Ex Libra 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
 , 
 
 f. 
 
 \A^^ 
 
 (T
 
 ESSAYS.
 
 ESSAYS, 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL, 
 
 BY JAMES MABTINEAU. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 NUW YORK: IIEXBY HOLT AND COMPANY, 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TBUBNEK & CO. 
 
 ')7 & 5!), LUDCATK Hlf.I,. 
 
 1875,
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 ?AQB 
 
 OOMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY 1 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 63 
 
 NATURE AND GOD 121 
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH 171 
 
 HANSEL'S LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 213 
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY: BAIN 244 
 
 REVELATION; WHAT IT Is NOT, AND WHAT IT Is 280 
 
 PERSONAL INFLUENCES ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY: NEWMAN 
 
 COLERIDGE CAKLYLE 329 
 
 THEOLOGY IN ITS RELATION TO PROGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE . . . 406 
 
 1928380
 
 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 
 
 THE publisher takes special pleasure in offering 
 this volume of ESSAYS selected from the much- 
 admired writings of Rev. JAMES MARTINEAU, 
 Professor in Manchester College, London. Mr. 
 Martineau is considered one of the profound- 
 est thinkers and most brilliant writers of this 
 century. His contributions to the Prospective, 
 Westminster, National, and other Reviews at- 
 tracted the attention of the best minds in both 
 England and America, and produced a marked 
 and favorable impression upon men of all denom- 
 inations. He has done more, perhaps, than any 
 other writer of our time to detach religion from 
 its historical accidents and accretions, and to 
 defend its essential elements from the destruc- 
 tive assaults and tendencies of the positivist 
 and critical schools. He is by far the ablest 
 exponent and champion of religious faith in 
 its contest with the scepticism and materialism 
 
 [Uil
 
 iv PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 
 
 of the age ; and his criticisms of Mill, Spencer, 
 Comte, Hansel, and Bain are almost necessary 
 to a complete understanding of the positions 
 these men severally occupy, and leave scarcely 
 any thing to be desired on the other side. The 
 subjects discussed in these Essays have awakened 
 a general and growing interest among all classes 
 of thoughtful readers ; and the publisher esteems 
 himself fortunate in being able to collect them 
 from inaccessible magazines, and in presenting 
 them to the American public in a permanent and 
 elegant form. 
 
 BOSTON, March c 1, 1866.
 
 ESSAYS, 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL. 
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY.* 
 
 FROM the day of a man's death seven years must elapse, 
 so this Catechism informs us, before lie can be " incor- 
 porated in the Supreme Being;" i.e. registered 
 among the worthies of humanity, and honored with a 
 commemorative bust. We neither belong to the priest- 
 hood, nor are within six years of the date that must 
 deride the question of Comte's apotheosis. Leaving so 
 great a verdict to the council of the future, we avail 
 ourselves of the labors of his translator and the recent 
 close of his career to notice a few characteristics of his 
 genius and system. Neither the puerilities of his later 
 writings, nor the self-exaggeration pervading them all, 
 cancel his claim to recognition as the most powerful 
 and constructive thinker of the modern scientific school, 
 and as a half-pious believer in the dreary visions of a 
 philosophy held by many, though avowed by few. The 
 
 * The Catechism of Positive 1'eligion. Translated from the French cf 
 Angnste Comtc, by Richard Conyreve. London: Chapman, 1&5S. 
 National Kcview, 1858. 1
 
 2 COJMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 difficulties over which his influence lias triumphed attest 
 his intellectual force. In his survey of particular sci- 
 ences, not excepting his own (the mathematics), he has 
 incurred the reproach of serious errors and misconcep- 
 tions. Even among savants, his temper and personal 
 pretensions are as unique as are E\vald's among critics 
 and theologians. His style is an oppressive miracle of 
 tediousness, benumbing the vivacity of the cleverest 
 translator, and taxing the patience of the most practised 
 student. His chief reputed merit the creation of 
 Sociology he proclaims with the airs of a ,;'o?, in- 
 stead of committing it to the test of time and thought ; 
 and men like Mr. Mill, who had accepted his baptism, 
 and been initiated into his gospel, excuse themselves 
 from his apocalypse. And no sooner do " Secularists " 
 indulge their gratitude for his abolition of theologies 
 and hierarchies, than he publishes himself Supreme 
 Pontiff of humanity, and sets up a theocracy without a 
 God. Yet, in spite of every weakness and offence, he 
 has found his way to the thought of the present age. 
 A few vigorous minds he has moulded to an extent un- 
 known, perhaps, even to themselves ; and many more 
 owe no slight obligation to the pregnant hints every- 
 where scattered through his first great work. His main 
 attempt viz. to destroy the antithesis between the 
 physical and the moral sciences, and draw them out in 
 one continuous series, by ranging man and his life 
 among natural objects has established itself as a 
 characteristic of our time, and exhibits more signs of 
 vigor than the older forms of anthropological and 
 social doctrine. If the most marked intellectual tend- 
 ency of the age be to advance the lines of every science
 
 COMTES LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 6 
 
 into a domain hitherto distinct to press physical con- 
 ceptions into chemistry, chemical into physiology, phy- 
 siological into morals and politics, and by the energy 
 of inductive law to shoulder metaphysics and theology 
 over the brink of the world altogether it is largely 
 due to the action, direct and indirect, of the JPhiloso- 
 phie Positive. 
 
 The doctrines of Comte can scarcely be appreciated 
 without some reference to his personal career. On this 
 point, indeed, he himself lays no little stress ; and he 
 has accordingly supplied, in a series of prefaces, an 
 autobiographical sketch of his mental history. It ap- 
 pears that during his earliest years he was exposed to 
 two singularly inharmonious influences, whose struggle 
 must have affected his whole development. His family 
 belonged to the Catholic and monarchical party in the 
 South of France ; to conciliate which the first Napoleon 
 had surrendered to ecclesiastical regime the young revo- 
 lutionary schools, in which, at the same time, the exact 
 sciences constituted the preponderant discipline, and 
 the political sentiments of the crisis still remained. No 
 amalgamation could well take place between elements 
 BO discordant. From the first, the theological influence 
 seems to have found no entry into our author's nature ; 
 and his whole problem was to bring his political and 
 social ideas into some systematic relation to his mathe- 
 matical and physical knowledge. In this respect his 
 genius and character bear the true Napoleonic tvpc ; 
 and as the exiled Emperor at St. Helena .shows himself 
 still the officer of artillery, and regards the world from 
 the engineering point of view, so Comte betrays the 
 same tendency to push dynamics into the conquest of
 
 4 CGMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 history and mankind, and coerce the universe of life 
 and persons into the formulas applicable to things. 
 The French tendency to large and neat generalization, 
 BO tempting to the lofe of order, so dangerous to the 
 paramount feeling of truth, does not appear to have 
 been checked in him by any considerable devotion to 
 the literce humaniores. No trace appears of the 
 scholarly habits of mind, and that peculiar balance 
 of faculty, to which philological and moral studies 
 geem to be indispensable. Though his view over his- 
 tory is wide, and supplies him with many original 
 reflections, yet the tact of sympathetic criticism is 
 nowhere found, and the dominance of the natural phi- 
 losopher's rules of thought is always conspicuous. His 
 mathematical training was completed in the Polytechnic 
 School ; and during its progress he seems to have 
 fallen under the influence of St. Simon, and caught 
 the inspiration of his socialistic dreams. This influence 
 he himself professes to have been " disastrous ; " inas- 
 much as it suspended his purely philosophical activity 
 in favor of schemes of direct political experiment, liut 
 the disciples of this singular enthusiast have always re- 
 proached Comte with intellectual plagiarism from their 
 Vnaster; and certainly the historical generalizations of 
 Comte continually remind us of the principles and 
 methods of the earlier school. After long dissatisfac- 
 tion with the disorderly condition of all political and 
 social speculation, and an eager desire to carry the 
 exactitude of physical science up into the phenomena of 
 life and humanity, he at last realized his hope in 1822, 
 at the age of twenty-four, by the discovery of his great 
 law as to the three successive phases of human evolu-
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 5 
 
 tion. Tlus law is ap follows : that, both in the indi vi- 
 cinal and in the history of mankind, thought, in dealing 
 with its problems, passes of necessity through (1) a 
 theological stage ; (2) a metaphysical,; before reaching 
 (thirdly, and finally) the positive: resorting, in the 
 earliest instance, to the idea of living and personal 
 agents as the motive-power of nature ; then proceeding 
 to substitute abstract entities, such as force, substance, 
 &c. ; and only at last content to relinquish every thing 
 except the study and classification of phenomena in 
 their relations of time and place. In 1825-6, he 
 sketched in some minor essays the mode of applying 
 this law to the re-organization of the body politic ; and 
 in the latter year commenced an oral exposition of his 
 discovery in its entire range of application. His course 
 was unhappily interrupted by a profond orage cere- 
 bral, in other words, a temporary attack of mental dis- 
 order ; for their mismanagement of which he fiercely 
 attacks his physicians and the usages of their pro- 
 fession. His recovery enabled him to complete his 
 lectures in 1829. This viud-vocs exposition forms the 
 basis of his great work Cours de Philosophic Posi- 
 tive, the publication of which extended over twelve 
 years, from I8o0-1842. It consists of six very thick 
 volumes, divided into sixty leyonsj during the course 
 of which he reviews, by the light of his law, the ensem- 
 ble of human knowledge, beginning with the purely 
 quantitative sciences, as the most simple ; and having 
 taken the inorganic studies in the order of retreat from 
 this primitive base, advancing to the province of physi- 
 ology. The laws won in that field ho carries up into 
 anthropology ; and by adding; on the effects of combin-
 
 6 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ing men in associated numbers, he seeks to establish a 
 special and crowning science of Sociology . It is on 
 his ability to accomplish this final object that he stakes 
 the whole credit of his method ; and whatever is prior 
 to this lie regards as the mere vestibule to his great 
 structure. The better to secure a trial of his claims 
 upon this issue, he has made his sociological system the 
 subject of a separate work, Systeme de Politique 
 Positive; in which the natural sciences are entirely 
 left behind, and his law is applied exclusively to the 
 relations of human nature and history. The second 
 title of this work, Traite de Sociologie, being bor- 
 rowed from his essay of 1824, resumes, hi 1851, the 
 thread of his early career. 
 
 In the mean while a complete revolution had taken 
 place both in his inner character and in his external 
 relations ; cutting his life into two dissimilar periods, 
 the identity of which in the same person his original 
 disciples must find it difficult to realize. The severe 
 mathematician, the rigorous philosophic censor, the 
 scornful materialist, is now converted into the " High- 
 Priest of the Religion of Humanity," the chief of the 
 " Occidental Republic," the type of the " Regeneration 
 of the Affections," sending missionary despatches to 
 Russian emperors and Turkish viziers, and surrendered 
 apparently to the visionary enthusiasms of a St. Simon 
 or a Robert Owen. He speaks of himself as the 
 founder of a new, final, and universal worship. He 
 claims an annual subsidy from his disciples, in support 
 of his sacerdotal character, and addresses the yearly 
 circular which demands the tax to all the Western 
 lands. He repudiates our chronological era and the
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 7 
 
 Roman calendar; makes 1788 his zero of human his- 
 tory, which begins for him with the French Revolution ; 
 gives us thirteen months in the year, and a day over for 
 commemorating all the dead ; and dates his productions 
 in a way horrifying to Quakers, and questionable even 
 to Hero-worshippers ; finishing one preface on the 
 23d Aristotle, year 63, another on 12th Dante, a third 
 on the 25th Charlemagne ; writing to the Emperor 
 Nicholas on 19th Bichat, and to Reschid Pacha on the 
 7th Homer, &c. Whence this extraordinary change 
 in a man ti'ained under the austere discipline of the. 
 exact sciences? Skilful observers of human character 
 might perhaps notice in his first great work symp- 
 toms of gre.it personal peculiarity, but certainly nothing 
 which could prepare them for his later exhibitions. 
 An overbearing dogmatism and astounding self-appre- 
 ciation appear in all his expositions ; and the personal 
 preface in which he takes leave of the last volume of 
 his Philosophic, besides betraying frequent soreness 
 and bickerings towards the Academic and the savants 
 of the day, querulously turns upon the authorities of 
 the Polytechnic School for not appointing him to one 
 of the higher professorships, and almost dares them to 
 dismiss him from the subordinate post he held there. 
 His contemptuous estimate of the reputations of the 
 hour and the intellectual spirit of his time would have 
 more effect but for the manifest admixture of disap- 
 pointed feeling ; for threnodies on the " decline of 
 science " are heard with impatience when deriving their 
 inspiration from personal grievances. There may have 
 been grounds for the complaints of persecution so fre- 
 quently insinuated against Arago ; but there is enough
 
 8 COMTK'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in Comte's teaching and influence, notwithstanding his 
 incontestable genius, to explain some indisposition on 
 the part of the directors of public education to trust 
 him with distinguished functions, without supposing 
 malignant cabals against him, prompted by jealousy, 
 and working by mean intrigue. Having publicly pro* 
 claimed his 1 real or supposed injuries, and challenged 
 dismissal, he was almost unavoidably taken at his word ; 
 and in 18434 underwent what he terms his "polytech- 
 nic spoliation," followed by seven years of persecution 
 from the " peduntocracy " of Paris. It was during this 
 interval that the agency presented itself which created 
 his "second career." He had been thrown back en- 
 tirely on private life ; he had just completed his 
 "immense elaboration," and his six volumes were before 
 the world ; and he had attained, in some involuntary 
 w;iv, another kind of freedom, not specifically defined, 
 but termed an "irreproachable moral freedom," a 
 phrase which, interpreted by its connections, evidently 
 means u dissolution of the marriage-tie. Disengaged 
 in so many senses, he is no way claimed by the past, 
 but open to new impulses ; and just at this opportune 
 crisis, by a destiny which might be called providential, 
 were it not that " theological ideas are cerebral infirmi- 
 ties," he fell in with "an incomparable angel," similarly 
 separated from matrimonial obligations, Mine. Clotilde 
 de Vaux. Drawn to sympathy at first by "the sad 
 conformity of their domestic destinies," they soon find 
 that each nature is constituted to give what the other 
 wants ; she knowing nothing of Positivism, and he 
 nothing of love, and neither unwilling to learn the les- 
 son of the other. Comte attributes the previous sleep
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 9 
 
 of his gentler feelings, first to his early withdrawal 
 from the domestic circle into a scholastic seclusion ; and 
 next, to a marriage which he had contracted on pur- 
 pose to repair his deficient affections, and which, thus 
 taken as a prescription, very naturally failed to produce 
 any new symptoms. It was not too late, however, at 
 the age of forty-five, for the " better human senti- 
 ments" to be awakened in him; their energy, indeed, 
 was all the greater for their previous exceptional repres- 
 sion ; and when appealed to by a type of feminine 
 nature unequalled in the past and present, and unsur- 
 passable in the future, they effected in him a moral 
 resurrection, became the source of new positivist inspi- 
 rations, and completed the conditions of his great mis- 
 sion to re-organize entirely the whole of human 
 existence on the principle of giving ascendency to the 
 heart over the understanding. Of this lady, though 
 he speaks of her in all his prefaces as an object of 
 interest to the whole world, we know nothing except 
 that she was unhappy, and converted Comte from philo- 
 sophical vigor to puerile sentimentality. She had 
 begun, it seems, a fiction ( \Vi1ltlmine) intended to 
 correct the mischievous influence of the doctrines of 
 Mme. Dudevant ; and her admirer makes it a topic 
 of special praise, both of her and of himself, that not- 
 withstanding their own unfavorable experience, they 
 always inculcated the sacredness of marriage, and re- 
 sisted the laxity of domestic morals too prevalent in 
 France. When, however, he tells us that the heroine 
 of the unfinished tale was to " have passed successively 
 through the chief actual aberrations," preserved through 
 all by natural purity and elevation, so as to end at last
 
 10 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in domestic felicity, it is difficult to recognise the 
 superiority in moral conception to the novels of George 
 Sand ; nor can we wonder that the authoress's family 
 were unwilling, after her death, to give effect to her 
 wish that the Ms. should be left in Comte's hands. A 
 single year was the term of that " incomparable object- 
 ive union " which was to alter his whole future career ; 
 her early death then restored him to his solitude, and 
 left him, as he says, to the fainter though more assidu- 
 ous exercise of "subjective adoration." Had any rem- 
 nant of religious belief still clung to him, this event 
 Avould have swept it away: "Were it possible," he 
 says, "for my reason ever to go back to that theologi- 
 cal condition which is adapted only to the infancy of 
 humanity, this catastrophe would suffice to make me 
 reject with indignation the providential optimism which 
 affects to console our miseries by enjoining on us a 
 stupid admiration of the most frightful disorders. 
 Ever-innocent victim as thou art, scarcely knowing 
 life but by its deepest griefs, thou art laid low at the 
 very moment when at length a worthy personal happi- 
 ness commenced, closely connected with a human social 
 mission! And I too, though less pure did I de- 
 serve, after so many unjust sufferings, to have thus 
 frustrated the long-delayed felicity reserved for a lonely 
 existence constantly devoted, from its opening, to the 
 fundamental service of humanity? Does not, more- 
 over, this twofold private calamity constitute a public 
 loss in a way to exclude all idea of compensation ? " 
 AVith this sentiment he seems to have completely im- 
 bued her own mind, little as it seems to breathe the 
 feminine tenderness which he ascribes to her ; for she
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 11 
 
 died repeating again and again the strong-minded pro- 
 test that she did not deserve so to suffer and be cut off. 
 The philosopher's heart, however, once softened, 
 scarcely knows how to make enough of its newly-dis- 
 covered susceptibilities. Not only did the image of his 
 mother, whom he acknowledges to have inadequately 
 loved during her lifetime, terminated fourteen years 
 before, now appear to him in a more affecting light; 
 but his servant-maid, "the incomparable Sophie," 
 endowed, as he observes, with the fortunate inability to 
 read, which the more strongly brings out her rectitude 
 
 O J O 
 
 and penetration, becomes a model of womanly per- 
 fection, and completes his triad of guardian angels. 
 He celebrates them all as concerned in the tardy realiza- 
 tion of his emotional life, and wishes it to be under- 
 stood that their inspiration is silently present in the 
 whole execution of his great mission. But Madame 
 Clotilde is still the dominant influence ; and the terms 
 in which the influence is described are most extraor- 
 dinary, exhibiting the extravagance of passion without 
 its poetry, and reduced to a mere affair of quantity, 
 and uttering its devotion in tones that seem rather to 
 mock at other religion than to breathe their own. 
 "What Dante has done for Beatrice, Comtc will more 
 effectually accomplish for his " holy Clotilde ; " whose 
 name, associated witli his own, is to go down and be 
 preserved in the most distant and imperishable memo- 
 ries of a grateful humanity. And it is highly charac- 
 teristic, that her title to this eternal distinction is always 
 her influence upon him, and therefore her instrumen- 
 tality in the development of Positivism : his system, 
 his discoveries, his genius, constitute the grand per-
 
 12 COMTE'S LIFE AND puiLOSorinr. 
 
 mancnt essence ; as connected with his public life an 
 importance belongs to his private life, and this impor- 
 tance is shared by her who so powerfully moved him. 
 The impression throughout is simply this : " When the 
 Himalayas fall in love and make sonnets of thunder, 
 the most distant hamlets of the plain will ask ' Who is 
 it?" It was through her angelic ogency that he lias 
 become a really double organ for human nature, the 
 representative at once of its intellect and of its soul ; 
 and without her he would never have been able, in his 
 own person, to append to the career of an Aristotle 
 that of a St. Paul ! He certainly awards to the " new 
 Beatrice " titles which have no parallel in the immortal 
 verse that celebrates the elder one ; for she is at once 
 his " subjective mother " the source of his second and 
 regenerated life, and his " objective daughter," the 
 docile pupil of his first and intellectual life. Nor do 
 merely human analogies and relations suffice to express 
 and satisfy his feeling. This lady is to be recognized, 
 not by him alone in his three daily prayers, but by all 
 truly regenerate people, as " the best personification of 
 the Supreme Being." Candor, however, requires us to 
 acknowledge that, in claiming this highest distinction, 
 he is by no means exclusive in his affection ; for within 
 a few pages he says, that to the positivists evert/ worthy 
 woman habitually furnishes the best representation of 
 the true Grand-Eire, and that the affective sex is, in his 
 system, set up as the moral Providence of the human 
 race. In his annual circular of 1853, addressed to the 
 tributaries who furnish his subsidy, he explains how it 
 is that he spends so much more of his moderate income 
 in house-rent than in maintenance ; lie admits that his
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 13 
 
 lodgings, strictly speaking, exceed his actual material 
 wants, but urges that they were the "scene of his moral 
 regeneration under the angelic impulse which com- 
 manded his second life ; " and, considering the decisive 
 blessings which the West has already received from this 
 source, he would charge with ingratitude all those who, 
 sharing the public and private benefits of the new reli- 
 gion, would let him be torn from the scene of their 
 origin. These holy walls, with the adored image for 
 ever imprinted on them, are a daily help in developing 
 an intimate worship of the best personation of the 
 Supreme Being ; and have proved so " during all those 
 years, already not a few, in which her glorious subject- 
 ive eternity has taken the place (alas, too soon) of her 
 sad objective existence." There, under this resistless 
 patronage, such a harmony establishes itself between his 
 private and his public life, that the advances of each 
 may soon extend to the other ; so as to make him feel 
 the true theory of their unity long before putting it into 
 expression. Thus the same environment which wit- 
 nessed his first regeneration will soon find itself con- 
 secrated by many decisive celebrations of the chief 
 social sacraments. "I have just completed," he says, 
 "the principal part of my religious structure, and the 
 decisive little work in which the subjective participation 
 of my holy eternal companion is already unanimously 
 recognized. How else shall I be able to achieve, with 
 equal advantage, the remainder of the principal elabo- 
 ration, and even the less important works that will fol- 
 low? I have already reached the age when I must 
 scrupulously administer my time and my means of ex- 
 ecuting, with full cerebral vigor, all that I promised at
 
 14 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the end of my fundamental work. It is for this reason 
 that I shall nl ways repudiate the stupid material econo- 
 my which would deprive me of a powerful spiritual 
 assistance." The fantastic forms under which, here and 
 elsewhere, the author's egotism and self-exaggeration 
 present themselves ; the elaborate minuteness with 
 which for the benefit of the " West " and the " Future " 
 he publishes his sickliest feelings ; the pomp with which 
 he claims " eternal veneration " as well as temporal 
 maintenance for his "noble services," might induce a 
 suspicion that he is playing a part, and practicing on 
 the simplicity of his disciples. Nor is it easy, in esti- 
 mating minds of this peculiar constitution, to draw the 
 psychological, or even the moral, distinction between 
 self-flattery and artful misuse of the confidence of 
 others. But Comte's dogmatic self-assertion, whether 
 it speaks in maudlin softness or with hieratic grandeur, 
 we believe to be perfectly sincere ; the homage which a 
 nature barren of every superhuman reverence, and pay- 
 ing only a provisional respect to the past phases of 
 mankind, necessarily turns in upon itself. Of Divine 
 and permanent in the universe he admits nothing ; and 
 of its progressive phenomena he himself is the newest 
 and ripest, the blossom shaped at length from the 
 rising sap, and tinted by the growing light, of history. 
 There was a grand fate concerned, he intimates, in his 
 encounter with Madame Clotilde ; the rebirth of his 
 heart was indispensable ; and " the ensemble of human 
 destinies commissioned an incomparable angel to deliver 
 to him the general result of the gradual perfectionating 
 of our moral nature." He evidently looks on the whole 
 past as a mere prelude to his own labors, and having
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 significance except as ushering them in ; all its pro- 
 ducts, like the nodding sheaves in Joseph's dream, are 
 to stand round upon the field and bow to him. If any 
 thing lingers on the world that is too stiff-necked and 
 refractory for this, it will simply have to disappear; 
 and the only force that remains to older modes of 
 thought is just sufficient for the process of mutual 
 annihilation, that Positivism may enter upon the cleared 
 field without a blow. For example, throughout the 
 area prepared by the Roman empire, two incompatible 
 forms of monotheism, Islam and Catholicism, have for 
 upwards of a millennium aspired to universality ; at last 
 they are exhausted ; for five centuries the Crescent has 
 renounced its pretensions to the West, and the Cross 
 surrenders to its " eternal antagonist " the very locality 
 which it first consecrated. The ancient territory of the 
 civilized world is nearly equally divided between the 
 two ; they have no longer any energy that is productive 
 and conquering, but only enough to neutralize and 
 extinguish each other in favor of the Positive Philoso- 
 phy. For this hour the philosophy, through its 
 antecedents, has been all the while preparing itself, 
 demounting by the steps of a noble filiation, Comte 
 claims Hume as his chief forerunner in philosophy, 
 with Kant as an accessory, whose fundamental concep- 
 tion waited for true development in Positivism. In 
 relation to political doctrine, he was preceded by Con- 
 dorcet, in conjunction with De Maistre, whose princi- 
 ples first became fruitful in the positive school, and are 
 nowhere else appreciated. Add to these Bichat and 
 Gull as his predecessors in scientific physiology, and 
 you have the six recent names that connect him with
 
 16 COMTE'S 
 
 the three systematic fathers of the true modern philoso- 
 phy, Bacon, Descartes, and Leibnitz. Higher still, he 
 finds himself again in the middle ages, under the cowl 
 of Thomas Aquinas, the cloak of Roger liacon, and 
 the wreath of Dante ; and thus directly reaches his true 
 precursor, the prince of genuine thinkers, the incom- 
 parable Aristotle. Though the world was not ready 
 till now for the final retreat of monotheism before the 
 positive philosophy, all capable thinkers instinctively 
 felt their relative merits, however imperfectly they ex- 
 pressed their feeling. Tacitus and Trajan, it is now 
 admitted, were right in pronouncing "inimical to the 
 human race " a religion which consigned perfection to a 
 celestial isolation, disowned the dignity of labor by 
 deducing it from a divine curse, and made woman the 
 source of all evil. Those eminent men did but anti- 
 cipate the ultimate judgment of matured humanity. 
 They could not be aware of the provisional benefits of 
 which, during the infancy of a new civilization, this 
 faith was to be the medium ; and they pronounced what 
 the ripened reason of our age at length confirms. And 
 when the Christian priesthood and influence had finally 
 become effete and retrograde, it was reserved for M. 
 Comte, by fully satisfying the intellect and sentiments 
 of these last days, to assume the Pontificate of Human- 
 ity, and vindicate the ancient instinctive antipathy of 
 philosophy to Christian or other theology. It is worthy 
 of remark, however, that while, in his survey of old 
 times, his sympathies resort to the judgment of philo- 
 sophic emperors and historians against a faith of the 
 common and even the servile class, it is his cue, in 
 dealing with the present day, to invert this order of
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 preference, to speak slightingly of the educated and 
 ruling orders of society, and to pay special court to the 
 proletary class, especially the women among them, and 
 above all, if they have the "fortunate inability to read." 
 Among these alone, he says, can be found the openness 
 to real truth, and the reverent docility necessary to true 
 discipleship ; the freedom from pre-occupation by either 
 retrograde or anarchical ideas ; and more particularly, 
 the mind unspoiled by pretended private judgment on 
 political and other matters quite beyond them. Al- 
 ready has the proletary class suffered in this way from 
 the exercise of universal suffrage ; and only in women, 
 through their happy exemption from political rights and 
 interests, has the requisite submissiveness of spirit been 
 preserved. To them, therefore, he especially appeals ; 
 not without a consciousness that he has some resistance 
 to expect from their feeling in favor of certain doctrines 
 on which he throws contempt, in particular the doctrine 
 of a future life. But this repugnance, he assures them, 
 is quite a mistake ; and if they will only reflect that he 
 makes them the true personification of the Grrand-.Etre, 
 and through their influence on the affections of men 
 gives them a subjective immortality in the minds of 
 others, they will be convinced that his system is far 
 from being dry and cold, and will be ashamed to regret 
 the loss of a mere egoistic futurity. Does not posi- 
 tivism lay down the law of "eternal widowhood" (i.e. 
 forbid second marriages) ? IIo\v, then, can it be said 
 not to provide an honorable homage to feminine affec- 
 tion ? In all this bidding for support from particular 
 classes, there is surely something little worthy of either 
 a philosophy or a faith. And when \ve connect with il
 
 18 COMTE'S LIFE AND 
 
 the .assertion, in the fifth volume of his first great woik, 
 that probably up to that time he was himself his only 
 disciple, it can scarcely fail to appear like the expres- 
 sion of morbid disappointment. The more and more 
 eccentric displays of pretension which characterize his 
 later volumes, are painful to all who appreciate his 
 earlier genius. But they are too curious as psycholo- 
 gical studies, and too vitally connected with the dis- 
 tinctive type of his doctrine, to be left out of sight. 
 Indeed, he so constantly insists on ihe inseparable con- 
 nection of his subjective experience with his public 
 action on the world, that it is impossible, by his own 
 rule, to characterize his system without tracing the 
 manifestations of his idiosyncrasy. 
 
 The episodical treatise in which arc found the most 
 peculiar exhibitions of his later mode, is the (Jalt- 
 chisme JPositiviste, announced, as translated by Mr. 
 Congreve, at the head of this article. It was published 
 towards the end of 1852, and forms a kind of excursus 
 from the second volume of his Politique. It is in the 
 form of dialogue, between himself, as sacerdotal in- 
 structor, and an "angelic interlocutrix," who is no other 
 than Madame Clotilde. The conversations unfold the 
 mysteries of the positivist " religion ; " the attributes of 
 the " incomparable goddess " of humanity ; the " insti- 
 tution of guardian angels ; " the three daily prayers ; 
 the organization of the priesthood, and the whole ritual 
 and calendar of this new anti-faith. The date of pub- 
 lication was purposely fixed near the commencement of 
 Louis Napoleon's dictatorship. That crisis, the author 
 intimates, had imposed a salutary silence on all bab- 
 blers (i.e. had extinguished journalism, political asso-
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 elation, and discussion) ; and he avails himself of the 
 sudden stillness to obtain a hearing', and to w direct 
 especially the feminine and the proletary thought to his 
 fundamental revolution." His previous scientific ex- 
 positions address to the popular mind too antipathic a 
 treatment to win the indispensable success ; and to meet 
 the conditions of active propagation, he turns outward 
 the moral and effective side of his doctrine, asking leave 
 to use only two pairs of strictly scientific terms, which 
 he cannot do without, viz. " statical and dynamical " 
 " objective and subjective." Here, then, if anywhere, 
 we may expect to find the results on which he dwells 
 with greatest pride ; and if we must seek in his larger 
 works the logical root and evolution of his system, here 
 is the depository of its choicest fruits. Yet, strange to 
 say, the book is inconceivably absurd ; and it is only in 
 the literature of Morinonism that any thing more child- 
 ish and dismal can be found. Mr. Congreve's affec- 
 tionate reverence for his master is undoubted ; and the 
 aim of this translation is certainly to glorify, not humil- 
 iate, the new hierophant. People have always differed 
 about monuments ; and Madame Tussaud is known to 
 believe that the saints and heroes look best in waxwork 
 and their own old clothes. 
 
 Since the publication of the books of Exodus and 
 Leviticus, no more elaborate system of " religion " has 
 appeared than M. Comte's. It has its cult us, private 
 and public ; its organization of dogma ; its discipline, 
 penetrating to the whole of life ; its altars, its temples, 
 its symbolism, its prescribed gestures and times; its 
 ratios and length of the different parts and sorts of 
 prayer ; its rules fur opening or shutting the eyes ; it3
 
 20 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ecclesiastical courts and rules of canonization ; its orders 
 of priesthood and scale of benefices ; its adjustment of 
 the temporal to the spiritual power ; its novitiate and 
 consecration ; its nine sacraments : its angels, its last 
 judgment, its paradise : in short, all imaginable requi- 
 sites of a religion, except a God. Were it not for 
 this omission, we should feel an interest in examining a 
 structure so curious and careful. But in presence of 
 this blank, any serious estimate of the scheme would 
 be as idle as for the geographer to discuss the climate 
 and flora of his dreams, or the architect to measure the 
 spires of the frost-work and criticise the castles in the 
 clouds. 
 
 It may well be asked, what possible principle of co- 
 herence, what inner meaning at all, there can be in a 
 system professing atheism, yet propagating a "reli- 
 gion." With the answer to this natural inquiry we 
 shall be content, and then proceed to a less repulsive 
 side of our author's doctrine. His originality is some- 
 times too great for his conservatism ; and he wants now 
 and then some equivalent for what he has been ruth- 
 lessly cancelling. Having superseded " monotheism," 
 he finds it necessary to invent a " new Supreme Being ;" 
 and such Being he has accordingly provided, and 
 ordered to be represented in statuary by " a woman of 
 thirty with a child in her arms." This Grand-Etre is 
 "the aggregate of co-operative beings endowed with 
 nervous systems of three centres ; " * the sum-total of 
 the civilized or progressive part of our race, whether 
 
 * Ki'flexions syutlii'tiques, au point tie vuc positivistc, Mir la Philosophic, 
 la Morale et la Keli^ioii; court Apcr^u dc la Religion positive, e. systi'ma- 
 list-e ou i'omu'e par Augustu Couitc, p. 65.
 
 COMTES J.I V R AND 
 
 past, present, or future ; the picked clay of humanity, 
 that falls kindly into an idealizing mould. The gi eater 
 portion of mankind's ayunot having become historical, 
 and each generation adding its quota to the noble dead, 
 " the Supreme Being is not yet fully formed," but re- 
 ceives " new component parts " so long as our planet 
 remains habitable by men. " In the composition of the 
 Great Being the dead occupy the first place, then those 
 who are yet to be born. The two together are far 
 more numerous than the living, most of whom too are 
 only its servants, without the power at present of be- 
 coming its organs. There are but few men, and still 
 fe\ver women, who admit of being satisfactorily judged 
 in this respect before the completion of their objective 
 career" (p. 81)). After death, however, so it is 
 said with shocking burlesque, there comes to each 
 the judgment, that is, the verdict of his fellow-citizens 
 whether he is worthy to be contributed to the Gfrand- 
 Etre; and should he be voted into so sublime a place, 
 his presence thenceforward in the recognized ideal of 
 humanity constitutes his "future life," his ' : subjective 
 immortality." 
 
 We need not proceed further. What the worship of 
 saints would be, if the King of Saints were dead, 
 nay, what the sceptic Euhemerus actually supposed the 
 Hellenic mythology to be, such deification of mortals 
 in default of an Immortal is the avowed religion of 
 positivism. The minutest prescriptions are given for 
 conducting the whole process, both mental and ritual. 
 At your altar in the morning, for instance, you are to 
 adore your mother, probably (if you are adult) " be- 
 come subjective" to you, and requiring to be brought
 
 22 COMTK'S LIFK AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 In-fore your secret - ision. To help the effort and ex- 
 press the inwardness of the object, you must shut your 
 eyes. This done, you first set up the place on which 
 the figure is to enter ; next, fix her intended attitude ; 
 thirdly, choose her dress; and then, at length, permit 
 herself to glide into view ; taking care to idealize by 
 subtraction only, not by addition. In due order, the 
 prayer to her ensues ; consisting for the first half of 
 the hour in " commemoration " of her goodness ; then, 
 for the rest, in "effusion" of the feelings thus awakened. 
 The evening prayer is to be said in bed, and to be only 
 half as long ; and the midday devotion may limit itself 
 to recitals of a quarter of an hour. The wife and the 
 daughter (or, for a woman, the husband and son) are 
 to be conjoined as guardian angels with the mother, 
 and to have their turn of homage. The public worship 
 only applies the same principle to a wider circle of rela- 
 tions, running through and celebrating all the great 
 social tics, the several stages of human progress, the 
 natural classes of the body-politic; and forming an 
 ecclesiastical calendar, with special services all through 
 the year. The temples are all to face towards the 
 metropolis of humanity, Paris, of course ; but mean- 
 while the positivists will not object to use the churches 
 and cathedrals as they are, and occupy them as they 
 fall into disuse. Even the Madonnas may pass well 
 enough, with altered name, for the Goddess of Human- 
 ity. But insle;id of the cross (or of the crescent) 
 must be substituted, as sign of the faith, the curve 
 described by the hand in touching the three chief cere- 
 bral organs. There are no elements too incongruous 
 to blend in this strange "religion." The dissecting-
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PIIL osomr. 23 
 
 room, tlic high altar, the lover's bower, all subscribe 
 their proportion to its ceremonial and sentiment; not 
 without an ever-recurring preponderance of the last, 
 significantly expressed in the saying-, that " soon the 
 knee of man will never bend except to woman." * 
 
 It is dreary enough, yet pathetic too, to stand by and 
 see the great materialist elaborately mimic the Catholic 
 Church, which had surrounded his youth with its forms 
 without holding his manhood by its faith. The mean- 
 ing was gone, but the picture remained, and looked in 
 at every deeper and gentler hour with a lingering 
 charm. The sacrament of early life was disenchanted ; 
 yet he could not withdraw his eye. He forgot that the 
 wine of the Real Presence was poured out, and adored 
 the empty cup. His plagiarisms from Catholicism are 
 not confined to the details of external ritual, lie 
 owns, and tries to imitate, the vast moral power it ex- 
 ercises through its biographical traditions, its gallery 
 of martyrs and saints ; and to embody this education 
 by ideals is one of the chief ambitions of his system. 
 He missed the deeper truth, that these lesser pieties 
 depend upon a greater ; that the human reverences con- 
 stitute a true hierarchy, which falls into confusion when 
 the Supreme term is gone ; that though lower men may 
 give veneration to a higher, he is higher no more if in 
 his heart he accepts it ; and that only when the whole 
 heart of humanity is habitually drawn upward in trust 
 of a Living Perfection, can we safely apportion homage 
 to one another. Once or twice, indeed, the suspicion 
 (seems to cross him that, if indeed we stand at the 
 head of living natures, the conditions of any collective 
 
 * Politique positive, vol. i. p. 259.
 
 24 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 humility must fail, and that it would be better for as- 
 piration could we retain the sense of " our inferiority to 
 angelic beings." But there will ever "appear ab( ve 
 us" (so he answers his own misgiving) "a type of 
 Real Perfection, below which we must still remain, 
 though it invites our persevering efforts to continual 
 approximation." May we not ask, Where, then, do 
 you find this " type of Real Perfection above us ? " Is 
 it indeed Heal to you ? Or is it Ideal, and that in 
 the poor sense of being merely imaginary? If we 
 stand at the summit of the hierarchy, the space "above 
 us " is a blank, and has neither " type " nor attraction 
 any whither. The angels and God being removed, no 
 concrete personal living " perfection " exists beyond our 
 humanity, and what you substitute is an abstraction 
 feigned by our forecasting fancy not an actual J3eing 
 other than ourselves, but a potential state of certain 
 future selves. Is not this poor ghost, which counter- 
 feits the "Real" object of faith and trust, an involun- 
 tary testimony to the indispensable energy of that 
 religious aspiration for which Comte's universe is empty 
 of all provision? 
 
 From this desolate side of positivism we gladly turn 
 to estimate some of its distinctive features as a theory 
 of human knowledge and a classification of the sciences. 
 Its leading positions are these : 
 
 Theology and Metaphysics are two successive stages 
 of nescience unavoidable as preludes to all Science. 
 
 We can know nothing but phenomena, their co-exist- 
 ences and successions ; and the test of our knowledge 
 is prevision. 
 
 By " phenomena " must be understood objects of per-
 
 CO.MTE'S IAYK AND PHILOSOPHY. 25 
 
 ceplion, to the exclusion of psychological change rc- 
 j)uted to be self-known. 
 
 The idea of Causality, efficient or final, is an illusion 
 which should be expelled from philosophy. 
 
 The sciences logically arrange themselves in a certain 
 series, accoi'ding to the growing complexity of their 
 phenomena ; and their historical agrees with their logical 
 order. 
 
 The first and the last of these positions involve his- 
 torical assertions, as to the actual procedure of the 
 human mind, of the most sweeping kind. To test 
 them satisfactorily would require a survey of the whole 
 march of civilization, and a critique upon its springs 
 of movement possible only to the regular historian of 
 knowledge. It is easy enough, over so wide a field, to 
 gather and group examples in confirmation or in dis- 
 proof; but the evidence of a general law depends on 
 the balance of the whole, and can only be estimated 
 on the large sc.de. We shall not attempt, therefore, 
 to explain the grounds of our prevailing dissent from 
 Comte's historical rules, or the connections which might 
 perhaps save whatever truth they have. We address 
 ourselves in preference to the three intermediate posi- 
 tions, which are the real key to the whole Sj-stcm. 
 
 A question, however, arises in limine as to the 
 name of this " philosophy." Why call it "Positive"? 
 From what is it discriminated by this epithet? The 
 terms with which it stands in contrast, and which mark 
 what it would exclude and replace, are "theological" 
 and " metaphysical." But neither of these is its 
 proper correlate, or would ever occur to the mind in 
 connection with it. Each of them miii'lit be thrown
 
 26 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 into various antitheses : " theological " might be op- 
 posed to finthropologic, to atheistic, to naturalistic, 
 &c. ; " metaphysical," to physical, to historical, to 
 logical, &c. ; but cannot, in virtue of its own meaning 
 or definition, be made a contrary to "positive." The 
 only opposition into which this word can be thrown is 
 expressed by the term "negative;" and what Comte 
 really means to intimate by this phrase is, that there is 
 nothing at all in either theology or metaphysics, and 
 that his procedure is distinguished from them both by 
 having all the reality to itself. He is quite at liberty 
 to think so, and to make good the boast, if he can ; but 
 to embody it in his nomenclature, and adopt it as the 
 base of his classification, is in the highest degree un- 
 philosophical, an offence at once against logical pre- 
 cision and moral propriety. To arrogate merit under 
 the guise of a scientific division, is quite inadmissible, 
 except in the code of quack-advertisements and eccle- 
 siastical polemics. It is as if we were to divide human 
 studies into politics, poetry, and sense; or to classify 
 men as merchants, farmers, and fools. If we take 
 away the coloring of self-praise involved in the word 
 "positive," the attribute which we require to mark is 
 simply this, the limitation of research to phe- 
 nomena^ in their orders of resemblance, co-existence, 
 and succession; an idea which the word positive has 
 no tendency whatever to convey. Phenomenological, 
 as opposed to ontological, indicates the character which 
 Comtc requires to express ; and had he stated it thus, 
 we should have recognized an old and well-established 
 antithesis, and perceived that the theology and meta- 
 physics which he separates into two states are essentially
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 27 
 
 one; conjointly, indeed, opposed to his exclusiveness, 
 but only on principles common to them both. The 
 recognition of reality behind appearance, of causation 
 as well as manifestation, is that which they assume and 
 Cointe denies. The nature of the controversy is dis- 
 guised, and its issue taken for granted, by the substitu- 
 tion of a threefold for a twofold classification, and the 
 appropriation to the final form of a laudatory predicate 
 instead of a neutral definition. 
 
 Beyond the petitio principii involved in this choice 
 of a word, nothing whatever is advanced to show that 
 phenomena and their laws are the only accessible objects 
 of human thought. The principle is diligently re- 
 iterated without end ; but its evidence is never adduced, 
 and the difficulties attending its admission are nowhere 
 appreciated. The axiom being laid down that phe- 
 nomena are all in all (and further, as we shall sec, that 
 perception is the sole medium of intelligence), it is 
 clear that there can be no knowledge but physical ; and 
 it is only stating this proposition from the other side, to 
 say that all theological and metaphysical conceptions 
 which go beyond phenomena are invalid ; they must be 
 negative, if only the other be positive. Tried by the 
 tests of physical knowledge, ontological cannot but 
 fail ; its genius being wholly different, and its criteria 
 not the same. It is the perpetual boast of Cointe 
 that positive science gives prevision, a triumph never 
 won by its rivals. True, but not very conclusive ; for 
 jprevision, the perception of what is to turn up here- 
 after, is an apprehension of phenomena, and natu- 
 rally must arise from the study of phenomena, and not 
 from reflection on realities other than phenomena,
 
 28 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 So far forth as theology and metaphysics have presumed 
 to obtrude themselves into any science of observation, 
 and usurp its proper work, so far have they mistaken 
 their province, and deserved the reproach of failure. 
 Nothing that they can teach respecting the causation 
 and meaning of things will enable us to determine be- 
 forehand the particular course of cosmical or human 
 events, or in the least dispense with the necessity of 
 inductive research. It is one thing to have true faith 
 and insight respecting the infinite sources of all possi- 
 bilities, and quite another to be familiar with the order 
 of concrete actualities. But this rule reads both ways ; 
 and if there be no right of road in one direction, 
 neither is there in the other ; and Comte can no more 
 disturb the theologian's truth than the theologian can 
 interfere with his. If prevision is impossible, if we 
 cannot operate forward from the absolute to the rela- 
 tive, conversely we cannot operate backward from the 
 relative to the absolute ; and the positivist should as 
 little pretend to deny upwards as the theologian to af- 
 firm downwards. As no theist professes that God is a 
 phenomenon, the failure of phenomenological research 
 to meet Him contradicts no one's faith ; and the boast 
 of one investigator that he found no God at the end of 
 his telescope, and of another that the cerebral dissect- 
 ing knife comes across no human soul, misconceived 
 altogether, though quite in the spirit of Comte, the fun- 
 damental conditions of the problem. "Orru are known, 
 not as the corollaries, but as the postulates, of pheno- 
 mena ; and if not recognized at the beginning, will 
 never be found at the end. The two orders of appre- 
 hension, though each is the complement of the other,
 
 COMTE'S LITE AND PHILOSOPHY. 20 
 
 have no common measure ; and endless contradiction 
 arises from confounding their functions and methods. 
 
 Above all, is it absurd to test the validity of theo 
 logical and metaphysical conceptions by their power of 
 movement and " progress " ? Why, the very sameness 
 with which they are taunted, their patience from age 
 to age, is precisely the sole conceivable evidence they 
 could offer that they are what they profess to be, the 
 representation in us of the constancies of the universe. 
 And nothing could more effectually discredit them, as 
 the steady shadows of eternal entity, than a history of 
 growth and change. If they indeed be, as they pre- 
 tend, the background of cognition answering to the 
 abiding realities which hold all phenomena, it is their 
 business and function to keep still. Their vindication, 
 lies in their permanence. They are the conservative 
 elements of all knowledge ; the base and condition of 
 movement, but not the moving thing ; the vital atmos- 
 phere that sustains it, but not its beating wing. Do 
 you complain that the ideas of Causality, of Soul, of 
 God, of Substance, never get on, but are essentially 
 what they always were? Instead of damaging them, 
 you give the highest possible testimony to their veracity 
 and authority. Did they sweep forward, as you desire, 
 they would belie their word, and be detected as belong- 
 ing to the tide of physical change, not to the infinite 
 deep below. If on account of this stationary character 
 any one denies to these ideas the name of knowledge ; 
 if this word, as implying distinction and plurality, be 
 refused to the self-identical and simple, we shall not 
 object, provided it be understood that they are, if not 
 knowledge, the conditions of knowledge ; if not the
 
 30 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 object seen, the light by which we see ; that reliance on 
 them is indispensable to reading the universe as it is, 
 and that the enlarging field of phenomena and law finds 
 them still equal to their all-comprehensive function, 
 though needing revision in their special form and appli- 
 cation. 
 
 And to what, after all, amount the alleged "unpro- 
 gressivencss " and " barrenness " of all conceptions ex- 
 cept of phenomena and their laws? If by this be 
 meant that we spin no theological cotton, and lay down 
 no metaphysical telegraphs, that our breakfast-table 
 displays our electro-plate, but not our creed, the 
 remark is true, but trivial enough. If it asserts that 
 men's private temper, arid family administration, and 
 political aims and social sympathies, are unaffected by 
 their religious and philosophical convictions ; that those 
 convictions have ceased to influence what the poet 
 writes, the historian tells, the artist paints, what the 
 schoolmaster teaches, what the merchant does with his 
 wealth, what the patriot and the statesman endeavor to 
 achieve by law, the statement is as false as it is 
 startling. Much as we are in the habit of hearing 
 about the old "ages of faith," when nobody doubted 
 and everybody obeyed, they never put in an appear- 
 ance in real history, but shrink away like a golden age 
 from the illumination of direct evidence, and retire into 
 an elder darkness. Beyond the select enclosure of the 
 Church order, there have always been hardy and defiant 
 spirits, or thoughtless and indifferent, or subtle and 
 refined, that have yielded their inner life but little to 
 theological authority ; and wherever opportunity of ex- 
 pression has been given, as in the earliest poetry of
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 31 
 
 France and Italy, this fact has unambiguously displayed 
 itself. There seems no reason to suppose that theo- 
 logical and philosophical ideas ever had more power in 
 the world than they have at this moment ; though their 
 scattered and unorganized condition precludes them 
 from embodied and hierarchical manifestation of auth )r- 
 ily. M. Comte has no appreciation of the freed;) n 
 and variety of movement which the human mind in its 
 modern development demands. With the French tevd- 
 ency to idolize the " unity of power," and to see in dis- 
 tributed and individual forces nothing but " anarchy " 
 he treats the insurrection against Catholicism as a dis- 
 solution of faith ; and considers all the private ard 
 personal substitutes for the theocratic regime of the 
 Church as merely provisional disguises of irretrievable 
 decay. Nor does it occur to him that it is illogical to 
 demand from the theological and abstract convictions 
 of men the same direct and visible application to the 
 business of the passing hour of which their technical 
 knowledge is susceptible. In our practical work we 
 have to deal with phenomena and modify them ; and 
 here the instruments of our power can only be found 117. 
 right apprehension of the laws of phenomena. Theol- 
 ogy and metaphysics do not profess to teach us these ; 
 but to go behind them, and enable us to think truly of 
 their ground and source ; supposing this promise real- 
 ized, it can evidently give us no new arts, no rules by 
 which cither to predict or to command any particular 
 succession of external facts. But the influence upon 
 our tone of sentiment and affection, upon the interpre- 
 tation we put on life and nature, on the admirations we 
 feel and the ideal we follow, is profound and powerful,
 
 32 COMTE'S LIFE AND 
 
 although indefinite. It is always difficult, indeed, to 
 fetch out this power into actual life, and give it con- 
 crete application ; to bridge over the interval between 
 our faith respecting real being and our manipulation 
 with transient phenomena ; to incorporate a spiritual 
 religion into a working church : and of this confessed 
 difficulty Comte avails himself to persuade us that the 
 " positive sciences " contain the only practical order of 
 human ideas. But the same argument would equally 
 discredit all our ideas of beauty, harmony, and sub- 
 limity ; whose expression is, in like manner and from 
 like causes, difficult to create into palpable forms, and 
 when so created, is equally inoperative in the prediction 
 and command of phenomena. If the merchant does 
 not keep his books by his theology, neither docs the 
 artist bake his bread by his aesthetics ; and in either 
 case the reproach of inefficiency is equally idle. 
 
 But Comte not only restricts the intellect to phe- 
 nomena, he restricts the word " phenomena " to the 
 changes perceptible by sense. They must be external 
 to us, presented to material observation, in order to 
 become "facts" at all. Successions of feeling, idea, 
 and will, known to us by consciousness, are to be 
 thrown out of the account, and furnish nothing upon 
 which intelligence can work. Psychology, accord- 
 ingly, resting as it does upon self-observation, is a 
 mere illusion ; and logic and ethics, so far as they build 
 on it as their foundation, are altogether baseless. This 
 repudiation of all reflective knowledge is due chiefly to 
 Comte's acceptance of phrenology, a system which 
 has always taken an infatuated pleasure in knocking out 
 its own brains, by denying ab initio the validity of
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 33 
 
 that self-knowledge on which all its own evidence 
 directly or indirectly depends. The arguments on 
 which Comte relies in his criticism on the psychologists 
 are the stock objections of Gall and Spurzheim and 
 Combe, viz. that the mind observing and the mind 
 observed being the same, the alleged fact must be gone 
 and out of reach before it is looked at ; that a mental 
 state is not a whole fact, but only a part or function of 
 a fact, being as much a mere outcoming of some cere- 
 bral state as the feeling of indigestion is the sensational 
 side of deranged action in the stomach ; and that psy- 
 chologists have never found any thing out, or reaped 
 any scientific fruit. The inadequacy of this argument 
 has been felt and acknowledged by J. P. Mill, whose 
 superior knowledge of psychological literature, and dis- 
 ciplined habits of reflection, enabled him to appreciate 
 far better than the French metaphysician the real value 
 of this class of pursuits. 
 
 It is necessary to protest in liniine against the repre- 
 sentation which Comte gives of the " psychological 
 melhod." He places it in false contrast with a mode 
 of procedure against which it has nothing at all to 
 object, and which its votaries have, in fact, been the 
 chief agents in advancing. Availing himself of De 
 Blainville's remark, that the phenomena of every living 
 being may be regarded either statically, i. c. with ref- 
 erence to the conditions essential to their occurrence, 
 or dynamically, i. e. with reference to the products in 
 which they embody themselves, he lays it down that 
 the mental functions must be studied under one of these 
 two aspects : we must cither engage ourselves with the 
 organs requisite for their manifestation, in which case
 
 34 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 our work is purely physiological ; or we must attend to 
 the construction and course of scientific theories, and 
 compare and analyze the ways of thinking by which 
 the human mind has actually won its knowledge and 
 achieved its progress, and in this case our task re- 
 solves itself into a critique on the intellectual history of 
 mankind. To these two processes he opposes the psy- 
 chological, which, he says, pretends to discover the 
 fundamental laws of the human mind by contemplating 
 it in itself, i. e. wholly apart from either causes or 
 effects. The rivalry thus set up on behalf of the phys- 
 iologists (to take their case first) every scientific psy- 
 chologist will entirely disown. He does not in the least 
 object to the most searching investigation of the organic 
 conditions under which the several orders of mental 
 phenomena arise : he only maintains that, besides the 
 relations in which they stand to their bodily antece- 
 dents, they also have certain relations inter se; that, 
 as felt by us, they are variously like and unlike, so as to 
 be susceptible of classification, and present themselves 
 in determinable sequence so as to be reducible to laws. 
 To effect these classifications, and ascertain these laws, 
 is certainly the primary aim of the psychologist. He 
 thinks it possible to attain it by comparative self-knowl- 
 edge ; and even were it proved that the whole series of 
 phenomena were loose among themselves, produced not 
 one out of another, but each separately from its own 
 prior organic condition, he still deems it a legitimate 
 and useful service to bring into order these derivative 
 uniformities ; for there is no reason why in this par- 
 ticular instance the general rule should fail, that order 
 among the effects is a clue to corresponding order in
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 35 
 
 the cause. But in assuming this as his centre of work, 
 the psychologist passes no slight on the physiologist's 
 investigations into the nervous and cerebral conditions 
 of sensation, thought, and emotion. He is well aware 
 that the light of discovered order radiates forward as 
 well as backward, and that if uniformities of succession 
 or co-existence can be detected in the physical condi- 
 tions, they will become exponents of similar relations 
 among the mental facts. lie simply leaves this indirect 
 method of classification to the physiologist, and him- 
 self resorts to the direct ; willingly availing himself of 
 every help supplied by researches into the vital organ- 
 ism, and giving no countenance to the narrow-minded 
 assumption that the selection of one order of relations 
 for special attention is a disparagement of another. It 
 is not to the discoveries, but to the fictions of phre- 
 nologists, that intellectual philosophy objects ; nor can 
 any one familiar with the writings of Descartes and 
 Locke, of Spinoza and Berkeley, of Reid, Mill, and 
 Hamilton, deny its habitual eagerness to use to the 
 utmost the results placed at its disposal by the zeal of 
 the anatomist. The antagonism, therefore, supposed 
 by Comte is all his own. 
 
 It is equally so when he accuses psychologists of 
 substituting self-examination for study of the real- 
 ized products of human thony.kt, such as scientific 
 hypothesis, the history of civilization, and development 
 of ideas. Not a book of modern psychology can. be 
 found, not a dialogue of Plato, not a treatise of Aris- 
 totle, in which the logical laws of human reason are 
 not continually illustrated, if not directly deduced, by 
 reference to the organism and method of the sciences.
 
 36 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and the recorded procedures of human thought. The 
 value of these historical materials for determining the 
 principles of cognition is not more appreciated by 
 Comte than by the objects of his criticism ; the only 
 difference is, that while they consult individual con- 
 sciousness, in addition to the recorded development of 
 the race, and for their power to read and interpret the 
 monuments of intellectual history profess themselves 
 indebted to sympathetic self-reflection, he denies that 
 we can know ourselves, yet insists that we decipher the 
 world. His position, therefore, is simply destructive ; 
 and we have not the invidious office of depreciating his 
 proposed methods, which are of admitted value, but 
 only of defending the philosophical competency of our 
 own. 
 
 "The chief consideration proving clearly that the 
 mind's practical self-contemplation is a pure illusion," 
 is the following. Whatever the mind knows, is its 
 object of knowledge ; every object of knowledge is 
 other than the knowing subject, therefore what the 
 mind knows can never be itself. "By an invincible 
 necessity, the human mind can immediately observe all 
 phenomena except its own." " The thinking individual 
 cannot divide himself in two ; let one reason, while the 
 other looks at the reasoning. The organ observed and 
 the organ observing being in this case the same, how is 
 it possible that observation should have place ? " 
 
 This argument curiously reverses a celebrated maxim 
 of James Mill, and, indeed, of Hobbes, to the 
 effect that to have a feeling, and to know that you 
 have it, are identical. Comte tells us that to have a 
 feeling, and to know that you have it, are incompati-
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 37 
 
 ble. e.g. I fall into- a frozen pond ; I know the water 
 and the ice, but I cannot possibly know that I am 
 cold. Or, I go a sea-voyage under bilious conditions ; 
 I observe the swaying water and the lurching ship ; but 
 " an invincible necessity " conceals from me the fact 
 that I am sick. Of the two things given in the act of 
 perception, viz. the percipient consciousness and the 
 perceived object, it has usually been supposed possible 
 to doubt the second, but not the first ; the very doubt 
 itself bringing, as another state of the conscious self, 
 its own refutation. And accordingly, though we have 
 numerous forms of idealism which construe all outward 
 phenomena into mere appearances within the mind, we 
 have hitherto had no strictly corresponding materialism, 
 cancelling from our knowledge all mental states on the 
 ground of their being ours, and claiming certainty for 
 the outer world precisely because it is foreign to us. 
 This, however, is the strange position taken up by 
 Comte. The argument by which he supports it is a 
 mere appeal to the mystery which belongs to all cogni- 
 tion, whether of external or internal facts. How is it 
 possible, he asks, that we should know our own state, 
 since we must cease our mental activity in order to 
 observe it? In other words, reflection upon our inner 
 experience must follow upon that experience itself, 
 and be separated from it by a certain interval of time. 
 Be it so ; why is this more inconceivable than the per- 
 ception of an outward fact which stands off from me 
 by a certain interval of space? If our intelligence can 
 bridge the chasm of local separation, what hinders it 
 from uniting the termini of succession? What is mem- 
 ory, if the present self can never know any thing
 
 58 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 about the past self? Its distinction is, that it report* 
 to us, not simply outward things in themselves, but 
 outward things (or inward) as they affect us; so that 
 it has even been contended there is properly no 
 memory but of our own former states. If now its re- 
 ports are good for nothing, there is an end of the 
 matter, and human acquaintance with the past is an 
 illusion. But if they be accepted as valid, the knowl- 
 edge which they supply is either immediate or mediate. 
 Is it immediate? Then are we immediately cognitive 
 of our own past states, in spite of Comtc's maxim. Is 
 it mediate? Then do we, as now remembering, know 
 something past, as having then perceived it ; the truth 
 in my present remembrance is just what there was in 
 my former perception ; and without immediate cogni- 
 tion of my own state at the percipient moment, no 
 mediate knowledge of it could be given by memory. 
 In fact, the act of perception is necessarily and equally 
 an act of self-consciousness, objective no more than 
 subjective ; and to claim for it authority for phenomena 
 without, is in itself to concede to it like authority for 
 phenomenon within ; nothing being an outward phe- 
 nomenon at all except vhat appears on the double field 
 of thought and thi)tgs, and is known as being and as 
 felt. 
 
 And if we be incapable of knowing our own experi- 
 ences and thoughts, we cannot pei'form on them any 
 act of comparison, separation, or combination. Yet 
 what is human language but the crystallized form of 
 countless discriminations and analogies, so clearly felt, 
 and frequently referred to, as to demand the means of 
 permanent expression ? Comte refers us to scientific
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 39 
 
 theories and logical processes as the only possible means 
 of reaching logical laws. But how could these intel- 
 lectual methods speak to us intelligibly at all, were it 
 not for the parallel movement of our own thought, 
 carried into the study as interpreter and test? To 
 beings not self-conscious, or not able to rely on their 
 reflective insight into their own ways of intellectual 
 action, the record of other men's reasonings could 
 awaken no responsive intelligence ; only through our 
 sympathetic self-knowledge do they find us out and 
 teach us any thing. All grammar, all philology, all 
 scientific language, are in fact psychological deposits; 
 not less certainly testifying to the perpetual action of 
 self-reflection, as one factor of human knowledge, than 
 the geological strata bear witness to the operation 
 through ages past of the very elements that work upon 
 our homesteads and on the beach at our garden-gate 
 to-day. Comte's advice is excellent, if addressed to 
 those who can open their vision upon their own nature 
 and intelligence ; but has no sense or application for 
 the sort of blind chimera or one-eyed Cyclops that he 
 imagines, with pictures of the universe glazed upon the 
 surface, and never taken home to any known self 
 within. No doubt our self-knowledge is dependent to 
 an incalculable extent on the living in a human world, 
 and standing before the face of other men : the mani- 
 festations of their nature, whether by natural language 
 of the moment or by the historical record of past pro- 
 cesses of thought, are conditions necessary to the de- 
 velopment of our reflective faculties : and if we were 
 to insist on insulating the sell-consciousness from all 
 these data, that it might spin a science out of its own
 
 40 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 viscera, we should but impose upon an empty power a 
 self-consuming task. But, on the other hand, our 
 ability to decipher the expression of other minds de- 
 pends, in its turn, on converse with our own ; and to 
 bid us study the fruits of their resenrch and meditation, 
 while despairing' of all acquaintance with our own, is 
 to place a banquet before the sleeping or the dead. It 
 is impossible to make either of the reciprocal condi- 
 tions prior to the other ; their efficacy lies in the balance 
 and alternation of action and re-action ; and so close is 
 the inter-dependence of psychological and objective 
 knowledge of human nature, that a theory which de- 
 spises either excludes both. 
 
 The objection, however, which Comte is most zealous 
 in urging against the psychologists is, that their method 
 has never been crowned with any success, great or 
 small, and that their labor lias been absolutely barren. 
 Even if this statement be tried by the test present to 
 the author's own mind, viz. the amount of direct dis- 
 covery respecting the processes of the mind, it is a 
 monstrous exaggeration. The logical doctrine of Aris- 
 totle, the modern theory of vision, the ascertainment of 
 laws of association and abstraction, Butler's exposition 
 of the moral constitution of man, deserve to be 
 ranked among positive achievements of a high order, 
 and are recognized as such by the vast majority of com- 
 petent judges on these points. If perfect unanimity is 
 not attained even on these doctrines, neither is it secured 
 at present in regard to any of the corresponding parts 
 of biological science ; and the only advantage which 
 the positivist has over his predecessors in intellectual 
 philosophy is in his liberal promises for the future ; his
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 41 
 
 disparagement of the past not being justified, so far as 
 yet appears, by the detection of a single law of our 
 mental or moral nature. These reproaches of back- 
 wardness should at least be reserved till they can be 
 uttered from a point of real advance. Perhaps, too, 
 the test by which the fruitfulness or sterility of a pur- 
 suit is estimated by Comte may not be altogether ad- 
 missible. His demand obviously is for some new field 
 of " prevision " special to psychology: the demand is 
 disappointed, because intrinsically unreasonable. From 
 objective studies we expect objective results ; from sub- 
 jective studies it is natural to look for subjective re- 
 sults : not so much for a fresh sphere brought into 
 knowledge, as for a more refined knoiviny power, for 
 quickened faculties self-protected from beguiling errors, 
 for intellectual implements of more ethereal temper and 
 disciplined skill. That this appropriate effect of re- 
 flective studies has been their habitual attendant, is 
 undeniable ; every period of intense speculative activity 
 being the precursor of the next advance of even physi- 
 cal science, and educating the faculties up to the point 
 when the discovery of new laws becomes possible ; set- 
 ting the previous gains of human research in due order 
 and relation, and preparing language and method for 
 new service. Alternately acting and studying its action, 
 the mind, whether by systole or diastole, sustains the 
 pulsation of its living thought ; and to demand the one 
 operation without the other, is not less absurd than to 
 complain that the heart does not always propel without 
 resilience. Nor is it only in the successive periods of 
 human culture that this need of reflective studies is 
 observable. No fact is more conspicuous in individual
 
 42 COMTE'S LIFE AXD rniLOSOPHY. 
 
 biography and the comparative experiences of educa- 
 tion, than the systematic superiority, in pliancy and 
 balance of faculty, of men not strange to metaphysical 
 and moral studies, over those who never quit the circle 
 of mathematical relations and physical laws. Were 
 the methods of intellectual and moral philosophy alto- 
 gether illusory, it is inconceivable that a certain habit- 
 uation to them should be an indispensable gymnastic 
 for the mind, and a needful check to the narrowing 
 tendency of the "positive sciences," when exclusively 
 pursued.* 
 
 Closely connected with Comtc's contempt for the psy- 
 
 * In spite of Conite's contempt for psychology, lie is one of the most 
 resolute of psychologists himself; and freely appenls, when convenient, to 
 that very self-consciousness which at other times he declares to be quite 
 blank and dumb. Thus we find him announcing that the " phenomena of 
 life" are "knuicn by immediate consciwtsntss'" (Phil. Pus. vol. ii. p. 64P, vol. 
 iii. p. 8); an assertion standing in accurate contradiction to the doctrine on 
 which we have been commenting. Nay, so completely does he forget his 
 denial of any possible self-knowledge, as to affirm, when required for his pur- 
 pose, that " man at jirst known nothing but himself," so as to apply his ."elf- 
 knowledge as a universal formula for the interpretation of nnture. But how 
 could man erect his self-consciousness into a rule for explaining all phe- 
 nomena, if no inward fact were cognizable by him at ally Perhaps, how- 
 ever, it is only since monotheism came in, that psychology has become 
 impossible and absurd; for, while denying it to modern metaphysicians, 
 Comte is full of admiration of its use among the ancient augurs. He claims 
 for polytheism the honor of instituting the first careful observation of nature; 
 laments that we have to put up with our poor meteorological registers in 
 place of the far superior weather-tables of the Etruscan soothsayers; and 
 affirms that, with a view to the interpretation of dreams, the intellectual 
 and moral phenomena were made the subject of the most delicate observa- 
 tions, pursued day by day with a perseverance not to b( again expected till 
 the positive philosophy has reached its final development (Phil. Pus. vol. v 
 p. 135). It is ^to be presumed that, as dreams are altogether inward (acts, 
 this marvellous store of scientific observation accumulated in their service, 
 and throwing light on the intellectual and moral life, could be no other than 
 psydtoluyical atjritttl. How is it that it may be invested in Divination ; but 
 must be inaccessible to Science, at least until Positivism finds a profitable 
 use for it?
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 43 
 
 shologists is his disrespect for certain ideas and beliefs 
 whose only guarantee is in our self-consciousness. 
 Thus he treats as an illusion our idea of Causation,' 
 requiring us to dispense with it altogether, not merely 
 in its theological form of Will, but no less in its scien- 
 tific equivalent of Force. " Every proposition," he 
 gays, " which is not ultimately reducible to the simple 
 enunciation of a fact, particular or general, must be 
 destitute of all real and intelligible meaning." Again : 
 "Forces, in mechanics, are only movements, produced 
 or tending to be produced ; but although this is happily 
 pretty well understood now-a-days, yet an essential form 
 is still required, if not in the conception, at least in the 
 habitual language, in order to cancel altogether the old 
 metaphysical notion of force, and present more accu- 
 rately than hitherto the true point of view." And he 
 shows the same jealousy of any properly dynamical 
 notions when complaining afterwards of Bichat's specu- 
 lation respecting " vital forces " and proposing to return 
 to the true path by substituting the word " properties " 
 for "forces"! His definition of the word "Law" as 
 an "invariable relation of succession or resemblance 
 among phenomena," together with his severe restriction 
 of the human mind to the investigation of "Laws," 
 demands of us an entire disuse of all belief or even 
 idea of Causality. 
 
 Now if he had been content with saying that causes 
 lie beyond the field of observation, and that scientific 
 induction, even in its highest generalizations, can never 
 carry us further than the order of co-existence and 
 sequence among phenomena, he would have stated only 
 an important truth, the one great truth on whose
 
 44 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 clear apprehension depends the whole difference be- 
 tween ancient and modern investigation of nature. All 
 knowledge which finds its test and triumph in accurate 
 prevision, or, more generally, in the determination of 
 absent facts by means of present data, docs require 
 exclusively an attentive study of the relations of events 
 in time and place. Though we were endowed with no 
 other power than the ability to register, compare, and 
 analyze series, without any suspicion of a purpose, or 
 wonder about origination, we should want nothing (ex- 
 cept, indeed, an indispensable moral incentive) to com- 
 plete the conditions of scientific discovery. It stands 
 to reason, indeed, that, in order to foresee, we need 
 only to know the sequences to which events, beginning 
 from the present, are limited ; and that, in order to fill- 
 in the absent half of a cluster of phenomena by sug- 
 gestion from what is at hand, we have but to learn 
 the groupings in which they uniformly occur. And the 
 rule, thus rational in its principle, is confirmed by the 
 actual history of natural knowledge. No scrutiny, it 
 is true, ever succeeds in laying hold of a new force, 
 and fixing it in its distinction before our view : all 
 that can be done is to detect some unsuspected effects, 
 which are but a fresh disposition or succession of phe- 
 nomena ; and behind that veil no astuteness can carry 
 us. We are apt to be deceived on this point by the 
 habitual employment, in scientific treatises, of names 
 for reputed forces of different kinds, chemical, elec- 
 tric, magnetic, vital, &c. We naturally suppose that 
 the votary of each department of research has some- 
 thing to tell us of the force prevailing there, and of the 
 characters which distinguish it from its dynamic neigh-
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 45 
 
 bors. On closer inspection, however, we shall find 
 that of the force itself, apart from what it does, he has 
 nothing special to say : he defines it by the apjjear- 
 ances it puts forth ; he separates it from other forces 
 by stating the dissimilar effects which they severally 
 exhibit ; nor has he any other means of referring to the 
 ranks of Swdpeig than by marshalling the perceptible 
 phenomena under their appropriate heads. The name 
 "magnetism" stands for the viewless cause of all those 
 movements in certain metals (iron, cobalt, nickel) 
 which occur in the vicinity of particular ferruginous 
 ores, or of iron brought into similar conditions : the 
 movements may be induced under considerable variety 
 of prior conditions, through which it would be impos- 
 sible for us to trace any identity of originating power ; 
 and the assumption of unity rests entirely on the ter- 
 mination of all these conditions in one result, viz. the 
 polar disposition or deflection of the needle. It is the 
 specialty of the phenomenon that is honored with the hy- 
 pothesis of a special force. Heat, again, is the name 
 of an equally unknown cause of certain phenomena, 
 such as a given animal sensation, and the expansion of 
 bodies, and their change from solid to liquid and liquid 
 into gaseous, which are entered under this category 
 for no other reason than that they cling together, and 
 though not alike in themselves or appreciable through 
 the same sense, arise under the same physical condi- 
 tions. The concurrence of these effects having tied 
 them into a group, the rise of any one of them becomes 
 a sign of the possibility of the rest, or of the presence 
 of the supposed cause : but of that cause, per sc, as 
 apart from its effects, of its unity, except in thcii
 
 4t> COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 concurrence; of its difference from magnetism, e?:cept 
 in the unlikcness and separation of the effects, we 
 have assuredly no cognizance. Thus much, then, must 
 be freely granted to Comtc, that all investigation 
 into natural forces is delusive, unless understood to be 
 mere phenomenological research, prosecuted under the 
 disguise of dynamical language ; and that its only real 
 result must be to ascertain the analogies and the order 
 of perceptible facts. If this be true, we must materi- 
 ally alter our ordinary conceptions of the operations of 
 nature. AVe must no longer attribute any reality or 
 efficient existence to gravitation, electricity, cohesion, 
 &c. ; but, treating them as mere fictions of thought 
 subservient to classification, must resolve the universe, 
 under the eye of science, into a legion of phenomena, 
 irregular to begin with, but susceptible of being regi- 
 mented and disciplined by due attention to their like- 
 ness and affinities. If our language is to be regulated 
 exclusively by the resources of the natural sciences, 
 and nothing to be admitted into it but what they can 
 undertake to guarantee, nothing short of a clean sweep 
 of every dynamical form of phrase can satisfy the obli- 
 gations of truth. And yet this is manifestly impossi- 
 ble ; and has been found so by Comte himself. 
 
 How are we to reduce this apparent inconsistency? 
 Inductive science gives us no access to causes behind 
 phenomena ; yet we cannot expound it without speak- 
 ing of them, and assuming them. Is fiction, then, the 
 indispensable vehicle of truth ? And must a false pos- 
 tulate underlie the whole fabric of our knowledge? So 
 would it assuredly be, if every idea were to be dis- 
 carded as invalid for which inductive science declines to
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 47 
 
 be responsible. But when we have confessed that, by 
 the way of perception, and in the study of laws, causa- 
 tion cannot be reached, it by no means follows that the 
 idea is to be expelled the service of the human mind. 
 The question arises, whether, as it evades us at the end 
 of science, it may not, perhaps, be found at the 
 beginning! the spectacle-case may well be empty, if 
 the glasses are already on the nose, helping us all the 
 while to see the very emptiness itself. If the idea of 
 causality be a metaphysical datum, it is no wonder that 
 we miss it as a physical qiuesitum ; nor is it difficult to 
 understand why it presents no variety to our mind, 
 however various be the phenomena behind which it is 
 planted, or the corresponding changes of name it may 
 assume. By an irresistible law of thought, all phe~ 
 nomena present themselves to us as the expression 
 of power, and refer us to a causal ground whence they 
 issue. This dynamic source we neither sec, nor hear, 
 nor feel; it is given in thouyht supplied by the 
 spontaneous activity of the mind itself as the correl- 
 ative prefix to the phenomenon observed. By the 
 general acknowledgment of philosophers, this idea is so 
 strictly " a necessary idea " as to be entirely irremovable 
 from the conception of any change ; to cut the tie be- 
 tween them, and think of phenomena as not effects, is 
 impossible, in fact, even to the very writers who pro- 
 pose it in theory. 
 
 What value, then, arc we to put upon this belief? 
 Either we must take it as a natural revelation, or reject 
 it as a natural lie; in the case of an original datum of 
 thought contradictory to no other, a third course is 
 impossible. If we are to rely on the veracity of our
 
 48 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 constitution as thinking beings, we must accept the 
 subjective postulate as giving a valid rule for objective 
 nature. If \ve are to suppose our intellectual consti- 
 tution mendacious, and deem causation a mental fiction, 
 no reason will remain for trusting our perceptive con- 
 stitution any more ; and our observation of facts and 
 quest of laws will perish by the contagion of uncer- 
 tainty. It is impossible, except by arbitrary caprice, 
 to save the one part of our cognitive nature while 
 sacrificing the other, and vain to pretend that the depo- 
 sitions of the first are in any sense opposed to those of 
 the other. That the " power " given to us in thought 
 is apprehensible by no perception, avails as little to 
 disprove its reality as the inaudibleness of light to 
 convict the eye of false reports. Yet this is the only 
 argument by which Comte justifies his contempt for 
 causes. AVe freely surrender to him all search by 
 scientific methods after a plurality of forces distin- 
 guishable in themselves : but he confounds this illusory 
 aim with the recognition, on the authority of a law of 
 thought, of universal causation, inserted by the mind, 
 without any change of type, behind all sets of phe- 
 nomena in turn. Start up what may to arrest our 
 attention, one and the same homogeneous idea of 
 power occurs to us ; and whether it receives the name 
 of chemical, or physical, or vital, the dynamical back- 
 ground of the conception remains unvaried, and the 
 momentary representation alone is exposed to change. 
 The trustworthiness of this belief has the same guarantee 
 as the self-evident predicates of space and time : it is 
 the indispensable condition of our thinking of phenom- 
 ena at all ; they are just as absolutely unpresentable to
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 49 
 
 the mind apart from causality, as motion without dilu- 
 tion and extension. Indeed, it is remarkable how these 
 two great data, Space and Time, rescue us from tli3 
 scepticism of the materialist school. They stand as 
 eternal barriers to forbid our final exit from the natural 
 faiths of reason ; or as a bridge that spans the gulf be- 
 tween metaphysical and physical apprehension, and has 
 a beating upon each ; so that, destroy which you will, 
 the whole roadway of human knowledge falls, and 
 neither of the interdependent realms remains accessible 
 or habitable at all. Will you take your stand on the 
 entities of Keason alone? Then, as Comte truly says, 
 your knowledge will never advance a step ; you will 
 find no law, and win no prevision. Will you try the 
 other side, and say that Perception of phenomena is 
 the only source of knowledge? Then you must throw 
 away from your belief both space and time, which, as 
 eternal, are not phenomena, and as infinite, you cannot 
 have perceived ; and with them must perish all that 
 they contain, so that your solid realism goes off into 
 absolute Nihilism. Will you attempt a compromise, 
 and let natural faith have its way unquestioned respect- 
 ing these two necessary receptacles of phenomena? 
 Then the postulates of thought, by no means stopping 
 there, are not only good for these, but good for more ; 
 and causality slips in by the plea that makes room for 
 Law. 
 
 Final causation, not less than efficient, our author 
 imagines to be contradicted and disproved by " posi- 
 tive " knowledge ; and he is fond of turning aside from 
 his exposition to mark the points where science ap- 
 pears to exclude the notion of providential design.
 
 50 COMTE'S LITE .AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Thus astronomical discovery, in his opinion, completely 
 overthrows the doctrine of divine purpose in the ar- 
 rangements of the solar system: 1. Because design, 
 whenever alleged, is conceived of as relative to man, 
 whose nature gives the only measure we have of good 
 and evil ; and though he might plausibly be supposed 
 the object of divine care so long as his station was 
 assumed to be central, the idea must vanish with the 
 disclosure of the earth's dependent and planetary posi- 
 tion. 2. Because it is demonstrated that the order and 
 stability of the solar system, and the fitness of its sev- 
 eral bodies for the residence of living beings, are 
 necessary consequences of purely mechanical laws. 
 3. Because in many respects the system might be 
 greatly improved, and by no means deserves the admi- 
 ration wasted on it.* This last argument we may leave 
 to those who feel themselves able to pronounce on the 
 relative merits of possible universes, as compared with 
 one another and with the actual. The belief in design 
 is by no means pledged to the doctrine of optimism. 
 The readiness with which every theist admits the exist- 
 ence of evil, the frequency with which he speaks of 
 imperfections in life and nature, and his habitual refer- 
 ence to a future and ideal world, show that hi.s faith 
 can co-exist, without prejudice, with the conception of 
 more " advantageous conditions " of being than he wit- 
 
 * " With persons unused to the study of the celestial bodies, though very 
 likely well informed on other parts of natural philosophy, astronomy has still 
 the repute of being a science eminently religious; as if the famous words. 
 'The heavens declare the glory of God,' had lost nothing of their truth." In u 
 note Comte adds, "Now-a-days, to minds familiarized betimes witli the tru<- 
 astronomical philosophy, the heavens declare no other glory than that of 
 llipparchus, Kepler, Newton, and all those who have contributed to the 
 ascertainment of their laws." PklUisophle Positive, vol. ii. p. 36.
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 51 
 
 nesses where he is. For ourselves, we confess Comte'a 
 censorship over the universe affects us very much in the 
 same way as many religious writers' patronage of it. 
 They undertake to show how much better, he how 
 much worse, it is than it might have been. If this sort 
 of argument is open to the one, it cannot be closed 
 against the other ; and we may leave them to settle it 
 between them as best they may. Whether the stomach 
 is made on the best principles ; whether the sea is not a 
 little too salt; whether the isthmus of Panama is not to 
 be regretted ; whether the ice may not be rather overdone 
 about the poles ; whether, if M. Lesseps had been con- 
 sulted, the shortcomings of the Red Sea might not have 
 been avoided ; whether the two sides of the moon are 
 fairly treated ; whether Jupiter is all right without a 
 ring, or Venus would be improved by diminution of 
 light and levity, are matters for those who know 
 every thing and a good deal more. Such questions are 
 as a flood let loose, and spreading without use and with- 
 out bound, covering the landmarks of all fruit-bearing 
 truth and turning thought into a desolating waste. 
 Mend the world as you will, there must always remain 
 ideal standards, measured by which it will be liable to 
 criticism as before. The body of man, for instance, is 
 variously frail, and can scarcely stand, without fracture, 
 a ten-feet fall ; but give him cast-iron ribs, and a rail- 
 way accident will contrive to crush him ; and the more 
 you harden him, the greater the forces into which he 
 will venture. In short, the critique of nature in detail 
 is quite beyond us ; and whether we find there little 
 providences or monstrous blemishes, we are alike in 
 danger of seeing only the reflection of our own egotism.
 
 52 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Praising or censuring the arrangements of the world, 
 Ave equally set up certain ideal ends of our own imagin- 
 ing, which we assume that it was or ought to serve ; by 
 the test of these we try nature, and, according as her 
 structure realizes or falls short of them, we pronounce 
 it perfect or imperfect. Comte and the divines are 
 therefore both within the same school of teleological 
 criticism ; both speak of a good or a bad way of real- 
 izing a presupposed conception ; both are equally far 
 from confining themselves to the study of actual phe- 
 nomena and effects, uncompared with others that might 
 have been. Forming as we do part of the scheme of 
 nature, limited as our power of conception is to the 
 resources of the universe that bounds the horizon of our 
 minds, we cannot pretend to be judges of the skill or 
 clumsiness of the world's laws ; and the moment we 
 pass beyond the simple admiring perception of order 
 and relation, and begin to imagine how much better or 
 worse matters would have stood under other conditions, 
 we entangle ourselves in a thicket of ever-growing 
 problems, from which extrication is impossible. The 
 faith in divine purpose will persevere through all ; but 
 the critique of that purpose in special instances is vari- 
 able and insecure, and was properly excluded by Bacon 
 from the business of science. 
 
 Thus the particular thought from which the creation 
 of the world has been supposed to spring, viz. to be the 
 moral centre of the universe, and the scene of a drama 
 fixing the gaze of all higher beings, does really, as 
 Comte's first argument remarks, lose its hold of proba- 
 bility by the Copernican discovery. The plurality of 
 worlds, be they inhabited or uninhabited, is fatally at
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 53 
 
 variance with the scheme of moral symmetry that 
 makes man the hero of all time and nature. But to 
 discredit this particular idea is one thing ; to disprove 
 the presence of design altogether is another. The ten- 
 dency of the Copernican discovery, is quite in the 
 opposite direction, to give enlargement, instead of cur- 
 tailment and extinction, to the significance and purpose 
 of the world. The old theory of the divines proving 
 too small to suit the magnificence of the facts ; its 
 chief object, man, finding himself in presence of a 
 scene so unexpectedly august, which is the more 
 natural inference, that therefore this scene must have a 
 greater cause than we had conceived, or that it can 
 have none at all ? And so perhaps it will ever be. 
 In one instance after another ad infinitum, it will be 
 found that the idea we had planted at the heart of a, 
 thing is too small, and is transcended by the scale of 
 the reality. To make this the excuse for substituting a 
 smaller or a blank, is perversely to justify a logical 
 retrogression by a scientific advance, and to say that, 
 the more glorious the creation, the less thought must it 
 contain. No less a paradox than this is Comte's rea- 
 soning that, because a particular idea of the divine 
 intention gives way, Final Causation in general is 
 exploded. 
 
 The only considerable argument in the passage on 
 which we are remarking is the second, that the 
 physical forces and arrangements being known, to 
 which the order and stability of the solar system is 
 due, the phenomena are exhaustively explained with- 
 out any intervention of purpose at all. Now what id 
 the nature, and wherein lies the plausibility, of this rea-
 
 54 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 soiling? It is simply a playing-ofF of physical causation 
 against moral, or, as it is called, final causation ; tho 
 forces of matter are adequate to produce all the move- 
 ments and all the equilibrium, and so no force of mind is 
 wanted. But have we not just learned from Comte 
 that we know nothing of any forces of matter, nothing 
 of any production of one phenomenon from any other, 
 or from causation at all? that our investigations and 
 discoveries arc absolutely debarred from passing beyond 
 the grouping .and succession of phenomena? Then 
 what does he mean by here finding in physical causes a 
 substitute and equivalent for the volitional action which 
 he excludes? They cannot shut out and supersede that 
 action, unless they are competent to do the same thing ; 
 if they claim to stand in its place, they must undertake 
 to discharge the required office instead of it. Either, 
 therefore, gravitation must be equal to the task hitherto 
 given to the Divine Will, i.e. must be a real efficient 
 force, and not a mere generalized phenomenon ; or else 
 it cannot make good its rival pretensions, or enter at 
 all upon the field which is at present occupied by final 
 causes simply on the merit of this qualification. In 
 other words, our author may take his choice of two 
 positions : he may limit the possible achievements of 
 our minds to the ascertainment of laws, and say that 
 causal problems are inaccessible ; or, admitting causal 
 problems, he may pronounce one solution true and 
 another false, declaring e.g. in favor of physical forces 
 as against spiritual agency. But he cannot do both, 
 and slip about from the one to the other at will ; he can- 
 not fight a particular causal hypothesis with a mere law 
 of phenomena which is not causal, and say in the same
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 55 
 
 breath that we can know nothing of this matter, and 
 also that we know the matter to be not so-and-so, but 
 otherwise than that. Cause against cause, law against 
 law ; but no cross-fire is possible ; and, slam the heavy 
 gate of gravitation as you may in the face of Living 
 Agency, still if its bars are only ranges of co-existence 
 and succession, and its chevaux-de-frise only bristling 
 clusters of phenomena, causation will slip through and 
 round and over, and feel no obstruction to be there. 
 
 As to the choice which Comte practically makes be- 
 tween the two positions just described, there can be no 
 doubt. He assuredly thinks of nature, not simply as 
 the theatre of phenomena, but as the residence of forces. 
 In what sense can he affirm that periodicity of planetary 
 perturbation, and the consequent equilibrium of the solar 
 system and its orbitary movements, are necessary con- 
 sequences of gravitation, if he does not conceive of 
 gravitation as a cause ? From the two great conditions 
 of every Newtonian solution, viz. projectile impulse 
 and centripetal tendency, eject the idea of force, and 
 what remains? The entire conception is simply made 
 up of this, and has no sort of faintest existence without 
 it. It is useless to give it notice to quit, and pretend 
 that it is gone, when you have put a new name upon 
 the door. We must not call it "attraction," lest there 
 should seem to be a power within : we are to speak 
 of it as "gravitation," because that is only "weight," 
 which is nothing but a " fact ; " as if it were not a fact 
 that held a power, a true dynamic affair, which no 
 imagination can chop up into incoherent succession; 1 
 Nor is the evasion more successful when we try the 
 phrase " tendency of bodies to innttuil approach?
 
 56 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The approach itself may be called a phenomenon ; but 
 the "tendency" is no phenomenon, and cannot be 
 attributed by us to the bodies without regarding them 
 as the residence of force. And what are we to say to 
 the projectile impulse in the case of the planets? Is 
 that also a phenomenon? Who witnessed and reported 
 it? Is it not evident that this whole scheme of physical 
 astronomy is a resolution of observed facts into dynamic 
 equivalents, and that the hypothesis posits for its calcu- 
 lations, not phenomena, but proper forces? Its logic 
 is this : if an impulse of certain intensity were given, 
 and if such and such a mutual attraction were con- 
 stantly present, then the sort of motions winch we 
 observe in the bodies of our system would follow. So, 
 however, they also would if willed by an Omnipotent 
 Intelligence. Both doctrines are so far hypothetical ; 
 both hypotheses are dynamic ; both are an adequate 
 provision for the facts ; so that on this ground neither 
 can exclude the other. There is, however, this differ- 
 ence : we know that the doctrine of composition of 
 forces is an artificial device, by which, in innumerable 
 cases, we treat us if plural a spring of motion which, 
 like our own volition to a given muscular action, is 
 really simple; the quasi-plurality being a contri- 
 vance for bringing the phenomenon under dominion to 
 the calculus, and finding its equivalent. If it be 
 maintained that the phenomenon is really composite, 
 antagonist muscles and numerous levers being set in 
 motion, we reply, that the complexity is at all event? 
 in the mode of execution, not in the principle of origi- 
 nation, which, being our own conscious volition, we 
 know has none of those parts, but goes straight at the
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AXD niiLosoriiY. 57 
 
 resultant. It appears, therefore, that the composite 
 doctrine betrays its fictitious character where the voli* 
 tional origination is an indisputable fact ; and that, even 
 allowing it in such case to represent reality, it is a mere 
 executive reality, wielded as an instrumental medium 
 by the immediate power of Will behind. In the same 
 manner, the hypothetical composition of the Newtonian 
 forces does nothing to exclude the primary causation of 
 a Divine Mind. 
 
 In this connection it is curious to notice, in so acute 
 a mind as our author's, the logical inconsequence pro- 
 duced by incompatible antipathies. He commits the 
 inconsistency, which would be extraordinary were it 
 not ordinary with his class, of excluding all Will 
 from the universe because there is nothing but Neces- 
 sity, yet insisting on Necessity as an attribute of all 
 Will. It is evident that whichever of these two posi- 
 tions is established destroys the other ; yet it is scarcely 
 possible for the atheist to avoid holding both. "Look 
 at this whole frame of things," he says, " how can it 
 proceed from a mind, a supernatural will? Is it not 
 all subject to regular laws, and do we not actually 
 obtain prevision of its phenomena? If it were the 
 product of mind, its order would be variable and free." 
 Of mind, therefore, it is a mark, that its phenomena 
 are unsusceptible of prevision ; of volition it is charac- 
 teristic to be free ; and the absence of these attributes 
 negatives the presence of voluntary agency. Here, 
 then, the atheistic argument itself not only concedes 
 liberty to will as possible, but reasons from it as the 
 one essential. Yet no sooner do these writers begin to 
 treat of the only will which we directly kuovv, v:^. our
 
 58 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 own, than they contend for the contradictory of all 
 this ; affirming that the will has no freedom whatever : 
 that it follows determinate and ascertainable laws ; that 
 its products are not variable or irreducible to rules of 
 prevision ; and that if we cannot yet foresee them, the 
 fault is not in the indctermiuateness of the facts, but in 
 the imperfect conquests of our knowledge. From this 
 it- would seem that necessity and detcrmiuateness of 
 sequence, being not less predicable of will than of other 
 orders of facts, may as well be a sign of it as of any 
 thing else, and cannot at all be taken to disprove it. 
 Either, then, the will is free, or else theism is un- 
 harmed ; and the attack on either of these propositions 
 eaves the other. The fact is, the atheistic reasoning is 
 an involuntary testimony to the inextinguishable faith 
 in the freedom of the will, a testimony the more 
 impressive because unconsciously given by a hostile 
 witness. When the problem practically comes before 
 him, how to get rid of supernatural volition from the 
 universe, he can find but one mode, viz. to get rid of 
 every trace of freedom, and enthrone everywhere natu- 
 ral necessity. In this he follows a perfectly correct 
 logical instinct ; he tries the issue upon the antithesis 
 of two notions that are truly contradictory! But if they 
 are mutually exclusive in the universe, so are they in 
 man ; and it is the secret consciousness of this that 
 suggests and sustains the whole argument. When, 
 after this radical acknowledgment, Comte condescends 
 to the assertion that any man who fancies himself free, 
 may undeceive himself by standing on his head for a 
 few minutes, and trying what becomes of his clearest 
 thoughts and strongest resolves, we cannot fail to see
 
 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 59 
 
 how much deeper is his involuntary wisdom than his 
 superficial polemic. As well might you urge it as a 
 disproof of free-will, that you cannot put the moon in 
 your pocket, or conti-ive to live five hundred years, or 
 write an epic in your sleep. Be the limitations of our 
 power prescribed by nature, or self-imposed, or a mix- 
 ture of the two, no one ever denied or questioned them ; 
 no one ever contended for a freedom in man unfettered 
 by organic conditions. To do so would be to pro- 
 nounce him omnipotent and absolute. In truth, free 
 causality is so far from requiring the absence of all 
 limiting conditions, that it cannot be conceived of except 
 as in their presence. Its activity is in its very essence 
 preferential, the adoption of this to the exclusion 
 of that; and to empty out all data, to cancel the finite 
 terms, is to destroy the problem and preclude the 
 power. All mental action is intrinsically relative, and 
 when predicated as absolute becomes entirely incon- 
 ceivable. It is therefore mere trifling to argue against 
 
 o o o 
 
 free-will by pointing out the dependence of ooral phe- 
 nomena on organic conditions. These conditions are 
 the very data of the whole problem ; they may exist in 
 every variety of number and intensity ; by increasing 
 which the range left open to determination may be 
 continually narrowed, till, in the extreme case, it 
 wholly disappears, the qurcsitum is among the data, 
 and the problem is self-resolved. The real question 
 is, whether this extreme case is universal. 
 
 ]>ut we must release our readers from an uncon- 
 scionable detention. A Ye should, however, have been 
 unfaithful interpreters of our author, if we had not 
 made them feel a little of the tedium he inflicts. Our
 
 60 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 interest in him being chiefly from the moral side, we 
 have addressed ourselves exclusively to the dogmatic 
 groundwork of his system, and especially to the as- 
 sumptions by which he discredits psychological science, 
 appends ethics to biology, and dismisses religion into 
 limbo. It is in this, his JPrima JPhilosophia, that we 
 find it necessary to contest every step. When, advanc- 
 ing from this abstract ground, he begins to construct 
 his hierarchy of the sciences, we acknowledge for the 
 first time the true style of a master-hand. Two things 
 only provoke remark in this part of his work : (1) The 
 principle of arrangement by which he gives order to 
 the sciences, advancing from the more universal prop- 
 erties to the more special, is by no means original ; and 
 in the hands of Dr. Arnott had already, in 1827, been 
 employed to raise in outline precisely the symmetrical 
 pyramid of knowledge which Comte contemplates with 
 so Inuch pride. Our author's additional rule, that 
 with this logical order the historical growth of the 
 sciences agrees, will not, in our opinion, bear exami- 
 nation. (2) This linear arrangement of the sciences, 
 all around the same axis, appears to us absolutely 
 untrue, both to their inner logic and their outward 
 history. We deny that the knowledge of human nature 
 and life waits for an antecedent biology, chemistry, 
 physics, and astronomy, or uses their conclusions, when 
 obtained, as its presuppositions. We maintain the es- 
 sential independence of its evidence and method, and 
 the possibility, nay even necessity, of its beginning 
 at the same moment, and advancing part passtt, with 
 our apprehension of the outward world. We assert 
 that the sciences dispose themselves round two great
 
 COJITE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 61 
 
 axes of thought, parallel and not unrelated, yet dis- 
 tinct ; the natural sciences held together by the one, 
 the moral by the other. In practice our author himself 
 proceeds as if it were so ; and in his review of political 
 and social doctrine, leaves his physiology and chemistry 
 entirely behind. His notices of both groups of sci- 
 ences, taken separately, abound with original criticisms 
 and striking generalizations ; but it is especially in the 
 sphere of physical knowledge that his habits of thought 
 render him an instructive and suggestive guide. 
 
 As for his celebrated threefold law, we will only 
 point to the distorting effect it has had on his great 
 historical survey. In obedience to its cruel exactions, 
 the natural organism of European civilization has been 
 torn to pieces. As the third, or positive stage, had 
 accomplished its advent in the author's own person, it 
 was necessary to find the metaphysical period just 
 before ; and so the whole life of the Reformed Chris- 
 tianity, in embryo and in manifest existence, is stripped 
 of its garb of faith, arid turned out to view as a naked 
 metaphysical phenomenon. But metaphysics, again, 
 have to be ushered in by theology ; and of the three 
 stages of theology Monotheism is the last, necessarily 
 following on Polytheism, as that, again, on Fetichism. 
 There is nothing for it, therefore, but to let the me- 
 diaeval Catholic Christianity stand as the world's first 
 monotheism, and to treat it as the legitimate offspring 
 and necessary development of the Greek and Koman 
 polytheism. This accordingly Comte actually does. 
 Protestantism he illegitimates and outlaws from religion 
 altogether ; and the genuine Christianity he fathers 
 upon the faith of Homer and the Scipios ! Once or
 
 02 COMTE'S LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 twice, indeed, it seems to cross him that there was such 
 a people as the Hebrews, and that they were not the 
 polytheists they ought to have been. He sees the fact, 
 but pushes it out of his way with the remark, that the 
 Jewish monotheism was " premature " ! The Jews 
 were always a disobliging people : what business had 
 they to be up so early in the morning, disturbing the 
 house ever so long before M. Comte's bell rang to 
 prayers ? 
 
 It is unfortunate that Comte, like many men at once 
 capable and vain, rests his chief pretensions on precisely 
 Avhat is weakest, least original, and most misleading, 
 in his modes of thought : whilst he drops unconsciously, 
 and leaves unmarked, his strongest and most fertile 
 reflections. The consequence necessarily is, that his 
 first reputation, conferred by disciples in answer to 
 his own demand, will have to shift its ground ; that a 
 prior polemic must prepare the way for ultimate appre- 
 ciation ; and that before he can be wisely heard, the 
 louder half of him must be forgot.
 
 63 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL/ 
 
 BOTANICAL students, more than thirty years ago, turn- 
 ing over the leaves of the English Flora, encountered 
 the frequent name of J. S. Mill, as an authority for the 
 habitat or the varieties of flowers. Before the earliest 
 of these papers was written, the author, stripling as he 
 must then have been, was already known to distin- 
 guished men as a faithful observer of nature. A holi- 
 day walk through the lanes and orchards of Kent, 
 which would have yielded to most youths a week's frolic 
 and a bag of apples, filled his tin box with the materials 
 of a naturalist's reputation. Nothing short of the same 
 method of severe earnestness, carried through the whole 
 intellectual training, and interpolating nothing between 
 the child and the man, can well have formed the most 
 elaborated mind of our age, and presented it almost 
 complete at its first appearance. These volumes, in- 
 deed, bring to our recollection many an essay which, 
 though not thought worthy to be included in their con- 
 tents, would bear biographical testimony to the early 
 richness and variety of the author's attainments. Nor 
 
 * Dissertations and Discussions, Political, Philosophical, and Historical; 
 reprinted chiefly 1'roin the Edinburgh and Westminster Iteviews. By John 
 Stuart Mill. In 2 vols. J. W. 1'arker. 1859. 
 
 National Kevicw, l6iU.
 
 64 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 WHS he thrown into this wide and heterogeneous culture 
 without an organizing clue. In the analytical psychol- 
 ogy of the elder Mill he inherited an instrument of 
 great power for the logical reduction and systematic 
 grasp of all knowledge : and his belief in it and mastery 
 over it were complete. Limit as we may the pretensions 
 of the Hartlcyan doctrine, it affords an incomparable 
 discipline for the first stage of philosophical reflection ; 
 and, from the fascination which it invariably exercises 
 over young intellects, its discipline is unsparingly and 
 spontaneously applied. Its first principles easily pass 
 unchallenged in the sensational years of life, ere the 
 finer and deeper shades of inward consciousness have 
 emerged. Its chemistry of ideas actually explains so 
 many marvellous transformations, and seems potentially 
 competent to so much more, that we readily go into 
 captivity to it at an age when ingenuity of process is 
 more impressive to us than truth and precision of result. 
 It has often exercised a profound influence over minds 
 that, at a later stage, have been determined to violent 
 re-action against it : as in the case of Coleridge, who 
 named his first son after Hartley, and slept with the 
 Observations on Man under his pillow. And of all 
 the writers of this school, the most enchaining and irre- 
 sistible is James Mill, whose Analysis of the Phenom- 
 ena of the Human Mind has always appeared to us a 
 masterpiece of close and subtle exposition, to be dis- 
 sented from, if you please, in its assumptions and con- 
 clusions, but rarely to be broken in the midst. Did the 
 facts of consciousness stand as he represents them, his 
 method would work. He satisfactorily explains the 
 wrong human nature. The mental gymnastic, however,
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 65 
 
 involved in the study of such a work is invigorating, 
 and gives command over a kind of psychological calculus 
 to which innumerable problems yield. Furnished with 
 this, our author tried its application over the widened 
 field of his own generation and the richer resources of 
 his own nature : and we are recalled to his first tenta- 
 tives in the present rcpublication. 
 
 The cold rigor of the elder Mill concealed from the 
 world the extent of his literary knowledge; and when, 
 now and then, he supported his political doctrines from 
 the Republic of Plato, or dropped a tributary phrase 
 to the genius of that philosopher, people attributed it to 
 some freak of pedantry, and almost disputed the right 
 of a "Benthamite" to such an uncongenial admiration. 
 "\Vhat was begrudged to the father was freely conceded 
 to the son, whose susceptibilities were believed to have 
 an ampler range, who was known to have scholarship as 
 well as science, and whose Platonic studies told not on 
 his dialectic only, but on his style. He encountered, 
 and to his true honor he vanquished, the greatest trial 
 that can meet the young philosopher at the outset of 
 his career, viz. the extravagant expectations and loud- 
 whispered praises of an intellectual coterie, accustomed 
 to abuse and confident of triumph. Elderly prophets 
 who had been stoned in their day fixed their eyes upon 
 him as a sort of Utilitarian Messiah, who would take 
 away the reproach of the school. Could he not grace- 
 fully discuss poetry with the poet, and art with the art- 
 ist? Had he not an appreciative insight into the earlier 
 philosophies, which Bentham could only laugh at and 
 caricature? Was he not surely destined, by his high 
 sympathies with heroic forms of character, to give the 
 
 5
 
 60 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 hereditary doctrine a nobler interpretation, and rescue 
 it from the ignorant imputation of selfishness? That a 
 young writer, in whose hearing these things were con- 
 tinually said or implied, should disappoint no prediction 
 contained in them, is a rare evidence of moral as well 
 as intellectual strength. The narrowness and perversi- 
 ties which had brought the Utilitarian Radicals into dis- 
 repute, never, from the first, appeared in him. There 
 was even, we should say, a conscious revolt from them, 
 an over-anxious care to avoid them, and a deliberate set 
 of the will to apprehend the opposite point of view, and 
 feel whatever truth and beauty lay around it. It was 
 from some feeling of this kind, and especially from a 
 determination to disown the Bowring type of Bentham- 
 ism, that tre London Review arose in 1835, under 
 the guarantee of our author's intellect and Sir William 
 Molesworth's purse ; and the review of Professor Sedg- 
 wick's Discourse with which it opened, though unspar- 
 ing not to say arrogant as a manifesto against the 
 rhetorical ethics of the Cambridge geologist, makes not 
 a few concessions on the other side ; it cheerfully sur- 
 renders Paley, and cautiously guards its defence of 
 Locke ; and shows a sensitiveness equally alive to the 
 nonsense of opponents and the shortcomings of friends. 
 So strongly are the papers of the next four or five years 
 marked by the apparent resolution to escape from party 
 one-sidedness, that they have almost an eclectic charac- 
 ter, with its usual accompaniment, an actual, overbal- 
 ance of candor in favor of rejected schemes of thought. 
 The masterly article on Bentham certainly occasioned 
 not a little flutter of displeasure among his thorough- 
 going admirers, while the corresponding paper on Cole-
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 67 
 
 ridge was welcomed by his disciples as a conciliatory 
 and generous advance. Both of them, it is true, were 
 written for the benefit of the author's own party : and 
 the former therefore naturally became a criticism, cor 
 rective of what was amiss at home ; the latter an expo- 
 sition, reporting what truth might be fetched in from 
 abroad : and the balance cannot be expected to hang as 
 even as if he had been teaching each party how to take 
 the measure of its own hero. Still it is evident that he 
 rose from the study of Coleridge's writings with an ad- 
 miration powerfully moved ; that they first transferred 
 him from an abstract to an historical theory of politics ; 
 and that, in exhibiting the speculative outline of these 
 writings, he felt half-ashamed of the radical allies for 
 whose instruction he performed the task. This school- 
 ing of himself into appreciation of a Conservative phi- 
 losophy was not altogether acceptable to the veterans of 
 his party ; but it obtained for him a hearing where their 
 voices could not effectually penetrate, and established 
 literary communication between lines of thought pre- 
 viously closed against each other. And his influence as 
 a writer, measured in its intensity and its kind, was 
 singularly complete at once none of his larger pro- 
 ductions having produced, it is probable, a deeper im- 
 pression than the three great essays to which we have 
 referred. Tin's, indeed, is no more than the tribute due 
 to the early balance and maturity of his powers. There 
 is something almost preternatural in the singular even- 
 ness of these Dissertations and Discussions, the 
 produce of a quarter of a century, scarcely betraying 
 growth, because requiring none ; and indicating not less 
 severity of logic, and sharpness of statement, and au-
 
 08 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 thority of manner, in the first pages than in the last. 
 And a higher quality than any of these, and equally 
 apparent throughout, the more honorably distinguished 
 our author because personal to himself, and by no means 
 habitual in his school, or indeed in any party connection, 
 we mean a deliberate intellectual conscientiousness, 
 which, scorning to take advantage of accidental weak- 
 ness, will even help an opponent to develop his strength, 
 that none but the real and decisive issue may be tried. 
 That our author is always successful in this we cannot 
 indeed profess to believe ; but we are convinced he 
 always means it, and never misses it, unless through 
 the involuntary limits of his mental sympathies. 
 
 These limits, however, cannot fail to assert them 
 selves, in spite of the most elaborate culture. A 
 catholic intellect is not to be created by resolve ; and, 
 notwithstanding his wish to interpret between " Ben- 
 thamites" and " Coleridgians," Mr. Mill has still left 
 the chasm between them without a bridge, and found 
 neither wing nor way for bringing them together. He 
 effected the exchange of one or two political ideas ; 
 borrowed the vindication of a " Clerisy," or endowed 
 speculative class ; enlarged the radical definition of the 
 functions of the State ; favored, with St. Simon as well 
 as Coleridge, the search for " Ideas," as well as Facts in 
 History ; qualified the austerities of Political Economy 
 with a tinge of Socialistic humanities ; and balanced tl-? 
 conception of Progress with that of Order. But these 
 modifications were torn from their connection and taken 
 over to the Bentham side without their root : fruits, as 
 it were, plucked from the orchard of the Highgate 
 philosopher and stowed away in the store-closet of St.
 
 JOIIX STUART MILL. 69 
 
 James's Park, sure to be consumed in a season and to be 
 reproductive of no more. Accordingly, the sociological 
 doctrine, whose first elements were taken from Cole- 
 ridge, completed itself under the inspiration of Comte. 
 We do not say that this interweaving of opposite ingre- 
 dients prejudges the truth' and unity of the doctrine ; 
 but if the parts do cohere in one vital organism, it can 
 only be by grafting anew : and one or other has left its 
 stem, to grow apart no less than before. In fact, it 
 was only in particular results, never in fundamental 
 principle, that our author deemed approximation pos- 
 sible. For himself, he surrendered no inch of his foot- 
 ing on the old ground of the " Experience-philosophy " 
 and the "Utilitarian Ethics," and only aimed to enlarge 
 its imperfect survey, and complete the edifice which had 
 been partially raised upon it. This he has accomplished 
 over a vast portion of the field, and his labors (with 
 those of Mr. Austin in another department) have so far, 
 we believe, consummated the possibilities of the system 
 which they represent. It has attained an unexampled 
 completeness and refinement ; its subtlest corrections 
 have been applied ; its inmost resources have been 
 strained ; and now, more than ever, it ought adequately 
 to meet the intellectual and moral exigencies of life. 
 That it really covers the whole breadth of human want 
 our author doubtless believes ; yet the tone of his wri- 
 tings leaves a singular impression of melancholy and 
 unrest. He seems rather to be making the best of the 
 human lot as it is, than to find it worthy of a wise man's 
 welcome. AVith a firm hand he draws the prohibitory 
 circle which limits our knowledge to the field of expe- 
 rience, and concentrates a steady eye on his survey
 
 70 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 within it; yet not without glances of thought, pa- 
 thetic in their very anger, towards the dark horizon 
 of necessity and nescience around. Balanced and cour- 
 teous as he is, it is always with a certain sharpness 
 and irritation that he turns in that direction, and says, 
 "Why look there? there is nothing to be seen." And 
 his moral discontent with the world is still more marked 
 and more depressing than the speculative : his admi- 
 rations spending themselves, and with fastidious scanti- 
 ness, on what is wholly out of reach on Greek polities, 
 that have passed out of reality, and on socialistic, that 
 are doubtfully destined to arrive at it ; and his dislikes 
 increasing as the objects are nearer home England 
 being more stupid than France, and the decorous middle 
 class the meanest of all. Out of sympathy with society 
 as it is, and with languid hopes of what it is to be, our 
 author seems to sit apart, with genial pity for the mul- 
 titudes below him, with disdain of whatever is around 
 him, and in silence of any thing above him. No one 
 would believe beforehand that a writer so serene and 
 even, not to say cold, could affect the reader with so 
 much sadness. You fall into it, without knowing 
 whence it comes. All the lights upon his page are 
 intellectual, breaking from a deep reserve of moral 
 gloom. 
 
 The great mass of Mr. Mill's labor has been devoted 
 to what may be termed the middle ground of human 
 thought, below the primary data which reason must 
 assume, and short of the applied science which has prac- 
 tice for its end. At the upper limit shunning the origi- 
 nal postulates of all knowledge, and at the lower its 
 concrete results, he has addressed himself to its interme-
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 71 
 
 
 
 diary processes, and determined the methods for work- 
 ing out derivative but still general truths. Does he 
 treat of the investigation of Nature ? he takes it up to 
 the highest laws of phenomena, irrespective of the hy- 
 pothesis of an ulterior source. Does he define the range 
 of Logic? it is the science of proof, dealing only with 
 the inference of secondary truths, not the science of 
 belief, which would include also the list of first truths. 
 Does he explain the business of Ethics ? it is to appraise 
 and classify voluntary actions by their consequences, 
 not to scrutinize them in their springs. This avoidance 
 of the initial stage, this banishment of it into another 
 field, is perfectly legitimate, in order to bring each in- 
 quiry within manageable limits ; and leaves in every 
 instance a body of researches which, in their independ- 
 ent prosecution, yield results of immense value and 
 interest. A perfectly serviceable logic of the inductive 
 sciences may be constructed, without settling the meta- 
 physics of causation ; and of the deductive procedure, 
 without determining the original premises of all thought. 
 And a treatise on morals, which should establish methods 
 of estimate for human actions and dispositions, founded 
 on their personal and social tendency, would contribute, 
 if not the more important, at least the larger half of a 
 complete body of Ethical doctrine. Political Economy 
 is not even in contact with any ultimate metaphysics at 
 all, and can only be taken up and treated as a mid-way 
 science, worked out, indeed, deductively, as our author 
 has most ably shown, but only from hypothetical prem- 
 ises, special to itself, and not pretending to any un- 
 qualified, much less a-priori truth. It lies, therefore, 
 unreservedly within the grasp of Mr. Mill's habitual
 
 72 JOHN STUAKT MILL. 
 
 
 
 method ; and has accordingly been treated by him, we 
 should say, with mastery more indisputable and com- 
 plete than any other subject which he has touched. 
 That he has somewhat relaxed the severity of abstract 
 deduction maintained by James Mill and Senior ; that 
 he has gone beyond the rigid border of the science, and 
 laid open to the eye and heart some neighboring fields 
 of social speculation ; that in demonstrating natural 
 laws he so amply dwells on the conditions of their ad- 
 justment to human well-being, may be complained 
 of by closet doctrinaires, may actually render his book 
 less fit for a student's manual ; but, in our opinion, 
 gives a wise latitude to researches whose interest will 
 always lie chiefly in their applications. The problems 
 of Political Economy are peculiarly amenable to an in- 
 tellect like our author's, whose characteristics are rather 
 French than English; sharp apprehension of what- 
 ever can be rounded off' as a finished whole in thought ; 
 analytic adroitness in resolving a web of tangled ele- 
 ments, and measuring their value in the construction ; 
 reasoning equal to any computation by linear co-ordi- 
 nates, though not readily flowing into the organic free- 
 dom of a living dialectic; remarkable skill in laying out 
 his subject symmetrically before the eye, and presenting 
 its successive parts in clear and happy lights. No one 
 has more successfully caught the fortunate gift of the 
 French men-of-lettcrs, the art of making readers 
 
 O 
 
 think better of their own understanding and less awfully 
 of the topics discussed. It is seldom possible to read 
 many pages of a German philosopher without suspect- 
 ing yourself a fool : and even if you conquer your first 
 despair, if you struggle and climb on, and make good
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 73 
 
 your footing as you ascend, you are desired to look 
 down so many frightful precipices and abysses on either 
 side, that the thin ridge of science seems but precarious 
 protection across the yawning nescience. French po- 
 liteness takes far better care of your nerves, smooths 
 and rolls your path into a gravel-walk, beguiles you 
 into every ascent above your level, plants the abysses 
 out of sight with a laurel screen, and persuades you 
 that you arc at the top just where the landscape is 
 clearest and you are still far below the clouds. This 
 exclusive taste for the positive and wholly visible, this 
 ingenuity in conducting to the best points of view, and 
 this faculty of lucidly exhibiting it, our author pre- 
 eminently possesses ; and in the treatment of Political 
 Economy these aptitudes are available with all their 
 benefits and without the slightest drawback. 
 
 Logic and Ethics, however, lie at a much less dis- 
 tance from metaphysical reflection ; and, indeed, can be 
 cut away from it only by an artifice of arrangement. 
 So far as they admit of the separation, and their body 
 of doctrine stands unaffected by the metaphysical as- 
 sumptions which are left outside, so far we think Mr. 
 Mill's strength as great here as elsewhere ; and it is 
 great precisely in proportion as his middle ground 
 is more or less nearly adequate. In Ethics he has 
 aimed at no more than the rescue of the " principle of 
 utility " from misapprehension and obloquy. The po.^'- 
 tioe side of his vindication, legitimating the use in inor- 
 
 ' O O 
 
 als of a canon of "consequences," he has made good. 
 The negative side, excluding appeal to the authority of 
 any internal rule, and resolving conscience into a reflec- 
 tion of the accidental sentiments of others, appears to
 
 74 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 us entirely to fail. In Logic, his exposition, considered 
 as an organon, an analysis of method, a conspectus of 
 rules for the interpretation of phenomena and the dis- 
 covery of laws, is almost an exhaustive manual of 
 procedure for the present state of science. But con- 
 sidered as a philosophy, giving the ultimate rationale 
 of the intellectual processes it describes, it leaves us, 
 we confess, altogether unsatisfied. Could he really 
 have maintained a metaphysical neutrality, could 
 he have simply cut off and dropped out of view the 
 a-priori top of logic, the causal postulate of nature, 
 and the inner datum of morals, could he have carried 
 out his work lower down without reference to them, 
 our obligation to him would have been scarcely qualified. 
 But this was impossible. There are certain points of 
 his field at which the omitted topics cannot be ignored ; 
 and here, unfortunately, our author's original silence 
 is exchanged for direct denial : we know no a-priori 
 truths ; no causation beyond phenomenal conditions ; 
 no inner moral rule. Not only do these negations 
 necessarily descend upon our author's middle ground, 
 and affect a portion of his conclusions in detail, but they 
 express in him, as they must in every man, the grand 
 lines in the whole configuration of his mind. Some of 
 the directions which they take we will attempt to 
 trace. 
 
 First, then, Mr. Mill is faithful to his antecedents in 
 the fundamental question of all philosophy : " What is it 
 possible for us to know?" His answer is, "We can 
 know nothing but phenomena." In his article on Cole- 
 ridge, he both presents the problem and records his 
 reply :
 
 JOHN STUAKT MILL. 75 
 
 "Every consistent scheme of philosophy requires as its 
 starting-point a theory respecting the sources of human knowl 
 edge, and the objects which the human faculties are capable 
 of taking cognizance of. The prevailing theory in the eigh- 
 teenth century, on this most comprehensive of questions, was 
 that proclaimed by Locke, and commonly attributed to Aris- 
 totle that all knowledge consists of generalizations from 
 experience. Of nature, or any thing whatever external to 
 ourselves, we know, according to this theory, nothing, except 
 the facts which present themselves to our senses, and such 
 other facts as may, by analogy, be inferred from these. There 
 is no knowledge a priori ; no truths cognizable by the mind's 
 inward light, and grounded on intuitive evidence. Sensation, 
 and the mind's consciousness of its own acts, are not only the 
 exclusive sources, but the sole materials of our knowledge. 
 From this doctrine, Coleridge, with the German philosophers 
 since Kant (not to go further back), and most of the Eng- 
 lish since Reid, strongly dissents. He claims for the human 
 mind a capacity, within certain limits, of perceiving the nature 
 and properties of ' Things iu themselves.' He distinguishes 
 in the human intellect two faculties, which, in the technical 
 language common to him with the Germans, he calls Under- 
 standing and Reason. The former faculty judges of phenom- 
 ena, or the appearances of things, and forms generalizations 
 from these ; to the latter it belongs, by direct intuition, to 
 perceive things, and recognize truths, not cognizable by our 
 senses. The perceptions are not indeed innate, nor could ever 
 have been awakened in us without experience; but they are 
 not copies of it; experience is not their prototype, it is only 
 the occasion by which they are irresistibly suggested. The 
 experiences in nature excite in us, by an inherent law, ideas 
 of those invisible things which are the causes of the visible 
 appearances, and on whose laws those appearances depend: 
 and we then perceive that these things must have pre-existed 
 to render the appearances possible ; just as (to use a frequent
 
 7C JOHN STUAUT MILL. 
 
 illostratioD of Coleridge's) we see before we know that we 
 have eyes; but when once this is known to us, we perceive 
 that eyes must have pre-existed to enable us to see. Among 
 the truths which are thus known a priori, by occasion of 
 experience, but not themselves the subjects of experience, 
 Coleridge includes the fundamental doctrines of religion and 
 morals, the principles of mathematics, and the ultimate laws 
 even of physical nature; which he contends cannot be proved 
 by experience, though they must necessarily be consistent 
 with it, and would, if we knew them perfectly, enable us to 
 account for all observed facts, and to predict all those which 
 are as yet unobserved" (vol. i. pp. 403405). 
 
 Our author's verdict on this question is given in these 
 Avords : 
 
 " We here content ourselves with a bare statement of our 
 opinion. It is that the truth, on this much-debated question, 
 lies with the school of Locke and of Bentham. The nature 
 and laws of things in themselves, and the hidden causes of the 
 phenomena which are the objects of experience, appear to us 
 radically inaccessible to the human faculties. We see no 
 ground for believing that any thing can be the object of our 
 knowledge except our experience, and what can be inferred 
 from our experience by the analogies of experience itself; 
 nor that there is any idea, feeling, or power in the human 
 mind, which in order to account for it requires that its origin 
 should be referred to any other source. We are therefore at 
 issue with Coleridge on the central idea of his philosophy " 
 (vol. i. p. 409). 
 
 Were it to our purpose to discuss this problem with 
 Mr. Mill, instead of simply tracing its bearings upon 
 his scheme of thought, we should require a much more 
 precise statement of it than we find in the foregoing 
 passage, in which the association (however qualified)
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 77 
 
 of Locke and Aristotle, as giving the same suffrage in 
 reply to the same question, the classification of Kant 
 with the ontologists, and the indiscrimirfate reference of 
 more recent " German philosophers " to the same side, 
 indicate, under the form of historical error, no less 
 loose a conception of the opposite theses than of the 
 advocacy arrayed on either hand. Aristotle was just 
 as much a realist as Plato, though he made the realities 
 accessible to us by a different path. Kant was the great 
 iconoclast who discredited all objective entities as idols 
 of the mind ; and till the re-action under Schelling, there 
 was no claim of any knowledge of " Things in them- 
 selves." In order to present the matter in a clearer 
 form, we must disengage from each other two aspects 
 of this problem, the ancient, and the modern ; the iden- 
 tification of which by English writers is the source of 
 endless confusion. Among the Greek schools, the ri- 
 valry between the real and the phenomenal, between 
 "Tilings as they absolutely are," and Things as they 
 relatively appear, was fought out, not on the field of 
 our cognitive faculties, but in the open Kosmos. It 
 was a question, not of knowledge, but of being; not 
 logical, referring to the limits of thought, but meta- 
 physical, concerning the constitution of existence. In- 
 stead of shaping itself into the form, " Can we yet to 
 know any entities, or must we be content with phenom- 
 ena?" it asked, "Are there any entities to be known, 
 or only regiments of phenomena ?" In the view of one 
 party, time and space comprised nothing but an eternal 
 genesis of appearance out of appearance, wave upon 
 wave, with no abiding deep below. In the view of the 
 other, the succession of phenomena was but the super-
 
 78 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 final expression, the momentary and relative activity 
 of substantive objects and permanent potencies behind, 
 which formed the constancies of the universe, and or- 
 ganically belonged to its unity. By neither party was 
 man set over against the universe to look at it across 
 *a interval, as subject facing object. By both he was 
 . rgarded as himself a part and product of the Kosmos, 
 oivolved in the same problem, included in the same fate. 
 I'4s constitution, whatever it were, spread into him and 
 . ^appeared there in miniature, and with no modification 
 vdicept that of cropping-up into consciousness and emer- 
 ging from simple being into being known. Phenomena, 
 ontering us, turned up in the shape of sensations ; en- 
 tities, if there were any, in the shape of rational thought, 
 of ideas remotest from sense, of the true, the beauti- 
 ful, the good. If in the makrokosm around there was 
 more than phenomena, the personal mikrokosm could 
 not but repeat the tale and show these ovra. in our intel- 
 lectual history. If, on the other hand, phenomena were 
 all, then in us also there could be only sensations and 
 their metamorphoses. It thus lay in the very genius of 
 the ancient philosophy that the problem of knowledge 
 should be subordinate to the problem of being, the 
 mere shadow or reverberation of it in our little grotto of 
 consciousness ; and that it should be judged downward, 
 from the great circle to the little. That there could be 
 any failure of concentric arrangement, any misfit be- 
 tween existence and thought, that if there were the 
 real as well as the seeming, it could remain incognizable, 
 never occurred to the earliest representatives of this 
 controversy. None were sceptics of realistic knowledge, 
 except in virtue of a prior scepticism of real being.
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 79 
 
 Aristotle certainly had no such scepticism ; and his con- 
 troversy with Plato never touched the question whether 
 we had ontological knowledge, but only the question 
 hoio we had it. Plato explained it by identifying the 
 objective ideals embodied in natural kinds with our 
 subjective general ideas of the intellectual constitution 
 of the universe : its hierarchy of essential types came up 
 into conscious forms on the responding theatre of our 
 reason ; so that we could read its entities straight off, 
 in virtue of our sympathetic share in the thoughts incar- 
 nated within it. For this doctrine of immediate fel- 
 lowship of reason with its realities, Aristotle substituted 
 a path of gradual approach to them : declaring that, 
 while Nature developed itself deductively, thinking itself 
 out into actuality from the general to the particular, and 
 thence to the individual, we must trace the same line 
 regressively, beginning with the sensible which is next 
 to us, and ascending to the universals which are furthest. 
 But this difference from Plato as to the method of 
 knowledge, involved no difference as to the things 
 known. The goal of reason was, the same for both 
 the apprehension of real and ultimate entities. The 
 thing known by the consciousness within us, itself lay 
 in the world without 113. This example shows that the 
 denial of " a-priori ideas " carries with it no denial of 
 ontological knowledge. 
 
 In modern times, from causes which we cannot stop 
 to trace, this problem has been taken in the inverse 
 order. The battle between the real and the phenomenal 
 has been removed from the Kosmical to the Human 
 theatre, and fought out ou the enclosure of our faculties. 
 Without prejudging the contents of existence, it has
 
 80 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 been asked, "How far do our cognitive powers go? 
 Are they fitted up in adaptation to phenomena alone? 
 or does their competency reach to substantive being as 
 uell ? " It lias been supposed easier to stop at home 
 and measure the knowing subject, than to pass out and 
 determine the known object ; and accordingly a Logical 
 critique of Man has taken the place of a Metaphysical 
 estimate of Nature. Such a critique (supposing that 
 \ve have resources for conducting it), in giving us the 
 measure of ourselves, gives us the measure of our world. 
 Either our faculties will prove equal to the problem on 
 both its sides ; and then we shall stand where Plato and 
 Aristotle left us : or will turn out blind to all except the 
 phenomenal sphere ; and then whatever else may lurk 
 behind will be to us as though it were not, and the 
 negation of knowledge will demand the non-affirmation 
 of being. The alternative can be decided only by psy- 
 chological self-scrutiny. Is the verdict given in favor 
 of our ontological capacity? it can only be on the 
 ground that, besides our mere sensations and their 
 associated vestiges, we find in us an independent order 
 of ideas, carrying with them intuitive beliefs affirmative 
 of existence other than phenomenal, and no less entitled 
 to confidence than the susceptibilities of sense. Is the 
 verdict, on the other hand, a negative one? It may 
 rest upon cither of two pleas. The independent testi- 
 mony of the Ideas of Reason may be denied, by resolv- 
 ing them back into elaborated traces of sensation. Or, 
 again, their originality and intuitive character being 
 allowed, they may be referred to the mere mould or 
 configuration of our mental constitution, inevitable for 
 us, but not on that account declaring itself necessary in
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 81 
 
 nature ; with authority, therefore, merely subjective, 
 and destitute of all objective validity. It is on the 
 former of these two pleas that Mr. Mill, in common 
 with the whole school of Locke, takes his stand ; while 
 the latter is the ground assumed by Kant and his disci- 
 ples. The same sceptical conclusion belongs to both : 
 and the difference as to the analysis of the knowing 
 powers involves no difference as to the things known, 
 or rather, not known. This example shows that the 
 affirmation of " a-priori ideas " carries with it no af- 
 firmation of ontological knowledge. 
 
 A problem imperfectly conceived cannot be effectively 
 argued; and no " Coleridgian," it is probable, ever felt 
 himself hit by our author's occasional reasonings against 
 .him. The keen aim and the steady hand are of no avail 
 where there is an optical displacement of the thing aimed 
 at. Be his polemic, however, against the opposite 
 doctrine what it may, our present purpose is to track 
 through his philosophy the vestiges of his own. Is our 
 knowledge limited to phenomena? Then we must part 
 with, our mathematical entities, Space, the a-priori 
 ground of geometry, Time, of successive counting, 
 or number, with the necessary Infinitude of both. 
 We know them only in the limited samples of expe- 
 rience, as attributes of body and emptiness, of events 
 and feelings, over an indefinite field. And the pure 
 geometric figures, with the properties they involve, in- 
 stead of being truer than Nature, are false copies of 
 physical forms, yielding only approximate inferences, 
 whose boasted "necessity" is nothing but dependence 
 on inaccurate hypothesis. We must part also with our 
 Metaphysical entities, Substance, as the ground of
 
 82 JOHN STUAUT MILL. 
 
 Attributes, be it Matter, for the properties of nature 
 without us, or Mind, for the phenomena of consciousness 
 within us ; Kind, as the real unity of essence looking 
 through a plurality of individuals ; Cause, as a principle 
 of dynamic origination, or more than the aggregate of 
 phenomenal conditions. We must part with our Reli- 
 gious and Moral entities, God, whether as transcend- 
 ent cause of the universe, or Mind throughout it, or 
 living Light of human Conscience ; and all the ideal 
 meanings in nature and life, whether owned as final 
 causes by Science, or caught as the inner expressiveness 
 of things by the intuition of Art. This copious surren- 
 der of natural beliefs is the inevitable consequence of 
 the primary assumption ; it is shared with our author 
 by the Nominalist Divines of Oxford ; and is no further 
 special to him, than in the unwavering consistency and 
 absence of self-deception with which he carries it out. 
 Hence his contempt, the more unsparing from its 
 professing to spare, for the recognition of purpose in 
 nature ; expressed in sentences like this : " Upon this 
 peg he" (z.e. Professor Sedgvvick) "appends a disser- 
 tation on the evidences of design in the universe ; a 
 subject on which much originality was not to be hoped 
 for, and the nature of which may be allowed to protect 
 feebleness from any severity of comment" (vol. i. 
 p. 105). And similar is his impatience of any expres- 
 sion of wonder: "And here he" (Professor Sedgwick 
 again) " begins by wondering. It is a common propen- 
 sity of writers on natural theology to erect every thing 
 into a wonder. They cannot consider the greatness and 
 wisdom of God, once for all, as proved, but think them- 
 selves bound to be finding fresh arguments for it in
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 83 
 
 every chip or stone : and they think nothing a proof of 
 greatness unless they can wonder at it ; and, to most 
 minds, a wonder explained is a wonder no longer " 
 (vol. i. p. 105). Tt is curious to compare these scorn- 
 ful words with the maxim of Bacon,* " Admiral io 
 est semen sapient Ice,' " with the statement of Aristotle, f 
 that Wonder is the primitive philosophical impulse ; 
 with the graceful saying of Plato, J tr lt is a happy 
 genealogy which makes Iris the daughter of T/iCiumas," 
 i. e. which treats the messenger of the Gods, the 
 winged thought that passes to and fro between heaven 
 and earth, and brings them into communion, as the 
 child of Wonder: "for this," he says, "is the special 
 sentiment of the philosopher, nor has his pursuit any 
 other source." The truth is, Mr. Mill expresses here, 
 as in all else, the characteristics of the strictly scientific 
 mind, whose work is done and whose contentment is 
 attained when the order of phenomena is fully deter- 
 mined, and no premonition of the future remains to be 
 gathered from the scheme of the past. Were this the 
 end of Philosophy, as it is the end of Science, his view 
 would be complete. 
 
 But not only, in our author's opinion, is our knowl- 
 edge limited to phenomena. Among phenomena we can 
 know only the internal our own sensations, thoughts, 
 emotions. The whole objective world vanishes under 
 his analysis : first, its substantive pretensions ; then, 
 even its attributive. What do we know of matter? 
 nothing but its properties. What do we know of its 
 properties? nothing but the sensations they give us. 
 
 * De Augmentis Sclent, lib. i., Montagu, vol. viii. p. 8. 
 t Metapli. i. 2. J Tiiua-t. 155.
 
 84 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 An object is no more than an associated "TO up of quali- 
 ties, the enumeration of which exhausts what we have 
 to say of it. A quality is no more than an assumed 
 and unknown source of some affection of sense : so that 
 not only does the hot, round, bright sun evade us ; its 
 heat, its form, its light evade us too ; and we are aware 
 only of a co-existent warmth and visual da/xle of the 
 circular kind. The third chapter of the System- of 
 Loyic (book i.) expounds this doctrine with great 
 clearness and amplitude. In substitution for the ten 
 categories of Aristotle,* Mr. Mill distributes all ''name- 
 able things" all possible objects of thought and speech 
 into four classes, viz. : 
 
 * WT are surprised that Mr. Mill should treat Aristotle's list as an attempt 
 to classify " Namtaltl? t)niit;s" and drive them up into their summit tjtnvra. 
 A mere glance at the list corrects this common mivcomeption. "Xameable 
 tilings" are the possible objects of tliomjl/t ; and consequently the "Names" 
 themselves, the possible xulyectf (>f pi'it/Htgititms : and were tln-se the matter 
 divided, we should have in the Categories a classification of possible Sub/n't*, 
 and in the. 1'redieables, of possible J'icd'u: ttm, of propositions; a very in- 
 structive pair of logical results, but certainly not what Aristotle contemplated. 
 Without going through the list, it is evident at once that several of its terms 
 (e. y. ~pof TI, TTOV, TTnTf) do not represent any possible subjects of proposi- 
 tions. The assortment is in fact an enumeration, not of things signified by 
 Name*, but, a.s Aristotle himself distinctly explains, of all po-sible meanings 
 of sinr/le \\ r ttrtl<s, including Adverbs, Prepositions, and other rtlit'miutl 
 words which are not Names at all. Regarded in this light, the catalogue is 
 not indeed unexceptionable; but does not yield the utter absurdities which Mr. 
 Mill naturally sees in it as a list of the most extensive classes into which 
 tilings could be distributed. We arc quite aware that Mr. Mill's " Xameable 
 Things ''are not limited to Subjects, but include also what is "capable of 
 \w\n predicated of other Things." Even this extension, however, does not 
 cover the ground of Aristotle's Categories, (inasmuch as the relational words 
 cannot be predicates any more than subjects.) while it disadvantage<;ii.*ly 
 trenches on the ground of the 1'redicables. In classifying tit- siynij'cnnt 
 dtotng of Ittnyurifje, all mention of the two parts of the predicative relation is 
 as yet intrusive, and is accordingly avoided by Aristotle. When we advance 
 from the Accidence to the Syntax of Logic, we then want two new classifica- 
 tions: 1st, of Xameable things or possible Subjects; 2dly, of 1'redkable
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 85 
 
 "1st. Feelings or States of Consciousness. 
 
 2d. The Minds which experience tlio.se feelings. 
 
 yd. The Bodies, or external objects, which excite certain of 
 those feeling-, together with the powers or properties whereby 
 they excite them. 
 
 4th. The Successions and Co-existences, the Likenesses 
 and U. likenesses, between feelings or states of consciousness. 
 Those relations," it is added, " when considered as subsisting 
 between other things, exist in reality only between the states of 
 consciousness which those things, if bodies, excite ; if minds, 
 either excite or experience" (Loyfc, vol. i. p. 80). 
 
 Though the usages of language forbid our author to 
 carry his reduction further, he gives us notice that the 
 second and third terms are but sham categories, really 
 resolvable into the first. Of "Mind" we know only 
 the "feelings or states of consciousness ; " of ''Body," 
 and its "properties," only the resulting "feelings or 
 states of consciousness " again. The existence of my- 
 self, except as " a series of feelings," the existence of 
 any thing other than myself, except as the feigned and 
 unknown cause of sensations, I have no title to af- 
 firm. Though the structure of human speech assumes 
 them, it has no right to do so : and were it amenable to 
 the true laws of our intelligence, it would leave us with 
 only the first and fourth of the foregoing heads. AVc 
 are thus shut up absolutely in Egoistic phenomena, 
 without cognizance of any objective world beyond our 
 own circumference, or subjective axis at our o\vn centre. 
 
 tilings, or possible Predicates. From his running together of all theso, from 
 his imperfect use of the distinction between the extension and the comprehen- 
 sion of a term, and from his removal of the u /jt-r/irc out o'.' {>>,-ua into ovofia, 
 our author's account of the " Import of Propositions" seems to us less huni- 
 uous and satisfactory than any other part of his " System of Lojjic."
 
 86 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 This is unqualified Idealism : the more so, because Mr. 
 Mill does not stop with the assertion that, apart from 
 their properties, we are ignorant of the nature of Mat- 
 ter and of Mind ; but pronounces us ignorant of their 
 existence. The phenomena to which we are limited are 
 regarded by other philosophers as at least phenomena 
 of something; by him, as phenomena of nothing. 
 Berkeley himself did not remove the objective world 
 and swallow it up in the subjective : he merely changed 
 it from material into Divine, and left the Personal en- 
 tities, of Man and God, undisturbed and alone with each 
 other. And even Fichte, the most thorough-going of 
 all Idealists, while taking every thing into the subject, 
 still did not break the vessel of personality, and spill 
 and scatter its living water into phenomenal spray. 
 Our author goes further, and says : we know of nothing 
 without ; we know of only change within ; and our 
 whole cognitive life consists in the conscious Ct/mpari- 
 son and orderly notice of our feelings and ideas. 
 
 There is no part of Mr. Mill's scheme of thought in 
 which this idealistic theory of cognition does not make 
 itself felt. It induces him, as a psychologist, to cancel 
 the word Perception, and to deny that in the process 
 it denotes there is any thing more than associated Sen- 
 sations. When we seem to be carried out of ourselves 
 and referred to a world beyond, we are in reality only 
 referred from one of our own sensations to others, 
 from a single member of a cluster to the rest, from 
 what we actually feel in one sense to what, in suitable 
 positions, we might simultaneously feel in another. 
 When we attribute whiteness to snow, we say that a 
 particular sensation of color belongs to a group, the
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 87 
 
 remainder of which, a coldness, a softness, a sparkle, 
 &c. are expressed by the word " snoiv." It is co- 
 existence of sensations, and nothing else, that we predi- 
 cate. The extreme test of this doctrine is found in our 
 apprehension of distance, form, and magnitude. If 
 these can be stripped of their externality and resolved 
 into modifications of self, if they can be turned from 
 synchronous relations in the space without us into suc- 
 cessive feelings along the line of consciousness within 
 us, the Idealist has solved his hai'dest riddle. Our 
 author has attempted this in reply to Mr. Samuel Bai- 
 ley's attack on Berkeley's "Theory of Vision : " and, in 
 spite of our good opinion of his cause, we are not sur- 
 prised that his arguments have failed to convince tliS 
 Sheffield philosopher. The question is, How do we see 
 things to be external to ourselves? and what is our 
 belief in their 'outness'? Mr. Bailey answers: It is 
 an immediate intuition or revelation of the visual sense, 
 requiring no other condition. Mr. Mill first answers : 
 It is a mental judgment, consisting in the suggestion of 
 tactual and muscular sensations by visual which have 
 become associated with them in experience. But then, 
 unfortunately, the tactual and muscular sensations are 
 not external, whilst our quassitum is: so that the thing 
 said to be " suggested " does not fit the case. To escape 
 from this difficulty, Mr. Mill next remarks,- " What 
 we regard as external is not the sensation, but the cause 
 of the sensation, the thing which by its presence is 
 supposed to give rise to the sensation : the colored ob- 
 ject, or the quality residing in that object which we term 
 its color" (vol. ii. p. 93). The "outness" then at- 
 taches to the " object," in distinction from the " sensa-
 
 88 JOHN STUAIIT MILL. 
 
 lion;" to the object therefore not as seen, or as felt, 
 but as "supposed." What then is this "supposition'*? 
 Does the visual impression suffice to occasion it? If 
 so, nothing' else than vision is wanted for the belief of 
 "outness," and Mr. Bailey is right. Or, must the sup- 
 position of an object wait for the sensations of Touch ? 
 Then upon these, though not upon visual feeling, a bc- 
 ief in " outness" must attend, an objective apprehen- 
 sion upon a subjective experience : and Touch differs 
 from Vision, in carrying with it more than sensation. 
 This psychological addition to sensation, in which Mr. 
 Mill after all has to seek his " outness," is what is com- 
 monly called Perception by those who trust it. With 
 him it is part and parcel of an unauthorized "suppo- 
 sition " respecting an objective source of our feelings ; 
 and is not owned under any name which assigns its 
 valid authority, lint though he describes it in dispara- 
 ging terms, he cannot dispense with it, and really take 
 us out of ourselves by any manipulation of inward 
 sensations : and the only difference between him and 
 Mr. Bailey's disciples is this that while they step into 
 externality on the terra firma of reliable Perception, he 
 is carried thither at a leap upon the back of a chimera. 
 The advantage, so far, appears to us entirely on Mr. 
 Bailey's side. Only, we cannot think him right in 
 attaching the indispensable perceptive function to the 
 simple visual susceptibility. It is to the eyes as mova- 
 ble organs that it belongs ; and were it not for asso- 
 ciation thus established with the muscular system, we 
 believe with Berkeley that sight would no more give us 
 externality than smell. Not, however, that there is any 
 magic in the " muscular sensations" giving them an
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 89 
 
 exceptional power to do this great thing for us. Were 
 the muscles insensible as ropes, they would retain, we 
 believe, their distinction, so long as they differ from all 
 our mere senses, in obeying the prior signals of our will, 
 and introducing our inner causality into collision with 
 
 O / 
 
 outward obstruction. In that experience, we believe, 
 lies the birth-point of our objective perceptions and 
 our subjective self-consciousness ; including both the 
 Mathematical antithesis of here and there, and the 
 Dynamical antithesis of our own Power and Power 
 other than our own. With Mr. Mill we deem vision 
 by itself incompetent to give this report. With Mr. 
 Bailey, we accept the report as a revelation when we 
 get it ; and regard it as altogether beyond the resources 
 of sensation, and needing description as a cognitive 
 Perception.* 
 
 To follow the vestiges of our author's idealism through 
 certain characteristics of his logic would involve too 
 many technicalities, and too deep a plunge into the 
 recesses of the Nominalist controversy. He naturally 
 dislikes the language of classification, invented in a very 
 different school ; and, refusing to use it in defining the 
 business of a predication, treats every proposition as 
 
 * How difficult it is, on Mr. Mill's principles, to deal with our objective 
 belief, is evident on examining his account ot' the notions ' Substance" and 
 "Quality." In order to step on to these notions, he avails himself of the 
 idea of Owse. "Quality" hidden Cause of Sensation: "Substance"' 
 hidden Cnuni- of qualities. It is therefore in obedience to the exigencies of 
 the (.'autal idea, that \ve are carried in thought bthiiid phenonujKi, and set 
 down on (he ontological tield. Yet, when Mr. Mill comes to expound this 
 idea, he denies to it any but a phenomenal meaning: " When, in the eourst- 
 of this inquiry, I speak of the vtit.-te of any phenomenon, I do not mean a 
 cause which is not itself a phenomenon" (/.<"//<, i. p. 3>). To work thi* 
 same idea both wavs, now to ;c;t up <^ur entities and then to knock them 
 down. is siirtlv mukinir either too much or too little ol it.
 
 90 JOHN STUAUT MILL. 
 
 declaring Dimply a co-existence of attributes ; thus in- 
 terpreting both subject and predicate in their intension 
 rather than their extension, and giving the counter- 
 development to the quantitative methods of Mr. l)e 
 Morgan and Dr. Boole. If we arc at liberty to sacri- 
 fice psychological truth to the exigencies of a calculus 
 of deduction, either principle is adequate to its end, 
 though the advantage practically lies with the mathe- 
 maticians. Hut on both sides the unfortunate copula 
 seems to us to be put upon the rack and made to 
 say what it does not mean ; and the simple fact to be 
 overlooked, that we naturally construe the subject of a 
 proposition in its extension, and the predicate (which 
 therefore may be an adjective) in its intension : s.> th.it 
 neither co-existence of attributes nor equation of groups 
 correspond witli the living processes of thought and 
 language. But on this special field we must not enter. 
 It is the instinct of idealism, whithersoever it turns, 
 to translate objective terms and conceptions into sub- 
 jective, and to draw all reality and meaning into the 
 inward life. To this we attribute the characteristic 
 prominence given, in Mr. Alill's Moral doctrine, to 
 self-formation and individuality. The frequency 
 with which he recurs to this topic, and the earnest- 
 ness with which he speaks of it, show how high it ranks 
 in his estimate. It is, indeed, the great province of 
 Kthics which he would recover fr.nn the neglect of pre- 
 vious utilitarians. Paley, he admits, looks too exclu- 
 sively "to the objective consequences of actions, and 
 omits the subjective ; attends to the effects on our out- 
 ward condition and that of other people too much, to 
 those on our internal sources of happiness or unhap-
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 91 
 
 pi r ess too little" (vol. i. p. 151). Ami of Bentham'si 
 theory it is still more strongly said that 
 
 " It will do nothing for the conduct of the individual, beyond 
 prescribing sonic of the more obvious dictates of worldly pru- 
 dence, and outward probity and beneficence. There is nc 
 need to expatiate on the deficiencies of a system of ethics which 
 does not pretend to aid individuals in the formation of their 
 own clia actcr ; which recognizes no such wish as that of sell- 
 cnllure, \ve may even say no such "power, as existing in human 
 nature ; and if it did recognize, could furnish little assistance 
 to that. great duty, because it overlooks the existence of about 
 half of the whole number of mental feelings which human 
 beings are capable or', iujlu.linj: all those of which the direct 
 objects are states of their own mind. 
 
 u Morality consists of two parts. One of these is self-edu- 
 cation ; the training, by the human being himself, of his affec- 
 tions and will. That department is a blank in Bentham's 
 system. The other and co-equal part, the regulation of his 
 outward actions, m.ist lie altogether halting and imperfect 
 without the first: I'm- lio\v can we judge in what manner many 
 an action will affect even the worldly interests of ourselves 
 and others, unless we take in, as part of the question, its. 
 influence on the regulation of our, or their, affections and 
 desires?" (vol. i. p. .'id'!.) 
 
 Tliis is well and wisely said : and it greatly narrows 
 the ground of difference between the opposite schools of 
 ethics. Only secure at the outset a perfect programme 
 of human nature ; take into account all its aims and 
 affections, including its aspirations after r; ideal ends ; " 
 accept these, ranged on their own scale of intensity and 
 self-estimation, as given facts; let the whole picture, 
 once drawn by thorough psychological survev, stand as 
 true for humanity and unimpeachable by the defects
 
 ;12 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 of individuals; ami, under such conditions, Butler 
 himself will consent to your computing your code on 
 "the Greatest-Happiness principle." For, evidently, tho 
 "greatest happiness" of a nature which has moral affec- 
 tions to begin with, aims at perfection and idons of it 
 which it feels to be authoritative, will be very differ- 
 ent from that of a nature simply sentient, and having 
 as yet to determine itself hither or thither by the relish 
 of its pleasures and the repulsion of its pains. Each 
 propensity, separately, brings us satisfaction when it 
 gains its end: but if we are so constituted that, taken 
 out of a certain order and proportion amonir the rest, 
 that satisfaction is again spoiled ; if the same is true of 
 all in turn, so that for the whole series there is an ideal 
 law, the dislocation of which is the wreck of our inward 
 peace ; if, further, there is inherent in this misery the 
 special consciousness that it is what we have no right to 
 incur, then you can settle the due order of life by 
 the rule of "happiness," should it so please you; for 
 this rule is itself but the expression of a prior scale of 
 natural excellence and authority. All inward rightness 
 involving satisfaction, the satisfaction may be used as 
 its sign. Only, unfortunately, the sign cannot well be 
 made apparent, except to those who already know the 
 thing signified. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, the great part which this 
 "Self-perfecting" by an inward ideal plays in our au- 
 thor's ethics, and its value as a formula for completing, 
 we should rather say, relinquishing, the utilitarian 
 theory, we find a difficulty in so combining his expo- 
 sitions of it as to settle it on any philosophical basis. 
 In the passage just cited, it is described as covering one
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 93 
 
 half of the whole ground of morality. Morality is, 
 however, in all cases but a means to an end (Logic, 
 p. 385), and that end is declared to be happiness. 
 Mr. Mill accordingly points out, as will have been 
 observed, thatj without studying the effects of our con- 
 duct on our own characters, we cannot compute even 
 its external influence on the affairs of ourselves and 
 others. Here the self-training is vindicated on the 
 general utilitarian ground that, without it, there will 
 be an omitted class of consequences. AYc must take 
 care of our affections and will, as being important to 
 the interests of ourselves and others : and this particular 
 position, as not an end in themselves, but an instrument 
 of something ulterior, is essential to make the care of 
 them a moral act. Yet elsewhere our author lifts this 
 self-formation out of all subsidiary relations, and com- 
 plains of Bentham that 
 
 "Man is never recognized by him as a being capable of pur- 
 suing spiritual perfection as an end ; of desiring, for its oic/i 
 sale, the conformity of his own character to his standard of 
 excellence, without hope of good or fear of evil from other 
 source than his own inward consciousness " (vol. i. p. 3-39). 
 
 "What is that to me?" Bentham would reply : "did 
 you not say that all morality is directed to an end 
 beyond it? If this pursuit of yours is good on its 
 own account, it does not belong to morality ; and it is 
 no imputation on me, as a moralist, that I say nothing 
 about it. A man may make it his end to conform to 
 his own standard of excellence : so much the worse for 
 him if the standard is a bad one, talk as he may of 
 spiritual perfection." And in truth Mr. Mill himself 
 elsewhere expressly treats as un-snornl and purely
 
 J;4 JOHN STUAUT MILL. 
 
 sesthetical this realization of inward harmony, this con- 
 formity with ideal laws ; and pronounces it sentimental 
 " to set this aspect of actions above the moral," which 
 looks to their consequences : 
 
 " Every human action," lie observes, ' has three aspects : 
 its moral aspect, or that of its right and wrong ; its aesthetic 
 aspect, or that of its beauty ; its sympathetic aspect, or that of 
 its lovableness. The first addresses itself to our reason and 
 conscience; the second to our imagination; the third to our 
 human fellow-feeling. According to the first, we approve or 
 disapprove ; according to the S"cond, we admire or despise; 
 according to the third, we love, pity, or dislike. The morality 
 of an action depends on its foreseeable consequences ; its 
 beauty, and its lavableness, or the reverse, depend on the 
 qualities which it is evidence of. Thus a lie i< u-rong, because 
 its effect is to mislead, and because it tends to destroy the 
 confidence of man in man ; it is also mean, because it is cow- 
 ardly because it proceeds from not daring to face the con- 
 sequences of telling the truth or at best is evidence of want 
 of that power to compass our ends by straightforward means, 
 which is conceived as properly belonging to every person not 
 deficient in energy or in understanding. The action of Brutus 
 in sentencing his son was rigid, because it was executing a 
 law essential to the freedom of his country, against persons of 
 whose guilt there was no doubt: it was admirable, because it 
 evinced a rare degree of patriotism, courage, and self-control : 
 but there was nothing lovable ; it affords either no presump- 
 tion in regard to lovable qualities, or a presumption of their 
 deficiency. If one of the sons had engaged in the conspiracy 
 from affection for the other, his action would have been lov- 
 able, though neither moral nor admirable. It is not possible 
 for any sophistry to confound these three modes of viewing an 
 action ; but it is very possible to adhere to one of them exclu- 
 sively, and lose sight of the rest. Sentimentality consists in
 
 JOIIX STUAttT MILL. 95 
 
 selling the last two of the three above the first; the error oi 
 moralists in general, and of Benthain, is to sink the two latter 
 entirely " (vol. vi. p. 387). 
 
 If this distinction is good in our criticism of others, 
 it \vill apply no less to our own case. And surely if 
 there be any form of our personal energy which belongs 
 to the second head, and takes shape from the ''ima- 
 gination " of ethical " beauty," it is the self-approxima- 
 tion to an ideal standard "on its own account." In 
 proportion as the aim to be gains upon the intent to do, 
 does " sentimentality," as above defined, take place of 
 "morals." With what consistency, then, can Bentham's 
 disregard of this aim be treated as u curtailment of 
 morality by full half its whole amount? It seems to 
 us that, in our author's scheme, this aspiration, after an 
 inward perfection floats about without settling in its 
 proper place. It is as if he felt it more than utilita- 
 rian, and so let it have an ideal end of its own ; vet 
 also more than aesthetic, and so charged it with the half 
 of human morals. It is the old problem of tiie xaiov 
 and the uyaQov, difficult to Plato, impossible to 
 Bentham.* 
 
 In truth, there is nothing in the utilitarian theory, 
 
 * Mr. Mill's distinctions are usually taken with so inucli precision, that 
 we hardly venture to confess our imperfect satisfaction with his account of 
 the Mural as Cifusaticc of "foreseeable c<:Hi''intin-t* ; " and of the ^Kttln-tic 
 and Lovable as L'xpressice of inner " yuultiirs." All throe, we should say. 
 are equally /:>/>/< -ssice ; and the essence of their effect upon us lies in what 
 they severally express. The Moral expresses j>nj\-m/ce inmmy .)/>//////. <;/' 
 ruliiiitnry com/net : the ^Esthetic, iiiifiril linrnuniij in- J'arcc, imiiliiiitury "s "v/J 
 tin ruluntary : the lM\'a.\)le,jinratm>unt.(iJfecl!imtttcn<:$g 1 iiiuriil<>rmit. It seem* 
 to us quite arbitrary to say that our Ajytrofa'tion is charactcri7i'd by looking 
 sway from the principle and down to the consequences of action. We >hoid-l 
 say, its sympathy goes right up to the spiritual source within the character, 
 just as much as in the cases of Admiration and AJJ'cciiuu.
 
 96 JOHN STUAHT MILL. 
 
 however enlarged, for this sclf-formati >n to rest upon, 
 bevond the exigencies of our obligations to our fellow- 
 
 tf 
 
 men. Whij should a man mould himself under the 
 pressure of " a vague feeling and inexplicable internal 
 conviction"? (p. 385.) Is it to escape the uneasiness 
 of disappointed aspiration? This can be done by per- 
 scveringly neglecting the aspiration far more effectually 
 than by realizing it, and so advancing it to an ulterior 
 stage. Besides, if this were all, what else would the 
 pursuit be but the indulgence of a spiritual luxury, 
 the highest refinement of egoism? Imprisoned within 
 the circle of myself, conscious indeed of differences 
 among my affections, but not warranted in treating 
 them as significant of any thing, I am constituted of 
 mere subjective emotions : I can but spin around my 
 own centre, and whether on this axis of preference or 
 on that, I equally fulfil my law of being. Plant me 
 alone amid a desert of negation, with susceptibilities 
 that are the index of nothing, and powers in communion 
 with nothing ; and whatever ferment of elements there 
 may be within me, storms of broken equilibrium and 
 harmonies of returning calm, they can but constitute 
 some form of taste and prudence, and can never make 
 a duty : there is no rule of higher and lower that could 
 be pronounced valid for any second nature that should 
 enter on the vacant field. One half of self, if it he 
 only self, cannot claim the worship of the other, 
 any more than a ventriloquist can learn any thing from 
 his two-voiced dialogue, or a single actor can play or.t 
 a real drama by change of dress. For obligation we 
 must have an authority, for admiration, a beauty, 
 for reverence, a goodness, beyond self and higher
 
 JOHN STUA11T MILL. 07 
 
 than self: and unless we may accept our subjective 
 a] (prehensions of spiritual excellence as significant of 
 objective realities, and look upon our "ideal ends" as 
 the openings on us of a purer Will and the communion 
 of a supreme Perfection, we do not see how they can 
 ever be more than the phantasms of a vision or lend us 
 any wing effectual against our own weight. Mr. Mill 
 himself remarks, in concurrence with Mr. Grote, the 
 fact that, in its primitive form, the sense of obligation 
 is exclusively of the personal kind. "Personal feel- 
 ings either towards the gods, the King, or some near 
 and known individual, fill the whole of a man's bosom ; 
 out of them arise all the motives to beneficence, and 
 all the internal restraints upon violence, antipathy, 
 and rapacity : and special communion, as well as special 
 solemnities, are essential to their existence" (vol. ii. 
 p. 321). Is this so certainly a mere puerility of early 
 society, doomed to be advantageously replaced by " the 
 Impersonal authority of the Laws"? or is it only 
 the most elementary expression of an ineffaceable fea- 
 ture in our nature? and do "the Laws" themselves per- 
 haps prevail not as " impersonal " and abstract, but as 
 representing the higher personality of the Nation, repre- 
 sented through the living voice of assembled dikasts? 
 and does conscience itself speak in more solemn tone in 
 proportion as it seems to reveal a Will greater than 
 opinion and auguster than our own ? And is it not 
 then possible that we may yet return, with glorified 
 interpretation, to that early stage, and by re-translating 
 duties into personal relations between the Human and 
 the Divine, restore to them the living power of affection 
 and fidelity ? 
 
 7
 
 98 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 The subjective principle of our author's philosophy 
 pervades his literary code ; and very characteristically 
 appears in an attempt, highly ingenious and suggestive, 
 to answer the untiring question, "What is poetry?" 
 He replies, It is the spontaneous expression of feeling ; 
 and all thoughts and words which pour out feeling, not 
 for influence on others, but as in soliloquy, are in their 
 essence poetry : and the poetic minds are those whose 
 thoughts arc linked by feelings, and determined into 
 existence by the laws of emotion. Mr. Mill's poet must 
 be all loneliness and intensity, a kind of spiritual 
 firework going off of itself in infinite night. So iso- 
 lating a definition would in no case apply to other than 
 lyric poetry ; and our author has the courageous con- 
 sistency to adopt the limitation, and to consider the 
 drama and the epic redeemed from prose only by the 
 intermixture of lyrical elements. Did we even accept 
 this startling restriction, the theory, we think, makes 
 far too much of mere quantity of sensibility ; which is 
 often strongly marked in minds eminently un poetical. 
 But above all it is any thing rather than solitary, self- 
 evolved feeling that constitutes the poet. lie more 
 than any goes forth out of himself, and mingles his 
 very being with the nature and humanity around him ; 
 entering into their essence by humbling his own, and 
 directing on them the idealizing glance which looks in 
 at their eves and reads their heart. He lives, not to 
 express himself, but to interpret the world, and become 
 the vocal organ of the silent universe and the dumb 
 souls of men. 
 
 The excessive appreciation of "individuality " which 
 was noticed in a recent review of our author's treatise
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 99 
 
 on "Liberty," belongs to the same general tendency. 
 His sympathies, unless in the form of pitv, scarcely 
 seem to touch the common level of human life, or to 
 acknowledge any vital connection with the general faith 
 and conscience. His fears, his despondencies, his pre- 
 cautions, all look towards the social sentiment, in whose 
 conservative moral elements he sees little else than the 
 joint-stock opinions of mediocrity and vulgarity ; and 
 his hopes somewhat languidly and scantily fiv to emi- 
 nent and exceptional personalities who can see over the 
 heads of the crowd. The old Pagan trust in "wisdom," 
 with pathetic or supercilious gaze on all below, re- 
 appears in him : and "thinkers," "great thinkers," 
 
 step forth so often upon his page, and conduct their 
 mission with so much pomp, that the mother-wit of 
 modest readers grows quite ashamed and blushes to the 
 eyes. When, for instance, the announcement is made 
 that it " is becoming more and more the grand effort of 
 all minds of any power, which embark in literature," 
 
 "to have something to say" (vol. i. p. 240), homely 
 people, who never made "the grand eifort," know at 
 once that they have not " minds of any power," and 
 naturally shrink before the knitted brows of such self- 
 elaboration. 
 
 Many of our readers, we doubt not, will have felt 
 a certain surprise and incredulity at finding Mr. Mill 
 classed with "Idealists." The term seems to contradict 
 some of his best-marked tendencies, and not at all to 
 hit the kind of influence which his writings have exer- 
 cised. Had we classed him with " Materialists,"* we 
 
 * The word " Materialism," it should be observed, stands, with a difl'er- 
 eut rantre of meaning, in two distinct antitheses. As opposed to Immaterial-
 
 100 JO1IX STUAUT MILL. 
 
 should probably have been tlrmght nearer tlic nnrk. 
 And the truth is (for \vo must quality a strong asser- 
 tion by a yet stronger), he is both, and presents, in 
 different parts of his doctrine, two opposite sides, which 
 often practically co-exist, whether or not they arc philo- 
 sophically coherent. On the one hand, we have found 
 him resolving all our knowledge, " both materials and 
 sources," into /SV //-know ledge ; denying any cognitive 
 access to either qualities or bodies external to us ; and 
 shutting us tip with our own sensations, ideas, and emo- 
 tions. But on the other hand, though we know nothing 
 but the phenomena of ourselves, we are nothing but 
 phenomena of the world : the boast is vain of any thing 
 original in the mind : the sensations from which all 
 within us begins are the results of " outward expe- 
 rience : " the pretended a-priori ideas turn out a-poste- 
 riori residues : the volitions that set up as spontaneities 
 are necessary effects of antecedents earlier than we : 
 the truths we seem to win by pure deductive intelli- 
 gence are but interpretations of physical induction : and 
 the characters we think our own are but subservient 
 copies of the influences around us. Our author's whole 
 picture of man exhibits him as a natural product, 
 shaped by the scene on which he i.s ca?t ; and he rejects 
 every theory without exception which has been set up, 
 
 ism, it is concerned with the question of the Mind's ultimate substance, and 
 denotes the opinion that the Mental Phenomena are referable to the same 
 substance which manifests the Physical; not to a different one, as the Iinma- 
 terialist contends. As opposed to Jdertllam, the word is concerned with 
 another question, viz. the equal or unequal originality and trustworthiness 
 of our Subjective and Objective knowledge. To hold the balance even 
 between them is Dualism: to resolve the latter into the former is Ide'ilimn: 
 to resolve the former into tin latter is Materialism. It is in this lost bui'se 
 alone that we have to do with the word.
 
 JOTIX STUART ?.IILL. 101 
 
 in psychology, in logic, in morals, to vindicate the 
 autonomy of human reason and conscience. And thus 
 we are landed in this singular result : our only sphere 
 of cognizable reality is subjective : and that is gener- 
 ated from an objective world which we have no reason 
 to believe exists. In our author's theory of cognition, 
 the non-ego disappears in the ego ; in his theory of 
 being, the ego lapses back into the non-ego. Idealist 
 in the former, he is Materialist in the latter. 
 
 This subjection of man to physical nature exhibits 
 itself in a Sensational psychology ; which, while con- 
 demning Condillac's simplification of Locke as mere 
 verbal generalization, does but stretch the same mate- 
 rials upon a different loom, and weave the whole web 
 of our mental life out of the data of sense. The nearer 
 we are to sensation, the less room is there for error and 
 uncertainty : as \ve recede from it into abstractions of 
 the understanding and ideas of reason, tin tenure of our 
 truths is more precarious : and consciousness, however 
 entitled to be believed about tactual and ocular impres- 
 sions, is to be distrusted in all reports which decline to 
 go back thither for authentication. In spite of Mr. 
 Mill's denying us all legitimate access to an external 
 world, no one allows so little that is original to the 
 mind itself, or places so little reliance on what there is. 
 That a belief should be provided for in the mind's own 
 constitution, and be inseparable from the very action of 
 its faculties, is an idea which he resents like an affront ; 
 if it be so, it is a sheer tyranny of nature : there may 
 be no help tor it ; he may be compelled to believe ; but 
 he will do it under protest, and declare that he has no 
 ground for it, and would escape if he could.
 
 102 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 "I am aware," he says, "that to ask for evidence of a 
 proposition which we are supposed to believe instinctively, is 
 to expose oneself to the charge of rejecting the authority of 
 the human faculties; which of course no one can consistently 
 do, since the human faculties are all which any one has to 
 judge by; and inasmuch as the n caning of the word 'evi- 
 dence' is supposed to be, something which when laid before 
 the mind induces it to believe, to demand evidence when the 
 belief is ensured by the mind's own laws is supposed to be 
 appealing to the intellect against the intellect. lint this, I 
 apprehend, is a misunderstanding of the nature of evidence. 
 By evidence is not meant any thing and every thing which 
 produces belief. There are many things which generate 
 belief besides evidence. A mere strong association of ideas 
 often causes a belief so intense as to be unshakable by expe- 
 rience or argument. Evidence is not that which the mind 
 does or must yield to, but that which it ought to yield to, 
 namely, that, by yielding to which, its belief is kept conform- 
 able to fact. There is no appeal from the human faculties 
 generally, but there is an appeal from one faculty to another ; 
 from the judging faculty, to those which take cognizance of 
 fact, the faculties of sense and consciousness. To say that 
 belief suffices for its own justification, is making opinion the 
 test of opinion: it is denying the existence of any outward 
 standard, the conformity of an opinion to which constitutes its 
 truth. We call one mode of forming opinions right, and 
 another wrong, because the one does, and the other does not, 
 tend to make the opinion agree with fact to make people 
 believe what really is, and expect what really ill be. Now 
 a mere disposition to believe, even if supposed instinctive, is 
 no guarantee for the truth of the thing believed. If, indeed, 
 the belief ever amounted to an irresistible necessity, there 
 would then be no use in appealing from it, because there would 
 be no possibility of altering it. But even the:i the truth of 
 the belief would not follow ; it would only follow that mankind
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 103 
 
 were under a permanent necessity of believing what might 
 possibly not be true ; just as they were under a temporary 
 necessity (quite as irresistible while it lasts) of believing 
 that the heavens moved and the earth stood still" (Logic, 
 vol. ii. p. 94). 
 
 The case of supposed intuitive belief which is here in 
 the author's contemplation is the so-called " principle 
 of Causality," the maxim that "every phenomenon 
 must have a cause." Were we discussing this par- 
 ticular axiom, we should present it under another form, 
 "every phenomenon is a manifestation of power," in 
 order to save it from being' confounded with a very dif- 
 ferent, and by no means self-evident, proposition, 
 " every phenomenon has the same constant phenome- 
 nal antecedent : " and should protest against identifying 
 the empirical expectation of " uniformity among natural 
 successions " with the necessary belief in " Universal 
 Causation." The first, involving a question of mere 
 order among perceptible events, Mr. Mill is entitled to 
 call "a fact in external nature,'* and to regard as wait- 
 ing upon "evidence:" it is for the latter alone that 
 axiomntic authority can justly be claimed. We have 
 quoted the passage, however, with no view to this 
 special instance, but solely to illustrate our author's 
 treatment of " intuitive and necessary beliefs." We can 
 thoroughly understand his reluctance to concede their 
 existence, his precautions against installing mere preju- 
 dice and mental limitation into the honors of first prin- 
 ciples, his scepticism of a pretension which has certainly 
 been grossly abused. But when he says outright, that 
 a-priori beliefs, really inherent in the mind, are totally 
 unworthy of trust, however imperiously they may com-
 
 104 JOHN STUAUT MILL. 
 
 pel submission ; and when he casts about for somo 
 appeal against them, either from thought to "fact," 
 or from faculty to faculty, he seems to us to lose all 
 his logical bearings, and forget the base winch he had 
 measured with so much care. What security can there 
 be for any truth, of "ffict " or of thought, a 
 posteriori or a priori, if the positive and primary 
 affirmations of our mental nature may be suspected of 
 making fools of us? The assumption of un veracity, 
 once made, cannot arbitrarily stop with the province 
 which Mr. Mill wishes to discredit. He himself also 
 must, somewhere or other, come to an end of his 
 w evidence " and " proof," and be landed on principles 
 not derivative, but primary : and then he must either 
 accept their coercion " because there is no use in 
 appealing from it," or unconditionally rely on them as 
 the report of truthful faculties ; and in either case is 
 on the same footing with his a-priori neighbor. Be 
 the " proof" what it may which authenticates the belief, 
 it is the faculty which, in the last resort, authenticates 
 the proof. And whither, in the supposed cases of 
 intuitive belief, does Mr. Mill contemplate carrying 
 the appeal? He expresses this in two ways : (1) objec- 
 tively ; he would bring the belief to an " outward stan- 
 dard," to the test of "fact," "experience," "external 
 nature:" (2) subjectively; he would remove the trial 
 from one faculty to another, from the "judging" faculty 
 to "sense and consciousness." But, as to the first, 
 have we not been already taught that we know nothing 
 external to ourselves? and even were it otherwise, 
 the knowledge would have no other voucher than the 
 instinctive apprehensions on which we are discouraged
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 105 
 
 from relying. And as to the second statement, we 
 have to ask, how are we to settle which, of a plurality 
 of faculties, sits in the higher court? and by what title 
 especially sense and consciousness nre set in the chief 
 seat, yet both of them debarred from "judging" any 
 thing, and restricted to the reporting of our sensations 
 and ideas as inward " facts " ? If not qualified to 
 "judge," how can they revise "judgments"? And if 
 they are qualified, then their testimony must be accept- 
 ed, with all that it carries in it, the counter-realities 
 of object and subject, and the very principle of causality 
 inseparable from their discovery. By denying Percep- 
 tion as distinguished from Sensation, Mr. Mill himself 
 incapacitates " sense " for bearing witness to any thing 
 but the sensations within us : how then can he appeal 
 to it for a verdict on a maxim claiming to- be valid for 
 the universe? He treats every thing external, all 
 body and all qualities, as mentally feigned to serve 
 as " unknown causes " of our sensations : but if the 
 objective world is just an hypothesis invented to satisfy 
 "the principle of causality," how can he appeal to it to 
 pronounce sentence on that principle itself ? He either 
 disbelieves or believes this objective world. Does he 
 disbelieve it, on the ground that all our knowledge is 
 subjective? then his "outward standard" for testing the 
 causal principle is non-existent. Does he believe it? 
 then he does so on the strength of this causal principle 
 itself, and, in accepting the hypothesis, grants the 
 paramount necessity of " unknown causes" for known 
 phenomena. 
 
 The dominance of Sensation in Psychology is natu- 
 rally followed by the dominance of Induction in Logic.
 
 106 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 Accordingly, our author's whole treatment of this sub- 
 ject carries out his crusade against "the a-priorities," 
 and his thorough-going determination to hunt down all 
 general propositions into elementary concrete facts. 
 All his characteristic opinions respecting the process of 
 reasoning are of the same type and tendency : that we 
 draw inferences from particulars to particulars without 
 passing through any generalization ; that the deductive 
 procedure has no cogency of proof, but is simply an 
 interpretation of our notes of prior inductions ; that the 
 syllogism involves a petitio principii; that geometri- 
 cal demonstration is only a carrying out of false physical 
 measurements. These doctrines, though deriving fresh 
 strength from Mr. Mill's powerful advocacy, are not 
 new ; and they are among the standing marks of what 
 is called "the empirical philosophy." They depend for 
 the most part on a peculiar view of abstraction, gene- 
 ralization, and naming, which would require us, were 
 we to discuss it, to drag our readers into the innermost 
 recesses of psychology. One remark only will we make 
 in regard to our alleged inference from particulars to 
 particulars, without use of any intermediate generali- 
 zation. All advance to new truth implies the co- 
 operation of two conditions : viz. certain objective 
 data or facts, as material for the mental action ; and 
 a certain subjective mode of dealing with these data, 
 a law of the mind's action upon them. To the first 
 we necessarily attend, and we consciously realize them, 
 thinking distinctly both of tho known thing from which 
 we start, aiul of the previously unknown on which we 
 are landed. But the other, being the mere form of our 
 own life for the moment, takes effect of itself without
 
 JOHX STUART MILL. 101 
 
 asking leave of our self-consciousness : it is not reflected 
 on, because it is itself our reflective act. All, there- 
 fore, that we need explicitly state to ourselves, and set 
 forth as the " evidence, " or external inducement, 
 of a particular conclusion, is the particular datum which 
 moved us to draw it : and for your belief that you are 
 mortal you adduce sufficient reason when you sav, 
 the people I have known and heard of have been mor- 
 tal. But this would not act upon you as a reason at 
 all, were it not a law of your mind to proceed, on suffi- 
 cient hint from particular cases, to the idoa of a kind, 
 in the present instance, humrtii kind t in which 
 the same attribute inheres all through. It is only 
 because you are an individual " of a certain descrip- 
 tion" (as Mr. Mill has it), an example of the kind, 
 that you know yourself to be mortal. If, therefore, 
 the latent condition of the process is to be laid bare, 
 if the implicit principle of the reasoning is to be made 
 explicit (and without this there is no psychological 
 analysis at all), it is indispensable to state the general 
 mental law in virtue of which particular data conduct 
 us to a particular conclusion. That we do not make 
 the universal proposition an object of thought and 
 visible step to our inference {e.g. "all men are mor- 
 tal/' as proving that "we are mortal") is no justifica- 
 tion of its expulsion from the logical analysis ; the very 
 object of which is, not to state the "evidence," but to 
 go behind the evidence, in reasoning, not to be 
 content with the objective conditions of the process, but 
 explicitly to give the subjective too. From a similar 
 limitation of his view to the objective side of reasoning, 
 and an ovei>ia'ht of Aristotle's distinction between what
 
 108 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 the mind has tv tovdftti and what it has tv Htp^e/f, Mt 
 Mill has laid, as we think, an unreasonable stress on 
 the charge of pelitto principii against the syllogism. 
 The Aristotelians at all events have an easy retort. If 
 there is no deduction without petitio principii, there 
 is no induction without concluding a particuldri ad 
 universale: and all our reasoning, of either kind, is in 
 violation of logical rules. There is nothing in this 
 paradox that will frighten us, when once we apprehend 
 the true nature and limits of logic, d rules. It is evident 
 that we could never make a step in reasoning, if we 
 only reasoned ; if we neither add any thing to our 
 premises ab extra, nor draw any tiling ab infra, that 
 was not comprised in them before, no new thing ever 
 can appear. So long as the mind itself is allowed to 
 contribute nothing, out of its own modes of activity, 
 to the enlargement or the evolution of the data, these 
 data of themselves, objectively measured, will lie still 
 for ever and yield nothing : and it is the mutual play 
 of comprehension and extension, the metaphysical pos- 
 tulate of causation, and the idea of the unity of kinds, 
 that put the dead materials in motion, and elicit a 
 Ihing advance. 
 
 If, in his aim to supplement Bentham, our author 
 yielded to an idealistic impulse, he remained true, in 
 what he retained from the great utilitarian, to the 
 materialistic tendencies of the school. The inward 
 side of ethics is made, in every aspect, dependent on 
 the outward. Do we ask what determines the moral 
 quality of actions? we are referred, not to their spring, 
 but to their consequences. Do we inquire how we 
 come by our moral sentiments? by contagion, we are
 
 JOIIN STUART MILL. 108 
 
 told, of other people's approbation and disapprobation, 
 not by any self-reflective judgments of our own. Do 
 we seek for the adequate sources of a man's guilt or 
 goodness ? we are presented with an enumeration of 
 the external conditions which made his character, like 
 his health, just what it is. Instead of the self- 
 fonnation, the evolution from within towards an 
 unrealized type of perfection, we have man treated 
 as a natural product, moulded by surroundin pressures 
 on his sentient susceptibilities. There can be no doubt 
 about the decisive preponderance of this latter view in 
 our authors writings. Though he is willing for a 
 moment to borrow a light from the subjective doctrine, 
 and find something genial in its glow, he resolves it 
 in the end into an illusory brilliancy, the mirage of 
 a mental atmosphere charged with earthly vapors and 
 disturbed with accidental refractions. Though he recog- 
 nizes the fact expressed by the words "Conscience," 
 " Moral Rectitude," "Principle," and insists on its im- 
 portance in human nature, he allows it only actual force 
 (such as any superstition might win), .not ethical 
 authority; and, with James Mill, psychologically de- 
 duces it, with the aid of Hartley's law of transference, 
 from the original datum of self-love. These apparent 
 concessions constitute but the semblance of approxi- 
 mation between the two doctrines : it has never been 
 about the fact, of a moral consciousness that they differ, 
 but about its value ; and distrust of it is equally pro- 
 duced by its denial and by its disparagement. If it 
 is nothing but a compendium of borrowed prejudices 
 and interested preferences, all starting from egoistic 
 pleasures, but by chemical combination wrought into a
 
 110 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 pnssion that forgets its birth, and now lords it over 
 others with its " ipse-dixitism," it is idle to make a 
 merit of acknowledging such a " spring of action " as 
 this, and to imagine that, by doing so, human nature 
 is presented in a more respectable light. Mr. Mill 
 repeatedly protests against the common identification 
 of the utilitarian scheme with the " selfish theory ; " on 
 the ground that the former, in determining the morality 
 of actions, takes into account the consequent pleasures 
 and pains to other people as well as to the agent. It 
 certainly does so actually in Bentham's hands : and 
 might do so legitimately under any philosophy which 
 established an obligation other than prudential to con- 
 sult for the happiness of others. This, however, is 
 precisely what Bentharn does not do : and for want of 
 it, the unselfish superstructure of his system is simply 
 imposed, without any logical cohesion, upon a com- 
 pletely selfish base. By speaking of pain and pleasure 
 as if they were objective and impersonal quantities, 
 carrying values irrespective of their individual appro- 
 priation, he slips into the delusive facility of treating the 
 agent's happiness and that of others as interchangeable 
 and homogeneous magnitudes in every problem. But 
 in proving his first principle, the exclusive govern- 
 ance of human life by pain and pleasure, he rests 
 entirely on the paramount value to each man of his 
 own pleasures, and the impossibility that, without this 
 element, life could be desirable to him at all. Xor was 
 Bentham at all inclined, in his doctrine of human 
 nature, at any time to think that the question of mcum 
 and tvum made no difference in the value of a pleasure. 
 "Think not," lie said, "that a man will so much as lift
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. Ill 
 
 up his little finger on your behalf, unless he sees hia 
 advantage in it ! " From his premises as they stand no 
 rule of life can be consistently deduced, but the selfish 
 one that the agent must be determined by a regard to 
 his own happiness ; including, of course, the portion of 
 it that may be wrapped up with the happiness of other 
 people. Bentham's own benevolence of disposition 
 easily carried him over from this narrow rule to that of 
 the greatest happiness of all persons concerned. But 
 even his disciples have felt it to be one of the greatest 
 lacunce of his system, that no scientific proof identified 
 the "happiness of all concerned," which was his rule, 
 with the " happiness of the agent," which was his 
 principle. It was only in so far as he was inconse- 
 quential that he emerged from the limits of the selfish 
 system. The defect which he left has been carefully 
 supplied in more recent developments of the doctrine, 
 especially by James Mill and Mr. Austin. The 
 principle, however, resorted to for the purpose, involves 
 and allows no departure from the selfish basis. It 
 simply avails itself of association and interdependence, 
 to extend the sphere of our personal happiness so as to 
 include among its conditions the happiness of others. 
 It justifies benevolence on the ground of self-love, 
 disinterestedness, as the ultimate fruit of interest. We 
 are far from denying the importance of establishing the 
 real harmony between the prudential and the social 
 principles in our nature, or from doubting that a real 
 advance towards this end is made good by the method 
 so skilfully applied. But, after all, it leaves the 
 "pleasure to one's self" as the actual spring, and 
 the legitimating ground of every volition ; it makes the
 
 112 JOHN STUAKT MILL. 
 
 claims of others' good contingent on its identification 
 with our own ; it recommends sell-denial on the pleu 
 of self-indulgence : and thus never really crosses the 
 boundary which separates interests from obligations, 
 but simply pushing forward the lines of prudence till 
 they enclose the whole ethical field, adopts the symbols 
 and landmarks of duty, with an altered significance. 
 We must honestly say, that this sort of recognition of 
 others' happiness, as "cause of pleasure to ourselves," 
 seems to us still to lie within the limits of the " selfish 
 system : " by which we understand, the doctrine that the 
 idea of pleasure to oneself is the mainspring that cannot, 
 and need not, be absent from any act of the human 
 will. And though this " theory of motives " appears in 
 literature and life much more extensively than any sys- 
 tematic notions on morals, it has undeniably co-existed 
 with the utilitarian doctrine in all the great represen- 
 tatives of the school. In the pages of Bentharn and 
 James Mill, the two theories advance, hand in hand, to 
 the assault on "the ordinary morality." Why, then, 
 if Professors Sedgwick and Whewell choose to attempt 
 a joint repulse of them, should this be rebuked as either 
 stupid or dishonorable championship? 
 
 There seems to be something irresistibly irritating to 
 the utilitarian mind in the bare mention of an internal 
 principle, known to us by self-consciousness, from 
 which a moral theory may be developed. Paley can- 
 not resist a quiet sneer at "the Moral Sense man." 
 Bentham degrades him from the text into a foot-note ; 
 will not have him in the same room, but puts the 
 conceited fellow in the closet and, baiting him there 
 with a troop of jeers, makes even that too hot to hold
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 113 
 
 him. James Mill considers him only less contemptible 
 than Sir James Macintosh. And our author, impa- 
 tient, it would seem, at having to spend pains on such 
 a fool, scarcely listens to him enough to catch his 
 thought and answer what he means. He more than 
 once asserts, for instance, that "the contest between 
 the morality which appeals to an external standard, and 
 that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the 
 contest of progressive morality against stationary, 
 of reason and argument against the deification of mere 
 opinion and habit" (vol. ii. p. 472). Why so? \Yhy 
 should the appeal to a common Conscience in mankind 
 be more egoistic and anti-progressive than the appeal 
 to a common Reason ? Does an author, who has so 
 distinguished himself in Logical psychology, and whose 
 writings mark an era in its " progress," doubt that there 
 is also a Moral psychology, equally exempt from a 
 stationary doom? AVhat matters it to the possibilities 
 of development, whether the data for our ethical judg- 
 ments are found within or without, in a comparison 
 of the springs, or a comparison of the results, of action? 
 Take which system you will, you have, in fact, to carry 
 your scrutiny into both spheres. Are you Utilitarian? 
 in spite of your "external standard," you have to esti- 
 mate "intention," " temptation," and other inward ele- 
 ments. Are you a Moral Consciousness man ? the only 
 thing settled for you within, is the relative authority of 
 the several Springs of Action ; and to get at the right 
 act, out of several possible to the same spring, you 
 must go out and look at its consequences, like a Bentha- 
 mite. Of course, if there are no laws of Moral con- 
 sciousness within us, and what we take for such are
 
 114 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 only pieked-up opinions without common ground in our 
 humanity, a morality appealing to them cannot make 
 scientific advance: not, however, because they arc 
 internal, but because they are illusory. To explode 
 error, on whichever side it lies, is certainly to secure 
 progress. But Mr. Mill's proposition we understand 
 to be, that on the truth of the one or the other of the 
 two schemes it depends, whether morals are stationary 
 or progressive. Such an assertion cannot appear just 
 except to those who fancy the Moral Faculty to be, in 
 the creed of its believers, a sort of oracular Pythoness 
 seated in the mind, to pronounce categorically on every 
 problem brought up for solution. 
 
 In spite, then, of the opposite tendencies co-existing 
 in Mr. Mill's mind, his sympathy with the Subjective 
 methods is not strong enough to secure a judicial 
 insight into their real bearings. lie is in the cud so 
 completely carried off by the objective school, that we 
 doubt whether, if Comte's influence could have pre- 
 ceded that of the elder Mill, any introspective side, 
 any psychological faith (at best rather shaky after its 
 first enthusiasm is over), would have appeared at all. 
 Had the two tendencies found their perfect balance and 
 adjustment in himself, his occasional descriptions of 
 them, as manifested in the history of philosophy, would 
 have been unimpeachably correct. Yet, notwithstand- 
 ing such outward resemblance to the truth as intellec- 
 tual conscientiousness ami adequate reading can secure, 
 our author's historical illustrations, when taken from 
 ancient or from modern continental philosophy, al- 
 most always affect us like a portrait in which the 
 measurements and the features seem faithfully laid
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 115 
 
 down, while the essential expression is missed. The 
 friendly intimacy, the living communion of thought, i, 
 wanting between the artist and his subject, ere the 
 picture can speak to you as true. We can illustrate 
 our meaning by only one example, selected simply 
 because it broadly generalizes the relations between 
 the metaphysical and empirical schools, and so ena- 
 bles us to dispense with much critical reference to the 
 particular philosophers named. 
 
 '*It has always been indistinctly felt that the doctrine of 
 a-priori principles is one and the same doctrine, whether 
 applied to the ov or the dtnv to the knowledge of truth or 
 to that of duty ; that it belongs to the same general tendency 
 of thought, to extract from the mind itself, without any out- 
 ward standard, principles and rules of morality, and to deem 
 it possible to discover, by mere introspection into our minds, 
 the laws of external nature. Both forms of this ino.le of 
 thought attained a brilliant development in Descartes, ilie 
 real founder of the modern anti-indu t've s hool of philo ophy. 
 The Cartesian tradition was never ! st, being kept alive by 
 direct descent through Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Kant, to Sehel- 
 ling and Hegel ; but the speculations of Bacon and Lo/ke, 
 and the progress of the experimental sciences, gave a long 
 period of predominance to the philosophy of experience ; and 
 though many followed out that philosophy into its natural 
 alliances, and acknowledged not only observation and experi- 
 ment as rulers of the speculative world, but utility of the. 
 practical, others thought that it was scientifically possible to 
 separate the two opinions, and professed themselves Baco- 
 nians in the physical department, remaining Cartesians in 
 the moral. It will probably be thought by posterity, to be the 
 principal merit of the German metaphysicians of the last and 
 present age, that they have proved the impossibility of resting 
 on this middle ground of compromise ; and have convinced all
 
 IK) JOHN STUAllT MILL. 
 
 thinker.* of any force, that if they adhere to the doctrine of 
 a-priori principles of morals, they must follow Descartes and 
 Hegel in ascribing the same character to the principles of 
 physics" (vol. ii. p. 457). 
 
 Now we fully accept the statement here made, that, 
 in all consistency, the metaphysical method either goes 
 into both worlds, what is, and what ought to be, 
 or keeps out of both. We further agree, that Descartes 
 found a function for it in both, Locke in neither. But 
 who the nameless philosophers are that, excluding it 
 from the one, kept it in the other, we are quite unable 
 to conjecture : and till we are better informed, we 
 remain sceptical of their existence. Further, we can- 
 not acknowledge that the metaphysicians in cither field 
 ever proposed " to discover the laws of nature " " by 
 mere introspection into our own minds;" if by this i.s 
 meant that they wished to dispense with " observation 
 and experiment," and to set up as an "anti-inductive 
 school." They always, and without exception, so far 
 as we know, found room, within each of the two 
 provinces, for botk methods, the a-priori and the 
 d-posteriori ; the one being deemed proper for the de- 
 lection of entities, the other for the ascertainment or 
 phenomena and their laws. When the phenomena 
 were mental, the result was Empirical Psychology ; 
 when external, Empirical Physics. The two modes 
 of procedure actually sit side by side, arid receive 
 some of their most characteristic developments in the 
 " Ethica " of Spinoza ; the psychological parts of which 
 are as completely empirical as the researches of Ilobbes, 
 and full of direct and striking anticipations of the Mill 
 doctrines themselves. We are not aware that any
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 117 
 
 metaphysician, be he ever so "Coleridgian," can be 
 named, who has supposed that the proper work of 
 induction could be achieved by intuition. It was not 
 until the " Baconians " came upon the stage and ac- 
 quired ascendancy, that one of the procedures endeav- 
 ored totally to expel the other, and unconditionally 
 claim the whole field. The a-priori people never 
 dreamt, in regard to their a-poxtvriori neighbors, of 
 trying the writ of ejectment with which they now find 
 themselves served. The only dispute between them 
 was a boundary dispute, where exactly, on the as- 
 cending slope, the perceptible laws of phenomena 
 merged in the logical evolution of necessary beintr 
 
 O Cj / O 
 
 (such as space), on the descending. Haunted by the 
 analogy of Geometry, in which sequences of pure 
 thought seemed to open out relations and connections 
 of real existence, the Cartesians undoubtedly pushed 
 the a-priori claim beyond its just limits, and attempted 
 conquests with it which it cannot make. And it is not 
 unnatural that, in the exultation of victory over them, 
 their opponents should meditate dispossessing them of 
 every thing. As to the result, if there be nothing 
 but phenomena, these opponents will succeed : other- 
 wise, we suppose, not. But that the result, whatever 
 it be, will be sweeping, can be doubted by none. The 
 " middle ground of compromise," by surrender of the 
 natural and reservation of the moral field, is, we think, 
 quite imaginary : and, with sincere deference to Mr. 
 AI ill's great authority, we doubt whether the position, 
 Teutonically proved untenable to "all thinkers of any 
 force," has ever been taken up by a single English 
 writer, or attacked by a single German. Keid, Stew-
 
 1 1 > JOHN STUAUT MILL. 
 
 art, Hamilton, Whewcll, all put limits on the resources 
 of the a-posteriori method : and all carry the same rule 
 of restriction into the natural as into the moral sphere ; 
 for the most part, amid mutual differences, leaving the 
 same fundamental ideas in the field of exemption, 
 Space, Time, Substance, Cause, on the one hand ; 
 Personality, Moral Obligation, Preferential Freedom, 
 on the other. 
 
 The characteristics on which we have ventured to 
 dwell are more discernable in the occasional writings 
 before us than in the author's systematic works. No- 
 where, however, are they so conspicuous as broadly to 
 challenge the eye : like all foundations, they hold what 
 is above them in the light, but lie hid themselves. 
 They have more to do, we believe, with Mr. Mill's 
 marked influence upon his age, with both the fear and 
 the admiration so strongly directed towards him, than 
 his direct contributions to Logic and Political Econ- 
 omy. No writer, it is probable, was ever more read 
 between the lines : his authoritative force of intellect, 
 his perfect mastery of his materials, his singular neat- 
 ness of exposition, marked him as a great power in the 
 speculative world : but, as usual, the real interest felt 
 was not less scientific than moral, as to the direction 
 in which that power would work. A certain air of 
 suppression occasionally assumed by Mr. Mill himself, 
 with hints for a revision of the existing narrow-minded 
 morals, has increased this tendency. This suppressive 
 air is the greatest fault we find in him ; it is his only 
 illegitimate instrument of power, for it weighs chiefly 
 on the weak : and the shade which it passes across his 
 face is sometimes so strong as almost to darken the
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 119 
 
 philosopher into the mystagoguc. Is the blame of this 
 demeanor thrown on the tyranny of society ? If that 
 be all, tyranny is better broken in a land like ours by 
 conscientious defiance than by ambiguous submission 
 and argumentative complaint. It seems hardly becom- 
 ing in an author who has attained the highest rank of 
 influence in the intellectual councils of his time, to write 
 as if there were something behind which, as a veracious 
 thinker on human life and morals, he would like to sav, 
 but which, under the pitiable bigotry of society, must 
 be reserved for an age that does not persecute its bene- 
 factors. Such a demeanor appears to us the counter- 
 part, among speculative men, of dogmatic self-assurance 
 among religious professors : and Pharisaism hurts the 
 humanities and the humilities as much in the " Wiser 
 than thou," as in the " Holier than thou." Nor is the 
 effect, of this manner better than its principle. Weak 
 minds, as Mr. Mill observes of the theologians, are apt 
 to begin wondering : and a manner so provocative of 
 curiosity sets them thinking what these terrible secrets 
 can be. Such questions are sure to find answerers ; 
 and among the busy-bodies and hangers-on of a school 
 a certain cant of initiation arises which fosters everv 
 vice of the sectarian life. We have not Mr. Mill's 
 positive faith in Discussion as an instrument for the 
 determination of moral controversies. But- still less 
 have we faith in Reserve and supercilious avoidance. 
 
 In taking leave of our author, we repeat our grateful 
 acknowledgment for most important light and aid 
 from him over the whole middle ground of science) 
 which he has chiefly made his own. Thousands of 
 students, beyond the circle of which he is the centre,
 
 120 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 urc indebted to him for the power to think more closely 
 and dearly, and the resolve to reach the ultimate 
 ground of beliefs too lightly held. His writings are 
 far more than the culminating expression of a particular 
 school of thought : they are a permanent contribution 
 to the intellectual training of the English mind. Could 
 the haunting problems of Being be silenced, whilst we 
 only listened to the flow and caught the rhythm of 
 Phenomena ; could we be content to hear it said that 
 they are inaccessible to the human faculties, and not 
 think in reply that nevertheless the human faculties 
 may be not inaccessible to them, no more effectual 
 guidance need be demanded. But so long as the laws 
 of " co-existenct and succession " afford no refuge from 
 the sense and iced of a deeper beauty, right, and 
 good, the most searching and exhaustive of scientific 
 intellects will not persuade men to forego the hope 
 of some higher philosophic genius to answer instead 
 of dash their aspirations.
 
 121 
 
 N A T U R E A N D G D.* 
 
 THE two brothers Humboldt, it is well known, apply- 
 ing each a fine genius to different pursuits, diverged in 
 their convictions with regard to the supreme objects of 
 thought and faith. William, in sympathy with the life 
 of humanity, studious of its expression in language, in 
 literature, in law, and in all the vicissitudes of civiliza- 
 tion, never lost the traces of a Divine Government over 
 the world, and even in the superstitions of mankind 
 saw only a barbarous jargon attempting an eternal 
 truth. Alexander, at home in the great Kosmos, fa- 
 
 * The present Relations of Science to Religion: a Sermon preached on 
 Act Sunday, July 1, 1860, before the University of Oxford, during the Meet- 
 ing of the British Association. By Rev. Frederick Temple, D.I)., Head-Mas- 
 ter of Kugby School. Oxlbrd and London, 1GO. 
 
 The Correlation of Physical Forces. By W. R. Grove, M.A., F.R.S. 
 Second Edition. London, 1650. 
 
 The Mutual Relations of the Vital and Physical Forces. By Dr. Carpen- 
 ter (Philosophical Transactions, 1850). 
 
 Principles of Human Physiology. By Dr. Carpenter. Fifth Edition, 1S55. 
 
 The Order of Nature, considered in reference to the Claims of Revelation. 
 By Rev. Baden Powell, M.A.. F.R.S. , &c. London, 1859. 
 
 The Intellectual Development of Europe, considered with reference to 
 (he Views of Mr. Darwin and others, that the Progression of Organisms is 
 determined by Law. Bv Prof. Draper, M.D., of New York. Communicated 
 to the /oi, logical Section of the British Association ( Atlieiiii-um, July 14, I860). 
 
 Glimpses of the Heaven that lies about us. By T. E. Poynting. Lon- 
 don, If 60. 
 
 Nationa. Review, October, 1800
 
 122 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 milinr with the ways of Nature from her rude Titanic, 
 workshops to her finest harmonics of life, significantly 
 declared himself to be of "the religion of all men of 
 science." That his implication of rt ail men of science" 
 in his own negative doctrine is far too sweeping, not 
 less so, indeed, than the Bishop of Oxford's counter- 
 part assertion that " no men great in science favor Mr. 
 Darwin's hypothesis," is evident not only from the 
 older examples of Newton, Boyle, Cuvier, and Davy, 
 hut from many of the newest representative names, 
 Oersted, Herschel, Owen, Faraday. Still, there is 
 ample evidence of a certain general tendency in Natu- 
 ral Science to foster habits of thought embarrassing to 
 religious conviction. On a first view it certainly ap- 
 pears strange that the men most conversant with the 
 Order of the visible universe should soonest suspect it 
 empty of directing- Mind ; that they should lose their 
 first faith on the very field where natural theology 
 gleans its choicest instances of design : and on the 
 other hand, that humanistic, moral, and historical stud- 
 ies, which first open the terrible problems of suffer- 
 ing and guilt and contain all the reputed provocatives 
 of denial and despair, should confirm and enlarge, 
 rather than disturb, the prepossessions of natural piety. 
 The result, however, ceases to be paradoxical, on closer 
 inspection of the relation between physical and moral 
 knowledge. 
 
 The jealousy between natural science and religion is 
 of very long standing. From the time of Anaxagoras 
 onward, every attempt to explain by secondary causes 
 phenomena previously unreduced has been regarded as 
 an audacious wresting of some province from the gods.
 
 AND GOD. 123 
 
 And, on the other hand, as early at least as Epicurus, 
 the investigators of nature began to tolerate the refer- 
 ence to Divine agency merely as a provisional neces- 
 sity, to be superseded in each field as it was explored, 
 and serving only as a decent disguise for our residuary 
 ignorance. The dialogue of the De Naturd Deorum 
 exhibits, in the persons of Balbus and Velleius, the 
 same rivalry between Theology and Physics which often 
 animates the Section-rooms of the British Association. 
 The antiquity of the controversy attests its deep-seated 
 origin, in causes beyond the range of the Biblical rec- 
 ords and the peculiarities of the Christian doctrine. 
 The Scriptures, in the presence of the Baconian logic, 
 have merely encountered the inevitable fate of any in- 
 flexible I item scripta existing side by side with ever- 
 widening inductions. A consecrated theory of the 
 phenomenal universe, embodying the perishable imagi- 
 nations of one age or people, necessarily blends with 
 every religion, however charged with essential and 
 inspired truth ; and, as necessarily, comes to be dis- 
 credited as discovery extends, till it has to be discharged 
 from its spiritual receptacle. The series of questions 
 on which the conflict has been renewed in modern times 
 between the closed " Word " and the opening Works of 
 (rod is as long as the chain of inductive sciences them- 
 selves ; and the result has been invariable, the pa- 
 tience of nature overcoming the authoritative plea of 
 miracle. Copernicus, in spite of the hierarchy, has 
 cried with more effect than Joshua, "Sun, stand thou 
 still ! " Ships are daily chartered to those Antipodes 
 which Lactantius declared to be impossible, and Augus- 
 tine unscriptural, and Boniface of Metz, beyond the
 
 12A XATUKK AM) OOP). 
 
 latitude of salvation. Witchcraft, so long preserved by 
 the Mosaic Law among our list of crimes, has disap- 
 peared from every European code; and demoniacal pos- 
 session in mania and epilepsy, though in the Gospels 
 giving form to the miracles and evidence to the Mes- 
 siahship of Christ, has been unable to hold its ground 
 against the exorcism of the College of Physicians. 
 The common parentage of the human race, already 
 rendered distasteful by L'richard's suggested probability 
 of a black Adam and Eve, has become an open question 
 with the advance of ethnology, notwithstanding the 
 absolute dependence upon it of the whole scheme of 
 ecclesiastic theology. The tower of Babel faded into a 
 myth, as the, affinity of languages was better under- 
 stood. Egypt, so long measured by the patriarchal 
 chronology, and cowed by the song of Moes and 
 Miriam, has at last taken a strange revenge upon her 
 fugitives, by discrediting their traditions, and exposing 
 the proofs of her dynasties and arts beyond the verge of 
 their Flood, nay, prior to their Eden. The terrestrial 
 cosmogony of Genesis, in spite of all the clamps and 
 holdfasts of a perverted exegesis, hits long been knocked 
 to pieces by the geologic hammer. And now it would 
 seem doubtful whether, even with regard to the specific 
 types of organized beings, the idea of sudden creation 
 may not have to be altogether relinquished in favor of 
 a principle of gradual modification. 
 
 One by one, these questions may be determined and 
 pass away. And if this were all, a mere glance at the 
 past results, without appealing to the supreme security 
 of truth, ought to tranquillize all religious alarms : for 
 who that has in him any intelligent image of our mod-
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 125 
 
 ern Ivosmos would think it " for the glory of God " to 
 h:ive back again the little three-storied, or seven-storied 
 structure, in which the Hebrew and early Christian 
 imagination found room and time for every thing, 
 earthly, devilish, and Divine? Every thing- has turned 
 out grander in the reality than in the preconception : 
 the heavens that open to the eye of a Herschel, the 
 geologic time whose measures direct the calculations 
 of a Lyell, the chain of living existence whose links are 
 in the mind of a Hooker, Agassiz, or Darwin, infinitely 
 transcend the universe of Psalmist's song and Apoca- 
 lyptic vision. However obstinate the battle may seem 
 to be on each of these particular points, as it arises, the 
 combatants again and again fight out a peace at last : 
 why, indeed, should the theologian object to find the 
 scene of Divine Agency larger, older, more teeming 
 with life, than he had thought? But all these collisions 
 have a significance far deeper than the special topic of 
 each occasion. They are signs of a more fundamental 
 conflict, Avhose essence remains when they are set at 
 rest ; of a real, ultimate, irreducible difference, easily 
 mistaken for contradiction^ between the whole scien- 
 tific and the whole religious mode of approaching and 
 viewing the external world. 
 
 Christianity, engaged in establishing immediate rela- 
 tions between Man and God, takes little notice of Na- 
 ture ; which might in fact be absent altogether without 
 material injury to a scheme pen adingly supernatural ; 
 and which was actually to vanish in order to the final 
 realization of the Divine purpose for Humanity. The 
 defining lines of the religion run, so to speak, overhead 
 of Nature, and pass direct from spirit to Spirit : Given,
 
 126 NATUHE AND GOD. 
 
 the human consciousness of sinful need and the sigh for 
 holy life ; given also, the Divine response of forgive- 
 ness, rescue, and communion ; and the essential idea is 
 constituted. The circle of thought aiid feeling which it 
 collects around it has only a negative relation to the 
 outward Kosmos, and finds Nature rather in its way. 
 Still, when compelled to look the visible world in the 
 face and recognize it as the depository of some perma- 
 nent meaning, Christianity, like all pure and spiritual 
 Theism, can only regard the universe as the manifesta- 
 tion and abode of a Free Mind, like our own ; embody- 
 ing His personal thought in its adjustments, realizing 
 His own ideal in its phenomena, just as we express our 
 inner faculty and character through the natural lan- 
 guage of an external life. In this view, we interpret 
 Nature by Humanity ; we find the key to her aspects in 
 such purposes and affections as our own consciousness 
 enables us to conceive ; we look everywhere for physi- 
 cal signals of an ever-living Will ; and decipher the 
 universe as the autobiography of an Infinite Spirit, 
 repeating itself in miniature within our Finite Spirit. 
 The grandest natural agencies are thus but servitors of 
 a grander than themselves : "the winds are His messen- 
 gers ; and flaming fire, His minister." Using Nature 
 as his organ, He transcends it : the act in which he 
 does so is the exercise of his own Free Volition, ren- 
 dering determinate what was indeterminate before : it is 
 thus the characteristic of such act to be supernatuittl : 
 and Man, so far as he shares a like prerogative, occu- 
 pies a like position ; standing to that extent outside and 
 above the realm of necessary law, and endowing with 
 existence either side of an alternative possibility. At
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 127 
 
 both ends therefore of the scheme of Kosmical order, 
 are beings that go beyond it : all that is natural lies 
 enclosed within the supernatural, and is the medium 
 through which the Divine mind descends into expres- 
 sion and the Human ascends into interpreting recogni- 
 tion. The effect of this faith upon the study of objects 
 and phenomena is obvious enough. They will be inter- 
 esting, not on their own account, but as signs of the 
 Thought which issues them : in quest of this, conjec- 
 ture will turn inwards ; and, taking counsel from the 
 higher moral consciousness, will come back to them and 
 see meanings and motives they do not contain. The 
 observer will be in danger of converting the universe 
 into the mere reflection of his own conscience and emo- 
 tions ; of overlooking its calm neutralities ; of reading 
 some special smile in its sunshine and judgment in its 
 storms ; or, when experience and culture have rendered 
 these simple interpretations no longer possible, of fol- 
 lowing some more elaborate, but still premature, clue 
 of design, and losing himself in a labyrinth of miscon- 
 strued relations. The disposition of the human soul to 
 seek for its own prototype and start at its own shadow 
 in the outward universe, is a solemn and significant 
 fact. But it can no more do the work of natural 
 knowledge, than the inspection of a foreign people's 
 expressive looks and gestures can supersede the patient 
 study of their language, a language formed by the 
 working of the same feelings and ideas, yet not intelli- 
 gible through mere sympathy with these. At a mo- 
 ment when our thirteen inches of summer rain arc 
 episcopally explained, in diocese after diocese, as a, 
 punishment of some unspecified sin, and are abou*
 
 12S NATURE AX1> GOD. 
 
 to be stopped by deprecation, we can scarcely wonder 
 at the well-known contempt with which both Bacon 
 and Spinoza have visited the applied doctrine of Final 
 causes. 
 
 Science, on the other hand, brings to the scrutiny of 
 Nature quite a different order of faculty and feeling. 
 It lays aside, as intrusive, the inner mural consciousness 
 with its postulates and beliefs ; and enters the field 
 under pure guidance of the Perceptive and Comparing 
 powers. It might accomplish the whole of its avowed 
 aim, with less embarrassed speed, if the mind could 
 actually be reduced to an unmoral, impersonal mechan- 
 ism of intellectual elaboration ; transfusing nothing of 
 itself into the universe, but logically working up, in 
 crystalline arrangements of resemblance, co-existence 
 and succession, the phenomena given from without. 
 Ti;is a jjrwi'i limitation of its instruments involves a 
 corresponding limitation of its field ; precluding it from 
 the whole area of free causality, and enclosing it 
 within the range of phenomena now determinate. For 
 the same reason, the order of its advance through this 
 field must be ever one and the same, from sensible 
 particulars to related groups, from minor to major laws, 
 from classifications with a single base to others that take 
 account of many. Beginning with the rudest raw mate- 
 rials of observation, the n&neQOV nQO<i /)/<,, it carries 
 up the rules they yield into the next rank of things, 
 taking on some refined addition to make the expression 
 adequate to the case; and so on, till the formula which 
 shaped itself at the bottom of nature finds its way up- 
 ward to the top, and humanity itself, as a scientific 
 object, seems to come out as a mere culminating devel-
 
 NATURE AX I) GOD. 129 
 
 opment of the earliest and lowest term. The hierarchy 
 of laws which Science constructs accomplishes the 
 grand end, of enabling her to predict the course of 
 nature. In part, they are direct rules of empirical 
 and concrete succession, simply describing the order of 
 bodies and their appearances, as in Plane Astronomy. 
 In part, as in Physical Astronomy, they are rules com- 
 bined out of the decomposed conditions of analyzed 
 phenomena. In either case, the power of prediction is 
 attained ; and equally so, whether the rules present the 
 ij)$issi)na vestigia of nature, as we believe to be 
 the case with Kepler's laws, or whether, by some device 
 of reduction and substitution, they furnish mere equiva- 
 lent elements, tantamount, in all their combinations, to 
 the natural facts. The Ptolemaic foreknowledge of 
 eclipses was manifestly due to artifices of this latter 
 kind : and we incline, with Adam Smith, to refer even 
 the Celestial Dynamics of Newton to the same head. 
 Be this as it may, the mere ability to reason out future 
 individual phenomena by strict deduction from some 
 equation of abstract conditions impresses us with a sense 
 of Fate : the logical cogency of the inferential steps is 
 mistaken for a material nexus among the objective 
 facts : and, when taken in conjunction with the uni- 
 formity revealed by inductive observation, fixes upon 
 the scientific fancy that nightmare of Universal Neces- 
 sity, beneath which every higher faith either is sup- 
 pressed or cries out in agony. In a universe thus 
 regarded there is no room for any thing but determin- 
 ate phenomena : and the semblance of somewhat else in 
 tnan is readily explained away, by simply throwing him 
 
 y
 
 130 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 in among natural objects, studying him exclusively from 
 the outside, and disparaging the possibility or the valid- 
 ity of self-knowledge. Had he ever so free a causal 
 power, its phenomena also, once summoned to exist, 
 must be determinate, must vary with the scope and 
 weight of his limiting conditions, must be no less open 
 than any other facts to the statist's method of averages : 
 so that you have only to shut the door on the inner con- 
 sciousness, and restrict us to the gate where the facts 
 come out, in order to lose witness of the supernatural 
 in man, and draw him also within the meshes of inev- 
 itable Law. 
 
 The radical antithesis, then, between Religion and 
 Science consists in this : that the former, proceeding 
 on the data of our Voluntary and Moral faculties, car- 
 ries a supernatural interpretation through the universe, 
 and sees in nature the expression of affections and will 
 like our own ; while the latter, proceeding on the data 
 of our Perceptive and Generalizing faculties, discovers 
 uniformities of phenomena, and accepts the conception 
 of necessary law not only as the key to Nature, but as 
 exhaustive and ultimate. Let the maxims which are 
 Bclf-evidcnt to either of these sets of faculties be ap- 
 plied to the sphere of the other, and the effect can only 
 be to discredit and dissipate the objects in that sphere. 
 If every phenomenon is the momentary expression of 
 free volition, if the supernatural reigns everywhere 
 and alone, then is nature an illusion, and the demarca- 
 tion is erased between Primary causality and Secondary 
 law. If, on the other hand, "we know nothing but 
 phenomena," if our cognitive endowments are ex- 
 hausted upon "resemblances, co-existences, and sue-
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 131 
 
 cessions, then is the Order of nature our only 
 reality, its Causality, our dream; and of God, 
 who is riot "a phenomenon," we cannot rationally 
 speak. 
 
 The most obvious way of escape from this dilemma 
 is, to restrain the pretensions of each class of faculties 
 within its own province, and protest against its am- 
 bition of universal empire. Let the moral and spiritual 
 intimations, it is said, have their own authority and sus- 
 tain their own beliefs ; they need not be meddled with, 
 so long as they stop at home and do not overrun the 
 Kosmos with their theology. Let the observing and 
 inductive tendency push on, the mensurative and de- 
 ductive calculus work out its results; they can but 
 give us ne\v truth, so long as they deal only with finite 
 things, and do not trespass upon the sphere of Per- 
 sonality and Infinitude. This is the tone prevailingly 
 assumed both by liberal divines and by reverential or 
 cautious men of science ; and it suffices to establish an 
 armistice between them which is at least an agreeable 
 change upon open war. To this compromise Bacon 
 habitually resorted : and quite in the sense of his phi- 
 losophy it is found pervading the writings of the late 
 lamented Baden Powell. To us, we confess, it is pro- 
 foundly unsatisfactory : especially when the two sepa- 
 rated provinces are treated, not as two independent and 
 incommensurate kinds of knowledge or kinds of faith, 
 but the one as knowledge, and the other as faith. Mr. 
 Baden Powell intended, we are sure, to be not less loyal 
 to his Christian Theism than he was to his Inductive 
 philosophy. When, however, after volumes of proof 
 that the universe discloses nothing but immutable l:iw
 
 132 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 and material development, so orderly indeed as to be- 
 speak Thought, but so inexorable as to be silent of 
 Character, after treating the supernatural as intrinsically 
 incognizable, and the moral and spiritual as entirely out 
 of relation to the rational faculty, he briefly relegates us 
 to "faith*' for our grounds of religious conviction, we 
 certainly feel that the door is rather rudely slammed in 
 the face of our inquiry, and that we are turned out 
 of the select society of the philosophers who know, 
 to take our place with the plebs who believe. It is 
 utterly destructive of the equipoise of authority between 
 the two spheres, to characterize the one as "knowl- 
 edge," which involves objective certainty, the other as 
 "faith," which goes no further than subjective assu- 
 rance. This it was which exposed Bacon to the false, 
 but not unnatural, suspicion of Atheism : and the pain- 
 ful negative impression of unsolved problems, so gene- 
 rally left on Mr. Baden Powell's readers, is unduly due 
 to the same crudeness of distinction. The truth is, he 
 had effectually thought out the one side of the question, 
 which was congenial with his intellectual habits and pur- 
 suits, without gaining any corresponding command of 
 the other: and his imagination, left alone with the 
 astounding revelations of modern science, was not sim- 
 ply possessed but overpowered by the conception of ull- 
 comprehending and necessary laws. A more balanced 
 reflection would at once have shown the futility of the 
 distinction he wished to establish. If by "faith" he 
 meant reliance on a principle as self-evident, i.e. rec- 
 ommended only by its psychological necessity ; if by 
 "knowledge," distinguished from faith, he meant ar 
 acquired apprehension of truth on evidence other than
 
 NATURE AXD GOD. 135 
 
 its own ; * tlicn there is just as much "faith" concerned 
 in Science as in Religion; and just as much "knowl- 
 edge " in Religion as in Science. Xot a step could 
 Geometry, Arithmetic, Physics, advance without as- 
 sumptions respecting Space, Time, external Substance, 
 which are no less pure and absolute gifts of our pyscho- 
 logical constitution than the moral assurance of our 
 responsibility. And in Ethics, the propositions that 
 it is wrong to punish an unconscious act, that extreme 
 temptation mitigates guilt ; in Religion, that the hypo- 
 crite's prayer is unavailing, that to the pure in heart God 
 is best revealed, arc law ion not less certainly than in 
 Science the place of the North from the pointing of the 
 needle, or the recent birth of an animal from the 
 mother's milk. 
 
 Even apart from the inexact and unequal balance 
 maintained by Mr. Baden Powell between the rival 
 claims, a mere compromise founded on a division of 
 territory is intrinsically impracticable. The savant 
 cannot help advancing his lines of thought into human 
 and moral relations and esteeming them amenable to 
 him. The theologian cannot help applying his faith 
 to the universe, for the supernatural is conceivable only 
 in relation to the natural, and the transcendency of God 
 involves the subordination of the world. And if a man 
 be at once savant and theologian, how is he to manage 
 the partition of his creed? One side of him deny- 
 ing all knowledge but of necessity anil nature, the other 
 
 * We do not propose these as satisfactory definitions of "faith" and 
 " kn wludg8 : " but the terms, if treated as mutually-exclusive oppusites, 
 appear to admit of no others. And this is the case with which we have to 
 deal.
 
 134 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 believing only freedom and God, is he to take turn and 
 turn .about with the " Yes " and " No," and care nothing 
 about their discord or their harmony? Whether as t\ 
 logical invention or as a work of art, we cannot admire 
 this composite figure, half philosophe, half saint ; on 
 the left of the mid-line, a Diderot, on the right, a Fene- 
 lon. No earnest mind can endure a life of double 
 consciousness, or excuse it on the pedantic plea of differ- 
 ent faculties. Many or few, their testimony must all 
 converge on the unity of truth, and is falsely construed 
 till it does so. If the report of "the moral and spiri- 
 tual powers" be trustworthy, if there lives an Eter- 
 nal Will immanent in the universe and communing with 
 ourselves, it is impossible to avoid the inquiry, in wliat 
 relation this Primary and Voluntary Cause subsists to 
 those Secondary Laws of phenomena which it i? the 
 business of Science to define. How are the seemingly 
 contrary beliefs forced on us by our outward and by 
 our inward apprehension to adjust themselves in recon- 
 ciled co-existence ? 
 
 Is there any middle term which can aid the mutual 
 understanding between the Religious and the Scientific 
 view of nature? any fundamental thought common 
 to both, or passing as an essential from the one to the 
 other? We think there is, viz. the idea of Force.. 
 That this really is an intermediate conception, more 
 than physical, less than theological, will probably be 
 conceded on both sides. It is less than theological : 
 for, in league with the epithet "material," it can quit 
 the Theist, and take service with the Atheist. It is 
 more than physical : for the term certainly goes beyond 
 the meaning of the word " Law ; " it expresses neither
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 135 
 
 any observable phenomenon, nor any mere order of 
 co-existence or succession among phenomena. To our 
 objective Perception and Comparison nothing is given 
 but movements or changes ; to our Inductive Generali- 
 zation, nothing but- the sifting and grouping of these 
 in space and time. Such mental aggregates or series 
 of phenomena complete what we mean by a Law ; but 
 are only suggestive signs of a Force in itself imper- 
 ceptible. As defined by Mr. Grove, the word denotes 
 "that active principle inseparable from matter which 
 induces its various changes" (p. 14). So well aware, 
 indeed, are the more rigorous Inductive logicians (as 
 Comte and Mill) of the hyperphysical character of this 
 notion, that they would expel it as a trespasser on the 
 Baconian domain ; or, if it stays, strip it of its native 
 significance, in order to reduce it to their service. Let 
 any one, however, only imagine the sort of jargon into 
 which, agreeably to this advice, our language of Dy- 
 namics would have to be translated ; let him try to 
 express the several intensities in terms of Time-succes- 
 sion, and he will need no other proof of the utter help- 
 lessness of physics without this hyperphysical idea. 
 Mr. Grove most justly remarks: "The word 'Force,' 
 and the idea it aims at expressing, might indeed be 
 objected to by the purely physical philosopher as repre- 
 senting a subtle mental conception, and not a sensuous 
 perception or phenomenon. To avoid its use, however, 
 if open to no other objection, would be so far a depart- 
 ure from recognized views as to render language scarcely 
 intelligible" (p. 12). 
 
 It is admitted, then, that we have here a physical 
 postulate, indispensable to the interpretation of nature,
 
 1 NATUttE AXD GOD. 
 
 yet not physically known. Its objective reality is guar- 
 anteed, the suspicion of its being a "mental figment" 
 is excluded, by the same security on which we hold the 
 infinitude of Space and the impossible co-existence of 
 different Times, viz. its subjective necessity sis a con- 
 dition for conceiving objects and phenomeim at all : 
 a necessity, we must add, evident in the habitual lan- 
 guage, not only of those who consciously acknowledge 
 it, but equally of those who, like the Positivists, affect 
 to believe in a ya'co/v of things without a dvvafuf. Being 
 thus, at the same time, real in its existence, and ideal 
 in its cognition, Force admits of being investigated 
 both physically and metaphysically : and take it up in 
 which aspect you will, the results are remarkable and 
 concurrent. 
 
 The tendency of natural science in its earlier stages 
 is to establish a plurality of " Forces." Each separate 
 family of phenomena throws back its distinctive charac- 
 teristics on the dynamic source to which they are re- 
 ferred : and Nature is conceived to have on stock as 
 many powers as she has kinds of product to display. 
 Thus it is that we fill out our list of mechanical, chemical, 
 vital, mental forces. The only differences actually 
 observed lie among the phenomena : but these arc 
 taken as exponents of corresponding differences in 
 the causes behind. The very distinction and organi- 
 zation of the Sciences themselves proceed up.m tiiis 
 principle : each science taking up from among the 
 properties of matter some one type, and chasing /t, 
 as it were, through the universe, and writing out the 
 history of its achievements. Latterly, however, espe- 
 cially since the application of a more refined research
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 137 
 
 to the so-called "imponderable agents," the old lines of 
 classification have been losing their mechanical straight- 
 ness and sharpness, and the coloring of the several 
 provinces has faded into softer contrast, tending to 
 something more than harmony. The first effect of the 
 prism, in the hands of Newton, was to destroy the sim- 
 plicity of light, and to disengage it in idea from heat : 
 the last effect, in the hands of Bunsen, has been, in the 
 very act of giving extension and precision to the analvsis, 
 to twine together, in a web of wonderful relations, 
 the luminiferous, the calorific, and the chemical rays. 
 By the undulatory theory, the same calculus embraces 
 the measurement of sound and of light. Galvanism, 
 manipulated by Davy, became the most powerful of 
 chemical agencies. And, by both direct and converse 
 proofs, Oersted and Faraday have compelled electricity 
 and magnetism to exchange effects. The several modi- 
 fications of motion produced by all these agents carry 
 in them mechanical momentum, and avail to overcome 
 cohesion and gravitation. By combining such facts as 
 these, Mr. Grove has shown, in his ingenious and 
 striking Essay cited at the head of this Article, that all 
 the forces comprised under the term " Physical " are so 
 " correlated " as to be no sooner expended in one form 
 than they re-appear in another, in fact, to be converti- 
 ble inter se ; and therefore to be not many, but one, 
 a dynamic self-identity masked by transmigration. Xot 
 content with a dead pause at Mr. Grove's resting-place. 
 Dr. Carpenter, in his communication to the Royal So- 
 ciety, has carried the argument to a higher point, ami 
 shown that the law extends to the Vital forces : and, in 
 his Human JPhi/sioloyy, he conducts it to its climax
 
 138 NATUKE AND GOO. 
 
 in the Mental forces. The energy of volition communi- 
 cates itself to the motory nerves ; these again hand over 
 the stimulus to the muscular fibre ; by whose contrac- 
 tion, finally, some mechanical movement is produced : 
 each step of the process being marked by a waste or 
 consumption of the transmitting medium, but an undi- 
 minished propagation of the transmitted force. Jt is 
 not within the scope of our present design critically to 
 estimate this subtle speculation ; but simply to record it 
 as the last result of dynamic generalization. The con- 
 clusion is, that the plurality of forces is an illusion ; 
 that in reality, and behind the variegated veil of hetero- 
 geneous phenomena, there is but one force, the soli- 
 tary fountain of the whole infinitude of change. 
 
 This position, however, immediately opens a further 
 question. If we are to reduce our numerical variety 
 of forces to one, which member of the series is to re- 
 main with us as the type of all? Where is the initial 
 point of these migrations? How are we to know the 
 propria persona of the power from its disguises? 
 Shall we more rightly presume that the lowest term, 
 the mechanical, passes upwards and re-appears in the 
 form of mind? or that the highest rather descends*, 
 divesting itself of prerogative qualities at each step, and 
 appearing at last with quantitative identity alone? For 
 answer to these questions we must turn from the physi- 
 cal to the metaphysical scrutiny of the main concep- 
 tion. We have seen that it is a hyperphysicai idea, a 
 postulate of Reason, applied to nature : and to find its 
 essence and true type, we must disengage ourselves 
 from its applications and detect its pure form in our 
 intellectual constitution. (Just your eye, then, along
 
 NATURE AXD GOD. lo* 
 
 the series enumerated by Grove and Carpenter, and 
 ask yourself in which of these forms the dynamic ide.i 
 originally necessitates itself. Is it that you have to 
 supply it on seeing* an external body change its place ? 
 or, on witnessing some chemical phenomenon, as an 
 acid stain of red on a blue cloth? or, on noticino- the 
 
 ~ 
 
 needle quiver to the North? It will be admitted that, 
 if we ourselves were purely passive, all these changes 
 might cross our visual field with only the effect of a, 
 time-succession, first, one movement or condition, 
 then another : while, conversely, if, without any of 
 these phenomena exhibiting themselves before us, we 
 ourselves were in the active exercise of Volition more 
 or less difficult, the idea of Force would be provided 
 for. It follows that )FV//.is the true type of the concep- 
 tion, identical with it as a primitive intuition ; and th.it 
 its lower forms arc but an attenuated transcript of this, 
 stripped, by artificial abstraction, of all that is super- 
 fluous for the exigencies of scientific classification. 
 The habitual resort of philosophers to this, when they 
 want an illustration of the dynamic idea, might con- 
 vince them that it is more than an illustration, that 
 it is the sole and exhaustive case, of which the rest are 
 but mutilated conceptual repetitions, and without which 
 there would be no others. Dr. Carpenter, with his 
 usual clearness in penetrating to the essential point, 
 seizes at once on the " sense of effort " as the ground of 
 all our causal thought, as the "form of Force which 
 maybe taken (is the type of all the rettt ; " declares 
 that " our consciousness of force is really as direct as is 
 that of our own mental states;" and admits that, "in 
 this particular case, Force must be regarded as the
 
 140 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 direct expression or manifestation of that Mental stats 
 which we call Will." But he stops short, as it seems 
 to us, of the true breadth and simplicity of his reduc- 
 tion, when he adds, "In the phenomenon of vol- 
 untary movement, we can scarcely avoid seeing that 
 Mind is one of the dynamical agencies which is capa- 
 ble of acting-on Matter ; and that, like other such 
 agencies, the mode of its manifestation is affected by 
 the nature of the material substratum through which its 
 influence is exerted." ' If Force is known to us from 
 within, if it is the name \vc give to self-conscious exer- 
 cise of power, then that is just the whole of it known 
 to us at all ; not " one particular case," leaving " other 
 such agencies " to be learned in some different way ; but 
 the absolute dynamical conception itself, co-extensive 
 with every actual and possible instance. Take away 
 the "consciousness of force" in ourselves, and with the 
 keenest vision we should see it . nowhere in nature. 
 Endow us with it ; and we have still no more ability 
 than before to perceive it as an object in the external 
 world, observation giving us access only to phenomena 
 a-* distributed in space and time. Nor, from knowing 
 it within, do we acquire any logical right to infer it 
 without, except in virtue of an axiom of Reason in- 
 separably present in it, that "all phenomena are the 
 expression of Power," the counterpart of that power 
 which issues our own. This it is which constrains us to 
 think causation behind nature, and under causation 
 to think of Volition. "Other force" we have no sort 
 of ground for believing, or, except by artifices of 
 abstraction, even power of conceiving. The dynamic 
 
 * Human Physiology, 585.
 
 NATURE ANT) GOD. 141 
 
 idea is either this, or nothing : and the logical alterna- 
 tive assuredly is, that Nature is either a mere Time- 
 inarch of phenomena, or an expression of Mind. 
 
 The physical and the metaphysical scrutiny of this 
 indispensable scientific conception converge, then, upon 
 one conclusion ; that all Force is of one type ; and 
 that type is Mind. 
 
 This resolution of all external causation into Divine 
 Will at once deprives the several theories of kosmical 
 creation or development of all religious significance. 
 Not one of them has any resources to work-with that 
 are other than Divine : you may try what you can do 
 with this kind of force or with that : but you cannot 
 escape beyond the closed cycle where each is convertible 
 with Volition. To you it may not appear under its full 
 aspect: for " Force '' is precisely Will from which we 
 omit all reference to the living thought : but its ob- 
 jective character is unaffected by this subjective default. 
 We lament to see the question between a sudden and a 
 gradual genesis of organic tvpes discussed on both 
 sides, not indeed by the principals in the dispute but 
 by secondary advocates, too much as if it wore a 
 question between God and no-God. In not a few 
 of the progressionists the weak illusion is unmistakable, 
 that, with time enough, you may get every thing out of 
 next-to-nothing. Grant us, they seem to say, any 
 tiniest granule of power, so close upon zero that it is 
 not worth begrudging ; allow it some trifling tendency 
 to infinitesimal increment ; and we will show you how 
 this little stock became the Kosmos, without ever taking 
 a step worth thinking of, much less constituting a case 
 for design. The argument is a mere appeal to an
 
 142 NATUKE AND GOD. 
 
 incoinpctcncy in the human imagination ; in virtue of 
 which magnitudes evading conception are treated as out 
 of existence ; and an aggregate of inappreciable incre- 
 ments is simultaneously equated, in its cause to 
 nothing, in its effect to the whole of things. You 
 manifestly want the same Causality, whether concen- 
 trated on a moment, or distributed through incalculable 
 ages : only, in drawing upon it, a 'logical theft is more 
 easily committed piecemeal than wholesale. Surely it is 
 a mean device for a philosopher, thus to crib causation 
 by hairs-breadths, to put it out at compound interest 
 through all time, and then disown the debt. And it is 
 vain after all: for dilute the intensity, and change 
 the form, as you will, of the Power that has issued the 
 Universe, it remains, except to your subjective illusion, 
 nothing less than Infinite and nothing lower than Di- 
 vine. And hence it is an equal error in the Theist to 
 implicate his faith in resistance to the doctrine of pro- 
 gressive development, be it in the formation of the 
 solar system, in the consolidation of the earth's crust, 
 or the origination of organic species. That doctrine 
 would be atheistic only if the first germ on the one 
 hand, and the evolution on the other, were 1'oot and 
 branch undivine, some blind material force that could 
 set itself up in rivalry to God's. Inasmuch, however, 
 as all forces are convertible, and that, too, not by cul- 
 mination into Volition but by reduction from Volition, 
 they are but His mask and can never be His competi- 
 tors : and if ever they seem less than Will, it is only 
 by a self-abnegation which is itself one of the highest 
 acts of Will. Why, but for the fallacious suspicion to 
 which we refer, should you object to recognize a law of
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 143 
 
 progression in nature any more than in human history? 
 You think it Providential that 3 fan should be con- 
 ducted from low beginnings, through the struggles of a 
 various experience, to a civilized existence beyond the 
 dreams of an early world. You follow, not without a 
 solemn piety, the steps of a Lessing or a Bunsen tracing 
 the Education of our race. From the painful impres- 
 sion left upon you by the long and wide spectacle of 
 savage life, by the meanness of a thousand supersti- 
 tions, by the cruelties and flagitiousness which darken 
 even the most brilliant and sacred eras, you fly f>r 
 relief to the thought, that these are but transitory 
 stages on the way to better things ; that they do 
 not in themselves give the true idea of the world ; 
 that they must be viewed in connection with the ulterior 
 destination on which all the lines of the past converge. 
 You even argue that, were there nothing of this move- 
 ment in advance, were every thing human stationary 
 as Chinese society or periodic as the Stoic's universe, 
 all would look too much like Fate : it is not in a 
 perpetual noon, but only in a brightening dawn, that 
 Divine hope rises in the heart. Why, then, if it be 
 reverential to think thus of man, should it be atheistic 
 to think the same of nature? What is kosmical devel- 
 opment but the counterpart of human progression? 
 Without an ever-living movement of idea, how can we 
 conceive of an Eternal Mind at all? And if there be 
 a Divine plan through all, how is its law to be read off 
 and its drift deciphered, but, as every infinite series is 
 found, by legibly exposing some adequate segment of 
 its terms, and spreading its steps along the ages? U'e 
 pronounce at present no opinion on the scientific que-
 
 144 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 tion to wliicli Mr. Darwin's book has recently imparted 
 n fresh interest. Looking at the speculation with 
 rather a logician's than a naturalist's eye, we confess 
 that our prevailing impression, at a little distance from 
 the fascinations of the author's skill, is of the extreme 
 exility of the evidence compared with the immensity of 
 the conclusion. Should, however, the doctrine of Natu- 
 ral Selection become as well-established as that of suc- 
 cessive geologic deposition, we venture to predict that 
 works on Natural Theology will not only survive this 
 new shock to the idea of creative paroxysms, but will 
 turn it to account as a fertile source of thcistic evidence 
 and illustration. It is matter for regret and surprise 
 that Mr. Darwin himself should have set forth his 
 hypothesis as excluding the action of a higher intel- 
 ligence : 
 
 "Nothing" (lie says) "at first can appear more difficult 
 to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts 
 should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though 
 analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of 
 innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual 
 possessor" (p. 459). 
 
 Surely the antithesis could not be more false, were 
 \ve to speak of some patterned damask as made, not by 
 the weaver, but by the loom ; or of any methodized pro- 
 duct as arising not from its primary bnt from its sec- 
 ondary source. All the determining conditions of 
 species, viz. (1) the possible range of variation, (2) 
 its hereditary preservation, (3) the extrusion of interior 
 rivals, must be conceived as already contained in the 
 constituted laws of organic life ; in and through which,
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 145 
 
 just as well as by unmediatcd starts, "Reason superior 
 to the human " may evolve the ultimate results. In a 
 perfectly analogous case the products of human indus- 
 try distribute themselves over the earth according to the 
 laws of Political Economy, all springing from the spon- 
 taneous pressure of human desires : yet who would 
 think it a just antithesis to say, that the ebb and flow 
 of wealth and arts are due, not to any Providence of 
 God, but to the hunger of mankind? 
 
 At the same time, though Primary and Secondary 
 causation do not exclude each other, we own the diffi- 
 culty of clearly adjusting their relation in our thought : 
 nor can we pretend that it is abated by resolving all 
 power into Will. In the supernatural sphere, indeed, 
 the communion of Spirit with Spirit, the Divine 
 with the Human, this Personal conception of power 
 meets every exigency ; because here the relation all 
 depends on the free play of affection and character. 
 But the governance of Nature by Personal Volition is 
 less easy to conceive, the more we are impressed by the 
 inflexibility, the neutrality, the universal sweep of her 
 great laws. For mere manageable clearness, if that 
 were all, some credit might be given to the old Deistical 
 representation, of God as once contriving the universe, 
 and then stocking it with properties and powers which 
 dispensed with his further agency. Unfortunately, 
 these properties and powers once installed in the kos- 
 mical executive, are too apt, like mayors of the palace, 
 to set up for themselves : and the more all definite idea 
 of a creative epoch, marked by sudden birth of the 
 heavens and the earth, breaks up and distributes itself, 
 the less ha this theory to hold it together, and th-3 
 
 10
 
 146 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 more urgent becomes the cry for an immanent and liv- 
 ing God. The religion of the present age, in all its 
 newer and more vigorous manifestations, represents this 
 cry. Re-acting against the usurpations of secondary 
 causation, wearied of its distance from the Fountain- 
 head, it flings itself back with pathetic repentance into 
 the arms of the Primary Infinitude, and tries to feel 
 even the iron clasp of nature as the immediate embrace 
 of God. It is a, pure and high impulse : yet, when 
 tranquil enough to go in search of its philosophical 
 ground, it must become conscious of dangers and self- 
 variance on this side too. It is impossible to resolve 
 all natural causation into direct Will without raising 
 questions (we say it plainly, but with reverence) of the 
 Divine psychology. You say, He personally issues all 
 the changes in the universe. Is there, then, a volition 
 for each phenomenon? and if so, what constitutes a sin- 
 gle phenomenon? each drop of rain, for instance, or, 
 the whole shower? or, the wider atmospheric tide which 
 includes the other term of the broken equilibrium? or, 
 the system of aerial currents that enwrap the earth, and 
 of which this is as much an element as the rain-drop of 
 the shower? or, the tissue of conditions, without which 
 such currents would not be what they are, including, 
 at a stroke, the constitution of water and of air, the 
 laws of caloric, the distribution of land and sea, the ter- 
 restrial rotation, the inclined equator, the solar light 
 and heat? AVherc, in this mighty web of relations, are 
 we to fix, and how to insulate, the unit of volition ? 
 Driven, by the infinite multiplicity of phenomena, to 
 recognize in some form the occurrence of generic voli- 
 tion, you encounter the ulterior question, what, then,
 
 NATUUE AND GOD. 147 
 
 constitutes the principle of grouping' for each genus, 
 whereby what is manifold towards us is one from Him ? 
 Are the objects of his determining Thought concrete 
 things and integral beings, individuals or kinds, such as 
 Natural History deals with in its classifications? Or, 
 are they rather those functions or properties into which 
 we analyze bodies, which run together to constitute 
 an individual, and separate to traverse a host ; so that 
 he thinks in the order of Science, with a volition for 
 each Law, now gravitation and all that it carries, 
 then, Electricity throughout its sweep? Lay out the 
 conception which way you will, the two divisions cross 
 each other. In the contemplative religion of many a 
 cultivated man, they doubtless come, the one or the 
 other, as may turn uppermost, with no sense of incon- 
 sistency. But down in subtler depths the perplexing 
 mystery has been felt, ever since Plato's <'% after 
 vainly grappling with it, left it to the consciousness of 
 the world. 
 
 Mr. Poynting, in his Glimpses of the Heaven that 
 lies around us, assumes the Scientific order of Divine 
 volition ; supposes the Kosinos to be thought-out, Law 
 by Law, in the track of Newton's, Dalton's, Oken's, 
 Faraday's generalizations ; and feels every shadow gone 
 in the simple recognition of God as personally execu- 
 ting the whole scheme. His book is not less picturesque 
 in exposition and ingenious in combination than it is 
 bright and joyous in tone ; and to young readers, able 
 to adapt themselves to its somewhat fantastic form, it 
 gives a valuable coup-d'oeil of the newer methods of 
 scientific thought, though perhaps with too little dis- 
 crimination of positive results from speculative inter-
 
 148 NATUllK AND GOD. 
 
 pretation. For our fastidious gravity, uc must confess, 
 the visionary and supernatural dress of the first part of 
 the work, in which the author, escaped from the 
 body, lias the world explained to him by a celestial lec- 
 turer, is more n burden than a help. But doubtless 
 we are heavy of wing : and in compassion to such in- 
 firmity, the author, in n second part of the volume, 
 re-appears in the flesh, and takes his stand upon the level 
 earth again, and gives a prose version of the " Divina 
 Com media " that precedes. From this part we gather 
 the theory that God's supreme end is the revelation and 
 spiritual reproduction of Himself in humanity ; that 
 history, Scripture, nature, are constituted throughout 
 to serve as the school and discipline of our race ; that 
 the lower ranks of organized beings are sent forth as 
 prefigurements, in advancing series, of man ; that the 
 several orders of force, mechanical, chemical, vital, 
 mental, by which nature is built up, are developed 
 modes of atomic attraction and repulsion ; which again 
 are resolvable, atoms and all, into a direct exercise of 
 Divine power in lines converging on given points 
 of space. An atom is a geometrical centre on which 
 God directs force in all radii, thus constituting an 
 attraction thither. Did the radii mutually impinge 
 with perfect precision, they would give a statical result- 
 ant : but arriving with slight inaccuracy, they form an 
 eddy round the centre, .and so surround it with a zone 
 of repulsion. Two atoms unite, when, through rotation 
 in opposite directions, their osculating surfaces are mov- 
 ing in the same ; while under reverse conditions they 
 retreat. An atom quivering makes its lines of gravitat- 
 ing force quiver too ; and hence the phenomena of light
 
 KATU:;E AND GOD. 1 iy 
 
 nnd sound, and whatever else is reducible to undulation. 
 By changes, often ingeniously rung, upon these ele- 
 mentary assumptions, the atoms are made to climb into 
 their place and build the world and its organisms ; and 
 the lines to vibrate in such mode and degree as to fur- 
 nish law after law in every science from physics to 
 physiology. The hypothesis, in its I'esolution of matter 
 into force, bears an essential resemblance to Bosco- 
 vich's ; and, as might be expected, breaks down at the 
 same point, the attempt to step, with only quantita- 
 tive help, to the qualitative phenomena of nature. All 
 the optical history, for instance, of a sunbeam is elabo- 
 rately deduced : and the physiological changes along the 
 visual nerve are also set forth : and both series of prop- 
 agated movements are regarded as wonderful provision 
 for enabling us to see. But when the question is asked, 
 how it is that one vibration of atoms gives the sensa- 
 tion of heat, another that of light, a third that of sound, 
 the only answer is, such is the will of God, who, " as 
 soon as the quivering beats on eye or spirit," "raises in 
 the mind the idea of light," or of heat, &c., as it may 
 be. Were it not, then, for this interposed special voli- 
 tion, the visual idea would not arise, and trains of 
 vibratory processes would be as inoperative on the eye 
 as they are upon the ear. There is thus no more fitness 
 in one of the mechanisms than in another, or in any 
 than in none at all, to produce its appended perception : 
 for this flows from a Divine act which might just as 
 well interchange the antecedents or dispense with them 
 entirely. And when we further remember that all the 
 prior movements are also described as God's own voli- 
 tional force, we seem to lose ourselves ; n i gratuitous
 
 150 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 circuit, in which lie devises and works his own com- 
 plex machinery for providing his own occasions for 
 interposing his own volitions. We are reminded irre- 
 sistibly of Malcbranche : who, in the chain of material 
 causes and effects, saw a scheme of nature offered to 
 the apprehension of Minds ; and, in the constituted 
 faculties of minds, beheld a provision for the cognition 
 of Nature ; yet sunk an impassable chasm between 
 them, and made intercommunication impossible, except 
 by miracles, mero arbitrio, that superseded both. 
 With Malcbranche, however, the direct Divine act 
 was limited to the intermediation between Mind and 
 Matter, each of which could operate in its own sphere 
 though not cross over to the other. But Mr. Povnt- 
 
 O . 
 
 ing's spinning machinery of atoms is the immediate 
 activity of God : the whole mental life of man, and the 
 ordinary exercise of his faculties, arc so too ; not less 
 than the intercourse between the one and the other. 
 When the objectivity of Nature, and the subjectivity 
 of Man, and the whole scheme of relations uniting 
 them, arc all thrown into the Infinite together, all dis- 
 tinctions of being disappear, all problems vanish, and 
 complex tissues of adaptation seem to lose all serious 
 meaning and take the aspect of an empty play of 
 thought, evoking conditions in order to meet them. 
 For our own part, we confess to a very sceptical appre- 
 ciation of the whole atomic doctrine, so unfortunately 
 mixed up by Dalton with the law of definite propor- 
 tions : and cannot help regarding the idea expressed by 
 the word " atom " as a purely fictitious contrivance for 
 escaping the contradictions of infinitude, an arbitrary 
 stop in face of the perils of that wilderness, a logical
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 151 
 
 thrust of the ostrich-head into the sand. And it may 
 be due perhaps to this disrespectful estimate, that we 
 find it painful to picture the Divine agency expending 
 itself in rectilinear descents upon these centres, and in 
 eddies round them, and quiverings from them, and 
 a continuous evolution of nature from nothing else than 
 such questionable rudiments. If such things really go 
 on, we are not anxious to wrest them from the men 
 of science and their " secondary laws," in order to claim 
 them for the Primary. 
 
 But besides the questionable character of this atomic 
 starting-point, and the incongruous mixture of neces- 
 sary deduction and interpolated miracle, the exposition 
 is open to the objection which attaches to every scheme 
 of mere Divine self-evolution: it is, or in the mind 
 of consequential thinkers it must become, Pantheistic. 
 We use this word, not as a loose term of current 
 reproach, repr >.;c!i often directed against precisely 
 what is most pure and true in the religion of thoughtful 
 men, but rigorously, to mark the absence in a scheme 
 of the universe of any thing or being properly objective 
 to God : and this feature we cannot but regard as a 
 fatal loss of philosophical equilibrium. Mr. Poynting 
 anticipates this objection, and meets it thus : 
 
 "I have been told that some people will suspect the views 
 of the universe here set forth of being Pantheistic. If there 
 should be any such persons let rne beg them not to be fright- 
 ened by their own spectral fancies. The views here given. 
 instead of being Pantheistic, are the antidote for Panthe- 
 ism. 
 
 Pantheism is the conception of the Universe as God. 
 According to it, nature and human minds are all only parts
 
 \0"2 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 of one Mysterious All, called God, but not thought of as a 
 personal Being, as having thoughts and affections like the 
 Christian God. 
 
 Now instead of saying that the Universe is God, I dis- 
 tinctly say that the Universe is only the sign, and effect of 
 God his word, just as our words are signs and effects of our 
 being. Instead of saying the mind of man is only a part of 
 Goil, I distinctly say that the very explanation of our exist- 
 ence is, that God desires not to multiply Himself, but that He 
 craves otherness beings not Himself; but only like Himself, 
 sympathizing with Him, sons and heirs, not members of his 
 own being. 
 
 The conception of God here presented is intensely unpan- 
 theistie, because it is intensely personal. God is thought of 
 here as a being of love, goodness, thought ; as, in fact, a 
 Father. The whole doctrine of the book depends upon the 
 soundness of our attributing to Him sympathies like those 
 which we ourselves possess." {Introduction^ p. xxi.) 
 
 This emphatic disclaimer is perfectly satisfactory, so 
 far as the author's own faith, and the conscious aim of 
 his teaching, are concerned. It is also true that, 
 throughout his volume, the Personality of God, and his 
 Transcendency beyond Nature, are never compromised ; 
 and that the ascription to Him of emotions and concep- 
 tions akin to ours is carried even to the verge on which 
 reverence begins to tremble. But it is not enough that 
 you save the Divine personality, if you sacrifice the 
 Human ; without relation to which lesser, as substan- 
 tive moral object, the greater, left to shed affections 
 onlv on its own phenomenal effects, cannot sustain 
 itself alive. Our author's theory appears to us to 
 make no adequate provision for the personality of Man, 
 to treat him merely as the highest natural product,
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 153 
 
 the last organism prefigured by the imperfect approaches 
 of other animals, and crowning the long line of homo- 
 geneous development. Mr. Poynting, indeed, himself 
 believes, and intends to work out the belief, that God 
 "craves otherness, beings not Himself:" and if this 
 intention be successfully carried out, our scruple is 
 groundless. How far the discrimination of man from 
 God is adequately made, how far it establishes them 
 in real relations of Person to Person, may be esti- 
 mated by the following statements : 
 
 " How often had a poor doubting mind confessed to me, 
 'You say that God is in contact with us, and gives his Holy 
 Spirit to those who ask Him. Yet I look back through all 
 my life, and I am not aware of any inspiration, any revelation, 
 any suggestion, that has not come, like all my thoughts and 
 feelings, by my ordinary faculties and instincts. It seems to 
 me that I have been left alone with my own mind, and God 
 has not at all interfered in its workings.' I now saw that what 
 we call the ordinary working of the mind itself, the law of its 
 faculties, the movement of its impulses, was the very flowing 
 of the Holy Spirit" (p. 75). 
 
 The same doubt is met with the same answer in the 
 Second Part : where it is said : 
 
 " We have watched our minds, we have prayed ami 
 striven, but we have been able to detect no trace of any 
 stirring in our spirits beyond the natural action of our facul- 
 ties and instincts. 
 
 Let us, then, consider these ordinary impulses and fr.Mil- 
 ties. When we feel the impulse of Benevolence, the- If. .8 of 
 the Beautiful, the love of Knowledge, when we feel tho Sen- 
 timent of Conscience approving or disapproving, when v ., feel 
 the Reason leading us ou from step to step of truth w< l.now
 
 154 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 not how, whence do these impulses and movings come ? 
 what is their fountain? Do we invent these movements? 
 Do we originate or direct them ourselves? No, the move- 
 ments seem to come in upon us like streams of life from a 
 source outside our Will. Now what is the source from which 
 these streams or movements come? Is there an inexhaustible 
 supply of such streams, powers, impulses, shut up in secret 
 wells within us, and is there some mechanical contrivance for 
 unlocking these wells at our need, and letting these streams 
 flow in upon our consciousness? I reply, we know of no such 
 wells ; we cannot, indeed, imagine them. We have never had 
 experience of any such contrivance. On the other hand, there 
 is a Cause, a real known cause at hand all around us God 
 himself, the Eternal fountain of Life and Power quite suffi- 
 cient to account for the phenomena" (p. 365). 
 
 If every feeling which streams in upon me, and every 
 facultative activity that goes out from me, is thus for- 
 eign to me and is the Personal agency of another Mind, 
 what remains to be my own ? Where am I ? My sub- 
 jective experience, my objective energies, all given 
 away, the whole essence is gone, and I have no longer 
 any pretension to rank as a Person. The only con- 
 ceivable residue of humanity left, after the Holy Spirit 
 has thus claimed its own, is an empty capacity for the 
 reception and transmission of alien influences and emana- 
 tions. Mr. Poynting accordingly speaks of the soul as 
 w an organ, God's great organ," the music of which 
 is from the breathing and inflowing of God's Holy Spirit 
 (p. 310) : the very image employed, if we remem- 
 ber right, by Tertullian, in order to express the entire 
 superseding of the human personality by Divine inspira- 
 tion in the sacred writers. To say that we stand re- 
 lated to God, as the artfully-constructed instrument to
 
 NATbRE AND GOD. 155 
 
 the skilled hand that makes it speak, is to exclude the 
 conditions of moral life, and make us His fabric rather 
 than His sons. Perhaps our author would refer ns to 
 other passages, in which he seems to reserve the Will 
 as man's peculium : as in this sentence : 
 
 " livery sensation, every thought, every feeling, every motion 
 of every muscle, destroyed a fibril in the voluntary, or man's 
 part of the frame; every motion of heart, every motion of the 
 lungs, and each other organ connected with the preparation 
 and circulation, destroyed a fibril in the involuntary, or God's 
 part of the frame" (p. Io8). 
 
 Will, however, cannot stand alone, to make a per- 
 son, when every thing else has been alienated. It fails 
 of the very conditions of its exercise, unless surrounded, 
 within the same individuality, by the data, and aided by 
 the light, of other faculties, forming with it the proper 
 nature or constitution of the living self. To will, with- 
 out affection to desire, and reason to compare, is impos- 
 sible : the style, so to speak, of affection, and the style 
 of reason, are just as personally characteristic, as the 
 style of willing : and to banish the two former into 
 the Divine Personality, while retaining only the third 
 for the human, is at once to "confound the persons" 
 and "divide the substance." In proof of the impersonal 
 and alien nature of our Reason, Conscience, Benevo- 
 lence, &e., our author appeals to their involuntary 
 character, and asks whether " we originate and direct 
 them." He may test the value of the argument bj 
 putting the same question respecting GotV* Reason, 
 Benevolence, Holiness, &c. Are these products of Ilia 
 Will ? Did He " originate " or " invent " them ? And
 
 156 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 if not, arc they foreign to Him? On the contrary, they 
 are of His innermost essence ; forming the spiritual 
 background of pro-requisites to Volition ; more than all 
 else defining His real and ultimate Self, precisely be- 
 cause not effects of His Will, but beyond Him to cre- 
 ate or to destroy. In short, if it is Will that goes to 
 make personality, it must carry with it, not its products 
 alone, but its indispensable conditions. And these arc 
 just the circle of impulses and faculties which our 
 author forbids us to appropriate. 
 
 We think, then, that Mr. Povnting has not adequately 
 guarded his doctrine on this :eide ; and has left, in strict- 
 ness, but one Person in the Universe. Let ns add 
 that, in this, he stands associated with a great and holy 
 company, and with them yields only to the excess of a 
 noble affection. It has ever been the tendency of 
 intense and paramount devotion to take nothing to 
 itself, and give every thing to God. Minds engaged 
 in habitual contemplation of the Infinite seem to be- 
 come conscious, not of littleness only, but of nothing- 
 ness in the Finite : and the vain attempt to hold the 
 two in co-existence ends in passionate casting ot 
 the Finite away. They pass by meditation into a 
 certain speculative form of Christian self-abnegation ; 
 and feel, with Augustine, that, ethically, Humanity 
 has no standing before God ; with Malebranche, that, 
 intellectually, it has no light but His ; with Taulcr, 
 that, spiritually, its only strength is to pass, exposed 
 and weak, into His hand ; with Spinoza, that, sub.stan- 
 tivclv, it vanishes into a mode of His reality. Tran- 
 siently, every religious man, it is probable, touches one 
 or other of these dizzy verges of thought, where the
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 157 
 
 spirit tremble s between the supreme height and nothing- 
 ness. And there are seasons in the history of every 
 church and nation when, in re-ac-tion from a temper 
 of false security and pragmatical self-assertion, it is 
 well for the consciousness of a people to be snatched 
 away, and planted for a while where it may look into 
 the solemn space and feel the awful breath. But the 
 permanent equilibrium of human thought is not there. 
 The sense of Duty returns ; the strife of Reason starts 
 afresh ; the toil of the Will resumes its tools ; and 
 the latent assurance of personal faculty and of real 
 freedom to use it, feeling its natural root, grows up 
 into the light again ; and pushes its green terrestrial 
 margin ever further upon the overpowering expanse 
 of Divine Necessity. Augustine converts the world : 
 but Pelagius is its counsellor day by day. And we 
 hold it indispensable to any tenable theory of Religion, 
 that finite natures, and especially the human person- 
 ality, should be secured in their real rights, and so 
 interpreted as to remain, in some intelligible sense, 
 objective to God. 
 
 This condition, it is evident, no theory can fulfil 
 which represents God as evolving the universe " out of 
 Himself." He is then both its substance and its phe- 
 nomena ; and it is in no way differenced from Him, 
 except by His transcending it. A blunt way of avoid- 
 ing this consequence was resorted to by the more 
 Judaically-minded Fathers of the Church in their doc- 
 trine of "creation out of Nothing;" a doctrine 
 which, holding its ground so far as material or fab- 
 ricated nature is concerned, yielded, at the higher stage 
 of human and spiritual existence, to the Alexandrine
 
 158 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 notion of the extension of the Divine Logos : and thus 
 made way for the distinction between a mere creature 
 and a son of God. This blank " Nothing," what- 
 ever philosophers may say against it, was at least 
 effectual for cutting off all obligations to antecedent 
 material, whether within or without the Eternal sub- 
 stantive Being, and compelling the recognition of the 
 world as something other than God. To this grand 
 Hebrew distinction, a true instinct led the Church to 
 cling through all the seductions of Gnosticism : and 
 though the formula embodying it may give way, philo- 
 sophical Theism cannot afford to surrender the distinc- 
 tion itself in any re-action towards Greek and German 
 modes of thought. Our age professes itself weary of 
 the old mechanical Deism, and cries out for the Imma- 
 nent and Living God. It is well : but, even for 
 Immanency itself, there must be something wherein 
 to dwell ; and for Life, something whereon to act. 
 Mind, to think out its problems, unless those prob- 
 lems are a dream, cannot be monistic, a mere 
 subjective infinitude, its tides and eddies all within. 
 What resource, then, have we, when we seek for some- 
 thing objective to God? The first and simplest, in 
 which accordingly philosophy has never failed to take 
 refuge, is Space. Inconceivable by us except as co- 
 extensive and co-eternal with Him yet independent of 
 Him, it lies ready, with all its contents of geometri- 
 cal property, for the intuition of his Reason. And to 
 Thought, which thus comes out of its eternity, and 
 engages itself upon determinate relation, we cannot 
 help ascribing the cognition of Time, with its attend- 
 ant, Number. Thus, the circle of quantitative data is
 
 NATUHE AXD GOD. 15 
 
 complete, and the ground of all mensurative and de- 
 ductive intellect is there. Will this, then, suffice? 
 Can we follow out the Kosmical problem to its end 
 upon this track? The experiment has been too tempt- 
 ing for philosophers to resist ; and again and again 
 they have worked in this vein, and tried to exhibit the 
 universe as a deduction, thought-out " more, geomet- 
 rico " from axioms of Eternal Reason ; to dispense 
 altogether with creative volition, as the source of 
 order ; and to connect even physical qualities and phe- 
 nomena by a conceivable chain of logical necessity with 
 the self-evidence at fountain-head. But though in 
 these attempts the most has been made of quantitative 
 methods and conceptions, though, for instance, Ex- 
 tension has been set up as the essence of Body, in the 
 same way as Thought is the essence of Mind, it has 
 proved impossible to avoid resort to other conceptions, 
 as Substance, Attribute, Cause. Still, with these 
 purely metaphysical and a-priori ideas added to the 
 mathematical, it was supposed possible for Reason to 
 evolve the world by following out the steps of a dem- 
 onstration. The Necessity of things was coincident 
 with the Necessity of thought : the nexus of Nature's 
 development was the nexus of logical sequence : cause 
 and effect were identical with premiss and conclusion : 
 creation of being was discovery of truth : and final 
 causation was the attainment of a Q. E. D. To com- 
 plete the organism of such a system has been the vain 
 ambition of many a keen and spacious intellect : and in 
 the Ethics of Spinoza and the Dialectic of Ilegcl the 
 pretension has, in modern times, twice culminated and 
 twice fallen. The principle of their failure is this:
 
 160 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 they did not, fur, in truth, they could not, keep 
 their promise of borrowing nothing from experience 
 and observation, and working every thing from onto- 
 logical self-evidence. Physical postulates lurk in their 
 metaphysical axioms : and however ready we may be to 
 admit the a-priori necessity of such ideas as " Sub- 
 stance " and " Cause," and so far to let them stand on 
 the same list of primary entities with "Space," as 
 Heal yet not empirically Known, Ideal yet not mental 
 fictions, still there is this difference ; that they are 
 intrinsically relative notions, each of them member of 
 A pair, and that the other and correlative term 
 "Attribute" nntithetive to Substance, "Effect" or 
 " Phenomenon " to Cause is simply physical and an 
 indispensable condition of its companion. Under the 
 cloak therefore of stately metaphysical axioms, as they 
 march in plenipotentiary array, concealed entrance is 
 given to material assumptions : and in the subsequent 
 logical progress, it is just these inductive principles 
 which cunningly slip out and lay the plank across many 
 a chasm that were else impassable. Thus, the unsat- 
 isfactory results of these bold attempts, their inevitable 
 slip out of their pure Monism, may well confirm our 
 reasonable presumption, that nature cannot be treated 
 as a geometrical or logical necessity ; that, were God 
 alone with the inner Laws of Thought and the outer 
 data of Quantity, no universe need ever have been ; 
 and that to evolve the result intelligibly, we must go 
 beyond the assumptions of the mathematics and meta- 
 physics. In other words, there must be something else 
 than Space objective to God. 
 
 Whether it is rationally conceivable that God should.
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 101 
 
 so to speak, supply Himself with objectivity, 
 by a " creation out of nothing," or whether, as Sir 
 W. Hamilton contends, the conception is absurd and 
 self-destructive, we need not pause to inquire. The 
 idea is in any case discredited by modern science. It 
 arose from an interpretation of the Mosaic cosmogony : 
 it belongs to the doctrine of the six days and the sud- 
 den " beginning " of their work ; and loses all support, 
 even from the imagination, as soon as the creative 
 process is deprived of starts and catastrophes, and 
 construed into a slow perpetuity of change. An in- 
 stantaneous summons of a Kosmos out of nothing 
 seems to require as its product a world perfected at 
 once, in simple answer to the call ; as the idea is 
 enounced, so must it be realized ; and nothing could 
 be more incongruous with the ecclesiastical notion of 
 absolute origination than that, in response to the Crea- 
 tor's fiat there should appear, for instance, a red-hot 
 earth, requiring millions of years before its human and 
 historic purpose could even open. The measure of 
 its ulterior progress inevitably becomes the measure 
 of its earlier emergence. But if we must pronounce 
 this conception superseded, there is only one resource 
 left for completing the needful objectivity to God ; viz. 
 to admit, in some form, the coeval existence of matter, 
 as the condition and medium of the Divine agency and 
 manifestation. We freely allow that this is an assump- 
 tion, resting on quite other grounds than those which 
 support our belief respecting Space. But it is an 
 hypothesis which neither religion nor philosophy, be- 
 yond the pantheistic circle, has been able to avoid ; 
 which, at one extreme, Hebraism admits in its Chuos ; 
 
 11
 
 162 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 and, at the other, Hellenism in the &ttt(iot, w';'Xf/, to ur t 
 or, of Plato, and the vty of Aristotle. Our mental 
 constitution itself, indeed, seems to contain a pro- 
 vision for the belief: just as every phenomenon, neces- 
 sitating the idea of Causation, carries us to God ; so 
 every attribute, necessitating the idea of Substance, 
 refers us to Matter. And all the physical indications 
 point unambiguously the same way. Stupendous as 
 the chronoinetry is which the Geologist places at our 
 command, its utmost stretch into the Past brings us 
 apparently no nearer to a lonely God : nature is still 
 there, with no signs of recency, but still in the midst 
 of changes that have an immeasurable retrospect. 
 May we not, then, fairly say that the burden .of pro:>f 
 remains with those who affirm the absolute origination 
 of matter at a certain or uncertain date? Failing 
 
 O 
 
 the proof, we are left with the Divine Cause and the 
 material Condition of all nature in eternal coprescnce 
 and relation, as Supreme subject and rudimentary ob- 
 ject. 
 
 This position, however, needs some obvious limita- 
 tions. We do not mean, of course, to claim perpetual 
 existence in the past for the particular material objects 
 we see around us : or, for any of the kinds of beings 
 now extant : or, even for all the properties which mat- 
 ter now exhibits : for, prior to the appearance of organi- 
 zation, for instance, the physiological qualities and 
 actions were not assumed. Stripping off, as we retire 
 backward, the more refined, as being the more recent, 
 modes, and endeavoring to reach the simplest skeleton 
 of the constitution of matter, we meet with a familiar 
 distinction which may prevent us, in taking what logi-
 
 NATURE AND GOD. lf>3 
 
 cal necessity requires, from taking more than it re- 
 quires. We refer to the distinction which the attacks 
 of a purely sensational philosophy and the neglect of a 
 purely deductive only tend to confirm between the Pri- 
 mary and the Secondary qualities of Body. The former 
 are those which are inseparable from the very idea of 
 Body, and may be evolved a priori from the considera- 
 tion of it as solid Extension or Extended solidity. The 
 latter are those which we could not thus evolve by 
 reflection, but which, having no necessary implication 
 with the definition of body, must be learned, like all 
 contingent things, from experience. To the former 
 class, for instance, belong Triple Dimension, Divisi- 
 bility, Incomprcssibility ; to the latter, Gravity, Soft- 
 ness or Hardness, Smell, Color, &c. As the former 
 cannot absent themselves from Body, they have a reality 
 coeval with it, and belong eternally to the material 
 datum objective to God : and his mode of activity with 
 regard to them must be similar to that which alone \ve 
 
 CJ 
 
 can think of his directing upon the relations of Space, 
 viz. not Volitional, to cause them, but Intellectual, to 
 think them out. The Secondary qualities, on the other 
 hand, having no logical tie to the Primary, but being 
 appended to them as contingent facts, cannot be re- 
 ferred to any deductive thought, but remain over as pro- 
 ducts of pure Inventive Reason and Determining Will 
 This sphere of cognition, a posteriori to us, where 
 we cannot move a step alone but have submissively to 
 wait upon experience, is precisely the realm of Divine 
 originality : and we arc most sequacious where He is 
 most free. While on this Secondary field His Mind 
 and ours are thus contrasted, they meet in resemblance
 
 1(')4 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 again upon the Primary : for the evolutions of deduc- 
 tive Reason there is but one track possible to all intelli- 
 gences ; no merum arbitrium can interchange the false 
 and true, or make more than one geometry, one scheme 
 of pure Physics, for all worlds : and the Omnipotent 
 Architect Himself, in realizing the Kosmical concep- 
 tion, in shaping the orbits out of immensity and deter- 
 mining seasons out of eternity, could but follow the 
 laws of curvature, measure, and proportion. And so, 
 in the region of the demonstrative sciences, to us the 
 highest that mere intellect attains, where most we feel 
 our thought triumphant and seem to look down on 
 dominated nature, there is His Mind the least uncon- 
 ditioned, and there alone comes into experience of 
 necessity. 
 
 There is, then, on the one side and the other of this 
 boundary-line, a ground in Nature for the action of a 
 purely Intellectual Divine power, evolving consequences 
 by necessary laws of thought ; and for the action of a 
 purely Voluntary power, weaving in what is absolutely 
 original, and executing the free suggestions of design. 
 And there is a justification for both forms of religious 
 philosophy ; that which attempts the " a-priori road," 
 which detects Divine vestiges in the mysterious signifi- 
 cance of Space and Eternity and Substance, or in the 
 diagrams which suit alike the terrestrial and celestial 
 mechanics, which feels it a solemn thing that One 
 and the same Reason pervades the universal Kosmos ; 
 and that which, on the track of experience, recog- 
 nizes marvellous combinations, and delights in the sur- 
 prises of beauty and design. The only fault of either 
 method lies in its self-exaggeration and intolerance of
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 1(55 
 
 the other. When, however, \ve come close to the ques- 
 tion, in what way the Volition of God applies itself to 
 the objective material on which it works, the difficulty 
 still recurs : does it move in the lines of nature's gene- 
 ral laws and forces, so that each one of these has as it 
 were a volition of itself: or, does it alight upon the 
 concrete and living results in individualized, especially 
 in conscious, and supremely in moral, beings? If we 
 take the first side of the alternative, we throw the aims 
 of God into the order of the Inductive analysis of 
 nature, and seem to withdraw all realized things and 
 persons from his contemplation : we engage him in 
 weaving worlds and creatures to which, except as com- 
 pounds of a thousand lines of skill, he is indifferent. 
 If we take the second side, we relieve indeed this moral 
 anxiety, but, in rendering each integral being the object 
 of a distinct and unitary purpose, we throw out of 
 intelligible gear the several laws which science shows 
 to be confluent in that one nature, and seem, in claim- 
 ing them also for the Will of God, to send the voli- 
 tions in cross directions. 
 
 We do not deny that these conflicting modes of 
 thought are hard to reduce into complete harmony ; 
 or into harmony at all without selecting one of them as 
 of superior authority and entitled to exercise a regula- 
 tive influence over the other. Were we never to look 
 beyond physico-theology, we believe the controversy 
 between the two would be perpetual ; the naturalist, 
 and every sympathizing observer of individual ob- 
 jects and kinds, being so prevailingly impressed with 
 adaptations of organism and life as to see the final 
 pauses there ; the student of the physical sciences, on
 
 100 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 the other hand, being so possessed with the concep- 
 tion of grand imperial laws that override all single 
 integers of being, as to deem all concrete design 
 subordinate or doubtful, and engage the Divine interest 
 chiefly upon the method and tissue of the universal 
 order. The indications of purpose which Paley finds 
 in the fitness of the eye for its special use, Baden Powell 
 rather sees in the symmetry and uniformity of the great 
 optical laws, which still speak of Mind, though they 
 sweep over tracts of time and space where vision can- 
 not be. The scale must be turned and the verdict 
 gained by appeal to the Moral sources of religion 
 within us. Volition, in its very nature, is at the dis- 
 posal of Character: and the character of God, the 
 order of affections in Him, the ends that are highest 
 in regard, we learn, not from the tides, the strata, or 
 the stars, but from the intimations of Conscience, 
 and the distribution of authority in the hierarchy of 
 our impulses. The perfection which is our ideal is 
 but His real ; the image of Him thrown upon the sen- 
 sitive retina of the soul by his own essential light. 
 The moment we refer to this interpreter, we know that 
 if intellectual tastes are good, personal affections are 
 better, and reverence for goodness the best of all : we 
 can no longer dream that the sense of symmetry, the 
 delight in beauty of thought or things, can have para- 
 mount disposal of the Divine Volition : we must recog- 
 nize as supreme with Him the Love towards personal 
 beings capable of sympathy with his nature, of trust in 
 his direction and free aspiring to his likeness. If the 
 moral order of the universe be the zelsivzaTov rt),o^ 
 the physical must stand to it in the relation of an
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 167 
 
 instrument : general laws are for the sake of particular 
 beings : and the order of nature, whatever other ends 
 it may embrace, has primary reference to the personal 
 agents on its scene, who, in the endowment of freedom, 
 occupy a position above nature. Docs this reduction 
 of the scientific laws to a secondary place withdraw 
 them from God and convert them into his deputies? 
 Not in the least : they are secondary, not in nearness 
 to his Person, but in rank within his Thought : and 
 there is in this nothing to interfere with his execution 
 of his own design, and letting his Will be the only 
 Force. The volitional character of the several modes 
 of natural power does not require that they be willed 
 upon their own account, so that they carry in their 
 aspect the features and movements of the Divine char- 
 acter. As the methods of his activity they variously 
 traverse, in their classification, the grouping of his 
 purposes. He is immanent in Nature : but his real life 
 is known only beyond Nature. To believe the first 
 alone of these clauses is Pagan, to believe the sec- 
 ond alone is evangelical ; Christian philosophy must 
 blend them both. 
 
 There is, however, a limit beyond which we find it 
 difficult to carry out, with satisfactory clearness of 
 conception, the doctrine of God's immediate agency in 
 nature. The secondary qualities of matter, the " physi- 
 cal forces " of the world, may readily be regarded as 
 mere disguises or mere signs of Himself. But living 
 beings can hardly be conceived as simply the nidus 
 of power not their own, the organism theirs, the 
 function, not. We cannot follow Descartes in treating 
 them as mere automata. Their whole distinctive sig-
 
 168 NATURE AND GOD- 
 
 nificnnce lies in their being separate centres of at least 
 incipient individuality ; and to represent them as only 
 media of a Divine incarnation is offensive alike to 
 science and to religion. Here, then, it seems impos- 
 sible to dispense with the idea of delegated power, 
 detached by one remove from the universal source, 
 and lent out for a term of life to work the conditions 
 of a distinct existence. The instincts and sponta- 
 neities of animals constitute a true Divine guidance, 
 adjusted as they are in accurate relation to their exter- 
 nal position, and restrained within definite limits of 
 possibility : but this very method and preconception 
 imply an abstinence for the time being of direct and 
 momentary volition, and a consignment of the whole 
 phenomena, in group or system, to a determinate "na- 
 ture" or "constitution." The difference is perhaps, 
 after all, incident only to our point of view, and would 
 disappear could we contemplate the world " under the 
 form of eternity." We live down from moment to 
 moment ; we deliver forth our volitions one by one 
 in linear detail ; we have experience enabling us to 
 interpret generic acts of Will inclusive of complexity 
 of relations and a persistence in time : and cannot pre- 
 sent to ourselves the Divine power running into fixed 
 types, or trace the deep-rooted unity of these seeming 
 islands in the sea of things with the continuous conti- 
 nent of the Infinite Will. Be it remembered too, that 
 there are two kinds of union with God, dynamic and 
 moral ; and that moral union requires dynamic separa- 
 tion ; which accordingly widens as we ascend in the 
 scale of being, till a true Self, a free Personality, 
 appears, sufficiently beyond the verge of Nature to give
 
 NATURE AND GOD. 169 
 
 an answering look to tlic very face of the Most High. 
 At this culminating extreme we have a real trust of 
 independence, subjectivity perfected, causality real- 
 ized. At the other and initial extreme where the mate- 
 rial datum lies, we have passive potentiality, mere 
 objectivity, causality not yet begun. Between this 
 infranatural commencement and supernatural end, the 
 Creative agency moves, to build and animate the mighty 
 whole which we call Nature ; at each advance receding 
 from the bare receptivity of matter, and approaching, 
 through the spontaneous vital energies, the actual indi- 
 viduality of personal existence. In this great cycle, 
 Matter is the negative condition of Divine power ; 
 Force, its positive exercise ; Life, its delegation under 
 limits of neces.<itv ; Will, under concession of freedom. 
 And if we may venture to speak of a yet higher stage 
 which evades the reach of words, that saintly posture 
 of the soul which Scripture designates by the term 
 Spirit, may we not say, it is the conscious return, by 
 free identification, of every delegated power into har- 
 mony with its Source ? And so, the dynamic removal 
 finds its end in moral unity. 
 
 But these questions deepen and widen under our 
 hand ; and we must close them. We have endeavored 
 to throw a line or two across the gulf which unhappily 
 divides the savans from the theologians of our day. 
 Whether any communication will pass along them we 
 do not presume to say. But of this we are sure ; 
 that the alienation they seek to remedy can be but tran- 
 sitory, having no foundation in the nature of things, 
 arising only in the crossing lights and illusory darkness 
 of human fancy. Inasmuch as Deductive Science rep-
 
 170 NATURE AND GOD. 
 
 resents the Order of God's intellect. Inductive Science 
 the methods of his agency, Moral Science the purpose 
 of his Will, the blending of their voices in one glorious 
 hymn is as certain as the Oneness of his nature and the 
 symmetry of his Universe : arid it must be a very poor 
 Science and a very poor Keligion that delay by discord 
 the approach of that great harmony.
 
 171 
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH* 
 
 IF we intended to review either of these books, we 
 should not name them both. Each of them has a 
 scope too vast for the span of our critical measurement. 
 The Reviewer's steps are short and few, and would 
 soon be lost in Mr. Maurice's five centuries of Meta- 
 physics ; still more in following Mr. Spencer's genesis 
 of the universe from chaos to the Crimean war. In 
 the historical work, suffice it to say, the student will 
 find a faithful guide to the deeper literature and life 
 of modern Europe ; copious in knowledge, catholic in 
 judgment, genial in spirit ; betrayed, perhaps, here 
 and there into some waywardness and disproportion 
 by an impatience of psychology, and a distrust of all 
 "human notions" that have become systematic and 
 exact ; but essentially true to the genius of great rep- 
 resentative writers even in the most opposite times. 
 In the speculative book of First Principles, we have 
 
 * First Principles. By Herbert Spencer, Author of " Social Statics," 
 "The Principles of Psychology," c. London: Williams and Xorgatc. 
 1862. 
 
 Modern Philosophy; or, a Treatise on Moral and Metaphysical Philoso- 
 phy from the Fourteenth Century tc the French Involution; with a Glimpse 
 in to the Nineteenth Century. By the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A. 
 London: Griffin, Bohn, and Co. 1662. 
 
 National Review, Oct., 1862.
 
 \1'2 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 a kind of prose Lucretius ; an attempt to s!io\v, both 
 by inductive generalization from admitted laws, and l>y 
 a-priori inference from the ideas of Matter and Force, 
 lio\v the Kosmos, natural and human, has evolved 
 itself, and, on the assumption of a homogeneous nebu- 
 l;ir stuff to begin with, must have become what we find 
 it to be. To those who are versed in scientific litera- 
 ture, the mere statement of the thesis will characterize 
 the work. Enterprises of so bold a^sweep recommend 
 themselves only to minds that have unbounded confi- 
 dence in logical architecture, and can venture, with 
 a few well-shaped abstractions at the base, to build 
 and arch to any height. They are uncongenial with 
 the cautious temper of the practised observer : and 
 diifer in their vastness and vagueness from those special 
 vaticinations in which, more by glance than by experi- 
 ment, a Newton, an Oken, or a Goethe may decipher 
 the style of nature. They are neither the percep- 
 tive readings of a genius intimate with the world, 
 nor a bond fide generalization taking up into itself 
 without fear or favor all the threads of ascertained 
 order ; but a framework of hypothesis, constructed 
 from the metaphysical terms in which science is obliged 
 to speak, and filled-in ad libitum with such picked 
 phenomena from every field as may symmetrically fit. 
 In such a scheme, the masses of fact p resented, though 
 occupying the main area, are of subordinate moment 
 to the lines of thought : and Mr. Spencer himself, we 
 are convinced, would have attained no trust in his 
 Ivosmogony, had he not, in the true spirit of a logical 
 enthusiast, felt his footing sure on his a-j>riori ground. 
 But for this, the enormous disproportion (oppressive
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AXD FAITH. 173 
 
 enough even on Mr. Darwin's limited field the mere 
 " Origin of Species ") between the weight of the con- 
 clusion and the tenuity of the induction must have 
 overpowered him ; and he must have doubted the use 
 of dressing-up a few score of plausible appearances 
 with a whole universe of phenomena out of the reckon- 
 ing altogether. For our own part, we must confess 
 that this new book of Genesis appears to us no more 
 credible than the old. While its doctrine is too big 
 for physical proof^ it is of the wrong kind for meta- 
 physical. V/e should as soon think of giving an a- 
 priori receipt for a pudding, as for a solar system or 
 a jelly-fish. If mere intellectual force could conquer 
 an intrinsically unmanageable task, it would yield to 
 the prowess of our author. With the resources of 
 a scientific culture he unites a severe logical habit, an 
 originality of combination, and a precision of exposi- 
 tory method, to which no reader can be insensible ; 
 and which want nothing but a securer set of first 
 principles to justify the somewhat positive tone of self- 
 reliance characteristic of him, as of most system-build- 
 ing intellects. 
 
 Passing by, however, the substantive matter of both 
 Mr. Maurice's history and Mr. Spencer's Kosmogony, 
 we fix attention on a single fundamental problem, 
 which has a pervading influence on both works, and 
 receives from them contradictory answers. What is 
 the highest legitimate object of Reason in man? Is he 
 precluded from passing beyond the finite order of 
 "co-existences and successions," which Science scru- 
 tinizes and defines? or, is he capable of apprehending 
 the Infinite Cause behind, of which Keligion speaks?
 
 174 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 Mr. Maurice not only believes that knowledge of 
 Divine Reality is possible, and is given, but looks 
 upon the whole course of human history and thought 
 as its witness and illustration. Mr. Spencer not only 
 rejects as failures all attempts hitherto to cross the 
 confines of phenomena, but undertakes to prove that 
 the human mind has no organ for cognizance of the 
 Supreme Cause : so that Religion resolves itself into 
 the acknowledgment of an inscrutable background, in 
 front of which all the luminous shapes of knowledge 
 have their play. While the one writer sees in the 
 working of devout wonder and the sense of an eternal 
 living thought the mainspring of all intellectual search, 
 the other deplores the darkening influence of sacred 
 ideas upon the human understanding, and opposes 
 Science to Religion as the known to the unknown 
 the perceptions of day-light to the dreams of night. 
 
 We have no doubt that Mr. Spencer represents, in 
 this doctrine, the prevailing sentiment of living sci- 
 entific men, and the tendency which for some time to 
 come will gain force against all resistance. It is a. 
 necessary price which we must pay in re-establishing 
 the distinction and just relation between the sphere of 
 phenomena and that out of which phenomena come ; 
 between also the faculties in us which apprehend the 
 one, and those which are organs for the other. We 
 have not yet escaped a period, co-extensive with the 
 history of Christianity, during which, from blindness 
 to this distinction, religion has identified itself with 
 interpretations of nature now known to be false ; and 
 it must suffer the re-action against a discredited prophet 
 unable to make good his word. Compare the picture
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 175 
 
 of the universe in the imagination of a Ilerschel, a 
 Lyell, a Darwin, with the same scene as disposed in the 
 thought of Isaiah, of Paul, of Chrysostom : look at 
 the celestial architecture of the Apocalypse, and then at 
 what the telescope reveals : think what is implied in the 
 mere conception of a "Solar system," and the changed 
 classification from " Heaven and Earth " to " Suns and 
 Planets : " remember that with the disappearance of 
 the supernal halls from the sky, and of the abyss with 
 its infernal chains from the subterraneous strata, a host 
 of inhabitants are dislodged, and fallen angels and 
 imprisoned spirits and tormenting fiends lose them- 
 selves in the cold void : and can you wonder that, on 
 the one hand, Augustine would hear nothing of antip- 
 odes, or Koine of the Copernican idea, or the Dean 
 of York of the geological ; or, on the other, that those 
 who had dissolved the fictitious palace of the Most 
 High should suppose they had discovered a mere dark- 
 ness or a blank within? The modern redistribution 
 of the kosmical bodies in space undeniably involves 
 a total break-up of conceptions previously guaranteed 
 bv sacred authority. So, too, with regard to the 
 origin of the universe in time. What has become of 
 the date which many of us learned at school: "B.C. 
 4004, Creation of the world"? Limit the term 
 "world" as you will, suppose it to say nothing but 
 of this planet ; still, with what amazement must we 
 now look back on the practice of entering its birth in 
 the annual register, like the battles and budgets and 
 debates that make up a Times New-Year's Day retro- 
 spect ! Into what magnitude has that " chief event 
 of a year" opened before us! Walking through a
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 geological museum, and estimating its intervals by 
 what unit of time we please, we not only discover the 
 "Creation of the world," like a Chancery suit, 
 to be "rather a process than an event," but are con- 
 strained to give it an asymptote for its measure, 
 arriving at our own position from out of an inde- 
 terminate immensity. Instead of being the flash of 
 a moment, or a week, from which the great periods 
 of national vicissitude on the world may be sharply 
 reckoned, it breaks into indefinite duration, and they 
 shrink into a point. Yet they, too, have rebelled 
 against the limits we had allowed them ; and human 
 history, while dwarfed by physical, asks, with every 
 new discovery, for larger room and more numerous 
 centuries in our imagination. After every allowance 
 for uncertainty in the earliest vestiges of humanity, 
 tli" concurrent evidence of Egyptian archaeology, of 
 the laws and affinities of language, of comparative 
 religion, and of the stone implements, if not more 
 positive remains of man, found in not the most recent 
 deposits, must be held to imply an indefinitely more 
 remote beginning and more gradual development of 
 our race upon the earth than we had been taught to 
 believe. 
 
 The alteration thus introduced into our modes of 
 conception is the same throughout. Larger space, 
 longer time, slower movement, finer gradation, than 
 we had dreamed of, have everywhere to be admitted. 
 Among objects, nothing isolated ; in events, nothing 
 sudden ; a web of infinitely extended relations, in 
 which this is part of the same mesh with that; a his- 
 tory of infinitely divisible changes, in which to-day
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 177 
 
 is born of yesterday, and the shifting shadows g'lide 
 and never leap ; these are the new aspects under 
 which modern knowledge presents the system of the 
 world. And though it still leaves vast lacuna where, 
 if you insist on it, you may find room for things unique 
 and lonely, and starts of existence per saltuin ; yet, 
 as these gaps are being steadily filled in, and look just 
 like older chasms where similar fancies lie in ruin and 
 now visibly grassed over, there arises an increasing 
 presumption against exceptional crises of surprise. 
 Hence, on the whole, we are passing over to the idea 
 of evolution, rather than creation ; of a creeping 
 upwards, little by little, in place of a leap out of 
 nothing ; of the lower type of phenomenon preceding 
 the higher, and the better coming out of the worse. 
 Nor can any well-informed man seriously doubt that 
 in this idea the order of genesis is more truly repre- 
 sented, than in that which it replaces. 
 
 What is the meaning, what especially the religious 
 bearing, of this change? It is essentially an assertion 
 of neglected rights on the part of Nature ; that 
 sphere of unconscious growth, which has always been 
 recognized as copresent with Man and God, the beings 
 of conscious thought and power ; but has not always 
 received the attention due to an immeasurable empire 
 and an everlasting law. Christianity in particular 
 was, from its very essence, so absorbed with the imme- 
 diate relation between Man and God, as to look upon 
 the universe as the mere theatre of their alienation and 
 re-union, the visible xtayu of a moral drama, the 
 scene built up, above, below, for the solemn tragedy 
 of human probation and Divine Justice, and reflecting 
 
 12
 
 178 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 in its lights and glooms the changing phases of the 
 plot. It was but the tabernacle raised for the abode 
 of spiritual beings, the heavens "a tent" for the 
 Eternal " to dwell in," the earth a hospice for the Mor- 
 tal to lodge in ; sprung from the fiat of yesterday, 
 dissolved by that of to-morrow, and meanwhile pliant 
 alike to the steady purpose or the sudden occasions 
 of the Almighty Will. However true and needful 
 was this claim of transcendent reality for Moral re- 
 lations and living Minds, it doubtless made too little 
 of the kosmical system, usurped its rights and miscon- 
 ceived its ways ; and scarcely left any adequate interest 
 attaching to the patient scrutiny of its facts and laws. 
 For such tranquil pursuits we need an absence of pas- 
 sionate problems and the presence of a durable world : 
 and we cannot imagine in a Tertullian the researches 
 of an Aristotle, or transfer to a Carlstadt the reason- 
 ings of a Galileo. At last, however, in re-action from 
 the exclusive ascendancy of the Christian idea, Nature 
 resumes her place it may be, more than her place; 
 shows her uniformities spreading everywhere through 
 epace and time ; pushes her claims far up into the 
 being of man himself; and requires us to think again 
 what it is that irremovably belongs to God. 
 
 The answer to this question appears to us simple : 
 Science discloses the Method of the world, but not its 
 cause ; Religion, its Cause, but not its method : and 
 there is no conflict between them, except when either 
 forgets its ignorance of what the other alone can know. 
 
 When, for instance, the old book of Genesis an- 
 nounces God as the Cause of all, it speaks the language 
 of pure Religion, which cannot be traversed or met,
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 179 
 
 except behind the field of mere phenomena. When it 
 relates that it took six days to make the universe, and 
 recounts what was done on each ; how, first, Day and 
 Night, then Heaven and Earth, then Land and Sea, 
 were parted from each other ; how, between the crea- 
 tion of vegetable and animal life, the greater and lesser 
 lights were set aloft ; how the water and the air were 
 peopled before the solid ground, and man came last 
 of all to rule the other tribes and live upon the fruits of 
 the field ; in all this, it essays the language of Sci- 
 ence, and is open to correction from every fresh reading 
 of the order and method of the world. And so, when 
 the modern book of Genesis wants years by the million 
 for every day of that Creation-week ; when it deals 
 with spaces in which ten thousand of those "firma- 
 ments " would be lost ; when it alters all the elements 
 and transposes all the order, and distributes to be done 
 for ever what had been gathered up to be despatched 
 at once ; when it substitutes a perpetuity of birth and 
 death in things for an outburst of creative labor suc- 
 ceeded by eternal rest; in all this, it also speaks 
 what Science has a right to say, though it compels all 
 the prophets to retract and apostles to sit still and 
 learn. But if, on the strength of this right, it goes on 
 to say, "these ways of nature are all in all, and behind 
 them there is nought for man to apprehend," k usurps 
 a function not its own, and affirms that which lies not 
 less beyond its competency than was the Newtonian 
 astronomv beyond that of the Hebrew kosmogonist. 
 No discoveries of method touch the question of causa- 
 tion. Whether the way of procedure be this or be 
 that, be such as we now think, or such as once was
 
 180 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 fancied, or such other as may hereafter be conceived, 
 is indifferent to the background of Reality, which 
 throws the procedure forth. As religion has no voice 
 about the order of phenomena, conversely, the order 
 of phenomena has nothing to say about religion : they 
 sit perfectly clear of each other: nor is any delusion 
 more absolute than the notion that the one can ever 
 contradict the other. Causality, with which alone 
 religion in this relation has to do, is not amenable to 
 the same faculties that take cognizance of method, 
 those by which we perceive, compare, arrange : it 
 cannot be heard, smelt, or seen : no lens can fetch 
 it into view ; no generalization reach further than its 
 effects ; no classification grasp more than its outward 
 expressions. It is no object of sense ; or of inference 
 from any combination of the data of sense : and a 
 merely observing, sifting, discriminating mind, how- 
 ever keen its perceptions, however delicate its feeling 
 of resemblance and difference, could never come across 
 it. It may nay must be thought: it may be 
 named : but it is added on by the intellect to the ex- 
 periences of perception ; not drawn by the intellect out 
 of them. It is by an inner necessity of lleason that 
 we refer all phenomena, single or grouped, disposed 
 into this picture or into that, scattered in negligence, 
 or reduced by induction, to an originating Power : 
 and precisely at this point it is, where Science has 
 already come to an end, that Iveligion begins, and 
 undertakes to speak of that which remains when the 
 account of phenomena is closed. 
 
 Seeing, then, that the two spheres have no contact, 
 or contact only at a point, it is not less futile to im-
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 181 
 
 aginc atheistical encroachment from physical knowledge 
 than to be afraid lest the tangent should cut a slice 
 out of the circle. The more we discover, the more 
 phenomena will there be crying out for their Cause. 
 Is their field widened every way? so much the more 
 august must his universal presence be. Is their suc- 
 cession immeasurably older? so much the sublimer 
 what we conceive of his duration. Is their symmetry 
 more exact and their cycle more determinate ? so 
 much the surer the order of his thought. Is the 
 method of their issue, not by paroxysms of omnipotence, 
 but by perpetual flow of power stealing to the roots of 
 things? then does the Genesis cease to be historical, 
 and we are at it ourselves ; and may read it no longer 
 in the preterite, but in the progressive tense ; saying 
 not that once he did create, but that now and always 
 he is creating the heavens and the earth. If the 
 Theist was ever right, according to the measure of his 
 day, assuredly nothing has been found out to put him 
 in the wrong. If the poor little universe that over- 
 arched the tents of Abram, and hail been there only 
 for a few generations, made its claim felt to be of 
 origin Divine, it certainly has not forfeited that claim 
 by prefixing to its age the reaches of geologic, time, 
 tleepening around it the heaven of Newton, and sus- 
 pending itself in the balances of Clairaut. 
 
 'But was the Theist ever right?' it may be asked. 
 Granting that science makes his case no worse, and 
 can never acquire a title to contradict him, still we 
 may inquire what, intrinsically, i* his case? What 
 can we say, and on what warrant, respecting that 
 invisible sphere of Power behind phenomena?
 
 182 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 That something may be truly said about the Cause 
 of tliinga has been rarely questioned, since the New 
 Academy ceased to parade its doctrine of universal 
 nescience. Men have spoken in terms different enough: 
 but, far from saying "we cannot tell," have variously 
 affirmed, (1) Nature has a Divine Author; (2) Na- 
 ture has no Divine Author; (3) Nature is Divine, 
 and its own Author : and these several doctrines have 
 been discussed upon common principles and on objec- 
 tive grounds, in perfect assurance that somehow or 
 other the controversy was rationally terminable, and 
 truth attainable. If there was any thing on which, in 
 this matter, Theist, Atheist, Pantheist demonstrable 
 agreed, it was surely this, that the problem on which 
 they all engaged was amenable to thought, and might 
 be solved. Else, why plunge into it, and pronounce 
 upon it? Without the assumption that knowledge is 
 possible, the very attitude of quest is impossible. Yet 
 Mr. Spencer, analyzing the doctrines of these three 
 men, and discharging all their mutual discordances, 
 finds them all concur in this, that the object of their 
 search is hopelessly out of reach, in a darkness beyond 
 the limits of thought itself. It is a bold feat of eclec- 
 ticism to sift out any common " soul of truth " at all 
 from the two contradictory propositions of Theist and 
 Atheist : but to make it consist in precisely what each, 
 by its very existence, excludes, to draw a declara- 
 tion of nescience from two positive professions of 
 knowledge, implies an almost Hegelian dexterity of logi- 
 cal cross-examination. We must say it seems to us 
 a burlesque application of the questionable maxim, 
 every human belief has a "soul of truth," to take
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 183 
 
 up not only inconsistent opinions, but positions of 
 which one must be true and the other false, and by 
 pretending to dissolve their variances, precipitate the 
 residuary "soul." The process cannot be soundly 
 carried through. Between " Yes " and "No" there is 
 nothing common. If you discharge their differences, 
 one of them disappears. If you save any thing from 
 both, the falsehood and contrariety are uneliminated 
 still. You may choose, but cannot compromise, be- 
 tween them : and if there be a delusive show of some 
 joint element, it can only be gained through sophis- 
 tical manipulation of the propositions, inserting by 
 implication what is required to be got out again by ex- 
 plication. We could allow something to our author's 
 argument, if he turned it round and rested it on the 
 real dissidence, instead of the pretended concord, of 
 ontological beliefs ; if, with Bossuet in his Variations 
 of Protestants, he said, 'the truth is in none of you; 
 for truth is one ; and you are all at sixes and sevens, 
 and have not a shred of unity to show.' But to bring 
 into court three differing men, each sure that he knows, 
 and tell them, 'the truth is in all of you; for you all 
 mean to say, that you are quite in the dark,' is a strange 
 combination of paradox and reproach. 
 
 The position which is thus curiously gathered from 
 the critique of opposite opinions, viz. that the Su- 
 preme Cause is incognizable, is not left, however, 
 without support from more direct and positive reason- 
 ing. On this we must say a few words. The hardy 
 old-fashioned Atheist used to say outright, 'There is 
 no God,' and forthwith to set his faculties and yours at 
 work upon the problem, to get to the bottom of it.
 
 184 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AXD FAITH. 
 
 Of late, thanks to Sir W. Hamilton, we have 
 fallen upon a more refined and idealized form of the 
 same doctrine, a purely subjective atheism, which leaves 
 with the Divine Reality permission to be, but withdraws 
 from us the power to know; and says, 'Appre- 
 hensible by us there is no God.' The trial of the case 
 is thus removed from the outer court of existence, 
 where we seek the limits of real being, to the inner 
 tribunal of psychology and logic, where we investigate 
 the limits of human reason. There is certainly a 
 jnodest look in thus apparently contracting the problem 
 within a narrower circle and bringing it home to the 
 familiar seat of our self-knowledge : and it has a sound 
 of meekness to say, ' We pretend not to make our line 
 the measure of things as they are ; beyond its end 
 there is the unfathomable still : only we find that it 
 stops short of God ; and if he be, it is in the abyss 
 we cannot reach.' Yet we greatly doubt whether the 
 seeming simplification is not sophistical, and the hu- 
 mility a self-deception. The limits of thought are not 
 in effect easier to determine than the limits of being : 
 and the battles once fought on the field of Metaphysics 
 are renewed, one by one, and fought over again on the 
 field of Logic : nor have Locke and Kant, with their 
 critique of faculty, closed a single question previously 
 opened by the contemplation of existence. The haunt- 
 ing old realities, Space, Substance, Essence, Cause, 
 are not got rid of by stopping in our own chamber and 
 refusing to go forth among them : they re-appear in 
 their shadows on the floor and their reflections on the 
 wall ; and in the dress of a-priori thoughts awaken 
 the same faith or scepticism which they had provoked
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 185 
 
 on the field of necessary being. Suppose it, however, 
 to be otherwise : suppose the cognitive limits accurately 
 defined : suppose the line separating the possible light 
 from the irremovable darkness incontrovertible drawn. 
 'What then ? in order to fall on the right side of the 
 line, an object must comply with certain conditions : 
 and conversely, before you exclude it, you must be 
 able to deny those conditions. But how can you do 
 this of an object quite unknown ? by what right do you 
 prejudge a hidden rcalitv, and so give or refuse it 
 predicates as to assign its place? Is it not plain that, 
 in declaring it absolutely inscrutable, you assume it to 
 be partially known? and that, like children in some 
 blindfold game, you have taken a peep at it before 
 letting it go into the dark and professing that you 
 cannot see it at all? It is but the semblance of intel- 
 lectual humility, which must thus presume a knowledge 
 in order to disclaim it. 
 
 The doctrine of i-eligious nescience has been ren- 
 dered so familiar by Mr. Mansel, as to belong to the 
 common stock of contemporary thought, and to make 
 any full exposition of its grounds unnecessary. It 
 assumes that God, if acknowledged at all, must be 
 entitled to the epithets "Absolute" and "Infinite" on 
 the one hand, and "Cause" on the other. Supposing 
 this to be admitted, several contradictions arise between 
 the parts of the admission ; and some positions to 
 which thought is incompetent altogether. To be " Ab- 
 solute," for instance, means, to be out of all relations : 
 to be "Cause" means, to stand related to an effect: 
 and the same object cannot be both. Again, "Infi- 
 nite " Being is unexelusivc being, to which nothing can
 
 18() SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITIf. 
 
 be .added and no new predicate attached: "Causal" 
 Being is transitive and productive, passing to condi- 
 tions not occupied before, and adding to the stock of 
 existence, or functions of existence, chargeable upon 
 it. The epithets are therefore incompatible. More- 
 over, the very nature of Thought itself imprisons us 
 within the circle of relative things: for it carries in it 
 a necessary duality, and consists in marking off and 
 distinguishing, object from subject, body from space, 
 attribute from substance, prior from posterior, and 
 individuals, classes, and qualities inter xe. Apart 
 from a field or term of comparison, awy-thing proposed 
 for thought becomes no-thing, and only a vacancy 
 remains : nor is the vacancy itself appreciable but by 
 standing over against the self that looks into it. If 
 then to think is, on the one hand, to note the confines 
 of things, it can never pass beyond the finite : and if 
 it is, on the other, to discriminate their contents and 
 properties, it can never pass beyond the relative. The 
 Absolute and Infinite cannot therefore present itself 
 to the intellect at all. 
 
 So the warrant for the doctrine of religious nescience 
 is simply this : that God is " absolute ; " and we can 
 know nothing but the relative. 
 
 Of one point, however, Mr. Spencer declares, we 
 may be sure ; and that , upon the highest guarantee, 
 the same a-priori necessity of thought which enforces 
 the nescience itself, viz. that the. Absolute exists in 
 reality, though denied to apprehension. For, were 
 it otherwise, there could be no relative ; relativity it- 
 self being in its term cognizable only by contrast with 
 the non-relative, and forming a duality with it. Take
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 187 
 
 ftway its antithetic term, and the relative, thrown into 
 isolation, is set up as absolute, and disappears from 
 thought. It is indispensable therefore to uphold the 
 Absolute in existence, as condition of the relative sphere 
 which constitutes our whole intellectual domain. Be 
 it so : but, when saved on this plea, to preserve the 
 balance and interdependence of two co-relatives, 
 the " Absolute " is absolute no more; it is reduced to 
 a term of relation : it loses therefore its exile from 
 thought : its disqualification is cancelled : and the al- 
 leged nescience is discharged. 
 
 So, the same law of thought which warrants the 
 existence, dissolves the inscrutableness, of the Abso- 
 lute. 
 
 What, after all, then is the amount of this terrible 
 nescience, victoriously established by such a flourish 
 of double-edged abstractions? Let not the dazzled 
 observer be alarmed : with all their swift dexterities, 
 these metaphysical whifflers draw no blood : if they do 
 more than beat the air, they cleave only ghostly foes 
 that need no healing and are immortal. It all comes 
 to this ; that we cannot know God out of all relation, 
 apart from his character, apart from his universe, apart 
 from ourselves, vacuum within, vacuum without, 
 and no difference between them, but everywhere a 
 sublime equivalence of being and of blank. Privation 
 of this knowledge we suffer, not in our capacity of 
 ignorant creatures, but in our capacity of intellectual 
 beings ; intelligence itself' consisting in not having 
 
 & 
 
 cognition of such sort : so that, if we had it, we should 
 cease to understand, and pass out of the category of 
 thinking natures altogether. If any one chooses to
 
 186 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 imagine that this would be a promotion, and to feel 
 himself aggrieved by his exclusion from it, far be it 
 from us to disturb so transcendent a grief: but from 
 the common human level his dream of privilege is 
 indistinguishable from the reality of loss, and his ambi- 
 tion of apotheosis seems tantamount to a longing for 
 death. God other than "Absolute," God as related 
 to nature, to humanity, as embracing and quickening 
 the finite world, as the Source of all order, beauty, 
 good, in every aspect which distinguishes the Living 
 from the Existing God, we are not by the hypothe- 
 sis debarred from knowing. This is enough : and 
 every step beyond this would be a step out of knowl- 
 edge into ignorance, a lapse over the brink of reason 
 into unreason. We protest against these relative ap- 
 prehensions being left to us with an apology, and dis- 
 paraged as "regulative knowledge," a kind of pious 
 frauds put upon our nature, falsehoods which it is 
 wholesome for us to believe. Their relativity is a 
 ground of trust, and not of distrust; presenting pre- 
 cisely that union of the Real and the Phenomenal, 
 Being and Genesis, the One and the Many, the divorce 
 of which, in the interest of either, has falsified almost 
 every philosophy. True, God so regarded, will not, 
 in the rigorous metaphysical sense, be absolutely infi- 
 nite. But we know no reason why he should be ; 
 and must leave it to the schoolmen who worship such 
 abstractions to go into mourning at the discovery. 
 
 The doctrine of nescience is further defended by 
 appeal to Spinoza's principle, that to predicate is to 
 limit, " Omnis determinatio est negatio." Whatever 
 you affirm of any subject introduces a boundary into
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAlTII. 189 
 
 its nature, and shuts the door on ;i possibility previ- 
 ously open. How then, it is asked, can the Infinite 
 be the object of thought? To think is mentally to 
 predicate : to predicate is to limit : so that, under the 
 process, the Infinite becomes finite : and to know it is 
 to destroy it. If so, however, the Infinite can have no 
 predicates, none of the marks, that is, or characters 
 of existence, and will be indistinguishable from non- 
 being. To deny it to Thought, yet save it to exist- 
 ence, as Mr. Spencer proposes, is thus impossible. 
 If it is an incognizable, it is also a nonentity. What 
 is intrinsically out of thought is necessarily out of 
 being. 
 
 Or will you look at the Infinite from the affirmative 
 rather than the negative side ; and instead of guarding 
 it from what it must not be, consider what it must 
 comprise and be? Then we shall give just the opposite 
 account of it : ceasing to say that it can have no predi- 
 cates, because no limits, we shall demand for it all 
 predicates, because all phases and possibilities of being. 
 To the Infinite, as unexclusive, every thing affirmative 
 belongs : not only to be, therefore, but to be known ; 
 to subsist within the sphere of intellect as well as in 
 every other sphere. To claim it for Being, yet with- 
 draw it from Thought, is thus again impossible. If 
 it is an entity, it is not an incognizable. The Infinite 
 which is real in existence is possible in cognition. 
 
 We cannot see, therefore, the slightest logical advan- 
 tage in the new subjective atheism over its broader 
 objective counterpart. The denial, for all minds, of 
 any possible knowledge of God, is tantamount to the 
 denial, for him, of real being. Not only do the two
 
 190 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 negations appear to us morally equivalent, with only 
 a tinge perhaps of more reluctant dreariness in that 
 which is at present in vogue ; but they are inseparable 
 Avithout metaphysical contradiction. Mr. Spencer 
 must, it strikes us, concede either more to ontology 
 or less; either fall back on the maxim, "All we know 
 is phenomena ; " or go forward from his assurance that 
 the Infinite Cause is to admit some possible apprehen- 
 sion of what it is. The law of thought which is his 
 warrant for the simple existence does not stop there, 
 but has something to say of the nature too : it is 
 either good for nothing, or good for more than he 
 accepts. Reserving this point for the present, we may 
 exhibit the doctrine in still another light, before taking 
 leave of its metaphysical aspects. 
 
 Every relative disability may be read two ways. A 
 disqualification in the nature of thought for knowing 
 x is, from the other side, a disqualification in the nature 
 of a? for being known. To say then that the First 
 Cause is wholly removed from our apprehension is not 
 simply a disclaimer of faculty on our part : it is a 
 charge of inability against the First Cause too. The 
 dictum about it is this : " It is a Being that may exist 
 out of knowledge, but that is precluded from entering 
 within the sphere of knowledge." We are told in one 
 breath that this Being must be in every sense " perfect, 
 complete, total including in itself all power, and 
 transcending all law" (p. 38); and in another that 
 this perfect and omnipotent One is totally incapable of 
 revealing any one of an infinite store of attributes. 
 Need we point out the contradictions which this posi- 
 tion involves? If you abide by it, you deny the Abso-
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 101 
 
 lute ;iml Infinite in the very net of affirming it ; for, in 
 debarring the First Cause from self-revelation, you 
 impose a limit on its nature. And in the very act of 
 declaiming the First Cause incognizable, you do not 
 permit it to remain unknown. For that only is un- 
 known, of which you can neither affirm nor deny any 
 predicate : here you deny the power of self-disclosure 
 to the "Absolute:" of which therefore something- is 
 known; viz. that nothing can be known! 
 
 It is matter indeed of natural wonder that men Avho, 
 in standing before the First Cause, professedly feel 
 themselves in face of the impenetrable abyss of all 
 possibilities, should take on themselves to expel that 
 one possibility, that the Supreme Reality should be 
 capable of self-revelation. Among the indeterminate 
 cases comprised in their inscrutable abyss they cannot 
 help including this, that the Mysterious Being mm/ 
 be Conscious Mind. Let them deny this, and their 
 profession of impartial darkness becomes an empty 
 affectation : they so far exchange their attitude of sus- 
 pense for one of dogmatism. Let them admit it : and 
 how, with the possibility of God, can they combine r.n 
 impossibility of revelation? May it be that perchance 
 all minds live in presence of the Supreme Mind, source 
 of their own nature and of the nature that surrounds 
 them, yet that he cannot communicate with them, and 
 let them know the affinities between the human and the 
 Divine? Is there a possibility of kindred, yet a 
 necessity of nescience? Wlio is this Uncreated tint 
 can come forth into the field of existence and fill it all, 
 yet by no crevice can find entrance into the field of 
 thought? that can fling the universal order and beauty
 
 192 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 into light and space, yet not tell his idea to a single 
 soul? that can bid the universe into being, yet not 
 say, " Lo ! it is 1 " ? So little credible do we find this 
 combination, that, when we hear men insisting on the 
 dumbness of the Everlasting Cause, we cannot imagine 
 but that the" religious interpretation of the world has 
 already ceased to be open to them ; and that, however 
 they may assume, with Mr. Spencer, a neutral attitude 
 towards the spiritual and the material conceptions of the 
 Ultimate Reality, the controversy has in effect, though 
 perhaps unconsciously, died out for them by prejudg- 
 inent. 
 
 To assure me that some familiar conception is totally 
 impossible, and goes dead against the "first law of 
 thought," is the polite metaphysical way of saying 
 "you are afoul;" and the frequency and gusto with 
 which your men of formulas resort to this euphemism 
 are highly amusing ; and with the timid and self-dis- 
 trustful win doubtless a temporary success. Nobody 
 knew, till Hamilton and Mansel told him, that when- 
 ever he talked of things beginning or ending, of time, 
 of space, of power, all his terms were "inconceivable," 
 and all his propositions " contradictions." This was 
 discouraging : and now Mr. Spencer steps in with a 
 new opprobrium. He has discovered a set of pseudo- 
 idcati, a species of mental impostors, that do somehow 
 turn up in the mind, but have no proper business there, 
 and must be cast out into limbo, or wherever else their 
 3ettlement may be. They include, as might be antici- 
 pated, all the elements of ontological belief, usually 
 referred to an u-prtorl source. They are charged with 
 falsehood, for no other reason that we can discover
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 193 
 
 than that, being symbolical transcripts of sensation, 
 according to the exigencies of our author's psychology, 
 they refuse to acknowledge their parentage, and put 
 on quite independent airs. And they are distinguished 
 from true ideas, as generally the "inconceivable" 
 from the "conceivable," in this, that they do not, like 
 the latter, come before the imaginative or representa- 
 tive faculty. After assuming this test of " true and 
 false," of "clear and obscure," of "thinkable and un- 
 thinkable," and it is the test which Hobbes has 
 bequeathed to his followers, it is all plain-sailing out 
 of the u-pt'iori seas. If, among our mental stores, 
 phenomenal perception, and what grows out of it, may 
 alone be held valid as knowledge, the ideas of reason, 
 with regard to real and ulterior being, are condemned 
 without a hearing as ignorance. Repudiating these 
 one-sided assumptions, we maintain the equal validity 
 of our phenomenal and our ontological apprehensions. 
 
 That all consciousness and thought are relative, is 
 not only true, but a truism. That this law visits us 
 with disability to transcend phenomena is so little true, 
 that it operates as a revelation of what exists beyond. 
 The finite body cut out before our visual perception, 
 or embraced by the hands, lies as an island in the 
 emptiness around, and without comparative reference 
 to this cannot be represented : the same experience 
 which gives us the definite object, gives us also the 
 infinite space: and both terms, the limited appear- 
 ance and the unlimited ground, arc apprehended 
 with equal certitude and clearness, and furnished with 
 names equally susceptible of distinct use in predication 
 and reasoning. The transient successions, for in- 
 
 13
 
 194 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 stance, the strokes of a clock, which we count, 
 present themselves to us as dotted out upon the line 
 of permanent duration ; of which, wrthout them, we 
 should have had no apprehension ; but which, as their 
 condition, is unreservedly known. Time with its one 
 dimension, Space with its three, we are compelled to 
 regard as infinite ; not in the mere subjective sense, 
 that our thought of them suffers no arrest ; but in the 
 objective sense, that they in themselves can have no 
 beginning or end. In these two instances of relation, 
 between a phenomenon given in perception, and an 
 entity as its logical condition, the correlates are on 
 a perfect parity of intellectual validity. You may 
 disparage the underlying ground as " negative : " and 
 negative it is so long as your attention only uses it to 
 pitch on the phenomenon it carries : but this order is 
 reversible at will : and the moment you change the 
 focus of your thought and bring the containing field 
 into your view, your representation of space is not less 
 positive than that of body. Plus and minus are them- 
 selves relatives, and change places according to the 
 starting-point and direction of your measurement. 
 "The darkness," says Malebranche somewhere, "strikes 
 upon our perceptions as well as the light : it effaces, 
 no doubt, the glare of colors ; but produces in its turn 
 effects of its own." You may decry the ideas of the 
 M infinite " and the " eternal " as not " clear : " and clear 
 they are not, if nothing but the mental picture of an 
 outline can deserve that word. But if a thought is 
 clear, when it sits apart without danger of being con- 
 founded with another, when it can exactly keep its own 
 in speech and reasoning, without forfeiture and without
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 195 
 
 encroachment, if, in short, logical clearness consists, 
 not in the idea of a limit, but in the limit of the idea, 
 then no sharpest image of any finite quantity, say, 
 of a circle or an hour, is clearer than the thought of 
 the infinite and the eternal. Or, finally, will you 
 perhaps admit these to their proper honors as mere 
 thoughts, positive thoughts, clear thoughts, but 
 deny to them the character of knowledge? This 
 course is open to you on one condition ; that you re- 
 strict the word " knowledge " to the discrimination of 
 phenomena from one another, and refuse it to the dis- 
 crimination of them from their ground ; arid say, for 
 instance, " I know the moon to be different from the 
 sun ; but I do not know it to be different from the space 
 in which it floats : " or, " I know Caesar's life and date 
 to be other than Seneca's ; but I do not know either 
 from the eternity in which it appears." Can any thing, 
 however, be more arbitrary than such a definition? 
 more repugnant to common sense and common lan- 
 guage? nay, more self-destructive? for only as differ- 
 enced from their common ground can things ever be 
 known as differenced from one another : erase the 
 primary differentiation, and all others are for ever kept 
 out of existence. AVe have no guarantee for any except 
 in the assumed veracity of our perceptive and logical 
 faculties : and that guarantee we have alike for all. 
 We conclude then, on reviewing these examples of 
 Space and Time, that ontological ideas, introducing u.s 
 to certain fixed entities, belong no less to our knowl- 
 edge than scientific ideas of phenomenal disposition and 
 
 O 1 
 
 succession. The two types of cognition are different 
 in this : that the one gives to our apprehension the
 
 196 SCIE.N'CE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 unchangeable constancies of the universe, whatever 
 is, not wluit will appear, and so supplies no after- 
 sight, no foresight, but simply insight : while the other 
 gives us the order and the lines of change ; and so 
 enables us to reproduce the past in thought and antici- 
 pate the future. Both kinds of discernment have the 
 same warrant : both are alike indispensable to the har- 
 mony of Reason with itself and with the world : neither 
 can affect independence of the other: and the attempt 
 to glorify exclusively the characteristic* of either is 
 a mere professional limitation of mind, whether in the 
 priest of Nature or the priest of God. The charge 
 of nescience, advanced on the plea of the relativity of 
 knowledge, is double-edged, and cuts both ways. 
 True it is that the Infinite, discharged of all relation to 
 the Finite, could never come into apprehension ; as, 
 without body, we should not know the truth of space : 
 and that, in the attempt to deal with it absolutely, 
 thought, overleaping its own conditions, is baffled and 
 perplexed. But it is no less true that the Finite, dis- 
 charged of all relation to the Infinite, is incognizable 
 too ; as, without the comprehending space, bodies 
 could not mark out for us their determinate figures and 
 positions : and that, in spite of every vow to ignore all 
 except phenomena, Science is obliged to resume into 
 itself certain metaphysical elements, were it only as 
 the vehicle of description for its own work. On either 
 hand, these are unfruitful propositions. What is the 
 use of telling me that an "Absolute" which came into 
 no relation would be inapprehensible? It is only say- 
 ing that an unmanifested Infinite could never be found 
 out ; that an everlasting silence would be totally inau-
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 197 
 
 dible. Vapid words, in a universe full of visions and 
 of voices ! 
 
 What we have said with regard to Space and Time 
 applies equally to the case of Causation. Here, too, 
 the Finite offered to perception introduces to an Infi- 
 nite supplied by thought. As a definite body reveals 
 also the Space around, and an interrupted succession 
 exhibits the uniform Time beneath, so does the passing 
 phenomenon demand for itself a Power behind : the 
 Space and Time and Power not being part of the thing 
 perceived, but its condition ; guaranteed to us, there- 
 fore, on the warrant, not of Sense, but of Intellect. 
 They are all on the same footing : we think them all 
 by the same necessity : we know them all with the same 
 certainty. Mr. Spencer freely allows that we are obliged 
 to regard every phenomenon as the manifestation of 
 some Power ; that " we are obliged to regard that 
 Power as Omnipresent" (p. 9U) ; that "we are no 
 more able to form a circumscribed idea of Cause than 
 of Space or Time, and \ve are consequently obliged to 
 think of the Cause which transcends our thought as 
 positive though indefinite" (p. 93); that we have a 
 right to trust this demand for originating power ; and 
 that on this reposes our indestructible belief in an 
 ultimate Omnipotent Reality. Here already are several 
 predicates assigned which hardly consist with the proc- 
 lamation that the Primary Existence is wholly unknown : 
 that Being, it seems we may say, is One, Eternal, 
 Ubiquitous, Omnipotent, manifested as Cause in all 
 phenomena. Is there not more explicitness here than 
 could be expected from an entity absolutely latent? 
 But this is not all. Our author further identifies the
 
 108 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 First Cause with what appears in Science under tho 
 name of " Force," and is tracked through the metamor- 
 phoses of physical, chemical, vital, and other phenom- 
 ena. The dynamic principles that we carry into our 
 interpretation of nature, that Force is persistent through 
 all expenditures, and one. under every disguise, arc 
 in truth but the transformed expression of the axiom 
 of ultimate Causation. The primary and secondary 
 agencies being thus merged into one, and conjointly 
 made objects of a-priori apprehension, the next ques- 
 tion naturally is, what in the last resort means this 
 word "Cause"? Pursued backward to its native seat, 
 as a form of the intellect itself, what type does the 
 thought present? Mr. Spencer truly says, "the force 
 by which we ourselves produce changes, and which 
 serves to symbolize the cause of changes in general, 
 is the final disclosure of analysis" (p. 235) : he admits 
 that we cannot match our own voluntary effort against 
 an external force, and regard them as susceptible of 
 a common measure, without, assuming them to be like 
 in kind (pp. 58, 254) : and as "no force save that of 
 which we are conscious during our own muscular efforts 
 is immediately known to us," while "all other force 
 is mediately known," it is clearly the inner volition that 
 serves as prototype of all exterior power, and defines 
 what the intellect intends by the word Cause. Now 
 combine these several propositions. One power we 
 immediately know. That power is Will. Others, if 
 assumed by us, must be assimilated to this. But be- 
 hind every phenomenon we must assume a power. 
 And all such powers are modes of one and the same. 
 And that one is identical with the First Cause and
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 109 
 
 Ultimate Reality of Being. The inference is irresist- 
 ible, that by a fundamental necessity of thought we 
 are constrained to own an ever-living Will, a Personal 
 Agent, as Author and Administrator of the universe. 
 This is precisely what the Theist maintains ; and in- 
 cludes all that he can gather from the bare contem- 
 plation of physical nature, apart from the moral expe- 
 riences and the spiritual history of humanity. Collected 
 from so limited a ground, the ground too least rich in 
 
 O 7 O 
 
 phenomena of the highest expression, it is but a meagre 
 and imperfect form of faith. But still it dissipates the 
 theory of nescience. It vindicates some distinct appre- 
 hensions of the " Supreme Reality." And drawn as it 
 is directly from the statements of an author who con- 
 troverts it, it is a matter of some curiosity to see how 
 he evades the apparent cogency of his own premises. 
 
 He forsakes the line of proof by a very simple device. 
 The likeness between our own force and that which 
 operates around us, though a necessity, is also, he 
 conceives, an illusion of thought : and so we must 
 give up our first natural belief that the universe is 
 at the disposal of a Mind, the Divine counterpart of 
 ours. There is no other conception open to us in our 
 apprehension of outward causality : and yet this con- 
 ception fails, and betrays us into absurdity. How so? 
 Because it implies that the weight which 1 lift with my 
 muscles must, in order to pull against me, be furnished 
 with muscles too : and whatever teaches me that the 
 objects about me are not alive destroys the assumed 
 resemblance between th'e inner and the outer world, 
 The case is thus stated :
 
 200 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 "On lifting a chair, the force exerted we regard as equal 
 to that antagonistic force called the weight of the chair; and 
 we cannot think of these as equal without thinking of them as 
 like in kind ; since equality is conceivable only brtwecn 
 things that are connatural. The axiom that action and 
 re-action are equal and in opposite directions, commonly ex- 
 emplified by this very instance of muscular effort versus 
 weight, cannot be mentally realized on any other condition. 
 Yet. contrariwise, it is incredible that the force as existing iu 
 the chair really resembles the force as present to our minds. 
 It scarcely needs to point out that tli-- weight of the chair pro- 
 duces in us various feelings according as we support it by 
 a single finger, or the whole hand, or the leg; and hence to 
 argue that as it cannot be like all these sensations, there is 
 no reason to believe it like any. It suffices to remark that 
 since the force as known to us is an afte* tiou of consciousness, 
 we cannot conceive the force existing in the chair under the 
 same form with endowing the chair with consciousness. So 
 tl:;.t it is absurd to think of Force as in itself like our sensa- 
 tion of it, and yet necessary so to think of it if we realize it 
 iu consciousness at all" (p. 08). 
 
 There would be something in tliis reasoning, if 
 the muselcs were the Personal Agent disposing of the 
 chair, and their sensations the power he put forth. 
 The causality, however, does not lie in them, but be- 
 hind them ; they are themselves obedient to a mandate 
 from within ; and their sensations, which occur only in 
 the execution of the act, do not even begin till that man- 
 date has given the signal. Were the muscles altogether 
 insensible, the power at head-quarters would not on that 
 account be disqualified for action, or be unconscious 
 of itself. We may entirely discharge out of the account 
 the whole of this merely ministerial apparatus, with
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITlf. 201 
 
 all ils supposable varieties. It is not this which even 
 the simplest individual, be it that small "child" so 
 much dandled by the psychologists, or the everlasting 
 ''peasant" preferred by bachelor philosophers, or the 
 "fetish-worshipper" in favor with Mr. Mill, attri- 
 butes to the external objects acting upon him : and 
 his discovery that they do not possess it disabuses him 
 of no previous idea. What he plants in idea behind 
 the phenomena that strike him is similar, not to his 
 muscles which obey, but to his Will which bids : and 
 of this idea, though it has a history to go through in 
 correspondence with his culture, no progress of reason, 
 we feel assured, will ever disabuse him. At last, as 
 at first, because by a necessity of thought which 
 runs through all experience, he has to think of 
 Causality as meaning Will, and to borrow all his 
 dynamic language, " attraction," " repulsion," " ten- 
 sion," "percussion," "active," "passive," "weak," 
 r strong," "overcome," "resist," from familiar in- 
 stances and conditions of Will. If not, there must 
 be some point and some process for unlearning his 
 original postulate, and substituting some other idea 
 of power. Yet this can never be. For, confessedly, 
 it is beyond the competency of experience, however 
 refined, to disclose any thing but laws: the mystery 
 of force evades the penetration of the observer, and 
 therefore has no presence among the materials of in- 
 ductive generalization : Science did not give it, and 
 Science cannot take it away : it lies on another Held, 
 where the correction or corroboration of phenomenal 
 knowledge can never meet it. Born as a pure intel- 
 lectual datum, it remains among our intellectual re
 
 202 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 serves, withdrawn not only from every .actual, but 
 from every possible contradiction : an indestructible 
 and unalterable postulate, inherent in the very organism 
 of Reason itself. Does this require us then, as our 
 author insists, to " endow the chair with consciousness," 
 and, with Kepler, to set a separate spirit on each 
 planet for its guidance? By no means. The theory 
 of Living Causality involves no such puerilities ; is no 
 more negligent than Materialism itself of the lessons 
 of scientific generalization : only it puts upon them 
 a somewhat different interpretation. On the funda- 
 mental fact to be construed there is sufficient agreement. 
 Undisciplined Man looks on all moving and impressive 
 things as animate ; starts at the spirits in the wind, 
 the rushing water, and the forest gloom ; and feels 
 upon him a host of awful eyes in the watching lights 
 of heaven. Civilized Man goes among these things, 
 and tabulates them all ; takes meteorological notes ; 
 draws up nautical almanacs ; calculates when the tim- 
 ber will become available as coal ; and in a few weeks 
 reduces even a new comet to rules, and publishes its 
 road, in the Times newspaper. Wherein consists the 
 essence of this change? Will you say, "Nature which 
 we supposed alive at the beginning, we have found at 
 last to be dead " ? We should rather reply, " Nature 
 Avhich in our childhood seemed charged with the caprices 
 of a thousand spirits, has become, for our maturity, 
 organ of the faithful thought of One." The widening 
 circuit of law, the merging of anomalies, the ever- 
 growing tissue of analogies, do not touch the inner 
 nature of causality : they are but the spread of unity 
 where plurality was before. So long as the provinces
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 of the visible world, and the corresponding sets of 
 phenomena, struck our perception one by one, they 
 needed for their explanation a god a piece : when two 
 were fused together, the separation of their causes 
 lapsed as well : and when, by the apprehension of 
 some universal law, the great kosmical conception, 
 embracing heaven and earth in a common order, as- 
 sumed consistency, the miscellaneous crowd of spirits 
 necessarily disappeared, in favor of the One Mind 
 that manifestly thought out the whole. By this 
 change, the provincial departments of nature, formerly 
 invested with independent life, fell into subordination ; 
 became simply instrumental; and, when taken 
 apart for separate contemplation, could reveal mctliod 
 only, not causality, which had now retired into the 
 unitary background. The notion of distinct laics, 
 mechanical, chemical, vital, mere modes of causal 
 procedure, succeeded to that of distinct personal 
 agents, and furnished lines of demarcation, often 
 entirely new, between field and field of nature : but as 
 this notion does absolutely nothing either to supersede 
 or to satisfy the axiom of causation, the personal agents 
 expelled by it leave a function unfulfilled. That func- 
 tion, vacated by their many wills, is taken up and 
 absorbed into One ; the singleness of the world express- 
 ing the singleness of its Cause. The early identifica- 
 tion then of Causality and Will can never be disproved, 
 and is never lost : the spiritual element is not dis- 
 charged by any discovery of Laws : dislodged from this 
 or that detached seat, it simply ceases to be scattered 
 and becomes concentrated: and as Science weaves phe- 
 nomena into unity, Religion blends the Divine Powers
 
 204 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 into One. A Vc arc told it is " Fetishism " to look on 
 the world as instinct with Living Mind. If so, it is at 
 least that imperishable clement which Fetishism has in 
 common with the highest Theism. AVe are told, it 
 is the effect of Philosophy to exorcise every spirit from 
 the universe, and reduce it to an aggregate of uncon- 
 scious laws. If so, it is at least that effect of Philoso- 
 phy which it shares with mere stupefying Custom ; 
 an infirmity of technical habit, not any vision of 
 what is special to its field, but an acquired blindness 
 to what remains beyond. There is doubtless a differ- 
 ent reading of the world present to the mind of the 
 man of Science, and to the soul of the Poet and the 
 Prophet ; the one spelling out the order of its phe- 
 nomena ; the other, the meaning of its beauty, the 
 mystery of its sorrow, the sanctity of its Cause. But 
 seeing that it is the same world which faces both, and 
 that the eyes arc human into which it looks, we can 
 never doubt that the two readings have their intrinsic 
 harmonics, and that the articulate thought of the one 
 will fall at last into rhythm with the solemn music of 
 the other. 
 
 On full survey of the logical conditions of this great 
 problem, it seems to us that Mr. Spencer has alighted 
 on the least tenable of all the possible positions. AVe 
 can understand the Positivist with whom laws are ul- 
 timate, and who turns causation out of doors into 
 meta physic night. We can understand the Theist, who 
 says that, on whatever ground you know the First 
 Cause to exist, on the same ground you know that 
 Cause to be a free Mind. But we cannot understand 
 the intermediate position, which allows a field to
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 205 
 
 Ontology, but condemns it to perpetual barrenness ; 
 which admits and demonstrates the nn ton, but meets the 
 ti ton with only negations and despair. To prepare 
 the way for this paradox, both the Theistic and the 
 Atheistic doctrines are charged with contradictions which 
 they do not contain. The self -existence, for instance, 
 which the latter ascribes to the universe, and the former 
 to God, is declared to be " rigorously inconceivable," 
 because tr to conceive existence through infinite past- 
 time, implies the conception of infinite post-time, which 
 is an impossibility" (p. 31). A Ye cannot answer for 
 the consciousness of others : and in the face of this 
 frequent assertion we hardly like to speak for ourselves. 
 Yet after repeated reflection we cannot at all detect 
 this alleged "impossibility." To form an image of any 
 infinitude, be it of time or space or number, to go 
 mentally through it by successive steps of representa- 
 tion, is indeed impossible ; not less so than to trav- 
 erse it in our finite perception and experience. But to 
 have the thouyltt of it, as an idea of the Reason, not of 
 the phantasy, and assign that thought a constituent place 
 in valid beliefs and consistent reasoning, appears to us 
 not only possible, but inevitable : and the large part it 
 plays in mathematical science alone suffices to vindicate 
 its worth for the intellect. So far as t/tis difficulty 
 goes, "self-existence" appears to us perfectly suscep- 
 tible, and equally susceptible, of intelligible predication 
 regarding the universe and regarding God. Xot that 
 the two assertions the Atheist's and the Theist's-- 
 remain at all upon the same footing bevond the circle 
 of this particular criticism, and are equally free from 
 other difficulties attaching to the claim of self-existence.
 
 206 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 Mr. Spencer treats the two cases as parallel throughout, 
 and charges it on Theists as a gross inconsistency that 
 they demand for their Ultimate Reality the very attri- 
 bute which they forbid the Atheist to affirm of his. 
 " Those who cannot conceive a self-existent universe ; 
 and who therefore assume a creator as the source of the 
 universe ; take for granted that they can conceive a self- 
 existent creator" (p. 35). "If we admit that there can 
 be something uncaused, there is no reason to assume a 
 cause for any thing" (p. 37). Far from admitting 
 this indiscriminating doctrine, that self-existence may go 
 either everywhere or nowhere, we submit the distinction 
 that while, by the laws of thought, phenomena demand 
 causation, entities dispense with it : and it is, we pre- 
 sume, in obedience to this law, that our author himself 
 plants his " Absolute Reality " behind the scenery and 
 changes of the world. It is not existence, but entrance 
 upon existence and exit thence, that must be referred 
 to an originating power. And inasmuch as the uni- 
 verse resolves itself into a perpetual genesis, a vast 
 aggregate and history of phenomena, the Theist is per- 
 fectly justified in treating it as disqualified for self- 
 existence ; and in passing behind it for the Supreme 
 Entity that needs no Cause. ^This distinction is no 
 invention of mere theology : it is recognized in other 
 fields. No one asks a cause for the Space of the uni- 
 verse : and it depends on the theory we may form of its 
 J\l alter, whether that too is excepted from the category 
 of originated things. But everywhere the line is drawn 
 upon the same principle ; that entities may have self- 
 existence ; phenomena must have their Cause. 
 
 It is an old'reproach against gross forms of religion,
 
 SCIENCE, XESCIEXCE, AND FAITH. 20i 
 
 that they teach worshippers to suppose God " alloyelhei 
 such a One as themselves.'' This reproach is now 
 a favorite weapon, used by the nescient philosophy, 
 against those who worship a Divine nature in any 
 respect such a one as their own : against all therefore 
 who see above them any Divine object at all ; for 
 plainly, in the total absence of common attributes, no 
 apprehension, no reverence, no sympathy, no suspicion 
 of existence even, would be possible. Unless man is the 
 monopolist of mind in the universe, and it culminates in 
 him, higher intelligences, however they transcend him, 
 must resemble him up to the extreme limits of his 
 thought ; and to take the rudimentary experiences of 
 spiritual faculty in himself as his base of conception for 
 the Universal Mind is no more presumptuous than from 
 his paper diagrams and calculations to construe the 
 geometry of the heavens, and lay down the orbits of 
 the stars. It is singular that an author who both insists 
 on the necessary belief of a First Cause, and declares 
 that the only causation we know is our own, should also 
 write as follows in derision of the theologians : 
 
 " If for a moment \ve made the grotesque supposition that 
 the tickings arid other movements of a watch constituted 
 a kind of consciousness ; and that a watch possessed of .such a 
 consciousness insisted on regarding the watchmaker's actions 
 as determined, like its own. by springs and escapements ; we 
 should simply complete a parallel of which religious teachers 
 think much. And were we to suppose that a watch not only 
 formulated the cause of its existence in these mechanical 
 terms, but held that watches were bound out of reverence 
 so to formulate this cause, and even vituperated, as atheistic 
 watches, any that did not venture so to formulate it; we
 
 208 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 shouM merely illustrate the presumption of theologians by 
 carrying their own argument a step further" (p. 111). 
 
 Standing as it does for i "theologian," this is of 
 course meant to be a great fool of :v watch. Yet, till 
 it gets excited and begins to "vituperate," its "first 
 experiments in thinking" do not seem so much amiss. 
 For do they not contrive to hit somehow upon the exact 
 truth ? Give the " springs and escapements " their 
 " grotesque " change of meaning and function ; let them 
 cease to be "mechanical," and become vital and mental ; 
 let the watch, in virtue of them, be able to think and 
 will, and raise questions of causality : and then, when 
 it guesses its own origin from a being similarly gifted 
 with rational and voluntary powers, does it not pitch 
 upon the fact? Had it not a watchmaker? and was he 
 not furnished with just the conscious faculties which 
 had been newly awakened within itself ? The endow 
 mcnts by which he made it, are they not like those by 
 which it found him out? To us, we must confess, the 
 " springs and escapements " of our author's satire seem 
 a little out of order ; and the logical " ticking " of the 
 watch less at fault than the reasoning which makes fun 
 of them.* 
 
 If of such type be the presumption of theologians, it 
 is at least a happy presumption, in that it solves its 
 
 * The watch is so evidently in the right, that it is not cosy to explain 
 where the point of the illustration is supposed to lie. If the absurdity be 
 meant to consist in this, that the watch attributes to its maker, not simply 
 faculties, but in addition oryim like its own, the " simile " breaks down in 
 its application: for no theologian ascribes to God any thing analogous to the 
 human organization, of muscles, brain, nerves, &c. ; or fails to guard 
 expressly against any intrusion of " parts and passions " into the idea of 
 him.
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 209 
 
 problem truly. To curry out the illustration :v little 
 further, suppose, as the first fruit of their much think 
 ing, a dispute and jumble of cross-tickings among the 
 watches ; and that one, attached to the " know-noth- 
 ing " party, faced full upon our first reasoner and 
 said: 'Do not tell me about a watchmaker: such 
 person is impossible, except in the dreams of your 
 miserable egotism. Some Cause certainly you and 
 I must have had : but if every creature is to set up 
 a Maker like itself, where shall we be? You and I can 
 do a little thinking, no doubt ; but that is because we 
 have wheels ; it is a kind of ticking they have. We 
 can also choose this way or that ; but only because 
 there is an elastic thread in us that goes tight and loose 
 by turns. We fancy ourselves living, and seem to go 
 of ourselves : but if you attend to the winding-up that 
 happens to us, you will see it is only a mechanical force 
 turning itself into vital. So, for us to be alive and 
 knowing, there is no need for the Cause of us to be so. 
 No, no : your watchmaker-theory is too mechanical for 
 me : watch-evolution is better, as far as it goes. " I 
 suppose we grew." But of the Heal Cause the only 
 thing I know is, that it cannot be a watchmaker : it 
 cannot be in any respect like us : it cannot think : it 
 cannot will : it cannot live : and to believe any thing 
 of the sort is " transcendent audacity." ' Is this nescient 
 watch entitled, merely by its humor for negations, to 
 the praise of eminent modesty, and also to the preroga- 
 tive of high rebuke? To drop the illustration, does 
 a profession of ignorance, does an immunity from 
 theological belief, confer a right to stigmatize the faith 
 of others as " impieties "? 
 
 14
 
 210 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 
 
 Such censure, however, does the sensitive zeal of 
 Mr. Spencer administer to us for irreverent speech in 
 our pages* regarding the Supreme Cause ; speech so 
 irreverent as to cast into the shade the presumptuous 
 fellow who lamented that he had not been consulted at 
 the making of the world. What is the sacrilegious 
 violence, the Titanic scaling of the heavens, that 
 calls down this lightning of reproof ? Simply the 
 utterance of these three thoughts : that, though Sense 
 may vary, Reason must be uniform in all beings : that 
 the uncreated nature conceded universally to space it 
 was difficult to deny to matter in its Primary Qualities : 
 and that, as Mind must be one, so must Righteousness 
 be one, whether in Heaven or upon earth. As our 
 author himself maintains that Matter can have no 
 genesis and suffer no destruction, it cannot be the 
 second of these positions that offends him. The first 
 declares precisely what the most calm and cautious of 
 modern savans, Oersted, wrote a treatise to establish, 
 the Unity of Reason throughout the universe ; the 
 ubiquity of space and time securing the relations of 
 measure and number everywhere ; and all other knowl- 
 edge being entangled with this constant element. The 
 third declares the corresponding Moral principle, 
 the Unity of Goodness, the persistency of Right, 
 the identity of Real Excellence, from sphere to sphere 
 of character. Is it "audacity," is it "irreverent," to 
 apply these principles to the Highest of Spiritual Na- 
 tures? Then it is "audacious" and "irreverent" to 
 own him as Mind, or speak of any Divine Righteous- 
 ness at all : for to do so is to assume a constant essence 
 
 * See the Kssay on Nature and God, J>- 121.
 
 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AND FAITH. 211 
 
 embodied in these words. Mr. Spencer's conditions 
 of pious worship are hard to satisfy : there must bo 
 between the Divine and human no communion of 
 thought, no relations of conscience, no approach 
 of affection, no presence of Living- God with living 
 soul: to the jealous prophet of an empty "Absolute " 
 these things are all "impieties." And the "true 
 religion " which condemns them consists in " the con- 
 sciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our 
 highest duty to regard that through which all things 
 exist as The Unknowable" (p. 113). When we ask 
 against whom, what dear object of sacred loyalty, our 
 grievous irreverence has been committed, the name of 
 this blank abstraction is given in. Far be it from us 
 to deal lightly with the sense of Mystery. It mingles 
 largely with all devout apprehension, and is the great 
 redeeming power that purifies the 'intellect of its 
 egotism and the heart of its pride. But you cannot 
 constitute a Religion out of mystery alone, any more 
 than out of knowledge alone : nor can you measure 
 the relation of doctrines to humility and piety by the 
 mere amount of conscious darkness which thev leave. 
 All worship, being directed on what is above, us and 
 transcends our comprehension, stands in presence of 
 a mystery. But not all that stands before a mystery 
 is worship. The abyss must not be one of total gloom, 
 of neutral possibilities, of hidden glories or hid- 
 den horrors, we know not which, of perhaps the 
 secure order of perfect Thought, or, equally perhaps, 
 the seething forces of a universe fatefully and blindly 
 born. Such a pit of indeterminate contingencies will 
 bend no head, and melt no eye, that may turn to it.
 
 212 SCIENCE, NESCIENCE, AM) FAITH. 
 
 Some rays of clear light must escape 'rum it, some 
 visions of solemn beauty gleam within it, ere the 
 darkness itself can be "visible" enough to deliver its 
 awfulness upon the soul. Without positive apprehen- 
 sions of a better than our best, of a Heal that dwarfs 
 our Ideal, of a Life, a Thought, a Righteousness, 
 a Love, that are the Infinite to our Finite, there 
 is nothing to revere, nothing to decide between despair 
 and trust. To fling us into bottomless negation is to 
 drown us in mystery and leave us dead. True rever- 
 ence can breathe and see only on condition of some 
 mingling and alternation of light and darkness, of 
 inner silence and a stir of upper air. Nor do we 
 believe that any of the .appropriate effects of " true 
 Religion " can outlive the simple trust in a Personal 
 Ruler of the universe and human life.
 
 213 
 
 HANSEL'S LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.* 
 
 THE Canon of Salisbury must have entertained a 
 strange idea of the exigencies of the orthodox Christian 
 faith, when he provided it, by bequest of his estates, 
 with a fresh defence every year till the day of judg- 
 ment. To the Aberdeen merchant whose munificence 
 evoked Archbishop Simmer's Records of Creation 
 and Mr. Thompson's Christian Theism, it seemed 
 sufficient if a new buttress were added, or a new 
 approach were opened, to the edifice every forty years. 
 Even at this rate the pure gospel must become coated 
 over, like the focus of a labyrinth, with excessive pro- 
 tection, or be accessible, like an Egyptian sanctuary, 
 through an endless propyhcum. But if Oxford is to 
 widen its zone of " evidences " just forty times as fast, 
 and annually drive back the lines of "heretics and 
 schismatics," it is alarming to think how the little 
 oratory of true worship will lie in the midst of a Rus- 
 sian empire of demonstration ; with certain proof of one 
 text at least, that scarcely will "the world itself contain 
 
 * The Limits of IteligioiiR Thought examined in Eight Lectures, preached 
 before the University of Oxford, in the year U5.S, on the Foundation of the 
 late l!ev. John Hampton, M.A., Canon of Salisbury. l!y Henry Lon^neviile 
 Mansel, 15.I)., Header in Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy at MHgdalei. 
 College; Tutor and lute Fellow of St. John's College. London: Murray 
 1S68. 
 
 National lieview, January, 1859
 
 214 M ANSEL'S LIMITS or 
 
 the books that have been written." To judge, however, 
 from the seventy years or so that have elapsed since the 
 foundation, the Bampton Lectures are not unlikely to 
 melt into oblivion at one end as fast as they come into 
 existence at the other. In proportion to the number 
 of eminent names that appear in the series, including 
 Heber, Milinan, Whately, Hampden, and Thompson, 
 it is remarkable how few of the volumes can be re- 
 garded as permanent enrichments of our theological 
 literature. The nomination to the lectureship seems 
 to oppress the natural forces of even strong minds ; to 
 reduce genius and learning to commonplace, if it does 
 not tempt them into heresy. In a few exceptional 
 instances, as Bishop Ilampden's volume on the 
 Scholastic Philosophy, the series illustrates the pain- 
 ful cost at which reputations arc won in theology ; in 
 many more it shows the facility with Avhieh they may 
 be lost. Among the recent annual occupants of St. 
 Mary's pulpit have been two accomplished logicians, 
 Provost Thompson and Dr. Mansel ; but. the Lectures 
 on the Atonement had no trace of intellectual identity 
 with the lucid and comprehensive Outline of the La^vs 
 of Thought; and now the acute and well-read author 
 of the Prolegomena Logica gives us, on the greatest of 
 subjects, a book which, in spite of its careful elaboration 
 and literary skill, will probably convince no one but 
 himself, and be felt by many of his best readers to 
 unsettle the very bases it was written to establish. 
 
 There are two ways in which you may conduct a 
 process of religious persuasion. You may appeal di- 
 rectly to the sources of spiritual conviction in the human 
 mind, and endeavor to awaken the mood and present
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 215 
 
 the thoughts, from which belief in Divine things be- 
 comes conscious and distinct. Or you may think it 
 needless thus to begin at the beginning, and, taking the 
 matter up at a later stage, may seek to ward off and 
 remove objections by which the springs of faith have 
 lost their action. The former method is creative and 
 sympathetic ; the latter is corrective and antagonistic. 
 The one develops what is latent ; the other suppresses 
 what is obtrusive. The one rests in affirmation ; the 
 other negatives denial. By the rules of logic these two 
 methods ought to be equivalents in validity ; and in the 
 treatment of any subject purely intellectual they would 
 actually be so. But religious faith, once broken by 
 logical doubt, no logical refutation, it is probable, ever 
 restored ; so long as its inner ground remains unen- 
 larged, so long as no new field of moral consciousness 
 is opened, the mere dialectic discussion of data grown 
 ineffectual must remain, we believe, without result. 
 This, indeed, is only a consequence of the essential 
 difference between a philosophy and a religion. In 
 the apprehension of our Divine relations the logical 
 faculty has but a secondary function, to justify, to 
 reconcile, to organize, to unfold certain given convic- 
 tions ; and is misapplied in the attempt to evoke or 
 re-instate what is not there. Hence it is that, in many 
 a mind, a mass of sceptic clouds, charged with thunders 
 of denial, will cling steadfast to its cold heights against 
 your keenest blasts of argument ; and then, by some 
 unnoticed change in the climate of the soul, will silently 
 disperse. And hence also it is that men who have got 
 rid of their own scepticism are so seldom able to shake 
 other people's. To their old companions in doubt, they
 
 216 M ANSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 stem to have deserted their c:un[> by a mere spring of 
 caprice ; and they arc themselves disappointed, when 
 they would account for their altered position, that they 
 cannot trace the approach to it by a more intelligible 
 path. They find themselves using to the disgust of 
 their associates the very same evidences which used 
 to affect them with ennui or contempt ; and from the 
 refutations which once appeared demonstrative some 
 secret cause seems to have drawn all the pith .away. 
 The removal into a higher region of belief is seldom 
 effected by retracing the logical staircase which brought 
 us to a lower ; but rather by flinging away some de- 
 taining weights, and passing with spontaneous ascent 
 into congenial altitudes. 
 
 From insensibility to this fact, theologians greatly 
 overrate the power of mere critical refutation directed 
 against heretical doubt. They fancy that it must undo 
 in the sceptic the process which it seems to render 
 impossible to themselves ; and when a book like But- 
 ler's Analogy appears, they regard the orthodox case 
 as complete, and its triumph secure, except with the 
 Avilful or the stupid. The clerical pride in that inge- 
 nious work, the constancy with which its arguments are 
 reproduced, the exultation with which its dilemma is 
 presented to every opponent, curiously contrast with 
 its utter inefficacy upon the minds it was intended to 
 influence, and show how wide the chasm which sepa- 
 rates the systematic divine from the troubled hearts lie 
 has to help out of their perplexities. Who ever heard 
 of a Deist turned into Christian by reading the Amdo- 
 gy? or of a Christian brought by it into higher con- 
 ceptions of his religion ? Its whole force is expended
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 217 
 
 in baffling simple Theism, or any Christianity that 
 assumes it, and compelling you to take either more 
 
 than this or less than this, to go on to orthodoxy or 
 
 fall back on atheism. Equally admired as a logical 
 feat by sceptics who strain at a gnat and dogmatists 
 who swallow a camel, it hurts and browbeats every 
 intermediate feeling ; and even where it carries the 
 intellect, docs so by perplexing the moral sense, and 
 reducing reverence to lower terms. That this fatal 
 tendency belongs to the very essence of the argument, 
 will appear from the barest sketch of its structure. 
 
 It is altogether an argumentiun ad hominem, ad- 
 dressed, on behalf of ecclesiastical Christianity, to the 
 believer in simple Theism. He is taken up on his own 
 ground ; and nothing more is asked from him at the 
 outset than he is accustomed to allow, that the world 
 and human life evidence the existence and exemplify 
 the moral government of an Infinite and Holy God. 
 Go with me this one mile, says Butler, and I will 
 compel you to go twain ; resting with me at last in the 
 assurance that the scheme of Redemption, as orthodox 
 men understand it, has the same Author as the scheme 
 of Creation. For not a questionable feature can you 
 name in my theology which has not its exact counter- 
 part in yours. It is needless for me to deny or explain 
 the difficulties ; it is enough that I retort them, and 
 show that you also are in the same case. Do you 
 object to the miraculous origin of Revelation? I 
 remind you of the miraculous origin of Nature. Are 
 you repelled by the mystery of the Incarnation? It is 
 no darker than any other union of the Infinite with the 
 Finite, of spiritual freedom with physical necessity.
 
 218 HANSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 Are you shocked at the notion of hereditary corruption? 
 What say you, then, to the natural entail of disease 
 and character? Is it incredible that the punishment of 
 the guilty should be ransomed by anguish to the inno- 
 cent? I refer you to the whole history of human life, 
 where all redemptions are vicarious, and the best men 
 pay in sacrifice and sorrow for the deliverance of the 
 worse. If, in the face of these difficulties, you can hold 
 to your Natural Religion, why should they disturb your 
 acceptance of a Revelation to which they still adhere? 
 If the two schemes come from the same Author, what 
 more likely than that they should exhibit the sumo 
 features? 
 
 This argument, it is evident, far from relieving any 
 perplexity, lets it lie in order to balance it by another. 
 It duplicates the sense of painful embarrassment, by 
 detecting the same repulsions in the sceptic's residuary 
 belief which have already determined him to partial 
 unbelief. So far as the. reasoning succeeds, it is not by 
 lightening objections in the ecclesiastical scale, but 
 by weighting them more heavily in the theistical ; and 
 the only new feeling it can give to an opponent is this, 
 that however ill he may think of other people's God. he 
 has no reason to think better of his own. If he is 
 driven to accept a scheme of doctrine on this ground, 
 he surrenders his higher sentiment to a lower necessity, 
 and betrays the devoutness of his faith from shame at a 
 logical reproach. 
 
 The cogency of this reasoning appears to us not less 
 questionable than its piety. ' Granting even that every 
 ugly feature found in the received "scheme of redemp- 
 tion" may be refound in the "scheme of creation," we
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 219 
 
 submit that it occupies a totally different place in the 
 two, constituting the very text and substance of 
 the one, and only, as it were, a foot-note in an appendix 
 of the other. In the constitution of the world, those 
 parts and arrangements which perplex our sense of the 
 Divine justice and goodness are insignificant exceptions 
 in a grand and righteous whole ; and the gloom they 
 would occasion, did they stand alone, is lost in a "more 
 exceeding glory." They do not speak the essence and 
 spirit of the system ; they are the silent enigmas that 
 lie out of relation to it ; and arc superable by faith only 
 from their relative unimportance. It is otherwise with 
 the doctrines by which the creeds offend the moral sense 
 and the natural pieties : the hereditary curse of sin and 
 ruin; the eternal punishment of helpless incapacity; 
 the conveyance of an alien holiness by imputation, 
 and the transfer of an infinite penalty from an offending 
 race to a saving God; these are no exceptional inci- 
 dents in the orthodox scheme, but its organic members, 
 its very plan and life, the only thing it has to offer in 
 exemplification of the character of God. These arc not 
 the w difficulties " of its " revelation," but the whole of 
 it; if these are not revealed, its advocates will tell 
 you, nothing is revealed ; and a theology that omits 
 them wants "the essentials" of the Christian faith. 
 Thus the darkness, the negations, the sorrows of Natu- 
 ral Religion are made, not simply to re-appear in this 
 Christianity, but to constitute it and be the only soul it 
 has ; while the illuminated side of theism suffers eclipse 
 and falls into shadow as a "non-essential." This inver- 
 sion in the proportion of light to gloom on passing from 
 the one system to the other appears to us utterly to
 
 220 MANSKL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 vitiate the conclusion from their Anally; indeed, in 
 strictness, to destroy the Analogy itself. 
 
 Nor is this the only fallacy involved in Butler's rea- 
 soning. His fiindainen(il maxim, that "Revelation and 
 nature, having the same Author, may be expected to 
 exhibit the same features " may he admitted, until lie 
 adds, " and therefore to contain the same difficulties" 
 There is, we suppose, some limit to the resemblance 
 which may he reasonably looked for between the two 
 systems. No one's anticipations would be satisfied by 
 their being perfectly alike, each, in its disclosures, 
 an exact fac-simile of the other. And if so, if the 
 presumption be irresistible in favor of some difference 
 in the midst of the visible affinity, where should we 
 fitly seek for the lines of divergence? Surely the very 
 antithesis, " Natural" "Revealed" is an index to 
 the true seat of contrast. Precisely what Nature hides, 
 is Inspiration given to unveil ; it is where the one is 
 silent that the other has to speak ; and only in so far as 
 the first leaves us in the dimness of perplexity does the 
 second vouchsafe its light. The "difficulties," therefore, 
 of unaided Theism are exactly what we should not 
 expect to find over again in a religion sent to our 
 rescue ; and just in proportion as we do so, docs the 
 gift forfeit its character as a "Revelation," and remain 
 undiflfcrenced from our prior darkness. To insist that 
 the universe and the gospel come from the same Author, 
 jind to forget that they contemplate different ends, 
 supplementary of each other, is to do violence to all 
 laws of rational presumption. 
 
 We are far from saying that there is any thing incon- 
 ceivable in a partial revelation, which shall leave many
 
 f If 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT?, 221 
 
 obscurities not cleared up : nor (Lire we prescribe, by 
 any a-priori rule, how much must be given, and how 
 much left, i We only say that it is the essence of 
 revelation to dissipate darkness ; that whatever it does, 
 be it little or be it much, must be of this kind ; that, 
 though it may let old perplexities lie unsolved, it con- 
 tradicts its nature if it introduces new ones ; and that 
 as its very idea and aim is to give the key and method 
 of the Divine administration to those who were in 
 danger of missing its spirit amid conflicting details, 
 the antecedent probability is extreme in favor of a lu- 
 minous simplicity, and against its reproducing the iden- 
 tical riddles on which it takes compassion. 
 
 We well know that to question Butler's perfection is, 
 in the eyes of churchmen, little short of the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost. We can honestly say that it is not 
 without trying hard to believe in him, and not without 
 admiring recognition of his merits as an ethical thinker, 
 that we find his theology, as expressed in his great 
 work, oppressive to the religious feeling and unsound 
 in its logical elaboration. This being the case, it is 
 not surprising that Dr. Mansel's book gives us just the 
 same experience : for it is essentially an adaptation of 
 the same argument to the altered conditions of modern 
 philosophy. The chief difference is the following. 
 Butler concerned himself with the outward constitution 
 of things in both the spheres which he compared, 
 with the actual laws and arrangcn.enis of the world 
 on the one hand, the organic facts and system of 
 redemption on the other. For everv thing apparently 
 objectionable in the latter he was readv with some cor- 
 responding ill look iu the former ; and having set the
 
 222 MAXSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 deformities in equilibrium, there he left them to cancel 
 each other. How far they are real or not is indifferent 
 to his reasoning, which dwells only on their parallelism, 
 not on their intrinsic validity. He no further accounts 
 for them than by referring to the small measure of our 
 present faculty as applied to the immensity of the Divine 
 scheme ; and supposes that they would disappear, even 
 from our view, were our horizon enlarged, and a wider 
 survey obtained over the relations of tilings. Dr. 
 Mansel, on the other hand, rests nothing on the ob- 
 jective analogy of natural and supernatural arrange- 
 ments, and every thing on the subjective incapacity of 
 the intellect for dealing with either : his plea is, not 
 that God has set similar puzzles in the world as in the 
 gospel, but that man brings the same logical disquali- 
 fication to both. It matters not, therefore, in his argu- 
 ment, what the particular adjustments of nature or 
 doctrines of Scripture may be : change them ever so 
 much, on this side or on that, they would suit us no 
 better. Our difficulties are not in the things, but in 
 ourselves; not matters of degree, brooding heavily 
 here and vanishing there, and variable with our oppor- 
 tunities ; but, being carried about with us in the verv 
 structure of our faculties, are constant for every pos- 
 sible system, and never short of irremediable contra- 
 diction. That the rationalistic critique of the orthodox 
 faith is successful in finding insuperable inconsistencies, 
 is not denied ; but you have only, it is said, to 
 apply the same logical experiment to any religious 
 philosophy whatsoever, and it will equally disappear 
 under the process. Thought lies under a fatal dis- 
 ability with regard to Divine things, and is doomed
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 223 
 
 to frame its religion out of hopelessly incompatible 
 belief's. 
 
 There is something very tempting to a reasoner in a 
 principle of this kind, the discovery of a subjective 
 incompetence. It does great execution on very easy 
 
 terms. It saves all trouble of external reconnoitring? 
 
 ^5 
 
 and comparison of evidence, and serves for every case 
 alike. It despatches all enemies with one instrument : 
 a sort of unicorn polemic that, like the beast in the book 
 of Daniel, " pushes " impartially against all the cardinal 
 points. Dr. Mansel, accordingly, by a single opera- 
 tion, clears the field of all opponents at once ; he has 
 only to wave his metaphysical wand, and pronounce his 
 universal incantation, and they turn into phantoms, and 
 disappear into his appendix; a miscellaneous prison- 
 house, where all evil spirits are reserved for judgment. 
 There would seem to be some little difference between 
 the springs of doubt in ethical minds like Theodore 
 Parker's or Francis Newman's, and in mystical, like 
 Bruno and Schelling, between the akosmism of 
 Spinoza and the atheism of Comte, between the 
 historical scepticism of Strauss or Baur and the specu- 
 lative dialectic of Hegel, between the business-like 
 rationalism of the Socini and the impersonal theology 
 of Schleiermachcr : and he indeed must be a fortunate 
 divine who has found an answer that will serve for all. 
 The danger of such a comprehensive refutation always 
 is, lest it should inadvertently include yourself. It is 
 difficult to set so large an appetite to work, and stand 
 yourself out of reach of its voracity. And we have 
 serious fears that Dr. Mansel must sooner or later full 
 n victim to the hunger of his own loiiic.
 
 221 M ANSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 The mighty spell which is to paralyze all heretical 
 critics at a stroke is no other than Sir William Hamil- 
 ton's principle, that the Infinite cannot be known, 
 because to know is to discriminate, and what is dis- 
 criminated is finite ; or, again, to state the matter in 
 another form, that the Absolute cannot be known, 
 because to know is to apprehend relations, and what 
 is related is not absolute. The rule may be expressed 
 in the terms of various other antitheses : that thought, 
 as such, can deal only with that which is conditioned, 
 and which is plural; and must therefore find uncon- 
 ditioned and unitary being inaccessible. This inability 
 to think or apprehend, except by relation and differ- 
 ence, is assumed to be a human limitation of faculty, 
 a provincial incompetency, a negation of mental light 
 rnd power. And the realm from which it excludes 
 u> is precisely, we are told, the religious realm : for 
 God is that infinite, absolute, unconditioned unity, the 
 knowledge of whom contradicts the very nature of 
 thought. Hence there can be no philosophy of reli- 
 gion. Every attempt to construct such a system has 
 to substitute spurious counterfeits of the genuine Divine 
 essentials : for positive "Infinitude," the simply Indefi- 
 nite; for the "Absolute" per sc, the mere ground- 
 term of a Relation ; for the " Unconditioned," the 
 conditioning antecedent. Not only are these ambitious 
 impostures in contradiction with the legitimate originals 
 (the "indefinite," for instance, being susceptible of 
 increase, while the "Infinite" is not); but they are 
 themselves only illusions, negations of thought rather 
 than thoughts, the mental background on which our 
 positive conceptions rise and display themselves. No
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 225 
 
 ingenuity can avail to rescue us from this inherent 
 disqualification : no spasmodic spring can carry us over 
 the chasm that parts our intellect from all divine knowl- 
 edge : no cautious steps and steady eye can find a 
 bottom to the cleft between. A critique of religion is 
 impossible to a mind which is condemned by its consti- 
 tution to a faith composed of contradictions. 
 
 In order to show the different forms in which these 
 inevitable contradictions crop up, our author reviews, 
 first, the metaphysical systems which form themselves, 
 like Spinoza's and Hegel's, by evolution from the su- 
 preme terms of thought, the Infinite, the Absolute, 
 the Causal, as their data, and endeavor from this 
 ontological beginning to find a deductive path into anil 
 through the phenomenal world of nature and humanity : 
 and then, the Psychological systems which, inversely, 
 commence from the laws of human consciousness, 
 the sense of dependence, the belief of origination, the 
 feeling of obligation, and attempt thence to explore 
 a passage into the hyperphysical and divine world. In 
 the former, the finite can never attain to its rights or at 
 all emerge from the pantheistic whole ; nor can any 
 predicates be attached to the Infinite : for, on the 
 principle that omnix determinatio est nef/fttiu, it parts 
 with its essence bv gaining an attribute, and, unless it 
 is to lose its affirmative reality, must for ever remain 
 the blank of Being. In the latter order of systems, 
 on the other hand, we can never escape from the finite : 
 if we wait for logical stepping-stones to the other side, 
 we shall wait for ever, and have no resource but to 
 lodge in an atheistic world ; and if, rather than this, we 
 convey into a presumed Infinite our ideas of Persou- 
 
 15
 
 226 M ANSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 ality, Intellect, and Character, we do but deny the 
 essence we mean to enrich, and in the same breath 
 affirm limitation and disclaim it. The self-destructive 
 nature of the fundamental conceptions of rational 
 theology is thus exhibited : 
 
 " These three conceptions, the Cause, the Absolute, the 
 Infinite, all equally indispensable, do they not imply con- 
 tradiction to each other, when viewed in conjunction, as 
 attributes of one and the same being? A Cause cannot, as 
 such, be absolute ; the Absolute cannot, as such, be a cause. 
 The cause, as such, exists only in relation to its effect ; the 
 cause is a cause of the effect; the effect is an effect of 
 the cause. On the other hand, the conception of the Abso- 
 lute implies a possible existence out of all relation. We 
 attempt to escape from this apparent contradiction, by intro- 
 ducing the idea of succession in time. The Absolute exists 
 first by itself, and afterwards becomes a Cause. But here we 
 are checked by the third conception, that of the Infinite. 
 How can the Infinite -become that which it was not from 
 the first? If causation is a possible mode of existence, that 
 which exists without causing is not infinite, that which be- 
 comes a cause has passed beyond its former limits. Creation 
 at any particular moment of time being thus inconceivable, 
 the philosopher is reduced to the alternative of pantheism, 
 which pronounces the effect to be mere appearance, and 
 merges all real exi-tence in the cause. The validity of this 
 alternative will be examined presently. 
 
 ' Meanwhile, to return for a moment to the supposition of 
 a true causation. Supposing the Absolute to become a cause, 
 it will follow that it operates by means of free-will and con- 
 sciousness. For a necessary cause cannot be conceived as 
 absolute and infinite. If necessitated by something beyond 
 itself, it is thereby limited by a superior power; and if neces- 
 sitated by itself, it has in its own nature a necessary relation
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 227 
 
 to its effect. The act of causation must therefore be volun- 
 tary ; and volition is only possible in a conscious being. But 
 consciousness, again, is only conceivable as a relation. There 
 must be a conscious subject and an object of which lie is 
 conscious. The subject is a subject to the object ; the object 
 is an object to the subject ; and neither can exist by itself as 
 the Absolute. This difficulty, again, may be for the moment 
 evaded, by distinguishing between the Absolute as related to 
 another and the Absolute as related to itself. The Absolute, 
 it may be said, may possibly be conscious, provided it is o:dy 
 conscious of itself. But this alternative is, in ultimate analy- 
 sis, no less self-destructive than the other. For the object 
 of consciousness, whether a mode of the subject's existence 
 or not, is either created in and by the act of consciousness, or 
 has an existence independent of it. In the former case, the 
 object depends upon thy subject, and the subject alone is 
 the true absolute. In the latter case, the subject depends 
 upon the object, and the object alone is the true absolute. 
 Or, if we attempt a third hypothesis, and maintain that each 
 exists independently of the other, we have no absolute at all, 
 but only a pair of relatives; for co-existence, whether in con- 
 sciousness or not, is itself a relation" (p. 47). 
 
 The general conclusion which Dr. Mansel draws 
 from this Strait dcr Fucultiiten is hardly what the 
 premises would lead us to expect. Our idea of the 
 "Infinite," being merely negative, would seem to be 
 the index to no positive reality. Our idea of "Person- 
 ality," being a mere reflection of our limited conscious- 
 ness, is declared to be incapable of application to a 
 nature not finite. Yet we are assured (p. 80) that it 
 is "our duty to think of God as personal ; and it is our 
 duty to believe that He is infinite," though the two 
 conceptions contradict each other. The notion of " In-
 
 228 M ANSEL'S LIMITS or 
 
 finitudc " is at once "inadmissible" in theology, and 
 yet " indispensable." Nor is this h jniliating necessity 
 of compounding a faith out of contradictories at all 
 peculiar to our Religion. All the fundamental pos- 
 tulates of thought, Time, Space, Substance, Power, 
 are in the same plight ; introducing us to entities 
 which we cannot harmonize with our experience of 
 phenomena. In all these cases nothing is left to us 
 but to accept the ontological ideas as true relatively to 
 MS, given forms of our thought, but to beware of 
 regarding them as valid for things in themselves, ^r for 
 any point of view beyond our own. Whether they do 
 or do not represent realities as they are, we cannot tell : 
 but as we are imprisoned within them, they are regu- 
 lative truth for our minds, though having no claim to 
 the character of speculative truth, imaging what lies in 
 the outer daylight of the universe beyond our dreams. 
 
 Our readers will at once recognize in this sketch a 
 revival of the principles of Kant ; who, by resolving 
 into subjective conditions all our ontological and per- 
 ceptive assumptions, left the intellect in idealistic insu- 
 lation, and blew up every bridge by which thought 
 could pass to the mainland of real Being. Dr. Mansel, 
 however, is more thorough-going still. Kant, it is 
 well known, recovered in his treatise on the Practical 
 lieason the ground he had abandoned in his analysis 
 of the Speculative : and authorized the resumption, as 
 presuppositions of conscience, of the very faiths, in 
 moral freedom, responsibility, and absolute divine law, 
 which no dialectic was able to guarantee. Our author 
 complains of this as an inconsequence ; and carrying 
 his own scepticism steadily through, involves Morals
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 229 
 
 with Theology in the same sentence of mere subjectiv- 
 ity, rendering- their ideas inapplicable, except in conde- 
 scension to our incapacities, to any sphere beyond the 
 human.* We may indeed perhaps must speak 
 of an Absolute Morality : but the phrase involves a 
 contradiction in terms ; for the moment we try any 
 ethical conception upon an Infinite nature, it is swal- 
 lowed up and disappears. Emotion and change, such 
 as are inseparable from disapproval or compassion, 
 from either free forgiveness or conditional reconcilia- 
 tion, and from openness to prayer, are incompatible 
 with immutable self-identity : yet, on the other hand, 
 the alternative suppositions, of an ethical neutrality or 
 an optionless and necessitated justice, no less impose 
 limits on the perfection of Being. On this side also, 
 our author contends, all religious belief is necessarily a 
 tissue of contradictions, protected only by the existence 
 of equal contradictions in any scheme of unbelief. The 
 conclusion from the whole is, that, in our natural 
 Theism, we must hold to both of the incompatible 
 terms, the existence of the Infinite that can have no 
 predicates, and the truth of the Finite predicates he 
 cannot have ; and that, bringing this state of mind 
 to the scheme of Redemption, we are in no condition to 
 
 * Ft is with great diffidence that, speaking from memory alone, we call 
 in question a statement respecting Kant, repeatedly made, or implied by .'o 
 studious and careful a writer as Dr. Mansel. Hut we know of no authority 
 for the following representation, and cannot persuade ourselves that Kant 
 has anywhere exposed himself to so reasonable a criticism: " Kant um|iies- 
 tioiiably went too far, in asserting that things in themselves (ire- not as they 
 appear to our faculties; the utmost that his premises could warrant him in 
 asserting is, that we cannot tell whether they are so or not" (p. U4S). Dr. 
 JUanscI produces no citation, and ati'ords no means of verification. Certainly, 
 if Ka::t ever said such a thing, lie not only "went too far," but Veil into 
 variance with the whole spirit of his philosophy.
 
 230 HANSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 cast the first stone at its seeming inconsistencies, but 
 are bound to content ourselves with estimating its 
 evidences, without attempting a critique of its doc- 
 trines. Taken at their worst, they are as good as 
 ours. 
 
 This line of thought, we must confess, appears to us 
 even painfully precarious. Suppose, for argument's 
 sake, that we grant the premises, and say, with Sir 
 "VV. Hamilton, that only the Finite can be given us in 
 thought; that the Infinite is for us only a negation, 
 a subjective inability to think; and that relative con- 
 ceptions, on such a subject, are equivalent to ignorance. 
 How far do these assumptions bear out Dr. Manscl'd 
 conclusion, that we must throw ourselves on Revela- 
 tion? They establish conditions which make all reve- 
 lation impossible. 
 
 Let us allow for the moment that, by the constitu- 
 tion of our faculties, we have (as our author says) a 
 legitimate belief in the existence of the Infinite, but 
 a total inability to attach any predicates to this subject. 
 How can such a Being, so cut oft' from all possible 
 access to our minds, reveal himself to us? As well 
 might you say that Silence can make a speech. An 
 existence without predicates is a non-existence : as Dr. 
 Mansel himself admits, "pure being is" to us "pure 
 nothing" (p. 328). That negation should send a mes- 
 sage to nescience appears not readily conceivable ; nor 
 can we imagine in what the " evidences " of such a 
 communication could consist. 
 
 But do the premises really guarantee to us even the 
 bare existence of the Infinite? We cannot see how. 
 The only ground for this faith which Dr. Mansel ever
 
 iJKLIGIOUS THOUGHT. 23] 
 
 presents is, " that our whole consciousness is compnssed 
 about with restrictions, which we are ever striving to 
 pass, and ever tailing- in the effort" (p. 121). But 
 the bird in the cage and the captive in his cell learn 
 nothing, by their vain efforts, of the world beyond. It 
 is a marvellous thing to affirm that every incoinpetency 
 implies an Infinitude. Our mental limits are evidence 
 of no more than that the intellect is less than the 
 intelligible. If, moreover, we are capable of discover- 
 ing, with Hamilton and Mansel, that this "Infinite," 
 which we are to endow with " existence," is but a 
 subjective negation, the mocking shadow of our own 
 impotence, we lose every ground for holding to its 
 objective reality. The very discovery itself consists in 
 nothing else than the detection of untrustworthiness 
 in the belief. What docs it amount to but this, 
 that our cognitive faculties are constructed without 
 provision for any thing beyond phenomenal knowledge, 
 that we are made exclusively for the finite, not for 
 the infinite?- And this is only to say that, whether 
 there be an Infinite or not, is a question beyond our 
 affirmation or denial. 
 
 Turn the matter which way you will, this much is 
 certain : to a mind disqualified in its structure for a 
 " Philosophy of the Infinite," there can be made no 
 Revelation of the Infinite ; in older form of phrase, if 
 natural religion be impossible, through incapacity in 
 the subject, so is supernatural. Religious ignorance 
 arising from defect in the attainable evidence, or from 
 an undeveloped state of the faculties, may be remedied 
 by supplementary information or an awakening disci- 
 pline. But if the very instrument of intelligence carries
 
 232 M.VNSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 its own darkness with it, and is fated ever to turn its 
 blind side to God, then it stands similarly related to all 
 possible media of expression, and there are no terms on 
 which Divine light can be had. AY here the receptive 
 power is at fault, it is vain to multiply and intensify 
 communication : as well might you hang a blind asylum 
 with chandeliers, and expect that, though the daylight 
 was useless, the brilliancy at night would tell. If there 
 are no predicates of God assured to us by Reason, or 
 only such as contradict each other and open the way to 
 opposing possibilities ; if we have only such knowl- 
 edge (?) of Him as either may or may not represent 
 Him as He is (p. 146) ; if we can affirm nothing 
 of Him that might not with equal reason be denied ; 
 there are no discriminative marks by which He and 
 His agency may be recognized : for the unknown has 
 no characteristics. Our incompetency extends there- 
 fore further than Dr. Mansel contemplates, to the 
 signs and evidences of Revelation, as well as its con- 
 tents ; and the paralysis of Natural Religion is the 
 suppression of Revealed. 
 
 Our author's logic, then, in mowing down its thistle- 
 field, inconsiderately mows off its own legs. He cuts 
 away the only supports on which religious thought can 
 rest or move; and nothing short of an unqualified onto- 
 logical scepticism is in agreement with his premises. 
 AYe cannot in the least discover why, on his principles, 
 we are to believe either of the two contradictories 
 which he requires us to hold in combination, that 
 God is infinite, that God is personal. He disparages 
 the sources of cognition from which we receive these 
 propositions, yet keeps their allegations on his books.
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 233 
 
 Jf the witnesses are untrustworthy, why let their testi- 
 mony fix the main points of the case? The "infinite" 
 being unmeaning for us, and the ft personal '' unmeaning 
 in God, Avhat title can they show to joint hold on our 
 belief? No intellectual intuition, no consciousness, no 
 legitimate inference, can assure us of either ; where, 
 then, are their credentials? To these questions we find 
 110 reply except that disbelief, if we choose to try it, 
 will bring no logical gain. This is a good argument 
 for a Pyrrhonist, who woidd maintain us in indetermi- 
 nate equipoise, but is inconvertible to the purposes 
 of the Christian philosopher and divine. The habit of 
 dealing with derivative steps of thought is not favorable 
 to a firm grasp of the primary data ; and we cannot 
 help thinking that Dr. Hansel's own mind is not clear 
 with regard to the ultimate roots of religious belief. 
 He cleverly pursues and breaks the track of many a 
 system of erratic metaphysics ; but, fascinated with the 
 hunt of delusion and incompetencv, he pushes the rout 
 too far, and, as it seems to us, rides over the brink of 
 the solid world, and falls into the abysses. 
 
 And now, having argued the matter from our au- 
 thor's premises, we must confess and justify our discon- 
 tent with them. We cannot admit the doctrine of the 
 religious incompetency of the human faculties ; and 
 the wide concurrence in it of schools apparently oppo- 
 site, of Mill and Comte, of Hamilton and Mansel, 
 will hereafter, we conceive, be looked upon as no 
 less curious a phenomenon than the ovation with which, 
 in the last century, the Critical Philosophy was carried 
 off along the most divergent paths of thought. Unde- 
 terred bv the fashion of the dav and the influence of
 
 234 MAXSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 Authoritative names, we do not hesitate to believe 
 with Cousin, that there is a legitimate " passage from 
 psychology to ontology," and to protest against the 
 paradox that human intelligence, in its highest exer- 
 cise, can only mock us with impossibilities and contra- 
 dictions. 
 
 To put the matter into the shortest formula, let us 
 say, we admit the relative character of human thought 
 as a psychological fact ; we deny it as an ontological 
 disqualification. All acts of the mind, whether crea- 
 tive or apprehensive, are undoubtedly discriminative, a 
 procedure from a less to a more determinate state. As 
 self-conscious, they carry with them the distinction 
 between subject and object; and as directed upon this, 
 and not on that, they cut out a definite from 'an indefi- 
 nite. To conceive, to know, to reflect, is in every case 
 to deal exclusively with difference and relation ; men- 
 tal action is dualistic, not monistic. So far we are 
 agreed. 
 
 Is, then, this relativity an incompetency or a quali- 
 fication for thinking? a cognitive limitation, or a cogni- 
 tive power? Our author, following Sir W. Hamilton, 
 treats it as a provincial restriction imposed upon our 
 nature, barring us from escape into the realm of real 
 rather than seeming knowledge, and under the show of 
 science dooming us to nescience. Is there any plea for 
 such disparagement and distrust beyond the argument 
 which, in parallel case, Hegel wittily attributed to 
 Kant: "It cannot be true, because we think it"? 
 AVhat reason is there to suppose that in natures higher 
 than ours there is another sort of knowledge in which 
 nothing is differenced, and even the knower is not
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 235 
 
 separated from the known? And if such a condition 
 of being existed, would it legitimately rank as more 
 intelligent or less intelligent than ours? And again, 
 where is the field of otherwise possible knowledge from 
 which this relativity excludes us? Drop the limit, and 
 what new reaches of being do you bring within the 
 intellectual horizon ? Nothing surely can be more 
 arbitrary than to treat the very essence of a faculty 
 as the negation of faculty, and complain of the eye as 
 enabling us to do nothing but see, and condemning us 
 to see only what is visible. That we cannot think 
 except by differencing, means only that we cannot 
 know where there is nothing to be known, or that we 
 cannot use a function without having 1 it. If intelligence 
 consists in distinguishing, how can distinguishing be an 
 incompetency to understand? And does the "compe- 
 tency " of the most perfect intellect consist in this. 
 that it dispenses with differences, and sees all things 
 to be equally true, and truth itself identical with false- 
 hood ? 
 
 I>ut, it will be said, this relative character of knowl- 
 edge at all events limits you to the finite, and precludes 
 access to God as Infinite. On the contrary, we submit 
 that relative apprehension is always and necessarily of 
 two terms together : if of sound, then also of silence ; 
 if of succession, then also of duration ; if of the finite, 
 then also of the infinite. It is the 7tnonoi> Wevdo,' of 
 Spinoza, of Schclling, of Hegel, of all monistic specu- 
 lative svstems, that they set up in isolated supremacy 
 one of two inseparable data of thought, and then en- 
 deavor to educe the other out of it ; and Dr. Manscl 
 falls, we think, into the same snare. He strains after
 
 2I5() MAN T SEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 :ui Infinite that shall exclude the Finite ; an Absolute 
 that shall emerge from till Relation ; a Causality that 
 shall be pure of all conditions. If Theism were staked 
 on his finding sueh things, his despair of it would be 
 natural enough. For these conceptions, which lie de- 
 nies to be on speaking terms, are in each case Siamese 
 twins, between which any affectation of estrangement 
 cannot fail to be highly inconvenient. They come into 
 existence before our thought together, and have their 
 living meaning only in pairs; one of the two giving 
 us the constant and ontological ground, the oilier the 
 phenomenal manifestation. The attempt to think away 
 the finite from the presence of the infinite, or vice vers.i, 
 must inevitably fail ; and of the two schemes to which 
 the attempt gives rise, viz. that which says " entities only 
 can be known," and that which says f ' phenomena only 
 can be known," both are to be unhesitatingly rejected. 
 Two other possibilities remain, viz. the Idealism which, 
 treating all " relation " as a subjective economy of ours, 
 pronounces that we know neither,' and the Realism 
 which, taking relations in the mind as exponents of re- 
 lations out, decides that we know both. It is on this 
 last alone that, in our view, a sound philosophy can 
 take its stand. 
 
 The position taken up against this doctrine rests on 
 the distinction between positive and negative ideas. 
 Of the finite, it is said we have a positive idea ; of the 
 infinite, except as the negative of this, we have none 
 at all : the one. therefore, is the exponent of an object- 
 ive reality, the other is only a subjective incapacity. 
 The term which is given to us by experience is reliable : 
 its concomitant, which is supplied in thought, is an
 
 KELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 237 
 
 empty form. In every case of relation between pre- 
 sumed entity and perceived phenomenon, Space and 
 position, Time and succession, Substance and 
 quality, Infinite and finite, the more ambitious 
 term is unaccredited, a mere metaphysical impostor; 
 putting on the airs of demonstration and universal 
 validity, and pretending to hold good for all possible 
 worlds ; but, by this very mark, betraying its close 
 confinement to our own mind as the mere shape and 
 shadow of our faculty. So far does Dr. Mansel carry 
 this Kantian Idealism, that he pronounces all judgments 
 insecure and personal in proportion as they are self- 
 evident, and, like the exact sciences, exhibit the char- 
 acteristics of Universality and Necessity (p. 203). 
 Now we will not enter here on the question whether 
 those pairs of ideas are or are not valid beyond the 
 enclosure of our nature : that falls into the general 
 controversy with the Idealist. But this we venture to 
 affirm, that, valid or invalid, the two terms of each pair 
 must stand or fall together; and that, except by an 
 arbitrary conp-de-tete, one cannot be taken and the 
 other left. Both are given to us, e.g. a limited 
 figure and the boundless Space from which it is cut out, 
 in one and the same mental act, and are equally 
 secured by the veracity, or vitiated by the unveracity, 
 of our intellectual constitution. There can be no ob- 
 jection to call the one " positive " and the other " nega- 
 tive," provided it be understood that each is so with 
 regard to the other, and that the relation is convertible ; 
 the finite, for instance, being the negative of the infinite, 
 not less than the infinite of the finite. If more than 
 this be meant, if the word "negative" is immovably
 
 238 MAXSEL'S LI. M ITS OF 
 
 fixed on the ontological term, as a disparagement of its 
 trustworthiness and an assertion that it is obtained by 
 mere thinking-away of sterling elements, then we dis- 
 pute tlie doctrine as false alike to psychology and to 
 logic; and with Dr. M'Co.sh, whom our author unsatis- 
 factorily criticises (p. 333), contend for a "positive" 
 idea of the infinite. The attempt to resolve this idea 
 into that of the "indefinite," does but mock the feeling 
 of every precise thinker. That is " indefinite," to which 
 Ave know no end ; that is " infinite " which we know to 
 have no end. The belief in the one is attainable by 
 simply thinking limits away ; the belief in the other 
 rests on the positive deposition of our own faculties, 
 which must be either taken at their word or dismissed 
 as cheats. 
 
 It is perfectly true that of the Infinite, whether of 
 Space, Time, or other mode of Being, we can form no 
 mental representation; and that, when we try to do 
 so, we can only resort to a vain stretching of the finite 
 till we are tired and give it up. We suspect that this is 
 what is meant when the idea is identified with a mere 
 inability to think; for certainly many of the "contra- 
 dictions " charged upon it arc simply cases of baffled 
 imagination. But it is no objection to either the reality 
 or the legitimacy of a thought, that it is not of a kind 
 to be brought before '' the mind's eye." We believe, 
 though we cannot conceive, the infinitude of space and 
 time : and these beliefs take their place and perform 
 their proper intellectual function in processes of rigor- 
 ous scientific reasoning ; not only without vitiating the 
 result, but with indispensable aid to its true evolution. 
 If this is not a "thinking" the infinite, this letting
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 230 
 
 it into a procedure of thought with operative power on 
 the final product, we know not what, thinking is. 
 
 We confess a total insensibility to most of the alarm- 
 ing; perplexities which our author endeavors to fix on 
 the Idea of the Infinite. They all arise out of the 
 spurious Spiuozistic demand, that this idea shall he 
 kept out of relation to any thing-, and the false assump- 
 tion that, unless this is done, the idea is sacrificed. 
 Except in personal argument with opponents making 
 this demand, there is no reason for giving way to it. 
 No religious truth or moral interest requires us to 
 identify God with any infinitude but that which stands 
 in ontological relation to the finite. When we are 
 asked whether, in creating the world, God increased 
 the quantity of being, and are reminded that, if Fie did, 
 infinitude received addition, and if He did not, the finite 
 world is nothing at all, the consequences do not in 
 either case distress us as might be expected : an Infini- 
 tude that supplies its own completion was potentially 
 without defect ; and a world that manifests an Infini- 
 tude other than its own atones for its nonentity. As 
 well might you ask whether the sun, on first appearing, 
 added any thing to the extension of the universe; be- 
 cause, if he did, it was not infinite before ; if he did 
 not, he could have no size. These puzzles (which, be 
 it remembered, remain after Revelation precisely what 
 they were before) arise in great measure from the 
 application of quantitative ideas to qualitative exist- 
 ence, and the attempt to solve all problems of genesis 
 and change by the formulas of addition and subtrac- 
 tion. In order to be added together or to limit one 
 another, o!;jects must be homogeneous and must be
 
 240 HANSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 magnitudes ; and to speak of " quantity of beiuy '' in 
 the abstract, or to discuss sucli a combination as God 
 4- World, appears to us not less unmeaning than to 
 ask about the temperature of duration, or to debate 
 whether sleep + dream is larger than sleep alone. In 
 forgetfuinesa of this principle, our author pronounces 
 the co-existence of the Divine attributes inconceivable 
 without contradiction, because involving a plurality of 
 infinitudes, side by side. If the attributes were not 
 each sui generis, and if they wanted room, the remark 
 would be true. J$ut if, according to Spinoza's rule, 
 " thinking is not bounded by body, or body by think- 
 ing," there is no need for heterogeneous attributes to 
 become finite in order to co-exist. 
 
 These things being borne in mind, it is truly aston- 
 ishing to find Dr. Mansel treating as perfectly parallel 
 mysteries the co-existence of Attributes in the Divine 
 substance, and the co-existence of Persons in the Di- 
 vine Unity. For the cases differ precisely in that which 
 turns the scale from possibility to impossibility. No 
 two attributes of the same substance are alike ; there 
 is no tangential relation between them ; therefore no 
 mutual interference. But with personalities it is' 
 otherwise ; as so many distinct subjects they are gencr- 
 ically the same, with differences only attributive ; and 
 are therefore mutually exclusive and limit each other. 
 It is only by attenuating the conception of personality 
 till it melts away into that of attribute or function, that 
 this doctrine becomes at all presentable in thought ; 
 and so, to the very relation which our author adduces 
 as the counterpart of its contradiction, we habitually 
 resort to relieve it of its mystery. In like manner,
 
 RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 241 
 
 Dr. Mansel's remark that the doctrine of the God-Mun 
 id neither more nor less perplexing than any other 
 co-existence of a finite object with the infinite overlooks 
 the real seat of the difficulty, which lies not in the 
 relation of magnitude between the t\vo natures predi- 
 cated, but in the fact that both of them are Personal 
 essences, the second Person in the Godhead and the 
 " perfect man " Jesus, and therefore, by the rule 
 of mutual exclusion in such cases, incapable of union 
 in the same subject. It is a bold paradox to assert 
 that the tormenting and intricate subtleties of the Eu- 
 tychian and Monophysite controversies concerned a mat- 
 ter no harder to understand than the co-existence of 
 the finite Moon with the infinite Space. 
 
 On the whole, then, we cannot follow Dr. Mansel 
 in his scepticism respecting the natural springs of reli- 
 gion in the human mind ; and if we could, we should 
 feel that the possibility of revelation was gone too. 
 We have entire faith in the veracity, and in the consist- 
 ency, of the reports given in by our highest faculties ; 
 and think it possible, even within our segment of a 
 life, to trace their convergence towards one Divine and 
 Holy Keality. The causal instinct of the intellect, the 
 solemn suspicions of the conscience, the ideal passion 
 of the imagination, the dependent self-renunciation of 
 the affections, are all, we believe, so many lines of at- 
 traction to the same Infinite Object. And however 
 numerous the aspects under which that transcendent 
 Being mav present Himself to the different sides of our 
 nature, we sec no reason to doubt their consonance, or 
 to despair of the noble and pious attempt to exhibit 
 them in harmony. Nor do we think it should be a 
 
 1G
 
 242 HANSEL'S LIMITS OF 
 
 congenial task, for a divine versed in philosophy, to 
 enlist his skill in the defeat of this attempt, in wid- 
 ening the discrepancies, reducing the approximations, 
 and making the most of the failures of the religious 
 reason. We have no tenderness towards the meta- 
 physical pantheism, from Spinoza to Hegel, which 
 Dr. Mansel criticises in his earlier lectures. But we 
 should give it up to him with more satisfaction, did he 
 not, in his doctrine of the Infinite, appropriate its chief 
 feature, and so, in the very act of putting it to death, 
 transfer to himself its most fatal weapon. The effect 
 of his essential sympathy with these systems in their 
 conception of the problem to be proposed, shows itself 
 especially when he ceases to contend with them, and 
 addresses himself to the moral difficulties of faith, the 
 doctrine of forgiveness, the grounds of prayer, the pos- 
 sibility of character in God. His treatment of these 
 great subjects makes us forget the philosopher and 
 recognize the divine : inventing imaginary difficulties, 
 and removing them by fictitious solutions ; implying 
 slighter acquaintance than in the previous discussions 
 with the literature of the subject ; and missing, as it 
 seems to us, the essential bases of ethical theory. 
 
 The general spirit of this book is scholarly and lib- 
 eral ; and probably the deviations from this tone are 
 involuntary and intellectual merely. But there are 
 examples of controversial unfairness, which, though 
 sanctioned by usage, we deeply lament to see. In 
 notes giving some account of the works of Strauss and 
 of Baur, Dr. Mansel thinks it allowable to bring to- 
 gether, as an anthology of absurdities, all the extreme 
 results and most amazing hints which the Hegelian
 
 IIELIGIOrS THOUGHT. 243 
 
 dialectic of these writers supplies, Avithout noticing the 
 fact that their philosophy is an insignificant accident, 
 which, if entirely removed or replaced ly a different, 
 scheme, would leave the mass of their historical criti- 
 cism unaffected. The consequence is, that these notes 
 present a gross caricature, and leave an impression 
 utterly false of two writers, both of whom, in spite of 
 great aberrations of ingenuity, have produced an inef- 
 faceable impression on Christian theology ; and one has 
 furnished contributions of extraordinary value to the 
 solution of the grandest of historical problems. How 
 decidedly we are opposed to their main theories, our ha- 
 bitual readers well know ; and from their philosophy we 
 stand at a greater distance probably than Dr. Mansel. 
 But no orthodoxy can consecrate the spirit of polemic 
 detraction, or excuse a scholar from recognizing schol- 
 arship and a Christian from observing justice. A 
 writer, however, who thinks (p. 247) that Christianity 
 is all lost, if once you admit the slightest human ele- 
 ment in the teaching of Christ, belongs to a stage of 
 theological opinion at which genial admiration and 
 judicial estimates of modern critical learning are hardly 
 possible. Few things, indeed, are more striking in this 
 volume than the contrast between the aruteness and 
 refinement of its metaphysics, and the purely popular 
 and elementary character of its biblical ideas.
 
 244 
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY: BAIN* 
 
 IT is rare to find an Englishman, not a graduate in 
 Arts, who believes in the existence, or even the 
 possibility, of what are called the "Mental and 
 Moral Sciences." The average national intelligence 
 looks on them as the showy shams of Academic dis- 
 cipline, and is as suspicious of their solidity as of Mr. 
 Gladstone's. The Scotchman, on the other hand, 
 by ordination of nature and University charter, 
 takes kindly to these studies : discusses their problems 
 everywhere, at church, on the platform, even in the 
 public-house ; and, migrating South of the Tweed, re- 
 introduces them, from time to time, into our literature 
 and life. In their pure form, however, he would hardly 
 succeed in gaining our ear for them. But, himself 
 catching the infection of our scepticism, he adapts them 
 to the level of our belief, surrenders their distinctive 
 characteristics, assimilates them to physical knowledge, 
 and reduces them from their autonomy to a mere prov- 
 ince of the "Natural Sciences : " and then, for the first 
 time, when he has construed all that is " mental " in the 
 
 * The Senses and the Intellect. By Alexander Bain, A. M. London, 
 1855. 
 
 The Emotions and the Will. By Alexander Bain, A. M., Examiner in 
 Logic and Moral Philosophy in the University of London. London, IfcJU. 
 
 National IJeview, April, 1860.
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : T5AIX. 245 
 
 phenomena into physiology, and all that is "moral" 
 into the chemistry of ideas, we begin to suspect his 
 doctrine of something better than metaphysic moon- 
 shine. Both the elder Mill and Mr. Bain o\vc their 
 English laurels to the remarkable skill with which they 
 have negotiated away the claims of the native Scottish 
 philosophy, and saved or sacrificed their science by 
 putting it under protection of a stronger power. In 
 saying this, we refer, not so much to their doctrines as to 
 their method : and especially to the preconception from 
 which they set out, as to the nature of their study and 
 its relative place in the scheme of human knowledge. 
 
 What is "Psychology"? Nobody would think of 
 putting it among the Physical Sciences, or would hesi- 
 tate to admit that it stands, in some sense, at the remot- 
 est point from them. Nor would the most enthusiastic 
 disciple of Faraday or Liebig pretend that it dealt with 
 phenomena reducible to Chemical Law ; though per- 
 haps he might claim a loss distant relationship to them 
 than that of the mere Natural Philosopher, and might 
 even reserve, on behalf of his favorite pursuit, some 
 contingent reversionary right of interest in them. To 
 judge from the habitual language of medical litera- 
 ture, the Physiologist considers himself to be treading 
 close upon the heels of the Mental Philosopher, and to 
 be heir- presumptive, if not already rival claimant, to 
 the whole domain. Between the facts of life, as 
 manifested through the lower grades o;' organized ex- 
 istence, and the facts of mind, special to our race, he 
 recognizes no ultimate distinction, and confidently looks 
 for evidence of essential identity. And whatever bo 
 the destination of Intellectual Philosophy, draws with
 
 246 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY C BAIX. 
 
 it that of Ethics and Religion : for, once within the 
 enclosure of the distinctive human faculties, it is impos- 
 sible for the inquirer to insulate the Reason, whilst 
 relegating Conscience and Faith to quite another field. 
 In this view, therefore, the study of humanity consti- 
 tutes only the uppermost stratum of scientific Natural 
 History : it deals with certain residuary phenomena 
 left on hand when the lower organisms have been 
 exhausted : and its separation is no less provisional 
 and artificial than that of any one branch of zoology 
 from any other. It is thus the crown and summit 
 of the hierarchy of Natural Sciences ; emerging from 
 physiology, as physiology from chemistry, and chem- 
 istry from physics ; and differing only, as each superior 
 term differs from the subjacent, in the greater com- 
 plexity and more restricted range of the attributes it 
 contemplates. Psychological studies, prosecuted with 
 this preconception of their position, will naturally bor- 
 row, as far as possible, the resources of the nearest 
 science, will seek explanation of human facts in the 
 simpler animal analogies ; and in proportion as these 
 fail, will feel baffled, and anxious to reduce the variance 
 to the lowest point. To bring the higher phenomena 
 under the rule, or close to the confines of the lower ; 
 to exhibit them as woven in the same loom, only of 
 finer web and more complicated pattern, will be the 
 instinctive aim of researches begun from this side. Nor 
 will the aim be wholly unsuccessful in regard to the 
 border phenomena, of Sense, Propension , and Habit, 
 which retain us in affinity with other living kinds. 
 If it incurs the risk of failure and harm, it will be at 
 the upper end, among the extreme human character-
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIX. 247 
 
 istics : where, to say the least, it is strongly tempted 
 to repeat upon psychology the same violence of which 
 Comte complains as committed by the physicist on 
 chemistry, and the chemist on physiology, a coercivr 
 assimilation of ulterior to prior laws. 
 
 There is certainly a captivating simplicity in this 
 pyramidal arrangement of all our possible knowledge 
 around a single axis ; with the base broadly laid in the 
 universal properties of matter, and the apex rising to 
 the solitary loftiness of Man and even crowned with his 
 highest svmbol, the cross. It seems to promise that, 
 by merely repeating our steps and not growing dizzy, we 
 shall surmount all our ignorance, and find Thought and 
 Love, as well as Force and Matter, beneath our feet. 
 At the same time, it seems to warn us, that the special 
 endowments of our own being are utterly inaccessible 
 to our apprehension, -till we have ascended through tier 
 after tier of previous sciences. The promise and the 
 warning, if reliable, are of superlative importance. Is 
 it true, then, that, simply and only by ascending the 
 stair of natural knowledge, by persistent prolonga- 
 tion of its familiar processes, - we reach the stage of 
 Mental and Moral Science? Is that stage really to be 
 found along the same line of method, only ranged 
 around its furthest segment? AVe utterly disbelieve it: 
 and venture to affirm that no refinement of growth in 
 the other sciences has any tendency to blossom into 
 knowledge of the Mind ; and that such knowledge, 
 instead of being doomed to wait till the alleged prior 
 terms in the series have been built up, begins with 
 them at the beginning, proceeds with them pari pas- 
 $u, and can no more be put before or after them than
 
 248 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 
 
 the image in the mirror before or sifter the object it 
 reflects. 
 
 The ground of these assertions is simply this : 
 Mental Science is Self-knowledge : Natural Science, 
 the knowledge of something other than Self. Their 
 spheres are of necessity mutually exclusive ; yet so 
 related that, like all true opposites, they come into 
 existence together. Wakened up by some phenomenon 
 from the sleep of unconsciousness, we discover two 
 things at once, viz. ourselves as recipient and the phe- 
 nomenon as given : we are in possession of an external 
 fact and an internal feeling ; and have already had our 
 first lesson in both physical and mental knowledge. 
 Every event, in like manner, has its outer and its inner 
 face, and is apprehended by us as existing and as felt ; 
 contributing an element, in the one aspect, to our 
 familiarity with nature, in the other, to our acquaint- 
 ance with our own mind. The same relative fact 
 which, in the external space, is called Light, when 
 brought home to us, is called Vision : and whilst Optics 
 take charge of it. in the former case, it belongs to Psy- 
 chology in the latter. Not a single predicate attaching 
 to it is common to both sides of the relation : on the 
 one, it is cause, it is in space, it has dimension 
 and local movement : on the other, it is effect, it is 
 in time, it is a feeling, exempt from the laws of 
 size and measurement. This divarication of the phe- 
 nomenon into two opposite directions is inherent in the 
 cognitive act itself, and goes wherever it goes, constant 
 as focus to focus in the ellipse : and this it is which con- 
 stitutes the indestructible antithesis between physical 
 *nd mental science, making them twins in their birth
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 
 
 but without contact in their career. In the play of 
 life, the action and re-action, between ourselves 
 and the surrounding scene, attention may pass out- 
 ward, and forgetting itself, may look at this or that; 
 or may turn inward, and forgetting the world, may 
 count the beads of thought and note the flush of feel- 
 ing : and the results, of natural knowledge in the first 
 instance and psychologic in the second, are absolutely 
 parallel and co-ordinate, and can never be transposed 
 into linear subordination. Self-consciousness has one 
 realm to construe ; Perceptive observation, another. 
 Could we always forget ourselves, and use our faculty 
 upon objects without knowing it, we should still be 
 competent to the " interpretation of nature : " could we 
 always forget the world, and scan the inner history 
 alone, we should still be competent to register the laws 
 of thought. The necessary duality of all intellectual 
 action happily excludes this extreme, and preserves 
 some approximate equipoise between the two momenta 
 of our knowledge : but it is none the less true that they 
 are perfectly distinct, however concurrent ; that inter- 
 change between them is impossible ; that, though they 
 hang and balance from the same beam, the weights 
 which are heaviest in the one have no effect upon the 
 other; and that the attempt to treat them as homogene- 
 ous can but upset and confound the conditions of human 
 intelligence. What is shown to us by the outer day- 
 light of objective discovery must always be other than 
 that which we see by the inner light of self-knowledge : 
 and could the rays of either fall upon the other's field, 
 there is nothing there which they could fetch out of 
 darkness.
 
 250 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 
 
 We submit therefore that a dualistic grouping of 
 the Sciences, in place of a monistic, is prescribed 
 by the fundamental conditions of Intelligence itself; 
 that without a firm and absolute reliance on the pos- 
 tulates and resources of objective experience, Natural 
 knowledge can make no way ; that without equally 
 firm and absolute reliance on the postulates and re- 
 sources of self-consciousness, Mental and Moral phi- 
 losophy must remain impossible ; and that whilst neither 
 can question, not either may borrow, the language and 
 methods of the other. So long as we look at the 
 extreme cases of contrast in the two series, Astron- 
 omy, for instance, and Psychology, this statement 
 will perhaps challenge little objection : star-gazing tak- 
 ing us out pretty far, and thought-analyzing keeping us 
 pretty close at home. There are however several inter- 
 mediate departments of knowledge which seem to give 
 us insight into the workings of the human mind, not by 
 introspection, but distinctly by the study of external 
 data. Jurisprudence and Politics, History, Philology, 
 and Art, all engage themselves upon visible and tangi- 
 ble products of the past, and have no less objective a 
 look than Botany and Geology themselves ; yet all issue 
 in deeper acquaintance with humanity : they appear to 
 be physical in their procedure, and moral in their result. 
 Nevertheless, they do not disturb, they even confirm, 
 the principle of our dual arrangement." What are the 
 "external phenomena" with which they deal? Laws 
 and States, the embodiment of the social Conscience ; 
 Language, the crystallization of human Thought; 
 Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture, the witnesses of 
 human Ideality ; Action and Suffering, the outcome
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 251 
 
 of human Life and Passion. For the purpose of out 
 present argument, it is an abuse of terms to call these 
 "external" facts. They are so, in the sense in which 
 tears are drops of water, or a ship's colors a few vard.< 
 of cotton rag : but their whole essence lies in the inter- 
 nal meaning of which they are the record and the sign, 
 in the invisible and spiritual facts of which they compel 
 the very elements to take charge. And all such simply 
 expressive phenomena speak to us only to the extent 
 of our sympathy, and through the medium of our self- 
 consciousness : did they not hold up the mirror to our 
 inner life, and enable us better to read ourselves in their 
 reflex image, they would tell us nothing, and would drop 
 from the catalogue of human studies. Here, and here 
 alone, does the maxim hold, that "like only can know 
 like," that the cognitive process requires community 
 of nature between the knower and the known. In 
 physics, it is rather the opposite rule that prevails, 
 of contrariety between subject and object : at all 
 events I need not, in order to estimate color, have my 
 faculty prismatically painted : or, to appreciate acids, 
 be sour myself; or, to exa.nine the magnetic laws, be 
 personally liable to dip. But, if I am to know human- 
 ity, human I must be ; and all its memorials, so far as 
 they are not dumb to me, are but the extension of my 
 self-conscious being. In this distinction we have the 
 true dividing-line between the departments of Science 
 and Literature, and the principle of their profound 
 difference of operation on the minds exclusively occu- 
 pied with either. It would take us too far from our 
 proper path to work out this hint at present : it is 
 intended only adequately to carry out the dual arrange-
 
 2.32 CEREBHAL PSYCHOLOGY t BAIN. 
 
 incnt of our intellectual pursuits, and justify the appro- 
 priation of all the "Jitenc hiunaniorcs" to the side of 
 self-knowledge. 
 
 Mr. Bain's book opens with an account, lucid, exact, 
 and compendious, of the nervous system in man. In 
 its proper place, beside the volumes of Bell, of Quain, 
 of Sharpey, of Carpenter, nothing could be better : and 
 in a practical manual for students, especially when they 
 are to be examined by the Author himself, we do not 
 question the utility of such an exposition. It is a ser- 
 viceable key to much that would else be obscure in the 
 language of psychological writers : and just as a mu- 
 sician may reasonably feel some curiosity respecting 
 acoustic laws, so is it natural that an interest in 
 mental processes should extend itself to their organic 
 antecedents. But, tried by any strict test of logical 
 right, the disquisition is, in our view, altogether foreign 
 and intrusive : and we prefer the practice of the older 
 writers, Reid, Stewart, and Mill, who take up their 
 subject no earlier than the conscious phenomena, and 
 leave the medullary conditions entirely out of view. It 
 is not that we doubt the physiological importance of the 
 modern cerebral researches, or feel any thing but regret 
 at their hitherto scanty achievements. But if they were 
 ever so successful, if we could get to look at all that 
 we want, if we could turn the exterior of a man's body 
 into a transparent case, and compel powerful magnifiers 
 to lay bare to us all that happens in his nerves and 
 brain, what we should see would not be sensation, 
 thought, affection, but some form of movement or other 
 visible change, which would equally show itself to any 
 being with observing eyesight, however incapable of the
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 253 
 
 corresponding inner emotion. Facts thus legible from 
 a position foreign to the human consciousness are no! 
 mental facts, are not moral facts, and have no place in 
 the interior of a science which professes to treat of 
 these, and reduce them to their laws. All that could 
 be done with such outwardly perceived phenomena, 
 at their point of nearest approach to the pyschologist, 
 is to note down their order of succession, in parallelism 
 with the corresponding order of the series known to 
 self-consciousness. Supposing two such co-ordinated 
 trains to be established, we may admit that the physi- 
 cal, if the better ascertained and distincter in its terms, 
 might help us, like the clearer column of a bilingual 
 inscription, to identify or discriminate the parts of the 
 other. But it cannot be pretended that our acquaint- 
 ance with the nervous system supplies us with any sec- 
 ondary ratios of this kind by which the primary can be 
 construed into truer order. The cerebral phenomena 
 are in an immeasurably darker state than the mental, 
 and are even indebted to these for every hypothetic clue 
 by which the fancy of physiologists could find a way 
 through their relations. The grand discovery itself 
 (still not undisputed) of separate motory and sensory 
 nerves only follows at a vast distance, in respect of cer- 
 tainty and perspicuity, the conscious difference between 
 action and receptivity. Dr. Hartley's theory of Vibra- 
 tions was not, in our judgment, a more questionable 
 incumbrance on his doctrine of Association, than Mr. 
 Bain's correcter physiological exposition on his subse- 
 quent intellectual analyses. While it throws not a ray 
 of real light into them, it tinctures them with a lan- 
 guage of materialistic description, at once unphilosophi-
 
 254 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 
 
 cnl and repulsive. When we are told of the " high 
 charge of nervous power" needful for "susceptibility to 
 delicate emotions," of the " numerous currents of the 
 brain" involved in "wandering of the thoughts," of 
 the " full development of a wave of emotion " from " the 
 cerebral centres," of the "eminently glandular" na- 
 ture of "the tender affections ; " when it is observed 
 that "Irascibility may draw to itself a large share of 
 the vital sap;" and that "the tender emotion usurps 
 largely a great portion of mankind, being so alimented 
 by the natural conformation of the system as to main- 
 tain its characteristic wave with considerable persist- 
 ence," and that " this gives great capacity fur the 
 affections," especially with "requisite support" from 
 " the structure of the glandular organs ; " K we lose 
 all sense of psychological truth, and no more know our- 
 selves again than if, on looking in the glass, we were to 
 see an anatomical figure staring at us. There is no 
 more occasion for such phraseology, than for an artist 
 to paint his Madonna with the skin off. It is recom- 
 mended neither by scientific precision, nor by illustrative 
 good taste. The one only excellence of psychological 
 description is to speak truly and searchingly to our self- 
 consciousness : and of vital sap, and high charges, and 
 powerful currents, and diffusive waves, we certainly are 
 not conscious : nor do we know of any writer resorting 
 to this style of exposition, without forfeiture of all fine- 
 ness and sharpness in his delineations of spiritual facts, 
 and quite degenerating from the purity of Berkeley, the 
 neatness of Stewart, the severity of Kant, the trans- 
 parency of Jouffroy. 
 
 * The Emotions and the Will, pp. 32, 193, 230, 94, 233, 232.
 
 CEKEBKAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 255 
 
 We have said that t!ic psychological difference be- 
 tween active power and the passive susceptibilities of 
 Sense was familiar to mental philosophers, and was 
 treated as fundamental, long before the physiological 
 
 L v O 
 
 separation of motory from sensory nerves. Of the vast 
 majority of writers the remark is so true, that this dis- 
 tinction is seldom absent from the leading divisions and 
 even titles of their works. But there is one important 
 class of exceptions. The Sensational psychologists 
 have steadily resisted the claims of this distinction ; have 
 denied its ultimate reality, and by various ingenuities 
 resolved it away ; have contended that activity means 
 onlv muscular movement, and that this is both set 
 a-going and made known exclusively by sensation. 
 From this sole source, followed by the clinging to- 
 gether of connected movements and the vestiges of 
 contiguous sensations, they have explained all the phe- 
 nomena of human nature. Of all the difficulties of 
 this undertaking, no one has been more pressed upon 
 them, and more in vain, than that of extracting from a 
 primitive passivity the various forms of energy and strug- 
 gle. At last however the conviction, which has so long 
 stood out against psychological appeal, is yielded to 
 physiology : and Sir Charles Bell having detached the 
 nerves, Mr. Bain separates the functions, of action and 
 sensation, lie admits as original, along with the sus- 
 ceptibilities of sense, a spontaneity of movement, a 
 start into energy without any prefix of feeling : and this 
 is the capital new feature, certainly a marked im- 
 provement, which he has added to the resources of 
 his school. In order to turn this spontaneity, quite 
 random at first, into volition, he assumes an inherent
 
 256 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIX. 
 
 tendency to persistence in every muscular adjustment 
 which procures a pleasure or relieves a pain : in virtue 
 of which this class of movements, once hit upon, dis- 
 engage themselves from the heterogeneous mass of pos- 
 sible combinations, and fall into the track, and come 
 under the command, of regulated associations. This 
 mode of deriving the voluntary from the involuntary 
 phenomena is essentially the same with that of Hartley 
 and James Mill : and, though carried out with much 
 fuller elaboration, and addressing itself more carefully 
 to the grand nodus of the problem, the process of 
 deliberate preference and decision, will probably con- 
 vert no one who has been left unsatisfied by the previous 
 expositors. The real novelty lies higher up : in freeing 
 the first involuntary movements from their dependence 
 on any sort of feeling, and so creating a fund of spon- 
 taneity to set off against the stores of sensation, and 
 make acquaintance with them. 
 
 This doubling of the established data of his school, 
 by the introduction of a term distinctly antithetic to 
 sensation, seemed to us at first to offer the means of 
 reconciliation with the opposite philosophy. Nothing 
 could look more like a surrender of the monistic for 
 a dualistic principle. But, we regret to say, the prom- 
 ise is for the present illusory. The reason is this. 
 Though Mr. Bain grants us a spontaneity, he plants it 
 where we have nothing to do with it, any more than if 
 our limbs were spasmodically stirred by a galvanic 
 touch. In his zeal to cancel Hartley's prefix of a sen- 
 sational stimulus, he forgets to leave any attendant con- 
 sciousness at the fountain-head at all, and makes the 
 movement come, psychologically, out of nothing. The
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIX. 257 
 
 6rst tiling' we feel is the series of muscular sensation? 
 in the execution of the act : there it is, accordingly, 
 that our conscious life begins, and the prior word of 
 command for the initiation of the act took place out- 
 side. The dynamics of the case are thus quite numb 
 and foreign to us : and our experience still dates from 
 the earliest sensation, and includes no counter element. 
 So far as our mental history is concerned, this novelty 
 of Mr. Bain's is therefore inoperative, and lapses back 
 into that mere emphasizing of the muscular feelings so 
 familiar to the readers of Dr. Thomas Brown. Could 
 he only have burst through the enchantments of this 
 paralyzing sensational circle, we believe him to have 
 been on the eve of an important advance. By simply 
 drawing his " spontaneity " and its force within the lim- 
 its of consciousness, instead of leaving it beyond the 
 threshold, solutions arise of problems otherwise unman- 
 ageable. On one of these we will dwell for a few 
 moments, the origin of the beliefs respecting Exter- 
 nality and Space. 
 
 It is admitted on all hands, or, at least, we shall 
 freely concede it to our author's philosophy, that if, 
 like Condillac's sentient statue, we simply stood still 
 and felt this and that sensation of smell, taste, or 
 sound, we should have no knowledge of an outward 
 world. The conditions of this belief first enter in 
 connection with the muscular system ; in the exercise 
 of which we gain our apprehensions of objects distinct 
 from ourselves, of their dimensions, forms, positions, 
 and of the circumambient field in which they lie. So 
 far we are agreed. But now comes the question, how 
 are the muscles qualified to give us this special instrur- 
 
 17
 
 258 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIX. 
 
 tion? and by what process do they impart it? Brown, 
 Mill, Bain, all concur in their answer. First, we gain 
 the idea of linear extension by muscular feelings of 
 various range, as in the slight or greater closing of the 
 fingers, or sweep of the arm, or exploring a wire : part 
 of a given scries of sensations not being the same to us 
 as the whole, or a less part as a more considerable, we 
 have differences for every degree of continuance ; and 
 these are so many lengths. Next, we have but to give 
 this idea numerical increase, i.e. conceive of co-exi*t- 
 ing lengths, whether by joint action of a plurality of 
 fingers, or by combining the movements of one over a 
 euifacc, as of a pane of glass, and we are introduced 
 to superficial extension. And lastly, by letting our 
 fancy go out with its length-idea on all radii from any 
 point, we win at once the conception of Space; or 
 again, by embracing a solid object between the two 
 hands, we discover co-existing surfaces separated by 
 lengths, and complete our triad of dimensions. Thus 
 our idea of Extension is built up, bit by bit, one dimen- 
 sion at a time ; and the last to come, in the order of 
 our knowledge, is geometrical solidity. 
 
 Every thing, in this exposition, depends on the 
 soundness of the first step ; the others, being little 
 else than contrivances for multiplying lengths, disap- 
 pear of themselves if the lengths are yet to seek. 
 How, then, are they got? Merely, it is said, by our 
 experiencing in the muscles a train of sensations, com- 
 ing to an end, now sooner, now later ; this variation in 
 the protraction of the series being the gist of the whole 
 matter, and giving us our qucexitum of length. If 
 BO, however, any succession of feelings susceptible of
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BA1X. 250 
 
 similar variation would do as well: a melody heard, 
 now complete, now broken off; a cycle of odors, at one 
 time half administered, at another cut short near the 
 beginning, would meet all the prescribed conditions, 
 and ought to furnish us with the Knowledge of Exten- 
 sion. The liability to more or less abbreviation of the 
 sensational thread is no peculiarity of the muscular 
 sense : and to pitch upon this circumstance as giving us 
 our comparison of lengths is fatal to the exclusive claim 
 which is set up for this class of feelings. What can be 
 more inconsistent than, first, to single out the locomo- 
 tive organs as alone competent to the phenomenon, and 
 then to refer the phenomenon to something in them 
 which is no speciality of theirs at all? Do you fly then 
 to the distinctive quality of their feelings, rather than 
 their mere interrupted succession ? Different, of course, 
 the muscular feelings are from smells, as tastes also or 
 sounds are from both ; but so long as they are only 
 sensations, delivered upon our consciousness one after 
 another, they win no advantage, for purposes of objec- 
 tive disclosure, over their companions. Even could we 
 know them by ever so perfect an introspection, they 
 would be found in us, not out of us, and would not help 
 us to step beyond the subjective world : their succession 
 would be in duration, not in space, and would give us 
 the sequent parts of time, not the synchronous parts of 
 linear extension. King the changes as you will upon 
 mere Sensation, these difficulties will shut you in. The 
 only reason why the passive reception of odors would not 
 reveal the outward world is, that it does not go beyond 
 sensation ; and so long as you stop at that stage, the mus- 
 cles will serve you no better than the pituitary membrane.
 
 2(10 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : 1JAIX. 
 
 In what, then, really consists the prerogative distinc- 
 tion of the muscular system? It has an obvious and 
 important peculiarity. In our experience of smell, hear- 
 ing, &c., the first thing that happens is the sensation, 
 which arrives at us out of the unknown, and wakes us 
 up in an unexpected way ; and any cognitive act, when 
 we arc in a condition to have one, follows on the sensi- 
 tive phenomenon. But the muscular sensations occur 
 in executing an act already ordered by mandate from 
 ourselves ; the signal for them is passed before they 
 arise, and this mental prefix, name it as you will, pre- 
 vents our being taken by surprise with the phenomenon, 
 and provides an incipient cognitive element at the foun- 
 tain-head. This inverse order of procedure in the loco- 
 motive faculty redeems it altogether from the category 
 of the Senses. It starts from a point that is no more 
 "Sensation" than the cognitions in which the proper 
 Senses terminate; call it volition, or call it spontaneous 
 energy, it is the putting forth of personal causation. 
 This is a function beyond the province of mere Sense. 
 A /Sense cannot make efforts; nor are its phenomena 
 causes, but effects. Not even, we believe, are sensa- 
 tions an essential feature in the executive stage of the 
 operation ; if the muscles were made of india-rubber, 
 or paralyzed in their sensory nerves, their system, we 
 conceive, would not be disqualified, provided it obeyed 
 the mandates from head-quarters, for giving us knowl- 
 edge of an objective world. This knowledge breaks on 
 us from the collision of our own conscious force with 
 impeding resistance : and so long as the two extremes 
 retain this relation, the intermediary members may be 
 many or few, sensible or insensible, without hindering
 
 CEKEBUAL PSYCHOLOGY: BAIN. 201 
 
 our discovery of the antithetic Subject and Object : the 
 one here, the other there; the one Causal hence, 
 the other Causal hither. By removing the dynamical 
 commencement of this experience out of consciousness, 
 and beginning our psychological history lower down, in 
 the sensations of the executive muscles, Mr. Bain ap- 
 pears to us to have missed the true germ of our ideas 
 of Personality, of Space, and of Causation. 
 
 No doubt, the accurate measurement of our force 
 against variable resistances, and of the several intervals 
 between objects, is largely dependent on the proper 
 muscular sensations, which are invaluable as a scheme 
 of graduated signs. But the things measured and 
 signified, apart from the appreciation of their de- 
 grees, are cognizable through an energy behind the 
 muscles. The collision of that energy of ours with 
 the counter-energy of the world, as attested by Sensa- 
 tion, reveals to us, by the crossing lines of direction, 
 the contrast of the Self and the other-than-Self, and 
 gives us, as Categories for all phenomena, the two 
 centres of Personality and Externality. The antithesis 
 of these mutually excluding- terms carries in itself both 
 a geometrical opposition of Place, and a dynamical 
 opposition of Force. Instead of our having to go to 
 school for a long experience, in order to be trained 
 into these ideas, our whole experience constitutes itself 
 around these apprehensions, as its three grand axes ; 
 and of the two sides of each pair, neither has imy 
 advantage over the other : the outer and the inner both 
 are given in the same act, and known by the same self- 
 light, or rather reciprocal light ; and there is no more 
 propriety in saying, that we know the external world
 
 2(52 CKHKIJKAL rsvciiOLo:;v : BAIX. 
 
 only through our own feelings, than in saying that we 
 know our own feelings only through the external world. 
 To know at all involves both terms : and the attempt tc 
 establish a subordination between them, and resolve 
 objective cognition into subjective consciousness of our 
 own phenomena, is nothing else than, in the very act 
 of patronizing experience, to destroy its fundamental 
 postulates, and open the way to every idealistic dream. 
 The following passage is therefore, in our view, far 
 from satisfactory : 
 
 " As our belief in the externality of the causes of our sen- 
 sations means, that certain actions of ours will bring the sensa- 
 tions into play, or modify them in a known manner, this belief 
 is easily furnished to us by experience ; it is no more than our 
 experience entitles us to entertain. Having felt, again and 
 again, that a tree becomes larger to the eye as we move; 
 that this movement brings on at last a sensation of touch ; that 
 this sensation of touch varies witli movements of our arm, 
 and a great many other similar coincidences; the repetition 
 of all this experience fixes it in the mind, and from the sight 
 alone we can anticipate all the rest. We then know that our 
 movements will bring about all the changes and sensations 
 above described, and we know no more; but this knowledge is 
 to us the recognition of external existence, the only thing, so 
 far as I see, that external existence can possibly mean. Be- 
 lief in external reality is the anticipation of a given effect to a 
 given antecedent ; and the effects and causes are our own 
 various sensations and movements." (The Senses and the 
 Intellect, p. 373.) 
 
 According to this, to see the sun in the heavens is to 
 believe that, if we could only keep on walking long 
 enough, we might burn our fingers ; to descry the lark 
 aloft, is to recite by muscular sympathy the beating of
 
 CEREBRAL, PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 263 
 
 its wings since it left its . nest ; to think of any distant 
 space is to run over our locomotive sensations in reach- 
 ing it, and the opportunity of thrusting out our arm 
 when we have got there. Emptiness means simply 
 scope for muscular exercise ; and the Infinitude of 
 Space imports only potential gymnastics for us under 
 all conceivable circumstances. This kind of " analy- 
 sis " of our ideas seems to us, we must confess, a cruel 
 operation, a cold-blooded dissecting of them to 
 death. The disjecta membra given as their equiva- 
 lents, and strung together in succession to replace the 
 original whole, defy all identification. Look down an 
 avenue of trees, and consider whether, in appreciating 
 its perspective, you are engaged upon the mere imagina- 
 tion of touches, or the computation of fatigue? Watch 
 a lighthouse from a ship's deck, by night, laying its long 
 line of beads towards you upon the waves, and say 
 whether the thing denoted by this "visual sign" has 
 any thing to do with cither your legs or your finger- 
 ends. Can you believe that even to a blind geometri- 
 cian diagrams and areas present themselves, not as 
 simultaneous existences beyond his personality, but as 
 possible series of tactual impressions in himself? or, 
 that when James Mitchell, the blind deaf-mute, amused 
 himself with picking stones out of the brook, ranging 
 them in a circle on the grass, and then assuming the 
 centre as his own scat, the figure of his environment 
 did not lie in his dark imagination complete at once? 
 For our own part, we utterly distrust this whole doc- 
 trine, which construes back the grand synchronous unity 
 of Space into trains of muscular successions in our 
 Sense, and interprets the objective world into cohesive
 
 204 CEREUUAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 
 
 relations among our subjective phenomena. How com- 
 pletely all externality disappears in the Eyo, when this 
 psychology is fairly carried out, will be evident from 
 the following passage, in which the existence of light is 
 made contingent on the visual feelings, and the whole 
 language of outward being and causation is treated as 
 an empty product of !r abstraction : " 
 
 " We seem to have no better way of assuring ourselves 
 and all mankind that with the conscious movement of open- 
 ing the eyes there will always be a consciousness of light, than 
 by saying that the light exists as independent fact, with or 
 without any eyes to see it. But if we consider the case fairly, 
 we shall see that this assertion errs, not simply in being 
 beyond any evidence that we can have, but also in being a 
 self-contradiction. We are affirming that to have an existence 
 out of our minds which we cannot know but as in our minds. 
 In words we assert independent existence, while in the very 
 act of doing so we contradict ourselves. Even a possible 
 world implies a possible mind to perceive it, just as much as 
 an actual world implies an actual mind. The mistake of the 
 common modes of expression in this matter, is the mistake of 
 supposing the abstractions of the mind to have a separate and 
 independent existence. This is the doctrine of the Platonic 
 ' ideas,' or 'forms,' which are understood to impart all that is 
 common to the particular facts or realities, instead of being 
 deiived from them by an operation of the rnind. Tims the 
 actual circles of nature derive their mathematical properties 
 from the pre-existing idea,' or circle in the abstract ; the actual 
 men owe tlitir sameness to the ideal man. So instead of look- 
 ing upon the doctrine of an external and independent world as 
 a generalization or abstraction grounded on our particular 
 experiences, summing up the past, and predicting the future. 
 we have got iuto the way of maintaining the abstraction to 
 be an independent reality, the ibundation, or cause, or origin,
 
 CEKEBHAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 285 
 
 of nil those experiences." (The Senses and the Intellect, 
 p. 37C..) 
 
 This is the old pitfall, where philosophy, too boldly 
 stepping on its solid-looking sensational ground, has so 
 often tumbled through into a bottomless Idealism. We 
 arc not to sav, it seems, that light exists as an " inde- 
 pendent fact." Then it exists either as a dependent 
 fact, or not at all. If the former, it is dependent on 
 vision, that is, on its own effect, which is absurd. If 
 the latter, then vision exists by itself; that is, effect 
 without the cause, perception with nothing perceived. 
 Our author plainly confounds the two inverse kinds of 
 "dependence," logical, in the order of knowing, 
 real, in the order of being: the catixa cognoscendi 
 and the causa essendi. The knon-lcdge of light is 
 dependent on vision, its effect; the being of vision 
 is dependent on light, its cause: whose relative "inde- 
 pendent existence" is so far from being "contradicted," 
 that it is directly implied, by its dependent logical posi- 
 tion : the two things being indeed but one and the 
 same relation read from opposite ends. Our author, it 
 is true, affirms that " we cannot know light, but as in 
 our minds" But how so? Because, we presume, it 
 is known by seeing it, and that is an act of the mind. 
 Yes, certainly; the seeing: but, on that very ac- 
 count, not the things seen: for the cognitive act, 
 instead of implying coalescence and identity, is con- 
 ditional on separation and mutual exclusion, of the 
 knower and the known, and can reveal neither except 
 as over against the other. Were it otherwise, were 
 all that we know to be on that account seated at the 
 cognitive point, knowledge and being must coalesce,
 
 2GO CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : liAIN. 
 
 and could never look e:ich other in the face : nothing 
 could he known as existing : and nothing could exist as 
 known. The intellectual power itself would constitute 
 a disqualification for intelligence. If there really were 
 external objects, and a faculty in us for their apprehen- 
 sion, Mr. Bain's argument would still apply : if where 
 they are known, there we must presume them to he, 
 our cognizance of them as external ought to he treated 
 as false ; its truth would be a proper ground for disbe- 
 lieving it ; and the perfect knowledge of a thing would 
 be its absolute disproof. 
 
 A psychology which allows us cognizance only of the 
 thread of our own i'eelings is obliged to account for 
 the objective look and substantive pretensions of some 
 portions of our knowledge, by making up aggregates 
 of feelings, and assuming that their chemical union 
 gives them the fallacious aspect of being more than feel- 
 ings, of being elsewhere than in ourselves, of be- 
 ing one instead of many. The grand instrument of 
 this metamorphosis, we need hardly say, is the Asso- 
 ciation of Ide.is, or, more properly, of actions and 
 mental states ; among which, either contiguous terms, 
 or resembling terms, have a tendency to revive each 
 other. This is a veritable and universally recognized 
 psychological law : and to the great merits of his 
 school in vindicating its importance and extending its 
 application Mr. Bain has made large .additions in his 
 copious and elaborate exposition. Without the origi- 
 nality of Hartley (whose work, after every deduction, 
 still stands in the highest rank of psychological litera- 
 ture), and without the severe precision of James Mill, 
 our author opens a fuller storehouse of illustration, and
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIX. 267 
 
 spreads out its contents in a more telling 1 and agreeable 
 way. He is master of all the dexterities of this law, 
 and prepared to show the utmost that can be done 
 with it. Whether it is not overtasked is perhaps a 
 natural question with even the most trustful reader. 
 Its requirements are so modest, and its achievements 
 so grand, that it is apt to be suspected for the very 
 scale of its apparent victories. ( Given the rudiments 
 of any brute,' so it seems to state its problem, 
 'to construct the perfection of any angel.' The five 
 senses ami ganglionic spontaneities are briskly stretched 
 upon the Jacquard-loom : the cards, perforated accord- 
 ing to theory, are hung upon the beam : and after a few 
 chapters of cheerful weaving, the divine form is finished 
 off; and you have the satisfaction not only of admiring 
 it, but of knowing exactly what its reason, love, and 
 goodness arc made of, and how put- together. The 
 doctrine, appealing as it does chiefly to the earliest 
 experience, and making rapid use of the years of in- 
 fancy, rests, to a dangerous extent, on a conjectural 
 psychology.. It has already got over all its difficulties 
 before the age when reflection can put it to the test : 
 and when called in question by the mature and practised 
 self-consciousness, glibly answers that it is too late in 
 the day to bring up any inner evidence against it ; that 
 its wonders are all wrought within us, and can no longer 
 be unravelled ; that we have been so transformed by it 
 n.s not to know ourselves, and to be decipherable only 
 by its light ; that what we take to be the simplest 
 mental states it knows to be superlatively complex : 
 what, the primary truths of reason, to be the ultimate 
 tricks of language ; what, the native insight of con-
 
 CEUEUKAL PSYCHOLOGY : H.MX. 
 
 science, to be the artificial imposition of social opinion, 
 It is always difficult, for want of recognized criteria, to 
 criticise hypothetical history ; as, for want of common 
 substance, to fight a duel with a ghost. Being', how- 
 ever, to no small extent, at one with this doctrine, we 
 may perhaps hope to explain a scruple which checks our 
 complete assent to it. F.>r the sake of distinctness we 
 limit ourselves to a certain point. 
 
 All the langagc of the doctrine is framed on the sup- 
 position that, a number of elements being given, and 
 laid detached before the mind, it cements them together 
 in groups and trains, in ever-increasing complexity. 
 The mental history is, in this view, a perpetual forma- 
 tion of new compounds : and the words, "Association," 
 "Suggestion," "Cohesion," "Fusion," "Indissoluble 
 Connection," all express the change from plurality of 
 data to some unity of result. An explanation of the 
 process therefore requires two things ; a true enu- 
 meration of the primary constituents, and a correct 
 statement of their laws of combination : just as, in 
 chemistry, we are furnished with a list of the simple 
 elements, and then with the principles of their syn- 
 thesis. Now the latter of these two conditions we 
 find satisfied by the Association psychologists : but not 
 the former. They are not agreed upon their catalogue 
 of elements, or the marks by which they may know the 
 simple from the compound. The psychologic unit i.s 
 not fixed ; that which is called one. impression by Hart- 
 ley is treated as half-a-dozen or more by Mill : and the 
 tendency of the modern teachers on this point is to 
 recede more and more from the better chosen track 
 of their master. Hartley, for example, regarded tho
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : IJAIX. 209 
 
 whole present effect upon us of any single object, 
 say, an orange, as a single sensation ; and the 
 whole vestige it left behind, as a single "idea of sensa- 
 tion." His modern disciples, on the other hand, con- 
 sider this same effect as an aggregate from a plurality 
 of sensations, and the ideal trace it leaves as highly 
 compound. The "idea of an object," instead of being 
 an elementary starting-point with them, is one of the 
 elaborate results of repetition and experience ; and is 
 continually adduced as remarkably illustrating the fus- 
 ing power of habitual association. Tims James Mill 
 observes : 
 
 ' It is to tliis great law of association that we trace the 
 formation of our ideas of what we call external objects ; that 
 is, the ideas of a certain number of sensations, received to- 
 gether so frequently that they coalesce as it were, and are 
 spoken of under the idea of unity. Hence, what we call the 
 idea of a tree, the idea of a stone, the idea of a horse, the idea 
 of a man. In using the names, tree, horse, man, the names of 
 what I call objects, I am referring, and can be referring, only 
 to my own sensations ; in fact, therefore, only naming a certain 
 number of sensations, regarded as in a particular state of 
 combination ; that is, concomitance. Particular sensations 
 of sight, of touch, of the muscles, arc; the sensations to the 
 ideas of which, color, extension, roughness, hardness, smooth- 
 ness, taste, smell, so coalescing as to appear one idea, I give 
 the name, idea of a tree." * 
 
 To precisely the same effect Mr. Bain remarks : 
 
 " External objects nsnallv affect us through a plurality of 
 senses. The pel hie on the seashore is pictured on the eye as 
 form and color. \Yc laky it up in the hand and repeat tho 
 
 * Analysis ol' the I'liuuomunu of the Human Mind, vol. i. p. 71.
 
 270 CEllEBUAL PSYCHOLOGY : MAIN. 
 
 impression of form, with (lie additional feeling of touch 
 Knock two together, and there is a characteristic sound. 
 To preserve the impression of an object of this kind, there 
 must he an association of all these different effects. Suc-li 
 association, when matured and firm, is our idea, our intellectual 
 grasp of the pebble. Passing to the organic world, and pluck- 
 ing a rose, we have the same effects of form to the eve and 
 hand, color and touch, with the new effects of odor and taste. 
 A certain time is requisite for the coherence of all these quali- 
 ties in one aggregate, so as to give us for all purposes the 
 enduring image of the rose. When fully acquired, any one 
 of the characteristic impressions will revive the others; (lie 
 odor, the sight, the feeling of the thorny stalk, each of these 
 by itself will hoist the entire impression into the view." ( The 
 Senses and the Intellect, p. 411.) 
 
 Now, this order of derivation, making our objective 
 knowledge begin with plurality of impression and arrive 
 at unity, we take to be a complete inversion of our 
 psychological history. Hartley, we think, was per- 
 fectly right in taking no notice of the number of inlets 
 through which an object delivers its effect upon us, and, 
 in spite of this circumstance, treating the effect as one. 
 Had he explicitly drawn out the principle which im- 
 plicitly guided him, it would have assumed perhaps 
 something like this form: 'That each state of con- 
 sciousness, whether awakened through more or fewer 
 channels, is, during its continuance, originally simple ; 
 and can resolve itself only by change of equilibrium.' 
 Xo psychological law appears to have higher evidence 
 than this ; and, little as the range of its consequences 
 has been perceived, there are probably few who would 
 dispute it when stated in a general form. Were it not 
 true, the feeling of each moment, determined as it is by
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY: BAIN'. 271 
 
 innumerable conditions in our organism, not one of 
 which could change and leave our state the same, would 
 seem to us, or must once have seemed, infinitely intri- 
 cate. But the constancies of our system, however nu- 
 merous, never disclose themselves till they break up ; 
 the functional sensibilities of the organic life first report 
 their character when they go wrong ; the muscles, 
 blended in a state of rest, detach themselves by the 
 permutations of motion, and acquire, as in learning 
 the use of a keyed instrument, more and more delicate 
 discriminations of feeling and action ; and if the special 
 senses less obviously converge upon one psychologic 
 point, it is only because their relations are perpetually 
 shifting inter se, and disappointing our experiments of 
 the requisite statical conditions. But even now, after 
 life has read us so many analytic lessons, in proportion 
 as we can fix the attitude of our scene and ourselves, 
 the sense of plurality in our impressions retreats, and 
 we lapse into an undivided consciousness ; losing, for 
 instance, the separate notice of any uniform hum in the 
 e:ir, or light in the eye, or weight of clothes on the body, 
 though not one of them is inoperative on the complex- 
 ion of our feeling. Tiiis law, once granted, must be 
 carried far beyond Hartley's point. Not only must 
 each object present itself to us integrally before it shells 
 off into its qualities, but the whole scene around us 
 must disengage for us object, after object from its still 
 background by emergence and change ; and even our 
 self-detachment from the world ovcr-against us must 
 wait for the start of collision between the force we issue 
 and that which we receive. To confine ourselves to the 
 simplest case : when a red ivory-ball, seen for the first
 
 272 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BA1X. 
 
 time, has been withdrawn, it will leave a mental repre- 
 sentation of itself, in which all that it simultaneously 
 gave us will indistinguiahably co-exist. Let a white 
 hall succeed to it ; now, and not before, will an attrib- 
 ute detach itself, and the color, by force of contrast, be 
 shaken out into the foreground. Let the white ball 
 be replaced by an egg : and this new difference will 
 bring the form into notice from its previous slumber. 
 And thus, that which began by being simply an object, 
 cut out from the surrounding scene, becomes for us first 
 a red object, and then a red round object ; and so on. 
 Instead, therefore, of the qualities, as separately given, 
 subscribing together and adding themselves up to pre- 
 sent us with the object as their aggregate, the object is 
 beforehand with them, and from its integrity delivers them 
 cut to our knowledge, one by one. In this disintegra- 
 te ;n, the primary nucleus never loses its substantive char- 
 acter or name ; whilst the difference which it throws off 
 appears as a mere attribute, expressed by an adjective. 
 Hence it is that we are compelled to think of the ob- 
 ject as having, not as being, its qualities ; and can 
 never heartily admit the belief of any loose lot of attri- 
 butes really fusing themselves into a thine/. The unity 
 of the original whole is not felt to go to pieces and be 
 resolved into the properties which it successively gives 
 off; it retains a residuary existence, which constitutes 
 it a substance, as against the emerging quality, which 
 is only its phenomenal predicate. Were it not for 
 this perpetual process of differentiation of self from 
 the world, of object from its scene, of attribute from ob- 
 ject, no step of Abstraction could be taken ; no qualities 
 could fall under our notice ; and had we ten thousand
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIX. 273 
 
 senses, they would all converge nml meet in but one 
 consciousness. But it' this be so, it is an utter falsifi- 
 cation of the order of nature to speak of sensations 
 grouping themselves into aggregates, and so composing 
 for us the objects of which we think ; and the whole 
 language of the theory, in regard to the field of syn- 
 chronous existences, is a direct inversion of the truth. 
 Experience proceeds and intellect is trained, not bv 
 Association, but by Dissociation, not by reduction 
 of pluralities of impression to one, but by the opening 
 out of one into many ; and a true psychological history 
 must expound itself in analytic rather than synthetic 
 terms. Precisely those ideas, of Substance, of Mind, 
 of Cause, of Space, which this system treats as infi- 
 nitely complex, the last result of myriads of confluent 
 elements, are in truth the residuary simplicities of con- 
 sciousness, whose stability the eddies and currents of 
 phenomenal experience have left undisturbed. The 
 same inversion of the real mental order has exercised, 
 we think, an injurious influence on the whole Logic and 
 Philology of the Association philosophers ; the organ- 
 ism of speech requiring, for its due interpretation, to 
 be read downward from its wholes into its parts ; and, 
 without this, being hardly capable of construction up- 
 wards from the atoms of predication to its life. We 
 cannot at present expand these hints ; but they will 
 suffice to show the wide sweep which a fundamental 
 psychological truth or error cannot fail to have, and 
 how the whole configuration of philosophy may be 
 affected by even a slight want of precision in its first 
 lines. Mr. Bain often approaches very near the im- 
 portant principle (as it seems to us) of the Unity of 
 
 18
 
 274 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 
 
 original consciousness ; speaking, for instance, of " the 
 concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of 
 consciousness, in the same cerebral highway " ( The 
 Senses and the Intellect, p. 3")9) ; and in the follow- 
 ing passage not only recognizing, but enforcing, the 
 necessity of differentiation by change : 
 
 ' Were it not for the primitive shock that difference gives, 
 there would be no basis for the intellect. All colors would be 
 alike ; sounds would not be distinct from touches or smells, 
 and there would he no cognition possible in any sense. The 
 feeling of difference, therefore, is the first step ; the impress- 
 ing of that, under the plastic property of the mind, into an 
 enduring notion is the next. We begin by being alive to the 
 distinctive shocks of red and green, of round and oval, small 
 and large ; by and by, we attain to the fixed notion of a rose 
 on its stem ; thence we go on combining this with others, until 
 the mind is full of the most variegated trains of imagery. 
 The laws of association follow up, and do not necessarily 
 imply, or contain in themselves, the primordial sense of differ- 
 ence, which is the most rudimentary of all the properties of 
 our intellectual being. Analysis can descend no deeper, ex- 
 planation can go no farther; we mu,st make a stand upon this, 
 as the preliminary condition of all intelligence, and merely 
 peek to place its character in a clear and certain light." (The 
 Emotions and the Will, p. G2G.) 
 
 Whilst insisting, however, on the imlispensableness 
 of change of impression, Mr. Bain apparently thinks 
 this condition sufficiently provided for by the mere 
 co-existence of sensations through a plurality of Senses ; 
 the power of discriminating which he attributes to the 
 Intellect as an ultimate and fundamental prerogative : 
 
 " The basis or fundamental peculiarity of the Intellect ia 
 discrimination, or the feeling of difference between consecutive,
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN T . 275 
 
 or co-existing impressions. Nothing mor<; fundamental can 
 possibly be assigned as the defining mark of intelligence, and 
 emotion as such does not imply any such property." (T/te 
 Emotions and the Will, p. G14.) 
 
 " Consecutive impressions " involve change ; but " co- 
 existing impressions" do not : and if the discriminative 
 power is equally related to both, it is not dependent 
 on the occurrence of change. And conversely, if it de- 
 mand change, it can do nothing with mere co-existing 
 impressions. This last position we believe to be the 
 true one ; and we cannot assent to Dugald Stewart's 
 statement : "Although we had never seen but one rose, 
 we might still have been able to attend to its color, 
 without thinking of its other properties." * Mr. Bain, 
 in concurring with this opinion of Stewart's, and at- 
 tributing plurality to the original effect of a single 
 object, appears to us to forget his own doctrine as to 
 impossibility of any sense of difference without change, 
 and to let slip a psychological clue already familiar to 
 his hand. 
 
 We have lingered near the incunabula of the oppo- 
 site psychologies in the hope that, by scrutiny of their 
 development at its initial stage, some approximate lines 
 might be found for them to prevent their rapid diver- 
 gence. The only hope of improved mutual understand- 
 ing lies at the, beginning. To discuss the ulterior 
 questions into which they run is a far easier and more 
 attractive task ; but, at the same time, utterly useless, 
 till the logical preliminaries are determined a mere 
 race from diflerent starting-points over incommensurable 
 
 * Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, part ii. chap, iv, 
 sect. 1.
 
 27() CEUEBRAL 1>SYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 
 
 fields. The enormous differences which open out ;is (lie 
 two methods pursue their way suffice, for those who 
 know them, to throw an interest around the finer dis- 
 tinctions at the commencement. If the dual is tic method 
 be admissible, we obtain at the fountain-head, unless 
 our ultimate constitution be unveracious, direct authority 
 for a few primitive cognitions, accurately corresponding 
 with the most rooted and universal belief's of mankind 
 viz. the substantial existence of ourselves as knowing 
 Subject, and of the external world as known Object ; 
 the reality and infinity of Space as the seat of the latter 
 with its contents, and the reality and infinity of Dura- 
 tion as containing the successions of the former ; the 
 origin of all phenomena from a causality not phenome- 
 nal. In such judgments, accepted as the inherent 
 postulates of all intelligence, we have a few first truths 
 to render experience possible, and to form a basis for 
 reliable knowledge. If the monistic principle holds, if 
 the only thing accessible to us is our own phenomena, 
 if they are but transformed sensations, if, moreover, 
 thev are phenomena of nothing and nobody, it is idle 
 to speak of cognition at all ; there is neither outer world 
 to be known, nor any "we" to know it: the inner 
 history alone is fact ; and it can furnish no rational 
 propositions, except about the groupings, the succes- 
 sions, or the resemblances inter se, of the feelings and 
 ideas composing it. Body means the experience of 
 certain muscular sensations ; Space, the experience 
 of their absence ; Infinity, the conception of their 
 possibility ; and what we say of these can be only 
 autobiographical, without validity beyond. Causality 
 denotes the constant priority of one of our states to
 
 CEREBRAL PSYCHOLOGY: BATX. 277 
 
 another. Belief means an association of ideas and 
 feelings, strong enough to stir muscular sensations. 
 Perception is a very misleading word ; pretending to 
 refer some sensation to an object that gives it, but 
 properly referring it only to the group that has it. 
 Personality is the sum -total of all the feelings in any- 
 one conscious life up to its present moment, in com- 
 nr.m language, rather aristocratically limited to human 
 beings; and to say, f l committed this sin,' is to tack 
 on a new phenomenon at the end of a train and lengthen 
 its thread. There can be no first truths ; for we form 
 no judgments till we have got language, and must have 
 the parts of speech before we can predicate any thing; 
 and then any stiff association of ideas, however arbi- 
 trary, is ready to set up for self-evidence. The propo- 
 sitions which assume this look are about nothing except 
 empty abstractions of the mind's creation, yielding only 
 an illusory certainty ; and it is a rule that a Science, to 
 be demonstrative, must be hypothetical ; and, to be 
 pure, its hypotheses must be false. The steadiness 
 with which the thorough-paced Hartleyan walks through 
 these startling paradoxes, the rigor with which he fol- 
 lows out their lines, with a pleasant sense of beauty and 
 discovery, we cannot but regard as curiously express- 
 ive of the mind logical rather than psychological. The 
 skill and ingenuity are often marvellous ; but to a very 
 large extent are expended, not in interpreting, so much 
 as in explaining away, your actual consciousness ; in 
 converting it into some strange, uncomfortable coin, 
 declared to be its change in full ; in apologizing for the 
 imperfect evidence of their equivalence, and showing 
 that it could not well be greater, considering all that
 
 278 CRREBKAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIN. 
 
 they have had to go through. Just as Mr. D;ir\vin, 
 on finding fossil species disinclined to help him, fixes on 
 them an ex-partc character, and urges that his genuine 
 witnesses must have disappeared and become indistin- 
 guishably worked up into the very grain of the world ; 
 so does the Association psychologist feel no discour- 
 
 1 
 
 agcmcnt from the refractory look of mental facts as 
 they are, whilst he can plead that the rudimentary forms 
 are compelled by the very hypothesis to vanish, and lie 
 mingled invisibly with the containing strata of the mind. 
 There is obviously a limit beyond which this kind of 
 plea cannot be carried without withdrawing the doctrine 
 it is meant to benefit from all rational test : and the 
 extent to which it is urged, measures the degree in 
 which conjecture takes the place of the vent cftuxn. 
 Now, when it is remembered that almost every one of 
 the distinctively human phenomena presents a crux 
 interpretum to this school ; that the points at which 
 suspicion of psychological tampering arises include the 
 Ideas of Space and Time, the ground of the Mathe- 
 matics ; of Substance and Causality, implied in Phys- 
 ics ; of Personality and Obligation, the conditions of 
 Morals ; of Right, the basis of Law ; of Beauty, the 
 essence of Art ; of Supreme Goodness, the inspiration 
 of Religion ; that whilst Memory and Conception and 
 Habit are fairly explained, Belief and Volition are 
 analyzed out of their identity ; the disproportion be- 
 comes striking between the assured value of the doctrine 
 and its cost. At every one of these points, Mr. Bain's 
 exposition has, to our feeling, the peculiar character of 
 ingenious unreality which is so common in all the later 
 writings of his school, and which so markedly distin-
 
 CEKEBIIAL PSYCHOLOGY : BAIX. 279 
 
 guishcs the subtle misconstructions of Brown and Mill 
 from tlie faithful half-analysis of Loeke. We find our- 
 selves entangled continually in mere quasi-psychology , 
 \vhich does not in the least speak to any thing within : 
 but shows how, under certain enumerated conditions, 
 an equivalent to the actual state of mind might be pro- 
 duced. This is more especially the case in the second 
 volume, where the author's description of the moral 
 phenomena seems to us to be drawn from some quite 
 imaginary human nature ; and to have no relation to 
 the real experiences and faiths of tempted and strug- 
 gling men. Highly significant of his method in this 
 respect is his habitual discontent with the language in 
 which men have embodied their ethical feeling and 
 thought. The great question of Moral Liberty is got 
 rid of by a wholesale objection to every one of its lead- 
 ing terms : " Freedom " is inappropriate ; " Necessity " 
 is an incumbrance ; " Self-determination " is a bad name 
 for motive pleasures and pains ; " Choice " can mean 
 nothing but the ending of suspense in a single line of 
 activity ; and so on. These terms " have weighed like 
 a nightmare upon the investigation of tli-e active region 
 of the mind." Docs the suspicion never cross Mr. 
 Bain that to cancel the vocabulary of moral thought and 
 feeling is to discharge the phenomena from his philoso- 
 phy? We refrain, however, from following him at 
 present into this great field ; his elaborate treatment of 
 which would require an independent discussion.
 
 280 
 
 REVELATION; WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT 
 IT IS.* 
 
 As there is a substance, we believe, which not only 
 burns in water, but actually kin^'es at the very touch 
 of water, so there certainly are insatiable doubts, which 
 not only resist the power, but seem to kindle at the very 
 centre of Christian faith. There is one question which 
 we should have supposed set at rest for ever in the 
 mind of any man who believes either in the revelations 
 of conscience or tho.se of Scripture, the question 
 whether or not it is permitted to man to knorv, and 
 grow in the knowledge of, God. If that be not possi- 
 ble, we, for our part, should hnve assumed that religion 
 was a, name for unwise, because useless, yearnings in 
 the heart of man ; and the Revelation whether natu- 
 ral or supernatural which professes to satisfy those 
 yearnings, simply a delusion. Yet so numerous and 
 closely twined are the threads of human faith and scep- 
 
 * What is Revelation V A Series of Sermons on the F.pipbany; to which 
 are ndc'cd " Letters to a Student of Theology on the Hampton Lectures of 
 Mr. Mansel " By the Kev. F. D. Maurice, M. A. Cambridge: Macmillan, 
 1859. 
 
 Preface to the Third Edition of Mr. Mansel's Hampton Lectures on the 
 Limits of Religious Thought. London: Murray, 1857. 
 
 Characteristics of the Gospel Miracles: Sermons preached before the Uni- 
 rersity of Cambridge. By F. B. Westcott, M.A. Cambridge: Maciuillau. 
 
 National Review, Juiy, U5y.
 
 REVELATION ; WHAT IT IS NOT, ETC. 281 
 
 ticism, that probably half the Christian \vorld searcelv 
 knows whether to think God Himself the subject of 
 Revelation, or only some fragment of his purposes for 
 man ; while professed apologists for Christianity arc 
 often, like Mr. Mansel, far firmer believere in the irre- 
 movable veil which covers the face of God, than in the 
 faint gleams of light which manage to penetrate what 
 they hold to be its almost opaque texture. And, as wo 
 have intimated, this doubt is not only not extinguished 
 by the Christian Revelation, but it seems in some case.* 
 even to feed on its very essence. Mr. Mansel seems to 
 regard the Christian revelation almost as express evi- 
 dence that God is inscrutable and inaccessible to man, 
 in that it only provides for us a " finite " type of the 
 infinite mystery, and presents to us in Christ not, lie 
 thinks, the truth of God, but the best approximation to 
 that truth though possiblv infinitely removed from it 
 of which "finite" minds arc capable. In other 
 words, he believes in the veil even more intensely than 
 in the revelation : nay, he seems to think this profound 
 conviction that the veil is inherent ir> the very essence 
 of our human nature, and indissoluble even by death 
 itself, unless death can dissever the formal laws of 
 human and finite thought likely to enhance our rev- 
 erence for the voices, so mysteriously "adapted"- to 
 finite intelligence, which float to us from behind it. 
 "In this impotence of Reason," he says, "we are com- 
 pelled to take refuge in faith, and to believe that an 
 Infinite Being exists, though we know not how; and that 
 He is the same with that Jieing who is made known in 
 consciousness as our Sustaincr and our Lawgiver." 
 And again, in the preface to his new edition .-
 
 282 REVELATION ; 
 
 " It has been objected by reviewers of very opposite scl:oola, 
 that to deny to man a knowledge of the Infinite, is to make 
 Revelation itself impossible, and to leave no room for evi- 
 dences on which reason can be legitimately employed. The 
 objection would be pertinent, if I had ever maintained that 
 Revelation is, or can be, a direct manifestation of the In- 
 finite nature of God. Hut I have constantly asserted the 
 very reverse. In Revelation, as in Natural Religion, God is 
 represented under finite conceptions, adapted to finite minds; 
 and the evidences on which the authority of Revelation rests 
 are finite and comprehensible also. It is true that in Revela- 
 tion, no less than in the exercise of our natural faculties, thertj 
 is indirectly indicated the existence of a higher truth, which, 
 as it cannot be grasped by any effort of human thought, can- 
 not be made the vehicle of any valid philosophical criticism. 
 But tlie comprehension of this higher truth is no more neces- 
 sary either to a belief in the contents of Revelation, or to a 
 reasonable examination of its evidences, than a conception of 
 the infinite divisibility of matter is necessary to the child 
 before it can learn to walk." 
 
 The fact of Revelation, as it is conceived by Mr. 
 Mansel, is, then, a mere adaptation of Truth to human 
 forms of thought, whether it come through conscience 
 or through Scripture; in both cases alike it is the 
 formation in our minds of a " representative idea," or 
 type, of God, not the direct presentation of the Divine 
 Life to our spirits, which he believes that we could not 
 receive and live. By conscience the vision of n holy 
 but finite Judge, Lawgiver, Father, is borne in upon 
 our hearts, namely, through the consciousness of our 
 dependence and of moral obligation ; by Scripture the 
 historical picture of a finite law, a Providence adapted 
 to finite minds, and lastly, a finite but perfect Son id
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 
 
 presented to our eyes. Thus certain messages hav-j 
 issued from the depths of the infinite mystery, which 
 have been mercifully translated for us into the meagre 
 forms of human thought : some of them arc spontane- 
 ously welcomed by human consciences ; others, attested 
 as they are by superhuman marvels, and not inconsist- 
 ent with the revelations of the conscience, are accepted 
 as convincing by hum. in reason ; and both alike help to 
 teach us, not what God is, but how we may think 
 of Him with least risk of unspeakable error. By these 
 necessarily indirect hints, as the truest of whu'h our 
 nature is capable, Mr. Mansel entreats us to hold, and 
 to guide our footsteps ; calling them "regulative truths," 
 by which he means the best working hypothesis we 
 are able to attain of the character and purposes of 
 God. They arc the only palliatives of that darkness, to 
 which the blinding veil of a human nature inevitably 
 dooms us. Revelation, we are told, cannot unloose the 
 "cramping" laws of a limited consciousness; it cannot 
 help the finite to apprehend the infinite ; but it can do 
 something to guide us in our blindness, so that we may 
 not unconsciously fail foul of the forces and laws of that 
 infinite world which we are unable to know ; it can give 
 us a "conception" of God, which is rjuitc true enough 
 as a practical manual for human conduct. But, to use 
 Mr. Mangel's own words, " how far that knowledge rep- 
 resents God as He is, we know not, and have no need 
 to know." 
 
 With this theory of Mr. Mansel's we have already 
 dealt in part.* We should rejoice that it had been 
 given to the world if onlv for the reply which it has 
 
 * See page 213.
 
 2S-1 REVELATION ; 
 
 called forth from Mr. Maurice, a reply which is not 
 merely an embodiment of ,1 completely opposite convic- 
 tion, but the insurrection of an outraged faith, the 
 protest of a whole character against a doctrine which 
 pronounces that all the springs of its life have been 
 delusions, and which tries to pass off human notions of 
 God in the place of God. Books generally go but :, 
 little way below the outer varnish of men's individual 
 culture; and it is not a little delightful to meet with 
 any that has all the various life and complexity of the 
 mind itself. The somewhat thin and triumphant logic 
 of the Bampton lectures, the evident preference for 
 analyzing the notions of man rather than returning to 
 the study of the realities from which those notions were 
 first derived ; the dogmatic condemnation of human 
 Reason to be imprisoned as long as it remains human 
 in "the Finite;" and finally, and most of all, the 
 gospel of God's inaccessibility, might in any case 
 probably have drawn from Mr. Maurice a solemn pro- 
 test ; but when all these instruments are used avowedly 
 in defence of Christianity, and Christ is himself put 
 forward, not as the perfect Revelation, but as the least 
 inadequate symbol of the divine nature, we do not 
 wonder that the tone of Mr. Maurice's reply is, if 
 alwsivs charitable, often sad and stern. Mr. Mansel 
 preaches that the sphere of Reason is the field of 
 human things ; Mr. Maurice, that every fruitful study 
 of human things implies a real insight into things 
 divine. Mr. Mansel holds that the human mind is 
 "cramped by its own laws;" and that divine realities, 
 therefore, so far as they can be the subject of its 
 thoughts at all, must be stunted, or, as the phrase is,
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND AVIIAT IT IS. 285 
 
 "accommodated" to the unfortunately dwarfed dimen- 
 sions of the recipient : Mr. Maurice holds that the 
 mind of man is fr adapted " to lay a gradual hold of 
 the divine truth it is to apprehend, and to grow into its 
 immensity ; instead of the divine truth being " adapted " 
 to the little capacities of the human mind. Mr. Man- 
 s-el holds, as \ve have seen, that Christianity tells us 
 just enough to keep us right with a God whom we can- 
 not really know ; Mr. Maurice, that the only way we 
 can be so kept right is by a direct and, in its highest 
 form, conscious participation in the very life of God. 
 
 In attempting to discuss, with the help of our authors, 
 the true meaning and objects of a divine Revelation, we 
 shall not again travel over the ground which we have 
 before disputed with Mr. Mansel. His position, that 
 the so-called laws of human thought are 'laws' in the 
 sense of arbitrary restrictions on intellectual freedom, 
 and not qualifications for real knowledge of any thing 
 deeper and wider than our own minds, we have already 
 sufficiently examined. We saw every reason to think 
 that the phenomena which induced him to despair of 
 our capacity for any divine insight were phenomena 
 inherent in all intelligence, human or divine, because 
 describing the very essence of intelligence.* To this 
 ground, therefore, we shall not now return ; but assum- 
 ing at on?e that there is nothing in the essential char- 
 acter of human thought to betray its own a-priori 
 
 * Mr. Mansel, in his new preface, quotes our observation, that " relative 
 apprehension is always and necessarily of two terms together; it of sound, 
 then also of silence; it' of succession, then also of duration; if of the 
 finite, then also of the inlinite;" and replies: "This is true as regards Ilia 
 meaning of the words, but by no means as regards the corresponding objects. 
 It' extended to the latter, it should in consistency be asserted that the touccp-
 
 REVELATION ; 
 
 incapacity for venturing into every region into wh'u'h 
 huniiui wants force us to gaze, let us take up the argu- 
 ment at once in its direct bearing on our communion 
 
 lion of tlint which is conceivable involves also the conception of that which 
 is inconceivable; that the consciousness of any thing is also the conscious- 
 ness of nothing; that the intuition of space and time is likewise the intuition 
 of the absence of both." Mr. Manscl has here supplied us with an excellent 
 illustration of the truth of our special position as to Finite and Infinite Space. 
 No doubt the general law of relative apprehension, as applied to language, 
 would require only that we should apprehend equally the meaning of the 
 relative terms, and not the corresponding objects. To understand what I 
 mean by " conceivable," I must understand what I mean by " inconceiva- 
 ble; " and perhaps the case of " sound " and "silence " is, as applied to the 
 knowledge received by a special sense, a discrimination of the* same kind. 
 We insisted on this universal law, that the whole force of apprehension really 
 consists in <liscriiin>ttion, only because Mr. Manscl seemed to us to represent 
 this relativity of human thought as an imbecility requiring apology to those 
 higher intelligences which, as he seems to suppose, can apprehend all things 
 without discriminating one thing from another. But this general relativity 
 of human apprehension was not the main fact referred to in the passage from 
 which Mr. Manscl quotes. We were referring more particularly then to 
 sj>trid pairs of relative apprehensions, which are not merely united together 
 in logical significance, but which, as thus united, carry with them a convic- 
 tion of objective reality, or in other words, which carry belief. In the case 
 of "succession" and "duration," "change" mid "cause," "Finite Space" 
 and "Infinite Space," the tie is not logical, but real. Xo one can conceive 
 " succession " without postulating inlinite duration, nor awake to the con- 
 sciousness of duration without an actual succession. Xo one can think of 
 finite space without postulating infinite space, nor awake to the con.-'cious- 
 ness of inlinite space without an actual experience of finite space. Xo 
 one can think of a "change" without postulating a " cause," nor ask for a 
 " cause " without consciousness of a " change." The " conceivable " and the 
 " inconceivable" are mere logical correlatives, in which neither term carries 
 anv belief. " The conceivable " is not a district cut out of a Whole described 
 ns "the inconceiv.-ibl; 1 ," as Finite Space is with respect to the Whole of 
 Jiuiuite Space. The very word "finite" bears in itself testimony to the 
 positive meaning in infinite-, and therein alone (lifters from " definite," which 
 would be fully adequate to express all that is expressed by " finite," if there 
 were no more than an unsuccessful attempt to lay down a limit if there were 
 not an absolute denial of a limit in the word Inlinite. In the special cases 
 referred to, then, the correlative is not formal and logical, but a real correla- 
 tive in belief. We must say we cannot even understand what thinkers so 
 accomplished as Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel mean when they talk of 
 'Infinite" and "Infinitesimal" as purely negative ideas, implying onty
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 287 
 
 \vith God, and sec whether Mr. Mansel has reallv any 
 adequate ground for the assumption which his opp.i- 
 ncnt, \ve think truly, regards as destructive of the very 
 spring of faith, tiiat though able to convince our- 
 selves that God does exist, the mere * infinitude " of 
 his Xature renders it impossible for us to hold converse 
 with Him. Passing as rapidly as may be over these 
 somewhat artificial earlier difficulties, we shall reserve 
 Mr. Maurice's help for the more positive and construc- 
 tive part of our imjuirv. 
 
 On what, then, d ;es Mr. Mansel base his assump- 
 tions ? Mainly on this, that if we really do hold direct 
 and conscious converse with God, we should find the 
 results of that converse, and of aptitude for it, inscribed 
 on our mental constitution. "A presentative revelation 
 implies faculties in man which can receive the presenta- 
 tion ; and such faculties will also furnish the conditions 
 of constructing a philosophical theory of the object 
 presented." With the first part of this sentence every 
 one must agree ; if God can be present, as we believe, 
 to the human mind, there must be faculties in us which 
 enable us to discern that presence. But the latter 
 assertion, that such faculties will also enable us t > con- 
 struct "a philosophical theory of the object presented," 
 
 fnlurct to tliink. Almost every one know? that mathematicians practically 
 use these ideas. distin^uishm"- even between various <>c/tr. of in(iniiii>l<i 
 with accurate results. Tin- merest schiilh;iy know*, lor instance, that EU 
 iiitiniti-lv Miiiill line, though of cour-e impossible to picture. i> :i n-nliiy. :".:] 
 > dit'.erent in kiml fit in ;i point. ll';>t it ran !> .-!iwn nvi.uit trii-:i!ly to t,,n- 
 tain as many points as tlie lonjre*: JiiK- in Xatnr -. Is \'-ii- nil a j;ir_:'in -.v:t!:-' t 
 n'ea'.jinjr. thotig'i it is a (k-nionstrahl..- i-rt;ii;iry '! A- a;>j>!i 1 '." " ; r-ou.-li- 
 tjt.-s." which are neither capable of increa<- IMP (l"iiiiii:i'i.i:i. t!n- ti-rni* " l'.\'.\- 
 nite" and " Finite" have either no mear.in^. or ;ta!ly diti'-Ttlit o,;-; :in.| 
 hence laucli of Mr. Manscl's confu.-i'ju.
 
 288 REVELATION' ; 
 
 seems to us a most amazing and gratuitous assertion. 
 A philosophical theory is possible when we stand above 
 our object, not when we stand beneath it. The learner 
 has faculties by which to learn ; but if what he studies 
 is inexhaustible, he will never have a " philosophical 
 theory" of it. Principles, no doubt, he will reach; 
 certain truths to mark his progress he will discover ; he 
 will know that he understands better and better that 
 which he can never comprehend; but a theory of the 
 whole he can never attain unless the whole be within 
 the limited range of his powers. Hence we entirely 
 deny 'Mr. Mansel's assumption, that direct converse 
 with God implies faculties for constructing "a theory" 
 of God. This is the fundamental error of his work. 
 He admits no knowledge except that which is on a level 
 with its object. Nothing is easier than to prove that no 
 plummet of human Reason can measure depths of the 
 divine mind ; nothing falser than to suppose that this 
 incapacity shuts us out entirely from that Mind, and 
 proves it to be the painted veil of " representative 
 notions" of God, and not God Himself, who has filled 
 our spirits in the act of worship. 
 
 AVe hold, then, that this is Mr. Mansel's first, and 
 perhaps deepest, error. lie sees that we have no 
 "theory" of God which is not presumptuous and self- 
 contradictory, and he argues therefrom that we have 
 no knowledge. Surely he mi^ht have learned better 
 from the simplest facts of human life. Have we any 
 "theory" of any human being that will bear a moment s 
 examination? Yet is our communion with our fellow 
 men limited to a consciousness of our own notions of 
 them? Are not "fixed ideas" of human things a siim
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 289 
 
 of a proud and meagre intellect? Yet Mr. Mansel 
 practically donies all knowledge of divine things, except 
 knowledge through "fixed ideas." He mistakes that 
 which hides God from us for that which reveals Him. 
 "Notions," "fixed ideas," of God, no doubt, and very 
 poor ones too, we have in abundance ; but instead of 
 being the media of our knowledge, they are more often 
 the veil which every true moral experience has to tear 
 aside. When we turn to Him with loving heart and 
 conscience, we find half the crystallized and petrified 
 ideas, pi'ofessing to represent his attributes, dissipated 
 like mists before the sun. To know is not to have a 
 notion which stands in the place of the true object, but 
 to be in direct communion with the true object. And 
 this is exactly the most possible, where theory, or com- 
 plete knowledge, is least possible. We know the 
 " abysmal deeps " of personality, but have no theory of 
 them. We know love and hatred, but have no theory 
 of them. We know God better than we know our- 
 pelves, better than we know any other human being, 
 better than we know either love or hatred ; but have no 
 theory, simply because we stand under and not above 
 Him. We can recognize and learn, but never compre- 
 hend. It is therefore idle to argue that knowing facul- 
 ties imply the means of " constructing a philosophical 
 theory," when every case in which living beings share 
 their life and experience with us adds to our knowl- 
 edge and to our grasp of principles ; whereas we can 
 construct "theories" about only the most simple and 
 abstract sciences. 
 
 But this point granted, Mr. Mansel takes his next 
 stand in favor of a merely " notional " theology on the
 
 290 REVELATION* ; 
 
 infinite nature of God. Admit, he says, that we can- 
 not adequately comprehend our relations with finite 
 realities, still such knowledge as we have of them may 
 be direct, because our knowin<?power bears some defi- 
 nite proportion to the object known. But knowledge 
 of an infinite being should either imply or generate, 
 so he reasons, infinite ideas in your own intellect. 
 Have you such ideas? If so, produce them. If not, 
 admit at once that what knowledge you have of such 
 beings is not direct, not first-hand at all, but at best 
 only by representative ideas miniature copies of the 
 Keality on an infinitely reduced scale. The object to 
 be known is unlimited; the intellectual -receptacle a 
 very narrow cell. There can be no room there for that 
 which it professes to hold ; if, therefore, any thing which 
 gives a real notion of that object actually has managed 
 to squeeze in, it can only be a minute image, a faint 
 symbol, an "adaptation" to the poverty of human 
 nature. Only a finite fraction of the infinite Reality 
 could be apprehended by a finite intelligence at best; 
 and that, of course, would give far less conception ot 
 the whole than a representative idea, reduced propor- 
 tionately in all its parts to suit " the apprehensive powers 
 of the recipient." Such is, as far as we understand it, 
 the nature of Mr. Mansel's objection. "In whatever 
 affection," he says, "we become conscious of our rela- 
 tion with the Supreme Being, we can discern that con- 
 sciousness only by reflecting on it under its proper 
 notion" Air. Mansel does reflect on it, through many 
 lectures, under several "notions," which he at least 
 conceives to be " proper ; " and finding them all what 
 he terms finite, he ends by telling us that the human
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 2 ( J1 
 
 mind can only apprehend a finite type of God, and yet 
 is compelled to believe that God is infinite : whence he 
 argues we can have no direct knowledge of God at all, 
 but can only study a limited symbol of Him, which lie 
 Himself has mercifully introduced into our minds, and 
 reproduced in an objective and more perfect form in the 
 incarnation of Christ. And if, still dissatisfied, any one 
 suggests to Mr. Mansel that knowledge of God, like 
 knowledge of human things, may be partial, but yet 
 direct, and progressive, in short, a real and growing 
 union of our mind with his, he replies : 
 
 " The supposition refutes itself: to have a partial knowledge 
 of an object is to know a part of it, but uot the whole. But 
 the part of the infinite which is supposed to be known, must 
 be itself either infinite or finite. If it is infinite, it presents 
 the same difficulties as before ; if it is finite, the point in 
 question is conceded, and our consciousness is allowed to be 
 limited to finite objects. But in truth it is obvious, on a 
 moment's reflection, that neither the Absolute nor the Infinite 
 can be represented in the form of a Whole composed of parts. 
 Not the Absolute, for the existence of the Whole is dependent 
 on the existence of its parts; not the Infinite, for if any part 
 is Infinite, it cannot be distinguished from the Whole; and if 
 each part is finite, no number of such parts can constitute the 
 infinite." 
 
 Now what does all this prove ? This, and this only : 
 that if we take the words "Absolute" and "Infinite" 
 to mean that He to whom they are applicable chokes 
 np the universe, mental and physical, and prevents the 
 existence of every one else, then it is nonsense and 
 clear contradiction for any one else, who is conscious of 
 his own existence, to use these words of God at all.
 
 KEVELATIOX ; 
 
 Surely this might have been said without so much cir- 
 cumlocution. And what docs Mr. Mansel thereby 
 gain? Simply, as far as we can see, that he has estab- 
 lished the certain non-existence of any Being in this 
 sense "absolute" or "infinite." Mr. Mansel denies 
 this, and says, "No, I have only proved that a philoso- 
 phy of the Absolute and Infinite is impossible to man." 
 But if we ask, Why not to God also, and to all rational 
 beings who do not believe in any philosophy of self- 
 contradictions and chimeras? he will immediately turn 
 upon us and say, "Because, after all, you must admit 
 that there is an 'Absolute' and an 'Infinite,' and that 
 these terms ought to apply to God. It is our incom- 
 petence to conceive that involves us in all these self- 
 contradictions. If you are going to deny the existence 
 of the 'Absolute' and 'Infinite,' you will get into as 
 much trouble in another direction as if you admit and 
 try to reason upon them. Suppose there is no Infinite 
 and Absolute, and we must assume the universe to be 
 made up of finites, and to be itself finite ; which is the 
 more inexplicable alternative of the two?" 
 
 Now, in reply to this reasoning, we must say very 
 explicitly that it is a mere playing fast and loose with 
 words. Mr. Mansel first wants the words " Infinite " 
 and "Absolute" to exclude all limitation or order of all 
 sorts. Every thing like essential laws of mind or char- 
 acter, every mental or moral condition or constitu- 
 tion, self-imposed or otherwise, under which the Divine 
 mind could act, he calls a limitation, and excludes 
 from the meaning of the words. When he has proved, 
 what is exceedingly easy to prove on such an hypoth- 
 esis, that we can only speak of the Infinite in self-
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AM) WHAT IT IS. 293 
 
 contradiction;*, he says, ''Well, then, here is an end of 
 the Absolute and Infinite. Clearly we are unable to 
 grasp this ; but the only alternative is the f relative ' 
 and 'finite;' an alternative still more inexplicable." 
 And now, by "finite," we must remember, he means, 
 not that which acts under given conditions, under 
 the limitations, say, of a Perfect Nature, infinitely rich 
 in creative power, though of ordered Creative Power, 
 issuing from the depths of an Eternal Holiness and 
 Eternal Reason, but limited in every direction ; con- 
 ditioned everywhere, not by the life-giving order of 
 Character, but by the helplessness of external bonds. 
 We have no hesitation in saving that between unlim- 
 ited Infinitude, understood in that sense in which Mr. 
 Mansel professes to think that less imbecile mental con- 
 stitutions than ours would find no contradictions, and 
 the absolutely cramped and fettered Finitude, understood 
 in the sense in which there is no realm of unlimited 
 development and free creation at all, between these 
 extremes, we say, the whole universe of mind, from the 
 Divine to the human, is necessarily comprehended. 
 The one alternative, which Mr. Mansel does not deign 
 to admit into his religious dilemma even hypothetic-ally, 
 that of unlimited energy, conditioned by definite 
 laws, moral and spiritual, is that which the Revela- 
 tion of conscience and the Revelation of history alike 
 reveal to us as the actual standard of perfect ion. 
 The sense in which the "Absolute" :in<! "Infinite" are 
 really self-contradictory terms, is the sense in which 
 we try to make them proof against every limitation ; 
 and they are so in that case for the very simple 
 reason, that the absence, of all positive characteristics
 
 294 REVELATION ; 
 
 is, as Mr. Mnnsel has himself admitted, not only as 
 great, but really a far greater limitation than the pres- 
 ence of those characteristics would be. A vacuum is 
 certainly not limited, like a human being, by any spe- 
 cific mode of life ; but it must be said to be still more 
 limited by the absence of all modes of life whatever. 
 On the other hand, the sense in which the Conscience 
 and Reason of man eagerly assert the reality of an " In- 
 finite" and "Absolute" Being, is not in the least the 
 sense in which they are self-contradictory terms. We 
 are forced to believe in a being whose moral and intel- 
 lectual constitution is, not vaguer and less orderly, but 
 infinitely distincter and more rich in definite qualities 
 and characteristics than our own ; but whose free Crea- 
 tive Energies, as determined by those characteristics, are 
 infinitely greater also. The mental constitution which 
 impresses Order on the operation of Power is not, we 
 are taught alike by conscience and inspiration, a true 
 limitation on life, in the sense of a fetter ; but is rather 
 in itself a proper fountain of fresh life, and a con- 
 servation of Power which would otherwise neutralize 
 itself. Our incapacity to conceive the " Infinite " and 
 "Absolute," in the sense in which they repudiate all 
 conditions, turns out to be a positive qualification for 
 conceiving them as names of God. We want them as 
 describing attributes in which we can trust, and we can 
 only trust in the attributes of a perfectly holy, and 
 therefore, in some sense, defined Nature. 
 
 We may be fully satisfied, then, as the great revela- 
 tion of all experience, that the real fulness and per- 
 fection of character which we vainly strive to express 
 by the word " infinite " is not gained by the absence,
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 295 
 
 but by the expansion and deepening, of those defined 
 moral qualities which Mr. Mansel wants to persuade 
 us are to be considered mere limitations of nature. 
 When, for instance, he applies the word " infinite," in its 
 physical sense, to the divine personality, and asks if it 
 does not exclude all other beings, because any other 
 really free will must impose a limit on the operation of 
 the divine will, we ask if there would not be far 
 deeper limitation in the denial to God of the possibility 
 of that divine love which can exercise itself only on 
 free wills. That only can be considered a real limita- 
 tion which chokes the springs of spiritual life ; and all 
 self-imposed limitation on absolute power which is the 
 condition of a real exercise of the spiritual or higher 
 springs of life is the reverse of real limitation. This is 
 the lesson of every human responsibility. Is not every 
 new duty, soc:ial or moral, a limitation of some kind 
 an obligation to others which at least in some direc- 
 tion appears to impose a limit on us, and yet which 
 enlarges the whole scope of our nature? And is it not 
 equally clear that a divine solitude would be more lim- 
 ited by the necessity of solitude, than by the freedom 
 of the beings who are learning to share the divine 
 life? 
 
 Mr. Mansel will say that all this is playing into 
 his hands. He had desired to persuade us that all 
 direct knowledge of God was impossible, because we 
 cannot tell what is limitation and what is not ; in other 
 words, we can form no adequate " conception " of 
 fulness or perfection of life. What seems to us limi- 
 tation, may be, not limitation, but, a mode of divine 
 power; what we reverently think of as belonging to
 
 20 G REVELATION ; 
 
 God because it is included in our notion of power, may 
 not really belong to Him, but be, in fact, a human 
 limitation. Assuredly this is so. We have already 
 admitted that if adequate or exhaustive notions, not 
 of God only, but of any living bring, were needful to 
 us for direct .knowledge, we .should have no direct 
 knowledge of life at all. But we have been protesting 
 against Mr. Mansel, not for saying that we have no 
 adequate conception of (fod, but for saying that we 
 cannot be conscious of his presence with us, conscious 
 of the life we do receive from Him, conscious of what 
 He really is, in the same, indeed even in a far higher, 
 sense than that in which we are conscious of what 
 human beings are. We cannot tell whether this or 
 that would be a limitation on the divine essence ; but 
 v.-e can tell whether love and righteousness and power 
 fl.iw from Him into us. Does this give us no knowl- 
 edge of God? Does this give us no communion with 
 Him ? " No," says Mr. Mansel ; ' r for ' love,' and f right- 
 eousness,' and ' power,' can be received into your minds 
 only in finite parcels, which give no approximation to 
 a knowledge of their infinite fountain." Here, again, 
 we come upon that delusive and positive use of the 
 word " infinite " which, in spite of Mr. Mansel's protest 
 that " infinite " has only a negative meaning, runs 
 through his whole book. He says we do not know 
 what "infinite" means, and therefore cannot know that 
 the "finite" is like the "infinite." We know f rod's 
 love, and are obliged to believe that it is immeasurably 
 deeper than we can know ; and Mr. Mansel wishes to 
 persuade us that this last faith may change the whole 
 meaning of the first, that the very depth and truth
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 29? 
 
 which we assert ourselves unable to gauge ouu'ht to be 
 a source of doubt whether we know the reality at all. 
 A life comes into a man, the depths of which he cannot 
 sound ; and his very conviction that he has not the 
 capacity to comprehend its fulness is to empty it of all 
 defined meaning ! Surely Mr. Mansel must see that 
 "infinite" is a mere hollow word when used in this 
 way. The conviction we express by that word is sim- 
 plv that what we know to be restraints on our highest 
 
 1 / a 
 
 and fullest life do not exist in God ; but this conviction, 
 instead of leading us to fear that righteousness and 
 love change their nature in Him because He is " infi- 
 nite," fills us with certainty that they do not. In short, 
 righteousness and love are qualities which, if we are 
 competent to know them really at all in any single act 
 of God's, we know to be the same in all acts ; and all 
 that we mean by calling them infinite is, that we have 
 more and more to learn about them for ever, which will 
 not change and weaken, but confirm and deepen, the 
 truth gained in every previous act of our knowledge. 
 M. Hansel's notion, that because our knowing capacity 
 is limited and God inexhaustible, we can never know 
 directly more than such a fraction of his nature as 
 would be rather a mockery than a personal revelation, 
 is a mere physical metaphor. Our capacity for know- 
 ing may be limited either so that partial knowledge is 
 delusive (as of one corner of a figure) if taken for the 
 whole ; or so only that it is true in kind, and extends to 
 the whole, but utterly inadequate in depth. The latter 
 is of course true of all direct knowledge of a person- 
 ality, which we know to be one and indivisible. What 
 we do not know is, then, mainly, the immeasurable
 
 298 REVELATION ; 
 
 range .and inexhaustible depth of that which in a single 
 act we do know. Or if there be other characteristics 
 as yet wholly unknown, we know them to be in har- 
 mony, because belonging to the same perfect person- 
 ality with those we do know. 
 
 In brief, we may sum up our differences with Mr. 
 Mansel on this head by saying, that if " infinite " is to 
 mean the exclusion of all definiteness of nature and char- 
 acter, then we do know, and he himself admits that 
 it has no application to God, if only because it would 
 itself be a far greater limitation than that which it 
 excluded ; that if, on the other hand, it be admitted to 
 be consistent with a defined character and constitution, 
 and to mean rather "perfect," then that we certainly 
 have not an abstract idea of what this is, but have posi- 
 tive faculties for gradual conscious recognition of such 
 a Perfect being when manifested to our Conscience and 
 Reason, and an inextinguishable faith in his perfection 
 even as unmanifested. Finally, that if it be main- 
 tained that what \ve can thus recognize is as nothing 
 when compared with what is beyond our vision, we 
 may admit it, provided only that what we do know is 
 direct knowledge, and knowledge of God, not of a part 
 of God ; and that it carries with it not merely a hope, 
 but a certainty, that the inexhaustible depths still unre- 
 vealed will only deepen and extend, instead of falsify- 
 ing, that knowledge at which we have arrived. 
 
 We have dwelt somewhat long on what seem to us 
 the most transparent sophisms, because it is on them 
 that Mr. Mansel relies for his assertion that our knowl- 
 edge of God cannot be direct ; that Revelation cannot 
 reveal Him, but only a finite type of Him, more or less
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 299 
 
 different from the reality how different no one can 
 dare to say. Such a position destroys all interest in 
 the Revelation when it comes. If it be only a working 
 hypothesis, to keep us, while confined in the human, 
 from blindly and unconsciously dashing ourselves against 
 the laws of the divine ; if it merely says, " Take this 
 chart, which necessarily alters the infinite infinitely to 
 make it finite ; but nevertheless, if you steer by it, it 
 will save you as much from the rocks as if it were 
 true," we do not believe any body would care much 
 for Revelation at all. We should say, "Show us fresh 
 realities, and whether they be finite or infinite, we \\ill 
 attend ; but as for these magical clues, which only 
 promise to keep us right, without showing us how or 
 why, we would rather be wrecked against one really 
 discovered rock, we would rather founder in the attempt 
 to sound on our own f dim and perilous way,' than be 
 constantly obeying directions which are mere accommo- 
 dations to our ignorance, and which will leave us, even if 
 we obey them strictly and reach the end of our voyage 
 in safety, as ignorant of the real world around us as 
 when we began it." Yet Mr. Mansel's great plea for 
 Revelation, as he understands it, is, that it provides us 
 with regulative though not with speculative truth, 
 that it gives us wise advice, the wisdom of which we 
 can test by experience ; though furnishing nothing but 
 guesses at the true grounds of that advice. 
 
 Now if any one is disposed to admire the apparent 
 modesty of this conclusion, and to acquiesce in it as the 
 true humility of mature wisdom, he will do well to study 
 in Mr. Maurice's profound volume the evidence that 
 every living movement of human thought, religioua
 
 300 REVELATION ; 
 
 or otherwise, cries out against it. All regulative truth, 
 nil truth, that is, which has a deep influence on human 
 action, all truth in which men trust, is founded in the 
 discovery of ultimate causes, not of empirical rules. 
 The distrust of empirical rules in science, in art, in 
 morals, in theology, is all of the same root. It may 
 be safest to act on probabilities where there is no cer- 
 tainty ; to act by empirical rule where the principle of 
 the rule is undiscovered ; to follow a plausible authority 
 where there is no satisfying truth ; and by such rules, 
 no doubt, in the absence of (til temptation to disre- 
 gard (hem, men are occasionally guided when they 
 cannot reach any basis of fact. But, as Mr. Maurice 
 very powerfully insists, there is no single region of life 
 in which these " regulative " and approximate generali- 
 ties exercise any transforming influence on the mind. 
 The smallest probability will outweigh the greatest if 
 it fall in with our wishes; the empirical rule sud- 
 denly appears specially inapplicable to the exceptional 
 case in which it becomes inconvenient. The plausible 
 authority is disputable where its recommendations are 
 irritating or painful. It is quite different where we 
 have reached a fresh certainty, a new cause, a new 
 force, a new and self-sustaining truth, a new fountain 
 of actual life. Actual things and persons we cannot 
 ignore; we may struggle with or defy them, but we 
 cannot forget to take them into account. For the 
 lottery-prize we will pay far more than it is worth, 
 the number of blanks scarcely affecting the imagina- 
 tion ; the danger of detection never checks the bond- 
 fide impulse to crime ; a single certain suffering which 
 will be independent of success or failure, the anguish
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS 301 
 
 of conscience, which success rather intensifies, will 
 outweigh it all. Exactly in proportion to the exclusion 
 of hypothetical and the presence of known and tested 
 elements is the really " regulative " influence exerted on 
 the human will. Believe with Mr. Mansel that Reve- 
 lation gives us a more or less true notion of God, and 
 it will cease to kindle us at all. Recognize in it with 
 Mr. Maurice the direct manifestation of God to the 
 conscience, and the life thus manifested will haunt us 
 into war, if it do not fill us with its peace. If faith 
 give no certainty, it is not " regulative," but itself spec- 
 ulative ; if it does not satisfy the reason, it cannot 
 overawe the will. Mr. Mansel appears to regard the 
 phrase " satisfying to the reason " as applying to that 
 sort of knowledge which can answer every query of 
 human curiosity. He tells us that the influence of mind 
 on matter is a regulative truth, of which we cannot 
 give the least account, and not, therefore, satisfving 
 to the Reason. In this sense, clearly, no living influ- 
 ence in the universe is satisfying to the reason ; for we 
 cannot reason any thing into life. But this is a totally 
 different sense from that in which he invites us to sur- 
 render our desire for a reasonable knowledge of God, 
 as distinguished from a regulative message from Him. 
 Reason in the highest sense does not pursue its ques- 
 tions beyond the point of discriminating between a real 
 and permanent cause or substance, and a dependent 
 consequence or a variable phenomenon. It asks " why" 
 only till it has reached something which can justify its 
 own existence, and there it stops. True Reason la 
 satisfied when it has traced the stream of effect up to 
 a living Origin, and discriminated the nature of that
 
 302 REVELATION ; 
 
 Origin. It is not the impulse of Reason, but, as Mr. 
 Maurice has finely said, the disease of nationalism, 
 which continues to make us restless questioners in the 
 presence of those living Objects which ought to fill 
 and satisfy the Reason, inducing us to ask for a 
 reason deeper than Beauty before we can admire, for 
 a reason deeper than Truth before we can believe, 
 for a reason deeper than Holiness before we can love, 
 trust, and obey. But no true Reason is, or ought to 
 be, satisfied with an echo, a type, a symbol, of some- 
 thing higher which it cannot reach. If it find transitory 
 beauty in the type, it turns by its own law to gaze on 
 the Eternal beauty beneath ; if it find broken music 
 in the echo, it yearns after the perfect harmony which 
 roused the echo. Reason might be defined to be that 
 whick leads us to distinguish the sign from the thing 
 signified, which leads us back from the rule to the 
 principle, from the principle to the purpose, from 
 the purpose to the living character in which it origi- 
 nated, which, in short, will not be satisfied with any 
 image, but cries after the Original. 
 
 ]f this be Reason, then, to satisfy Reason is to find 
 out truly regulative truth ; for what is it which, in the 
 passion and fever of life, truly transforms and chastens 
 human purposes? Surely nothing but the knowledge 
 of realities, sensible realities more than spiritual 
 abstractions, spiritual realities most of all : mere 
 things painful or delightful far more than any abstract 
 ideas ; men far more than things ; men present more 
 than men absent ; but men absent more than the dream 
 of an absent God, because we have lost our faith in 
 God altogether when we have lost our faith in his
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 303 
 
 direct presence with us. We need scarcely take more 
 than one example of what Mr. Mansel calls regulative 
 moral truth. It will be quite sufficient to test the 
 utterly hollow and unregulative character of the gospel 
 which he can alone deliver to his disciples. He tells us 
 that our human morality, like our human objects of 
 faith, is an adaptation to our condition ; though it 
 surely must resemble, with quite inconceivable differ- 
 ences, the divine morality from which it has been 
 epitomized for us. What is his illustration? One so 
 extraordinary, that it is difficult to believe he was not 
 trying to prove that such reduced and " adapted " rides 
 and types can have no regulative influence on the 
 human will. He is arguing that there is not, and can- 
 not be, "a perfect identity," or even "exact resem- 
 blances" between the morality of God and man, that 
 actions may be "compatible with the boundless good- 
 ness of God which are incompatible with the little 
 goodness of which man may be conscious in himself." 
 The case he takes is the duty of human forgiveness. 
 It is the duty of man, he says, to forgive uncondition- 
 ally a repented sin. People who argue that God 
 cannot be less good than man, assume that God must 
 do likewise. The fallacy lies, he maintains, in forget- 
 ting that the finite form of human duty essentially alters 
 the moral standard in the mind of God. This he 
 proves as follows : 
 
 " It is obvious, indeed, on a moment's reflection, (hat the 
 duty of man to forgive the trespasses of his neighbor res is 
 precisely upon those features of human nature which cannot 
 by any analogy be regarded as representing an image of God. 
 Man is not the author of the moral law ; he is not, as mail,
 
 304 REVELATION ; 
 
 the moral governor of his fellows; he has no authority, merely 
 as man, to punish moral transgressions as such. It is not as 
 sin, but as injury, that vice is a transgression ayainst man ; it 
 is not that his holiness is outraged, but that his rights or his 
 interests are impaired. The duty of forgiveness is imposed 
 as a check, not upon the justice, but upon the selfishness of 
 man ; it is not designed to extinguish his indignation against 
 vice, but to restrain his tendency to exaggerate his own per- 
 sonal injuries. The reasoner, who maintains ' it is a duty in 
 man to forgive sins, therefore it must be morally fitting for God 
 to forgive them also,' overlooks the fact that this duty is binding 
 on man on account of the weakness, and ignorance, and sinf id- 
 ness of his nature: that he is bound to forgive as one who 
 himself needs forgiveness; as one whose weakness renders 
 him liable to suffering; as one whose self-love is ever ready 
 to arouse his passions and pervert, his judgment." 
 
 We scarcely ever met with a passage in any thought- 
 ful writer which seems to us to contain deeper and 
 more disastrous misreadings of moral, to say nothing 
 of Christian truth, than this. To us the profound and 
 deadly falsehood lies exactly in that which constitutes 
 its value to Mr. Manscl the assumption that man's 
 duty to forgive is not grounded in his likeness, but in his 
 unlikeness, to God. But it is not to this point we wish 
 to call attention, but to the worth of such a truth as 
 regards its power to regulate human conduct. If there 
 be anywhere a duty hard of performance, it is the 
 duty of human forgiveness. If there be one which 
 the ordinary nature of man spurns as humiliating, and 
 almost as a wrong to his whole mind, it is that duty. 
 Ground it in the very nature of God, in the holy living 
 will which, ever close to us, ever able to crush, is ever 
 receiving fresh injury, and yet, even in inflicting the
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 305 
 
 supernatural anguish of divine judgment, is ever offer- 
 ing anew both the invitation and the power to repent, 
 and you open the spirit to a reality which cannot hut 
 awe and may melt it, in the hour of trial. ]>ut ground 
 it with Air. Manscl on the old, worn-out, lax sort of 
 charity which is indulgent to others because it is weak 
 itself, and it will be the least regulative, we suspect, 
 of regulative duties. Mr. Maurice's exposure of the 
 hollowness of this foundation is too fine to omit : 
 
 " ' The duty of forgiveness is binding upon man on account 
 of the weakness and ignorance and sinfulness of liis nature.' 
 But what if the weakness, ignorance, and sinfulness of my 
 nature dispose me not to forgive ? What if one principal 
 sign of this weakness, ignorance, sinfulness of my nature is, 
 that I am unforgiving? What if the more we'ak, ignorant, 
 and sinful my nature is, the more impossible forgiveness 
 becomes to me, the more disposed I am to resent every injury, 
 and to take the most violent menus fur avenging it ? It is my 
 duty to forgive, because I am ' one whose self-will is ever ready 
 to arouse his passions and pervert his judgment.' To arouse 
 my passions; to what? To any thing so much as to acts of 
 revenge ? To pervert my judgment ; how ? In any way so 
 much as by making me think that I am right and other men 
 wrong, and that I may vindicate my right against their wrong? 
 And this is the basis of the duty of forgiveness! The temper 
 which inclines me at every moment to trample upon that 
 duty, to do what it forbids ! The obvious conclusion, then, 
 has some obvious difficulties. Obvious indeed ! They meet 
 us at every step of our way ; they are t/tc difficulties in our 
 moral progress. Forgiveness is ' to be a check on the sclii>h- 
 ness of man.' Where docs he get the check ? From his 
 selfishness. It is the old, miserable, hopeless circle. I am to 
 persuade myself by certain arguments not to do the thing 
 
 liO
 
 301) REVELATION ; 
 
 which I am inclined to do. But the inclination remains as 
 strong as ever; bursts down all the mud fortifications that 
 are built to confine it; or else remains within the heart, a 
 worm destroying it, a fire consuming it. Whence, O whence, 
 is this forgiveness from the heart to come, which I cry for? 
 Is it impossible ? Am I to check my selfishness by certain 
 rules about the propriety of abstaining from acts of unfor- 
 giving ferocity? God have mercy upon those who have only 
 such rules, iu a siege or a shipwreck, when social bonds are 
 dissolved, when they are left to themselves ! All men have 
 declared that forgiveness, real forgiveness, is no', impossible. 
 And we have felt that it is not impossible, because it dwells 
 somewhere in beings above man, and is shown by them, and 
 comes down as the highest gift from them upon inau. . . . 
 And whenever the idea of Forgiveness has been severed 
 from this root, whenever the strong conviction that \ve are 
 warring against the nature of God and assuming the nature 
 of the Devil by an unforgiving temper has given place to a 
 sentimental feeling that we are all sinner.-, and should be 
 tolerant of each other, then has come that weakness and 
 effeminacy over Christian society, that dread of punishing, 
 that unwillingness to exercise the severe functions of the 
 Ruler and the King, which has driven the wise back upon 
 older and sterner lessons, has made them think the vigor of 
 the Jew in putting down abominations, the self-assertions 
 of the Grei-k in behalf of freedom, were manlier than the 
 endurance and compassion of the Christians. Which I should 
 think too, if, referring the endurance and compassion to :; 
 divine standard, I did not find in that standard a justification 
 of all which was brave and noble in the Jewish protest 
 against evil, in the Greek protest against tyranny. Submis- 
 sion or Compassion, turned into mere qualities which we are 
 to exalt and boast of as characteristic of our religion, become 
 little else than the negations of Courage and Justice. Con- 
 templated as the reflections of that Eternal Goodness aud
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. SO/ 
 
 Truth which were manifested in Christ, as energies proceed- 
 ing from him and called forth by his Spirit, submission to 
 personal slights and injuries, the compassion for every one 
 who is out of the way, become instruments in the vindi- 
 cation of Justice and Right, and of that Love in thu fires of 
 which all selfishness is to be consumed." 
 
 We have done our best to explain why we utterly 
 disavow Mr. Mansel's interpretation of Revelation, as 
 a message intended to regulate human practice without 
 unfolding the realities of the divine mind. It is a less 
 easy task, but not less a duty, on the part of those who 
 are gravely sensible of the emptiness of such an inter- 
 pretation, to give some exposition of the deeper mean- 
 ing which the fact of revelation assumes to their own 
 minds. We hold that it is an unveiling of the very 
 character and life of the eternal God ; and an unveiling, 
 of course, to a nature which is capable of beholding 
 Him. It is not, in our belief, an overclouding of 
 divine light to suit it for the dimness of human vision, 
 but a purification of human vision from the weakness 
 and disease which render it liable to be dazzled and 
 blinded by the divine light. It is, in short, the history 
 of the awakening, purifying, and answering, of the 
 yearnings of the human spirit for a direct knowledge of 
 Him. It proceeds from (Hod, and not from man. The 
 cloud which is on the human heart and Reason can 
 only be gradually dispersed by the divine love ; no 
 restless straining of turbid human aspiration can wring 
 from the silent skies that knowledge which yet every 
 human being is formed to attain. Coming from God, 
 this method, this " education of the human race," as 
 Lessing trulv termed Revelation, has been unfolded
 
 308 REVELATION J 
 
 with the unfolding capacity of the creatures Ho was 
 educating to know Him. Its -significance cannot be 
 confined to any special series of historical facts ; but 
 it is clear that the Divine government of (he Jewish 
 race was meant to bring out, and did bring out, more 
 distinctly the personality of God, while the history of 
 other races brings out more clearly the divine capaci- 
 ties of man. Hence the co-operation of different nations 
 was requisite for the fulfilment of the Revelation. 
 Centuries were required for the complete evolution even 
 of that special Jewish history that was selected to 
 testify to the righteous will and defined spiritual char- 
 acter of the Creator. Centuries on centuries will be 
 required to discipline fully the human faculties that are 
 to grow into the faith thus prepared for them. The 
 blindness of the greatest men, of the highest races, of 
 wide continents, cannot shake our faith that this pur- 
 pose will be fulfilled ; for the term of an earthly life is 
 adequate at best for its conscious commencement, and 
 only under special conditions even for that ; nor are 
 there wanting indications that both in the case of men 
 and nations the longest training and the dreariest 
 periods of abeyance of spiritual life, are often prepa- 
 rations for its fullest growth. By tedious discipline, 
 by slow Providence, by inspirations addressed to the 
 seeking intellect of the philosopher, to the yearning 
 imagination of the poet, to the ardent piety of the 
 prophet, to the common reason and conscience of all 
 men, and by the fulfilment of all wisdom in the Son of 
 God's life on earth, has the Divine Spirit sought to 
 drive away the mists that dim our human vision. 
 Through its wants and powers alike human nature has
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 309 
 
 been taught to know God. Its every power has been 
 haunted by a want till the power was referred to its 
 divine source, its very wants have become powers when 
 they have turned to their divine object. If this, then, 
 and nothing short of this, be Revelation, a living and 
 direct unfolding of that divine mind in which, whether 
 we recognize it or not, we " live and move and have 
 our being," an eternal growth in our knowledge of 
 the eternal Life, we ought not to rest satisfied with 
 showing that Mr. Mansel's reasons for disputing the 
 possibility of such a wonderful truth are unsound, we 
 ought also to show by what criteria we judge that this 
 is the actual fact, the great reality, on which all our 
 love of truth and knowledge rests. 
 
 The first stage in any revelation must be, one would 
 suppose, the dawning knowledge that there is a veil 
 "on the heart" of man, and that there is a life unmani- 
 fested behind it. In Mr. Mansel's, as in our view, 
 this is a knowlege which can be gained by man ; but 
 he makes it the final triumph of human faith and 
 philosophy to recognize and acquiesce in it ; while we 
 hold it to be the very first lesson of the personal 
 conscience, the very first purpose of that external 
 discipline which was intended to engrave the Divine 
 personality on Jewish history, to teach that such a 
 cloud may ever threaten the mind and conscience, but 
 that it can be dispersed. 
 
 What, indeed, is the first lesson of the human con- 
 science, the first truth impressed upon the Jewish 
 nation, but this, that a presence besets man behind and 
 before, which he cannot evade, and which is ever giving 
 new meanings to his thoughts, new direction to his
 
 310 REVELATION; 
 
 aims, new depth to his hopes, new terror to his sins? 
 Where, then, if this haunting Presence be so overpow- 
 ering, if it follow us as it followed the deepest minds 
 among the Jewish people, till it seem almost intolerable, 
 where is the darkness and the veil which Revelation 
 implies? Just in the fact that this presence does seem 
 intolerable; that it is so far apart from that of man, 
 that, like a dividing sword, it makes his spirit start ; 
 that he seeks to escape, and is, in fact, really able to 
 resist it ; that he can so easily case-harden his spirit 
 against the supernatural pain ; that instead of opening 
 his rnind to receive this painfully-tasking life that is 
 not his own, he can so easily, for a time at least, set 
 up in its place an idol carved out of his own nature, or 
 something even more passive than his own nature, and 
 therefore not likely to disturb his dream of rest. This, 
 AVC take it, is the first stage or act of revelation, 
 whether in the individual conscience, or in that special 
 history which is intended to reveal the conflicts between 
 the heart of a nation and the God who rules it. It 
 is the discovery of a presence too pure, too great, too 
 piercing for the natural life of man, the effort of the 
 mind, on one pretence or another, to be allowed to 
 stay on its own level and disregard this presence, the 
 knowledge that this must end in sinking below its own 
 level, the actual trial and experience that it is so, 
 the reiterated pain and awe of a new intrusion of the 
 supernatural light, the reiterated effort to "adapt" 
 that light to human forms and likings, the reiterated 
 idolatry which all such adaptations imply, whether 
 physical, as in the Jewish times, or intellectual, as in 
 our own, and the reiterated shame of fresh degrada-
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 311 
 
 tion. If this be, as, \vc believe, the human conscience 
 testifies, whether as embodied in the typical history of 
 the Jews, or in the individual mind, the first stage in 
 that discovery which we call Revelation, what becomes 
 of Mr. Mansel's theory, that Revelation is the " adap- 
 tation " of the " infinite " to the " finite," of the perfect to 
 the imperfect, of the absolute morality to the poor ca- 
 pacities of a sinful being? If so, why this craving 
 of the nature to be let alone, this starting as at the 
 touch of a flame too vivid for it, this comfort in 
 circumscribing, or fancying that we can circumscribe, 
 the living God in some human image or form of 
 thought, and worshipping that by way of evading the. 
 reality ? Does the human spirit ever quail thus before a 
 mere notion? If God Himself is inaccessible to know- 
 ledge, should not we find it extremely easy to adapt 
 ourselves to any abstract or ideal conception of Him? 
 It is the living touch of righteousness, even though 
 human only, that makes us shrink ; not the idea of 
 righteousness, which, as all theologies testify, is found 
 pliant enough. But if it be a righteous life and will, 
 not merely the idea or idol of a righteous life and 
 will, that stirs human nature thus deeply, and finds us, 
 as it found the Jews, afraid to welcome it, awestruck at 
 the chasm which divides us from it, fearful to surrender 
 ourselves to its guidance, ready to adapt it in any way 
 to us, unready to adapt ourselves to it, if, we say, 
 we know it to be a living will that thus checks, urges, 
 and besets us. Mr. Mansel's theory as t<> the narrow 
 limits of human knowledge would scarcely induce him to 
 deny that it is God Himself; for there is nothing in hus 
 theory which is not almost as much contradicted by tint,
 
 312 REVELATION; 
 
 living spiritual converse between the human spirit ami a 
 spirit of perfect holiness sis by direct converse with G<>d. 
 This first stage of Revelation, which we have called 
 the Jewish, may be said to discriminate the divine 
 personality of God more sharply from his own works 
 and creatures than is possible or true in any subse- 
 quent and maturer stage of his unfolding purpose. It 
 is, in fact, the first stage in the divine " education " 
 of the individual conscience, as well as of the human 
 race ; and is so vividly reflected in the national history 
 of Israel, only because that is the only history in which 
 the appeals of God to the corporate conscience of a 
 whole nation are recorded as fully as the actual national 
 deeds in which those appeals were complied with or 
 defied. In the history of other nations the divine will 
 for the nation has been at once far less vividly inter- 
 preted, and, even when adequately interpreted, far less 
 carefully recorded ; it has been allowed to gleam forth 
 only fitfully through the often uneducated consciences 
 of national heroes ; while in the case of the Jews, 
 we find a succession of great men, whose spirits were 
 more or less filled with the divine light, in order that 
 the world might see in at least one national history 
 some continuous record of the better purposes of God 
 for the nation, as well as of the actual life by which 
 those purposes were partially frustrated or fulfilled. 
 This, we believe, is the only peculiarity of Jewish 
 history, that a race of prophets was permitted to pro- 
 claim, with varying truth of insight, no doubt, but 
 still with far clearer and more continuous vision of the 
 divine purpose than any other nation has witnessed, 
 what God would have had the people do and abstain
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 313 
 
 from. To the nation itself this was not always a gain ; 
 probably that which was evil in it would not have 
 grown into so stiff and hard a subsistence but for tho 
 power inherent in divine light to divide the evil from the 
 good (for the vision of a purpose too holy for the life 
 of a people issues in greater guilt as well as greater 
 goodness) ; but for the world at large no doubt it has 
 been and is an immeasurable blessing, strictly speak- 
 ing, a Revelation, to see written out, parallel with the 
 national life of a single people, the life to which God, 
 speaking through the purest consciences of each age of 
 their history, had called them. But the phase of Iteve- 
 lation which we see in Jewish history is simply, on the 
 scale of national life, what the first discovery of God 
 by the individual conscience is in individual life. In 
 both cases there is a contrast presented between G;>d 
 and man, between God and nature, sharper than 
 belongs to any other stage of his unfolding purposes. 
 The separate person ility of God is engraved on Jewish 
 history with an emphasis which indicates that to the 
 Jew there seemed scarce any common life between 
 God and man, any bridge between the supernatural 
 will and the easy flow of Nature. And is it not thus 
 engraved on the individual conscience when first man. 
 becomes aware that the natural veins and currents of 
 his character tend to a thousand different ends, whither 
 the brooding Spirit of God forbids us to go, or 
 whither if we do go, it haunts us with throes of super- 
 natural anguish till we turn again? Is it not simply 
 the discovery that the actual bent of our whole inward 
 constitution is not divine, the despair of seeing how 
 it is ever to become so, which makes us, like the
 
 314 REVELATIOX ; 
 
 Jew, separate the divine Spirit so sharply from his 
 living works and creatures, that tor a time we doubt 
 whether the nature within us can be used by God at all 
 whether, much rather, its forces must not be wholly 
 cancelled, before the will can be set free? 
 
 But this sharp contrast between the personality of 
 God and the nature of man, and in lesser degree 
 of the external universe, is not and cannot be final. 
 And if the Jewish history witnesses that the Will of 
 God is the starting-point of a new order, that the 
 forces of human nature must be brought into subjection 
 to that, if they can be used by God at all, then the 
 history of a hundred other nations, more especially 
 of the Greeks, and in later centuries of the Teutonic 
 races, does testify with equal explicit ness that natural 
 life is essentially divine, and requires at most remould- 
 ing by the Eternal Spirit, a remoulding which is so 
 far from cancelling, that it brings out the true nature 
 in all its freshness, in order to become the fitting 
 organ of a Supernatural Righteousness. In other words, 
 while man takes his stand on the level of his own 
 motives and affections, and shrinks from the trans- 
 forming influence of the Spirit of God, these motives 
 and affections are the veil which needs taking away ; 
 but if he will permit himself to be raised above that 
 level, and will open his heart freely to the supernat- 
 ural influence at which he trembles, then it will not 
 be ayaiHst the voice, but by the voice of his own 
 spiritualized motives and affections, that God Himself 
 speaks. The veil itself becomes transparent ; the glass 
 that was dark, luminous. Accordingly the revelation 
 to conscience, which is more or less Jewish, and sets
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 315 
 
 nil the fibres of the natural life quivering- like an aspen- 
 leaf in the wind, is necessarily partial arid temporary. 
 Even in the highest of the prophetic strains there is 
 perhaps an undervaluing' of nature, and human nature 
 in its natural manifestations, a disposition to antici- 
 pate something- like a revolution rather than a regener- 
 ation in its constitution, to represent direct praise of 
 God as better and more worthy than the indirect praise 
 implied in its perfect natural development. Could 
 God's Self-Revelation have been stayed at that point, 
 we doubt whether Gentile nations, the Greek for 
 instance, could ever have embraced it. Deep sensi- 
 bility to the divine beauty of all human faculty and 
 life was so deeply wrought into the very heart of 
 Greece, that the Greek only recoiled at the Hebrew 
 vision of a God before whose presence human faculty 
 seemed to pale away like starlight in the dawn. Nor 
 could the Hebrew faith itself have lived on perma- 
 nently in that phase. Already, before the Jewish era 
 came to a close, the danger of idolatry with which 
 Jewish faith was first threatened, the danger that 
 .God would be confounded with his works, had 
 merged in the danger that He would not be recognized 
 as living- in his works. There is an exactly parallel 
 movement in the history of the Revelation of God to 
 the individual conscience. When first 
 
 " Those high instincts before which our mortal nature 
 Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised " 
 
 come upon us, we feel that man is nothing, and God 
 every thing ; but soon human nature re-asserts its do- 
 minion ; and if there be no full reconciliation between 
 the two, either the "high instincts" become ossified
 
 316 HEVKLAT1ON ; 
 
 into dogmn, and the mortal nature runs a fouler course 
 in their presence than it would in their absence, or 
 they fade away again altogether. 
 
 There is a natural and legitimate revolt in man against 
 any Supernaturalism which docs not do full justice to 
 nature : and the opposite risk of a deification of nature, 
 such as Greece and the Gejitile nations were prone to, 
 produces perhaps less fearful, certainly less unlovely 
 re.- ults than the error which divorces nature from God, 
 and by disclaiming in the name of piety any trace in 
 Him of the life of the world, strips that world bare of 
 all trace of God. Judaism taught us for ever that 
 Nature must be interpreted by our knowledge of God, 
 not God by our knowledge of Nature ; but it was only 
 .the perversion of Judaism which completely dissolved 
 the tie between the two. The Greek shuddered, and 
 Avith reason, at the sacrilege of ignoring the breath of 
 divine life in the harmony of the world ; but it was but 
 a perversion of Hellenism when the Pantheist sought 
 to identify the two, to multiply his delight in natural 
 organisms until their influences fell into a kind of mu- 
 sical harmony in his mind, which he called the Divine 
 "Whole. Both of these opposite tendencies are equally 
 perversions. And both alike witness to the expectation 
 in the human mind of some Revelation of the true tie 
 between the life of God and the life of his creatures, 
 the yearning to know, not only what God is in his 
 essential character, but what seed of his own life He 
 has given to us, and what power it is by which that 
 seed may be guarded through its germination from the 
 extinction or corruption Avith which it is threatened. 
 Accept with the Greek the capacity for a divine order in
 
 WHAT IT IS M)T AND WHAT IT IS. 317 
 
 man nnd the universe ; accept with the Jew the reality 
 of the " Lord's Controversy " with man ; and how are 
 the two to be reconciled? how is the supernatural right- 
 eousness to avail itself of the perverted growths of 
 human capacity ? how is the "Lord's Controversy" to 
 be set at rest ? 
 
 This was a question which the Jewish Revelation 
 never solved for the questioner, except so far as it 
 taught him that God could conquer the most rebellious 
 nature. But even then he recognized the Supernatural 
 will as triumphing over the poverty of human and nat- 
 ural life, rather than as revealing itself actually tlirough 
 and in the divine springs of that life. The "Contro- 
 versy " was solved for him rather by the power of God 
 over nature than by the power of God in nature. But 
 what was it that the Gentile nations craved? Some 
 new conviction that the supernatural was not at war 
 with the constitution of nature, but the eternal source 
 of it ; that the gradual growth, the seasonal bloom, the 
 germinating loveliness of the natural and visible uni- 
 verse, culminating in the wonderful life of man, is itself 
 not a veil but a revelation, a harmony of voices address- 
 ing us from the Divine life, and claiming our allegiance 
 to One higher than themselves. They too saw, what 
 the .Jew had been taught, that in fact this was not 
 really so, that there was a jar. a discord somewhere ; 
 but if they saw far less clearlv whence came the power 
 which could command the discord to cease, they saw 
 far more clearly that, if it could cease, the ti-nc nature 
 would be restored and not conquered, vindicated and 
 not extinguished, strengthened not exhaled. 
 
 The human condition of this revelation, as of all
 
 318 REVELATION J 
 
 other Revelation, is born with the human mind. The 
 Supernatural and Righteous Will, who besets and 
 confronts on every side the unruly impulses of our 
 lower self, is revealed to the Conscience, and without 
 the Conscience could not be revealed at all. But 
 besides this, there is another experience of man's which 
 renders him capable of another revelation. Quite apart 
 from the conscience and the sense of guilt and the law, 
 quite apart from the living Will, who looks into our 
 hearts and searches out their evil, there is, we sup- 
 pose, in every man a more natural and genial experience 
 of the spontaneous growth and unfolding, or it may he 
 only the effort to unfold, of the true nature as it ought 
 to grow, a gentle spontaneous resistance to the 
 shapes into which our faults and imperfections force or 
 try to force it, the effort of the true man within us to 
 grow into his right and perfect state in spite of the 
 resistance of frailty, incapacity, and sin. What we are 
 now speaking of is not an experience merely of the 
 moral life, but of the whole nature. Does not every 
 man feel that there are unused capacities of all kinds 
 within him, gently pressing for their natural develop- 
 ment? I hat a living tendency urges us to grow, not 
 merely in moral but in physical and intellectual consti- 
 tution, towards the individual type for which we were 
 made? that the various frictions of evil, moral or 
 merely circumstantial, which prevent this, when it is 
 prevented, distort the true divine growth, and leave us 
 less than what we might have been ? It was this expe- 
 rience wluoh the religion of Greece has preserved so 
 vividly, the faith that, beneath the deformity of real 
 life, there is a formative plastic power that is ever
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 319 
 
 urging us towards our truest life ; beneath ungainlincss, 
 a growth, or effort to grow, of something more harmoni- 
 ous ; beneath ignorance, a growth, or effort to grow, of 
 the true understanding ; beneath impurity and evil, the 
 growth, or effort to grow, of the true moral beauty. 
 
 It was, we believe, to this experience in every man's 
 mind, an experience which cannot be called moral 
 so much as the true instinct of life, that the unveil- 
 ing of God in Christ appealed, and which fitted the 
 Christian revelation to include the Greek as well as 
 the Jew. There at last was the harmony of the Super- 
 natural and the Natural, the divine effort at har- 
 monious growth which seemed to be in every man, 
 unfolding from the germ to the full fruit without the 
 canker or the blight, and yet at the same time revealing 
 to all of us exactly what the Supernatural vision reveals 
 to the conscience, the absolute will of good, the divine 
 anger against sin, the infinite chasm between evil and 
 good, the power and holiness of God. What was this 
 life, in which the unity of God and man was at length 
 vindicated? Did it not utter in clearer accents the 
 awful Will which had spoken within the Jew? Did it 
 not image in living colors the perfect nature which 
 had stirred so gently and breathed so deep a sense of 
 divinity into the finer folds of Grecian life? Was it 
 not at once the answer to that craving for a true vision 
 of the moral nature of God which had haunted the 
 Hebrew conscience, and the answer to that craving 
 for a true vision of the undistorted life of man which 
 had haunted the Grecian imagination ? True, it was a 
 vision of the Father only as He is seen in the Son, of 
 the iilial and submissive Will, not of the original and
 
 320 KEVELAT1OX ; 
 
 underivcd Will ; but as it is the perfection of the filial 
 Will to rest in the Will of his Father, the spiritual 
 image is perfect, though the personal life is distinct. 
 And this was, in fact, exactly what answered the 
 yearning of the Greek for an explanation of that 
 living- germ of divine life within him. Was it not a 
 perfect nature, filial like his own, the very nature 
 into which he was capable of growing, that had thus 
 been pushing against the weight of deformity, stirring 
 the sources of natural perfection, and warning him 
 that his mind was growing in wrong directions, and 
 not blossoming into the beauty for which it was de- 
 
 o ^ 
 
 signed? He was ready to recognize as the divine 
 "Word, which had grown into pirfect humanity in 
 Christ, the very same higher nature which had been 
 in him but not of him ; which had filled his mind with 
 tluse faint longings after something that he might have 
 been and was not ; which was still stirring within him 
 whenever a new blight, or a new failure, or a new sin, 
 threatened to divert him still further from the destiny 
 to which he knew he was capable to attain. The secret 
 Will, of God was, according to the longing of the 
 Jews, first fully manifest in Christ ; the secret hopes 
 of man were, according to the "desire of all nations," 
 there first fulfilled. 
 
 If Christ, then, was to the Jew mainly the Revela- 
 tion of the Absolute Will as reflected in the perfect 
 filial will ; to the Greek mainly the revelation of that 
 perfect human nature which had been so long stirring 
 within him, we might expect to find acts in which he 
 especially revealed the living Ruler of the Universe, 
 and acts in which he especially revealed the inward
 
 WIIAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 321 
 
 influences which were to restore order to the human 
 heart ; acts in which lie manifested the Father, and 
 acts in which he unsealed the eternal fountains of purity 
 in human life. Mr. Maurice, in answering Mr. Man- 
 sel's assertion that the Absolute is beyond human vision, 
 calls attention especially to the former class. He inti- 
 mates that in the miracles and the parables, for in- 
 stance, we have Revelations of the spiritual source of the 
 physical world. Mr. Wescott's thoughtful little book 
 pursues the same track with regard to the miracles only. 
 The tenor of both writers is the same. There had been 
 ever in man an awe at the mighty powers of the physi- 
 cal universe, and the apparent recklessness with which 
 these powers acted. The Jew, who loved to see in 
 God the source of all power, still hardly dared to refer 
 these crushing forces to the same national Providence 
 which had guarded and governed his race with a per- 
 sonal care so express. The Greek thought them in 
 their awful undeviating order far more sublime than he 
 could have done had he held them to be exercises of 
 a mere Supreme Will. But yet he would willingly 
 have connected them with an order, spiritual as well as 
 physical, such as he recognized in the destinies of men. 
 Christ, by manifesting the power which controlled and 
 upheld them, and yet manifesting it with a healing 
 and life-giving purpose, answered both these cravings. 
 "These powers," the miracles said, "which seem so 
 physical, so arbitrary, sometimes so destructive, which 
 sometimes appear to be wielded by an evil spirit, are 
 in the hands of one who would heal men's miseries, 
 restore their life, moral and physical, purify them 
 from disease, and hush the storm into a calm : if it 
 
 21
 
 322 REVELATION ; 
 
 ever seem otherwise, be sure that the seeming destruc- 
 tion has a life-giving purpose, the physical disease a 
 deeper healing influence ; that the tempest is a bringcr 
 of serener peace, the blindness a preparation for diviner 
 light. The order of the universe has a spiritual root ; 
 the purpose of love which changes, is also the purpose 
 of love which directs it. He who can bind and loose 
 the forces of nature, has thus revealed the eternal 
 purposes in which they originate." 
 
 So again, Mr. Maurice, in a sermon of great beauty, 
 claims for the parables that they were intended to 
 reveal the spiritual significance which had been from 
 the first embodied in the physical processes of the uni- 
 verse, that the analogy between the light of the body 
 and the light of the spirit, the sowing and reaping of 
 the external and of the spiritual world, and the other 
 analogies in what we usually call Christ's " figurative " 
 language, are not really metaphorical, but exhibit the 
 perfect insight of the divine mind of the Son into the 
 creative purposes of the Father. If it be true that 
 the creator of our spirits is the creator of our bodies 
 also, we might only expect that he who revealed the true 
 life of the one, .would know and exhibit its close natural 
 affinities with the life of the other. Is not the physical 
 universe as a whole meant to be for man the vesture of 
 the spiritual universe? Is not all the truest language, 
 therefore, necessarily what we call figurative ; and only 
 false when the spiritual is interpreted by the physical, 
 instead of the physical by the spiritual? 
 
 " But if there is this correspondence between the organs 
 of the spirit and the organs of sense, if experience assures 
 there is, does not that explain to us the meaning and power of
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 323 
 
 the parables? May not all sensible thing?, by a necessity of 
 their nature, be testifying to us of that which is nearest to 
 us, of that whieh it most concerns us to know, of the invs- 
 feries of our own life, and of God's relation to us? May it 
 not be impossible for us to escape from these witnesses ? 
 They may become insignificant to us from our very familiar- 
 ity with them; nay, we may utterly forget that tin-re i- any 
 wonder in them. The transformation of the seed into t'.ie 
 full corn in the ear may appear to us the dullest of all phe- 
 nomena, not worthy to be noted or thought of. The difference 
 in the returns from different soils, or from the same soils 
 under different cultivation. the difference in the qualiiv of 
 the produce, and the relations which it bears to the quality 
 of the seeds, may be interesting to us from the effect such 
 varieties have upon the market, from the more or less money 
 we derive from the sale; not the least as facts in nature, facts 
 for meditation. The relation between a landholder or farmer 
 and those who work for him, between a shepherd and his 
 sheep, all in like manner may be tried by the same pecuniary 
 standard ; apart from that, they may suggest nothing to us. 
 Thus the universe becomes actually 'as is a landscape to a 
 dead man's eye;' the business in which we are ourselves 
 engaged, a routine which must be got through in some way 
 or another, that we may have leisure to eat, drink, and sleep. 
 Can any language describe this state so accurately and vividly 
 as that of our Lord in the text? Seeing we see, and do not 
 perceive ; hearing we hear, and do not understand." 
 
 This revelation, however, through Christ, by his 
 life, by his miracles, by his parables, by his resurrec- 
 tion and ascension, of the Supreme Will, would not 
 have fulfilled as it did the "desire of all nations," had 
 it not also revealed that living power in man by which 
 human nature is wrought into his likeness. To know 
 God has been, in all ages, but an awful knowledge,
 
 324 REVELATION" ; 
 
 until the formative influence which is able to communi- 
 cate to us his nature is revealed also. And according- 
 ly, Christ no sooner disappears from earth than all the 
 Christian writings begin to dwell far more on the new 
 strength he had revealed within them than on his 
 outward life. The interior growth of divine nature 
 thus revealed might be called new, because now first 
 they recognized it as a divine power, as a power they 
 could trust, as a life that would grow by its own might 
 within them if only they did not smother it and were 
 content to restrain their own lower self from any vol- 
 untary inroads of evil. This power had been there, no 
 doubt, iu all men and all times ; the germinating life of 
 an inward spirit of involuntary good had never been 
 a stranger to man ; it had always pushed with gentle 
 pressure against the limits of narrow minds and narrow 
 hearts and of positive evil, not, indeed, with the 
 keen and piercing thrusts of divine judgment, but with 
 the spontaneous movement of better life striving to cast 
 off the scale of long-worn habit. But now this power 
 was not only felt, but its origin was revealed. It was 
 that same divine human nature which had been embod- 
 ied in the earthly Christ that was stirring in the hearts 
 of all men. It was he, whose life had been so strange 
 and brief a miracle of beauty, to whom they might 
 trust to mould afresh the twisted shapes of human 
 imperfection, to push forward the growth of the good 
 seed and the eradication of the tares within them. The 
 same life which had shed its healing influence over the 
 sick and the sinful in Galilee and Judea, was but 
 the human form of that which fostered the true nature 
 beneath the falsehoods of all actual life, and worked
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 325 
 
 within tlic disciples as they preached their risen Lord. 
 Jt w;js not they, but r " Cl'.rist that worked in them." 
 Here was the true explanation of the unity of the 
 human race, the common life which was the source of 
 all that was deep and good ; as separative influences 
 grew out of all that was profoundly evil. They were 
 all members of Christ ; his nature was in them all, 
 drawing out the beauty and chastening- the deformity, 
 breathing the breath of universal chanty, and kindling 
 the flame of inextinguishable hope. This was a power 
 to trust in, the image of the Father's will, because 
 breathing the very spirit of that will ; and fuller of 
 hope than any vision of a holy king commanding' an 
 allegiance which they could not bend their stiff hearts 
 to pay, or conquering their moral freedom without act- 
 ing on the secret springs of their humanity. They had 
 known this power in themselves before ; but they 
 had not read it aright, because they had not estimated 
 aright its source and the certainty and universality of its 
 operation. They had not before known it as directly 
 manifested in him who opened the eyes of the blind, 
 and cleansed the leper, and stilled the storm ; who 
 forgave sins, and wrestled with temptation ; and finally 
 passed through the grave, and trouble deeper than the 
 grave, without being " holden " of it, because his will 
 was freely surrendered to his Father. 
 
 Here, then, was a revelation not simply of the Abso- 
 lute nature of God, but of the formative power of 
 Christ that is at work to cancel distorted growths, and 
 e\en mere natural deficiency in every human heart. 
 But it was to do more than this, it was to take away 
 sin itself from those who could bring themselves to trust
 
 326 REVELATION J 
 
 their hearts freely to his influence ; to reveal to them, 
 in short, the great divine law that, as through the unity 
 of human nature " if one member suffers, all the mem- 
 bers suffer with it," so through the same unity a new 
 life may spread into even the weakest and corruptest 
 member. It was to reveal it as the highest privilege of 
 this great central human life to purify others when once 
 their will bogins to turn towards him by entering into 
 the very heart of their evil and reaching the very core 
 of their inward misery ; so that while new life returns 
 to them, the shadow of pain inseparable from the per- 
 fect knowledge of human guilt falls back on the spirit 
 of the great Purifier. This was the revelation of the 
 true nature in man ; a nature that not only, as the 
 Gentile nations felt, asserted the primitive truth and 
 goodness properly belonging to every human creature, 
 but that is capable of restoring that truth and goodness, 
 cancelling the sinful habit, melting the rigid heart, 
 emancipating the sullen temper, by the mere exertion 
 of its spontaneous fascination over any spirit which 
 once surrenders to its control. And this, accordingly, 
 is the great subject of Christian writers after once 
 Christ had left the earth. It was to them a new dis- 
 covery that the restorative power in every heart was 
 not the power of their own wills, which they knew to 
 be limited at most to a rejection of evil acts, but the 
 very same power which had grown up into a perfect 
 humanity in Christ, and only required an act of contin- 
 uous trust to claim them for its own. To trust in such 
 a power was not hard, to stifle the active rebellion of 
 their own wills was possible ; but to purge the turbid 
 fountain of their human life, had that also been required
 
 WHAT IT IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS. 327 
 
 of them, as both Jc\v and Gentile had often dreamed, 
 was mere impossibility. To knuio who it was who was 
 working- in them, was to multiply infinitely the regener- 
 ating power of his life. 
 
 Such, then, we hold to be the essence of the divine 
 Self-Revelation of God. Into the question of its exact 
 relation to the historical narrative in the Bible, slightly 
 touched upon both by Mr. Mansel and Mr. Maurice, 
 we cannot here enter. While accepting gratefully the 
 many new and brilliant lights which all Mr. Maurice's 
 writings, and this last perhaps most of all, have cast on 
 the deepest subject into which the human heart can 
 enter, we should perhaps differ most from him in his 
 biblical criticism. A mind so rich in meditative wisdom 
 as his, so ready to snatch a religious truth from the 
 strangest confusion of historical incident, seems scarcely 
 able to appreciate the kind of impression which incon- 
 sistent and sometimes inconceivable statements, sup- 
 ported by no appreciable evidence, such, for instance, 
 as that of the star which is said to have guided the 
 Magians to the manger at Bethlehem, make on or- 
 dinary students with regard to all historical details, 
 indeed to all the historical elements of Revelation. 
 Mr. Maurice is as deeply persuaded as we are that 
 the fullest and freest criticism will work out the most 
 happy issues. For ourselves, we feel little doubt that 
 such criticis-m will show a large admixture of untrust- 
 worthy elements in the narrative of both Old and New 
 Testament; and that if it prove so, the mere eman- 
 cipation of the intellect from what seems a purely 
 literary superstition as to the truth of the Bible narra- 
 tives, will probably bring far more gain to the spiritual
 
 328 KEVELATION J WHAT IT IS NOT, ETC. 
 
 freedom of man, and do far more to direct attention to 
 the spiritual evidences of all divine truth, than any 
 other result could educe. We believe Bibliolatry has 
 been, and is likely long to be, the bane of Protestant 
 Christianity. Spiritual realities would indeed be recog- 
 nized as spiritual . realities by few, had they had no 
 perfect manifestation in the actual works and Providence 
 of God, had not the desire of the heart been em- 
 bodied in the desire of the eyes. But that no minute 
 history was needful of the earthly life of him who can 
 interpret his own meaning, and who came that he 
 might draw the veil from eternal power and truth, and 
 not to fascinate men's eyes and hearts to one single 
 illuminated point of space and time, is sufficiently 
 proved by the absence of all records of his life which 
 can be called minute, or which do not rely on the faith- 
 fulness of memory even for their outlines. Human 
 vanity, eager to guarantee its own immortality, carries 
 laboriously about all the jKiraphernalia for setting down 
 every word and action before its transient life is spent. 
 He who is solving the agonizing problems of ages, 
 speaking to the depths of the human spirit in genera- 
 tions on generations yet unborn, and uttering "the 
 things which have been kept secret from the foundation 
 of the world," can afford to dispense with the minute 
 history of his life, when he has power to turn every 
 human conscience into a new witness of his truth, and 
 every heart into a new evangelist of his glory.
 
 329 
 
 PERSONAL INFLUENCES ON OUR PRESENT 
 THEOLOGY : NE \VMAN COLERIDGE CAR- 
 LYLE* 
 
 "THEOLOGY," says Mr. Macaulay, in his mischievous 
 way, "is not a progressive science." It may, however, 
 be retrogressive ; and it is sure to repay flippant neg- 
 
 * The Arians of the Fourth Century; their Doctrine, Temper, and Con- 
 duet, chiefly as exhibited in the Councils of the Church, between A D. 325 
 and A.D. 381. By John Henry Newman, 51. A., Fellow of Oriel College. 
 Second edition, literally reprinted from the first edition, fcvo. London: E. 
 Lumley. 1854. 
 
 Callista; a Sketch of the Third Century. By Dr. J. H. Newman. 
 12mo. London: Burns and Lambert. 156. 
 
 The Defence of the Archdeacon of Tauuton, in its complete form. Royal 
 8vo. London: J. Masters, and J. II. and J. Parker. 185(5. 
 
 Notes, Theological, Political, and Miscellaneous. By Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge. Edited by the Kev. Denvent Coleridge, M.A. London : Moxon. 
 IfcoS. 
 
 Charges to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Lewes, delivered at the 
 ordinary Visitations in the years 1843, 1845, 1846. By Julius Charles Hare, 
 M. A., Archdeacon. Never before published. With an Introduction, explan- 
 atory of his position in the Church with reference to the Parties which divide 
 it. Cambridge: Maemillan and Co. 1856. 
 
 The Doctrine of Sacrifice deduced from the Scriptures. A Series of 
 Sermons by Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A , Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn. 
 Cambridge: Macraillan and Co. 1854. 
 
 St. Paul and Modern Thought: Remarks on the Views advanced in 
 Professor Jowett's Commentary on St. Paul. By J. Llewelyn Davies, M.A., 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Incumbent of St Mark's, White- 
 chapel. Cambridge: Maemillan and Co. 1S">6. 
 
 Passages s-elceled from the Writings of Thomas Carlylc. With a Bio- 
 graphical Memoir. By Thomas Ballantyne. Post Svo. London: Ch.'ipmar 
 and Hall. 1656. 
 
 National lievicw, October, 1856.
 
 330 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 Jcct by lending its empty space to mean delusions. To 
 its great problems some answer will always be at- 
 tempted : and tbere is much to choose between the 
 solutions, however imperfect, found by reverential wis- 
 dom, and the degrading falsehoods tendered in reply by 
 the indifferent and superficial. Even in their failures, 
 there is a vast difference between the explorings of the 
 seeing and the blind. We deny, however, that Chris- 
 tian theology can assume any aspect of failure, except 
 to those who use a false measure of success. It is not 
 in the nature of religion, of poetry, of art, to exhibit 
 the kind of progress that belongs to physical science. 
 They differ from it in seeking, not the phenomena of 
 the universe, but its essence, not its laws of change, 
 but its eternal meanings, not outward nature, in 
 short, except as expressive of the inner thought of 
 God : and being thus intent upon the enduring spirit 
 and very ground of things, they cannot grow by nu- 
 merical accretion of facts and exactcr registration of 
 successions. They are the product, not of the patient 
 sense and comparing intelligence which are always at 
 hand, but of a deeper and finer insight, changing with 
 the atmosphere of the affections and will. Instead of 
 looking, therefore, for perpetual advance of discovery 
 in theology, we should naturally expect an ebb and flow 
 of light, answering to the moral condition of men's 
 minds : and may be content if the divine truth, lost in 
 the dulncss of a material age, clears itself into fresh 
 forms with the returning breath of a better time. 
 
 With hope thus moderate, in no confidence that the 
 millennium is due at present, but certainly in no despair 
 of larger visions than to-day's, we propose to glance at
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 331 
 
 the newer characteristics of English theology ; to trace 
 their origin and deviation from the data of the antece- 
 dent generation ; and to indicate any common point to- 
 wards which their several lines of direction may seem 
 to converge. Few thoughtful men, who have lived 
 through the greater part of the present century, can 
 fail to be more or less aware of a vast change in the 
 religious ideas and spirit of the time, a change surelv* 
 to a higher mood of faith, and even of doubt. A rapid 
 survey of its social conditions, and of its chief authors, 
 living and departed, may help us to appreciate its mag- 
 nitude and tendency. 
 
 Prior to the peace of 181. 5, the disposable activity 
 of the English mind was bespoken for the most part by 
 the excitement of European politics. What religious 
 movement there was arose out of the contagion of 
 " French principles," or the recoil from them ; and was 
 so subservient to the antagonism of parties in the state 
 as to acquire no independent or scientific character. 
 The disaffection of Ireland, and its threatened invasion 
 by Napoleon, gave an anti-catholic direction to the zeal 
 of the day, and enabled the " Clapham sect," favored 
 bv the prejudices of the king and the influence of Mr. 
 Perceval, to attain a position disproportioned to its 
 merits. After the close of the war, the numbers and 
 social importance of this party continued to increase. 
 There were large arrears of domestic politics to be dealt 
 with ; and the prominence held by the Catholic question 
 for twelve or fourteen years made a watchword of the 
 " Bible-cry," placed the " Evangelicals " in the van of 
 the "Protestant interest," and Irish zealots in the van 
 of the Evangelicals. This temporary leadership was
 
 332 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 not fivorable to their permanent power. A fatal taint 
 of political agitation infected the system ; and once 
 committed to the keeping of Hibernian rhetoric, it was 
 spoiled for the quiet depths of the English mind. 
 
 One by one the elements of the political struggle 
 succeeding to the war were discharged. The disabili- 
 ties were swept away ; the House of Commons was 
 reconstituted ; the municipalities were reformed ; sla- 
 very was abolished. These great enterprises of action 
 and resistance being over, and the strain of conflict 
 withdrawn, attention was free for more reflective in- 
 terests, and an inner movement began to replace the 
 outward. The several religious parties, disengaged 
 from their civic campaign, were sent home to their 
 spiritual husbandry, and thrown upon their intrinsic 
 resources of genius and character. The time, ever so 
 critical for church and doctrine, had come at last, 
 the time of searching thought and quiet work. Other 
 charity than would serve upon the hustings, a deeper 
 gospel than was known at apocalyptic tea-tables, a 
 piety stimulant of no platform cheers, became indis- 
 pensable in evidence and expression of the Christian 
 life. Especially at the centres of intellectual light, 
 the Universities, where the speculative faculties are 
 trained, were the reigning systems sure to be tried 
 by the severest tests. Who could abide the day of 
 reckoning? What party, formed amid the tastes and 
 admirations of the previous age, could prove itself 
 equal to the larger problems of a new time? Dis- 
 charged from the work of middle-class agitation, and 
 scrutinized by academic eyes, what had Evangelicism 
 to show? Its men of genius? if it has higher names
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 333 
 
 than Wilberforce and Martyn, we never heard them. 
 Its literature? its favorites were Hannah More and 
 Robert Montgomery. Its divinity? it attained the 
 altitude of Scott, Romaine, and Sumner. Its art? 
 the .accomplishments of a modern day-school go beyond 
 it. With faint appreciation of scholarship, and entire 
 dislike of philosophy, it seemed studiously to repel the 
 approaches of intellectual men ; and accordingly had 
 been illustrated by the devotion of no great mind. Its 
 preachers, imperceptive of the English standards of 
 good taste and reverence, could hardly be distinguished 
 from Dissenters. Its creed, an endless chain of inflex- 
 ible links, could only revolve in the same technical 
 groove, and could apply itself to no resistance that lay 
 out of its meridian. The cold-blooded rapture with 
 which the most dismal pictures were drawn of this re- 
 deemed world, and a divine economy sketched which 
 tortures every moral affection, plainly showed that the 
 scheme was no longer realized, and had passed from an 
 inner life to an outward opinion. The ecclesiastical 
 doctrine of the party was moreover purely Erastian, 
 and left no intelligible barrier to separate the Anglican 
 Church from the crowd of Nonconformists at home, 
 and the uncpiscopal Protestants abroad. These fea- 
 tures had been little noticed while the merits which bal- 
 anced them were still fresh ; while the race of idle and 
 worldly clergymen was disappearing before the new 
 earnestness ; while great philanthropic enterprises were 
 led by the followers of Simeon ; while the fact remained 
 conspicuous, that there was a Christianity to be recov- 
 ered for the land, and that these men had stepped forth 
 to do it. But in the third decade of this century theii
 
 33-i PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 "first works'' had grown familiar; their weaknesses had 
 become fixed ; their type of character had cleared itself 
 of its accidents and taken shape. It caught the fastid- 
 ious eye of Oxford ; and ere long, beneath that fine 
 perception all the blemishes were brought out. A 
 series of criticisms began, at first cautious and respect- 
 ful ; but gradually assuming a wider range and an in- 
 tenser spirit, they assailed the Evangelical party with 
 every weapon of antipathy which could be drawn from 
 the armory of imagination or logic, Scripture or his- 
 tory. The weariness and distaste felt at Oxford to- 
 wards the Church-Calvinists supplied the first impulse 
 to the Tractarian movement ; and it was chiefly with a 
 view to displace them that a new theology was advanced. 
 As its lines were filled in, and it acquired consistency 
 and depth, a positive inspiration of genuine faith super- 
 vened and left all party passions behind. The great 
 agent in this work was John Henry Newman ; without 
 an estimate of whose genius and influence only two- 
 thirds of the theological history of contemporary 
 England could be written. In him and the Oxford 
 ecclesiastical re-action we have our first source of the 
 modern development ; not exactly first in time, or per- 
 haps even in importance, but most conspicuous and best- 
 defined, and therefore most tempting to begin with. 
 
 The sister University became the officina of no 
 " Tracts ; " and so no one talks of a " Cambridge theol- 
 ogy." There is such a thing, nevertheless ; at least 
 there is a theology, perfectly distinct and characteristic 
 of the age, formed by Cambridge men, and born with 
 the impress of Cambridge studies, though not elabo- 
 rated on the spot. Coleridge taught at Highgatc ; but
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 335 
 
 he poetized and learned at Jesus College half a century 
 before : and the men through whom chiefly his Platonic 
 gospel has passed into the heart of our generation, 
 Julius Hare and Frederick Maurice, acknowledged the 
 same alma mater. To those who are familiar with 
 the writings of these eminent teachers, it will not appear 
 fanciful if we trace the origin of the school to intellec- 
 tual revolt against their academic text-books, Locke and 
 Paley. Empirical psychology and utilitarian ethics are 
 the permanent objects of Coleridge's hostility ; and 
 their removal is with him the prior condition of any 
 morality or religion at all. It was reserved for Pro- 
 fessors Sedgwick and Whewell, at a later time, to 
 dethrone upon the spot the two established potentates in 
 philosophy. But the murmurs against them had long 
 been gathering. Their school had not stood still, and 
 in its advance had become encumbered with able but 
 inconvenient allies ; betraying, in Bentham and James 
 Mill, the tendencies full-blown which it hud been often 
 jyproached with secreting. Long before the Genius of 
 the place, starting at the shadow of its own philosophy, 
 recoiled and took shelter with an elder faith, the sensi- 
 tive and religious mind of Coleridge had not only found 
 refuge there for himself, but opened an asylum for other 
 wanderers, and lighted up a chain of posts to sh;>w the 
 way. The movement, commenced in re-action from 
 inadequate metaphysics, never rested till it found tln> 
 legitimate repose of a satisfving theology. In naming 
 the accomplished Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn as the most 
 distinguished representative of this type of religi;>in 
 thought, we do not overlook the marked individuality 
 which assigns to him a place of hi.s own. But this
 
 336 FEIJSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 very freedom and freshness in the disciple wi! be found 
 characteristic, as of Plato's so of Coleridge'i disciples. 
 Mr. Maurice may well protest against the al urd clas- 
 sification which, under the common desig. ation of 
 "Broad Church," ranks him in the same t .ries with 
 AYhately, Powell, and Williams, men v hose first 
 principles and whole method are the most precise con- 
 tradictories of his own, however congenial with him 
 they may be in resistance to unchristian narrowness and 
 unworthy fears. But he has always affectionately 
 claimed his affinity with the author of the Aids to He- 
 fltctwn, and cannot be displeased if we seek him, with 
 Julius Hare, in the parlor of the Higbgaie sage. In 
 the philosophical re-action proceeding thence to pene- 
 trate the whole substance of Christianity, we find the 
 second element in the modern development. 
 
 It would be a curious problem of literary geography 
 to trace the stream of French intellectual influence 
 which has passed through Edinburgh, to effect its infil- 
 tration into the English mind. Certain it is that the 
 action of continental culture on North Britain has been 
 more immediate and conspicuous than on South ; and 
 in return, the writings of the " Scottish school " have 
 met with a recognition in Paris and Geneva which they 
 never obtained in England. The genius of the country 
 inclines, on one side, to the Gallican type of Rcforme I 
 theology ; on the other, to the material sciences i:i 
 which Paris, on the whole, has borne the palm. Piay- 
 fair, Leslie, and Dugald Stewart, in their mathematical 
 and physical expositions, have the peculiar impress of 
 French neatness and precision. David Hume, scarcely 
 English in his style, was still less so in the easy play
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 337 
 
 of liis logic, and the careless completeness of liis Pyr- 
 rhonism. And the answers which his own countrymen 
 gave to him were precisely such as the metaphysical 
 orthodoxy of the Faculte des Lettres approved and 
 reproduced. Again and again may be noticed a certain 
 sympathetic or concurrent change in the speculative 
 temperature of Edinburgh and Paris. During the 
 depression of France after the Restoration, the re-action 
 against the opinions and tastes of her revolutionary 
 period was everywhere strong in Europe ; and met in 
 Edinburgh with no check from any fascinating sys- 
 tem or powerful mind. The phrenology of Gall, the 
 criticism of Jeffrey, the rhetoric of Brown, could not 
 assuage the deeper thirst now beginning to be felt. 
 Something else was needed than a new form of the 
 discarded materialism, and frecthinking, and sensation- 
 alism of the last age. In truth, Scottish logic and met- 
 aphysics had run dry, and by resort to them was no 
 baptism of regeneration to be found. While many still 
 wandered there in hope, there came out of the desert a 
 Scottish vcttes, who had descried an unexhausted spring, 
 and led the way to it by strange paths. Thomas 
 Carlyle gave the first clear expression to the strug- 
 gling heart of a desolate yet aspiring time, making a 
 clean breast of many stifled unbeliefs and noble hatreds ; 
 and if unable to find any certain Saviour for the pres- 
 ent, at least preparing some love and reverence to sit, 
 "clothed and in right mind," for the Divine welcome, 
 whenever it might come. Is the reader surprised that 
 we keep a niche for the author of Hero- Worship in 
 our gallery of theologians'? Be it so. The officials of 
 St. Stephen's were also surprised at the proposal to put
 
 338 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 Cromwell's effigy among the statues of the kings. We 
 will only say, that whoever doubts the vast influence of 
 Carlyle's writings on the inmost faith of our generation, 
 or supposes that influence to he wholly disorganizing, 
 misinterprets, in our opinion, the symptoms of the time, 
 and is blinded by current phraseology to essential facts. 
 With this conviction, we must treat the literary re- 
 action represented by him as the third element, com- 
 pleting the modern development. 
 
 To these three movements, distinguished by the 
 names of Newman, Coleridge, and Carlyle, must be 
 mainly ascribed the altered spirit, in regard to religion, 
 pervading the young intellect of England. In proceed- 
 ing to notice them one by one, we must be content 
 with a sliuht glance at their most salient features. 
 And we must wholly pass by many secondary, though 
 far from unimportant, streams of separate influence 
 which have swelled the confluence of change. The 
 operation of Arnold's life, of Whately's writings, 
 of Channing, of the younger Newman, of Theodore 
 Parker, of Emerson, on the temper and belief of 
 the age, has in each case been considerable. But we 
 limit ourselves to the propheta majores. Moreover, 
 it is only on the fresh powers, cutting into original 
 directions, and making roadways of thought where 
 before was the forest or the flood, that we propose to 
 dwell. Whilst these have been working their way, of 
 course the old tendencies have not quitted the field, or 
 lost their hold. The elder orthodoxies, the elder scep- 
 ticisms, of established type, are still alive ; and now 
 and then, during the last thirty years, have put forth 
 startling ro -assertions of their vitality. In Comte the
 
 >X OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 339 
 
 physical, in Strauss the historical, negation of theology, 
 may be said not only to re-appear, but to culminate. 
 And each of these, again, has its group of related phe- 
 nomena : the Logic of Mill, the hypothesis of the Vesti- 
 ges (and, we would add, the greater part of the replies), 
 the Psychology of Herbert Spencer, and the propa- 
 ganda of Secularism, tracing the course of the Positiv- 
 ist tendency ; while the freer hand which scriptural 
 criticism everywhere displays, its more open feeling for 
 the human element in the gospel, qualities which, 
 most conspicuous abroad, are yet familiar to us in Bun- 
 sen, Stanley, and Jowett, indicate a direction from 
 which the LeLen Jesu has rendered it impossible to 
 recede. These, however, are but the newest steps on 
 beaten tracks of thought. Since the age of Bacon 
 (nay, for that matter, from the days of Socrates), we 
 have known that to seek only natural law, was the way 
 to find only natural law ; and since the time of Sender, 
 there is no excuse for surprise if the critique of Scrip- 
 ture persists in demanding some modification of our 
 faith. To lay down the true bridge from inductive 
 science to the living God, to settle the relation be- 
 tween the human and the divine factors in the process 
 and monuments of revelation, these arc not new dif- 
 ficulties ; nor is it an original device to full into despair 
 a*, them, and declare that the problems can be worked 
 only on their finite side. Comte and Strauss, therefore, 
 we disregard, at present, as mere confimifoicc-p/icao/n- 
 ena, rather clenching the past than opening the 
 future. They do but modify the equilibrium of given 
 conditions : and our purpose is to describe the dynamic 
 elements which have introduced unexpected movement.
 
 340 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 The marvellous results of the High-Church re-action 
 have nearly effaced the remembrance of its local and 
 personal beginnings. Jt was busy at Oxford long be- 
 fore the first "Tracts" appeared; under an aspect, 
 however, which gave little promise of the j$ewman-i(i 
 (to borrow a witticism of Yv'lmtely's) afterwards devel- 
 oped. Some thirteen years before the Tracts were 
 advertised, two undergraduates had an epistolary con- 
 troversy together on the subject of baptismal regenera- 
 tion; and the correspondent who took the evangelical 
 side was John Henry Newman. The doctrine, there- 
 fore, was in vogue ere its appointed advocate was con- 
 verted. In truth, Dr. Charles Lloyd, who filled the 
 chair of Divinity (Regius) from 1822, and the see of 
 Oxford from 1827 till his death in 1829, was, through- 
 out this period, obnoxious to the Evangelicals as the 
 avowed representative of an opposite school, to which 
 also Hawkins, Pusey, and Keble belonged. But the 
 " Catholic " tendency of this group of friends was 
 marked by other symptoms than the later Tractarian. 
 Dr. Newman has remarked, that "the same philosophi- 
 cal elements" will "lead one mind to the Church of 
 lioiue ; another to what, for want of a better word, 
 may be called Germanism." * He is pleased to add, 
 that the determination towards the Tiber or the Rhine 
 will depend on the person's " sensibility or insensibility 
 to sin." Perhaps, also, a little on his knowledge or 
 ignorance of the German language and literature ; 
 without some access to which, "Germanism" would 
 seem to be impossible, and therefore, in the given case, 
 Romanism inevitable. The Pr<-Newmanites at Ox- 
 * Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 71.
 
 ON OUJt PRESENT THEOLOGY. oil 
 
 ford were not unfurnished with modern, in addition to 
 ancient, scholarship ; and, accordingly, were known 
 to iook with hope and favor on the aims of a scientific 
 theolog3 r , and to be quite above the conventional dis- 
 paragement of German research to which a blind cow- 
 ardice resorts. Indeed, Dr. Puscy's first publication, 
 dedicated to Bishop Lloyd, was a defence * of the 
 " Theology of Germany " against the strictures of Mr. 
 Rose in his Cambridge University Sermons. This 
 little book, which, we believe, has long been suppressed, 
 bears curious witness to the deflection of the Oxford 
 movement from its original path. The author explains 
 the extravagances of Rationalism by the absurd "stiif- 
 ness " and intolerable " orthodoxism " which preceded 
 and provoked them : he welcomes the aid of Kant and 
 Schclling in transition to a higher faith : he treats the 
 dangerous crisis as over, and the healthy renovation of 
 theology as in progress. ]Nor are his particular judg- 
 ments of men and books less remarkable than the general 
 course of his argument. Of Lessing he speaks (p. 51) 
 with warm affection, as "probably more Christian" 
 despite his scepticism, than his orthodox opponent Goze ; 
 and (p. 150) as, "perhaps rightly, preferring Pantheism 
 to the then existing systems." He recognizes (p. 177) 
 l)e YVelte's t: really Christian faith,'' obscured though it 
 might be by adherence to the philosophy of Fries. 
 Sehleiennncher receives (p. 115) the highest praise. 
 Bretschneider is justified (p. 154) 1 >r attempting, iu 
 the Probability to bring the Johannine question to an 
 issue. And it is strange to hear (p. MO) from the 
 
 * An Historical Inquiry into the probable Causes of the Rationalist Char- 
 actor lately predominant in tlie Theology of Germany. l>y K JJ. Pu:j*:y 
 M.A., Tellow of Oriel College, Oxford. liUS.
 
 342 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 nominal father of "Puseyism," that the "gratia minis-' 
 terialis" the efficacy of the sacraments and offices, 
 though administered by evil men, is "an absurd and 
 pernicious fiction/' That a book abounding in such 
 estimates should be laid by this particular author at the 
 feet of an Oxford bishop and llegius Professor ; and 
 that the successors to that divinity chair should be first 
 Dr. Burton and then Dr. Hampden, are clear indica- 
 tions of a theological tendency, present and powerful 
 in the early years of the anti-evangelical movement, but 
 superseded and discharged at a later stage. 
 
 In 1829, Bishop Lloyd made his mortal exit. Super 
 fluous German and defective "sensibility to sin " having 
 thus withdrawn to other scenes, there was room for 
 "the same philosophical elements," with proper "sensi- 
 bility" and no German, to enter from the other side, 
 and, slipping to the front, lead on whither that happy 
 set of graces tends. For a while it seemed doubtful 
 \vhich of the two paths the Oxford High Church was to 
 take Germanism or Romanism theological advance 
 or ecclesiastical retrogression : and the events of that 
 year curiously show how little either section of the 
 party understood its own instincts and could take its 
 proper attitude. It was the memorable year of Catho- 
 lic emancipation and Sir Robert Peel's rejection at 
 Oxford. At that election we find Dr. Puscy among 
 the strenuous supporters, Dr. Newman among the vehe- 
 ment opponents, of the minister and his Relief-bill: 
 the former reputed to be "one of the most liberal mem- 
 bers of the University," the latter in close " union with 
 the most violent bigots " of " the No-popery party ; " 
 
 Life of Blanco AVIiite, vol. iii. p. 131.
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY". 343 
 
 the future Anglican in the camp of the liberals the 
 future Romanist in that of the Orangemen ! Yet New- 
 
 man had already betrayed the tendencies which ere lono- 
 
 j / o 
 
 possessed him entirely, and become separated by them 
 from his former associates of the same school. Not 
 only had his private opinions opened out, from 18236, 
 into something like " full-blown Popery,"* but he h:id 
 evinced on their behalf that unrivalled power of per- 
 sonal influence which few sensitive minds can resist, 
 and which carries with it a restless passion for its own 
 exercise. He was, indeed, foiled in his first conflict 
 with the Evangelical party, and in his first attempt to 
 dictate a policy to his own ; but his was not a power 
 which depended on external success ; it was a spiritual 
 ascendency, yielding like the air to local strokes of 
 force, but remaining circumambient and elastic still. 
 The minute-book of the Oxford Auxiliary Bible Society 
 probably records the earliest public evidence of his 
 alienation f'r.mi his undergraduate faith. Already re- 
 markable for the force and fervor of his preaching, 
 and not yet an object of theological suspicion, he had 
 been appointed third secretary to the society in 182(5, 
 on the suggestion of Dr. Symons (present Warden of 
 Wndhmn College), and with the approval of Dr. 
 M' Bride (nr>\y Principal of Magdalen Hall), and other 
 distinguished supporters of the Low Church. No 
 sooner had he accepted the office than an anonymous 
 circular appeared on the breakfast-table of sundry 
 clergymen of the place, lamenting that the society was 
 in the hands of the low party ; urging the importance 
 of effecting a change, and pointing out a rule which 
 
 * See V. W. Nun-nun's I'haet-s of Faith. \> 11.
 
 34i PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 conferred a vote on every clerical subscription of half-a- 
 guinca. It was soon whispered that this paper was not 
 unknown to the new secretarv ; though one at least of 
 
 - * 
 
 his near friends felt secure in denying his connection 
 with it, and was proportionately disturbed to find it 
 really his production. The design, thus commenced in 
 secret, soon threw off all disguise. The draft of the 
 annual report, drawn up in the usual unctuous style 
 by the first secretary, Mr. Hill (Vice-Principal of St. 
 Edmund's Hall), came before the committee for discus- 
 sion. The new secretary moved some two hundred 
 and fifty amendments, which would have struck out 
 all the Scripture adaptations and " gracious " jargon 
 from the document, and turned it into such English as 
 he might use. He lost his amendments, his office, 
 and all further confidence from the Evangelical party. 
 
 The lo?s, however, of his tutorship in Oriel, involv- 
 ing as it did a breach with Dr. Hawkins (the Provost), 
 was more significant in relation to the subsequent course 
 of Anglicanism. In conjunction with two out of three 
 co-tutors (the elder Froude and Mr. [afterwards Arch- 
 deacon] Robert Isaac Wilberforce) , he had requested 
 that the Oriel men might be distributed into four sepa- 
 rate sets ; and that of these, one might be assigned to 
 each tutor as his pastoral charge. The request was 
 refused by the Provost, on the reasonable ground that, 
 by the proposed arrangement, the students would fall, 
 in each case, under the exclusive power of one man's 
 mind, instead of experiencing, as was intended, the 
 influence of the whole tutorial body. The disappoint- 
 ed petitioners resigned ; and from that moment the 
 preacher at St. Mary's, checked in his operations
 
 ON OUH PHESENT THEOLOGY. 345 
 
 within his college, laid himself out for religious action 
 beyond its walls, and raised his Church and Little- 
 more into a power of the first order in the history 
 of English religion. 
 
 The death of Dr. Lloyd removed his chief external 
 check at a time when his internal resources for influence 
 were fast maturing. The Divinity chair and the epis- 
 copal office were no longer united ; and scientific theol- 
 ogy lost the shelter of the mitre. The subtle intellect 
 and resolute will of John Henry Newman were left with- 
 out a rival : not indisposed to crush as dangerous the 
 explorations of German criticism, which probably sug- 
 gested nothing but scepticisms to his outside gaze ; and 
 impelled to organize, out of the safer materials of 
 patristic and ecclesiastical literature, where he was at 
 home, a scheme of doctrine with clear passages between 
 the parts, with commodious stowing-place for every 
 doubt, and foundations buried out of sight. We pre- 
 sume it must be ascribed to the influence of his friend, 
 that Dr. Pusey never followed up the direction on 
 which he had so well entered in his "Inquiry" concern- 
 ing Rationalism ; and that a few years later (in 1836) 
 he was ready, in his turn,, to employ against Dr. 
 Hampden the verv same unworthy weapons which he 
 had wrested from the hand of Mr. Hose. When he had 
 succumbed, all ambiguity as to the course of the move- 
 ment ceased. The assault on Evangelicism from the 
 side of free learning was silent; the guns spiked, 
 the batteries abandoned. All was to be done from the 
 entrenched positions of Past Authority, and the com- 
 munications surrendered with the open road of Future 
 Truth. Though some cautious years had still to pass
 
 346 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 ere the full bearings of the new system were displayed, 
 the absence of divided command accelerated its devel- 
 opment, and simplify its history. The preacher of St. 
 Mary's was undisputed choregus: and the analysis of 
 his personal theology preserves the essence of the whole 
 re-action. 
 
 Whence arises that strange mixture of admiration 
 and of distrust, of which most readers and hearers of 
 John Henry Newman are conscious? Often as he car- 
 ries us away by his close dialectic, his wonderful read- 
 ings of the human heart, his tender or indignant fervor, 
 there remains a small dark speck of misgiving which 
 we can never wipe out. The secret perhaps lies in this, 
 that his own faith is an escape from an alternative 
 scepticism, which receives the veto not of his reason, 
 but of his will. He has, after all, the critical, not the 
 prophetic mind. He wants immediateness of religious 
 vision. Instead of finding his eye clearer and his foot 
 firmer the deeper he sinks towards the ultimate ground 
 of trust, he hints that the light is precarious, and that 
 your step may chance on the water or the rock in that 
 abysmal realm. The tendency of the purest religious 
 insight is ever to quit superficial and derivative beliefs, 
 and seek the primitive roots where the finite draws life 
 from the Infinite. The awfulness of that position, the 
 direct contact of the human spirit with the Divine, 
 the loneliness of communion when all media of church 
 and usage are removed, do not appall the piety of 
 noblest mood. With Dr. Newman the order is re- 
 versed. He loves to work in the upper strata of the 
 minds with which he deals, detecting their inconsist- 
 encies, balancing their wants, satisfying them with the
 
 ON OUH PRESENT THEOLOGY 347 
 
 mere coherence and relative sufficiency of their belief, 
 but en con racing them to shrink from the last question- 
 ings. With himself, indeed, lie sometimes goes deeper, 
 and descends towards the bases of all devout belief; 
 but evidently with less of assurance as his steps pass 
 down. The ground feels to him less and less solid 
 as he penetrates from the deposits of recent experience 
 into the inner laboratory of the world ; and it is only 
 when he stands upon the crust, and takes it as it is, 
 that he loses the fear lest it rest upon the flood. His 
 certainties are on the surface, and his insecurities below. 
 With men of opposite character, often reputed to be 
 sceptical, doubt is at the top, and is but as the swaying 
 of water that is calm below, and sleeps in its entire 
 mass within its granite cradle. He seems to say within 
 himself, " There * no bottom to these things that I can 
 find; we must therefore put one there; and only mind 
 that it be sufficient to hold them in, supposing it to be 
 real." He deals, in short, with the first truths of reli- 
 gion as hypotheses, not known or knowable in them- 
 selves, but recommended by the sufficient account they 
 give of the facts, and the practical fitness of belief 
 in them to our nature. He denies the existence for 
 our mind of any thing unmoftttnv, and treats even our 
 highest persuasions as a provisional discipline, whole- 
 some for us to retain, whether they be harmless errors 
 or eternal truths. Nor is this radical scepticism merely 
 implied at second-hand : it receives direct and repeated 
 statement as a philosophical principle. In his History 
 of the Arians,* the author explains the distinction 
 drawn by the Fathers between 0-eo).o-/m and otxovofiut, 
 
 * Pages 43, 44.
 
 318 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 between absolute and relative truth in rcgtrd to God. 
 An "economy," \vc are told, is a representation not cor- 
 responding with the real nature of things, but reduced 
 into adaptation to our faculties, and substituted for the 
 truth in condescension to our incapacity. It is not 
 simply the broken view which alone we can seize of 
 transcendent realities, given for apprehension but not 
 yet apprehended ; it is a " pious fraud," a benevolent 
 cheat, directly put upon us by the Creator himself, 
 to stand as the moral equivalent of a missing verity. 
 Now, what does the author include under this class of 
 representative illusions? Does he, like the Fathers, 
 confine the application to the doctrine of the Incarna- 
 tion and historical manifestation of God in Christ, as 
 opposed to his inner and Absolute Kssence? Far from 
 it. He reduces to the same head the revelation to us 
 of moral law,*; and the suggestion, by sensible phe- 
 nomena, of an external material world; and the 
 aspect of design and purpose which the cosmical 
 order assumes in the eyes of " the multitude." Are 
 these things, then, these porphyry pillars on which 
 our very life is raised, nothing but appearance, 
 "shadows," "beguiling the imaginations of most men 
 with a harmless but unfounded belief"? So does our 
 author regard them : and in his idealism saves nothing 
 whatever, so far as we can find, from the realm of fan- 
 tasy. Alike in the world of sense and in the temple 
 of the spirit "man walketh in a vain show." In this 
 way the very antithesis from which he starts disappears : 
 he gives such an extension to the system of economy as 
 to swallow up the theology altogether, and to present 
 God to us as never and nowhere doing any thing but
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 349 
 
 " simulating " on our behalf. Not only are we kept at 
 a distance from all realities ; but the representations 
 amid which our minds are imprisoned are, or may be, 
 f til tie representations; false in the same way and 
 degree as the assertion that the Mosaic dispensation 
 was unchangeable, though all the while it was destined 
 to be abolished. Alas ! have \vc here no key to our au- 
 thor's fondness for an esoteric and exoteric presentation 
 of doctrine? for a mystical as well as a literal exe- 
 gesis? for a discipline arcani? for doubling the 
 aspect and expression of all that is offered as truth? If 
 the universe and God set the example of being scenical, 
 what shall hinder religion from becoming histrionic? 
 
 The hypothetical nature of even the most funda- 
 mental propositions in theology, their dependence on 
 .assumptions which not our vision but our blindness 
 compels us to make, is strongly asserted in the fol- 
 lowing paragraph of the fourteenth University Sermon ; 
 on the Theory of Developments in religious doctrine : 
 
 " It is true that God is without beginning, if eternity m?iy 
 worthily be considered to imply succession ; in every place, 
 if He who is a Spirit can have relations with spa -e. It is 
 right to speak of His Being and Attributes, if lie be not 
 rather super-essential ; it is true to say that lie is wise or 
 powerful, if we may consider Him as other than the most 
 simple Unity. lie is truly Three, if lie is truly One; He is 
 truly One, if the idea of Him falls under earthly number. 
 lie has a triple Personality in the sense in which the Infinite 
 can be understood to have Personality at all. //' we know 
 anything of Him, //' ue may speak of Him in any way, 
 if we may emerge from Atheism or Pantheism into religious 
 liiith, if we would have any saving hope, any life of truth 
 aud holiness within us, this only do we know, with this only
 
 350 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 confession we must begin and end our worship, that the 
 Father is the One God, the Son the One God, and the Holy 
 Ghost the One God; and that the Father is not the Son, the 
 Son not the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost not the Father." 
 (p. 353.) 
 
 To a faith thus contingent on certain prior assump- 
 tions there could be no valid objection, if the as- 
 sumptions themselves are regarded as unconditionally 
 sure. But the fatal thing is this, that every one of them 
 is regarded by the author as an "economy" as referable 
 not to our knowledge but to our nescience as rather 
 a jifHorov tyevftog than a genuine "first truth." Reason 
 would as soon suspect as trust them; nay, it is 
 reason that traces them to their seat in our feebleness 
 and incapacity, and enables us to put the case of their 
 being false. If, in a fit of caprice, you choose to 
 throw them all away and substitute their oppositcs, no 
 one can show rational cause against you, or dispute the 
 philosophical adequacy of your new hypothesis. Both 
 doctrines, atheism and theism, our author more than 
 once intimates, arc theories that will hold water. " It 
 is indeed," he says, "a great question whether atheism 
 is not as philosophically consistent with the phenomena 
 of the physical world, taken by themselves, as the doc- 
 trine of a creative and governing Power."* In pre- 
 ferring the religious interpretation of the universe, we 
 seize an hypothesis at a venture, impelled- by the pre- 
 sumptions of a good heart. 
 
 On every account we object to this statement of the 
 ultimate grounds of religion. The author concedes far 
 too much to the atheistic doctrine ; and by treating it 
 
 * University Serrnons, chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, p. 186.
 
 OX OUR PKESEXT THEOLOGY. 351 
 
 tin an Jiypothesits puts it to a wrong test : for the ques- 
 tion is, not whether its premises, if true, will cover 
 the phenomena; but whether its premises (e.g. its 
 nations of Force, Causation, Law) are true, or, on 
 the contrary, confused and self-contradictory. He 
 establishes a false variance between the rational and 
 the moral faculties of the soul, and in consequence 
 between philosophical and religious evidence ; so that 
 we are made to lose a truth by the one and then recover 
 it by the other. Speculative Reason sends us to the 
 Gazette, but Practical Reason steps in with copious 
 assets and discharges every claim. We dislike to be 
 made the sport of these experiments between imaginary 
 rivals : we object to being drowned in the sea of specu- 
 lation, just that the Humane Society of practical prin- 
 ciples may rub us into life again. The intellectual 
 and the moral functions of our nature have one and 
 the same inspiration, gain their vision by one and the 
 same light ; and it is only by a trick of artificial ab- 
 straction that faith can be said to suffer ruin from the 
 one and receive rescue by the other. The postulates 
 of morals stand, in their own right, as first principles 
 in philosophy. But the essential fault of our author's 
 foundation lies in his Idealism. That the existence 
 and perfection of God, that the conflict of moral 
 law with lower nature, should be no more certain 
 than the reality of an outward world, we may content- 
 edly allow, provided that outward world be left to us as 
 an immediate object, positively given to our knowledge 
 by a veracious faculty. This, however, is precisely 
 what Dr. Newman refuses to us. He treats the notion 
 of a material universe as an " unfounded belief," neu-
 
 352 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 tral at best as to truth or falsehood. Our moral faith, 
 our religious faith, he sets on the same footing with our 
 natural realism ; and then slips that realism away as 11 
 harmless beguilement, "simulating" yet masking the 
 inaccessible fact.* The logical consequence is evident 
 is probably meant to be evident ; for sceptical deso- 
 lation is found to be the best preparative for the shelter 
 of an authoritative church. 
 
 The relation of faith to reason is traced by Dr. New- 
 man with a fineness and general truth of discrimination 
 that remind us of Butler. f He rejects the rationalist 
 conceptions of faith, as either the purely intellectual act 
 of believing on testimonial and other secondary evi- 
 dence, or the purely moral act of carrying out by the 
 will what has been acccepted by the understanding. 
 The former confounds it with opinion ; the latter with 
 obedience. He does not narrow the term to the Luth- 
 eran dimensions, to denote a reliant affection towards 
 a person, and imply a grace peculiar to the Christian 
 and Jewish dispensations. It is a moral act of reason, 
 believing, at the instigation of reverence and love, 
 something which goes beyond the severe requirements 
 of the evidence. In matters of pure science, where 
 we have to do with mere nature, the mind simply fol- 
 lows the vestiges of proof. But in concerns of man 
 and God we necessarily carry into every process of 
 judgment antecedent presumptions which color our 
 whole thought, and interpret for us the external signs 
 given to direct us. To a cold intellect these presump- 
 tions will be wanting ; and it will construe the spiritual 
 
 * ArianB of the Fourth Century, pp. 44, 45. University Sermons, p. 350. 
 \ See especially University Sermons, ix. x. xi. Essay on Development, 
 ch. vi. $ 2.
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 353 
 
 as if it were physical. To a bad heart they will be 
 dark suspicions ; and it will believe its own shadow. 
 To an affectionate, faithful, humble mind they will be 
 clear trusts ; and it will "think no evil," and "hope all 
 things." It is in this yielding of the reason to the bet- 
 ter suggestion this casting of one's lot with the higher 
 possibility, that faith consists. Obedience to conscience 
 partakes therefore of the nature of faith;* and implies, 
 wherever found, a seed of grace and an offer of salva- 
 tion. The great heathen world is thus brought within 
 the compass of a divine probation ; and faithful men, 
 true to their gifts and guidance, are scattered through 
 all lands and ages. It is characteristic of the judg- 
 ments of faith, that they are immediate and intuitive, 
 detached and unsystematic ; whilst those of wisdom are 
 mediate and reflective the explicit and connected con- 
 tents of implicit acts of trust. Wisdom is therefore 
 the end of that Christian culture of which faith is the 
 beginning,! the tmGri^ of morals, as opposed to mere 
 L;<% 5oi. It springs from the exercise of Reason 
 on the data of Faith. The same Reason, exercised on 
 the data of Sense and Perception, constitutes the scien- 
 tific intellect ; whose scrutiny, thus working in alio 
 genere, can never alight upon moral discoveries, or 
 replace what has been let slip through non-acceptance 
 of the presumptions of Conscience. Here lies the 
 great mistake of Protestants, Avho begin with inquiry, 
 expecting to end with faith "grapes from thorns, 
 and figs from thistles." Catholics, on the other hand, 
 begin with faith, and develop it by inquiry ; J rever 
 
 * University Sonnons, ii. ' p. 10 ct seqq. t Ibid. xiii. p. 288. 
 
 J Loss and Gain, p. 103. 
 
 23
 
 I 
 
 354 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 ently taking the divine instincts, and drawing out tlioir 
 hidden oracles into the symmetry of a holy philosophy. 
 In this view the very materials of religious knowledge 
 are present only to the tact of a pure heart ; and our 
 author is quite self-consistent when he affirms, in lan- 
 guage curiously coinciding with his brother's, that the 
 moral sense the "spiritual discernment" is the le- 
 gitimate judge of religious truth ; the intellect having 
 only to prepare the case and watch it with negative and 
 corrective function.* 
 
 In its broad features; its linking of moral with reli- 
 gious reverence ; its separation of conscience from 
 understanding ; its distinction between implicit and ex- 
 plicit truth, this theory of faith contrasts favorably 
 both with the evangelical no-theory and the ration- 
 alist wrong theory. Did the author never quit its 
 systematic statement, or, in quitting it for concrete 
 application, never transgress its terms, we should thank 
 him for removing old errors without remonstrance for 
 introducing new. When, however, we turn from his 
 disquisitions to his tales, and observe the use to which 
 he puts his doctrine in practical life, we start back in 
 dismay, and ask ourselves whether what we had so 
 much approved in thought can issue in what we must 
 utterly disapprove in action ? In the sermons we seem 
 to understand the statements, and with full heart assent 
 to them that "faith must venture something;" that in 
 order to finish by knowing, you must commence by trust- 
 in or ; that self-surrender in the dark to conscience clears 
 
 O ' 
 
 up into open-eyed wisdom. Nor should we seriously ob- 
 ject to the exhortation, "Believe first, and conviction 
 
 * University Sermons, iii. pp. 40, 44, 45.
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 855 
 
 will follow," so long as we may construe the " belief ' 
 to mean simple reliance on instinctive impressions of 
 the good and true, and the "conviction," a reflective 
 apprehension of their ground; and may therefore read 
 the lesson thus : " You must do the right before you 
 can know it." First, however, an uneasy wonder stops 
 us when we are told that in early times men became 
 Christians, not because they believed, but in order to 
 believe;* and that the characteristic doctrines of the 
 Gospel were not offered to them till after they h:ul 
 bound themselves to the church by baptism. Next, the 
 real meaning of these ill-favored general statements 
 becomes shamefully apparent in a particular instance in 
 Loss and C-rain, whore the hero, a puzzled Protestant, 
 unsatisfied with English church-parlies, but an entire 
 stranger to the Ivomanist system and worship, is pas- 
 sionately urged by a recently "perverted" friend to 
 take his hat and walk straight away into confession and 
 adoption. He does not at the moment yield to the 
 advice ; but a little later he follows it, without any 
 great advance in his mental preparation, and before 
 ever witnessing a service in a Catholic church. 
 
 is the word "faith " degraded to the sense of " trying 
 the experiment of an. unknown religion, and obeying it 
 at hazard ;" and has no further reference to conscience, 
 which stands quite neutral towards a church not yet 
 appreciated. There is still, however, a lower step to 
 be taken. Dr. Newman does not attempt to disguise 
 the shock given to the moral feeling and taste of new- 
 comers by many things inseparable from Romanism. 
 How docs he counsel them to deal with their distress? 
 
 * Ariuns, [>. 78. Loss and (Iain. |>. 313.
 
 350 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 To respect it as a sacred sign? to follow -their own 
 
 highest perception at all risks? Xo ; but to suppress 
 and stnother it ; to consider that they must not expect 
 to get through without dirt, and to hope that things 
 will look cleaner when the eye has become used to 
 them. And this, proh pudor! he also calls "faith;" 
 having at last turned it right round, and brought it 
 to mean the contradiction of conscience, the placid 
 swallowing of what is offensive to the moral sense. In 
 short, he makes it convertible with mere " taking on 
 trust," without regard to the felt quality of the thing 
 taken. Whether you yield to what commands, or to 
 what scandalizes, your natural reverence, you equally 
 satisfy the conditions of our author's "faith." The 
 word thus becomes an engine that will work either in 
 advance or in reverse : whether you believe your con- 
 science or disbelieve, it keeps you on the pious track. 
 
 The practice of professing a creed " in order to be- 
 lieve " has long been a favorite with the casuistry of 
 Oxford. Arnold, troubled with doubts about the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity, was recommended by his friend 
 Keblc to take a parish, and avow the doctrine several 
 times per week, and multiply the meshes of his entan- 
 glement with it. Every Oxford tutor, we believe, could 
 quote instances in which scepticism of greater extent 
 has been met with similar advice. Without discussing 
 the picas advanced in defence of such counsels, we will 
 test their character by an imaginary case, exhibiting 
 the conditions- in the simplest form. In a religious ami 
 highly accomplished family, connected on all hands with 
 the church, an erring son, let us suppose, becomes 
 enamored of the " doctrine of circumstances ; '' and
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 357 
 
 passing through the mere fatalistic stage, settles into 
 resolute and open-eyed atheism. No nobleness of 
 character or confusion of thought beguiles him (as hap- 
 pier natures are beguiled) into the illusion that moral 
 distinctions remain when divine realities are gone: and 
 his life exhibits no violent inconsistency with a creed 
 which disclaims responsibility. Among his numerous 
 clerical connections, one, we will suppose, is captivated 
 with the new formula, that men are to become members 
 of the church not " because they believe, but in order 
 to believe:" and, acting on this rule, addresses him to 
 the following effect : "You say you disbelieve the exist- 
 ence of a God ; but you are in no condition to judge, 
 for you have never tried the hypothesis of theism. 
 Your first step must be to grant it for experiment's 
 sake, to act as if there were a God, and become a 
 <^(m'-Christian. Join the church ; diligently profess 
 the creeds ; take the sacrament ; be constant in your 
 prayers ; expostulate with the heresies of others ; and 
 in due time belief will follow ." It is easier, perhaps, 
 to conceive such counsels offered than to imagine them 
 accepted. For completeness' sake, however, let us 
 suppose their influence for the moment to prevail. A 
 sudden transformation is visible. The atheist looks up 
 his prayer-book, and is seen twice a day at church : 
 he audibly says, "I believe in one God, the Father 
 Almighty, &c. ;" he bows to the east at the mime 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ; lie hears the warning from 
 the altar to " search his own conscience " " not after the 
 manner of dissemblers with God," and answers it by 
 boldly partaking at "the holy table." lie plays the 
 Pharisee towards pure and pious friends, needing his
 
 358 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 rebuke; for their " ncological " tendencies. His fictitious 
 zeal at last outstrips the pace of his spiritual counsel- 
 lor ; to whom he points out certain worldly-minded 
 friends as requiring to be brought to a " sense of their 
 condition." The clergyman declining so delicate an 
 office, the spell of his influence is broken; his hope- 
 ful novice throws up with disgust " the hypothesis of a 
 God," relapses into the atheism which had never really 
 left him for an hour : and "Richard is himself again." 
 
 That we have not misconceived the natural issue of 
 this sort of experiment, critics of human nature will 
 perhaps allow. That the experiment itself is a legiti- 
 mate offspring of the parent maxim, the logical reader 
 will hardly question. But between logic and life, it 
 will be said, bridges are scarce ; and, in practice, these 
 extreme cases never find the means to cross. Those 
 who speak thus can have had little access to the inner 
 history of the present age. When the time comes for 
 its sincerest biographies to appear, the truth will often 
 prove "stranger than our fiction." 
 
 The theory of Christianity which Dr. Newman's 
 writings present deserved better at his hands than to 
 be given as an hypothesis and an " economy." Stript 
 of perverse adjuncts, and checked at its points of deflec- 
 tion, it assumes the aspect of a religious philosophy, 
 combining, with an unusual sense of proportion, the 
 chief truths of Christian morals and faith. In its results 
 it concurs, of course, with the Catholic doctrines ; but it 
 brings them out in fresh connections and with reference 
 all round to the rival teachings, from the midst of which 
 the expositor himself has emerged into them. The brief- 
 est notice of the main features must content us.
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 358 
 
 The human soul cannot lose its essentially moral con- 
 si itntion. Free and responsible still in the heathen 
 notwithstanding the fall, and in the Christian though 
 brought under grace, it has never sunk below the 
 capacity, and never rises above the obligation, of obedi- 
 ence. The sense of duty is intrinsically the highest 
 authority, the ultimate ground of all ecclesiastical 
 pretensions. The "objective authority" of the church, 
 which is peculiar to revealed religion, would have noth- 
 ing to rest upon, were it not for the prior "subjective 
 authority" of conscience, which belongs to natural reli- 
 gion. The dispensations of God arc not, therefore, 
 restricted to the Hebrew course of history : they are 
 universal as the human conscience, and every man has 
 his trust of light and grace. Even special revelation 
 must be regarded as probably given at different times to 
 all nations ; no tribe being without traditions of super- 
 natural events. The distinction in favor of the Jewish 
 race is simply that with it alone have the facts been pre- 
 served by authentic records and media. And as the 
 inspiration of God is not restricted by limits of place, 
 so neither does it die out with time. He speaks to us 
 still, and enables us to add to our store ; not, indeed, 
 by taking any new point of departure, but developing 
 and applying the divine data, by resolving the vis- 
 ion and concrete thought of the Son of God into the 
 component ideas and living truths which it yields to 
 holy reflection. 
 
 In its very nature religious truth is .sr//*-cvidencin<r, 
 evolved from the mind rather than deposited on it : 
 and the care of the teacher or the church must lie 
 directed less to any intellectual elaboration of proof
 
 360 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 than to prepare the temper and posture of the receiving 
 soul, and waken into consciousness the elementary expe- 
 riences of reverence and faith. Christianity itself is self- 
 eridenctng, and by its inherent power makes way where 
 no hooks of evidences could carry it. Indeed, all its 
 doctrines are really given, and have actually been 
 found, in natural religion. Only they came to wise 
 and good heathens on the vague authority of a divine 
 principle, instead of a, divine agent. The one grand 
 gift of the Gospel to the human mind is that, by the 
 Incarnation, it has determined the personality of God, 
 and His relations of character and affection towards 
 man. This, and not what is called the "doctrine of 
 the Cross," is the specialty and living kernel of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 Christianity, however, is not adequately described as 
 a revelation of truth ; or even as a saving transaction : 
 rather is it (inclusively, indeed, of these) a divine 
 Institute in perpetuity for helping man to "elc.msc 
 himself from sin." His fallen nature, though not 
 ruined or bereft of its free-will, is in a state of moral 
 infirmity, requiring supernatural aids ; and these the 
 Christian economy provides. First, the Son of God 
 became incarnate, " non amittendo quod erat, sed 
 xttmendo quod non erat" reconciling infinitude with 
 personality, and purifying the nature He adopted and 
 through whose experiences He passed. Next, the sac- 
 rificial merits of this act are distributed by a perpetual 
 re-incarnation in the Eucharist, and, with modifications, 
 by the other sacraments, as vehicles of grace. I5nt 
 again, the spiritual purification which is thus freely 
 given to faith for past evil does not close the contin-
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 361 
 
 gencies of the future. Only in proportion as the grace 
 of faith leads to works and love, is it effectual for the 
 time to come : so that the retrospect on Redemption 
 does not close the prospect of Retribution, and within 
 the Gospel there is still a Law. Baptism, which 
 washes out all prior sin, cannot be repeated: and sub- 
 sequent transgressions must be cleansed away either by 
 the penances and absolution of the church, or by the 
 expiations of purgatory. Throughout his doctrine our 
 author provides a responsible place for the human will, 
 and constructs a true moral theology." His antithesis 
 between grace and nature shows itself, not by opposing 
 faith to morality, but by importing into morals an 
 interior contrast between the tastes of the natural and 
 of the religious conscience ; the latter going beyond the 
 mere human rectitudes, and producing ascetic virtues, 
 
 regarding life as penitential and expiatory, if not 
 endowed with positive and blessed promise to self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 On the mere Romanist, appendages to this scheme, 
 
 the Invocation of saints, the Mariolatry, the Apos- 
 tolic Succession, &c. we mean to say nothing. They 
 are chiefly remarkable for having raised up in their 
 defence the obnoxious but highly important "doctrine 
 of development." In the absence of any plausible 
 support from Scripture, it became necessary, if they 
 were to be retained at all, to widen the source of 
 Doctrine, and give an interpreting and determining 
 power to the church. In order to reconcile Protestants 
 to this, it was maintained that for them too, not less 
 than for the Catholics, the letter of the Bible was insuf- 
 ficient, unless read by the reflected light of later ecclcsi-
 
 362 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 astlcal decisions. Neither the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 nor the usage of Infant Baptism, could be gathered 
 from the sacred writings alone. Such questions as 
 those respecting an intermediate state and the remission 
 of past-baptismal sins are raised, but not solved, by the 
 Gospels. Nor can Scripture determine its own canon, 
 or its own inspiration. To set it up as a self-sufficing 
 objective authority, is to apply it to a purpose for which 
 it is not intended or adapted. On the other hand, 
 traces abound upon its page that it has been composed 
 on the principle of development, that is, with a view to 
 an ulterior determination of many things which it leaves 
 indeterminate. The statement of the Logos-doctrine 
 in the proem of St. John's Gospel is but the germ in 
 which the true doctrine of Christ's higher nature lies : 
 and till successive heresies had started the questions dor- 
 mant within it, and given occasion for a verdict on them, 
 the right solution could not disengage itself from the 
 possible wrong ones. The prophecies quoted from 
 the Jewish Scriptures in the Christian seem inappli- 
 cable, till we are furnished with the double meaning or 
 non-natural sense ; and to bring this fully out required 
 the experience of a. later time, when the necessary ten- 
 dency of literal and historical interpretation to Ariaii 
 rationalism had been made evident in the exegetical 
 school of Antioch, and the connection of the mystical 
 method with orthodoxy and piety had displayed itself 
 in the catechetical school of Alexandria. From all 
 these symptoms it is gathered, that the Christian sys- 
 tem, not excepting its primary principles, is only im- 
 plicitly given in the canonical books ; that the seed of 
 truth, once consigned to human souls as its receptacle,
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 363 
 
 more and more clearly evinced its nature and discrimi- 
 nated its species by the growths into which it opened ; 
 that the tact of the church in recognizing the ^cnuine 
 
 ~ C? O 
 
 characters, and in rejecting the spurious or mixed, 
 became finer with continued exercise, and the aid of 
 prior definitions ; that instead of testing the later by 
 the earlier, we are to interpret the earlier by the later, 
 and import the explicit doctrines of the fourth and fifth 
 centuries into the rudimentary expressions of the first. 
 Protestants must either denude their creed to its mere 
 embryo, or let it assume the proportions of full-blown 
 llomanism. 
 
 The state of this controversy is curious. The as- 
 sumption on both sides is, that either the Bible or the 
 Church is impregnable, and achieves all our protection 
 from error for us : the only question is, which of the 
 two it is. To put tliis to the test, each party tries to 
 discredit the favorite refuge of the other. Dr. Newman 
 does not scruple to discharge a volley into the intrench- 
 inent of Scripture, in order to show the Protestants 
 that it may be made too hot to hold them, and "compel 
 them to come in" to his sti-onghold. They reply by a 
 hot fire at his church-bastions, to convince him that 
 they may be knocked about his head. Is it surprising 
 if both are pretty well riddled ; if neither is found to 
 be designed for the purpose to which it has been 
 applied ; and if a change of the whole ground should 
 be the clearly indicated result? liy no documentary 
 process, no construction of title-deeds, be they canonical 
 or ecclesiastical, of the first century or the fourth, can 
 you draw forth the oracular system which you seek. 
 Rail off what plot of history you \v : ll, the human, with
 
 304 PERSONAL IXFLUKXCE8 
 
 all its liabilities, will bo there. Wander where you 
 will on its unenclosed spaces, the divine, with its eter- 
 nal teaching, will not be absent. For discriminating 
 the true from the false, the accidental from the essen- 
 tial, in morals and religion, whether drawn from the 
 special Christian data, or from the entire life of hu- 
 manity, something more is needed than to draw an 
 arbitrary line round a select group of books, or a 
 favored series of centuries. " Objective authority " 
 in religion there doubtless is ; but vested in a Person 
 who is eternal, and not therefore a fixture of chronol- 
 ogy ; speaking to us through all the media of His life 
 in humanity, and not therefore separable from the 
 "subjective authority" of conscience, or discoverable 
 without it ; and though uniquely manifested in the 
 " Word made flesh," yet owned by us cvcrichere only 
 through the same Word in hearts already tinctured with 
 the Christian consciousness. 
 
 Looking back on the whole influence of Dr. Xcw- 
 man's personality and writings, we see in it a great 
 preponderance of good. Bishop Thirlwall has justly 
 acknowledged that the Oxford movement has given rise 
 to more valuable writings in theology than had appeared 
 for a long time previous to it. And though it arrested 
 the pursuit of critical theology for a while, the post- 
 ponement was amply compensated by a newly-awakened 
 attention to the whole history of Christianity, and a far 
 more searching look into the moral and spiritual condi- 
 tions and effects of faith in the human soul. The 
 prosecution of the critical theology will be resumed with 
 larger, humbler, yet freer spirit, now that some deeper 
 root has been found for Christian obedience and belief
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. ol)0 
 
 than an authority wholly external and contingent on a. 
 literary tenure. A sense of the universality and per- 
 petuity of Divine grace, of the_sanctity of common 
 duties and self-denials, of the grandeur and power 
 of historical communion and church-life, of the true 
 place of beauty and art in worship, has deeply pene- 
 trated into the newer religion of England ; chiefly, it 
 is true, among the classes within reach of academical 
 modes of thought and feeling, but through them affect- 
 ing the administration of parishes and manors out of 
 number. For the re-union of religious and moral ends, 
 for the reconciliation of human admirations with holy 
 reverence, for the consecration of the near and tem- 
 poral, many a heart owes a debt of unspeakable 
 gratitude to the literature of the Oxford school. The 
 one grand sin which we must set off against these 
 merits, is a certain want of unconditional and ultimate 
 trust in their own principles. Their system has too 
 often the appearance of being constructed on purpose as 
 a refuge from doubts they dare not face. Their intel- 
 lectual men have been fond of playing with fire, and 
 flinging about brilliant scepticisms, eating into the very 
 heart of life, for the chance of inducing flight into their 
 protecting fold. It is hard for a proselyte of terror to 
 become a child of trust : and the brand of fear deforms 
 the forehead of this party. "To obey," they say, " is 
 easier than to believe : so we will begin from the con- 
 science, that we nny end with assurance. " Good : 
 but sec that you obcv out of the belief you /iftrf, instead 
 of with ff rii-ic to n belli.'/ which you hare not. Con- 
 science has a right to you through and through, and 
 must be served without terms : and vainly do you
 
 So' 6 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 mount her sacred steps on knees of painful penance, if 
 the thought of your heart be to escape from the outer 
 exposures and threatening skies of doubt, into the shel- 
 ter of a ready temple and the sympathy of a mighty 
 throng. The deepest form of scepticism is seen in thy 
 mind which is in haste to believe ; which resolves, by 
 some violent spring, to make an end of darkness, 
 whether the light attained be God's or not ; which is 
 not content to follow precisely and only where Fie 
 shows, and cannot rest upon the trustful word, " My 
 soul, wait patiently for Him. " Something of this un- 
 faith lurks in the spirit of the new Catholic party. They 
 recognize the ambassadorial credentials of Conscience, 
 and show you on its casket of secrets the very signet of 
 the King of kings : on opening the despatch-box, you 
 find they have stuffed in all the creeds. The self- 
 deception involved in this is not always unmixed with 
 artifice. All such policy is a half-conscious attempt to 
 suborn God's Spirit on behalf of our own desires and 
 prejudices, and against the doubts and scruples which 
 may be truly His. 
 
 Transferring ourselves now from Oxford to Cam- 
 bridge, we acknowledge at the outset that the place has 
 much less to do with the party, in the case of the phil- 
 osophical movement led by Coleridge, than in that of 
 the eccesiastical represented by Newman. Yet it was 
 before the University of Cambridge that Julius Hare* 
 first produced the fruits of his meditations at the feet of 
 the poet-philosopher : and it was in Trinity College 
 chapel that he preached the sermons which mark most 
 
 * Sermon on " the Children of Light," preached before the University in 
 182S.
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 3()7 
 
 clearly his theological position.* The Highgate sage 
 had gone to his rest at the very beginning of the Oxford 
 movement (in 1834), and left his disciples to deal with 
 the phenomenon according to their own lights. Mr. 
 Hare had visited the Eternal City, and witnessed there 
 some things which indisposed him to trifle with the 
 honest heart of Protestantism. " I saw the Pope," he 
 used to say, " apparently kneeling in prayer for man- 
 kind : but the legs which kneeled were artificial ; he 
 was in his chair. Was not that sight enough to coun- 
 
 o o 
 
 teract all the acsthetical impressions of the worship, if 
 they had been a hundred times stronger than they were ? f 
 He saw at once the part that he should take ; and in his 
 first sermon, preached before the clergy of the diocese 
 of Chichester, he vindicated, from the words, "Lo, I am 
 with you always, even unto the end of the world," the 
 living presence of the invisible Word in His own Per- 
 son against the sacerdotal delegation claimed, and 
 virtually substituted, by the Tractarians. Profoundly 
 Lutheran in his conception of "faith," and jealous of all 
 interposed media between the Church and her Divine 
 Head, he resisted at the outset the dangers of an official 
 theocracy with an absent God. The offence given to 
 some hearers bv this sermon made him hesitate for a 
 time to accept the office of Archdeacon of Lewes. But 
 in overruling his objections, Bishop Otter rightly inter- 
 preted the character of his mind ; of which the recent 
 
 * Sermon on "the Law of Self-sacrifice," 1820; and Serin on on ; 'the Sin 
 against the Holy Ghost," in 1*82. 
 
 t Sec Introduction, page xxvi. (understood to be by Mr. Maurice) to the 
 Vwtution Chfirr/ts of the An-hiltncim of />"<-.!, in tin: years 1843, 1845, 1840; 
 a charming sketch of Hare's character and position, as rich and wise as it ie 
 ala innate.
 
 308 PEI5SOXAL INFLUENCES 
 
 sermon was only a partial expression ; and which, 
 though impulsive and unsystematic, had too many open 
 and susceptible sides, too rich a culture, and too real a 
 spiritual depth, to restrict its sympathies to any exclu- 
 sive party. 
 
 In fact, the polemic attitude for the moment assumed 
 towards the Anglicans by no means expressed the char- 
 acteristic of his school. A much deeper and earlier 
 antipathy had called it into existence, and shaped it into 
 form. Coleridge, as all his readers are aware, was in 
 early life a preacher among the Unitarians. Though 
 never having a permanent pastoral charge among them, 
 he was once on the point of settling as a minister at 
 Shrewsbury : and, in withdrawing, he assures the con- 
 gregation that, while he prefers a freer mode of life, 
 "active zeal for Unitarian Christianity, not indolence or 
 indifference, has been the motive of my declining a local 
 and stated settlement as a preacher of it." His early 
 poems, and the name of his eldest son, attest the fervor 
 with which he embraced the philosophy op Priestley and 
 Hartley, as well as the "Psilanthropism " of the sect. 
 By the side of the French atheism of the day, these 
 opinions wore a conservative aspect towards Christian- 
 ity ; in the presence of the political " Church-and-King" 
 vulgarity, they seemed generous to liberty : in the total 
 oblivion of deeper speculation, and the absolute domi- 
 nance of physical method, they satisfied the demand for 
 compactness and system in philosophy. But only the 
 dearth of other waters, and the parching of that desert 
 time, could detain him at this spring. His natural 
 
 * Letter, dntc'l Shrewsbury, Jan. 19, 1798, to >f r. Isaac Wood. High Street, 
 Shrewsbury. (Jhn.-tiun liefonner Tor 1834, p. 40.
 
 ON OUll PKESENT THEOLOGY. 3G9 
 
 thirst was ever feeling its way to more congenial foun- 
 tains. His speculative creed had never penetrated the 
 unconscious essence of the man, but lay as a texture 
 about him, without growing into the fibres of his heart. 
 In 1790, he records, in a private letter, his experience 
 under sore affliction: "My philosophical refinements 
 and metaphysical theories lay by me in the hour of an- 
 guish as toys by the bedside of a child deadly sick."' 
 Never, in short, was the genius of a man more out of 
 its element. An infirm will, a dreamy ideality, a pre- 
 ternatural subtlety of thought, and intense religious 
 susceptibility, were thrown among a people eminently 
 practical and prosaic, impatient of romance, indifferent 
 to intellectual refinements, strict in their moral expecta- 
 tions, scrupulous of the veracities but afraid of the 
 fervors of devotion. The strength and the weakness 
 of each party were vehemently antipathic to those of the 
 other : and their inevitable divergence once begun, 
 the alienation became rapidly complete. Coleridge was 
 a born Platonist, who could not permanently rest con- 
 tent, with Locke, to seek all knowledge in phenomena, 
 or, with Paley, all good in happiness : and on the first 
 opening of his cage of experience, he darted out, and 
 took to his meta physic wing. 
 
 It was Kant who first lifted the bar and set him free ; 
 and who, with Schelling, inspired him to seize that bor- 
 der territory between psychology and theology, which 
 had long been declared a dream-land. If anywhere 
 the relationship can be really witnessed between the 
 human spirit and the divine, it must be on the awful 
 
 * Letter to Mr. Benjamin Flower, Editor of the Cambridge Intelligencer. 
 Monthly Repository for 1834, p. 654. 
 
 24
 
 370 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 confines of the two ; and by taking stand on the ground 
 of our highest consciousness, we may perhaps be able to 
 pass to and fro across the line, and find the breadth of 
 any common margin there may be, and note where, on 
 the one hand, it sinks into pure Nature, and on the 
 other, rises into the absolute God. Here, then, he 
 worked in both directions, upwards and downwards, 
 till the two tracks met : with results which, so far as 
 our present object is concerned, may be briefly indi- 
 cated. 
 
 Dr. Newman has himself drawn attention to a re- 
 markable concurrence between his own conceptions and 
 Coleridge's, respecting the sources and limits of natural 
 religion in the human mind.* They agree in seeking 
 the germ of devout belief in the experiences of con- 
 science ; in recognizing the essentially religious character 
 of morality ; in making faith the prior condition of spir- 
 itual knowledge, and vindicating the maxim, Credo, tit 
 intelligam. Newman, however, represents the moral 
 feeling more as a blind instinctive datum to be accept- 
 ed ; Coleridge, more as cognitive power, looking on 
 reality with open eye. And further, with Newman 
 there is no other original spring of divine knowledge ; 
 while Coleridge allows us an intellectual as well as a 
 moral organ for the apprehension of God. Beyond and 
 above the Understanding, which generalizes from the 
 data of perception, gathers laws from phenomena, 
 frames rules from experience, traces logical consequence 
 and adapts means to ends, he enthrones the Reason, 
 which seizes a different order of truths viz. the 
 necessary and universal, in themselves inconceiva- 
 * University Sermons, ii. p. 24, note.
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 371 
 
 ble, in their absence contradictory ; and in a different 
 way viz. intuitively and immediately, not mediately 
 or through a process. The former ( Verstand) has the 
 field of Nature (that which is born, the originated 
 and transient) for its object, and belongs to our natural 
 part as its seat; and is therefore not peculiar to us, but 
 shared by other animal races, whose so-called " in- 
 stinct" is not specifically distinguishable from adaptive 
 intelligence. The latter ( Vernunft) has the realm of 
 /Spirit (the super-natural, to which the predicates 
 of time and space are inapplicable) for its object, and 
 for its seat in us our spirit or supernatural part. Had 
 Ave, in combination with our sentient capacity, only un- 
 derstanding, though in ever so eminent a degree, we 
 should remain mere living things, with an honorable 
 place in the records of natural history, but leaving the 
 registers of morals and religion still blank and clasped. 
 The Reason by which a higher life becomes possible 
 divaricates into two functions, the cognitive and the 
 active ; the former giving the roots of all our Onto- 
 logical thinking, the ideas of Cause, of Unity, of 
 Infinitude, &c. ; the latter furnishing the postulates 
 of all Moral action, the ideas of Freedom, of Per- 
 sonality, of Obligation. Both the speculative and the 
 practical reason have a voice in our primary religious 
 faith. But the former, alone and by itself, would give 
 us merely an ontological "One," a Spinozistic Absolute, 
 the residuary God of the a-priori demonstrations: 
 necessitating, no doubt, a self-subsistent Infinite of which 
 atheism can render no account, but leaving us unassured 
 how far predicates of character may be transferred to its 
 mysterious subject. Hence the chief application of
 
 372 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 speculative reason in theology must always be critical 
 rather than creative; to slay in single combat each suc- 
 cessive foe that may sirise ; but not to proclaim for 
 whom it i^ that the champion stands, and for ever keeps 
 the field. On the other hand, the practical reason or 
 conscience reveals to us the Holy God, who is the pro- 
 per and positive object of our faith ; who is doubtless 
 more or less clearly apprehended in proportion to the 
 purity of our discerning and reflecting faculty, but wiio 
 lurks suspected or half-perceived in the darkest hearts; 
 if no otherwise, at least in their fears and compunc- 
 tions : for " remorse is the implicit creed of the guilty." 
 The will, as empowered to carry out the ideas of 
 IJeason in the realm of Sense, to make Spirit of avail 
 in Nature, is by its very function .vy>er-natural, and 
 cannot be entangled as a constituent in the very system 
 which it is to influence from above. Only the divinely- 
 free can achieve that passage. A footman will run 
 your errand across the town ; but it needs a winged 
 Iris or a sandalled Hermes to bear the messages of gods 
 to men. It is precisely in the freedom of the will that 
 a person is distinguished from a thing, and becomes a 
 possible subject of moral law. And so is it in the 
 recognition of a good other than the sentient, of an 
 authority transcending all personal preference, of a 
 right over us and our whole cargo of " happiness," ac- 
 tual and potential, that the sense of Duty and the 
 conditions of morality begin. Hence Edwards and 
 the necessarians, Priestley and the materialists, Paley 
 and the Epicureans, depict a universe from which all 
 moral qualities and beings, divine or human, are ex- 
 cluded : and whether reasoning down from God as
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 373 
 
 absolute Sovereign, or up from man as simply sentient, 
 miss whatever is august and holy in its life. 
 
 From the distinction drawn between nature and 
 spirit, it follows that there cannot be such a thing 
 as "natural religion." All religion must be spiritual, 
 springing as it does exclusively within the supernatural 
 element of us. Nay, more ; all religion must be re- 
 vedled, if by that word we mean, "directly given by 
 Divine communication," as opposed to mediate dis- 
 covery of our own. For what and whence are those 
 primary ideas of conscience which constitute or presup- 
 pose our deepest, though not our fullest, faith? Are 
 they of our own making? of our own finding? Have 
 we any thing to do with their genesis? Do they not 
 report to us of the necessary and eternal ? And are 
 they not the presence with us of that Eternal, whereof 
 assuredly nothing temporal and finite can report? Is 
 there not profound truth as well as piety in the coup- 
 let : 
 
 "None but Thy wisdom knows Thy might: 
 None but Thy Word can speak Thy name! " 
 
 The reason in us is not personal to us, but only the 
 manifestation in our consciousness of the infinite reason, 
 presenting us with its supernatural realities, and intrust- 
 ing to our will their divine rights over our world. It is 
 thus the common ground of the divine and the human, 
 the essential base of their communion, the Logos which 
 is at once the objective truth and the subjective knowl- 
 edge of God. 
 
 These results have thus far been reached psychologi- 
 cally, by beginning with the data of the human soul 
 and tracing their indications upward. But, to meet it,
 
 374 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 Coleridge also descends, by an ontologica] track, from 
 the Absolute One to His expression in the finite, a 
 Platonic Logos or Son of God ; to whom we are to 
 refer at once the physical kosinos, the divine process in 
 history, and the intimations of reason and conscience. 
 Through this mediator, found alike at the foot of our 
 speculative dialectic and at the summit of our moral 
 analytic, do God and man meet and sustain living rela- 
 tions}. 
 
 But St. John identifies this Logos with the historical 
 Christ; in whom, therefore, the Infinite reaches not 
 only finite, but concrete and personal manifestation. It 
 is the glory and joy of our humanity that lie took it into 
 Himself; and conquering sin in it, purified it, and gave 
 it a seed of higher life. Through uttermost self-sacri- 
 fice, He reconciled its deepest sorrows with complete 
 perfection ; redeemed it and drew it to God ; and made 
 manifest in time the eternal facts of His infinite love, 
 His personal union with our nature, and the law of 
 self-sacrifice as the deliverance of His universe. 
 
 If we rightly understand the theologians of this 
 school, they do not intend, when they speak of the di- 
 vine assumption of our nature, to limit their reference 
 to the individual life of Jesus of Nazareth. The Son 
 is united not with this or that particular man only, but 
 with humanity itself as a type ; and constitutes, as He 
 ever has constituted, the ground and life of all its good. 
 The blending of the two natures is not a biographical 
 but an " eternal " fact, belonging to the essence of their 
 relation. The particular Incarnation of the evangeli- 
 cal history "reveals and realizes" the universal truth; 
 to which all its exceptional and marking features,
 
 OX OUR IMJESENT THEOLOGY. 375 
 
 miraculous birth, agony and crucifixion, resurrection and 
 ascension, stand related as symbols to the reality, 
 as passing phenomena that tell the tale of an eternity. 
 They are, indeed, more than this ; because they are not, 
 as symbols may be, mere signs or instruments of 
 suggestion ; but are homogeneous with the thing signi- 
 fied, and integrated with it as its highest momenta. 
 
 Following out this interpretation of the redemptive 
 operation of the Son, we may conceive of it in two ways : 
 as in reality always going on, although unrecognized ; 
 and as at length revealed in a plenary Incarnation, so 
 as to be henceforth turned out from the unconscious 
 to the conscious state. This last change is in itself a 
 spiritual revolution of the highest order, like the 
 burst of a universe only felt, and by inches, before, on 
 the eye touched by the finger of Christ. By ceasing to 
 be latent, by being given to our faith, the redeem- 
 ing agency is at once raised to a higher power. Now 
 that we know who it is that pleads and strives with our 
 evil nature, we can freely go to meet Him, and He may 
 act from within our will as well as from without. His 
 life-giving energy is quite another thing, since not a 
 thing at all, but a person, not even a "better self," 
 but a Divine othcr-than-self ; and confers upon the soul 
 a " new birth." From the life of nature, conscious of 
 only Self disturbed by an impersonal law, we emerge 
 into the life of the spirit, set free bv faith, and admitted 
 to personal communion of trust and love. The transi- 
 tion into the " new birth " is the chief element in the 
 redemptive act of the Son. The continuous power of 
 holier life in the heart thus regenerate is the sign and 
 function of the Holy Spirit. Both these, the crisis
 
 376 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 of change and its spiritual sequel, are indeed full of 
 mystery on their objective or Divine side. But from the 
 subjective or human side it is easy to perceive how 
 the consciousness of a Divine Person blended with the 
 humanity of each of us, and the source in it of whatever 
 is higher than we, may be really a new seed of life within 
 us, giving us a holy living Object in place of a repul- 
 sive ethical abstraction, and awakening all the powerful 
 affections that ever seek a Personal Centre of repose. 
 
 From the whole complexion of this scheme it will be 
 gathered, that the Original Sin countervailed by redemp- 
 tion is not birth-sin (which would be natural disease, 
 not moral evil) ; and that the redemption is not an ex- 
 tinction of punishment, but a deliverance from sin. It 
 is not that God is paid off, but that man emerges " a 
 new creature." The "evil ground" there is in the 
 human will, the downward gravitation of self, 
 the need of a Diviner to draw us to any good by the 
 sacrifice of self, are simple facts accessible to every 
 man's self-knowledge. And we are well aware that, 
 co-existing with our free agency, they are not our mal- 
 ady, but our fault. Coleridge and his school every- 
 where denounce the Calvinistic doctrines of hereditary 
 depravity and of penal satisfaction, as turning man 
 from a person into a thing, and denying to God all 
 moral attributes. The primary conditions of any true 
 theory of redemption are, that the whole operation takes 
 place on humanity ; and that it both finds and leaves 
 man a free agent. Neither of these conditions is corn- 
 plied with by any form of the Calvinistic scheme. 
 
 Some of the peculiarities of Coleridge most familiar to 
 theologians, his tetrads and pentads, his doctrine of
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 377 
 
 Church and State, his denial of the documentary inspi- 
 ration of the whole Bible, we pass by; not from any 
 slighting estimate of their importance as parts of an 
 organic whole, but in order to insulate the one charac- 
 ter, of religious Realism, which is the inner 
 essence of the system itself, and the living seed of its 
 development in the school of Mr. Maurice. It is 
 chiefly from inapprchension of this character, and from 
 the inveterate training of the English mind in the op- 
 posite habit of thought, that so many readers complain 
 of obscurity in the writings of the Chaplain of Lincoln's 
 Inn. We do not deny that his meaning is at times dif- 
 ficult to reach ; for it is apt to be delayed too long by 
 his scrupulous candor of concession, his modest shrink- 
 ing from self-assertion, his preference of the sympathetic 
 to the distinctive attitude. But we venture with some 
 confidence to assert, that for consistency and complete- 
 ness of thought, and precision in the use of language, 
 it would be difficult to find his superior among living 
 theologians. It is the old question, what do you 
 mean by a clear or distinct thought? Do you mean a 
 mental image or representation of something, like your 
 conception of a perceptible object or of a finite portion 
 of space or time? Then certainly you will not cease to 
 complain of Mr. Maurice's indistinctness ; for he speaks 
 and thinks of Spirit, and Righteousness, and God, as 
 realities without mental picture and yet closely known ; 
 and he treats the notions of Infinitude and Eternity as 
 something else than "negative ideas," the finite and 
 the temporal with all the meaning emptied out. If, how- 
 ever, by "clearness of idea" you mean, not "the, idea 
 (if a limit," but "a limit to t/tc idea," if your cond!-
 
 378 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 tions are satisfied, provided thought does not run into 
 thought, but each keeps its own place and function with 
 exactitude, then you might as reasonably charge in- 
 distinctness on Air. Mill or Archbishop Whately as on 
 Mr. Maurice. Many parts of his doctrine \vc are un- 
 able to follow with assent ; but we see no excuse f; >r 
 the absurd distortions of his peculiar Christianity, with 
 which the party-organs of Church and Sect have long 
 abounded. Critics who have read any one of his prac- 
 tical or historical essays, with some feeling of its clear 
 and life-like charm, ought surely to know that if his 
 theology seems difficult to them, it cannot be from his 
 want of practised thought and literary skill, and must 
 arise from their not having at present found his lati- 
 tude. 
 
 Coleridge, commencing in re-action from a scheme of 
 materialistic necessity, gave great prominence to his 
 assertion of free-agency. Not till he had effectually set 
 humanity on its feet again, did he proceed to identify 
 the intimations of its moral reason with the indwelling 
 life of the Divine Word. Air. Alaurice is caught up 
 by this last thought, and has become its organ to the 
 present age ; and so intensely does it possess him, that 
 we fear his losing sight too much of the prior truth from 
 which the start was made, and reducing man into a 
 mere prize, to be contended for between the Satan and 
 the God within him. Pushing the claims of a diaboli- 
 cal being far into the evil phenomena of our nature, and 
 those of a Divine Being over the whole of the good, he 
 thins away the space for the free human personality till 
 it becomes at times quite evanescent. This is a danger 
 ever incident to the wish of humility, that nothing
 
 ON OUR rilESENT THEOLOGY. 379 
 
 should be claimed for self, that all should be referred 
 to God. But it must be restrained from reaching 1 its 
 ultimate limit ; or else the ground of morals sinks again 
 away, and, in pantheistic guise, universal necessity ab- 
 sorbs us all once more. We say, "in pantheistic 
 guise; " for, be it observed, the two personalities the 
 Human and the Divine must ever appear and disap- 
 pear together: they are the two terms of a relation 
 which wholly vanishes on the merging of either ; and 
 though, with safety to both, there is room for consider- 
 able variety in the theory of their respective functions, 
 yet should an eye of reverential caution be kept (espe- 
 cially in our dav) on the limits of the problem where the 
 foci fall into each other. If, however, Mr. Maurice 
 lias too nearly approached this danger, it is under the 
 inspiration of a truth than which there is no greater. 
 The assumption of humanity by the Eternal Word may 
 be construed from above downwards, so as to illustrate 
 the character and agency of God ; or from below up- 
 wards, so as to throw light on the spiritual experiences 
 of man. In the former view, it gives to our trust and 
 worship One whose chosen life is in our spirits, who 
 moulds us into unities not our own, of family, of na- 
 tion, of church, who is not wearied by our perverse- 
 ness, but, still pressing His righteousness upon us, is 
 ever redeeming what else were lost. In the latter view, 
 a singular sanctity is imparted to the inner facts of our 
 own existence and the invisible springs of the world's 
 history. All that we inadequately call our ideals, the 
 gleaming lights of good that visit us, the hopes that lift 
 again our fallen wills, the beauty which Art cannot rep- 
 resent, the holiness which life does not realize, the love
 
 3BO PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 which cannot die with death, what arc they? Xot 
 onr higher, but a hit/her than ice the living Guide 
 Himself, pleading with us and asking for our trust. 
 The actual and concrete, on the other hand, which tails 
 so immeasurably short of these fair types, the false 
 fact that lies ashamed beneath the true vision, that 
 is our poor self; in which is nothing but failure, disap- 
 pointment, and negation. One simple and only thing 
 is U!>ked from us : to cease trusting this delusive self 
 and go freely into the Hand that waits for us, to ex- 
 change the tension of volition for the quiet of unreserved 
 surrender, to pass from the chafing mood of " works " 
 to the still heart of "faith." The great original sin of 
 our nature is, that we reverse this order, that we rely 
 on ourselves and are afraid of God, and accordingly 
 seek, by some act of ours, to buy Him off and be rid 
 of His terrors and persuade Him to let us alone. 
 Whether men endeavor to propitiate Him by relinquish- 
 ing something that they have, "or to serve him by 
 something that they do, they mistake their position, and 
 measure tlemselves off against Him as if they had pro- 
 prietary rights which they could abandon in His favor, 
 or some availing righteousness which could satisfy His 
 moral perception. They aim at acting upon Him : and 
 He is wanting to act on them ; and will persist till they 
 drop their gifts, and know their failures, and freely 
 come to Him as they are to be moulded by His thought. 
 It was to bring about this removal of distrust towards 
 God, to reveal the law of self-abnegation as Divine and 
 supreme, that the Word became flesh, and passed 
 through its grievous incidents, and entered into sympa- 
 thetic pity for its sins and fears. The most alienated
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 381 
 
 feeling, once apprehending this manifestation of Divine 
 adoption, could hold out no more. Such an Incarna- 
 tion, bringing to a focus the perpetual truth of the 
 "God with us," is not a humiliation of the divine na- 
 ture so much as the glory and joy of the human, and 
 discloses to us not a fallen world but a redeemed, with 
 whose resistance the " Spirit of holiness" will not for 
 ever have to strive. It harmonizes with " the belief 
 that man is not an animal carrying about a soul, but a 
 spiritual being with an animal nature, who, when he 
 has sunk lowest into that nature, has still thoughts and 
 recollections of a home to which he belongs, and from 
 which i-.e has wandered." * 
 
 The same mode of thought by which the individual 
 life is thus turned into a sanctuary exhibits human so- 
 cietv as in its essence a theocracy ; and wins for the 
 experiences and polity of the Hebrew race, as particular 
 embodiments of a universal method, a meaning which 
 Lessing's hints ought long ago to have elicited. Not 
 that we mean to press at all closely the analogy be- 
 tween the doctrine of the " Prophets and Kings of the 
 Old Testament," and the " Thoughts on the Education 
 of the Human Race." They are alike in this : that 
 they pull down the fences which had detached the He- 
 brew life from the great territory of human history, and 
 find a universal function for even what is most excep- 
 tional in it. In their mode of procedure, however, they 
 differ : Lessing seeking in the career of the Jewish 
 people the rudiments of an unfolding idea ; Maurice, 
 the witness to eternal truths, the manifestation by 
 time-samples of infinite realities and unchanging rclti- 
 * Hare's Charges, Introduction, p xxi.
 
 882 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 tions. And this difference touches :i characteristic of 
 the living divine, which more than any other makes him 
 a perplexity to his contemporary critics. So strong in 
 most Englishmen is the " natural man," as habitually 
 to assume, till they discover whither the maxim leads, 
 that " all we know is phenomena ; " or rather they turn 
 all they know into phenomena, and contemplate nothing 
 " under the form of eternity." Even their theology is 
 no exception. They dramitize it ; drawing it out into 
 an economy or plot, with different scenes, and progres- 
 sive action, and crises of terror and of rescue, and a 
 grand catastrophe to wind up the whole. Now the ele- 
 ments and incidents of this plan Mr. Maurice takes out 
 of series, and redistributes in synchronous (or rather in 
 timeless) relations. States of humanity which we are 
 apt to represent as successive, and to string together as 
 passages of an historical process, he treats as always 
 co-existent in all men, as abiding attributes or affec- 
 tions of their being. "Original sin," for instance, is 
 not, in his view, a prior condition giving way to "rec- 
 onciliation " as a posterior ; but both exist together in 
 all men. And so too Divine states, which we are com- 
 monly taught to dispose chronologically, cease with him 
 to be separate. Christ the Saviour is usually believed 
 to have first come at the "advent," and to be identical 
 in date with Jesus of Nazareth. But, in Mr. Maurice's 
 view, there never was a time when our race was not 
 equally the abode of His " real presence." " Man, ac- 
 cording to his original constitution, was related to 
 Christ ; " * who was in the heathen world while they 
 were bowing to gods of wood and stone, and in Saul 
 
 * The Doctrine of Sacrifice. Dedicatory Letter, p. 21.
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 383 
 
 while yet the persecutor. The conversion on Damas- 
 cus' road, and the whole historical gospel, did but reveal 
 a Divine person that had never been absent from our 
 humanity. There was not first, a lost Heathendom; 
 and then, to replace it, a redeemed Christendom : but 
 always, and throughout both, One who was and is 
 redeeming;; and many, alas, in each, who resist this re- 
 call of them from their outer darkness. This abolition 
 of tune-conditions, and redisposal of the same facts as 
 essential and permanent realities, gives the true key to 
 our author's most difficult writings. The transmutation 
 it eifects in the doctrine of " eternal punishment " is but 
 one example of its marvellous power of rejuvenescence 
 applied to a theology grown decrepit in routine. 
 
 The great strength of this school lies, we think, in its 
 faithful interpretation of what is at once deepest and 
 highest in the religious consciousness of men ; and its 
 recognition, in this consciousness, of a concrete and 
 living Divine person, instead of mere abstractions with- 
 out authority, or the dreams of unreliable imagination. 
 And we may well be grateful for a scheme which estab- 
 lishes a uniform constitution of our nature and our 
 world, in steady relation to supernatural realities, 
 broken by no revolutionary jerks or local exemptions ; 
 and which, therefore, opens a welcome to a scientific 
 ethic, and metaphysic, and history. Nor is its strength 
 merely that of fair promise and earnest appeal. 80 
 long as it advances on the ground of religious philoso- 
 phv, it appears to us to make its tooting good : and the 
 first questionable step is, perhaps, at the point where 
 it enters history, and hands itself over from Plato 
 to St. John. The identification of the eternal Lo<joa
 
 384 I'KusoxAL INFLUENCES 
 
 with the historical Christ is at present left to rest upon 
 external authority alone, and that too the authority 
 of a single evangelist. A thoughtful learner in this 
 school mi<j;lit be brought by some Alexandrine Coleridge 
 into a, faith like Philo's in the Divine Word, and set 
 within the spiritual forecourt of this gospel. He might 
 next, on testimonial grounds, be led to receive the 
 whole evangelical series of external facts from Beth- 
 lehem to the Mount of Ascension. And yet these two 
 termini of his belief might remain in painful discontinu- 
 ity : and we do not see that the links of relation have 
 hitherto been adequately supplied. If the whole stress 
 is to be laid on the doctrine of the fourth gospel, the 
 question becomes an anxious one, how far the evan- 
 gelist's thought has taken its complexion from the Mas- 
 ter's discourses. how far infused it into them. For 
 surely, without re-opening the discussion of authorship 
 at all, the complete equalization of tone in this gospel 
 between the discourses and the narrative, rendering it 
 often hnposjible to mark the boundary between them, is 
 a fact of the utmost moment, in itself accounted for in 
 either way : and if the discourses are as unlike those 
 in the other gospels as they are like the personal com- 
 position of St. John, the hypothesis most assuring to 
 us respecting their historical character is at an undeni- 
 able disadvantage. Shifted from the authentication of 
 Christ himself to that of even "the beloved disciple." the 
 Incarnation of the Logos in Jesus (in the sense required 
 by the theory) would rest on too doubtful a support : 
 for who could say whether we had to do with the revela- 
 tion itself, or only with the mould of thought into which 
 the disciple threw it?
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 385 
 
 That this difficulty has not been more felt by the 
 Coleridge divines is due, we believe, to the prc-occu- 
 pution of their minds with intense convictions, thirsting 
 for that which assimilates with them or gains a glory 
 from them. Broad providential lights on history, genial 
 hopes of a less selfish human world, they open to us 
 by their wisdom and their life. And there are parts 
 of Scripture, the Pauline Epistles eminently, and the 
 Prophets in no slight degree, where a darkness readily 
 breaks away at the approach of their characteristic 
 thoughts. Mr. Maurice's Unity of the Hew Testa- 
 ment abounds with happy combinations possible only 
 to a fine spiritual tact. But exegesis has work to do 
 in which other gifts are of more avail than moral per- 
 ception and religious insight : and then it is that these 
 writers, like their favorite catechetical school of Alex- 
 andria, appear to us signally to fail. Who does not 
 smile at Mr. Maurice's explanation of the first chap- 
 ter of Genesis? And where, in addition, critical judg 
 ment and dexterity are required, the result is still 
 worse, as in his treatment of the genealogies of 
 Jesus. No deficiency in the furniture of scholarship 
 causes this phenomenon. It is simply that biblical and 
 historical criticism never succeeds, except in striking 
 out partial lights, when it engages minds deeply tinc- 
 tured with any metaphysical or spiritual enthusiasm. 
 The eye, accustomed to the eternal realities, loses the 
 quick and flitting glance that best seizes the expression 
 of nature and the phenomena of time. 
 
 After all, the real force of this school is independent 
 of scientific imperfections. They are believing men 
 afraid of no reality, despairing of no good, and resolute 
 
 25
 
 386 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 to test their faith by putting it straightway into I re. 
 They set, to \vork to realize the kingdom of God in Soho 
 Square and other naineahle localities' ; and in their step 
 towards this end there is as free, confiding, joyful move- 
 ment, as if with their eyes they expected to sec the 
 great salvation. There is more of the future, we sus- 
 pect, contained in their gospel than in any talking 
 theology whose cry is heard in our streets. 
 
 Hence we feel ourselves to be falling back a step, 
 when we turn from the preacher of Lincoln's Inn to 
 the prophet of Chelsea. The influence of the latter, 
 vastly the more intense and widespread, appears to us to 
 have reached its natural limit, and taken up the portion 
 of believers allotted to it. As a revolutionary or pen- 
 tecostal power on the sentiments of Englishmen, it is 
 perhaps nearly spent: and, like the romantic school of 
 Germany, will descend from the high level of a faith 
 to the tranquil honors of literature. So long as Mr. 
 Carlyle spoke with any hope to the inward reverence of 
 men, and in giving voice to their spiritual discontents 
 made them feel that they were emerging from mean 
 scepticisms into nobler inspirations, he was a deliverer 
 to captives out of number. But the curly voice of hope 
 has become fainter and fainter, first passing into an 
 infinite pathos, and then lost in humorous mocking or 
 immeasurable scorn : and men cannot be permanently 
 held by their antipathies and distrusts, and cease to look 
 for any thing from a rebellion that never ends in peace. 
 He gets us well enough out of Egypt and all its filthy 
 idolatries ; but, alas ! his Red Sea will not divide, and 
 the promised land is far as ever, and the question 
 presses, whether "we are to die in the wilderness?"
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 387 
 
 For a just estimate of Mr. Carlyle as an historian and 
 man of letters the time is not yet come. But his spe- 
 cific action on the religion of the age (of which alone 
 we speak) already belongs in a great measure to the 
 past, and is little likely to offer new elements for appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 It is difficult now to transfer ourselves back into the 
 age, not yet faded however from living memory, when 
 Boileau and Kames Avere great canonists in the world 
 of letters, and criticism occupied the mortal form of 
 Dr. Blair. Of what stuff the young souls of that age 
 could be made we cannot imagine, if they really 
 found nutriment in solemn trifles about the unities and 
 proprieties, the choice of diction, the length of 
 sentences, the nature of tropes, and the rhetorical 
 temperature required for interjection and apostrophes. 
 Mr. Carlyle, among other contemporaries, certainly rose 
 with indignant hunger from such a table of the gods, 
 symmetrically spread with polished covers and nothing 
 under them. In mere analvsis of the machinery of ex- 
 pression or even thought, in rules for the manufacture 
 of literary effects, he could find no response to the en- 
 thusiasm kindled in him by his favorite authors. The 
 true ambrosia of the inner life was turned into dry ash 
 by the legislators of belles lettres : and he was courage- 
 ous enough to ask for the missing and immortal element. 
 The same external direction had been taken bv philoso- 
 phy, and produced the same consciousness of a miserable 
 void. The searching scepticism of Hume showed the 
 dreary results to which the mere analvsis of "experi- 
 ence " compendiously led. And the devices of utilitarian 
 cuisine for putting pleasure into the pot and drawing
 
 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 virtue out betrayed the loss of the very idea, of morals. 
 The very things which this desiccating rationalism flung 
 off, were to Mr. Carlyle just the essence and whole 
 worth of the universe : and to show that beauty, truth, 
 and goodness, could not thus be got rid of, while impos- 
 tors were hired to bear their name ; that religion is not 
 hope and fear, or duty prudence, or art a skill to please ; 
 that behind the sensible there lies a spiritual, and be- 
 neath all relative phenomena an absolute reality, was 
 evidently, if not his early vow, at least his first in- 
 spiration. Surely it was an authentic appointment to 
 a noble work : and on looking back over his quarter- 
 century, no one can deny that it has been manfully 
 achieved. 
 
 By what providence Mr. Carlyle learned the German 
 language, in days when the study of it was rare, we 
 cannot tell. But through it he evidently was enabled 
 to " find his soul ; " and gained confidence to proclaim 
 the faith which was stirring from its sleep within, and 
 at once woke up at the sight of its reflected image with- 
 out. That revolt against rationalism which Dr. New- 
 man apparently used, and directed for preconceived ends 
 and in the service of an "economy," presents itself 
 in Mr. Carlyle with all its veracious freshness. The 
 same positions that approve themselves to the Oxford 
 Catholic as suitable hypotheses, and to the Highgate 
 philosopher as rational axioms, are seized by the liv- 
 ing intuition of the Scottish seer ; that wonder and 
 reverence are the condition of insight and the source of 
 strength ; that faith is prior to knowledge, and deeper 
 too ; that empirical science can but play on the sur- 
 face of unfathomable mysteries ; that in the order
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 389 
 
 of reality the ideal and invisible is the world's true 
 adamant, and the laws of material appearance only its 
 alluvial growths. In the inmost thought of men there 
 is a thirst to which the springs of nature are a mere 
 mirage, and which presses on to the waters of eternity. 
 Extinguish this thirst by stupefaction of custom, re- 
 duce thought to work without wonder, and several 
 delusions, both doleful and ridiculous, will speedily 
 obtain high commissions in human affairs. The true 
 marvel of Origination being lost, a '' cause-and-cffect 
 philosophy " will esteem every thing solved when it has 
 shown how each nine-pin in the universe knocks down 
 the next. The spiritual germ and essence of humanity 
 being forgot or denied, "a doctrine of circumstances' 
 will discuss the prospect of furnishing to order any re- 
 quired supply of poets, philosophers, or able administra- 
 tors, like so many varieties of farm-stock. The idea 
 of a God-given freedom being dismissed with the phan- 
 toms of " the dark ages," a calculus of "motives" will 
 be invented for finding the roots of every human prob- 
 lem, and raising any given sentient man to any required 
 moral power. The genuine ground of all communion 
 with the Infinite having sunk away within us, all sorts 
 of logical proofs, and logical disproofs, will quarrel to- 
 gether about primitive certainties that shroud themselves 
 from both. In nil these complaints, the substantive con- 
 currence of our author with Mr. Coleridge is conspicuous. 
 And though, in his Lift: of Sh'rlinj, the humor h;;s 
 seized him to ridicule the " windy harangues " and diz- 
 zying metaphysics of the ITighgate soirees, there was a 
 time when he had no little faith in the same methods ad 
 well as larjre agreement in the same results. In his
 
 390 PEUSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 earlier essays, he too expounds the distinction between 
 "Understanding" and "Reason," and sets up the latter 
 as the organ for apprehending the ideal essence, which 
 is the true reed of things. He speaks with reverential 
 appreciation of Kant's doctrine, both metaphysical and 
 moral ; and with hope as well as admiration of the 
 several aesthetic theories developed from similar begin- 
 nings. In short, he manifestly put an early trust in 
 the philosophical method to which Coleridge remained 
 faithful to the last. And not less manifestly did he 
 soon break away from this path in despair ; and with 
 characteristic vehemence thenceforth inveigh against the 
 propensity to seek it as an illusion of disease. In 1827, 
 ho defended the Kritilc der reinen Vernunft against 
 ignorant objectors, as reputed by competent judges to 
 be "distinctly the greatest intellectual achievement of 
 the century in which it came to light ; " and dwelt with 
 approval on the rule that, in quest of the highest truth, 
 we must look within, and thence work outward with the 
 torch we have lit. Yet in 1831 he broached, in his 
 Characteristics, his celebrated doctrine of "Unconscious- 
 ness : " which teaches that all self-knowledge is a curse, 
 and introspection a disease ; that the true health of a 
 man is to have a soul without being aware of it, to 
 be disposed of by impulses which he never criticises, 
 to fling out the products of creative genius without look- 
 ing at them. In a word, the reflective thought on which, 
 in the former year, he had relied for the purest wisdom, 
 had in the latter become the sin and despair of human- 
 ity. What can have befallen in the interval? Had the 
 author meanwhile tried the metaphysic springs, and 
 after due patience found them, not simply "saints
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 391 
 
 wells," with no healing in them, but poison-fountains, 
 that made the sickly soul yet sicklier? We do not 
 believe it : for there is nowhere any trace that the first 
 clue of entrance into the German philosophy had been 
 followed up ; and on the other hand, every indication 
 that Mr. Carlyle's denunciation of metaphysics is the 
 mere judgment of an intuitive genius on methods of 
 reflection, whch, however helpful to slower and more 
 formal minds, it is not given him to take. Had he 
 been able to retain and pursue his first hope, had 
 he taken the severe path of philosophical discipline, 
 and surrendered himself to its promise of deliverance, 
 we hardly think that we should ever have heard that 
 passionate cry of despair, which proclaims the distinctive 
 glory of man to be his irremediable woe, and asserts 
 that, in finding himself, he for ever falls from heaven. 
 The preacher of this doctrine had already started prob- 
 lems within himself, to which no answer (as his o vn 
 word declares) could be found but by faithful question- 
 ing within : and it is a serious tiling to go thus far, and 
 yet not abide long enough to hear the reply. But in- 
 stead of this, he flings away the very problems with a 
 shriek, as the fruit by which paradise is lost ; repents 
 of all knowledge of good and evil ; claps a bandage 
 round the open eyes of morals, religion, art ; and sees 
 no salvation but in spiritual suicide, by plunging into 
 the currents of instinctive nature that sweep us we 
 know not whither. This tragic pai-adox has, indeed, 
 a, generous source, and is even thrown up by a cer- 
 tain wild tumultuous piety. It springs from a deep 
 sense of the hatcfulness of self-worship, and the bar- 
 renness of mere self- formation. It is a stormy
 
 3'J2 TEKSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 for escape from these ; only with face turned, filas ! in 
 the wrong direction back towards the west, with its 
 fading visions of Atlantic islands of Unconsciousness, 
 instead of forwards to the cast, where already the 
 heavens are pale with a light, instead of a darkness, 
 not our own. 
 
 Though this despair of the highest objective truth 
 could not fail, in the long-run, to produce pathetic and 
 tempestuous results, yet for a while the mere deliverance 
 from the negations of the empirical schools sufficed for 
 a gospel : and the new sense of divine mystery and 
 meaning, behind all that met the common eye, was 
 little else in effect than a revelation. A certain conse- 
 cration fell on what had been quite secular before : and 
 with this peculiarity, that its influence spread as an un- 
 derground beneath the foundations of objects and pur- 
 suits previously disconnected, and became a common 
 conductor of fresh reverence into them all. Literature, 
 art, politics, natural knowledge, seemed to sit less apart 
 from religion. Heave off the utilitarian incubus from 
 above, and secret affinities begin to be felt at the roots 
 of their life. When it is no longer "the sole aim" of 
 poetry "to please/' of science to "get fruit" for the 
 storehouses of comfort, of government " to protect body 
 and goods," of sculpture and painting to minister to 
 luxury, they obtain ideal ends, which in essence 
 melt and merge together; and all of them beauty, 
 truth, and righteousness culminate in the reality of 
 God. Whatever the theologians may say, the age 
 owes a debt of rare gratitude to the man who, above 
 all others, has awakened this new sense within its soul , 
 has touched with a strange devoutness many a class
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 393 
 
 which book and surplice had censed to awe ; has taken 
 the impertinent self-will out of the movements of pencil, 
 pen, and chisel ; and made even Mechanics' Institutions 
 ashamed of their incipient millennium of " useful knowl- 
 edge." The influence of Mr. Carlyle's writings, and 
 especially of his Sartor Resartus, has been primarily 
 exerted on classes of men most exposed to temptations 
 of egotism and petulance, and least subjected to any 
 thing above them, academics, artists, litterateurs, 
 "strong-minded" women, ""debating" youths, Scotch- 
 men of the phrenological grade, and Irishmen of the 
 Young-Ireland school. In the altered mood of mind 
 which has been induced in these various groups within 
 the last five-and-twenty years we acknowledge a con- 
 spicuous good ; and could even hear, with more of 
 sadness than of condemnation, the passionate words 
 that once burst fiom the lips of a believer: " Curly le 
 is my religion ! " 
 
 The unity i however, which our prophet's mystic 
 sense discerns among our human "arts and sciences" is 
 too great : and we must reclaim from him a distinction 
 which not even the fusing power of his genius can do 
 more than blur and conceal. Not in the human and 
 moral world only, but quite similarly in the physical, 
 does he see the expression of the Infinite and Divine. 
 Both are alike symbols of the one spiritual essence, 
 which is hid from the blind, and revealed to the wise, in 
 all. He does not, like Coleridge, separate nature and 
 spirit into two realms, quite differently related to Him 
 who is the source of both, the one His moulded 
 fabric, the other His free image, but treats them in- 
 discriminately as the vehicles of His manifestation, and
 
 394 PEUSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 phenomena through which the Divine force pours. 
 This is not, indeed, done by sinking humanity into a 
 mere object of natural history ; rather by raising the 
 objects of natural history up to the spiritual level, add- 
 ing significance to them, instead of taking it from us. 
 But still, man is not permitted to remain quite sui gene- 
 ris : he is simply the highest of the countless emblems 
 woven into the universal "garment of God." The tex- 
 ture is one and homogeneous throughout : in one 
 sense all natural, as a determinate product in time ; in 
 another, all supernatural, as mysteriously issuing from 
 eternity. The same comprehensive formula, the ap- 
 pearance of the Infinite in the finite, serves every- 
 where, and equally describes " the lily of the field " and 
 the Redeemer who interpreted its meaning. 
 
 Did we want to turn human life into a mere school of 
 Art, there might be nothing very fatal in the looseness 
 of this doctrine. An impartial conception of some 
 Divine idea in every thing may clear away the film of 
 sense, and open to view the life of much that else were 
 dead. To rend away the veil is the grand "condition for 
 enabling the eye to see : whoever does this, may talk as 
 he pleases of the realities behind ; they will vindicate 
 themselves. Yet even for truth of representation, and 
 infinitely more for faithfulness of character and action, a 
 distinctive reverence for man as more than natural, as 
 the abode of God in a sense quite false of clouds and 
 stars, as intrusted with himself that he may surrender 
 to a higher, is indispensable. For want of this, 
 Mr. Carlyle loses all ground of difference between the 
 natural and the right, the out-come of tendency and 
 the free creations of conscience. He is tempted into ex-
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 39,5 
 
 ccssive admiration of mere realizing strength, irrespective 
 of any higher test of spiritual worth. Whatever can 
 get upon its feet, and persist in standing on this world, 
 is vindicated in his eyes, and exhibited as a sample ot 
 the "eternal laws:" while that which has nothing to 
 show for itself except that it ought to be, righteous- 
 ness that knocks in vain at the door of visible "fact," 
 meets with no sympathy from him, and is even jeered 
 for its foolish patience in still sitting on the step with 
 unremitting prayer. True, he docs not admit the rights 
 of possession till after a pretty long term, and knows 
 ho\v to treat the "shams" and upstarts of to-day, the 
 "flunkey" powers that usurp more venerable place^ 
 with withering scorn: still, however, for a reason 
 which would equally condemn an aspiration transcend- 
 ing human conditions, viz. because they arc at variance 
 with the laws of the actual, a'nd are sure to be disowned 
 by the baffling solidity of nature. Against the fickle 
 multitude of momentary facts and popular semblances, 
 he sides with the conservative aristocracy of natural 
 laws ; but recognizes no divine monarchy with preroga- 
 tives over both. The kingdom of heaven and the king- 
 dom of nature being identical, neither transcending the 
 other, but being related only as inner meaning and out- 
 ward expression, no margin is left for an ideal other 
 than the long-run of the actual, for an "ought" be- 
 yond the "can," for a will of God surpassing finite 
 conditions. Hence Mr. Carlyle's habit of resolving all 
 ethical evil into "insincerity " and "unveracity," surely 
 a most inadequate formula for the expression of even 
 commonplace moral judgments. Extend these terms 
 ever so much, use them to dem te unconscious as
 
 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 well as conscious self- variance, nay, include in them 
 also defiance of nature and outward possibility, 
 Mill, what far-fetched circuits must be taken before you 
 can bring under such a definition the sins of envy, cov- 
 ( tousness, resentment, and prudent licentiousness ! The 
 root of this delusive conception of human goodness lies 
 iu the pantheistic assumption, that to fly in the face of 
 natural forces is to withstand the highest that there is ; 
 and its fruit, when fully ripe, cannot fail to be an indif- 
 ference to many a natural sin, a lowering of the ideal 
 standard of conscience, and a derision of baffled yet 
 trusting righteousness. Every reader of Mr. Carlyle 
 can remember painful instances of entire abdication of 
 all moral judgment on atrocious actions and abandoned 
 men, a Mirabeau and a September massacre: nay, 
 even ridicule of the whole distinction of moral and im- 
 moral applied to actions, as "the blockhead's distinc- 
 tion ; " and many a hint that the difference lies only 
 in the customariness (mores) of one practice as com- 
 pared with another. Did it never occur to him to ask 
 whether it is the human usages that make the moral 
 sense, or not rather the moral sense that makes the 
 human usages? 
 
 Yet this questionable doctrine, often provoked into 
 expression by some senseless prudery or ungenial rigor, 
 is very far from representing the author's real and deep- 
 est mind. Flashes of purer light meet you not rarely, 
 especially in his earlier writings. Who can forget how, 
 in the hour of uttermost desolation, amid the wildest 
 storm of unbelief, the sheet-anchor of the unhappy Teu- 
 fclsdrockh was the " infinite nature of Duty;" and 
 in this form never, in his utmost extremity, did the
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 397 
 
 Divine presence desert him? And are we not teld, in 
 many changing tones, that in obedience and reverence 
 alone can any true freedom be found ? that \ve are to 
 recognize God in the higher life within us, as opposed 
 to the pleasure-life? that we can find Him only by self- 
 renunciation? In these ingenious days, when no one 
 proposition is so rude as to contradict any other, some 
 dis-ciple of the " many-sided " poet, or some proficient 
 in the "dialectic process," may be able to harmonize 
 such sentiments with the assertion that " man cannot 
 but obey whatever lie ought to obey" At present we 
 do not pretend to have reached the "higher unity" in 
 
 1 o / 
 
 which appeals to our freedom coalesce with the assertion 
 of universal necessity. 
 
 To pull up the fence between "nature" and "spirit" 
 within us is to throw the Understanding and the Char- 
 acter into the same field. We are therefore prepared 
 for the celebrated paradox, that intellect and goodness 
 always go together ; so that, of mental insight and 
 moral soundness, either may be taken as the measure 
 of the other. If by " intellect " and " insight " is meant 
 exclusively what Coleridge calls "reason," this state- 
 ment not only ceases to be a paradox, but becomes 
 almost a truism : for it is the chief function of this 
 power to make us conscious of moral truth and obli- 
 gation ; and the consciousness fades when faithlessly 
 neglected, lint if these terms refer to what Coleridge 
 calls " understanding," if the possession of this en- 
 dowment constitutes a claim upon them, then the 
 doctrine is conspicuously false : for the " adaptive intel- 
 ligence," being an animal faculty, is entirely separable 
 from moral conditions ; actually exists without them in
 
 398 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 many tribes of creatures ; and in man simply rises to a 
 quickness of generalization and a skill in the use of 
 means which imply nothing respecting the wise estimate 
 or the faithful pursuit of ends. Low passions and self- 
 ish impulses are quite capable of enlisting on their 
 behalf all the resources of this mental gift ; their partner- 
 ship with which gives us the idea of a satanic nature. 
 Mr. Carlyle, we believe, means to say, that this sort of 
 " understanding " he will not acknowledge as intellect ; 
 it is a mere "beaver" or "fox" faculty, not to be noticed 
 among the distinctions of man. Not till you have got 
 beyond mechanical ingenuity and lawyer adroitness do 
 you enter on the proper human territory ; within which, 
 capacity and character go together. This interpretation, 
 throwing us upon Coleridge's upper region, reduces thv 
 maxim to an intelligible truth. But will Mr. Carlyle 
 consent to take it with all its fair consequences? Will 
 he, without flinching, read the truth both ways, in- 
 ferring either term of this constant ratio (^intellectual" 
 and "moral") from the magnitude of the other? \Ve 
 know that, where he discovers (as in Mirabcau) great 
 force of mind, he is ready to plead this in bar of :ill 
 objections against character, and to insist that, in spite 
 of appearances, such brightness of eye must cany with 
 it soundness of conscience. But will he turn the prob- 
 lem round, and abide by it still? When he finds, 
 deep hid in the retreats of private life, a goodness emi- 
 nent and even saintly, a moral clearness and force great 
 in their way as Mirabeau's keen-sightedness, will he 
 accept the sign in evidence of mighty intellect? Will 
 lie say that, notwithstanding the meek and homely look, 
 high genius must assuredly be there? We fear not:
 
 ON 'OUR PI.'ESEXT TITEOLOGr. 39S 
 
 at least, we remember no instance in which the inference 
 is set with its face this way ; whilst it is familiar to all 
 his readers as an excuse for admiration startling to the 
 moral sense. In truth, this maxim, more perhaps than 
 any other indication, expresses the pagan character of 
 our author's mind ; his alienation from the distinctively 
 Christian type of reverence, rather for the inner sancti- 
 ties of self-renunciation than for the outward energies of 
 self-assertion. His "hero-worships" certainly present us 
 with a list far from concurrent with the "beatitudes:" 
 nor can we fancy that he would listen with much more 
 patience than a Lucian or a Pliny to blessings on the 
 meek and merciful, the pure in heart, the ever-thirsty 
 after righteousness. For him too, as for so many gift- 
 ed and ungifted men, the force which will not be 
 stopped by any restraint on its way to great achieve- 
 ment, the genius which claims to be its own law, 
 and will confess nothing diviner than itself, have an 
 irresistible fascination. His eye, overlooking the land- 
 scape of humanity, always runs up to the brilliant peaks 
 of power : not, indeed, without a glance of love and 
 pity into many a retreat of quiet goodness that lies safe 
 beneath their shelter ; but should the sudden lightning, 
 or the seasonal melting of the world's ice-barriers, bring- 
 down a ruin on that green and feeble life, his voice, 
 after one faint cry of pathos, joins in with the thunder 
 and shouts with the triumph of the avalanche. Ever 
 watching the strife of the great forces of the universe, 
 he, no doubt, sides on the whole against the Titans 
 with the gods : but if the Titans make a happy fling, 
 and send home a mountain or two to the very beard of 
 Zeus, he gets delighted with the game on any terms and 
 cries, "Bravo'" "
 
 400 TKHSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 The Sartor Resartus finds the manifestation of God 
 in the entire life of the universe ; in visible nature ; in 
 individual man, and especially his higher mind ; in the 
 inarch and process of history ; and in the organic devel- 
 opment of humanity as a whole. The author's tendency, 
 however, has increasingly been to retreat from all other 
 media of Divine expression upon his favorite centre, 
 the genius and energy of heroic men. So much has 
 he gathered-in his lights of interpretation upon this 
 focus, as to incur the charge of setting up the personal- 
 ity of individuals as the single determining agency in 
 the affairs of the world, and forgetting the larger half 
 of the truth, that all persons, taken one by one, are but 
 elements of a great social organism, to whose laws of 
 providential growth they must be held subordinate. 
 History cannot be resolved into a mere series of biogra- 
 phies : uor can the individual be justly estimated in his 
 insulation, and tried by the mere inner law of his own 
 particular nature. It would be a melancholy outlook 
 for the world, if its courses were simply contingent on 
 the genius and life of a few great men, without any 
 security from a general law behind that they should 
 appear at the right time and place, and with the apti- 
 tudes for the needful work. And, on the other hand, 
 were the life of nations to be expended in nothing else 
 than the production of its half-dozen heroes ; were this 
 splendid but scanty blossoming the great and only real 
 thing it does, there would seem to be a wasteful dispro- 
 portion between the mighty forest that falls for lum- 
 ber and the sparse fruit that would lie upon your opeu 
 hand. There is need, therefore, of some more manifest 
 relation between individual greatness and the collective
 
 OX OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 401 
 
 life of humanity; and to save us from egoism, from 
 fatalism, from arbitrary and capricious morals, we must 
 learn to recognize a divine method of development in 
 both. primarily, in race and nation, and with author- 
 ity over the secondary functions of personal genius. 
 
 That Air. Carlyle's "hero-worship" requires to be 
 balanced by a supplementary doctrine of society and 
 collective humanity, he would himself perhaps be dis- 
 posed to allow. But what is this supplement to be? 
 Is it merely to teach that the individual is to hold 
 himself at the disposal of the ivliole ? to correct his 
 conscience by the general tradition or the permanent 
 voice of humanity ; to sink his egoism, to temper it by 
 immersion in the universal element, and become the 
 organ of the progress of the species ? Far be it from 
 us to deny that there may be men susceptible of inspi- 
 ration from such a faith, capable of dying for such 
 abstractions as a "law of development," of being torn 
 limb from limb Out of regard for "the whole." Still 
 less would we disparage by one word a heroism all 
 the nobler for the faint whispers that suffice to waken it 
 into life. Yet we cannot help feeling that in these im- 
 personal ideas, of "collective society," "law of the 
 whole," "destination of mankind," &c. there is a 
 want of natural authority over the conscience, and, 
 missing the conscience, over the personal impulses of 
 individual men. In the mere notions of "whole and 
 part," of "organism and member," of "average rule 
 and particular case," there resides no moral element, 
 no rig/its over the will: and if ever they seem to carry 
 such functions, it is only because a deeper feeling lurks 
 behind and lends them the insignia of a prerogative not
 
 402 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 their own. In a world of mere rf general laws," it 
 would ever remain a melancholy thing to sec living 
 heroes and saints struck down at the altar of " histori- 
 cal tendency" by some shadowy dagger of necessity. 
 Love, enthusiasm, devotion, need some concrete and 
 living object; if not to command their allegiance, at 
 least to turn it from sorrow into joy. And you have Imt 
 to translate your "progress of the species" into " King- 
 dom of Heaven," and the problem is solved. The 
 ever-living God stands in Person between the " indi- 
 vidual " and the " whole," by His communion mediat- 
 ing between them, stirring in the conscience of the 
 one, and constituting the tides of advancing good in 
 the other, and so engaging both in one spiritual life. 
 Surrendering immediately to Him, instead of to the ulti- 
 mate ratios of the world, faithful men fling themselves 
 into Omnipotent sympathy, and find deliverance and 
 repose. They have a trust that relieves them of every 
 care ; and can leave themselves to be applied to the 
 great account and problem of the world by One who 
 is in the midst, and from the first, and at the end, at 
 once. Through Him, therefore, as the common term 
 of all righteousness, must the collective humanity win 
 its due rights and reverence from Each. The private 
 conscience ceases to be private, the public claim to be 
 merely public, when both are to us the instant plead- 
 ings of His living authority. In obeying them, we yield 
 neither to a mixed multitude of our own kind, whoso 
 average voice is no better than our own, nor even 10 
 our mere higher self; but to the august llevealer of 
 whatever is pure and just and true. In enforcing its 
 traditions and inheritance of right, the Nation or Society
 
 ON OUR PRESENT THEOLOGY. 403 
 
 of men is not proudly riding on its own arbitrary will, 
 but recognizing the trust committed to it and serving as 
 the organism of eternal rectitude. 
 
 It is for want of this deliverance from Self at the 
 upper end, that Mr. Carlyle, resolute to break the igno- 
 ble bondage on any terms, proposes escape at the lower 
 end; and, preaching up the glories of "Unconscious- 
 ness," sighs for relapse into the life of blind impulsive 
 tendency. With him, we confess the curse ; we groan 
 beneath its misery ; but we see from it a double path, 
 backward into Nature, forward into God, and cannot 
 for an instant doubt that the Self-consciousness which 
 is the beginning of Reason is never to recede, but to 
 rise and free itself in the transfiguration of Faith. Deny 
 and bar out this hope, and who can wonder if the 
 sharpest remedies for man's selfish security are welcomed 
 with a wild joy ; if run/ convulsion that shall strip off 
 the green crust of artificial culture and lay bare the 
 primitive rock beneath us, appears as a needful return 
 of the fermenting chaos? Ho\v else are the elementary 
 forces of instinctive nature to re-assert their rights and 
 begin again from their unthinking freshness? In some 
 such fueling as this we find, perhaps, the source, in Mr. 
 Carlyle, of that terrible glee that seems to flame up at 
 the spectacle of revolutionary storms, and to dart with 
 mocking gleams of devilry and tender streaks of hu- 
 manity over a background of "divine despair." Indeed 
 we could not wish for a better illustration of the two 
 paths of escape from Self, back into Nature, forward, 
 into God, than the contrast of Carl vie and Maurice 
 in the whole coloring and climate of their spirit : the 
 sad, pathetic, scornful humor of the one, capricious
 
 404 PERSONAL INFLUENCES 
 
 with laughter, tears, and an ire r, and expressive of man- 
 ful pity and endurance, alike removed from fear and 
 liope ; and the buoyant, serene, trustful temper of the 
 other, genial even in its indignation, and penetrated 
 with the joy of an Infinite Love. 
 
 The three schools of doctrine at which we have thus 
 rapidly glanced occupy the most distant points in the 
 KnglUh religion of the present age ; or, at least, in 
 the new fields of tendency which it has opened. It may 
 seem a vain quest to look for any thing common to the 
 whole. Yet when they are interpreted by their inner 
 spirit, rather than by their outward relations, one 
 thought will be found secreted at the heart of all the 
 perennial Indwelling of God in Man and in the Uni- 
 verse. This is the distinct gain that has been won by 
 the spiritual consciousness of the time ; and that already 
 enriches fiction and poetry, art and social morals, not 
 less than direct theology. In the preceding criticisms 
 we have said enough to show that we are not indifferent 
 to the mode and form of doctrine in which this thought 
 is embodied. But however threatening the mists from 
 which it has to clear itself, it is the dawn of a truth, 
 a blush upon the East, wakening up trustful hearts 
 to thanksgiving and hope. Wo know well the anger 
 and antipathy of all the elder parties towards every 
 phase of the new sentiment. We are accustomed to 
 their absurd and heartless attempt to divide all men be- 
 tween the two poles of their logical dilemma, either 
 absolute Atheism, or else "our" orthodoxy. But these 
 are only symptoms that the new wine cannot go into 
 the old bottles. They do but betray the inevitable 
 blindness of party -life, the increasing self-seeking,
 
 OX OUR rilESEXT THEOLOGY. 405 
 
 the loss of genial humility, the conceit of finished wis- 
 dom, which mark the decadence of all sects. Precisely 
 in the middle of this pretended alternative of necessity, 
 far from " Atheism " on the one hand, and from most 
 " orthodoxies " on the other, stand at this moment 
 the vast majority of the most earnest, devout, philoso- 
 phic Christians of our time ; men with trust in a Living 
 Righteousness , which no creed of one age can adequate- 
 ly define for the fresh experiences given to the spirit 
 of another. To them, and not to the noisy devotees 
 and pharisees of party, do we look for the faith of the 
 future.
 
 400 
 
 THEOLOGY IN ITS RELATION TO PROGRES- 
 SIVE KNOWLEDGE.* 
 
 THE College which resumes its work this clay professes 
 to impart a special training for the Christian Ministry : 
 and the Christian Minister is one who, in discipleship 
 to Jesus Christ, aims to guide the reverence, to ennoble 
 the conscience, and sustain the piety, of men. To treat 
 such an office as the object of a particular discipline, 
 not simply for the character and affections, but for the 
 intellect too, takes fur granted, what has not always 
 been admitted, that Theology is, in some sense, n 
 Science and admits of being methodically taught. This 
 assumption would be false, if religious truth were simply 
 a natural intuition, or a supernatural inspiration, in each 
 individual mind. Just as Aristotle, in order to save 
 Ethics for scientific treatment, dismisses the hypothesis 
 that virtue is either a native faculty or a given feeling, 
 and insists that it is a formed quality and developed 
 order of preferences in the mind;f so, if our "schools 
 of the prophets" are to have any justification, we 
 must be prepared to show, that religion contains matter 
 for teaching, and is neither inborn like eyesight, nor 
 
 * An Address at the Opening of the Session 1865-6 of Manchester New 
 College, London, October the 9th, 1865. 
 t Eth. Nic. II. v.
 
 THEOLOGY IX ITS RELATION, ETC. 407 
 
 an arbitrary visitant like a trance or dream : for. in 
 the one cafe, training would be superfluous, and, in the 
 other, impossible. All teaching is communication from 
 mind to mind : it implies that one mind may know more 
 than another, and the same mind more at a later time 
 tlnn at an earlier. And, using the inequality as 
 instrument for the progress, it further assumes that 
 teacher and taught, instead of being abandoned to lonely 
 inspiration, - M words that cannot be uttered," have 
 a common medium of thought and mutual intelligence, 
 and can meet, when they speak together, upon the 
 same real objects. As every Medical school takes for 
 granted, by its very existence, that the animal body is 
 real, and its physiological constitution permanent and 
 cognizable ; as every Law school takes for granted that 
 human society is constant, and throws its self-regulating 
 forces into a machinery but little variable ; so does a 
 Theological school assume that God and his relations 
 to man are objective realities, perpetually there and 
 approachable by human faculties. Two things there- 
 fore, with regard to the nature of religion, arc denied 
 by every such institution as this: (1) it is not a mere 
 natural instinct; (2) it is not a mere supernatural 
 grace. And two things about it are affirmed : (1) it 
 presents something real and permanent for the intellect 
 to hold by ; (2) it has its undetermined and progres- 
 sive lines, on which it is the business of the teacher to 
 move and mark the fixed points as they emerge. 
 
 Without this mixed composition, of the constant and 
 the variable, it may be doubted whether, intellectually, 
 religion would retain its interest at all. Were it noth- 
 ing but a scheme of shifting conceptions, unrelated to
 
 408 THEOLOGY IX ITS RELATION 
 
 any thing beyond our personality, the mere shadow 
 of ourselves flung on the universe without, it might 
 remain, like any other illusion, a curious object of 
 psychological analysis, but would lose all serious place 
 in human lite. Were it, on the other hand, a scheme 
 of absolute knowledge, so determined and rounded off 
 as to be. like its Object, " without variableness or 
 shadow of a turning," it might no doubt be recited 
 afresh to each generation, like the alphabet or the 
 numeration table, and so far be made the business of a 
 school : but however new to the learner, it would be old 
 to the teacher, and become wearisome as a routine, un- 
 quickened by the real life of his mind. So repugnant 
 is this to both the intellectual and the spiritual nature, 
 that no effort can render it possible for long. Thought 
 is alive, and cannot rotate like a machine; and, in its 
 eagerness for movement, carries every science with it, 
 if not into advance, into aberration, at any rate into 
 change. Still more are reverence and affection alive ; 
 and, while faithful to the same object, they are unable 
 to rest without transporting it into a new air and 
 investing it with fresh lights : so that a religion for- 
 Hdden to improve betakes itself to degeneracy, rather 
 than become petrified, and, instead of growing upwards 
 into statelier proportions, breaks into lateral defor- 
 mities, as the only vent for its vitality. What, for 
 instance, arc all the outrages on sense and history 
 committed by the prophetic or .allegorical interpreter, 
 but an attempt to adjust a fixed text to a moving 
 world, to find room within the narrow frame of the an- 
 cient letter for the grand lines and various groups of 
 the modem picture? These cannot be left out of the
 
 TO 1-flOGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE. 409 
 
 scheme of faith, since they have found their way into 
 the scheme of things : and those who seek for God, 
 not in his own universe, but in a document about it, 
 are obliged to stretch and distort the record to make 
 room for what is not there. Even in the most station- 
 ary theologies, the real interest lies in the expansion of 
 old truth to embrace and consecrate the newest births 
 of time. 
 
 The mode, however, of dividing the constant from 
 the variable elements in a religion is not always the 
 same ; and in the intellectual training of Christian 
 teachers, it makes the greatest difference which of two 
 principles we adopt as our rule. 
 
 The first assumes that the things to be taught are a 
 determinate stock of truths given in perpetuity, suscep- 
 tible of no increase, secured against all abatement. 
 These are the divine constants ; filling the whole sphere 
 of religion ; and throwing out all the variables into the 
 secular sciences and arts ; amid which religion is to find 
 its application without any re-action upon its theory. 
 Let us consider what direction is naturally impressed 
 upon theological education by this assumption. 
 
 The primary aim will be to teach methodically the 
 fixed scheme of positive religion, and secure on every 
 side its hold on the student's mind. Nor is it by any 
 means a scanty intellectual culture that may subserve 
 this end. For the Protestant (to whom we must limit 
 our view) the scheme is embodied in Scripture. Now 
 to be master of Scripture is to be at home in two lan- 
 guages, most unlike each other, and long silent upon 
 the earth ; to have an eye and ear for their dialectic 
 variations in time and place ; to trace the literary life of
 
 410 THEOLOGY IN ITS RELATION 
 
 the Hebrew people from its dawn to its decline, and of 
 Christendom in its obscure beginnings ; to be familiar 
 with the history of the Eastern world till it became a 
 province of the West. These resources are needed for 
 entering into the interior of Scripture. But no ancient 
 book is rightly appreciated, unless its external history 
 is surveyed, and the witnesses examined to its origin, 
 its travels, its transmission, the uncertainties of its text, 
 and worth of its translations : researches, the ex- 
 tent and complexity of which are sufficiently attested by 
 the immense critical apparatus they have placed at our 
 disposal. From the moment when the Scriptures were 
 snatched from sacerdotal keeping and delivered over, as 
 the new-found oracles of God, to the venerating scrutiny 
 of reading men, the development of sacred learning was 
 large and rapid ; and, though for a time suspended by 
 the excitement and desolation of religious wars, still 
 showed, in Limborch and Le Clerc, how little the 
 intellectual impulse given by Calvin and Beza had spent 
 its force. The refinement and security which modern 
 scholarship has gradually attained, and the compendious 
 form into which the results of vast research are now 
 reduced, are unfavorable to the reputation of those 
 earlier masters of sacred criticism : the light handbook 
 gives us what we want at a glance, and their heavy 
 folios are left to gather the dust upon our shelves. But 
 whoever has occasion to consult them will be disposed 
 to wonder at the vast strides of approach already made 
 towards the standard of learning in our own day ; 
 especially when he remembers to how great an extent 
 the scholar of the sixteenth and even the seventeenth, 
 century had to be his own lexicographer and gram-
 
 TO PROGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE. 411 
 
 /narian, to make his own index and concordance, to 
 work out his own archaeology, to construct his own 
 maps and tables of dates, and go to the sources of 
 history for himself. These disadvantages, which would 
 excuse a much greater inaccuracy than we actually find, 
 drove the .man of learning out over an immense field, 
 and gave him a range of erudition and a grasp of judg- 
 ment which may well astonish the more special students 
 of later times. 
 
 The proportions in which the religious and the sim- 
 ply intellectual impulse contributed to the great works 
 of Protestant erudition, it is impossible to determine. 
 Were it not that, at the revival of learning, precisely 
 similar phenomena appeared on the field of secular 
 literature, and Joseph Scaliger and Henry Stephens 
 rivalled the greatest prodigies of theological industry, 
 we might be tempted to say that nothing short of an 
 overpowering reverence for the Bible as the word of 
 God, could sustain the laborious patience of the old 
 divines, or invest with any living interest their verbal 
 criticisms and technical disputes. Perhaps the spell put 
 upon the imagination in the two cases, by the undis- 
 covered wisdom and beauty of Pagan literature, and by 
 the spiritual depth of the sacred books, was not so dis- 
 similar as we might suppose, and would stir the mind 
 to the same efforts, and produce analogous results. 
 But, when the first flush of wondering impulse had 
 passed away, secular and sacred learning were doomed, 
 by a single cause, to take different directions, and ac- 
 quire a character ever more distinct. The Scriptures 
 were assumed to be a continuous oracle, an unbroken 
 authoritative record, homogeneous for all the purposes
 
 412 THEOLOGY IN ITS DELATION 
 
 of religious guidance, a divine book in which the ever- 
 living Author, wielding the human secretaries as his 
 organs of communication, discloses all that is known of 
 his will and moral government. If a critic were to 
 treat the Iliad of Homer, the Cyropasdeia of Xenophon, 
 and the history of Thucydides, as belonging to one 
 another, and all as components of the philosophy of 
 Aristotle, the results could scarcely be more fatally 
 grotesque. Xo doubt, the sanctity attributed to every 
 line secured an eager and prolonged scrutiny of the 
 text, word by word : but the gaze was too close, and 
 the imaginary light was too intense, for clear and 
 comprehensive vision. An exaggerated significance 
 was seen in the simplest phrase ; narrative was con- 
 strued into type, and myth mistaken for history ; a 
 Hebrew ode was made to yield evangelic dogma ; and 
 whether the Elohist or the Jehovist told the story of 
 Creation, whether Job affirmed of God or his friends 
 denied, whether the Preacher taught Epicureanism or the 
 later Isaiah the law of humiliation, whether Matthew 
 presented Christ as miraculously conceived, or Paul as 
 the pre-existing spiritual Adam, or John the evangelist 
 as the Incarnate Logos, it was all alike authorita- 
 tive: the various elements fused into one uniform 
 alloy, and re-issued, as shekels of gold, to serve for 
 coin of the temple. In the presence of such precon- 
 ceptions, it is evident that all historical method, all 
 recognition of natural growth of religious ideas, all crit- 
 ical appreciation of contrasted doctrines, all discharge 
 of local and personal errors from the imperishable 
 essence of divine truth, must remain impossible : and 
 scholarship, kindled at first, but dizzied at last, with
 
 TO PROGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE. 413 
 
 the monotonous glory it sees upon the page, settles into 
 blindness and distinguishes nothing. There is an 
 immense accumulation of theological erudition ; but, 
 under this spell, it lies dead and dark, and yields none 
 of the brilliant results of the corresponding secular 
 learning. There is not within it the free, sincere and 
 healthy movement on which elsewhere the veracious 
 instinct of the intellect insists ; it is held in hand and 
 inarched about, as if to check an enemy. Are there 
 weak places exposed and threatened? its masses are 
 ordered up to close and hide them. Can an impression 
 be made of reserved strength? its ranks are opened to 
 show it and scare assault away. This is not the spirit 
 of the true scholar; who, knowing no enemy, can leave 
 unguarded any holy places already held, and go forth, 
 as pilgrim and explorer, to find new ones that shall 
 enlarge his homage aud consecrate fresh points upon 
 the world. 
 
 Not even the most rigid theologian, however, can 
 live exclusively with what he regards as the constants of 
 religion. Fix these as he may, lie finds himself in a 
 
 O f' * 
 
 changing scene, with the variables of which he is in 
 immediate contact ; and the relations between the im- 
 mutable data of his creed and the shifting conditions 
 of human life have to be re-adjusted, as new ideas and 
 wants arise. To qualify himself for this, and become a 
 proficient in applied religion, he must know how the 
 world is going on, follow in the track of the advancing 
 sciences, listen to the tones of the younger literature, 
 and breathe the air of other men's thought. He cannot 
 act as trustee of the deposit committed to him, unless 
 he looks around him and bees how it is to be udminis-
 
 414 THEOLOGY IN ITS RELATION 
 
 tercel in the altered temper of the generations as they 
 rise ; what doubts it has to meet, what repugnance to 
 encounter ; by what fresh paths of approach it must 
 reach minds now transported into uncalculated lati- 
 tudes. Theological education, therefore, however se- 
 verely conservative, is far from deserving the reproach 
 of indifference to the march of the phenomenal sciences. 
 Its own purpose can never be fulfilled without a com- 
 prehensive knowledge, revised and filled in from time 
 to time, of whatever the historical critic, and the 
 inductive philosopher, and the speculative thinker, may 
 profess to have achieved. But, under such an inflexi- 
 ble system, the student's specialty is this ; through his 
 wide range he sees nothing in its simply natural light, 
 judges nothing by its own proper evidence, but carries 
 with him a criterion foreign to the field ; his stock of 
 cjiistants he uses as regulative, determining without 
 appeal what shall be taken and what be left ; all that 
 falls in with them he appropriates and works in to 
 modernize his creed ; .ill that conflicts with them he 
 discards and blackens as profane. By thus importing 
 the postulates of a divinity-school as the measure of 
 inductive truth, a hopeless breach is created between 
 the logic of theology and that of science, and a war 
 begun which is the more miserable, because the parties 
 to it, always within reach of irritating challenge, move 
 upon different lines and can never fairly meet. It is 
 needless to say how this method spoils every thing it 
 touches, scholarship, natural knowledge, religion, and 
 produces the temper most alien to the genius of them 
 all. Is it not a melancholy fact that every modern 
 science has had to make good its footing, not only
 
 TO PROGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE. 415 
 
 against sluggish incredulity and prejudice, but against 
 misguided piety? that the very Sun could not find his 
 right place in the heavens, or Man prove, by bits of 
 pottery and flint, his long tenancy of this earth, with- 
 out a clamor of devout fear and futile contradiction? 
 Is it right that we should always know beforehand, 
 irrespective of the evidence, what reception every physi- 
 cal or ethnological theory which makes large demands 
 on time, every critical verdict which lowers the date or 
 renames the author of a Hebrew book, will meet with 
 from the clergy ? There must be something wrong in 
 a system which disturbs the quiet of eternal truth by 
 dissolving in it a fermenting mass of decaying opinion ; 
 and whoever can precipitate the precarious foreign 
 admixtures, and leave the fountains of faith pure and 
 clear, brings the truest healing to the moral and spir- 
 itual life of men. 
 
 In order to provide for this function, and escape the 
 evils just described, the College for which I speak to- 
 day follows a different rule in drawing its line between 
 the constants and the variables in religion. The prin- 
 ciple is this : the things about which we teach are given 
 in perpetuity ; but the things to be taught about them 
 are open to revision in every age. God, in his rela- 
 tions to the universe and to ourselves ; Man, his indi- 
 vidual and social n:iturc, his responsible position, his 
 history, his destination, are the ultimate objects 
 which we here aspire to know ; and, as media of this 
 knowledge, on the philosophical side, the intellectual, 
 ethical and spiritual phenomena of the mind ; and, on 
 the historical, the manifestations of Divine Life in the 
 past of our humanity, and primarily in the person
 
 416 THEOLOGY IN ITS KELATION 
 
 and work of Jesus Christ, with whom it culminates, 
 and from whom dates a new birth of inextinguishable 
 faith and aspiration, a new glow, unexhausted yet, of 
 pity and of hope. The form and spirit of an intellec- 
 tual training conducted on this principle it is not diffi- 
 cult to trace. 
 
 It is sometimes supposed, that where so much is left 
 open to revision, the continuity of belief must be 
 broken, and no permanent roots be struck to feed the 
 growth and mature the fruits of religious character. 
 Each teacher, it is imagined, relying on his lonely 
 fancies, and dignifying them with the name of intui- 
 tions, will begin his quest de novo, and think out 
 his scheme of doctrine, as if he were floating by him- 
 self in space; owning no authority, and deriving no 
 strength from his partnership in the heritage of hu- 
 manity. Nothing can be more erroneous. No doubt 
 it must always rest with the individual reason and con- 
 science to pronounce the personal verdict of true or 
 false ; but the pleadings on which they decide are 
 fetched from the gathered stores of Christian and 
 heathen wisdom, and epitomize the thought expended 
 on the oldest and deepest problems ; and, when seem- 
 ing to flow immediately from a single mind, are ren- 
 dered possible there only by a traccless myriad of 
 influences infiltrating into it from earlier time. The 
 whole Past must rain upon the uplands, and the clouds 
 hang on the invisible peaks, of history, to make the 
 smallest rill of thought that winds through our own day. 
 Even in the philosophical treatment of natural Ethics 
 and Religion, where, as in all deductive reasoning, we 
 seem to be independent of what predecessors have found,
 
 TO PROGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE. 417 
 
 and to draw conclusions that would be at home in any 
 age, the appearance is illusory ; for that very human 
 nature from whose phenomena we reason and whose 
 affections we interpret, has expanded into new and 
 richer forms, and presents, in its circle of Christian 
 experience, data unknown before. And in historical 
 theology, the very semblance of any breach with the 
 past is simply impossible. No man can extemporize, 
 or spin out of himself, a critical knowledge of ancient 
 languages, literature and life ; he is here absolutely 
 dependent on forerunners for his whole outfit of origi- 
 nal assumptions and beliefs, and must start on his own 
 explorings from the point at which they have deposited 
 him. The slow and gentle way in which alone the 
 shadows can ever break from off the ancient world, and 
 a little light steal in, now from the pages of a recov- 
 ered book, now through the propylajura of a dug-up 
 temple, and then from some happy flash of philological 
 combination, sufficiently secures us, so long as we are 
 simple and trustful, without fear and without guile, 
 from any but silent anil insensible changes of histori- 
 cal conviction. In Mich matters, the shocks all come 
 from our insincerities and delays on the one hand, and 
 from the re-action of irreverent extravagance provoked 
 upon the other ; feverish paroxysms being the inevita- 
 ble retribution of long reticence and suppression. 
 
 In order to fall in with the peaceful course of theo- 
 logical change, to hold by what is undisturbed, and 
 detach it from the doom of the rest, the student must 
 be well brought up to the point already reached, the 
 point at which he pitches his tent and raises his altar, 
 till he is ordered to move on. This involves the 
 
 21
 
 418 THEOLOGY IN ITS RELATION f 
 
 whole apparatus of knowledge required, in the former 
 case, by the stationary defender of the faith ; together 
 with an important addition, viz. an acquaintance with 
 the history of theology, in the largest sense ; not only 
 with the ecclesiastical stages by which accepted dogma 
 was formed, but with the inverse critical processes by 
 which it has been partially dissolved, and removed from 
 the faith of scholarly men. One who is pledged to hold 
 a compacted scheme of belief as divine, can never rec- 
 ognize it as growing or declining with the changing 
 seasons of .our nature, at one time the creation, at 
 another the victim, of human reason. He is obliged, 
 therefore, to ignore its history, however indisputable it 
 may be ; to treat as an image fallen from heaven, some 
 idol of doctrine which, if you are familiar with its first 
 age, you may see gradually moulded under the pressure 
 of the time ; and to insist that it still stands as ada- 
 mant, though in the dry intellectual air all its tenacity 
 is gone, and observers wonder when the clay is to crum- 
 ble into dust. Even within the memory of our own 
 generation, how many are the determinate points of 
 change, which it would be simply stupid not to register 
 as past events in the history of opinion ! What has 
 become of the date which stood in our school-tables, 
 "Creation of the World, B.C. 4004"? and what of 
 the next, w The Universal Deluge, B.C. 2348''? Into 
 what undreamt-of distance has Egyptian chronology re- 
 treated ! yet how many such steps must we repeat, ere 
 we alight upon the first vestiges of man ! and how 
 many more, to exhaust the relics of life and death upon 
 this world ! We have learned to recognize the compo- 
 site structure and comparatively low date of the Penta-
 
 TO PROGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE. 419 
 
 tench ; the progression of religious doctrine through 
 the Old Testament ; its variety in the New ; the mix- 
 ture of unhistorical elements in both, and of human 
 opinions long ago corrected, and expectations never 
 fulfilled. In what state of mind would the scholar be 
 who did not know these things? or the reasoaer who 
 should suppose that they left all as it was before? All 
 that is reali, indeed, all that is Divine, God in his 
 perfection, Christ in his filial sanctity, and for humanity 
 the eternal law of Duty and Self-sacrifice, they and 
 similar changes without end, sweep past and leave 
 more majestic than before. But he only can feel the 
 serenity of this assurance, to whose trust no constants 
 are essential beyond the irremovable realities. 
 
 Even he, however, must, from time to time, take 
 careful account of the course of discovery in its bear- 
 ings on the common heritage of faith, with a view to 
 guide and resettle the piety of others. For this end, 
 something more is needed than a knowledge of what 
 has already been done, affecting theological belief: he 
 must know what is still doing, the inquiries that 
 are hovering and preparing to alight, the thoughts 
 that are in the air, the weather-signs that drift upon 
 the clouds : for these, interpreted by the law of the 
 past, will often give a serviceable presage of the future, 
 and prevent the misplacement of sympathy and effort. 
 If he have the tact of a tender and pious heart, he 
 will use this foresight of the probable direction of 
 thought, not loudly to prejudge what is yet on trial, or 
 to hurt a reverence which time, if it does not entirely 
 spare, may gently train another way ; but to avoid lin-
 
 420 THEOLOGY IN ITS DELATION 
 
 goring too long upon a precarious spot, and 
 to withdraw men's worship to ground for ever sacred. 
 But, beyond this noiseless preparation for changes that 
 may not be far, he will guard his mind against any 
 interest of religious partisanship in the pending prob- 
 lems of science or criticism. Removed alike from 
 boastful elation at their progress and from blind re- 
 pugnance to it, he will give his religion no regulative 
 power over his scientific judgment : so that, from the 
 tone of his devotion and the cast of his affections, you 
 shall not be able to tell beforehand what he thinks of 
 the origin of species, or the antiquity of man, or the 
 date of Daniel or the authenticity of the fourth Gos- 
 pel ; but he will surrender himself simply to the facts 
 as they appear in evidence ; frankly going with every 
 conclusion fairly won ; pausing in every suspense ; rest- 
 ing on what is undisturbed ; deeming it the office at 
 once of reason and of faith, not to bespeak the universe 
 that ought to be, but humbly to accept the universe that 
 is, and find room in it for reverence and trust. 
 
 That this enlargement of the variables in theology, 
 so as to include the whole sphere of phenomenal knowl 
 edge, is alone consistent with the true temper of tht> 
 philosopher and the scholar, will hardly be questioned 
 But how will it affect our religion? Does it not put 
 Revelation at hazard? Is piety safe, when so much to 
 which it clings is set afloat? 
 
 I reply, our rule sets nothing afloat, but only pro- 
 vides how we shall demean ourselves towards that 
 which, by the decree of nature and of God, is afloat: 
 and the rule is simply, not to deal with it, whilst it is
 
 TO PROGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE. 421 
 
 in motion, as if it were fixed. Certainty is not ours to 
 create or to annihilate ; we cannot make it, by pretend- 
 ing it ; we do not destroy it, by letting its absence 
 speak for itself. If piety has been brought, as is too 
 probable, to cling to many doubtful and perishable 
 things, so far it is assuredly unsafe ; but will you rem- 
 edy this by declaring the doubtful to be sure, and the 
 perishable immortal? or, by giving the affection its 
 true Object, and carrying it to an eternal rest? If 
 Christendom, sickly and feeble with its long disease 
 of dogma, has got to put its trust, not so much in the 
 living God and his own real ways, as in certain opin- 
 ions about him and reports of his acts, it is a healing 
 process to disengage its soul from the detaining veil of 
 human notions and propositions, and deliver it straight 
 into personal divine relations. An unreserved repose 
 upon reality, an acceptance of it as better than any 
 semblance and having absolute right over our ideas, is 
 the genuine piety of the intellect, without which there 
 is no sacredness in its exercise, no struggling refrac- 
 tions, no tender tints of trust and sacrifice, to mellow 
 its dry light. 
 
 All "Revelation," by the very force of the term, 
 must be a disclosure of things as they are. Every 
 corrected conception of things as they are, sustained 
 by scientific evidence, either concurs with the presumed 
 revelation, or it does not. If it does not, a human 
 error is eliminated from an aggregate which we had 
 charged entirely on God, and what is his own stands 
 purified : the natural has gained a light, and the super- 
 natural has lost a darkness. If it does concur, then
 
 422 THEOLOGY IN ITS RELATION 
 
 what was before known as revealed is now also known 
 as natural : we sec for ourselves what had been taken 
 on the testimony of those who knew better ; and our 
 apprehension is unspeakably cleared and deepened. 
 The truth no longer hangs detached, plainly seen 
 indeed, but apart from its tissue of relations ; it has 
 found its footing and settled upon its own ground. 
 Revealed religion, so far as it is not fancied but real, 
 must always be undergoing this conversion into natu- 
 ral : if it gives us the master-thought of God, the true 
 key to which the unopened recesses of the inner and 
 the outer world will yield, it can hardly fail to find, or 
 by developing to add, the experiences which conform 
 to it and evidence it. Whatever, being found in 
 Scripture, is refound in nature and in life, becomes an 
 independent possession of humanity ; and, except that 
 the history of truth is only second in importance to 
 truth itself, the very Scriptures might so far suffer 
 again their mediaeval disappearance, without loss of 
 the treasure they had given to the world. 
 
 And, if the theologians could but look with a calm 
 eye upon the past, they must see that, wherever the 
 strife is over and the field is still, every advance of 
 knowledge has been a gain to religion, won at the 
 expense only of deforming fictions. As our petty 
 schemes of the world break in pieces and fall away, 
 diviner ones construct themselves and make us ashamed 
 of our regrets. Who would now, in the interests of 
 piety, wish to have back the childish little kosmos 
 of the Hebrew legends, or the three stories of the 
 Pauline heaven? or dare to say, that, in supersed-
 
 TO PROGRESSIVE KNOWLEDGE. 423 
 
 ing them, Copernicus and Newton blasphemed ? Who 
 would choose to have no kosmos at all till six thousand 
 years ago, or fling a stone at a Herschel or a Lyell for 
 letting in light and showing life within that dark im- 
 mensity? The age of the world, as it deepens, does 
 but prolong its testimony to God, and make it worthier 
 of his eternity : its scale, as it expands, does but place 
 us in a temple more august, and nearer to his Infinity. 
 Does any one, whose mind has been enlarged by 
 ancient history and whose heart has listened to the old 
 mythologies, want to have his sympathies reduced 
 again to the " chosen people," and the divine com- 
 munion with our race, so various and pathetic in its 
 early struggling tones, restricted to that only channel ? 
 And if from the person of Jesus Christ the artificial 
 dress of Messianic investiture, and some disguising 
 shreds of Jewish fable, drop away, who that can fix 
 an appreciating eye on the emerging form, will not say 
 that it is diviner far, embodying in its grand and 
 touching lineaments the essence and spirit of a new life 
 of God in our humanity? This experience, this re- 
 moval to a higher point of faith, is from the first the 
 invariable result with the scholar who works most 
 freely, because quite trustfully, at these problems : as, 
 after long delay, it comes to be the result with all at 
 last. The intermediate disturbance of religious calm, 
 the pious dismay on the one hand, the petulant irrev- 
 erence on the other, befall chiefly those who do not 
 intimately commune with such researches, but, looking 
 on, judge them by external and inapplicable stand- 
 ards, and not by their inner and essential relations.
 
 424 THEOLOGY IN ITS RELATION, ETC. 
 
 AVhoever, in these things, has gone deep and touched 
 ground, is not afraid of falling into a bottomless abyss : 
 and hence the moral importance of that thoroughness 
 of study which we strive to cultivate here. For, may 
 we not say, the essence of the large and liberal spirit 
 lies in the absence of fear and the promptness of 
 love ? 
 
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