no such experience within the determination of a universal space. All such facts are fully explicable from our hypothetical idea, and prove it to be the law for the determination of experience in one space. We will again take facts occurring in reflected vision. The same illustrations might be found in reflected hearing as an echo in the sense ; but inasmuch as hearing has the conditions for only a very imperfect construction of space, 336 THE TTNDERSTANDIKG IN ITS LAW. It can not be made so convenient for our design. We have appearances in vision from any medium that may subserve the purposes of a mirror — the calm surface of a hike ; the prepared plate of glass, with its quicksilver coating on the backside ; or some metal with its highly polished surface. In any such arrangement, the occasion is given for a content in the sense, and the construction into definite figure is com- plete, and readily efiected. In all such constructions, a space is apprehended as necessarily as the figure constructed in the consciousness. But this space is significant only as relative to the particular mirror. The mirror is conditional for it ; it is produced in it, and destroyed in its destruction. There are as many different spaces as mirrors, and it is im- practicable that there should be one universal space em- bracing all mirrored spaces. Such appearance is objective, inasmuch as the mirror is no part of the subject-self but occasions the same appearance for all subjects of self-con- sciousness in the same circumstances ; and thus the space is objective and independent of the peculiarity of the subject apprehending it, and is the same space for all self-conscious sul)jects of it. But though objective and the same space to all that may ^apprehend it, yet is it space in that mirror only, and not the same space with that in any other mirror ; since the removal or destruction of the mirror abolishes its space, without any interference with other mirrored spaces. "We may thus very well speak of the definite figures in the same mirror as all appearing within the same space, for there is the constant substance of the mirror through which to con- nect at each different period of observation and for every different observer. But another mirror has its own space, for each pei'iod of observation and for every observer ; and EXPERIENCE IN ONE SPACE AND TIME. 337 it would demand an including mirror of all mirrors, to bring the spaces of all mirrors into one universal mirrored space. And i^recisely because there is no such all-embracing sub- stance, which, as universal mirror, might hold all mirrored spaces in itself, there can be no determined universal whole for the spaces in all mirrors. It is thits impossible to deter- mine tlie experience in reflective vision in one universal space ; and this precisely in conformity with our hypothesis ; for, so far as constant substance may be thought in the mir- ror itself, there is one whole of space, but because a con- stant substance underlying all mirrors can not be thought, therefore the spaces in all mirrors can not be connected in one universal space. And still further, the mirrored space may be considered in reference to the space in which the mirror itself is. Each mirror is itself in a space and has its own space in itself, and the space within the mirror can not be the same space with that in which is the mirror itself; for the removal or de- struction of the mirror is an abolishing of the space within it, but no interference with that space in which was the mirror itself. To make the mirrored spaces one universal space would demand a universal substance as constant mir- ror, which might contain all others ; but such imiversal mir- ror would still demand its own place in which it might be, and could never identify the place in which it was, with the universal mirrored space that was in it. TVere it true there- fore, that an experience of reflective vision should be deter- mined in a universal whole of all mirrored spaces, by the occasion of an including substance as mirror for all mirrors, it would still be impracticable to determine such experience in one universal space ; for the spaces m which the universal 15 338 THE UND E !'> ST A XDIX G IX ITS LAW. min-or must be, could not be thought connected in one space with that universal mirrored space which was in the mirror itself. And still further, the space m which the mirrored ap- pearance is, may be considered in reference to the space in which the phenomenon is, of which the mirrored appear- ance is the reflection. The reflected appearance is not the same as the phenomenon reflected, for the removal of the mirror abolishes the first, but has no interference with the last ; and in the same Avay and for the same reason, the space in which is the reflected appearance is not the same space as that ki which is the phenomenon reflected. Should some universal mirror, therefore, give all reflected appearance to be an experience in one universal mirrored space, we should not thus connect this experience in the same space with an experience of the phenomena reflected. The one, though universal of its kind, would still leave the other altogether unincluded. The substance which filled the space and oc- casioned the phenomenon reflected would be no substance in the mirrored space of the reflected appearance, and on this account the two spaces can not be connected in a judg- ment of the understanding, into the same space. Thus, in all the many and very diversified fects of reflected vision, we find them all held in colligation by our hypothetical idea, as their actual law. We will, in the last place, take the facts which occur iu open vffiio?i. The illustration will be the same in any organ- ism, that may give occasion for definite construction in space ; but as the organ of vision gives such occasion the most perfectly, the facts connected with vision become the most a]>propriate for our purpose. Mere ajjpearance in con- EXPKUIENCE IX OXE SPACE AXD TIME. 339 Bciousness necessitates the apprehending of a space ; but mere appearance does not give an occasion for determining all as in one space. When I simply perceive the stars in their apj^earances, I see them to be in a space ; and I may make constructions, that shall give me their bearing and distance fi'om each other in that sj^ace ; but something more than appearance must be given, as occasion for connecting them m thought in the one universal space. I can not perceive in the sense, but only judge in the understanding that all ap- pearance is in the one space. If I sail on a smooth lake in a clear niglit, I may perhaps be wholly unable to perceive the sm-face of the water, so perfectly does it reflect all that is above it. In such a case I shall perceive the appearajice of the stars above and beneath, and so far as perception is concerned I am ensphered in a heaven of stars, and the mere appeai'ance can not determine for me which hemi- sphere is direct and which reflected appearance. It is only where in the understanding I fix the constant space- filling substance, that I come to determine this one to be the existing heaven and the other its perfectly mirrored reflec- tion. And ray determination of appearances in this one space is only as I think it to be filled with constant sub- stance. The space-filling substance of the stars has been constant through the day, though the more intense sunlight has wholly absorbed their phenomenal being ; and when they appear again on the succeeding evening, because their appearance is occasioned by the same constant substance, I judge them to be the same stars, and in the same space. So, also, when the voyager has sailed to the opposite side of the globe and on the opposite side of the equator, he per- ceives a heaven in which the stars have wholly another ap- 340 THE UlfDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. pearance ; but he judges them all to be in the same one space, not because he so perceives them, but because he con- ceives a filling of space by some existing substance from the place of the stars in one hemisphere to the place of the dif- lorent stars in the other. A chasm of all substantial being as notional space-filling force would cut ofi" all communica- tion from one phenomenal world to the other, and we should be unable to determine them in the same one space, but only as each in its own space. All the facts, both as negative of a connection in a no- tional and as positive for such connection, come together in our hypothesis — that we ncA'er determine experience in one universal space except in the thought of a connective no- tional, and always when we have such connection. No fact can be found in any experience determined in one whole of space, that may exclude itself from the colligation of this universal Law. 2. Experience in TTniversal Time. — I can have no ap- prehension of the passing of a time except through some modification of my internal state. When that varied modi- fication is going on, a time is apprehended as going on in my consciousness ; as that is quickened or retarded in its flow, the apprehension of an elapsing time is faster or slower ; and as all such modification of inner state ceases in consciousness, all apprehension of a time ceases in conscious- ness likewise. It is, thus, ever the fact that some modify- ing process is going on in the internal state, and this appre- hended in the light of consciousness, or we do not con- sciously apprehend that a time is passing ; and that we do apprehend the elapsing of a time, in conformity with the flow of such varied modifications of inner sense. This fact EXPERIENCE IX ONE SPACE AND TIME. ,341 full in our apprehension will facilitate the acqnisition, and ready application, of many other facts to our present pur- pose. We vr'iW Jlrst gather some facts in purely subjective exper ience. There are many instances of an experience going on wholly within our own minds, and in which we are our- selves our o^^Ti world. The inner sense alone is active in perceiving and constructing a train of passing events as they take place wholly within our own subjective being. This may be a passing of one emotion after another, or one thought after another, or perhaps a varied flow^ of thoughts, emotions, and purposes Avhich stand only in our conscious- ness and pass only in our inner sense, while all attention to any thing external is withdrawn. In such a case there is the consciousness of an elapsing time, but as it has been ap- prehended only in relation to the coming and departing of the inner events, its correspondence with the time which has been going on in the flow of passing events external to us has not been at all regarded ; and as we have had no appre- hension of the external events and the time of their flow, it is impossible that we should put one within the other and determine them to the same one universal time. We are obliged, when we are roused from our subjective thinking, to recur to some standard which indicates how the flow of passing outward events has progressed, and thus determine the period of our musing by putting it within a definite period of an objective flowing of events ; and we are sometimes greatly surprised at the ascertained disparity between them. We may suppose some pure geometrician as Euclid or Archimedes, or some Newton or La Place constructing his 842 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS L AW . pure diagrams of the heavenly movements, and so wholly intent on the intuitive processes which are going on in his own pure creations, that the phenomenal events of an outer world are utterly lost to the consciousness. To such a mind, absorbed in its own action, there wUl be a progressive modi- fication of the internal state as the process of pure construc- tion and intuition goes onward, and thus consciously a time is passing ; but the only time apprehended is that in which this inner agency may be brought, by constructing into definite periods the instants in which it has stood or the moments through which it has passed. Were there no other conception of the modification of an inner sense but such as was subjectively experienced in its own constructing agency, we should have a time but it would be our own subjective time only ; nor should we be able to say that it could be at all within any universal time of an objective duration. When the i^hilosopher awoke from his profound study and went out from the consciousness of an inner sense to the consciousness of an outer movement, he would be wholly unable to identify the subjective succession with an objective duration, except as he could fix on some constant substantial being as a source of successive changes in the alterations of its phenomena, and from that determine how an objective time had passed since his subjective time had been going on, and thus putting the period of the latter within tlie definite period of the former. While it thus is manifest that time subjectively can have no identification in an objective time ; except through the determination of the one within the other by the connec- tions of phenomenal events in a perduring substantial source, 60 it is the more manifest that the mere j^assing of a time EXPEKIEXCE IN ONE SPACE AND TIME. 343 ill subjective consciousuess can never be determined in any universal time. My inner agency in its modifications of my internal state is subject to perpetual interruptions. "When it is in process, then a time is passing ; when it is inter- rupted, then is the flow of tune in my subjective conscious- ness broken up ; and it is not possible that I should conjoin the periods as in one time across these breaches. Within my subjective experience there has been only passing periods as I have been conscious of the varied internal modifications of state, and those separated by intervals when no subjective time was passing ; and surely, without some perdurmg source marking its changes in perpetually altered phenomena, and which I can never find in my sub- jective being, I can never connect these separate periods across their fathomless voids of all time, and deteriuine them to belong to one universal whole of all time. To my sub- jective experience they are so many separate times. And I have nothing in me, as the subject of their self-conscious apprehension, by which I can connect them all in one universal time. Other subjects of self-consciousness may by their o^^'^x inner agency be modifj-ing their own internal states, and coming to the consciousness that a time is thus passing on in their inner sense ; but there is nothing to connect the periods in their interruptions into one time in each self-con- scious subject, much less any thing to connect all their periods into one universal time for them all. There must be a perduring source, whose changes shall be marked in con- tinually coming and departing phenomena which arise as events from it, and thus give a continually flowing time objectively as common standard for all their subjective 344 THE UNDERSTAN^DING IN ITS LAW. times ; and only thus may all be detennlued in the same universal time. No one subject can connect his own periods across their frequent interruptions by any permanent standard in his own subjective being. And neither one nor all can bring the periods of their separate selves into one time, from any common standard found in their subjective being, nor is this in fact ever done but by referring them all to some per- manent objective source of changes. There would be as many times as there are subjects of self-consciousness, did we not determine our own and each others tunes by some permanent objective notional, which as substantial source connects the changes in their periods and gives one time for us all. We may ?iext take facts in our subjective organis^n. If we confine the modification of our internal state to the com- ing and departing appearances or the motions in some delu- sive organic aiFections, we shall attain a large class of facts for our purpose. The deceptive phantoms before mentioned in some diseased or deranged organ — as the colors from the pressed eye-ball, or a ringing sound in the ear, or a pain in the nerves — would give occasion for a constructing agency and thus for a modification of internal state, and thereby secure the consciousness of a passing time. But inasmuch as this sensation originates in the organism, and gives occa- sion for the self-conscious possessor of the organ only to be thus internally affected, the passing of the time can be of no significancy beyond his subjective being, and as exclusively his own time as above in the purely mental movements. So far, therefore, as there are such periods in organic experience, they may furnish their facts for our purpose. Perhaps the facts of dreaming may here give the best EXPERIENCE IN ONE SPACE AND TIME. 345 illustration. A dream may be taken as a sensation in our subjective organism generally, inducing such intellectual construction as the state of the oi-ganism occasions ; and such, though only of the reproductive imagination, do yet induce a modification of the internal state, and thus the con- scious passing of a time. But none of us can bring the times of our dreams into one connected whole of a dreaming time for ourselves subjectively, much less put all the times of all dreaming in all persons Into any one time, or identify the times passing in our dreams with our objective universal time, only as we have some substantial source for phenom- enal successions, and subject the times of our dreams to this one common standard which marks the progress of one universal time for all. TTe may lastly take the facts of any real phenomenal experience. My perceptions of phenomena through any organism are, so far as they are appearance in my conscious- ness, subjective only. The color, the sound, the touch, the taste, and the smell, are all in me subjectively ; and the modification which their distinction and construction in con- sciousness occasions in my internal state gives the conscious- ness of a passing time, but this phenomenal passing in its periods is in my subjective consciousness only. I am not conscious that such modifications and such periods are pass- ing in others. This would demand that tlie others con- sciousness should become phenomenal in my consciousness. I have my own phenomenal coming and departing in con- sciousness, and another subject may have his ; but no con- sciousness of either can put the interrupted periods of one subject into one time, much less the periods of the two sub- jects of self-consciousness into one common time. Every 346 THE UN DEE STANDING IN ITS LAW. subject judges that what has occasioned his perception of the phenomena is the same permanent substance occasion- ing the Hke perceptions for all ; that the changmg events originate in a source which is a common occasion for per- ceiving the same series of events by all ; and that the occa- sions for modifications of internal state are given alike to aU ; and thereby the periods are the same to all, and are connected in the same one time for aU. The substantial time-keeper gives the phenomena of moving hands over the dial-plate, and the tick of the seconds, and the periods of them in their series, as a standard for common experience ; and although the perceptions are only subjective and sepa- rate in the sense, yet the permanent sameness of substan- tial source in the thought connects them all in one nature, and in one tune. Thus, in all the above facts is the colliga- tion of our hypothesis verified as universal Law. SECTION III. THE DETEEinNATION OP AN EXPERIENCE IN ITS PARTICULAB PLACES AND PERIODS. All experience is but a medley of appearing and dis- appearing phenomena, except the phenomena are determined in their particular places and periods. And that we do judge phenomena to be each in its own place and period in universal space and time, and determine their relative bear- ings and distances from each other, needs no illustration ; since our experience has no connection in itself as a whole any further than such determination of particular phenom- EXPERIENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 347 ena in space and time is effected. The poiut for investigation is, to find the Law in the facts for such particular determin- ation. Will our hypothetical idea bind up within itself all the facts of a determination of particular phenomena to their places in space and their periods in time ? If so, the induction will evince this to be their law ; and tluis that the understanding does determine the particulars of an experience in place and period, in accordance wuth our d priori idea of an understanding already attained. "We shall, as before, take the particular determinations in space and in time separately. 1. Particular determination of places in sjyace. — All the phenomena of experience, we judge to be in one universal space ; and the law for this as already found in the facts is, the connection of these phenomena in a constant sj^ace-fiUing substance. We shall now show, that the law for all partic- idar determination in space is the fixing of the phenomena in their relative spaces, by their inherence in the constant space-filling substance. In all determination of particular phenomena in space there must be some movement. The place occupied must be determined in bearing and distance from other places, and we never take such bearings and distances without an intellectual moving agency which in its progress constructs the places and the lines between them. But no movement can be apprehended, except in reference to somewhat that is permanent. I only determine that I move, by a reference of myself to something which does not move. It thus be- comes the condition in all determination in place, that we have some permanent stand-point. ' But I find no permanent stand-point in my subjective 348 THE UNDEKSTANDIXG IN ITS LAW. being. When I am conscious of an inward constructing agency producing pure figures in space, the movement is ajiprehended only in the jjassing of the agency throughout the diverse points in the j^rimitive intuition. Subjectively, my pure diagrams have a relative bearing and distance from each other, but no determined relation to the places of any phenomena in universal space. Nor, from my subjective sensations any more than from my subjective pure intui- tions, do I attain to any permanent stand-point. If I press my eye -ball and fill the organ in consciousness with the float- ing fantastic colors, they may have bearings and directions from each other, but they give no permanent point for de- termining themselves in universal space. And this would be precisely the same with our real sensations, were only the subjective sensations regarded. That I had a real sen- sation in touch, and this continued so that in my conscious- ness I attained the construction of some definite figure and thus a place in space ; yet, if the perception in sensation were all that was given, I should not be able at all- to deter- mine where in the universal space that place was, nor what direction and distance from the i>lace of any other construc- tion by the touch. The result would be the same in the construction, whether the organ of touch moved over the resistance or the resistance moved over the organ, and the mere sensation would give no permanent stand-point from whence to take any bearings and distances. Sensation can give only the subjective ; and the subjective can never at- tain to any pennanency from whence to determine particu- lar places in space. All the facts of our merely subjective experience are bound in this law, that we can determine them only in a subjective space, for that only has perma- EXPERIENCE IX PLACE A X D PERIOD. 349 nency in reference to our subjective self; but what relation this bears to any places in universal space we can not deter- mine, precisely because we can attain no permanent objec- tive. But, if now I take my own body, and think all the phe- nomena which it occasions in the sense to inhere in it as a constant space-filling substance, and thus that this body per- manently occupies a place ; I can in this determine the beai'- ing and distances of aU these phenomena inhering in the permanent substance of my own body, and say what are their relations in their places to each other. The direction and distance of the appearing head from the appearing foot through any sense of vision or of touch may readily be de- termined ; because there has been given the permanent space-filling substance in the understanding, which as fixed position in objective space occasions its own phenomena to appear in their own relative places, as inhering in it each in its own place. Just so far as you fill a space with the per- manent substance, you determine the relative places of its phenomena ; for so far, and only so far, you have the hypo- thetical law for it. But such determination of the relative places of the dif- ferent phenomena of my own body, can determine notliing of the relations to any places in universal space beyond it. I can not determine my relative position in the room I oc- cupy, by any permanent filling of a space with the substance of my own body alone. That will only avail to determine the relative places oi' the phenomena in my own body, and not the places of any jihenomena beyond the space so occu- pied. I must first judge such phenomena to be the inhering quahties of a space-filling substance beyond and enclosing 350 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. my body ; and I may then very well determine the relative places of the phenomena in my own body with those in the substance of the wall of the room in their particular places. All the hypothetical conditions are so far given, and so far a determined experience in particular places is effected. But still, all determination of place is confined to the space of the room, and we can not yet say where in space the room itself is. I look from the window of my room, and various phenomena aj^pear to be moving past the space of the room which the window occupies; bat I can not determine whether the space of my room and myself in it are moving past the outer phenomena, or whether the phenomena are moving past the window of my room. My room may be the cabin of a steamboat, and I readily determine the rela- tive positions of all the places in the room ; but I can not yet say where in universal space the phenomena beyond are, in reference to the place of my room. I may find them to be the phenomena of another steamboat, but I can not yet say whether they are permanent and we are moving, or the con- trary ; or whether both are not moving in opposite direc- tions ; or, perhaps both in the same direction, though one be more rapid than the other, and thus the more rapid pass- ing by the other. Until I can attain some permanent space- filling substance in the judgment of the understanding — as a tree, a house, a hill upon the shore — Avhich I at once recognize as occupying permanent place still beyond, I can not determine the relative bearings of any phenomena ex- ternal to my own room. The permanent substance on shoi'e gives occasion for determining the direction and bearing of all the phenomena interveiling. But fjicts in the same direction will still farther confirm EXPERIENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 351 our hypothesis to be the universal law ; for this 2)erraaiient substance on shore may be still transcended. We can not tell where in space the phenomena on the shore are, except as we have extended our thought to the earth itself, as per- manent space-filling substance, and determined its phenom- ena to be connected in it as permanent ground for their ap- pearance, and thus as fixed at determinate bearings and dis- tances from each other in their particular places. And then, if we would know the place in space of the earth itself, we have the higher stand-point to attain in the permanent space-filling substance of the sun, which determines all the phenomena of its planets and their satellites in their relative positions. And then, yet again, this planetary system can be determined in its place in space only by a higher perma- nent substance in the fixed stars, which considered as occu- pying each the same place in space beyond the region of our planetary system, may give the same law for the mider- standing to determine the place of the system as, in the first illustration given, the place of any part of my own body. And then, whether all the fixed stars are indeed fixed in the same invariable place in imiversal space, or are not perhaps themselves planets carrying each their unseen systems around some higher center, can only be determined by attaining such phenomena as evince their inherence in such higher space-filling substance. Our hypothetical prin- ciple is thus a universal law. The notion of a pei-manent space-filling substance, connecting all the phenomena in their relative places through their inherence in this substance, must be given, or no determination of experience in partic- ular places in space is ever effected ; and at once, and always, where such connective is given, the determining 352 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. judgment in the understanding is readily and confidently made. The point for an absolute determination of all places in universal space would be some fixed substantial center, which never changes its place by a revolution around some higher center ; fi'om which all centrifugal force goes out, and to which all gravitating force tends ; and thus making the universe of nature to be one sphere of substantial being wdth its inhering phenomena ever occupying as a whole the same j^lace in universal space. Shall we ever determine such fixed center, which unmoved itself yet ever determines all motion relatively to itself? Surely not from experience. No experience can possibly rise to the absolute in anything ; therefore can never attain to an absolute determination of space. It can only determine the relative places within the space which is occupied by a permanent substance, and in which the inhering phenomena are fixed in their connection to their respective places. If we were placed upon the sup- posed absolute center to which all motion would have ulti- mate reference, it would be impossible for us to determine in experience our steadfast position. The understanding may think such a permanent stand-point ; but place the sense there and it could not see if it stood, or whether it moved about some higher unseen center. 2. Particular determinations of periods i?i Time. — Time has three modes of relation to phenomena, and we need to gather the facts in each, and see if they all come within the circumscription of our hypothesis for determin- ing particular periods in time. (1 .) Facts in the determination of particular periods in the perpetuity of time. — Tliis general fact is every where EXPERIENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 353 apparent, that there is not a perpetual apprehending of a time in any self-consciousness. When there is a progressive modification of internal state, ^ye may be conscious that a time is passing ; but when there is any interruption of the conjoining agency, there is an interruption in our conscious apprehending of a time. Such interruption>s are frequently occurring in every experience. The intellectual agency is often so completely absorbed in other constructions, that Ave take no note of time. There are also reveries and musing meditations, paroxysms of delirium and fainting fits and the stupor of disease, and more especially the occurrence of sleej) from the necessities of our animal constitution ; in all of which, the consciousness of an elapsing time is inter- rupted. To our subjective being these intervals in our con- sciousness have no sicrnificancv, and ai"e a void of time as truly as a void of all inner affection. Such chasms in any elapsing time effectually break up in our consciousness the perpetuity of time. It is nevertheless a fact that we some- how determine time to be perpetual, and to have been con- tinually passing during these interruptions in our conscious- ness of all time, so that we as truly determine a period to our unconsciousness as to our conscious exercises. This can be no intuition of the sense, but must somehow be a discur- sive judgment formed in the understanding. If I am sail- ing with the current of a stream in my conscious apprehen- sion, and am then wholly unconscious of any such movement through sleep or otherwise, and again awake in conscious- ness of the similar fact that I am sailing with the current of a river, certainly my interrupted apprehensions can not be so brought together, or the chasm of consciousness so bridged across, that I can 2:)erceive that I have been perpet- 354 THE U N 1) E K S T A N D I X G IX ITS LAW, ually sailing with the current, nor that the currents in the two periods of appreliension are the same perpetual stream. If I determine such facts at all, it must be through some discursive judgment in the understanding. I must think the connections of these experiences through some media, which as data lie beyond the subjective experience itself. And here all the facts, in our determination of the inter- rupted periods of our experience to be- in perpetual time, will be brought into complete colligation by our hypotheti- cal condition of a perduring source, as the time-filling sub- stance to which the phenomena in their different periods all adhere. Thus, after a period of activity in consciousness, I fall asleep in my study-chair. After this interruption of con- sciousness, I again awake and would fain determine the con- tinuity of time in this interval when time had no significancy to me. Certainly I do not attempt to make my intellectual agency pass through this chasm, and thereby construct the periods in consciousness that I xi\^j jycrceive a time has been perpetually passing. I have no diversity of instants in that interval of unconsciousness which I may conjoin in unity, and by this bring in conjunction the periods before and after, and thus make the time perpetual. I take a very dif- ferent course ; laying aside all function of intuition I seek to connect the periods only by a discursive operation of the understanding. I find some permanent source of varying phenomena which has existed through the interval, and whose coming and departing events have had their penods in this interval, and which have thus connected the periods through this subjective void of all time ; and I at once con- clude that time has been perpetual. Any such perduring BXPERTENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 355 Bonrce for coming and (lci)arting events will give a datum for such a discursive judgment, and all the facts of a deter- mination of the perpetuity of time through such a chasm will invariably rest upon it. Thus, I may take my watch, which has been a perduring source of var3dng events in the movements of the different hands over the dial-plate, or the undulations of air from the Btroke at each swins: of the balance-wheel. Those events as phenomena have not appeared in my experience, yet has the occasion for such phenomena jDcrpetually existed, and I must thus think them connected in their continual periods, varying as the changes in the source went on ; and in the judgment of the understanding, I at once determine that a time has been perpetually passing, though in my subjective consciousness it had no significancy. I conclude thus, only in a discursive process that has gone from period to period through the notion of a perduring source in the understand- ing. As another fact, I may look at the falling sands through the permanent waist of the hour-glass ; and though I have been all unconscious of the varying phenomena, yet is this perduring source of such successive appearances for any perceiving sense that might have been present in con- sciousness, a sufficient datum for the understanding to de- tertnine that the occasions have had their periods, and that the time has been perpetually passing. The shadow of the gnomon on the sun-dial may give another fict within the same conditions. The perduring soui'ce as notional in the understanding has been in existence through the interval of my unconsciousness, and given occasion for a continual per- ception of the moving shadow to any sense which might have received the content and have had its pei'petuated time 356 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. through all the moments ; and the void of time in conscious- ness is thus a perpetuation of time in the understanding. Only by such connection of adhering occasions in a perdur- ing source, do we determine any particular period to be in a perpetual time. And when no artificial chronometers are at hand, the same conditions are given in a thousand ways, each of which would be a new fact coming under the same hypothesis. Thus, I awake, and find the sunshine from my window has changed its position; or, perhaps the twilight of evening has succeeded to the clear daylight when my sleep com- menced ; or, the diminished warmth of ray room from the neglected and expiring fire in the stove ; or, the diminished light and exhausted oil in my lamp ; any one of these or numberless other such occasions give the datum in a per- manent source of continual variations for the determination in the understanding, that a time has been perpetually pass- ing through all intervals of our unconsciousness. So in that void of all time to us which precedes our existence as self- conscious beings, or that which is yet to come beyond the present instant in consciousness, we readily determine a per- petuity to time and embrace all the experience of humanity in one perpetuity of duration. The permanent substances which give their phenomenal brightness in the heavens are lasting sources of adhering events for a continual experience, and thus become data for the determination of a perpetual time, which flows on in unin.terrupted periods, independent of all consciousness of it. They are thus, what their Maker in tlie beginning designed they should be, " lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night, and that they may be for signs and for seasons, and for days and EXPEKIENCE IX PLACE AND PERIOD. 35V years." As far as we may think the perduring source to exist with its occasions for the adhering phenomena to come and depart, so f;ir we can carry out our determinations of particular periods in a perpetuity of time, and give the chronology of nature ; but when that notion as necessary condition of all connection in time drops from the under- standing, the vacant thought has nothing for its support, and all determination of perpetuity to time is wholly im- practicable. We thus affirm, that all the facts in an actual determinar tion of particular periods to perpetual time, come completely within, and are wholly concluded by our hypothesis — that the connections of adhering events in one perduring source is the necessary condition for all such determination of an experience in perpetual time. We have in this no longer a mere hypothesis, but an actual universal Law. (2.) Facts iu the determination of particular periods in the uniform suecession of time. — We judge time to be in uniformly progressive flow ; that its stream does not turn back upon itself, nor wheel itself about in one perpetual cycle ; and that it is not by desultory leaps, nor paroxysms of quickened and retarded movement. But when only the subjective apprehension of a time is given, we determine nothing in reference to the ordered progress of its move- ment. Our dreams may give an apprehension of successive periods in any direction ; and our memories may follow back the tide of events, or begin at any past point and follow down again the old stream of our experience. Were there nothing but our subjective constructions of periods, our apprehension of time must be backward er forward, accordinsr to the contingent modifications of our interna] 358 THE UXDERSTANDIXG IN ITS LAW. State by the constructing movement. There is nothing in the subjective consciousness, which may serve as a perma- nent from which to determine the absohite direction or the rapidity of the current of time. How, then, do we deter- mine the particular periods in time to be in an ordered and unifoi'm succession ? The facts will all be bound up in our hyjjothetical condition — that an ordered series of causation alone gives the datum for the determination of particular periods as uniformly progressive. Thus, as before, when I awake from my sleep, and would fain know how much of time has passed, I need to deter- mine, not only as before that there has been a perpetual passing of time and which is effected by any perduriug source of adhering events, but, moreover, now I need to determine that this j^erpetual passing of a time has been in an ordered and uniform succession. A perpetual movement from period to period might be as the pendulum to and fro ; or, as the wheel on its axis revolving without progress ; or, as the waves on the surface of the lake varied indefinitely ; and there would be the notion of one perpetual som'ce in which adhering events in their periods were continually recurring, and we might determine that all the periods belonged to a perpetual time ; but we must have some other data for determining that all the periods are in one uniform progress, as an ordered and even succession of time. When I look at my watch to determine hoio much time has passed, the datum which I get for my judgment is not merely that the substance is source for perpetual coming and departing events, but, moreover, is cause that the events can be only in one order and in uniform rapidity of succession. It is the abiding source and its events which suffices for perpetuity KXPERIENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 359 of time, but it is the series of cause and effect which can alone suffice for the determination of an ordered succession of time. If the watch might go either backwards or for- wards, or in a progressus of irregular rates of movement, there would be no datum for determining the onward flow of time, and none for determining uniformity of process by it. Thus with the houi'-glass, the sun-dial, or any other artificial chronometer ; we take the notion not only of a perduring source, but also of an ordering cause, necessita- ting the source to give its altered events in uniform succes- sion. So far as we attain such a datum, Ave possess a chro- nometer ; and so far as there is any deficiency in these condi- tions, the capability of an accurate determination of suc- cessive time is defective. I may know that my stove has been gradually diminishing in warmth while I was sleeping, and thus the cause of the gradual settling of the mercury in my thermometer ; and in this case I could determine the movement of the mercury and its periods to be in one direc- tion, and so far it would be chronometer for the progess of time. But, I must also have the datum of uniformity of causation, before I can make it chronometer for the rapidity of time. Any notion of causation is sufficient in its varying events to determine a progressus of time, but only uniformity in the variations can make it practicable for us to determine the uniform successions of periods in time. Thus, although we readily determine that time is a pro- gressus and never a regressus, we attain to only a compara- tive and not an absolute determination of the even flow of time. We find it necessary to bring every chroncmeter to some comparative standard of an ordered series f causa- tion. The great standard is the revolution of tlu :ai'th o»» 360 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. its axis. Taking the earth as perduring source of the varied phenomena, and the cause of its revolutions as ordering the same m progressive and equable successions, we have the great chronometer by which all artificial time-keepers are to be regulated. As this revolution of the eai"th divides itself into the tAvo j^ortions of Ught and darkness, so it has been found convenient to give to the ordinary chronometers two revolutions to one revolution of the earth, thereby separately measuring the day and the night. An hour-glass may take any equable division of this as a twelfth, and be truly an hour-glass ; or a twenty-fourth, and be a half hour-glass. But in all the datum is the same — a causation ordering suc- cessive phenomena in accordance progressively and equably, with the revolutions of the earth. And now, that this is perpetually progressive is readily manifest. The causation is ever onward and not backward. One point of the earth's surface comes under the meridian after another, and these points can not alternate in the periods of their coming to the meridian, each with each. We thus determine the periods to be progressive and never regressive. But inas- much as the movement is a revolution, and each day repeats its causal variations in the same order ; how do we deter- mine that time has any otlier progress than a repetition of cycles ? The facts bring lis again within the circumscrip- tion of the same hypothesis. Had we no causation l)ut that which orders our diurnal revolution, we should not be com- petent to determine our regular progressus in time, and each day would be to us the old day over again ; as with only a whirling balloon in the open air of heaven, each turn would to the aeronaut be in the same place. But as a sight of the objects on the earth would give the data for determinuig EXPERIENCE IN PLACE AND PEllIOD. 361 that his revolutions varied from place to place, so do the thousand onward moving events give the data for determin- ing that the diurnal revolutions of the earth vary in their periods, and are each a time further on in the oi)ening of eternity tlian the last. The on-going of th^ objective events in nature are right onward from day to day, and not wheeled into cycles as the earth rolls on her axis, and thus each day though a periodic revolution has a diiferent period from its predecessor. Were all the causes in nature only repeating a certain circuit, and coming about again as in a vortex only to go over again the same eflects in the same order, their experience could only induce the repetition of the same cir- cuit of inner modifications, and time could be determined only as a perpetual revolution in the same cycle. So also, should nature at any moment cease the onward development of cause and effect and turn directly back upon her order of connections, making every where Avhat had been the con- sequent to an antecedent to become the antecedent to the same, the determination of time could only be that of a regressus, and yesterday would return again to our experi- ence, and life roll itself backward through the consciousness in an exactly reversed order of periods as of phenomena. But, while the earth repeats her revolutions, the causes in nature do not turn from a direct on-going in their developed effects, and we in these attain our data for determining that every recurring day is a new day further on in the period of time, and not the same day repeated, nor a return again to the old day which had passed. The successive jn-ogress of time is thus readily determined from the successive on- going of events. But an absolute equality in the onward progress of time 16 362 THE UNDEESTANDING IN ITS LAW. is not thus determined, nor indeed can in any way be deter- mined from any possible experience. Here are facts so much aside from the class before given, and which would so little have been expected to come within the same connec- tion, and yet which do surprisingly evince themselves to stand bound in the same hypothesis, that they may be well considered as an example of a consilience of facts leaping vnthin our hypothetical condition from a distance — and thus add the stronger confirmation that our hypothesis is the universal law for all determination of successive time in an understanding. Thus, I may very well determine that the pulsations at my wrist go on in an ordered succession, for I have a perpetual cause in the palpitating heart for suc- cessive pulsations in their progressive periods. But I can not say that the pulsations and their periods are equable in their successions, precisely because I can not determine that the development of the causation into effect is equable. The phenomena as efiects come into experience, but the actional cause can never come into experience. I may trace the phenomenal pulsations up to the alternate action of the heart in systole and diastole, and determine tliat this con- traction and dilation is in successive progression, for I think the same cause for this as phenomenal effect that I do for the pulsations; but yet it is only tiie phenomenal that has come Avithiu consciousness, while the causal efficiency is necessarily notional in the understanding and can never be made appearance in the sense. I have no means, therefore, of determining the absolute equality of the succession in the cause, and can only attempt such determination of equable succession in the effects. I compare the phenomenal effects with those in another series of cause and eftect. I find, on EXPERIENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 363 comparison with the on-going phenomena of my watch, that the pulsations for one minute are, say seventy-five ; and, in some minute of another hour, I find them to be less or more, say seventy for the less and eighty for the more numerous. How shall I determine which successive periods are the true successions in time ? Only by taking the causation in the one case or the other to be an assumed equable eificiency, and thus judging the phenomenal eftect of that to be equa- ble in its periods, and then determining the phenomenal effects in their successive periods in the other compared with that as a standard. If my watch is taken as having kept on its equable efiiciency in developing its successive effects, I shall determine that the pulsations have been faster or slower in the different periods, from some inequality of causation in the heart. But, how determine that the causal efficiency of the watch has been equable ? I may compare it with the falling sands of an hour-glass, or the oscillations of a pendulum regulating the descent of the same weight, and may assume that the efficiency of gravitation is an equable cause in the same place on the earth, and thus, if the watch agrees thereto, that its efficiency has been uniform. But, if now I should compare that watch, thus tested, with a sun-dial through the year, I should find perpetual inequalities of movement faster and slower than the dial, varying in extremes of fifteen minutes, and making the difference between mean-time and apparent-time on any given day in the year. How shall I determine where is the equable efficiency now ? The watch has been tested by the constant efficiency of gravitation in nature, and yet it disagrees with the revolutions of the earth in their periods, which are tho 364 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. phenomenal effects of the same causal efficiency. Is the same cause in nature contradictory in its own effects ? But all these conflicting phenomena leap together within the same conditions, when we know that the earth is running its elliptical course about the sun, and varying its rate of movement proportionally from perihelion to aphelion, and that thus its equal revolutions on its axis will bring the same place oil the earth to its meridian, at different inter- vals, in different parts of its orbit, and to just the degree and on the very days of the year indicated by the facts of disagreement between the clock and the sun-dial ; and that, therefore, those different days in the year are just so much longer or shorter in their periods in absolute time. We determine the equable succession of time on the hypothesis only that the higher causation of gravity, in its force fi-om the sun, is equable in its production of effects at equal distances. It might here be said, that for all which has yet been determined of the equable succession of time, there may notwithstanding be as wide variations between a correct chronometer and some years, as between this chronometer and some days in the year. And so it may be. And if this were so found as a fact from any comparison of widely dif- ferent years with the same accurate time-keeper of centuries, it would only the more confirm our hypothesis ; for we could only determine the equalization of the discordant times, by taking the higher stand-point of causation, and thinking our sun, with its whole attendant system of worlds, to be wheeling on in its grand ellipse around this causal effi- ciency in one of the foci of its orbit, and conditioning the Bame disparity of years in this great cycle, as before of daya EXPERIENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 365 in the annual circuit of the earth in its orbit. Nor should we then be any nearer the attainment of an absolute mea- sure of time. The only position for such determination would be the absolute center of aU gravitation, fixed in its one position in the immensity of space, and ensphering and revolving all phenomenal being about itself. And if we stood at just such central point with an eye to perceive the rolling imiverse about us, how should Ave see that our own position did not move in absolute space ? How see that the revolutions were not unequal in absolute time ? Causation may be producing the faint pulsations of an artery or wheel- ing the universe on its center ; but in all cases it is the con- uected series which determines the periods to be an ordered progress in time, and the even working of the efiiciency which determines the equable progress in the successive periods. "We have, therefore, a sufficiently broad induction of facts to determine that our hypothetical condition is a universal Law, and needs to be held as hypothesis no longer. (3.) Facts in the determination of j^articular periods in simultaneous time. — We have varied phenomena each in their own periods, and which are alternately appearing and disappearing in the sense, so that when one appears the other has disappeared, and when the last appears again, the first has also again disappeared ; and, though they are never given in consciousness together, we yet determine them to be together in the same time. This can not be from think- ing them to be the adhering events of the same source : for that can only determine them in the judgment as perpetual in the same one whole of universal time, not that they are together in the same one period of universal time. Nor can 366 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. it be from thinking them to be the dependent effects of the same cause ; for that can determine them only as successive iu the universal time, and thus they can not be simultaneous. Since, then, the perception never brings them into the con- scious experience, simultaneously, and no datum yet consid- ered gives them in the judgment of the understanding as simultaneous, the inquiry yet to be made is — under what law do these facts of a determination to particular periods as simultaneous events arrange themselves ? Our hypothet- ical condition is — that they must be connected in the com- munion of a reciprocal influence. This last induction of facts will exhaust all our hypotheses for determining partic- ular periods in time : and if the hypothetical condition be found to be the actual Law, our task wiU be completed. Thus, when I have the phenomena of continuous motion over the graduated points on the dial-plates of two clocks, in such a position that when I perceive one the phenomena of motion over the other is not perceived, and thus, alter- nately ; I may say of each when thought to be events from a perduring source, that their periods must belong to one perpetual time ; and also, when thought to be effects from an ordering series of causation, that the periods in each must be in pi'ogressing succession ; but, as I can not see the phe- nomena of motion in both together, I can not 2:)erceive the moments of motion in both to be simultaneous ; nor can the notions of perduring source and perpetual cause enabl me at all to determine, that the motions in both pass any given points in both at the same moment. But if now these phenomena of motions over the graduated points of the two dial-plates are apprehended as on opposite sides of a tower, and that they are the two faces of the same chapel- EXPERIENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 367 clock, and have each a communion recij^rocally, so that one can not be modified in its motion but the same modification must be ^communicated also to the other ; I have then a da- tum in the understanding by which I may well, discursively through this datura, determine that their movements are si- multaneous. With such a reciprocity of influence I can, and without such I can not, and in point of fact it is only by such that I do, determine any phienomena of alternately per- ceived movements to be simultaneous. I may touch the opposite scales of a balance, or the counter-weights suspended on each side of a pulley alter- nately — and the same will also apply to alternate vision, or perception through any organ of sense — and my apprehen- sion may be, that when one scale or one weight has been raised the other has been found lower dowTi, or the reverse ; and if I had nothing more than the alternate perceptions in the positions of the phenomena, I could not determine whether these alternations of place were successive or simul- taneous. The interval in perception will admit, that the displacement should be either in a successive or a simultane- ous time. If I should somehow get the notion of two alter- nate causes each producing its own eiFect, one lifting and the other depressing the weights ; this notion of alternate cause in the understanding would necessitate the judgment, that the displacement was also alternate and thus successive ; but when the notion of the communion of recijDrocal influ- ence is assumed in the understanding, so that the action and reaction must synchronize, the judgment must conclude in the simultaneous displacement of the weights. And pre- cisely the same hj-pothesis applies where no phenomenal connection, like the scale-beam or the pulloy-roj^e, brings 368 THE UNDERSTANDING IN ITS LAW. the communion within the intuitions of any organism of sense. Two voyagers, at opposite sides of the earth, find each a high tide in the ocean, but surely no human perception can settle the determination that they are contemporaneous. An accurate chronometer, when the two men should subse- quently meet and compare their experience, might be the medium for determining that the tides were simultaneous ; but the accuracy of the chronometer must ultimately be tested by its comparison with the action and reaction of gravitating bodies in the diurnal revolution of the earth. And such notion of the reciprocal influence of gravitating forces, acting and reacting upon the ocean according to the positions of the sun and moon, exclusive of the chronometer, would be sufficient for determining the simiiltaneousness of the tides by each man at once and in his own place. This wholly imperceptible force of gravity is, as notion in the understanding alone, an efficient connective of the phenom- ena ; and as valid a condition for the judgment of contem- porary being in the tides, as if it could be made phenome- nal like the scale-beam. The reciprocity of influence must produce the tides coetaneously. And precisely this medium of communion in the reciprocal action of gravitation per- vades the universe. It is the grand and only law, as notion in the understanding, by which we can determine the times of any phenomena of revolutions, and transits, and eclipses, and occultations, and full and change throvigh all the heav- enly bodies. What is now going on in regions of space un- seen, coetaneously with the phenomena which now appear; and what events in all past history were contemporaneous in occurrence with some remarkable phenomenon in the EXPEKIENCE IN PLACE AND PERIOD. 309 heavens — as an eclipse, or the full moon — and thus often the settlement of long Unes of events in disputed clironology ; and what phenomenal occurrences in the revolutions of the earth, the tides of the ocean, the appearances in the heav- ens, and even the coming and departing of comets, simulta- neously with each other ; all are determined on the hypo- thesis alone, of the fixed connections through all the phe- nomena of nature of a universal and everlasting communion in the reciprocities of causation, which modifies all from each and each from all simultaneously. Cut off in thought the departing comet from this reciprocal communion, and you have cut h off from all connection in the understanding ; and you can no more determine its sameness of time with the phenomena of nature, than you can its directions and distances in space from the places occupied in nature. Its law of all connection is gone, and it is no longer a part of our system, nor is it any more even a determinate part of the universe. It is somewhere its own universe, in its own space and its own time ; but it is not ensphered and turning in unity with universal nature in its space and its time. It is, then, sufficiently shown in the facts, that the hypo- thesis of a communion in the notion of a reciprocal influence for the determination of phenomena as smiultaneous in their periods in time, is no longer hypothesis but a veritable Law in the facts. And inasmuch as we have now found the law in the facts comprehensively for all determination of phenomena in place and in period, and can now see that the law in the facts is precisely the correlative of our a jyriori idea of an understanding ; we may unhesitatingly affirm, that here is a true and valid psychological science. We know the Understanding completely, both in its tran scendental Idea and in its empirical Law. APPENDIX TO THE UNDERSTANDING. AN ONTOLOGICAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE VALID BEING OP THE NOTIONAL. The doctrine of immediate perception of objects was with Reid in this form, that an impression on the organ mysteriously induced a state of mind that was a conception of the thing itself, and accompanied with the necessary be- lief that the object had a real outer existence. With Brown, the state of mind in an organic sensation came immediately Avithin consciousness, and this was known directly, but the external cause was known only as correla- tive to the organic impression. Sir William Hamilton makes perception to be the product of a " presentative fac- ulty " and to be directly and immediately cognizant of ob- jects, but in this peculiar manner. Causation is always duplex, involving action and reaction. The object and the organ are thus necessarily present and in contact in all cases of organic impression. The whole exterior of the nervous system is open to touch, and this nervous organization is compound of body and mind, and is one of the elements in the cause of ])erception and the outer matter in contact with it is the other element. All perception is thus at last resolved into touch. At the point of contact the mind and its object are together, and the intellect immediately appro- VALID BEING OF THE NOTIONAL. 3Yl hends the outness and the extension of the object, and by muscular pressure immediately knoM's the hardness or roughness of the object. But the human mind can know nothing that does not thus make itself present to it in nerv- ous contact. The theory can never explain vision or hear- ing to be immediately cognizant of outer objects, even if it were allowed to be true for touch, for only rays of light come in contact with the optic nerves, and only waves of air with the auditory nerves, and all we could thus know would be the color of the light and the sound of the air, not at all the extension or other qualities of the outer and distant object. And even for touch, it must assume that mind itself becomes extension in the extended nft'vous or- ganism, for it knows the extension of the object only from knowing its own extension in the extended nervous system. Mind and nerve must be one, or else the unextended mind could not know the extended nervous body, and thereby know the extended outer object. But Hamilton is himself a thorough Kantian in reference to time and space. He holds space to be " a mere subjec- tive state," and wholly " an a pinori form of the Iinagina- tion." Could, then, the mind immediately know the object as extended, this extension could only be in siibjective space, and it would be utterly impossible to determine the objects of different persons to any one common space for all. It would leave out all data for any possibility of prov- ing valid being to the subjective world of mind and the ob- jective world of matter. Our Faith might be assumed to pass on beyond subjective knowledge, and admit of object- ive being in one common space and common time for all, but our Philosojihy can never attain such a station. And om 372 APPENDIX TO THE UNDERSTANDING. faith can only be resolved into a divine constitution; so God has made us to believe^ but it can not be said that so God has made mind and matter to be. McCosh clearly sees that Hamilton has really yielded up all knowledge of an outer world and played entirely into the hands of the skeptic, and goes back to the assumption without explanation that we immediately perceive things themselves, and that all qualities, hot and cold, good smells and bad smells, etc., are already in the things themselves and not the alFections which the things produce in us. By none of these views of perception, and of knowledge only througli perception and in consciousness, is it possible to deliver ourselves from the skeptic who presses his doubts of the validity of immediate perception for things in them- selves, or if things themselves are assumed to be given by perception to the consciousness, who presses his doubts of the validity of any such assumed consciousness. The per- ception and the consciousness are in these cases the ultimate, and there is no possible way for philosophically determining anything about perception and consciousness themselves. For suppose we push this skeptic fully out to the extreme conseqence of denying validity to consciousness, not from any arbitrary questioning, but from logical deductions or direct opposing reasons, and force him to admit, as cer- tainly we may, notwithstanding all his reasons, that his con- scious experience of the fact of his doubting is itself no more valid than the otlier facts in experience which ho assumes to doubt, and thereby oblige him to admit that he must doubt the fact of his doubting, and is wholly skeptical in reference to the fact of his own ske})ticism, what then ; have we thus demonstrated to him that he does know? VALID BEING OF THE NOTIONAL. 373 Have we not rather pushed hhn further back into the dark- ness of a deeper doubt, and made his skepticism all the more incorrigible ? He is forced to admit that he doubts whether his own skepticism has any reahty, and that nothing can be known, not even the fact that he doubts every thing. But is here such a reductio ad absurdutn as must legitimate an opposite conclusion ? Can this prove that he does know ? or is there here any subversion of the ground of his skepti- cism ? Certainly, such crowding him with his own admis- sions is only pushing him further from all hope of coming to the light, or that to him any light can be. If you can not meet his skepticism in its reasons, you only make him a more confii*med and incorrigible skeptic by di'iving- him out to the extremes of his own logic. We have now a position where Ave can fairly and fully meet and annul all skepticism of the valid being of mind and of matter in its very sources, and annihilate the false data from whence it assumes to question perception and consciousness. Materialism, Idealism in its double form, and universal Pyrrhonism may now clearly, fairly, intelligi- bly, be met and conquered. We shall find Materialism and Idealism to be simply defective, true so far as they go but false because they ai-e each only half-truths, and that univer- sal Pyrrhonism is wholly error, and founded on a soj^histi- cal illusion. The materialist knows matter but doubts of the being of mind ; the idealist admits mind to be but doubts the being of the material ; and the Pyrrhonist doubts all, for he deems man's original and fundamental faculties for knowing to be self-contradictory. It is compe- tent now to demonstrate Idealism against Materialism, and MateriaUsm against Idealism, and thus prove a dualism of 374 APPENDIX TO THE UNDEES.TAXDINO. both mind and matter, and also competent to exjDOse and remove the sophism ou which a necessary and universal skepticism has been maintained. 1. Tlie Demonstration of Idealism against Materialism.. The scholastic dictmn nihil est in intelUctii^ quod non prius fuit in sensu, is the starting-point to the logical skepticism which doubts the knowledge of all but material being. The logical process may be from the origin to the completed perception, or from the full perception back to the origin. In the Jirst logical form it goes thus — all knowledge must be through the oroanic sensation and the relative modifica- tions which may be by reflection given tj the objects of sense. But all the sensation must be induced by something that impresses and thus afiects the organic sensibility ; and as this impression is from matter without and made upon a material organism, it is not possible to trace the material action beyond the material afiection. In the second logical process it goes thus — inasmuch as whatever is in the intel- lect has first been in the sense, and the organic sense can be impressed and affected only by matter, therefore all that is known may be referred back to some material impression upon a material organ. Any knowing of an object which is not from and of the material world must, therefore, be taken as a delusion, and the object a mere chimera. But now, instead of the outer material impressing the organic material, and inducing a sensation in the organ as first and only condition for kuowmg, we have found that an intellectual agency may, solely from an anticipation of con- tent in the sense, determine all that is possible to be given in the sense ; and also, that from the very conception of a force in space, the intellect may itself determine all that sub- VALID BEING OF THE NOTIONAL. 375 Stances and causes can connect ui a judgment of the under- standing ; and that both in the sense we perceive, and in the understanding we judge, only precisely according to these determining conditions. Hence it demonstratively follows, that the material is not conditional for all knowing, but that the intellect from its own anticipation of sensible content, and its own conception of notional substance and cause, and with no content in an organism from without, can proceed at once to the knowledge of what it is jjossible for a sense and an understanding to accomplish. There is an actual know- ing that is wholly independent of all organic affection and sensation. And further, even when the organism is affected, nothmg can be either distmctly or definitely perceived, except as the intellectual agency intervenes and works the content given into a completed phenomenon. And thus, when the phenomenal is given, no ordered experience can occur in the consciousness, except as the intellectual agency connects the phenomena in their substances, causes, and reciprocal influences. And yet further, as proof that the intellectual is not only independent of the material, but is itself permanent and abiding through all its changing exercises, and is ever one and the same mind, we have the conviction in clear con- sciousness that all our appearances are in one and the same light of consciousness not only, but that all the conscious- ness of objects must be in one self, or there could, in the nature of the case, be no perpetuation and connection in one order of experience. And as more manifestly conclusive still, we have the un- doubted fact that all men have the consciousness of a per- during time through all the vicissitudes of their experience, 376 APPENDIX TO THE UNDERSTANDING. and yet no matter how permanent the nature of things might be which occasioned such experience, it never stiD could occur in one subjective time to us, were it not that the one unvaried subjective agency constructed the phenom- ena and connected them in an unbroken series so far as the consciousness extends. All this demonstrates a unity and permanence of the In- tellect that can consist with nothing but the valid being of the one individual Mind. 2. Tlte Demonstration of Materialism against IdeaJr isni. — The form of Idealism which is given in the Berkleian Sensationalism has already been disposed of, in the valid being of the phenomenal appended to the Sense. The j^he- nomena having been proved real, their connection in an ordered experience will depend upon the same permanent substance and cause, as a notional, which we shall ajjjjly to the form of transcendental Idealism, and will need no other and separate consideration. The German form of Idealism as transcendental, or the ultimate result of the critical phi- losopliy, is as follows. Assuming the very opposite dictum fundamental for Materialism, Idealism affirms that all sensa- tion is from the intellect. The intellectual agency produces all that is phenomenal, and connects all in unity by a deter- mined process of dialectical development. Beginning in pure thought as it goes on spontaneously under the control of an absolute law, the speculation puts itself within and as identical with the movement, anc^ follows out, without fore- casting, the entire subjective process. The pure spontane- ous thinking is at first self-absorbed and single in the logical movement, and thus all self-consciousness is impossible. As the process goes on, and the products of the thinking be- VALID BEING OF THE NOTIONAL. 37"? come set and stated in particular stages of the development, they stand out in an orderly and determined connection each with each, and make in themselves a natural series. These become conditions and limitations in the spontaneity of thought, and forbid that thought should further go on in self-absorption and unconscious development. The products become distinguished from the process, the connected series of thought stands out separate from the thinking, and as other than the intellectual agency they become objective to it and in the consciousness there appears a duality as the self and the not-self, and thus self-finding on one side is at the same time a finding an objective nature of things on the other side. Thoiight, thus, in spontaneous develoj^ment originates its products which limit and condition its sponta- neity, and which as thus made objective to itself become an ordered series of experience, and stand out in the conscious- ness as the resjular oncroingrs of the external world of na- ture. The Sense is but the Intellect giving objectivity to its own logical creations, and the world of matter is the lim- iting of the process of thought by its own ideals. The space and the time in which they appear are relative only to the products, and are objective in the same way as the thoughts. Now, let it be admitted that an intellectual agency may pass on in just such an ordered development of thought, and awake in self-consciousness to find its own products stand- ing out as other than itself, and objective to itself, and thus that these products become phenomena and have their rela- tive places and periods, yet will it be utterly impossible, in any way, to bring them into a determined order of experi- ence which may stand in one common space and one com- 378 APPENDIX TO THE UNDEK STANDING. mon time for all. So far as the whole could be apprehended in their places as contiguous place to place, or as the more remote could be reached through the contiguous places in- tervening, the determination of all in their places relatively to the place of the whole would be easy, and the contem- plating mind would so far have them all in one space. But when there was any break in the contiguity from any lapse of the connecting intellect, it would sunder place from place, and neither distance nor direction could be determined across the chasm. The same subject of consciousness would have his own experience dissolved, and his phenom- ena standing together in their patches of places that could not be put into any one space which should hold them all. And so far as these phenomena could be apprehended as continuous in their periods, or as the earlier could be reached by consciously remembered successions, then their periods relatively to each other in the time of the whole might be easily determined. But when there was any cessa- tion in the connecting process there would come a void in the linked successions, and the same subject of conscious- ness would have his continuance of time dissolved with no possibility of renewing the connection. The same subject could not keep up a perpetuated experience in any one space or any one time. But further, admit an uninterrupted experience, and thus a perpetuation of contiguous places and continuous periods, and therefore to the subject the capability to determine aU his experience to one space and one time, he would still be unable to ])ut his experience into any one common space and one common time with others. His phenomena, places, and periods, and thus his whole experience, space, and time, VALID BEING OF THE NOTIONAL. 379 are wholly restricted to himself in his own subject, and what this may be relatively to others, he can not determine for them, nor they for him. Each one is shut in upon him- self, and his process of thinking and connecting in self- consciousness is isolate, and no one can determiuately put his experience into another's places and periods, and make it to have its connections in one common space and one common time with others. But Ave have now made it manifest, that all experiences are determined in the same one space and one time for all the human family, through the medium of a notional in the understanding. At whatever place or period any one mem- ber of the human family has lived, and had his experience of the phenomena and their vicissitudes in the world of nature about him, he knows how to connect them in the same one space and the same one time with aU the experiences of the race, and that such places and periods for individual experi- ence have their relationship in this one space and one time to the places and periods for the experiences of all others. This demonstrates that the experience of the race is not ideal and merely an objectif}dng of theii- own thoughts. The proof is conclusive that there is a substantial nature of things, and a perpetual causal efficiency working on in the material world. Also, from the now determined law of phenomenal con- nections in the notions of substances, causes, and reciprocal influences, it is competent to show that a credulous or super- stitious fancy, by false judgments, may introduce the follow- ing forms of preternatural visions, but which will exhaust all the methods of dealing in " lying wonders." There may be assumed to be appearances in space with no substantial 380 APPENDIX TO THE UNDEKSTANDING. filling of space, and here we may have any form of ghosts and spiritual apparitions. Or there may be assumed to be events appearing that come and depart with no perduring source out of which they arise, and we shall have all the illusions of magic, and the legerdemain of jugglers and conjurers. Or there may be pretended to be an apprehension of future events without the causal connections, and there will be all the deceptions of fortune-tellers and soothsayers. Or finally there may be claimed to be communion with no reciprocal media, and under this we shall have all the assumptions of clairvoyance and the pretended revelations of the mesmeric sleep. These are all the forms of judgments that may be falsified in their connections, and are thus the only methods in which it can be attempted to enter into an experience neither natural nor supernatural. The necessary notional connections are here discarded, and the miraculous interven- tions of the supernatural are not claimed, and thus all the mystery must be assumed to He in somcAvhat that is aside from nature as the j)reternatural. Put by themselves, all such appearances must be phantoms in a maze, and would constitute a world that could not become intelligible nor give an experience that could be determined in any one space and one time as common to all. If there were not already a substantial and causal nature of things, it could not be determined where the ghosts were nor when they appeared. A mere sense world, or a merely ideal world, could never give an experience for all in a space and time for all. 3. An outline of the de^nonstration against Universal Pijrrhonisin. — This skepticism deduces its conclusions from the alleged contradiction of the consciousness by the reason. The undoubted universal conviction of consciousness is that VALID BEING OF THE NOTIONAL. 381 we perceive external objects immediately, and not some image or ideal representation of them. Reason, on the other hand, directly falsifies such convictions, and demon- strates that often at least the real outer object can not be in the sensibility, and that when it does come in contact, it can not be the object but only the sensation which may be directly perceived. In all cases, not the object, but some intermediate representative thereof, must be that which is actually perceived, and at best we must know the outer objects by this intermediate representative. Here, then, two original and independent sources of knowledge terminate in direct and unavoidable contradic- tion. Clear consciousness may not be questioned, nor its convictions resisted. A clear deduction of reason may not be gainsayed, but its demonstration must compel assent. One may not be permitted to correct the other, for they are both original and independent ; nor can one expound the other, for there can be no exposition authoritative of one over the other. When one source of knowledge comes in different ways to opposite convictions, an exposition may be made by an independent examination of the media of knowledge. When I perceive the same phenomenon through different colored glasses, or as passing from a rarer to a denser medium, such explanation of the contradiction is practicable between the two perceptions, but here the con- tradiction is affirmed to he between clear consciousness and legitimate reasoning ; and all that can be said is that they subvert each the other, and all ground of confidence in our whole intelligent being falls hopelessly away forever. But, now, in our psychological examination of percep- tion and judgment, we have attained the complete Idea of 382 APPENDIX TO THE UNDERSTANDING. the whole process, and we have also found the actual Law in the facts, and here we have found exact harmony and not contradiction. The Idea in the reason, and the Law in the facts as given in consciousness, are in the accordance of per- fect correlates ; there must then be some false element some- Avhere in this alleged conclusion of inevitable contradictions. We may also affirm farther, that the data are given by whicli we may detect the fallacy on which rests this whole superstructure of absolute doubt, and show just how and where the fallacy is made an occasion for surreptitiously bringing in so fatal a skepticism. Tlie data attained in Rational Psychology may be used as follows : The content which is given in sensation becomes an occasion for a spontaneous intellectual operation of Dis- tinction, and thereby the quality is brought into distinct consciousness. The constructing intellectual agency gives to it definite form in the consciousness, and thereby the per- ception is perfected and the phenomenon complete. The content as sensation, while it occasions the intellectual agency in discriminating and constructing, determines it also according to its own conditions, and is thus objective in its reality, as opposed to the intellectual agency which is subjective in its reality. All this is brought within the immediate consciousness, and is thus a direct and immediate perception. So far, our psychological conclusions confirm the first fact assumed by the skeptic as his preparation of the ground for his deduction of universal Pyrrhonism ; viz., that the universal conviction of consciousness is that we perceive the object immediately. But the fact further is, that this distinct and definite quality is all that the sense can reach, and all that conscious- VALin BEING OF TIIR NOTIONAL. 383 ness can testify to as immediate in its own light. That causality, whatever it may be, which gave this content to the sensibility and thus in its aftection induced sensation, is not itself given m the sensation, noi- can it be known as immediately in the consciousness. It is not at all perceived, but must be attained, if known at all, through some other faculty than that of the sense. The qualities of the rose — color, fragrance, smoothness, weight, taste, etc., as given in any and all organs of sense — are immediately perceived; but what perception ever attained the rose itself, as other than its qualities? The rose, as causality for affecting the sensibility through the content given, is not an object for the consciousness at all, and is not, therefore, in the testi- mony of any consciousness, immediately perceived. Reason only affirms that this causality, which is back of its per- ceived qualities, is not perceived ; and certainly no con- sciousness contradicts this. Consciousness confirms this, so far as it may, by its negation of all testimony about it. It denies that any thing back of the qualities ever becomes an object to it. And the same might also be shown of the inner phenomena. The acts, as affecting the internal state in any mental exercise, come in to immediate perception, as they come immediately within the light of consciousness j but whose consciousness ever testified that his own mind, as causality for these acts, had ever been immediately per- ceived? Consciousness affirms one thing, an immediate per- ception of qualities ; and reason does not at all contradict this, but affirms and a priori demonstrates it. Reason also affirms one thing — whatever it may be which is under or back of the qualities, and is causality for their coming within the sensibility that they may thus be brought by the intel- 384 APPENDIX TO THE UNDEESTANDING. lectual agency into the light of consciousness — that this causality as thing in itself can not be immediately perceived ; and consciousness does by no means affinn in contradiction, but, as far as it may, sustains reason by a negation of all testimony about it. The whole basis of the skej^ticism, so broad and startling in its consequences, is thus found to be the old sophhm ^flgu7'ce dictio7iis, so often deluding us by its fallacies, and which is at once demolished when our analysis enables us to see the false play upon the phraseology. The object for the sense in its perception is phenomenon as quality solely ; the object for the reason is the thing itself as cau- sality for its qualities : and certainly consciousness may very well testify for its immediate perception of the former, and reason very well deny an immediate perception of the latter, without any contradiction between them. We are thus able to utterly overthrow universal skepticism, by being made competent, through the conclusions of Rational Psy- chology,' to expose the sophism on which it had been built. We have thus a valid being of tlie inner spiritual Intel- lect against Materialism ; and a valid being of the externa] material World against Idealism ; and a complete subversion of that Universal Skepticism which denied that we might know either of them. We may also very well show how impossible it must be to attain to any such demonstration, or effect any such over- throw of all skepticism relative to our knowledge in percep- tion, by taking the position of Reid. This is available only as a defense, not at all as a point of aggression against any skepticism ; and it defends itself only in the dogmatism of an assumption. The argument from common sense was sim- ply the conviction of consciousness which Hume alleged VALID BEING OF THE NOTIONAL. ^85 was contradicted by reason. While Reid affirmed tliat com- mon sense was wiser and safer than all the conclusions of reason, Hume could still allege his proofs that reason flatly- contradicted common sense notwithstanding. Hume could not thus be cured of his universal skepticism, nor so far as his philosophy could avail could Reid prevent himself from being dragged down into the same abyss, and only saved himself by prudently holding on to consciousness or com- mon sense, and let philosophical reasoning go where it would. And the same also is true in relation to the other forms of skqjticism ; it is not possible from mere counter- assumptions to do any thing effectual to extirpate them. " In 1812 Sir James Mcintosh remarked to Dr. Brown, that Reid and Hume differed more in words than opinion." Dr. Brown replied — " Yes, Reid bawls out — ' we must believe an outer world ;' and then whispers, ' but we can give uo reason for our belief.' " " Hume cries aloud — ' We can give no reason for such a notion ;' and then whispers, ' I OAvn we can not get rid of it.' " — Progress of Ethical Philosophy^ p. 239. The conclusion from all the above is unavoidable, that no subjective action of a veritable understanding can possi- bly give the conditions for determining a nature of things objectively to its places in space and its periods in time. Even if an understanding could create its own world of phe- nomenal qualities and events, it could not determine their places and periods in one immensity of space and eternity of time, if it did not also make them to inhere in their sub- stances, depend upon their sources, adhere through their causes, and cohere by their reciprocities. And if it did this for itself, it could not determine one common space and 17 386 APPENDIX TO THE U 2f DE R S T A X D I X G . time for all, except as the substances and causes were objec- tive realities. A nature of things in determined space and time must have its inherent laws of connection, and such laws can no more relax the constancy and stringency of their control, than space may break up its own immensity or time may sunder its own perpetuity. The nature of things as they exist is thus demonstrably an intelligible Universal Sys- tem. Not an accumulation of atoms but a connection of things ; not a sequence of appearances but a conditioned series of events ; not a coincidence of facts but a universal communion of interacting forces. Nor is such a conclusion merely assumed ; nor the credulity induced by habitual ex- perience ; nor the revelation of an instinctive prophecy ; but it is a demonstration from an a priori Idea and an actual Law which logically and legitimately excludes all skepd- cism. PART III. THE REASON •ooo»- THE FTJlSrCTION AND PROVINCE OF THE REASON. In the determination of the accordance of Idea and Law in both the Sense and the Understanding, we have ah'eady done what the Sense and the Understanding alone by them- selves could never accomplish. The Sense by distinguish- ing and conjoining can give distinct and definite phenomena, but the Sense has no interest nor capacity to look over its own agency, or look hito its own function, and find that which is a priori conditional for its own operations, and thereby explain its own perceptions. And so also the Un- derstanding by connecting the phenomena into things and events can give an ordered experience in one common sjjace and one common time, but the Understanding has neither interest nor capacity for rising above its connecting opera- tions and finding that M'hich is necessarily conditional for all processes of thinking, and thereby explaining its own judg- ments. The Sense is satisfied in perceiving, and the Under- standing satisfied in judging, and neither of them can phi- losophize about perceiving and judging, and what we have already done in determining both the sense and the under- 3S8 THE EEASO>". standiBg has been in the use of a function quite other and higher than either. The diverse points and instants were no sense-phenom- ena, and can not themselves be perceived, but were neces- sary conditions for aU perceiving ; and thus the primitive intuition of space and tune were wlioUy attained by the reason. And so also the spacL'-flHiiig au'l tiine-abiding forces "were no phenomena for the sense, nor ans judgments connected by the understanding, but were necessary condi- tions for all connections of phenomena in judgments; and thus the pure notion as substance and cause has also been whoUy attained by the reason. By its insight only was it made known that without the points and instants, phenom- ena could have neither place nor period, and without the substantial and causal forces, the phenomena could never be determined to an experience in one cxjmmon space and one common time. A higher function has all alons? been in ex- ercise, and we have come to an exposition philosophically of both the sense and the understanding by the insight and oversight of this superior function. In the Sense we perceive; in tlie Understanding we judge ; but in the Reason we overlook the whole process of both. The one intellect envisages in the sense, suhstantiates in the imderstanding, and supervises in the reason. The same intellect as sense distinguishes quality and conjoins quantity ; as understanding connects phenomena ; and as reason comprehends all forms of knowing. Since, then, the sense and the understanding have had no interest in the work of comprehending their own pro- cesses and no capability for effecting it, more manifest is it, that it must now be from the interest and capacity of the PROVINCE OF THE REASON. 389 reason alone that we shall come to any comprehension of its own processes of knowing. The animal has sense and per- ceives, and has also understanding that judges of the relar tions of what is perceived, but it is only as the man is ra- tional that he can subject both his perceiving and judging to an d priori determination. The animal may be said merely to know, but the man goes beyond, and knows his very processes of knowing. It becomes, thus, the last want of science in its highest exercise to thoroughly examine this function of the reason and comprehend its own processes of comprehending. The difficulty of this last investigation appears promi- nently in this, that it can not be in the use of a higher func- tion subjecting a lower to its examination, for it is the high- est of all functions for knowing that we are now engaged in considering, and there can be no other method than a pro- cess of self-knowledge ; the reason must examine and deter- mine its own processes in the exercise of its own insight. Here is the grand yvCidi oeavrbv of the ancient philosophers, the most difficult attainment of all science, and comprehen- sive itself of all philosophy. Xo intuitions in sj^ace and time can here help us, for that which we seek can have no construction in figure or period ; and just as little can any connections of discursive thought help us, for that which we seek can never be connected in the notions of substance and cause. That which we would here know must be wholly suj)ersensible and supernatural. The overseer of nature can not be shut up within nature. We seek that which encompasses nature, and which can not be any media of connection within nature. It demands careful notice how impossible it must ever 390 THE REASON. be to enter the province and fulfill the function of an all- comprehending reason by any processes of discursive think- ing. It is no more preposterous to set the sense to thinking and judging, than it is to set the understanding to oversee- ing and comprehending. Geometry may as well be made dynamical and invade the province of natural philosophy, as to make natural philosophy transcend nature and explore the region of the supernatural. The intuitions of sense, constructions have their proper field for a pure science ; the nnderstanding-discursions have also their proper field and philosophy ; and the insight of the reason must have its own field and peculiar science above them all. And yet so constant, and determined, and almost incorrigible, has been the attempt to enter the province of the reason through some processes of the discursive understanding, that it be- comes an interest on the behalf of all rational science thor- oughly to expose the absurdity and helplessness of all possi- ble efibrts in this direction. The prison of nature is the des- tined dwelling of the discursive understanding, and if the human intellect has no higher processes of knowing, then verily will these prison-doors never open on any thing be- yond. All that an understanding wants, is to think the connections in a nature of things, with no hinderances, and be permitted to push her j^athway from condition to condi- tioned interminably. But how thus make a leap fi'om the fleeting phenomena, which perpetually alternate in births and deaths, to a world of immortality ? How escape from the linked necessities in this iron chain to know the free originations of the Being who acts in His own liberty? How rise from the interminably dependent to an absolutely inde- pendent Author and Governor ? PROVINCE OF THE REASON. 391 The process may begin in subjective thougJd^ and the postulate may be some law of thought as a regulative-con- ception, or an identification of subject and object, or an abstraction wliich anniliilates all distinctions of being and naught, but in all cases the thinking must proceed in an interminable series of fixed conditions, with no interest in nor aim toward, any ultimate consummation. It may be termed a development of the absolute thought, but in that direction the development can have no completion, and the perfected Deity is found only at the fulfillment of the inter- minable logical evolution ; or it may essay to turn itself back upon its own footsteps and retrace its way to some uncondi- tioned landmg-stair, and at some highest generaUzation or abstraction assume that it has reached that supernatural, but on this assumed highest standing-point there is no relief to the demand for an ah extra conditioning, and the under- standing must still hopelessly peer into the open void and anxiously stretch one foot forward in vacuity. The highest condition and the last conditioned are still nature only, and the livins: movement that has gone from one to the other can at the most be called the world-spirit, which has thought out the whole process and been the same in every stage, and not at all the world-creator, who was before the world was made and has been above it and Lord of it through all its onward changes. Or the attempt may be made tp reach the supernatural by beginning in objective nature. Here the understanding can move from one phenomenal event to another only through their substances and causes. The speculation must, there- fore, run an endless race, for if it stop any where up or down the series, it must bring its first jihenomenon from, or lose 392 THE BEASON. its last in, an utter void. Should it assume to have run all back to an original absolute substance out of which all phe- nomena have come, this absolute substance, so called, would be only nature still, standing as the germ of the universe with its rudiments conditioned already in the order of their necessary evolution. Should it trace all to a first cause, it could find nothing in this assumed first cause but an efficiency ali-eady conditioned and which must produce the events in just such an ordered series, and could thus be merely the inner power which works out the world of nature. If it assume this cause as so producing the universe that the uni- verse does not as much condition it in its reactions as it does the universe, then is there the sundering of the first cause from nature and a chasm is made over which it is impossible that any thought of an understanding should be able to pass. But if it allows the conditions to so go down into nature that they may be followed up from nature and reach back within the causation itself, this could be no supernatural divinity, but nature still running up her linked regressus into the bosom of the Deity. The very conception of a sub- stance is that of a space-filling force which must affect the sense and give out its phenomena in a determined manner, and if it be modified by other substantial forces as cause, it must make its changes in a determined order. The intrinsic being of substances and causes, as used by an understanding, must make their qualities and passing events unavoidable and without alternatives. Substance and cause are essen- tially nature, and can never reach the being of the super- natural. The search for the supernatural is just as endless and empty when we attempt the attainment through the indica- PKOVINCE OF THE REASON. 808 tions of adapted'iiess to ends. Nature gives many indica tions of design, and design must have a designer. The con- dition must be adequate to the conditioning, and as the fact is more than causation, even adapting causation, so such adapting cause must have had an intelligent source. We attempt to find such intelligent source by a process of thought in the understanding. We seize upon an assumed designer as condition for the produced design, and we find this itself adapted to produce just such results. The adaptation is just as manifest here as in its own product, and is a condi- tioned demanding for itself a previous conditioning, and thus a higher designer, as truly and for the same reason as the former adapted product. Whence the independent unconditioned spring for all design ? The fact that humanity asks this is proof that humanity has that which can not be satisfied with nature, but if the discursive understanding be set to find it, its highest adapting cause will to it be neces- sarily an adapted product, and from its law of thinking the chase must be still onward. We may assume that there is, somewhere, an underived designer, because the interest of this higher demand in humanity can not else be quieted, but in the use of the understandino; onlv we are forced to rest in the mere assumption, and make the want the only ground for assuming the being, while the intellect can never attain to such being nor make its conception any thing other than an intrinsic absurditv. An endless series raav be claimed as an absurdity, but on the opposite side, to the understanding there is the impossibility and absurdity of taking any adapt- ing cause which is not in itself an index of its having already been adapted. In subjective thought, we may thus run the race of speo- 17* 394 THE EEASON. ulative Idealism; in objective nature, we may follow the track of philosophical Materialism ; and in an assumed Teleology, Ave may flee from absurdities up the stream of adapting causes which have no source ; but the fixed con- nections of a discursive understanding necessarily exclude it forever from the land of promise. The Canaan of the super- natural can not so be entered. The empty abstraction is but the thinking an ideal Deity into nature ; the false gener- alization is but the crowding of nature back into Deity. Reason presses all her interest for deliverance, but no tor- tured energies of an understand mg can give any relief. The conception and use of the speculative reason as given by Kant can not at all help us. It diifers wlioUy from the reason as given by Plato, and which only is the true function we at all need for the attainment of the super- natural. The former finds in humanity this irrepressible want for an unconditioned cause and an unadapted designer, which may truly be first cause and independent intelligence, and instead of recognizing it as a demand originating in the insight of the reason and which only the functions of the reason can satisfy, he makes it to be a constitutional form or a 2)riori conception in the human mind regulative of the process towards its attainment, and then pushes on the pro- cess from the conditioned to the conditioner as if at last the unconditioned supernatural might be attained. This is shown to be a vain and hopeless effort, inasmuch as it involves an intrinsic antinomy in the speculative faculty itself. The same intellectual faculty, which demands and regulates the process to get, is obliged to convict itself of an utter helplessness to attain. But it has been really the rea- son demanding the supernatural, and the discursive faculty PROVINCE OF TUE REASON. 395 of the understanding sent on to find it. The antinomy arises from the mistake of employing the connecting under- standing to work out the problems of the comprehending reason. "When the reason as function is set to work in the Ught and under the direction of its own insight, no antinomy arises and the supernatural is fairly and intelligibly attained. The common consciousness is the light in which Ave see all phenomena, and the common discursive thinking is the process by which we judge all phenomena to be connected in one nature, but a higher light and a broader jDrocess is necessary that we may comprehend nature in a clearly ascer- tained supernatural Author and Governor. To distinguish this insight of the reason, and express our conviction of its difference from all lower forms of knowing, we say of its objects that we have them in our " mind's eye." The painter or sculptor has his perfect archetype after which he works, and which is comprehensive of all he hopes to express on his canvas or in his block of marble, but as a creation of the reason, it is only in the " mind's eye" that the ideal stands before him. So, it has been by no perception of sense that we have determined the phenomena to one com- mon space and one common time, or that we have found the space-filling and time-abiding force to be necessary to a com- mon experience of nature ; all this has been from the insight of the reason, and the process has been determined solely under the direction of the " mind's eye," and when we now come to the attainment of the supernatural compass for comprehending all of nature and experience, the common consciousness and the common logical discursions can do us no service, but we must direct our way by the " mind's eye" only. And yet, as the light in which we have examined 396 THE REASON. and expounded both the perceiving and judging has led us to results more convincingly valid than all perceiving and judging could themselves attain, so we may rest assured "vvUl the light of reason as convincingly bring us to the knowledge of a validly existing supernatural domain. A S}Ti thesis, as something added to nature which is above nature, and not an analysis, as something taken from nature which is already iu nature, is what we here need. The God of nature must be known as independent of na- ture, and added in the judgment that He is nature's Creator. In the mind's eye, the primitive intuition gave occasion for immediately beholding how phenomena must be constructed, and the substantial and causal forces gave also in the mind's eye the occasion for rationally demonstrating how alone experience could be connected in one space and one time ; so now, the mind's eye must as clearly apjirehend the supernatural spirit in order to any demonstration, how alone universal nature can be comprehended in an author as its besfinning:, and a finisher as its consummating. In this only can we possess the compass for comprehe^idhig how nature, and nature's one space and one time, can begin and end. In this necessary process of comprehending nature by the supernatural, we shall attain the true function of the reason in its subjective Idea. We must afterwards find act- ual facts in colligation by a Law, which is the exact correla- tive of this Idea, and in this we shall have a completed science of Rational Psychology. An ontological demonstra- tion of the being of God, of the soul, and a world of im- mortahty, may then fairly follow. CHAPTER I. TIIE REASON IN ITS SUBJECTIVE IDEA. SECTION I., THE ATTAINMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE AS AN 1 PRIORI POSITION FOR THE REASON. When we trace backward the work of the understand- ing in connecting phenomena into a system of universal nature, we find every event to be conditioned to an antece- dent, and inasmuch as the series in nature could be given in a discursive judgment only through the connections of the understanding, so in our regressus we can only retrace the very pathway of antecedents and consequents which the operation of the understanding has previously cast up in its connecting agency. It were in vain, therefore, to attempt any regressus in the pathway of nature's development ex- cept as we must step from the conditioned up to the condi- tion perpetually. The function of the understanding is wholly employed in the work of concluding in discursive judgments, and in reference to phenomena it can do nothing but connect them into a nature of things through their ap- propriate notions, and, thus, were there no other and liigher function in exercise, we should never find any higher want than that there should be given an unhindered development 398 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. to nature in the connection of cause and event, and an un- obstructed passage to the march of thought down the series in an indefinite progressus or a reflex returning up the series in an unbroken regressus. The undei'Btai.ding finds no dis- quiet from its confinement within the conditions of nature, for its endowment of function capacitates it for mo\i:i<; only within the fixed series of nature, and it can possess no inter- est beyond it. Our intuitions would as soon seek to over- leap and circumscribe space and time, as would our discur- sions to go beyond and comprehend nature. But that there are the functions of a higher faculty in action is quite manifest, not only from our past philosophiz- ing on the sense and tlie understanding, but also from the earnest inquiry spontaneously and perpetually coming up — Whence is nature f and whither does it tend ? There are the strugglings of a faculty within whose interest it is to overleap nature, and which may never be made contented by running up and down the linked series in the conditions of nature. Discursive thinking up to the highest generali- zation and down to the lowest analysis can not satisfy. No possible conclusion in a discursive judgment, whether in the abstract or the concrete, can fill this craving capacity. There is demanded *for it a position out of and above the flowing stream of conditioned changes, whence may be seen the un- conditioned source in which they have all originated, and the strong and steady hand that holds all suspended from it self and gives to them their direction toward some ultimate consummation. But this interest of the higher faculty al- ways exceeds the capabilities of the lower to satisfy. The sense, in its pure operations, can only construct for itself a pathway by conjoining the diversity in space and time, and AN A PKIORI POSITION IN THE ABSOLUTE. 399 can, therefore, never issue out beyond the line which she carries onward herself and which is limited in her own movement. The understanding can have foothold only as it may step from the conception of some phenomenon as event to an antecedent phenomenon in connection by its cause; and it may, therefore, never put down the foot beyond the conception of that which is an attained condition for its present standing, and which could be no safe stepping-stone were it not itself conceived to be linked to a still higher condition. The aspirings of this higher faculty and the ef- forts of the inferior to reach and satisfy it, throw the human mind upon a tread-mill which forces it to a perpetual but vain toil, compelling to a continual stepping while each stair must ever slide away beneath and disappoint the hope of any permanent landing-place. We can, in this way, find no link in the series which will permit that it should be taken m the judgment as the origin of all others, and itself unor- iginated from a higher ; and if we assume that there must be such somewhere at the head of the series, this is merely because the higher faculty demands some ultimate point upon which all are dependent, but which is only assumed to be and never reached, because the lower faculty can never attain unto it. An interminable dialectic is thus opened from the very faculties of the human mind, and all attempt to stop the demand in the interest of the reason, that we should some- how issue out of nature and find its Author and Governor, is in vain ; and all efibrt in any possible use of the functions of an understanding to meet this demand is equally in vain. The reason is too enterprising, to submit to any circumscrip- tion within nature ; the understanding is too limited in its 400 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. capacity, to he able that it should ever unbar the gate and point the way to the supernatural. The discursive faculty must ever keep within the conditions of the space and time- determinations, and must, therefore, ever pass through the connective notions of substance cause and reciprocal influ- ence in concluding in judgments ; and that which may not be brought w^ithin the conditions of such connectives must forever, to it, be not merely the imattainable but the utterly unintelligible. We are thus forced to dispense in this part of our work with all use of the understanding, and can see that if the supernatural may in any manner be attained, it must be in the use of the reason only. The faculty in whose interest the want originates, must rely upon its own resources alone to attain to that which may satisfy it. It is its own operation for comp)'ehe)iclin(/ universal nature that we wish to attain in a complete and systematic process, and thus possess the entire faculty of the reason in its idea. In this we shall find how it is possible that a nature of things may be comprehended ; and according to which, if in fact this ever is done, nature necessarily must be comprehended. The finding of such a, fact must belong to the second chap- ter of the Reason, while here we are intent only on attain- ing the systematic process as idea. As preliminary to all progress in this work, it is first of all necessary that we attain our a priori position of overlooking this whole pro- vince, and in the light of which our whole investigation must be conducted. We make abstraction, then, utterly of all that is phe- nomenal, and therefore dispense with the use of all the functions of the sense both in the sensibility and in the con- structing agency. By thus making abstraction of all that AN A PIIIORI POSITION IN THE ABSOLUTE. 401 is phenomenal, we dispense also with all the operation of the understanding, which must go from phenomenon to phenom- enon through the connecting notion. The jDhenonienal is gone and there is nothing to connect, and the notional as a connective only remains, and the functions of the under- standing have not the necessary conditions for their opera- tion. They can connect in judgments only according to the sense, when that may give its phenomena ; but here nothing of the sense remains. We have then the notional only, as the reason had supplied it for the use of. the understanding in the connecting of the phenomena in the sense. We thus have nature in its substances, causes, and reciprocal influ- ences, as things in themselves, and as they must be deter- mined to exist by any intelligences who should know things directly in their essence, without any organs of sensibility to give to them a mode of appearance as phenomena. Hav- ing thus wholly done away with the phenomenal and the coming and departing of appearances ever varying, and retaining only the notional which' is permanent, we do away with all significancy and use of -the separate places in space and the separate periods in time which the definite phenom- ena severally occupied. Substance in its causality is, but no inliering, adhering, or cohering qualities are. The true ground and essential being of nature is conceived, but not the mode of its appearance as phenomenal world in the sense. We have already made ourselves somewhat conversant with this pure understanding-conception of space-filling and time-endurinp- substance, which the reason supplies for the understanding in order that it may determine phenomena in the one common Sipace and one common time. We would 402 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. now take it more immediately within the mind's eye, and endeavor to attain a clear reason-conception of what it must be. We have simj^ly considered it as force, which in its very conception involves an antagonism, but have not at- tempted to attain any conception of distinguishable forces, and thus of distinct substances in their causality. Nor need we now go into any very extended disquisition on these topics, a very few considerations being sufficient for all pres- ent purposes, while a more complete examination will be found in the Rational Cosmolgy. "We liere need only to notice that different substances are forces differently modified. Tlie living animal has a sensory which in its excitability to appetite is force for locomotion ; the living {)lant has no sentient nature to be awakened in an appetite, and has no locomotive force, yet still an appetency to take in and incorporate with itself that nourishment which lies contiguous to its own organization, and thus a force of assimilation for its own development ; the mineral gathers about a nucleus by supei'-position that w^hich is homogeneous to itself, and ..thus a force of crystallization ; many earths have their chemical affinities, and thus a force of cohesion ; and fluids and gases their affinities which give a force of combination ; magnetism, electricity, and galvan- ism have their transmissions of influence throug^h counter- currents and thus a bi-polar force, and gravity has every where an antagonism in its attraction and repulsion ; while liglit and heat are direraptive forces that push from a center and are necessarily imponderable. And here, let it be noted, that the higher force is always superinduced upon the lower forces and adapts itself to them, perhaps modifying but not destroying them. The higher holds all the lower in com- AN A PRIORI POSITION IN THE ABSOLUTE. 403 bination and subserviency to its own ends, but can neither exclude nor annihilate them. The force of animal life holds also that of assimilation in vegetable life ; and vegetable life has the forces of crystallization, chemical cohesion, the bi- polar forces, and gravitation, all retained in subservient com- bination ; and so the crystal has its chemical bi-polar and gi'avitating forces, while the crystallizing force overrules all the others and holds them subordinate to its own end. We shall not here attempt to trace the a priori law through all these distinguishable forces. Past a doubt such a law exists, and determines how each distinguishable substance inust be / and determining how the substance in its causal- ity must be will determine also how its modes of phenom- enal manifestation in the sense must be, and thus what quali- ties and events must appear. But we are not here at all concerned with the tracins: of nature in its substance down- ward, as it must develop itself in an experience in the sense ; and only concerned in retracing its conception upward to a supernatural Author. We will then, having made abstraction of the phenom- enal, now make an abstraction of all the superimposed dis- tinguishable forces, and retain only the most simple and that which is primary and present in all, viz., the force of gravity. In this we retain all that is essential to a space- filling and time-enduring force, and thus all that is essential in the notion of substance with its causality. Let there be the reason-conception of an everywhere antagonistic force, and we shall in this have substance with its causal laws of attraction, repulsion, inertia, impenetrability, motion by im- pulse, etc. ; and thus, as it were, the frame-work or elemen- tary rudiments of a nature of things, without regarding ■t04 THEEEASONIXITSIDEA. whatever other distinguishable forces and thus different sub- stances and causes may be superinduced upon this. What- ever may be thus superinduced, we may know that it can not exchide or extinguish this force of gravity. This must surely be as extensive as nature ; for it is the primal force upon which all other superinduced forces must rest, and by which they must all be conditioned. We have in this all that is necessary for an a priori representation of a univer- sal nature of things in itself, and not in phenomenal ap- pearance. We may, then, take any point in this primary space- filling force, and if it is not itself a center, it will be tend- ing to some center of gravity. When we approach that center of gravity, il it is not itself an ultimate central point, that point with all the sphere M'hich turns upon it will be tending to some flirther point, and thus we might move on- ward through worlds and systems indefinitely. Can the reason take its stand upon some central point, toward which the universe of matter shall gravitate, and find an author and primal originating source for it, without needing any higher point of antagonism? Such ultimate point we now assume in conception, and the task of the reason is, to show how it is possible that that point, and thus all the universal sphere that tends toward it, maybe originated and sustained. In the comprehension of that one central point of all antag- onism we comprehend the universe of nature. And, here, to prepare the way for attaining that pure ideal which must be the compass for reason's comprehension of nature, it is quite important that we attain to a clear reason-conception of this central force upon which universal nature must repose. AN A PRIORI POSITION IN THE ABSOLUTE. 405 Conceive of two congealed j)encils, such that when their points are jjressed together the pressure shall equally hquefy both, and then will the liquefaction accumulate itself about the point of contact, and if no disturbing force intervene the fluid will perfectly ensphere itself about that point, en- larging as the pressure continues, and the liquefaction accu- mulates. The rigid pencils would equilibrate the pressure by an opposite unpelding resistance, and though there would be force at the point of contact, it would all be re- tained in that point, and there could be no accumulation. The hquefaction at the* point permits a perpetual coming in and going off from the point, and in the continued jH-essure a continual coming in and going ofi", and thus a contmual accumulation. This must ensphere itself about the point, for the protrusion from the point must constantly be equal- izing itself in all directions, as the antagonisms push each liquefied pencil back from the point of contact and out upon itself If now we will abstract the phenomenal, and only retain in the mind's eye that which is the space-filling thing in itself, we shall have the pure notion of force as a space- filling substance. The substantial being is the force, and the phenomenal is the mode in which this space-fiUing force gives its appearance through the sense. In our supposition above, for illustration, we have assumed pencils as sense- phenomena, but that purpose being answered, we would now retain the pencil-points in contact only in the mind's eye, as two pure activities in counter-action, and themselves doing what the liquid pencils indicated that the pressure was doing with the fluid, viz., ensphering itself about the point of counter-agency. We would make the mind's eye 406 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. follow the force, and not now use the bodily eye that fol- lowed the phenomenon which the force determined. The antagonist activities in the point of contact must have each a perpetually augmenting energy springing from its own source, and this will secure that each must press the othej out and back upon itself as the augmenting energy conies in, and thus determine a perpetual generation of force at the point, and distribution of it equally all around the primal central position. Each antagonism as crowded back becomes an energy still pushing toward the center, and this equalizes itself all around the centei't and all points out of the center perpetually react upon the center as the gener- ating forces accumulate about it, and thus this central force must have more reaction upon it as the si^here enlarges, and when the sphere has so enlarged as in its reactions upon the center to equilibrate the generating force at the center, the generation of forces can proceed no further, and the sphere ceases to grow. An infinite agency at the center can aug- ment the sphere indefinitely, at pleasure. So a primal space-filling force as a veritable substance may be. Other distinguishable forces may be superinduced upon this, and we may have cohesive, crystalline, vegetable, and animal bodies as distinctive substances, but Avhether filling a few feet of space, or the place of revolving worlds and systems, they will all alike gravitate toward, and be controlled by this central power. With a clear conception of such force and this kept be- fore the mind's eye, as truly space-filling substance, we can readily determine a jwiorl many things which material sub- stance must phenomenally manifest through the sense, and follow out the physical causation which will in these forces AN A PRIORI POSITION IN THE ABSOLUTE. 40 V be everywhere working through universal nature. The ma- terial universe must be spherical ; must have its peripheral limit ; must have its poles in the line of the antagonism working at the center ; must have repulsion from the center as the cube of the radius of the sphere, and must have re- action toward the center in each radius, and Avhich will be attraction at the center, as the square of the radius ; and as both the attraction and repulsion regularly diminish from the center, they must both be as the quantity of outgoing and reacting forces, and ever in the ratio, the rejjulsion as spherically self-balanced, inversely as the cube of the dis- tance, and the attraction as circularly self-balanced, inversely as the square of the distance ; with many other cosmical principles that in Rational Cosmology has already been determined and correctly stated. But it is the interest of reason here, to follow out this mherent cognition of sub- stance and cause in the opposite direction ; not to trace the forces as they work down into nature, and work out an in- telUgible and orderly cosmos, but as they may lead upward to the cognition of the supernatural. The antagonist agen- cies srenerate force and are determiuins: conditions for all the development of nature downward, but in their single and separate energizing they have neither substance nor phe- nomenon above. The central force can sustain and give control to the universe and become to all the physical causes and changes of the universe that which can be traced to no higher physical condition. All force and change originate and propagate themselves from hence, and there is no higher point of force, or possibility of phenomenal manifestations. The single energies are not physical force, and can impress themselves upon no material organs, that they may give 408 THE EEASON IN ITS IDEA. content for any phenomena. They belong wholly to the spiritual and not to the material world. But it is a fair and for the reason a necessary inquiry, whence these energies that constitute in their antagonism the space-fiUing forces ? In what source may we find these acts which counteract to become iudentified? All force, and thus all of material nature is a compound and has at least a duality ; in what may we find a primordial and indi- visible unity ? Nature fills place in its own space and period in its own time, and space and time as common for all can only be determined in the one common nature ; where shall we find the grand source and terminus out of which, and into which, both nature and nature's space and time may come and depart together ? How shall we find and know Him to whom the conditions of nature, and of nature's space and time are utterly impertinent and unmeaning ? All these and more such queries the reason must ever be pro- pounding, and when nature hes before us only in the vagiie apprehension commonly taken of material substance and physical cause, it were vain and presumptuous to attempt any answer. There is nothing that gives traces of wisdom and rational principle in the dry and dead matter, and thus no foot-prints of the Maker to lead us out to His dwelling- place, nor any marks to tell us how He made the Avorld or indicate how He manages its movements. But with our clear conception of forces as substantial and dynamical, nature has already in her intrinsic being the lines that lead downward in cosmical order and beauty not only, but also lines which lead upward to a wholly supernatural Creator and Governor. Tlie tracing of such lines upward may be as reverent as the tracing of them downward may be patient AN A PRIOKI POSITION IN THE ABSOLUTE. 409 and careful, and the results may be as sure for the superna- tural as for the natural. Nature exists in substantial, im- penetrable, space-filling forces, and reposes on the grand central counteragency ; Avhence comes this central counter- working of simple spiritual activities? If they woi-k on abidingly, the universe is steadfast ; if they cease their ener- gizing, the universe at once collapses. Withdi'aw the cen- tral activities, and nature is at once extinguished; who originates and perpetuates this central working ? In some way the reason must come to the cognition of a Bource in its simplicity, that may at pleasure energize in the sinficle acts that counterwork and constitute the central force, and which through this central force may generate and dis- tribute the substantial forces which constitute the material universe. In this source must be a directing intelligence that conditions all things, and which conditioning must orig- inate here with no hio-her author. Substance in its efficient causality is ground and source for all phenomena, but this intelligent agent must in His own simplicity be the Creator of the force that constitutes universal nature, and must put it out in the void which from its presence only is a void no longer. The Creator must stand absolved from all condi- tions that can arise ah extra to Himself, even from any inter- nal antagonism and force which, as action and reaction, would demand that He be a composite being. His only con- ditions must be such as are self-imposed in the dignity of His own transcendental unity. It is not, thus, an uncondi- tioned which is given in abstraction — merely cutting off all occasion for changes and successions aboA'e, and assuming a source and cause for all below — this the space-filling force and substance of nature itself is. It must be a positive and 18 410 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. intelligently affirmed unconditioned, whose only end of action is found by Himself in His own being. Such alone can stand above nature, and condition nature, without the reciprocity of a conditioning back upon Himself from nature. As thus positively unconditioned, we give to this concep- tion of a supernatural being the high name, which must be His own prerogative and incommunicable possession — the Absolute. Not absolved from the claims of His own excel- lency and dignity, for such absolute could be no personal God, but wholly absolved from all ah extra relations and conditions. He is a law to Himself and thus His action always self-determined, but nothing out of Himself imposes any law ujion Him. The absolute in the meaning of infinite space, or unconditioned cause would be no help in compre- hending the universe ; our only compass must be the Being who self-controlled, stands absolved from all other controll- ing. The whole problem of the reason, therefore, is seen to be in this determination of the absolute. Nature can be comprehended by the reason in no other possible manner than as encompassed in the being of such an absolute ; and the determination of this, is tlie determination of the iDossibility of an operation of comprehension. In the pure ideal of the absolute we are to find onr a priori position for over- looking nature, and thereby determining how its comprehen- sion is possible ; and in this we shall have the entire func- tion of a comprehending faculty, higher than that of the sense which only conjoins, and higher also than the under- standing which only connects, even the faculty of the rea- son which comprehends all that may be conjoined or con- nected. Such will be the function of the Reason in its Idea. AN A PRIOKI POSITION IN THE ABSOLUTE. 411 It is quite important here to carry along with us, in this part of our work, the abiding conviction that we have passed completely out of the domain of the sense and of that of the understanding also. It will be wholly perposterous — when we have made abstraction of all that is phenomenal, and transcended all that the oj^erations of conjunction and of connection have produced, and have taken upon us the task of an a priori examination of the comprehending faculty — if we shall any where unawares permit that there be a sliding away from this pure province of the supernatural, and we be found dealing again with the conceptions which are con- ditioned to nature and the modes of space and time. The absolute is not nature and possesses nothing in common with nature, and may neither be constructed in place and period nor connected in substance cause and reciprocal influence. The entire phenomenal and notional of nature is so wholly out of and beneath the absolute, that although originating in and depending upon the absolute, yet may it never be conceived as reacting and thereby throwing back any condi- tions upon the absolute. "We may have nothing to do with any conditions here reaching back from nature, and putting us again to our old work of discursive connections. SECTION II. THE DETERMINATION OF PERSONALITY TO THE ABSOLUTE. The reason-conception of the absolute, which the reason gives to itself, is above the notional ; as the understanding- conception of the notion, which the reason gave to the 412 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. understanding, is above the phenomenal. To distinguish this pure reason-conception from the pure understanding-concep- tion of the Notion, we here give to it a distinctive name and call it the Ideal. This ideal of the absolute is to be the compass for comprehending nature, as the notional was the medium for connecting phenomena in a nature of things. In this we are to determine how it may be known, as a syn- thetical proposition, that nature must have its author ; as in that it was determined how it might be demonstrated, that phenomena must be inherent in substance, adherent in cause, and coh-erent in reciprocal influence. The phenomena were in distinct and definite places and periods, and could not be determined in one whole of space and of time, except through the media of such notions as gave universality to all places in one whole of sjjace and all periods in one whole of time. In this manner the phenomena in the sense and the things and events in the understanding came very well to be united, and the passage from the sense to the under- standing was efiected, and the synthetical propositions — aU qualities must have substance ; all events must have cause ; all concomitant events must have reciprocity of influence — came to be readily demonstrated, when ■s^nthout such a •priori demonstration they could only be used as assump- tions. And now the same result of an a 2)riori demonstra- tion of a synthetical projjosition is to be determined, but with this difierence, the conceptions of the phenomena and the things were, the one in the sense and the other in the understanding ; while here, the conceptions of a nature of things and of an author of nature are, the one in the under- standing and the other in the reason. The passage from the sense to the understanding and from the understanding ELEMENTS OF C O M P R E H E X S I O N . 413 to the reason both demand a syntliesis, and can neither pos- sibly be effected by any analyses descending nor any general- izations ascending ; and as we have found the passage for the first in the notional, so now we are to find the passage for the second in this pure ideal. And yet still further, as we found the very essence of substance hi its causality to be a space-filling and time-endur- ing force^ and that as counter-agency it filled its place in space from a permanent center and might thus determine all places in its own space, and also as enduring center it might thus determine all periods in its own time ; so now we must find the very essence of the absolute to be a spaceless and timeless personality^ who, as above all the modes of expan- sion in space and duration in time, may be not nature but supernatural ; not thing but person. If conditioned to the one whole of nature, of space, and of time, then it must be of the substance and causality of nature, and can never be the Divinity above nature. No matter whether all of the phenomenal be abstracted from it or not ; in naked substance and cause it is but pure force, space-occupying and time- abiding, and must react upon nature and nature upon it, and the compound thus effected must still be nature altogether. And no matter whether it be carried above all phenomena ; it is then pure force in its antagonism at the center, and as undeveloped must yet go out in development, and such is only nature in its rudimental germ, and not at all nature's author and God. Except as we determine the absolute to be personality wholly out of and beyond all the conditions and modes of space and time, we can by no possibility leave nature for the supernatural. The clear-sighted and honest intellect, resting in this conclusion that the conditions of 114 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. space and time can not be transcended, will be Atheistic j while the deluded intellect, which has put the false play of the discursive understanding in its abstract speculations for the decisions of an all-embracing reason, and deems itself so fortunate as to have found a deity within the modes of space and time, will be Pantheistic. The Pantheism will be ideal and transcendent, when it reaches its conclusions by a logi- cal process in the abstract law of thought ; and it will be material and empiric when it concludes from the fixed con- nections of cause and effect in the generalized law of nature ; but in neither case is the Pantheism any other than Atheism, for the Deity, circumscribed in the conditions of space and time with nature, is but nature still, and whether in abstract thought or generalized reality, is no God. It becomes Pan- cosmism rather than Pantheism. This determination of personality to the absolute, and which takes it out from all the modes of space and time, is the only possible way in which it may be demonstrated how nature may have an author, which author shall not be nature still and yet demanding for itself an author. In snch a pure ideal as the absolute in its personality, a compass is given by which the reason may comprehend nature, and the completed process of comprehension thus effected is a faculty of the reason in idea. This, therefore, is a necessary, and our next work, to determine personality to the absolute. This will give all the necessary elements in the work of comprehen BiON. We termed unity, plurality, and totality the primitive Elements in the operation of Conjunction ; and also sub- stance and accidence in space, or, as the same thing, source and event in time, and cause and effect, and action and re- action, the primitive Elements in the operation of Connec- ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIOX. 415 tion ; Ave will now terra these when found, the prunitive Elements in the operation of Comprehension. It will result here, as in each of the former operations, that the primitive elements Avill be three in number ; and also as in each former case, that the first and second elements will stand to each other in an antithesis, while the third will be the sjTithesis or point of indifference between the first two. 1. Antagonism, by which is meant the point in which two agencies meet and counter- work, determines position in space. The accumulated and ensphered force determines place in space ; and, as fixed in its center, the entire sphere occu- pies perpetually the same place in space. From this space- filling substance in its permanence the one whole of space is determined, inasmuch as its permanent place gives a datum for determining direction and distance from its center to all the i:)laces in space Avhich it occupies. But if we were to conceive of its extinction, though it were impossible to con- ceive that space itself were extinguished, yet it would be wholly impossible to determine sameness of place, and thus impossible to determine the same wholeness of all space. The conception of a new antagonism would give again new position, and the engendered force would give again new definite place, and thus a determined whole of all space ; but whether this whole of all space were the same as the former whole of all space could no more be determined than whether the places in which the reflected moon and stars in two dif ferent lakes appeared were the same whole space. The first position and place, and thus wholeness of space, are lost to all determination so soon as the space-filling force is extinct, inasmuch as there is then nothing by which permanency of 416 THE EEASON IX ITS IDEA. position and place can he indicated. It thus follows, that the single pure agency which can have no antagonism, can have nothing to which the conditions of space have any sig- nificancy. It can never be determined in position, place, nor in the sameness of any one Avhole space. So also this jDoint of meeting in action from whence counter-agency takes its rise, determines instants in time. The successive counter-working and accumulating of force and continuance of changes determines period ; and, as reckoned from the primal instant onward, gives a datum for determining aU period in Avhich the series of changes occur, and thus of determining the same one whole of time. But, were we to conceive this counter-agency to be extin- guished, and another antagonism with its determined instants and successive periods and one whole of time to be determined: it would be impossible to determine that the two wholes of time were the same whole of time, equally as much so and for the same reason as to determine whether the succes- sions and times inherently in two dreams were in the same whole time. There would be no perduring source which could indicate the periods of its own changes. It thus fol- lows, that the single pure agency which can have no antagon- ism can have no fixed instant, no definite period, and no determined whole of time ; and thus to it none of the condi- tions of time can be significant. Moreover, in this antagonism the primal condition of a nature of things is determined. Its counter-agency engen- ders the space-filling substance in all its causality, and evolves the successive changes as cause and effect, all of which in their conditioned connections depend upon this i)ri- mal condition ; and thus all of nature is determined in this ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 417 central counter-working ; and if any other distinguishable forces be introduced, they must be superinduced upon this, for this primal force must condition all that shall come within it. It thus follows, that the simple pure agency can come within none of the conditions of a nature of things ; inasmuch as within itself there can never be an- tagonism, and thus can never give an engendered force which is causality and condition for all of nature, and, therefore, to it the notions of substance, cause, and recipro- cal influence are wholly impertinent and insignificant. This reason-conception of simple, pure activity is thus wholly unconditioned to space, time, and a nature of things; and is a jviori conditional for all transcending of nature. It were wholly impossible to find any passage out from na- ture to the supernatural, except in this reason-conception of a pure agency which can come within none of the conditions that belonof to nature, and has none of the necessitated con- nections of a discursive judgment. But such pure activity is the conception of 7:>i- plied conditions. The earth produced its fruits without the apphcation of human toil as a condition ; the combustible took fire without the application of a spark or flame as a condition. But in neither case is it a negative of all condi- tion and thus an exclusion of necessity. There is an inhe 18* 418 THEEEASOJSriNITSIDEA. rent causality already in possession, and in virtue of which the product appears. The earth is already cause for the germination of the seeds in its own bosom ; the combusti- ble is cause for combustion in its own fermentation ; there is no need for the application of any other causality than that already in possession. But this efficiency has been transmitted from a higher causality, and is thus truly condi- tioned ill its antecedent. The causation has itself been caused, and could not have been a causa cavsans had it not also been alread}^ a causa causata. It is wholly a discursive process that we here pursue, and the efficiency must be fol- lowed up from event to event, the subsequent always condi- tioned by what has already taken place in the antecedent. Nature possesses only conditioned causality, and though it may negative all applied conditions and call this spontaneity, yet can it never negative all communicated or transmitted condition and be pure spontaneity. There is also, sometimes, a passing up to the primal con- ditions, and by a negation of all antecedents an assuming of a spontaneous beginning in this primal condition. But such attains no positive reason-cognition of spontaneity, and only an arbitrary negation of all higher conditioning. The only method of a distinct cognition of this assumed spontaneity is, to fix the mind's eye upon a force in a point of counter- agency. This gives the genesis of a substance which fills definite place in space. The force as substance in its causal Ity, begins to be in tliis antagonism ; and above this it is not properly substance or cause, but pure act. Causality be- gins in this counter- working, and develops itself in a per- petual unfolding of new conditioned products. Here, there- fore, is cause in its highest conception ; unconditioned, ex- ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 419 cept in the inherent antagonism -which is its o-n-n being. And no\v, this is sometimes taken to be the Unconditioned ; the Absohite Cause ; the Spontaneity that begets nature ; and that in wliich not only all philosophy of nature, but all science must terminate. It is the starting-point for thought, and nature must be evolved from it. It must go out in effects, filling space and evolving the universe from its own efficiency, and must ever work on in the interminable pro- gressus of pushing new conditioned products from the last ; and is thereby the author of a perpetually unfolding nature of thinsrs. The author of nature can no more be Avithout the universe, than the universe can be without its author. The universe is but the perpetual unfolding of the abso- lute cause. But, in this there is no pure spontaneity. It is boimd in its own conditions, and is under a necessity to develop itself. It is not nature's author as supei-natural but only nature's germ including the rudiments of a universe, and is as much nature at the first as in any successive step of its develop- ment. Causality is ever counteraction ; and thus inherently conditioned action ; and is notional for the understanding, not pure ideal for the reason. It can possibly have no ele- ment of personality within it, and thus no pure spontaneity may be analyzed from it. The supernatural is not absolute cause ; this is an absurdity, inasmuch as cause is ever inhe- rcLtlv conditioned. The reason-cognition of a pure spontaneity must be found in the simple activity, and not in any force which is the product of counter-activities. The substance in its caus- ality originates in, and can not itself possess, a pure sponta- neitv. The coimter-working of causation must be tran- 420 THE REASON IX ITS IDEA. scended, or we only mount to where nature begins, but we do not go over at all within the supernatural. ISTature is connection through dynamical conditions ; the supernatural is uncompounded, uncounteracted self-activity. That an author of nature may be person independent of nature, he must be pure activity, neither caused by, nor conditioned to, any efficiency imparted or transmitted ah extra. If this activity stand conditioned to any thing ah extra, then does nature reach beyond its author ; and he is comprehended and no compass for comprehending nature. The absolute must comprehend aU counter-agency, and must therefore be pure spontaneous agency ; and in this is found the first es- sential element, which transcends the agency that is com- pound and conditioned as thing, and is agency in its own unconditioned simplicity as person. The first Element in determining personality to the absolute, and thus the possi- bihty of comprehension, is/)i«*e Spontaneity. 2. Pure spontaneity in itself is Avholly blind and lawless. It can not of itself be sufficient to determine personality to the absolute, nor give the compass for an operation of com- prehension. There must be some end to which the action as spontaneity is directed, and such end must give the law to the action, and thus as antithesis to spontaneity give the cognition of spontaneity controlled and determined. But the cognition that such end is in nature, or that it is nature itself, will subject the spontaneity to nature, and at once condition the absolute in necessity. It is, only that nature mav be. This controlling end must be other than nature, out of and independent of nature, or it can not possibly give us the a priori condition in Avhat way nature itself must be, and thus comprehend nature in the eternal design and rea- ELEMENTS OF C O M P E E U E N S I O K . 421 3on of its author. As above nature, that end which is to give law to the agency creative of nature must be super- natural. It must determine how nature is to be, while yet nature is not brought into benig ; and must thus be control- ling over the spontaneity, independent of any and all condi- tions to which it is to direct the spontaneous agency that it may give them their birth. The absolute itself as author of nature exists alone out of nature, and is the supernatural ; and thus this end, controlling the creative agency as sponta^ neity, must be in the absolute itself. This must be its own end, and thus also its own law ; and thereby comes out the reason-conception of personality in this, that the absolute is pure Will : he is self-active and self-directed. His end, and thus his law of action is not in nature ; for that would de- grade him at once to a means, and a thing to be used for a further end. He would be, only that nature as end might be. His end is in himself, and his law of action is self- imposed ; and he thus makes natui-e to be for his own be- hoof. That spontaneity may become personal acti\ity, and thus a will which may behave — i. e., have possession and control of its own agency — it must possess an end in itself, and thus impose law upon itself, and thereby be autonomic. But such a conception of end and law in the absolute itself, is pure autonomy y and this must be a second primitive element in personality. But this reason-cognition of 2^ure autonomy is not very readily attained in its complete discrimination from all the illusions which a discursive understandino; constantlv ob- trudes upon us. It is not by any analogies with the dynam- ical connections in an understanding, much less any analysis of such conclusions in judgments, or any abstractions of 422 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. conceptions gained in discursive processes of thinking, tliat will bring us to any right and adequate apprehension of what a pure Avill is, and in it the everlasting distinction in kmd of all person from thing. It is not in itself probable that this knot in all dialectics and vexed problem in all ethical metaphysics — so intricate that the labor of centuries has been here exhausted — is so easily to find its solution, as bv a mere change of the discursive connection from tbe conditioned series in outward nature to any conditioned successions in inward experience, that we are henceforth to have it free from all entanglement. If we keep the process within the discursions of the understanding, we shall have necessity and heteronomy ; never spontaneity in autonomy. We may have a sensibility awakened to appetite, but no such action from awakened desire can be pure will, any more than is the flowing stream when impelled by its own gravity and retained within the banks which its own action has constituted. The present has always its condition in a higher period than its own, and when it is to go forth in action, that action has already its law imposed upon it by another above and out of itself, and it can not thus become its own end, and arrest the whole process, and throw itself out of its long and deep-worn channel, and originate some new product of its own for which it shall be beholden solely in autonomy. Its perpetual flow of activity can in no way be discriminated from physical necessity, by any arbitrary terms that may be put upon it. It is important that we here distinctly apprehend how completely we must transcend the whole province within which work the functions of the understanding, or we can never find the compass for com- prehending nature. For this it is conditional that we have ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 423 a will, iu whicli only can there be personality ; and a pure will is in its very conception self-action self-directed ; spon- taneity in autonomy. If, in any way, we put the end which is to condition the activity out of the absolute itself, we thereby bind the absolute in conflitioned nature. This win appear in the conclusion of the following con- siderations, First, let it be considered that in nature noth- ing is for itself. Through all her series, nature now is, not for what it is, but for something to be. It is not itself its own end, nor possessing any tiling which is its own end, but is ever an iinfoldinof to attain somethino: not vet consum- mated. No portion nor aggregate of nature can be auto- nomic, but is and ever must be under conditions imposed upon it, and thus is ever a means to an end not itself nor its own. It is ever moi"e used as a thing, and can never be- come a user of things for its own end as person. But, secondly, we will rise above the phenomenal in nature, and thus pass from the changes which give coming and departing events in a perpetual series of conditions, and take the space-filling force at the i:)oint of its antagonism on which all nature reposes ; and here we may find a sort of autonomy, but not pure, or such as elevates from thing to person. This central antagonism is force ; and in its counter- working supplies force which enspheres itself in sj^ace, and thus has within itself its own laAv, and in its working dif- fuses its own law through all the sphere ; and thus the uni- verse is in this view under a law self-imposed. The space- filling force difinses its own law through all the space filled, and is ever thus working on under the conditions of its own laws self-perpetuated. This is mechanical autonomy. The central force develops itself, and carries its own conditions 424 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. throughout all the space of its workmg. But such sub- stance iu its causality becomes force in the meeting and comiteracting of the two simple agencies, and has thus its law put into itself by agencies from above and out of itself, . and it can only transmit this inherent but imposed law from condition to conditioned, indefinitely. It must ever work for some end not yet reached, and can not thus ever find its own origin or its consummation. It can not propose itself as its own end, and thus arrest or modify its agency for its own sake ; but must evermore work on, blind to all other ends than that of filling space and evolving the conditioned from the antecedent condition, and be a thing used by others, and not person to use others or itself for its own behoof. Its inhering law is yet imposed by a higher, and for an end yet to be, and is, therefore, truly heteronomy and not pure autonomy. And, thirdly^ there may be conceived any other distin- guishable forces superinduced upon this space-filling force, and we may have the forces of magnetism or electi-icity over-ruling but not extinguishing the force of gravity ; or chemical or crystalline forces successively over-ruling and modifying all on which each may be superinduced ; and we shall have each higher distinguishable force possessing its own inherent law, and diffusing this law through all the sphere of its operation, and thus acting for another and higher end than that which lies within any distinguishable force beneath it ; but this inherent law will have been still imposed upon it by some simple agencies above it, and con- ditioning its action to the attainment of ends not yet reached, and thus no more an end in itself, and autonomic, than the primal antagonistic force of gravity. ELEMENTS OF COMPKEHENSIOX. 425 And, fourthly, we may have tlie distinguishable force of vegetable life, and which may control all the forces of attraction and repulsion, and cliemical affinities, and crystal- lization, and use them all as subservient to its own higher end in assimilation and growth ; yet still will this vegetative autonomy be a law imposed from above itself, and necessi- tated to a perpetual working for an end beyond itself, and can never attain to the completed and final plant in its con- summation for which all preceding generations of plants have germinated and died. The vital force works on ever- more from parent plant to produced gei'm in the servile toil to get an end which is not its own, and under the compul- sion to a task which Avill never be finished. Here is only a thing and not person in pure autonomy. And this may also be extended to the superinducing of the distinguishable force of animal life in its sentient caj^ac- ity, and its internal organism for receiving and masticating and digesting its food, and this including all the irritabihty of nerve and muscle Avhich induces appetite, and locomotion, and selection of food, or objects of appropriate gratification for any sense ; and we shall have here a sentient autonomy which seems to be a user of many things for its own end in its self-gratification, and which, as controlled by self-enjoy- ment may sometimes be called will {brutum a7-bitrium) ; but this entire anima is still nature altogether and wholly shut up within necessitated successions, and is thus utterly thing and not person. The entire animal force is conditioned in its primal constitution, and the sensory necessitated in its internal pathognomy, and must thus work on as the servant of the animal organization and made to do the work which the body wants and when it needs ; and it can never finish 426 THE EEASON IN ITS IDEA. its toil, for it is perpetually kept in successive animal organ- izations from generation to generation, which never cease their craving. It can never rise to the dignity of making itself its own end and satisfying itself in its own action, but is ever lashed on by a master who imposes the task, and reaps the products, and allows that there be occasional grat- ifications amid the toil only as necessary to keep the slave alive and in a working condition, A sensory is a thing under necessity, not a person in autonomy. Nor, though we add a light above its own instinctive cravings, in which the sentient force may work, shall we thus give to it personality. Make it competent to general- ize its own past experience and thereby come to the conclu- sion that some gratifications cost too much in their subse- quent exactions or inflictions, and that there is a rule of pru- dence which lies in this generalization of consequences to be heeded, and let this rule be very accurately attained in its own well-weighed experience ; still every present result is already conditioned in some past event, and whether a spe- cific appetite shall be strongly excited and control the action, or whether a generic desire of self-love as prompted by pru- dence shall carry the movement, this is already settled in some previous period which has conditioned the sentient force then to go out in operation. The end of action is out of itself, and imposing its law upon itself, and the sensory with all its prudential considerations is conditioned force and not will, and acting under a law imposed upon it, and not in autonomy. Yea, should we conceive that there was the capacity to generalize universal experience, and find the rule of pruden- tial welfare for all sentient beings ; the force which should ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 427 go out in beneficence toward all would have been already determined in that wliich has conditioned its amount of sen- tient kindness. That it is prudent to itself, and congenial to itself, to be kind to others, is a law imposed upon it by that which out of itself has conditioned its sentient force to be such and so great as it is. Its benevolence would as completely stand conditioned in its pathology as any other constitutional appetite. It would be the product of its physiology as truly as its hunger, and as much bound in the series of conditioned changes as its digestion or its growth. It is all nature ; wholly a thing and not a person. By none of the distinguishable forces of nature, from the mere antagonism of the primal force to those of the most complicated in animal life and sentient gratification and function of judgment in generalized experience, do we find any passage to the supernatural, nor any approach to the clear discrimination of thing from person. All is wholly under law imposed, and in no case itself an end in itself All is a means to an end ; that which knows no indignity in being used for another ; a thing that may have a price ; and thus never rismg to the dignity of personality, which has rights that it may not compromit, and can never consent that it should be bought and sold, nor that it should ever permit itself to be used by another regardless of its inherent autonomy. Just as little is there pure autonomy in nature, as there is pure spontaneity ; and though one thing may override and control another thing, yet is the highest still a thing and subjected to conditions above and out of itself. "We rise then, _ fifthly, to the absolute above nature, as we must for determining pure autonomy to personality. And here an accurate and extensive discrimination is to be made. 428 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. and which cau not be effected without care, or we shali possess this second element of personahty but very con- fusedly and obscurely. Let it be considered that in one aspect the spontaneous pure activity may be contemplated as simply artistic. It is to go out in the production or creation of distinguishable forces, and thus in the genesis of a nature of things. But in such going forth of the pure activity there must be some end to be attained, and some law must be given to the process by which the agency may go out the most directly and com- pletely to its issue. This can not be in the light of any copy or pattern already objectively existing, in which may be found the model of what is yet to be, for the creator of nature has not yet an objective universe after which he may fashion another. As artist, the absolute must possess the primary copies or patterns of what it is possible may be, in his own subjective apprehension, and the first creations are subjective in the absolute reason as universal genius. The pure ideals of all possible entities lie as pure reason-cogni- tions in the light of the divine intelligence, and in these must be foupd the rules after which the creative agency must go forth. That subjective pure archetype of what is to have objective being in an actual space-filling force, is the law by which the pure spontaneity is to be controlled. The agency which has this subjective archetypal rule in its own liglit has artistic genius, and such directing genius may be termed wisdom. When nature is to be brought forth into space and time, the creator must possess this in the begin- ning of his way. Of the whole work, this artistic wisdom personified may say, " When He prepared the Heavens I was there ; when He set a compass upon the face of the ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 429 depth; when He established the clouds above; when He strengthened the fountains of the deep ; when He gave to the sea His decree that the waters should not pass His com- mandments ; when He appointed the foundations of the earth ; then I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing ever before Him." And now this artistic wisdom and rule is, in one acceptation, autonomy ; it is law and guide for the creative agency, and it is a possession in the absolute itself It is like the archi- tect wlio has his own rules in his own intellectual being. He is in an important sense a self-regulated agent, working after his own subjective archetypal pattern. But this will not suffice for the attainment of a pure autonomy. This artistic skill is something to be used, and the personality using has not yet been found. What is to determine that it shall w.ork ? and after what pattern it shall work ? and whether at the expense of marring the product the workman shall not be induced to violate the artistic rule ? If there be nothing but some want in a sen- sory to be satisfied, like a mechanic who builds his own dwelling for his own convenience, then will the end be found in the gratification of that craving ; and no matter how skillful, how spacious, or how costly the building, it has all been conditioned to the want he found himself constrained to gratify, and for which the agency must go forth, or his sentient nature must abide the unhappy consequences. The value of the work and of the workman is estimated solely by the sentient gratification as end. When material worlds in all their distinguishable forces have been put into space, and gravitating, and chemical, and crystalline agencies have been made to develop themselvea 430 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. in perfect conformity to the archetypal rule ; if, then, this material creation is to be clothed in the verdant beauty and luxuriance of vegetative life, and the sentient want in the maker and his artistic pattern be given, the work will go on to this higher consummation and the gratification be therein attained. And should, again, all this beauty and bounty seem to lie waste, as the sti-eam in a desert, until some sen- tient created beings be introduced to partake and enjoy, and the great Architect find within himself a want that can only be satisfied by making and seeing sentient beings happy ; then would the artistic energy again be put forth to gratify this craving desire. in his own sentient being, and the air, and waters, and earth o'er all its hills and plains will teem with living happy millions. We might tlius go on through indefinitely higher grades of sentient desires, and furnish our artist with higher patterns for created products, and we should keep an artistic skill perpetually energizing for the gratification of sentient wants, and which, if finally terminating in some highest wants and thus in some highest happiness, would still be all of nature. The want is found to be already determined ; a conditioned nature condition- ing all the working, and all the products of the artistic workman ; and which is thus a mere automaton, not pure autonomy. We may essay to elevate such artistic autonomy which merely governs its actions by the rules given and foi- tlie end of gratifying some sentient wants, to the place of supreme author of nature, and as if we had found in this a personal Deity may call him the divine Architect ; and his wisdom may be consummate in adapting means to ends, and manifold in working ; but the end of all is already conditioned in his E L E M K N T S OF C O M P K K 11 K N S 1 O N . 431 necessary sentient cravings, and as truly in nature when his own want can be satisfied only with the happiness of other sentient beings as when the animal hungers for its daily food. Whoever possesses the sensory with its craving want must seek for this artistic skill, and use the artisan only for the gratification to which he may minister ; and he may thus be good in the acceptation of useful beyond all else, inas- much as he alone may minister to the highest want. Such an artist, to such highest sentient craving, would be invalu- able ; above all price in exchange ; worth more than all else, because serving a want the highest of all ; and, brought in barter to the market, would buy out all that in the universe could be put to sale ; but still this would be only a thing among other things as goods in the market, and more valu- able only as a more profitable instrument for the gratification of a higher sentient end. He is a workman who can guide his hand by his own eye, and whose skill is woi'th so much by the day or by the job to the employer who wants him. He is only a means to be used for an end, precisely as a mas- ter may want the higher faculties of his slave to accomplish such ends as he can never reach by the brute strength and instinct of his horse, and on this account only the slave is worth just so much more than the horse. When the abso- lute is thus viewed as a means to some end in sense, and out of and apart from his own intrinsic excellency as end, he is at once degraded fl'om a sovereign to a servant ; from a person to a thing ; he exists for what he makes ; his price is fixed by his products ; and he is worth so much more than other workmen only as he can make better wares. A sentient nature, somewhere secretly wound up to an undeni- able craving, is the spring Avhich sets the automaton in 432 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. action ; and lie works for, and works out, the end for which he is ah'eady conditioned in his own constitution. The only autonomy that may be affirmed of such an artist is, that he carries his rules in his head, but the spring and end of his action are wholly from and in another who employs him. We have not thus attained to any Personality. What we need is not merely a rule by which to direct the process in the attainment of any artistic end, but we must find the legislator who may determine the end itself. This question is not the ultimate — In what way shall an artist be furnished with rules for doing his work to the greatest perfection ? When that is decided to be after his own pure subjective archetypes, the ultimate question is altogether this — Whence is the ultimate behest that is to determine the archetype and control the pure spontaneity in its action ? Shall it go out in an antagonism as central force, in which shall be the genesis of an ensphered and revolving space-filling substance ? and why thus ? Shall we answer, it must be thus in order that a subsequent superinducing of distinguishable forces upon this mere space-filling sub- stance, such as magnetic chemical and ciystalline agencies, may all together work on and work out the complicated but exact machinery of a material universe thi'ough all its com- ponent systems and worlds ? But why such a material uni- verse in its perfect architecture ? Shall we again answer, this is all thus in order that the beauty and bounty of a vegetative life may be spread over hill and valley ? — but why this exuberance of vegetative life ? In order, again shall we say, that glad sentient beings may people the ma- terial worlds, and find a home amid all these adaptations in the heavens above and the earth beneath to their animal ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 433 wants ? — but again the inquiry is just as prompt and urgent — why this Avorld of sentient beings ? And should Ave ivgaiu answer : all this is for this great end, that some sentient beings may possess the exalted faculty of generalizing their own and their fellows' experience, and determii)ing rules of utility, and prudence, and economy, which must regulate the action of each for his own highest welfare, and the interac- tion of all for the highest happiness of the whole ; and that thus there may be a social organization and a political sover- eignty, which may administer a government of penal sanc- tions, coercing each to act for the highest happiness of all ? But this social world, thus legislating for itself on the grand principle of its highest happiness in the aggregate, is still a created world ; a product of an artist after the rule of his own subjective archetypal perfection ; — why such a social world? — whence the behest that set this artist to his work, and called out this artistic wisdom in the service ? And here shall we ansAver, as if it were to stop all further questioning, that this artist had a sensory the gratification of whose highest desire was the impartation of happiness to other sentient beings ; and that thus his own inner want put him to the work of making other sentient beings, who in their owTi happiness might satisfy him and make him to attain his maximum of gratification? But surely in this, we have nothing but nature in its necessitated conditions. The abso lute is simply kind and good-natured, and acts from consti- tutionnl cravings, as really as all other sentient natures The susceptibility to happiness from benevolent action is in this way as truly an appetite in its awakened desire, and necessitated in all its cravings, as any animal want. Ques- tions like these still necessarily return — Why such suscepti- 19 434 THE KEASON IN ITS IDEA. bility to beneficence ? — What if the want in the sensory had been of an opposite kind ? Must the artist work merely because there is an inner want to gratify, with no higher end than the gratification of the highest constitutional cravins: ? Can we find nothing beyond a want, Avhich shall from its own behest demand, that this and not its opposite shall be ? Grant that the round worlds and all their furniture are good — but why good? Certainly as a means to an end. Grant that this end, the happiness of sentient beings, is good — but why good ? Because it supplies the want of the supreme Architect. And is this the supreme good ? Surely, if it is, we are altogether within nature's conditions, call our ulti- mate attainment by what name we may. We have no ori- gin for our legislation, only as the highest architect finds such wants within himself, and the archetypal rule for grati- fying his wants in the most eflfectual manner ; and precisely as the ox goes to his fodder in the shortest way, so he goes to his Avork in making and peopling happy worlds in the most direct manner. Here is no will ; no personality ; no pure autonomy. The artist finds himself so constituted that he must work in this manner, or the craving of his own nature becomes intolerable to himself, and the gratifying of this ci'aving is the highest good. We must find that which shall itself be the reason and law for benevolence, and for the sake of which the artist shall be put to his beneficent agency above all considerations that he finds his nature craving it. It must be that for whose sa'ke happiness, even that which as kind and benevolent craves on all sides the boon to bless others, Itself should be. Not sentient nor artistic autonomy, but a pure ethic auto- nomy which knows that within itself there is an excellency ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 435 which obliges for the sake of itself. This is never to be found, nor anything very analogous to it, in sentient nature and a dictate from some generalized experience. It lies within the rational sj^irit and is law in the heart, as an inward imperative in its own right, and must there be found. The pregnant illustration of the Apostle is explicit that spirit only may know what is in spirit : " What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him ? even so the things of God knoweth no man but the spirit of God. Tlie spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." This inward witnessing capacitates for self-legis- lating and self-rewarding. It is inward consciousness of a worth imperative above want ; an end in itself, and not means to another end ; a user of things but not itself to be used by anything ; and, on account of its intrinsic excel- lency, an authoritative determiner for its own behoof of the entire artistic agency with all its products, and thus a con- science excusing or accusing. This inward witnessing of the absolute in his own wor- thiness, gives the ultimate estimate to nature, which needs and can attain to nothing higher, than that it should satisfy this worthiness as end; and thereby in all his works, he fixes, in his own light, upon the subjective archetype, and attains to the objective result, of that which is befitting his own dignity. It is, therefore, in no craving want which must be gratified, but from the interest of an inner behest, which should be executed for his own worthiness' sake, that " God has created all things, and for His pleasure they are and were created." It is not sufficient that a product is attained which is good only as a means to some further end j nor yet that a 436 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. personality is assumed who is only artistic skill and wisdom, for this is only means to an end, and wholly a servant for an- other's using ; nor yet that this servant have w^ants, even that he should make others happy for the sake of his own happiness, for this keeps him in servitude still, inasmuch as the want can only be as a means to the creation of a happy race, and the creation of such a race a means only to satisfy such a want ; but above all the artistic skill and the imparted happiness, we must come into the light and purity and majesty ineffixble of an uncreated personality, before whose presence all this sublimity of architecture and all this exuber- ance of bounty and of gladness may be laid as an offering, whose only estimate can be that it is worthy to be accepted of him, and whose only end can be that it has been created for him. The summuji bonum is in his dignity and excel- lence, and in this the great Eternal read the law how created nature should be, and under such behest the fiat went forth, and such Nature is. It is precisely in this light, and solely in this presence, that we wake to the consciousness of what reverence is, and know that we stand before an awful Majesty where we must bow and adore. "We may stand amid all the sublimities of that wonder-working potcer which is fashioning the material mechanism of the heavens and the earth, and we shall admire and praise in profound astonishment ; we may look upon all the arrangements which, in the bounty of an ever- working wisdom and Icindness, is diffusing sentient joy and gladness over millions of happy beings ; and we may go with such as are competent to recognize their kind benefac- tor into His presence, and hear the ten thousand times ten thousand voices, in different ways proclaiming their glad- ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 437 some gratitude as the sound of many waters, and we sliall syrapatliize in their joys and praises with a rapturous delight ; but it is only when I see all these standing in the presence of that absohite sovereignty and pure moral personality, who searches them all in the light of His own dignity^ and judges them by the claims of His own excellency^ and esti- mates their worth solely in reference to His loorthiness / and when also I see that thus it behoved they should have been made, to be fit creatures of His ordering and accepting, and that He made them thus after the behest of His own un- created reason, and in the light of His ethical truth and righteousness, and governs them and holds them ever subor- dinate to His own moral glory and authority ; it is in such a presence only, that I reverently cover my face, and fall pros- trate, and cry from my inwai'd sjjirit, " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty ;" " Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory," " Thou art worthy O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power, for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are, and were created." In this is the very essence of personality, that it may assume in its own right the authority to control its own agency ; and may lay claim to the high prerogative of being an end, and must resist whatsoever would degrade it to be used as a means to any other than its own end. In this is Conscience ; which must forbid all intrusion from any possi- ble source within its own domain, and in violation of its own end as moral character. And in this also is Will ; tliat the act is not nature necessitated in its conditions, nor alone pure spontaneity in its blindness, but held in control by that witness of what is due to itself as personality ; and thus possessing that inward spring in the interest of its own 438 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. worthiness, which may resist, and shut out, and beat down, all that would seduce or force it from allegiance to the claims of its own dignity. Nor except in the possession of such intrinsic excellence and dignity of being, and for the behest of which every thing else must be trodden undei' foot, can there be an agency, however mighty, or skillful, or beneficent, that may be permitted to take rank among per- sonalities ; but at the highest must be put among utilities, which may command its own price, but can never claim a reverence for its own dignity. We thus come to the safe conclusion, that in order to personality the absolute must have, not only the element of pure spontaneity, which would give autocracy, but moreover that inward witness of its own worth and dignity which makes itself end and not means, and which gives pm^e Autonomij. 3. Pure spontaneity in the absolute is simple act, stand- ing above all the conditions of force, and thus above all necessity as nature. But mere spontaneity is blind action, aimless and lawless, and though essential to personality is not itself sufficient for it. Pure autonomy is end above nature, and in its own intrinsic excellency worthy to be end itself and thus a law to its own action. It gives the inward witness of a right to hold on to its own Avorthiness as end in every action ; and that it behoves itself never to let its action become subservient to any end that collides with its own dignity ; and thus affords the spring within itself, in the interest of its own excellency, to control and direct its own agency. The intrinsic excellency and dignity of the being gives its own law to the action of the being, and hence it is no longer pure spontaneity merely, but sponta- neity under law, viz., the behest of its own intrinsic excel- ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 439 lency, Tliis antithesis of pure spontaneity and pure auto- nomy has its point of indiiference — /. e,, a point in which pure spontaneity combines witli or comes under the auto- nomy, and is no longer mere spontaneity but spontaneous act governed ; and also in which the pure autonomy com- bines with the spontaneity, and is no longer mere autonomy but self-law governing. We have, thus, not the two ele- ments in their separate singularity, as set over the one against the other; but in their interaction as in synthesis one with the other, so that we may say that neither is ex- tinct, and that neither in itself is, but a terthim quid is, which may be called indifferently a self-act governed, or a self-law governing. In this synthesis of self-action and self- law a will first emerges, and the very essence of person as distinct from thing is in the possession of will. In this only can the being have possession of his own action, and in this having of his action comes his capacity to behave. Respon- sibility to his inner self calls for perpetual allegiance to the authority of this inner sovereignty. In the absolute unde- rived I am, this self-agency and self-law is ever in perfect synthesis, undisturbed by any intruding act or colUding law from any possible quarter, and thus ever a pure will in the tranquillity of its perfect holiness. When, therefore, we have the element of pure sponta- neity and pure autonomy in synthesis, we have a tJiird rea- son-cognition in a com])leted personality, which is pure lib- erty. Without spontaneity the absolute must be linked in the necessitated successions of nature ; without autonomy it must be mere blind and lawless action ; but in the syn- thesis of these there is a will, which may make its alterna- tive to any foreign end, or agency, or law that car obtrude 440 THE REASON IX ITS IDEA. itself, and thus a liberty. A will in liberty is completed personality. It is important that we come accm\ate]y to discriminate this reason-cognition of pure liberty from all the false and spurious understanding-cognitions of freedom with which it is often confounded ; or rather above which it has very gen- erally been denied that it is possible for the intellect to reach ; and thus, by denjang the possible conception of pure liberty, the entire province of the supernatural has really been discarded. The Deity, proposed to the faith of many an assumed Theist, has been in this way a mere Nciticratus ; a deity bound utterly in the discursive connections of sub- stance and cause. In vain Avill any assumed terms, bor- rowed from the supernatural, be brought in to assist us; without a pure liberty we can not rise above nature. In the operations of cause and effect, when the work is unhindered by any opposition, it is often said that nature is free. But all application of the term freedorn, to nature must be with a different acceptation than that it is pure lib- erty. Nature can in none of its operations be found as an agent controlling its action for itself as end, but is every where going out into effects in which there can be no rest- ing as end, but which always exist only as means to a fur- ther end. Nature is whollv a means, and can never cease its action as if it had found its consummation in itself, and had thereby satisfied itself; but must work on interminably, and ever in the line that a previous condition has made al- ready to be necessity. It may be free in this acceptation, that its development has nothing in advance to condition it, and thus its work goes on unhindered. The progressus of cause and effect finds ever an open and unobstructed path- ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION'. 441 way. But in all cases the working of nature must be con- ditioned by something from behind, and urged forward by a force a tergo, both that it must be, and be just what it be- comes. In no one step of nature is there any alternative ; from what already is, that step which is now proximately future must be taken, and must be so taken as has already been conditioned. There is no autonomy, no will, no per- sonality, consequently no liberty. Again, the animal is often said to choose, and that choice is freedom. But the word choice is very ambiguous ; and the freedom of choice may be equivocal, with very different meanings in different applications. The anhna is a sensi- tive nature superinduced upon a vegeta / and animal life is as truly nature as vegetable Hfe. The force of vegetative life is, also, superinduced upon material being ; but all the distinguishable forces in material being and that of vegeta- tion are alike nature. And now of all, we may say that they have their affinities or congenialities, and that they thus make selections, and in all cases this selecting may be a force which works unhindered ; but by whatever name we call it, we shall be able to see that so far as its freedom is concerned it is in all cases alike, and is simply that of un- hindered causation ; not at all, that Avhich from the end of its own worthiness can bring in an ethical spring as alterna- tive to nature's conditions, and thus in liberty. Chemical combinations select according to conditioning elective affini- ties ; crystalline formations select the homogeneous from the heterogeneous ; the magnet selects the steel-filings from saw- dust; the fire selects the stubble from the stones; the plant selects its own congenial nourishment ; the ox selects grass, and the tiger selects flesh ; but all these varieties of selec* 19* i42 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. tion are alike in nature, and necessitated by their conditions. We may give the name of choice to the animal selection ; but it is not because there is any approach toward a will in liberty, that may supply an alternative to nature's condi- tions ; and if it seem less appropriate to say the fire chooses than that the animal chooses, it is only as we permit our- selves to be deluded with the false play of the understand- ing, which would assume to rise from thing and approach to person, by merely modifying discursive conditions. The " half-reasoning elephant," and the " architectural beaver ;" the " cunning fox," and the " sagacious dog," all rise to the exercise of a force which concludes in a judgment according to conditions in the sense, and thus come quite Avithin the * province of an understanding, and we may thus be less of- fended by applying to them the attributes of personality than to manimate, insensate matter ; but the one is no more removed from the fixed chain of conditions in nature than the other, and the action of the most intelligent animal is as little in liberty, and as truly necessitated by previous condi- tions, as the fire or the magnet. All is controlled by the sentient nature, which in every act has its condition in some already conditioned events, and which no amount of sagac- ity can lift out of the bondage of necessity. That its action in a change of perceived circumstances changes, is no more an index of choice in liberty, than that the current of the stream changes its direction when it meets the obstacle thrust in the way '■^ its progress. Tlie conditions at the time are the events which have come out from a previous period, and are themselves the conditioning facts of what is next to arise; and amid such conditions, neither the magnet, the stream, the vegetable, nor the animal, can bring in the ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 443 interest of a dignity in its own personality, as spring to carry itself against, or to throw itself out of the necessitated successions of nature. All its freedom is this, an unhin- dered progression in following down the current of nature's conditions. The choices of animal nature are component links in this iron chain as truly as the effects of gravity. Il is controlled by appetite and thus by nature, not by its own behest in reason, and thus in hberty. Hence the animal is ever thing, and never person ; it has a price, but not a dig- nity. Man, also, by so much as he is sentient, is atiimal only. All the cravings of his sensory are constitutional and thus conditioned, and the action in an appetite and in its gratifi- cation is wholly of nature. As animal alone, man has no will in liberty, and thus no moi"e a personality that the brute "which perisheth. Except as man has a higher endowment than a sentient nature, and in which he may find an inner Avitness of an intrinsic excellency and dignity, that forbid all prostitution of itself to be used as means to gain any end of the sensory, but which is imperative that all possible gratifi- cation of sentient nature shall be wholly controlled and even thrust aside and beat down for the higher end of its own worthiness, and which may thus take hold uj^on an interest in its own excellency of being, and resist and subjugate all the clamorous appetites of sense, and hold them in perpet- ual servitude to its own ethical end, he neither has nor can have any personality nor responsibiHty, inasmuch as other- •wise he can possess no will in liberty. He may bow his per- sonality to the ends of animal gratification, and in his depravity make the ethical to serve the sensual ; but it is because of this inner witness of intrinsic excellency and dignity de- 444 THE REASON IK ITS IDEA. graded and debased, that he has remorse as a gnawing woi'm. His personality in his will is thus enslaved to sense and subjected to nature, but it can never lay aside its high pre- rogatives and become nature. In its lowest degradation and debasement in guilt, the inner withness of its own intrin- sic rights disregarded and sacrificed will give a perpetual self-condemnation, and urge the behest to reassert and regain its rightful supremacy and authority. Man can only thus sell his liberty to the sense against the constant claims of his own personality, and stand every moment self-condemned in his self-degradation. Were he only animal he would ruminate in quiet enjoyment upon the past croppings of sense ; it is the recoil of the accusing spirit back upon itself in conscious guUt and debasement, that gives the sting to all man's reflections upon his sensuality. Deprive him of this higher endowment and you leave him wholly to nature, and no matter hoAv extensive his force of understanding in generalizing his own and his fellow's experience, and attain- ing the rules of prudence and benevolence ; he can make neither to be an end, except as he find the want already in the sensory, and that want as conditioned in nature will condition the act, and link that also in the necessities of nature. But, in determining to the absolute his own right to be himself his end of action, in the dignity of his own excel- lency, and thus to control his pure activity by his own worthiness as ethical law, and that whatever may be the ends proposed out of himself he may fix upon them or utterly exclude them according to this behest in the inner witnessing of the rights of his own being, we have that ELEMENTS OF COMPREHENSION. 445 self-agency and self-law which is spring for alternative action to any ends possible to be presented, and thus is ever pure \vill in the sovereignty of its perfect law of liberty. He is a personahty above nature, who may steady Himself against the obtrusion of all ends in a real nature of things or all archetypes in a possible nature of things, and stand utterly unconditioned by an actual or a possible series of condition and conditioned, and answer only to the supreme, all-con- trolling ethical claims of his inner being, viz., that he magnify his own worthiness as his highest good, and the absolute end and right. This is quite other than the free- dom of unhindered causality ; or, the choices of sentient nature that go out in gratification for conditioned wants ; even the acts of rational Personality in a will, which, though not lawless, has only an ethical law in Hberty. That may be said to be the good, will^ in the acceptation of the holy will, which is pure spontaneous act under the ethical law of its OAvn dignity as person ; which knows no colliding end with the ethical law ; which preserves the per- fect tranquillity of finding every end in his own interest perfectly conformed to the ethical end of his own Avorthi- ness ; and thus never subjected to the conflict of a law in himself with a law out of himself. That would be the good will in the sense of the virtuous will, which has the colliding of sensual end with ethical end, but which in the conflict ever valorously beats back and subordinates the sen- sual end. Such may ever have the peace of a strong and watchful government, but never the tranquillity of perfect love. This is self-regnant, the other self-complacent. The Divine will must ever be the purely holy will in its tranquillity. The Absolute, as pure Uncreated Reason, can 446 THE REASOX IN ITS IDEA. have no ends appealing to any interest in collision with that which is the highest ethical law of Reason ; ever to act according to his own rationality, or, as the same thing, worthy of himself. It is thus in the same sense " impossible that God should lie" as it is that " He can not deny Himself." He " ever abideth faithful,' inasmuch as within the person- ality of the absolute reason, it would be absurd that there should be an interest that should collide with the highest rationality. All possible ends must, to the Absolute Reason, be held in subordination to its own end, and this is the con- trol of pure spontaneity by a pure autonomy, and which, as furnishing an alternative to all possible ends as interest, is pure Liberty. These three. Spontaneity, Autonomy, and Liberty, are all the elements which determine Personality ; and, as in the Ideal of the Absolute, determined in His per- sonality, we are to comprehend universal nature, so in these, we have the primitive Elements of an operation of Com- prehension. SECTION III THE A PRIORI COMPREHENSION OP NATURE IN THE PITRK PERSONALITY OP THE ABSOLUTE. Personality involves pure spontaneity under a pur autonomy, and this is the sole condition of pure liberty. It is a capacity of action in will, and possesses within itself the spring of an alternative to any possible external end which may be proposed to it. This is pure self-determination ; not as arbitrament with no end, for this would be the absurdity of A PRIOKI COMPREHENSION OF NATURE. 447 a determination undermined ; but an arbitrament from the ethical end of its own excellency, and to the ethical end of its own worthiness. The supreme intrinsic excellency of the absolute, as person, is itself the reason and the ethical behest that he should not be a means to any end out of Himself It behoves that he be the user of all possible things, and that he be used by nothing possible. His own agency should be directed by those rights which are insepar- able from his own excellency. All right as ethical exists in personality, and is founda- tion for the peremptory demand that nature as servant shall find its end in the person, and that no possible end in nature shall be permitted by the person to hold himself in bondage to it. Finite personalities must in this respect be in the likeness of the absolute person, and each be an end in him- self which he may never subordinate to any end in nature without violating the rights of personality and making him- self tjuiltv of self-degradation. It would thus involve an ethical absurdity that the absolute person, for whose use is all possible nature, might use the finite personality as he may use nature. Nature is not end itself, and can have no rights, and can therefore never rise above the instrumental ; personality, even finite, has rights which it would be an unworthiness in the absolute to disregard or invade. The ultimate end and supreme good of the Divine dignity will give an ethical behest that all of material and sentient nature be used as thing^ and that all of moral being be treated as person. A sovereignty suisreme and universal, legislating and governing in the right and for the end of his own dignity with a purely holy will, must control the mate- rial and moral worlds, by widely diiFerent laws ; condition- 448 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. iug all of the formei- in the necessitated connections of nature, and holding all of the latter to the responsibilities of " the witness within" as the perfect law of liberty. Nature must glorify its maker as thing to be used for an end not its own ; finite personality, as offspring of the Deity, must glorify God in the joyful service which it is its own ethical end lovingly to render. But such conception of personality, which may originate action from a spring within itself and control a consumma- tion that shall be w^holly for itself, is exclusively a reason-con- ception. To the understanding, all that is personality, or a will in liberty, must be AvhoUy without signification. Its functions can only connect discursively and never contemplate existence comprehensively ; and that there should be action from a being who may originate and consummate withm him- self, must to it be utterly unintelligible. But if we will keep our philosophy here wholly within the province of the super- natural, and not permit the illusions of discursive connections in an understanding to obtrude themselves upon us, we may surely and soundly attain to an a priori demonstration. In order to this it is now quite necessary to guard against any deceptive ambiguities in the terms which it may be conven- ient we should here use. We have transcended the whole region of phenomena as the qualities and events constructed in place and period, and our use of the word attribute, as applied to the elements of personality, must not be consid- ered at all the phenomenal quality which inheres in a space- filling substance, and may be given in sensation and con- structed in a definite quantity. And so, moreover, have we transcended all the region of the notional, which as substances and causes connect nature A PRIORI COMPREHENSION OF NATURE. 449 in a universe ; and when we now use the terms influence^ power^ essence, or source as referable to person, we must not at all consider these as the physical forces, which in nature may be made to push or pull and thereby modify and dis- place existing things. Even Avhen it is convenient to borrow words from the understanding, and thus bring up the terras from the natural to the supernatural, and call the absolute a ^irst Cause, and speak of the behest of his own dignity as causative determiner of his acts, or of the will as causality of the personal agency, we are by no means to allow our- selves to come under the delusion, as if with the terms there had come up the things of nature, and that such supernatural causation had any connection with nature's causes in their necessitated conditions. If the words are sometimes bor- rowed, the meanings must never be confounded. The attri- butes and causalities of the supernatural both transcend and comprehend the qualities and causalities of the natural. All the substantiality and causality of nature originate in, and are used by, the absolute will in liberty. Thus carefully dis- criminating our reason-conceptions of personality from all understauding-conceptions of things in nature, we now pro- ceed to the consideration of a possible comprehension of universal nature in the absolute personality. As incorporeal and uncreated reason and will, the abso- lute has his own spring of action within himself, and in this a power in liberty which is wholly above and sqiarate from all force in nature, and which may be creative of force. He may originate simple acts which, in their own simplicity, have no counter-agency and can therefore never be brought under any of the conditions of space and time and nature. From his own inner capacity of self-determination he 450 MH E REASON IX ITS IDEA. • may designedly put simple acts in counteraction and at their point of counter-agency a force begins which takes a position in space and occu2:)ies an instant in time. There is a begin- ning in something where nothing was; and this has position, mstant, and permanence. The perpetuated energizing in counteraction is creation in progress, inasmuch as force accu- mulates about that point of antagonism, and enspheres itself upon it as a center ; and a space is thereby filled, which may be conjoined in a definite figure ; a time is thus occupied which maybe conjoined in a definite period; and an impene- trable substance is made, which may give content in a sensi- bility, and be conjoined in a definite phenomenon. Above that [loint of counter-agency all is simple activity — unphe- nomenal and unsubstantial, and having all its essentiality in the power of the supernatural as v,-ill in liberty ; in, and below that point all is force — phenomenal in the perception of the sense, and substantial and causal in tlie judgment of the understanding, and existing as physical nature in its necessitated conditions. In this substance, place in its own one whole of space is determinable ; and in this also, as source for successive events, period in one whole of time may be determined ; and thus an existence is given in a space and a time, Avhich can not come and depart as in a mirror or a dream. The energizing of the absolute will may fill so much of this one whole of space, and do this in so much of this one whole of time, as shall be directed by the archetypa rule of his artistic wisdom ; and may give the modifications of distinguishable forces, also, in accordance with such rule ; and all for the end of his own worthiness : and thus, at the fiat of the absolute will, nature is, Avith all her substances, causes and reciprocal forces, and with all the tribes of vege- A PRIORI COMPREHENSION OF NATURE. 451 table, animal, and human beings. God need only to will it, " and for His pleasure they are." Xature henceforth goes on in her development according to the law of physical forces, and is perpetually a natura naturans ; but, at the great central point of all counter-working, and in all the points of a superposition of distinguishable forces, a condi- tionins: of nature is determined bv the absolute in his own liberty, and thus all nature is still natura naturata. Physi- cal causes perpetually work on, and all is thus causa causans ; but all these causes are conditioned in their sources by the self-determining will of the nb-olute, and are thus causa causata. The power wliieh imposes conditions upon nature, and gives causality to causes, is wholly aboA'e all the condi- tions and causes of nature, and with nothing of the neces- sities of physical force, has no other controller than the supreme artistic -v^-isdom under the behest of the absolute in liberty. And still further, while this space-filling force takes its place in space, and is impenetrable, inasmuch as it can admit the substance of no other space-filling force into its locality except in its own displacement, so also is all the reflex action of this engendered and ensphered force sustained upon the central point of the primal antagonism. Action and reaction, attraction and repulsion, centripetal and centrifugal agency fill the whole sphere of universal nature ; but no working of physical forces can press back of the central point in which they have their genesis, and invade the world of the supernatural. The Deity needs but to will the coun- teraction in its perpetuated force, and universal nature finds its equilibrium in the repulsion from the center and the reflex pressure to the center, and holds itself suspended on its own conditioned forces, without the possibility of any weariness 452 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. or exhaustion to its maker. It is wholly the product of the Divine will, and wholly the act of the absolute ; and while utterly dependent for its being upon the Divine will, can yet never react upon or in any way condition the being and agency of the omnipotent producer. It is thereby a verita- ble creation distinct from its creator, of which it may intelli- gently be affirmed, that the creator is conditional for it, but it in no wise conditions the creator. Within it are contained all the series of conditioned and thus of necessitated succes- sions ; and from the rudimental germs in their primal crea- tion as distinguishable forces, is already determined the fact and the order of development. The conditions for enspher- ing worlds ; for centripetal and centrifugal forces, and the ratios of their action both as to quantity and distance from the center ; their revolutions upon their axes, and their orbits about their primaries ; and the relative inclination of the planes of these orbits, and of the axes of the spheres to them, and of the proportions of the axes of each to their equatorial diameters ; and, in short, the whole formal arrange- ments of the universe are given in the very points where the primordial forces have their genesis ; as is also the whole science of natui-e in its original bi-polar, chemical, crystalline, vegetable and animal forces. An a priori philosophy may long be detained in this broad field, before it shall be com- petent to detect all these forces in their distinguishable rudi- ments, but their laws, and thus all their possible conditioned changes, have already been settled in their creation, and may be determined. All this context of conditions, constituting universal nature, is dependent, while the absolute maker is wholly independent ; it is his creature and subjected to his use. A PRIORI COMPREHENSION OF NATURE. 453 He is its Lord, and has the right of sovereignty over it to make it subservient to the end of His own dignity. It is, only because He is ; and the ethical behest of his own ex- cellency has summoned it to fill its place, and endure its time, and subserve His purpose. God made it, and is wholly independent of it ; and thus both Atheism and Pantheism are utterly excluded, in this reason-cognition of the absolute as person. This determination of an origm to nature, in its own space and time, is a complete comprehension of nature on the side of nature's beginning. And now, that on the other side we may comprehend nature in its conswnma.tion^ we have the same compass of an all-embracing reason in the absolute ■ as personality, and who as having the final end of all His agency in Himself, must STOvern and direct all of nature to the end for which it has been created by Him. The Supreme Architect must have the archetypes of all possible nature in His own sub- jective apprehension. There is no inward craving want of a sensory, which may subject the will to the bondage of a blind necessity in going out to gratify it, nor put the will in a perpetually militant attitude in resisting it ; but there is the one high and controlling behest of His own excellency, that every possible end shall be determined in subserviency to the right of His own worthiness. It is the highest ra- tionality, that the absolute reason be Himself the end of all ends. This inward ethical spring to all action finds no pos- sible collision in the Divine bosom, and nothing hinders His will in the sweet and loving execution of an eternally steady and tranquil disposing of itself to the ultimate end of His own glory. In this is pure and perfect holiness ; and it will control the artistic selection and execution, from amid all 464 THE EEASON IN ITS IDEA. possible archetypal creations, to that which will be most worthy of His own making and accepting. There is a measuring of things by things, but no thing can be an ab- solute good. The measure of all things is in the personal ity of reason , and the absolute reason is the perfection and glory of aU possible persons ; and whatever magnifies His dignity will include the exaltation of finite personality. Tho supreme good for all moral personality is this unbroken reign of the Divine Holiness. And this grand end in aU the works of God must secure an optimism in nature, as the product of His creative power. His will must be on that archetype which in the end of His reason is the most reason- able ; in the end of supreme loveliness, is the most lovely ; in the end of an excellency above all price, is the most ex- cellent ; and in the presence of a dignity where all finite worth fades, is the most worthy. In this autocracy and autonomy of the Deity, we have the ultimate and complete measure of His creation. In the tranquil self-possession of a perfectly holy will lies his eter- nal purpose ; and the steady agency moves on in artistic wisdom, to the fulfillment of His settled counsel. Material worlds and systems, with their distinguishable forces as sub- stances in their causality, are made and arranged in their order and perfection of mechanical adaptation, action and movement ; and the rich abundance and beauty, which veg- etative life throws over the surface of the green earth, are brought out ; and the changing seasons with the changing years roll on, and day and night, and " sweet return of morn and eve " are in perpetual alternations. But not in this perfection of arranged forces, though worthy of the power and manifold wisdom of the absolute maker, shall we A. PBIOEI COMPREHENSION OF NATURE. 455 find the ultimate end for which the Ahuighty works. He is more than artistic perfection, and may not permit His action to be exhausted in the satisfaction of the artist. He is architect only in subserviency to a higher end in a higher excellency, and material worlds with all their furniture exist only as instruments to be used for a higher behest. Sen- tient tribes of living beings peojjle these wide fields, and gather the good harvest of nature, and live in gladness and joy on this bounty, and thus in addition to the wider action of artistic skill in the adaptations of material, vegetable and animal nature, we have the much higher product of animal enjoyment and happiness. But God is good in the accepta- tion of bountiful and beneficent, only that it may subserve a much higher intrinsic excellency in His being, than that He should be benevolent. Human beings, to whom may be given an intelligent apprehension of that which is rule for their highest happiness, and an immortality, that they might endlessly obey and enjoy, would so far be only of nature ; and their rule of life, a generalization of expei'ience as they found it to be ; and their obligation to obey, not any thing of ethical worth and dignity, but solely as slaves to a nature than can pay in pleasure or in pain. Their ultimate master would be the power of the leviathan who may caress or tor- ture ; and tlieir only virtue would be that they work on with the eye on the greatest wages before them, and the consciousness of the lash behind. But God is author of the nature which rewards and punishes, for a much higher end in Himself than that so He must do if He would satisfy a want He finds in Himself to be made happy by making others happy. This would leave Him the slave to a neces- sity as tvrannical as that of the animal, and stretch the 456 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. iron chain of nature completely around Him. There is here nowhere a will in liberty but the mere brute arhitriutn of nature's strongest craving. The Deity should not thus ex- haust his action in giving laws to nature, from w4iich the rules of prudence in attaining the greatest happiness on the whole may be derived, and this only to sit by and enjoy Himself the happiness, which this on-going of nature may work out for Him in the perceived happiness of His crea- tures. It is no possible craving want to be gratified that can be the ultimate end and law of the absolute power, and which must at once condition the absolute, and exclude from the prerogative of personality with a will in liberty ; but it is an ethical interest in reason alone, which in its own right demands when and how and what the happiness shall be, and what artistic arrangements shall be given to nature, con- ditioning the happiness it shall work out. God will keep His benevolence subservient to His holiness, and make it to find its end in His own worthiness, and impart happiness in no way that shall be derogatory to His essential excellency and dignity. And this discloses at once the crowning end of the whole physical creation, with all its sentient happi- ness, viz., that it may subserve a personal and moral crea- tion, in its advancement of virtue and holiness to such a de- gree of dignity and moral worth, as the ethical behest of His own person will admit that the absolute Author should secure. The absolute fully compi-ehends Himself, and fathoms all the depths of His own being, and has other and fiir higher capabilities than any material or sentient organizations can exhaust. To create and superintend the development of A PRIORI COMPREHENSION OF NATURE. 457 only such forces could not reach the ultimate end of His own worthiness, inasmuch as it would be a termination in the less while He held Avithin Himself the archetypes of the greater, and involve the absurdity that the absolute rea- son should satisfy itself with something other tlian reason. Its behest must be the maximum of archetype, and the con- Bxunmation of working. A moral world — a system made up of varied orders and ranks of persons in liberty — will be brought into existence ; and thus, the congeniality of accord- ant being, in reciprocal communion and affection, will be disclosed. There may then be an ethical society, governed by the spring which the "inward witness" of what is due to each in the worthiness of His own personality shall give; and the whole rewarding itself, in the blessedness which accrues to each in the holiness and blessedness of all, and God and His moral creation come together in a reciprocity of holy love. Somewhere, this moral world will be brought in connection with the conditions of the physical world ; and all the adaptations of material, vegetable, and sentient being be found to have their end in the interests of the moral system. A race of beings, compounded of the mate- rial, sentient and moral, may be created ; and thus that which is personal becomes incai'nate, and the free is sub- jected to the colliding action of the necessitated, and per- sonal liberty is put upon its probation in conflict with the conditioned force of nature, and through this one point of connection with nature, a modifying influence is consequently carried over all the sphere of moral being. God will use the natural for the ends of the moral ; and he will govern the moral, by ethical laws and influences which origii.ate in the behest of his own intrinsic excellency and digni*,y. 20 458 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. When the ends of natui-e are kept wholly subordinate to the ethical end of personality, then are the physical and the moral worlds in harmony, and the entire creation of God is good, and " the morning stars sing together." Sin may enter by any prostitution of an ethical claim to a physical want, or by any assumption of the finite reason above its proportionate excellency, and become a soul-sin, but this must be somewhere below the Creator, and from the creature-personality ; inasmuch as no colliding want can reach to the absolute, and sin enter through him ; and no moral responsibility to an " inner witness" can be found in physical nature, and sin inhere in it. Through any finite personality sin may come in ; and that it should come in somewhere, in any possible modification of a moral system in its necessary subjection to a conditioned nature, may be a certainty to the omniscience of the absolute, except in such interposition for prevention as would compromit the higher ultimate end in the behest of his own dignity. God may not lay aside his own dignity, and act unworthy of his own excellency, to save a moral creation from riiin. He may not leave the throne of sovereignty, ethically his in his own intrinsic excellency, and permit himself to be used as a servant and instrument for some other end that then takes the throne ; even though it be the holiness and blessedness of a moral universe. What he may do, he will do to ex- clude sin ; both in the use of sentient nature as a penalty, and when sin has entered, in its use as a tabernacle for di- vinity to " set forth a propitiation, to declare his righteous- ness ;" but not for the prevention of nor the redemption from sin will God " deny himself" He will so create nat- ural and moral worlds, and so arrange them in their connec- A PEIOBI COMPREHENSION OF NATURE. 459 tions, and so act upon them in all his agency, as shall com- pletely meet the end of his own worthiness ; and give that archetype as the pattern for artistic wisdom, which, of all possible ways for creating energy and governmental influ- ence to go forth, shall be most reasonable, most lovely, most righteous and holy, when tried in his presence, and by the ethical rights and claims of his own personality. This must comprehend every event in nature, every act in the moral world, and conclude the entire creation in that final consum- mation of the whole plan and work, when it shall be worthy to be presented to, and accepted by the God and Judge of all. Then shall come the full and eternal chorus, "and every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, shall be heard saying, Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." Here, therefore, in the complete ideal of the absolute in personality, it is possible that we may attain to a perfect and entire comprehension of nature, and indeed of all crea- tion physical and moral. A nature of things may originate in the Deity as personal creator in libei'ty, and stand out distinct from, and wholly excluded from all conditioning reaction upon, tlie Deity; while itself is dependent upon, and subjected to, his supreme will. We no longer seek a resting place through the discursions of the under- standing, where we must ever be hastening the foot- step from the conditioned to a higher condition ; but we have found a conception for a safe and permanent source of all things, in the self-sufliciency of an absolute, personal Deity. Nor do we run on the interminable line of final 460 THE REASON IN ITS IDEA. causes, and find one thing to end only in that which must yet run on to some further end ; but we have a sianmum honum^ and ultimate end, in the intrinsic worth and rever- ence due to the absolute personal God, before whom all his creation should stand uncovered. The chain of nature's conditioned events may lengthen down the depths of the void below, but the hand out of which it comes forbids aU anxiety lest unsupported it should fall, and nature be extin- guished ; or, lest it should go on downward with no aim but to lose itself in unfathomed emptiness. Xature has a beginning ; a guide ; a consummation ; and in this, nature is completely comprehended ; nor is it possible that in any other manner, it should find its comj)rehension. The complete Idea of the Reason, as faculty for an ope- ration of Comprehension, is thus given in the compass of the Absolute in personality. Nature may he comprehended in a pure Spontaneity^ Autonomy^ and Liberty : or, which is the same thing — Reason may comprehend Nature in the compass of an Absolute Person, CHAPTER II. THE REASON IN ITS OBJECTIVE LAWc -oOCO=»- FINITE AND ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. Comprehension determines things in their origin ami their consummation, and which we have already seen is only to be effected through a free personality. Sense can merely conjoin in definite place and period, and thereby give in consciousness the arising and departing phenome- non; but can not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth. An understanding can merely connect the phenom- ena in their substances and causes, and thereby give to the flowing events in nature a perduring substratum of exist- ence which ever is, and only changes its modes of being and manifestation ; but can not say, what is origin for this sub- stance in its causality, nor to what consummation these changes in nature are tending. It may go up and down the interminable series of changing events, but can by no means overleap the linked conditions and determine from whence the whole have come, nor whither the whole will find their end ; and in such perpetual running from link to link there can never be effected a comprehension of the entire chain. 462 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. The reason is the only faculty for comprehending^ and this by encompassing both origin and end in a personal author. We have determined the a priori possibility of such comprehending operation, in the compass of a personality in liberty, and in this have attained to the complete idea of an all-embracing reason. But thus far, the all-comprehending reason is only a void conception. We have not yet found such a comprehending faculty in actual being and operation. So it may be ; so, if a-t all, it must be ; but that so it ^s, we have yet to find. Our remaining task is this, that \sq take any facts which may present themselves in the whole field of a comprehending agency and find whether they come at once within the actual colligation of this law of free person- ahty. It is incumbent, that from these various facts, we should show that a comprehension of things reaches so far as, and no farther than, an applied law of personality in lib- erty reaches. This will give the accordance of Idea and Law which has all along been our criterion of true science. This will perfect our entire Psychological System ; but as in the sense and the understanding we gave an outhne of the Ontological Demonstration of their objects, we will here do the same for the objects of the reason — The Soul, God, and Immortality. We shall find an occasion for distinguishing these facts of a comprehending agency and putting them into two sep- arate classes, accordingly as they belong to a world of a finite or of an absolute personality. We shall find that a finite personality is the compass by which we comprehend one class of these facts, and the abso- lute personality the compass by which we comprehend the other ; and to mark the distinction between these, it is im- / FINITE AND ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 463 portant that we familiarize ourselves to the following con- siderations. We may speak of a sensorium^ reached hy any content as quality given in an organ of sense, and thus excited, becoming capacity for sensation ; and all this Avill lie wholly within the fixed conditions of nature ; and the phenomena which it will give occasion for constructing in consciousness, and thus all perceptions, will stand wholly within necessitated conditions. We may also speak of a sensory as more deeply subjective, reached by the perceived objects and thus excited becoming capacity for appetite in any way of a constitu- tional craA'ing or want, and all this will be within the linked conditions of nature ; and the desires, as well as percep- tions, will be necessitated. The entire sensibility, call it sensorium or sensory, capacity for perceiving or wanting, is wholly within nature. The percejitions of objects may vary, and remembered consequences of former gratifications may modify desires, and changed circumstances may demand a changed course of action to secure the object wanted, and all this will induce a judgment relative to the ends of a sentient natuie accord- ing to what is actually given in the sense, and which must thus change as the perceived circumstances and wants have changed ; but all this will still be controlled wholly by the conditions of nature, and an animal understanding will be mere instinctive subtlety or brute sagacity, and held com- pletely in servitude to the conditions imposed upon it. Even should we admit a gefneralizing of all experience, and there- by a rule of highest gratification in the aggregate, and in this the dictate of prudence ; the whole would still be within the bondage of necessity, and the perception and the appe- 464 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. tite and the judgment all conditioned in nature,' and no other prerogative would be gained than a mere expansion of an animal understanding necessitated in all its judgments, its wants, and its gratifications. Its aggregate want in its pru- dential judgment would be conditioned and would itself con- dition the act to gratify, as truly as in the craving of parti- cular appetites. In no way can the merely sentient force rise above nature. Man has within him, all the distinguishable forces of material being ; and, as material, is conditioned in nature as truly as the clods on which he treads. He has also animal life ; yet this, in th'e furthest extension of sentient wants and sentient gi-atifications, and in the highest generaUzations of consequences in an attained experience, gives to him no prerogatives above his fellows of the stall or of the stye ; but he, equally mth all animal nature, is wrapped about by the iron chain of necessitated successions. The degree is nothing but a consideration of a longer or a shorter chain ; the kind of connections, as animal, in man and in brute is the same. We have in nature, throughout, a superinducing of distinguishable forces one upon another, the last using the former for its own ends, yet itself still held in all the conditions of the former but as it overrules without extin- guishing them ; and in this, different grades of space-filling substances are given, while all are ensphered about a com- mon center, the whole of Avhich is the physical tmiversey bound every where in conditions which make it a fixed nature of things through its perpetual development. And, again, in contradiction to the physical we have the ethical icorld. The intrinsic excellency of the absolute is the central law of the moral universe. The spirit of God riNITE AND ABSOLUTE PERSON ALITY. 465 knoweth perfectly what is in God, and this inner witness of his own excellency and dignity is the consciousness of his own right, and what alone is worthy of him, and is thus inner law as a divine conscience in the autonomy of his own being. In this is also an ethical spring for the direction of his own agency, and in this self-determining capacity lies the Divine will. And as, moreover, there is in this will, self- determined in the riojht of his own excellencv, an alternative to any other end Avhich can be presented, than his own dig- nity, so there is here a ^\■ill in liberty. This determines per- sonality to the Deity ; and as ever self determined in self- complacency, with no colliding ends to disturb the perpetual tranquillity, we have in this, properly, the Holy and the EVER BLESSED GOD. Man, as spiritual, is the offspring of the Deity, and although only finite rationality is yet in the very likeness of the absolute reason. To every finite spirit there is the inward witness of its own intrinsic dignity and excellence, and thus a knowledge of what is worthy of itself in its own righteous claim, and thereby a conscience as law within written on the heart. In this is spring for an alternative to any colliding end that may come before the man, and thus a will in liberty is his endowment. The yielding of the good will to any colliding end whatever is a degrading servitude, and makes it to be a depraved will ; and the valorous beating back and holding in subjection every want of nature to the worthi- ness of the spiritual, becomes the virtuous will. The will of the holy God and of the ■snrtuous man are directed by the same principle, the iiftrinsic excellency and dignity of the spiritual ; and the inner witness differs only in this, that in God it is an absolute reason and in man it is a finite ration- 20* 466 fHE REASON IN ITS LAW. ality, which in its excellence gives energy to conscience. The will of God, in whatever way made known to man, will thus come to his conscience as the right of the absolute, and which it will he imperative that he should obey on the • ground that the finite excellency can not otherwise maintain its own worthiness, but must really debase itself by any rebellion against the absolute, and bring the conviction of degradation and guilt to its own conscience ; and where there is this disobedience of the finite, it will behoove that the absolute inflict penalty on the ground that thus he should vindicate his ow^n dignity, and sustain a worthiness that must be reverenced. The intrinsic excellence of rational spirit is every where end and law, and the inward witness of what is its right is the ULTIMATE EIGHT ; and every where holds all personality responsible each to his own conscience. The absolute right includes the finite, and in this harmonizes all possible ethical claim thi-ough all possible persons, and makes of all possible grades of spiritual being an ensphered moral universe. Any part acts unworthy of itself and in violation of the right of the whole, when any colliding want carries the will in servi- tude to it; and the vindictive penalty for such violation must be made to meet every sinner, through his own con- science. In this, we have an ensphered moral world, held together by the law of liberty, as the ensphei"ed physical world is held together by the law of conditioning forces and these two spheres meeting ai^i intersecting in man. So far as man is only material or animal he is wholly nature, so far as he is purely spiritual he is wholly supernatural ; but as the two spheres of nature and of rational spirit come together in man, and thus make him to be neither mere ani- PIXITE AST) ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 467 mal nor pure spirit, we have tliat complex existence which we call a human being. So much of the natural as is thus put in combination with the rational, constitutes that which, as entire, we properly tei'm the icorkl of humanity. The law of the sentient in this woi'ld of humanity is wholly of nature, and may be called appetitive ; the law of the spiritual is "wholly of reason, and may be known as imperative. And now, our object is to gather these facts where there is any comprehension of things in their origin and end, and see whether they may all be held in colligation by this hypo- thesis of a free personality. In nature we shall not expect to find such facts of a comprehending agency on this hypo- thesis, inasmuch as in nature there can be no free personality. Within the field of humanity, inasmuch as we now assume that it is not all nature, we may expect to find some facts to be comprehended in the free though finite personality with which humanity is endowed. But in the broad field encom- passed by Divinity, we must anticipate the most satisfiictory instances of an all-embracing reason, as practicable and actual only through a manifest application of the law of an absolute personality in liberty. If we find the- comprehen- sion to be only as we apply the free personality, and always w^hen we do so, and precisely to the degree in which we are able to do so, it will prove itself to be the actual law, hold- ing all facts of a comprehending reason in colligation by virtue of its own universality. "We shall thus need two Sections for the classification of facts under the finite, and under the absolute personaUty in liberty. osophy of humanity generally, only as the free personality, in every case, is made the compass for originating and con- summating the entire connections of the philosophical sys- tem. If he only takes nature, as experience gives it to him ; FACTS IN FINITE PERSONALITY. 483 he has it just as the animal has it, and is simply an empiric : if he has his own conception of substances and causes as primitive forces, and makes his own discursions through these to his conclusions in a systematic judgment ; then has he a philosophy which is his own as belonging to the universal reason, and is comprehended only as his in these free con- ceptions, and discursions of his own rational being. All philosophy is mere particular fact and not universal truth,, except in the free personality. 4. Psychological Facts. — In our animal sentient nature, we may have a psychology which reaches over the whole field of our conscious experience. The phenomena of the internal sense may be singly apprehended, and even a broad induction of such remembered exj^eriences may be made and generalized and classified, by an understanding judging only by sense. But if all experience could be thus general- ized, it would simply give us a psychology as a fact, and ca- pacitate us to affirm that so experience in consciousness is ; but we could not thus attain any a priori conditions for these mental facts, and determine that so universally human consciousness must be. We should have no universal truth in the operations of mind, and thus no rational psychologi- cal science. But, humanity is competent to reach an a jynori field, quite above and conditional for all consciousness. The pure diversity in space and time can be taken in the reason, and the whole operation of conjunction in all possible definite form be determined. And also the conditional space-filling and time-abiding force, as substance and cause, can be taken in the reason, and all possible operation of connecting events in a nature of things be determined. And once more, the 484 THE REASON IN ITS LA"W. ideal of the absolute may be attained in the reason, and all possible operation of comprehending nature thereby deter- mined. The entire field of intellectual action is thus brought within its a priori conditions, and we have a psychology, not from experience merely, but rationally demonstrated and determining how experience itself is possible. Each man has thus his psychology so far forth, and only so far forth, as he has attained the primitive elements of these in- tellectual operations of conjunction, connection, and compre- hension, and determined their ideal possibihty ; and human- ity in general comprehends just so much of psychological science, as has been a jyriori determined in these operations conditional for all intellectual cognition. All possible intel- lectual apprehension lies before humanity, and by so much as human investigation has already reached, has humanity acquired a true science of mind. We have, therefore, the same law for the facts of com- prehension in psychological science, that we have before found for comprehension in philosophy, mathematics, and aesthetics. Only in the free personality, above and quite in- dependent of a sentient nature, do we originate and con- summate all our psychological demonstrations. We find humanity to have a comprehension of its psychology only as it may move in rational freedom. 5. Ethical Facts. — In all the foregoing facts of a com- preh ending reason in humanity, we have been wholly con- fined to that region where the physical and rational spheres intersect each other, and have found the free personality only in the rational as it could make its spring in its own interest, and thus always originate action alternative to the gratifications of sentient nature ; and yet never rising to the FACTS IX FIXITE PERSONALITY, 486 purely spiritual, as wholly independent of a possible or ideal nature. Esthetic personality stands the lowest in this com- plex region ; above the animal, inasmuch as it may contem- plate beauty and create in the productive imagination its own world of living forms, without any aids or promptings of sense, and solely from its love of the beautiful ; but still below the purely spiritual, inasmuch as all the pure ideals of art must take some form, and be conditioned within a pos- sible nature of things. Scientific personality, whether in mathematics, philosophy, or psychology, stands higher but still within this complex region ; above the animal, for the same reason, that it may pursue science for its own sake, and make for itself its own subjective system, which shall have strict universality beyond all the generalizations of experi- ence ; but yet below the purely spiritual, inasmuch as all its scientific systems, even in their ideal creations, must be con- ditioned in possible nature. The world of taste, though of the free originations of the jDroductive reason, must still have its artistic product put objective in nature, and holding some matter within its living forms of beauty ; and the world of scientific truth, though a free origination of rea- son like art, and higher than art in that it is not conditioned to embrace any content of matter, must stUl be restricted to what is possible to be given in nature, and conditioned within the determinations of space and time ; and thus both beauty and truth, art and science, while possible to be given only in the comprehension of a free personality, are yet in- competent to rise into the region of the purely spiritual divorced from all the conditions of a possible nature, and attain to the dignity of an ethical imperative, which does not merely cheer in its own interest but obliges in its own 486 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. right. There is a comprehension of nature as below human- ity, but not a comprehension of humanity itself as both nat- ural and sujjernatural ; sense and spirit. For this purpose it is necessary that we be able to rise above the intersection of the two spheres and stand wholly and purely within the si^iritual. Iti the play-impulse we rise above the animal ; we attain the interests by which we may cultivate, refine, and enlighten savage humanity, and thus effectually lift man above his brutal instincts and appetites, and this is surely a great achievement and most auspicious beginning ; but we do not thus introduce him to the claims of an ethical life^ and the communings of a spiritual society. Neither the beauty of art, nor the truth of science, while they elevate him above the physical and the animal, can possibly place man among the moral and the immortal. But humanity has the facts of an ethical comprehension, and which give to it that which is its own as solely the ob- ligated and the responsible ; and as higher and more impor- tant than any yet considered, it is now especially incumbent that we attain a clear view of these facts of an ethical com- prehension, and see whether they all come ultimately within the colligation of the same law of a free personality ; the freedom only so much the higher, as the personality by which we encompass the facts is the more exalted. We here need, not merely the aesthetic and the scientific free- man, and thus the artist and philosopher as person ; but the ethic freeman, and thus the sage in his wisdom and virtue. We do not here reach to the sanctions of religion, natural or revealed, because we are not now in the recognition of the absolute, but only the finite personality ; we have a mo- rality in the right of humanity, and we here seek for the FA.CTS IN FINITE PERSONALITY. 487 law of its comprehension. In order to this our hypothesis demands in the facts a spiritual or etliical personality ; and we need under this last division, this important subdivision in our induction — Firsts the facts which indicate our recog- nition of an ethical personality in humanity; and, Secondly^ the facts which evince that we make this ethical free person- ality the perpetual and only law of all ethical comprehen- sion. Flrst^ the facts, which indicate the universal recognition of an ethical pei'sonality in humanity. By this is meant the recognition that the human may always figure himself not merely as material or animal, nor yet merely as artistic or scientific, but altogether as spiritual in an ethical and immortal being ; and thus possessing an end which is imperative in its own right, and for its own sake. This is seldom explicable even to him who yet manifestly recog- nizes such ethical personality. Very often from the de- lusive false play of an understanding which may con- nect and never comprehend, the very conception of such an ethical personality is affirmed to be an imjDossibility, inas- much as it involves an absurdity. And so indeed it would be, were the connections in nature's conditioned substances and causes our only method of judging, inasmuch as all judgments of existence must thus be discursive and never comprehensive ; yet we now undertake to adduce some of many focts, which indicate the universal I'ecognition of such ethical personality in humanity, though quite inexplicable or even speculatively denied by him, who, notwithstanding, does most unequivocally evince his full recognition of it. (l.) An ethical end controlling by an imperative all other ends. — A sentient nature with its animal appetite must 488 THE EEASON IN ITS LAW. have one particular course in which its highest gratifications in the aggregate will be attainable. This may be found from a generalization of experience in a calculation of con- sequences, or be given as a revelation from some higher source of knowledge. In whatever way attained it is a dic- tate of prudence^ resting upon the consideration of the greatest happiness. Moreover, a sentient nature in the midst of other sentient beings, must have one particular course for its action in which it will render itself the most useful to all others, and so to every being in tliat commu- nity of sentient natures, there is the course for each to be the most useful for aU. And whether such a line of action be attained by an accurate calculation of general conse- quences or by revelation from a higher experience, its course is the dictate of benevolence or public xitility^ and rests upon the greatest happiness of the gi'eatest number. These rules of action are conditioned in the sentient svstem, and are as truly facts, things made, as the sentient beings themselves. The dictates are made in makino: the sentient beinsrs, and would be changed in any change in the constitutional nature of these beings. The sentient being and his system of fel- low beings, existuag as they do, must of necessity enforce such dicta. "When, then, we put the inquiry — Why be prudent ? the answer at once comes from the sentient craving of nature ; there is thus the higher wasres, in the greater sum total in individual happiness. Better make the present or the par- tial sacrifice, for the future and the greater gratification. And why be benevolent ? The answer of a sentient nature must be, either that the result of obevinsx tlie dictate of benevolence will be a fuller stream of gratification, poured FACTS IN FINITE PERSONALITY. 489 oack from the many upon tlie one ; or that it finds within itself an appetitive want, Avhich is most gratified in seeing others happy. The first is merely prudence in the form of beneficence, lending to get more in return ; the last is mere kindness, the gratification of a sympathy which craves like any other appetite ; and both are conditioned in the necessi- ties of a nature of tilings, on all sides. Nature wholly works in and controls the sentient subject ; and nature is also the lawgiver, the judge, and the executioner. It is in rain to rise above nature by any attempt and question any part of the jirocedure ; either the obedience or disobedience of the subject, for a conditioned nature controlled him ; or, the legislative, judicial, and executive departments of the government, for these are all conditioned in nature. The animal is in his action conditioned to the craving of his sen- tient nature, whether of any particular appetite or the high- est gratification on the whole, and all such craving is neces- sitated by the antecedent conditions, and then the ponder- ous iron wheel as executive in nature rolls on, crushing the imprudent and the unkind. The omnipotence of nature is all that can be regarded ; whether in the good or bad for- tune of the sentient being ; the dictates given ; or, the consequences accruing to each and to the whole. Human- ity, in its sentient nature, can never rise to any end other than the appetitive, and that is throughout necessitated in the conditions of nature. But, as aesthetic or scientific, humanity has ends which mav entirely control those of sentient nature. Merely as artist, man may so recognize the baseness of sacrificing taste to appetite, and selling beauty for bread ; that he shall thereby hold in check any craving of sense, and refuse to 21* 490 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. prostitute his genius to any mercenary consideration. And merely as philosopher, also, he may so regard scientific truth, that he shall hold all the ends of animal nature wholly sub- servient to its attainment ; and be so in love with it, that no consideration of sensual gratification or sacrifice can draw hinT from it. Without resrard to the ethical claim for ve- racity, and solely from the stedfist inner adhesion to scien- tific truth, Gallileo departs from the bigots who had forced him to recant his doctrine of the earth's revolution, still re- peating to himself " but it does turn." There may very well be so lofty a deference to the interest of reason, that the man shall be a willing martyr to the beauty of art, or to the truths of science. This is not the sacriticing of one gratified want for a greater ; it is a sacrifice of all gratified wants, in order not to debase the ends of reason to sense, and sell its beauty at a price, and barter its truth for a hire- ling's wages. Few, perhaps, may possess so deep and ab- sorbing an aesthetic or scientific interest ; but to every thinking mind, it is quite manifest how humanity may be brought up to such an elevation of rational culture, that all of sense shall be made to succumb to the rules of taste, or defer to the truths of science. Here, then, is a field for freedom ; and the savage, in whom the sentient completely reigns, may be broiaght up into it from his state of brutality, and attain to a personality in liberty. But his spring, alter- native to the appetites of nature, will be simply the love of the beautiful and the true restraining the gratification of the agreeable, while he still may know nothing of the ethical in its imperatives and responsibilities ; and though elevated quite out from the animal, he does not thus attain to a moral and immortal existence. FACTS IN FINITE PERSONALITY. 491 But we now turn to a fact which every mind may recog- nize, viz., an end in inoral character, or worthiness in the ethical personaUty, which wliolly subordinates all other ends of the sentient or the human being, and makes every want of the animal nature and every interest in art and sciesce amenable to its behests. It over-rules both prudence and benevolence, and commands by a higher imperative than foi the sake of happiness or of kindness, even from personal worthiness, and thus that the action ought to be prudent and kind. And this higher end has also i-ightful sway over the whole world of art and science ; and is imperative that neither beauty in taste, nor truth in philosophy, shall be pur- sued, otherwise than in flill accordance with the worthiness of the ethical personahty. As " the life is more than meat," so is the integrity of moral character more than appetite or art or science. K any want whatever, or any happiness in any degree or duration, or any interest in beauty or truth, induce the will into its service as end, so that it shall cease to hold the highest worthiness of the ethical personality as supreme end ; then is the moral chai*acter degraded and de- based ; the spiritual birthright is sold for a " mess of pot- tage ;" and the soul is forced to blush in conscious shame, in the inner witnessing of its own vileness. " The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear ?" "Whoso thus saveth his animal life shall lose the life of his spirit. This every where recognized fact, of an imperative to curb every appetite, and all jesthetic and scien- tific interest, by the higher end of an ethical worthiness ; and to have no happiness nor beauty nor science in the subversion of this ultimate end and right, evinces the universal recognition of an ethical personality in humanity. 492 THE EEASON IN ITS LAW. (2.) Ethical affections above all others. — That which ministers to the gratification of sentient want is agreeable, and that which offends the appetite is disagreeable. Hence we often term one affection or love, and the other hatred. In the various ways in which the agi'eeable and the disagree- able apply to our sentient natures, there may be the emo- tions of joy or sorrow, gladness or grief, hope or fear, etc., and in this manner may arise all the constitutional affections which are found in a sentient nature. They are wholly nat- ural affections, inasmuch as they are wholly necessitated in the conditions of the sensory, and are thus wholly bound in a nature of things. Were there nothing in humanity but the wants of a sentient nature, all our affections. must be strictly nature, and stand in their conditioned connections like all the successions in the physical world. And, more- over, we may apply the beautiful and the true to the play- impulse, and awaken the cheerful interest which gives the rational pleasures of taste and science and we shall have those affections in humanity in which the artist and the phi- losopher may particij^ate ; but though these affections are awakened in freedom, yet are they all circumscribed within nature and conditioned to space and time, inasmuch as these pure objects which awaken the affections, though destitute of matter, must yet have form, and though above the sen- tient must yet abide in the region of the human. To pos- sess such affections, in the full perfection of art and science, capacitates for no participation in the ethical affections of the purely spiritual and immortal. But we may bring in here, from the experience of hu- manity, an array of facts which evince the full recognition of affections that can come from no such parentage. They PACTS IX FINITE PERSONALITY. 493 evince their pedigree from an ethical personality, and in their own right take precedence over all other aifections. They are no result of any application of the agreeable to a senti- ent want, nor of the beautiful to an aesthetic or of the true to a scientific interest. When an occasion for a high degree of sentient gratifi- cation presents itself, but with the clear conviction that in- dulgence will be followed by a more than counterbalancing sentient suffering, then the gratification is forboi-ne from the dictate of prudence. When this is all that restrains, the only possible affection induced in the experience is the glad- ness that so much sentient evil has been excluded, blended with a certain measure of self-esteem for the prudential fore- sight. But when, in externally similar circumstances, such affections as the following are experienced, viz., a conscious self-approbation in an act of self-denial and a complacency in the review of the act as worthy of my spiritual and im- mortal being, and that I must have forfeited my self-respect and found occasion to hide my face in shame at my degra- dation, if I had done otherwise, we then surely have some- thing higher than any dictate of prudence on the ground of greatest happiness. It is not the price of happiness in greater gratification, but the intrinsic dignity and worth of my ethical personality ; and the affection is wholly that of complacency in character, not of gladness in so cleverly ex- cluding sentient suffering. And moreover, when in some period of intense suffering I endure it, and refuse to escape from it in the prudential conviction that greater suffering would be otherwise unavoidably incurred ; the only affection which this can induce is the patience, which comforts itself in the wretchedness to which nature dooms me by reflecting 494 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. that it is better so than to change ; I could only throw off this burden to take a greater ; I could not make myself more happy by escaping, I am the less miserable by enduring. But if now such considerations and affections as the follow- ing come up ; it is manly to endure ; it is an honor to hu- manity, and an ennobling of character to stand firmly amid the severity of these sufferings ; then is it necessary to rec- ognize a free personality altogether above any appetitive want. All the considerations of happiness in greater grati- fication or less suffering are forever banished as mean and mercenary, and the sole question is the end of my ovm. worthiness — what in the right of the spiritual in my human- ity is my duty ? — and whether for a day, for life, or forever, I shall, as I ought, stand by my duty to the rights of my ethical personality, and bide the blow that any force in con- ditioned nature can bring upon me. And so, also, when from the dictate of kindness I have made great sacrifices to increase the hapj^iness and relieve the misery of man, and in which has also been included the dictate of prudence in that thus my own greatest happiness is promoted, I shall doubtless have a refined gratification of sympathetic want in witnessing the fruits of my kindness and receiving the pledges of their grateful return, and while they enjoy the happiness I have imparted I also enjoy with a sweeter relish the happiness that flows back upon me, and I find it thus true even in my constitutional nature that " i is more blessed to give than to receive." But if, on the other hand, I have contemplated humanity as spiritual and not merely as sentient, and have had the worthiness and not merely the happiness of my race in view ; and if my labor and sacrifice has been to win them to virtue, and that the PACTS IN FINITE PERSONALITY. 495 rights and claims of the spiritual and not the appetitive wants of the sentient have been my end, and that I can hold on my course amid discouragements, and hatred, and perse- cution ; and, when at all successful, if I rejoice for virtue's sake in their recovered dignity, but when without success, and only from the imperative of my personality, if I can still persevere in my duty, and find my reward solely in the end of my worthiness without one sentient want gratified ; then in all this, I recognize a spring to action which can not lie in the dictates of prudence and benevolence, and can never stand in a generalized self-love nor a kind sensibility, but must originate solely in the inner witnessing of the spii'it, as imperative for its own Avorthiness' sake. If an emotion of reverence ever arises, it has not been in the presence of any thing which nature, material or sentient, can set forth. I may fear, wonder, and be terrified before the working forces in nature, but I can never revere, except as I find a personality, which in his own right can hold every appetite and affection that nature can awaken subject to his own behest, and will not go at their bidding though nature do its worst. So if I am affected in remorse, I at once distinguish it from regret for some imprudence or un- kindness, and feel that it bespeaks something more than happiness lost, even ethical dignity debased and worthiness of moral character degraded. I may experience shame in my sentient being, if some conditions in nature have made me to appear ludicrous ; or, when through mere impi-udence I have exposed myself to ridicule ; but I well know the dif- ference between all such shame, and that ethical debase- ment, which blushes even before its own consciouness that it has been guilty of subjecting the spirit to the flesh. I can 496 THE reaso:n^ in its law. grieve under nature's bereaving calamities, and weep in sor- row that I have been imprudent ; but I shall distinguish all this fi'om the tears of contrition and penitential sorrow that duty has been neglected, and my virtuous character tarnished. I know in all cases, the mighty difference between wounded sensibility, and violated authority ; a want made empty, and a right wronged. And in all such distinctions of affection, every man recognizes the existence of an ethical personality, which alone can give to such experiences in humanity any exposition, and to such distinctions of affection any con- sistency. (3.) Reciprocal complacency in communion. — Different animals herd together, induced by kindred appetites. A constitutional want brings man into society, and the cravings of nature would be sufficient force for collectings human beings into communities. Congenial temperament, the in- stincts of consanguinity, common pursuits and reciprocal advantages bring different persons together and hold them in companionship, and often with much mutual satisfoction. Very much of what is termed friendship and love among men reposes upon such conditions in nature. But all this, operating in its fullest measure, can produce no reciprocal complacency. Here are the strongest bonds which the sen- sibility may give to social communion ; and still all is appe- titive and conditioned by the cravings of nature. A higher communion may be cherished in the cultivation of eimiliar tastes, and the study and contemplation of the same truths. Art and science, insomuch as they rise above sentient wants, give purer interests ; and a conmiunion of such pure interest in the same living forms of beauty and conceptions of eternal truth, will constitute rational attach- FACTS IN FINITK PERSONALITY. 497 ment far superior to any mutual gratifications of animal want. And yet, such a community wOuld be utterly desti- tute of mutual ethical complacency. No one would have the inner witness of his worth, and the imperatives which this imposed, nor could any thing be known of self-approbation, or the approbation of others. All communion in spii'itual personality Avould be impracticable, for they have not as yet waked to the consciousness of such an existence. But wholly above all these attachments, we have exam- ples of a communion in common rights and mutual claims and the fulfillment of reciprocal imperatives, and thus attach- ments which strike their root in virtue, and repose upon confidence in moral worth and integrity. All men may witness acts of virtue, and approve; but the virtuous will be conscious of more than approbation — there will be a com- placency and sweet communion of spirit in the whole trans- action. Every mind reveres the steadfast good will which holds firm to righteousness, and bears up in duty against all inducement and danger; but a vicious mind, though com- pelled to respect, will not be pleased with such stern and inflexible consistency of character. The example throws back upon him the consciousness of his own debasement, and awakens self-condemnation, and he will never hold com- munion with the rigidly virtuous for virtue's sake. Such moral repellency, between the virtuous and the vicious, evinces in both an ethical personality ; on one side, a will enslaved to the gratification of sense, and on the other, a will free in its loyalty to right, but in both a character which is estimated by each, and between which there can be no reciprocal complacency. The virtuous man on the other hand, knows that his 498 THE KEASOX IN ITS LAW. virtue lies in the valor with which he beats down all the contending appetites of the sense, and subjects every end to the ultimate claim of his own true dignity. In the society of the virtuous, there is a reverential respect of each for all ; and, while each possesses an inward self-approbation, there is also mutual complacency which can be found in nothing but the possession of a vii'tuous ethical character and the recognition of the same character in others. No other than a free ethical person can love the virtuous for his worthiness' sake ; and none but the ethically good, in their fi-ee personality can be loved by the virtuous. I may value as of such a price^ that which I may use for my happiness or interest ; but there is no attaining to the complacency of personal communion in this, for the means I use is in that very use made thing and not person. A good, as a means to an end, is wholly a different good in kind from that which, as ultimate end, must be the supreme good. If another per- son is good only as means to end ; if the absolute Deity is so held as good, only that he makes a heaven of happiness for me, then to me he is at once made a thing and has a price, and not a dignity which is above and beyond all bar- tering. "When the reciprocity is only that of happiness, and men regard each other only as each is subservient to the others' happiness ; or man regards God as only the maker and dispenser of happiness, and God regards His creatures only as they minister to Him in happiness ; then is it impos sible that the ethical love of complacency should subsist between them. A want and not a worthiness is thus put as end, and that each were reciprocally useful to each, as joint stock co-partners in happiness to be distributed among them all, and valued by each only in projDortion to his own share, FACTS IN FIXITE PERSONALITY. 499 would be the only point of congeniality between them, and each wonld be to others, a thing to be iised ; a means to be valued for what it could get ; and not a person, who had rights in his own intrinsic worthiness, which must be ethi- cally respected by all. Reciprocal complacency requires the communion of free personality — Hke with like ethically — their rights mutually respected, and their imperatives indi- vidually fulfilled ; not each a means to the others' happiness, but each complacent in the others' worthiness. That we have such facts of complacent communion, and that every man is conscious of a capacity for an imperative to such communion, is the clear recognition of his own and others' free ethical personality. (4.) Capacity to resist all the conditions of nature. The cravings of a sensory are wholly conditioned in nature. The cravings must be as nature develops, and there is no alternative to what nature imposes. The whole sentient life, constitutional temperament, physiological propensity and native susceptibility, is bound in cause and effect, and were there nothing bixt desire for happiness, there would be no alternative to nature's conditions in the experience, A dic- tate of prudence, settled by the most comprehensive gener- alization, is as truly appetitive as any single want in its sud- den excitement. The conditions of nature will determine that the prudent judgment shall or shall not be concluded, and gratification is sought accordingly. All action from a want is as completely one with nature as the flowing and ebbing of the tides or the revolving of the planets. Sen- tient life must ever more flow in the current of nature's con- ditions, and can possibly find or admit within it no spring to action as alternative to nature. 500 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. When, therefore, we recognize any facts which evince a capacity to turn and stem the stream of nature's conditioned sequences, it is quite manifest that in them we recognize an ethical personahty in liberty. It is no more manifest, when the tempest-tossed ship rides out the storm and maintains her steady and safe position against the elements, that her anchor holds on to that which stands beyond the contending billows ; than that when the good will holds firm against all the crav- ings of appetite, it has its end above all that a sensory may contain. To play off one appetite against another, to stifle one want in the stronger craving of another, to hold each clamorous passion in subjection by the prudential considera- tion of the greatest gratification of all, is still to be only in nature. It is merely using one part of nature as a defense against another 2:>art, or the whole of nature against any particular interference. But, when all of sentient nature is setting in one direction, and an inner witness of what is due to the worthiness of an ethical character puts its imperative prohibition to the attainment of any such end ; then, is the ethical end wholly out from the sentient end, and the ethical right gives a spring to control the sentient want, and an alternative is afibrded to nature's conditions by putting a sovereignty over nature, and giving to sentient want a mas- ter that in his own right may subject and control it as a whole and forever. Should it be said, after all the fair a[)pearance there may still be some secret want or pruden- tial consideration, that is controlling the whole sentient nature beside, as an o'ermastering craving ; we should then at once appeal to any man's own consciousness of either what is, or of what ought to be, in his own case ; and such FACTS IN FTNITK PERSONALITT. 501 facts of consciousness are at once the recognition of the etli.ical personahty. Thus, you have yourself been thrown into circumstances, where all the inclinations and tendencies of sentient nature were in one direction, and appetite and example and oppor- tunity were all in combined impulse towards gratification. But there sprang up the irrepressible witnessing wnthin — I ought to resist, and turn back this whole tide of appetitive desire, and stand firmly uncompliant. And here the ques- tion is — Whence this ought f Surely not from any portion of the sentient nature ; not from any aesthetic or scientific interest ; it is the claim of some ethical sovereignty, as imper- ative over appetite and taste and philosophy, and holds the agreeable, the beautiful and the true in science, subordinate to the good and the right in morals. Nothing can possibly awaken this conviction of obligation but the inner witnessing of a right, and never the mere craving of a want. All of appetitive want may thus be combined, and yet the counter conviction may come that I ought, and therefore that I ain able even when I do not, to resist evei'y impulse of the sense, and stand unswayed by all the promptings of constitutional desire. The consideration of time, how long such subjec- tion of gratification shall be maintained, has no possible relevancy ; the end of ethical worthiness is supreme for all possible period. Nor, has the consideration of the degree of trial and sacrifice any pertinence ; the highest possible susceptibility of a sentient nature is still to succumb to the worth of ethical character. All that a sensory in its keenest craving and most passionate want can sacrifice may be demanded in the right and for the rational end of the spiritual excellency ; and thus an imperative may 502 THE KEASON IN ITS LAW. fix an obligation to resist nature, great as the trial may be and long as it may endure. The firm will, in its ethical integrity, is thus capacity for standing against nature in all her fierce. Let her do her utmost, and I may still be firm and imyielding ; let me be crushed beneath her iron condi- tions through all my sentient being, and I may still say, m obedience to the end of my own w^orthiuess, that I will go down to death in the integrity and loyalty of my good will and pure conscience. Even in the degradation of the spirit to the lowest depravity, and the submerging of all imperative beneath the raging tide of passionate gratification, the man is still com- pelled to the conviction, that he has put himself under the domination of nature in the flesh by his own consent, and that this degradation is not misfortune but guilt, and that he ought to break the chain of his sensuality at once, and come out from his foul and noisome prison-house, and stand up in manly valor and virtue, with the free and the good. He is conscious that while his appetites are of nature, there is a nobler part of his being which is not bound in the conditions of nature. He can take hold of wliat is beyond all of nature's conditions, and stand thereby in steadfast resist- ance to every thing which would degrade and enslave him, and for the sake of his dignity trample on all of happiness which collides with duty. This the virtuous man knows as achieved in his righteous integrity ; this the vicious man knows as claimed in his conscious responsibility ; and in this is the ftill recognition of a free ethical personality, whose right is above all the ends which any conditions in nature may propose. Here are now sufficient facts for the evincing of a uni- FACTS IN FINITE PERSONALITY. .503 versa! recoguition of an ethical personality in humanity, and tliis prepares us for the remaining consideration in the induo- tiou of ethical focts, viz. : Secondlij. — That we make this ethical personality the only compass, by which to comprehend all the facts that ai'e moral in humanity. The successive events in the flo^\'ing stream of nature around us, as the seasons, the weather, the alternations of day and night, the growth and decay of vegetation, etc., how much soever they may aifect us favor- ably or unfavorably, we never call ours as if we had any responsibility in origmating them. We always refer them to an agency quite above and beyond all that is human. The chanscina: events in the nhvsical world affect mankind, but are never brought within the compass of humanity, as if they belonged to it, or were at all comprehended in it. So also with the changing wants and cravmg appetites of our sensitive nature. We may call these ours inasmuch as they come ^nthin the unity of self-consciousness, and take place on the field of our experience ; yet we never appropri- ate them to our personaUty and consider them as compre- hended within our agency. They are the affections which nature within and around us works upon us, in which we are passive, and not that we in any sense originate them. That I am cold, or hungry, or sleepy, and desire to gratify or relieve these craving wants is nature's work on the field of ray sensibility, and not my work, as originating in my purpose, and carried out according to my intention. I hold myself to be wholly irresponsible therefor, except as in some act of liberty, I excite or control the executive acts which gratify them. The promptings of self-love, though generahzed to the broadest dictates of prudence or kind- 504 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. ness, are wholly pathological and bound in the necessity of nature's conditions. The brute and the man, as , animal solely, move in the same lines of conditioned appetite, and take or leave the objects of gratification according to the craving want, or as controlled by the teachings of experi- ence. We never comprehend such facts in the compass of any responsible personality. Moreover, we create our own forms of beauty, or con- struct our own pure diagrams in geometry, or connect our primitive conceptions in a philosophical system, and we may call these productions of art and science ours, in the accep- tation that they are the works of our rational genius. We comprehend them Avithin the compass of an aesthetic or scientific personality in humanity ; but inasmuch as all such products are not within the region of spiritual rights and behests, we shall never here recognize the claims and imper- atives of moral obligation and responsibility, nor attempt to comprehend the beauty of art nor the truth of science in an ethical personality. But, there are facts,, which evince that man is in himself an ethical whole ; a moral world ; self-separated from all other things and persons. As each man has his own, so hu- manity in the aggregate becomes a comprehensive total as human responsibility and obligation. Here is excluded all the facts of a merely sentient existence, and all of taste and science, inasmuch as none of these are bound up iu the im- peratives which originate in what is due to the spiritual and immortal in humanity. Every man's virtues and vices are his own, in a meaning wholly other than that his appetites are his own ; and wholly other than that his productions in the fine arts, or his FACTS IN FINITE PERSONALITY. 505 attainments in science, are his own. They are his, in that they are wholly comprehended in himself; and theu' origi- nation, and final intent are compassed in his ethical person- ality. That voluptuous indulgence, wliich has not merely brought pain and loss from its imprudence, but far more has induced conscious debasement and remorse, must the guilty man say, is all my own in its entire moral and responsible being. That selfish counsel given to another ; that decep- tive and ensnaring influence ; that tempting sohcitation ; that dishonest intewtion and matured plan of wrong-doing ; that perverse and perpetuated immoral habit ; that malicious slander, or profane speech, or licentious publication ; that unholy deed, and that wicked lie ; all are in my own con- sciousness confined to my personality ; and it were quite vain for me to attempt to shrink from a full and final ac- count. So also, on the other hand, that firm purpose and decided adherence to principle ; that disregard of all allurement and threatening in the line of duty ; that good counsel on vir- tue's side ; that cheerful sacrifice of pleasure for the right ; all have had their origin in my personality ; and are deeds, for which none but myself can be conscious of a complacent self-approbation. They have dignified and adorned my char- acter, and in them no other personality can participate. These deeds of vice or of virtue have gone out and mingled with the facts of nature, and become linked uito the condi- tioned series of physical causes and efi"ects, and spread abroad their baneful or beneficial influences ; but they did not come of nature, and can not be transferred from myself to any of the necessities in nature. They must forerer stand to my account, and come back to me for their origin 22 506 THE EEASON IN ITS LAW. and final design. And thus with every man ; he separates all that is his from all that is nature's or another person's, and thus comprehends his own in himself, and as proper per- son with his own deeds stands self-isolated from aU else ; and neither nature, nor his fellows, can be made to share in his responsibilities. What nature has wrought within him or thrown upon him and what another person as mentor or tempter has done, he puts entirely distinct from his own agency, and thus takes his own, and stands forever and com- pletely absolved from all that is not his own. In this, and in this only, is the comprehension of human morality. Every man owns as his, and at his responsibility, that which has origin and direction from his ethical person- ality ; and he can be made to own as his no other events be- side. His personality in liberty is the only compass by which to include his responsibility ; and the morality of the human race can only be comprehended in that which is ethi- cal personality as habitant in humanity. Sentient craving is nothing but conditioned nature working in man ; beauty and truth have an interest above appetite, but can not give im- peratives nor awaken responsibilities ; the end of his own worthiness and dignity, as moral character, gives the inward witness by which he knows himself and his own. And now, in conclusion we say, that all the facts under all the foregoing heads are fully held in colligation by this invariable law of comprehension. On the whole field of hu- manity, we never comprehend any portion of its facts in their origination and consummation, except as we bring them completely AWthin the compass of a free personality. Whatever in human experience is conditioned in material nature, or in sentient nature, we never attempt to compre- PACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 507 hend, except as we ascend to the comprehension of nature itself. It is found in hu^man experience, only as this is sub- jected to necessity ; and hence its comprehension if attained at all, must be brought within the compass of a personality, which is sovereign author of humanity itself. In this sec- tion of comprehended facts in human experience^ we have our invariable hypothetical law ; that we comprehend nothing, which we may not bring within the compass of a personality in liberty. We have yet to carry out the same hypothesis over the facts in a comprehension of natm'e itself, and thia we will effect in the next section. SECTION II. THE FACTS OF A COMPREHENDING REASON WHICH COMB WITHIN THE COMPASS OF AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. In the previous section we determined the fact of a uni- versal recognition of a free personality in humanity, and that aU comprehension of the products of humanity was wholly by the compass of this free personahty. We rise fi'om na- ture, and find that which is not conditioned in nature, and comprehend this in an author and designer. The artist is rational and free person, in that the love of the beautiful is spring for an alternative agency against all the appetitive wants of sentient nature, and thereby all the productions of an artistic taste are comprehended in the compass of the aesthetic personality in humanity. The philosopher is ra- tional and free person, in that the love of the true is spring for an alternative agency against all craving want, and 508 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. thereby all the attainments m science are comprehended in the compass of the philosophic personality in humanity. The moral agent is rational and free person, in that an ethi- cal imperative is spring for an alternative action to all sen- tient want and all aesthetic and scientific interest, and thereby all moral character and responsibility are comprehended in the compass of the ethical personality in humanity. A com- prehending reason thus actually comprehends all the products of humanity, aesthetic, scientific and moral, as facts in human experience, solely by the compass of a recognized free per- sonahty. It is much to have thus found that the facts of compre- hension, so far as they He among the products of humanity, are all in complete and perpetual colligation by this law ol a personality in liberty. We never comprehend within the products of humanity any events, which we do not at the same time recognize as within the compass of a free human personality. Whatever is bound in the conditions of nature though appearing on the ground of human experience and coming within the fiel^d of human consciousness, is at once attributed to nature and not comprehended as within that world of events which humanity origmates, and for which it must stand accountable. But, therefore, we have the facts of comprehension only amid the products of humanity. Each person is compass by which we comj^rehend all that is his ; and all persons constitute all of humanity, and in the aggregate compass by which we comprehend all the creations of man ; and if any facts should disclose themselves as the product of angelic agency, such events would in the same manner be compre- hended within the compass of angelic personality. In this FACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 509 way, however, we could attain to but a very partial induc- tion of the facts of a comprehending agency. Very few of the events in nature can be considered as the product of either human or angelic personalities. Take away from the series of conditioned causes and effects in nature all the events which have found their origin in humanity and may be comprehended within the compass of human personali- ties, and though such subtraction would give abundant manifestation that nature had been much modified and indeed augmented in the stream of her flowing sequences by man yet would that which was taken bear but a very small proportion to that which woul^ still remain. These modifications of material nature w^ould not at all reach to its primitive substantial space-filling force. The essence of nature would be found to be neither increased nor dimin- ished, inasmuch as the products of man's creation are never any distinguishable physical forces, which may fill space with new substances or superinduce upon existing matter new organizations. We have, therefore, occasion for many facts of a com- prehending agency in the origination and consummation of events in nature, which can by no means be brought within the compass of any human personality. Indeed, our grand object is to determine the law of a comprehending reason in reference to nature herself, and we have only dwelt upon the facts of a comprehending reason within the products of humanity, in order to show that as the actual law is here also the same, we might thereby have the more abundant confirmation, that this one hypothesis of a personality in liberty holds all facts of a comprehending agency every where within its colligation. We shall make it our object in 510 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. this section to show that all comprehension of nature has this one law, the recognized compass of a free personality, as the author and finisher of all that is thus comprehended ; and wherever such encompassing personality is recognized, there do we at once comprehend all the events in him. Since the events are of nature, and not the product of any finite personality, it follows that we must take it for our hypothesis that all such comprehension of events must stand within the comj)ass of an absolute personality. We f^haU, therefore, find it convenient to pursue this order of induc- tion — First, to induce such facts as show a universal recog- nition of an absolute personality above nature ; and Secondly^ to induce such facts of a comprehending reason for nature, as shall evince that all operation of comprehending nature is by the law of this absolute personality. In this last division, inasmuch as we have both a physical and an ethical system as universal, it will be necessary to have this sub-division of facts for the law of comprehension, ^rs^ in the physical, and secondly in the ethical universal system. 1. Facts evincive of a universal recog7iition of an Abso- lute Personality. — There are many facts which show that the human mind readily recognizes a personal author and governor of nature, and it is only from the influence of per- verted speculation that such recognition comes to be dis- carded. Humanity is not Atheistic except as deluded. The conviction that there is a personal God above and Lord of nature, would be perpetual and universal except for the paralogism induced in the antinomy of the connections of the understanding and the comprehension of the reason, of which more notice will soon be taken. This is not the place for an ontological argument demonstrative of the actual FACTS IN AX ABSOLUTE PEESONALITT. 511 existence of a personal Deity ; we seek now only to estab- lish this conclusion, that the human mind readily recognizes such a being, and that the conviction is not discarded except through a process of speculation which may be easily exposed in the very sources of its fallacy. (l.) The ready assent to the fact of final causes in I^ature. — The common and most satisfactory basis of Natural Theology is the miiversal conviction of final causes in nature. The evidences of adaptation to ends are so nu- merous and so prominent, that no observing mind fails to be impressed with the conviction, that there has been an intel- ligent design in such adaptations. The argument, accumu- lative with every fact of adaptation, is at first satisfactory and convincing to every apprehending mind. It is when we begin to speculate upon the process of proof, and examine the conclusiveness of such argumentation, that we lose the force of this first conviction and may pass through all grades of skepticism to a confirmed infidelity. The sj^eculation does not at all weaken the evidence of adaptation to ends in nature, but it obscures the conviction that such facts may be made demonstrative of a personal Deity. When we examine these connected adaptations more closely, we find them all conditioned in their sequences, and the succeeding to be necessitated by the j^receding and the on-going of nature a perpetual sei-ies of link in link without alternative. The means to an end now future were themselves end to be reached by former means, and how are we to leap in our conclusions, from this linked necessity every Avay shutting us within its fixed connections to some independent and free personality as an original designer ? Listead of the phenomenal adaptations connected in their 512 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. conditioning causes, we may assume that an intellectual attribute which we call intent or design^ appears as element in this combination ; and we may then take that intellectual element as the fact from which to conclude upon an absolute and free maker and designer of all things. But we shall still have the same endless chain of conditioned sequences. There is design, as intellectual element, in the arranged wires of the carding-machine, and this may be deemed suffi- cient proof for an intelligent designer. But when I see that busy little iron hand, with astonishing precision, bending and cutting the wire and puncturing the leather and exactly insei'ting the card-teeth, I find here the intellectual element higher up in the development of sequences and conditioning in necessity what is below it. How shall I leap from the conditioned mechanism to the free personality. The man makes the iron hand that makes the card ; but that man again is an adaj^tation as means to such an end, and in his wants and interests and circumstances as much conditioned, it may be, to make card-teeth macl lines, as such machines are to make cards. In the man then is now found the intel- lectual element conditioning all that follows.- But I need a designer adapting the man to his sequences, as much as in the former case I needed the man adapting the machine to set card-teeth ; and then, when I find the designer of the man in his adaptations, I shall find the intellectual element there, and yet shall be no nearer to a demonstration of an origin of all design in a free personality than when I began with this design in the arranged wires of the carding- machine. It is ever design apprehended only in some already conditioned connection, and I can not leap from conditioned result to a free originating personality. PACTS IX AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 513 It is thus with every form of argumentation on the basis of final causes. That which seemed so conchisive at first, when speculatively examined fails utterly to reach any con- clusion. The regressus is ever with an open backward way, and when pushed, the understanding must perpetually tread back from one conditioned to a higher condition, and never reach its origin in an nnconditioned. It is thus that all teleological proof of the existence of a personal Deity must fail of a demonstration, because it is impossible that the pro. cess should rest in other than an arbitrary conclusion. The personal designer is surreptitiously assumed because we rationally need him, but not at all because we logically find him. But, when we now know the clear distinction between a connecting understanding and a comprehending reason, we can at once free ourselves from all the delusion and par- alogism of such speculation. Reason demands an absolute and can rest in nothing else, for it can possibly comprehend nothing except in this compass of a free personality ; but an understanding forbids all such origination, and can possi- bly conclude in connected judgments only through the medium of perpetually underlying and interlinking condi- tions. The very idea of a personality in liberty is an absur- dity to the discursive faculty, and to which the conception of a deity can possibly be none other than the notion of a substance filling all space, and in its causality working through all time, and connecting within itself all the condi- tioned phenomenal changes in nature. The reaching forth of the comprehending reason, and the short-coming of the connecting imderstanding utterly forbid that we should put the two fiiculties at work together, or one for the other, and suppose that their results may be brought concentric with 22* 514 THE EEASON I>f ITS LAW. each other in the same sphere. If we would attain to the personal Deity of a comprehending reason, we must not delude ourselves with the folly, that such can be measured in the connections of a discursive understandins^. The dis- cursive faculty can not move at all without its media of sub- stance and cause, and when it thus moves it must be from con- dition to conditioned ; how then may it assume to determine any thing about the originating of space-filling substances and time-abiding causes ? It is quite as incompetent to deny any thing about free personalities as to prove any thing. It can not sav how substance and cause mav begin to be, but as little can it say that they may not begin, and have their origin in a free personality. It is wholly impertinent to this faculty, that it should meddle at all in the questions of final: causes and free originations, and ethicAl personalities. The sense might as well attempt to perceive the essential force which connects the phenomenal universe. Xeither is com- petent to affirm or deny beyond its OAvn legitimate province. We may at once therefore, utterly disregard all these de- lusive speculations of a discursive judgment ; and if they are found wholly incompetent to comprehend the adaptations in nature, by the compass of a personal Deity, so also ai"e they wholly incompetent to exclude the possibihty of such comprehension, and deny the actual being of a personal God of nature. The ontological demonstration may hereafter come in its proper place, but enough is here given to shovT that the conviction of final causes in nature should not be at all weakened or modified from any speculations which are manifestly so jireposterous. And yet, all such recogni- tion of final causes is, in the fact itself, the recognition of a free personality above nature. A final end to be at- FACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 515 tained in and by nature involves an overruling and a using of nature for some personal intent, and in that mind, the recognition of a personality independent of and absolute over nature. To such a mind " the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth forth his power." " The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." (2.) The reeognition of miraculous interijositions in nature. — It is not contrary to, but quite in accordance with the convictions of mankind generally, that there should be miraculous interpositions. All skejiticism in reference to the competency of human testimony for the proof of miracles is, as in the case of final causes, a result of delusive specula- tions. Deny that philosophy can reach beyond experience and generalizations from experience, and we shall then have nothing but the connections of an understanding, and can not conceive where a miracle should come from. No amount of human testimony can rise to as high a source of convic- tion against the uniformity of nature and for the miraculous interposition, as is given in universal expei'ience against the miracle and for the uniformity of nature. The very basis of all philosophical conviction underlies the belief of the uniformity of nature ; but the credibility of a miracle has only testimony, which all experience shows may be fallible. An assent to the fact of a miracle, therefore, on any amount of testimony is credulity, and a philosopher should be wholly above it. And, surely, if we keep this philosophy, there is no altei'native to this skepticism in reference to all testimony for a miracle. That a Deity is assumed, who may control nature miraculously, can be only through the same 516 THE EEASOX IX ITS LAW. credulity ; for all science is wholly within the generaliza- tions of experience, and no experience, however generalized can reach beyond nature, but must ever run up and down the interminable sequences of her conditioned connections. But we may readily pass by all this when we have learned the antinomy of the two operations of a connecting understanding and a comprehending reason. If we will ad- mit nothing but the logical conclusions of a discursive con- nection, then verily are we shut up withm nature, and the testimony of such as might rise from the dead could not avail to carry us beyond nature's linked successions. But ii we have attained the complete idea of a comprehending rea- son, then nothing forbids that we should readily cherish the common conviction of mii-aculous interpositions. Without canvassing the testimony for the validity of any specific miracle, in this place, it is sufficient that we show a ground in philosophy for such conviction when properly substantiated by testimony, and we may then take such common recognition of the fact of miraculous interpositions as involving the recognition of an absolute personality above nature. I do not at all apprehend, in any recognized miracle, that nature has violated her own laws of connec- tion, and that any distinguishable forces in nature have of themselves broken away from their fixed order of develop- ment ; for this would not merely transcend, but contradict he laws of an understandinsf. I conceive of a new event put into nature, which did not come from any previous con- ditions in nature, but from wholly a supernatural source. Xor is this new event such as might originate in a finite per- sonality, as when by human volition changes are made in nature, which do not come of nature but of our free person- FACTS IN AX ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 51« ality. The new event has its source ah extra from all na- ture's conditions, and is also such a counteraction of nature, as evinces a power superhuman over nature. Opening blind eyes, and unstopping deaf ears, and healing the sick, and raising the dead, and controlling the elements, and thus di- rectly overpowering nature in her own causal operations by a direct counteracting of her flowing conditions ; these and such like events alone rise to what we mean by miraculous interpositions. Nature may then receive these new events and incorporate them within her own conditions, but they began to be in nature from no paternity of nature, and had their genesis wholly from a superhuman source. And now we affirm the feet, that the human mind read- ily admits that such interpositions have occurred in nature, and it is only from a delusive speculation that skepticism arises while a complete philosophy sustains such conviction ; and such conviction involves the recognition of an absolute personality; a will in liberty; unconditioned by nature and having a sovereign control over nature, and which may make new things or annihilate old things in nature at his pleasure. It is not nature at work upon herself, nor anomo lous and monstrous originations in nature ; but it is a hand from without thrust in sovereignty within, and modifying and making and extinguishing the forces of nature as it pleases. Such conviction can not be, but in the recognition of an absolute and free personality. (3.) T7ie order of nature' s formation^ as given in Geo- logical Facts. — Here we meet with no speculations of a de- lusive philosophy to obscure or deny the facts themselves, but we take them as nature has left her own record of what has been done within her upon her own successive pages, 618 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. and in legible characters and a meaning unmistakable. The facts to which we here refer, and would present in the most comprehensive manner, are as follows. Repeated convul- sions from deep subterranean forces have in frequent in- stances broken through the sohd crust of the earth's sur- face, and turned out the edges of these upheaved strata to our view, which have their dip of a greater or less inclina- tion to the horizon, according to circumstances. These ex- posed strata are the leaves of nature as a book, and contain the memorials of past historical occurrences through a long series of many and diversified geological epochs. In the reading of this record backward from the present all traces of man's existence on the earth cease to appear, when we pass the accumulations of a few feet of soil upon the surface. Comparatively slight modifications of the allu- vial deposits, or more violent and extensive changes of dilu- vial action which yet do not mark any deep convulsion, are alone contemporaneous with the history of man's abode upon the earth. Passing these we come to the tertiary formation, and have commingled strata of sand, clay and lime of a thou- sand feet in thickness. The remains of animals of existing species are here found in large numbers, and yet such are constantly diminishing as we go down, until in the lowest formation of this series, very few traces of the existing forms of animal life now on the earth there appeal', while their places are filled by strange fossils of many different and now wholly extinct species. The SECONDARY formation succeeds, and we have the chalk heels of a thousand feet depth in which no fossil shell- fish and only one animal is found of the present existing FACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 519 types of sentient being. We find next the oolite formation of half a mile in thickness, deposited by subsidence from rivers and seas alternately, and in this we lose utterly all traces of any existing species of animated nature, and among other new forms we encounter here the strange and monstrous saurian remains. The neio red sandstone of two thousand feet comes next ; and this followed by the coal formations of many thousand feet in depth, the carbonized remains of the immense vegetable productions of an older world, and in which no plant of present forms apjDears, nor is there any indication that any fowl then existed or any an- imal roamed through these primeval forests. Here are in- terposed, between the coal-strata, limestone formations of great thickness, not as the sepulchres of fossil shell-fish, but the remains in mass of myriads of testaceous or coralline animals. We come next to the old red sandstone forma- tions many thousand feet in depth, and which are an aggre- gate of older rocks fractured and decomposed and promis- cuously put together by successive depositions, and contain- ing such organic remains as there lived and died, but which have left no successors among the latter fossil species. Deeper and earlier than all these, come the primary for- mations. The Silurian system here has place for a mile and an half in depth, with its hundreds of animal species utterly extinguished in its own stratifying process, and their petri- fied remains testifying to the long cycles in which successive species one after another came, and ran through their re- spective generations, and then utterly ran out of being for later types of new organizations. Then we reach the Cam- brian system of nearly equal thickness of old slate rock, and in which the fossil remains of animal life are much di- 520 THE KEASOX IX ITS LATV. minislied, and admonish us that we are coming to an age more soUtary than the places of death and of graves, even to periods when sentient hfe had not yet a beginning. The Cumbrian formation receives us stiU lower down, and here we stand with all the generations of life above us, worlds on worlds which have for countless ages slept iii death, and read around us only the records of material na- ture ere life was gi\en or death began its reign. Mica schist in stratifications of many thousand feet, are given ; and then gneiss formations bring us down below the records of all stratifications ; and the crystallizations of the solid granite deeper than we can penetrate, tell us only of the fusing fires beneath ; and the leaves of nature's book are ail sealed up from mortal eyes beyond. A region of ten miles in depth below the surface has thus been explored, and we can here delibei'ately trace the history of nature's operations, and the Interpositions occurring in its own successions with unmistalcen certainty and precision ; through every foot of Avhich tliere must have been the passing away of geological ages, to have sufficed for their accumulations. Whatever the geological epochs, there is the evidence that antecedently to all accumulation in rt'gul.u- strata by any subsidence, there was in action the antagonistic force of attraction and repulsion, ensphering the mass about a com- mon center ; and also that the distinguishable forces of heat, and electrical and chemical agencies were superinduced, without at all subverting the original space-filling substance in its causality. ^Mutter had thus chemical combinations as the development of such foi'ces, and above these the crys- talline force is superinduced, and thus as preparatory to or- ganic productions material existence is brouglit into form, FACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 521 and its conditioued changes run on in the development of causes and eftects, and nature works itself out in the action of its intrinsic forces. Attraction and repulsion, bipolar forces, chemical affinities and crystalUne age.icies have their inner conditions, and 'their inter-working necessitates their resulting products. But neither of these distinguishable forces can carry theu' action beyond their own inner condi- tions. Gravitation can not act as caloric or electricity, nor can they act as chemical affinity and crystallization. By so much as the higher force conditions the working of the lower is there a superinducing of the higher upon the lower, and it were no more absurd to sav that the lower orioiuated in an utter void, than that the higher originated from the lower. By so much as it is higher and controlling it is a superinduction, and the excess to have come from the lower must have originated from utter emptiness. Xo distinguish- able force can do more than develop its own rudimeutal being, and thus nature can never go out of herself as she is and bring into herself new and higher forces. All superin- duction can be no development from inherent endowment, but must be causation imparted by an ab extra interposition. Crystallization overacts chenucal affinities and gravitating agencies Avithout extinguishing them, and could not thus have found its genesis from them, but must have been super- induced by some agency beyond them ; and so in turn Avith all distinguishable forces, which shall overact crystallization, or any succession of such forces as shall one overact the other. We may not, yet at least, be able to read from this book of geological records the fact that nature in her distinccuish- able forces Avas successively brought into being, and that 622 THE BEASO:^ IN ITS LAW. the superinduction of one force upon another, ua simply physical organizations, was with interventions of long geo- logical periods. We may confidently affirm that the lower could not beget the higher, but we can not affirm that they were successively superinduced, nor deny that nature began with the combination of the gravitating, chemical and crys- tallizing forces. As yet we have nothing but probabihties from analogy, to guide us in our conclusions higher up in geological periods than the originations of vegetable organi- zations. Though the probabilities are all the other way, yet we w^ill not here decide that the crystallization of the granite mass, and the action of heat and electricity, and magnetism, may not all have been coeval with the force of attraction and repulsion m the space-filling substance. But whether contemporaneous or successive, their combination is no iden- tification of these forces. They are as readily distinguish- able from each other as if we had them in isolated action, and we can distinctly determine the parts which each per- forms in the formation of the physical structure of our globe. In this combination of agency, distinguishable through all its superinduced elements, we may now leave the considera- tion of the times of superinduction to some further study of the record, and merely apprehend, in the causality induced by the overacting and controlling of the higher with the still peri^etual operation of the lower forces, that the subter- ranean fires, and the crystalhne rocks, and the half fused gneiss fonnations, and supei'imposed dejiositions of mica- schist, would be a necessary result of the conditioned devel- opment. Xature would put on her conditioned forms, and take her conditioned positions, and pass along in condi- FACTS IN" AN ABSOLUTE TEKSONAHTY. 523 tionecl locomotion, and have her conditioned changes, fi-om the action of her own forces. But, after all this, we have a sure and clear record of successive interpositions. We can very legibly read what has been done since such forces had brought the merely ma- terial development through its prehminary stages, and it is to these results, as far more important now for our purpose, that we give a more special attention. Indefinite geological cycles passed round in the inward action and onward devel- opment of physical forces, and the onward series of cause and effect induced then* combinations and cohesions, and the heat gave its molten masses, and the crystalline forces ar- l-anged the firm and deep granite beds, on which the entire geological superstructure through all its varied strata re- poses ; and yet periods of incalculable duration passed by, while the primitive gneiss rocks were attaining their consol- idation and position, and while still later the mica-schist was being deposited ; but at length a point in the ongoing of nature's conditioned changes is reached, where we have her record that what had ncA'er yet appeared, and what could not be begotten from all that nature was — a new and higher force than any yet in action — began its being and its mani- fest control, over the other forces on which it had been su- perinduced. In some shallow of the primitive ocean, where the broken and triturated particles of this primeval world had been accumulated by the forces then in action, wholly a new force is at work ; and, overruling other forces for its own uses, it is building up forms and combinations of phe- nomena unlike all that natin-e has before known. A field of marine fihjw^ the product of a vital force, which organizes, and energizes through all the organization of root, stock, 524 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. branches and leaves, is in its first existence. The germin- ating lile begins while yet through nature no parent stock or seed is found ; and the plant expands and matures, and while the primitive organization falls and is utterly decom- posed, this vital force still hves on in the ripened germ, and propagates itself in its undecayed energy in the newly shooting plant. Thus vegetative life begins, and runs on its coarse through all the following generations of that species of the sea- weed. Whence, now, is this new force in such controlling action? It has just come into nature, and over-rides the other material forces, and is itself source for all these new phenomena, but whence is it ? Gravitation, chemical and crystallizing forces, all say it is not in us, and can not have been brought out from xis. It is their superior, and uses them and modifies them for its own ends. That it should be deemed some genesis of nature is absurd, for nature has tin now known no causality which could reach so high and control so far, and by so much as it exceeds aU former force in nature, it must thus have originated from an utter void ; and which is just the same impossible supposition, as if all nature were deemed the offspring of an utter negation of aU being. It has been superinduced upon nature, and has thus become an addition to nature, and can therefore only be a creation from some being supernatural. And yet so per- fectly is this new force superinduced uj3on all the other forces which it uses, in the harmony of its conditioned and conditioning operation, that it is quite manifest this hand, wliich interposed and put it into nature, is the same hand which intelligently holds and guides all nature. We have not before been able to open the book to the I'ecord of FACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 525 nature's beginning, but all has been developed nature, stretching back to a beginning we have striven to find, but could not reach. Here we find so much of nature as vege- table life begins to be, and so in harmony with all else of nature that it uses without extinajuishinor its other forces ; and we recognize in it a supeinatural personality, who is absolute for it, and for all of nature. And here also, we may see that the evidence for this recognition of an absolute personality accumulates through all the succeeding epochs of geological formations. The primitive forces of gravita- tion, cohesion and crystallization act on, and the new vital force controls thera and perpetually reproduces itself in har- mony with them through all its propagations ; but, with the vital force as essential behig for one marine plant, we can have in nature only its generations and in its own kind. This vegetative force is conditioned to its own organizations and can build up only its own phenomenal structures, and can never go out and originate a new species of organic life. Each new species of vegetable life is a new force in nature, more emphatically so for animal, and onward from the lowest orders of testacea or corraline existence up to the highest species of the mammalia. A new superinducing of beings, ujion that which nature before possessed, is effected in each case ; and as it did not come out of previous forces of nature in their conditioned development, so in each case, we have a new recognition of that same personal and supernatural interference which, out of nature, puts into nature what he pleases. We come along up from this great depth to which we have descended and reached the lower sepulchres in which the earhest dead lie entombed, and from thence we pass along 526 THE REASON IN ITS LAAV. by the myriads of once living beings preserved in their forms beyond the skill of all embalming, while at every step of our ascent we pass above entire species of animals, which had run on through many generations and then died out utterly in the extinction of the race, and another put anew within nature as its successor in time but without any genea- loarical connection. One form of sentient nature has thus been built up by a distinguishable vital force, which has propagated itself through all its generations and occujjied; its geological era, and that entire organic energy has ceased to act and its kind become extinct ; and other species have in like manner been successively put anew Avitbin nature, and each has recorded its type of being in form and locality and habitude on the spot where its generations came and Avent, and we can as readily determine the originations and extinctions of tlie species as of the individuals themselves. New forms of life begin and end, sometimes in the same geological formations and sometimes jjerpetuated thi-ough successive strata, and these followed by others to become themselves in turn extinct, and thus nature has from the beginning of animal and vegetable life, been replenished by repeated and successive creations. Among the last products of his forming hand Ave find the book of nature like the record c)f Moses, to teach that man Avas made by God in his own likeness, and that his origin is a very recent date com-- pared with the geological cycles since other and lower types, of sentient beings began. AVhat, in all cases of these super-- induced forces of vegetable upon material, and of animal upon vegetable being, was there in the lower which should beget the higher? What, Avhon one species became extinct, that sliould bethegeuesisof another widely diiferent species? FACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 527 What, ill all that existed through nature, could rise so high as to give birth to man, when there was yet no human pro- genitor ? As well might all nature rise into being from an utter void of all being at once, as to rise by progressive steps, with each addition an origination fi-oni a void of all bemg beyond what nature then contained. Over and over again we here recognize in these legible records of a super- natural interposition, which has put into nature that which nature yet had not, the existence of a free personaUty wholly unconditioned by nature. (4.) The recognition of a free personaUty in humanity. We have before found that this is a universal conviction, and that the jiersonality comprehends all that is moral in humanity and for which man is held by himself to be respon- sible. This we are convinced did not come of nature, inas- much as it is competent to resist nature, and to distinguish its own originations from the conditioned successions of nature, and thus stand forth with its own m separate unity. Still this free finite personality is recognized as in combina- tion with nature. The free force of the reason as spring of action in the right of its own dignity, is the j^ower of will ; and yet, while this may ever stand in resistance to all the wants of its sentient nature, it may never wholly separate itself from that nor prevent the appetitive wants from coming frequently in collision with itself, and can maintain its sover- eignty only by perpetual vigilance and valor. The person- ality is habitant in sentient nature, and has the prerogative of an end above nature, and thereby an imperative to main- tain its dominion over nature, but with all this prerogative above nature, it can not break up its combination and stand forth AvhoUy pure from nature. Humanity is ever animal as 528 THE KEASO]Sr IX ITS LAW. well as rational, and it can not exclude nature's wants from colliding often with its own ethical end, but only prevent such colhding wants, when they do and will intrude, from attaining the mastery. Nature, both without and within the human sensory, keeps on in her own unbroken succes- sions of cause and effect, and the human will can not stop this, but only exclude her dominion within its own sphere. Thus is it manifest that the human personality did not come of nature, since it may wholly exclude all domination of nature's conditions over it ; and as manifest is it that nature did not come of it, for it can no otherwise free itselt from nfiture than by excluding not by anniliilating nature. It is a distinguishable energy superinduced upon nature, and as controUing nature in its own right is a power above force, competent to hold itself free from all external force and to hold in subjection all the inner forces of its own sen- tient nature. Personality in humanity is not, therefore, deemed to be a higher force in nature superinduced upon existing lower distinguishable forces, as when the force of heat overrules gravity without extinguishing ; but this personality as power of will is itself supernatural even in its superinduc- tion upon nature. We recognize in this, not a new physical force, but an ethical personality as absolute above nature, who not only originated nature through all its superinduced forces in succession one above another, that the highest might physioMllj control and use all the lower, but also crowned the whole with a supernatural in his own image, that this finite personality might ethically control and use all of nature for its own worthiness' sake, while itself should be subject only to the absolute dignity in the personality of its FACTS IX AX ABSOLUTE P li R S O X A L I T Y . 529 author. In this author of human personaUty is universally recognized the absolute ethical personality of a Deity, who may originate not merely distinguishable forces superinduced upon some grand central antagonist force, but who must be of right the grand center of the whole ethical sphere, and have made both the physical and the ethical systems for his own worthiness' sake. 2. The fact of a comprehending operation for univer- sal nature is onli/ by the compass of this Absolute Person- ality. — Taking the universe of being, Ave have the material vegetable and animal worlds as purely physical existence, and wholly bound in the conditions of a nature of things. Their entire onward development is wholly necessitated from their primitive rudunental being, and all in combination as one universe had one fixed series without an alternative. We have in this imiverse of being, also, the complex exist- ence of the sentient and the rational in humanity, and thus the human race so involved in the conditions of a nature of things, that in their constitutional being they belong to the same physical system, and must be comprehended within the compass of the same author and designer. "We nfted thus here to see the fact of a comprehending operation of reason for the entire universe of being, material, vegetable, animal and human. This hximan has moreover its personality in liberty, and is thus ethical being ; and in the end of its own intrinsic dignity and worth, the human personality must stand in moral alliance with all etliical beings in their per- sonality ; and Ave shall thus have an ethical universal system, including all free personality. We need, therefore, to see the fact of a comprehending reason for an entire ethical system, in its separate and comprehensive imperatives. We have, 23 630 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. then, to attain the facts for a comprehension of both a phy- sical and an etliical universe. And here, in each case, the hypothesis is, that we never effect such comprehension except by tlie compass of this absolute personality which we have found to be universally recognized, and never even specula- tively discarded but by a delusive paralogism which is now readily exposed. We will here take them up in their order. (l.) The Gotnprehension of the Physical JJrdmrse. — The comjirehensive agency performs its operations only by the compass of an author and finisher. If a true and pro- per bi'ginning be not reached, then no act of a comprehend- ing agency can commence. All is left to the conditioned series of cause and effect, evermore reproducing itself iu every repetition. And when a proper origination is attained, a designed consummation must also be apprehended, or the work of comprehension can not be completed. It is begin- ning and progress with no aim, having no end to be reached, and no go.d of perfection to be attained ; " a mighty maze and all without a plan." Such encompassing author and finisher is found only in this recognition of an absolute per- son, as the God and guide of nature and the sovereign of the moral universe. This is manifest abundantly, from the facts given in any direction where this conviction of the human mind, that there is such an absolute personal Deity, has not been dis- carded or in any Avay lost. If the rational in man has among any savage people, been as yet so little developed that the recognition of an absolute personality has not yet been reached, then has there to such a rude and barbarous tribe been no comprehension of any thing in natui-e ; of nature as a universe ; or of any ethical system. If through FACTS IX AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALIiy. 531 a delusive speculation, such original conviction has been dis- carded, there has at once been lost all rational comprehen- sion of the universe. Whence it came ? and whither it tends? have been questions not only unanswerable to such, but in the discarding of all encompassing in a beginning and consummation, such questions are without significancy. We might as well ask whence come and whither tend the passing periods of time, for nature's connections are thus made as aimless and endless as the conditioned successions of indeterminate durations. No Atheistical system ever attempts to comprehend the universe. Nature coijies, it knows not whence ; and moves onward, it knows not whither. If it talk of laws and principles in nature, its talk is all absurdity ; fer its laws have no law-giver and its principles no ^:)rw^c^}3^^^»^. If it seek to generalize these laws and principles and make its God of the aggregate, and thus atheism chansje to Pantheism ; it is onlvto chansce the absurdity' of its language, for such an aggregate is still evermore made up of parts, and the j^arts can neither find nor make the one that shall comprehend the whole. No . Polytheistic scheme can give an encompassing author ; for each god is tutelar deity for but his own region, and all aie m 2Jerpetual contention, until some recognized God of all gods harmonizes the whole, by encompassing the whole in his oriojinatincr and consummatini; control. A Manichean theory, of two original sources of all being, is but just so far comprehensive as its assumed personality encompasses; and light and darkness, the good and the bad da?mon, divide the universe between them, and all is eternal conflict, except one be expelled in the supremacy of the other. Ko intellec- tual comj)rehension of universal nature has in fact ever been 532 THE KEASON IN ITS LAW. made, where the comprehending reason did not encompass all from beginning to final end in one absolute personal Jehovah ; and wherever such recognition of absolute per- sonahty has been attained, there, as a matter of fact, has universal nature ever been comprehended in liim as sole author and finisher thereof The law in the facts of all comprehension of nature is the recognition of an absolute and free being, and the process of all comprehension in the fact is in precise correlation to all such comprehension in the a priori idea. (2.) 77ie comj))'ehensio)i of the Ethical System. — Man is conscious of perpetual imperatives, and that there are perpetual moral obligations that must rest upon the race. It is not difficult to take the convnctipns of obligation, grow- ing directly out of the inward witness of what is due to the dignity of man^s rational and spiritual being, and find a perfect ethical system every way' complete and comprehen- sive in its own autonomy. The existence of the ethical persons wiU itself originate the impei'atives as universal moral law, and the control of the law universally wUl be the consummation of the moral government. This Will include only such ' imperatives as may be made universally binding, and in which we may readily come to see that which should be^ without regard at all to the enquiry, now, whether that which should be actually is. It is for the facts as imperative that we here seek, and not for the facts as they may be existing in real life. Humanity in its ethical personality, is spring for control- ling all the j^ipetites of its sentient nature. They should in all cases be held so subject and the good will in each per- son should ever reign sovereign over desire. As separate PACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 533 persons the highest imperative would be, the preservation of the integrity of moral character, which is found in mak- ing and keeping the ends of the sentient subservient to the end of the rational. The maxim for each person must be — do that which is due to the dignity of the person, in the complete subordination to it of the wants of the animal. This is the duty of each person, and hence it is due as a right in each person, that no other person be allowed to interfere, and endanger its continuance. As social beings, therefore, each having imperatives in the right of his own personality, and thereby the right to an mihindered com- pliance with such imperatives, the maxim for each must be — do nothing that shall infringe upon the freedom of another in his compliance with the im2)eratives of his own 2)erson- ality. Such individual maxims thus made into law universal would be thus expressed — respect thy own rights and regard the liberty of thy neighbor in his rights. All rights originate in the intrinsic dignity of personality, and all imperatives originate iu rights ; and thus all rights and all duties at once exist in the existence of human society, and the sum of all law for such society is found in the above maxim made into law universal. From this, by analysis, may be derived every private and social duty, but which it is not necessary should be here formally drawn out. The entire coramunitv in the asrsrrcfjate would attain the consum- mation of a human society, by the control of such universal law. The afjsrreojate would become an orcjanic whole in systematic unity thereby. Each person, as component ele- ment in such a society, would be both end in himself, and auxiliary to the end of all, sustaining his oVvn worthiness and contributing to the miiversal dignity. The social body 534 THE Ei;ASO>' IX ITS LAW. would be altogether without schism, and the functions of a healthy life going on in every part. In the social system of humanity this ought so to be ; and then the whole stands out in its completeness under the directory of its own law and blessing itself in every part through the perpetual residts of its own action. Such a consummation is no mere conception arbitrarily created. That hiunanity is in social being, is ground suffi- cient to induce the universal conviction, that such a consum- mation ought to he. The imperatives originating in its own beins: srive the claim for such an ethical svstem in its origin and consummation. All should thus act from the maxim which is imperative as law universal ; and all so acting, the acrm-eorate worthiness and blessedness is attained, and virtue and moral self-complacency reign in every part. It is right- eousness rewardincr itself accordino^ to its merit in its own results. But that which ought to be, icill not be, when any one person has \4olated a right and introduced sm into the sys- tem. This one violation reaches through and breaks in upon the rights and the complacency of the whole. All have a righteous claim upon every other that they each fulfill the law universal, and that no one shall be as "a broken tooth or a foot out of joint." And when such offending member introduces his disturbing and colHding moral action, it is the equitable claim of the whole, that the delinquent and all his deranging action be at once excluded. But it ought not to be that his exclusion be merely topical displacement, as the removal from a material machine of some part broken or become rotten. Remorse and shame is the sinner's due, and the moral disapprobation of all the holy, perpetually FACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 535 made manifest towavcl him, is the righteous clement of the guilty. The Hght, in which he ought to regard liimself as lost in dignity, is precisely the light in which all others ought to regard him ; and his retribution of shame, self-re])roach, and pubhc abhorrence is as imperative, as the approbation and complacency for the virtuous. And still further, the sin and colliding agency of one does by no means release any other from the imjjerative of the law universal, but each is bound to the same integrity of character personally as before the unworthiness of one had been introduced. And here then begins an evil which the action of the system can not in itself remedy. The im- peratives remain, but the bliss of all is marred. Even such as are fii'mly loyal to the right rule feel the colliding influ- ences of the sinner, and their freedom and rights and bless- edness are impaired. The system can not repair itself in its own action. An intruding evil has come in which it can not eject. The system must still work on under its imperatives^ but it "wiU now perpetually and forever work wrong. And so, precisely, we find the facts to be. They are not in human society as they should be. "What ought to be is not, and the ethical system is perpetually contravening its own imperatives, and perj^etuating moral inconsistencies which it can not itself redress. Tlie retribution of the wicked, and the exclusion of their colliding influence is not as from its own imperative it ought to be. That which is differs far from that which should be, and the perpetual on- going is a perpetuation of wrong-doing. In such a state of facts all comprehension of an ethical system were impossible. That has come in which should not have originated, and that consummation which should be is unattainable. The fact as 536 THE REASON IN ITS LAW. it is has no satisfactory origin or end, as ethical system. It stands itself, in its own working, abhorrent to tlie moral reason and conscience it embodies ; and is an ethical blot, eternal and irremediable in its own helijlessness of all self- cleansing. And here, the question is, how comj^rehend tlie ethical system in humanity as we find it, marred, perverted and in- corrigible from its own action ? We can comprehend an ethical system as it should be very readily ; since the exist- ence of the human society would itself originate the rights and the imperatives, and the fulfillment of the law universal would be its consununation ; but it is a very difierent fact of comprehension when the ethical system is already perverted and m itself heli^less and hopeless of all restoration in its own movement. How such perverted ethical system origi- nated ? how be consummated ? is now the problem. In what way is the operation for comprehending an etliical system efiected, as the system is in its depravity ? And to this, the answer is universal, both as negative and jDOsitive. No Atheistic or Pantheistic system ever did or ever can comprehend an ethical government over human beings in their dei^ravity, by accounting either for the origin of sin, or for the recovery of the race from it. All Theistic sys- tems ever have made such a comprehension, by encomjiass- ing all with the hand of an absolute moral governor from the inception to the consununation ; and in some way re- ferred to Ilim, in the perfection of His wisdom, the sove- reign disposal of all that the moral government involved. Under the administi'ati(Mi of a Divine Sovereign, has the human race been created, and the ethical relations and re- sponsibiUties established, and the sin and disorder have FACTS IN AN ABSOLUTE PEESONALITY. 537 come in and will be so controlled as at last to -work out a consummation worthy of his dignity, and corresponding to every claim that his subjects may righteously lay before his throne. Whatever may now be hid, in the darkness of his inscrutable dealings, is only mystery to the finite subject ; " God is his own interpreter, and He will make it plain." Thus, and thus only, has there ever been effected any com- prehension of an ethical system in depraved humanity. It might be very easy to show here, that the provisions of the Gospel scheme of Redemption are j^recisely adapted to the interests of reason in effecting such an ethical com- prehension, and that the divine interpositions have been wholly regulated by the beliests of God's OAvn worthiness and dijxnitv. It behoved him so to interfere and no other- wise in the permission, the overwhelming and restraining, the expiation, pardoning, and punishmg of sin. On the christian ground of a moral government, its comprehension is in complete conformity with every fact of man's ethical responsibility and God's righteous sovereignty. Man in his freedom should have been no otherwise restrained ; God in his holiness should have no oth6i"wise interposed. But oixr whole work in determining the fact and the law of a com- prehending reason, for an ethical system as it is in fallen hu- manity, is completed in tliis, that we now see that it has never been attempted except upon Theistic groimds ; and that in tlie recognition of an absolute personality as moral governor, whether without or Avith the liglit of a divine revelation, the moral system with the sin and evil in it has ever been held, as in some way having a rational origination and idtimate consummation. Putting thus together all the facts of a comprehending 23 * 538 THE REASON IN' ITS LATV. agency, whether on the Umited field of humanity, or of a divine operation in nature, or of a divine government over an ethical system of fallen beings, and finding in all that the only law is that of a free j^ersonality, and that without such compass of a personaUty in liberty no comprehending as fact is any where given, we have an induction sufficiently broad for deducing the general law of all comprehension ; and this law in the facts is the jjrecise correlate of the a priori idea of all comprehension, and thus gives science to the operation of reason. We have as demonstrative a science, for an intelligent eom/)re7«ensio;i of universal human- ity and universal nature, as for the connection of j)henom- ena into a nature of things, and for the conjunction of the diverse in quality into definite phenomena. We have thus the science of oirr entire intellectual being, including the functions of the Sense, the Understanding, and the Reason. This is all that we have pi'oposed to ourselves, and in this we have a complete philosophy of the human mind — a Itor tional Psychology. "We understand the universe in the space-filling forces that constitute it, and which in their substantial being and causal action determine all sense phenomena. We compre- hend the universe in the activity of a personal spirit who creates and governs it. He is the author of nature, and of the common space and time of nature, and is thus himself absolved from all the conditions of nature and of nature's space and time ; and in this he is the Absolute. The xVbso- lute can not be understood^ for all the conditions which give law to logical thought are wholly impertinent, and all the conditions which give unity to the judgment are insig- nificant when ai)pUed to Ilira. He can not be comprehended PACTS IX AN ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 539 by any finite intelligence, for He is the absolute compass comprehending all things. He can be rationally appre- hended as a Spirit in His self-activity, self-law, and liberty, by all rational beings, and is thoroughly known only to him- self; " the things of God knoweth no man, but the spirit of God." To the understanding which would ask Iwxo God is, "we say, " Canst thou by searcliing find out God ? canst thou find the Almighty to perfection ? It is high as heaAen, what canst thou do ? deeper than hell, what canst thou know ?" To the Reason which has its insight into nature, " his eter- nal power and Godhead are clearly seen," and to the reason only does revelation disclose the being of God. TTe thus know that he is, and v:hat he is, but can determine nothing whence and hoio he is.. 22'' APPENDIX TO THE REASON. AN ONTOLOGICAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE VALID BEING OP THE SUPERNATURAL. A COMPREHENDING Reasoii in its process of operation has now been fully obtained both as subjective idea and objective fact, and in this is a complete science of the reason as faculty for comjDrghension and in ^hich we conclude our examination of the whole field of Rational Psychology. As in our completed science of the sense which is faculty for conjunction, and also' of the understanding which is faculty for connection, we found the data for an ontological demonstration of the valid being of the objects given in each faculty, so here it may be expected, that the science of the reason will fui'iiish the data for an ontological demonstration of the objects cognized by it in its functions of a compre- hending agency. These are the finite personality in human- ity ; the absolute person as author and governor of nature ; and the consummation of his final end of a universal system in some future state of moral existence. Our whole work will thus be concluded in this outline of a demonstration for the valid being of the supernatural, in the several respects of THE Soul, God and Immortality. From what has pre- ceded, a bare statement is sufficient. 1. TJiQ valid being of the, Soul. — The conception of the VALID BEING OF THE SUPEKNATUBAL. 541 soul as an existence which is supernatural includes more than living and sentient being, and a higher capacity of action than from any promptings of aj^petite or general judgments of greatest gratification deduced from experi- ence. All this is conditioned and held in necessity by some- what that has gone before, and is thus bound in tlie linked connections of nature, and through its most subtle analysis or in its highest generalization can be but nature still, mak- ing no possible-^ approximation towards the sui^ernatural. There must be an existence which is ethical, and which in the right of its own personality may act independently, and in liberty, and feel a conscious responsibihty for such action. Is there a process of demonstration for the valid being of such Soul ? • Two sources of argumentation may be taken. (1.) The fact of a comprehending agency. — Neither a conjoining nor a connecting agency could attain the concep- tion of an operation of comprehension, much less that either could actually comprehend. An acting liberty, as rational j^ersonality, can alone comprehend any thing as having a proper origin and consummation. The fact there- - fore, that man comprehends nature in the compass of an absolute personahty is demonstration that he is Soul. (2.) Tlie facts as given in an ethical experience. — Were there the conception of an ethical i3ersonality as soul some- how attained, still no mere ideal of the soul could give the actual facts of its rational agency. The following, among other focts, are in actual being — imperatives controlling all appetites ; affections above all sentient emotions ; reciprocal complacency betAveen moral personalities ; and more espe- cially a cajjflicity to resist all the conditions of nature and 542 APPENDIX TO THE REASON. Stand firm on the ground of duty — and the fact that man has such experience is proof that he is Soul. 2. The valid existence of God. — There are thi-ee lines of demonstration. (1.) The fact that cdl atheistic speculations are from the antinomy of the discursive faculty as xmder standing^ and xchich have heen shoicn to he delusive. — ^This delusion removed, the teleological argument for an author and gover- nor of nature, derived from the traces of design iu nature, remains irrefragable. (2.) Tlie fact of new forces originating in nature.— Such facts have been before given, and could not come of nature. Xo mere concej^tiou of a God could give such facts. The facts are, and they demonstrate that a God is. (3.) Tlie fact that an ethical system is in being. — -This has beforehand been made manifest. Such etliical system can neither originate from nor be controlled by any tiling in nature. Tliat it is, is demonstration that an absolute ethical person as moral Lord and Judge exists. 3. The validity of the SouVs Jnimortality. — The exist- ' ence of humanity is itself origin for the rights and impera- tives in an ethical hmnan system. Obedience universally to these imperatives is a consummation of the system in its perfection. But as fact, the law universal is not kept. The moral system is thus in its depravity, and if left to its own action its consummation in its moral perfection is quite hopeless. What ought to be certainly will not be, from the system's own action. Is there then any way of demonstrat- ing the consummation of a moral system^ and in this, demon- strating that the soul shall be immortal ? The process is as follows. The truly virtuoi* man has a VALID BEIXG OF THE SUPEKXATUEAL. 543 righteous exj^ectation of happiness ; and his hope rests upon an imperative that his blessedness be equal to his merit. The A'icious ought to anticipate misery ecjual to his demerit. The virtuous and vicious ought so to be placed, that the wickedness of the one shall not interfere with the libertA-, endanger the virtue, nor diminish the bUss, of the other. The virtuous have not, however, what they might hope foi-; the vicious have not what they should fear ; and the action of the bad perpetually annoys the good. If what ought to be is to be, an ethical sovereign must make it so to be. And unless morality is a figment, and all our ethical experi- ence a chimera, such a consummation must some way be effected ; hence, on this ground alone a strong faith in the l)ehig of God, and of a future state, might be cultivated, put at the most it would be faith, and not science. There n'ould be facts in our conscious imperatives showing what Plight to be, but we could not thus reach the facts for demon- strating, that what ought to be in fact icill he. But if now we add what has already been attained, in the ontological demonstration of the actual being of a God, then we have sufficient for a conclusive proof. God is y a future state of rewards and punishments ought to he y the existence of God is a guarantee that what ought to be surely will be. God is ethical goodness, and it is impossible that He should deny Himself. It is thus infallible that the soul shall live on in its obedience and bliss, or iu its disobedience and misery, for- ever; and also, that the time must come, when the separa- tion of the righteous from the Avicked shall effect the designed and demanded consxunmation of the moral system. 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