LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. GIFT OF" THE FAMILY OF REV. DR. GEORGE MOOAR Class THE SENSUALISTIC PHILOSOPHY THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, CONSIDERED UY ROBERT L. DABNEY, D.D., LL.D., PHOI-BSSOR m DIVINITY IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, OF THE PKESBYTEKIAN CHURCH OF THE SOUTH, PRINCE EDWARD, VA. ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 770 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. ~D3 COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & Co. EDWARD O. JENKINS, J'Hl.VTKK AXD STEREOTYPER, 20 NORTH WILLIAM ST., N.Y. ROBERT RUTTER, BI.VDEH, 84 BEEKMAK STREET, N.Y CONTENTS. CHAPTER. -PACW. I. THE ISSUE STATED, ...... i II. REVIEW OF THE SENSUAI.ISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE PREVIOUS CENTURY. HOBBES, LOCKE, CONDIL- LAC, HELVETIUS, ST. LAMBERT, ... 7 III. ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND, . . . . S 2 IV. SENSUALISTIC ETHICS OF GREAT BRITAIN, . . 85 V. POSITIVISM, 93 VI. EVOLUTION THEORY, . . . . . . 107 VII. PHYSIOLOGICAL MATERIALISM, . . . .131 VIII. SPIRITUALITY OF THE MIND, . . . . 137 IX. EVOLUTION THEORY MATERIALISTIC, THEREFORE FALSE, T f>5 X. VALIDITY OF A- PRIORI NOTIONS, . . . 208 XI. ORIGIN OF A.PRIORI NOTIONS, . . . 245 XII. REFUTATION OF SENSUALISTIC ETHICS, . . 287 XIII. PHILOSOPHY OF THE SUPERNATURAL, . . 337 088 SENSUALISTIC PHILOSOPHY. CHAPTER THE ISSUE STATED. TT^NGLISHMEN and Americans frequently use the L^ word " sensualist" to describe one in whom the animal appetites are predominant. We shall see that it is a just charge against the Sensualistic philosophy, that it not seldom inclines its advocates to this dominion of beastly lusts. But it is not from this fact that we draw the phrase by which we name it. The Sensualistic philosophy is that theory, which resolves all the powers of the human spirit into the functions of the five senses, and modifications thereof. It is the philosophy which finds all its rudiments in sensation. It not only denies to the spirit of man all innate ideas, but all innate powers of originating ideas, save those given us from our senses. It consequently attempts to account for every general and every abstract judgment, as an empirical result of our sensations, and consistently denies the validity of any h priori ideas. Such was the philosophy which was dominant in France at the close of the eighteenth century ; and which, untaught by the frightful results it produced there, is now striving again to establish its dominion among us towards the close of the nineteenth age. The great men who, in France, raised again the (i) 2 Sensualistic Philosophy. standard of a truer philosophy, Maine de Biran, Royer Collard, and later, Victor Cousin, were called by contrast "spiritualists." Their characteristic doctrines were the distinct assertion of a separate, spiritual substance in man, soul, spirit, or mind, a simple monad in each per- son, immaterial, and contrasted with all material masses in its essential attributes; the relation of all organs of sensation as instruments to this intelligent spirit ; its capacity of existing and acting after separation from the body ; and the innate power of this substance to originate for itself, upon occasion of the particular ideas presented by sensations, valid abstract notions, valid primitive judgments of reason and conscience, and free desires and volitions. I should be perfectly willing to retain this name. And none, perhaps, could be found more appropriate, had not a coarse imposture, which has very recently become current, so usurped and denied the word " spiritualism," as to endanger con- fusion of ideas ; and had not some earlier writers per- verted the term to express the false theory of the pure idealist. Let it then be understood, that the philosophy which I maintain against the Sensualistic, or exclusively empirical, and which has just been described, shall be called the Rational. It holds that the human intelli- gence is not a bundle of organs, but a pure spirit ; it asserts for man a Reason, and not merely senses and their modifications. In the eighteenth century, the Sensualistic philosophy appeared under many phases ; it does so again in the nineteenth. But it always has its characteristic traits, and carries its own dangers to truth, virtue, and happi- ness. One attempt of this criticism of it will be to show that it always involves tendencies to erroneous logic, vitiating even the physical sciences, which it is wont to claim as its peculiar clients ; to universal scepticism ; to idealism ; to nihilism ; to the obliterating of moral distinctions, and the destruction of moral responsibility ; The Issite Stated. 3 to materialism ; to a denial of the supernatural ; and thus, to atheism. Let us be understood : we do not charge that every Sensualistic philosopher holds to all these results, or approves them ; we charge that they are all latent in the system, and that one or another of them is continually making itself patent in the out- g-rowth of this philosophy. Of this, one of the most instructive proofs is the historical ; for there " the tree is known by its fruits." We shall, therefore, prepare the way for the stricter criticism, by a brief, but per- spicuous review of the chief movements of Sensualism, especially in our own age. The chief point which I aim to make, however, in this introduction, is my emphatic protest against the assumption, now so common among the Sensualistic school, that no metaphysic is valid. All who are tinc- tured with " Positivist " errors, continually exclaim, " No psychology ; away with metaphysics ! Only the phenomenal is true!" They wish to give no heed to the testimony of consciouness ; they would ignore all subjective first truths, and confine true science to what sensations reveal, alone. They limit the light of " Ex- perience," that safest of guides, to their experience of the objective. Now to this injustice we " give place by subjection ; no, not for an hour." For, what is any science but a system of cognitions ? But a system of cognitions must imply principles of cognition of some sort ; and what are these but a metaphysic ? These physical Positivists cheat themselves, in supposing that by ignoring separate spiritual substance with & priori laws, they can get rid of this truth. Let the something which knows be a spirit or a group of organs, one must have principles of cognition, all the same, in order to have systematized thought. Nothing can be more obvious than that the successful use of any implement implies some knowledge of its qualities and powers. And this is as true of the mind. as of any other imple- 4 Sensualistic Philosophy. ment. It is simply impossible that one can construct any other branch of knowledge, without having some science of psychology and logic of his own. In other words, he must have accepted some laws of thought a priori, in order to construe his own thoughts. If he has not clone it in words, he must have done it in fact. This is true of all common men. When the mechanic assumes, without present experiment, that a new steel blade will cut wood, has he not assumed two meta- physical truths ; the presence of the same substance under the same properties, and the validity of his own memory concerning past experiments ? When the gourmand argues, " I may not eat minced pies to-night for my supper, because they gave me frightful dreams last night," has he not posited a logical law of the rea- son ? Every man is a virtual psychologist and logician (unless he is idiotic) ; he cannot trust his own mind, ex- cept as he believes in some powers and properties of his mind ; these beliefs constitute, for him, his meta- physic. Even the Positivist, of course, has his psychol- ogy, although he repudiates it in words. And this is the Sensualistic psychology. No writers, of any school, go farther than the leaders of the Sensualistic philoso- phy, in speculations which have every trait which is expressed by the word " metaphysical " when used by the people in an evil sense. Nowhere on earth can writings be found more psychological, (that is, fuller of a false psychology,) more abstruse, more subtle, more obscure or more illogical and unpractical, than, those of the most recent leaders of this school. All these phi- losophers love to applaud the inductive laws of Lord Bacon, and to contrast them with the unprofitableness of metaphysics. But Bacon does not undertake to establish physical laws ; he proposes to settle those principles for reasoning from facts of experience, by which any and every physical law are to be established. In a word, it is metaphysics ; only, it is true meta- The Issue Stated. 5 physics. So, nothing is easier for the perspicuous reader, than to take any treatise of any votary of the Sensualistic philosophy, and point to instances upon every page, where he makes a virtual appeal to some principle of metaphysics. Says this writer, concerning some theory of accounting for a group of phenomena : " This is not valid, because it is only hypothesis." But what, I pray, is the dividing line between hypothesis and demonstrative induction ? And why is the former, without the latter, invalid ? The answer is, metaphysics. " The post hoc does not necessarily prove the propter hoc." Tell us, why ? It cannot be told, without talk- ing metaphysics. " Nothing," says the Positivist, " is demonstrable except what is experienced in sensa tions." There is, then, one & priori principle, at least, of the human .intelligence ; this namely, that the intui- tion of sense-perception is valid, if all other intuitive judgments are baseless. For it is only by assuming the validity of that intuitive judgment at the outset, that the Positivist ever learned anything valid by sense- perception. But above all do we insist, that the facts given by our subjective consciousness shall be admitted into the rank of experimental evidences. They shall be granted to be even more empirical, when observed with due care, than any objective empirical knowledge. The Sensual- istic philosophers will be compelled to look them in the face, and to admit their force. For first, in claiming this, we are really pursuing the very process which they profess to approve. We observe and compare the experienced facts of consciousness, and make inductions from them. And second, we show that it is only by rec- ognizing the validity of the facts of consciousness, that any one can receive the testimony of sensation. If I do not know certainly, that there is a conscious, intelligent self, who sees with the eyes, still less can I know that the thing seen by that self has any reality. If I am not 6 Sensualistic Philosophy. certain beforehand, that the self who saw the landscape last year is the self who recollects it now, still less have I any assurance that memory is not playing me false, in seeming to reproduce the same conception formerly perceived by my eyes. CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF THE SENSUALISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE PREVIOUS CENTURY. HOBBES, LOCKE, CONDILLAC, HELVETIUS, ST. LAMBERT. i. rpO the curious mind it will appear remark- able, and to the devout, perhaps, providen- tial, that the first modern expounder of the Sensualistic philosophy should have carried it most fully to its legitimate results. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury (A. D. 1588 to 1679), taught it with a boldness, ability, and unblenching consistencv, which make his specula- tions invaluable to us : he shows us just what its corol- laries are, when carried out with a rigid logic, from those first premises which are common to all the school. We may, then, ascribe to this intellectual giant the "bad eminence" of having anticipated all the fruit, which history has subsequently shown, by the specula- tions of his followers, and by the calamities these specu- lations have procured for their people, the system is fitted to bear. He enables us to see the whole develop- ment of Sensualism epitomized in one man. Philosophy, according to Hobbes, has for its object all bodies which are formed and possess qualities. Physics, then, constitute the whole of true philosophy. As God is not conceived of as a body, or as having been formed ; to philosophy neither His existence .nor attributes are cognizable. Complaisance to the Chris- tian prejudices of the day led Hobbes, instead of sim- ply denying His existence, to remit its discussion to the (7) 8 Sensualistic Philosophy. separate sphere of theology : philosophy has no more to do with the idea of a God. So, Christian usages make us talk of our souls as spirits ; but it is impossible to have any evidence of an immaterial substance ; for the only evidence is that of conception, which, in turn, comes only from sensation. The only definition of a soul, then, which philosophy can admit, is " a natural body of such subtility that it does not act upon the senses, but which fills a place, as would the image of a visible body, and has figure (without color) and dimen- sion." Our souls have two faculties, conception and movement. Sensation is nothing else than a movement of certain parts, which exist in the interior of the sen- tient being, and these parts are those of the organs by which we feel. Sensations are the principle of knowl- edge, and all knowledge is derived from them. Thus, memory consists in our having a sensation that we have had a sensation. Imagination is a sensation which continues with feebler force, after its cause has ceased to act, like the wavelets which roughen the surface of a pool for a number of moments after the stone has fallen upon it. All the acts of generalizing, naming our ideas, comparing, and reasoning, are but associations of these sense-perceptions. Let us now see how Hobbes generates the emotional and voluntary powers of the soul, which he denomi- nates its faculty of movement. Says he : Conceptions and imaginations (decaying sensations) are only certain movements excited in a substance within 1 the head. This movement is propagated also to the heart, and either concurs with or retards the vital movement there. This concurrence we call " pleasure," " content," " well-being ;*' this retardation we call " pain," " evil." The objects which produce the concurrence we de- scribe as pleasant ; those which produce the retardation we term odious. Love and hatred are only these feel- ings of concurrence or retardation again, relatively to Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 9 their objects. Farther : this concurrence which we call " pleasure " draws toward its object, and this re- tardation which we call " pain " repels us from its ob- ject. The one of these feelings is " desire," and the other is " aversion," or, relatively to the anticipation of pain from such an object, " fear." Thus we have the genesis of motives in the soul ; and all is still but modi- fied sensation. It is not difficult to see how the phi- losopher will, on this plan, account for volitions. In every case of sudden or prompt volition, there is one desire present (desire, being but sensation of pleasure modified), and volition is nothing but this desire un- checked, culminating into determination. If, however, another object cause pain in the mind, the first desire will be counterpoised by the fear. To this first pair of feelings may succeed still another desire, and another fear ; and a third or fourth pair of feelings, between which the mind oscillates backwards and forwards. This oscillation is what we call " deliberation." As long as it subsists, no determination takes place, of course. The last desire, or fear, at this series of oscil- lations, happening to be the most vivid of the series, becomes volition ! Hear his own words : (Human Na- ture, Ch. 12, 6.) " As to will is desire, and to will not to act is fear, the cause of the desire or the fear is also the cause of our will." And again: " When delibera- tion takes place, its last act if it is a desire, is .volition, and if it is repugnance, it is negative volition ; so that volition and desire are one and the same thing consid- ered under different aspects." " The liberty of willing and not willing is no greater in man than in other ani- mals. Indeed, in one who feels desire, the cause of the desire precedes, in such sort that the desire cannot but follow ; that is to say, it follows necessarily." It is too plain, from these citations, that with Hobbes there is no true liberty of the human spirit ; and, indeed, he con- fesses himself a fatalist. In this he is thoroughly con- io Sensualistic Philosophy. sistent. In \his view, man's liberty is merely the privi- lege to execute with the bodily members the volition which is necessitated by the objective cause. Of true liberty, that s, a power of choice, he thinks the mind has none. T] he distinction between the outward in- d the subjective desire, and that between ^nsibilities and the conative emotions of totally neglected. The object causes de- e desire not counterpoised is volition ! ducement an the passive s the soul, are sire ; and t Hence the human spirit is the passive .victim of any objective impression ordained for it by fate or a me- chanical necessity. If chance or Satan, or a human seducer, presents a purse of gold, with privacy and opportunity, to a man susceptible of cupidity, the voli- tion to steal it is as purely 'an effect of physical neces- sity, as pain ^s of the blow of a bludgeon which breaks his head. And the man is precisely as irresponsible for the volition as he is for the pain. The thoughtful hearer can divine hence, in advance of Hobbes' statements, what his scheme of ethics will be. We may find it set forth with perfect perspicuity and boldness, in a few sentences : " Every man calls that good which is agreeable to himself, and that evil which displeases him. Thus, since each man differs from others by his temperament or his mode of being, he differs from them in his distinction between the good and the evil ; and there exists no goodness abso- lutely considered wilhout relation ; for the goodness which we attribute to God, even, is only His goodness relatively to us. As we call the things which please or displease us good or evil, we call the properties by which these things produce these effects, goodness or wickedness" " Appetite, or desire, being the commencement of the animal movement which carries us towards some- thing which pleases us, the final cause of that move- ment is to attain the end, which we thus call the de- Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century, n sign : and when we attain that end, the pleasure which it causes in us is named enjoyment. Thus good, and designed end, are the same thing regarded differently." We are thus consistently taught from Sensualistic premises, that there is no uniform standard of moral right: that there is, indeed, no moral good save animal enjoyment for all desires are "animal movements'' and that there is no moral motive except selfishness. Conscience is as thoroughly obliterated by this scheme as the existence of the fairies. Let us now see what theory of political society is deduced by Hobbes from his metaphysics, in his treat- ises of the Citizen, and " Leviathan." We must re- member that, according to him, there is no supreme uniform standard of moral obligation, and no conscience in man. The only motive of rational conduct is self- interest. Hence, Hobbes naturally infers that the orig- inal conception of right which the human being has, is of a natural right to appropriate whatever he sees will contribute to his pleasure, and to avoid whatever pro- duces pain. By the same reason one man feels this right, every other feels the same. The natural state, then, is one in which each man tends to claim all things, and to resist the similar claims of all others. But by the same natural right, each man is also resisted. Hence, the state of nature is " a war of all against all." But self-interest cannot become enlightened by expe- rience, without perceiving that this war of all against all tends, on the whole, to the reduction of natural enjoyments to a minimum, and to the universal destruc- tion of persons. Hence, the first acquired desire of nature is for repose from this endless strife of warring wills. How shall that repose be sought ? Obviously, only in some force strong enough to suppress the strife ; for there is no moral principle in man which can become a regulative standard. The competing wills of individuals being all naturally equal, and ail properly exorbitant, 12 Sensualistic Philosophy. there is no reasonable umpire between them but the strong 1 hand. Might makes right. He who is able to overpower the assailant of his natural good, in the competition, if he chooses not to destroy him, has thereby a perfect property in the spared enemy. Slav- ery and violent conquest are legitimate ; and in this way was actually originated the controlling force which calmed the universal warfare into political so- ciety. When a conqueror had compelled a sufficient number of subjugated persons to work and fight for him, to show himself practically superior to all others, he was recognized as the suitable ruler, by all the others whose self-interest taught them to desire repose. Hence in order to secure the peaceable enjoyment of some natural good, they submitted their claims to the re- mainder to the powerful man, and became willingly a part of his subjugated train. The essence of political power, then, is force ; and in order to gain the end of government, repose, it must be an irresistible force. Government, then, should be absolutely despotic. And it is much more consistent that it should be an absolute monarchy in the hands of one man. The ruler is absolute proprietor of the persons and property of all the citizens; he is wholly irresponsible to them, as to all earthly authority. For, in passing from the state of nature into the political state, each person surrendered his individual inde- pendence absolutely to the Ruler, and a surrender of this kind is final and beyond recall. For, by this act, right of resistance is for the people annihilated ; and they have reduced themselves, as holders of such a franchise, to non-existence. The entrance of the in- teger into political society is, as to his separate rights, final suicide. The Ruler is master, and the citizens are property : property has no appeal against its own proprietor. Any right of conscience against the Ruler's fiat is, of course, out of the question : for Hobbes Senszialistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 1 3 does not believe in any conscience that can have rights. I have begun by detailing briefly the creed of this old Sensualistic philosopher, because his ability and boldness have carried it to its true results. It will be found that he has anticipated by two hundred years, the Sensualistic theories of our own day. The affinity be- tween them is significantly shown by their zeal in re- publishing his almost-forgotten works, and in vaunting his wisdom. Some of them may shrink from his ex- treme conclusions ; but we are left to suppose that this moderation is rather the result of prudence than of dis- approbation. The purpose at this time is not so much to refute, as to show the real contents of this scheme of metaphysics. In consistency, it must include a denial of spirit, of God, of all a priori judgments, of the reason and abstract ideas, of all moral distinctions, of free agency, and of civil liberty. It leaves man, in reality, only sense-perceptions, appe- tites, and associations thereof, presenting them in ap- parent modifications of memory and experience. The sole plausibility of Hobbes' description of human nature arises from one artifice, that he has availed himself tacitly of the great fact of man s depravity, to construct a sort of saturnine travesty of his practical principles and actions. It is true, that a multitude of men are selfish ; that they habitually disregard moral distinc- tions ; that they seem slaves to animal appetites, and incompetent to aspire to any other than animal good ; that they are best restrained by self-interest and fear. Hobbes' philosophy has no place for the doctrine of sin and of conscience. Hence, it is plausible for him to make this partial induction, and to ignore the great con- stitutional principles of reason and conscience in the human soul, which, in a true analysis of human nature, must always hold the prime place, and which, in fact, utter everywhere a constant, though often an unheeded, 1 6 Sensualistic Philosophy. the ideas themselves, which must be the only means of acquainting ourselves accurately with them. He should then have begun by the analysis, and inferred the origin of our ideas from their qualities. -Locke, having proposed first to ascertain the origin of our ideas, begins by an absolute denial of all innate ideas and principles in the soul. If we can understand his reasoning (Book I., Ch. I.), it appears to be simply this: That if we find the mind furnished with natural faculties for acquiring its ideas, it is unreasonable to suppose that nature has given us any innate ones. But the former is obviously true. And anyone who will con- sult his common sense impartially, will convince himself that the only ideas he has, are those acquired by expe- rience in the use of those faculties. We are bound, then, to conclude, that previous to experience of sensa- tions, the mind is a blank, a tabula rasa, a surface sus- ceptible of impressions, but absolutely without any char- acters inscribed upon it. And this conclusion is pushed so unsparingly, as to deny not only innate ideas, but innate principles of cognition. Thi:> famous demonstration contains two glaring faults. The pious author is misled by a material illus- tration suggesting a false analogy. The mind is not a tablet, written or unwritten by nature; it is an intelli- gent agent. It is not a surface, but a spiritual monad. And second, Locke heedlessly confounds the occasion of the genesis of ideas with the cause. It may be per- fectly true, that the intelligence exerts none of that cognitive power of which its nature makes it capable, and discloses none of those ruling norms of thought, or feeling, or will, which are originally constitutive of it, until it is stimulated by sensation. But from this, it by no means follows that sensation bestows those capacities and laws. To state this confusion of reasoning is sufficient to expose it. The question, whence the forms of thought and the ideas which seem to be original, must be decided Sens^taiistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 17 by wholly another process than Locke's ; by faithful analysis, not by a mere concurrence of experiences. To say, for instance, that the mind thinks of empty space when it has sense-perception of a body extended, is far short of proving that the abstract idea comes from the sensation. It may be, that it comes from the mind itself upon occasion of the sensation. And that, I repeat, is to be proved or disproved by something- else than mere synchronism. Locke defines idea as anything which is before the mind when it thinks. He traces the whole operations of the mind to two sources, experience and reflection. Experience means, with him, our objective experiences through the senses. And the mind's reflective processes contain nothing except what was first derived from sensation. Reflection is our internal experience. The ideas which it gives us are those of the operations of our spirits upon the objective experiences. Here we have the whole account of the processes of our soul. Fortunately for Locke's credit, the vagueness of his own apprehension of the reflective processes saved him from a part of the consequences of the Sensuab'stic phi- losophy. Under the mist of this description of reflec- tion, giving the mind, in addition to sense-perceptions, ideas of its own operations thereupon, the amiable au- thor was enabled to assume, from time to time, the exercise of the a priori powers of mind which he else- where so absolutely denies. But there remains his fatal dogma, that there is nothing in the mind save what first came from the senses. And his interpreters of a later day have taken care to clear away all uncertainty, by the sharpness of their exclusions, leaving us nothing but sensations and their modifications. Locke, having denied everything innate, attempts to give us a Sensualistic origin for some of the ideas which have been most confidently believed to be connatural, such as our ideas of space, duration, identity of self, 1 6 Sensualistic Philosophy. the ideas themselves, which must be the only means of acquainting ourselves accurately with them. He should then have begun by the analysis, and inferred the origin of our ideas from their qualities. Locke, having proposed first to ascertain the origin of our ideas, begins by an absolute denial of all innate ideas and principles in the soul. If we can understand his reasoning (Book I., Ch. I.), it appears to be simply this: That if we find the mind furnished with natural faculties for acquiring its ideas, it is unreasonable to suppose that nature has given us any innate ones. But the former is obviously true. And anyone who will con- sult his common sense impartially, will convince himself that the only ideas he has, are those acquired by expe- rience in the use of those faculties. We are bound, then, to conclude, that previous to experience of sensa- tions, the mind is a blank, a tabula rasa, a surface sus- ceptible of impressions, but absolutely without any char- acters inscribed upon it. And this conclusion is pushed so unsparingly, as to deny not only innate ideas, but innate principles of cognition. This famous demonstration contains two glaring faults. The pious author is misled by a material illus- tration suggesting a false analogy. The mind is not a tablet, written or unwritten by nature; it is an intelli- gent agent. It is not a surface, but a spiritual monad. And second, Locke heedlessly confounds the occasion of the genesis of ideas with the cause. It may be per- fectly true, that the intelligence exerts none of that cognitive power of which its nature makes it capable, and discloses none of those ruling norms of thought, or feeling, or will, which are originally constitutive of it, until it is stimulated by sensation. But from this, it b)' no means follows that sensation bestows those capacities and laws. To state this confusion of reasoning is sufficient to expose it. The question, whence the forms of thought and the ideas which seem to be original, must be decided Sensuaiistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 17 by wholly another process than Locke's ; by faithful analysis, not by a mere concurrence of experiences. To say, for instance, that the mind thinks of empty space when it has sense-perception of a body extended, is far short of proving that the abstract idea comes from the sensation. It may be, that it comes from the mind itself upon occasion of the sensation. And that, I repeat, is to be proved or disproved by something else than mere synchronism. Locke demies idea as anything which is before the mind when it thinks. He traces the v/hole operations of the mind to two sources, experience and reflection. Experience means, with him, our objective experiences through the senses. And the mind's reflective processes contain nothing except what was first derived from sensation. Reflection is our internal experience. The ideas which it gives us are those of the operations of our spirits upon the objective experiences. Here we have the whole account of the processes of our soul. Fortunately for Locke's credit, the vagueness of his own apprehension of the reflective processes saved him from a part of the consequences of the Sensuaiistic phi- losophy. Under the mist of this description of reflec- tion, giving the mind, in addition to sense-perceptions, ideas of its own operations thereupon, the amiable au- thor was enabled to assume, from time to time, the exercise of the a flrwrt powers of mind which he else- where so absolutely denies. But there remains his fatal dogma, that there is nothing in the mind save what first came from the senses. And his interpreters of a later day have taken care to clear away all uncertainty, by the sharpness of their exclusions, leaving us nothing but sensations and their modifications. Locke, having denied everything innate, attempts to give us a Sensuaiistic origin for some of the ideas which have been most confidently believed to be connatural, such as our ideas of space, duration, identity of self, 1 8 Sensualistic Philosophy. infinitude, and axiomatic, or self-evident truths. His method throughout has the same fundamental error of mistaking the occasion of a mental change for the cause. When do we have the idea of empty space ? he asks. Only when we see or feel two bodies separated in space, or a body occupying space by its extension. Does not this show that the abstract idea of space is an empirical one, as truly as the idea of color or figure ? How is the idea of duration generated ? Locke an- swers, that we get it from the empirical note of the succession in our own ideas. One idea follows another ; hence we derive the idea of succession, and succession is duration to us ; the only notion of duration which we really have. For, he argues: only let the succession of ideas stop, and our perception of duration is gone. Let a man sleep soundly ; the time seems to him but a moment, whether it be an hour, a night, or a year. If all flux of ideas should be arrested by virtue of the ex- clusive prominency and persistency of one idea before the mind as sometimes happens in profound reverie we should take no note of time. So, his followers add, a period of time which is filled up with a succession of numerous and vivid ideas, seems to the mind a long duration ; as when a country-youth first sees the many novelties of the city. So, our conscious identity is, according to this sys- tem, but an empirical idea, deduced from the observed sequence of two states in consciousness. As the second^ state follows the first, reflection refers it to the same subject ; and thus is generated the notion of our own identity. So, likewise, our idea of the infinite is con- founded with that of the indefinite. According to Locke, infinitude is an idea purely negative, implying only the absence of definite limit. Hence, when we en- deavor to construe it, we find ourselves resorting to the aid of number, in order to avoid falling into a com- plete confusion of mind ; and we think of infinite space, Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 19 as millions of leagues added to millions ; or of infinite time, as millions of years added to millions. For such a system as Locke's, there are no necessary truths, nor primitive judgments. These are the objects of his ridicule. Such of them as he does not denounce as meaningless verbal forms, he derives from experi- ence. It is true, that in his instances of necessary truths, he takes good care to cite only such as can be most easily made to appear empty ; while he avoids all allu- sion to the more evident and important ones. What man, he exclaims, was ever helped to the ascertainment of anything which he did not know before, by such max- ims as these ? " That which is, is." " Nothing can be and not be at the same time." Of such primary judg- ments as these : " No effect without a cause," or, " no means without an intended end," he says nothing. Those axioms which are not empty truisms, he sup- poses to be learned by experience. For the child does not even understand their enunciation, much less be- lieve them as necessary truths, until he has learned their truth in experimental instances. Locke, like the other leading Sensualistic philoso- phers, is a thorough Nominalist. In this he is obviously consistent. For if there is nothing in reflection, save the ideas derived from sensation, since our sense-per- ceptions are only of individual objects, there is nothing to which general terms can answer. They are names, and nothing more. General concepts are mere chimeras of the reason. Here we may mention the famous defi- nition of truth in our ideas, which, in the hands of Berkeley and Hume, led to results so astounding. " Truth in ideas," said Locke, " consists in their con- formity to their objects." A moment's reflection will convince you, that by this description we get no truth in any idea of the objective world whatever. For clearly, my idea of matter is not like matter ; my sub- jective idea of a color is not like a color; my idea of 2O Sens^calist^c Philosophy. solidity is not itself solid ; my idea of extension is not actually extended. Hence, Hume readily deduced his whole frightful conclusion of scepticism, and Berkeley his system of pure idealism. But what else could Locke give us as a definition, bound as he was in the trammels of his wretched sensualism ? He could not say, that the correctness of our ideas is determined by their rise according to the a priori laws of the intelligence; for he had begun by flouting all such laws. With him, the intelligence has no innate laws; it is a tabula rasa; its one original property is susceptibility of impressions. Locke's views concerning the evidence of God's exist- ence are characterized by two traits : an utter repudia- tion of the a priori method of Des Cartes, and an exclu- sive reliance on the a posteriori and teleological method. To the latter, there can, indeed, be no objection ; and its value cannot be exaggerated. . But this is upon two conditions: I. Provided the primitive and necessary judgment be granted, " no effect without adequate cause," the argument from the existing universe is solid. But this principle Locke nowhere asserts ; he passes it by in silence. In his philosophy there is no room for it ; for he denies all necessary first truths, and recognizes none but those derived from experience. 2. This a posteriori argument, if it stand alone, will only prove that God is a cause sufficient to account for the effect He is powerful, indeed, for the effects are grand ; He is intelligent, for the effects are full of skill; He is truly an Artifex mundi, a world-maker, a grand mechanic. Perhaps, also, since the effects are limited, confused, and imperfect as far a known to man, may the First Cause be limited and imperfect? To this question the philoso- phy of Locke gives no answer. For it has no place for the necessary truths of the reason, that the contingent must imply the uncaused, the finite must imply the in- finite, and the imperfect must imply the perfect. Let us admit these intuitions of the reason and conscience ; Sensualis tic Philosophy of Previous Century. 21 and we have, indeed, what St. Paul would show us in his natural theology, a Being of " eternal power and godhead." But in the Sensualistic philosophy, these necessary truths are ignored. Again, we have seen that until we find a God infinite in being, duration, and holi- ness, we have no true object of rational worship, but only a Demiurgus. But, says Locke, our only idea of the infinite is a negation ! He knows no other concep- tion of infinitude than the indefinite. Hence, the Di- vine Being, in becoming a suitable object of worship, must become a negation, an unknowable entity. Here we have the conclusion, which re-appears in the Sen- sualistic philosophy, from Hobbes to Herbert Spencer. In Book IV., Ch. iii., Sec. 6, Locke carries the Sen- sualistic philosophy to another of its results; the denial, or, at least, the doubt of the spirituality of man's soul. We cannot know, he asserts, without revelation, b}* the contemplation of our own ideas, whether that which thinks in us is incorporeal or not. For, so far as our own reflective acts inform us, it may be possible that a certain mass of material particles aggregated in a given way, may become capable both of thought and feeling. Now, I assert, that if this be so, it will be most philo- sophic to believe that the something which thinks in us is an organism of material particles. For why postu- late more than is requisite to account for all effects? Again, if the something which thinks is an organized body, then every instance of the destiny of organized things known in our experience would incline us, by analogy, to think that our souls will perish ; for do we not see all other organisms perish ? Nor can we be very sure that revelation designs to teach us the true immateriality of our souls ; if our own consciousness does not forbid our ascribing all spiritual functions to some species of matter. For when the Bible tells us that our souls are spiritus, irvevfij, -):p, what guarantee have we that it may not design we shall understand 22 Sensnalistic Philosophy. that this refined substance within us which thinks, is still as material as. the atmosphere which our lungs exhale? Thus, the Sensualistic philosophy betrays us again to the materialists. When we shall prove, what we now assert, that our rational consciousness does absolutely forbid us to ascribe spiritual functions to any form of matter, the importance of the doctrine will be obvious to every religious reader. It only remains for us to notice Locke's moral theory. We anticipate at once a doctrine unworthy of this de- partment of our souls' operations, from the exceeding brevity of the space which the author devotes to the subject. And a moment's thought prepares us to find that a Sensualistic philosophy cannot admit a correct theory of morals. Virtue and vice are not sensible qualities ; we do not discriminate them by touch, smell, the palate, the eyes, or the ears. The experience we derive through our senses cannot lead to the genera- tion of the distinction, because the knowledge of it must pre-exist, in order to our judging the actions we witness, as to their moral quality. But the experience of sense-impressions can tell us that some actions are followed by pleasure, and others by pain. Our self- interest in that which is pleasant or painful : there you have the production, and the only production of the reflective process acting upon our sensible experiences. There is all the basis, which these philosophers have, on which to construct a theory of morals. One can scarcely see a more impressive proof of the wretchedly vicious nature of their principles, than when he finds the amiable and devout Locke impelled by their rigor to identify natural and moral good, and to resolve the moral motive into self-interest. General good and evil are again and again defined by him as those things which are suited to produce in us pleasure or pain. Hear him proceed, Book II, Ch. xxvii., Sec. 5 : " Good and evil, morally considered, are nothing else than the Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 23 conformity or opposition which is found between our actions and a certain law; a conformity and opposition which attracts us to the good and deters us from -the evil, by the will and power of the lawgiver. And this good and this evil are nothing else than the pleasure and the pain which, by the determination of the law- giver, accompany the observance or the violation of the law. And this is what we call reward and punishment." Virtue, then, is obedience to a law. And the motive of that obedience is self-interest, stimulated by a fear of penalty and a hope of advantage. By this analysis, a real morality disappears as completely as in the alem- bick of Hobbes. The only difference which appears between the will of the lawgiver and the will of the transgressor is this: that the lawgiver is able to impose his penalty on the sinner. It will be impossible on this ground to prove that it is wrong to obey a law enjoin- ing \\icked actions, provided the wicked lawgiver is able to enforce a sufficient penalty. For the moment Locke resorts to any other element to discriminate be- tween the just and the unjust law, he surrenders his principle; the h priori distinction between things right and wrong in themselves, not in their pleasant or un- pleasant consequences only, unavoidably comes in. Or will those who think with Locke say, that the law which obligates is only the divine law, and such human laws as coincide therewith ? This is true ; but why true ? Only because God is able to override all advantage or loss derived from created lawgivers by His larger rewards or penalties? Then it is God's might which makes His right. There is but one other answer to the question, Why does 'God's law always obligate ? That is : because it is infallibly righteous. But the moment you assign this other reason, you inevitably introduce the primary moral distinction as wholly another than, and superior to, the distinction between natural advan- tage and los?. 24 Sensualistic Philosophy. The havoc which the Sensualistic philosophy makes in the foundations of ethics, presents one of the most crushing" refutations. It is my purpose to employ this line of opposition to the full; and hence this attempt to familiarize the reader's mind to it. 3. The philosophy of Hobbes, as partially revived by Locke, won many followers in England in the eight- eenth century. In the hands of Hume, of Berkeley, and of Hartley, it bore very contradictory yet legiti- mate fruits. But the healthy sobriety of the British mind, derived chiefly from the general influence of the Bible, prevented this philosophy from gaining a full sway in its native home. Its history reminds us of some of the plants of other continents transplanted to Europe, which flourished far more in the foreign than in their native soils. It was when transplanted to France, that the Sensualistic philosophy disclosed its real powers of mischief. It found there a congenial soil, in a population restless, pleasure-loving, acute, and un- controlled by any practical Christianity, ignorant of an enlightened Protestantism, and freed from the shackles of an effete Romanism. Here the daemon found for itself a "house swept and garnished." The real agent for naturalizing the ideas of Hobbes and Locke in revolutionary France was the Abbe de Condillac (whose philosophic works appeared from 1746-1777). The pre- cision and neatness of his style, the apparent simplicity of his system, and the quiet boldness of his dogmatism, fitted him for pleasing a superficial and sensual age. Cousin ascribes, indeed, to Voltaire the place of a fore- runner, who prepared the way for Condillac. When the former visited England, he found the philosophy of Locke in full credit, and he adopted its principles with enthusiasm. Voltaire was a literary man, rather than a philosopher. But while utterly devoid of both the power and the patience necessary for correct analysis, he was master, to a transcendent degree, of the arts of Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 25 illustration, of persiflage, and of satire. These he em- y ployed not only to assail Christianity, but to disparage the philosophy of Des Cartes and Leibnitz ; and thus he prepared an open field for the Sensualistic philosophy. The title of Condillac s first work, " Treatise on the Origin of Human Knowledge," and every character- istic of his method, betray his indebtedness to Locke. His whole work is to push Locke's principles to their extreme results ; which is begun in the earlier publica- tion just mentioned, and completed in his " Treatise of the Sensations," eight years later. Like Locke, he be- gins by the vicious method of seeking " the origin of our ideas," instead of observing their traits and conditions. Bolder than Locke, he announces it as his purpose to show that every process of the soul is reducible to a single principle, and that is sensation. The simplification which seems to be promised by this result is seductive to the superficial thinker; but such a design cannot but make havoc of the modest and humble rules of true, inductive science. With Condtllac, all the faculties, including what Locke distinguished as faculties of reflection, are generated by experience, from the one faculty of sensation, the only real power of the human soul. Thus Condillac precludes himself from those whole- some, though inconsistent, returns to rational views of the a priori powers of the soul, which Locke gains through the vagueness of his definition of the reflective acts. With Condillac, the favorite phrase is to call every operation of mind "a transformed sensation." Reflec- tion itself is a transformed sensation attention, mem- ory, comparison, judgments, desires, volitions all are but transformed sensations. In order to carry out his project of ascertaining first the origin of our ideas, Condillac tells us that we must ascertain how the human being acquires his first ideas. But this first acquisition is made in infancy ; and neither can we remember our own infantile experiences, nor 26 Sensualistic Philosophy. can an infant portray his to us. Hence, says Condillac, it will be unavoidable, that we shall make suppositions as to how the first ideas are acquired. Such is the pre- posterous foundation of the whole superstructure! He does, indeed, say that the consistency of this hypothe- sis concerning the unknown generation of our infantile faculties, with their adult operations, will be a guaran- tee that he surmises aright. But I reply, What guaran- tee have we that he does not misinterpret our adult experiences, at the imperious demands of a pre-con- ceived hypothesis ? His definition of perception is, " the impression oc- casioned in the soul by the action of the senses." Con- sciousness is "the feeling which a perception gives the soul of its presence in it." That is to say : perception is the soul's feeling of a sensible impression from with- but, and consciousness is simply the soul's feeling that it feels. The reader must be careful to apprehend how, by these definitions, Condillac obliterates at once, and forever, those distinctions between the soul's acts of in- telligence and of feeling, of understanding and of sus- ceptibility, and conation, which, in sound philosophy, are so important, and in common sense, are intuitively recognized. Intellect itself is, with him, a susceptibility, no more : perception is a sense-impression, no more. All other processes, whether intellectual, emotional, or voluntary, are but "transformed sensations." Thus the impassable chasm, which forbids the reduction of the intellectual and active powers to the same element, is sought to be evaded b}^ an arbitrary definition. But to proceed. If the mind has but one sensation ; or if one among several is made dominant by its own vividness, so that the others fade out, the mind is monopolized by it. This state we term attention. Thus, a sensation is at- tention, whenever it is exclusively vivid. The susceptibility to be impressed by sense may be Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 2 7 divided between a present and a past sensation. " These we perceive both at the same time : to perceive, and to feel the two sensations is the same thing." This per- ception (or feeling) of the sensation which we had, in the past, is memory. Thus, as soon as a sensation be- longs to the past, it is memory. So that memory also is " transformed sensation." "As soon as there is double attention, there is comparison ; for to be attentive to two ideas and to compare them, is the same thing." But since attention is but sensation dominant, and com- parison also is twin sensation, so, to perceive (or feel) a relation of difference or resemblance between two sen- sations is but to- attend to the two together. Thus judgment arises, and the forming of propositions by the mind. Comparison and judgment, then, are but " transformed sensations." We are often obliged to carry our attention from one object upon another, in considering their qualities separately. The attention thus directed is like light which reflects from one surface to another so as to illuminate both : and Condillac calls this " reflection." Thus reflection is also "transformed sensation." Abstraction is nothing but the attention directed upon one quality of an object instead of attaching itself to all the qualities together. Reasoning is nothing but a double judgment, or one judgment, within another. Imagination is only reflection combining images. So that abstraction, reasoning, and imagination also are but " transformed sensation." After this series of analytic juggleries, Condillac re- proaches Locke with not having carried his own system to its proper results. That philosopher, he complains, seemed to leave us under the belief that all these were, like the powers of sense, innate faculties. Whereas he should have discovered the principle of their genera- tion, and shown them to be only acquired habitudes of the mind. 28 Sensualistic Philosophy. The intelligent reader will have perceived, already, an initial, and an insuperable difficulty at the founda- tion of Condillacs system. If all mental functions are " transformed sensations," and sensation is feeling, then feeling is the one original power of man's soul. But how is a system of cognitions to be built upon an exclu- sive foundation of feeling? Feeling is not idea. It is related to thought, as caloric is to light. It is a func- tion of susceptibility, while thought is a function of in- telligence. Where, upon Condillacs system, does idea come in? His answer to this question is: that sensa- tion, by relation to the soul which it modifies, is a feel- ing ; by the relation which it bears to the external object, it is an idea. This, the only answer possible for him, on his principle, is no answer at all. Let any man consult his own consciousness, and he will see that while an idea stimulates feeling, the one is not transformable into the other. As in the analysis of a solar ray, heat attends the spectrum ; but the heat with- out the light could never give us the prismatic colors. Intelligence is necessary in order to the feeling itself. The mind must see, in order to be impressed ; unless it is an unintelligent, compound organ. Here may be seen the amazing omission of Condillacs scheme ; he leaves out that rational consciousness which is essential in order to sense-perception. How does mere impres- sion from without result in cognition ? Only as it is realized in our consciousness. That which makes all the difference between impression and perception, is the intelligent Ego: if the subject of the sensation has not seen it in his rational consciousness, it has not been sensation.; but a mere organic vibration, a function simply animal, and unintelligent. Condillacs analysis gives us the occasion of ideas, in the external impression : it leaves the cause totally out of the question : it gives us the condition, but takes away the foundation of cog- nition. And here may be repeated the objection made Sensualistic Philosophy of Previoiis Century. 29 against the scheme of Locke : Condillacs whole theory depends upon a gross confusion of occasion with cause. It is perfectly true, that there is neither cognition, feel- ing, nor volition, until some object is presented to the mind, upon which it may direct its powers of intellec- tion or activity. But this is wholly another thing from proving that the object generates any of these faculties or their actions. And a correct inspection will show us that the latter statement is not only without proof, but positively untrue. Thus : according to Condillac, attention is but domi- nant sensation. This is an account of the matter essen- tially incorrect, in that it omits the Ego, the subject which attends. Let us inspect the various instances in which we exercise attention, and we shall see that we are able to give it to the one of several impressions which is not dominant : we can withhold our attention from the obstrusive sensation, to bestow it on the faint and obscure one. Yea, we can withdraw it from all sensations, to bestow it upon abstract conceptions. The will obviously comes into play here : the Ego is at once seen to be the essential factor, the objective impression the mere condition. Exertion of will is in order to attention, and therefore not the consequence of it. The brightening of the idea attended to, until it rises into dominancy, is the effect, and therefore not the cause of our volition. So, it is equally shallow to say that comparison is but a dual attention. Attention to two ideas is indeed the condition of comparison ; no more. The relation of equality, difference, or the like, is a new idea not reducible to the idea of either of the objects of the dual attention ; not seen in, but between them. Condillac divides ideas into two classes, sensible and intellectual. The only difference which he makes be- tween the two is, that the sensible idea represents an object which is actually operating upon our senses : the 30 Sensualistic Philosophy. intellectual represents objects which once operated and have now disappeared from before the senses. If every- thing in the mind is transformed sensation, this is of course the only distinction possible. But the distinc- tion is obviously false. We have an intellectual idea of empty space, of abstract duration, of cause, of spirit as that which thinks, of God, of infinitude. Have either of these ever acted upon our senses ? Something phenomenal may have been the condition of the rise of these ideas ; but it is impossible that it should have been the source. This source must be sought, then, in the reason itself. If sensation is but impression relatively to the mind itself, and idea only as it is related to the object, then, of course, Locke's definition of truth in our ideas must be adopted in its fullest sense. Truth can only be the conformity of our ideas to their objects. The repre- sentative theory of perception must be held in its baldest form, with all the absurd consequences fixed upon it by Dr. Reid. And it is equally clear, that the sceptical result which Hume drew from that definition, must follow in the most rigid form. For between an object and the feeling with which it may impress us, there is obviously no relation of identity. The mind has no more real cognition of the true nature and form of the thing which impresses it, if sensation is relatively to the mind only impression, than an animal in the pitch- dark which is hurt by a blow knows thereby the form of the being who struck it. It only knows that it is hurt. Our perceptive ideas must be merely relative to our subjective law of feeling. We are rigidly confined within the charmed circle of our om spirits, and can never know that there is any correspondence between our ideas and objective realities. When Condillac proceeds to deal with our abstract ideas, he follows closely the false analysis of Locke ; as indeed his reduction of everything to " transformed Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 3 1 sensations " necessitates. With him our idea of space is nothing but that of an object extended. Our idea of substance is nothing but that of an aggregate of per- ceptible qualities. Our idea of duration is only a mod- ification of our experience of succession. The infinite is only the undefined. It is not the purpose of this chapter to give the detailed refutation of these state- ments/ But in order to put in a caveat against their acceptance, we beg the reader to consider, in passing, this result. If anything is certain in our consciousness, it is certain that we can only think properties as refer- red to a substance whose properties they are. Condillac ridicules the attempt to form an idea of " being in itself;" being, separated from all perceivable proper- ties : and his ridicule is just. We only know substance through some properties belonging to it. And it is equally certain, that we only know properties as refer- red to some substance in which they inhere. " Property in itself" would be as impossible an idea as " Being in itself." Thus, if we have no other idea of substance than merely an aggregate of properties, our cognition is re- duced to a zero, and the result is an absolute nihilism. If there is no valid idea of substance, other than of an aggre- gate of properties, then our conscious spirits are nothing except a series of successive ideas and feelings: and after these are reduced to naught, spirit itself vanishes ! Thought and thinker both disappear together in the abyss of Nothing. Condillac, like Locke, as we might expect, advocates the most extreme Nominalism. Deductive reasoning he declares to be nothing but the equating of indentical propositions. In his view, every process of deduction is precisely like the algebraic equation, in which one thing is set equal to another, and that again to another, until a solution is reached. He is also famous for the maxim, that "A science is only a language well con- structed." These points are only mentioned now, in 32 Sensualistic Philosophy. order that they may serve to illustrate the erroneous theory of the syllogism advanced by Locke and his fol- lowers, when we proceed to the more thorough testing of the principles of this philosophy. Let us now proceed to inquire what account Condillac gives of our moral states and acts. As he generated all the faculties of the understanding from simple sensa tion, he gives us the same source for all the faculties of the will. Every sensation, says he, is more or less agreeable or unpleasant in itself; for it is a contradic- tion to speak of feeling which is neither the one nor the other, and sensation is feeling. Now when present sensations give us feelings positively painful, or less pleasant than our previous ones, we cannot but compare the two states as to their relative pleasure. But Con- dillac thinks he has shown that comparison and judg- ment are but " transformed sensation." The rise in memory of the conception of the object which, experi- ence tells us, could give us the increment of pleasure, is also a transformed sensation. Now the judgment, which connects the pleasure with that object, is de- sire. What is it we do, when we desire? says he; we only judge a pleasure connected with a certain object. From this desire modified, he generates, also, passions, as love, hatred, hope, fear, joy, will. All these then are but " transformed sensations." A passion is but a desire which excludes all other desires for the time, or is, at least, dominant over them. Volition itself is but "an absolute desire, and such that we think the desired ob- ject in our power. The words ' I will,' mean, I desire, and nothing can oppose itself to this my desire ; all must concur with it." . This is the passive theory of Hobbes, in all except the names. Desire is but sensation transmuted, or re- flected back, and drawing us towards the object whence the sensitive impression came. Condillac ought to have inferred from this view, as Hobbes does, that the soul Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 33 has no real freedom. For obviously, it does not exert that determining" freedom as to how objects without shall impress it. But if desire is but this impression trans- formed, and if strong desire, with opportunity, is all of volition, then, clearly, I am no more a free agent in choosing an object, than I was in having the sense- impression happen to me, by the befalling of the out- ward object before me. Atalanta's free-agency had no more to do with her deciding to stop and pick up the golden apples, than it had to do with the fall of them in her path. So far as her choice entered, the one was as much fated as the other. But without true free-agency, responsibility is at an end. What room remains for a true moral system, on any plan whatever, it is impossi- ble for us to see. It is true that in an appendix to his " Treatise of Sensations," the author tardily and incon- sistently asserts the liberty of the soul. Experience, says he, teaches the sentient being to curb its desires, by the acquaintance which it has gained of the painful consequences of indulging some desires. This remem- bered experience appears in the problem, in the form of deliberation. The soul learns experimentally that this deliberation can and does cause the mischievous desire to subside, which otherwise was about to become volition by growing into denominancy. When this lesson is empirically learned, self-government begins, and the being is then a rational free agent. Our notion of power is nothing but a combination of these two empiri- cal ideas : first, that one may not do a thing (to which de- sire inclines him), second, that he still has the necessary faculties to do it. The consciousness of these two facts is our notion of power: as soon as the mind appre- hends it, it knows itself free. " Liberty consists, then, in determinations, which, while they always recognize our dependence by some part upon the operation of objects upon us, are the result of deliberations which we have made, or have had the power of making." 3 34 Sensualistic Philosophy. Such is the abortive and inconsistent scheme by which the author, after closing his work, seeks to retract the fatalistic consequences inevitable in it. The objection to the whole scheme is, that it again confounds a condition of free volitions with their effi- cient. In the obstinate and blind resolve to generate everything in man's soul out of simple sensation, the analyst practically leaves out the soul itself. He forgets this prime factor in the function ; the personal spirit, the Ego, with its original, innate spontaneity and the innate laws regulative thereof. Objective impression is indeed the occasion upon which spontaneity asserts itself in volition. That the objective impression is no more, is proved by the testimony of every man's con- sciousness: for who does not know that he often curbs and repells those impressions? It is proved by the fact that the same object is often no motive to volition whatever, with one man, while it unfailingly occasions it in another. How is it that like causes do not pro- duce like effects? The utter emptiness of Condillacs theory of volition is also shown by this remark : It wholly leaves out original dispositions ; indeed it has no place for them. But these are main elements of the problem, because they are the chief features of it, needing to be accounted for upon his scheme ; and they have more than all else to do with every case of volition, as its regulative cause. Take Condillacs statement in its simplest and most rudimental form ; all impressions are either painful or pleasurable. How comes a given impression to be the one, rather than the other? No- toriously, some objects are painful to some beings, which are pleasurable to others. There is obviously a law of disposition, which determines, a priori, whether a given objective impression shall be attractive and repul- sive. Since this law must preexist in order to any in- stance of attraction or repulsion, it is impossible that it can have been generated by attractions and repulsions. Sensualistic Philosophy o]^ Prci'ious Century. 35 In that la2U is the spring of subjective desires ; activities of soul for which the Sensualistic theory has no room, which yet every man's consciousness reveals to him as the very key of all his outward actions. In a word, Condillac, like Hobbes, has overlooked the all-impor- tant distinction between sensibility and conation : two constitutive and original powers of the soul, neither of which can be transmuted into the other. Upon his theory of the process of deliberation, we make here the following obvious remarks. Since it is the remembered experience of the pain incurred by in- dulging a given desire, which makes the counterpoise, deliberation is but the attraction of desire against desire ; no other principle can be consistently admitted by Condillac. So that we are virtually back at the solu- tion of Hobbes, who regarded deliberation as the libra- tion or see-sawing of two objective impressions com- peting to impose themselves on the soul. Where is the liberty, on this scheme? The soul, like the child's see-saw, is only victim, not agent. Next: there is no essential difference in this scheme, between the deliber- ation of a man, and the hesitancy of a beast. In each case, we have one impression against another impres- sion, actual or remembered. The only difference is the non-essential one, that the human animal, having more memory and intelligence, is more liable to the process than the more impulsive and unintelligent brute. Last : this theory of volition leaves out the moral motive as effectually as Hobbes'. We have here a balancing of natural advantages, but no higher standard of obliga- tion or rectitude. But what, according to Condillac, is rectitude? His " Treatise of Sensations " knows no other good or evil than the natural. Hence it must follow logically, that there is no other rational motive for man than self- interest, and no other rational end than pleasure. The author himself avows another consequence ; that good 36 Sensualistic Philosophy. and evil are not permanent distinctions, but are only relative to the sensibility of the individual. There is left here no basis whatever for a system of obligation and duty. It is true that Condillac, in a note, says : " The above propositions apply only to the distinctions be- tween good and evil, which a man would derive from the experience of his own sensibilities, while solitary. When brought into society, he would find that ' all which he has called good will not be morally good.' ' Is the moral distinction then generated by the will of society ? So it would seem, on his theory. But who are the integers who compose society? Only human beings similar to this solitary integer, who knew no other good or evil than his own selfish pleasures or pains, and liable to the same errors as to the morally good, with him. Obviously we have here no genesis for a true moral idea ; we have a mere generalization of the idea of self-advantage. Condillac cannot but see this: and hence, when in other places he is obliged to define moral good as conformity to law, he grants that a law merely arbitrary would not create obligations, nor would conformity -to it be virtue. Law only does this, he says, when its requirements are agreeable to God's law. Why, then, does God's law found obligation, and why is conformity to it virtuous ? The only answer is, because the divine law is the expres- sion of intrinsic righteousness ; but that answer Condillac cannot give ; his system has no place for an a priori idea like this. So that the moral distinc- tion is still as completely left out, as at the beginning. The best solution he can give is this : Laws are not arbitrary when they are dictated by the wants and fac-. ulties with which our Creator has naturally and gen- erally endowed men ; and when the act or neglect which the law prohibits would bring its own natural penalty. Such laws as these obligate, and for that reason. Still, I rejoin, there is no moral motive. For, the wants of Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 37 which Condillac speaks are, on his system, physical ; and the natural penalties of their violation or neglect are physical evil. Still we have no good but pleasure or pain, and no motive but self-interest; righteousness there is none in the whole scheme : the idea of it is really left out wholly. This definition of moral good as conformity to law curiously confirms my charge, that the Sensualistic philosophy has no place for any moral science. The very principle of that philosophy is, that the mind has nothing save what sensations give it. But morality can neither be seen, heard, touched, tasted, nor smelled. What is Condillac s reply to this? Mor- ality is visible, says he: for it consists in actions con- formable to law, and the actions are visible, and the law is visible ! How could a more emphatic confession be uttered, than this wretched statement, of the justice of my charge? It is too plain to need remark, that a for- mal act does not constitute morality. Its morality is in its intention, its subjective motive, the conformity of this motive to an a priori, rational standard, of which sense can have no cognition. Law is not morality be- cause it is law ; but because it is righteous law. And this abstract quality of righteousness, again, which alone characterizes the law as a moral standard, is invisible to eye-sight. Condillac is, again, inconsistent with himself, in assert- ing, in other works, the simplicity and spirituality of the soul, which the consistent reader of his main work, his " Treatise of the Sensations," is there virtually taught to deny. If sensations are absolutely the sole sources of all our ideas, since sensation only informs us of the being and property of bodies ; what business have we with spirits? They should have no place in our science : they are neither visible nor tangible. But Condillac held the simplicity and immateriality of the soul, and in one place argued for it with a most incon- sistent conclusiveness, from the process of comparison, 38 Sensualistic Philosophy. which,, in all other places, he describes as merely a transformed sensation. The comparison of two objects in a cognitive subject, says he, must imply the absolute unity and permanent identity of that subject. It sup- poses a centre, where the different terms of the com- parison are assembled. Locke spoke foolishly, when he stated that for aught we can know, some arrange- ment of material parts combined together, may be en- dowed by the Creator with the ability to think ; be- cause, as Locke says, we are ignorant of what matter may be capable, not knowing many of its qualities. This ignorance, answers Condillac, grounds no such conclusion. It is wholly unnecessary to be acquainted with all the properties of matter, to be certain that matter cannot think. " It is enough to remark that the subject of thought must be one. Now a material mass is not one ; it is a multitude." Here Condillac speaks like a true philosopher ; but he speaks against his own principle. If monadic spirit is the necessary middle term in every comparison, then the resulting judgment is something else than a " transformed sensation ;" it is a distinct idea generated by the understanding, not given to it. So far is Condillac from adopting the materialistic conclusion to which his system fairly leads, he leans rather to idealism. Having committed himself to. the representative theory of perception, he draws from it the conclusion which is inevitable, that our perceptions are only valid relatively to ourselves. We must, says he, " take good care not to think that the ideas which we have of extension and movement are conformed to the reality of things. Whatever may be the senses which give us these ideas, it is not possible to pass from what we perceive to what really is." Here he is trav- eling the same road which led Bp. Berkeley to a denial of the reality of the objective ; and Hume to universal scepticism. We shall see that this is not the last in- Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 39 stance in which the Sensualistic philosophy has ted to the inconsistent result of idealism. Once more : the " Treatise of the Sensations " seems to leave its sensitive subject devoid of all cognition of a God, and possessed only of certain superstitions which contradict themselves. This is consistent. Sensation itself shows us no God. But in subsequent works, the author presents an a posteriori argument for the exist- ence of an infinite God, which, in less inconsistent hands, would be sufficiently sound. The multitude of dependent effects which surround us must ultimately lead the mind to an Independent Cause. Our con- scious limitations of being necessitate, as a complement of our thinking, some Being absolute. This process would be valid, upon two conditions : That the mind be assured that a cause of every effect is a law necessary and universal; that the mind be capable of appre- hending the reality of the infinite. But what room is there for either of these beliefs in a system of" trans- formed sensations?" Each man's sensitive perceptions are partial and particular : they can contain in them- selves no universal, necessary truth. Sensation can only be of the definite and the limited: how then can it contain the infinite ? In fact, Condillac nowhere discusses or states the law of causation as a necessary truth : he simply omits it. But here he inconsistently assumes it, contrary to the spirit of his system. These inconsistencies were probably forced upon him by the influence of prescriptive opinions, and of the current beliefs of the age out of which he grew. The age which he helped to usher in was a bolder one ; and in carry- ing out his method, it did not hesitate to avouch the legitimate corollaries of materialism and atheism. 4. The rashness and audacity requisite to avow the full results of the principles of Locke, and especially of Condillac, were found in the French writer Helvetius, whose noted work, " L'Esprit," appeared in 1758, just 4O Sensualistic Philosophy. when the labors of his predecessor had placed the Sen- sualistic philosophy upon the throne of popular opinion in that country. This book propounds a theory of the human mind, as a foundation for a moral theory, which begins with the principles of Con.dillac, and only differs from him in dropping- his amiable inconsistencies. According to Helvetius, as according to his predeces- sors, the problem of philosophy is to investigate, not the properties, but the origin of our ideas. Man has but two mental powers, sensation and memory, which are both passive powers. Sensation is purely a phys- ical susceptibility : and memory is but sensation pro- longed and enfeebled. Judgment is also but sensation modified ; to say " I judge " is the same thing as saying " I feel." Our ideas of space, duration, spirit, infini- tude, are but illusions of thought. We really know nothing of space but extension, of infinitude but the in- definite. Errors of judgment arise wholly from pas- sion and ignorance. Our mental processes are essen- tially the same with those of brutes; and the only rea- son that man is in a higher state than they, is, that his corporeal organization gives him a superiority, and especially the capabilities of his hands, as compared with their hoofs and claws. Liberty is an illusion, save as it is the liberation of our bodily members from ma- terial bonds ; freedom of will is an idea of which phi- losophy can know nothing, and which can only be held, if held at all, on the authority of theology. As all ideas are merely relative to our own susceptibility of impres- sion, certainty is impossible, and absolute or necessary truths there are none. All ideas are but probable ap- pearances ; and a calculation of probabilities is the only reasoning possible. Helve tins revives the supposition of Locke, that a body organized somehow of mutter may possibly be sentient, and thinking ; and to this opinion he gives the fullest weight of probability. Indeed he leans to the opinion, that all matter is, if we but knew Sensualistic Philosophy of Prev TOILS Century. 41 it, sentient. " One can only understand by this word, matter, the collection of all the properties common to bodies. The meaning of the word being thus de- termined, it would only remain to know whether exten- sion, solidity, and impenetrability were the only proper- ties common to all beings. May not the discovery of such a force as attraction, for example, make us suspect that bodies have properties still unknown, such as the faculty of feeling, which, while only manifesting itself in the bodies of animals, may yet be common to all bodies ?" Have we not here, in different words, the same conclu- sion which is presented to us in our own day, as the last result of its " advanced thought ? " Of God and of immortality Helvetius, of course, knows nothing ; and of the former his work speaks not one word. It will not be hard for the reader to divine what kind of moral theory this author deduces from such a psy- chology. . It is, of course, a system of unmitigated and supreme selfishness. Enjoyment is man's only rational end : and the only enjoyment is physical, the pleasures of the senses. The universal motive of action is self- interest craving this end and shunning the opposite. This is equally the sole motive of individuals and of societies and nations. The man who will rise above prejudices and self-flatteries and make a true analysis of motives, will find that he never performed a deliberate act from any other motive than self-interest, and that mankind never does. What, then, is the motive of a sym- pathetic act, relieving the suffering of another without reward ? Says Hclvetius, the motive is nothing but the selfish desire the agent has to deliver himself from the instinctive pain of sympathy ! So, when the affection- ate mother practices what the world calls disinterested devotion to her children, her real motive is the selfish desire to enjoy the self-gratification and the applause attached to such actions. Is any gratitude due, then, from any beneficiary to any benefactor? Strictly, none : 42 Sensualistic Philosophy. the benefactor has no right whatever to claim grati- tude. Society, perceiving, from the view of self-interest, the advantage of encouraging and multiplying such benefactions, diligently inculcates the sentiment of gratitude ; but it is an artificial sentiment which men feel they are interested to propagate ; nothing more. So, the most splendid acts of patriotism are simply acts of self-gratification. When the elder Brutus ordered the execution of his two sons, it was only because the passion of patriotism was more imperious than that of paternity. When the benevolent man does good, and the malevolent mischief, it is simply because, to the nature of one, the sight of good has become by habit a selfish enjoyment, and to the other, the sight of suffer- ing is agreeable. Both are equally consulting their own selfish pleasure. Society, moved by self-interest, and perceiving its advantage in the multiplication of benevolent and patriotic actions, assiduously fosters the self-gratification and applause now attending them, and this is the whole account of what men call approbation. The probity of an action is nothing but its utility. From this code it follows ; and Helvetius bold) 7 avows the corollary; that there are no duties of self-restraint from any acts not visibly injurious to our own enjoy- ment. There can be no sin in any sensuality which, on the whole, confers pleasure. The wretched trade of the Cyprian is to be regarded as, on the whole, appro v- able ; because their luxuries stimulate the handicraft arts, and circulate money. The virtues of modesty, chastity, and temperance are the objects only of his gibes : he labors to show from history, that they are unnecessary follies. Love and friendship are with him simple results of selfishness: for their appetencies are nothing but the expressions of a selfish want. Of the affection of the sexes, he knows nothing but animal lust, and sneers at all else as an insolent affectation. The sole impulse to friendship is Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 43 the sense of pain which one feels for lack of a vent for the expression of the predominant passion of the hour. If a man is prosperous, his only need of a friend is that he may indulge himself through him, in the selfish vaunt- ing and a contemplation of his welfare. If he is in adversity, then he needs a fellow, simply as an object by which he may gain the selfish relief of querulous- ness. (See Bernard Mandeville's " Fable of the Bees," etc.) If the motive of action is thus absolutely simple and uniform, how comes it that men differ so much in opinions and conduct ? This arises, says he, solely from ignorance : it is because men do not understand alike the actual effects of actions on their own well- being, Hence, all that is necessary to procure uniform virtue, is, that the rulers shall diffuse intelligence. The whole art of. ruling well consists in teaching men per- spicuously what sorts of action will, on the whole, result in most pleasure, and in directing and stimulat- ing them by the hope of sensual gratifications. All men's natural capacities are equal ; and all the differ- ences of character and talent are caused by education. For, indeed, the sole attribute of the mind is a capacity to be impressed. The only faculties are sensation and memory ; and all the rest are merely modifications of these. Character is naught but a congeries of acquired habits ; and these are the handiwork solely of the out- ward impressions to which the person is subjected, and whose occurrence is to him fortuitous and unavoidable. Hence, it is obviously absurd to hold a man responsible for his character and principles of action ; for they are in no sense of bis choosing, but are results of a passive power in his nature, operated on from without. It would be precisely as unreasonable to hold the man responsible for these principles, as to hold the stone responsible for the cavities worn in it by the continual dropping of the water. With man's free agency denied, 44 " Sensualistic Philosophy. and his active principles turned into results of a passiv- ity, it is obvious that no basis whatever is left for a sys- tem of ethics. Man is simply a more accomplished beast, with certain instincts cultivated by the circum- stances incident to his gregariousness. It was not necessary for Helvetius to draw the conclusion, that man has no immortality, and is subject to no future rewards and punishments. The sensual and infidel Frenchman needed no help for this, but speedily ran to the conclusion, " Death is an eternal sleep." We thus see the Sensualistic philosophy, uninten- tionally revived by Locke, and furthered by Condillac, flower out in the bold hands of Helvetius into its matured results. This audacious speculator leads us down to the worst conclusions reached by the philoso- pher of Malmesbury, more than a hundred years before. Unrestrained by that thin show of respect which the Christian sentiment of England imposed on Hobbes, causing him to veil his virtual atheism, the insolent Frenchman discloses to us what are the real results of the dangerous maxims from which the Sensualistic philosophy flows : he interpreted his master, Condillac, as Mandeville did Hobbes, and as Collins and Hartley did Locke. This miserable book was received with acclamation by the French society which had been trained up under the tuition of Voltaire. Even a Rousseau could see its mortal taints, and protest against its manifest materialism and atheism. But Helvetius was hailed by the sceptical multitude as the greatest of the interpreters of human nature ; and his system of naked selfishness and sensuality became the " mode " with the genteel mob of Paris. It thought, with Madame du Deffant, that he was "the man who had told everybody's secret." Here should be repeated the remark which I made upon the scheme of Hobbes : that its plausibility arises wholly from the fact, that the instances upon which it is supported are taken ex- Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 45 clusively from diseased specimens of human nature. Helvetius analyses, in a pretentious and imperfect man- ner, the motives of the depraved, the Godless, the sen- sual, the supremely selfish ; that is, of the debauched society amidst which he lived ; and he had no trouble in finding self-interest and animal good their exclusive rule and end. He had only to treat as hypocrisies the judgments of reason and conscience, which are so influential in all natures not fatally debauched, but which he and his had covered up beneath the sordid accretions of their sensuality ; he had only to sneer them off the stage ; and his work was done, to his hand. Cousin, when describing the system of Helvetius ex- pounder, Saint Lambert, remarks upon the citation of the moral independence of Cato, who, in the midst of his overthrow, preferred the testimony of a right- eous conscience to the guilty prosperity of Julius Csesar. "Victrix causa Diis placuit, victa Catoric" But this instance is overwhelming to the selfish system ; for public opinion and advantage were wholly on the side of Caesar ; and had these been the rudiments of Cato's moral system, he should have envied the guilty but prosperous -conqueror. The critic then remarks, with fine sarcasm, " I cannot imagine how Saint Lambert was so maladroit as to invoke such a reminiscence. It is an act of justice we must render to Helvetius, that he chooses his examples much better : he cites none but tyrants and strumpets." 5. Helvetius was too outspoken in declaring the con- sequences of the Sensualistic philosophy, to complete the work of corruption. The better classes of the French people recoiled from the naked enormity of his conclusions. The Church condemned his book, and even compelled the author to sign a recantation, in which he exercised all the unblushing falsehood which his doctrines naturally sanctioned. The Sorbonne de- 46 Sensualistic Philosophy. nounced his system. Even the old autocrat of infidelity, Voltaire, dissented, and the sentimental Rousseau ear- nestly protested against the sensuality and materialism of the scheme. The sounder thinkers, like Turgot, ex- posed the conclusions and the premises. It remained for the friend and literary executor of Helvetius, Saint Lambert, an old and mediocre poet, to place a coating of decency upon his nauseous principles, without in reality amending them in any respect. The result was their general adoption, during the revolutionary epoch, by literary men and politicians of the new party. Saint Lambert, when a very old man, and not far from the end of the eighteenth century, left the walks of the muses, and published his " Principles of Morals among all Nations; or, Universal Catechism." This work was applauded by his cotemporaries, and one of the decen- nial prizes which the government of the Consulate had decreed for the encouragement of those who reflected honor on the nation by their works, was decreed to him in the most complimentary terms. Saint Lambert's point of view is clearly disclosed by his praises of Helvetius, of Locke, and especially of Hobbes. u Helvetius," says he, " is the first moralist who has made use of the principles of Locke ; and he employs them without pedantry and without obscurity: he aims to show the effects of the three principal causes of our errors ; our passions, because they make us see objects under only one aspect : ignorance of facts ; and the abuse of words. In treating of this last cause of our errors, he refers to Locke : but it is after having gone much farther than he went. Concerning virtue, he gives Us notions clearer and juster than any one has had before him. It results from his principles, that the thing which has most retarded the progress of morals is the habit of attaching the idea of virtue to actions, to a conduct, which are not useful to any one, and of separating particular interests from the general in- Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 47 terest." (Thus self-advantage is assumed as the only moral end.) " Hobbes is the first who has had clear ideas about that portion of freedom accorded to our souls. His opinion about the right of nature has been much censured ; it yet appears to me the truest which there is concerning this matter ; that is to say, that there is no right of nat- ure" The morals of Saint Lambert know, in fact, no spirit, and no God. The latter is left out of his system. He has nothing whatever to do with duty, obligation, or sanctions. The idea of future rewards and punish- ments is as totally omitted, as though he were writ- ing of pigs. Says he, " A man upon entering the world is only an organized, sensitive mass ; from all that surrounds him and from his own wants, he receives that mind, which may be, perchance, the mind of a Locke, or Montesquieu, that genius which will master the elements and measure the skies." " Man is sensi- tive to pleasure and pain : these sensations are the sources of his cognitions and actions. Pleasure : pain : These are his masters : and the business of his life will be, to seek the one and shun the other." " Nature creates our souls " by means of the ideas which strike our senses. Satirizing the " superstitious moralists," whom Helvetius had termed contemptuously, " hypo- crite moralists," he says : " They propose, by the sacri- fice of the pleasures, to merit that happiness which they have placed beyond this life. With them the present is nothing ; the future is all. And in the finest parts of the world, the science of salvation has been cultivated at the expense of happiness." According to Saint Lambert, the only moral motive is animal good : and the only moral standard is public opinion and the utility of our actions. Conscience is simply a sentiment ; the pleasure or pain, namely, which arises from perceiving that our act has incurred the 48 Sensualistic Philosophy. reprobation of public opinion and has been destructive of pleasure. In proof, he offers the fact that we usually blame ourselves for the actions which public opinion blames, and for no others. Our instinctive principles of action, as they are called, if they go beyond the de- sire of pleasure and aversion to pain, are nothing but the results of associations which experience teaches us to form between our sensations. The " Universal Catechism '' begins thus : i. " What is man?" Ans. "A being sensitive and rational." 2. "As sensitive and rational, what ought he to do?" Ans. " Seek pleasure, and avoid pain." 3. " Who are those who love themselves aright?" Ans. "Those who do not separate their own welfare from the wel- fare of others." "What is virtue?" Ans. "It is a habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others." It is true that the author also deduces some respectable rules; such as these:. "Why is pride a vice?" "Because it injures ourselves and others." " Whether powerful or feeble, mortal, be just to all men." " What is justice ?"" A disposition to conduct ourselves towards others as we would desire them to conduct themselves towards us." But from the princi- ples of the Sensualistic philosophy, these good pre- cepts are only inconsistencies. If man has no other rational end than to seek pleasure and shun pain ; if he is to have no hereafter; and if he is not related to an infinite rectitude in any divine ruler, then it can never be shown to be rational to seek the happiness of others at our own expense. No duty involving self-clenial can ever be demonstrated. For, why should a man forfeit his highest rational end, for the sake of any other end ? Will Saint Lambert say, that the pain of denying ourselves a sensitive enjoyment must be chosen, rather than the pain of braving adverse public opinion? Or will he say : Sensitive pleasure must be postponed to social and intellectual ones ? Let us sup- Sensualistic Philosophy of Previous Century. 49 pose the transgressor to answer : " I am so constituted as to be callous to the pain of adverse public opinion, and to intellectual joys, and to the pain of witnessing my fellow creature's misery." This philosophy has no answer : To that man, the supremely selfish conduct is the most rational, and therefore the most proper, wher- ever he is not restrained by force. I have thus presented, in brief outline, the history of the earlier Sensualistic philosophy of modern Europe, because there is no way so profitable for learning the true nature and tendencies of a system. The reader may be assured that there is no waste of time and la- bor in such a review. It teaches us by the sure lights of experience. As we see these first principles, in suc- cessive ages, and in different countries, leading the most diverse spirits towards or to the same malignant re- sults, we become assured of the falsehood and danger of the premises, as no mere speculation could convince us. We see a pure and pious Locke, a perspicacious ecclesiastic like Condillac, an aged literary coxcomb like Saint Lambert, pursuing their deductions from the primal error, which denies to the human spirit all ti priori ideas and judgments, assigning to it nothing but perceptions and their results. They are restrained in part by their prescriptive opinions, and their tempers and educations. But they yet travel in the same direc- tion with the hard-mouthed, atheistic Hobbes, and the debauched roue, Helvetius. They stop short of the most extreme conclusions of the latter, only in virtue of a happy inconsistency. The tree is known by its fruits. Moreover, the social consequences of the par- tial prevalence of these opinions have given the world a lesson which it should never forget. Men often stig- matize metaphysical philosophy as shadowy and vague : they call it cloud-land, contrasting the instability of its positions with the practical and useful truths of physics, as the fickle vapors are contrasted with the solid 4 50 Senstialistic Philosophy. ground. Let us accept the similitude for a moment. We are at once reminded that it is from this cloud-land, the most beneficent and the most destructive agencies descend, which bless or devastate the habitations of men. From those shifting clouds descends the genial rain, which waters the earth, making it yield bread for the eater and seed for the sower. Thence also descends the mighty wind, which wrecks the costliest works of man and buries the mangled builder beneath his own ruins. Thence falls the thunderbolt, which in one in- stant dashes him into death. The philosophy of the infidels and Sensualists of France was the storm-cloud from which fell the most ghastly ruin witnessed in modern times. The reign of terror was the offspring of this philosophy. It was under its express guidance that the legislature decreed God a non-entity, and death an eternal sleep ; that divine worship was formally abolished, and a courtesan enthroned as the Goddess of Reason ; that the guillotine stood u en permanence," pour- ing its stream of innocent blood down the street daily ; that the prisons were crowded with the noblest and best of the land, and emptied by indiscriminate massa- cre ; that marriage was superseded, and twenty thou- sand bastards were born to Paris in one year; that the skins of human victims were actually tanned in the tan- neries, and employed for common leather. It scarcely needed the atrocities and frenzy of the Paris Com- mune in our own days to give every reasonable man as- surance that the same tree will ever bear the same fruit. To sum up the whole in one word, the theory which begins by denying to man his spiritual attributes, natu- rally ends in making him an animal. None can deny, in the light of this history, the pow- erful influence of philosophy upon human well-being, either for good or for evil. Is this subject of thought, then, irreducible to a science, as the forces of the clouds and winds were for our forefathers ? Are metaphysical Sensu alis tic Philosophy of Previous Century. 51 inquiries incapable of coming into the form of any true and practical science which may yield us safe rules of precaution and of moral proceeding ; because the sub- ject, is incapable of measurement in magnitudes and numbers ? If we are to submit to this conclusion, then we must be resigned to regard the moral and spiritual powers of human nature, just as our primitive fore- fathers regarded the forces of the sky, as things real, terrific, but unknowable ; whose devastating powers may burst upon us, we know not when ; which we can no more resist than we can prognosticate. One thing is certain : the mental and moral sciences cannot be formulated by imposing upon them the " Positivist " method ; for this is to annihilate them, by destroying everything characteristic of that rational spirit which is their subject. May we not hope that, as the genius of a Maury has at length found the laws of those me- teorological forces which, to former ages, were only unknown fears; so the patience and humility of other inquirers will finally settle the laws of spirit, and build a philosophy which shall command the confidence of all? But if this is ever effected, it must be by the same modest and faithful methods by which Maury has tracked the viewless winds. We must not arrogantly begin with hypotheses as to the sources of the things we examine ; nor resolve that nature shall be forced, whether or no, upon the Procrustean bed of our sim- plifications. We must begin by the faithful and pains- taking inspection of the facts of consciousness, and learn from the qualities of these facts by a true induc- tion, what nature shall choose to disclose to us of her methods. CHAPTER III. ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN MIND, BY JAMES MILL. nnHE foremost English name in the false philosophy 4- of the nineteenth century is that of John Stuart Mill, who has recently passed from the stage. The plea for the Sensualistic philosophy, which we propose to review in this chapter, was written by his father. We shall find that in most respects the son has inherited not only the name, but the opinions of the family. One of the later acts of the son's life was to edit a complete edition of this work of James Mill, with copious notes by himself, Professor Bain, and the historian Grote. The relation of paternity which the father bears to the system of his more famous and influential son, gives great importance to this book. I have selected it as the clearest representative of the revived philosophy of sensualism in our century, as it is one of the earliest. We shall now see this false system proceeding from the same postulates, and advancing to the same con- clusions, which we briefly reviewed in the previous century. Its first principle is: "Nihilin intellectu quod non prius in sensu " : its last deduction is, again, mate- rialism and atheism. One of the most remarkable traits of the work of James Mill is, that we have here a psychology, without any mention, even the slightest, of a soul, or God ! Morell, noting the latter omission, finds it the natural result of his principles : but he adds : " Whether the author would have sanctioned such inferences, I have no means whatever of judging." The autobiography (52) Analysis of the Human Mind. 53 lately published of his son supplies that means : for J. S. Mill tells us, with an indecent boldness, that an embittered hatred and scorn of Christianity was one of the chief traits of the parent whom he so greatly revered. We may remark in passing, upon this, as a characteristic instance of the quiet insolence of infidel- ity. Let a theologian offer any discredit to a quality which these gentlemen have chosen to select, as an object of their own value and veneration, such as the quality of philosophic liberality, or toleration, and they visit upon him their keenest resentment. But let Mr. James Mill outrage the conscience, heart, and reason of all Christendom, by selecting for his spite and con- tumely that system which the wise and good of all ages have venerated for its supreme purity, tender- ness, and beneficence ; and he is to be tolerated with a scientific equanimity, if not positively applauded for his candor ! This is one specimen of the dogmatism of science ; a fault which threatens in our day to surpass the imperious bigotry of mediaeval theology. Mr. James Mill's system of psychology is extremely simple and perspicuous. He undertakes to construct a complete science of the human mind and will, of two elements : sensations and association. And this attempt is so literal as to omit from his postulates the being of mind itself! It is true, that he is sometimes betrayed into inconsistent references to the percipient self; for this is the penalty which common sense exacts of all who attempt to reject her. But not only does Mr. Mill omit all definition of mind, or spirit, as substance, and ignore the question whether it is immaterial substance : not only does he expressly deny all a priori and all necessary powers to the mind, except those of associa- tion ; he says expressly, that the affections which we term states of mind, are the mind. A sensation is, with him, " a point of consciousness." Such "points of con- sciousness compose our sentient being" (pp. 13, 17). With 54 Sensualistic Philosophy. him, consciousness is but another name for all the mind's affections. To him, our feelings are our conscious- ness. He thus rejects all reflective character in con- sciousness, while he rejects the power itself from the rank of a faculty (pp. 225, 226). It is simply the general name for all mental affections in his scheme, and in reality amounts to no more than a passive power of sensibility to impression. Again, like C&ndillac, he almost uniformly calls sensations feelings. Like him, he begins his analysis of the bodily senses with that of smell, for the very purpose, as it would seem, of reducing all sen- sations, including the visual, to the grade of a smell, a mere impression of a sensibility, a feeling, as distin- guished from an intellectual notion. (See rjp. 71, 223, 224.) So, ideas directly gained by sense-perception are also currently called " feelings ; " and the only description we have of a simple idea is, that it is a trace, or " copy of a single sensation." Everywhere, ideas are " copies of sensations." The only account we get from him of the perceptive process, is that " a copy " of the sensa- tional "feeling" remains in the mind after the sensation has gone ; and that copy is the idea. It is, of course, less vivid than the " feeling " of which it is a copy. Another radical trait of Mr. Mill's system, with which the reader must be acquainted from the first, is his as- sumption (without proof) of that definition of cause which makes it only an invariable and immediate ante- cedent of the change called effect. That this is all of the rational idea of cause that the notion of power in cause is an illusion is, with him, a maxim neither to be debated nor questioned. And he is fond of asserting that it is a maxim so well established by his school, that repectable philosophers have ceased to debate it. This theory of causation is applied everywhere (and as we shall see, is virtually applied, in a vicious circle, to prove propositions on which it depends). Thus, in ex- plaining the origination of a tactual sensation, the whole Milfs Analysis of the Human Mind. 55 is accounted for as antecedent and consequent phenom- ena ; the organ of nervous matter and tangible mass being the antecedent ; sensation the consequent. Thus, the true cause of the sensation, soul, is quietly left out, the whole effect being in the sequence of changes alone. " The expression, ' I feel the table,' includes both the antecedent and consequent " (p. 33). And the proceed- ing of the argument shows that, in the author's view, the expression includes nothing more. Again, on p. 51 : " Sensation exists only by the presence of the object, and ceases upon its absence ; nothing being here meant by the presence of the object, but that position of it with respect to the organ which is the antecedent of sensation." Thus, by cleaving to this view of causation, in its baldest literality, soul is again dropped out, as the unseen percipient power, and nothing remains but a pair of phenomena. So, in the definition of associated ideas, we are taught (p. 78) : " Our ideas spring up, or exist, in the order in which the sensations existed of which they are the copies. This is the general law of the 'Association of ideas'; by which term, let it be remembered, nothing is here meant to be expressed but the order of occurrence" And, on p. 81 : " Not that any power is supposed to reside in the antecedent over the consequent ; suggesting and suggested mean only antecedent and consequent, with the additional idea that such order is not casual, but, to a certain degree, permanent." But it is time that we heard Mr. Mill expound the other corner-stone of his philosophy, association of ideas. By means of this we shall see him create every primitive judgment, every a priori idea, every rational and intellective faculty, and all the powers of the will. In a word, his theory may be correctly described as a literal acceptance of the statement that man is "a bundle of habits." All his powers, intellectual and active, are resolved into certain habits of associating things; and so fully does he hold this, as to leave out 56 Sensualistic Philosophy. of the account, the Being which is qualified by the habits ; unless that be a u bundle of nerves." When we note how ideas follow each other in our consciousness, we perceive that they do not come at haphazard. As to sensations, it is the presence of objects which dictates their rise ; but as to ideas, their order depends wholly upon the order of the sensations of which they are copies. Sensations are actually in the mind, synchro- nously, or successively. Hence the ideas left by those sensations which were present synchronously, recur synchronously; and the ideas of those sensations which were felt successively, recur successively. For the whole law of association is summed up in this : that we always tend to have former processes repeated again as they first affected us. Other philosophers have fol- lowed Mr. Hume, in accounting the ties of association as not only previous coexistence, or succession ; but also, resemblance of ideas, or contrast, and cause and effect. Mr. Mill does not believe that contrast is any tie of association at all. He regards our association of resembling ideas as simply an instance of association by coexistence. And he rebukes his own master, Mr. Hume, for enumerating cause and effect as a distinct kind of tie of association, because they both hold that cause is nothing but immediate and uniform antecedent ; so that this species of association is nothing but an in- stance of association by previous succession. [We may mention, as a specimen of Mr. J. S. Mill's partial dissent from his father's system, that the son, instead of resolv- ing association of resembling ideas into a case of asso- ciation by coexistence, does just the reverse : he con- siders every association by coexistence as a case of resemblance.] If the reader asks, what interest Mr. James Mill has in reducing our ties of association to the two of previous coexistence and succession, a little reflection will show him. On the Sensualistic scheme, all It priori ,ideas and powers are to be gotten rid of. Hence, Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. 57 the phenomena of association are to be reduced to the most mechanical terms possible. And especially are functions of comparison and primitive intuition to be denied, at the basis of association. But now, if an original tie of association is found in the resemblance of things, this must imply a comparing act, as in order to the perception of resemblance. For how can resem- blance between two things be seen without comparing them ? And does not an act of comparison imply, as & priori to its performance, a middle term, between the two things compared, namely, percipient mind ? and must not this intelligent agent be regarded as endued beforehand with some subjective law of thought regu- lative of its comparing acts? This is as indisputable as that a pair of scales cannot go about the weighing of masses unless they have been furnished with a stand- ard of weights. Here, then, we should have that thing so inadmissible to the Sensualistic philosophy, a reason endued with a priori principles of judgment. Where- fore it must be denied, per fas aut nefas, that one resembling thing can originally suggest the idea of what it resembles. So, if a cause should suggest its effect, not yet experienced in sequence ; or an effect its cause, not previously seen in antecedence, we should have unavoidably another judgment hateful to the sen- sualistic thinker, a primitive intuition of cause and power. Hence the denial of these as original ties of association. Two other remarks will complete the outline of Mr. Mill's doctrine of associated ideas. He attaches great importance to this assertion : that when trains of asso- ciated ideas somewhat long have frequently passed in the mind, the attention may become so engrossed by some of the more vivid ideas associated, that the mind takes less and less note of the less vivid intermediate links. This goes on, until at length, in passing these trains of ideas through the mind, some dimmer links 58 Sensiialistic Philosophy. cease to be noted at all, or apparently drop out of con- sciousness. As links for bringing in the associated ideas, they were at first necessary : the train would not have passed to its completion without them. But the mind learns by practice to abridge its trains, or, so to speak, contract its associated processes, by skipping the unimpressive links, until the ordinary, careless thinker totally forgets how the associations were first formed. Hence, he is liable to misconceptions con- cerning the real source of conceptions and other com- plex trains, and falls into the blunders of the rational psychology, such as inventing a priori principles to account for certain judgments. The other doctrine is, that ideas which are very fre- quently synchronous or successive in sensation, and hence also very frequently so in idea, come to be asso- ciated with a corresponding closeness. Ideas which represent sensations always synchronous or immediately successive, are at last so associated together, that the association appears necessary. This, according to Mr. Mill, is the explanation of all beliefs called necessary, by other philosophers, and of many illusions called a priori ideas. To explain the manner in which association gener- ates our mental processes, we must, says Mr. Mill, explain the nature of an expedient which human beings have adopted tor their own convenience. This is lan- guage ; which the author delights to characterize as the " naming " of ideas ; and words he calls " marks " which we put upon our ideas. Two motives prompt men to name: One is the desire to communicate their mental states to their fellows ; the other is the desire of hav- ing a help for themselves in associating and recalling and dealing with their own ideas. The inferiority of animals to man, Mr. Mill thinks, is due chiefly to their lack of concert and cooperation in their endeavors; and this, again, is the consequence of not having signs Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. 59 by which to convey their feelings to their fellows. Hence we see the importance of this expedient of nam- ing. All the parts of speech are names. Nouns are names of sensations, ideas, and clusters of ideas united by association, and of classes of clusters. Adjectives are marks put upon marks, to effect subdivisions among nouns./ Verbs are adjectival words, expressing our sensations or ideas of actions. Predication is nothing but connecting a name with a name (or a mark with a mark) for the purpose of affirming, first the order in which we had the sensations named, and second, of af- firming the equivalency of the mark predicated with the mark of the subject. Hence the extreme Nominal- ist conclusion is drawn which we saw in the hands of the French Sensualists ; that propositions assert noth- ing but the identity of a name with a name ; and de- ductive reasoning is nothing but a chain of mere verbal equivalents. The simplest thing which man can name by a noun, is a single sensation (or the idea which is the copy thereof), as light, heat, weight. Next, groups of sensations, which are always experienced together, come to be named, for the sake of abbreviation, by a single noun. For instance: we have, always synchro- nous, a sensation of heat, with one of light, upon the presence of certain antecedents. We call the object, fire. We have, always synchronously, a feeling of red, a feeling of fragrance, a feeling of figure, and a feeling of extension and weight. We call the cluster of ante- cedents to this cluster of sensations, rose. We say "fire" "rose" for short, as men say; and only for the sake of saving the trouble of naming over all the sensations. And the words, u fire" " rose" really mean nothing but the antecedents to these clusters of feelings. (Mill's definition of general terms is deferred until we speak of the proper notion of classification.) Thus is insinuated, under this pretended explanation of the nature of concrete names, the rudimental error 60 Sensualistic Philosophy. of Mill's system. This is the tacit denial of true sub- stance. We are here taught, by an indirection, that there is no reality answering to our idea of substance ; a doctrine which, as we shall see, ma be: made to lead to the scepticism of Hume, the idealism of Berkeley, or the virtual nihilism of Hegel. But it is a doctrine neces- sary to the consistency of the Sensualistic philosophy. Recall its first principle : Nihil in intellectu, quod non prius in sensu. Remember, what all philosophy con- cedes : that it is only properties of bodies of which we have actual sense perception. Then, the Sensualist is bound to say, the mind has no business with any notion of the objective cause of sensations, except the notion of a cluster of properties. For, whence has the mind a right to the additional notion of a subject urn, or sub- stance, underlying that cluster of properties? It has touched, smelt, tasted, heard, seen, only the properties : it must predicate nothing else. The rational psychol- ogist answers: When sensation gives us the cluster of properties, the law of the reason, upon occasion there- of, intuitively and necessarily gives us the notion of the subjectuin, the real being ; of which the qualities cog- nized by sense must be properties. But that notion is a priori to sense-experience as to its source (though not as to the occasion of its rise), and the Sensualistic phi- losopher has been pleased to condemn such notions. Thus, Mr. Jas. Mill slyly suggests this verbal solution of the existence of this baseless belief in true substance, harbored by common sense. Association and naming do his work fof him. As the sensations of red, sweet, round, etc., are always synchronous, when the cluster of antecedents called " rose," is present, so the ideas arc inseparably associated. And the mind having invented the summary term " rose," for that cluster, in order to save itself the trouble of repeating a number of terms; this name and this cluster of sensations become indis- solubly associated together, until the mind learns by Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. 61 habit to think of something concrete under the name of " rose," and to .attach necessity to it. In consistency with this analysis, the elder Mill says : Our sentient being is composed of points of consciousness. And the younger Mill, in his criticism upon Sir William Hamil- ton, says that the only notion which should be attached to matter is, that it is " a permanent possibility of sen- sation." The next notion of the mind which Mr. Mill exam- ines, is conception. We remember that in his system an idea is the copy or trace of a sensation. A concept, according to him, is a complex idea affecting the mind without the immediate antecedence of sensation. De- parting from the established meaning of the term which by concept signifies some idea that the mind conceives, or produces out of itself from a seminal germ, he says a concept is a notion which takes several sim- ple ideas together into a complex. This is evidently false nomenclature ; for a simple idea in my mind, the bltieness of the ocean, which I saw on a voyage, may now have the essential quality of a concept. This es- sential quality is, that the idea of blueness, once seen in the deep sea, is now of subjective origin in my mind. I see no water, no color of blue at this time, with my eyes ; the source of the idea is no longer objective. It is true, that my mind was aided in raising the idea again out of itself, by the association of ideas. But its present source is subjective. With a percept I am affected from without. With a concept I affect myself. This subjective power is the very one which sensualism desires always to evade ; for it is difficult to allow its existence and yet deny to it all regulative principles; and any regulative principle would be that thing so hateful to sensualism, an a priori law of thought. Hence Mill desires to suppress the subjective activity of the mind in conception. Hence he defines a conception as a complex idea. He wishes us to believe, that the rise 62 Sensualistic Philosophy. of a concept in the mind is nothing" but the return of a train of associated ideas. When I conceive a horse, says he, I merely revive by association that train of sensations of color, figure, size, fourfootedness, etc., which I have so uniformly had synchronously. There is no real concrete being [as we come to imagine from the force of inseparable associations] cognized by the mind, when we think a horse ; but only that cluster of simple ideas associated. Here again we have the bald- est nominalism. The next product of the associating faculty, according to Mr. Mill's scheme, is Imagination. As a conception is a single complex idea, so an image is a train of asso- ciated ideas. The author endeavors strenuously not to see that constructive or creative feature, which is the proper characteristic of every product of the imagina- tion. For, the peculiarity of the work of this faculty is, that the mind, acting as a free-agent, and for a purpose or end of its own, arranges its elemental concepts in connections which they never had in sensational expe- rience. . The professional man for a utilitarian end, the poet for an aesthetic end, sunders the previous associa- tion of elements of conception, and arranges them into new wholes. The former invents a new hypothesis ; the latter a new picture. The elements never were asso- ciated in that order by any previous synchronism or succession in those minds : the new structure is a con- struction, a work of rational will. This essential feature of the power of imagination Mill weakly attempts to explain away. He intimates that the modification of structure is merely the result of the fading out of asso- ciation of the links least interesting to the attention, in the previously associated chain of ideas. When, for instance, the sportive mind imagines as its military figure " a hog in armor," closely-knit links of association existed all the way along the chain from the swine to the armor. But now, the attention being drawn to the Miir$ Analysis of the Human Mind. 63 ludicrous combination of the animal and trie armor, all else fades out of consciousness. In reply to this pre- tended explanation, I ask, first : Could there have been a tie of association between the two, except by contrast? But Mr. Mill denies that this is a principle of associa- tion. Second: What is attention? It involves a func- tion of volition. Thus, the constructive feature comes back into the process. The sensualistic analyst has a motive, here likewise, for falsifying the processes of imagination. If it is allowed to be the intentional work of a rational free-agent, then that agent must have, in its own reason, a principle of arrangement regulating the construction, independent of the previous associa- tions by coexistence, of the elements of conception. In a mechanical construction, the conception must precede the execution. In a process of imagination, the mind works with its own ideas, as its materials ; and here, again, the plan must precede the construction, not fol- low it. But here, again, we meet that truth which Sen- sualism cannot tolerate ; that minds may have & priori principles of thought. For, obviously, this form which volition impresses on the complex of ideas, is prior in cause to the result which is produced, and therefore it must be something else than association. Classification, according to Mr. James Mill, is an act of the mind which is purely one of association. We have seen how names are invented to assist the recovery of ideas by association. The same principle of mind associates the idea and its name, so that either suggests the other. The sole object of the mind, according to Mill, in classifying and inventing general names, is to save itself the trouble of repeating too many specific names. He says expressly that, if our memory were so strong as not to be encumbered by a multitude of specific names more than by a few, no general term would ever have been thought of. The process of forming a class begins, as he says, thus : A child has 64 Sensualist 'ic Philosophy. applied the word "foot " to one of his extremities. It and the name mutually suggest each other. Seeing his other extremity along with the first, association applies the name "foot" to that also. Thus, an object and an object suggests a name (" foot ") and its repeti- tion ; and the word comes to stand henceforward, in his association, for two objects. Thus the class of "feet." The worthlessness of this process is disclosed by a single question : It is just as likely that the child saw his right foot at the same instant, with a play-thing resting against it, his rattle, say, as with his left foot. Why, then, was it impossible that association should make him apply the name "foot," in common, to one foot and the rattle ? The radical element was lacking ; resemblance : the rattle and the right foot are not related by resemblance, as are the right and left foot. This simple instance shows that it is not the conven- ience of saving repetitions, alone, which prompts us to invent and use general terms : but the reason distin- guishes thereby the important perception of relations of resemblance. This Mr. J. S. Mill acknowledges, both in his note, correcting his father's analysis here, and in his " Logic." This unavoidable concession (as perhaps the astute father saw) ruins the cause of Sen- sualism. For we now have these facts : The mind, upon having sense-perception of two distinct objects : say, two human feet, also has, besides the two sensa- sations, a cognition of relation. Whence the latter ? Either of the- feet is visible and tangible ; the relation is not. There, then, is a supersensuous cognition. More- over, it proves that the mind has compared the two feet, while perceiving them by sensation. But this act is impossible, without the reason as a middle term, or comparing agent, between the two single ideas. Again, the reason refuses this cognition of relation to a multi- tude of pairs of objects, and only gives it to some pairs. It would not, in the child's case, give it to the foot and MilFs Analysis of the Human Mind. 65 the rattle, but would give it to the right foot and the left foot. At whose bidding ? Not at the bidding of association ; for the same occasion existed, in synchro- nous observation, in both cases. The reason, then, has a law of its own for judging relations ; and this is prior in causation to the sensations. The student may easily extend this refutation to a number of similar false pro- cesses in the Sensualistic philosophy. Mr. James Mill's method of resolving everything into association having been illustrated in these points, his remaining processes may be almost surmised by the reader. Abstraction is, with him, a somewhat differ- ent result of association and naming. We meet, among clusters of sensations, the same simple sensation recur- ring frequently, as the feeling of black color, in black man, black horse, black coat, etc. Frequent recurrence makes the association more vivid, and thus we are caused to note this quality, common to the black man, horse, and coat, more than other qualities. Wishing to name it apart from the clusters in which it recurs, we add the syllable, " ness/' and make " blackness ; " by which we signify no concrete thing that is black, but this quality taken out of all of them. The defect of this explanation is, that it leaves out the act of comparison, cognizing resemblance in the objects of the class, and the influence of voluntary attention upon our abstract- ing processes. Memory, in this system, is nothing but a complex case of association. To prove this, Mr. Mill reminds us of the admitted fact, that ideas come into reminis- cence always according to some tie of association, and that we always seek to impress ideas upon our memory by repeating their association frequently. But there is an essential feature in my reminiscence which always distinguishes it from other ideas arising by suggestion and sensation ; and this is the assured belief that I have had tliat idea before. The idea is not only in conscious- 5 66 Sensualistic Philosophy. ness, but 'I know that it has been in my consciousness before. Thus, every act of memory involves my identity, my notion of successive time, and a belief that seems to be intuitive. Evidently, I cannot determine deductively the validity of the belief that this idea is the same that was before in my own consciousness ; because there is no premise, except the belief itself, from which I can deduce. But Mr. Mill reduces our consciousness of our own identity to a, mere result of an association be- tween two consciousnesses immediately successive. He also reduces our notion of successive time to another result of a similar association. His attempted explanation of the belief in our own reminiscences is, then, as follows : When an idea is remembered, it comes because it is associated, probably through a number of links, with the sensation of which it is a " copy." That sensation, while it existed, was a point of our consciousness helping " to compose our sentient being." The next sensation or idea following it was, of course, associated therewith by the law of immediate succession. That idea was also " a point of conscious- ness," for the time being. The two together constituted our idea of self, which self-hood, thus generated, is also associated with the first idea. So, when the reminis- cence recurs, constituting again the feeling of identity, it is because the mind has rapidly run through all the intervening associations between the first impression and the last recollection of it, carrying back the idea of self-hood which is produced between every pair of links in this chain of points of consciousness. Mr. Mill admits that this process is complicated, but claims that it is of undoubted correctness ! Belief is, with Mr. Mill, only a case of inseparable associations. What others regard as necessary beliefs, he explains as simply judgments of invariability in the associations experienced. Belief of propositions is, with him, simply a recognition of the fact that the predicate MiWs Analysis of the Hitman Mind. 67 names the same thing which the subject names. Of axiomatic belief, his system knows nothing ; all is em- pirical, and the result of force of association. Those rational notions which other philosophers call a priori, he accounts for much after the fashion of Locke. We have seen that he regards our idea of duration as simply the result of an observed succession in our own consciousnesses. As impression follows impression, the relation of past, present, or future arises simply as an association. Combine these three (by association again), and the three abstracts, " pastness, presentness, and fu- tureness," literally compose our whole idea of duration. Time, then, is this threefold abstraction, with the matter of the events dropped out. Space is but the idea of exten- sion which we derive from a muscular sense, emptied by abstraction of its accompanying feeling of resistance. The infinite is, with him, simply the indefinite ; or, in other words, the idea of an aggregate, with the idea of still another increment as possible, associated with it. The cause is nothing more than the immediate invari- able antecedent, and what we call the necessary idea of power in the cause, is only an expression for our inabil- ity to separate in thought an association between a pair of phenomena which has become inseparable by constant recurrence together. Our belief in our own mental identity is, with Mr. Mill, also a result of experienced impressions indissolubly associated. The only differ- ence between his belief in his own identity and that of another object is, that in the first case the data of asso- ciation are given by consciousness, and in the second by observation. That is, a man does not know that his mind is the same any otherwise than he knows that the stone is the same upon which he daily steps into his home ! When we remember how J. S. Mill has rigidly carried out his father's, principles to the definition of the stone as nothing more than "a permanent possibil- ity of sensations," we shall appreciate how near this system comes to nihilism. 68 Sensttalistic Philosophy. Mr. Mill's theory of man's active powers is built upon the same law of association, with the assistance of an- other sensuous fact. Among our sensations, some are immediately pleasurable, and some painful. By the law of co-existence, the pleasure or the pain is, of course, associated with the idea of the impression. Here we have the key to the whole system of human emotions and volitions. The remembered idea of an impression which was pleasurable when experienced, differs from the impression itself, in that the pleasure is only an idea remembered, instead of an existing pleasure. This idea of the pleasure, as associated with the idea of the object which was the cause of the pleasurable impres- sion, is desire. So the remembered pain, as associated with the idea of its cause, is aversion. In like manner, fear and hope are explained, with all the other affec- tions. We observe experimentally, that some acts done by ourselves are attended by pleasure, or, what is practi- cally the same thing, the avoidance of pain. Now the idea of experienced pleasure (associated with that of the cause), is desire. So the idea of experienced pleas- ure associated with the idea of our own act causing it, is motive to volition. The volition always follows the stronger motive. Which shall be the stronger motive depends upon two things. One is the relative vivid- ness of the pleasure naturally attending the sensation ; the other is the intimacy of the association between the act and the pleasure, resulting from frequent repetition. Hence, it follows that moral education consists simply in establishing desirable associations between acts and consequences, by the frequent repetition of the right acts. Disposition, also, is nothing but habit. The dis- position to a given volition is no more than the tend- ency to recall the motive to it, and to feel it the stronger motive, arising from frequent association of the execu- tion of that volition and the pleasure. Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. 69 In the same facile way Mr. Mill explains all the ac- tions of taste and ideas and emotions of sublimity and beauty, without introducing a'ny other aesthetic prin- ciples than sensuous pleasures and pains. Associations do the whole work of taste, by representing to us ob- jects or ideas which once caused, or can cause, certain kinds of pleasure. Those ideas or objects which sug- gest these pleasures raise the idea of beauty or sub- limity. We are now prepared to understand Mill's theory of the will. All men regard volition as cause, and the muscular movements of our own members as next effects thereof. Hence, the natural way to approach the inquiry into the nature of the will, is to examine the rise of our muscular movements. We find then, first, that muscular movements are often produced auto- matically, by sensations; as when a certain feeling in the nerves of the nostrils contract the diaphragm and produce sneezing, or the flashing of a bright body be^ fore the eyes causes involuntary winking. Now, ideas are copies of sensations ; whence we learn that ideas, also, may direct the muscular motions of the members; as when thoughts cause men to move or gesticulate involuntarily. We are thus led to attribute all volun- tary movements to ideas in the form of motives. A motive is nothing, as he supposes, save the pleasure attending a certain impression associated with an act of our own as cause, or immediate antecedent. Now, a volition, when regarded as a mental act, and distin- guished from the muscular, is nothing but motive domi- nant. It is not correct to say that motive leads to voli- tion, motive is volition whenever the association of pleasure with the conceived action is strong enough to engross the mind. After all, then, it is ideas which move the muscles; and every case of volition, however conscious, is obviously regarded by Mill as virtually automatic, like that of the unconscious winking or gest- 70 Stnsnalistie Philosophy. ure ; save that the idea which immediately moves the muscles is also known in consciousness. But one may ask, if ideas of actions and resultant pleasures associated immediately move the muscles, does not the will exer- cise a self-determination over the rise of the ideas? No, says Mr. Mill. The advocates of self-determination know that we cannot directly will an idea into recollec- tion ; because volition implies that the object thereof must be already in the consciousness. Hence, ideas must come as the laws of suggestion bring them. These philosophers suppose, however, that the power of atten- tion modifies the suggestions, by brightening the ties leading on to the desiderated ideas. But Mill supposes that he has banished volition wholly from the mental phenomenon of attention, by asserting that the only cause that can give brightness, prominency, or permanency to any suggestive tie, is the pleasurableness of the ob- jective idea, and not the subjective power of the mind. Thus, all real free-agency is hunted from the last resting- place in the human soul. As in the original scheme of Hobbes, the soul is the helpless slave of outward im- pressions and of habits. The objective inducement is confounded with motive, motive is confounded with volition. The soul's seeming act of choice is described as being just as purely the automatic, physical result of the impressions given from without in sensation and association, as is the pain of a blow of the impact of the bludgeon. How can this system be redeemed from a stark fatalism which would reduce man's free-agency to a cheating illusion? Mr. J. S. Mill, in the conclusion of his " Logic,'' gives us this evasion, borrowed from a brief suggestion of his father. If the relation of cause and effect were what we believed it, a tie of efficient power between the immediate antecedent and its conse- quent, and if volitions were in that sense caused, then, says J. S. Mill, the necessitarian system would be un- avoidable. But the mind is not entitled to any such MiWs Analysis of the Hitman Mind. 71 intuition as that of power in the cause. The true doc- trine of causation is, that the cause is merely the imme- diate invariable antecedent. There is no foundation for any notion of necessity in a cause, except the un- broken uniformity of the association. By this way, he thinks he escapes the iron result of fatalism. Having, by one philosophical heresy, robbed man of his free- agency, he endeavors to restore it by another. The way is now prepared to understand the moral theory of the Mills. Mr. James Mill sums up all vir- tues under four heads : prudence, fortitude, justice, and benevolence. The first two are duties to ourselves, the last two to our neighbors. The only motives which this system knows are the ideas of pleasure or pain as associated with acts, the causes thereof. Experi- ence teaches us that some acts directly cause pleasure to ourselves or prevent pain, while others cause pain or prevent pleasure. These two classes are the good and the evil. The natural desire of good teaches us tj seek the one and avoid the other. Hence, nothing is needed but experience and association to form the habit of considering beforehand how acts will effect our en- joyment. The habit of thus considering is the virtue of prudence. Experience also teaches that some acts which are at first pleasurable, result in a greater ulti- mate pain ; and some, which are at first painful, yet cause a greater ultimate pleasure. Association, by the aid of habit, again couples the greater pleasure with the act at first unpleasant; and the vivid presence and influence of that association becomes the virtue of forti- tude, including self-denial. It is by association, also, that the pleasures and pains of others become agreeable or disagreeable to us. They remind us of our own pleasures. It is pleasant to us to see others' pleasures, simply because, by suggestion, they remind us of our own. Thus, all acts of justice and benevolence, the nature of which is to be promotive 72 Sensualistic Philosophy. or conservative of others' pleasures, come into the cat- egory of the good things. It is the same association which generates that pleasant sentiment called appro- bation. When we are spectators of acts of benevolence or justice, the spectacle is pleasing, simply because the advantage done in them to others is associated with our own similar advantage. That pleasure is our ap- probation for others' good deeds. When we clo acts of justice and benevolence to others, association also re- minds us of their approbation towards us as generated in the same way. And this is the account of our moral sentiments given by this philosophy, I only remark here, in order to indicate its defects, that it is radically a selfish system, resolving the whole idea of good into mere advantage; that it mutilates the definition of vir- tue by omitting classes of righteous principles of essen- tial importance, such as truth, godliness, and disinter- estedness ; that it utterly fails even to conceive the true nature of the moral motive; and that, with the real problem of the nature of moral obligation, the in- tuitive imperative of conscience, it does not even pre- tend to grapple. Such is a brief, but I believe a faithful sketch of a most influential system, which may be correctly named Philosophia Milliana, and which has been taught by the father and son with great and disastrous effect since 1829. This is the date of the appearance of Jas. Mill's Analysis. In several respects, the son, J. S. Mill, has recoiled, in his Logic, and other works, from the bold and hardy consistency of the father's errors. T'he son does not attempt to build a system of logic upon the father's ultra-nominalism. He does not, like James Mill, attempt to construct generalizations without com- parison. He is perspicacious enough to recoil from the absurdity of a memory without a judgment of self- identity a priori to it. But still J. S. Mill is doubtless to be held, in the main, a Sensualistic thinker. Even in Milfs Analysis of the Hitman Mind. 73 his Logic, which need not have led him into such ques- tions, he commits himself to the distinctive principles of that system. He denies, for instance, that the mind has any valid cognition of substance, because it obvious- ly has not sense-perception of it. He adopts the vicious theory of causation, making it nothing more than constant, immediate sequence. He denies that any intuitive judgments are axiomatic. He recognizes no propositions as established, save those which are established empirically. The most of my criticisms upon the system of the Mills will be deferred, until other forms of the Sensual- istic philosophy are traced, and we are thus prepared to refute them together. A few remarks are now of- fered upon some points of this Analysis of the mind, such as are either especially appropriate to it, or con- venient at this stage. The scheme of Mill, like that of Hartley, of which it borrows its main points, deserves to be called the phi- losophy of association. Beginning with the two men- tal functions of sensation and ideas (the copies of sen- sations), Mill constructs every power of the mind from these, by processes of association, with the act of " naming," which is, according to him, an expedient of the associative faculty. It may be said that he strips the mind of all original faculties, except the two of sensation and association. Now the laws of associa- tion are most important, and they doubtless combine with and modify the other faculties, both intellectual and active, in very interesting modes. Mill, like Hart- ley, calls our attention to many instructive facts and traits of suggestion. But it is a sheer delusion to at- tempt to construct the powers of the mind wholly out of a single accident qualifying it. The original princi- ples of the soul are doubtless susceptible of this law of habit, called association, the simplest expression for which is, the tendency of the soul to repeat its own 74 Sensualistic Philosophy. operations. But must there not be powers to operate, in order that they may experience this law of habit? The question is, What are those original powers? As in mechanics or physics, a force must exist, in order to be- come the subject of any regular method ; so in psychol- ogy, the faculty must be given, in the mind, in order to come under this mental habitude called suggestion, or association. This principle -simply repeats, it does not create. It connects what has been produced by other faculties ; thus providing for the preservation, ordering, and reproduction of these stores. The chief illusion of Mr. Mill is his doctrine of in- separable association. This error is indeed the corner- stone of his structure. Ideas, he thinks, become so connected by constant, synchronous, or successive oc- currence in the mind, that their association becomes indissoluble, without any other ground for that result. This is his solution for all necessary truths. The only reason why we cannot help thinking a concrete sub- stance in the rose, for instance, is the fact that the sen- sations of color, form, and fragrance, which we call properties of that substance, have been so constantly seen, smelled, and handled together, that their associa- tion has become inseparable. The only reason why the mind seems necessitated to think of a given effect as arising out of the power of its proper cause, is, that we have so uniformly experienced the two phenomena in sequence, that we cannot possibly separate them from association in thought. If this doctrine of insep- arable association is baseless, Mill's whole system falls into ruins. But the refutation of the doctrine is found in two familiar facts, either of which is fatal to it. First: oftentimes, the most inseparable associations are generated without frequent concurrences of the ideas, yea, by one single instance. The traveler experiences, once in his life only, the disastrous effects on his health of eating the manioc (or Mandioca) root of tropical Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. 75 America. He had used it without expressing the poi- sonous juice. Afterwards he sees others eat it, when properly prepared, and eats it himself a thousand times with impunity and benefit. Yet to the day of his death, he can never think of those torments of body, without connecting them with that root as cause. How came this, which Mr. Mill would call inseparable association, without repetition? Again, multitudes of instances exist in which our ideas have been universally con- nected in a certain way, without a single experienced variation, and yet the separation of the two ideas in- variably associated hitherto is perfectly easy. The citizen of tropical America had never, in all his life, seen, felt, or tasted water, except in the liquid state- But it is perfectly easy for him to accept authentic testimony which assures him that in the frigid regions men walk and ride on water solidified. The rustic has never seen a human figure, except as formed of flesh. The moment he sees a marble statue, he comprehends, with perfect facility, the nature of the object. Tt thus appears again, that invariable association of ideas has begotten no necessary judgment whatever. The lesson which we derive from these instances is, that there is something deeper than mere association, at the root of such truths. What is it? An intuition, which, how- ever given in the mind upon occasion of our experience of certain impressions, is yet independent thereof for its validity. We refer properties to substance, effect to cause, not because the ideas happen to have always risen together; but because there is a reason in the laws of the mind itself, why they must rise together. Having exposed this common error of Mill's analysis, I proceed to point out some specific ones : selecting such as illustrate, by their refutation, important truths of philosophy. First, it is instructive to see in the Mills, how the most objective, and, as they boasted, the most experimental of theories, by adopting the proton- 76 Scnsualistic Philosophy. pscndos of sensualism, has reached the extreme result of idealism. The mind, says Mill, is entitled to no cogni- tions save those which come from sensation. Hence, we may admit objective properties, but not objective substances. We are conscious of impressions and ideas which are copies thereof; but we are not directly con- scious of spirit. Therefore, we must define our sen- tient being as "composed of points of consciousness; " and what the world calls objective matter, as only "a permanent possibility of sensation." Thus mind and matter both vanish into two trains of impressions. But the reason now insists upon this question : Impressions upon what ? Upon an objective reality ? According to Mill, No. Upon a subjective reality ? Again he must say, No. Where, then! are we left? Again: if con- sciousness tells us that we cannot know real substance apart from its properties, she tells us as absolutely, that we cannot know properties, save as the properties of a subjectum. The two cognitions are bound together in an adamantine relation by the very necessity of our form of thought. If w r e think either substance or prop- erty, we are obliged to think them thus. So that if our cognition of subject is invalid, a valid cognition of properties is also impossible. Where, then, are we left ? Without either real object, real subject, or any real cognition ; on the dreary coast of that ocean of Nihil- ism to which the idealism of Hegel passed, and in which the empirical philosophy of Hume perished in the blank of universal scepticism. No better proof of the falsehood of Mr. Jas. Mill's analysis can be present- ed, than that it led his son to a definition of the objec- tive so preposterous and self-contradictory. It is only " a permanent possibility of sensations " for us. But if the reason has any judgment from any source, it is that permanency only belongs to real being. For what is permanency but perfect continuity of being? That which is only in posse cannot have permanency : there Mi IPs Analysis of the Human Mind. 77 is yet nothing to subsist in continuity. The very fact that our experience shows us the objective as a perma- nent cause of impressions upon our consciousness, is a sufficient proof that the objective is real. In the third place, I would show you, that upon this theory of the mind, knowledge would be impossible. The Mills define sensation as simple feeling ; and the ideas which are copies of the sensations, are also feel- ings. Vol. I., p. 224: " Sensations and Ideas are both feelings. When we have a sensation, we feel, or have a feeling : when we have an idea, we feel, or have a feel- ing." Note, again, that they define consciousness as a generic name for all the feelings with which the mind is affected, and identical with them. See pp. 224-226. Mill here repeats with unmistakable clearness that, as the words. " We have a sensation ; have an idea ;" mean only, " we feel ; " so, to be conscious of a sensa- tion, or an idea, means precisely the same thing. The only difference between consciousness and the other terms, sensation, thought, desire, etc., is, that conscious- ness is the general name, describing the whole class, of which these other names are sub-divisions. The school of Mill, Prof. Bain, and J. S. Mill, while quoting Ham- ilton, yet repudiate his definition of consciousness, as the " condition " of our mental operations, or as " the recognition by the mind, or ego, of its own acts and affections." According to Mill and his school, con- sciousness, being identical with sensations and ideas, which are feelings simply, is itself simply a feeling. This unavoidable conclusion they expressly accept. Now, then : how does any veritable cognition ever come into the mind ? Every person recognizes a radi- cal difference between feeling and knowing. The dif- ference is closely analagous to that between caloric and light. From illuminated bodies, they usually come to- gether ; heat in light. But from a black iron stove, caloric comes alone ; and it is dark. So, if feeling could 78 Sensualistic Philosophy. come without cognition, it would bring no idea ; it would be dark. How, then, with a consciousness which is only feeling, and mental states which, in their rudi- ments, are also feelings only ; how does any intelligence ever dawn in man? The truth is, an intelligent con- sciousness, a consciousness which is originally some- thing more than feeling, is the necessary condition of feeling itself. As in the solar rays, the caloric comes in the light; so in man's soul, feeling comes in, or by means of, knowing. Hence it is clear that Mill's sys- tem, in reducing both mental affections and conscious- ness to feelings, would make intelligence impossible. A man may have an idea of a simple feeling: he may have an idea of the pain which last week affected his nerves. This fact seems to have deceived Mr. Mill: he would reason from it ; if we have an idea of our past pain, what other source is there for this cognition than the feeling ? Then simple feeling may give knowledge. I reply : there is no other objective source ; but there is another subjective source, namely, an intelligent (not a mere sentient) consciousness of the past affection, given back to us in memory. Deny this, and an idea of a pain is as impossible as an idea of abstractions would be. The truth is, that consciousness is not a feeling, but an intellection. It is purely an intellection, as the faculty itself tells us ; and therein is its grand characteristic ; its total difference from feelings and volitions. It is this fact, that every act of consciousness is, in its rudi- ment, purely and solely an intellection as 'opposed to a feeling, which is the very condition of human intelli- gence. That consciousness is always an intellection (even when the mental modification referred by the ego to itself is a feeling), is well stated by Hamilton, amidst the inconsistencies into which he is plunged by his per- sistent effort to criticize Reid's doctrine concerning consciousness. Let us turn aside here, to correct these Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. 79 errors. The essence of Reid's view is, that conscious- ness is an intuitive faculty, the acts of which usually attend all the operations of all other powers of soul, giving us the cognition, that they are modifications of the self, or ego. Hamilton, after virtually adopting this view, as is unavoidable to him who fairly observes his own mind, modifies it in a certain degree, in the erroneous direction of the Mills ; arguing at great length, that all cur " special faculties of knowledge are only modifications of consciousness." (Lect. 12). There is a sense in which Reid's view includes this statement, viz. : that all our " special faculties," not only of knowl- edge, but of feeling, operate usually in and under con- sciousness ; and that it is only when they do this, that they furnish any materials of knowledge to us. But Hamilton seems to claim more ; virtually to identify consciousness and all our special faculties of knowledge. This is an error. First, because we are conscious of feelings as immediately as of thoughts. If conscious- ness is the same modification of mind with that modifi- cation which is its object, then, in this case, conscious- ness is a feeling. But Hamilton admits that conscious- ness is always an intellection. It is true, that he is more cautious than the Sensualistic school, limiting his identification of consciousness, so as to make it the same with our " special faculties of knowledge " onjy. But this is a plain inconsistency. For how do we become aware of our feelings? Only by consciousness. To be consistent, he should include all our special faculties of feeling also under consciousness, as Mill does. Second. Hamilton teaches (and illustrates with unusual perspi- cuity) the fact that the mind is affected with modifica- tions which are out of consciousness. But if conscious- ness is coincident with all those modifications, this is a contradiction. If, for instance, perception is only a mode of consciousness, to have a perception and not be conscious of it, is as clearly absurd as to have an un- 8o Sensualistic Philosophy. felt feeling (which even Mill gives up as a contradic- tion.) But to return : we have seen that upon Mill's analysis, cognition would be impossible*; we might have impres- sions, but no sense-perceptions, no ideas. And I call your attention to this result, in order to show how in- evitably the sensualist misunderstands (as he must) the real nature of perception. Leaving the conscious, that is, the intelligent ego, out of his analysis, he renders ideas impossible. Let me quote here an instructive passage from Cousin's criticism of the parallel attempt of Condillac : " In order that the feeling may be trans- formed into sense-perceptions, the action of an internal agent must correspond and be joined to that of the ex- terior forces ; from that double action springs sense-per- ception. Suppress the action of the objects, there is no feeling, and the sense-perception is impossible. Sup- press, on the other hand, a certain action of the ego (which it is not just now our business to determine) and there is feeling, but not sense-perception. It can- not be otherwise. In fact, that which characterizes perception and distinguishes it from feeling, is that the ego has consciousness of it. That must be well under- stood. It is the knot of the difficulty. It is the very point of the question. Either there is a sense-percep- tion, or there is not. If there is, it is felt, it is perceived ; the subject who experiences it has consciousness of it. If not, there is no sense-perception ; or if one will use the word sensation, it signifies only an impression not felt, not perceived, and without consciousness. Now, I say, that what the object produces is not perception a phenomenon in reality very complex it is only feeling." To get an idea from this mere impression -on sensibil- ity, we must invoke consciousness, the a priori, innate, fundamental faculty of intelligence. It is only as con- sciousness refers the impression to self, intelligent sub- Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. 81 ject, that idea arises. Without this subjective act of intelligence, there would be only feeling, in the dark. With it, there is light. The intelligence, conscious of its own modification in sensation, and conscious that it is not self caused by a volition from within, is neces*si- tated by its own original, rational law to impute this effect felt in consciousness to an outward cause ; and that, a cause which has real being. This rational law is no other than that which necessitates our inferring an efficient cause for every change ; the great constitu- tive norm of the human reason. There is thtis, at the root of every sense-perception, a judgment ; and to this judgment intelligent self contributes the essential part. Thus we see that Mill explains the simple by the complex. He regards judgment as the complex result of associated sensations ; whereas the true philosophy makes judgment the rudimental act of intelligence, uni- versally present as an element in all its varied processes. It is this judgment which at once, and in the same act, refers sensation to conscious self as subject, and to really existent object as cause, which gives us percep- tion. Thus we explain the rise of ideas in the mind out of mere impressions, and the conviction of the re- ality of the external world ; and we are guided safely between sensualism on the one hand, and idealism on the other. When we pass from perception to conception, we find in the theory criticised a similar error. Mr. Mill perpetually describes ideas as "copies of our sensa- tions." When an idea re-appears in conception without the original sensation again present, how are we to know that it appears unchanged ? The true answer is, that the intuitive power of memory here comes in, verifying to us by comparison between the present and the past intellections of the idea, its unchanged truth. But of this, the only possible solution, these philoso- phers cannot avail themselves, because they hold that 6 82 . Sensualistic Philosophy. memory is itself a result of association between ideas in conception. The effect cannot be called upon to assist in the creation of its own cause. The inadequacy of the Sensualistic philosophy may also be illustrated by the defects of its theory of lan- guage. The main features of that theory we have seen re-appearing in all the writers criticised ; in Condillac and Helvctius, and now more perspicuously stated by Mill. Language, according to him, is an expedient which man invents at the prompting of two wants: the need of communicating his ideas to others, and the de- sire to preserve and reproduce them more conveniently for his own mind. The sign once invented, association does all the rest in connecting it with the idea. All the modifications of language are also the work of this protean faculty. Association makes general names ; man's motive being simply to save himself the trouble of repeating so many particular ones ; that is, he learns to say "army," for instance, simply because it is incon- venient to repeat the muster-roll every time he has occasion to indicate it. Adjectival words are applied only to divide classes; as when we form the two sub- classes in the general class, "men," by saying "tall men," "short men." Predication, instead of being an expression of a mental judgment, is merely an expres- sion of this fact: that the predicate is a mark of the same idea which the subject marks. Now, upon this theory of language it can never be explained why the animals have not languages. They can utter sounds; and they can surpass man far in the language of panto- mime, which comes as fully within Mr. Mill's definition, " marks of ideas," as do articulate words themselves. The animals certainly feel one of the motives which he supposes have prompted men to form languages, the desire to communicate their impressions to their fellows. The ideas of the animals are certainly connected by association ; and they obviously have a certain kind of Mill^s Analysis of the Human Mind. 83 memory. Why, then, have they not, like man, con- structed a methodical language ; why have they not, in addition to their expressive signs, a syntax ? The pretended answer is: Because they lack the material organs for articulation and syllabication. But this is an insufficient answer. For first, if the lack really ex- isted, it could, by itself, only prevent a great multipli- cation of signs or marks of their ideas ; and the question would recur, why have not the animals connected the signs which are actually possessed by them (which are not a few) into a syntax, and thus formed, at least, a limited language, like those of savages? And second, is it true that the animals lack the material organs for syllabication? They have all that man's body has: lungs, wind-pipe, larynx, vocal cords, tongue, teeth, pal- ate, lips. Is not the reason why beasts never utter a true consonant, to be sought rather in their spirits than in their mouths? This question leads us to a true theory of language. Man, in inventing and meth- odizing these signs of his thoughts and feelings, em- ploys, a priori, subjective powers of reason, which the spirit of the beast does not possess. The reason why the latter never divides his signs into " parts of speech," and digests a syntax, is, that he has no rational powers of construing his impressions in his own consciousness. His spirit is, in fact, very much what the Sensualistic philosophy would make man's spirit, a mere sentient centre of successive impressions, which are associated, expressed, and partially remembered ; but never con- strued in the reason, into categories. And the reason why man is gifted with " discourse of reason," is, that his spirit is not what the Sensualistic philosophy would make it. The brute is impelled by instinct to utter those sounds which express his impressions. An in- stinctive species of association possibly causes him to repeat them when the impressions recur. But man names objects and ideas, of set purpose, in the exercise 84 Sensualistic Philosophy. of rational volition. He then forms classes by the exer- cise of the rational faculty of comparison. His adjec- tives are not mere expedients to sub-divide his general classes; but logical attributions of quality to its subject. Other and graver errors of this system will be ex- posed at a later stage, in common with those of subse- quent advocates of the Sensualistic philosophy. CHAPTER IV. SENSUALISTIC ETHICS IN GREAT BRITAIN. r I ^HE moral sentiments of man, as has been indicated, -*- afford us a capital test, both of the pretended truth and value of the Sensualistic philosophy. The undis- puted facts are these: that we have certain judgments and feelings, which are called, by common consent, moral or ethical ; and the very fact, that mankind gives them distinct names, shows 'that they are popu- larly supposed to form a class separate from our other perceptions and judgments. We speak of certain acts of rational agents as right or wrong. We ascribe to these merit or demerit. We think them deserving of reward or punishment. We speak of obligation to do the one sort and refrain from the other. We express a vivid approbation of the right, and disapprobation for the wrong acts. Especially when we are ourselves the agents of them, we feel sometimes remorse in view of our wrong acts, and a vivid peace and satisfaction in view of our right acts. We judge that we and our fellows have, in certain cases, a peculiar kind of claim, which we call our right, which we think to be a moral title fortified by obligation, to certain things or a certain treatment. It is manifest that the common element of all these judgments is the apparent distinction between right and wrong. For, it is the right act which is meritori- ous ; which earns reward ; which answers obligation ; which wins love; which, seen in ourselves, gives satis- faction of conscience ; which fulfills the claim of right of our fellow. What is the nature of that distinction ? (85) 86 Sensualistic Philosophy. We talk of conscience, as what perceives it. Is con- science a faculty, or merely a complex artificial func- tion ? It is in the answer to these radical questions that we apply a crucial test to our philosophy. Obviously, this moral distinction is not sensuous. Virtue is neither a primary nor a secondary property of material bodies. Obviously it is not such an attribute as can be perceived by sight (like color), or touch (like smoothness), or hearing (like harmony), or taste (like sugar), or smell (like fragrance). If men call it tropic- ally, a sweetness, or harmony, or brightness, they know that it is only so metaphorically. Literally, no man has sense-perception of it. Now, then, if the great maxim of the Sensualistic philosophy is true, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu ; our souls have no such original rational function as conscience. Conscience must be a complex or an artificial result of other, simpler powers of the soul. If men think it original, they must deceive themselves, as they do in imagining that they directly see relative distances or relative magnitudes of visual objects ; when, as Bishop Berkeley has taught us, they are only making a rapid and facile interpretation of certain primary sensations of extension, shade, etc. The great frequency of the process makes them cease to notice the parts of the association. So, habit and association construct what we call the functions of con- science, out of our natural perceptions and feelings, in some mode or other, and we have forgotten the real process, in our familiarity with the result. And last : as mankind popularly suppose that they have an original judgment of a moral distinction, it is logically incum- bent on the Sensualist to show some process by which the illusion has grown out of simpler elements, if he can ! The student has seen how these philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries recognized this task, and how they attempted to comply with it. On Sensualistic Ethics in Great Britain. 87 their principle, there was nothing else for them to do. We have seen how Hobbes, whose giant and ruthless tread broke the way for all of them, undertook to accomplish the task, by reducing all moral sentiments to simple, instinctive selfishness, acting upon the ulti- mate and simple fact of sensation, that some impres- sions are pleasurable and some painful. Thus, with him, the moral good is identical with natural pleasure. Pleasure is the only rational end. Self-love, directed to pleasure, is the whole moral motive. The laws devised by Leviathan (the autocratic Imperiuni), and accepted by the community as the necessary expedient for ending the intolerable anarchy of the " state of nature ;" these laws originate all moral distinction. Here we have the Epicurean ethics revived in the baldest form. Even the pious Locke is driven by the Sensualistic creed to accept this scheme in its chief principle : that the dis- tinction of good and evil is, in rudiment, no other than that of pleasure and pain. When his philosophy was transplanted into France, Hobbes' conclusions were yet more fully revived by Condillac, and pursued to their most loathsome results by the impudence of Hel- vetius. Returning now to Great Britain, we see the later Sensualistic philosophers pursuing the same fated course. Hume presents us what is virtually the same analysis, in his utilitarian ethics. What men call the virtuous, says he, is simply what experience has shown to be, on the whole, the useful. When we say, u we approve the virtuous," this is simply a result of associa- tion, combining the pleasure experienced from the utility, with the idea of the action which causes it. Thus, in experience and association, we have all the elements, as he thinks, to account for our seeming judgments of obligation, merit, and right. This is still, as we shall show in its place, a selfish system. Dr. Paley, the philosopher of the clerical devotees of 88 Scnsualistic Philosophy. the Sensualistic philosophy, proceeding from, the same starting-point, presents us with a religious, utilitarian, or selfish system. Virtue, according to his definition, is " the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." Obligation, with him, is " a forcible motive arising from the will of another." The distinctive quality of the vir- tuous act is, according to him, again, its utility. The rule of distinction, instead of being the imperfect expe- rience of the natural man (as with Hume), is God's wise will. The motive is still simple selfishness ; but selfish- ness enlightened by a revealed immortality and its rewards and punishments. Bentham presented a slight modification of the Utili- tarian scheme of Hume, in assigning the " greatest good of the greatest number,"* as the moral end. There was, in his theory, a certain sound of patriotism, equity, and benevolence, which rendered his speculations very at- tractive to many ingenious minds. To him who looks at the subject of morals only from the point of view of the human legislator, there is much of plausibility in Bentham. His practical rule of life was summed up in the favorite maxim, "Minimize the evil." The largest resultant aggregate of advantage is so often the prac- tical end of the legislator and magistrate, and an en- lightened and beneficent expediency is so often his guide, that many supposed they had found in this maxim the fundamental truth of morals. The acute Utilitarian can also explain, upon his principles, many of the rules of public and social morality. But the theory, like the more obviously selfish system, con- founds natural with moral good, and advantage with the moral motive. If the question be asked : why .is it al- ways virtuous to " seek the greatest good of the greatest number?" no other answer can be given, than that this * He doubtless borrowed it from Beccaria. Sensualistic Ethics in Great Britain. 89 good is man's properest end at all times. Why the great- est good of the greatest number, instead of the greatest good of the worthiest ? It can only be because, again, natural good is the exclusive rational end of man ; so exclusively so, that it is to attract the right reason by its mere mass, as matter attracts matter. By this theory, aggregate humanity is made our supreme end again ; and this assigns self-interest as the ultimate motive of all moral action. For the agent cannot for- get that he is an integer of that aggregate, and there- fore the principle on which the virtuous action is required that of the self-interest of the mass must also be the principle upon which it is rendered. Very near akin to this, again, is the theory of morals known as the benevolence scheme. This identifies vir- tue with the love of beneficence, (making no recogni- tion of the love of moral complacency as a distinct species of the affection). According to this scheme, benevolence is the one virtue, inclusive of all others. That which makes sin odious, and ill-deserving, and punishable by justice, is simply its mischievousness. The merit of virtue is simply in its beneficence. The rational ground of rewards and punishments is to be found in the politic tendency of these sanctions to " minimize " the mischiefs which sin naturally tends to inflict upon the welfare of man. This theory wears, at the first aspect, an air of peculiar amiability and disin- terestedness. Its advocates advanced it as the opposite of the selfish system ; for does it not propose our fellow- creature, and not self, as the object of the all-including virtue ? And what can be more disinterested than benevolence ? Hence many divines gave into this scheme ; especially of those who had imbibed the optimistic opinions of Leibnitz and the reasonings of Grotius on Christ's Satisfaction. It was naturalized in parts of America by the Hopkinsian school and their founder, Dr. Samuel Hopkins, of New England. The 90 Sensualistic Philosophy. clerical advocates of the benevolence scheme could not fail to make the plausible claim, that the Scriptures themselves are founded on it, inasmuch as they repre- sent love as " the fulfilling- of the law," and define God's own nature as love. Yet its affinities with the selfish system are obvious to a little reflection. Why should one desire to analyze the ultimate idea of the. virtuous into anything but the virtuous, except at the bidding ' of that sensualistic maxim, which can admit no original sources of man's judgments and affections, save the sensitive ? Why is benevolence the sum of all virtue ? Because it is beneficent, these philosophers answer. Its moral value, then, is solely in the fact that it pro- motes well-being ; and we are thus led back to the old sensualistic analysis, which recognizes no other original quality in acts than their pleasurableness or painfulness as the standard of their moral quality. Thus, again, moral good is identified with natural good. It is equally easy to show that self-interest lies at the root of the moral motive upon this scheme. If virtue is nothing- but benevolence, and acts are obligatory only because they confer natural good, then it is the plainest thing in the world that whenever I prefer my moral claim of right upon a fellow-creature, my desire of natural good is my valid reason for doing so ; that is, my self-interest. Thus we reach the conclusion that my self-interest grounds my moral right. So must it reciprocally ground my neighbor's moral right on me. What is this but to reduce the interchange of virtuous offices into the traffic of self-interest ? Dr. Thomas Brown, in his treatise on Cause and Effect, besides other features of his philosophy, be- trays a certain remainder of bondage to the Sensualistic philosophy. His theory of the moral distinction con- tains the same. It is true that in his eloquent lectures he attacks the selfish systems with vigor, and utters many noble and elevating sentiments touching duty Sensualistic Ethics in Great Britain. 91 and virtue, for which he deserves the thanks of all the good. Yet, in his final analysis, he reduces virtue to a generic expression for a certain class of sensibilities. With him, the affections or feelings of approbation and disapprobation are the rudimental fact; and he regards them as simply the instinctive impressions upon a sen- sibility. Certain acts impress us immediately with the peculiar pleasure called approbation ; certain others, with the instinctive pain called disapprobation. It is as when the visual perception of an azure tint gives in- stinctive pleasure to the sense. The soul, recognizing in its experiences these two classes of impressions on its sensibility, connects them by association with the acts which cause them, and colligates these into two classes. The virtuous acts are simply that class which affect this peculiar sensibility pleasurably ; the vicious are that class which affect it disagreeably. This account of the moral distinction differs from the correct one in one important respect, that it refuses to find, as we do, the source of the distinction in a primitive judgment of the reason. Instead of making the acts of conscience primarily such a judgment, and secondarily a peculiar emotion, Dr. Brown makes them primarily an impres- sion made from without on the distinctive sensibility, and secondarily a reference of acts to classes, by the associating faculty. Why should he thus depart from the analogies of sound philosophy? If we may surmise from the parallel speculation upon cause and effect, it was because his mind was too much tinctured with the Sensualistic principles, to be entirely freed from the prejudice against a priori laws of the reason. His scheme is thus, obviously, a sentimental, as distin- guished from a ratiqnal scheme of ethics : and it is better entitled to that name than the theory of Adam Smith, which he successfully exposes. After we have completed our grouping of the essen- tial points of the erroneous philosophy by this historical 92 Sensualistic Philosophy. review, we shall be better prepared to deal with the refutation of the ethical theories above stated. The explanation which the Sensualistic philosophy is obliged to give of our affections of taste is exactly parallel to its moral theory. It recognizes no rational aesthetic judgment whatever. It recurs again to the original fact, that sensations are either pleasant or pain- ful. These experiences, modified and combined by associations, are, with them, sole source of our senti- ments of beauty, sublimity, and their opposites. The Sensualist is impelled to this shallow solution by the same influence which corrupted his ethical theory ; his creed will not permit him to ascribe to the mind a supersensuous primitive power of judgment. Thus, the refutation of this aesthetic scheme would give us a similar test of the error of the creed. But only one point will be raised here. If the same power of asso- ciation is the instrument, and the same natural pleasures and pains of sense are the materials, both of the ethical and aesthetic sentiments, how is it that they do not form one general class in men's minds? Why do all men regard the two kinds of sentiments as essentially differ- ent? While a virtuous object and a tasteful object both give certain pleasures when contemplated, why do we always recognize the pleasures as unlike ? The beauti- ful action pleases and also wins our moral approbation ; the beautiful animal pleases, but wins no moral esteem. Why, in fine, is it that the notion of obligation is always combined, by the healthy mind, with the moral judg- ment, and never with the aesthetic ? I am bound to be like the man Jesus, and am unworthy and ill-deserving if I do not strive to be : I am not bound to be like Adonis, and forfeit no moral esteem by not being so. This one question, insuperable for the Sensualist, is enough to bring both his moral and his aesthetic analysis into discredit. CHAPTER V. POSITIVISM. " "POSITIVISM," says M. Guizot, in his Meditations, -*- " is a word in language a barbarism ; in philos- ophy a presumption." Its genius is sufficiently indi- cated in its chosen name, in which it denominates itself, not like other sciences, by its object, but by a boast. The votaries of physical studies often disclose a mate- rialistic tendency, depreciating moral and spiritual truths. The egotism and feebleness of the human un- derstanding ever incline it to exaggerations and partial conclusions. Man's sensuous nature concurs with the fascination of the empirical method applied to sensible objects, to make him overlook the spiritual. Physicists become so elated with their brilliant success in detect- ing and explaining the laws of second causes, that they come to think practically, as though the mind needed no higher cause. Thus they overlook the first cause, which constantly presents itself to the reason in all the others. This tendency to an exclusive or anti-theistic Naturalism, which is but an infirmity and vice of the fallen mind of man, no one has avowed so defiantly in our age as M. Auguste Comte, the pretended founder of the " Positive Philosophy." His attempt is nothing less than to establish this Naturalism in its most abso- lute sense, to accept all its tremendous results, and to repudiate as worthless all human beliefs which cannot be established by exact experimental and physical methods. Although it is not just to confound the man and his (93) 94 Sensualistic Philosophy. opinions, we always feel a justifiable curiosity touching the character of one who claims to lead our beliefs. He appeared before Guizot, when member of the Cabinet of Louis Pliillipe, with the modest demand that he should found for him a professorship of the History of Physical and Matlicmatical Science in the College of France. That statesman relates : " He explained to me drearily and confusedly his views upon man, society, civilization, religion, philosophy, history. He was a man single-minded, honest, of profound convictions, devoted to his own ideas, in appearance modest, al- though at heart prodigiously vain ; he sincerely believed that it was his calling to open a new era for the mind of man and for human society. Whilst listening to him, I could scarcely refrain from expressing my astonish- ment that a mind so vigorous should, at the same time, be so narrow as not even to perceive the nature and bearing of the facts with which he was dealing, and the questions he was authoritatively deciding ; that a char- acter so disinterested should not be warned by his own proper sentiments which were moral in spite of his system of its falsity and its negation of morality. I did not even make any attempt at discussion with M. Comte ; his sincerity, his enthusiasm, and the delu- sion which blinded him, inspired me with that sad esteem which takes refuge in silence. Had I even judged it fitting to create the chair which he demanded, I should not for a moment have dreamed of assigning it to him. " I should have been as silent and still more sad if I had then known the trials through which M. Auguste Comte had already passed. He had been, in 1823, a prey to a violent attack of mental alienation, and in 1827, during a paroxysm of gloomy melancholy, he had thrown himself from the Pont des Arts into the Seine, but had been rescued by one of the King's guard. More than once, in the course of his subsequent life, Positivism. 95 this mental trouble seemed on the point of recur- ring." The reader, allowing for the courteous euphemism of M. Guizot, can surmise from the above what mannei of man Comte was. His admiring votary and biographer, M. Littre, reveals in his master an arrogance and tyr- anny which claimed every man who expressed interest in his speculations as an intellectual serf, and which resented all subsequent mental independence as a re- bellion and treachery to be visited with the most vin- dictive anger. That his mental conceit was, beyond the " intoxication " which M. Guizot terms it, a positive insanity, is manifest from his own language. On hear- ing of the adherence of a Parisian editor to his creed, he writes to his wife : " To speak plainly and in general terms, I believe that, at the point at which I have now arrived, I have no occasion to do more than to continue to exist ; the kind of preponderance which I covet can- not fail to devolve upon me." .... "Manest no longer feels any repugnance in admitting the indispensable fact of my intellectual superiority." And to John Stuart Mill, at one time his supporter, he wrote of " a common movement of philosophical regeneration everywhere, when once Positivism shall have planted its standard that is, its light-house, I should term it in the midst of the disorder and confusion that reigns ; and I hope that this will be the natural result of the publication of my work in its completed state." (This is his Course of Positive Philosophy, finished in 1842.) This is the man, half- fanatic and half-crazed with conceit, who is author- ity with a large part of the Sensualistic philosophers of our day ! " Positivism " takes ics pretext from the seeming cer- tainty of the exact sciences, and the diversity of view and uncertainty which appear to attend metaphysics. It points to the solid and brilliant results of the former, and to the asserted vagueness and barrenness of the 96 Sensualistic Philosophy. latter. It reminds us that none of the efforts of phi- losophy have compelled men to agree touching abso- lute truth and theology ; but the mathematical and physical sciences are asserted to carry perfect assur- ance and complete agreement to all minds which com- prehend their proof. In these, then, we have a satisfy- ing and fruitful quality, " poritivism ; " in those, only delusion and disappointment. Now, adds the " Posi- tivist," when we see the human mind thus mocked by futile efforts of the reason, we must conclude either that it has adopted a wrong organon for its search, or that it directs that search towards objects which are ,In fact, inaccessible to it. Both these suppositions Posi- tivism holds true, as to philosophy and theology. Of those questions usually treated by philosophy and the- ology, the only ones which admit of any solution, are problems of sociology, and they must receive their solution from " Positivism." The rest are illusory. It claims that history also shows that this new science is the only true teacher. For when the course of human opinion is reviewed, they say it is always found to move through three stages. In its first stage, the human mind tends to assign a theological solution for every natural problem which exercises it: it resolves every- thing into an effort of supernatural power. In its sec- ond stage, having outgrown this simple view, and becomes metaphysical, it searches in philosophy for primary and universal truths, and ascribes natural ef- fects to a priori ideas. But in its third, or adult stage, it learns that the only road to truth is the empirical method of exact science, and comes to rely exclusively upon that. Thus, argue they, the history of human opinion points to u Positivism " as the only teacher of man. But Comte, while he denies the possibility of any science of psychology, save as a result of his " Posi- tivism," none the less begins with a psychology of his Positivism. 97 own. And this is the blankest sensualistic. He who declares that science cannot have any a priori truths, virtually adopts as his a priori truth the ground-maxim of that psychology ; he holds that the mind has, and can have, no ideas save those given it by sensitive per- ceptions, and those combined therefrom. The only pos- sible object of science, therefore, is the phenomena of sen- sible objects and tlieir laws. It can recognize no cause or power whatever, but such as metaphysicians call second causes. It has no species of evidence whatever, except sensations and experimental proof. Hear the science define itself: " Positive philosophy is the whole body of human knowledge. Human knowledge is the result of the forces belonging to matter, and of the conditions or laws governing those forces/' " The fundamental character of the positive philoso- phy is, that it regards all phenomena as subjected to in- variable natural laws, and considers as absolutely inac- cessible to us, and as having no sense for us, every inquiry into what are called either primary or final causes." " The scientific path in which I have walked ever since I began the labors that I obstinately pursue to elevate social theories to the rank of physical science, are evidently, absolutely, and radically opposed .to everything that has -a religious or metaphysical ten- dency." " My positive philosophy is incompatible with every theological or metaphysical philosophy." " Re- ligiosity is not only a weakness, but an avowal of want of power." " The ' positive state ' is that state of the mind in which it conceives \\\zi phenomena are governed by constant laws, from which prayer and adoration can demand nothing." Such are some of the declarations of his chief prin- ciples made by Comte himself. They are perspicuous and candid enough to remove all doubt as to his 7 98 Sensualistic Philosophy. meaning. He also distributes human science under the following classes. It begins with mathematics, the science of all that which has number for its measure ; for here the objects are most exact, and the laws most rigorous and general. From mathe- matics the mind naturally passes to physics, which is the science of material forces, or dynamics. In this second class, the first sub-division, and nearest to mathematics in the exactness of its laws, is astronomy, or the mecanique celeste: Next come mechanics, then statics, and last, chemistry, or the science of molecular dynamics. This brings us to the verge of the third grand division, the science of organisms; for the won- ders of chemistry approach near to the results of vital- ity. This science of organisms, then, is biology, the science of life, whether vegetable, insect, animal, or human. The fourth and last sphere of scientific knowl- edge is sociology, or the science of man's relations to his fellows in society, including history, politics, and whatever of ethics may exist for the Positivist. Above sociology there can be nothing; because beyond this sensation and experimental proof do not go ; and where they are not, is no real cognition. Comte considers that the fields of physics and mathematics have been pretty thoroughly occupied by Positivism ; and hence the solid and brilliant results which these departments have yielded under the hands of modern science. Biology has also been partly brought under his method, with some striking results. But sociology remains very much in chaos, and unfruitful of safe conclusions, be- cause Positivism has not yet digested it. All the prin- ciples of society founded on psychology and theology are, according to him, worthless ; and nothing can be established, to any purpose, until sociology is studied solely as a science of physical facts, and regular physical laws, without concerning ourselves with the vain dreams of laws of mind, free agency and divine providence. Positivism. 99 Such, in outline, are the principles of Positivism. Let us consider a few of its corollaries. One of these, which many do not deign to conceal, is a stark mate- rialism. They know no such substance as spirit, and no such laws as the laws of mind. For, say they, man can know nothing but perceptions of the senses, and the reflex ideas formed from them. " Positive Philos- ophy," which, they say, includes all human knowledge, is " the science of material forces and their regular laws." Since spirit and the actings of spirit can never be phenomena (i. e., changes known by sense-perception), it is impossible that science can recognize them. This demonstration is, of course, as rigid against the admis- sion of an infinite Spirit as any other, and more so, as Positivism repudiates all infinite ideas. Nor does this system avail itself of the plea that there may possibly be a God who is corporeal. Its necessarily atheistic character is disclosed in the assertion that true science cannot admit any supernatural agency or existence, or even the possibility of the mind's becoming cognizant thereof. Since our only possible knowledge is that of sensible phenomena and their natural laws, which are absolutely invariable, material nature must, of course, bound our knowledge. Her sphere is the all. Tf there could be a supernatural event (to suppose an impossi- bility), the realizing of it would destroy our intelligence, instead of informing it. For it would subvert the uni- formity of the natural, which is the only basis of our general ideas, the norm of our beliefs. Positivism is, therefore, perfectly consistent in denying every super- natural fact. Hence the criticism of its sympathizers, when, like Renan, they attempt to discuss the facts of the Christian religion and the life of Jesus Christ. Their own literary acquirements and the force of intel- ligent opinion deter them from the coarse and reckless expedient of the school of Tom Paine, who rid them- selves of every difficult fact in the Christian history by ioo Sensualistic Philosophy. a flat and -ignorant denial, in the face of all historical evidence. These recent unbelievers admit the estab- lished facts ; but, having approached them with the foregone conclusion that there can be no supernatural cause, they are reduced, for a pretended explanation, to a set of unproved hypotheses and fantastic guesses, which they offer us for verities, in most ludicrous con- tradiction to the very spirit of their " positive philos- ophy." What can be more distinctly miraculous than a crea- tion ? That which brings nature out of nihil must, of course, be supernatural. Positivism must, therefore, deny creation as a fact of which the human intelligence cannot possibly have evidence. As the universe did not begin, it must, of course, be from eternity, and, therefore, self-existent. But, being self-existent, it will, of course, never end. Thus, matter is clothed with the attributes of God. The perspicuous reader doubtless perceives that these deductions, when stripped of the verbal forms of philosophy, are identical with the vulgar logic which one hears occasionally from atheistic tailors and shoe- makers : " How do you know there is a God ? Did you ever see Him ? Did you ever handle Him ? Did you ever hear Him actually talking?" Those who have heard the philosophy of tap-rooms, redolent of the fumes of bad whiskey and tobacco, recognize it as pre- cisely that of Positivism, adorned with more sounding phrase. Once more : Positivism is manifestly a system of rigid fatalism ; and this also its advocates scarcely trouble themselves to veil. According to them, human knowl- edge contains nothing but phenomena and their natural laws. " The positive state is that state of mind in which it conceives that phenomena are governed by constant laws, from which prayer and adoration can demand nothing." " The fundamental character of positive Positivism. lot philosophy is, that it regards all phenomena as subject to invariable laws." Such are Comtes dicta. The only causation he knows is that of physical second causes. These, of course, operate blindly and necessarily. This tremendous conclusion is confirmed by the doctrine of the eternity and self-existence of nature ; for a substance which has these attributes, and is also material, must be what it is, and do what it does, by an immanent and immutable necessity. Positivism must teach us, there- fore, if it is consistent, that all the events which befall us are directed by a physical fate, and that the actions which we perform are also directed by similar causes ; that, in short, we are between the jaws of a physical machine, with all that is dear to us, and that our own free agency is illusory. Comte avows that his classification of the simpler sciences mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, biology was elaborated chiefly for the purpose of bringing the more complicated one of sociology under the posi- tive method. The two banes of human thought, meta- physics and theology, had so perverted sociology, that he found it in a greater state of confusion than any other. Hence, his most important mission is to recon- struct or regenerate this part upon the Positivist method. Let us see the result. Sociology must, of course, be studied exclusively upon the phenomenal method. Hence, the only trustworthy sources of its data are biology (as this school barbarously calls zoology) and history. Whatever man can learn pri- marily about the laws of mind and its faculties, he must gather from phrenology ! Later in his studies, Comte, becoming dissatisfied with the phrenological map of Gall and Spurzheim, which pretended to a basis of ob- served facts, constructed one which he deemed more correct, upon purely hypothetical grounds dictated by a purely subjective distribution of the mental faculties. Here we have precisely such consistency as we expect IO2 Sensualistic Philosophy. from a crazy man ! This is the philosopher who ostra- cised all a priori, subjective truth, all spirit, and all psychology, beginning by a psychology both subjective and hypothetical ! But let us see the practical conclu- sions of a sociology thus founded. Europe and America were to be broken up into little States of a few million people each. Every such State was to be governed by an oligarchy of three wealthy bankers, who were to appoint their successors by their own fiat, and govern absolutely, without parliaments, elections, or any restric- tions. The fashionable French doctrines of liberty, fraternity, and equality, he utterly flouted. All the wealth of the State was to be centered in a few hered- itary hands ; and all the rest of the people were to be operatives for these capitalists. Such was to be the social structure, all sustained and operated symmetri- cally by the potent but gentle influence of the positive philosophy. But, alongside of this secular oligarchy, there was to be a " spiritual order," composed of the positive philosophers and educators. As all theological systems and gods were exploded, of course there could be no church nor priesthood, in the ecclesiastical sense ; the spiritual order is simply the scientific caste in this oligarchical state. To them was to be committed all education of youth, all of whom were to be advanced to a certain degree in " positive science." The spiritual order was also to pronounce upon the wisdom and justice of the measures of the oligarchs ; the advisers were to have no power of enforcing their decisions, except reason ; but that, among rulers and people en- lightened by " Positivism," would always be sufficient. At the head of this spiritual caste of all the common- wealths of the whole world was to be one supreme phi- losopher, the embodiment of infallible "Positive" truth, whose title was to be " Pontiff of Humanity." From his scientific dicta there would be no appeal whatever ; and after his dominion was erected, there was to be no Positivism. 103 liberty of dissent whatever for any one, learned or un- learned. Positivism, as established by Comte, was thenceforward to reign unquestioned, with all the ma- jestic sway of infallibility, and liberty of thought would be a crime. The first " Pontiff of Humanity" was, of course, to be Comte himself; and he was to appoint his successor by his sole authority. The philosophic pope predicted also when this great revolution would take place in precisely thirty-three years from the date of the publication of his evangelion. Although Positivism knew no God, " neither angel nor spirit," for all this it was to have a splendid religion. A religion without *a God did not strike Comte as at all a solecism ; nor does it strike Mr. J. S. Mill as such. An object, however, it was to have ; and this was to be aggregate humanity ; the whole mass of men, dead, living, and to live hereafter. This aggregate, Comte called the " Great Being." He devised a system of worship for it, with eighty-four holy days each year, and nine sac- raments. As the Positivist believes in the annihilation of all the dead, and as the future generations are not yet in existence, it may seem difficult to imagine how the Great Being is to be made up. But that the people who find a spiritual and unchangeable God too shad- owy to have a place in their positive philosophy, should make a deity of a non-entity in large part, is only in character with the contradictions of their system. We are assured that the " Pontiff of Humanity " proposed the whole plan in perfect gravity. To the sober mind it seems perfectly obvious that Comte was a learned man crazed, either by constitu- tional disease, or by maniacal conceit. His speculations should occupy rather the place of morbid specimens, the monstrosities of mental disease, than of a system of philosophy. But they manifestly influence the science of this generation to a surprising degree. We are con- tinually told that in France, in Germany, and especially in 1O4 Sensualistic Philosophy. Great Britain, they are avowed by multitudes, and boast of prominent names. This is to be accounted for, not by any plausible consistency in " Positivism," or special ability ; but by the sympathy between it and the Sen- sualistic philosophy. The two systems foreshadow in common the darling results of infidelity, materialism, the denial of the supernatural, the denial of man's im- mortality, and atheism. If it be asked, how many Positivists we have, the question will receive two an- swers, according to the strictness or width with which the term is used. Those who follow Conite in every- thing, are few ; for such were his arrogance, dogma- tism, intolerance, and inconsistencies, that few could cleave to him through his whole career. J. S. Mill, while introducing his works to Englishmen through the Westminster Review, is heard dissenting from Comtes scornful depreciation of logic and psychology, as ever destined to be un-positive and no sciences. For, the reviewer had himself written a large work on Logic, and his father one on Psychology. But the essential features of the system, Mill warmly applauds. So, Dr. Thomas Huxley, Prof. Tyndal, and Mr. Spencer may be heard declaring- that they are no Positivists ; that is to say, they do not hold some of Comtes ideas touching the distribution of the sciences. But they also advance, with confidence, the essential features of his sys- tem, in connection with the evolution theory. Another of these evil portents on the literary horizon is Henry Thomas Buckle, in his " History of Civilization in Eng- land" His theory of man and society is essentially that of the Positivist. He regards all religion as the out- growth of civilization, instead of its root ; and is willing to compliment Christianity with being the best relig- ious effect of the British mind and character; (provided Christianity can be suggested without its ministers, whose supposed bigotry, ecclesiastical and theological, never fails to inflame his philosophic bigotry to a red Positivism. 105 heat). But he anticipates that English civilization will, under Positivist teachings, ultim tely create for itself a religion much finer than Christianity. He disdains psychology ; he does not believe man's consciousness a trustworthy witness ; and he regards those general facts which are disclosed by statistics, for instance, con- cerning human action, the only materials for a science of man and society. Fie commends intellectual scep- ticism as the most advantageous state of mind. He is an outspoken fatalist, and regards the hope of modi- fying immutable sequences of events by prayer, as pu- erile and absurd. He regards " positive science " as a much more hopeful fountain of well-being and progress, than virtue or holiness. It is significant, also, to hear so distinguished a natu- ralist as Dr. Hooker, a few y ears ago president of the British Association, in his inaugural address, terming natural theology, " that most dangerous of two-edged weapons ; " discarding Metaphysics as " availing him nothing," and condemning all who believe any of its truths as " beyond the pale of scientific criticism ; '' and declaring roundly that no theological or metaphysical proposition rests on positive truth. As- Americans are always prompt to imitate Euro- peans, especially in their follies, it is scarcely necessary to acid, that positivist dogmas are rife in our current literature. The tendencies of physicists are, as has been noted, towards an anti-theistic Naturalism; the boldness with which the school of Comte lift up their standard, has encouraged many to gather around it. Its most deplorable result is the impulse which it gives to irreligion and open atheism. Thousands of shallow persons, who have no understanding of any connected philosophy, and are too indolent and' inattentive to ac- quire it, are emboldened to babble materialism and impiety, by hearing it said that the " positive philoso- phy " has exploded the supernatural. io6 Sensualistic Philosophy. " Positivism," in its broader acceptation, may be said, then, to have become the prevalent type of the Sensual- istic philosophy in our day. Its more reckless and daring mode of dispensing with psychological and theological truths appears to be superseding, with most thinkers of a sensualistic tendency, the milder methods of the Condillacs and Jas. Mill. He would not commit a great practical error, who, wishing to defend his fellow-men from the mischiefs of that system, should aim his attacks at the dogmas of Comte. CHAPTER VI. EVOLUTION THEORY. A SOUND philosophy infers the existence of an infinite, personal God, by three processes of logic. Each is an a posteriori process, and either would be by itself conclusive. I. It is the great law of the reason, that event cannot arise without cause : ex nihilo nihil. Hence, dependent beings and phenomena reveal an in- dependent, eternal Being and Cause. Had there been a time in past eternity when notJiing was, all infinite duration must thenceforward have been a blank. Thus, by the very constitution of the mind which makes reasoning possible for us, the caused necessitates the belief in the Uncaused ; the presence of the temporal necessitates ihe belief in the eternal ; and the finite im- plies the infinite. " He who apprehends this, will not hesitate to grant that the uncaused Cause must include the' attributes revealed in his effects, intelligence, power, and will. 2. Th : phenomena with which experience acquaints us all express contrivance. Hence there must have been a contriver. 3. The necessary intui- tions of conscience are found, on simple inspection, to contain the conviction of obligation. It is impossible to explain this obligation as relating only to ourselves, or our fellow-man, or any aggregate of men ; while it includes these, it reaches beyond them. But obliga- tion implies an Obliger. The practical, or ethical side of the reason, therefore, lea(js us inevitably back to the same absolute Being, and necessitates, moreover, the recognition of His moral perfections, while re-affirming those of power, intelligence, and will. (107) io8 Sensualistic Philosophy. There is a supposed pantheistic evasion fr ;m this adamantine chain. This the Sensualistic philosophy cannot consistently embrace, because Pantheism is es- sentially idealistic. The only other evasion possible is that of an eternal series of temporal beings and events. Atheism has attempted to proceed thus : It admits that, inasmuch as beings now exist, beings must have eter- nally been in existence. But, it asks, why may not the eternal somethings have been caused somethings, such as those we see around us ; separated from us in dura- tion by an infinite number of intermediate links in chains of similar beings ? To this scheme of a self- existent infinite series, uncaused from without, philoso- phy advances these insuperable objections: That in such a series no immediate antecedent is, by itself, adequate cause for its immediate successor ; and that previous links in the chain could not be cause, since they were totally absent from the rise of the sequent effect. Thus the utter fallacy was exposed, which seeks to impose on our minds by the vague infinitude of the series as a whole. We were taught that no series made up solely of effects, each dependent, can as a who'e be self-existent. Thus perished that evasion of the atheist. Obviously, if there is any expedient for resuscitating it, this must be found in the attempt to prove that the law, " Like produces like," is not the whole explanation of the series. By that law a series of beings, forming a gemis, may continue, or may perish ; but by that law alone it can never be be originated ; for one genus of beings does not transmute itself into a new and differ- ent one. On the law, " Like produces like," alone, it is demonstrated the series of nature cannot be self-existent. Hence the last hope of atheism is, to attempt to prove that this law is not the whole natural law of the series ; that the Like does not produce merely the like : in other words, that the series contains within itself a natural Evohttion Theory. 109 power of differentiating its effects, at least, slightly. This is the heart of the "evolution theory" of our day. By the short review of the great theistic argument, which I have given, we discover the precise locus of the "evo- lution theory " in philosophy, and we perceive the logical instinct by which its advocates have been led (some of them, perhaps, semi-consciously) to elaborate it. This scheme is, however, no novelty. It is, after all its pretended refinements, but a revival of the " atomic- theory " of the Greek atheist, Democritus, adopted by the Epicurean school, but so utterly discredited by the combined logic % of the other schools of philosophy, that it has been driven for centuries into disgrace. The ap- plication of an evolution-hypothesis to the descent of man has been often attempted ; as by Lord Monboddo, who almost exactly anticipated Dr. Charles Darwin's conclusion. In the eyes of some modern physicists, however, it has received new plausibility from the more intelligent speculations of the Naturalist, La Marck, and the " Yestiges of Creation," a work ascribed to Mr. Robert Chambers, of Scotland. But it appears in its fullest form in the two works of Dr. Charles Darwin, " Origin of Species," and " Descent of Man," published with an interval of some eight years between them. This Naturalist thinks that, in animated nature, he has found the law of " Like producing like," modified by the two laws of " natural selections " and " survival of the fittest." Mr. Wallace (who is said to have devised the same hypothesis independently of Dr. Darwin about the same time) gives, in substance, this summary of it. It asserts : 1. The law of multiplication of animals in geometrical proportion. Any one species, if unchecked, would fill the whole world. The checks are the destruction of the germs and the living individuals of the species by enemies and by adverse conditions. 2. The law of limited population, by which a given 1 1 o Seyisualistic Philosophy. adapted area of our earth has always been fully stocked with adapted species. Hence the spread of one species must imply some limitation or destruction of some other. There is, thus, a constant struggle for exist- ence. 3. The law of Heredity, by which the progeny re- produces all the essential points of the parents, whether originally generic or newly-developed. 4. The law of variation, by which such differences in individuals, favored by external conditions, accumulate until they give rise to a distinct variety. 5. The law of equilibrium in nature,' whereby the in- dividuals and species best adapted to existing condi- tions survive, and the less fitted perish. Some of these laws are partly true as expressions of general facts. Dr. Darwin supposes that they are all illustrated by the race-varieties (which are certainly very striking) produced in genera and species whose original unity is ascertained, through the arts of the bird-fancier and stock-breeder. The result of these laws, modifying the law of the reproduction of likes by likes, would be a slight differentiation of successors from predecessors, in any series in animated nature. This difference, at one step, might be almost infini- tesimal : this conatus of Nature towards evolution being totally blind, and moving at hap-hazard, might result in nothing permanent through a myriad of experiments or instances ; and only evolve something stable in the species, in advance of its prior points, in the ten-thou- sandth case. Yet, if we postulate a time sufficiently vast, during which the law h'as been working, the result may, at length, be the evolution of the highest from the lowest forms of animal life. This theory, obviously, regards the process of evolution as entirely unintelligent. Both the species and the natural condi- tions which are co-working for the natural selection and survival of the fittest, work blindly ; and when Evolution Theory. 1 1 1 they evolve a success, they do it by chance. The speculation thus suggests, at least, a way in which adapta- tion may arise, without a contriving mind. Its atheistic advocates (among whom Dr. Darwin did riot rank himself) declare, with decision, that it totally explodes the teleological argument, as drawn by Paley from the contrivances in the organized world, for an intelligent Creator. For, say they, only grant time enough and a sufficiently vast multiplicity of experiments, then what- ever the ratio of failures to successes by the help of this law of "survival of the fittest," the successful variations persist, and the present organized universe is the slow result. One of these followers of Darwin illustrates this atheistic inference thus : What more blind than a hurricane ? Yet a hurricane may perform the appar- ently contriving work of transplanting a sapling, after this fashion. The first mighty blast of the gale has blown down a tall pine, uprooting with it a mass of earth, and leaving a cavity at the end of the prostrate trunk. Tnto this is accidentally dropped the sapling, just torn from its soft bed by the storm. The few clods of mould clinging to its rootlets will, by the natural power of gravitation, make it fall root-downwards. The torrents of rain which follow the gale will wash some soil from the up-torn mass upon it ; and thus we see it regularly planted in place of the dead pine. A French advocate of Darwin attempts thus to rebutt the principle of common sense, which teaches us that blind chance cannot be cause of an ordered result. " Cicero attempts to illustrate this, by citing the heroic poems of Ennius, and asking how incredible it would be that these should have been produced by pure accident, through the throwing together of a great multitude of separate letters from a basket. Give me an infinite number of throws, and an eternity to throw in ; then, amidst the infinite numbers of possible collocations which the letters may assume, may be the very one 1 1 2 Sensualistic Philosophy. constituting the poems of Ennius." By this species of speculation is the attempt now made to rob us of that teleological argument, from contrivance to a Contriver, which has satisfied every solid mind from Job and Soc- rates to our age. Darwin, in his second book, " Descent of Man," ap- plies his theory of the origin of species to the extreme case of the development by evolution of the human race. He supposes that this took place many thousands of years ago, under the natural operation of his two laws, from a highly - developed species of ape, now probably extinct. The ape's progeny, of course, began his human career in a state of primitive barbarism, as is argued by Sir John Lubbock. Many tedious cen- turies passed away before the human became enough humanized to have a history. The ape, who was the parent of man, was, in turn, the developed progeny of some less perfect animal. Thus, the series is followed back, until we find the simplest form of animal life. Thus, to construct animated nature, Darwin requires only his laws of evolution and the rudimental forms of animal life preexisting by the power of a Creator, or of some other agency. This account of man's descent in- volves, of course, the necessity of evolving his spiritual nature out of the instinctive animal functions of the brute. This arduous task Darwin attempts, actually endeavoring to account for the marvels of the enlight- ened human conscience as a development of the fears and habits of the trained animal. The sportsman says to his pointer-clog: "You ought not to have flushed those birds ! " He punishes him, and the dog cowers and expresses his guilt, fear, and penitence, by his deprecatory gestures. What does that " ought not '' mean to that dog ? What, is the lesson to him of those strident tones and of those blows? Thus, according to Darwin, we have the whole rudiment of the notions of obligation and merit in the virtuous hero. The whole Evolution Theory. 1 1 3 splendid result is but the evolution, by habit, of those ideas of an act and its sequent pain, given in the animal sensations, and connected by association. But man's intellectual and moral superiority to the brute's is chiefly accounted for by this fact, that among the physical improvements evolved is a great increase in the volume and convolutions of the brain. According to this animal system, it is the brain which thinks: and the man has gotten more talent than his cousin, the brute, because he has developed more brain. Thus far Darwinism. Dr. Thomas Huxley, and Prof. Tyndal, seconded by many British, Continental, and American Materialists, have undertaken to complete the process. They under- take to supply, without a Creator, that original and rudimental animal source, which Darwin required to start with. Huxley's contribution to this work is, to attempt to identify animal with vegetable life. This he endeavors to do by finding the origin of all vegetable and animal life in a substance which he calls "proto- plasm," which is his "physical basis of life." This, he asserts, however varied, always exhibits a threefold unity, of 'faculty, of form, and of substance. First, The fac- ulties are alike in all, contractility, alimentation, and reproduction. All vegetable things are sensitive plants, if we knew them. And the difference of these func- tions in the lowest plant and highest animal is only one of degree. Second, Protoplasm is everywhere identi- cal in molecular form. And, third, Its substance is al- ways oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. The fate, then, of all protoplasm is death, that is, dissolution into its four elements ; and its origin is the chemical union of the same. Does the compound display prop- erties very different from the elements ? So has water properties very unlike the mixture of two volumes of hydrogen and oxygen gas. Yet the electric spark, flashed through them, awakens the chemical affinit3 r r 8 114 Sensualistic Philosophy. which makes water. So, a little speck of pre-existing protoplasm causes these dead elements to arrange themselves into new protoplasm. There is, then, no more cause to assume in the living organism, a new and mysterious cause, above that of chemical affinity, and to name it vitality, than in the other case, an im- aginary property of " aquosity." And as a certain chemical aggregation of the four elements is proto- plasm, the basis of all life : so the higher vital functions including those of mind, must be explained by the same force, acting in a more complicated way. Huxley left, if his scheme were credible, only one gap to be filled : that between organic and inorganic life ; and he suggested the way of filling this chasm, by asserting that the only force which unites the four sim- ple elements into " protoplasm " is chemical affinity, and the only difference between the organic and inor- ganic masses is, that the chemical affinities in the former are more complicated. Yet, he himself admit- ted that no chemist had ever produced any vitalized matter, without generation from a vital germ. His associates, however, attempt to fill this remaining chasm, and to leave no place nor use for a Creator any- where. Prof. Tyndal, for instance, in his inaugural discourse, as President of the British Association, for- mally attempts to revive the forgotten system of Democ- ritus ; and to generate the Universe from nothing but atoms. He gives us himself the following outline of this old pagan-atheist system : i. " From nothing comes nothing. Nothing that exists can be destroyed. All changes are due to the combination and separation of molecules." 2. " Nothing happens by chance. Every occurrence has its cause, from which it follows by ne- cessity." 3. u The only existing things are the atoms and empty space ; all else is mere opinion." 4. " The atoms are infinite in number, and infinitely various in form ; they strike together, and the lateral motions and Evolution Theory. i r 5 whirlings which thence arise are the beginnings of worlds." 5. " The varieties of all things depend upon the varieties of their atoms, in number, size, and aggre- gation." 6. " The soul consists of fine, smooth, round atoms, like those of fire. These are the most mobile of all. They interpenetrate the whole body, and in their motions the phenomena of life arise." Tyndal gives us to understand that he accepts this scheme as his own, in all but the last proposition. He says : " The first five propositions are a fair general statement of the atomic philosophy as now held. As re- gards the sixth, Democritus made his fine, smooth atoms do duty for the nervous system, whose functions were then unknown." In Tyndal's atomic plan, we are thus given to understand the nervous system u does duty " for a soul. He then proceeds, after adopting tne pretended results of Darwin and Huxley with ful- some laudation, to extend the evolution theory to all mental and mgral faculties, including the highest. Here he adopts, with equally intense admiration, the dogmas of Mr. Herbert Spencer, concerning the hereditary transmission of instinctive habitudes, from parent to progeny, until by a cumulative process, the whole dis- cipline of the animal instincts, recorded on the matter of the brains of the parents through all past genera- tions, is bequeathed to ours. Thus, as evolution was gradually, through millions of ages, evolving the form of a Newton, or Shakespeare, from the primary animal cell to the mollusk, the reptile, the mammal, the ape, the man, this cumulative process was gradually evolv- ing the rudimental animal instinct of the insect, into the mind of a grand philosopher or poet. Tyndal thinks that the tactual sense is the rudiment of all the other senses, and, so, of all mind. Hence, the reason why human generations have at last evolved from the brute mind a human mind, is, that his members have become so developed that he can feel (with his fingers, lips, 1 1 6 Sensiialistic Philosophy. etc.) more things than shell fishes-, or horny-hoofed animals. Thus, parrots become wise birds, because they climb about and grasp things more with their claws and beaks than other birds do. Elephants are so very wise among animals, because their long and supple proboscis is so fine an implement to feel things with. Apes are smarter than most animals because their pre- hensile feet enable them to finger things almost like men. Horses, whose horny hoofs give them so sorry a chance to finger anything intelligibly with their ex- tremities, derive some chance for getting up an intel- lect, by the help of their nibblings with their very flex- ible lips. Tyndal thus reaches precisely the conclusion of the materialist Helvetius, in the last century, who, the student will remember, referred the whole differ- ence between human and brute faculties to the bodily difference, and chiefly to the structure of the human hand. And this is the sort of speculation to which, under the name of science, the assembled physical learning of Great Britain delights to pay its especial homage ! What more deplorable illustration can we have of the intellectual degradation to which man sinks under the teachings of sensualism and atheism ! But Tyndal, like Huxley, after obliterating all dis- tinction between mind and matter, finds himself io- volved in insuperable difficulties.' Hence, they resort to a sort of spiritualizing of matter. That is, they leap from a stark materialism, to a species of idealism. In- stead of identifying mind with matter, they would have us identify matter with mind. There is but one kind of power in the universe, and that is force ; and one kind of effect, which is motion. Mechanical action is motion of masses ; and mental action is motion of mole- cules. Mind-power will some day be literally corre- lated to material forces, as caloric in water has been to elasticity in steam. We must not, then, think of mat- ter as a something dull, gross, passive, simply pon- Evolution Theory. 117 derable, opaque, and inert ; but as the refined habitat offeree, the invisible, universal cause. Thus again, we see extremes meeting, and the extravagance of mate- rialism driving its advocates into the dreams of ideal- ism. Tyndal, in conclusion, cautions his hearers that they must not suppose this banishment of spirit, God, and immortality, out of the universe, need banish religion. Not at all. There is, indeed, no foothold for religion in man's rational nature ; but his emotions impel him to religion. And emotions are one essential side of human nature, and a very useful and noble side. Hence, the demand which man's emotive system makes for a relig- ion is not to be despised. The result seems to be this : that provided a man knows that he knows nothing on earth about any God, he may feel as affectionately dis- posed towards God as he pleases, and Professor Tyn- dal will not despise him ! But if he ever pretends to see any reason for his feelings, he is riot to be tolerated. Such is a just statement of this charitable and pious concession, and no travesty. The absurdity is suffi- ciently exposed by the statement itself. Or if any farther explanation is needed, it is found in this ques- tion : Under what condition can rational emotions rise in the soul ? Only when a proper object of them is be- lievingly seen in the intelligence. If one has feeling under any other condition, it is blind ; and unless it has a merely animal function to fulfil, it is a morbid affec- tion of the soul, and needs to be rebuked. Hence, if we are told that our religion can be a matter of feeling alone, and not of reason, it is the same as telling us to have no religion. Mr. Herbert Spencer is regarded, evidently, by Evo- lutionists (and perhaps by himself) as the Aristotle of Evolutionism. Beginning from the method of the Sen- sualistic philosophy, he presents us, at la^t, another 1 1 8 Sensualistic Philosophy. striking instance of the maxim that " Extremes meet," by usurping and exaggerating the most extreme feat- ures of Hamilton's rational system. Spencer begins by adopting the ultra-nominalism of James Mill, as to the formation of our general concepts. Ignoring the power of comparison in the mind, which is correctly made the basis of the doctrine of the Conceptualist, they treat our general names as mere names, answering to nothing but as many of the individuals as the mind can remember together. Hence, the larger the class, or image, the more vague the idea, say they. Hence, again, the notions which we acquire the habit of attach- ing to very large classes or comprehensive images, have less and less conformity to the things comprehended. They are mere symbols, as Spencer calls them, " sym- bolic conceptions," which we get into the habit of sub- stituting for our ignorance, where the objects named have really outgrown our conceptions. We have no guarantee whatever of their real truth. This initial sophism quietly omits the known fact, that every class- formation in the mind is an act of the a priori and valid power of comparison : and that the general term con- notes the common qualities, and denotes the individual things possessing in common those qualities. Spencer outrages, at the beginning of his process, the well- established law of logic, that in general terms, as we widen the comprehension of a class, taking in more in- dividuals, we unavoidably diminish the number of dis- tinguishable qualities seen to be common to all ; that is .to say, as we increase the denotation, we diminish the connotation. Hence, the truth is, that our most general ideas are the simplest. The idea in " animal " is simpler, and, in that sense, more perspicuous, than the idea in "quadruped": because the name of this smaller class connotes all the qualities in "animal," and at least one more besides. Hence, when Spencer calls these general notions " symbolic ideas," and when he says they are Evolution Theory. 119 valid only when sustained by an individual verification, he asserts a fundamental error of Sensualism. The next foundation-stones of his system are the two Hamtltonian doctrines, that our knowledge is only rela- tive, and that our minds are incapable of having any cognition of the unconditioned. Both of these he usurps and employs for sweeping and destructive uses, to which Hamilton would have utterly demurred. That he could usurp them shows, as we shall argue hereafter, that Hamilton mixed some errors of Sensualism in his own system. Whereas the Scotch philosopher claimed real knowledge for our perceptions of substance and the primary attributes of matter, and only made the remainder of our knowledge relative, Spencer would make it all so. Hamilton's love of strong and of novel phraseology prompted him to exaggerate that truth which all careful rninds apprehend, that our ideas about things infinite and absolute must be incomplete, because our own minds are finite ; and he loved to state it as an inability to think the unconditioned. This proposition Spencer pushes to the absurdity that all absolutes are to us wholly unknowable (concepts merely symbolic). Twenty years ago, Dr. M'Guffey, being in his study with me, pointed to Hansel's " Limits of Religious Thought," saying: "Have you read that book?" I answered that I had. Said he : " I beg that you will read it again carefully. I regard it as a dangerous and erroneous book, and I should be glad to know whether you concur with me." I could say that I had already concurred it seemed to me unspeakably mischievous. Mansel's dogma, that God cannot be truly known to our thought, because absolute and infinite, was precisely to Spencer's purpose; and he, of^ course, seizes it with much applause. He adopts all its glaring errors. He also extends the same " unknowable " character to all our abstract ideas ; to that, of course, of time, of space, of spirit, of matter, of beginning, of ending. While he I2O Sensualistic Philosophy. admits that no mind can help having these ideas, no one can ever have a valid title to think them. On this, as well as on the old Sensualistic ground, then, he dismisses God, substance, and spirit, from his phi- losophy. But the question now presses him : What is philos- ophy ? He cannot give the answer of any prior student : as, that Philosophy is the meta-physical ; or, that it is the science of rational spirit and God ; or, that it is the science of absolute being ; for he has nothing but the physical on his plan. He has no sp'r't, no God, no absolute being. What, then, can Mr. Spencer's philos- ophy be ? His answer is : Philosophy is Science com- pletely " unified," by which he means not merely sciences shown to be consistent inter se, but that all sciences are systematized laws of one single power. Can there be such a demonstration ? Ought there to be such a demonstration? All these deep questions Mr. Spen- cer virtually answers by his simple authority. He says there can and must be. He says science is not philos- ophy until it is thus " unified." He is not satisfied with the inter-consistency of the different sciences, which has satisfied other men. He says nothing philosophical is done until all sciences are shown to be the uniform and invariable law of a single power. He deigns to give no reason why. He speaks as a philosophic Pope. So it must be. The only ground for the assumption which he deigns to give is that suggested by the remark, that man's empirical scientific knowledge seems to point to the proposition that the laws of nature are universally uniform. But if they are, the other hypothesis of a universal Providence exercised by an almighty, per- sonal Spirit explains that result far better. Why, then, reject it for one at least as " unthinkable ?" There re- mains no answer but that so it pleases Mr. Spencer. To any common sense it appears evident, that could Mr. Spencer establish this philosophy, then his single, Evolution Theory. 121 universal power would belong to the absolute, and so would be " unknowable." And then Mr. Spencer would be bound to condemn and utterly cast away his "unified" philosophy, for precisely the same reason which has made him reject natural theology. His suc- cess must be suicidal, and so it is ; but this makes no difference with Mr. Spencer. What, then, is the single power with which this phi- losophy is to be constructed ? It is material force. He intends us> to take the word in the literal sense of mechanical or astronomical science. Force is Mr. Spencer's God. There is but one cause in the uni- verse, force ; and there is but one kind of effect in the universe, motion. Is not the ultimate idea of force an unconditioned one, and therefore " unthinkable ?" and is not motion, in its ultimate conception, equally so? Mr. Spencer admits it emphatically. Yet this unthink- able cause and effect constructs the whole philosophy of him, who is too philosophic to have any philosophy of an absolute or a finite Spirit, because these are "un- knowable." Why this ? No adequate reason appears in the whole of his speculations, except that Mr. Spen- cer appears not- to like the Christian's God or his own soul, and he prefers Force. The Titanic enterprise which he then proposes to himself is, to construct the whole universe, material and spiritual, with all its beings and powers, with all its varied and opposite effects, with its miracles of wise design and wise providence, by the sole action of blind force. The attempt is designedly termed Titanic ; such it is in its audacity and in its result. The Titans, a species of hybrid monsters, vainly proposed to reach the seat of God, which true science has lilted to the fixed stars, by piling one or two fifth - rate earthly mountains upon each other. Mr. Spencer employs a certain abnormal and diseased ability in inventing a certain heap of suppositions and imaginations, and com- 122 Sensualistic Philosophy. bining them together, with no result save that self-con- tradiction which I have pointed out. His structure is briefly this : Man's consciousness seems to give him sensations and the remembered concepts of them. Like Comte, he grants that it is impossible for a mind to construe its own ideas at all, without some general principle which we must needs begin with as a priori to the process of construction. The mind, then, must assume some prin- ciple as '" provisionally true." The warrant which we get, that it and its corollaries are really true, is the con- gruity afterwards ascertained experimentally between them and facts. When this congruity is found to be universal, that is, is tried by all human experience with- out meeting with a breach, then it makes our system of cognitions practically valid. Such a system would evidently make of all our science an inverted pyramid. One obvious consequence would be, that no knowledge would be thoroughly settled as valid until all knowledge was acquired. But would not the mind which attained to this be literally omniscient? Undoubtedly. Omnis- cience, however, is an infinite thing, and must by Mr. Spencer be remanded to the position of the " unknow- able." So that valid knowledge would be, on this scheme, impossible. Nor can he plead that as the con- gruities of the provisional hypothesis with experimental facts widened, their evidence would tend towards prob- abilities so high as to be practically valid. This is a confusion of thought which comes from an inaccurate comparison of this supposed process with the processes of the physicist, in testing a physical hypothesis by physical experiments. That they are fundamentally different, is made plain by a very obvious remark : that without some a priori principle to proceed upon, the physicist could not make that experimental verification at all. Thus, Dr. Franklin made the hypothesis that lightning might be electricity, and then tested it by Evolution Theory. 123 experiment. But no experimental test could possibly have any certain force, except on the postulate that like causes produce like effects ! Experiment cannot apply a standard to its own prior standard. This whole theory of ascertaining provisional hypotheses is, then, a delusion in Sensualistic hands. Spencer seems, in other places, to perceive this ; and hence, in all the subsequent parts of his work, he loudly declares that he has an a priori truth which is unde- monstrable because self-evident and necessary, and which is the all-unifying principle of science. This is, that Force is universally persistent. Its meaning is, that no element of force ever perishes or really ceases, any- where, or in all time ; but it is only transmuted into some other form or forms. Another truth, which is rather involved in this than drawn from it, is that like causes must universally produce like effects. This is evidently what Mr. Spencer means by his self-evident proposition, that law is universally uniform. The same first truth involves the conclusions that matter is inde- structible ; and that all motion is continuous. When the motion of a mass seems to terminate, it is only be- cause the motion has become molecular. If a ball that was just now moving, has been stopped, it is only be- cause the atoms of the body that stopped it, and perhaps of the ball, are now quiverin ; somehow with an amount of molecular motion, invisible to our eyes, exactly equal to the former motion of the ball. Still another principle, which he holds to be directly involved in his grand first truth, is that bunglingly termed by his brethren the correlation of forces. He expresses it more accurately by asserting that any one mode of force may be trans- formed into any other, and will be found equivalent thereto. This, then, is his % grand first truth : Force universally persistent, and as involved immediately in this : The connection of cause and effect absolutely and forever invariable ; and, The transformation and equiv- 124 SensuaKslic Philosophy. alency of forces. Grant the previous assumption, the first principle before the first, which is and remains a sheer assumption, that mechanical force is the sole power (involving the other absurd assumptions, that there is but one substance, matter ; and that there is neither spirit nor God) ; the ideas are consistent enough. If force is absolutely persistent, then, when a given force seems to pass into an effect, that effect is but a new form of the same force, and somehow equiv- alent thereto. But this will be further tested at a suit- able time. What we should remark here, is this singular fact : that Mr. Spencer's first, universal, necessary, self- evident intuition, the universal persistency of force, should be a doctrine only surmised, in our day, as the last deduction of a comparison of many physical sciences. Truly, in this new atheistic judgment, " the last are first, and the first last ! " Still more singular is it that Mr. Spencer should himself argue deductively to prove his own first truth ! He will excuse this marvelous logic, by saying that it is the very glory of it to find that which was first in analysis of laws is also last in their synthesis : that here is the crowning congruity. I re- turn to the charge with the question : If this proposi- tion is so necessary and self-evident, how is it that Mr. Spencer's friends, the physicists, only began to 'suspect it in our own generation ? And how can a first truth, which, as being a first truth, cannot have any premise behind it, be what this proposition historically is (if it is a truth at all), a final deduction from premises by a multitude of experiments ? Before I pass on, I will also show, out of Mr. Spen- cer's own mouth, the utter inconsistency of his whole objection against our natural theology. If there were any God, he would be " tlje Unconditioned," and thus absolutely unknowable. Hence, to predicate any at- tributes of him, to propound any doctrines whatsoever about him, to offer any service whatever to him, is of Evolution Theory. 125 the real nature of religious impiety; and Mr. Spencer's practical atheism is much the more " religious." But he expressly admits that this Force-God of his is equally unconditioned, in reality, and equally unknowable. Ought not Mr. Spencer to conclude, then, that it is bad science to propound any doctrine about it? So it seems to a plain mind. About the one " Uncondition- ed," infinite, personal spirit, Mr. S. forbids our having a single doctrine, or idea, or feeling, simply because it is unconditioned. About his " Unconditioned," uni- versally persistent Force, he commands us to hold a vast multitude of doctrines; to hold, in fact, all the knowledge we have at all ! But, some Evolutionist will say, Here is the grand difference : Mr. S. sees that force reveals itself by its effects, directly to sense-per- ception, our only faculty of cognition. I reply, that Mr. Spencer himself holds and teaches most emphatic- ally, that perception is as merely relative, and as utterly incompetent to have any valid cognition of uncondi- tioned reality, as any other supposed faculty. He him- self declares (correctly, so far) that it is just as impossi- ble for perception to cognize a property without think- ing an unconditioned notion of true being of which it is a property ; as it is impossible fbr a priori reason to cognize being as being, without doing so through some perceived property. But Mr. S. enables us to demon- strate his own inconsistency by his own argument. In Ch. IV. Principles, 25, having asserted that all our knowledge of the phenomenal is merely relative, he teaches us that this makes no practical difference against its utility. For, if it is regularly true that our perceptions show us certain phenomenal antecedents immediately followed by certain results ; we can take our measures accordingly, just as accurately as though we knew (what he thinks we can never know) that our perceptions corresponded exactly with the real being behind the phenomena. Now, he holds that all these 126 Sens :;alis tic Philosophy. pJicnomena are the manifestations of his Force-God. But that is the Unknowable " Unconditioned/' Yet our apprehensions of its manifestations can be prac- tically trustworthy as though it were not the unknow- able ! Why, then, may not an infinite personal Spirit make manifestations to our consciousness, which may be equally trustworthy ? The inconsistency of this position is made all the more crushing for Mr. Spencer, by this : that whereas he knows so little about his " Unknowable," that he dares not ascribe to it any intelligence whatever ; we know that our God is all intelligence, and, therefore, infinitely able to make all kinds of manifestations to our finite consciousness which His benevolence prompts. But let Mr. Spencer proceed with his evolution of his theory. Having gotten the intuition (by deduc- tion !) of the universally and eternally persistent force, he derives from it all other ideas. Our notion of space is our " consciousness of coexistent positions ;" position having been previously revealed in consciousness, simply as the ubi of a force, or point of force. Our no- tion of matter is a " consciousness of coexistent posi- tions that offer resistance ;" resistance being the mani- festation by which Force reveals itself to us. Matter and space are thus related : as we are conscious of re- sistance in or behind the coexistent positions, or not. This conception of matter, Mr. Spencer has already pronounced preposterous. On p. 52, 3, " Principles," he told us how the physicist Boscovich endeavored to relieve the difficulty of conceiving matter by this hy- pothesis : that " the constituents of matter are centres of force, points ivithout dimension, which attract and repel each other in such wise as to be kept at specific dis- tances apart." How does this differ from Mr. Spencer's definition of matter, as " coexistent positions offering resistance?" Boscovich's "points" are obviously Spencer's " positions," and Boscovich's " force " is Evolution Theory. 127 Spencer's " resistance." But to the former definition he objects (justly), that " a centre of force without ex- tension is unthinkable ; answering to these words we can form nothing more than a symbolic conception of the illegitimate order." Then, obviously, his own con- ception of space is only an illegitimate one, Yet this is made one of the corner-stones of his system. Time is but experienced succession. Our notion of material motion is simply the consciousness of matter in succes- sive positions in time. Thus, these a priori notions are, by Spencer, generated empirically, as by other Sen- sualistic philosophers, save that he employs novel and obscure phraseolog} T . Out of these unknowables, Mr. Spencer is now pre- pared to construct the known Universe. He next deduces the additional principles that every motion is along the line of greatest traction or least resistance ; that all motion is in its nature oscillatory ; that as mat- ter concentrates, motion dissipates itself, and as motion concentrates itself, matter, is dissipated. In this last pair we have the secret of the whole universe, inorgan- ic, living, and rational. Force does and undoes it all, concentrating matter and dissipating motion, or dissi- pating matter as it concentrates motion. These two laws made all the suns and planets upon the nebular hypothesis. (Although Mr. S. does not think, in the earlier part of the book, that the nebular hypothesis is proved). They also make all the plants and animals, and all the (so called) minds. At this point Mr. Dar- win comes in with his evolution hypothesis for animated nature. With his help, Mr. S. easily generated, during immense tracts of ages, first, protozoa, then, in succes- sion, the higher forms up to man. The two oscillatory laws, with the mutual reactions of organisms and their environments, the law of variation, or instability of the homogeneous, the law of the survival of the fittest, with the law of heredity, account for the gradual evolutions 128 Sensualistic Philosophy. of man, with all his conscience, intellect, arid will, out of the most rudimental insect. If we examine that rudimental life, we find nothing but a sensibility, the nascent source of a tactual sense. The changing en- vironment acts upon this little animated mass, by a series of forces. The mass responds by corresponding changes. Hence the growth of the individual. From the same general cause, the species differentiates and some members grow new organs. The tactual sense is gradually diversified by the varied influences of the environment, into other senses. Out of these, again, countless impressions stored up in the brain, and .trans- mitted by inheritance, gradually evolve mind ; and the descendant of the dull mollusk is, at perhaps the ten- millionth remove, a Newton ! Spencer's sociology is fashioned precisely as is his psychology, out of the impressions of force. Incredible as it may seem, tribes, societies, and nations are with him literal bodies ; social affections are adhesive attrac- tions, and the common movements of will and purpose in bodies of men are literal forces. The reader will remember how Spencer flouts our more derivative conceptions, as mere* " symbolic conceptions." But with him the metaphorical language which calls nations ''bodies," and moral principles "forces," are perfectly literal ! The whole is only an unhealthy dream. One of the most astounding things connected with this monstrous aggregation of confusions and assumptions, is the ap- plause it has received from some critics professedly Christian. Mr. Spencer tells us, in conclusion, that his materialism must not be regarded -like the gross sys- tems of earlier infidels, who, when they said man was mere matter, employed tHe word in its lowest sense, and with its heaviest associations. His materialism proposes to level up, and not to level down ; to sub- limate matter, and not to degrade spirit. He intimates Evolution Theory. 129 that his " Force " may answer as well for spirit, as spirit itself, could we only see with his eyes. For after all, his " Matter " is only a manifestation of force, and has no more substantive reality than our spirit. So, it is with him a favorite idea, a "symbolic conception " to call his absolute negation of belief touching- this " Un- knowable," " religion." For all this some Christian critics are thankful, and are quite consoled that Mr. Spencer, in demolishing all former beliefs, has left us thus much. They gravely propose that Christianity and unbelief shall meet together upon Mr. Spencer's as a common ground ! Whether this be blindness, or cowardice, it is equally amazing and deplorable. For, in the first place, Spencer's system is overtly anti-Chris- tian. He makes no secret of his contempt for the Chris- tian Scriptures ; and it is hard to discover any doctrine they reveal which he does not flout, from creation downwards. While the Scriptures command us to " acquaint ourselves with God, and be at peace," and while our Saviour declares that "this is life eternal, that we might know Him the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent;" the whole of Mr. Spen- cer's theolog}^ is summed up in this one point : that it is irreligious to attempt to know anything about Him. Second : It is a system of practical atheism. For, some knowledge is in order to any service. If we can verify no attribute of God, then we cannot trust Him, nor pray to Him, nor obey Him. In a word, that which is to us absolutely unknowable, is practically non- existent. Third, Mr. Spencer leaves no possibility of an immortality for man. The human being is, to him, simply an organized mass. There is no spiritual sub- stance. The very highest functions of reason, taste, and conscience, are nothing but modifications of Force ; literally the same force which, as gravity, weights the grocer's scale, or the donkey's cart, or as caloric soft- ens the iron and expands the steam ; literally trans- 9 130 Sensualistic Philosophy. formable into these, and correlated to them. When the organizing force is transmuted, then the man is subject to that " absorption of motion and diffusion of matter," which is Mr. Spencer's idea of death ; and it is as much the death of the mind as of the brain and muscles. Let Mr. Spencer tell the world as much as he pleases, that his materialism levels upward, and not downward ; that instead of debasing spirit he would have us refine matter into the universal " Force ; " still with all sinners of the common grade, his doctrine will have the simple result of imbruting those who adopt it. For their common sense will persist in believing that force is a mechanical power contrasted with the spiritual ; they will not believe the contradiction which would persuade them that the same species of power which obeys the mechanical law in the machine, and the chemical law in the laboratory, is also subjected to the spiritual law of conscience in the man. Mr. Spen- cer may persuade himself of this "symbolic concept;" the common sense of his pupils will not. Last, his scheme, in its sublimated form, is only a vicious aspect of the vicious scheme of pantheism. " Matter, motion, and force" contain all the phenomenal of all kinds; and these " are but symbols of the Unknown Reality." Mr. Spencer disclaims all positive conclusions for materialism, or for idealism ? True. But he shuts us up to the two alternatives of absolute materialism, or absolute idealism. The only choice he gives us, is be- tween the two forms of pantheism, either of which is practical atheism. CHAPTER VII. PHYSIOLOGICAL MATERIALISM. n~^HE great extension of the department of physi- ology, especially as combined with the doctrines of comparative anatomy, has occasioned another school of materialism. Its advocates are in full sym- pathy with the Sensualistic philosophy, and with the recent evolution doctrine ; and when they attempt to systematize those functions of the human being which we call mental functions, their method is precisely that of the Sensualist. This movement of opinion is not new or peculiar to our own age; but had, in the last cen- tury, an advocate at least as ingenious as any of the recent, in Hartley. The result of physiological mate- rialism is also to recognize no other mind than nerve- matter. It begins with these facts asserted by compar- ative anatomy : that as we proceed with dissections of animal bodies, from the lower to the higher species, wherever we reach a more complete, or better devel- oped nervous system, we see in the living animal abler instincts and fuller powers. Those species which have least nerve and brain, have also the fewest and poorest instinctive powers. Those which approach nearest to man in development of the brain, and completeness of the nervous system, come nearest to him in intelligence. Hence, they attempt to draw the inference, that this nerve-matter is the mind that thought, feeling, and volition are but refined, perhaps, inexplicable molecu- lar functions, or results of such functions, even as mus- cular contractions are. 132 Sensuaiistic Philosophy. The same conclusion is attempted to be drawn from observations upon the human brain and nerves. Thus : it is claimed that when certain injuries are inflicted on the brain, as long as they continue, all mental functions are wholly suspended. If the nutrition and stimula- tion of the brain by a circulation of nutritive blood is impaired, the powers of thought are impaired ; if the circulation is enriched, the vigor of mind is increased. Again : it is held that molecular functions of brain attend all the abstract and subjective processes of thought, just as truly as the sensitive. It is supposed that brain-ac- tion must accompany the abstract conception of God, of vacant space, of eternity, in the man who meditates with every sense closed, as truly as it attends the hearing of a trumpet, or sight of a landscape. This is inferred from the fact that the passage of such inward thoughts moves the features. This change of countenance would not occur, they argue, unless the muscles were moved by their nerves ; but these nerves radiate from the brain. Again : they profess to have ascertained that the con- tinued activity of the mind in abstract thought increases the amount of certain phosphatic salts excreted from the nerve tissues, and thrown out of. the body by its emunctories. The inference from this is, that molecu- lar action must be greater in the brain during, and by reason of, the mental exertions. Does not the corre- spondence of these facts, asks the materialist, point to the conclusion that mental activities are nothing else than molecular activities of nerve-matter? Yet more ingenious surmises are drawn from certain automatic actions of our limbs, and from experiments upon the relations of the different masses or organs of the brain by vivisection. When men walk along the way, occupied by thought or conversation, do their minds emit a distinct volition for every movement of each foot ? Especially when one continues to walk on, after he is wrapped in profound reverie, who can be- Physiological Materialism. 133 lieve that each motion is prompted by a distinct mental volition emitted by the spirit, when consciousness wholly fails to testify to its emission? It is inferred, therefore, that the nervous matter in the sensorial centre has an automatic power of sending- its motive influence down to the muscles, without the perpetual, immediate, and voluntary supervision of the mind. This result materialists suppose to be favorable to their conclu- sion. But let us look a little more closely at that complex nerve-organ usually called the brain. It is found, on dissection and experiment, to be not one, but three organs ; all, indeed, alike in being composed of nerve- matter ; yet distinguishable in place and function, and each of the three complex. First, at the base of the brain, or just over the spot at which the spinal cord enters the bottom of the skull, is a small, but compli- cated, body of nerve-matter, from which the spinal cord descends as a species of narrowed continuation, and to which all tJie different nerves of sensation directly converge. From this same centre all the efferent nerves of motion also diverge, the most of them through the spinal cord. This cluster of ganglions is evidently, in the immediate sense, the sensorium, the centre of sensations. Com- parative anatomy shows that it is the rudimental source of brain-structure ; for as observation descends from man to less perfect animals, this cluster is still there, at least rudi mentally, while the two other clusters of ganglions disappear more and more the lower we go. In man and other higher animals there lies, behind the sensorial centre, a mass of nerve-matter called the cere- bellum, which experiment and comparative anatomy seem to indicate as having no necessary connection with mental processes, but as a nervous store-house for the species of nervous influence which the sensorial centres transmit to the muscles. On the top and in front of these two smaller organs in the human skull 1 34 Sensualistic Philosophy. lies the largest organ of all, the cerebrum, or brain proper. This consists of several distinct lobes, arranged in two hemispheres, the whole composing the great mass which mainly fills the skull. It is formed of soft nerve- matter, with the vesicular substance bearing a larger ratio to the fibrous than in the spinal cord, and even lavishly supplied with blood. It also has its numerous fibres, which seem to converge towards the neck or joining-place, where it connects with the sen- sorial cluster beneath, even as the various nerves from the limbs and chest and organs of sensation converge upwards into the same sensorial cluster. To the cere- brum no nerve of sense or motion runs directly ! It has no feeling, and can be sliced away by the surgeon, without the creature's knowing it, save as one knows when his hair or nail is cut. It has been found not necessary to the functions of animal life / for, provided it can be re- moved without fatal lesion of the other vital organs, and especially of the sensorial cluster just underneath, the creature lives on without any cerebrum breathes, eats, and digests food, just as before. But, on the other hand, let this great cerebral mass be cut away or dis- organized by disease, or even unduly compressed, then merit al functions are at once interrupted. On the other hand, when the anatomist's knife interferes with the sensorial cluster, the vital functions, seemingly so inde- pendent of the cerebrum, are at once interfered with, and the slightest wound of the central nucleus of that cluster is instant death. Such is % a brief view of the relations of the three organs. From this the materialists would have us be- lieve that thought is as truly a nerve-function as the molecular affection of the sensorium, as brought to it by the afferent or received from it by the efferent nervous fibres. The matter affected, say they, is of the same kind ; why not regard the function as the same ? Psychologists appeal to " consciousness " to reveal to Physiological Materialism. 135 them the functions and nature of mind. Why not regard consciousness itself as nerve-function? If mind were a different and independent substance from brain, would not its consciousness reveal to it the interaction of brain as a distinct substance and subordinate instru- ment, even as consciousness shows to us the fingers by which we execute a conscious volition or derive a tactual sensation ? I have thus stated the main grounds of the material- istic hypothesis, as they are drawn from physiology, and advocated by such writers as Huxley and Flint ; and I have allowed them at least as much plausibility as they are entitled to claim. I will only add here, that in the judgment of still more learned physiologists, this conclusion is only plausible, and not true. Thus, Vir- choWy of Berlin, who cannot be suspected of sharing any theological prejudice, is quoted in " Nature " of November, 1874, as saying : " Of all kinds of dogmatism, the materialistic is the most dangerous, because it-denies its own dogmatism, and appears in the garb of science; because it professes to rest on fact, when it is but specu- lation ; and because it attempts to annex territories to natural science, before they have been fairly conquered." Dalton says: "The hemispherical ganglia are simply the instruments through which the intellectual powers manifest themselves." Draper not only asserts the im- materiality of the mind on grounds of common sense and sound philosophy, but he founds an ingenious* physical demonstration on the relation of the cerebrum to the sensorial cluster, to prove that mind is a sub- stance distinct from brain. Dr. W. B. Carpenter, the most profound and voluminous English writer on the physiology of man, is a firm believer in the spirituality of the soul and of God. Says Dr. James L. Cabell : " That cerebral action accompanies all mental action ; this is absolutely all that physiology has rendered probable. It has not demonstrated nor rendered prob- 136 Sensualistic Philosophy. able the position that cerebral changes precede and produce mental states. And, even in the case of the perceptive faculties, how can physiology ever bridge over the chasm between the final physical antecedent, the molecular tremors of the organic instrument, and the succeeding incongruous phenomena of perception and thought ? Whatever discoveries the physiologist as such may make, there must always remain this mys- tery, which it is an impertinence for him to undertake to solve." CHAPTER VIII. SPIRITUALITY OF THE MIND. r I ^HE Sensualistic philosophy of our age has now * passed before us in a brief, but faithful review. Let us 'com pare it with the same system in the eight- eenth century. We have seen this doctrine recom- mencing in the early part of this century with Mr. James Mill, the Condillac of English philosophy, and supported by the talents of his more influential son, J. S. Mill. It has regularly fulfilled its destiny, in passing, in the hands of the Evolutionists, into mate- rialism, and in those of Biichner and his supporters, into avowed atheism. If history has any lessons, and if moral causes have any regularity, nothing is lacking but the further diffusion of the doctrine to give us again its legitimate conclusion, a nineteenth century " Reign of Terror." International Communism has, indeed, al- ready given a prelibation from the pit, in its short-lived reign in Paris ; and this society is the avowed patron of this animal philosophy. If anything can be done, then, by perspicuous and faithful criticism, to expose its groundless pretensions and destroy its credit, he who accomplishes this will be rendering a priceless service to humanity, to just legislation, to sound morals, and to Christian theology. The conclusion to which this false philosophy sought to lead us, in the last chap- ter, naturally demands our first attention. For it seems necessary that we attempt to settle the question whether man has a Mind (and not merely a set of organs), before we examine the powers of that substance. We must (i37) 138 Sensualistic Philosophy. proceed next, then, to show that the mind is a distinct spiritual substance, and to examine and refute the pre- tended grounds on which materialists impugn this con- clusion of the almost universal common sense of civil- ized men. The method of the remaining criticism will be independent of the order of our previous review. I shall endeavor to advance, in my own arrangement, the correct doctrines of philosophy as to the origin of our cognitions, indicating, as I go along, their application to the refutation of the various errors. The science into which we are about to enter will probably never be an exact one. The Christian be- liever may hence raise the question : Will it not be better, then, to draw our creed as to the soul's nature and destiny, from the " more sure word of prophecy?" 1 reply with an emphatic affirmative, and nothing can be farther from my thoughts than to offer him mere phi- losophic demonstration in lieu of the authority of Rev- elation. There, the spirituality of the soul, its immor- tality, its free-agency, its responsibility, the originality of its moral intuitions, are all infallibly taught. The Christian needs no better support for his philosophy, and he knows that he can nowhere find so good a one. The history of opinion has taught us too clearly the uncertainties of human speculation on these abstract subjects ; involved as they are with the keenest prej- udices and interests of man's passions and pride. While sound thinkers are substantially agreed upon the great outlines of philosophy, in details, there is difference among even them ; and to the vagaries of false philoso-, phy, there seems no end. Here we have experimental proof that the powers of the human mind are imper- fectly fitted for these inquiries. But the infinite Mind, because it is infinite, can communicate its testimony to the finite on any subject which does not necessarily transcend it, in a way perfectly conclusive. The un- speakable advantage of revelation over human science Spirituality of the Mind. 139 here appears from this : that the problem of the verifi- cation of a testimony from God to us, is a single problem, perfectly definite, and perfectly simple to the right heart ; a problem to which man's powers are fully com- petent, provided only God presents His credentials. When that one point is settled [that God has presented His credentials], our progress is safe in His teachings. We have only to interpret them candidly,, and we are on infallible ground. But the problems which philoso- phy presents to the mind of man are manifold, abstruse, and sundry of them wholly above his grasp. What, then, is the proper relation of philosophy to Revela- tion ? It is obviously that of an obedient and grateful handmaid. We are not to bend God's testimony to our reasonings, but to bend them to His testimony. The question then recurs : whether philosophy should have any value with the Christian believer. The an- swer is, that it has a subordinate value. It is useful even to him who possesses the divine doctrines, to see the concurrence of man's own intelligence, rightly ex- ercised, with the Infallible Intelligence. But, second, there are, unfortunately, many who reject the better guidance, and are unwilling to, learn anything from it. If we can induce these persons to open their eyes to the heavenly light, by showing them how the feeble beams of human reason ought to shine towards it, we have done them service. Or, if we can silence by the feeble authority of reason, cavils which only had the seeming support of the same weak authority, we have done the cause of Truth a service. This legitimate at- tempt, to make philosophy the handmaid of Christian theology, has been sometimes misunderstood, as though it implied that the validity of theological conclusions was dependent on the methods of philosophy. It has even been charged against the philosophic theologian, that he thus staked all upon his philosophy, to such an extent that, supposing his philosophy dissented from, 140 Sensiialistic Philosophy. his whole theology would lose its validity along with it. This is unjust. The theological conclusions, if cor- rect, rest upon the divine testimony. The student is not dependent upon the acceptance of any philosophy for the power to construe them aright. The faculties which the Maker placed in him will ensure that, if he allows them to act candidly, whether he has a psycho- logical theory of his own faculties or not. The young man is not dependent upon a technical knowledge of anatomy, for power to use his limbs in the gymnastic exercise ; nature is his teacher here ; she will cause tendons and muscles, of whose existence he is ignorant, to obey his volition implicitly. Is, therefore, anatomy valueless? If those muscles are wounded or diseased ; if an indiscreet or malicious master is about to summon the muscles to exertions which will be found unnatural or destructive, then anatomy becomes valuable. In proceeding to test the nature of the something in us which thinks and wills, by the verdict of conscious- ness, I shall assume only what is granted on all hands. Human beings have processes commonly called knowl- edge, affections, and volitions. It is by consciousness that we become aware of these in ourselves. So far, all concur. But what is consciousness? Let us so de- fine it as to omit all the vexed questions, and to include in our postulated facts of consciousness, nothing except what all parties grant. Whether consciousness be more than this, or not, it certainly includes this : a cognition which the something that thinks has of its own thoughts, feelings, and volitions. So, we need not raise the ques- tion whether our minds have any modifications which remain out of this self-consciousness. I may safely claim this of all parties: namely, that no mental modi- fication can be so in the mind as to be subject of ob- servation and inference, without being within the light of our self-consciousness. Again: no one disputes the validity of the testimony of consciousness, as to the Spirituality of the Mind. 141 fact that the mental state, or act, of which he is con- scious is really in his mind at the time he is conscious of it. There may possibly be debate of the question whether he construes that mental state, or act, aright ; of the question whether his mind had it when it was conscious of having it, it is impossible to doubt. Once more, since no state, or act, can be so in the mind as to claim a share of the mind's attention, save as it is in the sphere of consciousness, it follows that we must be equally indebted to this one faculty for our cognitions of the objective and the subjective, so far as we are en- titled to any. If this faculty is trustworthy within any proper limits, then it must be held as trustworthy everywhere within those proper limits. It is clear, then, that the subjective testimonies of consciousness are not to be rejected as invalid, merely because sub- jective. Consciousness itself is subjective. Hence the materialist who accepts the objective perceptions seen in consciousness with unquestioning confidence, is not to be allowed to dispute its subjective cognitions, mere- ly because they are subjective. At this point, we may see how erroneous is the assumption so quietly made by the Sensualistic philosophy, in its profession and claim of empiricism. It requires us to base everything on observation; and it is right, so far. But when it then tacitly assumes that only objective facts in con- sciousness are observed experimentally, it makes a claim as preposterous as sweeping. For it will appear that the subjective cognitions revealed in consciousness are even more truly facts observed, or experiential, be- cause it is only through these that the objective be- come experiential. The psychological argument for the spirituality of the mind, from the facts of consciousness, is evidently the conclusive and legitimate one. For, let the suppo- sition that man may possibly have an independent, spiritual mind, be once made, and, of course, sensuous 142 Sensualistic Philosophy. evidences against it cannot be conclusive. For, by the very definition of spirit, as substance that is simple, monadic, indivisible, unextended, devoid of sensible attributes, we have no right to expect to detect its presence or absence by direct sensation. Hence, when the materialist argues that " science " (meaning thereby exclusively the science of sensible phenomena], " tells him nothing of spirit;" I reply : Of course it does not. But if he argues thence that there is no spirit, he is as unreasonable as though he would decide whether a given crystal vase contains atmosphere, by eye-sight and touch, and object that the vessel contained no color and nothing resisting. Of course it does not: for the definition of atmosphere is a gas absolutely transparent, impalpable, and colorless in limited masses. So, other faculties than the senses must decide whether there is a spirit in man ; for spirit by its very definition is devoid of sensible properties. The chief evidence of the soul's spirituality will be found to .be, when inspected, intuitive. Man only knows usually as he is conscious of what he knows. His con- sciousness implies a "being which is conscious. Hence, man's knowledge of himself, as conscious, thinking sub- stance, is a priori to, though implicitly present in, all his other thinkings. He knows his own thinking self first, and only by knowing it knows any other thing. In other words, my having knowledge, sensitive or other, im- plies the Ego that has it. I can only have perception of the objective by admitting the reality of the subjec- tive. I cannot construe to myself any mental state without postulating real being, a subjectum whose the state is. So, the sensations from the objective side we are necessitated to refer to real, objective being, the non-Ego. The non-Ego is only known by having admit- ted the reality of the Ego. The Scientific American once remarked that, although perpetual motion could be demonstrated to be impossible in a machine of human Spirituality of the Mind. 143 construction, there are always a good many people busy in inventing perpetual motion. That journal rec- ommended the following method of finding the per- petual motion to such as are determined to pursue the inquiry ; and it assured them that it would find it fully as effectual as any, and much cheaper and simpler. Select a large tube, with handles. Place it in the mid- dle of the floor, and let the operator get into it, and lay hold of the handles. When he lifts himself thus to the ceiling, he will have perpetual motion. It is by a parallel method that the materialists proceed with their argument. It is a similar species of logical tub-lifting, burdened with the weight of the lifter's person. The reality of Spirit can only be taken away by taking away the very cognition on which the materialist stands : that consciousness, namely, of the Ego, which is h priori to his knowledge of matter. But may we not distinguish the Ego from the non- Ego, and yet think them both matter ? I reply, No : because in the very recognition of the two a contrast arises 'between them before the reason, which is inevit- able. Every act of consciousness is seen to imply, upon inspection, the singleness of the mind. It learns the qualities of various objects by sensations exceedingly various, yet all are inevitably referred to the same knowing Subject. The Ego who perceives by touching, is all the time identical with the Ego who perceives by tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing ; and it is the same, again, with that Ego who afterwards reflects upon all these sensations ; and still the same, who feels towards the objects. The knowing Mind remains identical through all these diversities. But all mate- rial objects exist before us in plurality. The simplest material substance is constituted by an aggregation of parts, and may be conceived as divided. The lightest has some weight : the smallest has some extension ; all have some figure. But consciousness says that the 144 Sensualistic Philosophy. thing within us, which knows, feels, and wills, is simple. These varied modifications which we are necessitated to refer to one subject, we also know coexist in it without partition or plurality. The subject which conceives is the same that feels towards the object conceived. The agent who hates is the same that loves the opposite object to the one hated. Moreover, every act and affection of the mind is known in consciousness as having complete unity, and it is impossible to refer any attribute of extension to them even in conception. Endeavor to imagine a con- cept as round, or ponderous, or colored (as it is a men- tal act) ; or an affection triangular, as distinguished from another that is circular ; or the top and bottom sides of a judgment ; or a volition divided by some tool into halves and quarters ; and you feel, inevitably, that the thought is impossible. All the attributes of matter are absolutely irrelevant to spirit and to all its modifi- cations. But, while all our mental affections have abso- lute unity, we are taught by our senses that all qualities and affections of material masses are affections of their parts aggregated. The whiteness of a wall is the white- ness of a multitude of separate points in the wall. The magnetism of a metallic bar is the magnetism of a mul- titude of molecules of metal. The properties may be literally divided along with the masses. The material- istic conception receives a most exact refutation, when we recall the multitude of distinct ideas and feelings stored up in unconscious memory, and the vast differ- ence in number, in dull or youthful, and in great or learned minds. Materialists would claim memory as especially a nerve-faculty, because a blow on the brain so distinctly suspends all its operations, as do certain diseases of that organ. They also cite the case of sen- sitive ideas lying long in the brain, wholly unknown to consciousness, until some peculiar excitement of the brain stimulates the indistinct marks into recollections. Spirituality of the Mind. Must not these ideas have been somehow imprinted on the nerve-matter ? I reply, No ; but in the spirit. The convolutions of the cortical matter of the brain cannot be resorted t'o to receive all these marks. For, first, birds have the faculty of memory; but it is stated by anatomists that their brains have no convolutions. Second, the faculty of memory involves very intimately that of association. But the latter discloses ties of sug- gestion, by resemblance, contrast, cause, between ideas once before in the mind, and other ideas never before in the mind. It is the faculty of comparison which perceives resemblances, and this, as we have seen, im- plies an intelligent middle term between the ideas com- pared. This materialist theory can never account for the rise by suggestion of ideas not simultaneously marked in the brain by sensation. We know that the retentiveness of memory is chiefly dependent upon the attention given to the ideas when seen at first. But attention has as its essential element volition, which is a subjective faculty. And, last, the startling rise of ideas, supposed to be long forgotten, out of conscious memory, in some peculiar cases of excitement, make it at least probable that no impression is ever lost. If so, the accumulation has no end in this life ; and the material- ist view becomes impossible. If the brain, or a part of it, is the something which remembers, how are all these marks distinguishably made on a surface of no more breadth ? Why does not the tablet get full ? How is it that a mind, like that of Leibnitz, for instance, can still learn more than ever, by reason of all that he has learned ? We must bear in mind that, if materialism is true, the viewing of any of these marks, in the act. of reminiscence, is some sort of sense-perception, because, on that doctrine, there is nothing else but sense organs, either without or within the skull. How many lines on an inch of surface can sense perceive ? That is settled for our eye-sight, the keenest sense known to us, with 10 146 Sensualistic Philosophy. geometrical exactness ! ' The supposition of marks im- printed on a material mass or surface is untenable. Professor Bain, in his " Mind and Body," attempts by many expedients, but vainly, to escape this objection. He assigns the material marks or prints of our ideas in memory, not only to the cortical grey matter of the brain's surface, but to the numerous particles of grey matter, which, throughout the whole nervous masses, he supposes to be the connecting-links of filaments of nerve at their plexuses. He labors to exaggerate the number of these filaments, claiming for each of them the functions of an independent nerve ; and he endeav- ors to diminish the number of the ideas in the largest memory. The fatal chasms in his hypothesis are such as these. It is mere supposition that molecules of the grey matter at the ends of separate filaments receive and retain these permanent marks of previous nerve- currents ; no demonstrative proof is shown. Many fila- ments are agitated to convey a single sensation ; per- haps, in some single cases, like a sensation of warmth, hundreds of thousands. The difference of material capacities between the brain of a Cuvier and a clown can never be made to bear a proportion to the contents of their two memories. Here Professor Bain shall sup- port the truth and contradict himself: On page gist he asserts (without proof) that " for every act of memory, .... there is a specific grouping or coordination of sen- sations and movements, by virtue of specific growths in the cell-junctions." If so, there must be a direct pro- portion between the number of these material junction- cells and the number of ideas. But, on page 2ist, he confesses that while the brain of the common male weighs forty-eight ounces, that of Cuvier weighed sixty- four ounces, and admits : " There would be no exag- geration in saying that while size of brain increases in arithmetical proportion, intellectual range increases in geometrical proportion." Then his self-contradiction is Spirituality of the Mind. 147 clear, if forty-eight ounces of brain are requisite to give space for the material markings of a peasant's ideas, sixty-four ounces cannot give space for a Cuviers. Now the law of our reason compels us to refer this complete contrast of attributes to a real difference of substance. While we name the Ego, Spirit, we must call the objective something else ; Matter. The latter has extension, parts, weight, resistance, figure, and usually color, with ,ocher secondary properties. The former has none of these, but singleness, indivisibility, identity. The power in matter is force. The powers in spirit are heterogeneous, powers of knowing, feeling, choosing. The man who thinks consistently, must al- ways be more certain that there is mind, than that there is matter; because the recognition of spirit is in order to the knowledge of matter. Does sense-perception seem to the materialist to give him the most palpable knowledge of the matter external to him? This is only a sensuous perversion of his habits of thought. For he has only been enabled to construe that perception at all, so as to make it a datum of valid knowledge, by first crediting the intuition of consciousness. But that has also revealed to him the perceiving agent as contrasted with the object revealed. How unscientific is it, to use the intuition in her second, and refuse credit to her first testimony? We should rather say: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. Hence, while pure idealism and materialism are both errors, idealism is the less error of the two. It outrages our intuitions on one side, materialism outrages them on both. This partial com- munity of error we have seen curiously illustrated by the constant tendency of the Sensualistic philosophy from Condillac to Herbert Spencer, to veer from mate- rialism to idealism. In the next place, materialism contradicts our imme- diate consciousness of free-agency. Let us first inspect that consciousness. He who imagines that it is nothing 148 Sensualistic Philosophy. more than opportunity for the muscles to effect, with- out obstruction, the impulses from within emitted by the something that thinks, has wholly mistaken the case. There is, besides, a conscious free-agency as to emitting the impulse from within. The very essence of the case is, that the something which thinks forms self- determinations. To be sure of this, one needs only to listen candidly to the testimony of consciousness. Now this unique function gives us again a conviction of the unity and simplicity of the mind ; for we see intuitively that the being which emits this self-determination is a unit of power, acting in every volition indi visibly. Let any man watch the volitions which pass through conscious- ness ; they are flashes of spiritual power all emitted from a focal point. Experience has now shown us two different (and often rival) classes of effects ; those of material forces being one class, those of free choice the other. Force is blind, unintelligent, and necessitated. Choice is intelligent and free. Whenever we exercise moral and rational self-command against the attraction of some vivid impression on the senses, we have a clear evidence of the subjective and spiritual seat of the will. That vivid sense-impression is, according to the mate- rialists, a material affection. There are many cases in which this is not only the last, but the most potent antecedent in the brain. Why, then, does not volition follow as a physical consequent ? Yet we know that we often present a successful rational resistance. The same species of proof is presented by the somnambulic state, and by some others. In these states, the nerve organs, including both those of sensation and motion, act automatically. The somnambulist walks, and, per- haps, climbs, with perfect accuracy. But as soon as the mind awakes, or returns to its normal control over the nerves, t.Qtally different volitions assume direction of the whole man. Now, it is the somnambulic state which shows what the nerve-organs can do of them- Spirititality of the Mind. 149 selves. What is this new power which comes to the helm, the instant the mind resumes the sway of the body ? It is something more than nerve-matter, spirit. Whenever matter is an objective point of free choice, we are conscious that free-agency and material force become opponents ; the intelligent purpose of the voli- tion is to overcome some material force ; and the nec- essary nature of the material object is to present a passive resistance, up to its natural limit, to the free- agency. The reason refuses to think any effect with- out an adequate cause; and it is impossible to refer these contrasted effects of force and free-agency to a common cause. Hence, the something which wills cannot be the something which force inhabits ; mat- ter. This view as much excludes nerve-matter from the claim to be the substance which wills, as it does bony matter; for the actions of nerve-matter, so far as known by the senses, are only material ; that is, unintelligent and necessitated. From this point of view we see that the correlation, or as Spencer more perspicuously calls it, the transformation and equiva- lency of material force and mental will, is impossible. That false dogma is unquestionably the corner-stone of the evolution philosophy, as Spencer clearly enough saw. For, if there are two species of power in the universe, spiritual and material, that unification of sciences which he demands is out of the question. Again, if force and volition cannot be proven equiva- lent and transmutable powers, then, however Darwin might succeed in evolving higher animal forms from the lower, the evolution of man from animal progenitors, and the exclusion of a spiritual God from his creation, is all undone, because the mind is the man, and the evolution theory would leave the more essential part of human nature unaccounted for. This, then, is the key of the battle-ground ! Hence, the importance of defending it triumphantly. 150 Sensualistic Philosophy. I resume that defence, then, by claiming that any man's consciousness, faithfully inspected, reveals the essential difference between material force and voli- tion, which I have claimed above. Effects so hete- rogeneous cannot be correctly referred to the same cause. But I argue, farther, that volition originates material force. This fact is, indeed, the pretext of the evolutionist, for his assertion of the identity of the two ; but he misunderstands it. We perpetually see mate- rial force originating in volitions of spirits, but we never see volitions originating in material forces. Nay, but, replies the Evolutionist, is not sensation the result of some species of impact of matter upon the nerve- organs ? And do not sensations cause volitions ? To the latter, I reply, No ; they only present occasions for volitions, which are, in truth, caused from within. Let any one honestly inspect his own consciousness, and he will see that the activity of his soul in volition is from within outward ; not from the object inward ; he will see that, granted the object before the sense-percep- tion, it is the soul, the something which thinks, that elects to reach towards it, or not. The utter mistake of endeavoring to make the volition the mere, material " correlate " of the force expended by molecular im- pact upon the nerve-organ of sense, is thus displayed by Dr. Stirling, of Edinburg. Let us suppose that an insult is shouted in the ear of a choleric Briton. He flushes with anger, and his arm is nerved for a blow. The muscular force in those muscles, says the Evolu- tionist, is che transformed and equivalent force of the molecular impact of the acoustic waves upon his audi- tory nerve. Let us see ; a very simple experiment will test this. Let us suppose that the sturdy Briton knows only his mother-tongue ; and then shout the insult in French. No flush burns in his face ; no muscle is moved to strike. But now let a bystander translate the insult into English, reciting it in the softest tone, Spirituality of the Mind. 1 5 1 and the forcible manifestations of anger are at once made. Why this ? Evidently because sound was not even the occasion, much less the cause, of resentment, at all ; but an idea, a thought, of which the sound was the symbol. The occasion was in the idea alone. Upon apprehension of that, resentment arose ; when that failed to reach the mind, there was no effect. So, the evolutionist reminds us that the caloric which warms the cheek of modesty with a blush, is the same agent which expands the steam in the machine. Very true : but it is only a thought which can prompt the chaste soul to send the mantling blood into the warm cheek. Without the idea, the same acoustic waves, or refracted rays on the retina, provoke no blush. I remark further, that if volition is transformed material force, then one ought to be regularly measured in terms of the other. But this is not so. One man, with but a languid voli- tion, emits a muscular force which moves a mass that another cannot move by the most intense energy of his will. Worse than this : we see one when partially alarmed by danger, but fresh in body, by a compara- tively slight effort of volition, moving his limbs over the ground like a deer ; but later in the race, we see the same man, when death is close upon his heels, and when his whole will is stirred and nerved to agony, scarcely able to drag his feet a few inches. Force is not the correlate of will ; but it is a heterogeneous power. I return, then, to the assertion, that while material force is not transformable into volition, volition is an original spring of material force ; and we shall discover, the only original spring of it. Passivity is the essential attribute of matter. This is indisputably implied in the law of inertia, and also in the law of motion. Matter only receives force, and transmits, and obeys it. It is in itself as incompetent to originate force, as it is to resist it. Is, then, force from eternity to eternity, as Spencer would have it? We shall sec in a moment. 152 Sensualistic Philosophy. Whenever we have an opportunity to trace any series of forces to its origin, we find it always in the volition of a living thing. Does one hear, for instance, a can- non-ball hurtling through the air, and see it bury itself with violence in the earth ? Let him ask himself whence the momentum of this ball ? From the explosive force of the gunpowder ? Whence that explosive force ? One answer is: from the human providence of its manufac- turers. Another is: from the impact of fire, starting the chemical re-actions of its ingredients. Whence the fire? From the friction of a match. Whence that fric- tion ? From a quick motion of the gunner's arm. Whence that motion of the arm ? From a volition of the gunner's mind. Then we reach the beginning of this series of causes; for this volition, though occasion- ed by something out of that mind, is self-caused, an original emission of the spontaneous soul. Such is the original to which all series of forces are traced, which are not natural. Here, then, we have an analogy which begets the strongest probability, that all natural forces had the same origin in the will, namely, of the super- natural mind, God. The only apparent escape from this conclusion is in Mr. Spencer's assumption that force is from eternity to eternity, and so has no origin at all. But, first, this is inadmissible, because it gives us an infinite series of dependent effects, without any independent cause, which all philosophy rejects as an impossible proposition. It is inadmissible, second, be- cause the effects disclose at every step the richest intel- ligence, while mere force is blind. It is inadmissible, third, because this " persistency of force," in this sense, must also imply the absolute immensity of force and matter, as well as their absolute eternity. Let it be remembered that the evolutionist holds, that matter is the only habitat of force ; for it is an affection of matter alone, and not of empty space. He also admits, with us, that matter cannot be absolutely immense, or Spirituality of the Mind. 153 literally coextensive with infinite space ; because figure, dimension, and limit are inseparable from all our con- ceptions of matter. And last: it is impossible, as Mr. Spencer virtually admits, that a congeries of bodies finite in extent, and contained by nothing but empty space, can maintain his idea of the persistency of force. In every case of* material force, action must equal re- action. How can this equal re-action be given back to the forces on the edge of this material universe, where there is nothing to re-act ? Take, for instance, that form of force known as caloric. All the caloric radiated out from the masses of matter on the edge of the uni- verse, into empty space, can find nothing to radiate it back. Here Mr. Spencer's universal first truth, the persistency of force, absolutely breaks down. Matter cannot be eternal, or immense; God can. Hence, we are shut up to the conclusion to which every experi- mental analogy led us, that spirit is the only adequate ultimate source of forces ; and so, the presence of the forces of nature demonstrate the existence of the Super- natural Spirit, instead of superseding it. As concerns the correlation of material forces among themselves, we feel no motive, after so fully exempting the power of rational volition from their class, to assert or deny. But fidelity to the methods of sound science constrains us to remember that the doctrine of the cor- relation of the physical forces, even, is only a hypothesis. It has never received that verification so necessary to its demonstration as an established scientific truth, by the actual ascertainment of the unchanged equality of measurement for one force, and the other, into which it is supposed to be transformed. Such a verification, in- deed, the advocates of the doctrine admit to be forever impracticable. Again, has the force of gravity ever been correlated with heat, light, and electricity ? If so, why has any mass the same gravity, while its calorific and electrical conJiuons are most violently changed? 154 Scnsualistic Philosophy. That this hypothesis is not yet proved, appears from the ease with which a counter-supposition may be made, which seems to satisfy the known facts at least as well. Let it be supposed that each material force is a distinct and permanent property of the kind of matter which it inhabits, and potentially always present in it. This state of mere potentiality is an equilibrium produced by the resistance of another competing force. Then, all that will be necessary to produce the action of the former force, will be to release it from this counterpois- ing force. Its return to the state of rest, or potential presence, would be caused by the rise of a resisting force, again, sufficient to counterpoise it. Every phys- ical effect, then, is the result of an interaction of two or more single forces. Each force maintains its distinct integrity, both while active and potential. The advan- tages of this hypothesis are, that it might be supported by a multitude of physical facts, and is strictly accord- ant with a philosophic view of causation. According to this view, there is no transformation of one force into another, but each is and remains the" species of force it was at the beginning. The seeming transformation of one species into another is but the passage of the former from its active to its latent or potential state, and the release of the latter out of its potential into its active state. But, be this as it may, the evidence is totally lacking for the transformation of any inorganic force into the vital. And between both these and the spiritual there is a " gulf-fixed," which no man has passed or can pass. Materialism contradicts also the testimony of con- sciousness as to our moral judgments. This convinces us that matter, if a cause, is an involuntary and unin- telligent cause. But we know that we are responsible, and that this unavoidably implies a rational spontaneity in acting. No man deliberately thinks of holding a blind, material force to a moral responsibility. But this Spirititality of the Mind. 155 conviction of responsibility in conscience we shall find universal, radical, unavoidable, and intuitive. It is im- possible for a man reasonably to discharge his mind of it. He cannot think the admitted wrong as meritorious as the right, and the admitted wrong-doer irresponsible for his wrong, like a rolling stone, a wave, or a flame. These facts of consciousness compel us to admit the ex- istence within us of a substance different from matter. Had man no spirit, there would be nothing to be ac- countable. Were there no Spirit above him, there would be none to whom to be accountable. Were either true, our nature would be a lie and moral knowl- edge impossible. The attempt is made to meet these arguments by saying, first, that consciousness is not to be trusted. Consciousness, say they, is incomplete. She gives no account of the subjective acts and states of infancy, and an incorrect account of those of the mentally diseased. She usually tells us nothing of the large latent stores of memory. She is entirely silent as to any interaction of the nerve-system and the spirit, of which, if there is a spirit, there must be so much. But to what does all this amount? Consciousness does not tell us all things, and sometimes seems to tell us wrong. Were this granted, still the stubborn prop- osition would remain, that if we cannot trust conscious- ness, we can have no ideas. The faculty which they would exalt against her is sensation. Do the senses tell us all things? Are they never deceived? And does sense give any perception save as it is mediated by conscious- ness ? Enough of such special pleadings ! That con- sciousness reveals nothing direct of the interaction of the spirit and the nerve-organs, is precisely because spirit and matter are causes so diverse. So that this fact contains one of the most conclusive proofs against materialism. If our conscious intelligence could be simply a function of nerve-matter, then it would be 156 Settsualistie Philosophy. very natural to find every link of the nerve-action rep- resented to us mentally. But because conscious intel- ligence is not a material, organic function, but is the free action of spirit, a substance and cause wholly heterogeneous from matter, thsref >re it is that there is naturally a chasm of mystery just at the connecting- link between nerve-action in the sensor ium and the idea in the intelligence, and between volition in the spiritual agent and contraction in the efferent nerve. Just there is a relation, which the omniscient Spirit was able to institute. Sense cannot grasp that link, because the interaction is no longer material. Conscious intelli- gence does not construe it to itself, because it is not merely spiritual. Again, it is asked : If there must be an entity within us to be the subject of consciousness, why may not that be the Brair ^ One answer has been given above : That, while the pioperties and functions of brain-matter are material, qualified by extension and divisibility, those of consciousness are spiritual, simple, and indivisible. Another answer is, that I know my own brain, like other matter, like my eye-ball, is also objective to that in me which thinks. Of the most internal head-ache which men ever have, they say : " My head hurts me," as naturally and truthfully as they say : " My foot hurts me." The "Me" that is hurt is different in each case from the organ which hurts it. How do I know that I have a brain ? By a valid analogy from the testimony of anatomists as to the skulls of all other men. This testimony is the witnessing of a sense-perception, which the anatomists had, upon opening those other skulls; that is, an objective knowledge. They tell me that if it were proper for me to submit to the operation of trepanning on the forehead, they could enable me to see my own brain in a mirror as well as I now see my eye-ball in the same way. Who would it, then, be, who was looking at that brain, watching perhaps the pulsa- Spirituality of the Mind. 157 tions of the blood in it ? I would be looking-. Then, is the brain I ? The only notion which any man can con- strue to himself touching his own brain is, that it is the necessary instrument by which he thinks, not the Ego which thinks. Another answer to this supposition is suggested by Sir B. Brodie, from the dual structure of man's nervous system. Man's nerves, like his limbs, are all in pairs. The cerebrum has its two hemispheres. One side can be, and often is, diseased alone ; when the opposite members of the body are paralyzed. Now, if the brain is the mind, how is it that the mind, like the brain, is not dual? Why have we not normally, a dual con- sciousness? Why is it that cases of derangement are not usually, like paralysis, cases of mental hemiplegy? Is it not remarkable, again, if the brain is the mind, that the greatly largest organ in it has no sensibility ? No afferent nerve of sense runs directly to it, or pene- trates it. Although composed of nerve-matter, it ex- hibits no sensibility to pain, or other impressions. This proves, at least, that living nerve-matter is not neces- sarily, as such, endo-wed with sensibility. The natural inference would seem to be, that something additional to nerve-matter and vitality is necessary to furnish con- scious sensation, even. We are shut up to the con- clusion that the brain itself is not the intelligent agent, but its instrument. The physiology of the nervous system of man sug- gests a curious argument from the remarkable arrange- ment of the parts within the skull. Every experiential fact bearing on this branch of zoology tends to prove that these nerve-masses within the skull contain the centre of the system. Somewhere within these masses is the capital of the microcosm, man. Thither all the afferent nerves converge : thence the efferent nerves diverge. It is to some point within the skull that all the sensations from without are reported, as to their 158 Sensualistic Philosophy. headquarters ; it is from some point there that the voli- tions are despatched outward to the members. Now we saw the arrangement of those nerve-masses among themselves. There are three bodies, the sensory gan- glia at the base, which form a comparatively small cluster: the cerebellum at the rear, also a comparatively small mass ; and above, the cerebral hemispheres proper, which are united intimately together in their commis- sure, but have no connection with the other two, ex- cept by the species of neck, which unites them to the sensory ganglia underneath. Every fact of physiology shows that this cerebrum subserves some all-important function in man. It is nerve-matter most highly vital- ized ; it is lavishly supplied with nutrition by blood, clearly showing that it has a great deal of work of some kind to do ; it is in quantity greatly larger than both the others together ; it is penetrated throughout by nerve-fibres, which sub-divide and diverge to every part of its corrugated surface, and converge towards the point of union with the sensory ganglia at its base. Yet, in itself, it is incapable of sensation from without ! And to it runs not a single nerve directly, from any organ of sense, or any muscle! What is it? What does it do? The urgency of this inquiry and of these facts, has caused Dr. W. B. Carpenter, with other emi- nent physiologists, to say : the cerebrum is evidently the " organ ot man's internal sense" as the sensory gan- glia, with their extended ramifications to the various limbs and organs, are the " organ of external sense." We see, then, that man's nervous system has a dual division in two directions, lateral and longitudinal. Laterally, it is divided into pairs, which run alongside of each other, until they branch off to the several limbs and members. Longitudinally, it is divided at the base of the cerebrum into two ends. The lower end diverges from the point of division, sending its branching nerves downwards and outwards to the bodily organs, the Spirituality of the Mind. 159 members and the whole surface, and thus connecting man with the outer world. The upper end, the cere- brum, also sends its fibres branching and diverging up- wards from the point of juncture towards the super- ficies of that organ. But now note the peculiar fact, that this latter superficies is locked up in a rigid, bony case, is thus completely shut out from all external causations, and, in fact, has no surface organs whatever, for receiving them ! Nature has here taught us, indis- putably, one thing : that whatever are the agencies of the cerebrum, they are prompted from within, and not from without. There seem to be but two possible hypotheses as to what this agency is. One is the ra- tional conclusion that man has a distinct spirit, which is the Ego, the true self, the subjective, intelligent seat of spontaneity and mind-power; and that this peculiar, this grand nerve-organ, this cerebrum, thus insulated from all external functions, is the connecting instru- ment between this spirit and the nervous system. Its corrugated, vascular surface is at the opposite pole of the double nervous apparatus. The one pole is the extremities of the nerves, in the skin, the retina, the tympanum, the nostrils, the palate ; and this pole is acted on by the external world ; " the objective." The other pole is locked up from the external world in its case of bone, and is acted on by the spirit, " the subjective.'' In the meeting of the two members of the total nervous system, is consciousness, and effective volition, while man's spirit is incorporate in a body. The other sup- position, compatible with materialism, would be that the cerebrum was only a species of reserve battery, or re- ceiver, for either generating or storing up molecular nerve-power, from which the sensory ganglia might draw a species of reinforcement of nervous energy for their efferent work. But this would reduce all man's actions to the class of automatic, reflex nerve-motions, merely such as are excited by pricking in the motor- 160 Sensualistic Philosophy, nerves [and in many animals may be excited after death]. This last conclusion is contradicted by the very anatomy of the human system, by observed facts, and by the testimony of physiologists, who demonstrate that the cerebral functions cannot belong to the " reflex " class. We thus seem shut up to the former conclusion, that the immaterial spirit presides over the cerebrum, using it as its instrument ; as the external world, through the afferent nerves, dominate over the sensory ganglia. Some eminent minds have, indeed, regarded it as inconsistent to travel to a spiritual conclusion by a physical argument. To me this does not appear a necessary solecism. The student will weigh the reason- ing, and will remember that it is not our essential argu- ment; our demonstration stands firm without it. Its interest is in its confirmation of the other arguments, by its surprising concurrence of structural arrange- ments. We have argued from the unity of consciousness and all our mental functions. Materialists object that mate- rial affections which are not a unity, have this seeming unity to our conception ; as a musical tone is to the mind apparently a unity, and yet we know that it is a very numerous series of successive vibrations. I reply: True ; the oneness is only in the perception of it ; only as it becomes our mental affection does it assume unity. As we trace the effect from the successive vibrations of the musical chord to those of the air, the tympanum of the ear, the bony series of the inner ear, the aqueous humor, the fimbriated nerve, the series is still one of parts. It is only when we pass from the material organ to the mind that the phenomenon is no longer a series of pulses, but a unified sense-perception. This very case proves most strongly the unifying power which be- longs to the mind alone. So, when an extended object produces a sensation, though the object perceived is divisible, the perception thereof, as a mental act, is in- Spirituality of the Mind 161 divisible. It is the mind, and that alone, which is the unifier, because it is the mind which is the true unit. Bishop Butler grounded his immortal argument for the spirituality of that which thinks in us, partly upon the fact that the mind not only performed acts of sense- perception through its material organs, but performed also abstract acts of intelligence, such as the conception of general ideas, and of spirit, and God, independently of all organs of sense. Materialists now object that he was mistaken in his facts ; they think they have proved by physiological experiments and reasonings (see page 132) that no mental act takes place, not even the most abstract, independent of molecular brain-action. And this asserted fact is advanced with a triumphant air, as though it destroyed our argument. Turrettin, who used the same argument with that just cited from But- ler's Analogy, two hundred years ago, has acutely anticipated and exploded this objection. Suppose it be granted that a molecular brain-action does accom- pany the mind's action in thinking an abstract thought, as that of God, spirit, self; can a nerve organ give the mind that purely spiritual idea ? No cause can give what it has not. How is it possible for an organ essentially material to give a result from which the material is ab- solutely abstracted ? A liver can secrete bile from blood ; but the bile is as truly a material liquid as the blood. Hence we confirm the testimony of our own consciousness, that in abstract thought, as in spontane- ous volition, the causative action is from the rnind to- wards the nerve organ. The excitement of the nerve- matter is consequence, and the spirit's spontaneity is cause. In objective perception, the cognition of the. new sense-idea in the consciousness follows the excite- ment of the nerve-matter, in the order of causation. And just so surely, in the case of spontaneous thought, feeling, and volition, mental action precedes the action of the nerve-matter (if there is any) in the order of ii 1 62 Sensualistic Philosophy. causation. So that in the sense of Turrettin and Bp. Butler, these acts of soul are independent of material actions still ; and the inference holds as to the soul's distinct existence. Again : let us suppose all that the physiological materialist claims to be true, still the use he makes of his facts in favor of materialism only brings us to the hypothesis of Hartley, with its vibra- tions and vibrati uncles, which has been doomed to oblivion, as. a preposterous solution of the facts of con- sciousness by three generations of sound philosophers. Error gives us " nothing njw under the sun." But does not mental disease imply that the soul is material, or, at least, dependent on the body ? In dotage is not the mind, like the body, tottering to its extinction ? If the mind is a spirit, and spirit is a unit, could organic disease possibly take place in it ? I reply, that strictly, mind never is organically diseased ; but its infirmities are analogous to those which pathologists call, in the body, " functional derangements." It is the bodily organ of the soul's action which is weakened or de- ranged. This is the conclusion to which the best medical science has come, supported by the experience of the treatment of lunatics. If all our processes of thought and volition are performed, during our connec- tion with the body, through the instrumentality of brain-organs, then the physical disturbance of the latter accounts for all appearances of insanity, emotional or mental, just as readily as a lesion of .a nerve accounts for the inability of the man whose mind is perfectly strong and conscious to make his limb obey his volition. It is interesting to remember, also, that the mind is greatly influenced by habits. A very large part of our mental states are either sense-perceptions or have these for their immediate objects. If now the habitual balance of the soul's workings be unsettled, through the distor- tion or suppression of this important branch of its ordinary actions, nothing is more to be expected than Spirituality of the Mind. 163 that its whole action shall be deranged. When the grist is suddenly cut off from the milt, it changes its running, although there is no change of motive power or machine- ry. If a man has been long bearing a heavy burden on the shoulder, the throwing of it off causes him for a time to hold his shoulders unevenly. That which hap- pens in dreams shows that this explanation is reason- able. The mind's action is then abnormal. Every man in his dreams is temporarily and practically lunatic. His judgment is in partial abeyance, and the combina- tions formed in the imagination, and believed by him, are preposterous. It is because the suspension of sense- perceptions has thrown the mind's working out of balance. Let the organs of sense awake fully, and the current of sensations begins to flow aright, and the mind is at once itself again. In lunacy, and especially in dotage, ideas gained by the mind before the bodily dis- ease or decline took place are usually recalled and used by the mind correctly, while more recent ones are either distorted or wholly evanescent. The memory of the feeble old man for early events is tenacious and vivid, while for recent ones it is treacherous. But upon either object the judgment is as sound and just as when the man was in his prime. It has ever been a favorite objection of materialists, that by a parallel argument brutes may be shown to have distinct spirits. I reply, in the spirit of Bishop Butler, that this is an objection ad ignorantiam. If it should result that brutes have souls, perhaps many- prejudices would suffer by the discovery, but I see not that any principle of established truth would perish. It is no just logic to urge that our premises may contain some unknown conclusions, when the question is : do they or do they not contain this known and unavoid- able conclusion, the spirituality of man ? The nature of the mental processes of the higher brutes, especially, is very mysterious. It seems most probable that their 164 Sensualistic Philosophy. spirits are lacking in moral judgments and sentiments, in the aesthetic faculty, and in the ability to construe the contents of their consciousness to themselves in any rational order. But these are most essential to a rational personality. What is the destiny of that principle which, in the brute, is the seat of sensation, appetite, instinct, passion, associations, philosophy cannot tell us. Only when we resort to revelation, do we learn that the "spirit of the brute goeth downward, while the spirit of man goeth upward." Ignorance here is no argu- ment against the results of positive knowledge else- where. CHAPTER IX. EVOLUTION THEORY MATERIALISTIC, AND THEREFORE FALSE. TN Chapter VI. I pointed out, that the last hope -- of atheism, driven from the postulate of an eternal series of like things begetting their like, was in some theory of evolution, by differentiations between parents and progeny. This fact enabled us at once to assign the proper locus of Evolutionism in philosophy as a scheme concocted in the interests of atheism. Thirty years ago, the anonymous book, " Vestiges of Creation," propounded a theory of evolution. It was criticised and rejected as 'generally by the Sensualistic school as by sound philosophers. A generation later, the same scheme is revived, and a large part of the reading world is gone mad after it ! The " Vestiges of Creation" professed to recognize a Creator and the evi- dence of His final causes as fully as the theologian, and taught that the powers of evolution in organized beings were originally infused by God, and intelligently di- rected by Him to evolve the, creatures designed. The characteristic of the last scheme, which succeeds so largely where the other failed, is, that it discards the teleological conclusion wholly. Is this the cause of its popularity, that it seems to show men a way to get quit of the most perspicuous argument for the being of a God ? The coincidence is at least striking. Although Dr. Darwin frequently uses the words " design," " beau- tiful contrivance,-' and speaks of organs which are " in order" to ends, ho assures us that these are, with him, (165) [66 Sensualistic Philosophy. purely metaphors, and that his law of " natural selec- tion " is perfectly unintentional. It is a law of blind matter. Its results, however complicated and beauti- ful, are the effects solely of blind chance, acting through almost infinite numbers of trials, and succeeding at times solely by accident. This view does not lead Dr. Darwin to avowed atheism, but this is only his incon- sistency. His followers and admirers, such as Tyndai, Huxley, Biichner, Carl Voght, declare, with one voice, that he has made a final end of the teleological argument for the existence of a personal God. They declare that they need nothing but matter, force, a vast duration, and fortuity, to construct the whole universe of worlds, plants and trees, animals and intelligent men. That they understand the real effect of their friend's system aright, is confirmed by his ablest opponents, such as Louis Agassiz. These all declare that the fundamental error of the scheme is its omission of the evidence for a designing Mind over the universe. Atheism and Materialism are twin sisters. This evo- lution doctrine also leads, like all other atheistic schemes, to the denial of a soul to man. Whatever is in man, Evolutionists hold, was developed out of the lowest rudiment of animal life. Of course they do not think that development originates distinct substances : it merely modifies, increases, or diminishes what was there before. Then, if man came from a mollusk, unless the mollusk had a distinct rational spirit, man has none : he only has the mollusk's organism and habits improved. What room is there for a religion where there is neither soul nor God? A more practical view of this horrible system will doubtless be taken by its vulgar herd of votaries. It teaches them that they are generically brutes. They will act as brutes ; in this way they will understand their teachers. The demonstration of man's spirituality, given in the last chapter, is complete by itself; and, as such, it utterly overthrows the evolution False Evolution Theory. 167 scheme, at least as to man. But it is best to add some farther examination of it, to sustain previous conclu- sions. As we have seen, Dr. Darwin proposes to trace the human race back, through an ape, to the rudimental form of insect animal existence. He supposes that we shall have to look to a Creator to give us this animated germ to start with. Dr. Huxley adds another step, as we have seen, by finding in the chemical forces form- ing " protoplasm " a source for both vegetable and animal life in inorganic nature. The Aristotle of Evo- lutionism, Herbert Spencer, evolves everything from primary dead matter by force acting inevitably and eternally, developing organisms, and then changing them by the reactions of organs and environments. Professor Tyndal comes to their aid with his shallow attempt to rehabilitate the exploded and despised scheme of the ancient Atomic philosophers. It is with this doctrine, as a whole, that we have to deal. i. To begin at the bottom of the abyss, the atomic theory never was worthy of deliberate refutation, being only a hypothesis forever incapable of verification by any sufficient experiment or observation, either in con- sciousness or in the sphere of the senses. As such, it never had a right to be entertained, even for discussion, in the forum of inductive science. I will, however, point out a few of the assumptions it involves, which are fatal to its credit. It has never been demonstrated that there are ultimate atoms, possessed of the necessary attributes demanded by this scheme ; it is only a surmise from certain chemical facts. Is not H. Spencer authority on this point with his own people ? He declares that the argument for the infinite divisibility of matter is one impossible to be refuted by the human reason ! Where, then, is the certainty that we have permanent ultimate atoms of the kind Professor Tyndal needs ? Again, the latter rejects the conclusions of sound phi- 1 68 Sensualistic Philosophy. losophy as to rational spirits and the First Cause, be- cause we cannot picture them in the " scientific imagin- ation." Can he picture his ultimate atom ? This atomic scheme must postulate that motion is eternal and in- trinsic in the atoms ; but sound science tells us that inertia is the fundamental and original attribute of mat- ter : that it moves not, save as it is impelled. This all- important fact points plainly to the conclusion, that force is originally external to matter, and has been com- municated to it from a source external to it; and sound induction from all our experience of originated motion leads to the conclusion, that the only adequate ultimate source of force is in the volition of Spirits. That a for- tuitous conjunction of atoms should account for all the marvels of design in the universe, and that a material mass should be endowed with consciousness, reason, and conscience, are difficulties common to this and all the other phases of this philosophy. 2. We advance now to the position of Dr. Huxley, who endeavjors to account for vegetable and animal life by the action of the more complex chemical affinities producing " protoplasm." For the physical facts which explode this theory, we are, of course, dependent on natural historians and physiologists. But we are for- tunate in having the testimony of many of the most competent and experienced, who declare that the most rudimental vitalized matter which the microscope dis- closes is not Dr. Huxley's "protoplasm," but a living tissue-cell, with its vital powers of nutrition and repro- duction. They affirm also that all protoplasm, or liv- ing protein, is not alike in form, nor in constituent ele- ments ; and so marked is this, that microscopists know by the appearances of these different varieties Q{ protein, the different living matters whence they came. Then, different vitalities construct different forms of protein out of the same elements. Some forms are entirely in- capable of being nourished by some other forms, which False Evolution Theory. 169 should not be the case were all protoplasm alike. While vegetable vitality can assimilate dead matter, animal, vitality can only assimilate what has been prepared for it by vegetable (or animal) life. They tell us, finally, that all protein is not endowed with contractility, so that the pretended basis for animal motion does not exist in it. The seemingly plausible point in this chemical theory of life is the attempted parallel between the production of water and protoplasm. Asks Huxley : " Why postulate an imaginary cause, * vitality/ in this case, rather than 'aquosity,' over and above chemical affinity, in the other?" The answer is, that this anal- ogy is false, both as to the causes and the effects in the two cases. In the production of water from the two gases, the occasion is the electrical spark ; the real, efficient cause is the affinity of the oxygen for the hydrogen. In the reproduction of living beings, or tissue, the effi- cient cause is the living germ of the same kind, present beforehand. The proof is, that if this is absent, all the chemical affinities and electrical currents in the world are vain. The elements in a living tissue are held together,, not by chemical affinities, but by a cause heterogene- ous thereto, yea, adverse ; the departure of which is the signal for those affinities to begin their action, which action is to break up the tissue. As to the effects in the two cases ; in the production of water, the electric spark is the occasion for the coming of a potential affinity into action, whence a compound substance. In the case of the living body there is an effect additional to composi- tion. This is life. Here, I repeat, is an effect wholly in excess of the other case, which affinity cannot imitate. Protoplasm dead, and subject to the decom- posing affinities of other bodies, is the true analogue of water. Physical force and vital causation are obviously het- erogeneous. The former, in all its phases, is unintelli- 170 Sensualistic Philosophy. gent, involuntary, measured by weight, velocity, and quantity of matter affected, producing motion or equi- librium, mechanical or molecular. Even animal life has a species of spontaneity. Rational spirit, as a cause, has the unique attribute of free-agency, the very oppo- site of inertia, self-active and self-directing. Mind and its modifications cannot be measured in any physical quantities or terms, and hence it cannot be correlated to force. Volition is not transmuted into force, but controls and resists it. The natu?-e of vitality is to resist the material forces, such as chemical 4 affinity. When life departs, these resume their sway over the matter of the body, lately living, as over any similar matter ; but as long as the vital cause is present, it is directly antagonistic to them all. There is a still more fatal defect in this hypothesis, the "destructive force of which Huxley has himself pointed out, and ingeniously illustrated in another con- nection. This is the total absence of actual verification. No man has ever communicated life to dead, com- pounded matter. Let the infidel chemist make a living animal in his laboratory, without a living germ ; then only will his hypothesis begin to rise out of the region of dreams. There are, in fact, four spheres of creature existence, the inorganic or mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and the human or spiritual. Notwithstanding analogies between them (which is just what reason should expect between works of the same all -wise Architect), each is separated from the rest by inexor- able bounds. No man has ever changed any inorganic matter into a living vegetable, without the help of a preexisting vegetable germ ; nor vegetable matter into animal, without an animal germ ; nor animal into human, save by the aid of a human germ. The scientific (as well as the theological) conclusion is, that there is, in each of these, a distinct cause. The inference bears every test of a sound induction. Huxley claims that False Evohition Theory. 1 7 \ when his propositions about the identity of protoplasm are once accepted, our feet are upon the first rung of a ladder which necessarily leads us to the conclusion that thought and volition " are expressions of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of other vital phenomena " in fungi and the lowest animals. This is a specimen of the absurd license of this pretended science (which might more accurately be styled un- savory jesting), which aspires to overthrow the uni- versal convictions of rational men and the testimony of Scripture at once. If the premises were granted, the conclusion would still be utterly denied. If it were proved that vegetable phenomena were due merely to molecular affinities of inorganic matter, animal life would still be separated from it by a gre.at gulf. Again, if animal life were nothing but chemical action, there would still be a great gulf between men- tal action and the other two, as impassable as ever. Thought and rational choice cannot possibly be as- cribed to a substance extended, inert, passive, and in- voluntary. Here we are reminded that in organized creatures, there is something more than the physical, or even the vital causes which form it; design. There is the most ingenious, successful, diversified adaptation to functions. Such design is a Tlicught ; yea, more, such intentional adaptation discloses volition. Supp-^ss now, that chem- ical affinities can form protoplasm ; have they design, thought, wisdom ? Says Prof. Jos. Henry : If I melt together brass and glass, the result is a slag ; and that is the effect which physical causes produce. If I fash- ion them into a telescope, that is the kind of result which Design produces. Dr. Stirling, of Edinburgh, admirably illustrates this license of Huxley's pretended reasoning, alluding to Paley's famous illustration of the argument for design from the newly-found watch: " Protoplasm breaks up into Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxy- 172 Sensualistic Philosophy. gen, Nitrogen ? True. The watch breaks up similarly into brass, steel, gold, and glass. The loose materials of the watch [even its chemical materials, if you will,] replace its weight quite as accurately as the four con- stituents, Carbon, etc., replace the weight of the ' pro- toplasm.' But neither these, nor those, replace the vanished idea, which was the important element. Mr. Huxley saw no break in the series of steps in molecular complication ; but though not molecular, it is difficult to understand what more striking, what more absolute break could be desired, than the break into an idea. It is of that break alone that we think -in the watch; and it is of that break alone we should think in the pro- toplasm, which, far more cunningly, far more rationally, constructs a heart, an eye, or an ear. That is the break of breaks ; and explain it as we may, we shall never explain it by molecules." Here, then, is the fatal chasm in the materialistic scheme. Not only does it overlook the essential difference between inorganic and vital causes; it is guilty of the absurdity of ascribing to the blind, unintelligent force . of protoplasm, more thought, choice, and wisdom, than all the philosophers in the whole world will ever attain unto. When we rise to the crown of the series of living creatures in man, the absurdity culminates in the highest conceiv- able extravagance ; for there we see a being not only displaying the highest thought about him, but also con- taining thought in him. 3. Let us look, now, at the part of this structure con- tributed by Mr. Darwin. We object, first, that the favorite law of " natural selection " involves in its very name, a sophistical idea. Selection is an attribute of free-agency, and implies intelligent choice. But the " Nature " of the evolutionist is unintelligent. She acts by hap-hazard. To apply the idea of selection to such fortuity is but a metaphor, not science. Dr. Darwin, perhaps, seeing this fatal objection, thankfully accepts False Evolution Theory. 173 from H. Spencer what he deems the more accurate phrase, " survival of the fittest." But we still have the same absurdity insinuated under a metaphor. Fitness also implies design ! Fitness is an adjustment. That the physical interaction between environment and or- ganism should regularly result in this adjustment, while totally blind, is a supposition wild enough. But a mul- titude of cases might be found where the notion be- comes impossible, because the fitness existing is not between the being and its ordinary environment, but between it and some other being which it rarely meets, or never meets once in its existence. The natural venom, for instance, of the rattlesnake, is a contrivance fitted only to destroy its assailants. That poison has no adaptation whatever to its ordinary food, or companions, or nest, or the grass and leaves over which it glides ; its only " fitness " is to destroy an assailant which the snake may not meet twice in its life. .Did that possible future assailant develop the poison by a re-action? It is further noted by,Agassiz, that the principle of life, or cause in animated nature, notoriously and frequently produces the same results under diverse environments, and diverse results again under the same environments. These facts prove that it is not the variable kind of cause painted by the evolutionist, and does not effect these uniform results by a fortuitous natural selection. Evolutionists not only admit, but claim, that a vast tract of time must have elapsed, while "natural selec- tion," acting blindly, failing, perhaps, myriads of times where it succeeded once, and then only establishing the slightest differentiations, was evolving the wondrous animated universe out of the rudest sperms. The re- o mains of the failures of this blind striving towards de- velopment ought, then, to be a myriad times as numer- ous as the remains of the successes. For, while the corpses of mere jelly-fish and such like were perishable as soon as dead, and may have mixed with the undis- i 74 Sensualistic Philosophy. tinguished loam of the earth, the vast genera of crusta- ceous and vertebrate fishes and animals, all left behind them remains capable of preservation as fossils. Pal- aeontologists (to whom the evolutionists, of all men, are bound to adhere,) hold that great masses of these fossils actually remain, many of them of almost incredible age. But they all represent established genera. Where are the fossils of the transitional and intermediate links, which ought to be a myriad times more numerous? Were evolutionism true, " the world would not be large enough to contain them." Again : fossil natural his- tory should present us with both sides of the history of the blind process of this natural selection, with the fos- sils of the degraded, the unfit, as well as with those of the developed species. How is it that Mr. Darwin only dwells upon the latter? especially as the down-hill side of the history ought to be ten thousand times the full- est. But did the fossils present us with such a history, then how preposterous would it be to call the course of nature an " evolution," when nature's decadences would almost infinitely outnumber her advancements? The evolution theory is also inconsistent with the wide dif- fusion of some of the highest species of animals. Man is the highest and most complicated result of this sup- posed process. Now it is natural to suppose that the local conditions, or environment, necessary for evolving this most complicated result, would be most rarely found. But man is found more widely diffused over the globe, and multiplying his species under more di- verse climates and conditions, than any other animal. This is inconsistent with the result to be expected upon that scheme. But is the "survival of the fittest " a fact in nature? Where it does exist, is it not rather an artificial fact, due solely to human providence, or that of some other rational being ? Striking variations in species are, in- deed, produced by the arts of cattle and dog-breeders False Evolution Theory. 175 and bird-fanciers. But what becomes of them when left to " nature?'' Surrender any individual of a " de- veloped " variety, to the rude hand of nature, and its uniform tendency is to degradation. On a prairie, in a state of nature, the developed horse, or ox, or swine, would be the first to perish of his kind. These devel- oped varieties, as a whole, as soon as the rational providence is withdrawn which produced them, always tend backward towards the common species from which they originated. Natural historians tell us, that when incidental causes have produced variation of some in- dividuals from their kindred, the difference is largest in the earliest generations, and becomes smaller after- wards, unless artificial means are used to propagate it. Such variations must, then, have fixed and narrow limits. All breeders know the tendency of improved races to " fly to pieces," as it is sometimes expressed in their language. That is, when an improved type has been gained by crossing, all its progeny do not natu- rally reproduce the combined good points of the two parents; but there is soon manifested a violent ten- dency in many of them to follow, to an exaggerated degree, the peculiarity of one of the progenitors. One individual reproduces so exclusively the form of the sire, another so exclusively that of the dam, that they seem less akin to each other than do members of the original, unimproved stock. And the most artful vigi- lance is required in preventing these heterogeneous individuals from propagating, to preserve the combined type which is desired. Thus it appears that the natu- ral, as distinguished from the artificial or designed law of variation, tends to produce a more confused and a degraded progeny, instead of. an advanced one. Let us remember, again, that the natural consequence of the violences of the stronger individuals is, on the whole, to increase the hardships of the conditions under which all the species must gain subsistence. What ij6 Sensualistic Philosophy. clearer instance of this law needs to be sought, than in the human species, where the savage anarchy produced by the violences of the stronger is always found to re- duce the whole tribe to destitution, and thus to physi- cal decadence? Why else is it, that Bushmen are poorer, shorter, uglier, and feebler than Englishmen? Couple this, which is a true law of nature, with another : that usually the pampered individuals in every species are the least fertile, and we shall see that the natural tendency of animal life is rather to the survival of the inferior. The Andalusian stud was left to " nature," and the law of natural selection, in Mexico and South America. The consequence is, that the " mustang" pony and Pampa horse are far inferior to their pro- genitor. Well does Dr. Stirling remark here : " Natu- ral conjecture is always equivocal, insecure, and many- sided. It may be said that ancient warfare, for instance, giving victory always to the ablest and bravest, must have resulted in the improvement of the race. Or : that the weakest being left at home, the improvement was balanced by deterioration. Or: that the ablest were necessarily most exposed to danger. And so according to ingenuity usque ad infinitum. Trust- worthy conclusions are not possible on this me-thod." Naturalists teach us that in the animal world, true hybrids are always infertile. The familiar instance is that of the mule. The ass and the mare can propagate offspring, but that offspring can propagate nothing. It there is any small exception, that exceptional offspring is absolutely infertile, and is usually exceedingly ill- developed, or reverts towards one of the original spe- cies, so that the rub remains absolute. Hybrids cannot perpetuate their kind. Huxley in his " Lay Sermons," p. 295, very absurdly imagines that it suits his purposes, in one aspect, to appeal to this law ; for it annihilates his hypothesis. Surmising that certain species have been produced by variation and natural selection, he appeals False Evolution Theory. 177 to the law just announced, to prove that these are now true, distinct species. He thus gives his full sanction to the law. But if hybrids cannot perpetuate their kind, then no permanent species has ever arisen by " natural selection " in the way surmised by evolution- ists. For, had individuals originated thus, they would have been hybrids, and, so, must have disappeared. It is the fixed judgment of sound natural historians, that in this law we have a barrier (doubtless designed by the Creator) which must ever keep the genera and species of living creatures distinct and permanent in the main. Providence thus prevents that disastrous intermingling of types of organization, shading off in every direction into interminable confusions which must have resulted in the fatal degradation of all the genera. Dr. Darwin's supposition is obnoxious to the same fatal objection brought against Mr. Huxley's, the total absence of a verification. No man has actually created a species by evolution, which was permanent, and which met the other requisitions of natural science, for evinc- ing the true, distinct species. Men have produced varieties of pigeons, dogs, swine, oxen, and horses : that is all. Mr. Darwin does not pretend to claim more in the arena of facts. What they have done in these cases he thinks, looks as though Nature may have done more. If his thought be a just one, then all that it will entitle him to infer is the possibility that species may have begun thus. But according to the rules of logic, as admitted by all, that " may be " can never rise to the position of a scientific truth, until it is verified by ac- tual observation. We are given to understand that they have no such instances. Where is that " anthro- poid ape" which produced a man? Where is there a man really produced by the ape? Nobody pretends to have seen either. In fact, verification is not only lacking, but impossible ; because, the supposition puts this whole work of natural selection, as to any distinc- 178 Sensualistic Philosophy. tive results, so far back in the past, that human history has not, and can never have, any record of a single one of its decisive facts. This simple view should leave the whole scheme then, were men imbued with the true spirit of science, among the mere fancies with which poets amuse their idleness. It is related to science, just as Gulliver's voyage to Lilliput is to geography. But there are extant verifications against the scheme. The Darwinian professes a huge respect for palaeon- tology. He must in consistency profess this ; for if that branch of natural history is not true, all the pre- texts of the evolution theory are gone. Of all palaeon- tologists, the Darwinian has to be the most ancient. Butif palaeontology is true, then Darwinianism is proved false. According to that doctrine, as is well known, the relative ages of strata can be known ; and it can be known that the oldest strata contain the remains of the oldest living creatures. Hence, were the evolution scheme true, the oldest strata must necessarily enclose the remains of the most rudimental creatures, the next later strata must show us more fully developed creat- ures, and the last strata and the surfaces and waters of the present earth must give us the most fully developed of all. But it is not so : as testifies the best and most varied palaeontology. Mr. Hugh Miller crushed the " vestiges " with this fact ; showing that some of the fossils discovered by him in strata so old as to have been supposed too old for any organized life, were of quite well developed vertebrata. Prof. Agassiz says that the strata show vertebrate fishes alongside of the earliest mollusca, and just as old. Couple with this the other facts, that the very simplest forms of animal life exist now, along with the most highly developed, in appar- ently as great profusion as in the earliest stages of life. Mr. Hugh Miller also showed, that when once a given genus appears (by its remains) in the stony records, the successive generations of it do not show any tendency False Evolution Theory. 1 79 towards an improvement into higher and better organ- isms ; but on the contrary, the later generations of that genus appear rather to have degenerated. And, at last, the fossil record seems to say that, having become too degenerate to endure its environment, the whole genus perished, leaving nothing that had life behind it. It would thus appear that, in the old, pre- Adamite ages, as in the centuries between the coming of the beauti- ful Andalusian horse to Mexico, and the evolution of the " scrubby " Mustang from it, " survival of the fit- test " is no result of natural selection at all ; but where it occurs, it is the work of a rational providence, and not of physical forces. Again : Agassiz, with other most eminent paleontologists, declares that the lesson they read from the " stony record," is, that when the old genera began it was not by any natural means ; and when they perished, they left no progeny. They made a clean beginning and a clean ending ; neither was transitional. The fossil remains of man are the most conclusive of all. The most ancient skulls and skele- tons display just as perfect frames, and as much brain, as the modern man. During all the ages man has existed as a species, there is no discoverable evolution. Next, if the evolution process has taken place, it was a physical one ; for its assertors hold that it is the work of physical forces. They also teach that man is, thus far, its highest and best fruit. Then, man ought to be physically the strongest and greatest animal. But he is not. Compared with many of the mammalia as a beast, he is an inferior beast. The young human infant has far less instinct and locomotion than a young par- tridge, or a calf. The man has blunter senses, less strength, and less sagacious instincts, than the eagle,' the elephant, and the gorilla. He has less longevity than the goose. That which makes him the nobler creature is not animal instinct, nor muscular strength, nor complicated organs, but reason. He is "lord of 180 Sensualistic Philosophy. creation" by his Mind ; but for that many other beasts would rule over him, yea, destroy him. 4. We now reach a point of the evolution scheme where we collide with all its different teachers. That point is : Whence man's mind ? They have to answer, that it is only a function, evolved from mere matter, through the animals. Just as Dr. Darwin accounts for the evolution of the human hand from the fore-paw of an ape, so all the wonders of consciousness, intellect, taste, conscience, volition, and religious faith, are to be explained as the animal outgrowth of gregarious in- stincts, and habitudes cultivated through them. To any man who has either a single scientific idea touching the facts of consciousness, or a single throb of true moral feeling, this is simply monstrous. It, of course, denies the existence of any substance that thinks, distinct from animated matter. It utterly misconceives the unity which intuitively must be found underlying all the processes of reason in our minds. It overlooks utterly the distinction between instinctive and rational motives, thus making true free-agency, virtue, moral responsibil- ity, merit, and moral affection, impossible. It supposes that as the sense-perceptions and instincts of the beast have been expanded by association and habit into the intellect of a Newton, so the fear and habit of the beast, cowering under his master's stroke, or licking the hand that feeds and fondles him, are the sole source of the noble dictates of conscience and virtue. The holy courage of the martyr, who braves the fire rather than violate the abstract claims of a divine truth, is but the outgrowth of the brutal tenacity of the mastiff, when he endures blows and torments rather than unlock his fangs from the bloody flesh of his prey. The heroic fidelity of the patriot, in the face of the grimest death, is but the quality of the dog which will fetch and carry at his master's bidding. The disinterested love of Christian mothers, the heavenly charity which delights False Evohttion Theory. 181 to bless an enemy, the lofty aspirations of faith for the invisible and eternal purity of the skies, the redeeming love of Jesus, all that has ever thrilled a right soul with deathless rapture of admiration, and elevated man to- wards his Divine Father, are destined to have neither a future nor a reward, any more than the fragrance of a rose, or the radiance of the plumage of the bird, or the serpent's scales. After a few years, all that shall forever be of the creature endowed with these glorious attributes, will be a handful of the same dust which is left by the rotting weed. The spirit which looked out through Newton's eye, and read, through the riddles of the phenomenal world, the secrets of eternal truth and the glories of an infinite God, went out as utterly in everlasting night as the light in the eye of the owl or bat, that could only blink at the sunlight. These are the inevitable conclusions of Evolutionism, and they are an outrage to the manhood of our race. What foul, juggling fiend has possessed any cultivated man of this Christian age, that he should grovel through so many gross sophistries, in order to dig his way down to this loathsome degradation ? The ancient heathens wor- shipped brute beasts, but still they did not forget that they were themselves the offspring of God. It remained, for this modern paganism to find the lowest deep, by choosing the beast for his parent, and casting his God utterly away. Happily, the doctrine is as false, as impossible to be true, as it is odious. If we take the course most in favor with the evolutionist, external observation, we find an utter lack of verification, and, on the other hand, every known fact refutes the supposition. When we ascend to the earliest ages, we find from history that, although human knowledge has grown by accre- tion, the soul of man is the same precisely, in faculties and essence, which it was at the beginning of history. Nor is there any evidence that any of these faculties 1 82 Sensualistic Philosophy, have become relatively stronger. Let it be remembered that, in the matter of the accretions of knowledge, we stand upon our forefathers' shoulders : we begin where they left off. So that if we had not far excelled them as to the aggregate or total of arts and knowledge, that would have been an infallible evidence our faculties are in themselves inferior to theirs. When we inquire what was the strength of the faculties of the early men, we find that the first known statesman was the noblest and grandest Moses. Homer, the earliest of poets, has been the admiration and model of all subsequent poets. The earliest architecture, the pyramid of Cheops, con- tinues to be the wonder of the world; and it was only by the latest and most refined applications of modern art that we learned (through Mr. Piazzi Smith) that its builders had, in that primeval day, mastered enough of astronomy to give their building a more accurate " orientation " than many modern astronomers had se- cured for their observatories, besides presenting us a wonder of power and grandeur which no later monarch or people has attempted to rival. Now, if the faculties of man were produced by a law of evolution, running through all matter and all time, that process would be going on now, as well as in all the past of human his- tory. Ought it not to proceed with geometrical prog- ress ? At least, man should have advanced by this time to faculties as essentially different from those of Homer and Moses as theirs are different from the ape's. Where- as, his faculties remain precisely the same, and he has only advanced in that accretion of facts and arts which was unavoidable to a rational creature, not positively decadent. Another experimental fact is, that in all the duration of human history the animals have evolved nothing es- sentially /different from their earliest faculties. They have just the same powers and instincts now which they seem to have had in the days of those great ancient False Evolution Theory. 183 Natural-historians, Aristotle and Solomon. The lower species have not advanced towards the higher ; the higher have not advanced towards man. He entraps the wild beasts at least as successfully as in the days of Nimrod, and governs the elephant, the horse, and the ox, just as in the days of Porus and Pyrrhus. Practi- cally, the chasm between brute-instincts and human rea- son is just the same as at the beginning. Those instincts can be educated, or can even educate themselves, with- in a certain narrow limit. Spiders have been seen to adopt new adjustments for their webs, when subjected to unforeseen difficulties ; and human care causes some animals to do things which others* of their species do not. This is true. And, doubtless, the antediluvian spider, or the one which was in Solomon's house, showed just the same ingenuity. Ancient history can give us the same sorts of wonders, in dancing dogs and learned pigs, with modern. But there the evolution al- ways stops. No one has taken a young ape and educated it into a man. When that is clone, there will be a be- ginning in the demonstration of this hypothesis, and not until then. Since the day when it was said, " Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles," that common sense of mankind which is, in truth, the most solid inductive and empirical logic, has ever de- cided that an invariable difference of results positively proves a difference of causes. Since men, in all ages, do a multitude of things which no brutes ever do, we know that man has a spirit essentially different from the brute's. Mr. Darwin endeavors to find some foothold for his doctrine of heredity in this matter, by pointing to a few cases of inherited instincts, not supposed to be original, in animals, and a few cases of inherited talents in men. We do not know that the original wild dog " stood" its game. The pointer and setter have been taught to do so, until their progeny inherit the instinct, and do it 184 Sens^lal^st^c Philosophy. while untrained pups. Doubtless, the original dog was taught, like all other beasts of prey, by his instincts, to crouch for his prey, or to pursue it, as circumstances prompted. Both modes of pursuit were instinctive, and human art has only evoked one to the disuse of the other. We are told that progeny sometimes inherits the special talents of parents. The great musician, Mozart, was the son of a musician. Suppose I should reply, that more frequently the children do not inherit their parents' special faculties? Patrick Henry left no orator in his family ; Cromwell, no warrior. The truth is, that these facts are within very narrow and individual limits. Their effect upon the state of their species, as wholes, is at last naught. The individual exceptions terminate with themselves, or within narrow limits after them, and the law of the species moves on as before. Allow man a distinct spirit, and then a law of hered- ity becomes intelligible, because there is a substance capable of receiving the inheritance of culture. But the Evolutionist refuses to allow this. He insists that the talents and bents of the philosopher of the nine- teenth . century are the aggregated inheritance of powers and habits acquired, during millions of years, from myriads of progenitors, all the way between man and the mollusk, and all delivered over by inheritance to this latest offspring. Yet he holds that the genera- tion by the parent is only the transmission of an organic germ of matter. The father's spermatozoon, a micro- scopic speck of vitalized matter, which can contain but a few molecules, has yet, according to him, received and preserved the distinct material marks of all these innumerable differentiations, and these varied and al- most angelic pov/ers ! Yet the man who can believe this, cannot believe that there is immaterial spirit, be- cause it is neither visible nor tangible ! If we test this scheme, which evolves mind from the instincts of the brute, by internal observation, it is False Evolution Theory. 185 equally exploded. I wish to reassert, here, the position that what we observe in our own consciousness is as truly empirical as what we observe without with our senses. He who denies this, has, in spite of himself, denied the validity of sensible experience ; because no impression on the senses becomes valid cognition, save as it enters consciousness, and is interpreted therein. Now, consciousness informs us of a thinking self, a unit, without parts or extension. The rise of such a monad into being by gradual evolution is impossible. A habit may arise gradually, but mind is not a habit. It is the distinct spiritual substance, endowed with faculties, which intellectual habits qualify. Mind is not a habit ; it is the spiritual thing on which habits form. The habits may come by development ; the substance can- not. The impossibility of this genesis is especially plain in this, that it must suppose psychological faculties gradu- ally superinduced. There must have been, first, in some earlier generation of men, a " protoplastic " rea- son, conscience, free-agency, and responsibility, which were still three-quarters or half animal instinct, and the rest mental. But every man who ever* scanned his own acts of soul, knows that in all their stages, and in all their degrees of weakness and strength, they are en- tirely above and different from animal acts. It has been asked by Evolutionists : Is not the growth of the in- fant's mind precisely such a gradual development from animality to reason ? I reply, that the rational principle is not developed out of the animal, but out of its own nature, which had been present alongside of the animal all the time. That the animal has not passed into the rational, is plain from this : all the motions of the animal nature are still present, and it is one chief business of the rational nature to resist and govern them. They are not identified, but are either enemies or master and servant. But, chiefly, in whatever degree the rational 1 86 Sensualistic Philosophy. and moral functions appear, whether in a rudimental or a perfect form, the)' present the same characteristic difference from the animal traits. A feeble conscience is no more lijce appetite, in its intrinsic quality, than the conscience of a Washington or a Lee. Dr. Darwin, we presume, does not believe in the transmutation of metals by alchemy. Were a chemist to show him some silver produced from an ore of lead, he would never believe that lead was literally changed into silver ; he would pronounce at once that the Galena was by nature argentiferous, and he would demonstrate it by showing that all the percentage of lead was still present as lead, after the silver appeared. No* more do we believe in this moral alchemy. The young ape is never developed into a virtuous being any more than the normal human child grows into a mere animal. In a word, consciousness has its facts as truly as physics. These facts separate man as a distinct genus spiritually even more than his bodily shape does phys- ically. It is an unreasonable and wilful perversion of science, to inspect the human specimen, and refuse tp note his chief characteristics because they are mental. But had not the Evolutionist persuaded himself that there was no generic separation, he would never have attempted to evolve man's faculties thus. 5. Rational objections have been now presented, which entirely break the force of any plausible appear- ances, and place the evolution theory out of the pale of science. The most that can be claimed for it is, that it is an ingenious fancy. The mind properly imbued with the humble and cautious methods- of inductive science would be led to this conclusion by the contents of these writings themselves. Suppositions have to be added to suppositions, in order to arrive at their conclusions. Asserted probabilities are quietly exchanged into as- sumed certainties. Propositions introduced as condi- tional, are, after a little, made absolute without right. False Evolution Theory. 187 Many a " may be" is transmuted into a "must be." But, were all these yawning chasms closed up, the ut- most which could be made of the evolution hypothesis would be, that it contained a curious possibility. The student who supposes that the authentic secular science of the day concurs in it, will be much imposed on. A long list of the greatest names might be easily given, who totally dissent. Among these may be mentioned the lamented Agassiz and Professor Joseph Henry, of America ; M. Flourens, of the French Institute ; J. Von Leibig, Reute, and Wagner, of Germany ; Principal Dawson, of Canada ; while we pass over a long list of the greatest names in Natural History equally in- fluential. These speculations are to be deplored, in that they present to minds already degraded a pretext for mate- rialism, sensuality, and godlessness. The doctrine can never prevail permanently among mankind. The self- respect, the conscience, and the consciousness of men will usually present a sufficient protest and refutation. The world will not permanently tolerate the libel and absurdity that this wondrous creature, man, "so noble in reason, so infinite in faculties, in form and moving so express and admirable, in action so like an angel, in ap- prehension so like a God/' is but the descendant, at long removes, of a mollusk or a tadpole. But if the evolution hypothesis were supported by all the concurrent observations which we had opportunity to make, to the theist it may yet become wholly worth- less. Let it be only supposed, as a possibility, that the existence of an all-wise, almighty, personal God can be proved by lines of evidence independent of this debate, and that this God reveals to us His testimony that the universe and the living creatures in it are His handi- work. * We shall not forget, like the Evolutionist, that supposition is not proof; we shall not assume the truth of this supposition any farther than it is proved. But 1 88 Sensualistic Philosophy. we wish to point out this important truth, too often overlooked, that in such a case a hypothesis as to the origin of nature, however supported by h posteriori ob- servations, would stand related to the theistic position precisely as "circumstantial evidence" does to the tes- timony of living 1 witnesses in the courts. Judicial science, charged with the solemn responsibilities of the life and death of the citizens, has exactly ascertained the relations and rights of these two kinds of evidence. Upright and learned judges at law know that they can- not,, when dealing with life and death, indulge their fancies in the logical license, which too often constitutes the serious amusement of so-called philosophers. So, they have decided that circumstantial evidence, in order to destroy the testimony of a competent witness, must be an exclusive demonstration. It must not only satisfy the reason that the criminal act may have been committed by the accused in the supposed way, but that it could not have been committed by any other. An enlightened judge, in the absence of eye-witnesses of the crime, would instruct his jury that the defence is entitled to test the accuser's hypothesis of guilt by this rule, namely : If any other hypothesis can be invented, even, that is purely imaginary and unsupported by a single positive fact, to which all the circumstances given by the prosecutor can be reconciled, that is proof of the incompleteness of the accusing hypothesis ; the accused cannot be condemned. This law of evidence is just. For the hypothesis of innocence, compatible with the nature of things, and reconciling all the known facts, although absolutely unsupported by positive evi- dence, demonstrates at least this, that another hypoth- esis than that of guilt is possible. Now, let us sup- pose a crime committed without known eye-witnesses. The prosecutors examine all the attendant circum- stances 'minutely and study them profoundly. Out of them they construct a supposition that the crime was False Evolution Theory. 189 committed in secret by A. They show that this satis- fies every fact so far as known. They reason with such ingenuity, that every mind tends to the conviction A must be guilty. But now there comes forward an honest man, who declares that he was eye-witness of the crime, which he saw done by B, and not by A ; and on inquiry, it appears that B was at that time naturally capable of the act. Then, unless the prosecutors can attack the credibility of this witness, before his word their case utterly breaks down. The ingenuity, the plausibility of th^ir argument now goes for nothing. They had shown that, so far as was hitherto known, the act might have been done by A. But the witness testifies that, in fact, it was dene by another competent agent, B. The judge will then instruct that, unless the prose- cutors have legitimate means to contest the credibility of the witness, the argument is ended, and the accused entitled to his verdict of acquittal. The plausibility of the accusing hypothesis and the ingenuity of the prose- cutors are precisely what they were before. So, the facts remain as they were. But that hypothetical con- struction of them is utterly superseded by the testimony of the eye-witness. I take these pains to illustrate this familiar principle of evidence, because it is usually so neglected by un- believing naturalists, and even by theologians. I assert a perfect analogy between the case of the circumstan- tial accusations, and the pretended evolution argument, as arrayed against the testimony of Revelations or Natural Theology. To all but the thorough atheist, this analogy is conclusive. If there is any valid evi- dence from any other source than the phenomena in question, for the existence of a personal God, all-wise, free, and omnipotent, whether from Natural Theology, History, Tradition, Miracles, Prophecy, spiritual ex- perience, criticism ; and if that God has testified that He was the eye-witness (because Agent) of a different [90 Scnsualistic Philosophy. genesis of things, then the circumstantial argument of the evolutionist is superseded. However ingenious, however probable and seemingly sufficient in the light of the known physical facts and laws, this hypothesis yields before the word of this competent witness. Does that theory claim that, naturally speaking, organisms might have been produced by evolution ? God the Agent, according to the case supposed, tells us that in point of fact, they were otherwise produced. As 'omnipotence is an agency competent to any effects whatsoever, if the witness is credible, the debate is ended. Biichnef claims that the evolution theory must be true, because it is " the only hypothesis " which naturally accounts for the organisms which we see. Is not .God another hypothesis? This simple question ex- poses the insolence with which the very question to be settled is assumed! In plain words: if evolutionism were a hypothesis naturally probable (which it is not, nor even possible), it would amount only to this : Here is a scheme, which, if we were certain there is no God, might possibly give the origin of organized things. From this slender, conditional ground, it incontinently leaps to the conclusion that God is not, and that evolu- tion did everything. But let us see how firm is our position, when we set a Creator of " eternal power and godhead " against such a circumstantial hypothesis. I assert that our consis- tency appears from this consideration : that granting, even for argument's sake, a personal Creator, then ob- viously, whatever rational motives prompted Him to create, would prompt Him to produce organisms just as natural in traits, as though they had been the result of natural evolution. Let it be assumed, I repeat, only for argument's sake, that there is a God, and that His all-wise mind saw any motive, we may not know what, for creating horses, for instance. Then it is but a truism to say, that the same motive would, of course, prompt False Evolution Theory. 191 Him to make them na ural horses. The same conclu- sion holds of any other created thing. One motive for creating the first horses would be clearly revealed by the event : namely, that they might be natural parents of generations of horses descending from them. But the first horses of supernatural origin must have had, in order for this result, every trait of naturalness; for otherwise they could not have naturally reproduced their kind. Does not the science of Natural History itself define unit) 7 of species by precisely those proper- ties which are transmitted in the species by natural generation ? Then, the naturalness of th:it first horse could not infer for it a natural origin, until you had by independent evidences demonstrated' the absence of a Creator* The surmise that this horse came by evolu- tion is worthless to demonstrate the absence of creative power, for the simple reason this must be first proved absent, before that surmise is good for anything. My reasoning can be extended more widely than to animals.. It may be unsafe to assume that the sover- eign, creative mind must have been prompted by this or that final cause ; but it is perfectly safe to say that it was prompted by some final cause, and that a consis- tent one. For this is but saying that the Creator is wise, and what He has effected is, so far, a disclosure of what He intended to effect. Now we knew that when God was engaged in creating structures both organic and inorganic, He intended them to exist under the reign of natural law, because we see him uniformly place them under that law. This is but saying that what He does is what He intends to do. But natural law could not govern that which continued contra- natural in properties, (as well as supernatural in origin) ; therefore God must have' created all His first structures, whatever they were, natural in properties, while super- natural in origin. Hence it is preposterous for any one, save a blank atheist, to appeal to naturalness of traits 1 92 Sensualistic Philosophy. alone, as a sufficient evidence against a supernatural origin. " The beginning of a universe regulated by mechanical laws," says an eminent physicist, " must have been some ' configuration,' to which it might have been brought by the operation of the same mechanical laws, from an antecedent configuration mathematically assignable. Thus: The undisturbed orbit of a planet is an ellipse, described with a velocity periodically varying by a definite law. The planet passes any given point of its orbit with the same velocity, and in the same direction, in each recurring round. If it were arrested there, and then projected with that velocity in that direction, it would resume identically the same orbit. The actual motion at each point of the orbit is, therefore, the necessary projectile motion of the new- created planet at that point. Hence, wherever created and projected, its initial motion might have been the result of centrifugal action. Thus the elliptical circula- tion presents no marks of a beginning or of an end. As regards the terms of its existence, the phenomenon is dumb. The lesson it teaches is not the shallow sophism that it has no beginning or end ; but that whatever in- formation we derive on these points, we must seek from a source other than nature." The inference of an origin by mere evolution, from naturalness of the structure investigated, may, indeed, receive a complete reductio ad absurdutn, or ad athcismum (which is the same thing), by applying it to the nebu- lar hypothesis. This is, in fact, the surmise at which evolutionists usually choose to make their stopping- place. But if they are consistent, they should not stop there. If naturalness of condition implies necessarily a natural source ; then this universe of incandescent, rotating star-dust implies a state of nature still previous. For does not vapor suggest evaporation ; and does not sensible heat suggest an evolution from latency ? Certainly. Then the evolutionist should not make his False Evolution Theory. 195 first nebulous matter, his first. " Beneath the lowest deep a lower deep still threatening to devour him opens wide." There is, therefore, on this evolution logic, absolutely no stopping place, but a- regressus into an in- finite series of evaporations and condensations, filling all past eternity, each act of the drama containing the vast existence of one universe measured by millions of millions of years. The perfect justice of this reduction appears from this : that it is precisely the result of Her- bert Spencer at the summation of his philosophy. But the ghastly wickedness of the conclusion is equal to its utter absurdity ; the former appearing in the fact that it pushes God clean out of the universe, and out of eternity itself; the latter, in the thought that we have here precisely such an infinite series of finite effects (on an exaggerated scale) as Herbert Spencer himself, in common with all better philosophers, declares to be impossible. The time was, when vulgar, shallow athe- ism, asked flippantly, " Why not suppose that acorns produced oaks, and oaks acorns from all eternity?" Philosophy answered, that such a series of effects, each dependent and finite, yet independent as a series, would be a contradiction, a mere juggling cheat of the reason. Spencer cannot gainsay the answer. Yet the residuum of his whole pretentious method is, to give us precisely this cheat, in the form of an infinite series (not of acorns producing oaks, and oaks acorns, but) of universes "ending in smoke," and smokes evolving universes! But the evolutionist may retort, that the independent evidence of the theist for a personal God has been, thus far, only supposed, not presented, and the doctrine of evolution disables us from ever presenting it validly. Evolution, say they, has exploded the teleological ar- gument for the existence of a God. Dr. Huxley de- clares that the " Origin of Species " gives the death- blow to that argument. He quotes professor Kolliker, of Germany, as saying that, although Darwin himself 13 194 Sensualistic Philosophy. retains the teleological conception, his own researches show it to be a mistaken one. Says the German savant : " Varieties arise irrespectively of the notion of purpose, or of utility, according to the general laws of Nature ; and they may be either useful, or hurtful, or indiffer- ent." So, the " advanced " evolutionists generally. They evidently interpret the bearings of the evolution theory aright. Nature, in reproducing her kinds, has a ceaseless tendency to variations. This law is physical and blind ; it knows nt>t when it hits a success or a failure. But in virtue of an infinity of hap-hazard trials, in which it is impossible to miss all the time, it sometimes evolves an improvement. Then the struc- tures thus improved, by virtue of the "survival of the fittest," exist and multiply. Thus, only give them ages vast enough, and they think they can construct all the cunning master-pieces of this universe, so " full of the wisdom of God," without purpose, mind, or will, by blind chance. Says a French evolutionist : " Cicero has illustrated the teleological argument by saying that if one told him the admirable poems of Ennius were produced by the chance tumbling of a multitude of characters out of a basket, he should pronounce the story incredible. But give me an eternity in which to repeat my experiment of casting the basket of types out, and I shall at last doubtless produce the poem." H. Spencer asserts that it is mcjfre anthropomorphism in us, to interpret nature Ideologically. When we adapt anything to an end, we, of course, design and contrive. But it is absurd to conclude that therefore Nature does the same. Thus, this reasoning from the contrivances manifest in nature, up to a Creator's contriving mind, which has commanded the assent of every sound mind from the days of Job, Moses, Socrates, and Aristotle, to our own, is contemptuously repudiated. In support of the teleological argument, I would re- mark, first, that this philosophy of blind chance is in no False Evolution Theory. J 95 sense less absurd than the old pagan theory, which re- ferred all the adjustments of creation to a "fortuitous concurrence of atoms." It is indeed, but the same doctrine, revamped and refurbished, which, under the scornful logic of Socrates, has be^n cast out to the con- tempt .of science, pagan and Christian, for two thousand years. The Evolutionist, in advancing it, requires us to go back, discarding all the acquisitions of human civilization in this department, and immerse ourselves in the^stupidity of barbarism. I remark, second, it is impossible to persuade the common sense of mankind that blind chance, whose sole attribute is chaotic disorder, is the source of the admir- able order of this complicated universe. Something does not come out of nothing. Teach any sane man the beautiful structure of the human eye, with its numerous and delicate arrangements for its special function ; teach him that man's optical science required ages of cultiva- tion before he could even comprehend, and other years of study before he could imitate those wondrous adjust- ments ; and then tell him that a blind cause did it all. He will exclaim : " He that formed the eye, shall not He see ?" An American evolutionist has confessed that when he thought of the attempt to apply his theory to the production of a human eye, it at first " made him shiver." Well might he shiver ! The convulsion was the protest of his outraged nature against so monstrous a wrong to itsxeason. The fancy that it can hold true is a sickly delusion. They ask us : " Since blind chance may, amidst the infinite multitude of its experiments, happen upon any results whatsoever, why may it not at times happen upon some results wearing these appearances of orderly adaptation?" I answer: the question puts the case falsely. Sometimes? No. Always. The fact to be accounted for is, that Nature's results have always an orderly adaptation. The question we retort, then, takes 196 Sensualistic Philosophy. this crushing form : How is it that in every one of Nature's results, in every organ of every organized creature, which is known in living or fossil Natural History, if the structure is comprehended by us, we 'see the orderly adaptation ? Where are Nature's failures ? Where the vast remains of that infinite mass of her hap- hazard, aimless, orderless efforts ? On the evolution theory, they should be myriads of times as numerous as those structures which received some successful adapta- tion. Let us recur to the illustration of the Frenchman, employing an eternity in throwing a basket of printer's type abroad blindly, until, after perhaps an infinite number of throws, he happened to get precisely that collocation which cotnposed the martial poems of En- nius. Why might it not happen at last? Suppose, I reply, that the condition of his experiments were this : that JLC should throw a different basket of types in each trial, and that a considerable part of all the types thrown in vain should remain heaped around him ; then, he and his ex- periments would have been buried a thousand times over beneath the rubbish of his failures long before the lucky throw were reached. But this is the correct state- ment of .the illustration. The simple making of this statement explodes the whole plausibility, leaving noth- ing but a bald absurdity. For, as has been already stated, Evolution must admit the teachings of -Palaeon- tology. But the latter asserts that the organized beings of vast ages still exist, in the form of fossils. Now, will the Evolutionist pretend that the durable remains of the hurtful variations were less likely to continue in the strata than those of the naturally selected ? Not one whit. Then, there should be, on his supposition, as large a portion of the printer's types from every un- successful ''throw " left for our inspection as from the sole successful one. Where are they? No living, no fossil creature is found without complete adjustments to the ends of its existence ; or, if there are apparent False Evolution Theory. 197 exceptions, it is only because we have not yet knowl- edge enough to comprehend them. Through every grade of ancient fossil life, if we are able at all to under- stand the creature whose remains we inspect, we find the same admirable adjustment to the conditions of its existence. This is as true of the rudimentary as of the most developed. The genus may be now totally extinct, because, in the changes upon the earth's surface, the conditions of its existence have passed away. But, while those conditions existed, the organs of that genus were perfectly adapted to them. So, if there is in any ex- isting creature a structure, whose orderly adaptation to an end is not seen, it is only because we do not yet un- derstand enough. Such is the maxim of true science ; and it is the prime organ of its advancements. An- atomists, before Dr. Harvey, had seen the valvular membranes in the veins and arteries opening different ways. That great man, in the spirit of true science, assumed that they must have their final cause, inasmuch as a rational Creator placed them there ; and it was by following this postulate that he was led to the circula- tion of the blood. So, in all true science, now, the cer- tainty that every structure has its final cause, is the pole-star of induction. It is a safe prediction, that so soon as this new doctrine of darkness is established in physical science, there will be an end of all its splendor and progress. But, to return : will the evolutionist seek to evade this ruinous consideration, by saying that natural selec- tion has, long before our day, worked to such advanced results, that nothing is now evolved unfitted for sur- vival? Such a resort is impossible for them ; first, be- cause it would be a sheer surrender of their favorite dogma of the uniformity of nature ; second, because it would retract their fundamental law of perpetual varia- tion, which, if it operates at all, must produce differen- tiations favorable, unfavorable, and indifferent ; and, 198 Sensualistic Philosophy. last, because the remains of palasontologic life go back to the most rudimental forms of vegetable and animal life, so that, if evolution were true, the records still left to us ought to include the whole history, with all its blind blunders, as well as its successes. There is no escape for the Evolutionist from this demand. He must show us fossil-evidences of the evolution, containing specimens of all the countless degradations by variation, of all the unfitted for survival, of all the intermediate shades through which genus was differentiated from genus, of all the blind, non-adapted abortions, as well as of the few lucky advancements. He must show them in numbers at least proportional to the myriad fold numbers of their classes. But he cannot show us a single one ! 1 argue, again : that marks of designed adaptation are not confined to those organic creatures which prop- agate their kind. The permanent inorganic masses also disclose the teleological argument just as clearly. Con- trivance is as obvious in the planetary circulations, and in the tides and winds, as in the eye of the man 'or the wing of the bird. " The undevout astronomer is mad." Newton saw the handiwork of God in the heavens as plainly as Paley in the animal kingdom. Maury has shown us as beautiful a system of adaptations and as delicate adjustments, in the currents of the sea and air, as in the organic life of their denizens. But have sun, moon, and stars propagated so often as to give blind chance scope and verge enough, at last, to evolve all their wonders of wisdom from her blundering experi- ments? The evolutionist derives those bodies from nebulous matter. We were, not aware that he supposed a multitude of generations of planets had intervened between these which we now see displaying their Maker's wisdom, and the first revolutions of the nebu- lous mass which generated them. The evolutionist needs to have fossil planets as plentiful as polypi, in order to work out his theory with them. False Evolution Theory. 199 Again : were this theory all conceded, the argument from designed adaptation would only be removed a step backwards. If we are mistaken in supposing that God made the first of every living creature after its kind ; if the higher ones were, in fact, all developed from the lowest, then the question recurs : Who plan- ned and adjusted these wondrous powers of develop- ment? Who endowed the cell-organs of the first rudi- mentary living creatures with the different fitnesses for diversified evolutions? Who provided for all these varied arid admirable results from means apparently so simple and similar ? There is a teleological evidence at least equal to that revealed in the Mosaic genesis. The justice of this statement appears thus : Those Christians who concede the theory of a " creation by law " (as I conceive, very unwisely and inconsistently) do not think that they have thereby weakened the teleological argument in the least. Another evidence of the justice of my point appears in the language of evolutionists themselves ; when they unfold what they suppose to be the results of their scheme, the marks of design and final cause are so indisputable, that the phrases " beautiful contrivance," " marvelous adjust- ment,' 5 and such like, are extorted from them unwit- tingly. This is the testimony of their own conrmon sense, uttered in spite of a perverse and shallow theory. But evolutionists claim that they can point us to in- stances of selective arrangement wrought by the unin- telligent forces of nature, just as striking as anything upon which theists found the teleological argument. Huxley retorts to M. Flourens, that if he would go to the coasts of his own Brittany, he would find the senseless winds of the Bay of Biscay selecting the heavy and the lighter particles of sea-sand, and placing them in different belts along the shore. We are also reminded that it is possible for a hurricane to transplant a sapling to a new seat in the soil. I reply, that these instances delude 2OO Sensual is lie Philosophy. them, by reason of their overlooking two obvious truths. One is, that when such an adapted result is thus established, the hap-hazard natural agent is but the occasion, not the cause of the effect : the other is, that they are led to imagine the unintelligent agent has wrought an orderly result only by bringing in other parts of the workings of nature, and other agencies, which taken together, do involve that very feature of orderly and systematic contrivance which they are en- deavoring not to see. Let us explain the latter remark first. In order to show that the blind sea winds select the grains of sand and separate them, Huxley has tacitly to borrow other combined agencies, which are a part of the Creator's wisely adjusted system ; the gravitation of matter, the configuration of the hills and shores, the groves of trees. It is to the combined action of all these, that the seeming assorting and separation of the grains of sand are due, not to any power in the blind winds bj- themselves. Who planned that combination of actions? This is the very question which Huxley begs. He tacitly borrows the effects of a rational con- trivance, to account for the result without contrivance. "If he had not ploughed with my heifer, he had not found out my riddle." The student will see this whole illusion exploded, if he will restrict Huxley within the effect proper of one blast of wind. Inspect any given sand hill ; has this blind agent, in a single case, observed any order or method whatever in depositing any set of grains of sand, as to each other? Not in one single case. They are, as related to each other, deposited at random; the blind cause has resulted in a blind effect. We see thus, that when we eliminate the powers of a combined and adjusted system of natural causes, which contains the very point in debate, each blind cause is found to produce results without order, as com- mon sense had always believed. If a man walking over a field sees grains of corn deposited in a geometri- False Evolution Theory. 201 cal order, with an obvious design to tillage (in rows), he knows that a rational agent did it. Tf he examines the same field strewn over with scattering hail-stones by a storm, he knows that he will find the fragments of ice distributed without any order, inter se ; because an un- intelligent agent acted in that particular. As said Prof. Jos. Henry, When natural force combined the brass, glass, steel, and gold, the only result was a mass of slag, or cinder; when mind combined them, the result was a telescope. Here is the naked difference between the blind, and the intelligent cause ; when men think they have evaded it, they only deceive themselves. The other illusion of the evolutionist was in con- founding mere occasion with cause. The wind may happen to drop a sapling which the torrent had just torn up, and to drop .it with the heavier end, which happens to be the root, downwards, into a chasm of earth which the same hurricane had just made by up- rooting a forest tree. But I ask : Who arranged the atmospheric laws which move hurricanes? " Who regu- lated the law of gravity which made the root-end of the sapling fall downwards ? And especially, who endued the roots of that sapling, as its twigs were not endued, with the power of drawing sap from the moist earth? Did the blind hurricane do all that? But without all that, no growth, no real transplantation would have resulted; the sapling would have remained as true a wreck, as random a castaway, as any piece of rotting seaweed cast upon the bea ;h. So that it turns out, the wind was but occasion, and not real cause of the result. In every such instance, the evolutionist tacitly avails himself of a selected adapt .tion, whic . was outside any and every specific blind cause, and was essential in order to a result. We conclude, then, that the great teleological argument for God's existence stands un- shaken and- impregnable. The common sense of civil- ized mankind has not been thus mistaken in believing 2O2 . Sensualistic Philosophy. that where design is obvious, there must be a De- signer. I have thus led the student through a somewhat ex- tended criticism of the evolution-theory ; viewing it as it is an ally to the kindred cause of materialistic atheism. Having estopped the materialist from this path, by which he attempts to escape the existence of spirit and God, we return to the old conclusion, and we accept th'e exist- ence of both. Thus, the common faith of all the virtu- ous, and all the truly wise, of all ages, nations^ and creeds, is found unshaken by this recent storm of words. I purpose to conclude with a brief review of what is also a powerful argument, the moral affinities of the two philosophies. We saw that the practical effect of Darwin's specu- lations was to make man one among the beasts. But Huxley and his comrades would end by reducing both man and beast to the level of the clod. Why is it, that any mind possessed even of the culture displayed in these ill-starred speculations, does not resent the un- speakable degradation which they inflict upon man- kind ? Men would not thus outrage their own natures, without an interested motive. That motive is, doubt- less, in -many, the craving for license from moral re- straints, and release from that accountability to a holy God, which remorse foreshadows. In the more decent it is probably a semi-conscious vanity of intellect, itch- ing for a place apart from the common crowd of think- ers, and a semi-conscious craving for the liberty of an irresponsible self-will. They wish not to have this Christ to reign over them, To the sinful mind viewing its destiny superficially, it may seem a fine thing to have no omniscient Master ; to be released from the restraints of law ; to be held hereafter to no account for conscious guilt. But let us see whether even guilty man has any motive of self-interest to say m his heart, 44 There is no God," whether atheism is not at least as horrible as hell. False Evolution Theory. 203 The best hope of materialism is annihilation. This is a destiny terrible to man, even as he is, conscious of guilt, and afraid of his own future. Does he plead, that if this fate robs us of all happiness, it is at least an ef- fectual shield against all misery? I reply: The de- struction of man's being is a true evil to him, just to the extent that he ever experienced or hoped any good from his own existence. How strong is the love of life ? Just so real, and so great, is the evil of extinction. Sec- ond, but for guilt and fear, a future immortality would be hailed by any living man as an infinite boon. Of this, annihilation would rob us. How vile is that theory of existence, which constrains a rational free agent to em- brace the hope of an infinite loss, solely as a refuge from his own folly and sin ? The vastness of this miserable robbery of self can be poorly cloaked by the wretched fact,that this soul has so played the fool and traitor to its own rights and destiny, that it is now self-compelled to.elect the infinite loss of annihilation, rather than meet an alternative still more dire ! But materialism and atheism do not make one sure of annihilation. Despite his denial of a spiritual sub- stance, the materialist has a conscious identity, which has somehow been continued through a number of molecular and organic changes in that which he sup- poses its seat ; it may, therefore, continue in spite of death. It is the character of his philosophy to believe that " the thing which hath been is that which shall be." Some materialists have professed to believe in immor- tality. But should it be that man is immortal, and yet has no God, this itself will be eternal despair. For no materialistic theory can then expel from the man those immutable realities, sensibility, hope, fear, sin, guilt, accountability, remorse ; for their presence in us is more immediately testified by our consciousness, than any physical fact can be, which men attempt to employ as a datum for this one-sided philosophy. At least, 204 Sensualistic Philosophy. when death comes, that " most wise, mighty, and elo- quent " teacher dispels the vain clouds of materialism, and holds the soul face to face with these realities, com- pelling him to know them as solid as his own conscious existence. But now, if the materialist-theory is true, there is no remedy for these miseries. There is no God omnipotent to cleanse and deliver. There is no Redeemer, in whom dwell the divine wisdom, power, love, and truth, for man's rescue. The Bible, the only book that ever professed to tell fallen man of an ade- quate salvation, is discredited. Providence and Grace are banished out of the existence of helpless, suffering man. There is no object to whom we can address prayer in our extremity. In place of a personal God and Father in Christ, the fountain and exemplar of all love and beneficence, to who.n we can cry in prayer, on whom we may lean in our weakness and sorrow, who is able and willing to wash away guilt and heal depravity, who is. suited to be our adequate portion through an eternal existence, we are left to confront this infinite Nature, material, impersonal, reasonless, heartless. There is no supreme, rational, or righteous government over man; and when the noblest senti- ments of the soul are crushed by wrongs so intolerable, that their perpetual triumph is felt to be more hateful than death ; there is not, nor shall there ever be, to all eternity, any appeal to compensating justice! But our only master is an irresistible, blind machine, revolving forever by the law of a mechanical necessity; and the corn between its upper and nether mill-stones is this multitude of living, palpitating, human hearts, instinct with their priceless hopes, and fears', and affections, and pangs, writhing and bleeding forever under the re- morseless grind. The picture is as black as hell itself. He who is " without God in this world," is "without hope." Atheism is despair. This doctrine will never win a permanent victory False Evolution Theory. 205 over the human mind : the utmost it can do is, to be- tray a multitude of unstable souls to their own perdi- tion, by flattering them with an entire impunity in sin ; and to visit Christendom with periodical spasms of anarchy and crime. With masses of men the latter result will always compel this doctrine to work its own cure. For upon its basis, there can be no moral distinc- tions, no right, no wrong, no rational obligatory motive, no rational end, save immediate, selfish, and animal good, and no rational restraints on human wickedness. The consistent working of materialism would turn all men into beasts of prey, and earth into Tophet. Fortunately, the traditionary and involuntary influences of Christian- ity cause many of its opponents to be inconsistent ; and we are always glad to concede to such of them as de- serve it, the credit of being better than their creed. Tyndal insinuates that atheism is the ennobling doc- trine, contrasted with Christianity. For were not Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, like Prof. Tyndal, extremely moral and virtuous men? Nay, do not their characters stand in favorable contrast with Ariose of the Christian divines, especially in view of the dereliction of these naughty men from that species of toleration of opinion (the infidel philosopher's cardinal virtue) which regards an assault upon the infinite excellence of our Redeemer as an entirely proper object of complacent regard, and which has no heat of indignation for any error whatsoever, save the error of being zealous for truth and righteousness ? Unless Tyndal regarded his audience as fatuous, the impertinence of this portraiture of his pet-atheists as the good people is almost fatuous. Does " one swallow make a Summer?" Shall the two trees be tried by their fruits ? Then, we must not take an exceptional case from among the unbelievers to com- pare with an exceptional case anrtong nominal Christians. The exceptional atheist may be, as we hope Prof. Tyn- dal is, a decent and benevolent person, not because of, 206 Sensualistic Philosophy. but in spite of, his professed principles. He is prob- ably made decent by the indirect influences of that Christianity which, he professes to contemn. Mr. Tyn- dal, if \ve mistake not, was the son of a worthy non-Con- formist minister of the Christian Church. The Chris- tian virtues of the father descend, to some extent, to the son. But let him rear his sons and grandsons consist- ently in atheistic opinions and among atheistic com- panions, and we shall see the fruit. The fair mode of comparing the fruits is to contrast the whole body of atheistic materialists with the whole body of sincere Christians. Then, on the one side W2 have such char- acters as the Jacobins and sans-culottes of Paris in her two reigns of terror, and those original " Positivists," the Bushmen of Africa, and the blacks of Australia; on the other, we have nearly all that has been good and true and pure in Christendom and without it. Fortunately, even the partial establishment of this Godless doctrine produces mischiefs so intolerable, that human society refuses to endure them. Besides this, the soul is incapable of persistent atheism or materialism, because of the inevitable demands of those constitutive laws of thought and feeling which qualify it as a rational spirit. These cannot be abolished by any conclusions drawn from themselves, for the same reason that streams cannot abolish their own fountains. The sentiment of religion is omnipotent in the end. We may rest in assurance of its ultimate triumph, even without appealing to the work of the Holy Ghost, whom Christianity promises as the onyiipotent coad- jutor of the truth. While irreligious men explore the facts of Natural History for fancied proofs of a crea- tion without a Creator, the heralds of the Gospel will continue to lay their hands upon the heartstrings of immortal beings, and find there, for all time, the powers to overwhelm unbelief. Does the divine deal only with things spiritual ? But these spiritual conscious- False Evolution Theory. 207 nesses are more stable than all the other's primitive granite. Centuries hence, if man shall continue in his present state so long, when these grovelling theories of unbelief shall have been assigned to that limbus where polytheism, alchemy, and judicial astrology lie con- temned, Christianity will be still subduing the nations and blessing the world with its beneficent sway. There is an argument, ad hominem, by which this dis- cussion might, with strict justice, be closed. If mate- rialism is true, then the pretended philosopher who teaches it is a beast, and we are all beasts. Brutes are not amenable to moral law ; and if they -were, it is no murder to kill a beast. But brutes act very consistently upon certain instincts of self-preservation. Even they learn something by experience. But this teaches us that the propagator of these atheistic ideas is preparing intolerable mischief; for, just so far as they have pre- vailed, they have let loose a flood of misery upon man- kind. Now, then, these teachers are venomous. The consistent thing for the rest of us animals, who are not serpents or beasts of prey, is to kill them as soon as they show their heads ; just as whenever the stags see a rattlesnake, they cut him in pieces with the lightning thrusts of their keen hoofs. Why is not. this conclusion perfectly just ? The only logic which restrains it is, that Christianity, which says that we shall not shed man's blood, " because in the image of God made He man ;" but which these men flout. The only reason we do not justly treat atheists thus is, that we are not, like them, atheists. CHAPTER X. VALIDITY OF A-PR1ORI NOTIONS. necessity for this chapter in our discussion, again, illustrates the trite maxim : " Extremes meet." We -have seen Mr. Herbert Spencer, after be- ginning on the most extreme sensualistic ground, and adopting the most extreme Nominalism as to our ab- stract ideas ; borrowing the most vicious of the tran- scendental features of Sir William Hamilton's " rational realism " from him and Mr. Basil Mansel. The philos- opher of Materialism attempts to prove by these, his adversaries, that all our knowledge is merely relative, and that God is unknowable (along with all other un- conditioned conceptions). The real amount of Spen- cer's whole process, we saw, was but this : That, since God is " unthinkable," philosophy should discard Him, and refer everything to a single principle : force eternally persistent. And that, as all material phenomena, which he holds the only " thinkable " ideas, the more fully their causes are understood, are more nearly reduced to a single invariable law, the creation of a philosophy must consist in the unification of all sciences as laws of a single power, and all the effects of the universe, whether material, mental, or supernatural (so called), as effects of that single power : eternal force. I showed the student, very briefly, but very clearly, confirming my assertion by Mr. Spencer's own admis- sions, that if we let him take his choice, then his matter and his force-God have become as absolutely "unthinkable" as spirit and God. I pressed the fatal (208) Validity of A -Priori Notions. 209 question : If the fact, that our ideas of spirit and God are unconditioned, must expel them from our philos- ophy, why should not the same fact expel Mr. Spencer's ideal matter and his force-God also ? Why not ? Why must we sacrifice the convictions of all wise men for three thousand years, with the intuitions of conscience and all the hopes of our immortality, in order to get rid of one pair of " unthinkables," that we may adopt another pair confessedly as ''unthinkable?" Why? To the plain mind no reason appears ; we are required to do it simply on the ground of caprice, that Mr. Spencer appears to have an obstinate prejudice both against God and his own soul. (The latter, possibly, better founded than the former.) He chooses to prefer another pair of " unthinkables " of his own invention. I also urged the question: Why is the reference of all effects to one power necessary to the unification of man's knowledge into a true philosophy ? Because of the observed permanency and inter-consistency of nat- ural law ? No : for true philosophy answers, that this observed fact is abundantly satisfied by the omnip- otent providence of the supernatural, divine Power, over the natural. Why, then, trample on all the dem- onstrations of separate spiritual powers, presented by the intuitive consciousness of our own free-agency and by natural theology, in order to "unify" what is al- ready completely unified ? I pressed this question : Why? Really, there is no answer, save that Mr. Spencer prefers to have it so. He does not like this unification in the ruling will of One who is perfectly wise, good, holy, and true : that is the residuum of all his profundity. In a word, 1 showed that his whole system, if it could be anything, could only be a fclo de se : if it makes the old natural theology impossible, it, for the stronger reason, makes his own impossible. This is all that the modern unbelief accomplishes, when its premises are conceded. But the interests of 14 2 TO Sensualistic Philosophy. truth forbid our conceding 1 those premises. We do not concede that human cognitions are only relatively valid. While we are very willing to concede that that impos- sible something-nothing, the unconditioned abstract, is unknowable, we do not concede that an Infinite Being is unknowable. The predictions made by sober minds of the unsafeness of these Hamiltonian speculations, and especially of their exaggerations in the hands of some of Hamilton's followers, have been fully verified : it is time they were corrected. I believe I shall be able to show, by a few very simple distinctions, that these ex- travagances also, where they are not the mere results of verbal ambiguities, are the fruits of a sensualistic heresy, retained in the bosom of a rational system. We have been required to proceed thus: All cogni- tions are such, only as they are known in conscious- ness. The essential condition of all consciousness is the distinction of the " Me " and the " Not-Me." Hence, all cognition is a relation: hence the conclusion of the relativity of all knowledge. Now, there is a sense in which this is, of course, true. The relation of the " Not-Me" to the " Me," in consciousness, is the condi- tion of all knowing. But the vicious sense put upon this almost truism is another thing, namely : that our knowledge is all only a relation; in such a sense that the modification of the nearer term, or pole thereof, namely, of the modes of consciousness of the " Me," would change the whole of the cognitions. Thence it would follow, that the mind can have no guarantee of the validity of any cognition-in-itself, inasmuch as it is impossible for our subjective consciousness to test the validity of its own modes by any judgment ; the dis- tinction of the " Me " and the " Not-Me " being, as all concede, the sole condition of all judgments. Now, the first remark I make upon this sophism is, that it is but a new statement of the old system of absolute scepti- cism. The man who has followed it out with a consis- Validity of A-Priori Notions. 211 tent thoroughness is the universal sceptic who, like Hume, doubts the validity of all cognition. For I see not how this process can be applied to lead me to the relativity of any knowledge, without proceeding the whole length. But this absolute scepticism has been shown again and again to be not only utterly degrad- ing and ruinous to man, but a specimen of logical sui- cide.* Again : This doctrine of the mere relativity of knowl- edge is but another way of stating the doctrine of the pure idealist. Bishop Berkeley was but making a par- tial application of it, when he reasoned that sensation really gives us no certainty of the existence of an ex- ternal world. Kant was but making a partial applica- tion of it, when he concluded that the judgments of the pure reason, though unavoidable, are invalid. J. S. Mill is but doing the same when he concludes that the only knowledge we have of matter is of a " permanent possibility of sensations to us." And Hamilton is also travelling the same path of idealism, or, in other words, of (partial) scepticism, when he concludes that our knowledge of the secondary properties of bodies is only relative ; while he holds that our knowledge of substance and of primary qualities is immediate. Mill has proved that Hamilton is inconsistent in not going farther; that he has leaped off the precipice, and yet endeavors to stop in mid-air. Hamilton thinks that by * In Veitch's Life of Hamilton, p. 153, are two letters from M. Victor Cousin, evoked by the famous article of the former on Cousin's Eclecti- cism in the Edinburgh Review. Cousin thus confirms my charge : " Je me permets d'appeler votre attention sur la theorie de la Raison, et vous prie de la bien m6diter avant de la rejeter definitivement : car toute la question du scepticisme y est engagee, et je crois que si je vous tenais la, je vous prouverais que vous <5tes sur la route du scepticisme. II ne faut pas avoir peur du mot ftabsolu? Again : " Prenez garde, je vous prie, de ne pas laisser degenerer la philosophic ecossaise dans un scepticisme nouveau, qui ne vaudrait gueres mieux que 1'ancien." 212 Sensualistic Philosophy. discarding the representationist theory of perception, and by asserting that the reality of bodies and their primary properties are immediately known in con- sciousness, he has saved these from the idealistic ten- dency. We have assurance of their validity, not in the fact of sensation, but in the intuitive facts of the reason. Mill shows that upon his admission, this cannot dimin- ish the relativity of these cognitions. So, I assert, Mill, Kant, Berkeley, are equally inconsistent, in stopping half-way. If they take the leap at all, they should rec- oncile themselves to alight in the black abyss of Hume. If the process with which they all set out were solid, it would prove the mere relativity of all knowledge, as well as of a part. And here is my prac- tical ground for concluding that the process is a cheat. For how can I be required to adopt the self-contradic- tion : that I certainly know, I certainly do not know, that which I do know ? That is consistent scepticism ! The chasm which has been unwittingly leaped in this process is, after all, very simply disclosed. Cognition takes place by means of some relation of the " Not- Me " to the " Me." Granted. Therefore, cognition is merely that relation ? I do not grant it ; this is a non-sequitur : and it begs the whole question in inquiry ; which is this, whether by means 0/the relation of the u Not-Me " to the " Me," valid cognition arises. Let us illustrate by a similar non-sequitur, which betrays the sensualistic character of this whole way of reasoning. Says the Sensualist : " The relation of cause and effect is no other than that of simple immediate sequence: the notion of a power in cause is illusory. For has the mind any other experimental knowledge, than of the relation of sequence ? " Reason answers : that it is by means of this perception of a sequence, that the mind sees effi- cient power in the cause ; but our reason refuses to con- found the seen relation by means of which the presence of the efficient power is known, with that known power. Validity of A -Priori Notions. 2 1 3 This rational and necessary cognition we get in any instance, by means of the seen relation ; but it is not merely the same as the relation. Let our common sense make a similar correction in this argument for the mere relativity of our knowledge, in all other cases. Our cognitions are first, immediate intuitive, and sec- ond, derived or illative ; the validity of the latter de- pends on that of some immediate intuitive cognitions, which are premises. The question is : Are our minds validly entitled to any intuitive cognitions gotten by them in the occurrence of any relations of the " Not- Me " to the " Me " ? To this question I reply : Yes. Shall I be now required to prove my affirmative ? No ; for that requirement would be paradoxical ; it is absurd to prove a first truth which has no premise behind it from which to conclude a proof. And must I now as- sert again, that foundation-truth of logic, never denied by any thoughtful philosopher of any school, that there must be primitive judgments of the mind, or else there can be no derived ones? This, surely, is sufficiently trite. We find, then, when we make this simple distinction, separating our intuitive cognitions from those mere relations of the " Not-Me " to the " Me " (which are the occasions of our intuition), that the question needs only to be stated aright, to answer itself aright. Has my mind a true, spiritual, seeing power ? or is it only a term, a pole, of a relation between the " Me " and the " Not-Me?" When a telescope is placed at my eye, do I see the telescopic star ? Yes. Is this visual percep- tion something more than a contact of eye and tele- scope? Yes. But perhaps the image of the supposed star was in the telescope only ? I have inspected the telescope, and seen that there was no star in it. But perhaps the image of a supposed star was, in the same sense, in the mind only ? I reply, No. How do I know it was not ? The question is a paradox ; it is as though 214 Sensualistic Philosophy. one should ask me, How do I know that I know the thing which I know I know ? We have gotten back to the ultimate fact, an intuition of consciousness. At that, every system of cognitions must stop; to refuse to stop there is to refuse to be an intelligent being ; to de- rationalize one's self. And now, does not this ultimate issue which the question has raised, prove that this doctrine of the mere relativity of knowledge is virtually identical with that of absolute scepticism ? For when this species of sceptic is driven from all his smaller cavils against our knowledge, he always retires to this question, as to his final stronghold : " If the certainty of all deduced truths depends at last on the validity of the primitive judgments which are their ultimate pre- mises; and if these are undemonstrated ; is not all our knowledge uncertain ? " As M. Jouffroy has justly said, the very terms of this cavil show that it can never re- ceive an answer from deductive demonstration. Yet, it is enough to add : Every such caviller knows, is in- evitably necessitated to know, that no answer at all is necessary. He who seriously urges the cavil is as though one should say : " I am in contact with this tree ; and, therefore, I cannot know my distance from it, because there is no room to introduce any foot, or yard-measure, or any other measure of distance, be- tween my body and the tree." Every sane man re- plies, for that very reason the man's relation in space to that tree is known ; it is contact ; it is all the more cer- tain because there is no room to interpose any measure. Light is the sole medium by which we see objects. By what other medium, then, shall we see the light? There is none. " Therefore light must be invisible ! " Such is the logic of scepticism ; and it refutes itself every time the eye is opened. Were it possible for any man to act consistently upon the sceptical cavil, the sole re- sult would, obviously, be idiocy. It results, then, that we are intuitively certain, that while our cognitions are Validity of A -Priori Notions. 215 by means 0/the relation. of the object and subject, they are 'something more than that relation. All that we need be careful about is, that we separate faithfully be- tween veritable intuitions and correct deductions on the one hand and imaginary intuitions and illogical deduc- tions on the other. The mind is possessed of logical criteria for making that separation, if we will use them honestly. If our possession of such criteria is denied, then how has the sceptic or idealist ascertained 'the invalidity of any, or all, of our cognitions? With that reductio ad absurdissimum, I leave him. The transition to the other error to be discussed may be furnished by the peculiar terms in which Sir Win. Hamilton seems to delight in stating the doctrine of our primitive judgments. He calls them will were contingent, there could be no scientia media even: much less an immediate omniscience; and we should be compelled to the low and profane doctrine of the Sociiiians, that in the nature of things, God can- not foreknow all the acts of the creature. For the only intelligible definition of scientia media is, that it is that contingent knowledge of what free agents will choose to do in certain circumstances, arising out of God's in- finite insight into their dispositions. But if the will may decide in opposition to that foreseen disposition, the foresight of it is no ground of a knowledge what the volition will be. Nor is it sufficient to resort to the incomprehensibility of an infinite understanding to us, to evade this contradiction. For the infinite perfec- tion of the divine mind renders it not easier, but more impossible for it to hold the consistency of a species of knowledge purely conditional, when the very condition is denied. If a correct mind certainly foresees an act, then that act must be certain to occur ; else this certain foreknowledge is incorrect. It thus appears that noth- ing which is embraced in the divine foreknowledge can be contingent with God. But to return Eighth : Were volitions contingent, God would have no certain way of governing free agents efficiently, consistent with their free-agency : Acts might at any time be done by them contrary to God's most fixed purpose; and the only government possible for Him would be one of mutable expedients, devised to meet undesigned failures of His real plan. Nor could He bestow any certain answer to prayers, either against temptation and our own wrong choice, or against the wrong purposes of others. Last: The demonstration may be closed by the famous reductio ad absurdum, which John Ed- wards borrowed from the Scholastics. If the will is not determined to choice by subjective motive, but de- Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 297 termines itself, then the will must determine itself to choose by an act of choice, for this remains its only function. That is, the will must choose to choose. Now, this prior choice must be held by our opponents to be self-determined. Then it must be determined by the will's act of choice : that is, the will must choose to choose to choose. Thus we have an endless and ridic- ulous regressus. But the current objections are, that our view makes man a machine ; an intelligent one, indeed ; but yet a machine, in which choice follows motive by a natural, and so, a necessary tie. The answer is, that the analogy suggested by the objection is false. Man has no feature of the machine, save that his spontaneity always has some regulative law. The essential trait of the machine is wholly lacking ; a physical motive power outside him- self. Man's motive power is himself; the external ob- ject is inducement only, not motive. The motive is the agent's own judgment and desire, just as truly as the determination is the agent's own choice. The motive power is within, and therefore the man is not a machine. The agent is a monad, without parts ; and therefore the man is not a machine. It is objected, again, that this doctrine fails to account for those cases where the man determines against his own better judgment and feelings. Thus, it is said : the drunkard violates his own better judgment and his own sincere and anxious resolutions and desires by taking the intoxicating drink. In this case, it is urged, we have a volition contrary to the prevalent judgment and preference. I reply; No ; the man has chosen pre- cisely according to his own prevalent judgment and preference at the time. This drunkard may judge that sobriety would be the preferable good in the end, or as a whole ; but as to the question of this present indul- gence, which is the real, immediate object of his voli- tion, both judgment and propensity concur at the time 298 Sensualistic Philosophy. to prefer it as the present good ; otherwise he would not take it. It is true that the understanding is now misinformed, by strong propensity, to judge differently from its former judgment; and the delusive hope' of subsequent reform, combining the advantages of future impunity with present enjoyment, leads him to cheat himself with the idea that the preferable good is this immediate indulgence, to be followed by a future reformation, rather than immediate self-denial. Even Aristotle (" Nichomachian Ethics," Book IV., 3,) saw that this was the true solution of such cases of free- agency. It is objected that our repentance for having chosen wrong alv/ays implies the feeling that we might have chosen otherwise had we pleased. I reply : Yes ; pro- vided that different choice had been preceded at the time by a different view and feeling of the preferable. No man, who understands himself, supposes that he would have chosen differently, had he judged and felt as to the object precisely as he did. The thing for which the repentant mind blames itself is, that it had not those different and rightful judgments and desires, prompting the different volition. The conclusion which is really proved by all such instances is, that men know themselves to be blameworthy and responsible for wrong judgments and desires, as well as for wrong volitions. For, their consciousness tells them that both are functions of their own spontaneity. It is objected, again, that our doctrine cannot account for any choice between objects precisely equal. The answer is, that the equality of the objects by no means implies the equality of the subjective desires. Is the mind ever in precisely the same s':ate of desire for two minutes together, even as to one and the same object? The feelings are in a state of perpetual ebb and flow. In the case supposed, although the objects remain equal, the mind will easily make a difference; perhaps an im- Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 299 aginary one. We must remember that there is already a subjective motive, which is sufficiently prevalent, for choosing some one among the equal objects. The ob- jects being equal, an infinites! maily small preponderance of view and feeling will suffice to overcome the remain- ing inertia of will as to the choice of the one equal object over the other. But the leading objection is, that if the volitions are any way necessitated, man cannot be justly held respon- sible, or rewarded, or punished. There is, of course, a sense in which this is true, and hence the plausibility of the cavil. But the objection confounds compulsion with certainty of choice. If the man were compelled to an act against, his will ; if the act were in this sense in- voluntary ; then he would be neither responsible, nor meritorious, nor guilty. But the question is, whether the certain or efficient connection between man's own free judgments and desires and his volitions impairs his responsibility ; and to this question reason and experi- ence give a very clear negative. God has repeatedly punished wicked men for free evil acts, which He had predicted; but their prediction showed that their per- formance was certain. Again : we foretell the evil acts of the sensual and vicious, but we blame them none the less for those acts. How are we enabled to foretell them ? By our acquaintance with their dispositions, and our belief in the certain connection between dis- position and volition, supposing the presence of the ap- propriate objects. And we do not consider these wicked men as any the less responsible and blameworthy be- cause their dispositions to do wrong are so strong or so decisive ; we judge them only the more blameworthy therefor. Again : we procure volitions from our fellow- creatures, and we are often certain, in advance, that we shall procure the volition designed. On what else is all rational government of man by man founded ? Un- less the connection between disposition and volition 300 Sensualistic* Philosophy. were certain and efficacious, we could not know whether we could successfully induce a given volition by a given object or not. But do we dream that the persons influenced are not responsible or meritorious? Or, would one of those persons concede that his right act was not rewardable, because it had thus been in- duced by you ? Surely not. Once more : Gocl holds evil spirits and lost souls responsible for their wicked volitions, although the depravity of their natures cer- tainly determines them to an everlasting rebellion. All these cases demonstrate that no man's responsibility is impaired by the certainty of his choosing, in accordance with his own prevalent dispositions. But the objector returns to the charge with this argument : that we make a subjective disposition really regulative of the acts of choice. Unless that disposition is elected by the agent in an act of choice, it is in a sense involuntary 1 , and the agent is not really free. The answer is, that disposition is an original and rudimental fact of rational spontaneity, behind which no analysis and no argument can be carried. While original disposition is, indeed, not " voluntary " in the sense of being a result of a voli- tion, yet it is most properly voluntary in the sense of this argument : i. e., spontaneous. And of this the practical proof is, that the man exercises his ruling disposition wholly uncompelled : no one makes him exercise it. My disposition is as truly (in the language of the Greek), TO e' e/zo^, as my volition. But we have a crowning instance, which gives the refutation to this cavil: the holiness of God. He acts with infallible holiness, because He is efficiently determined thereto by a disposition infinitely and immutably holy. Was this disposition the result of an act of choice taken by God electing it, and thus acquiring it? No; for God is eternally and unchangeably holy ! Is God, then, not meritorious for His holy acts ? The thougnt is profane. Here, then, is an Agent in whom disposition was abso- Refutation of Sensucilistic Ethics. 301 lutely original and absolutely efficacious in regulatingHis volitions, and yet He is the freest and most praiseworthy of all agents. Finally : if disposition could only become morally praiseworthy or blameworthy by originating in the agent's own act of choice, from what regulative moral principle could that all-important, that consti- tutive, act of choice have proceeded ? Not from the resultant moral disposition ; the child does riot beget its own father. Then, from what ? There is no answer ; and the objector is left in this preposterous attitude, ascribing an all-important and decisive moral result to this first volition, which, according to his own scheme, had no moral motive ! He makes man's whole virtue or vice a stream of moral effects, flowing from a cause which had nothing moral in it ! We are thus inexor- ably taught that the moral quality of the stream of actions depends, not on the manner of originating, but on the nature of the moral dispositions, which freely exercise themselves in regulating the specific volitions in the stream. It is equally plain that the adaptation of any object to be an inducement to volition depends on some sub- jective attribute of appetency in the agent. This state of appetency must be ct priori to the inducement ; not created by it, but conferring on the object its whole fitness to be an inducement. In other words, when we seek to occasion volition by holding out an inducement as occasion or means, we always presuppose in the agent whom we address, some active propensity. No one attempts to allure a hungry horse with bacon, or a hungry man with hay. Why? We recognize in each agent an a priori state of appetite, which has already determined to which of them the bacon shall be induce- ment, and to which the hay. The same fact is true of the spiritual desires of the reasonable soul. Hence, it follows that inducement alone has no adequate power to revolutionize the subjective dispositions 302 Sensualistic Philosophy. natural to agents. The effect cannot determine its own cause. That view which the Sensualistic scheme gives of necessity is, then, false. True, volition always has a cause, which is the subjective motive. This cause is efficient, otherwise the effect would not follow. But the motive is subjective ; it is as truly the agent's self, judging and desiring, as volition is the same self-choos- ing and determining. And this subjective desire, causative of choice, is a function of the agent's activity, not of his passivity. The correct doctrine here pro- ceeds with Sir William Hamilton, in separating desire, as a conative and active power, from sensibility, which is passive. The desire is as much of the agent's spon- taneity as is the choice. Thus is corrected the error of the Sensualist, who, while he taught that volition is efficiently caused by desire, also taught that desire is but the passive reflex of the objective perception of the natural good or evil. Were this true, man would, in- deed, be merely a machine, governed through his desires by the fated influence of outward objects, and his free- dom would be illusory. On the other hand, the true doctrine of free-agency is equally fatal to the latest phase -of the Sensualistic scheme, which seeks to account for all the powers of man's soul by an evolution. If that truth is admitted, which we have established, con- cerning the existence of original and fundamental dis- position, then man's nature cannot be accounted for by the action of his environment upon his sensibility. On the contrary, the nature, or spiritual essentia, must be h priori to any influence of the environment. The law of original disposition must determine, in advance, whether the objective environment shall have any in- fluence, and what influence it shall have. As we saw that the fact of conscious rational spontaneity was fatal, when properly understood, to materialism, we now find it equally fatal to evolutionism. We find that disposi- Refutation of Sensucclistic Ethics. 303 tion, and not the objective inducement, is the real cause of those desires and volitions by which spiritual habits are fostered. Man's soul is not evolved, but created ; its essentia is not determined from without, but determines from within the direction in which the culture shall take place. Thus we are led to detect the central sophism. There is a development going on in all created things ; but it is only the development of natures that preexisted, changing not their essentia, but the completeness of the essentia in individuals. The individual of a genus is developed into larger size and powers ; no genus is developed into another gemts, be- cause the original essentia is predeterminant of the re- sults of culture. We have seen that the regulative law of every being's rational spontaneity is found in its original or native disposition. Thus, the regulative law of the divine free- agency is found in God's eternal holiness. That of the angels is found in the image of God, in which they were created. What is man's ethical disposition ? The answer to this question must be found by the philos- opher, by a careful observation of his own consciousness and of the conduct of his fellow - men. That man is a free agent in all. his sins, he knows intuitively. That he has, by nature, an intuition of the reason, called conscience, informing him of obligation to the right, and of the ill-desert of his sin, I shall prove in the sequel of this chapter. That his original disposi- tion is opposed to this intuition of conscience, every man may learn by faithfully consulting his own con- sciousness. To read this testimony aright, a few cau- tions must be observed. It is true that, until the man is far gone in evil, he cannot violate his own rational judgment of obligation, without pain of conscience ; but let us not confound this pain with opposition of the will to sin, for the pain of conscience is involuntary. It is also true that no man's will inclines him to do all the 304 Sensualistic Philosophy. sins possible to him, and that social affections, love of applause, interest, habit, and stress of conscience, cause most men voluntarily to perform many duties. But there remains the unhappy fact, that by all men some recognized duties are left unfulfilled, and this deliberate- ly and obstinately, as long as they remain in their nat- ural estate. There is, then, a certain extent to which the law of self-will, as opposed to the law of right ex- pressed in the conscience, is the regulative disposition of even the better sort. When we inquire as to the strength or decisiveness of this law, we find that it is dominant, to a certain extent, in all ; there are some recognized duties in each man's case which his heart is fully set in him to postpone, and some indulgences, con- demned by his own moral reason, which he is inexorably determined not immediately to relinquish. When we inquire of the prevalence of this disposition, we find it universal among all natural men. When we seek for its source, we trace it in each person to the very earliest date of conscious choice. This law of self-will is the ear- liest disposition which each one manifests, and the great problem of moral education is to repress and control it. We thus reach, by the testimony of universal experi- ence, this fact : that, while the reason intuitively and inevitably recognizes the imperative of conscience as the highest and properest rule of the rational creature, the will resists and rejects that rule, to some extent, in ever} 7 man, with an opposition equally inexorable. This, surely, is the most solemn fact of human nature ! It shows that there is an original and fundamental war- fare propagated' in our race. Our nature is manifestly dislocated. It has obviously been the subject of a catas- trophe. How, or when, philosophy cannot tell us ; and for this reason, most of the mere philosophers have at- tempted to hide the great fact from their eyes, thus introducing confusion and abortion into all the practical resulis of their speculations. But, surely, the proper Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 305 office of science, if it is faithful, is to include all the natural facts of the case ; and so, to make a correct and complete generalization of its data. But I have shown, by a very simple appeal to men's conscious experience, that while human nature presents these two fundamental facts, Spontaneity and Reason, there is now a radical opposition between the spontaneity and the reason, which is as original in our present native state as the two faculties themselves. But are the moral judgments of the reason funda- mental ? This is the question which has been post- poned, with the promise of a searching examination. In the Fourth Chapter, the answer given by Sensualism was stated, and the bearings of the two rival doctrines upon philosophy were explained. The issue there made up, we will now proceed to debate. Is any one of the theories tenable which Sensualistic philosophers have invented to account for the moral sentiments of men, as they actually present themselves in society, and as they were described in the beginning of my Fourth Chapter ? I undertake to show that none of them are tenable. The Selfish System has presented itself in varied forms, from Hobbes (who made the desire of natural good for self the whole moral motive), through Mandeville (who thought the instinctive desire for the selfish pleasure of applause was the moral motive), to Paley, who made the desire of everlasting future welfare the moral motive. The system has always this characteristic : it resolves the moral good into mere natural good, and virtue into enlightened selfishness. When pointed to the exertions of the affections usually termed disin- terested, as gratitude, sympathy, benevolence, it at- tempts to represent the instinctive after-pleasure attend- ing the disinterested acts as the real motive, and thus refines them also into an astute selfishness. Thus, 306 Sensualistic Philosophy. Hobbes, when walking in London with a sounder philosopher, gave a shilling to a cripple. When his companion said to him : There, you have refuted your own doctrine by giving voluntary aid to this suffering stranger, Hobbes answered : No ; the real motive was still self-interested, being composed of the relief which his own sympathetic pain experienced in giving the succor to the object, and of the selfish pleasure of the applause associated with the act. To all the phases of this selfish system I object, first : that on such a scheme the notions of right, of duty, and obligation, and of free-agency could never have arisen in the mind, and would have no relevancy or meaning. Let one frame the proposition, " Whatever favors self-interest is right," the very employment of the word " right" recognizes the fact that the mind has a standard other than that of self-interest. Any analy- sis of our idea of our own rights is utterly violated and falsified when made identical with self-interest. Does Hobbes say, for instance, that each man's self-interest is his own natural right? But according to his 'own showing, this Bright" in A, would imply no corre- sponding duty in him, and no obligation upon his neigh- bor B, to respect it, and no moral recognition on the part of any other. Anybody has an equal '" right " to deprive A of the enjoyment of his "right! " Whereas every man's common sense tells him that the very nat- ure of a right involves a moral title to its possession, and a corresponding moral obligation to respect it, resting on others. In other words, does not every sane mind recognize a distinction between "a right" and the accident of possession and enjoyment? If self-interest be the whole moral motive, then when the question shall arise, whether I shall do, or forego, a certain act, I cannot be consistently required to con- sider anything but this : whether my doing of it will promote that form of my selfish pleasure which I hap- Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 307 pen to prefer. If I say, " This act will most gratify me," the argument is at an end. Any judgment of obligation to restrain myself from any act is baseless. Will Epicureanism attempt, for instance, to interpose an "ought not" between me and any natural indul- gence, by saying : " This proposed sensual pleasure will, indeed, promote animal enjoyment, but hinder aesthetic or intellectual enjoyment, which are higher and purer. And since pleasure is your rational su- preme good, you are bound to prefer the more to the less"? If I choose to reply: "This animal good is to me the larger," the argument is ended ; all ground of obligation is gone. If no indulgence is in itself less or more virtuous than another, then, in the face of an ex- isting selfish preference, no possible argument of obli- gation can be constructed to restrain from any act. But are all the world wrong in supposing that there is such a bond as obligation ? If the sensualistic psychology is true, then the desire for natural good, which it makes the whole moral mo- tive, is a passive affection of the soul. It is no more voluntary, when the object of desire is presented, than is pain when one is struck, or chill when one is deluged with cold water. But this desire for the selfish good is the efficient of the volition. Where now is that free- agency, which, we intuitively judge, is rudimental to all moral action and responsibility? Man is no longer self-directed by rational, subjective motives, but drawn hither and thither like an animated puppet, by external forces.. It is precisely as absurd to hold him bound by moral obligation, or deserving of punishment for vio- lating the restraint, as the hungry sow, which devours the neighbor's corn. Penalties, on this theory, be- come the mere expedients of the stronger animals for protecting their own selfishness. And as this must remain true for the future also, all religious sanctions would be out of the question. 308 Sensualistic Philosophy. Second : I object to the selfish scheme from the pre- cedence of instinctive desire to calculation, in human action. That theory supposes that the selfish pleasure apprehended by the mind in performing an act must always be the motive for doing it. But on this false analysis, how could the man ever have the volition to perform the act for the first time ? The experience of the pleasure folowing the act only comes after ! This simple argument shows that, in the first instance of voli- tion, the motive must have been instinctive. What prompts the new-born infant to draw nourishment from the mother's breast? Will one say, the experienced sweetness of the milk? But it must have been drawn first, in order that the sweetness might be experienced. The first volition must have been prompted by instinct. This preposterous analysis assigns the effect as the cause of its own cause. Let us now apply this illustra- tion to the moral volition. An agent performs what the world calls a disinterested moral act (moral because it is disinterested). The selfish system says that its motive was, in fact, the selfish anticipation of the pleas- ure experienced by the agent in its performance. But the act must be first performed, in order that any such result may be experienced. Therefore, that experienced result was not the motive of the first act, however it may enter as a part-motive in its subsequent repetitions. But if the subsequent acts differ essentially from the first, then the whole do not form one and the same class of acts; and the same moral nature cannot be predicat- ed of the first, and of the subsequent ones. The first, we have proved, could not have had the selfish motive, and must have therefore been disinterested. The con- sciousness of having done disinterestedly gives the agent an inward pleasure. According to Hobbes, this after-pleasure, which proceeded from the consciousness that the act was unselfish, became a motive of mere selfishness, and, moreover, the cause of its own cause ! Refutation of ScnsuMstic Ethics. 309 The absurdity of the scheme is further proved by this : If the fact that a disinterested act results in pleasure to him who did it, proves that act selfish ; then by parity of reasoning, the fact that a selfish, malignant act usual- ly results in pain to the criminal agent, proves this act disinterested and virtuous. Third : Were the selfish theory true, the adaptation of another person's conduct to confer personal advan- tage on us would be synonymous, in our eyes, with merit. The villain who shared with us the rewards of his misdeeds, would evoke the same moral sentiments with the virtuous mother who blessed us with her generous sacrifices. There would be no generic differ- ence between the hollow flattery of the courtier, for the monster on whose bounty he fattened, and the ap- probation of the virtuous for the most splendid bene- factions of the patriot. Fourth : If our notion of good acts is nothing but a generalization of the idea of acts conducive to our self- interest, he who has most experimental knowledge of human affairs (that is to say, he who is most hackneyed in this world's ways) should have the strongest and clearest apprehension of moral distinctions, because he would most clearly apprehend this tendency of actions. He who was wholly inexperienced could have no moral sentiments. But is this so ? Do we not find that the most unsophisticated have always the most vivid moral sympathies? The inexperienced youth, ill-informed of the whole ulterior consequences of crimes, burns with moral indignation, while the hackneyed man of the world is callous. But, fifth : The crowning absurdity of this selfish theory appears here : That our consciousness always teaches us, the moral pleasure we have in well-doing depends wholly upon our feeling the virtuous act was not prompted by selfishness; the moment we feel that this was our prime motive, our self-approbation is wholly 310 Sensualistic Philosophy. marred. Indeed, the best and the sufficient argument against this miserable theory would be the instinctive loathing and denial uttered against it by every rightly- constituted soul. The honest man knows, by his im- mediate consciousness, that when he does right, selfish- ness is not his motive; and that if it were, he would be utterly self-condemned. As Cousin nervously remarks : Our consciousness tells us that the approbation we feel for disinterested virtue is wholly disinterested, and it is impossible for us t;j feel it, unless we feel that the agent who pleases us was disinterested in his act. Thus a thousand things in the acts, the language, and the affec- tions of men are utterly irreconcilable with this hateful analysis, and show it to be as unphilosophical as de- grading. In the next place, I group together three theories of the nature of virtue, which really amount to the same : That of David Hume, who taught that we appre- hend an act to be virtuous because it is useful to man- kind: That of Jeremy Bentham, who taught that vir- tue is pursuing the greatest good of the greatest number j And that of some New England speculators, who teach that virtue consists in benevolence. The latter is practi- cally the same with the two former. This appears from the fact, that the practical expression of benevolence is beneficence. The useful is but the beneficent ; so that it comes to the same to represent utility as the essence of virtue, or to represent benevolence as such. The latter theory is a natural offshoot of that speculation of Jonathan Edwards, which makes virtue consist in love of being \i\ general; and its filiation may be seen in the remarks just made. These schemes derive all their plausibility from three facts : It has been so often said that "honesty is the best policy," that men come to think it is the goodness of the policy which makes it honest. Again : to promote utility, or to do acts of beneficence to mankind, is right and praiseworthy in a Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 3 1 1 multitude of cases: the duties of benevolence are du- ties, and a very extensive class thereof; but not for this reason exhaustive of all duties. Once more: in the business of legislation, the expedient is very largely the guide of the magistrate, and civil governments punish crimes chiefly in proportion to their tendency to injure the well-being of society. This might easily deceive one who, like Bentham, was far more a legislator than philosopher, and lead him to suppose that he had found in the beneficence of acts the essential element of their virtue. He forgets that human laws, while they adjust their penalties to the intrinsic elements of wrong-doers, if the legislators are righteous, yet propose as their- proximate end the protection of human well-being in this life, and leave the final and exact apportionment of men's deserts to God, as His proper function. The " Benevolence scheme " appears in its most in- genious, and least obnoxious form, in the hand of Ed- wards, as Love for Being as being. But Edwards him- self admits that distinction made by the current of eth- ical writers, as by the good sense of mankind, between the love of moral complacency and the love of benevo- lence, or simple love of kindness. The latter is the benevolent feeling which the good exercise toward their fellow-men, simply as sentient rational beings, ir- respective of any moral attractiveness. The former is the love and delight of which moral excellence is the object. It is impossible for the Utilitarian, or any one else, to banish the distinction. For instance: Holy Writ saith that God loves sinners, and that God hates sinners: Are these sheer contradictions? It says that Gocl loves the righteous and hates the evil ; and also that " God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Now the only possible solution of these statements is in the distinc- tion just drawn. God loves sinners, despite their moral unworthiness, with the love of benevolence: He loves 312 Sensualistic Philosophy. the righteous, on account of their moral worthiness, with the love of complacency. The same things are true of wise and virtuous men: the righteous parent loves his reprobate son, despite his tin worthiness, with the love of benevolence; but his virtuous son, with the love of complacency also, on account of his moral worthi- ness. Now this unavoidable distinction overthrows Ed- wards' scheme. When he defines virtue as the love of Being as being, is it the love of benevolence, or the love of moral complacency? He is compelled to an- swer, as he does, that he means the love of benevo- lence. For, if the affection intended were the love of complacency, this would at once imply a moral object exciting it; and the .essential element of virtue would thus be inevitably differentiated from the love, as ob- ject and emotion. Edwards is too perspicuous to fall into that contradiction ; and so he defines that love of being as being which, he thinks, constitutes the essence of virtue, as the love of benevolence. But this leaves him involved in another contradiction. If this love of being as being is of the essence of virtue, it must, of course, be an object of moral complacency. But is it not virtuous to be morally pleased with the essence of virtue? Surely. Thus the love of complacency is again identified with its object, and the inevitable dis- tinction between object and subjective affection is again confounded. The only escape from this labyrinth of contradictions is to say, with us, that the love of benevolence is (not the essence of all virtue, but) under proper limitations, one of the virtues, distinguishable as species under genus, from all the other virtues, as, for instance, from that other virtuous affection, the love of moral complacency. It may be remarked again, on this " benevolence scheme " of moral obligation, that it tacitly assumes the existence and validity of the moral intuition, and of the distinct category of judgments with which it pro- Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 313 fesses to dispense. Suppose an avowed advocate of the Selfish system to demand of Bentham, or of Edwards : Why is benevolence virtue? Why is it my duty to make the greatest good of the greatest number my moral end ? They could find no valid answer until they had recognized the original distinction between advantage and right, and the obligation for the latter, as distinguished from the former. But I charge that these utilitarian schemes of ethics are all, in fact, modifications of the selfish system. They loudly claim to stand in contrast to the latter, because they profess to propose, not the advantage of the agent's self, but the well-being of mankind, as the ele- ment of all virtue, But as Jouffroy well argues, they really involve the whole vice of the selfish system. For, when the question is raised : Why do men regard the useful (or beneficent) as the right? the answer must be; Because natural good is man's supreme rational end. But must it not follow thence, that desire of natural good is man's highest motive? Thus the moral motive, and the all-important distinction between natural good, or mere advantage, and moral good, are as completely left out of the analysis as by Hobbes himself. The same absurd psychology is also assumed, which makes desire of good the result of experienced good, whereas the desire must exist and act .first, or the good would never be experienced. . But farther, these schemes all propose aggregate humanity as the true End of our moral action. This is involved in the doctrine that promoting the well-being of mankind is the very es- sence of all virtue. But our supreme End is virtually our God. These speculations, then, present the singu- lar coincidence of concluding with the materialist athe- ist, Comte, that aggregate humanity is the Great Being. But worse yet : as the individual agent is a part of that aggregate, he is a part of his own God ! He is, more- over, the nearest attainable part of that End ; he is the 314 Sensualistic Philosophy. only part for whose welfare he is directly responsible: he is the part whose welfare is most within his own keeping, and for which therefore he can labor most ef- fectually. If the natural good of mankind is the proper end of all action, then his own personal good must be the properest end of his own actions. I see not then, how, from the Utilitarian premises, the practical con- clusion can be avoided, that each man is his own prop- erest supreme End his own God ! What more in- tense expression could be given to the most utter self- ishness? It is instructive to see Dr. Samuel Hopkins, an outspoken advocate of the benevolence scheme, after narrating through many pages its disinterested- ness, coming (in his First Vol., Chap. 8) to this conclu- sion, and avowing that self-interest must remain practi- cally each man's immediate guide. Thus we are led back to the vilest results of the selfish system. Such, experience teaches us, is the practical tendency. While the Utilitarian schemes profess great equity and phi- lanthropy, they end in making their votaries supremely selfish and remorselessly unfeeling. The practical mor- alist may here learn, both from reason and experience, that no basis is laid for true virtue until the Right is clearly separated from the Advantageous, and is made the single rule of the soul. No man begins to be truly honest until he forgets to think of the maxim, that " honesty is the best policy." I argue, second, these schemes do not correctly state the facts of our consciousness. The mind does not al- ways feel that the obligation to an act is its utility or beneficence ; nor that the merit of the agent arises out of, or is proportioned to, the advantage his act effects. How often, for instance, do questions arise as to the obligation of speaking truth, where, if the utility were the element of the obligation, none would be felt ! Yet in such cases, the soul might feel most guilty had false- hood been uttered. These schemes do not sufficiently Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 3 1 5 explain the high obligation to honor the dead, whose well-being cannot be affected by us. Especially is it impossible, on these principles, to explain that highest of all obligations, to be grateful to God, to worship Him, and to honor Him with our offerings. For, these duties cannot promote His well-being, inasmuch as He is already supremely happy, and as He is independent and unchangeable. Will it be said that these acts to- ward God are only obligatory because of their reflex tendency to promote human welfare? This subterfuge would exhibit the profanity of the whole theory in the most glaring light ; for they would make mankind the true End, and therefore the real God, and Jehovah a species of omnipotent conveniency, and servitor to His creatures. Again : were beneficence or utility the es- sence of virtue, the rightfulness of acts would only be apprehended so far as experience had given us knowl- edge of the beneficence or mischievousness of their effects. Is this so? Does not conscience lash us for secret sins which leave no loss of health, capacity, or reputation behind them, so far as we know, and lash us all the more promptly and keenly, as we are inexperi- enced of crime and its wretched consequences ? Again : were this theory true, all really useful things should affect us with similar sentiments of moral approbation : a convenient bureau, or a good milch cow, as truly as a faithful friend or a benevolent rescuer. Dees Hume attempt to escape by saying that it is the rational and voluntary useful act which affects us with the sentiment of approbation? Then, we reply, he has given up the case ; for evidently the morality of the act is not in its utility, but in its rational motive. Once more: if util- ity is the virtuous element, then the degree of useful- ness should be the measure also of merit. We should always feel these acts to be most meritorious which were most advantageous. But do we? Which en- nobles Daniel, for instance, most in our eyes the hero- 316 Sensrialistic Philosophy. ism which refused to bow his conscience to an impious prohibition of the king of Persia, when the penalty was the lion's den ; or the diligence which dispensed order and prosperity over one hundred and twenty provinces? The extravagant conclusions of Godwin must also be accepted : that duties must be graded by us according to the public importance of the persons who are their objects; so that it might be the s-on's duty to see his own obscure father drown, in order to save the more valuable life of some stranger. Third: Were the Utilitarian schemes true, it might, in some cases, be utterly impossible to convince a man that it is immoral to u do evil that good may come." Let us suppose that the consequences of an act morally evil, so far as seen by the agent, appeared on the whole beneficial ; if the beneficence of the action constitutes its rightness, it is hard to see how the person can come to any other conclusion than that the results make it right. The evasion from this is to say, that experience teaches us that evil actions are sure, in the end, and on the whole, to result in mischief, notwithstanding pres- ent appearances of utility ; and that this more recon- dite truth will teach us, even on the Utilitarian princi- ple, never to " do evil that good mav come." This so- lution is inadequate : for first, the widest experience of the results of moral action would be necessary, before one would reach this moral rule. And next, the in- trinsic distinction between the virtuous and the bene- ficial is acknowledged by this plea; for the cases in hand are acknowledged not to belong to the class of the virtuous, although, so far as present knowledge goes, they do belong apparently to the class of the beneficial. The two categories must exist, then, in the mind a priori to the experience, or else the discrimina- tion would never be made. On all the utilitarian and benevolence schemes, we must falsify the proper theory of punishment in order Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics- 3 1 7 to be consistent. Of course, righteous punishment must be a righteous, a moral proceeding. But, says the utilitarian, the righteousness of all acts is their beneficial, or useful tendency. Then, the usefulness of penalties against sin must be the sole explanation and justification of the punitive policy. Fora penalty must be, in its very nature, a physical evil in itself. If benev- olence is righteousness, and the natural good is the properest rational end, how can any righteous ruler be justified in doing positive, natural evil to a fellow creat- ure ? This is the problem which the utilitarian has to answer. The only answer possible for him is, that the inflictions of natural evil as a penalty on a transgressor is justified solely by its useful tendency to prevent transgressions. In this matter, sin is treated simply as a mischief, or as contra-beneficial, and not for its in- trinsic ill desert ; and penalty is employed simply as a practical expedient, and the only one in the ruler's power which will restrain free agents. Punishment cannot be regarded as the righteous equivalent of the evil desert of sin, and as designed to satisfy the intrin- sic demands of justice outraged by transgression. Now, my argument is, that this view of the nature of punish- ment flows necessarily from the utilitarian theory ; but this doctrine as to the nature of punishment is false; and therefore the theory of the utilitarian is false. That such is not the nature and intent of punishment is proved by the consciences of both the innocent and the guilty, the former demanding righteous satisfaction for broken law, and the latter confessing the judgment in their fear and remorse. The legislation of all civilized States proves the same ; for none of them accept re- pentance as a full satisfaction for crime (however it may combine with other circumstances in defining the cases suitable for the exercise of mercy towards the con- victed). There is no country whose statute law ac- cepts even a genuine repentance as justification and 318 Sensualistic Philosophy. ground of full acquittal for the convicted murderer. The general rule still is, life for life, and blood for blood. But were prevention of crime the only object of penalty, repentance meets that requirement ; if it is genuine, it guarantees us against a repetition of the crime. Again : on this utilitarian theory of penalty, it might be more righteous to punish an innocent person in some cases, than the guilty, namely, where the trans- gressor would be more deterred and impressed by the former. For, if penalty is only a preventive policy, of course the most effectual preventive is the most righteous. Such a case may very easily occur. For instance, a chief magistrate of a city is seeking to re- strain a termagant, drunken woman of ill fame, by con- finement or even by stripes. She mocks at all his threats. What is the house of correction but a home by contrast luxurious, to her whose ordinary pillow is a curb-stone? Shame? What is shame to her? She has sounded all its depths already. Stripes even are naught to her, whose remorse lacerates her more keen- ly than the scourge. The magistrate is baffled. But now some one remarks, that there is one green and tender spot in this arid heart ; she has a delicate girl, still uncontaminated, who is the only object of love she recognizes. Seize that innocent girl, and disregarding her just protest, tear her tender shoulders with the scourge ; this will reach the obdurate heart of the mother. Now, if penalty is merely an expedient of re- pression, why is not this, the efficacious expedient, the righteous one? But every right heart cries out against it as monstrous ! Especially is this theory of punishment absurd, when applied to God's punitive government. For, first: He is omnipotent, and is always able, if He chooses, to con- vert and sanctify transgressors instead of punishing them, even temporarily. We must remember that, if this benevolence scheme be adopted, it must be applied Refutation of Scnsualistic Ethics. 319 to God's virtue, as well as man's; and then we have benevolence as His only moral attribute, or the whole of his Holiness. The problem, then, is this : God is infinitely and only benevolent: He is also infinitely powerful and omniscient. Hence, He must see that it is a more benevolent preventive of transgression to convert Satan, than to punish him ; and a more effectual one, for the punishment has not restrained him. For such a Ruler as God to punish him, was, therefore, a gratuitous propagation of natural evil, and disregard of the natural advantage of the universe, which advantage should have been God's first motive. The same inevitable proof would condemn every tem- poral penalty which Providence is inflicting, before our eyes, upon men and nations. But when we come to God's everlasting punishments, the case is terribly aggravated. For punishments that are never to end are not designed, of course, to make the sufferer better. Satan is not to be sanctified by his everlasting woe ; he is to remain an increasing sinner forever. When om- nipotent benevolence adopts this plan, explanation is im- possible upon the utilitarian theory. Does any one say, No: the contumacy of transgressors requires even as extreme instances as these of endless punishments, to deter them from sin. The fatal answer is : Even these do not deter men ; the world remains full of sin. But almighty Grace could, if it chose, convert Satan and all other stubborn sinners, and thus really attain the end of prevention. It thus appears, that the utilitarian theory of punishment will not apply to God's govern- ment, which is at once the most righteous and benev- olent of all. The theory is, therefore, false. Dr. Paley's type of the Selfish System may be said to be equally perspicuous and false. That such a speci- men of impotency and sophism in philosophy should come from a mind capable of so much justice and per- spicuity of reasoning as he has exhibited in the experi- 320 Sensualistic Philosophy. mental field of Natural Theology, is one of the most curious facts in the history of literature. I shall first attempt to rebut the objections which he insinuates against the originality of our moral judgments, and then criticise his own theory. He first proposes to test the question whether such distinctions are intuitively known, by supposing a case of what we call odious filial treachery, stated to a mind wholly untutored by human associations, example, and teaching; and by asking whether he, with us, would immediately feel its vileness. We answer, of course : No. But to show how preposterous the test is, we need not, with Dr. A. Alexander, dwell on the com- plexity of the moral problem involved. The simple solution is, that such a mind would not have the moral sentiment, because he would not comprehend the moral relations out of which the violated obligations grew, nor the very words used to state them. In no proper sense could this untutored mind be said to see the case. Now, what a paltry trick is it to argue that a certain mind has not a power of comparison, because it cannot compare objects which it does not see at all ! None of Paley's objections to our moral intuitions are boldly stated ; but he intimates that our moral sen- timents may all be accounted for by association of ideas, and imitation of our fellows. Thus: " Having noticed that certain actions produced, or tended to produce, good consequences, whenever those actions are spoken of, they suggest, by the law of association, the pleasing idea of the good they are wont to produce. What as- sociation begins, imitation strengthens; this habit of connecting a feeling of pleasure with classes of acts, is confirmed by similar habits of thought and feeling around us, and we duh it the sentiment of moral appro- bation.'' (This analysis is precisely in the vein of Hume.) The solution is shown to be worthless by this one word. The law of association does not transmute, but only Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 321 reproduces, the mental states connected by it. How then can the feeling of pleasure, which begins from the perceived tendency of a class of acts to produce natu- ral good, be changed, by mere association, into the sentiment of approbation which attends the knowledge of moral good ? These are widely distinct at first : as has been already shown. Again: On this scheme, how came men ever to have pain of conscience for sins which are naturally pleasurable, and are attended with no perceptible natural mischief at the time ? And how could the fact ever be explained, that we often have the sentiment of remorse for doing things which are in com- pliance with general associations and imitations? Dr. Paley draws another class of objections from the facts that men have no innate ideas of the abstract ele- ment of virtuous acts ; and that moralists, while assert- ing the instinctive origin of the moral sentiments, have never been able to point to any one simple, abstract type, such as veracity, etc., into which the idea of the virtuous may be ultimately resolved. To the first ob- jection no further answer is needed for those who un- derstand the criticism of Locke's system. We do not hold that man has any " innate ideas " of any first truths whatsoever. But we hold, nevertheless, that man has innate pozuers for seeing sundry first truths, and seeing them intuitively, upon occasion of the rise of the suit- able instances. The doctrine which Paley denies is, that the power of seeing the moral distinction is, in that sense, intuitive. Of course, the absence of innate ideas of the moral distinction, in advance of suitable instances, no more proves the moral intuition lacking than the (admitted) absence of innate ideas of mathe- matical axioms proves us lacking in rational intuitions. Paley's second objection will be found, upon inspection,, a bald begging of the question. The question is, whether the notion of Tightness in acts is an original or intuiti . e cognition of the human reason. Now, if it is, 322 Sensualistic Philosophy. it follows, of course, that it cannot be referred to any simpler or more ultimate type. The fact, that no phi- losopher has succeeded in analyzing the moral judg- ment into any simpler one, as veracity, harmony, love of being as being, sympathy, proves the very thing which Paley disputes; that this moral judgment is it- self of ultimate simplicity, and, therefore, intuitive. Can the abstract idea of Truth be analyzed or reduced to something simpler? Can it be defined in any sim- pler terms? Why not? Because the general notion of Truth is already simple and primary. Who dreams of arguing that the human reason has no original capac- ity of perceiving truths in propositions, because there is no simpler and more ultimate type to which the ab- stract notion of Truth, as common to all propositions, may be reduced? This is the very fact which con- vinces us that the power of seeing truth in propositions is one of the intuitive functions of, the reason. So, the very assertion which Paley makes of our moral judg- ments is the best proof that they also are original and intuitive acts of the soul. The absurdity of this point, in his hand, is also further illustrated by the fact, that he himself virtually attempts to make the very reduc- tion which he pronounces impossible. As we shall see, he attempts to resolve the moral notion in all virtuous acts into future utility ! Paley also insinuates the common objections against the originality of our moral judgments, from the wide variety, and even contrariety of moral opinions in dif- ferent ages and nations. In one country, filial virtue is supposed to consist in nursing an aged parent ; in an- other, in murdering and eating him. On one side of the Rhine or the Danube we have seen the burning of a Protestant heretic regarded as the first of merits ; and on the other, the first of crimes. It is insolently charged, that it is absurd and preposterous to regard .those sentiments as original and intuitive in mankind Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 323 which thus change with a boundary line, or a parallel of latitude. The answers to this confident cavil are, that no one ever pretended any human faculty was per- fect in its actings, however original. While it is ab- surd to refer to habit, example, and imitation, or asso- ciation, as generating any faculty, they doubtless have great influence in modifying, and especially in pervert- ing, its actings. Next as is justly remarked by Dr. Alexander : many of the supposed cases of contrariety of moral judgments are fully explained by the fact, that the dictate of conscience, right in general, is perverted by some error or ignorance of the understanding. The bigoted Papist felt conscientiously impelled to burn the Lutheran? True. And this erroneous judgment was an ignorant and perverted application of a great moral truth : that men are responsible to God for their er- roneous opinions. For if the Pope be " God upon earth," and Lutheranism be mischievous error, then the Lutheran will be justly responsible to the Pope. The Christian mother's highest duty is to cherish the life of her female infant; the Hindoo mother is impelled to drown hers in the holy Ganges. Yet both act on the correct dictate of conscience, that a mother should seek the highest good of her daughter at the expense of her own inclinations. The Hindoo has been taught by her false creed to believe that she does this to her daughter, by transferring it in infancy to heaven. Once more : it is a most erroneous conclusion to infer, that because men perform, in some countries, what we deem odious acts, with seeming indifference and publicity, therefore their moral judgments about them do not agree with ours. An educated Bengalee lies for a shil- ling, and when detected, professes to laugh at it as smart. A Hottentot woman will seem shameless in unchastity. Yet Lord Macaulay assures us, that the truthfulness of the Christianized Briton produces the same moral reverence in the Hindoo as in Europeans. 324 Sensualistic Philosophy. Livingstone tells us that the poor Hottentot has the same perception as civilized women, of the inconsist- ency of lewdness in the white Christian. The whole amount of the case is, that conscience may be greatly stupefied by evil influences; but her general dictates, when heard, involve the same moral principles. No heathen, no Papist differs from the Christian in the speculative judgments, that the right ought to be done and the wrong eschewed, and that he who neglects to do these is ill-deserving and worthy of punishment. When the intuition comes to be applied to particular questions of right and wrong acts, then erroneous creeds and opinions vary the practical conclusions of different men. But Paley, having succeeded to his own satisfaction in undermining our belief in the existence of original moral intuitions, gives us his own definition of virtue. It is " doing good to mankind, according to the will of God, for the sake of everlasting happiness." Moral obligation he defines as the forcible motive arising out of the command of a superior. The good-doing which is the matter of virtuous acts is, of course, conferring natural good. The rule is, God's revealed will ; the motive is, the selfish one of winning everlasting happi- ness. That this scheme should ever have seemed plau- sible to Christian divines, can only be accounted for by the fact that we intuitively feel, when a God is once apprehended, that His will is a perfect rule of right, and that it is moral to do precisely what He commands. This is the element of truth in Paley's definition. But when we raise the question, Why is all God's will obli- gatory? the only answer is : Because all His will, like His character, is holy. To do His will, then, is not ob- ligatory merely because God has commanded it; but He has commanded it because it is obligatory. The distinction of right and wrong is intrinsic. My asser- tion of the affirmative in this vexed question receives a Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 325 very conclusive demonstration, as follows : If every- thing that God commanded is morally .right because He commands it, then His act in commanding must be morally right. But the moral quality of God's act, like that of any other moral agent, proceeds out of the subjective motive which prompts the act. The act is right, not by reason of its mere form, but of the ra- tional principle regulating it. Then the moral right- ness of God's act in commanding must be traced up to the Tightness of the prior principle or attribute prompt- ing and regulating the utterance of such command. We are thus led, in spite of objection, to the truth that the morality of the act commanded is ct priori to the obligation on us : that the act is not right merely be- cause it is commanded by God, but was commanded by Him because it is right. Paley's theory is but a modification of the selfish sys- tem, and is, therefore, obnoxious to the same objections, He himself raises the unavoidable question, wherein virtue, on his definition, differs from a prudent self-love in temporal things. His answer is, that the latter has regard only to this life ; the former considers also fu- ture immortal well-being. Dr. Thomas Brown well observes of this, that it is but a more odious refinement upon the ordinary selfish system, defiling man's very piety, by making it a selfish trafificing for personal ad- vantage with God, and fostering a more gigantic moral egotism ; by so much as immortality is longer than mor- tal life. This scheme of Paley is equally false to our consciousness, which tells us that when we act, in all relative duties, with least reference to self, then we are most praiseworthy. We may add, more especially, that on Paley's scheme of obligation, it will be hard to deny that there may be as real obligation, in some cases, to do wrong, as to do right. A company of violent men overpower me, and command me, on pain of instant death, to burn down 326 Sensualistic Philosophy. ^ my neighbor's dwelling. Here is "a forcible motive arising from the command of another." Why does it not constitute a moral obligation to the crime ? Paley's only reply would be, that God commands me not to burn it, on pain of eternal death ; and this obligation supersedes the other, because, God is so superior to man, and the motive is so much more forcible. It seems, then, that it is God's might only which makes His right ! Or else a superiority in holiness must be granted, and this concedes the existence of an intrinsic moral distinction, other than forcible constraint. On Paley's scheme, there could be no morality nor moral obligation, where there was no revelation from God ; because neither the rule of virtue (His revealed will), nor obligation (His forcible command), nor motive (hope of His favor through our immortality, from a given conduct), would have any existence. That is to say, there would be no virtue for Pagans. Here, again, Paley's only possible evasion is to say, that while the rule and command do not exist in the form of a revealed theology, the Pagans have them in the teachings of natural religion. He would remind us how the Apos- tle says : " The heathen which have not the law are a law unto themselves." But I reply : If there are no authoritative intuitions given by God to man's soul, then natural theology has no basis. And especially, if the soul of man contains no trace of the image of God in the intuitive distinctions of conscience, then we hare no sufficient argument from natural reason to show that God is a moral being, and that He wills us to perform moral acts. A review of the reasonings of natural theology will evince this. The evasion, then, fails, and the fatal objection stands, that, upon Paley's scheme, there would be no virtue whatever for any heathen, however intelligent. The final and crowning refutation appears, when we attempt to apply this theory to God. His virtue, Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 327 surely, is the most complete and exact of all. It is equally sure that His virtue ought to be the lofty model of ours. But in what can the virtue of God con- sist, according to Paley's definition ? There is no rule ; for there is no Creator and sovereign over God, to point out to Him what it behooves Him to do. There is no moral obligation ; for there is no other whose command can apply a forcible motive to absolute Om- nipotence. There is no motive; for His everlasting happiness is eternally, immutably, and necessarily per- fect. The only possible escape from these monstrous conclusions is to say, that the rule, obligation, and mo- tive exist, for God, in the moral perfections of His own eternal and unchangeable nature. This is true ; a glorious truth ; the foundation-stone of all the virtue and happiness in the Universe. But to say this, is to repudiate the central principles of the Sensualistic ethics, and to teach the eternity of the intrinsic moVal distinction, in its most decisive form. Could any ex- posure be more complete than this, which shows us Paley stripping God, the infinitely perfect fountain and exemplar of all virtue, of the very possibility of virtue? Dr. Adam Smith, the celebrated author of the " Wealth of Nations," attempted, in his Theory of the Moral Sentiments, to explain them as modifications of the emotion of sympathy. He proceeds/after illustrat- ing, in an ingenious and instructive way, the nature of this powerful emotion, after substantially this fashion ^ When we contemplate the action of a fellow-man, we unavoidably conceive to ourselves the nature of the affections which, as we suppose, moved him to the act. If we feel ourselves in a state of instinctive sympathy with his affections as expressed in the act, we experi- ence a pleasure in this sympathetic harmony; and it is this pleasurable feeling which has received the name of moral approbation. Disapprobation, and the hotter 328 Sensualistic Philosophy. sentiment of indignation at wrong, are accounted for in a similar way, as results of a lack of sympathy with the agent's affections. Our sentiments of good con- science and remorse towards our own actions, he sup- poses to be produced thus. When we act, we imagine an ideal man looking on as spectator of our action and as we conceive him in a state of sympathetic har- mony with our motive, or out of it, we are, by the same power of sympathy, affected with self-approbation or remorse. The fundamental defect of this analysis is, that Smith is compelled tacitly to take for granted the existence of the moral sentiment, in order to account for it. Sym- pathy only reproduces a fainter shade of the same emo- tion which we are beholding. It is the secondary rain- bow in the soul, reflecting the same tints which appear in the primary. Hence, unless the producing senti- ment in the agent were moral, it could not produce by sympathy a moral sentiment. This may be tested by a very simple instance. Two malignant minds may be in full harmony in their thirst for revenge ; so that when the one uses his opportunity to wreak his malice upon his enemy, the other may be vividly affected by sympathetic imagination of the expected time when he shall do the same to his enemy. But this is not moral approbation : the conscience of each may be uttering its protest against the crime at the moment, and a sim- ilar remorse may pursue both the agents afterward. Again: the sentiments of conscience are supposed to arise by means of an ideal spectator. But by what law does our mind determine the nature of the sentiment in this ideal man inspecting our action ? His sentiment is but the projection of our own moral sentiment. Dr. Smith has taken the effect for the cause. Thus, in each step, he has to assume the affection as already produced, for the production of which he would account. Last: the sympathetic affection is always fainter than the one Refutation of Scnsualistic Ethics. 329 which awakens it. But our moral sentiments toward our own actions and deserts are far the most vivid. Re- morse is more pungent than disapprobation for another : self-approbation is sweeter than our pleasure in others' virtues. But according to Dr. Smith's analysis, the sentiments of conscience, being reflected once and again before they take this form, should be found far the faintest of all our moral sentiments. The ethical lectures of Dr. Thomas Brown, of Edin- burgh, are marked by great acuteness, and nobility of general tone ; and he has rendered gallant service in refuting the more degrading theory. He makes moral distinctions original and authoritative, and yet allows the reason only a secondary function in them. The whole result of his analysis is this : When certain ac- tions are presented, there arises immediately an in- stinctive and peculiar emotion called, for want of a more vivid term, moral approbation. It comes with- out any previous condition of self-calculation, judg- ment of relation, or rational perception. This imme- diate emotion constitutes our whole feeling of the rightness, obligation, and merit of the agent. As mem- ory recollects from experience the successive acts which affect us with the moral emotion, reason general- izes them into a class, and thus derivatively forms the general idea of virtue. Man's moral faculty is, then, according to Dr. Brown, not rational, but emotional ; not a proper faculty, but a sensibility. His system de- serves, even more than Dr. Adam Smith's, which he refutes, to be called " a sentimental system'." But it does not seem to me a valid objection to it to say, with Jouffroy, that Dr. Brown makes the moral emotion only a coordinate one among the ranks of our instinctive affections; and so there is no longer any more reason why the moral sentiment should claim to be dominant over them, than they over it. For Dr. 330 Sensualistic Philosophy. Brown might reply, that the very nature of this moral sentiment is, that it claims all the other sensibilities which can have any moral results as subject to its imperative, and thus within its domain. A more valid argument might be drawn from this peculiar, imperative feature of our moral sentiments. This feature certainly makes it the regulative faculty of the human soul. If our moral sentiments are rooted in an instinctive sensibil- ity, and not in a judgment of the reason, then man is not practically a rational being. Reason does not rule him when he acts rightly even. But, second, Dr. Brown's scheme does not square with the analogies of the soul. In every case, our ra- tional emotions arise out of our intellections. This is true, in a lower sense, even of our animal instincts : it is perception which awakens appetites. It is the con- ception of the intent to injure which gives the signal to our resentment. And in all the more intellectual emo- tions, as of taste, love, moral complacency, the view of the understanding, and that alone, evokes the emotion in a normal way. The soul feels because it has seen, and as it has seen. How else could reason rule our emotions? Surely this is one of our prime distinctions from brutes, that our emotions are not mere instincts, but rational emotions. We may note especially, too, that if our moral sentiments did not have an element of rational judgment at their root, it would be inex- plicable that they do not, like all our other instinctive affections, sometimes come into collision with our own reason. Again : Dr. Brown has very properly shown, in opposing the selfish system, that our instincts, be- cause instinctive, cannot originate in calculated self- interest. He seems to think that in making the moral emotion an instinctive sensibility, he has done all that is needed to make it morally disinterested. But be- cause an act is not selfishly calculated, it is not there- fore disinterested. Then would our animal appetites, Refutation of Sens^lalistic Ethics. 331 even in infancy, be moral virtues ! The truth is, as Jouffroy has taught us to distinguish : in instinctive volitions, the motive is personal to the agent, but not consciously so. In selfish volitions, the motive is per- sonal to the agent, and consciously so. Only when the motive is impersonal to the agent, and he knows it, and yet acts, is there disinterested virtue. Lastly : If Dr. Brown's theory were correct, moral good would only be relative to each man's sensibility, and there would be no uniform standard. An act might be good to one and bad to another, as it present- ed itself to his sensibility ; just as one .man calls a viand good, and another, bad. But the truth is, that moral distinctions are as intrinsic in certain acts, as truth is in certain propositions; both are eternal and immuta- ble. Even God sees and calls the right right because it is so. Dr. Brown foresees this, and in endeavoring to rebut it, is guilty of a mischievous absurdity. Why, he asks, does it give any more intrinsic basis for moral distinctions in acts themselves, to suppose that our cog- nizance of them is by a rational judgment, than to say, with him, that it is in the way they immediately affect a certain natural sensibility in us? What is intuition, he asks, but a sort of rational sensibility to be affected in a given way by propositions? And in either case we have no ground for any belief in the permanence of the quality felt or perceived, than that our Maker has made us to be affected so ! Thus he betrays the whole basis of morals and truth to a sweeping scepticism. We are compelled by our reason to believe, on the contrary, that certain propositions affect us with such and such judgments, because truth or error is intrinsic in them. Dr. Brown goes to the fatal extreme of say- ing that the permanent relations ascertained by the reason itself are not intrinsic in objects, and exist no- where except in the perceiving reason. Says he : Were there nowhere a perceiving mind cognizing the rela- 332 Sensualistic Philosophy. tion of the square of the hypothenuse to the squares of the two shorter sides, the relation would be abso- lutely non-existent, though the universe might be full of right-angled triangles. Is not this sheer scepticism ? Is it not teaching that none of the convictions of the reason have objective validity? There need be no stronger- refutation of his theory, than that he should acknowledge himself driven by it to such an admission. The moral functions of the soul have, indeed, an emo- tive element ; but this is the attendant and consequence of a rational element. Our moral judgments, then, as we have indicated fre- quently in the previous discussion, are evidently no other than functions of the reason. This is evinced by the remarks just made in refutation of Dr. Brown's sentimental system. In this judgment of the reason is rooted that peculiar emotion, which gives temperature to all our moral sentiments. Now it might perhaps be said plausibly, that the reason is concerned only with the judgment of truths in propositions ; and we are not willing to accept that analysis of virtue by Dr. Clarke into fitness, and of Wollaston, which reduces the moral distinction to that of mere truth. But truth in propo- sitions is a certain kind of relation between subject and predicate ; there are other kinds, and the proper func- tion of the reason is the judgment of all relations. Rea- son is the comparing faculty.. I confirm the doctrine that our moral judgments, so far as they are merely in- tellective of the distinction between right and wrong, are simply acts of the reason, by these other remarks. First : So far as we know, those beings who have rea- son, and those only, form moral judgments. The cause that brutes have no moral ideas, is, that they cannot reason on abstract truth. Second : If the moral faculty and the reason were two faculties, we might naturally expect that the one would sometimes convict the other of inaccuracy, as the memory does the reason, and as Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 333 observation does the memory. Third: The identity of the two functions seems strongly indicated by the fact that, if the reason is misled by any error of views, the moral judgm-ents are infallibly perverted to just the same extent. The moral motive is always a rational one. The imperative of conscience, the judgment of appro- bation or disapprobation, merit or demerit, are always grounded in the truth of some proposition predicating relation of agent and object. By that truth essentially these judgments are mediated. I see no necessity, therefore, to assign our moral acts to a special and dis- tinct faculty of internal perception, or " moral sense." They are functions of that crowning faculty which al- lies man to his Mak^r, the Reason. We have now passed in review all the several the- ories which attempt to resolve the moral sentiments of man into some lower faculty, and have found them un- tenable. Hence alone we draw a sufficient demonstra- tion, that, they are original and intuitive. All the chem- ists, for instance, attempt to analyze a new solid into some known simple substance, and absolutely fail. We, therefore, set it down as itself belonging to the list of simple and original substances. But this is not the whole of our proof. For every original and simple idea or notion with which our souls are furnished, we find a distinct, original power; and without this, the cognition could never have been possessed by man. Had man no eye, he would never have had the ideas of light and colors; no ear, he could never have had the idea of melody or harmony ; no taste, he would forever have lacked the idea of beauty. So, if the no- tion of rightness in actions is not identical with that of selfish advantage, nor common utility, nor benevolence, nor love of applause, nor taste, nor sympathetic har- mony, nor any other original sentiment, it must be gained directly by some other original power of the soul. To this, in the second place, consciousness testi- 334 Sensualistic Philosophy. fies: the man who fully and calmly investigates his own mental states and acts will be convinced that his view and feeling of the Tightness ol some acts arise imme- diately in his mind, without any other medium than in- tellection of the relations of agent to object; that when the attention is awake, their rise is unavoidable; and that their failure to arise would be necessarily appre- hended as a vice in the soul's actings. There is, indeed, great diversity in the estimation of the more complex details of moral questions. And men's understanding of these distinctions is often disturbed by three causes, well stated by Dr. Brown : complexity of elements, habits of association of ideas, and prevalent passion. But allowing for these, there is just that immediate and universal agreement in all sane human minds which we expect to find in the acceptance of necessary first truths. In the simple and fundamental ideas of morals, all men are agreed. Savages of all continents, for in- stance, think as we Christians do, on the simple ques- tions, whether gratitude be criminal, whether virtuous acts deserve penalty, whether beneficence is meritori- ous. In the case of any other intuitions, we have to make precisely the same allowances, and to expect the same disturbing causes, as in the moral. These important truths may be happily illustrated from our logical judgments. In some propositions [not in all: some are truisms, many are meaningless, and many are so unknown as to be neither affirmed nor de- nied] there is the element of truth or falsehood, simple, original, incapable of analysis into, or definition by, simpler terms, and immediately cognized by the mind's intellection : So, there is in some actions (of the class known as " moral ") an intrinsic quality of rightness or wrongness, equally simple, original, and incapable of analysis, seen immediately, like primitive truth, by the inspection of the reason. This quality in these acts is intrinsic. We see it not merely because our souls hap- Refutation of Sensualistic Ethics. 335 pen to be so fashioned as to see it ; but a truthful and perfect Creator has so fashioned our powers as to see it, because it is intrinsically there, in the right acts. But it is not asserted that all moral distinctions in par- ticular acts are immediately or necessarily seen. As in propositions, some have primary, and some deductive truth, some seen to be true without premises, and some by the help of premises ; so in acts having moral qual- ity, the Tightness or wrongness of some is seen imme- diately, and of some deductively. In the latter, the moral relation of the agent is not immediately compre- hended, but the moral judgment needs to be mediated only by the knowledge of some other truths. If these truths are not known, then the moral quality of the ac- tion is not obvious. This simple view shows us why, if the mind's opinions touching those truths which are the premises of moral judgments are erroneous, the moral judgment also errs. Just as in logic, so here : false premises used according to the correct forms of deduction, must lead to false conclusions. And here is the explanation of the discrepancies in moral judg- ments which have so confused practical ethics, and have given the pretext to the Sensualistic philosopher. The promise of my fourth chapter has now been ful- filled. Let this part of the discussion be closed with two inferences. The corner-stone of the Sensualistic philosophy is upturned by the establishment of the doctrine, that man's soul does possess primitive rational judgments of right and wrong. For here is one in- stance, one whole class of mental functions, existing in the teeth of the fundamental assertion of the Sensual- ist, that sense furnishes all our mental stores; and the instance is of transcendent importance. The Sensual- ist, losing his battle at this point, has lost it totally ; for the moral functions of the soul are regulative of all the others. Second : The decision of this question is vir- tually decisive against all the worse consequences of 336 Sensiialistic Philosophy. the Sensualistic scheme evolutionism, . materialism, and atheism. Let any man apprehend the solemn and unique fact of his own rational, responsible spontaneity, as it has been established in this chapter; let him look it in the face until he perceives its true significance, and he will relinquish these errors as self-evident ab- surdities. No matter, no organism of molecules, no mere organ of animal sensibility, can be the seat of this glorious and awful faculty. It stands above and apart from all these lower forms of being. That substance which is qualified by this power must be as unique as its peculiar endowment. And to assert its evolution by the operation of unintelligent law, out of lower forms of animal or inanimate matter, is as wild as to assert the rise of a universe out of nothing without a First Cause. Soul and God are revealed together in this otherwise inexplicable fact of responsible, intelli- gent free-agency. CHAPTER XIII. PHILOSOPHY AND THE SUPERNATURAL. TF man has a soul, a God, and a hereafter, and is a -*- fallen being, then, indisputably, every good man must deem the bearings of any code of speculative opinions upon the doctrine of Christian Redemption as unspeakably its most important aspect. For it is im- possible for any professed human itarianism to advance any praiseworthy purpose or motive whatsoever, as- suming to tend to the well-being or elevation of our race, but that I will show, if man is to have any future, that motive is bound to urge the well-wisher to seek his fellow-creatures' future good, as much more earnestly, as immortality is longer than mortal life. But has the Sensualistic philosophy any proposal to offer for re- deeming men from a disordered and mortal estate, as plausible or promising as Christianity ? Unless it has, a mere decent regard for humanity should prevent all disrespect to this doctrine, from which, it is manifest, the larger part of all the virtue, hope, and happiness in a miserable world now spring. I freely declare, there- fore, not as a clergyman, but as a human being not sim- ply malignant toward my suffering race, that my main impeachment of the Sensualistic philosophy, and es- pecially of the Positivist and Evolution doctrines, in which it now chiefly appears, is grounded upon their anti-Christian tendencies. I have pointed to that gulf of the blackness of darkness, and of freezing despair, toward which they thrust the human soul ; a gulf with- 22 (07,) 338 Sensualistic Philosophy. out an immortality, without a God, without a faith, without a Providence, without a hope. Were it not both impossible and immoral for a good man to con- sider such a thing dispassionately, it would appear to him odd and ludicrous to witness the pretended sur- prise and anger of the assailants at perceiving, that rea- sonable Christian people are not disposed to submit with indifference to all this havoc. There is a great affectation of philosophic calmness and impartiality. They are quite scandalized to find that Christians can- not be as cool as themselves, while all our infinite and priceless hopes for both worlds are dissected away under their philosophic scalpel. Such bigotry is very naughty in their eyes! This conduct sets Christianity in a very sorry light beside the fearless and placid love of truth displayed by the apostles of science ! Such is the absurd and insolent tone affected by them. J. S. Mill coolly argues, that, of course, \\\e clergy are wholly unfitted for any pursuit of philosophy, because they are bound beforehand by their subscription to creeds, which have taken away their liberty of thought in ad- vance ; and it is quietly intimated that mercenary re- gard for salaries and dignities dependent on that sub- scription, will prevent their accepting or professing the Sensualistic gospel. To this arrogance and injustice I, for one, give place by subjection, not for a moment. It is a composition of hypocrisy and folly. For we ob- serve that whenever these philosophic hearts are not encased in a triple shield of supercilious arrogance, they also burn with a scientific bigotry, worthy of a Dominic or a Philip II. of Spain. They also can vitu- perate and scold, and actually excel the bad manners of the theologians ! The scientific bigots are fiercer than the theological, besides being the aggressors ! If we were about to enter upon an Arctic winter in Lab- rador, with a dependent and cherished family to pro- tect from that savage clime, and if " a philosopher " Philosophy and the Supernatural. 339 should insist, in the " pure love of science/' upon extin- guishing by his experiments all the lamps which were to give us light, warmth, and food, and to save us from a frightful death ; and if he should call us test} r block- heads because we did not witness these experiments with equanimity, I surmise that nothing but compas- sion for his manifest lunacy would prevent sensible peo- ple from breaking his head before his enormous folly was completed. When a wilful, absurd person chooses to dignify his novel (or stale) vagaries, which contra- dict not only my most serious and honest judgment, but that of the best and wisest of human kind, with the reverend names of " Truth " and " Science," I sub- mit that I have at least as much right to reject them as no truth and no science, as he has to advance them. Let us suppose a case perfectly parallel. I had an hon- ored father, whose virtue, nobleness, and benevolence were the blessing of my life. That exalted character and all that beneficence were grounded in certain pro- fessed principles. Now, I know that father; I know, by their fruits, that his principles were noble. But here come a parcel of men who did not choose to be- come acquainted with him, and so really do not know his memory, and they indulge their vanity, or some other caprice, in disparaging his person and principles. But they expect me, his son and beneficiary, to "take it all coolly ! " It is quite naughty to have any heat to- ward gentlemen who are proceeding so purely " in the interests of the Truth ! " Now, every right heart knows that it is not only my. right, but my sacred duty o de- fend the sacred character of my father and benefactor with zeal and righteous emotion. If I were capable of really feeling the nonchalance which his gratuitous assailants profess, I should be a scoundrel. There is no righteous room for neutrality or indifference of soul when righteousness is assaulted. It is impossible for man to love truth and right as it is our duty to love it 34O Sensualistic Philosophy. without having sensibility when they arc injured ! Such is precisely the relation of the honest-minded Christian when his God and Saviour is disparaged ! If men choose to exercise their right of free discussion by waging this warfare on our God and His cause, they need not expect anything except the resistance of hon- est indignation ; it is a piece of hypocrisy as shabby as shallow to pretend to a right to outrage other people's clearest convictions without the provocation of their disapproval. We shall, of course, give them the full privilege of doing this wrong untouched of civil pains and penalties : this is the liberty of thought which Prot- estantism asserts, to its immortal honor. God forbid that any sinful abuse of the truth should ever provoke any Christian to infringe that liberty by persecution. And it is plainly our duty, under the bitterest provoca- tion of these gratuitous assaults upon the most precious principles, to see to it that we " be angry and sin not ;" that our indignation may not go farther than the evil desert, and our condemnation may contain none of the gall of personal spite. But there is an affectation abroad, among the assail- ants of Christianity, which demands far more. It claims the privilege of speculating as unchristianly as they please, not only without being molested, which we freely concede, but without being disapproved. They say that the very emotion of disapprobation is a perse- cution ; that this zeal is precisely the motive which, in more bloody days, prompted churchmen to visit civil pains and penalties upon dissentients ; that this motive will do the same thing again, upon opportunity, if it be allowed to exist ; and that, therefore, we are not true friends of liberty of thought until the very emotion is banished, and all speculation, no matter what holy and righteous thing it may assail, is considered without feeling and weighed with the absolute impartiality and initial indifference which they affect. Philosophy and tJie Supernatural. 341 Upon this claim my first remark is, that it is violently inconsistent. With these men, this license of thought is a holy thing (possibly their only one.) And when they imagine it assailed, or in the least restrained, do they entertain the question of the restriction with that dispassionate calmness ? Not at all ; they are full of an ardent zeal; and they believe that they "do well to be angry." They can argue the cause of charity most un- charitably, and can be most intolerant in their advocacy of toleration. Why ? Because the encroachment is unrighteous. Aha ! Then we have the sanction of the nonchalant gentlemen for the truth, that righteousness ought to be not only professed, but loved ; that moral truth and right are the proper object, not only of judg- ment, but of moral emotion. They have found out that it is good to be "zealously affected " in a good cause ! This is precisely my doctrine, provided only one is en- titled to be sure that the cause is good. My second answer is : That this species of indifferentism is unnatu- ral and impossible. Man's soul is formed by its Maker not only to see moral truth, but to love it upon seeing it. It is an unnatural soul, a psychological monstrosity, which does not. But love for that which is reasonably valued must have its counterpart emotion toward the opposite. One might as well demand to have a material mass with a top, but no under-side; or a magnet with a North pole to it, but no South, as a reasonable soul which loved the right (as it ought) and yet did not hate the wrong. Last : I argue, that such a state of soul would be criminal, if it were possible. Such moral neutrality would be intrinsic vice. In order to be capa- ble of it, man must be recreant to the positive claims of virtue. If I find a man who is really able to hear the question debated, whether Jesus Christ was an im- postor, with the same calmness, the same utter absence of emotion with which he would properly debate the species in botany to which a certain weed should be re- 342 Sensuctlistic Philosophy. fcrred, I shall be very loath to trust my neck or my purse with that man in the dark. The demand for this actual indifferentism as essential to true liberty of thought and philosophic temper, is absurd ; it is impos- sible it should exist. The speculative world needs to be reminded again of that doctrine of liberty of thought which Bible Protestantism enounced -when she be- stowed that boon on mankind (for it was nobody's gift but hers.) That men are responsible for their opinions, but responsible not to society, but to God : that chanty for evil and error is a universal duty ; but the object toward which we are to exercise it is the person and not the error of "the misleading fellow-creature. Charity had its incarnation in Him, who shed His tears and His blood for the persons of the Scribes, while He de- nounced their principles with inexorable severity. Obviously, then, we do not think with J. S. Mill, that clergymen are necessarily excluded from the pursuit of philosophy because they are committed in advance against that temper of indifferentism by subscription to their creeds. For, first, it is too late in the day to as- sume that the total absence of fixed convictions, even on the most fundamental and admitted truths, is a nec- essary qualification for the pursuit of truth. This would imply, after so many generations of pursuit, that truth is in fact a phantom, never to be attained at all : and what convict'c n could be so adverse to the honest pursuit of her as that? I have not so poor an opinion of philosophy as to believe that the sole architecture of it must ever consist in the upturning and relaying of the foundations. "Je vous avoue, autant le doute en beaucoup de points me parait sage et force", autant le scepticisme general sur la raison et les r6alites qu* elle nous decouvre, me semble, plus j'y reflechis, arbitraire, artificiel, et dangereux." (Cousin to Sir W. Hamilton.) Second : It is presumable that the clergyman, when he subscribes the creed of his choice, is already an edu- Philosophy and the Supernatural. 343 cated man, no longer a boy. He has investigated, has ascertained the principles which he adopts, and is en- titled to hold them as settled, at least so far as not to surrender them to a new struggle for existence, at the mere bidding of every impugner. Third : The quiet assumption that the clergyman alone, among his fellow- citizens, is devoid of that manliness and honesty which would sacrifice prejudices and emoluments in order to be faithful to truth newly discovered, is offensive. When we consider its significance, and when we re- member the multitude of clergymen who have, in all ages, done this very thing, with a magnanimous and uncalculating courage; when we recall the fact that Christianity alone has furnished actual martyrs to their convictions, we perceive that this insulting intimation betrays a scientific bigotry more vulgar and odious than anything exhibited by ecclesiastical intolerance. Every latitudinarian free-thinker reads us his trite lesson upon the Church persecuting free science, from the text of Galileo and the Romish Inquisition. Well, while thor- oughly reprobating the act and the body which author- ized it, we can very well afford to accept this as a typi- cal instance. Science has some unjust treatment to complain of; but Science did 'not present us with a martyr! Her apostle was not inspired by her with that pitch of manhood and fealty to truth ! He sub- scribed falsehood in order to save his own life ; and while this morsel of history leaves upon Rome the- stigma of invading the inalienable rights of the human- mind, it also leaves upon Galileo the dishonor of be- traying them. It requires the ennobling power of this Christianity, which Mill so contemns, to make men speak out the truth that is in them, in the face of death, instead of whispering the truth, and speaking out the lie, at the bidding of cowardice. With this representa- tive example set over against the noble army of Chris- tian martyrs, with what justice can it be said that 344 Sensualistic Philosophy. Christianity obstructs the search and profession of the truth ? In fact, it is her liberalizing and elevating spirit which has animated the most original and fruitful re- searches of modern science. The most patent signature of error upon the recent godless philosophy is this: that it is arrayed against the rudimental instincts of man as manifested in all ages. That the mind has innate principles of thought, regulative of its own intelligence; that all necessary truth is not inaccessible to it ; that a universe does imply a Creator, and that Nature implies the supernatural; that man has consciously a personal will, and that there is a personal will over man's governing him from above : these are truths which all ages have accepted. Now, it is always a safe test of pretended conclusions to ask if they contravene the necessary dictates of the common sense of mankind. If they do, we set them down as false philosophy, whether we can analyze the sophisms and expose them, as we have done with this system, or not. When the Idealist deduces the conclu- sion that the man who breaks his head against a post has no valid evidence of the reality of the post, or when Spinoza proved that good and evil are in themselves the same, the universal common sense of mankind gave them the lie : we might have safely assumed that a more correct statement of the elements they discussed would do the same. And so it turned out. So, when the Sensualistic philosophy proposes to omit the super- natural, it is, fortunately, attempting an impossibility. Man is a religious being. Men would have learned this, at least, as certainly as they would have learned the law of gravitation, had they applied that experiential method in which they boast, by a fair induction from the facts of human nature and history. That there is in man's soul an ineradicable principle which demands the super- natural, is as much a fact of natural history as that man is a bimanous animal. His spiritual instincts cannot Philosophy and the Supernatural. 345 but assert themselves in races and in individuals; and even in professed materialists, whenever the hour of their extremity makes them thoroughly in earnest. All that such philosophy can effect i ; to give sensual minds a pretext for blinding their own understandings and consciences, and perhaps sealing- their own perdition, while it affords topic of conceit to serious idlers in their hours of vanity. Rob man of the supernatural, and he must have it again ; he must have a religion. If you take from him God's miracles, he will turn to man's miracles. " It is not necessary to go far in time, or wide in space, to see the supernatural of superstition raising itself in the place of the supernatural of religion, and credulity hurrying to meet falsehood half way." The later labors of Comte himself present an example of this, which is a satire upon his creed sufficiently bit- ing to avenge all the insults Christianity has suffered from it. After beginning with the doctrine that true philosophy necessarily makes religion impossible, he ended with constructing a rel'gion with a priesthood, calendar,- and formal ritual, with aggregate humanity as its Great Being. " He changed the glory of the in- corruptible God into an image made like unto corrupti- ble man." Here also it should be said, that it is a falsification of the history of knowledge to 'each that when true, scien- tific progress is made, it causes men to relinquish the supernatural for metaphysics, and then this for positive, physical science. It was not so of old ; it is not so now ; it never will be so, either with races or individu- als. The cleric Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Leibnitz, Cuvier, Brewster, Herschell, did not become less devout believers by reason of their splen- did additions to the domain of science. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe were marked by a grand intellectual activity in the right direction. It did not become less Christian in its thought ; on the 346 Sensualistic Philosophy. contrary, the most perfect system of religious belief received an equal impulse. The Christian awakening in France, which followed the tragical atheism of the first revolution, and which Sensualism is now striving to quench in the blood of another Reign of Terror, did not signalize a regression of the exact sciences. Hu- man progress is a chequered scene, in which many causes commingle, working across and with each other, incomplete and confused results. Sometimes there is a partial recession of the truth. The tides of thought ebb and flow, swelling from the secret fountains which none but Omniscience can fully measure. But amid all the obscurities, we clearly perceive this general result, that the most devout belief in supernatural verities is, in the main, coincident with healthy intellectual prog- ress. One objection, which has been made by us already, against the different forms of Sensualism was, that it has no place for the conscious fact of our free-agency. The mind knows that, within certain limits, it has spon- taneity ; it does originate certain effects. No system, then, is correct, which has not a place for the full and consistent admission of this ultimate truth. But this same truth is enough to convince us that Sensualism is mistaken in, excluding the supernatural as does Posi- tivism and Evolutionism ; and in omitting a divine will and Providence. Science with the Positivist is nothing but the knowledge of sensible phenomena and their laws. Nature is the all; no knowledge can be outside the knowledge of her facts and laws ; no cause save her forces. The supernatural is to us the inaccessible. Again: Positivism argues; every branch of experiential knowledge, the more it is explored, does the more fully convince us of the universal and invariable uniformity of natural law. Hence, the argument is as when we follow tw r o parallel lines and find that, however for we trace them, they do not approximate, we conclude that Philosophy and the Supernatural. 347 if they could be infinitely extended, they would never meet. So, we are authorized by this widening- experi- ence of the invariability of natural laws, so far as we learn them, to conclude, that if our knowledge of all. natural law were absolute, we should find it absolutely invariable through all time and space. Once more, the fundamental principle of Positivism, as we saw, is that " it regards all phenomena as subject to invariable laws." The Sensualistic philosophy concurs in this as a funda- mental dictum, thus committing the absurdity of seek- ing in an objective fact (if it is a fact) a regulative sub- jective law of thought. However, passing by this- sole- cism, we observe that they infer from it that all super- natural facts are necessarily incredible, because the conviction that such a fact had occurred, would fatally dislocate our very laws of thought, as the event itself would dislocate the laws of nature. This is really the same statement with that of Hume's famous argument against the credibility of miracles, save that the recent unbelievers put it with more bold- ness and candor. According to Hume, it is experi- ence only which gives authority to human testimony, and it is the same experience which assures us of the uniformity of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do but to subtract the one from the other, and embrace an opinion either on the one side or the other, with that assurance which arises from the re- mainder. But according to the principles here explain- ed, this subtraction, with regard to all popular relig- ions, amounts to an entire annihilation ; and, therefore, we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testi- mony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and to make it a just foundation for any such system of re- ligion. Now there is a sufficient refutation of ajl this in the familiar fact, that our own wills are, consciously, con- Sensualistic Philosophy. tinually originating- effects of which nature, i. e., physi- cal force, is not the efficient : and that our wills are continually superseding this force to a certain extent. Let us take a most familiar instance, of the like of which the daily experience of every working-man furnishes him with a hundred. , The natural law of liquids requires water to seek its own level ; requires this only, and al- ways. But the peasant, by the intervention of his own free-agency, originates absolutely the opposite effect ; he causes it to ascend from its natural level in the tube of his pump. He adopts the just, empirical, and "posi- tive" method, for tracing this phenomenon to its true cause. He observes that the rise of the water is effect- ed by the movement of a lever; that this lever is not the true cause, for it is moved by his arm ; that this arm also is not the true cause, being but a lever of flesh and bone, which is moved by nerves; and finally, that these nervous chords are but conductors of an impulse which, his consciousness assures him, he himself emit- ted by a function of his spontaneity. As long as the series of pJienomena were affections of matter, they did not disclose to him the cause of the water's rise against its own natural law. It was only when he traced the chain back to his own self-originated and spiritual act, that he found the true cause. Here, then, is an actual, experimental phenomenon, which has arisen without, yea, above natural, physical law. According to the Positivist, nature discloses only the forces of matter; this cause was outside of and above matter. It was, upon his scheme (not ours), literally supernatural. Yet that this cause acted, was experimentally certain ; cer- tain by the testimony of consciousness. And if its testi- mony is not experimental and "positive," then no phenomenon in physics is so, even though seen by actual eyesight; because it is impossible that sensation can inform the m'pd, save through this same consciousness. But now, when this peasant is thus "positively " taught Philosophy and the Supernatural. 349 that his own intelligent will is a fountain of effects out- side of, and above, material nature, and when he lifts his eyes to the orderly contrivances and wonderful in- genuity displayed in the works of nature, and sees in these the experimental proofs of the presence of another personal intelligence there, kindred to his own, but im- measurably grander, how can he doubt that this supe- rior mind has also, in its will, another primary source of effects above nature? This is as valid an induction as the physicist ever drew from his maxim, " Like causes, like effects." We thus see it is not true that the "positive,"' or " experimental method," presents any difficulty in the way of admitting the supernatural. On the contrary, it requires tjie admission; that is to say, unless we commit the absurdity of denying our own conscious spontaneity. Will it be objected, that the pump also raises the water in virtue of another natural law, that of pneumatic pressure? Just so: the instance is all the better, in that it shows us how a personal will can combine with these natural laws, and produce, by occasion of the natural force, an effect which expresses the intelligent will above nature. It is precisely thus Christianity teaches us God employs His own natural agents. It is thus the supernatural underlies the natural. The difficulty, indeed, can only have force with an atheist. For if there is a Creator, if He is a personal, intelligent, and voluntary Being, then since it is always possible that He may see a motive in Himself for an un- usual intervention in His own possessions, our experi- ence of our own free-agency makes it every way prob- able that He may intervene on occasion. No rational man, who conducts his own affairs customarily on regu- lar methods, but occasionally by unusual expedients (when he has an adequate motive), can fail to concede a similar free-agency to God, if there is a God. This noted argument against the supernatural is, therefore, 350 Sensualistic Philosophy. a vicious circle. It excludes a God, because it cannot admit the supernatural; and lo ! its only ground for not admitting the supernatural is the denial of a God. The truth is, that nature necessarily implies the supernatural. Nature herself shows us the marks and proofs that she was not eternal nor self-existent. .She had, therefore, an origin in a creation. To deny this is atheism. But what can be more miraculous than a creation? If it were indeed impossible that there should be a miracle, then this nature herself would be non-existent, whose uniformities give the pretext for this denial of the supernatural. Nature tells us that her causes are second causes ; they suggest their origin in a First Cause. Just as a river suggests its fountains, so do the laws of Nature, now flowing in so regular a current, command us to ascend to the source who in- stituted them. The pretended argument of Hume against the credi- bility of miracles has received repeated answers, which need not be here repeated. The sophisms of it appear in a more general and, therefore, a more plausible form, in the argument against the possibility of a supernatu- ral effect, which 1 stated on page 347th. But all their plausibility is removed by the following truths. Man's reliance on testimony is not the result of experience, but is limited and corrected by experience. The child believes the testimony of his parent before he has ex- perimented upon it : believes it by an instinct of his reason. How poor, how beggarly, then, is the arith- metic which proposes to strike a balance between the weight of our experiences for the Christian testimony and our experience of the uniformities of nature ! Problems of moral thought are not to be thus dis- patched, like a grocer's traffic ! On this species of logic it would be impossible for me to believe the Nat- uralist, whose character I most revered, and whose word I most, honored, when he told me of the grand en- Philosophy and the Supernatural. 351 dogenous trees of the tropics: for I have seen marry hundreds of thousands of trees, for myself; and every single one was an exogen. Ah, says our modern phi- losopher, but there is nothing incredible & priori in Nature's producing endogens in the tropics. I reply, first: There is no more unlikelihood that a personal God should intervene, if He see^ fit, in His own affairs, in a manner unusual to my narrow observation: And second : That my instance has revealed the \ys\& petitio principii in the pretended argument; for it now turns out that the incredibility of the supernatural is held by our opponents to be h priori, and not a consequence of this worthless balancing of experiences. The second truth bearing on the case is (one already illustrated), that no uniformity of experience concern- ing a given sequence can demonstrate its necessity. It suggests only a probability. None should know this so well as the physicist, for it is his business to understand the nature of demonstrative induction. [See page 277,] If then, Reason, from any other source of her teachings, suggests'that the acting cause may have been superseded by another adequate cause, she regards a new and unusual effect as entirely possible, although she had before only witnessed the recurrence of the other, and that with unbroken regularity. That possi- ble other cause, reason does recognize in a sovereign God. For, Third : the experiential is not the only source of our valid judgments. How often is this impregnable fact to be forgotten ? The reason has its constitutive pow- ers, which, when the suitable occasion arises, give us their truths over and above our objective experience. Hence it is, by the most rigid conclusion, demonstrated that an asserted truth is not incredible, simply because it lies outside our whole experience. In view of these three remarks, it is obvious that the universal observa- tion of a perfect regularity in the action of second 352 Sensualistic Philosophy. causes is inadequate to prove that the unusual action of a First Cause is incredible. For illustration, by pre- cisely this logic, every new and unexpected effect of 'natural powers must also have been absolutely incredi- ble. " Universal human experience " did not contain a particle of ground for the assertion of such a new effect. The effect of gunpowder must have been abso- lutely incredible, That ships should be propelled with- out sails and oars must have been absolutely incredible. That a message should be instantaneously communi- cated, and that without writing, must have been abso- lutely incredible. But multitudes of people believed in cannons, steamships, and magnetic telegraphs, with- out experience, on mere testimony. Did they proceed unreasonably ? Fourth : The premise of this boastful argument claims that universal observation shows us natural law work- ing always and everywhere uniformly. This is not a correct statement of the fact. Not repeating the ex- ception, that the reason compels us to refer nature itself to a supernatural creation, I remind the unbeliev- er, that there is an existing testimony to frequent un- usual effects above nature, in the past experience of man. There was a time when water did not " run down hill," to wit: while Joshua was crossing the Jordan. There was a time when death did not retain his natural power over the corpse, namely : on the morning of the first Christian Lord's day. But that is the Christian testimony, the credibility of which is the thing in de- bate? Just so ; and therefore the disputant shall not be allozvedto assume its falsehood in his premise : the logical task he undertook was, to prove its falsehood in his conclusion. It is also worthy of mention here, that some of these supernatural effects are also attested by heathen testimony. But the assumption is false again, in overlooking another exception : the rise of every in- dependent species in palaeontology is an observed and Philosophy and the SitpernaturaL 353 experimental instance of supernatural power. Nature has no regular, ordinary power of producing new spe- cies ; yet the rise of many such is experimentally cer- tain. Retrenching these assumptions, then, all that experience authorizes us to assert is, that nature acts uniformly according to the laws of second causes, in the present age of the world, and within the limited compass of our competent observation. But that com- pass is a mere patch, compared with the whole uni- verse. Let not the physicist, now mislead himself by telling us of his telescope, which has made him ac- quainted with the laws of the planetary and sidereal heavens. About the stars he has found out a few things, while myriads of things which may be going on within or upon them, are totally unknown. He thinks he knows very certainly that the planet Jupiter and his moons regularly obey the same law of orbitual motion with the earth. Well. But was the astronomer on that planet able to detect any sign, by his telescope, upon the face of our little planet, on that morning when Christ burst the bands of death in the garden near Je- rusalem ? Of the vastly larger part of the events now occurring in the universe we know nothing, and we are therefore not entitled by our experience to say whether they are all arising naturally, or some super- naturally. The imagination is overweening. Fifth : An exaggerated use is made of the concep- tion sometimes heedlessly given of supernatural effects, as "violating natural laws," " reversing natural laws," or " suspending natural laws." Hence the recent phi- losopher concludes, that the supernatural effect would be, somehow, irreconcilable with the regular system of nature. He speaks of it as what would necessarily "disorder" or " dislocate " nature ; and he appeals to human experience and scientific observation to say whether any signs of such dislocation anywhere remain. Now, in fact, in the sense of the objector, no supernatu- 23 354 Sensualistic Philosophy. ral effect which a wise Creator and providential Ruler would work, is a violation, or a reversal, or even a sus- pension of natural laws. It is simply a new effect wholly above the power of natural second causes. It is a part of the consistent, all-wise plan- of Him who made, and is now steadily ruling, His universe according to His eter- nal purpose. It makes no dislocation, no jar even, in the machinery of nature. Let us take any instance of such an effect, as described in the Christian Scriptures. If their testimony is true, there was a human body su- pernaturally produced in the case of Jesus of Nazareth. Well, that body was nourished, grew, lived, and moved just as naturally as any other that came by ordinary generation. There was also a human soul miraculously produced, which possessed superhuman endowments of holiness and wisdom. But even this spirit was not, in its functions and progress, contra-natural ; these were only nature assisted and rendered more normal. This holy soul acquired knowledge, and acted, and thought, precisely according to the laws of man's rational nature, as reinstated and rendered in the best sense natural. In the house of Jairus there was a youthful form miracu- lously delivered from the hand of death. But from the moment Jesus delivered the reanimated girl to her par- ents, she ate natural food and resumed the natural func- tions of life just as fully as other children. In Jairus' family there was no more dislocations of regular routine than if the sick girl had been healed by natural means. These instances disclose the simple truth. God's mira- cles cohere perfectly with God's providence in ordinary, natural things, because both are the works of the same wise hand. The first miracle was creation. We saw that the thing produced by every creation must have been just as natural in structure as what afterward arose from nature. Everything, when created, passed promptly and smoothly tinder the designed domain of natural law. Obviously, then, it is just 'as un warrant- Philosophy .and the Supernatural. 355 able to think of a subsequent effect as " dislocating nat- ure," as it would be to imagine any outrage of nature in those first creative acts which gave Nature her nor- mal sway. The Book of Job tells us that, when God laid the corner-stone of the earth, " the morning-stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." According to the modern philosophy, instead of seeing in another supernatural act a theme of rational praise, they should have had their reason dislocated and their thinking confounded. The miraculous is, then, an effect which is, in one aspect, i. e., in the cause of its rise above nature, and yet is, in its own essence, conformed to nature. It neither dislocates the understanding nor the orderly working of Providence ; yet, if verified, it attests the presence of God. Once more, all these objections to the credibility of the supernatural imply the assumption, that the present system of nature is the complete and normal one. If it is not, v if disorder has anyhow entered, and if there is a personal God over nature, then it is every way credi- ble that He will intervene to correct existing evils, and to reform the erroneous workings. This is so obvious, that the advocates of the anti-supernatural uniformly ignore the truth that nature is evidently in a disordered state. They always speak as though it were in its normal state. They leave out the fall of man, by which. " the creation was made subject to vanity ; " and shut their eyes to all the symptoms of its " groaning and travailing in pain until now." But this no consistent philosophy can do. I showed in the last chapter, the rudimental fact, that man's disposition and his reason are universally and obstinately at war. Here we found a fundamental dislocation indeed, in the very constitu- tion of man's soul, which it was impossible to refer to the constructive power of the infinite reason ; we were compelled to ascribe it to some fatal abuse of sponta- neity in the creature. And here we find the clue to ex- 356 Sensnalistic Philosophy. plain the manifest disorders in material nature. Which, now, is the more rational expectation : That the all- Wise Maker will leave the work of His hand a prey to the disorder, to obey the perverted and disordered laws of a nature that is marred ? Or, that He hath sub- jected the creation to vanity " in hope," with the pur- pose of intervening at suitable times to retrieve that beneficent purpose which guided Him in the world's production ? The answer will be easy to the unsophis- ticated mind : If nature has a Master, and nature is not what she ought to be, we may expect her Master to jnterpose for her amendment. This supposed difficulty in the admission of the super- natural is thoughtlessly echoed by some who profess to be friends to religion. They have not considered (what the instincts of the objectors have taught them) that the objection is virtually against the possibility of all religion. There is, in fact, no religion worth the name, without the supernatural. God Himself is super- natural. Revelation is a supernatural event in the sphere of thought. Christ's person was supernatural, as truly as His miracles and resurrection. Since man's nature is ruined, and this is what originates the neces- sity, redemption must be supernatural, in some sort; this is so obvious as to be almost a truism. The events . which are to close the history of each soul, and of the world, will be supernatural. When men give up this feature, then, they give up, not merely one species of the evidence for x the truth of the Gospel, but the very possibility of any religion : they are virtual atheists. There is one more head of argument to be unfolded, of transcendent breadth and force, by which sound philosophy proves that' nature is actually grounded in the supernatural, not only for her origin, but her pres- ent subsistence. The first premise of it is found in the doctrine of providence. It is with strange emotions that I ask the question : Whether it is necessary to Philosophy and the Supernatural. 357 establish this premise before using it? Do I write in a Christian age and country; and must I still argue the truth admitted by all thoughtful Pagans: that there is a rational and moral order impressed upon the affairs of this world ? Is it still needful to argue this truth, upon which the whole logic of Bp. Butler's Analogy is founded ; which is implied in every fear and throe of re- morse in sinner's hearts ; which is read in the connection of all kinds of events in all sciences, by proofs as empi- rical and " positive" as those which support the exist- ence of heat or electricity ? There is a providential will above us which combines with all the laws of sec- cond causes in some way. Now, whatever theory we may hold concerning the mode in which this superior intelligence enters into the effects of second causes; whether we hold the preestablished harmony of Leib- nitz, or the scholastic theory of Aquinas, Jonathan Ed- wards, and Dugald Stewart, that the first Cause is really the only efficient, and that second causes are but the forms or methods of His ordinary acting; or the more rational theory of the Duke of Argyle (Reign of Law) ; or whether we refrain from all theories of explanation ; that providential will is the supernatural. It is above nature, in that it governs her. It is above nature, in that it exerts other powers than merely those of sec- ond causes, in guiding, if not in moving. ' And it is a present cause, ft " surrounds our down-sitting and our uprising, and s acquainted with all our ways." It teaches us that Nature only exists by reason of the supernatural. I will not go into the metaphysics by which the two older hypotheses as to God's relations to second causes were supported and .refuted. That of Leibnitz prob- ably has no serious advocate in our day : that of the Thomists will certainly not be advocated by the Sensu- alistic philosopher, seeing it is more destructive to his system than even the true one. For in making God 358 Sensualistic Philosophy. the real Efficient in every act of His ordinary prov- idence, it really makes second causes mere simulacra of powers, mere masks behind which God ordinarily hides His present hand; and it answers the denial of the su- pernatural, by making all nature's work such. Where- as the anti-Christian philosopher seeks to push God out of nature, this scheme answers by pushing nature aside and placing her whole powers in God's hand. The ascertained truth from which we start, then, is this : That there is a present controlling providence of the First Cause over all Second Causes. The problem is: How does it combine with them?- This question raises another : What are Second Causes ? Now let us be content here, again, with the philosophy of common sense, which regards dependent beings as possessing a true being and permanency. Each essential property of things is a power in posse, or the potency of an actual second cause. But, in order that one of these poten- tial properties may become cause, or exert power, a certain relation must be established between the thing or being it inhabits, and the other being which is to receive the effect. Each effect is, then, in reality, the result of the action or counteraction of more than one power. That is to say : Cause is always complex. A natural power exists while it is not acting ; its passage from passivity to activity is simply its release from some counter-action of another power. The providence, then, consists in the secret combinations and regulations of this counter-action. Hence, it not only allows, but requires, the permanency, the uniformity, and the real- ity of the natural powers in the second causes. It is because these continue, that this rational providence is able to use Nature in such a way as to effectuate, through her, special functions showing final causes. Let us consider, for example, a special and familiar case of a personal providence, pursuing such a special func- tion ; that of the clock-maker. There are two mechan- Philosophy and the Supernatural. 359 ical laws of which he chiefly avails himself. One is, that the gravity of a mass of lead suspended freely, will give him a constant motive power, of a certain force. The other is, that a pendulum having the length of thirty-nine and a certain fraction of inches, will swing, when thrust aside, in beats of one second. By bring- ing the force of his dependent weight to bear, through an escapement, upon the side of his pendulum, he pro- duces this regular and designed result. His weight does not accelerate its motion in descending as it other- wise would ; and his pendulum does not become quies- cent from friction and atmospheric resistance, as it other- wise would. The result is, the special function of a time- piece. This function can be regulated, arrested, or changed, at the will of the maker; the clock can be made to keep sidereal or solar time, true or false. Now, it is to be noticed that the maker does not effect this control through any infringing of the two natural laws he uses ; but by not infringing them. The providen- tial result is not obtained by virtue of any irregularity of the two laws, but by virtue of their invariable regularity. It is precisely because the law of gravity expressing itself in the traction of the dependent mass of lead, and in the changeless beat of the second's pen- dulum, is absolutely regular, that he is able to carry out his purpose, and to establish the special function. It is this regularity of natural law which enables him to vary the working of his clock at will. Thus, yet in a manner never fully revealed to us, the Almighty Providence employs the powers which reside in created things, to effectuate all His special purposes. The fact that no regular law is infringed does not imply that His superintendence is excluded : it is by means of that very regularity that He works. He guides with His skillful but invisible hand to just those combi- nations which release the powers of the second causes He needs for His purpose, and reduce to potentiality 360 Sensualistic Philosophy. those whose tasks are for the time completed. It is thus that perpetual providence enters, which we are compelled to grant, as much by the nature of created things and the requirements of our own reason, as by the testimony of Scripture. But when once we learn this great truth, that all the natural reposes immedi- ately upon the unseen supernatural, our difficulty is at an end, in admitting the credible testimony to the oc- currence of visible miracles, at a ncd-is vindice dignus. We have now reached a point where it becomes easy to refute the frivolous objection against the possibility of an answer to prayer from the stability of nature. That objection sets out by assuming the absolute and universal regularity of natural laws. No effect is to be looked for save from and through them, says the cavil- ler. But every effect is already potentially in its causes : they existing, it is as impossible that the effect can be arrested as that the actual past can be recalled. For instance : a company of people in a ship are informed by the captain that the vessel cannot live in so rough a sea more than six hours longer. Thereupon the Chris- tians present persuade the frightened passengers to pray for an earlier change of weather ; and if it hap- pens to come, and they survive to tell the story, they cease not to boast in the case as a manifest and specific answer to prayer. But, says the caviller, this is all su- perstition. That tempestuous sea was the regular phys- ical effect of meteorologic causes already established, and existing over the ocean, which, in turn, were con- nected with other movements, past and present, em- bracing our whole globe, and were the inevitable re- sults of other movements now in the irrevocable past. Hence the continuance or cessation of the storm is po- tentially decided in other causal movements already established, or even already past. If the storm were destined to subside within the six hours, it would have done so just the same without the prayers ; if it was Philosophy and the Supernatural. 361 not destined to cease, the prayers were futile. Prof. Tyndal, as all the world remembers, proposed to sub- ject the justice of this theory to a " physical test/' which the Christian writers were more successful in scolding than in refuting. His plan was the following : Let a multitude of poor men, sick to an equal degree with the same diseases, be divided equally into two wards of a hospital, and let them receive, in every respect, the same curative treatment. Let the Christian people pray fervently for those in one ward, and not at all for those in the other; but let not the sufferers on either side know anything of this, lest their imaginations, stimulated by hope or fear, should react favorably or otherwise on their bodily condition. Then, a faithful record of the percentage of recoveries and deaths would reveal, by a physical test, whether prayer efficaciously influenced the result. This, said he, is the way in which physicists, who argue from substantial facts, would pro- ceed to test the validity of a law of nature ; and if the Christians are in earnest, they will be glad to subject their opinion to so honest a trial. All that can be- said of this proposal is, that it has a show of plausibility : it might rise to the height of a jest, were not jesting on such a subject too unsavory for any decent mind. The real answer to the proposal is, that it begs the very question which it proposes to inves- tigate. Every man who can think consistently will see that the question, whether prayer is answered, turns on this other: Is there a personal Being exercising a pres- ent providence over us ? If there is none, of course there is no answer to prayer ; if there is, then He may answer prayer, provided the perfections which guide His will prompt Him to do so. Now, will they thus prompt Him ? If there is a God in Providence, this is a question about a rational free-agency. For such a ques- tion a " physical test " is obviously out of the question ; it is mere conjuring. Had Prof. Tyndal been as famil- 362 Sensualistic Philosophy. iar with his Bible as with his laboratory, he would have perceived this by two criteria. One of these is in the fact that the promises of answer to prayer which Chris- tians read in this book, are professedly separated into two classes. Some of the prayers authorized there seek the spiritual benefits of redemption : others seek allowable and innocent natural good, not essential to redemption. s The promise of specific answers given by the Christian s God is confined to the former class of objects. For the lat- ter class of objects we are permitted to pray ; but with the express information that there is no pledge what- ever of a specific answer, because the divine Omnis- cience may see that the natural good craved is about to cease to be, on the whole, a good ; or the natural evil deprecated is ceasing to be, to this petitioner, a real evil. We are taught to pray with submission, leav- ing the issue to the general wisdom and mercy of the divine Dispenser. And this is all the extent the Chris- tian Scriptures really give to any expectation of answer which they authorize. Now the point of the explana- tion is, that the object of petition in this proposed test falls under this latter class: the healing of sickness and prolongation of the life of the body are among those natural goods about which the God we pray to has given no specific promise. If Prof. Tyndal desires to get his many sins pardoned through God's Son, or his darkened mind enlightened to the knowledge of Christ, I am happy to assure him, that the promise is perfectly explicit, and we are authorized to pledge him, with lit- eral exactitude, that as soon as he prays in earnest, he will receive.' But if he desires the healing of his own or any other mortal body, at a specific time, God has not authorized us to give any pledge ; the result must be left to His wisdom and compassion, even as the great Redeemer left His prayer for deliverance : " Neverthe- less, not my will, but Thine be done." These are the terms on which we Christians hold our own lives. The Philosophy and the Supernatural. 363 test is, therefore, no test at all, and was suggested in sheer ignorance. The other criterion is this: that it requires a personal will of the most venerable nature to promise to submit itself to a needless test, upon a demand which can only appear petulant and insolent. Unless the test is guilty of the sophism of begging the very question under in- vestigation, I repeat, it must be assumed that possibly there may be such a venerable, personal will, concerned in answering our prayers. But if there is, it is every way probable, if not certain, that he will see an ade- quate, rational motive in his own self-respect, for de- clining to respond to such a test, after he has published his promises on that point. Hence, the failure of the attempted test would leave us entirely in the dark : it would prove nothing, save God's displeasure at our impertinence. It is. presumed that, had Prof. Tyndal pledged himself to deliver a certain course of lectures, and had he then been required to make a voluntary re- sponse to a course of experiments designed to ascertaia whether he was a person who could be trusted to keep his word, they would have proved decided failures. And it may be safely surmised, that were I to argue from his contemptuous silence under those experi- ments, that he cannot be trusted to keep his word, I should incur his certain resentment. I now dismiss this point with the question : Has the Almighty less right to protect His own self-respect than P,of. Tyn- dal ? In addressing ourselves to the more serious argument attempted against the possibility of Providential inter- ventions to answer prayer, I call the student's attention to some obvious remarks. First: That argument, if valid, would only apply to the kind of good explained above, as natural, allowable good, of which the Scrip- tures never say that God is pledged to bestow it upon petitioners certainly. The whole sphere of redemp- 364 Sensualistic Philosophy. tion is left untouched, including- all the blessings of God to the soul, as consisting in His own pardoning acts and communications of grace. These lie outside the difficulties arising out of the supposed rigiditj of ma- terial laws. Second : It is not necessary, in order to meet the cav 7 il, to enable the physical philosopher actu- ally to detect the secret hand of God, directing a new specific effect to emergence through natural laws, and to show the caviller how it is done. All that is neces- sary is, to evince that the act is feasible for omnipo- tence ; that is, to show that, for such power, it is not im- possible. The justice of this remark is evident to the modest reason. Every physicist claims credit from the unlearned in the parallel case. For instance, he shows the peasant that a message is actually sent and answered by the magnetic telegraph ; he tells him that there is a way to do it, by means of a knowledge giving to a per- sonal will a control over physical laws. He does not pretend to enable the peasant to comprehend that way. But he expects to be believed! Again: God -is a spirit ; His providential intervention is a spiritual agency. But no action of spirit reveals itself to physic- al tests or the bodily senses: none can be described in terms of material science. . Can the physiologist detect the actual mode in which his own spirit emits a voli- tion to the muscles along the efferent nerves? But he knows that the spirit does it, and that, precisely accord- ing to the laws of nervous matter. God is not the soul of the world, and matter is not His body; but the analogy is yet sufficient to reconcile the reasonable spirit to the mystery. Now it has been well remarked, in reply to the phys- ical objection against prayer, that Nature (whose stable laws are objected) is a system including both minds and matter. Both together make up the complex ma- chine. We have discovered a few of the established methods by which the powers in this vast system inter- Philosophy and the Supernatural. 365 act ; we know that many of them remain concealed from us. Spirits and matter can, and do, interact ; how much, we do not know. Now it may be that the ties of natural law are such, that the earnest desires which creatures utter to the Ruler of nature in prayer, are links in the chains of natural means by which the result is produced. Who can disprove this ? Then, if this is not shown impossible, it is not impossible but that the prayer may bring the answer in strict accordance with natural law, yea, by virtue of it. Again, every analogy known to common sense shows that it is unreasonable to suppose God shut out from intervention with the machinery which is the work of His own hand. Nature is His invention. He confer- red its powers out of His own self-existent omnipotence. The wonders of ingenuity and wisdom it discloses "are parts of His ways; but the thunder of His power who can understand ? " Now, is it not an absurd repre- sentation, that such an Artificer has been baulked by the very success of His own handiwork? That is, He exerted His perfect ingenuity in making a ma- chine, and made it so successfully, that. by reason of its very completeness, the machine has shut out its own Maker from intervention with it ! He has been so skill- ful that the work of His skill runs as it pleases, and not as He pleases ! It is not so with any other artificer ; as human art is perfected, its productions become at once more powerful and more manageable. What more exactly, more rigidly regulated as to the laws of its ac- tion, than a locomotive engine ? The material is iron, the most inflexible of metals. Its motive power is steam, a blind, imprisoned monster. Its might is irre- sistible by the direct strength of men. Its track is a pair of iron bars, of inflexible uniformity, equi-distant from each other everywhere to a fraction of an inch. And, to crown all, this machine must run backwards and forwards upon this track by an accurate " time- 366 Sensualistic Philosophy. table," from which no official can depart without the peril of destruction to himself and others. Yet this tremendous machine stops at the cry of a sick child ! There is a " Conductor," who knows the mode of regu- lating its motions consistently with the regular laws of its motion. So, there is a " Conductor " who manages the machinery of nature ! Shall God be represented as inferior to His creature? The objection against the providential answer of prayer is usually urged, as though all special providence were antagonistic to the regular action of second causes, and could only be effectuated through their disturbance. But, as we saw by the illuslr tion of the clock, this is a sheer mistake. All efficient providence is special ; the general providence is only through the special. God exercises it not against, but by means of, the in- variable uniformity of nature. It was not because the two laws of gravity in the weight and the pendulum were changeable, that the clockmaker was able to modify the running of his clock, but because they are changeless. Had these methods of natural force been variable, then the ability of this intelligent will to adapt them to a varying function, would have been far less; the task would have been far more difficult for him. But because they are invariable, therefore his task was feasible. He had only to arrange for certain changes of the interaction of the two unchanging forces, and the result was a function changing at his will. It is indis- putably possible for the great World-Maker to do* the same thing, as often as He pleases. We see very clear- ly, so far as the sphere of our intelligent observation goes, that each power residing in second causes, when released from potentiality into activity under the same conditions, always acts in the same way. But we are also conscious, if we think correctly, that there is al- ways an unexplored mystery attending the mode of that release and arrest. The power comes out of the Philosophy and the Supernattiral. 367 dark, into our observation and retires into the dark again. Does any one say, But its release from this potency into activity, and its arrest, are both the work of other powers in other second causes? This may be very true; and it may also be true that an immediate Providence is guiding the one natural power in its modification of the other. He does not intend that man shall expose and delineate the real method of His working. But He gives us abundant signs of His pres- ence and ability. Thus, as a sound and reverent philosophy begins with primitive and a priori notions, which, though rudi- mental to all knowledge, are themselves incomplete, so it ends with conclusions which are demonstrated, and yet imperfectly comprehended. " Now I know but in part." Perfect comprehension of truth is the prerogative of the infinite Intelligence; adequate and certain appre- hension is ours. The mind imbued with the " Positivist " temper will, indeed, remain obstinately dissatisfied with the result. Such a man will declaim against natural theology and the other moral sciences, as fruitless of all but differences and debates. But the friends of philos- ophy have their speedy revenge. Let him attempt to reconstruct the moral sciences upon a " positive " method, and they become at least as uncertain as the rest of us unpositive mortals. Thus it was with Comte. As soon as he approaches " sociology," and attempts to treat of mind, morals, human right, and government, the Priest of Humanity is compelled to excommuni- cate many of His earlier converts from His Church. Somehow " Positivism " itself, when it approaches this subject, is no longer " positive ; " it guesses, dogmatizes, dreams, disputes, errs, fully as much as its predecessors. What, now, does this show ? Plainly, that the experi- mental methods of the physical sciences are incapable of an exact and universal application, in this field of inquiry. The objects are immaterial; they are no longer defined, as in physics, by magnitude, figure, 368 Sensualistic Philosophy. quantity, duration, or velocity. The combinations of causation are too complex. The effects are too rapid and fleeting. The premises are too numerous and un- defined for our limited minds to grasp with exactness. If Positivism, with all its acknowledged learning, and mastery of the sciences of matter, with its boasts, and its confidence, has failed to conquer these difficulties in the little way it professes to advance in the science of the human spirit, shall we not continue to fail in part? " What can he do that cometh after the King? " Let us couple this fact, that the sciences of psychol- ogy and morals, with natural theology, have ever.been, and are destined to remain, the least exact and " posi- tive" of all the departments of man's knowledge, with this other: that they are immeasurably the most im- portant to his well-being and his hopes. The latter statement commends itself to our experience. It is far more essential to a man's happiness here (not to speak of his hereafter) that he shall have his rights justly and fairly defined than his land accurately surveyed. It is far more interesting to the traveller to know whether the ship-captain to whom he entrusts his life has the moral virtues of fidelity, than the learning of the navi- gator. It is more important to us to have virtuous friends to cherish our hearts than adroit mechanics to make our shoes. It is more momentous to a dying man to know whether there is an immortality, and how it may be made happy, than to have a skillful physician, now that his skill is vain. We see, then, that human science is least able to help us where our need is most urgent. M. Comte reprehends mankind, because " ques- tions the most radically inaccessible to our capacities, the intimate nature of being, the origin, and the end of all phenomena, were precisely those which the intelli- gence propounded to itself as of paramount importance, in that primitive condition ; all other problems really admitting of solution being almost regarded as un- worthy of serious meditation. The reason of this it is Philosophy and the Supernatural. 369 not difficult to discover ; for experience alone could give us the measure of our strength.." Alas ! the rea- son is far more profound. Man has ever refused to content himself with examining the properties of tri- angles, prisms, levers, and pulleys, which he could have exactly determined, and has persisted in asking whence his spiritual being came, and whither it is going, what is its proper rational end, and what its laws ; not merely because he had not learned the limits of his powers, but because he was, and is, irresistibly impelled to these inquiries by the wants of his soul. His intuitions tell him that these are the things, and not the others, which are of infinite moment to him. It appears, then, that it is unavoidable for man to search most anxiously where he can find least certainty in his own light. His intel- lectual wants are most tremendous, just in those de- partments where his power of self-help is least. To what should this result point us ? If we obey the spirit of true science, it will manifest .to us the great truth that man was never designed by God for mental inde- pendence of Him ; that man needs, in these transcend- ent questions, the guidance of the infinite understand- ing ; that while a " positive philosophy " may measure and compare his material possessions, the only " exact science " of the spirit is that revealed to us by the " Father of Spirits." This, the anti-Christian philoso- pher may be assured, is the inevitable conclusion to which the healthy reason will ever revert, as the needle to the pole, despite all his dogmatism and sophistry. Corrupted religions have always been too strong for false philosophy. What, then, is the hope for it, when the pure light of God's word is poured unobstructed into the mind of the nations? The seventh decade of the nineteenth century, at its beginning witnessed the arrogant advance of the Sensualistic philosophy, as though to new conquests against Christianity. The eighth will not have closed until the ebbing tide of its seeming success B R A ft I J W i\/rroi t UNIVEESITY OF CALIFOENIA LIBEAEY, BEEKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. !XJan54 3lWay'57BF- o> -it Vjl 00 .OR0 . iNF"' :R-LIBRART. REC'D JUL1619&/ REC'D LD OCT m 57I-2PM54 50m-7,'29