3 1822 01204 7064 m i mri m i mm (frV miVEHSlTY 09 c:auforn!A SAN DtCGO J ^0bui Mu.^t)m$Un ®ateg .: '■ or CAl 1F0RN14 S^N ;>!i (.11 illillillliliillilllllllilliii .^ 3 1822 01204 7064 O 6 .FT 2 r^ f^65 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. ALEXANDER CAMPBELL ERASER, M.A., PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHTSICS, NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH. EDINBURGH: W. P. KENNEDY, ST. ANDEEW STREET. HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON. MDOCCLVI. rDiNEfKcn : t. constable, printer to hee majesty The following " Essays in Philosophy" were originally contributed to the North British Bevietc, in the period extending from 1846 to 1855. They are now col- lected and republished, with a few slight alterations, chiefly in order to afford ready access to the evidence they may furnish, in support of the author's application for the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, left vacant by the death of Sir William Hamilton. In this point of view, these Essays are relevant, principally as manifesting the general tendency of the writer's opinions, in regard to Logical and Meta- physical questions that are prominent in the discussions of the Nineteenth Century, and especially in the works of the distinguished philosopher who recently adorned the Metropolitan University of Scotland. Though pre- IV pared at intervals during nine years, and as circum- stances arose to call them forth, it is believed that this small volume of Essays is pervaded by a Common Phi- losophical Principle. That principle assumes different modifications, according to the various aspects in which the chief problem of metaphysical research, viz., the Eelation of Knowledge and Existence, happens to be contemplated. The Theory of Knowledge, suggested in the following pages, the author is at present endeavouring more fully to mature. This task should be the labour of a life. He desires, when he contemplates it, to be influenced by the warning of Lord Bacon, against the " over early and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods ; from which time commonly sciences receive small or no augmentation. " Knowledge," adds Bacon, " while it is in aphorisms and observations, is in growth : but when once it is comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be further polished and illustrated, and accommodated for use and practice ; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance." The perfection of philosophical opinion, and any well-grounded assurance of certainty in those high matters, are the results only of cautious, long-continued, and patient reflection. Some passages fi'om a Lecture having reference to the Exercises of a Philosophical Class, into which the writer has sought to communicate intellectual life during the period of his academical experience, are introduced as an Appendix. They relate partly to practical arrangements for making Philosophy a gymnastic of the mititl, in the Universities of Modern Europe, as it was in the Schools of Ancient Greece. Church-Hill, Jlay 29, 1850. CONTENTS. Essay I. — Life and Philosophy of Leibnitz, . . .1 Essay II. — Hamilton and Eeid : Theoky of Pekceftion, . oT Essay III. — Scottish METAriiYsics : Theouy of Causation, . l-'l Essay IV. — The Insoluble Problem : A Disquisition on oiu Ignorance of the Infinite, . . • . .199 Essay V. — The METAriiYsics of Augubtinianism, . . 257 Essay VI. — Ferriek's Theory of Knowing and Beino, . . 285 APPENDIX. The Philosophical Class-Poom in the Nineteintii Century. 345 ESSAY I. LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. ESSAY I. LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNIT7 The lately republished philosophical writings of Leib- nitz are the productions of a species of intellectual labour that is very rare in this country, but of which, in Grer- inany, France, and America, the press is giving forth some original and many republished specimens. The amount of republished metaphysical literature of the higher kind which has appeared in foreign countries within the last thirty } ears, is worthy of remark. Some idea of it may be formed from any common catalogue of books recently issued from the press of Leipsic, Ber- lin, Paris, or Boston. The labours of the illustrious Cousin in this department are well known. The works, in whole or in part, of Plato, Proclus, Abelard, Des Cartes, Andre, and Pascal have reappeared under the superintendence of this eloquent founder of the modern eclectic school of France. Containing as they do the results, and in many re- "• North British Beview, No. IX. (May 1840.) 4 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. ppects splendid results, of purely abstract thinking, the works of Leibnitz are singularly fitted for contributing to imbue the mind of an ardent student with compre- hensive and lofty speculation. While his writings abound in daring hypotheses, they have, nevertheless, greatly advanced metaphysical science, by rendering cur- rent a multitude of new ideas ; and the fact of tlie con- tinued circulation of an amount of abstract thought so great, so peculiar in its kind, and so fitted to set other minds to work, as these books contain, can never be unworthy of the consideration of those who would ob- serve and study literature in its higher relations. Besides their intrinsic value, they are connected with an im- portant epoch in the history of modern speculation. This philosopher looms vast even in the distance, at the en- trance of the labyrintli of recent German Philosophy. Though a curious combination of circumstances has hitherto preserved the surface of the British mind, in a great measure, unruffled by an influence powerful enough to create so much commotion on the continent of Europe, there are signs in the literary horizon which betoken a change, for which society in this country would do well to be prepared. By the well-regulated study of these unwonted topics, we may not merely disarm the enemies of religion, of what in other times has been, and will continue to be, a favourite weapon of assault, but we may even convert that weapon into an instrument of use in the service of an enlightened Christianity. The interest lately revived elsewhere in the life and labours of Leibnitz, and iridicated among other LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 5 means by various recent publications,* suggests some me- ditation upon the leading events in his biography, accom- panied with a few historical and speculative notices, as an introduction to that great department of knowledge of which he was so distinguished a cultivator, viz., Metaphysical Philosophy. Perhaps these two last words are fitted to excite feelings of repugnance in the minds of some readers, as relating to something that is conceived to be at best vague and unproductive. The tendencies of public opinion in Great Britain, in the former half of this century, have evidently been greatly averse from these speculations. The section of society given to abstract meditation has never in any age been a large one ; and the recent wide extension of a certain measure of intelligence has per- haps helped to diminish it, by putting the current lite- * E. g. 1 . God. Gul. Leihnitli Opera Philosopluca quce extant Latina, Gallicu, Germanlca omnia. Edita recognovit e temporara ratiouibus dis- posita pluribus auxit Introductione Critica atqiie indicibus instruxit Joannes Eduardus Erdmann, Pliil. Doct. et Prof. Publ. Ord. in Univers. Halens. Pars Prior. Pars Altera. Berlin, 1839-18-10. 2. (Euvres ds Leibnitz, Nouvelle Edition, collationee sur les meiUeurs textes, et precedee d'une Introduction. Par M. Amedee Jacques, Pro- fesseur de Philosophie au College Royal de Versailles. Paris, 1842. 3. (Euvres de Loche et Leibnitz, contenant VEssai sur VEntendement Humain, revu, corrige, et accompagne de Notes ; VEloge de Leibnitz, par Fontenclle; le Discours sur la Gonformite de la Foi et de la Raison; VEssai sur la Bonte de Dieu, la Liberie de V Homme, et V Origine du mal, la eontroverse reduite a desargumens en forme. Par M. F. TnunoT, Professeur de Philosophie au College de France, et a la Facultc des Lettres. Paris, 1839. 4. Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibnitz — Eine Biographie. Von Dk. Gr. E. Guhkauer. Zwei Bande. Breslau, 1842. 5. Exposition de la Doctrine Philosophiqiie de Leibnitz. CEuvres dc Victor Cousin. 6 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. rature more under the control of a public for the most part necessarily busy with the affairs of practical life. If we except the rising symptoms of a coming change — indicated partly in the poetical contemplations of Cole- ridge and the logical philosophy and learning of Sir Wil- liam Hamilton — no literary efforts are even contemplated which involve purely speculative research ; and hardly any concern is manifested for the philosophical pursuits of other nations. Metaphysical Science cannot, from its pe- culiar nature, be made generally j)opular till the exercise of reflection has become more common ; unless, indeed, as sometimes happens, the science itself is degraded, so that (while the name Metaphysic is retained) those who pro- fess to be its votaries are conversant exclusively, not with the most subtle and evanescent, but with the simplest and most generally seductive class of the objects of thought. The present is a remarkable, and, indeed, anomalous historical epoch. In these islands it is, and has been since the commencement of this century, a period of rapid physical and social progress. Men have gained an in- creased knowledge of the laws and processes of matter, and thus the world is becoming a more convenient place of habitation. The principle of commerce has been developed to an extent unknown in the ancient world. The present revolution in the means of social intercourse and communication seems to be preparing the way for other changes, about which it is hardly safe to speculate. All the increased " subjection of mat- ter to mind" which the world, and especially this country, lias witnessed since the principles of the Baconian philo- LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 7 sophy have become popular, must be indeed gratifying to every lover of his race. And in the more sublime de- partments of Physical Science the same progress is visible. Geology is contributing the details of the past history of the 'planet on which we live. The telescope is making magnificent disclosures of the distant regions of the material creation. Nor is public interest confined to what is merely physical. Society itself is undergoing fundamental changes ; and the " science of society," under its twofold form of civil and ecclesiastical, is the theme of discussion and controversy. An age in which controversy turns on first principles needs, and will soon demand, a Metaphysical Literature. That state of knowledge and of general opinion is not a hopeful one, in which the thoughts and energies of men are directed exclusively towards physical or economical science. And when the intellect is in a state of fermen- tation, bare facts, separated from principles, excite only a feeble interest. Men then feel that beneath the stir occasioned by incessant activity among the outward events of this passing world, there lie hid the invisible elements and springs of those external changes of which this strange and dangerous life is the scene. Within and immediately around that inner circle, is the domain pecu- liar to Philosophy. The more deeply thought is exerted on any subject, the further is it compelled to go within the dominions of this " science of sciences." The soul there casts about for its anchorage in the ocean of thought. The need for a First Philosophy, of the kind we have indicated in the foregoing paragraph, is not indistinctly 8 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. referred to by Lord Bacon : — " Because/' says lie, " the distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point, but are like branches of a tree that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself in arms and boughs ; therefore, it is good to erect and constitute one universal science by the name of ^ 'pTiilosopliia prima^ primitive or summary philosophy, as the main and common way, before we come where the ways part and divide themselves ; which science, whether I should report deficient or no, I stand doubtful." The Metaphysical spirit makes itself manifest in vari- ous forms ; and this passage from Bacon in several respects illustrates the difference between the two great classes into which philosophers may conveniently be divided, according as they employ one or other of two modes of research that differ in their principles, methods, and results. One class includes those who would merely generalize from experience ; and whose highest laws are in consequence only their most extensive genera- lizations. The other class assume their first principles as given in the very act of exercising observation, and by demonstration endeavour to reach the extreme results of philosophy.* It is not easy to find a nomen- clature sufficiently comprehensive, and yet distinctively characteristic, to admit of suitable application to these schools. Probably, that suggested by Sir James Mac- * It is to be remarked, that the modified views of many thinkers wlio have been ranged on each side, call our attention to their tendencies rather than to their fully-developed principles. LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 9 kintosh is sufficiently exact for our purpose ; and we may- term the former of the two classes we have referred to Observational, and the latter Speculative ]\Ietapliy!5icians. Leibnitz is the type, in modern times, of an abstract thinker of the purely speculative school. It is curious to trace the connexion between the secluded and seem- ingly ineffective study of what Bacon calls the iikilo- sojjliia prima, in the form in which it api)ears in this school, and the great external and social changes in the world. The " Advancement of the Sciences" is obviously connected wdth the astronomy of Newton and Herschel. The " Wealth of Nations" is an acknowledged cause of many recent alterations in modern society. The " Essay on Human Understanding" has plainly influenced the subsequent current of British thought. Not less surely, though less obviously, has the more purely speculative philosophy of that school, in which Leibnitz is one of the most illustrious names, been connected, for good and evil, with important modifications of those minds by which public opinion must be formed. The intimate relation between the labours of men of this class, and that meditative style of Christianity which is displayed in the writings of some of the great names in the Christian Church, is also manifest. The influence of Idealism and the higher Metaphysics as operative forces in society, be- comes more apparent when we observe how efficacious their spirit has been to neutrrdize a vulgar sensationalism. The study of the systems of Philosophy in all their variety, and of the lives and labours of various philo- sophers, is to be encouraged for many reasons. It sup- 10 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. plies curious and useful thoughts, which might never otherwise have been suggested, and it also stimulates reflection in the student. The history of the erratic course which the human spirit has taken in the expe- rience even of profound thinkers, is besides fitted to moderate dogmatism. The men of mightiest genius are found often to have fallen into the most signal errors. It is morally useful to train the mind in the habit of calmly apprehending and appreciating new doctrines, however opposed to what one has previously been accus- tomed to entertain. " Man," says Pascal, "is made for thinking. To think as we ought is the sum of human duty." Habits of abstract meditation have, moreover, a use additional to their absolute value to the individual speculator ; they accustom men to a kind of exercise which must always be closely connected with the great progress epochs of history ; and by the lucid and com- prehensive views which they foster, as well as by the invigorating effect of the act of self-inspection, they be- come a potent force among those at work in society. Some knowledge of the personal history of Leibnitz is likely, besides its intrinsic use and interest, to be a valuable help to the reader who desires to understand and appreciate his writings. It is satisfactory to find that most of the materials collected by former biogra- phers, eulogists, and commentators, along with some new information, have lately been condensed into a useful biography by Dr. Gruhrauer, who has already laboriously edited several of the works of Leibnitz, and contributed LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 1 I to the revival of an interest in the philosopher. His monograph is well fitted to bring the reader into inter- course with the great Grerraan, and with those numerous contemporaries with whom he maintained a " literary commerce" during the grand period in which he lived. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born in Lcipsic on the 21st of June 1646. He was descended of an ancient family, that had gained distinction in civil and ecclesias- tical affairs. His grand-uncle, Paul Leibnitz, attracted notice in the wars in Hungary, and was highly honoured by the Emperor Rodolph II. We must not omit a special allusion to the eventful epoch of the philosopher's birth. Just a hundred years before, Luther had rested from his earthly labours, during the excitement of the most memorable religious and social change which the world has witnessed since the introduction of Christianity. But soon after the Reformer's death, Christian doctrine, owing in a great measure to the want of Christian organization in the Church, became, especially in Germany, gradually separated more and more from the hearts of nominally Christian men. The coldness of mathematical demon- stration represented Christianity in the pulpits and halls of the country of the Reformation, where, in the seven- teenth century, the icy orthodoxy of Calixtus took the place of the fervid sermons of Luther. The period of the Protestant Reformation was a time of much general excitement and progress in society, as well as the era of a great revolution in the Church. The 12 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. modern reformation of Philosophy was, however, formally inaugurated at a later period. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the recovery and revived use of the remains of antiquity supplied, for the most part, sufficient materials for literary activity. The controversy between the Aristotelians and the Kamists in the sixteentli cen- tury had, moreover, diverted men's minds from the production of a Philosophy altogether modern and re- formed. The birth of Leibnitz was just subsequent to the time when, the strength of the evangelical movement having unhappily abated in most countries, a movement towards a reform of Philosophy had succeeded. The mind is not likely at any time to be strongly stirred in a science like Theology, without being directed to " the science of sciences." A New Philosophy was making its appearance in England and France. Bacon's " Ad- vancement of the Sciences" appeared in 1605, and the "Method" of Des Cartes in 1G37. In each country thought and research had assumed a fundamentally different form. In England, the practical character of the people well agreed with the lessons of compre- hensive sagacity that were given forth in the works of Bacon ; and these naturally led to the solid and cautious, yet withal little imaginative form, which metaphysical science assumed afterwards in the works of Locke ; and through Locke, generally, in British philosophy. In France, on the other hand, the philosophical writings of Des Cartes had awakened that style of speculation which cannot be wholly dormant while the spirit of Plato and St. Augustin attracts sympathy in the world, and which LIFE AND PHILOSOPUY OF LEIBNITZ. ]3 in France, subsequently to Des Cartes, was adorned and elevated by some of the noblest and worthiest spirits of modern times. Besides the lives of Malebranche and Fenelon, those of Pascal, and Arnauld, and Nicole, and the other recluses of Port-Royal, give to the Cartesian a more sacred interest than can be attached to any other modern school of Philosophy. Although this peculiar feature of its history is marred by that mystic quietism which the monastic genius of the Catholic Church tends to foster, it is encouraging to find even this imperfect illustration of the manner in which Christianity may be allied to general speculation. But Germany was thenceforward to be the European focus of Idealism, and of abstract thinking of eveiy kind. In that country, previously to the rise of the Leibnitzian philosophy, there had been no manifestation of the new spirit of reform. The labours of Leibnitz virtually mark the commencement of the extraorthnary course which metaphysic has since run in the native country of that celebrated thinker. Since then, the principle which at first separated the schools of Locke and Leibnitz has modified the currents of thought in Britain and Germany, and is thus connected with many of those characteristics by which the British is signally distinguished from the Continental mind. Since then, too, Germany has been the centre of European speculation, and has exhibited some of the most extraordinary phenomena in the his- tory of human thought. There, amid the successive revolutions of more than a hundred years, every abstract question has been debated that the mind of man can 14 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. entertain ; and there has been added to preceding ones, perhaps the most remarkable and instructive of all the records of the clouded wanderings of human reason. The discussions raised by Leibnitz have given birth to the philosophical systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and so to the now enormously accumulated ma- terials of the Teutonic metaphysics. The father of Leibnitz was Professor of Morals in the ancient University of Leipsic. He died during the child- hood of his son. By his pious mother, the thoughts of the young Gottfried Wilhelm were much directed to re- ligion ; and this guidance no doubt gave to his subse- quent speculations much of that theological cast by which they are distinguished. Both his parents were Lutherans. The first twenty years of his life were spent chiefly in Leipsic* In the Nicolai School of that city, and also in the University, which he entered in 1661, he gave early evidence of his peculiar type of genius. His powers of mind were directed, in turn, to almost every ob- ject of knowledge. He eagerly studied history and the classics, in which his reading extended far out of the beaten track in which the ill-judged exertions of his nar- row-minded teachers would fain have restrained him. It was, however, when he was introduced to Logic and Philo- sophy, that the strength of his genius, and the special direction of his mind, were fully shown. He read Aris- * An interesting account of the remarkable self-educating process which the mind of Leibnitz underwent during these years, neai'ly related as that is to the subsequent development of his philosophy, is given by himself in the " Pacid'd Introductio Historical See Erdmann's Edition, p. 91, and see also p. 162. LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ, 15 totle, Plato, and Plotiniis, and revelled in the subtleties of the scholastic metaphysics — that stimulant of the human intellect for so many hundred years. In his father's richly- stored library, he read, almost during the years of child- hood, Scotus, and Fonseca, and Kubius, and Suarez, and Zabarella, and other schoolmen, with special delight. To the literature of theology he was no stranger, even at this early period. His thoughts were directed to the deep controversies about election and grace, by the works of St. Augustin and Luther, the reformed theology, and the writings of Antony Arnauld. The amount of learn- ing accumulated by this precocious student before he entered the University appears to have been prodigious. Soon after his entrance on academical life, Des Cartes fell into his hands. His tendency towards eclecticism, afterwards more fully displayed, was even then shown in endeavours to harmonize Plato and Aristotle, Des Cartes and the schoolmen. The scholastic logic and philosophy was then dominant in Leipsic, as it was in most of the other universities of Germany. The formal spirit, as well as the mechanical style of instruction then generally pre- valent in Germany, harmonized ill with the fire of specu- lation that was already kindled in the bosom of the youth- ful Leibnitz. A thousand chimeras of speculation floated through his brain. He started a thousand difficulties with his teachers and associates. Even Bacon, and Des Cartes, and the later Philosophy, served to awaken rather than to convince him. His mind was too independent to be moulded by others. His intellect revolted from the authority of his masters. In solitude, he cherished the 16 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. most ardent views of the advancement of knowledge and the progress of man. The whole history of the early years of Leibnitz forms a precious record of what we might call speculative expe- rience. It reveals the self-educating genius of the really original mind, and shows a singular development of ab- stract thought at an age when the attention is usually engrossed with the objects of sense.''* In his recorded experience, at tl.e age of sixteen, are to be found the dim forms of those problems which agitated his thoughts during the most active years of his life. For days to- gether, as he tells us, he was wont to pursue his walks alone in the woods of Rosenthal, near Leipsic, revolving in his soul the first principles of that mysterious life, to a consciousness of which he had become awake. Before he had studied mathematics, physics, or morals, he was led to the conception of the higher Philosophy. He felt, what can be felt only by the true metaphysician, — the need for a scheme of eternal first principles on which all knowledge must depend. This was the theme of his earliest writings. His speculations on a universal lan- guage, grounded on what he calls the alphabet of thought, and his treatise De principio individui, published when under twenty, display the metaphysician capable of going * It -would be interesting to collect illustrations of such experience out of the biographies of thinking men. A solemn moral regard is due to the cases of those especially (as Pascal) in whom a personal religious senti- ment is found to mingle with the operations of a mind engaged in the pro- cesses of reflection, and which finds in the consciousness of sin and guilt a new clement of difficulty and distress. Such instances suggest the whole subject of the Jdfjher religious experience, of which the phenomena are e.Ktreraely important to the student of Scripture, and of the human spirit. LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 17 back to first principles, and of following consequences intrepidly to their issues. In these labours of this early period, we have a fair specimen of the whole intellec- tual life of Leibnitz. They arc, moreover, eminently characteristic of the National Philosophy which he ori- ginated. Owing to a difference with the University authorities, Leibnitz left Leipsic, and his native country of k?axony, and in 16G6 went to the University of Altdorf. There he received his degree in law the same year. He thus belongs to that class of distinguished philosophers who have been bred to the legal profession. The philosophy of law naturally attracted his thoughts. At the age of twenty-one, he published a tract on j urisprudence, which forms an epoch in that science. " There was only one man in the world," says Hallam, " who could have left so noble a science as philosophical jurisprudence for pur- suits of a still more exalted nature, and for which he was still more gifted ; and that man was Leibnitz. He passed onwards to reap the golden harvests of other fields." After leaving the University, he led a somewhat de- sultory life for several years. During the interval be- tween 1666 and 1676, he visited several of the German universities, which must have served to confirm his academical tendencies. A professorial chair was soon within his reach, but was declined by one whose projects of Reform in Philosophy were too comprehensive to be confined within the narrow limits of a University. In 1667 he removed to Frankfort, where he became Secre- B 18 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. tary to the Baron von Boineburg, and was patronized and employed by the Elector of Mentz. During his re- sidence in the Electorate, he was much engaged in public, legal, and diplomatic labours, as well as in liter- ary pursuits. Yet his mind was all the time pervaded by the great idea of his life. He found time to edit the Antibarbarus of the Italian Nizolius, and, besides, was active in theological controversy. The Baron, who was born in the Lutheran Church, had joined the communion of Rome, and was much interested in a scheme for the union of the Eomish and Lutheran Churches. This eclectic movement was not forgotten by Leibnitz at a later period in his life. His speculations about this time are marked by the vagueness naturally characteristic of one who had cast off the authority of others, and had not resolved a system for himself It was the transition-period in his life, during which his recorded thoughts teem with the germs of those ideas that are found in a matured form, and in profuse variety, in the Nouveaux Essais and the TJiSodicee. These years are still more marked as the period of the commencement of that literary intercourse which afterwards accumulated so enormously, and in which Leibnitz always appears in the centre of the thinking spirits of his age. It commenced, and was maintain- ed, among others, with kindred minds in the Cartesian school — with Malebranche, the recluse author of the Recherche de la Verite, of whom we have the interesting records that his genius lay dormant, till it was kindled LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ, 19 by contact with the speculations of Des Cartes, and that his controversy about Idealism with Berkeley, on the only occasion they ever met, so roused the ardour of the then aged philosopher, that his death is recorded a few days afterwards — and with Arnauld, the pious, contem- plative Jansenist of Port-Royal, the theological and phi- losophical antagonist of Malebranchc. Leibnitz visited Arnauld at Paris in 1G72, and remained in that brilliant metropolis during the greater part of the few following years. In 1G73, he went for a short time to London, and came in contact with many of the English savans — amons: others, with Collins and Sir Isaac Newton.* Shortly before his death, for the first and last time, Spinoza, — that type of the demonstrative metaphysician, received a visit at the Hague from the now rising Saxon philosopher. From the wonderful logical concatena- tion of the system of Spinoza, his mind must have re- ceived a powerful impression. From about 1674, his intercourse with Hobbes may be dated. The sceptical Bayle seems to have been the useful instrument of the more full development of his ideas — an indirect benefit which the cause of truth has often received from the labours of scepticism,! The year 1676 is an era in the life of Leibnitz. Death had taken away his patrons the Elector of Mentz * If it were consistent with our design to refer to the mathematical contributions of our philosopher, we should find him holding the first rank in these pursuits, and " sharing with Sir Isaac Newton himself the glory of his immortal discoveries." f Leibnitz numbered among his confidential correspondents a Scotch- man — Burnet of Kemnay. See Dutens' Edition, vol. vi. 20 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. and Von Boinebnrg. He was himself in Paris. But his reputation in Germany was now of the highest. He accepted an offer, tendered for the third time, to reside at the brilliant literary court of Hanover. Thus commenced a connexion which lasted during the remain- ing forty years of his life, and in which he held a suc- cession of legal and literary offices, under the Duke John Frederic and his successors, the Electors Ernest Augustus, and George Louis, — the latter of whom be- came George I. of England two years before the death of Leibnitz. The additional means enjoyed by him at Hanover for gratifying the peculiarities of his genius, were used with his characteristic ardour. The va- riety of his aims during these forty years is marvellous. The development of his speculative genius continued to advance, and his thoughts, stirred from their lowest depths by the cycle of the sciences during that whole period, would present an exceedingly curious spectacle, if we could have these changes in the current of the soul represented to the senses. History, languages, geology, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, politics, and theology, in turn secured his attention, and his busy spirit col- lected the various learning of each department. His almost superhuman versatility of mind secured for Leib- nitz the highest distinction in most of the sciences which come within the range of human thought. In history he laboured for years on the antiquities of the house of Brunswick, and the early annals of Germany. An ex- perience of the extreme difficulty of historical researches suggested to him what may be styled the comparative LIFE AND PHILOSOrHY OF LEIBNITZ. 21 anatomy of languages as an instrument for facilitating his efforts to travel backwards into the past. To tlie study of languages he accordingly api)licd himself with incredible zeal. He laid ambassadors and Jesuit mis- sionaries under contribution for philological facts. In prosecuting this one department of investigation, he maintained a vast correspondence. Facts gathered from China and the Eastern tongues served to animate his exertions, and added new materials for speculation. Not content with the records and memorials of the past, contained in the words and works of man, he interro- gated the globe itself. In his speculations on the phy- sical vestiges of its early history, we find curious anticipations of recent geological hypotheses. These may be seen in a small tract entitled Protogea:^ Leibnitz was able, in an unusual degree, to combine the external and the contemplative life. A great part of his time was busied with the conduct of civil and ecclesiastical negotiations. His correspondence regard- ing the unity of the Church, with the Landgrave of Hesse-Eheinfels, with Arnauld, with Spinola, and with Bossuet, which occupied more or less of his time during twenty years, deserves some distinct notice. The re- union of the Protestants with the Church of Kome was then placed by Leibnitz in the first rank of those questions on a settlement of which his heart was set. By his philosophic mind this adjustment was felt to be nearly related to his previously ascertained spe- culative doctrine of the theocracy, and a universal hier- ^ See Dutens' Edition, vol. v. 22 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. archy. His veneration for the Komish theory of a living infallible authority, supplementary to, and expository of, the written word of Scripture, was indeed coupled with a protest against the existing corruptions of the Church, and an expression of his fear that a formal ad- herence to Kome on his own part might, from the practical intolerance of the Eomish theologians, cramp the freedom of his philosophical speculations. Though he thus firmly resisted all solicitations to join the out- ward communion of Kome, yet his heart, and per- haps his conviction, was accorded to the system of the hierarchy. His love for scholastic learning may have biassed his inclinations in this direction, and his comprehensive genius, like that of many other kindred spirits, found gratification in the vast unity and com- pleteness of the ideal Catholic Church, with its ritual, and its organization, apparently so suited for all the various characters and circumstances of those whom it desires to embrace within its ample fold, and all bear- ing so much the semblance of a fitting picture of that still vaster organization wherein he loved to contemplate the whole universe reclaimed into the harmony of the government of the All-holy and the All-wise. Yet this part of the life of Leibnitz is not one that can be studied with unmixed satisfaction. The source of those oscillations of opinion which are sometimes the consequence, in honest and devout minds, of a many-sided view of an extremely comprehensive subject, seems hardly sufficient to account for the inconsistencies of Leibnitz in his negotiations with the representatives of the Church of Rome. LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 23 During the later years of his life he was much engaged with another project of ecclesiastical union. A scheme was promoted by him about the year 1697, (under the auspices of the Courts of Hanover and Berlin,) for a general union of the Protestants against Kome, and especially of the two great sections of Protestantism, — the Lutheran and the Keformed. It was quite suited to the eclectic genius of the philosopher, and was long pressed by him on the attention of Europe. He laboured to de- stroy what he called the " idle phantoms" by which the Protestant Churches were separated. But the defects which marked his other scheme of universal Christian communion, marred this project of Protestant union. Both were essentially political and philosophical. They fail to recognise Keligion and the Church as independent powers, whose liberties are essential for the accomplish- ment of the ends of the Christian society. Even this philosopher seems not to have felt, that when religion becomes the slave of merely human authority, it ceases to be either the great instrument of civilisation, or the means of preparing men for full union in the City of God. The pious Spener, who had personally experienced its supernatural force, predicted the ill issue of the Confer- ence for Union held in Hanover in 1698, at which Leib- nitz, Jablonski, and Molanus were present. The result justified his sagacity. A scheme for ecclesiastical union or co-operation, in order to be successful, should be able to assume the spirit of hearty and supreme devotion to religion on the part of those who are to be united. The progress of the great spiritual commonwealth, and not 24 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. the political arrangements of nations, must be its ruling principle.''' The general doctrine of toleration, and the laws which regulate the attainment of truth, were frequently the subjects of incidental speculation on the part of Leib- nitz, connected as they are with ecclesiastical unity, and, indeed, with the discussion of whatever relates to the social or individual good estate of man. His dispo- sition was naturally tolerant. In his works we have repeated glimpses of those doctrines which have now become much more widely diffused through society, and which were so admirably enforced by his great contem- porary Locke, He appreciates with cordiality the value of the prevalence of mild sentiments, and an unsectarian spirit, as means for the discovery and diffusion of truth — habits of mind, which, we are glad to believe, are becoming now of more generally recognised moral obli- gation. Even the speculative discussion of this class of sub- jects has not yet been exhausted. There is room for an investigation into those general relations among men * It appears that an attempt was maile early in the eighteenth century, and supported hy Leibnitz, to introduce the constitution and liturgy of the English Church into Hanover and Prussia. A correspondence was opened with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and afterwards with the Archbishop of York. The English liturgy was translated into German in 1704. How strangely do the events of history reappear! The attempt to approximate the organization of the Churches of England and Prussia was unsuccessfully revived very recently, and in 1817, the fondly-cherished scheme of Leibnitz, having for its end the union of the Lutheran and the Reformed, was actually accomplished under the auspices of the late King of Prussia. LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 25 considered as members of society, in regard to indi- vidual belief or opinion, wliich tlie moral law demands, and which reason and experience approve, as best fitted to secure the most extensive diffusion of truth ; and in subordination to which all special social organization, civil and ecclesiastical, ought to be regulated. The full solution of this great problem is still among those left to exercise the minds of the men of this or of some future age. Throughout the forty years of his connexion with the Court of Hanover, Leibnitz maintained his literary in- tercourse with unabated energy. lu this period he set- tled and extended the foundations of the literary republic of Europe. In 1687, he travelled up the Ehine, ran- sacked the libraries and archives of Bavaria, Bohemia, and Vienna, and promoted his acquaintance with learned men. In 1689, he went to Italy, and gained free access to the Vatican and Barberini libraries. His intercourse with the Jesuits and other religious Orders, was all turned to the account of adding to his stores of learn- ing. After visiting Rome, he travelled through Italy, and returned to Hanover in 1690, only to resume his labours in the Eoyal library, of which he had been ap- pointed keeper. In 1700, he was the means of founding the famous Berlin Academy of Sciences, meant by him to be a centre of German literary and scientific inter- course and effort. He was unfortunately unsuccessful in his endeavour to establish at Vienna another institute of the same kind, and on a still more comprehensive plan. He was much interested in the civilisation of tlie rising 26 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. Russian empire, and had personal conferences on the subject with Peter the Great. He busied himself with the progress of education and missionary exertion in Russia, and also in the Grerman States, where he was anxious that the schools and colleges should be semi- naries of Protestant missions. Amid all his diversified projects, and stupendous liter- ary activity, the metaphysical tendency ever preserved the ascendency in the genius of Leibnitz. His philo- sophical principles w'ere gradually matured soon after his settlement in Hanover. The doctrine of Monads was de- veloped in a succession of publications subsequent to 1680. Some of his most valuable contributions to Philosophj'' are due to the publication of the celebrated " Essay on Human Understanding," which appeared in 1690, and at once attracted his attention. There could be little mutual sympathy between two i^hilosophers so completely anta- gonist as the author of the " Essay" and himself. Locke despised what he called the " chimeras" of Leibnitz. The Teutonic philosopher accorded to his English contempo- rary the praise of perspicuity, but proclaimed his utter ignorance of the " demonstrative metaphysics." In 1703, Leibnitz being disengaged, undertook a formal reply to Locke, which he completed in the following year. The death of Locke caused an indefinite postponement of the publication of this work, which did not appear till long after the death of the author. In 1765, it was given to the world by the industrious Raspe. This work, pub- lished under the title ofNouveaux Essais sur VEntende- ment Humain" is his philosophical masterpiece, and LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 27 contains the substance of all that has been advanced by him on behalf of his speculative system, against the school of Locke. The manner of publication adopted by Leibnitz was, for the most part, fragmentary. His " Systhme de VHarmonie PreStahlie" is developed in various small treatises. There is, however, one great work, which is more popular and practical in its style, and therefore more generally known than almost any of his other writings, the preparation of which occupied much ptirt of many years in his life. We refer to the Thcodic6e — a book which holds a front rank in the very small class of works specially conversant with the philosophy of re- ligion. The design of the TModic(^e is to reconcile the existence and continuance of evil in the universe with the character of G-od — to remove the difficulty that has been raised in all ages, and in all religions, and that may be reckoned the fundamental metaphysical problem of the Christian philosophy. It has already been indicated that the thoughts of Leibnitz were directed to these sub- jects from the time of his decided intellectual develop- ment. In 1671 he wrote a tract on Free Will and Predestination. The negotiations about Church union perhaps led him to take a greater interest in these specu- lations, in as far as the circulation of doctrines iitted to harmonize with the dark phenomena of the moral world the biblical view of the character of God, might facili- tate the peace of the Church. The avowed purpose of the Tli^odic^e is to refute the sceptical principle of Bayle, who denied the consistency of faith and reason, 28 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. and thus laid a foundation for universal doubt. The public appearance of the book in 1710, produced a pro- found sensation. It was received with applause by most of the continental universities, but the prevalence of Locke's Philosophy in England disposed the public mind in this country to receive it with distaste. The current of speculation, in the mind of Leibnitz, continued to flow during the later years of the philo- sopher's life. In 1714, he drew up a scheme of his Philosophy for the use of Prince Eugene of Savoy, {La mo7iadolo(jie.) This period of his life was also signalized by his correspondence with Des Bosses. The close of 1715 is memorable as the commencement of a still more interesting correspondence. In a letter to the Princess of Wales, he assailed the philosophi- cal and religious principles of the school of Locke and Newton. This called forth Samuel Clarke in their defence. The replies of Leibnitz, and the rejoin- ders of Clarke contain as large an amount of curious speculation as any work of modern times. The manner of God's relation to the universe — the nature of miracles — the laws of the divine and human will — the ideas of space and time — and the character and limits of the material world, are among the stores of this magazine of speculative discussion. The controversy was con- tinued with increasing zeal on both sides. Inferior in power of generalization and originality to his anta- gonist, the intellect of Clarke was possessed of an acuteness and logical force which rendered him one of the most skilful of philosophical disputants, and de- LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 29 manded a full display of the comprehensiveness and grandeur of mind of his German rival.* But that mighty spirit was now to close his connexion with this mysterious scene of existence. Leibnitz had suffered from occasional illness during several preceding years. These attacks, however, passed away, and the philosopher resumed his speculations with renewed energy. In November 1716, when he had to prepare his reply to Clarke's fifth letter, his illness returned with great violence. We have no distinct record in- dicating that the moral sensibilities of the Philosopher were rightly alive to the decisive nature of the awi'ul change. His seventy years are ended, and the lightning seems lost among dark clouds. During the last day of his life, we are told he was busied in conversation with his piiysician on the nature of his disease, and on the doctrines of alchymy. Towards evening his servant asked him if he would receive the Eucharist. " Let me alone," said he ; " I have done ill to no one, I have nothing to confess. All must die." He raised himself on the bed and tried to write. The darkness of death was gathering around him. He found himself unable to read what he had written. He tore the paper, and lying down, covered his face with his hands. A few minutes after nine o'clock on the evening of the 14tli *■ An English version of this CoiTCsponilonce was publislied hy Chiike in 1717. By the way, some of the most cm-ious pieces in modern meta- physical literature have made their appearance in the form of controversial " Correspondence." We need hardly refer, as examples, to the " letters " between Clarke and Butler, between Des Cartes and his critics, or between Mendelssohn and Jacobi. 30 ESSAYS IN nilLOSOPIIY. November 171G, Leilmitz ceased to breatlie. It is affect- ing to the imagination to contemplate a liuman spirit, whose course of thought throughout life was unsurpassed for power of speculation, and daring range of mind among the higher objects of knowledge, and who, at the very period of its departure, was in the depths of a controversy about the mysteries of the supersensible world, — thus summoned into that world, to become con- versant in his final relations with the Being who had intrusted him with mental power, and whose nature and attributes had so often tasked his speculative energies. The effect, upon many minds, of the record of the life of this Philosopher, may be, perhaps, akin to a confused amazement at tlie spectacle of continued mental exercises so unparalleled in kind and variety. Yet a vague im- pression of this sort ought not to be the predominant one. A grand unity pervades the seeming confusion in which this man's life seems enveloped. A reigning idea which diffuses a community of principle through the whole cycle of his works, we have traced back in the earliest operations of his reflecting powers. Conversant through his life with those mysteries in proof of which no reason can be given, and with real or seeming demon- strations founded on these " first principles," we find in Leibnitz the type or model of the speculative metaphy- sician. The present seems a fit occasion for bestowing the notice of a short discussion on this suggested sub- ject, which is connected with an important contribution made by Leibnitz to philosophy. The consideration of LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBXITZ. 31 it may, besides, make us advantageously familiar with some of the properties of that atmosphere in which has been gathered the cloud that has darkened subsequent German speculations, and rendered metaphysical science, in one aspect of it, retrograde in that country. Des Cartes, the reviver and reformer of Speculative Philosophy in modern times, commenced his philosophi- cal career with the practice of universal doubt, as the means of reaching the elements of knowledge. Thus set loose in the microcosm of thought, he found the con- sciousness of self-existence inseparable from the act of thinking. " Cogito, ergo sura" was accordingly his first principle. Involved in the rudiments of self-consciousness, he found the idea of an all-perfect Being, whose attributes require the certainty of all that is clearly and distmctly recognised by us. With the help of these assump- tions, he thought himself prepared to defend knowledge against the assaults of scepticism. But the supposed foundation was too narrow. The tests proposed for its extension were too vague. The effects soon became ap- parent. The disciples and admirers of Des Cartes main- tained doctrines the most vaiious. Malebranche could not, without the infallible Church, retain an external world. The Egoists, whose existence as a sect is, how- ever, somewhat problematical, having declared their inability to rise beyond the first axiom of their master, rested there amid the fluctuations of a merely subjective universe. Spinoza, unable to defend, by reasoning, our faith in finite substances, absorbed mind and matter in one all-pervading Existence. Des Cartes had, in truth, 32 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. proposed to the thinking world an insohible problem, when he sought to reach the extreme theory of know- ledge, self-consciousness alone being given. Leibnitz saw the insufficiency of the Cartesian prin- ciple. He longed to solve the hitherto unsolved diffi- culty of a First Philosophy. Des Cartes, by directing him to the mind itself, through which we reflect, had, for the first time, clearly shown the quarter in which those results of which he was in quest are to be found. The maxim of the school of Locke was " niliil est in in- tellectu nisi quod pt'ius in sensu." The famous addition, "nisi intellectus ipse" expresses the distinctive pecu- liarity of Leibnitz. But how is the " intellectus ipse" to be distinguished from the ^^ quod prius in sensu ?" The discovery of a testfor marking this distinction, is an impor- tant addition made by him to the common stock of philo- sophical principle. He has expressed its nature, among other places, in a letter to Bieling, in which, speaking of Locke, he asserts that he has " no idea of the demonstra- tive metaphysics. Could he have made the distinction between necessary truth, which we obtain by intuition, and those other truths which we reach by experience, he would have found that the senses teach us only what takes place, not what must take place." All those ideas which we are compelled to think, accordingly, belong to the very structure of the soul itself, and are to be in- cluded as articles of our original Faith.* The critical * Faith tas two meanings — a metaphysical and a theological. In the formei' of these sciences, it signifies the belief of principles which, in themselves, are incognizable or irreconcilable by the understanding, and LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 33 philosophy of Kant is an attempt, by the application of this principle, to collect the several truths with which the soul is at first furnished, and to view them in their relation to the added facts of experience. Philosophy has ever been a struggle between the spirit of doubt and the spirit of dogmatism — of which the one declines to admit as true any conclusion that is not the result of logical deduction, and the other assumes, in whole or in part, the principles which the sceptic assails. Men in all ages have been oscillating between these ex- tremes. The many, in whom the love of order and sim- plicity naturally predominates, and who are likely to be aiming at a philosophy in which every assumption and conclusion is capable of being conceived and explained by the understanding, may find, in the singularly acute " Treatise" of Hume, the results of such shallow meta- physics. A more profound view of what is revealed to reflection, finds an infinity of things which the under- standing cannot solve, and which, while not contrary to sense, are yet above sense. A love for the mystic ob- scurity in which this principle involves the higher truths of knowledge, may confine an enthusiastic thinker ex- clusively within that region of abstraction, and conduct him altogether away from sense and experience, till, lost yet unquestionable. In tliis sense, Faitli is the organ of the higher meta- plij'sics. In its theological acceptation, Faith is the hearty belief, on God's authority, of what God has revealed in His Word. Thus under- stood, the word expresses the organ of tlie higher theology. Throughout this Essay, we use it, unless it is expressly qualified, in its philosophical meaning. The mutual relation of these two kinds of Faith, is the object of the philosophy of religion — that much-trodden but, as yet, ill-cultivated field. C H ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. in the supersensible forms of thought, he resolves the actual into the ideal ; and thence, in a different direc- tion, reaches practically the very scepticism from which his previous course was a seeming divergence. Faith is, on the one side, lost in the dark abyss of doubt : on the other, it evaporates in the sunny haze of the empyrean of transcendentalism. In either case, a pretended philo- sophy, instead of guiding the perplexed labourers who are pressing on with their work below, only adds to the fogs which already darken their atmosphere. It is, notwithstanding, evident that the perfect philo- sophy must recognise and include a body of first prin- ciples, resting on faith, by which all knowledge of things divine and human must be regulated. As, in the mate- rial world, the lever needs a fulcrum before it can work, so, in the world of thought, these mysteries are the indis- pensable fulcrum of intellectual exertion. To obtain a refuge from doubt, and a sure and rational foundation on which knowledge and action may be based, must always be the aim of the higher philosophy. The ten- dency of men of earnestness and reflection in this direc- tion, depends on the maxim involved in the very act of reflecting; for the root of reflex thinking is the consciousness wliich we feel, that in rigorous search for truth or decisive controversy, we are called to labour for the attainment of an ultimate principle which shall either itself explain that about which we speculate, or else supply a self-evident reason that to us it is inexplicable. Keason would be interminable, if it did not find its ultimate limit in truths which it cannot LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 35 prove. Every principle must be either resolvable by the understanding, or must rest on faith ; and as every con- ceivable question may be thus carried down to faith, all knowledge runs into mystery. An adjustment of the fact of this realm of mystery, from which no effort can discon- nect us, has ever been the profound difficulty with men of contemplative minds, and one which the labours of think- ing men of all ages have advanced only a very few steps towards a solution. Its mal-adjustment in the philo- sophical system has already wrought havoc with the highest and most solemn interests of men. Along the borders of this shaded land, have arisen the miasmata of the schools of Elis and Alexandria, of Spinoza and the new German philosophy, and of eastern mysticism. Hitherto, Scottish thinkers, with a very few exceptions, have tried practically to substitute an analysis of mental phenomena, in place of the real difficulties of metaphysi- cal speculation. But abstract reflection, if legitimately pursued, must in the end place us in contact with these difficulties. If in some minds the floodgates of universal doubt are thus opened, this is a discipline we cannot avoid. Mysteries are needed as means to the attainment of knowledge. They are, moreover, sug- gested to the soul by all its most prominent objects of thought — by the starry heavens — by the infinite space in which we and they are included — by the awful eter- nity through which we are passing — by the conscious- ness of our own existence — by the revelation of Him " in whom we live and move and have our being" — by the sublime realities of a moral law, and a responsible be- 36; ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. cause personal agency — and by the dark shades of guilt in which a portion, at least, of that created personal agency is involved. Of mysteries like these we cannot rid ourselves. They rise in a thousand forms, and in them all knowledge merges. The question here reverts to deep- thinking minds. How are we to deal with them, and what place is to be assigned to them .? We may still " report deficient" the Philosophia Prima of Bacon ; but with the instructive lesson of the extravagancies of Continen- tal speculation before our eyes, and the sober Christian discipline of the Scottish mind for an additional sedative, we may yet become better prepared for the calm discus- sion and settlement (as far as man can settle them) of these lofty questions, and for an encounter with the hydra of a perverted speculation, which already shews signs of being within our borders, in the distorted theo- logy of would-be metaphysical theologians, and in the atheism and socialism of our corrupted masses. We fear we may not have succeeded in rendering very intelligible, and far less in rendering attractive, the na- ture and scope of the most comprehensive question in philosojihy. After any attempted statement of it, the consequent experience of the insufficiency of the words of ordinary language for these refined purposes, must invest with interest the splendid project by Leibnitz himself of a universal language, of which the alphabet should indicate the few original ideas with which all the rest of our knowledge is connected ; while overlooking, perhaps, the wide difference of the matter of metaphy- sical and mathematical science, he held that out of LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 37 these simple characters formulas might be constructed, expressive of the various relations between thoughts, and that through them inferences might be deduced, with the same freedom from error, as by the processes of geometry and algebra. But we must leave for the mind of the reflecting reader the entire subject, so imperfectly touched upon in the preceding paragraphs, and return to the books before us. The philosophical works of Leibnitz are, in bulk, only a small part of the literary productions of a life devoted to almost the whole sphere of possible knowledge.'^' Pro- fessor Erdmann has rendered good service to the thinking world by his edition (the most valuable of those re- ferred to at the commencement of this Essay) of this class of the writings of the father of German speculation. While Leibnitz could on no subject write un philosophi- cally, yet there are sections of his works which may be extracted and combined for publication as more exclu- sively and profoundly philosophical, indicating not ripples, extended widely, perhaps, over the surface of thought, but the ocean-swell of an agitation that is far below. This department of his writings is scattered, without much attention to order, through the voluminous publi- cation of Dutens, and is partly contained in the rare edition of his posthumous philosophical works by Kaspe. Accordingly, while the life of Leibnitz is an epoch in the * This maybe seen by an inspection of the most comprehensive edition of his works, by Dutens (Geneva, 1768, 6 vols. 4to.) We observe that a new edition of the entire works of Leibnitz is just now in course of prepa- ration at Hanover. 3$ ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. history of speculation, his speculative writings have been seldom and superficially studied. Besides the materials collected in former editions, Professor Erdmann has enriched his republication with no fewer than twenty- three original documents of Leibnitz, not before pub- lished, and which this able and industrious editor has recovered, during an active search in 1836, among the accumulation of manuscripts in the Royal Library of Hanover. Most of these added works relate to that theme, on the subject of which we have already alluded to as the central one of the intellectual life of Leibnitz. It increases the convenience of this edition, that the several works which it includes, 101 in number, have been arranged, as nearly as possible, in the order in which they were written. In this extensive collection, we are glad to recognise the Nouveaux Essais and the Theodic^e. It is not easy to give even a brief exposition of the very miscellaneous contents of these woiks. The system and manner of thinking of Leibnitz, is to be gathered from his philosophical works studied collectively, rather than from any separate publication. These collected writings bear throughout one very marked characteristic of inventive genius ; for they are crowded with richly suggestive germs of thought, cast forth often in disorder, as it were with intent to exercise the generalizing powers of others. From out of this stimulating variety, there may, however, be extracted two or three more prominent ideas, united, as far as possible, by demonstration, with his assumed first principles ; for the main purpose of LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 39 this metaphysician was to give to philosophy a mathe- matical strictness and certainty, and to reconcile its doctrines with those of theology. The universe is con- templated by him in the threefold relation of — 1. Its elements; 2. Their manner of connexion; and, 3. The end of their combination. The doctrine of ele- ments, he calls monadologie. The mutual relations of these elements, he held to be developed in a pre- established harmony. The final end of creation, he re- presented as an optimism. Let us accompany him at a distance, as he is constructing this system of d priori universal philosophy, in order to have before us a speci- men of a class of systems, foreign, indeed, to Britain, but which may be compared with the doctrines of the Eleatics, the Alexandrians, or Spinoza, ia respect of its boldness and comprehension. Through experience, Leibnitz finds himself surrounded, by compound or material bodies of amazing variety. This implies the existence of elements, of which these compounds are the results, and the nature of these ele- ments is to be ascertained according to the laws of thought. An application of the principle of the Suffi- cient Reason, demonstrates that matter can consist neither of parts which are infinitely divisible, nor of atoms possessed of figure and extension. Its elements must, therefore, be simple, unextended forces, or Monads, in which we obtain the a priori idea of substance. The individuality of these monads must consist in the diff'er- ent series of internal changes through which each one passes in the course of its existence. In these series, 40 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY, each successive change is termed a Perception, and every monad is a living mirror, giving forth, after its own fashion, a picture of the universe, which is thus one vast collection of spiritual forces. These necessary elements of all concrete existence cannot all be reduced to one class or order, for they are distinguished by different degrees of perception and active power. Some are desti- tute of conscious perception, and these are the elements of which the material world is the result. Then there is the animating principle of the lower animals. There are also the self-conscious souls of men, containing in themselves the fountains of necessary truth. And these three classes of created forces or substances must have a sufficient reason for their existence. There cannot be an infinite series of contingents, and, if there could, the final reason even of such an infinite series could be found only in a necessary substance. Creation must thus in- volve the existence of One Supreme infinite, the monas monadum, from whom all that is finite has been derived, and in whose existence it finds its complete explanation. This Supreme Substance is God. He is the fountain of all reality. The attributes of the created monads, as far as they are perfect, result from the perfection of God ; as far as they are imperfect^ from the necessary imperfec- tion of the creature.* * The Monadologie of Leibnitz is discussed in the pieces presented for the competition {Sur le Systeme des Monades) proposed by the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and which, with the successful prize dissertation by T. H. G. Justi, were published at Berlin in 1748. Each side in the con- troversy has its able defenders among the writers of these curious dis- quisitions. LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 41 Having in these conclusions, as he conceived, demon- stratively refunded concrete being into its elements, and related all created elements to the One uncreated and supreme, Leibnitz would next find the mutual relations of the several elementary forces of creation. Although the monads have neither figure nor extension in them- selves, their co-existence and relations sufficiently ac- count for the phenomena of extension, duration, and body. Space and Time have thus merely an ideal and relative exibtence. They result from the relation of monads, considered as co-existing or in succession ; and are simply modes in which we regard the objects of our experience. Further, the elements of creation being ab- solutely destitute of parts and extension, cannot mutually influence one another. Inter-causation is thus excluded from the real universe, and is confined to the pheno- menal, which is governed by mechanical law. Yet the universe is ideally related in the mind of God, and of each creature, in proportion as his ideas approximate to the Divine, God, " in the beginning," launched the elements into being, having resolved for each one a determinate history throughout eternity, and a history which should harmonize with that of every other. This mutual relation is beautifully illustrated, when we are told that from the given state of any monad at any time, the Eternal Geo- meter can find the state of the universe past, present, and to come. In the attributes of the Uncreated and Supreme, is to be found the sufiicient reason for a Pre- established Harmony in all that He has made. This explains the nature of the changes of creation. The ap- 42 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. parent action of finite monads upon each otberj is really the result of that original harmonious arrangement of God, in virtue of which He secures, without fail, those ends which He contemplated when the universe issued from his hands. The phenomena attendant on that fruitful theme of philosophical disputation, the union of soul and body, — of the self-conscious monad and the re- lated monads of an inferior order, — are counted capable of explanation on the same general principle. The suc- cessive changes of the soul must exactly tally with those of the body ; yet without any mutual action. They are related as two clocks, of which the one points to the hour exactly as the other strikes ; or as separate parts of the same clock, — for Leibnitz likens the whole universe to a timepiece which was wound up in the act of creation, and which thenceforward pursues its own movements harmoniously for ever.* Mind and matter — the realm of final causes, and the realm of efficient causes — are thus in necessary harmony. And a like harmony must obtain between reason and religious faith — the kingdom of nature, and the city of God. This last harmony links the theological with the merely philosophical part of the system of Leibnitz ; and introduces us to his philosophy of religion. A question may be asked, — If the universe — moral as well as physi- cal — is a self-regulating machine, is not the Creator * A comparison of this doctrine of pre-established harmony with the late Dr. Brown's Theory of Cause and Effect, illustrating their partial similarity and partial contrast, might tend to excite an important train of metaphysical speculation. ^ LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 43 seemingly excluded from the government of His crea- tion ; and, if not thus excluded, how is He related to the sin and misery which it contains ? That the apparent manner of His relations to the creation should be what it is, results, he thinks, from our relative knowledge, which can never rise superior to the condition of time. In reality, this pre-established harmony is a revelation of the Divine perfection in a scheme of Optimism. Every possible universe was, from eternity, conceived in the mind of God. One of these only can be translated from possible into actual existence, and that one must be the best. There is, indeed, included in it moral and natural evil, — the latter the harmonious consequent of the for- mer, and a reaction against it. But moral evil cannot be separated from the best of possible universes, and the will of God is not the fountain of necessary truths. The mystery of sin is not to be explained by the resolution of evil into good, for sin is essentially evil. But sin is necessarily involved in the idea of this best of possible universes, which, notwithstanding its evil, it is better to translate out of the possible into the actual, than to have no universe at all. Thus, the created universe must be the harmony of one great Theocracy, expressive of the attributes of the one Perfect Being. From His eternal throne, its several streams of elementary existence must have taken their rise. They have flowed, and they must continue to flow, in the courses into which he sent them in the beginning ; and, notwi4;hstahding the dark shades in which so many of them are enveloped, they are recognised by His Omniscience as the only possible and 44 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. therefore mosb glorious illustration, by creation, of the pure fountain whence they have originated. If illusory, these are, at least, splendid speculations. There are two modes of thus rising beyond tlie limits of the imagination in a philosophy of the universe. We may follow the course of the modern astronomy ; or, we may meditate on the facts of metaphysics and specula- tive theology. He who studies the one, gazes on the starry heavens and ranges in thought over the distant parts of material creation, till, lost in what he observes, his astronomy seems merged in idealism. The votary of speculation, on the other hand, taking in the spiritual as well as the material world, contemplates the Human and the Divine ; and with faculties fitted to judge only of successive and contemporaneous nature, meets the mys- teries of an objective world, of personality and free-will, and of the Divine existence, and seems, also, lost in that world of ideas, where physical and metaphysical science thus appear to converge. By these assumed demonstrations, of which we have given a very vague outline, Leibnitz hoped to deliver metaphysical science from future errors and controversies, and to lead the way to a universal peace, in which Keason should be harmonized with Keligion. Whatever we may say of the truth or falsehood of the doctrines to which he attained, we cannot withhold our homage of admiration when we reflect on such an amount of spe- culative genius in busy operation throughout a long life, — on the amazing sweep of the abstract conceptions which that genius has employed, — on that strong logical LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 4^, faith in the omnipotence of deduction, — on the riclily suggestive ideas which this mighty thinker has contri- buted to philosophy, — and, on the unit}'' of a system which sublimely designs to harmonize the spiritual with the sensible world. Leibnitz formed scholars, rather than a school. His sj'stem is essentially an eclectic one, and the whole ten- dency of his mind was opposed to merely national and sectarian distinctions, against which the extreme compre- hensiveness of his genius gave him an instinctive repug- nance, while his own fruitful mind rendered the most obscure system suggestive, and therefore worthy of being regarded with favourable indulgence. His sanguine spirit delights to discern a progress in the retrospect of the whole history of philosophy. In the early eastern systems, he finds noble ideas of God and the universe. In Greece he sees these reduced to a dialectic form. The early fiithers appear to him to cast aside the corruptions of the Greek philosophy, while the schoolmen employ it in the service of Christianity. In modern times philosophy has become more free and ardent, and better directed than ever, and would, he thinks, be more successful than it has been, but for the evil spirit of sectarianism. " There is only one permitted sect of all," says Leibnitz, " the sect of searchers after truth. The Aris- totelians and Cartesians fail, not for want of talent, but because of their sectarianism. The imagination, which has been long under the spell of a single melody, cannot readily listen to another. He who has for years travelled the same beaten track, becomes unobservant of the sur- 46 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. rounding scenes. Just so, those who have formed a habit of subordination to a single mind, are disqualified for the hopeful exercise of their own." Such was the spirit of Leibnitz ; yet, probably the prevailing impression on the minds of any who have studied his writings, is a feeling of the remarkable con- trast between the splendid intellectual exertions and enormous learning of this philosopher (combined as these are in him to an unprecedented degree), and the small positive contributions he has made to the register of permanently recognised truths. The vastness of his general principles occasions a corresponding vagueness in the rules for their application. They extend so widely as to comprehend only a few of the qualities of each of the objects that they include. The fact is, they reached too far to become at once familiar to the minds of men. The real spirit of the Leibnitzian philosophy slumbered for more than half a century, during which his nominal scholars under Wolff were starving on the subtleties of a severe yet profitless dialectic, and were evincing that dislike for really vigorous thought which is indicated by the pedantry of an empty imposing philosophical nomen- clature. In this period, the earlier Teutonic metaphysics perished as a System, to revive as a Spirit in the later German philosophy, and then to develop fully that germ, in the earlier system, of a perverted speculative idealism, which has shewn itself incompetent to realize in its expositions that positive adjustment for mysteries to which it aspires. It is impossible here to plunge into the depths to LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 47 which a formal criticism of this philosophy would con- duct us, implying, as such a criticism would do, a full determinatioQ of the province of d 2^^^^'^'^ reasoning in its relation to the facts of experience. The practised eye must have observed a connexion with many earlier and later schemes of a kindred description, even in the rough outline of it we have now given. The attentive student, of the sketch which we have attempted, has perhaps already recognised in the central principle of this system of universal philosophy, a rela- tion to one of the cardinal questions of metaphysical science, and a curious coincidence in the history of philosophy. By his subtle process of reasoning, Leibnitz virtually excludes the possibility of an external world. The last result of his analysis is a created aggregate of unextended spiritual forces, of various orders, and of which the mutual relations, as collocated in bodies, ori- ginate the phenomena of the visible creation. While the author of the Monadologie was in this manner resolving all creation into immaterial elements, a philosopher of another country, and of a different school, was approaching, perhaps more consciously, to a similar conclusion by a different course. Trained in the doctrines of Bacon and Locke, but receiving them into a soul that delighted to hold converse with Plato, and ignorant of the high questions agitated in Germany by his contemporary, he deduced from the principles of the English philosophy a system of idealism, which, besides its seductions for the imagination, is urged in a spirit and for a purpose that must ever render venerable 48 ESSAYS IN rniLOSOPHY. among Christians, as well as illustrious among meta- physicians, the name of Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. His well-known " Dialogues" are, to many minds, perhaps the most attractive display of metaphysical doctrine which the English language contains. This philosopher is, moreover, worthy of notice for more than even his ele- gant fancy, and refined discussion, and graceful diction. The scenes and music of material nature, which have infused so much poetry into his writings, and which he would connect with something less gross than the cum- brous apparatus of an external world, are all regarded by Berkeley as direct manifestations of God. With this Christian philosopher, visible nature is not an aggregate of merely unconscious substances — the refuge of atheism and materialism — the veil by which God is concealed from man, and then banished from his thoughts. In the seeming solitude of idealism, he finds himself in the immediate presence of the " Father of Spirits," in whom we thus literally " live, and move, and have our being." Thus, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, there were two philosophers, representing the two op- posed schools of philosophy, whose speculations con- ducted them to immaterialism.* The "demonstrative * We must not omit a reference to a writer of recluse and studious temperament, who, in tlie peaceful seclusion of a rural English parsonage, constructed a series of acute arguments in defence of an iramaterialism similar to that of Berkeley, and whose recorded speculations have secured the respectful mention of Eeid and Stewart. We refer to Arthur Collier, Eector of Langford Magna, in the county of Wilts, from 1704 to 1732. His Clavis Universalis, published in 1713, was seemingly unknown, at least in his own country, till a short notice of it was given by Dr. Reid in LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 49 metaphysic" of Leibnitz has parted with body and ex- tension before it has resolved nature into its elements. The experimental philosophy of Berkeley fails to extract from the phenomena of perception the evidence of a substance different in kind from the self-conscious spirit which perceives them. Since, as well as before the epoch of Leibnitz and Berkeley, that vast group of phenomena commonly desig- nated material, and which are so nearly connected with life in this " middle state," has occasioned much specula- tion. The defence of the doctrine of the essential dis- tinction of mind and matter, has hitherto been a char- acteristic of the national philosophy of Scotland. That philosophy has to encounter the opposition of three con- trary idealistic hypotheses, according to one of which all created existence is resolved, with Leibnitz, into spiritual substances of different orders, and material phenomena are regarded as merely resulting from these immaterial elements — according to a second, the ma- terial world is conceived as a series of ideas produced immediately and in regular order by God in the minds of men — according to a third, as a group of the pheno- mena of our own minds, regulated by an unknown prin- ciple. The adjustment of the long-agitated controversy about the nature of Matter is of practical importance, chiefly as it is connected with the refutation of scep- ticism. There surely remains room for a better-defined his Essays. Long extremely scarce, it is now generally accessible. Not less than two editions of it have issued from the j^ress within the last ten years, the last of them associated with a curious and interesting biography of this metaphysician, by Mr. Benson. London, 1837. D 50 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY, settlement of the actual evidence of consciousness with regard to a subject which, in all ages, has tended to excite speculation, and which, since the time of Ber- keley, has been regarded by acute minds as, at least, an "open question" in metaphysical science. The most important service, however, which its author hoped to render by his System of Monads, relates to the refutation of Pantheism. The Ilonadologie, with the consequent doctrines, is essentially an effort to indicate the metaphysical and moral relations of the Divine Being with the universe. Antagonist to the Cartesian hypothesis of occasional causes, the doctrine of a pre- established harmony has been accused of tending to an atheistic separation of the world from God, while the rival system has been counted open to the charge of an identification of the creature and the Creator, of which there are signs in the system of Malebranche, and which was fully developed in the Ethics of Spinoza. We are unable to undertake an elaborate discussion of a sub- ject so profound and complicated as the one suggested by these speculations — a discussion which requires a previous settlement of the limits and canons of me- taphysical reasoning — and we would conclude this Essay with some allusion to that awful frontier land, where religion becomes blended with the higher philosophy, and where objects have been found fitted to attract educated and uneducated minds in all ages of the world. Leibnitz, as we have seen, was led by his love of speculation, and also by a desire to repel the sceptical LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 51 objections of Bayle, to consider the much-vexed question of the origin of evil. It might be made evident, if we are not mistaken, that, in his attempt to reconcile the dismal phenomena of our own actual experience with what is discovered from other sources of the character of God, we have a fit illustration of the inapplicability, for purposes of useful effect, of principles so extremely "•eneral as those with which he was accustomed to deal. We frequently observe also an indistinct appre- hension, on the part of the philosopher, of the line by which, in these matters, positive is separated from ne- gative knowledge. There must be mysteries in a science like theology, which includes among its principal objects, the nature and attributes of God, as related to a class of responsible created agents. An important step of progress has been gained, when what is incognizable is treated as an acknowledged mystery. Much needs still to be done to spread the spirit, and secure the right application of this principle. The region of a new science, or at least of a wider and better application of metaphysical and also of logical science, seems to open before us, when v/e con- template in their connexion the series of events which pervade natural and supernatural theology, regarded as the science of the mutual relations of God and man. The primary truth of theology demands the exercise of philosophical fiiith. The finite mind cannot grasp the full conception of the co-existence of a responsible crea- ture with the infinite Creator. The existence of a moral 52 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. CREATION is a fact which man cannot explain. He finds in himself the relics of a Law impressed on him when he was created " in the image of God," which tells of duty and demands obedience ; and tliis gives evidence that man was created to be governed by, and so was taken into a moral relation with, a personal Grod. He finds himself a dependent and yet a moral agent, respon- sible for his manner of acting towards Him from whom he received the power to act. This combination of free- dom with derived and dependent agency, includes some- thing beyond the limits of the human faculties. An anchor is needed, by which the understanding may be kept back, on the one hand, from a Pantheistic absorp- tion of the moral creation in the Creator, and, on the other, from suffering the universe to be cast adrift on the dreary ocean of Atheism ; and it is found in the faith which believes what it can neither question nor fully comprehend. The evolution of the theological system is a further evolution of the mystery into which its first principle retires. As the understanding cannot embrace a recon- ciliation of the infinity of the divine attributes with the creation of beings free to act, and therefore responsible, neither can it devise a scheme for harmonizing with these attributes the dark history of a portion of that created agency. We find that each member of our own race is born into the world " alienated" from God, and we are told of another race that has fallen, without hope of re- covery, into the same awful habit of ungodliness. The continued existence of moral creatures in the universe LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNITZ. 53 has thus added another inexplicable phenomenon to the mystery of their original creation. Sin has appeared. Eesponsible creatures have become rebels against the law of Him from whom their responsibility was derived. The stream which, in the creating act, was seen to issue from impenetrable recesses, here resumes its subterranean channel, and Avhen it reappears, has become strangely altered. There is a third evolution of the mystery which per- vades theology. God Himself has spoken to us of an extraordinary plan of restoration, of which the opera- tion becomes apparent to us when the " alienated" are " reconciled." The created agent had carried his respon- sibility through the course of the original estrangement, and his responsibility is continued through the subse- quent course of restoration. Yet the subjective process of estrangement commences with his birth, and the sub- jective process of reunion is conducted by the present living agency of the Holy Spirit. The phenomena of restoration in the spiritual world, displayed in the Church of God, thus, like the two preceding classes of related phenomena, rise out of a region into which the eye of the human understanding cannot penetrate. A series of strange facts is unfolded in the history of this corner of the universe. Creation, sin, and salvation — the unfallen, the fallen, and the restored moral crea- ture — are revealed to us in events which we may know, while each seems to emerge directly from an abyss whose depths we cannot fathom. Their appearance has been the sisfiial for those controversies of theologians which 54 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. have been carried on, and those battles of faith with scepticism which have been fought, for ahuost six thou- sand years. In the revealed fact of creation, we find the germ of the questions of Pantheism and Free-will. The existence of sin has suggested the hypotheses of Manichasisra and Optimism. The phenomena of restora- tion are connected with the doctrines of Election and Grace, and their proposed modifications, and with the revealed prospects of the moral creation throughout eternity. It is ethically important that the mind should become familiar with the general character of that associated group of theological truths which demands the exercise of philosophical faith, and therefore falls within the range of what has to be considered, and somehow disposed of, in a complete system of metaphysical philosophy. That religion must be pervaded by this series of mysteries which we have endeavoured to trace, is a principle of which the cordial reception should moderate our pole- mical ardour with reference to all in theology that is merely human opinion, and conduct us " as little chil- dren" to that practical solution of them all, which is opened to the soul that has become " willing to do" the will of God. History, which has to record the signs of the moral disorder of man, bears the record of other irre- gularities, and that even in the series of natural pheno- mena. It gives evidence of the existence of One who died and rose again, and whose miracles, insoluble by the laws of the physical creation, are connected with the laws and harmony of a higher economy. As the grand creden- LIFE AND rHILOSOPIIY OF LEIBNITZ. 55 tials of a revelation from God, addressed to a fallen race, and which contains an account of the origin and cure of its disorders, sufficient to satisfy and stimulate a reviving conscience, they are fitted to elevate thought, from the world of sense in which they have been manifested, to man and man's prospects in that moral and spiritual world which we here " see through a glass darkly" in the reflection of a reality that is not yet in itself revealed. Thus has God sufficiently provided us with a practical solution for the mysteries of theology. Conversant, as we ought to be, with what is beyond the limits of sensible experience, and incapable of comprehension by faculties created for comprehending only the events of contempo- raneous and successive nature, we may yet learn, through experience itself, that religious faith in the miraculously revealed law of grace finds the needed harmony of what by us is incomprehensible — a harmony in which the conscience does the work that cannot be devolved upon the intellect, and in which the transformation of the character is found a sure path to the sufficient knowledge of the doctrine. The mysteries of nature and reason thus cease to hinder the gradual restoration of the rege- nerate to the image of God. The preceding notices and reflections have accumu- lated so much beyond our expectation, that we must not extend our limits beyond this point, from which we may look at a distance, with awe and profit, upon the host of speculative questions which the writings of Leibnitz are evidently fitted to raise. Our end has been gained, if 56 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. what we have written leads any to benefit by sympathy with the comprehensive spirit of a famous metaphysician and metaphysical theologian — to refresh and elevate their minds by the meditative study of his works — and to be warned of the still prevalent illusions which carried him captive, and, seeming to gain strength and courage from the victory, have carried captive the succeeding generations of German speculators. These lessons are needed in an age in which there are signs that the re- vival of old controversies, and the rise of new ones, — many of them not remotely connected with these illusory habits of thought, — are about to surprise a generation ill fitted to deal with abstract speculation. We love to anticipate a future history of Metaphysics and Theology in this country more encouraging than th.ese omens seem to forebode ; and to have disclosed before us in imagina- tion, as one of the characteristics of the succeeding age, an ethically disciplined metaphysical spirit, operating according to the canons of a well-applied Logic, under the increasing light of Biblical science, towards the pro- duction of a richly intellectual and yet profoundly scrip- tural theology, and the attainment, for the Christian religion and the Christian Church, of a position among the forces at work in society, which the human agency charged with their maintenance and propagation is not at liberty to disregard. ESSAY II. HAMILTON AND REID; THEORY OF PERCEPTION. ESSAY 11. HAMILTON AND REID/ Even in its unfinished state, Sir William Hamilton's Edition of the Works of Reidf is the most important contribution to the metaph3'sical literature of Great Britain that the nineteenth century has yet witnessed. The present publication contains the entire text of Reid. Of the Preface, Notes, Dissertations, and Indices, promised in the title-page by Sir William Hamilton, only the Notes, with six of the Dissertations, and part of a seventh, have as yet appeared. The publication of the remaining dissertations, with the preface and the indices, is, we hope not indefinitely, postponed. Even of the matter included in the volume before us, how- * North British Eeview, No. XIX. (November 1848.) f The Works of Thomas Beid, D.D., now fully collected, with Selections from his Unpublished Letters. Preface, Notes, and Supplementary Dis- sertations, by Sir William Haiiilton, Baronet, Ads'ocate, Master of Arts, (Oxford,) &c. ; of the Institute of France, the Latin Society of Jena, and many other Literary Bodies, Foreign and British ; Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. Text coUated and revised ; useful Distinctions inserted ; leading Words and Propositions marked out; Allusions indicated; Quotations filled up. Prefixed, Stewart's Account of the Life and Writings of Eeid, with Notes by the Editor. Copious Indices subjoined. Edinburgh : 1846. 60 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. ever, containing as it does nearly a thousand closely printed pages, at least a third part is contributed by the living philosopher, — and this proportion supplies a very inadequate idea of his share of the elaborate research, and refined and highly abstract thinking, which is com- prehended in the book. Dr. Reid's philosophical works have long been recog- nised in this country as the type and standard of the Philosophy of Scotland, and they are now regarded by the most thoughtful men of Europe and America as constituting a conspicuous land-mark on the wide sea of modern speculation. Familiar to our academic youth at home, as supplying for the most part the text or out- line of the discussions in intellectual and moral science in the Scottish universities, they have recently been translated into French by M. Jouffroy, and made the basis of instruction in philosophy in the schools of France. The exposition of the doctrines of Eeid, and the vari- ous ingenious applications of them to explain and amend the qualities of human character and society, which are contained in the works of Mr. Stewart — of which a slight but graceful specimen appears in this volume, in the " Account of the Life and Writings of Reid," — if they have added little to the speculative intrepidity of the Scottish school, have at least given a diffused popu- larity to the more abstract speculations of the elder Scottish philosopher. In consequence probably of his singularly high ideal of what is required in philosophical authorship, the HAMILTON AND REID. 61 metaphysical writings of Sir William Hamilton have hitherto been less frequent and copious than his extra- ordinary attainments demand, or than his wide-spread reputation might seem to presume. Until the appear- ance of these Notes and Dissertations, his metaphysical and logical doctrines were communicated to the world almost exclusively through the medium of the essays contributed by him, within the last twenty years, to the Edinburgh Revieiv ; and it ought perhaps to be noted as a somewhat remarkable circumstance, that a series of anonymous articles in that publication established for their author a fame which renders his name illustrious among European thinkers.* The appearance of the works of the Father of the Scottish School of Philosophy,f accompanied by the biographical memoir of him and estimate of his doc- * A selection from tlie series of Eeview articles referred to has been translated into French by M. Peisse of Paris, and has obtained a high re- putation among his countrymen. It comprises the four disquisitions on the " Philosophy of the Absolute," the " Theory of Perception," " Logic," and the "Study of Mathematics." Paris, 1840. + If not strictly speaking the founder of the Scottish School, Dr. Reid may at least be regarded as its first very conspicuous type or repre- sentative. Dr. Hutcheson, who was appointed to the Chair of Morals in Glasgow about 1730, has been usually regarded as the person who has given occasion, by his prelections and writings, to the philosophical activity by which Scotland was distinguished during the past and the earlier part of the present century. Sir W. Hamilton is, however, inclined to regard, as the real founder of the Scottish School, Professor Gerschom Carmichael, Hutcheson's immediate predecessor in Glasgow, a vigorous thinker on ethical subjects, and editor of Puflfendorf's treatise, " Dc Officio Hominis et Civis." Previous to Carmichael, there was, we believe, little independent Philosophy in Scotland. The " Philosophia Moralis Chris- tiana" of Principal Colvill of Edinburgh, for instance, published in 1670, is based on the revelation of Scripture or theological morality. 02 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. trines, by one who was the most distinguished of his immediate disciples, all under the auspices of the fore- most Scottish philosopher of the present age — a publi- cation which thus associates the names of Keid, Stewart, and Hamilton — is a memorable event in the history of our National Philosophy. It may suggest a brief medi- tation concerning the new matter now connected by Sir William Hamilton with the text of Keid. Anything like a comprehensive or critical estimate of the contri- butions of these three Scottish philosophers to the com- mon stock of the world's speculative knowledge, should be adjourned until the remaining portion of this work shall have appeared. We proceed to offer in the follow- ing Essay, a few somewhat miscellaneous observations, which may tend to prepare a portion of the public for the independent study of a book that cannot fail pro- foundly to interest every lover of abstract speculation. " That," says Lord Bacon, " will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and strongly conjoined together than they have been — a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn the planet of rest and contem- plation, and Jupiter the planet of civil society and action." This favourite doctrine and simile of Bacon, so fitting and urgent in an age whose retrospect was the centuries of scholastic speculation, is not less fitting and urgent, although in an opposite application, to the age and country in which we live. If the author of the " Advancement of Learning" proclaimed it in order to HAMILTON AND REID. 63 revive and to associate with philosophy external activity, philosopliers may proclaim it now in order to revive and associate with action elevated contemplation. Although in these Dissertations there is an apparent, there is not we think, a real variance with the doctrine of Bacon, for there is probably all that the principle of the division of intellectual labour will permit a single mind, of exclu- sive tendencies, to offer towards the creation of a spirit of contemplative activity. Perhaps the quality of a general kind that is most impressive in the aspect of Sir William Hamilton's por- tion of this volume is the singular i^urity of its specu- lative character, and the exclusively speculative ends which the author seems to have aimed at in his compo- sitions. The phenomenon here exhibited of an immense mass of wonderfully subtle logical distinctions, and pro- found metaphysical principles, produced and collected apparently by means of the energy of a love of thinking for its own sake, and a love of truth without regard to any of its nearer or more remote applications, is one which cannot fail to impress any intelligent observer of our British literature, were it only in virtue of its pre- sent novelty, in this age of extraordinary outward bustle, and in this island whose inhabitants are noted for the extremely palpable and concrete character of the objects that induce them to think and act. The many natuial motives, distinct from the love of knowledge on its own account, that incline men to seek for truth, together with the various acquired tendencies having the same direc- tion, which are fostered by the complicated social rela- 64 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. tions of this conventional age, and its alleged narrow and utilitarian principles of action, have failed to con- quer, or (we refer to this publication) even visibly to affect at least one mind, by inducing any diversion of its power from some of the loftiest regions of human specu- lation. It would be difficult to select from the whole rano-e of English literature, a work so distinguished in respect of these qualities. As regards the proportion of abstract speculation, and the rigorous deduction of endless syllo- gisms, perhaps some of the works of Hobbes, and the earlier philosophical productions of Hume, approach most nearly to the Dissertations of Sir William Hamilton. To these we may add the metaphysico-theological writ- ings of Dr. Samuel Clarke, and those of Jonathan Edwards, the great Calvinistic metaphysician of North America. But while the thought that is presented to us in the works of these philosophers resembles that which is contained in the Notes and Dissertations in its highly abstract character, in the iron logic of its connexion, and in the pervading traces of a strongly-developed faculty for reflection, there is evidence that other motives to intellectual exertion have united with the love of science on its own account in fostering the spirit which incited them to labour. Political motives influenced Hobbes. A love of fame and probably of paradox, not to speak of sentiments of frugality, and a desire for worldly inde- pendence, seem to have been considerable incitements of intellect in the case of Hume. A moral regard for those truths which are the bulwarks of religion and duty, HAMILTON AND REID. 65 roused the metaphysical genius of Clarke in their de- fence. In Edwards, the gratification of the logical iacnlty, by the attainment of a regularly developed, comprehensive, and exhaustive body of science, Avas entirely subordinate to the gratification of the reli- gious principle, through means of a conciliation of the theory of human activity and responsibility, with the more awful and mysterious doctrines of the Christian revelation. It is desirable, for the sake of the common good, that society should in each generation possess at least a few men in whom the habit of speculation, and the love of comprehensive thinking and speculative completeness, occupy a very predominant place among the motives which keep the mind in a state of activity. And although a desire for knowledge is a common pro- fession, it cannot be doubted that this sort of mental development is really of extremely rare occurrence. " The abstract love of truth," it has been well said, "is a principle with those only who have made it their study, who have applied themselves to the pur- suit of some art or science in which the intellect is severely tasked, and learns by habit to take a pride in, and set a just value on its conclusions. To have a disinterested regard for truth, the mind must have con- templated it in abstract and remote questions, whereas the ignorant and vulgar are conversant only with those things in which their own interest is concerned. All their interests are local, personal, and consequently gross and selfish." In a word, men usually attend to those E 66 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. fragments of truth, or of mingled truth and error, which are needed to aid them in the attainment of their own ends, and these ends vary with the character or predo- minant inclinations to action of individual men. Their knowledge consequently is fragmentary, relative and interested rather than scientific. The disinterested love of science and philosophy is a counterpoise upon the tendency of less elevated minds, to pervert the very meaning of the word truth, and to assume that those opinions which are or which seem best adapted to gratify some other active principle of the mind, sub- ordinate to, or at least quite distinct from, the desire for speculative activity, are to be received as a standard of belief As human nature and society are constituted, it is however well that instances of an exclusive development of the faculty for abstract or highly generalized science should be rare. A rigorous separation of the speculative from the practical, is apt, by causing a disruption of the complex nature of man, to infuse the spirit of scepticism into the operations of the understanding, and to occasion weakness and vacillation in the conduct of life. The Creator of the human mind has inserted into it numer- ous and various principles of action, which are besides usually fused together in practice. The search for speculative truth is in all common minds conducted in subordination to, and in all minds should be conducted in harmony with the law of mixed 7notives. The statesman is impelled by political as well as by logical necessity to know and practise the theory of civil or eccle- HAMILTON AND REID. 67 siastical government. The devout theologian searches inspired books under the constraint of the Christian motives, and from a conscientious impulse which attracts him with special ardour to that region of knowledge. The practical man, in the common commerce of daily life, over whom a love for the scientific kind of know- ledge has little if any influence, seeks only for those fragments of information which may enable him to find his way, through the complicated but very subordinate details, that are required for his worldly business or pleasure, toward those results which are fitted to gratify his love of power, or money, or fame, and to meet the emergencies of his professional pursuit. For the attain- ment of most of the ends of life, utilitarian rather than scientific knowledge is necessary, and no individual is more likely to be subject to irresolution and exposed to illusion than he from whose mind all the blind and irrational principles of action, which are meant to sup- plement reason, have been extracted, by the power of the habit of philosophizing, and w-ho submits to the in- fluence only of motives which are regulated by pure intelligence. Without the gravitation of forces such as those we have indicated, the spirit of unmixed specula- tion would (unless in the case of a genius of extraor- dinary strength) quit its hold of the lower and more palpable departments of universal knowledge, and find sufficient occupation among the most abstract, and general relations of things. Contemplating the frame- work which contains knowledge more than the know- ledge which the framework contains, the mind is apt 68 ESSAYS IN rniLOSoriiY. to lose a direct acqaintance with the actual and the in- dividual, in the splendid theory of the possible. The world of speculative reason differs from the actual world of living men, for man, as he is, differs from man as he ought to be. Philosophical theories are the nourish- ment of the purely rational principle ; but they tend, unless the influence is counteracted by strength of mind, and an attentive observation of the infinite variety of the existing modifications of the instincts, affections, and other irrational causes of action, to deaden, or at least to distort, the keen perception of the common mechanism of man's practical nature ; and they may in this way ex- pose the retired student of abstract metaphysics, like the astronomer of Easselas who fancied that he ruled the stars, to the influence of ludicrous, or even of dangerous illusions, in the conduct of life, and in inter- course with living men. The machinery of society is regulated in a great measure by habits and desires, that are only indirectly, if at all, influenced by the operations of the understanding. The moving world of human beings often does not coincide with the hypotheses of human reasoning, while there exists in it much that cannot fail to be overlooked by the man of mere con- templation. His dreams are thus broken, from time to time, by unexpected collisions with living society, and by contact with modes of character which his specula- tions had not prepared him to expect. It may be added that, except in the highest order of minds, this excessive development of the scientific faculty — this truth-seeking, only for the sake of knowing truth HAMILTON AND REID. 69 as such, and with little or no extraneous tendency to the knowledge of particular departments of truth — is apt to leave uncultivated an order of sentiments which, in the best men, are always mingled with philosophical specu- lation. The motives of religion and duty, which find their highest appropriate stimulus in the department of truth which regards God and our relations to Him, ought not to be separated from a love for abstract truth. But, on the other hand, it is possible to speculate with- out any impulse from the conscience, and to find mate- rials of science, among the objects of religious faith, which pervade the whole region of the higher philosophy, without forming the habit of converting the scientific knowledge into practice. An habitual employment, merely as the minister^ of pure speculation, of tViose objects which, of all others, are most fitted to alter the character for good, is appropriately punished in the agonies of religious scepticism. Another general characteristic of these Notes and Dissertations, hardly less remarkable than the one which has supplied a text for the observations contained in the preceding paragraphs, is the enormous accumulation of the materials of exact learning and historical research which they contain. Sir William Hamilton has long pos- sessed a European reputation for extraordinary erudition. The evidences of his varied and accurate reading which his edition of Reid contains are not confined to one pro- vince of literature, although they are of course especially conspicuous in all that is in any way within the margin of the history of philosophy, and particularly of the 70 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. speculations of the Peripatetics, the Schoolmen, and the modern Germans. No preceding British philosopher, with whose writings we are at all acquainted, makes any approach to the extent and minuteness of the kind of knowledge by which these pages are characterized. In- deed, with the exception of Bacon and Cudworth, in the seventeenth century, and Stewart and Sir James Mackintosh, in the nineteenth, our more distinguished metaphysicians and moralists have been conspicuously deficient in this important accomplishment. Locke, Butler, Hume, and Eeid, made no pretension to a complete and exact acquaintance with the history of speculation. Heading is valuable to the philosopher chiefly as one means for exciting his own power of thinking. Only a few minds, however, possess sufficient independent force to convert what they read into a source of intellectual nourishment ; and even great intellects have been averse from an extensive acquaintance with books, from an apprehension of their tendency to fetter the independent working of the mental faculties. " If I had read as much as other men, I had been as ignorant as they," is a well-known and memorable saying of Hobbes. But in these Dissertations the vigour of original speculation is preserved amid a boundless accumulation of materials collected out of what is contained in books. Leibnitz and Sir William Hamilton are to be noted among modern philosophers for the mental strength which can unite extraordinary I'eading with a ceaseless energy of think- ing. But the mind of the German philosopher is per- HAMILTON AND KEID. 71 haps more ready, by a species of mental chemistry, to fuse among the productions of its own intelhgence, as the elements of a new and distinctive creation, the materials that are thus presented to it ; while in the writings of the Scottish philoso})her, the treasures of learned research are oftener permitted to remain in mechanical juxtaposition with the results of his own intellectual activity, in which they are, as it were, visibly embedded like the fossil remains of a stratum of geology. In both the qualities to which we have referred, as generally characteristic of this recent contribution to our philosophical literature, there is a remarkable deficiency in the current publications in Great Britain, Our litera- ture indicates, for the most part, little exact acquaint- ance with the ancient or contemporary doctrines which it attempts to criticise ; and original speculation is almost unknown. Vague doctrines, assumed to be the productions of recent German thinking, supply its nourishment to the greater part of the " philosophical" mind of this country. Glimpses of Germany engaged in speculation are, however, no substitute for original thought about matters such as those on which the Ger- mans in these times, and Eeid, Locke, and Bacon in Britain, in other times, have displayed the highest qua- lities of intellect. If these specimens, by Sir William Hamilton, of what a profound knowledge of the history of opinion really is, incite some men to an exact study of the books of foreign countries and of former generations, they are also fitted to rouse the still more dormant spirit that seeks direct and independent intellectual contact 72 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. with the real problems themselves, which have afforded nourishment to the high philosophy of the great thinkers of other ages. It is not the repetition of a faint echo from Germany or France that constitutes the substance of what is contained in the immortal works of the Bri- tish philosophers whom we have named, who created for us a National Philosophy, with certain invaluable cha- racteristics peculiarly its own. But a chasm intervenes between their age and ours. Notwithstanding symptoms of a revived attention to certain metaphysical questions, often vaguely enough apprehended, it remains true, that during this generation there is hardly any trace in this island of profound and exact thought respecting those abstract topics which are implied in the discussion of the first principles of knowledge. Our repose from effort in the direction of philosophy is now interrupted by this volume, which seasonably presents to us the written re- sults of the life-labours of a sagacious and truly Scottish mind, in the company of fi^agments which offer a toler- able indication of the more important principles of the Scoto-German philosophy of the great living thinker, by whom the doctrines of Reid have been rendered more refined and definite, and his basis of philosophy made more comprehensive. There is one other characteristic of these Notes and Dissertations to which we can only refer, although it de- serves a copious discussion, and may, we hope, receive for itself a place among the principal objects of the regard of some earnest and thoughtful mind. We mean the peculiar nomenclature and terminology, and indeed the HAMILTON AND REID, 73 general texture of the language in which Sir William Hamilton's speculations are presented. A defect of pre- cision and permanence in that whole portion of language which relates to what is not to he classed among the ohjects of our senses, is an old and often-repeated com- plaint, Now, in respect of preciyion, and clearness, and adaptation to the peculiaritieis of the manner of thinking which it is meant to represent, and especially to the ex- haustive conveyance of condensed results of thought, the style of these Notes and Dissertations appears to us un- equalled by that of any English treatise in philosophy. It is an especial contrast to Locke, whose vagueness and variation in the use of scientific words has occasioned a large proportion of the thought and discussion that have been expended on his opinions. Here, on the other hand, the matter to be represented by the terms is rigidly- appropriated to them ; and if the ratiocination in which they are included sometimes appears to imply a mere involution and evolution of the signification of a series of names, it is all the more remarkable, in such absence of argument about things, to observe the accuracy with which a precise meaning is preserved in association with each name. These important ends are no doubt secured only by means of great sacrifices. The nicely manufactured ter- minology and sentences, so charged with meaning when used by the manufacturer, are treasures for the feebler minds who can study that philosophy only which con- sists in the ability to make a noise with uncommon and imposing words. It may be doubted, too, whether the 74 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. resources of our good old native English, with its agree- able suggestions of common or less abstract objects, have been rendered so available as they might have been, vi^ith a view to the more general diffusion of the doctrines, and the increase of their influence as means for modify- ing the public mind. But on this question we cannot now enter. When it is considered that the abuse of words has hitherto been among the most productive of all the causes that have indirectly contributed to the formation of philosophical literature in general, and of abstract controversy and discussion in particular, it must be evident that the theory and use of the proper signs for the statement and most effective circulation of philo- sophical ideas, is the theme for a volume and not for a paragraph — ^an appropriate task for the labour of a life, and not one which can be disposed of in an episode in an occasional Essay. It may readily be concluded that the qualities to which we have referred are on the whole unfavourable to the popularity, and (in many cases) to the intelligibility of these Notes and Dissertations, among general readers. Such condensed results of the highest generalization, and jets of thought cast forth without the amplification and ornament of popular eloquence, and with little reference to any of their various possible applications, are ill-fitted to coalesce with the prevailing mental habits. Most men are unwilling to consent to grope their way, in the lowest depths of intellectual abstraction, where the light of evidence is hardly sufficient for steady progress, and where they must ever be on their guard against the illu- HAMILTON AND IlEID. 75 sion of vague formulas, susceptible of almost any mean- ing, which occasion that dangerous collapse of the mind upon itself, that is often experienced after an intense efibrt of thinking with scanty materials about which to think. There seems to be an intellectual necessity that, in the present age of unscholastic and ill-disciplined phi- losophical taste, this remarkable addition to our litera- ture shall slowly, if at all, find direct admission for its doctrines, possessing, as it does, a selection and arrange- ment of words unsurpassed among the books of the Eng- lish language for precision and consistency — a formal clearness and distinctness of method — a singular inca- pacity to rest contented with a partial or isolated view of any great doctrine — a depth of thought and a refinement of distinction, the very apprehension of which implies the exercise of mental functions hardly ever in these times called into action, and a copiousness of pure argument unrelieved by those lighter graces and ornaments of fancy which are usually needed to seduce men to an exertion of the higher powers of mind. Even students of specu- lative science may confess the existence of a wish that, amid themes so ennobling and kindred with the most suitable objects of imaginative emotion, the metaphysi- cian had given occasional vent, through the mass of subtle distinctions and profound principles, and the accumulation of passages extracted from his stores of unequalled reading, to the living copious eloquence of which such themes are susceptible, and in which the literature of philosophy supplies so many illustrious ex- amples. The gorgeous imagery of Bacon has done much 76 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. to illuminate the ages that followed him with the light of his great doctrines, and his exquisite adaptations to philosophical purposes of the " winged words" of common language have helped to waft his philosophy down the stream of time. We must now, however, refer more particularly to the materials proper to philosophy itself, that are contained in the hook that has suggested the preceding remarks. Though somewhat an excrescence upon the discussion of metaphysical topics, we cannot dismiss without some notice the ninety pages of the " Life and Letters of Eeid/ which occupy the opening part of the volume, and which, introducing us as they do to the genius and peculiarities of an individual man, and associating these with the ex- ercise of abstract speculation, may prove to many readers not the least interesting section of its contents. The letters addressed by Reid to several of his distin- guished contemporaries, form the most important sup- plementary matter appended by Sir William Hamilton to the biography by Stewart. Nearly all of this corre- spondence may be included in three parcels — (1.) Thir- teen letters, written by Reid during the first six years after his removal from Aberdeen to Glasgow, to Drs. A. and D. Skene, physicians in Aberdeen. These interest- ing documents were furnished by Mr. Thomson of Ban- chory, and have not before been published. They con- tain some amusing pictures of Glasgow College in the last century, and " afford what was perhaps wanting to Mr. Stewart's portraiture of Reid — they shew us the phi- HAMILTON AND TwEID. 77 losopher in all the unaffected simplicity of his character, and as he appeared to his friends in the familiar inter- course of ordinary life." (2.) Nine letters addressed to Lord Karnes, and already published in Lord Woodhouse- lee's Memoirs of that philosopher. These afford some suggestive thoughts on what we may style the metaphy- sics of physical science. This and the former body of letters, also illustrate Keid's intelligent interest in the sciences of external nature, such as chemistiy and me- chanics, on their own account. (3.) A selection from upwards of twenty of Keid's letters to his kinsman, the late Dr. James Grregory, Professor of the Practice of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh. Of these the most curious parts relate to the controversy on free-will, and to the theory of causation. Stewart's "Account of the Life and Writings of Reid," is a work so well known to most of those in this country who are even moderately versed in the history of recent philosophy, that we need hardly occupy our readers upon anything like an abstract of its contents. A life of which the greater part was passed in the humble but agreeable seclusion of academical office successively in two Scottish provincial universities, cannot be expected to offer incident for the gratification of the lovers of brilliant external ad- venture, and must derive its interest from the peculiarities of the mental phenomena which it manifests, and the circumstances by which these were called forth, or amid which they struggled into action. Himself born in the commencement of the eighteenth century. Dr. Reid's an- cestors by the father's side were for generations ministers '78 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. of the Cluirch of Scotlaiicl, in the parishes of Upper Banchory in Aberdeenshire, and Straclian in Kincar- dineshire, and some of them were not unknown in the world of letters. By his mother he was connected with the most illustrious of the Scottish hereditary aristocracy of talent — the renowned family of Gregory. The name of Reid, and the associations connected with his family, may thus increase the interest of the thoughtful traveller in the beautiful vale of Dee. As the favourite residence of Reid himself, and of his friends Campbell, Gerard, and Beattie, the town and neighbourhood of Aberdeen may be regarded as classic ground in reference to the Philo- sophy of Scotland. The early youth of the philosopher does not seem to have given remarkable promise of the eminence which he after- wards reached, but his love for an academic life was soon indicated, and probably increased by his more than usually (in Scotland) protracted residence at Marischal College, and by his subsequent visits to the more splendid aca- demical establishments of England. For fifteen years he was pastor of the remote rural parish of New Machar, where, according to Mr. Stewart, " the greater part of his time was spent in the most intense study ; more par- ticularly in a careful examination of the laws of external perception, and of the other principles which form the groundwork of human knowledge." Gardening and botany were the chief relaxations of the meditative country clergyman. In 1752, he was elected Professor of Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen, where he found the opportunity to mature his fundamental doctrine, and HAMILTON AND REID. 79 to test it in a course of active public instruction, at the same time that he was one of the founders and leaders of a Literary Society, which then rendered Aberdeen a focus of Scottish intellect. From King's College Reid was, in 1764, removed to the chair of Morals in Glasgow, which he occupied actively for nearly twenty years, after which, until his death in 1796, he was engaged in preparing for the press and publishing his final and more elaborate treatises^ in a serene old age, eminently characteristic of the long term of cheerful meditative industry, and the habits of integrity and self-control which had marked his life.* The Scottish Philosophy of Dr. Reid, and the Scoto- German Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, constitute together an important stage in the great revolution which metaphysical science has been undergoing since the age of Des Cartes, and as such, they occupy an im- portant historical place in modern philosophy. A few sentences of explanation may illustrate this. Des Cartes is an influential and prominent person in the succession of great thinkers, chiefly because he was * It may be noted that (except the Tract on " Quantity," whicli was published in 1748) Eeid's first work, " An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense," appeared in 1764, — in his fifty-fourth year. It was followed in 1774 by a " Brief A ccoiint of Aris- totle's Logic," which originally appeared in the second volume of Lord Karnes' " Sketches of the History of Man." Eeid's " Essays on the In- tellectual powers of Man" were published in 1785, and those on the " Moral Powers of Man" in 1788. These treatises, along with a " Statis- tical Account of the University of Glasgow," published in 1799, three years after his death, arc the " Works of Eeid," now for the first time collected in Sir W. Hamilton's edition. 80 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. a thorough-going doubter, who, by means of his doubts, got rid of an accumulation of propositions, assumed on authority to be true, — the intellectual division, gene- ralization, and argumentation of the contents of which formed the materiel of the preceding or scholastic epoch of philosophy. The Cartesian "scepticism" raked up the foundations of things, and during the lifetime of the philosopher himself, as well as since, it has communicated a corresponding impulse to meditative minds l)y whora his works have been studied. Des Cartes doubted in order to believe and know. From the foundation down to which his doubts conducted him, he attempted to rear a comprehensive theory of knowledge. But the recon- structive has exerted small influence compared to the destructive part of his teaching, and it is mainly through the operation of the latter element that a revolution in the manner of thinking regarding the first principles of every sort of knowledge is the permanent result of his labours. The period of the history of human thought that has intervened since Des Cartes, is filled by a series of more or less imperfect reconstructions of philosophy, i.e., of the ultimate theory of knowledge, — out of the confusion con- sequent upon the sceptical method of the French philo- sopher. The attempt of Locke, in the " Essay concerning Human Understanding," is the first of prominent histo- rical importance. That great work is still properly an unfinished one. The metaphysical thinking of the last century and a half has been to a great degree employed in working out the problem suggested in it, which the HAMILTON AND REID. 81 author himself had, however, carried a long way towards a satisfactory solution. The name of Locke, associated with the names of Chirke and Butler, distinguishes the close of the seventeenth and the commencement of the eighteenth century as the Augustan era of metaphysical science in the southern division of the island. The imperfection or one-sidedness of Locke's philo- sophy, as regards the expression of its fundamental prin- ciples, was exhibited, in what is virtually the form of a redudio ad ahsurdum^ by David Hume, in his " Treatise of Human Nature," where, on the principles of Locke, all knowledge is reduced to a succession of phenomena, while absolute existence and human philosophy are proved to imply a tissue of contradictions. The philosophical doubts of Hume occasioned another independent effort to find the theory of knowledge. A conservative reaction, against the universal scepticism which he had extracted from the doctrine of Locke, was manifested almost contemporaneously in Scotland by Thomas Reid, and in Germany by Immanuel Kant — in Scotland with a tendency to what is practical and palp- able, and in Germany to idealism and pantheism. The epoch of Reid and Kant is distinguished by mak- ing the original structure of liuman intelligence a prin- cipal object of scientific attention. Each philosopher sought to find in that quarter a refuge from scepticism, and the only possible ultimate explanation of knowledge. Reid, on the inductive method of Bacon, systematically collected, under the name of " principles of common sense," those inexplicable beliefs, or original living facul- F 82 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. ties, which must be assumed in all knowledge. His doctrine is formed by means of a reflex attention to that common sense which is spontaneously exercised by the many. Kant, assuming the famous test of necessity as the basis of his critical investigation, demonstrated the originality of many of those notions which Hume had rendered up as the illusions of a universe of mere phe- nomena. He thus exhibited a theory of subjective knowledge, seemingly self-consistent and ])ermanent ; while Reid exhibited those beliefs which are the security, if not the explanation, of all knowledge, subjective and objective. Both supplemented Locke. The " Essay concerning Human Understanding" had furnished an important analysis of what is contributed to our know- ledge by experience, marked by the freshness of an inde- pendent thinker, who subjects old assumptions to a re- newed act of careful observation. But in his desire to find, by means of induction, the limits within which the human mind may be advantageously occupied, Locke had omitted to examine critically the original structure of intellect that is implied in the ability to gain such experimental knowledge as he had noted and analyzed in his survey of the mind and its stores. The schools of Reid and Kant have given the prominence, which Locke neglected to assign, to this object of investigation in the prosecution of the theory of knowledge. The common sense of Reid is the object of Scottish inductive investi- gation ; the categories of Kant of German formal criti- cism. The philosophy of Sir William Hamilton is to a large HAMILTON AND REID. 83 extent a fusion of the spirit and doctrines of Eeid and Kant, wrought by an independent and highly specula- tive mind, and adapted to the stage in the progress of the theory of knowledge which follows the last seventy years of German thinking. The philosophy of Reid was pointed against a scepticism that, as we shall afterwards show, was the result of a doctrine of I'epresentational per- ception. The philosophy of Sir William Hamilton is fitted besides this to meet the virtual scepticism of the German absolutists, by a demonstration of the necessary limita- tion of all possible human knowledge to what is relative and conditional. The old Scottish philosophy main- tained, against those who deny that science is possible, the existence of a body of vital beliefs, which are suffi- cient to infuse reality into our knowledge. The new Scottish philosophy uses the original beliefs and notions of the mind, at once against the sceptics, and against the philosophers who arrogate to man a knowledge of the infinite and the absolute. In the eighteenth century the citadel of human knowledge, and the ultimate foun- dations of human action, were assailed by Hume, on the principles taught by Locke and adorned by Berkeley. In the nineteenth century the assault is conducted by Schelling, Hegel, and the Continental transcendentalists, on principles suggested by Kant and Fichte. The Notes and Dissertations of Sir W. Hamilton are a refinement of our older national philosophy, and an expansion of its basis, fitted to adapt its doctrines to the rational defence of the knowledge that is gained by man, in his progress of inductive research along that ina media between P}'r- 84 ESSAYS IN rniLOSOPHY. rhonism and Transcendentalism— extremes that virtu- ally meet — which alone is open to him during his sojourn on this " isthmus of a middle state." But we must be more definite in our account of this stage in the Cartesian revolution. For this purpose three central ideas of the new Scottish Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, selected from a host of others, pre- sented in these Notes and Dissertations, which, with their text, embrace problems in the whole circle of the sciences of metaphysics, logic, and morals, may be employed as the basis of the remaining part of this Essay. I. The theory of Common Sense, regarded as at once supporting and limiting human knowledge, which is de- veloped in the first and most extended of the disserta- tions, and suggested in various of the footnotes through- out the work. II. The theory of immediate or conscious external Perception, expounded in the four dissertations on " presentative and representative knowledge ;" on " the various theories of external perception ;" on " the dis- tinction of the primary and secondary qualities of mat- ter ;" and on " perception proper and sensation proper." It is also referred to in the footnotes, especially those on the "Inquiry," and the second of the "Essays" on the intellectual powers. III. The germs or scintillations of a theory of Free- ivill, or responsible agency, which are contained in the footnotes on Eeid's essay on " the Liberty of moral agents."* * Materials sufficient to suggest tliougbts for a separate Essay may le HAMILTON AND REID. 85 The characteristic distinction and professed aim of the old Scottish philosophy is, as we have seen, the re- futation of Hume's scepticism, and the recovery of the First Trinciples of knowledge out of the ruin which it had occasioned. Dr. Reid himself, in an often (pioted passage of one of his letters to Dr. Gregory, asserts indeed that his peculiar merit lies " in having called in question the common theory of ideas or images in the mind being the only objects of thought." But the two statements are not oj)posed, and it may be interesting to some of our readers to have the opportunity of reflecting upon their coincidence. The course of thought along which we propose to conduct them with a view to afford this opportunity, as it implies an intelligent ap[)rehen- sion of the Scottish refutation of philosophical scepticism, may also suggest in its progress some important ques- tions regarding the value of a philosophical vindication found in the notes on Eeid's " Brief Account of Aristotle's Logic" which are remarkable for the severe precision and accuracy of the notices tliey contain, of the nature and province of tliat science which may be desig- nated Formal Logic, — or the theory of the laws of thought regarded in abstraction from the things about which thought may be exercised. Here Sir W. Hamilton diflers, in his estimate of the Aristotelian doctrine, from the older Scottish school — especially Campbell, Stewart, and Brown — and indeed from the general current of opinion in Scotland on this subject from the Reformation downwards. The Peripatetic doctrines were dis- lodged in a great measure from their place of authority in our Universities by Andrew Melville, and the Ramist Logic was in his time introduced into Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh. Although the poj^ularity of Ramus soon declined, Aristotle has never since recovered his former in- fluence in this country. See M'Crie's " Life of Melville," vol. ii. ch. 12. In Germany, the fortune of Aristotle has been different, and the logical treatises of the Kantian school should be consulted in connexion with the notes on Reid, to assist the apprehension of the limits and develop- ment of the science there referred to. 8G ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. and cx})lanation of human knowledge in general, and the influence of such treatment of it upon the establish- ment and extension of particular departments of science, and especially of that science which regards man in his most sacred relation. The philosophical tendency may be popularly de- scribed as the question-putting tendency. Of every ascertained or alleged fact philosophy seeks the explan- ation. Science is a species of knowledge. The scientific kind o± knowledge includes the possession of a precise and comprehensive acquaintance with its particular ob- jects, and their relations. Thus we are said to know the solar system scientifically, because we can allege the law of gravitation in explanation of the various mechanical phenomena which are thereby connected. Other j)or- tions of our physical knowledge approach more or less nearly to the dignity of scientific, in proportion as their parts are joined in the tie of defined relations which, as the first principles of the science, at once unite and ex- plain them. But such explanations as those that are su})plied even by the most advanced of our physical sciences are evi- dently incomplete, and the knowledge which they con- vey can hardly be styled philosophical. The last an- swers they afford to us only suggest more questions. Gravitation itself, for instance, or polarity, or electricity, need still to be accounted for, in order to satisfy philo- sophy, and explanations of them, if obtained, are only steps on the road of an infinite regress of analogous questions. But as an infinite number of receding ex- IIxVMILTON AND KEID, 87 planations is in itself an absurdity, and at variance with the limitation of" the human understanding, there must be some point into which the answers shall finally con- verge. That ultimate point mu&t be admitted to be the original structicre of the mind of man. What we have illustrated of physical induction holds good also of the results of deduction. Every explanation must rest on the inexplicable, and every demonstration must rest on the indemonstrable, while the last alleged inexplicable and indemonstrable belief is an instinct of human nature. If all the sciences must thus convei'ge in first prin- ciples, of which the only possible explanation is a state- ment of our own original mental structure, that structure itself may, it is evident, be made an object of the ques- tion-putting tendency. Though we cannot transcend our original notions and beliefs, we may at least collect or cricitise them. Those ultimate faiths, which cannot themselves be theorized, may be made the objects of metaphysical contemplation, as the mysterious founda- tion of human knowledge, and thus, as Mr. Hume pro- foundly remarks, " the most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer, as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it." Questions regarding the nature and number of the ultimate answers that can be given to the principle in man which suggests questions, are not likely to be put in the infancy of the human understanding, although 88 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. answers to tliein are craved by the developed faculties of knowledge. The account of the manner in which these inquiries were fairly raised in modern times, is a remarkable chapter in the history of the mind of man and of philosophy, which we now proceed to sketch. The modern metaphysical controversy with scepticism has turned upon the prevalent doctrine with regard to what is the immediate object of knowledge — a very curious part of the general theory of the intellect. An acquaintance even with the works of Dr. Reid is suffi- cient to render the reader familiar with the fact of the very general reception, previous to the time of that philosopher, of the doctrine of representative images or ideas, to account for all knowledge, except that which we have of our own mental operations, of which last it was usually granted that we are directly conscious. Mind, it was supposed, can be conscious only of itself, and the hypothesis of a representative knowledge was invented to explain the phenomenon — which theorists regard as the grand difficulty of intellectual psychology — of a con- scious intelligence, a large part of whose knowledge is not exclusively self-contained.* The hypothesis of mental representations, distinct at once from the percipient mind and from the object per- * We refer tlie reader to Reid's essay on External Perception, and to Sir W. Hamilton's dissertation on tlie Various Theories of Perception, for copious illustrations of the prodigious activity of thought and invention in different ages, in creating varieties of the representative hypothesis ; and we would especiall}' ask attention to the distinction, explained in the dissertation, between the cruder or more palpable, and the more refined theory of representation — between egoistical and non-egoistical idealism. HAMILTON AND REID. 89 ceivcil, seems to Lave been, in some form or other, a very common one previous to the publication of Ecitl's philosophical treatises ; although Des Cartes, Arnauld, and most of the Cartesians, Leibnitz, and probably Locke, understood by mental ideas, only modes of the mind itself in their representative capacity. The ideas assailed by Eeid were, however, entities distinct from the act of perception^ and they were employed to account for our knowledge of the material world, and for the phenomena of memory, imagination, and reasoning. These intellectual phenomena were supposed to have be- come more intelligible when — on the basis of self-know- ledge, and without any critical account of what other notions and beliefs are implied in the ability to observe, experiment, remember, and compare — the existence of such representative images was assumed by the philoso- pher, in working his theory of knowledge from within the region of the mind outwards, to independent and permanent realities. The inadequacy of this supposed intellectual ma- chinery to afford an ultimate explanation of knowledge is manifest, especially in two respects. 1. In its oppo- sition to the belief that has been inserted in the struc- ture of our mental constitution, that we have a direct knowledge of the qualities of matter — this hypothesis regarding the understanding as in immediate connexion only with what is representative of these qualities. 2. It is implied that the philosophers who maintain this doc- trine, thereby overlook the need, or at least superlicially perform the process of a comprehensive inductive exa- 90 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. mination of the first principles of knowledge and belief, apai-t from wliich no real progress can be made towards the philosophy of knowledge. The issue of philosophical scepticism is the analysis of knowledge into a succession of isolated phenomena, or into a series of notions of which no one can be predi- cated of another. The method employed by the pyr- rhonist is to show that a radical contradiction is implied in every attempt to collect phenomena into science, or even into fragments of science, thus paralyzing the grasp of those beliefs and notions which create and cement our knowledge. But although David Hume worked this sceptical method with success against a metaphysical hypothesis which resolves all knowledge into experience alone, and accounts for its entrance, and its various kinds, by means of representations^ the practical part of our nature always declares, by continuing in a state of activity, that human knowledge is in itself susceptible of a consistent defence, and at all events of a relative explanation, for a sane man hardly ever acts the sceptic, at least in the affairs of this life. It is for the philoso- pher to reconcile the speculative and the practical part of human nature, either by giving evidence that all our beliefs and notions are explicable, or else by exhibiting those of them that are mysterious in contrast to those of them which can be explained. To do something towards the accomplishment of this task was the aim of Dr. Reid. With a view to this, the prevalent doctrine of representative perception must be overthrown, because it is inconsistent with experience, HAMILTON AND liEID. 91 and with the fundamental notions and beliefs vvhieh be- long to the original stiucture of the human mind, as an agent consciously capable of knowing, and coming into direct and practical contact with, objects that are iiicle- pendent of itself. An inductive enumeration must, be- sides, be made of those first principles which the older philosophy had overlooked and in consequence traversed. And Reid has set himself to effect each of these tasks. He has exploded the favourite hypothesis of representa- tive images or entities, by showing that it is destitute of the evidence of internal experience, irrational, contra- dictory to the immediate dictates of our faculties, and, therefore, by vitiating the testimony of our original mental structure in one department of its utterances, and thus precluding any decisive appeal to its testimony as the ultimate criterion of truth in any other, fairly resolvable into universal scepticism. He has also, both ill the " Inquiry" and the " Essays," in the course of an analytic examination of the phenomena of the external senses, memory, imagination, and reasoning, collected many other specimens of judgments of which we cannot rid ourselves, while, at the same time, we cannot explain their presence in the mind by means of any derived origin. To a faith in these utterances of our nature he had cleared a road by removing the hypothesis of repre- sentative perception, and thus enabling philosophy to return, in that particulay^ to an acknowledgment of the credit of the common sense. In a word, Reid removed the excrescence of representations, which, in spite of common sense, the philosopher had introduced into the 92 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOl'ny. theory of perception, aad deraanded tlie liomage of the speculative world to the other judgments of the violated principle, which he had noted and treasured up in the course of an experimental investigation of liis own mind. But the powerful tendency of the habit of self-observa- tion to lose the way that conducts out of self-conscious- ness, has, notwithstanding Reid's protest, retained its sway, and led its victims through paths of illusive idealism more retired and seductive than any of those against which he had warned them. The hypothesis of images numerically distinct from the percipient mind, which constitute the entire material world of Berkeley, has indeed been almost banished from philosophical literature by Reid, but only to leave all the room for a more refined hypothesis of representation, which is still very generally received by Continental and British metaphysicians. The exposition and criticism of this subtle species of the doctrine of representative know- ledge is one of the principal novelties of the philoso- phical works of Sir ^Villiam Hamilton, and his disquisi- tion deserves study, were it only as the most elaborate specimen of purely speculative ingenuity that modern British philosophy has yet produced. We can afford only a few sentences to this subject, and must refer the reader to these Dissertations. A quality or phenomenon of mind, e.r/., a sensation, judgment, or desire, is evidently an object of knowledge to the mind itself not less than a quality or phenomenon of matter is. On the doctrine of the representationalist philosophers to whom we have referred, the observing HAMILTON AND REID. 93 mind is in fact in closer connexion with its own observed qualities than with the observed qualities of matter, and, in the opinion of many of them, we know the latter through the medium of the sensations which they occa- sion in the former. According to Dr. Thomas Brown, for instance, we know immediately, i.e., are conscious of, all our mental states, whereas any external object is known only by means of certain modes of mind (external states or sensations) which its presence has somehow occasioned. In this view of perception, the intercourse of the mind with the external world is through the inter- mediate sensations which alone are perceived by it ; but in self-consciousness it is in direct intercourse with its objects. As in the less refined liypothesis of representa- tion, the sphere of immediate knowledge is still confined within the mind itself, only instead of a succession of representative entities, distinct at once from the per- cipient mind and from the material object, the under- standing is presented with a succession of its own states. Each of these evanescent modes of mind, is, according to the relation in which it happens to be regarded, either an object or an act of perception. Now, it is argued by Sir William Hamilton that the germ of universal scep- ticism is latent in this more subtle, as Reid had proved it to be latent in a less refined, hypothesis respecting our knowledge of matter. On neither hypothesis do we get directly beyond the objects of self-consciousness, and, therefore, as each is said to violate that utterance of the original judgments of our nature which declares that we do, on neither can we get beyond the succession of our 9i ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. own thoughts and feelings, while in both even this self- knowledge itself becomes illusory, and must fall with the original faith that has been, in both hypotheses, assumed to be deceitful. Sir William Hamilton deals by the mental modes of this refined or egoistical idealism as Dr. Eeid had dealt by the representative entities, which are not mental modes, of non-egoistical idealism. Discarding the inter- position of any state of the mind as the immediate ob- ject of perceptive knowledge, or of any reflex act of mind upon its own sensations as a requisite for our first appre- hension of the outer world, he maintains that certain of the qualities of matter are the direct objects of a myste- rious insigJd, and thus that the mind is conscious of material as well as of mental qualities. On this theory we become immediately acquainted, at least in certain limited relations, with the material world that is outside and independent of us, and on the foundation of this direct apprehension of a very limited portion of its con- tents — to wit, its Primary Qualities — we gradually reach, in the light of our former information, by means of ab- straction and reasoning aided by habit and association, that growing knowledge of its properties, which in the earlier stages of its progress collects some of the secon- dary qualities of matter, obtains the notions of distance and form by means of sight alone, educates the general senses to an indefinite acuteness, and rises at last to those varied and recondite properties, characteristic of the different objects, by a precise acquaintance with the nature and laws of which, the physical sciences are con- HAMILTON AND REID. 95 stituted. An inductive history of this whole process is apiincipal part, as it is still a desideratum, in psychology. Much that is valuable for the explanation of its earlier stages has been contributed in tlie Dissertation on the " Primary and Secondary Qualities of Body" a disserta- tion which appears to us to form an important step of progress in this department of mental science. The opposite to this theory of a consciousness of cer- tain qualities of matter, which is itself styled Natural Realism, is the doctrine of Absolute Idealism, which de- nies to the material world any external independent existence. Intermediate between the two are the various hypotheses of representative perception or H}pothetical Realism. It is evident that this alleged inimediateness of our knowledge of the qualities of matter is to be contrasted, not merely with that sort of mediate knowledge which is implied in the possession of the results of inductive or deductive reasoning, but also with that other kind of mediate knowledge which, according to some philoso- phers, (and among others Sir William Hamilton, who has rediscovered and revived the old scholastic distinction of presentative and representative knowledge,) is implied in every act of memory and imagination. It is a more subtle analysis than the familiar one, which divides the propositions that compose what we believe, into those that are the result of reasoning, and those that are known by us intuitively, and it suggests some curious questions regarding tlie nature and economy of certain of our in- tellectual functions. 9G ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. One characteristic of the view of this economy that is taken in the Dissertations, is the development of a dis- tinction — open to reflex observation and investigation — between that knowledge of the phenomena of matter, now and here present, to which the name Consciousness is exclusively appropriated, and which is asserted not to involve any act of mediate self-consciousness, and that other knowledge — of the past and possible — which is, on the contrary, maintained to imply an act of the mind conscious of its own state as representative of something separate from the state itself. Thus, when I imagine a scene described in the Iliad, or when I remember the events of yesterday, the immediate objects of my know- ledge are certain phenomena of my own mind. Let the siege of Troy, or the events of yesterday be enacted be- fore my senses, and the immediate objects of my know- ledge are radically qualities of matter. When we know the possible and the past, the very operation of knowing is the only object of which the mind is conscious. But when we know the present states of our own minds, or the present primary qualities of matter, these states and qualities are known in themselves, and not through the medium of a representative mental state. Memory and imagination is thus each of them a species of self-con- sciousness, in which the intellect has for its immediate objects those phenomena of self, which form, in the one the acts of remembering past objects of perception or self-consciousness, and in the other of apprehending the creations of the poetical faculty. Tliis theory of the knowledge of what self once was HAMILTON AND REID. 'J7 conscious of, in the modes or qualities of self, contrasted with the more direct sort of knowledge of consciousness, suggests a variety of questions, and, among others, an inquiry into the laws according to which those objects of the mind that are at first observed, in a direct experi- ence of the inner and outer world, become, as objects of memory and imagination, converted into mental modes, and pass into the current of our associated thoughts. This field of investigation may, perhaps, be illustrated by the well-known doctrine of Leibnitz, regarding latent states of consciousness, to which Sir William Hamilton often refers in the course of his philosophical writings. The theory of perception maintained by Sir William Hamilton is not likely, we think, to exhaust discussion in a province which experience has proved to be so fitted to kindle metaphysical genius, and to give scope to spe- culative ingenuity. The new and revived doctrines of which his philosophy is composed, have uncovered too . many unsolved difficulties to permit such a result ; and we are inclined to expect an increase rather than an abatement of the intellectual gladiatorship which has hitherto been associated with the theory of our know- ledge of matter, as the result of a more diffused acquaint- ance with the assumptions and arguments of these Dis- sertations. It should be remembered, however, that it is as the arena of the struggle with philosophical scepticism, that this region of speculation has atti-acted combatants, G 98 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. earnest in the defence and development of the theory of human knowledge, as well as in the endeavour to recon- cile intelligence with practice, and to maintain for man the possibility of sciences, relative and limited, yet solid and suited to his circumstances. It is when regarded in relation to a specimen in one department, of the manner in which the war against this scepticism is to be main- tained in all, that the question respecting a presentative or representative knowledge of the external world is likely to be studied with most seriousness, and that it connects itself most nearly with our natural feelings and desires. The science of metaphysics — in its polemical aspect, the controversy with the Pyrrhonists — is a region into which those are forced who seek the ultimate answers that can be given to the inquiry, as to how much man is capable of knowing in any of the sciences, " Reasoning," says Pascal, " confounds the dogmatist, and nature the sceptic." It is the aim of the metaphysician to compose this difference — a task which the philosophy of Common Sense accomplishes in the only manner in wliich it can be effected by man. That philosophy seeks for, and renders prominent the inexplicable feelings, judgments, and notions in which reasoning and nature meet ; and in doing this, it ascends to the highest elevation that the human mind can reach, so long, at least, as man is constituted as he is. It is here that man gains the most comprehensive survey of the sciences, and were it not that the elevation is likely to dim his vision of the separ- ate objects of which the panorama is composed, it is HAMILTON AND REID. 99 from thence that each science receives for him its most pervading ilhimination. Thcic all his knowledge tends towards the organized imity — tlie ao(f)ta of tlie old Greek — to which our understandings can only make an approach ; and, as regards which, man assumes his highest function when it is the object of his love and aspiration, according to the original eloquent meaning of the tvord philosophy. It is as much for the sake of this illumination, as for the purposes of defence, that we need to foster those habits which send us in quest of the First Principles of metaphysics. Nature is usually sufficiently strong to defend, for all the uses of life, those portions of know- ledge which the powerful original motives of human activity require to be converted into practice, and she can always silence, by means of action, the objections of the few sceptical adventurers who seek to find their way behind the scenes, and ingeniously contrive literally to lose themselves in the attempt. " All sceptical reasonino- "' says Sir James Mackintosh, '"' is merely blowing up the ship, where you and your enemy go into the air together." But the speculative consistency and completeness of those sections of knowledge, which form the various sciences, is materially diminished, and the sciences them- selves must inevitably undergo a process of gradual de- terioration, if human thought is not sometimes turned towards those remote outworks, whence so commandino- a view may be gained of what is knowable, in contrast with what cannot be known. If the comprehensiveness of the knowledge that is possessed by the students of the 100 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. subordinate sciences is increased, as wider laws are, in their several provinces, gradually revealed to observation and experiment, — if the discovery of gravitation, for in- stance, is perceived to be valuable because it has illus- trated, the whole region of mechanics — this analogy may help to explain the effect, upon what we may call the style in which we hold every kind of knowledge, of a habit of intimacy with those highest laws, which, as ultimate propositions, mark the frontier that may not be passed by the human intellect. The progress of physical discovery upon this planet has become more enlightened since men have learned its figure, and the limits within which their exploration has been confined by the Creator. The fears of the followers of Columbus are now unknown, nor is El Dorado any longer searched, for. In like manner, the more nearly the metaphysician is able to find the precise sphere within which our re- searches must be confined, the more successfully may we expect knowledge to be converted, into science, and the more submissive should be our reverence, when we turn to those mysteries which are created for us by the limi- tations of human thought, which are disclosed to meta- physical investigation. The elements of pliilosophical faith — or, in the language of Keid, the principles of common sense — which are acted on by all, but to which the metaphysician alone directs an intelligent attention, as the special objects of his own science, are the materials of the foundation on which must rest that Classiflcation of the Sciences, towards which so much thought has been directed since the publication of the " Advance- HAMILTON AND IlEID. 101 raent of Learning." This survey and arrangement of these definite, solid, and self-consistent sections of know- ledge, appears to be the a])propriate business of the phi- losophers of the ensuing age. It implies a clear account of what that is which entitles any portion of knowledge to the designation of scientific, what the methods are by which vague, and narrow or imperfect knowledge may become science, what the principles may be which mark off one science into a province distinct from another, and what the bond of connexion among all the sciences is, with the scale of their relative value and importance, and the place of each as a part of that organic whole into which the philosophic mind seeks to mould all its know- ledge. The strength and precision of mind needed for a task like this, must be, in a great measure, regulated by the success of metaphysicians in detecting First Principles. Sir William Hamilton has greatly illustrated meta- physical science by the clearness and distinctness which he has infused into the theory of common sense ex- pounded by Eeid, and maintained by him in common with the great majority of ancient and modern philoso- phers, it being, " notwithstanding many schismatic aber- rations, the one catholic and perennial philosophy," while the very name common sense " is the term under which that doctrine has been most familiarly known, at least in the Western world."* * See, in the Dissertation on " Common Sense," lOG testimonies to this effect — a singular document, illustrative of the " succession" of metaphy- sicians, and of the analogy of metaphysical speculation, during three 102 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. There are two statements connected with this doctrine which shoukl he carefully noted and reflected on by the metaphysical student. Of these the one is a question of terminology, and relates to the precise object, or collec- tion of objects, that is signified by the technical term " common sense," when it is used as the term expressive of the proper province of his science. The other is a question of scientific method, and enforces the necessity of the labour of analysis and criticism for the discovery and arrangement of the genuine principles of common sense, purified from the prejudices and conventionalisms with which they are apt to be confounded, and by which they are almost always marred. Common sense, as a term of science in metaphysics, expresses those notions and beliefs which are essential to man regarded as an intellectual and moral being. The existence of such original convictions is assumed when man is declared to be capable of collecting knowledge from experience ; but they are not themselves built up of the materials of experience. Reflective induction may observe and systematize them, but it is not as the results of induction that they have gained an entrance into the mind. The phrase Common Sense, when used in the higher philosophy, is to be entirely dissociated from its more vague and popular meanings, in which it expresses natural prudence, or acquired skill in the management of common affairs and in the intercourse of society. These unscientific significations, while they are expres- thoiisand years, i'rom Hesioil and Heraclitus down to Sclielling, Hegel, and Cousin. HAMILTON AND REfD. 103 sive of mental qualities which, on their own account, very much deserve the attention of psychologists, ai-e likely to be productive of confusion when the term is used metaphysically, iQasmuch as many po|)ular prin- cijles of common sense are far indeed from having any pr«per claim to the dignity of ultimate notions and be- lirfs. Instead of the collected original judgments of the himan mind, appeals to common sense are often directed t( the prejudices of individuals, which must be analyzed Dt into the inspirations of the Author of our mental sructure, but into the perverseness of him on whom that tructure has been bestowed.* The detection of the genuine principles of common sense is therefore the result of an intellectual effort which requires qualities peculiar to the philosopher, and the argument from common sense is no irrational appeal to vulgar feeling. The reflex criticism which distinguishes the primary from the other qualities of matter, and which appropriates the former exclusively to the external world, is an illustration, from the phenomena of percep- tion, of the difference between an intelligent and an unscientific appeal to the ultimate criterion of truth. Analogous illustrations might be quoted, from other provinces of knowledge, of the manner in which pre- judice is sifted, by the application of this test, and these also may be made to prove that the purport of the Scot- tish philosophy is by no means to encourage the mob to carry away the ark of metaphysics. * It is against these s^niriovs principles of common sense that Locke's polemic against innate ideas may be beneficially applied. 104 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. In short, \vc may admit with D'Alembert, quoted in the Dissertations, " That the truth in metaphysics, hke the truth in matters of taste, is a truth of which all minds have the germ within themselves; to which, in- deed, the greater number pay no attention, but wHch they recognise the moment it is pointed out to them. . . But if, in this sort, all are able to understand, all ire not able to instruct. The merit of conveying easily to others true and simple notions is much greater than is commonly supposed ; for experience proves how rareV this is to be met with. Sound metaphysical ideas aB the common truths which every one apprehends, bu which few have the talent to develop." " The first pro- blem of philosophy," adds the Scottish philosopher, " and it is one of no easy accomplishment, being thus to seek out, purify, and establish, by intellectual analysis and criticism, the elementary feelings and beliefs, in which are given the elementary truths of which all are in pos- session ; and the argument from common sense being the allegation of those feelings and beliefs, as explicated and ascertained, in proof of the relative truths and their necessary consequences, this argument is manifestly de- pendent on philosophy as an art, as an acquired dex- terity, and cannot, notwithstanding the errors which they have frequently committed, be taken out of the hands of philosophers. Common sense is like common law. Each may be laid down as the general rule of decision ; but in one case it must be left to the jurist, in the other to the philosopher, to ascertain what are the contents of the rule ; and though in both cases the com- HAMILTON AND REID. 105 mon man may be cited as a witness for the custom of tlie fact, in neither can he be allowed to officiate as ad- vocate or as judge. . . We may, in short, say of the philosopher what Erasmus, in an Epistle to Hiitten, said of Sir Thomas More : ' Nemo minus ducitur vulgi j^bdicio ; sed rursus nemo minus abest a sensu com- muni.' " We have referred to the efforts of the Scottish school to extract, by means of analytic criticism, those prin- ciples of common sense which relate to our knowledge of the qualities of matter, seeing that, as already stated, it is chiefly in this province that the contest with philo- sophical scepticism has been maintained in Britain, and especially because the theory of external perception is the central point of Sir William Hamilton's re-state- ment and vindication of the conservative philosophy of common sense. But if our metaphysical science in this country has hitherto been chiefly suggested in that region of research, we must not forget that the struggle with scepticism has, in the most profoundly thoughtful nation of Europe, been transferred for us from the arena of our beliefs about matter to the arena of our beliefs about religion. These last have in Germany been put through an ordeal as severe as that which this volume contains evidence that the former have passed through at home, and scepticism is much less able practically to distort the mind of man with regard to Avhat concerns the present life than with regard to what concerns the life to come. A critical application of some of our higher minds to those principles of common sense that relate to lOG ESSAYS IN PIlILOSOrilY. onr faith in God, and our notions of the relation be- tween God and man, which should bring back to its origin this part of our knowledge, would correspond, in the region of theology, to the task attempted by Eeid and Sir William Hamilton in the metaphysics of per- ception. The Scottish sceptical philosophy of Hume is, indeed, throughout irreligious. But his antagonists in this country have as yet attempted little for the satisfaction of the scientific principle by a statement of the metaphy- sics of religion.* In Germany his doctrines have formed part of the seed that has there produced, during the last two generations, the rank crop of religious scepticism, which is now imported into the popular literature of Britain and America, in the new species of infidelity which makes a virtual excision of those principles of common sense that lie at the root of our religious know- ledge. An intelligent attention is due, on the part of those who are the authorized teachers of religion, to the progress of a form of scepticism which, while it subli- mates the Divine personality into the illusion of the Absolute, excludes the jpossihility of all positive theolo- gical knowledge, by discrediting the original or derived faculties for obtaining ideas of the supernatural, nullify- ing the argument from final causes, and refusing to re- ceive alleged miraculous events as by possibility creden- * We, of course, except the invaluable contributions to the philosophy of religion contained in Dr. Chalmers' Treatises on " Natural Theology " and on the " Evidences of Christianity," — so full of comprehensive con- ceptions, and abounding iu vigorous metaphysical discussions. HAMILTON AND REIT). 107 tials of what is divine, and which thus descends with the elementary controversy about religion, from the actual objective evidence to be sought for on its behalf, to — what is clearly a lower stratum — a criticism of our subjective faculties for the appreliension of natural, and especially of supernatural and positive revelation, and of the possibility of finite phenomena of any kind yielding evidence regarding what is infinite. An adjustment of these questions, capable of explaining tlie manner in which the human understanding is enabled to rise, on the ladder of available evidence, from the relative and finite phenomena of the mental and material worlds, to the region of religion or the supernatural, and which should also be in analogy with the Scottish philoso- phical account of our notions and original judgments respecting the qualities of mind and matter, would supplement what is still a defect in our national meta- physics. A mental experience of the divinity of tlie gospel sys- tem, which is gained by acting it out in the details of a holy life, is certainly a practical escape from those ques- tions of science. Without this, even the speculative task of the theologian cannot be accomplished, and it is chiefly in order to foster and render intelligent that habit of life that the task is worth his toil. But his work is not then done. Those to whom the written word is the centre of all truth, regarding the " things unseen and eternal," and the moral mystery of human life, cannot count valueless, thoughtful answers to such questions as refer to the manner in which the positive evidence of religion lOS ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. is reached by man, so that his thought, even while con- fined, by the necessity of its original structure, to the level of the relative and the conditioned, may be exer- cised on the objects of a religious faith, that precisely meets the wants of the human intelligence as well as of the human conscience. The comment on Keid's essay on " The Liberty of Moral Agents," is tlie part of the notes and dissertations that is most nearly related to the theory of religion and morality. Some account of it, and estimate of its value, as a contribution to the ceaseless controversy of meta- physicians and theolosiians on the mysterious topic of responsible agency, may interest those of our readers who are inclined to pay attention to the qucestiones vexatcB of the nature, possibility, and explanation of free-will. We must, however, restrict our reference to this subject within very narrow limits, having already more than exhausted our space. Sir William Hamilton, in common with his predeces- sors of the old Scottish school — Keid and Stewart — is a firm defender of the possibility of free-will. He main- tains that the reality of a powder or liberty, to luill luhat tve will, is testified to us indirectly, if not directly, by the experience of our own consciousness, and that the possession of it is essential to all activity of which the modes are properly objects of praise or blame. Such freedom is the root of man's personality, and constitutes his power of self-control over the desires and affections that have been inserted in his mind and committed to his government. HAMILTON AND REID. 109 Amid much obscurity and diversity in their account of the nature of free-will, a doctrine of liberty has, with few exceptions, till recent times, been maintained by the most religious and earnest of our British philosophers. Cudworth and Clarice attacked the opposite hypothesis of necessity as a citadel of the Atheists and Materialists of that age, and as interwoven with the speculations of Hobbes and also of Spinoza. In the eighteenth century, the assault on free-will was conducted by the Unitarians Priestley and Belsham, and the system of necessity has since been used by the Socialists and Communists of our own times, as a popular engine for the defence of their doctrines. It is also important to note that the modern doctrine of universal necessity is apparently at variance with wdiat is said concerning free-will, and particularly with the prominence which is given to the fall, in the doctrinal symbols of the Keformation. These creeds assume the jDOSsihility of a free-will, when they assert that human freedom was lost, " as to any spiritual good accompanying salvation," in the fall of Adam.* The loss of freedom clearly implies the possibility of it, for * See, as illustrations, tlie ten^li of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and the ninth chapter of the Westminster Confession, or symbol of the doctrine of the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland. In the latter document, we read expressly that "man in his state of inno- cency had freedom and power to will and to do," &c. The condition of the fallen human will is a distinct province of discussion. Some of the Ijroblems that may he raised in this latter department may he found, inter cilia, in a rather curious little book, Everard's " Creation and Fall of Adam Eeviewed, or a Brief Treatise wherein is discovered Adam's indowments in his Creation, and what he became by Degeneration." London, 1649. 110 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOl'IIY. what is lost must once have existed. But on the sysfem of universal necessity, free-will must be denied to man, whether fallen or unfallen, and even to God himself ; and the fall cannot consist in the loss of what is in itself radically inconsistent with the tie which connects all the phenomena of the universe. Yet the doctrine of free-will has, during the last and the present century, been exposed to the attacks of men of an aim and spirit very different from those of the in- fidel necessarians to whom we have referred. A system of universal necessity, substantially the same with that of Hobbes and Collins, was employed for the defence of some of the more peculiar doctrines of the Calvinistic in- terpretation of Christianity, by one of the most vigorous of the thinkers who in modern times have consecrated intellect to the service of revealed religion. President Edwards of New England, in his well-known " Inquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that Freedom of the Will, &c.," adopted the necessarian hypothesis, as a foundation on which certain portions of the interpreta- tion of Scripture, contained in the Reformed Confessions, might be unanswerably vindicated from the attacks of the philosophers. The substance of the argument thus adopted by Ed- wards is likely to be familiar to most of those who are interested in this discussion. The essential part of his reasoning may be condensed within a few sentences, although, owing to the expansion needed for the appli- cation of it to meet the various forms of objection, phi- losophical and theological, by which it had been or might HAMILTON AND REID. Ill be assailed, it has been diffused through a treatise of considerable size. The fundamental assumption of the whole book is the unlimited application of the law of causation, and the consequent existence of an infinite succession of derived causes or antecedents. The pheno- menon to be thereby explained is the origin of our ra- tional and responsible volitions. On the hypothesis assailed by Edwards, these acts of will are accounted for in each case by means of the assumption of a previous determination of the will itself, which was asserted to be possessed of the power of self-determination. The in- consistency of this explanation is clearly demonstrated in the^rs^ section of the second ixirt of the " Inquiry," which may be regarded as a summary of the argument which the modern antagonists of liberty are accustomed to present as an unassailable defence of a scheme of uni- versal necessity, in which all acts of will, Divine as well as human, are included. The series of syllogisms contained in the passage to which we have referred is irrefragable as against the conceptions of free-will at which it is pointed, if indeed an hypothesis of liberty such as is there assailed was ever distinctly maintained by any philosophical theologian of repute. But in truth, although the defenders of free- dom have united against fatalism, they are far from being lucid or unanimous in the statement of their own doctrine. Even Reid's writings on free-will can hardly be made to yield a consistent theory. The most important advance, as it seems to us, that has been made by Sir William Hamilton, in the discus- 112 ESSAYS IN PIIILOSOPHY. sion of this problem of i)liilosophy, consists in the ac- count which he has furnished of the very nature of the debated question, and of the real assumptions which every argument regarding it must imply. To gain a clear understanding of a disputed question, and of the conditions which must be conformed to before a true answer to it can be obtained, while it is usually a more painful and less manifest stage in the progress of a science or a doctrine, is often a more important one than the subsequent solution of its difficulties. It helps to fill the intellect with suggestive hypotheses of a kind appropriate to the peculiarities of the phenomena which are exposed for scientific explanation. The solution itself is frequently obvious when a new general principle has been obtained ; and it is easier to attempt to account for fresh phenomena by means of old hypotheses than to find others which are at once new and true. Dis- putants have long been obliged to struggle with the haze that has invested the question regarding the mean- ing of moral agency, and that philosopher has rendered an important service who has in any measure dispelled the mist. Dr. Reid maintains that liberty is conceivable. Sir William Hamilton asserts the fact of moral freedom as a possible but inexplicable mystery. Unless the freedom which is maintained is only neces- sity under another name, there can, we think, be no question that it is a mystery, and as such inconceivable. But even when liberty is resolved into unlimited neces- sity, the mystery is only made to recede. It is more out HAMILTON AND llEID. 113 of sight, but it still remains. The argument of the modern Necessarians, contained in tlie treatise of Ed- wards, takes for granted the inconceivable hypothesis of an infinite series of derived causes ; for the Divine volitions, in common with all acts of created will, are conceived as links in an endless chain of antecedents and consequents. The defenders of this necessity easily prove the self-contradiction of that counter-hypothesis, which explains freedom by means of what is virtually either an infinite series of self-determinations, or else a series which ultimately merges in a necessity that is out- side of the will. But on the latter, which is the selected alternative, they virtually assert the existence of an in- finite series of derived causes in the universe, in order to account for the acts of will which constitute a part of the phenomena of the universe. Now this hypothesis is in itself as inconceivable as that of the self-origination of volitions, and has besides been proved contradictory and absurd in various of the arguments in behalf of the first principles of natural theology.* The modern Necessarians, represented by Edwards, have thus failed, even by means of the accumulation of ingenious and conclusive argument which they have produced, to raise this problem, regarding responsible actions, out of the region of the insoluble. The appli- cation of the theory of causation which they have made, is sufiScient for a relative explanation of the phenomena * As, for instance, in Proposition Second of Dr. Clarke's " Demonstra- tion of the Being and Attributes of God." H 114 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. of the physical sciences, because these sciences deal only with linaited sections of the phenomena of the universe, regarded in those immediate, invariable, unconditional relations to one another, which have been fixed for them, and to which their objects are adapted, by the free First Cause and Governor of all, and which are commonly spoken of as the " laws of nature." But the hypothesis of a chain of mutually dependent sequences, which is sufficient for the explanation that the sciences of exter- nal nature ask for, regarding the particular orders of phenomena which are their objects, implies the absurdity of a chain without a beginning, when brought, as it is before it is capable of yielding the Necessarian inference, to give a conclusive explanation of all the phenomena which may be made the objects of investigation by man. It cannot, therefore, act as an insurmountable bar against the possibility either of an uncreated or a created free-will. In a word, on the side of liberty, man is lost in the mystery of absolute commencement. On the side of universal necessity, he is lost in the mystery, or rather the contradiction, of infinite dependent suc- cession. And thus it seems a conclusive inference, that this long-debated problem is indeed insoluble by man, or by any other being whose power of thought is limited like his. It is, however, practically solved, as similar problems in regard to other objects of our specu- lative nature are, in the existence of those feelings, by which we are compelled to assume, as a first principle, HAMILTON AND liEID. 115 our own responsibility for our acts of rational will. Possessing these, even without the possibility of any ultimate theory of moral agency for the gratification of tlic logical faculty, or finite understanding, men may consistently "follow after holiness," and also receive, as possible, though inexplicable, the supernatural account which has been conveyed to them of the historical origin of that tendency to sin of which they experience the power, as well as of that free restoration from the " fallen state," which, revealed in the Gospel, is myste- riously bestowed on the regenerate. This agrees, too, with the analogy of Scripture, for the Bible is fidl of both ideas — absolute commencement and derived volition — but it essays not to explain nor to reconcile them. If the finite power of reasoning may be proved inca- pable to grasp the theory that is sufficient to account for responsible actions, consistently on the one hand with our belief regarding causation, and on the other, with, the limitation of the series of causes which is assumed in those principles of the theistical argument that are at variance with the hypothesis of an infinite chain of de- rived causes, common sense includes among its other beliefs the conviction that we are created by God moral agents, responsible for those actions which we perform in relation to Him and to one another. This belief is suffi- cient to sustain our moral activity, even although the limits of the human intellect lay an arrest on further speculation, and therefore render it impossible for us to 116 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. retain in the vocabulary of our purely intellectual con- ception such words as Free-will and Kesponsibility, ex- cept, indeed, for the purpose of having finger-posts, as it were, for guiding us to points of view where we may have some of the most impressive aspects of that realm of mystery, by which human thought is encompassed on all sides, and on which we may " break the spirit" in metaphysical contemplation. The problem which these words suggest, as far as it is exclusively speculative, is truly one which, when we attempt to develop it, stirs the mind to its profoundest depths, as it offers to us the alternatives of self-origination, or an infinite course of dependent acts of will. With this negative rather than positive account of the theory of liberty, which, after all, only amounts to a statement of the reason why no conclusive solution can be given to the problem raised by the fact of moral agency, we leave the adjustment of the other questions connected with it to those who are ready to bestow addi- tional thought on the ideas of causation and responsi- bility which are those that are most peculiarly involved in the subject. And with this brief reference to a single department of the argument regarding the theory of moral agency, we abruptly and reluctantly close our account of the struggle of the Philosophy of Common Sense with Scepticism^ Idealism, and Nccessarianism. We regret, for the sake of the science in which we have been expatiating, the necessary concentration of thought and expression, which is manifest in this Essay, HAMILTON AND REID. 117 as we fear that the preceding disquisitions may thus appear, except to persons previously familiar with such thoughts, to be addressed only to those " small hooks of the mind" which catch at and apprehend mere illusive abstractions, and to have little or no connexion with that knowledge which penetrates nature, and finds real in- ductive axioms in her phenomena. We have reason to offer our cordial thanks to the distinguished author of these Notes and Dissertations, for providing among them so many paths and recesses in which the inquisitive student may reflect on phases of our knowledge, there presented to him, that will very greatly add to the number of his queries, on such topics as those which have occupied our attention in the greater part of this Essay, and where he may also gather no slight contribution to his stock of answers to such queries. The pages of this volume supply ample evi- dence that the graspings of the mind of man, after the first principles of physical, theological, and self-know- ledge, are not confined to one generation of the history of the world. These are founded on tendencies which are permanent as the race of man. They are the seeds of a nature fallen from its high original and destiny, but which was not adapted only or chiefly for this earthly life between two eternities. From Thales, Xenophanes, and Pythagoras in the Greek philosophy, and the still older inspired complaints of the patriarch of Idumea, down to our own century, the apparent discord of the llg ESSAYS IN rniLOSOPHY. theory of knowledge, arising from the real limitation of its sphere ; the great objects of knowledge — God, self, and the world ; — together with the riddles of creation, and of independent moral action, which these involve, have attracted, with a scientific interest, a succession of minds of different schools. Of this fact, the frag- ments of thought that are expressed in the accu- mulation of philosophical paragraphs, sentences, and references which enrich the learning of this volume, as well as its original matter, form a remarkable confirma- tion and illustration. Though ever and anon the calls of the circumstances through which men are passing may divert the attention of generations to the arrange- ment of affairs that are more pressing, if they are less sublime and imposing, the like aspirations will continue to ascend, and not the less passionately as the world approaches its catastrophe. They are worthy of rever- ence as the emanations of the human spirit in the direc- tion of the permanent, the infinite, and the eternal, the nourishment at once of nobleness and humility of mind, even although often the baffled efforts of a desire to break the barrier by which its own structure confines the thought of man, who finds instincts instead of ex]3lana- tions when he endeavours to form such science. This perpetual, yet broken struggle, after what must in the end elude his grasp, when become habitual and too ex- clusive in any individual, tends to weaken his judgment in common affairs, by abstracting it from clear and dis- tinct sciences, and palpable individual realities, and HAMILTON AND REID. 119 tempts his mind to sink into itself in the vain effort to find there that explanation which shall leave nothing to be explained. The check of nature thus imposed upon the unrestrained indulgence of speculation, affords an emphatical illustration of the sentiment which pervades the " Pensees " of Pascal, regarding the mingled gi'eat- ness and littleness of man. \ ESSAY HI. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS ; THEORY OF CAUSATION. ESSAY III. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS : THEORY OF CAUSATION. It seems a common opinion that there is little con- nexion between the subtle reasonings of recluse thinkers, devoted to abstract speculation, and the actions, or even the discoveries which are important to mankind. Books of Metaphj^sics are thus cast aside as void of human interest. The philosopher, notwithstanding, pursues his vocation, without expecting to convert the multitude to his manner of life. In each generation we find medita- tive minds, struggling to obtain the most comprehensive survey of the boundaries of knowledge, the deepest insight of the foundation of human beliefs, and the truest interpretation of the life of man. And when we look beneath the " show of things/' into the great heart of literature and social life, we find also that the intel- lectual agitation of these recluses has not really been unconnected, as it seemed to be, with the pulsations of that heart ; that, on the contrary, those who have main- 124 ESSAYS IN rillLOSOPHY. tained the vitality of philosophical discussion have — as by a social law — contributed the force which has kept the sciences in movement. The small band of labourers on these remote mountain summits of thought^ have guided opinions and affairs among the busy multitude in the valleys below. Their adventures and employments on the misty margin of human knowledge, whatever its success may have been in adding to the store of definite and immediately applicable information concerning the grand objects of the survey, will not be overlooked by a profound student of the literature and institutions of a generation. Abstract Philosophy — the expression of the deepest thought of the present, and the pioneer of popular opinion in the future — is a permanent intellectual want of the human mind. Its high speculations, even if con- versant Avith an absolutely indeterminate problem, are always important in their effects, as a chief cause of the changes for good or evil in the literary, social, and ecclesiastical expression of the current tastes and tend- encies. Philosophical labours, pursued amidst colourless abstractions, deeply tinge the results of every other de- partment of intellectual action. History, in short, goes far to confirm the profound remark of Coleridge : — " To the immense majority of men, even in civilized countries, speculative philosophy has ever been, and must ever remain, a terra incognita. Yet it is not the less true, that all the epoch-forming revolutions of the Christian world, the revolutions of religion and with them the civil, social, and domestic habits of the nations concerned. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 125 have coincided with the rise and fall of metaphysical systems."* Those who possess these convictions, cannot fail to regard with interest the kind of stream which, in any given period, is issuing from this remote well-spring of opinion. They will recognise some connexion between the topic of Scottish Metaphysics,! and those literary, scientific, theological, and even political questions which usually engage popular interest. Scotland has, in the past, added not a few classic books to philosophical literature. Our country has produced some of the most eminent speculative workmen of modern times, A care- ful analysis of the present opinions — especially theological and political — of Western Europe and America might trace back some of the most remarkable and influential of them to the workings of these Scottish minds.^; * " The Stateman's Manual : A Lay Sermon." By S. T. Coleridge. t The Literature of Scottish Metaphysics, regarded as a whole, has still to be collected and reviewed, and its history has still to be written. A valuable critical and historical essay might be founded on a review of that collective literature, including a summary of its performances, and a report of its " deficiencies" after the manner of Bacon. But a work so ambitious, and whicb needs so much research, is unsuited to an ephemeral Essay. The reader may be referred to a comprehensive and masterly sketch of the Philosophical Literature of Scotland, which has this year (1856) appeared in the " Eevue des Deux Mondes," from the pen of the Comte de Remusat, entitled, " L'Ecosse depuis la fin du xvii* Siecle, et la Pbilo- sophie de Hamilton." I We are glad to notice pleasing indications, even since this Essay has been written, that our philosophical literature is in a state of growth. We may refer, among others, to a Treatise on " The Philosophy of the Senses : or, Man in Connexion with a Material World," by Robert S. Wyld: (Edinburgh, 1852;) and an "Inquiiy into Human Nature," by John G. M'Vicar, D.D. (Edinburgh, 1853.) Jlr. Wyld's book contains the con- tribution of an unprofessional student of philosophy, and may be taken for 126 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. We cannot return to this inetapliysical region more appropriately than through the academic avenue formed by the writings of Sir William Hamilton. Nor can one more suitably foster the old Scottish taste for that study, than by inviting the attention of readers to some of the phases of our national speculation, in association with the most recent performances of the distinguished representative of Scottish Philosophy. No well-informed person needs to be told of the con- nexion between the name of Sir William Hamilton and the most elevated intellectual service of this age. During more than twenty years he has, by precept and example, recommended abstract speculation to a genera- tion by whom such pursuits have been almost unani- mously proscribed as valueless, and has laboured, in the isolation of his chosen walk, to redeem those products which are exclusively intellectual from the popular charge of uselessness. For many years he has been one of the chief philosophical powers in British literature, and he is now recognised as the solitary Scottish conqueror in the realm of speculation. The volume of his " Philosophical Discussions," ''• together with the a symptom of some popular revival, at the present time, of a pliilosopliic taste. Dr. M'Vicar has issued an ingenious Essay, which contains some curious disquisition, and much suggestive thought. We recommend it emphatically to the attention of all our philosophical readers. Pre-eminently worthy of attention is the work of our able countryman, Mr. Alexander Bain, "The Senses and the Intellect," (1855,) which dis- plays an uncommon clearness and ratiocinative power, — in the special department to the cultivation of which Mr. Bain has devoted himself. * " Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and Uni- versity Peform." By Sir William Hamilton, Bart. London and Edin- burgh, 1852. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS, 127 Notes and Dissertations conjoined with the author's edition of the works of lleid, contain more specidativc thought and curious learning than has ever before been discharged into literature by any single Scottish mind. The world is indebted to the "Edinburgh Keview" as the original channel of the most important British contributions to Philosophy of recent times, — the com- paratively popular Essays of Sir James Mackintosh, and these profound Discussions of Sir William Hamilton. The present volume includes the celebrated papers con- tributed to the " Review" from 1829 to 1838 ; and a remarkable Appendix of new matter which now appears for the first time. Six of the sixteen rei:)ublished Dis- cussions, as well as a considerable portion of the Ap- pendix, are devoted to Philosophy. In the present Essay we shall confine our attention to the philoso- phical parts of the volume. We make no allusion to many important questions in theology, church history, and the theory and practice of education, which are dis- cussed in its pages. We must, moreover, beg the special indulgence of our readers, while we try to conduct them towards the territory, — hitherto little frequented in Scotland, in which Sir William Hamilton has pursued his intellectual work as a philosopher. We do not ask them to take a part in the remote labour of lonely metaphysicians. But we do wish to induce them to join us in an exploring journey in that direction. If, before that journey is done, we have witnessed, as in a sunny haze, the champaign country, which a slight his- torical survey of modern British thought may disclose, 128 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. that more animating scene may perhaps make some amends for oar having to pass througli one or two metaphysical tunnels of more than usual length and darkness, which lie between us and a satisfactory view of the structure which has been reared by this latest labourer in the region of Scottish speculation. In what degree, it may be asked, has the literary and social atmosphere of Scotland been charged with the elements of intellectual life, during the quarter of a CENTURY within which Sir William Hamilton has been giving his philosophical opinions to the world ? The answer to this question, involving, as it does, some refer- ence to the earlier Scottish and even British systematic thought, may carry us over a considerable part of our present journey. In offering it, we shall view the intel- lectual character of this epoch in its connexion with the historical antecedents of which that character is partly the result, and then describe, in some of the doctrines ot Sir William Hamilton, the most recent expression which our insular and national speculation has assumed. The first of Sir William Hamilton's Discussions was published in 1829, when the sun of Scottish Philosophy seemed about to set. In the preceding year our country had lost in Stewart the most accomplished and least abstract expounder of the doctrines of Keid. Nearly ten years earlier, the brief and brilliant career of Thomas Brown was ended. Mackintosh still remained, his specu- lative ardour interrupted by the temptations of public SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. J 29 life, although no narrow strife of party had defiled the purity or clouded the grandeur of a mind too capacious for mere sectarianism either in Philosophy or Politics, and whose literary fragments excite regret only because they are so scanty and desultory. The eminent intel- lectual ability of the elder Mill is, notwithstanding his Scottish birth, more properly associated with South Britain, and neither the acute work of Ballantyne, nor the empiricism of the phrenologists, requires any excep- tion to the statement, that with Stewart, Brown, and Mackintosh, Scottish Philosophy seemed, twenty-five years ago, to be passing away, Nor does a greatly diiferent verdict seem called for, as regards the national life in intellectual pursuits, when we consider the productions of the country, either in general literature or speculative theology, now and in the intervening period. With the operations of Scott and Jeffrey, the most obtrusive and characteristic Scot- tish action upon modern literature ceased. Since Hume, there has been no Scottish movement among the prin- ciples of philosophical theology, of a diffusive influence extending over Europe. Chalmers introduced the vitality of a magnanimous and genial mind into doctrines in divinity, which, in the spirit of the national theological conservatism, tended, philosophically speaking, to assume a dogmatic rigour of the scholastic type ; and, like Ar- nold in England, illustrated the suitability of Christianity to the ever-changing social and intellectual condition of the successive ages of mankind. It is well if the watch- men of public opinion can still discover symptoms of I 130 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPnY, Scottish progress in the career which he commenced, — congenial efforts of Christian manliness in the cause of high thought and expansive Christianitj^, which might guard our theology and ecclesiastical life from the perilous isolation of a merely protesting, instead of an advancing and reconciling power. Must we say that Scotland, which in these years has been the scene of so much social, ecclesiastical, and religious activity, is, in the calmer sphere of meditation and learned research, to follow passively in the wake of Europe or America, or, with abated mental energy and progress, to repose amid her old traditions ? May we not put a more liberal interpretation upon the present phenomena of her intel- lectual life, — one which recognises the peculiar character of the nation, with its proper function in the history of opinions, and judge that, in an age of the dissolution of doctrines into their elements, it is good to find symptoms of the action of a law of doctrinal cohesion, even at the expense of the more enlarged philosophic sympathies ? Whatever answers may be rendered to these questions, it must be congenial to those who are interested in them, to study the character of the new type of Scottish specu- lation, which has been in the course of formation in these twenty years, by an intellectual giant, who is all the more conspicuous and remarkable as he now stands so nearly alone, in the ebb of literary activity in Scot- land which has been apparent during this generation. We cannot affirm that a corresponding ebb has been going on in England. The condition of reflective studies in the southern part of the Island seemed hardly more SCOTTISH METAniYSICS. 131 propitious than in Scotland twenty-five years ago. En- glish I'hilosophy had been a blank almost since the early years of last century. It was needful to look across the gulf of more than a hundred years, to dis- cover in the distance the great monument of speculation reared by Locke. Hartley, Price, and Harris are indeed eminent names in the interval. But for several genera- tions, philosophic thought had lost its charm for the leading minds of England. It was expressly discouraged by her universities, where the Modern Philosophy was at no time regarded with special favour. Yet, on the other hand, a quarter of a century since, the Scottish mind exhibited chiefly symptoms of a speculative de- cline ; while England was beginning to abound in the seeds of fresh thought, which have since produced no inconsiderable harvest, not only in metaphysics and logic, but in poetry, the social science, theology, and other de- partments cognate to Philosophy. It was then a period of transition. The aged Bentham stood almost alone, as the prophet of the worldly utilitarianism which was nourished by the philosophic teaching of a former gener- ation. But England was summoned to a course of medi- tation, transcending her wonted mental experience, by the dreamy sage of Highgate ; and invited to muse on the deep meaning and beauty of nature by the recluse of Eydal Mount. To these two fountains, aided by some tributary streams, no small part of what is peculiar to the national thought and literature in this generation may be traced. But even with the help of Scottish 132 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. gravitation towards the British metropolis, the genera- tion has not sent forth a master mind of mark enough to take a place in Philosophy in the ranks of the intel- lectual grandees of England, beside her own Bacon or Locke. An important chapter in modern intellectual history might, however, be formed out of the materials presented in the social and literary history of South Britain during these years. Strange tides of opinion have been passing through many minds, moving old institutions and tra- ditions, and gradually depositing a literature as different in its character from that to which the preceding period was accustomed, as the external arrangements of life in this country now are different from their state in the days of our fathers. It has been to England a period of the re\ival of theoretic principles, good and evil, into life, all over the substratum of the national mind. These principles, with their implied logical consequences, have been struggling into practice, with not a little of that force and consistency of purpose which earnest conviction directs against the seductions of ease and present expe- diency. Theories — the upheavings of the philosophic mind, have risen in greater number and force in England in these times than since the great Revolution. The present fermentation of opinions is, indeed, a signal illustration of the power of general principles, to modify even the practices and institutions which are discovered to be at variance with the logical results of speculation ; and to produce an epoch which can least of all dispense SCOTTISH METAPRYSrCS. 133 with those comprehensive minds, whose function is to guide wisely the revohition needed to reconcile concrete social institutions with abstract doctrines. Free reflec- tion is directed towards the depths of political, ecclesias- tical, and theological questions. The organization of labour, and of national and international society, is dis- cussed in many quarters in a manner which forces the disputants within the province of Philosophy. The recent history of ecclesiastical affairs suggests many applications of the meditative habit of mind to the pro- blems of the Church. Nowhere, perhaps, on the ecclesi- astical horizon, can the philosophic observer discover an object which better deserves his patient study than the Church of England, with its singularly complicated and anomalous external and internal relations ; and contain- ing elements now galvanized into a mutually destructive life, after the almost unbroken slumber of nearly two centuries. It is probably the region of theological con- troversy which presents the most obvious signs of the spread of a bold and novel intellectual life. The old questions of the criterion of certainty and the rule of faith, are raised by learned ecclesiastics and by philoso- phical religionists, in such a way as to manifest a ten- dency towards a state of opinion in which the principles of the Reformation seem destined to undergo a more searching scrutiny, by Eomanists on the one side, and Rationalists on the other, than they have experienced in this country since the Western Churches revolted from Rome. 134 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. Nor is the change in Continental less than it has been in English thoughtful literature, during the last quarter of a century, but it has gone in an opposite direction. In the earlier part of that period, Schelling and Hegel were conspicuous, among a host of less notable names, as philosophical leaders in Germany ; and Cousin was the centre of the most brilliant and numerous circle of thinkers which France has known since the decline of the Cartesian school. Now, after a course of speculation the most active, and in some respects the most extrava- gant which modern times have witnessed, Philosophy appears at last in a state of collapse in Germany, and, with the illustrious exception of Cousin, who, however, has in a great measure ceased from active labour, pos- sesses no original representative in France. For the valuable reflective research of the future, as for the other seeds of human progress, we are apt, when we look around, to turn from the country of Leibnitz and that of Malebranche, to the land which produced Bacon, and Locke, and Reid, But symptoms of the action of recent German and French Philosophy upon the British mind are notable in the present intellectual literature of this country. The philosophical methods and language which have origi- nated in Germany, in the last seventy years, so fill the vision of some of the minds devoted to this study in Britain and America, that they seem to have forgotten the fact, — concealed in the past behind the cloud of German metaphysics, that we have a characteristic Bri- SCOTTISH METAPIiySK.'S. J 35 tisli philosophical literature of our own ; aud moreover, that many of these foreign doctrines, in spreading among us, are only returning to the land of their origin in a sublimated form. Modern Philosophy may, notwith- standing, be vaguely described as developed according to the British aud the Continental type ; and the old Scot- tish was a modification of the British, with some im- portant peculiarities. The following paragraphs, in describing the rudiments of English and Scottish specu- lation in the early history of each, may in part illustrate this statement. When we ponder the deep convictions by means of which the majestic spirit of Bacon roused the mind of England, we find him guiding men in another step of that series, alternating between dream and waking — notionalism and realism, which the history of human intelligence presents. His works were designed to re- call men from illusions to reality — to lead them to de- scend beneath words to their true meaning, beneath changing appearances to the unchanging generalities which mere phenomena may either conceal or conduct to. But the call of Bacon was addressed, so to speak, in the national dialect ; and in the tone of one conscious that the function of man is patiently to seek truth, rather than dogmatically to assume that he has found, and may systematically expound it. Man cannot, he would say, ascend at once to the apex of Being, and form an a p?^iori science of existence, as if the knower were the lord of the knowable. He must ascend by slow degrees and, as the servant of experience, surrender the luxuries 136 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. of dogmatic hypothesis. Such was the spirit of Bacon, Instead of a finished system of his own, he characteris- tically offers a series of aphorisms and historic ilkistra- tions, which enforce the impossibility of exhausting Being in knowledge, the inferiority of the knower to the knowable, and open up the path to a real though partial intercourse between man and nature. We can- not now pause in his company. But the reader who Avishes to imbibe the spirit of that philosophy of which Experience is the watchword, may profitably return often to the De Augmentis and the Novum Organum. We pass down the stream of time well-nigh seventy years, to exchange the art and spirit of Philosophy — the principle of progress contained, in the form we have alluded to, in these works of Bacon, for the scientific theory concerning Experience, presented in the writings of Locke. The triumphs of Experience were becoming illustrious in physical discovery. But the illusions against which Bacon warned thinkers had not disappeared. Man was still lorded over by preconceptions through which he vainly tried to conquer his way to reality. Even the current Philosophy of the age appeared to Locke to pro- vide, in the famous dogma of innate princii3les, a refuge for notions which could not be traced back to what is real. Bacon had urged men to explore appearances in search of universal truths, and to abandon their precon- ceptions. But Des Cartes, Lord Herbert, and other lead- ing thinkers seemed to say that universal truths might be found among human preconceptions, without the SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 137 labour of a previous inductive scrutiny of appearances. The relation of human knowledge to Experience must itself, therefore, be scientifically determined. Their mu- tual adjustment, by means of an inductive study of our knowledge in its most general aspect, was the design of the imperfectly-performed work of Locke. With Locke and his associates the proper Philosophy of South Britain terminates. Bacon impelled men to search for a knowledge of the real through the seeming ; and Locke offered an ambiguous solution of the question, whether Experience is the only cause, and its sphere the utmost limit of human knowledge. The grand glimpses of Bacon, and the solid thought of Locke, are the chief excitement which the higher mind of Britain supplies, in the earlier period of its modern history, to the specula- tive tendencies of Europe. Careless of subtlety, and averse from what is mysterious, Locke has probably pro- moted Philosophy as much by the controversies for which the doubtful parts of his writings have afforded room, as by the doctrine which they unambiguously contain.''^ A psychological analysis of these two memorable minds would be a study of the English intellectual character. So delicate a process must not be interposed in this superficial survey of the main stream of speculation in * We of course refer here only to the purely philosophical works of Locke, and especially to his " Essay," which Sir James Mackintosh ranks as one of the four hooks " which have most directly influenced the gene- ral opinion of Europe during the last two centuries." But if Locke's " Letters on Toleration" are taken into the account, how greatly must the estimate of his influence upon suhsequeut opinions and legislation be increased ! 138 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. Britain. We go on to describe an important passage in its course. Tliat course was changed when the Essay of Locke became the aliment of a few Scottish thinkers to- wards the middle of last century. The circumstance seems to illustrate some of the points of difference in the character of the minds of the two divisions of this Island. When we consider the national character, we perhaps expect to find, in the higher intellectual operations of the Scottish mind, the tendency to test or verify dogma- tic assumptions, rather than to seek for principles which may be assumed. We look for a searching logical ana- lysis of theories, instead of the application to practice of opinions received although unconnected with first prin- ciples and void of the symmetry of system, which is more characteristic of the English mind. We also ex- pect to meet, in the productions of Scottish genius, a greater congeniality with what is purely abstract, a more entire submission to the march of merely speculative reasoning, and less facility to compromise with the other tendencies of human life, or to subordinate speculation to action. On the whole, one might anticipate in North Britain more angularity of philosophical doctrine, and a nearer approach to the extreme margin of knowledge, with perhaps a less genial development of the entire humanity, and less satisfaction in the 'practical solution of intellectual difficulties than might be exhibited in the south. England is likely to have a series of liberal thinkers, presenting various modifications of opinion ; Scotland, a system of doctrine, definite and dogmatic SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 139 enough to form the foundation of a school. The sub- stratum of good sense, common to both nations, is per- haps more logically refined and purely intellectual in Scotland ; richer, more pliable, and better adapted to practice in England.* These somewhat sweeping generalities concerning the character of communities often fail in the application of them to individuals. But the quality of the intellectual work performed by leading philosophers of the two divi- sions of this Island, seems to us to illustrate some of the mental features which we have attributed to their inha- bitants. It has been the function of the Scottish mind to supply, if we may so say, the logical digestion needed by the aliment which the great English philosophers have provided. If the works of English guides of thought exhibit freer and richer developments of all the elements of man's complicated being, and communicate through more numerous channels with practice, the fruits of Scottish reflection are fetched with more patient care * The Scottish mind — its love for what is logically definite and ex- haustive — its tendency to employ itself in the analysis, verificatiou, or de- fence of dogmas, rather than in seeking for them without any prejudg- ment, may be partly the cause and partly the efl'ect of the popularity of that systematic type of Theology which has educated the national mind since the Eeformation. The Christian science of Calvin, with its moral weight and logical tenacity, has defined the limits of system within which religious thought has been conducted by the Christian guides of the nation. The consequent difference of national character seems to be illus- trated, in respect to religion, in the small prominence of the reference to doctrinal orthodoxy in the English popular mind, when compared with the acute, if often dogmatic, recognition of " sound " doctrine which lias been associated with so much that is valuable in the better class of the Scottish peasantry. 140 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. from a narrower field, and are better adapted to satisfy a single tendency. Minds like Bacon and Locke occupy a point at which man and the world may be surveyed with a more ample sweep, in all the variety of sea and land ; Hume and Reid explore, the one with a keener scrutiny, and the other with a more patient attention, the remote boundaries and intricate recesses of the province of intel- lectual Philosophy. These two Scottish thinkers may be said to have passed Locke's theory through the win- nowing mill of the logical understanding and the com- mon sense, and to have reached results which were over- looked in the more discursive range of Bacon, and with the less purely speculative aims of Locke. We do not mean here to resume the old story of the doctrines of these celebrated persons. A passing sug- gestion concerning the meaning of their respective per- formances, in the intellectual evolution of the national mind, is all we profess to offer. The successors of Locke in the South resolved Experience into sensation, and yet professed to give a scientific account of all human beliefs. A more rigorous interpretation of the English Philosophy, with a determination to pursue its principles into their logical issues, marks the singular specimens of Scottish subtlety involved in the scepticism of Hume ; which originated, by a reaction, the " school" of Reid, and also, through Kant, directed the modern mind into a career of speculative action that is not yet ended. It is of course true, as regards practical conviction, that a system of universal scepticism can never be more than an " amusement" of the understanding ; but every con- SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 141 siderable effort by man to make his knowledge an object of scientific attention, and to discover its elements, is influential in human affairs, as well as intrinsically in- teresting. The great influence of these writings of Hume, upon the subsequent course of modern opinions in philosophy and theology, proves that his bold attempt to find what was implied in the current speculative opinions of his age may be regarded as more than a mere " amusement." And no one who wishes to study the different genias of the English and Scottish styles of British speculation should neglect to compare the " Essay on Human Understanding," with the "Treatise of Human Nature." If the " Treatise" was founded upon principles to which the " Essay" may be said to have given currency, it origi- nated in its turn a series of philosophical writings, which profess to discover other mental phenomena than those accounted for by the theory which Hume had found to hang together so loosely as to render a uni- versal speculative doubt unavoidable. In Hume's inter- pretation of the current Philosophy, we see how British speculation, which awoke at Bacon's summons to men to cast aside idola, and to search for the real among the seeming, has, in the act of reviewing the real extent of human knowledge, condemned men to perpetual banishment from truth, by resolving knowledge into illusion. Faith must be revived and vindicated. Ex- perience must be explored more patiently, in quest of witnesses to realities which transcend the " impressions" into which the Scottish penetration and subtlety of Hume 142 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. had analyzed the account of human knowledge given in the English Philosophy. The recognition of dogmatic first principles was eminently a Scottish task. It en- saored Reid and his associates. The retirement of a Scottish manse nourished the leading mind in this new school. For obvious reasons, the field selected by Reid, in his search for an evidence of reality which might repair the ruin occasioned by the recent explosion of speculative scepticism, was chiefly that part of human knowledge which relates to the world of the senses. Amid our very sensations we find ourselves, through perception, face to face with external realities which do not pass away when the sensations cease. Perception is the watchword or symbol of a dogmatic faith, which the reflective mind can vindicate, and which every mind must experience. " There is really something in the rose or lily which by the vulgar is called smell, and which continues to exist when it is not smelled Hardness and softness are neither sensations nor like any sensations ; they were real qualities before they were perceived by touch, and continue to be so when they are not perceived Upon the whole, it ap- pears that our (British) philosophers have imposed upon themselves and upon us, in pretending to deduce from sensation the first origin of our notions of external ex- istences, of space, motion, and extension, and all the primary qualities of body — that is, the qualities whereof we have the most clear and distinct conception." These, and very many similar passages indicate the style in which Reid searched the human mind, in order to ill us- SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 143 trate that kind of faith and intuition in which the mind gains a direct intellectual intercourse with the world of Matter. It was thus that the speculative ingenuity of one Scottish mind employed the received principles of the English Philosophy to efiect a dissolution of human be- liefs ; while the patient judgment of another revealed a profounder meaning in Experience than Locke had recog- nised. The philosophic ore discovered in England was, as it were, transmitted to Scotland, to be there tested by sceptical subtlety, and thus indirectly to give occasion to an energetic expression of the national dogmatic faith or common sense. The period of the decay of the old Philosophy in England and Scotland respectively, has some analogies with the period of its manhood. The incipient decline of Locke's theory in the south is connected with the name of a writer, who merits credit for his attempt to apply an important psychological law to account for our knowledge. We refer to David Hartley, author of the " Observations on Man," an expounder of the phenomena of mental attraction or association, noticed by Hobbes in the previous century, and the laws of which have since been popularly employed, in a sort of chemistry of ideas, to explain some mental facts supposed to be im- perfectly provided for in the doctrine of the Essay of Locke. Hume has recognised the value of the prin- ciple, in the constructive portion of his speculations. And it is curious to remark, that this law of the mechanical association of mental states, which, entangled 144 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. as it was with physiological hypothesis, engaged English Philosophy in its dotage in last century, was discussed in this century in Scotland by Dr. Thomas Brown ; and, freed from the incrustation of these hypotheses, has been by him applied as an almost universal solvent, in the formation of the ingenious system by means of which Brown beguiled not a few acute minds from the doctrines of Eeid. Scotland thus again filled its characteristic ofiSce in the evolutions of British opinion. But we have symptoms of a new type of abstract speculation in Britain, even before the old Philosophy of the country had exhausted itself Germany, instead of England, now presented material to the Scottish logi- cal intelligence. The name of Kant is associated with a revolutionary epoch in the history of modern European thought. The formalism of Kant, and even the absolu- tist dreams of his G-erman successors, began everywhere to supersede the doctrine of the eighteenth century ; and Germany was regarded by not a few as rendering a service in the modern somewhat similar to that rendered by Greece in the ancient world. Cousin, more than any other writer of the age, and in the noblest and most liberal spirit, was giving a diffused popularity to the study of the new systems. It was in these circum- stances, amid influences to which his extraordinary familiarity with what has been written by philosophers peculiarly exposed him, that Sir William Hamilton pre- sented, in successive instalments, his Philosophical Dis- cussions to the British public. In these Discussions, the student of philosophical literature may note conclusions, SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 145 and methods of searching for them, which recall Aristotle and K;int oftener than Locke and Reid. Their very language seems to warn the reader to transport himself to an intellectual position remote from the one occupied by the guides of thought whose works we have been tracing ; and to indicate that, in the silence of the old questionings which had busied thoughtful Englishmen and Scotchmen in preceding generations, the great Con- tinental movement in metaphysics, which had reached its height twenty years since in Germany and France, was helping to give a voice to a new representative of our insular Philosophy. The problems of the univeise and of absolute knowledge, suggested by the terms " unconditioned" and " conditions of the thinkable," are substituted for those more homely researches into the histoiy of consciousness, expressed by the once familiar terms " intellectual powers" and " mental states." Yet the reader of these Discussions may also discover in them some marks which attest not merely a British, but even a peculiarly Scottish parentage. He is thus re- minded of their nationality, and also of the cosmopolite influences amid which they were produced, in the decline of British, and the crisis of Continental and especially of French philosophy. (2.) At this point we should be prepared to offer some satisfaction to a variety of questions. What are the prin- cipal fragments of philosophical doctrine placed before us in the new Scottish writings ? Do they fit together K 146 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. into an organized body of Philosophy ? Wliat is tlie relative proportion of original and derived doctrine which tliey contain ? What is the method according to which that doctrine has been sought for and obtained ? What the arrangement of the philosophical studies and sciences which they suggest ? What the negative and the con- structive value of that Philosophy, regarded as a whole, and also in respect to one or more of its subordinate ramifications ? What important links of connexion may be described, between these extremely abstract dis- cussions, and some of the more interesting and obvious pursuits of mankind ? With these questions more or less in our view, we shall in the first place try to describe the chief philo- sophical opinions of Sir William Hamilton, within the compass of a few brief paragraphs, and with some regard to what seems to be the mutual relation and relative importance of principles presented in his works in a fragmentary form. We may remark, however, that the occasional manner in which these doctrines have been introduced to the world, and the dense brevity of style which marks a writer who scorns to render himself in- telligible to unreflective and illogical minds, combine to increase the difficulty of investing with a general in- terest a course of reasoning and contemplation suffi- ciently difficult to repel the multitude even in the most favourable circumstances, conducted as it is almost uni- formly in the remotest and least accessible regions of speculation. Then, the systematic use of a nomenclature, constructed with a rigorous precision suited to convey SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 147 philosophical meaning with singular efficiency to minds prepared for receiving it, unavoidably confines the stream of abstract discussion within a channel from which it cannot speedily escape to deepen the common opinion or literature of the age. Symbolic language, moreover, may be stereotyped after this fashion in the narrow de- partment where thought, as in the mathematical sciences, is conversant with necessary truth ; but the scientific language of one age must be outgrown by the results of observation, and of fresh experiments in meditation, in the next, in those truly human studies which deal with probability, and in which knowledge, while ad- vancing, is still imperfect. The general reader is on the whole apt to miss in these Discussions the plain and sometimes ambiguous language of daily life, through which the ample volume of the thoughts of Locke is discharged, or the natural grace and beauty in which the most subtle and original opinions of Hume are presented in his Essays. He cannot meditate freely when the evolutions of his thought must be fitted in to the move- ments of a complicated machinery of words. But, after all, the inborn thinker finds congenial companionship in Philosophy, whether she appears in easy negligence or in her academic robes. (3.) The object singled out for investigation in the new Scottish philosophical writings is Human Knowledge. The more precise purpose of a large part of them is, to unfold the most general and abstract Law or Condition 148 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOrilY. to which our judgments must conform, and by which therefore they are limited. Tlie problem more imme- diately examined in them is perhaps rather the limita- tion ofhumcm intelligence^ than that which, under the designation of the origin of knowledge, has more or less determined all the chief systems of modern speculation. But the one of these problems is essentially implicated in the other, and both of them are involved in the dis- cussions of Sir William Hamilton. It is the uniform lesson of his Philosophy, that human consciousness admits only a limited knowledge, and that the Absolute and Infinite are merely " names for two counter imbecilities of the mind of man." The philoso- phic axiom, that an unconditioned consciousness, and an unconscious knowledge, are alike impossible, is every- where proclaimed ; and the assumption is formally de- fended and illustrated in the discussion devoted to the " Philosophy of the Unconditioned." That intellectual point of view from which the limits of intelligence or consciousness may be studied seems, in short, to be the one which affords the most comprehensive and harmoni- ous view of these new Scottish speculations. The task of the thinker, who occupies this position for his study of thought, is, to exhibit — if possible systema- tically and exhaustively, the necessary laws by which human consciousness, as such, and also in each of its different modifications, is limited. In this respect, the work of Sir William Hamilton is the supplement and counterpart to that of Locke. If Locke describes the various sorts of " ideas," which are the immediate objects SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 149 of our judgment, together with the most general classes into which they may he resolved ; the Scottish thinker studies our judgments themselves, to find the conditions which must be fulfilled, in order that acts of intelligence may be performed in relation to any objects. If the ob- jective element in knowledge was appropriated, and, in a measure, psychologically analyzed, by Locke ; the sub- jective and necessary conditions of all conscious intelli- gence are selected for logical and metaphysical study by Sir William Hamilton. In British philosophy, Locke and Hamilton thus divide between them the two de- partments which belong to a complete reflective review of knowledge, — the objects ofhioitiedge, and the subjec- tive limits of intelligibility. The Scottish philosopher assumes two distinct kinds of necessary limits to human knowledge : — First, the logical, or those conditions to which all valid thinking must be conformed, and which regulate, moreover, ex- istence in general ; secondly, the metaphysical, consisting of a series of laws manifested in certain relations among existences, but not exhausting those relations, or reach- ing to a reality that transcends human thought ; in a word, to the Unconditioned. Tlie violation of the logical laws renders thinking a nullity, and existence an impos- sibility. On the other hand, the metaphysical conditions of knowledge have only a tinite application ; they do not enclose all being, but, though* not containing, they yet allow the reality of the transcendent and the absolute. Logic is, in short, the science of those conditions of con- scious intelli<2ence which cannot be violated either in 150 ESSAYS IN rHILOSOPHT. thought or in existence, and tlie fiilfihnent of which yields merely the oioi-impossible. What is conformed to these laws of logic is thinkable, and may be real ; what violates them can neither exist nor be conceived in the mind. Metaphysics is the science of those limita- tions to thought which are not absolutely limitations of existence. In the realm of existence, though not in that of thought, there may be that which transcends the metaphysical limits of intelligibility, and which, while not intelligible, is real. A large part of these Philosophical Discussions, and of the comments connected with the author's edition of Eeid, may be said to be occupied with an analysis of the meta'physical limits of intelligibility ; combined with psycliological descriptions of certain alleged faculties or modifications of metaphysically conditioned conscious- ness, which are revealed in the mind of man, (e.^/., per- ception, memory, imagination, with the laws of mental association, &c.) The Metaphysics is a Scoto-German supplement to Locke, and the Psychology is a scientific refinement on Eeid and Brown. (The Pure Logic, mean- time, we cast out of the account.) A metcq)]iysically -limited consciousness of phenomena is thus in a manner the element, — the " cogito, ergo sum" of Sir William Hamilton's constructive philosophy. His task, as a metaphysician, is to find and classify the conditions by which consciousness must be limited. As a psychologist, he should discover and describe the various modes or faculties of our conditioned con- sciousness. SCOTTISH METArHYSICS. 151 Consciousness is realized only under Kclations. This relativity is twofold : of Knowledge, and of Existence. — The relativity of human knowledge, i.e., the meta- physical limitation of it, implies, we are told, the re- lation of a subject knowing to an object known. Existence as known must be qualitatively known, in- asmuch as we must conceive every object of wliich wo are conscious, in the relation of a quality depending upon a substance. Moreover, this qualitatively-known object must be "protended, or conceived as existing in time, and extend.ed, or regarded as existing in space ; while its qualities are intensive, or conceivable under degree. The thinkable, in its last analysis, is thus the Relative, or Conditioned — being realized under limitations that lie either in thought itself, or in existence. With the help of these data, may we not discover and define the highest law of intelli- gence, and thus place the key-stone in the metaphysic arch ? When, for example, we try to conceive Time or Space — in order to determine the grasp of our power of con- ceiving, we find that we cannot realize either an absolute or an infinite conception of them. W^e can as easily " think without thought," as construe to the mind an absolute commencement or an absolute termination of time ; that is, a beginning and an end beyond which time is conceived as non-existent. Nor can we conceive either an infinite regress or progress of time ; for such notions could only be realized by the infinite addition in thought of finite times, and such an addition would itself 152 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHV. require an eternity for its accomplishment. If we dream of effecting this we only deceive ourselves, hy substitut- ing the indefinite for the infinite, than which no two notions can be more opposed. Time can thus be con- ceived only in a conditioned interval between two oppo- site, (an absolute and an ioiinite,) unconditioned, con- tradictory extremes or poles, each of w^hich is inconceiv- al)le, but of which, on the (logical) principle of excluded middle^ one or other necessarily is. The law by which our notion of time is thus condi- tioned may, it is assumed, be taken for the type of the universal law of the limitation of human intelligence. We cannot think any object or event either Absolutely or Infinitely. All thinkable existence must, in the act of thought, be limited by the mental conditions implied in an exercise of thought confined between these two contradictory, unthinkable extremes. But the speculations of Sir William Hamilton are not merely negative, analytic, and polemical. They may also be illustrated on their positive, synthetic, and con- ciliatory side. They may be represented as the fruitful seeds of metaph)sical discovery. Judgments, hitherto regarded as ultimate, may be accounted for by means of this elementary law of the limitation of thought. Philo- sophy itself may be advanced by the simplification and consolidation of its doctrines. Thus, the hitherto unac- countable mental necessity of attributing every quality to a SUBSTANCE, is merely a result of the Law of the Conditioned. And we experience an irresistible mental impulse to believe the existence of a cause, when any SCOTTISH METAPUYSICS. 153 change is observed by us. But the theory of the coudi- tioned virtually implies that we caunot conceive an Absolute commencement of existence. As a consequence of this intellectual inability, thus derived, we cannot conceive any change as a neiu existence, but only as a new form of an old existence ; we are thus under an in- tellectual necessity to refund every new appearance into a previous one. But this mental weakness, and conse- quent necessity, is only the causal judgment in its most abstract form. That judgment is thus only a special result of the necessary limitation of thought ; and the virtue of this theory of causality is said to lie in the pos- sibility, which it reveals, of a reconciliation between the doctrine of Free-will or moral liberty, and the axiom that every change implies a cause, — thus opening a new vista of progress to the metaphysician and the scientific divine. These are specimens of the principle of metaphysical progress which is alleged to be contained in this scien- tific demonstration of the limitation of human know- ledge. They are presented in conjunction with a mass of subtle psychological doctrines, concerning the specific differences of the acts of human consciousness. If the mental phenomena are all " conditioned," they are not, on that account, entirely similar. Reflection, on the contrary, reveals characteristic features by which they may be grouped into classes ; and reflective analysis, of of a very refined sort, is applied to them by Sir William Hamilton, in the discussions which relate to experimen- tal Psychology. In common with the elder Scottish 154 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. psycholof^ists, he confines his attention chiefly to that modification of conditioned consciousness which Reid calls perception. But he also examines, with singular acuteness, the laws by which conditioned consciousnesses are associated, and tlie marks hy which the representa- tive knowledge of memory and imagination may be dis- tinguished from the immediate consciousness of percep- tion. The preceding paragraphs contain a slight outline of the scheme within which Sir William Hamilton may be described as exhibiting, in fragments in his various philosophical writings, his doctrines concerning the meta- physical or necessary conditions of human consciousness, and the psychological modifications which that conscious- ness is discovered to manifest when it is studied experi- mentally. In the view we have given, it may appear that, on the whole, this new doctrine issues in a defini- tion of abstract intelligibility, and a metaphysical deter- mination of its necessary contents ; rather than in a psychological induction of our varied and vital acts of cognitive intercourse with real existences — physical, human, or divine. The judgment, that Matter exists, is represented as nnaccountable, and the theory of percep- tion is cut short on the margin of most interesting ques- tions. In regard to speculative theology, we are told that " the only valid arguments for the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul, rest on the ground of man's moral nature." But what definite judgments, it may be asked, should be pronounced concerning this curious and highly ab- SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 155 stract speculative theory, the parts of which seem to be formally united with the tenacity of the strictest logic ? Scotland has presented, in David Hume, just one other reviewer of knowledge in its First Principles, who can be associated with Sir William Hamilton, in respect of his undaunted resolution to tread only and at all hazards on its extreme margin, as well as his perfect acquaint- ance with every part of the ground he occupies; — and of the speculations of Hume, we may atfirm, tliat their intellectual force is not yet exhausted, nor has their design and meaning been fully interpreted. But what is the intrinsic value, and probable historic influence of this new, all-embracing theory ? What does its pre- sence in the great manufactory of opinion augur for the future ? (4.) It must be grateful to persons endowed with any ex- pansive intellectual sympathy, — even apart from the question of their positive truth, to contemplate the existence, in our British literature, of new speculations, tending to excite the action of the higher mental facul- ties. Any book which is fitted thus to increase the quantity of active thought in the world should be wel- comed. He who does not look to the philosophical writings of Sir William Hamilton, as to an Intellectual Gymnasium, forgets the chief office of all truly philoso- phical writing and discourse. The philosophic reader will not inquire first concerning the number of true propositions contained iu a speculative work ; he vrill 156 E^iSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. look to the amount of reflective power which the study of it discovers or tends to generate. Indeed, a contribu- tion to society of fresh and better-disciplined intellectual action, rather than the disclosure of hitherto unknown truth, has been, and perhaps must continue to be, the chief service rendered by this department of literature. The thoughtful reader of this class of books does not, it may well be, review the list of new doctrines which his reading has communicated to him, until he has reckoned up some of the changes in his mental experience which it has promoted. He will look within, to find the intel- lectual movement which the writing has favoured, as well as without, to learn the propositions it has denied or demonstrated. When he wants to know its character, he will ask, not only what satisfaction, but also what dissatisfaction it has occasioned in his mind, — what fresh longing to go beneath the surface of words and common opinions has been awakened — what ideal asso- ciations have been kindled — what new conviction of au end in life has been formed, and what old one deepened. Nourishment of this sort is what the truly philosophical taste craves for, and what the best guides in Philosophy have sought to supply. The vain show, or even the reality, of much miscellaneous information was the sham science against which the old Greek sages waged unceas- ing war. And they carried it on less by presenting to their disciples systematic intellectual results, than by making them feel the need for such, and the impossibility of the attainment, except through reflecting often and long upon familiar judgments, and the meaning of forms SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 157 of words which might be current among tliem. When we watch the evolution of a dialogue in Plato, instead of obtaining at its close an answer to the question with which we started at the commencement, how often do we learn only tliat we have not gained it, — not that it cannot be found at all, but that the chase is longer and harder than we had supposed, that one discussion, or even a series of discussions, cannot convey it, that some- times it cannot be conveyed at all from without, but must be drawn forth by reflection from within, and that this very work of reflection itself, to be successful, must not be the work of merely a day or a year — that it is rather the work of life, to be persisted in from day to day and from year to year, the symptom of a growing strength in man's reason, but of a strength which must become weakness, if it is separated from moral courage and calm devotion of the heart and will to Grod. We believe it must be the opinion of every reader of these Discussions, who can rise above the sedative influ- ence of system, penetrate through their novel nomencla- ture to its living meaning, and pass in succession the speculations they contain through a series of independent critical judgments of his own, that, — whatever be the truth of their doctrine, they at least tend powerfully to cherish the philosophical life. But this remark cannot well be dismissed without some comment. Two obvious qualities in the writings of Sir William Hamilton may appear on the surface hardly to agree with their possess- ing or diffusing intellectual vitality and power. One of X58 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. these iSj his extmorditiary familiarity with the philosophic opinions of all ages and nations ; the other, the method of doctrinal discovery employed by him in the formation of his own theories, which seems to press the life out of the very speculations to which it gives birth. Each quality has a close relation to the intellectual character of this age, as well as to the value of the new doctrine regarded as the science of knowledge. The extraordinary number of proper names and quo- tation marks, accumulated u})on these pages — especially obvious when they are compared with the pages of Locke, Hume,' Keid, or indeed any of the other masters of British thought — indicates, even to the superficial eye, how frequently the fresh flow of original discussion is interrupted by allusions to Greek, ]\Iedia3val, Continental, or the earlier British literature ; and by criticisms of the nature and originality of particular opinions held by philosophical writers. The authors own views are sel- dom projected in complete freedom from the course of previous opinion, and usually they are blended with, or appear to be suggested by, some disquisition which has been found in books. But these fticts do not really subtract, so much as they seem on the surface to do, from the originality of the philosopher, while they even illustrate the relation of Sir William Hamilton to the History of Philosophy in advantageous contrast to a prevailing fashion. We know not any other writer who has proved in how great a degree books may stimulate the intellect into indepen- dent action ; nor any recent philosopher who has inter- SCOTTISU ^METAPHYSICS. IJO preted the theories of the past and the present less biassed by an exaggerated opinion of the exclusive im- portance of history, or by preconceptions of th6 liistoric course of speculation, in its manifold phases in each suc- cessive age. The speculations of Schelling and Hegel in Germany, of Cousin and the eclectics in France, the popular writ- ings of Lewes and Morell, and even the ingenious work of Maurice, illustrate the manner in which the study of Philosophy is becoming a study of History, and liow theories about the past and future course of sjoeculation are substituted for abstract speculation itself But this exaggeration of the important trutb, — that the material to be examined by the pbilosopher includes the course of social thought as well as the phenomena of individual self-consciousness, may be apt to realize the fable of the dog and his shadow, by annihilating in the end Philo- sophy and its History. We must take care not to dis- tort the opinions of the past, in an attempt to fix them down on the Procrustes-bed of an a priori theory of what the course of Philosophy in the human race must be. One feels as if he were breathing an unhealthy in- tellectual atmosphere, when he is invited to search, in a narrow modern speculation regarding history, for all the liberal thought which has been produced by the medita- tion of three thousand years ; and he is apt, when thus confined, to long for the bracing exercise of a critical hunt over the open fields of the literature of the past. We cannot avoid suggesting this caution with reference to a prevailing inclination to substitute a preconceived 160 ESSAYS IN rniLOSOPIIY. history of speculative and theological opinions, in the place of the mysteries of philoso[)hy and the revelations addressed to faith in theology, which constitute the pro- per intellectual and moral aliment of the thinker and the divine. The reader of the philosophical writings of Sir Wil- liam Hamilton is in little danger of being seduced into inaction by either of these illusions. Jets of original thought find their way through innumerable crevices in the massive and beautiful structure of references to the literature of the speculations of the world, wdiicli re- mind us that old philosophical opinions are not the chief part of Philosophy. And while the author often indulges in the luxury of a classification of systems, an induction of passages ample enough to vindicate the arrangement is usually presented. Matter extracted from previous writings, without reference to any artificial ar- rangement at all, is exhibited on almost every page, and in a way likely to cast the seeds of fresh thought in the minds of well-prepared readers. (5.) But we must not be tempted into any discussion of the principles with which the remarks we have made bring us into contact — the relation of previous results of human thought to the fresh thinking of the world, the crystallization of old opinion in its connexion with the safe formation of new, individualism or private judg- ment in contrast with the history of the collective human intelligence. We have still to consider the Method in SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. ICl xvhich the speculative structure we have been describing has been reared. When we explore the literature of Philosoph}', we find that some minds have tried to solve the perennial problem of knowledge and existence, by a series of de- monstrations based on abstract metaphysical axioms, after the fashion of geometry and the other a priori sciences ; and others, on the contrary, by a course of in- ductive inferences, founded on experiments pursued in their own minds, in analogy with the method followed in physical research. At present we only refer to this fact. We do not raise the question, to what extent, by either of these methods, the objects of philosophic study have been transferred from the indeterminate region of doubt and mere opinion to the narrow territory of cer- tainty, — whether, in short, there is a nucleus of certain knowledge already formed within the proper province of the philosopher. But we may nftirm that the philoso- phical aspirations of Europe, in the last two hundred years, have supplied illustrations of the experimental or inductive, and also of the speculative or demonstrative, type of philosophic investigation. The mental science which is proposed in the Essay of Locke is virtually an Induction of the intellectual phenomena under the name of ideas. In that treatise Locke states, and then attempts to verify, the inductive hypothesis — that experience is sufficient to account for human knowledge. The statement is contained in the opening chapters of the second book ; and the author afterwards tests his hypothesis upon some of those mental L 102 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. facts, (e. g., our ideas of space, titne, number, infinity, power, substance, the material world, and the Divine Being,) which seem most difficult of solution by means of experience. We find Keid, too, in all his principal works, engaged in an observational scrutiny of selected acts of his own mind, which thus yielded to him infor- mation and inferences that Locke had failed to note. The region in which the observations and experiments of these and other congenial inquirers were carried on is not, indeed, as with the astronomer or chemist, one which abounds in solid and extended objects. Notwith- standing, it is the method of inductive research which is applied by them to its evanescent phenomena. But we follow a difierent method when we accompany Spinoza and Hegel, or even Des Cartes and Leibnitz, from their principles to their conclusions. We are not now putting an inductive interpretation upon mental events ; we seem instead to be evolving a series of Demonstra- tions from assumed abstract principles. We have quitted the region of contingency and probability ; we have entered on, and are confined within tliat of a priori speculation. But in the endeavours to exclude mystery from philosophy, by rendering a perfect logical explana- tion of knowledge, have we not separated knowledge itself from reality, and converted individual life itself into a step in the sublime demonstration ? Hegel's ex- traordinary deduction of All out of Nothing, may be taken for a logical reduction and exposure of the attempt to solve the problem of knowledge and existence merely by abstract speculation ; just as Hume, in the last cen- SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 1G3 tuiy, illustrated the insufficiency of the merely physical Philosoj)hy of his age, by using its principles to dissolve mind and matter into a series of " impressions." We incline to think that some of the more important differences between the new Scottish doctrine and the older Philosophy of the country, may be traced to the METHOD which Sir William Hamilton has employed in the interpretation of human knowledge, and the form- ation of the philosophical sciences. We refer, it must be added, rather to the manner in which the views in his writings that are of chief moment have been actually developed, than to the principle of progress or mode of considering the objects which he studies that has been formally announced by him. In the definitions which he has given, and more especially in his elaborate con- trast of Philosophy as conversant with " contingent matter," and " to be pursued on the hunting-field of probability," with Mathematics, which treats of " neces- sary matter," to be reasoned out in the iron chain of demonstration, he seems expressly to ally himself with those who have treated the principles of knowledge as a collection of mental facts, which might be resolved into classes through induction. Psychology is here the root, and the other philosophical sciences (logic, metaphyics, ethics, &c., and whether a priori or d ]josieriori) are the branches which grow out of it. Human knowledge, accordingly, whether its ultimate principles consist of "necessary" or "contingent" judgments, is only con- tingently known by the philosopher, through the reflex observation and classification of these judgments. 164 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. But when we turn from these general statements and controversial discussions to study the actual texture of the new doctrine, we find in many parts of it a synthesis of necessary notions and judgments, and not a body of inductive generalizations drawn from mental experience. In some places we seem to be in intercourse with the most illustrious of the scholastic commentators on Aris- totle, and not with a writer who lives two centuries after the revolution in the method of physical discovery which was inaugurated by Bacon, and announced as the prin- ciple of progress in the mental sciences too, by those masters who formed the rudiments of British Philosophy. On the whole, we appear to be in company with a guide in whose teaching the analysis and synthesis of abstract notions and judgments, as contrasted with the induction of real mental facts, holds nearly the same proportion as it does in the teaching of Des Cartes, whose constructive Philosophy is of the demonstrative type.* We feel that we need, in these circumstances, to guard ourselves from the risk of accepting demonstrative consistency in thought, as a ground for belief in doctrines which can only be contingently known ; and from thus weaving a web of abstract speculation, instead of unravelling the * The English reader may now, for the first time, provide himself with a version of the chief philosophical works of Des Cartes. The excellent translation of the "Discours de la Methode," (Edinburgh, 1850,) done by a young Scottish thinker — Mr. John Veitch — who has studied Des Cartes in the spirit of a true metaphysician, has been followed by a care- fully edited translation of the "Meditations" and some parts of the " Principia" from the same pen. This illustrates the comprehensiveness of spirit and enthusiasm with which Philosophy is beginning to be studied in Scotland. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 1G5 actual web of the human mind. Somethnes, too, when the reader expected to be hunting for legitimate assump- tions, with help IVom the rules of probability and elabo- rate verification, he finds that he is asked to consign well-defined quantities of meaning to appropriate words, to connect in propositions the words thus carefully freighted with signification, and then to discharge and distribute these meanings, by the aid of logical defini- tion and division, in the shape of highly-refiucd conclu- sions. On the whole, probably no other British philo- sopher can be named who has drawn so large a number of derived propositions from so small a number of as- sumed ones, using definition, division, formal induction, and syllogism so often and so successfully for awakening his readers to a distinct consciousness of what has been already assumed by implication ; who has opened so many paths of argument too narrow to be discerned by common minds, and shed on each a light which reveals their formal connexion with the centre from which they are derived ; who, in short, conducts so irresistibly to his numerous conclusions all who have come within the magic circle of his premises. Neither, on the other hand, can we mention any other recent British thinker whose doctrines might more probably stimulate discus- sion and encounter opposition, if they are criticised as the final metaphysical adjustment of the great problems of the intellectual life of man. Perhaps this curious discordance between the logical texture of the doctrine and the conviction which it car- ries, — and which justifies its character as an intellectual 166 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. gymnastic, may in part be accounted for by the inclina- tion, especially manifest in his latest writings, which seems to draw our Scottish philosopher away from the old British occupation of adding, through an induction founded on reflection, to our contingent knowledge con- cerning mental phenomena and first principles, — into his favourite sphere of evolving deductively the necessary consequences of judgments which are assumed to be axio- matic. In saying so we do not mean to deny either the value of such speculative discussions, or that they may, indirectly, promote powerfully an experimental study of the origin, principles of growth, and limits of human knowledge. If only we observe faithfully " the consti- tutive truths which consciousness immediately reveals," before they are assumed for axioms in reflective science, we enter without doiibt a rich mine of truth in this region of philosophic demonstration, and one likely ulti- mately to yield valuable inductive classifications regard- ing man. But it is a mine into wdiich the elder British philosophers have seldom entered ; unless Samuel Clarke and his school of philosophical theologians, or Hume, who employs deduction negatively to illustrate the logi- cal incongruity of the received dogmas, may be said to have done so ; and it is, moreover, one in which thinkers may go far astray if their first step be a false one. He whose course of philosophical study consists principally in an evolution of the necessary consequences of such judgments, and who is thus elaborating a science of luliat must he in Thought, is in danger of excluding from his regard not a little of what is in Man, including SCOTTISFI BIETArilYSICS. 1G7 those intellectual powers tliroiigli which man gains his knowletlge of things. He thus virtually separates Be- lief from Thought ; and, finally, having eviscerated knowledge altogetlier, his Philosophy, instead of an in- ductive study of man regarded as a knower, becomes an elaborate deduction of the logical contents of a i'cw ab- stract metaphysical axioms. But is there not a some- thing among the First Principles of human knowledge — call it a nucleus of belief in real things or what we will — which cannot be derived by demonstration from the abstract and necessary conditions of thought, and which, when it is made an object of reflex study, must be col- lected in an inductive examination of the living mind by the psychologist ? We cannot, in our narrow limits here, pursue to a satisfactory conclusion these hints concerning the law of doctrinal discovery in Philosophy, far less apply that conclusion for critically appreciating the massive speci- mens of the fruits of research in the different depart- ments of reflective labour which this wonderful volume exhibits. It is sufficient to indicate that it seems to contain the seeds of an a priori science of human knowledge, and that these seeds have so germinated in the more recent and elaborately developed parts of the book, that the experimental study of Man is w^ell-nigh overshadowed by the elaborate structures of demonstra- tive metaphysics. The realities of existence are dis- charged out of knowledge ; the abstract conditions of thought, with their necessary consequences and conclu- sions, are exhibited as a sufficient substitute. The illus- 168 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY, tration of our meaning must occupy nearly all the re- maining part of this Essay, But before we offer that illustration we may just refer to a great and as yet ill-adjusted theme, which is nearly related to the principle or method of doctrinal progress in philosophical studies, — we mean the theory of the Classification of the Sciences, and especially of the philo- sophical sciences. This speculation becomes more need- ful as the division of intellectual labour is accumulating fresh scientific knowledge in different provinces of re- search ; and, indeed, it must always be interesting to the truly philosophic labourer in any department. Addi- tions to the number and bulk of those organized masses of knowledge, to which the name science may be appro- priated, generate confusion, if their respective landmarks be not preserved, and if their mutual harmony be dis- turbed, by the development in one of principles which contradict those alleged to be discovered in another. The philosopher, moreover, is dissatisfied so long as he confines his thought within the province appropriated to any one of the subordinate systems of knowledge usually called by that name ; he seeks for the One Science which absorbs every other, or, if that be unattainable, for the " Philosophia Prima," which deals with the axioms of each, and justifies their separation into dis- tinct yet united provinces. The modern mind has not been uninfluenced by these considerations. Perhaps the most suggestive and luminous of all the works of Lord Bacon is that in which he reviews the condition, pro- spects, and mutual relation of the various parts of know- SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 169 ledge. The progress of knowledge has occasioned many similar surveys, in Britain and on the Continent, in the interval since Bacon. It is the speculation to whicli some of the most eminent minds of this generation have devoted themselves. We cannot now discuss their sug- gestive questions or conclusions. Our readers may refer, for example, to the small treatise on " Method " by Cole- ridge (which was meant to govern the arrangements of the " Encylopa3dia Metropolitana,") for the germs of much which has been tanght since, in English literature, concerning the laws which govern progressive know- led2:e, and the classification of the sciences. We should have been grateful to Sir William Hamilton for more help in answering a question so appropriate to this age, but especially to the present condition of philo- sophical studies, and to the important modifications in the old Scottish method of philosophic research which his writings sanction. Is Metaphysics conversant with man, or with necessary abstractions? What is the connexion between the study of the mental phenomena — the inductive generalization of the mental poiuers, commonly called Psychology, and a metaphysical criti- cism of the necessary conditions of thought? What is the ground, in the structure of the living human intelli- gence, of the dogmatic assumptions which stand at the head of the demonstrations of formal logic and meta- physics ? Setting out with their respective axioms, the mere logician and metaphysician may construct a priori sciences, in a mood of mind as alien from the philosophic spirit as is that of a mere mathematician. We should. 170 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. regard an exhibition of the connexion between either of these studies and the great philosophic stem, of which they are represented as branches, as a valuable addition to the teaching contained in this volume ; in so far as it might contribute philosophic vitality to animate the study of the symbolic formulas of the one and the ab- stract speculations of the other. This is a service, as regards the former, not rendered by Aristotle, nor by Kant, and which is nevertheless needed, if the Ancient Logic, remodelled by Kant and Sir William Hamilton, is ever to coalesce with the inductive psychology, which has hitherto been characteristic of the philosophical sciences in Great Britain.* (6.) But we must bid adieu to these general questions of method, in order that we may study the tendency of the I^ew Scottish doctrine, in the definite metaphysical dis- coveries to which it lays claim. The ultimate law of the limitation of human thought — the Law of the Con- ditioned — is alleged to yield these discoveries. When we are investigating the consequences which are referred * In this connexion we must recommend the study of an important work in the higher literature of philosophy — the "Prolegomena Logica" of Mr. Mansel. (Oxford, 1851.) In any critical discussion of recent English philosophical books, this acute and learned work should occupy a large space. Along with his other writings, it entitles Mr. Mansel to a fore- most place among living British psj'chologists and logicians. With several other recent philosophical works of merit from the same Uni- versity, it proves an increasing energy and expansion in these studies in Oxford, since the period, a quarter of a century ago, when Archbishop Whately published his " Elements " — a book which has done much to render logical studies popular. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 171 to it, we may gain some insight into the spirit of that system of doctrine which they contribute to form. Obvious illustrations of Sir William Hamilton's theory of the weakness of human intelligence are of course sup- plied by these perennial mysteries of thought — Space and Time. Their attributes have converted them into standing retreats for metaphysical contemplation and logical subtlety from age to age. Through these sub- lime avenues to tlie inconceivable, s})eculative minds have ever been ready to permit thought to wander, and to exhaust itself in the act. The varied specimens of the weakness of intelligence which are exhibited when the mind endeavours either, on the one side, to exhaust Space and Time, or, on the other, to realize their infinity, supply the chief proof alleged in tlie celebrated contro- versy with Schelling and Cousin, of ■' the impossibility of a knowledge of the unconditioned." But a more familiar kind of mental experience than any afforded by such necessary judgments concerning these mysteries is represented as also the fruit of the intellectual weakness which they so palpably illustrate. If, on the rare occasions on which we formally make the attempt, we find ourselves mentally unable to exhaust time, we daily experience the mental inability to isolate a change, that is implied in the judgment which inevi- tably forces us to connect every change with a cause. The "causal judgment" is the most ftmiiliar and fre- quently repeated of all our judgments. It is one which we are forced, whether we will or not, to entertain, when- ever we contemplate diaiigcs as such ; and it is on the 172 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY, tide of this irresistible mental impulse that we may be said to be carried towards the inferences of common life — the general lessons of the physical sciences — and even the august truths of natural and supernatural theology. This irresistible mental tendency to attribute every change to a cause is a specimen of the kind of facts which engage the study of metaphysicians. It has been an object of reflective scrutiny by philosophers for ages.* What do we mean when we judge that every event must have a cause ? Why is this judgment necessary '^ The discussion of these two questions is especially associated with the early history of Scottish Philosophy. It may be said to have occasioned a third question, which is partly involved in each of the others, with regard to the hind of necessity of which this famous judgment is the expression. We may glance at the modern history of the controversies immediately connected with the two former questions, before we examine the speculation ot Sir William Hamilton. It was the doctrine promulgated by Hume — that causation is only succession, and that the alleged neces- sity of the causal judgment is the result of the custom, generated by daily observation, of associating events in orderly sequences — which roused Kant from his " dog- matic slumber," and also added not a little to the bulk * A liistory of opinions concerning tlie Theory of Causation, in ancient, mediasval, and modern times, in the Indian and Arabian Schools, miglit till a volume, and include nearly all the great questions of metaphysical science. We meant to have illustrated this assertion, but our space con- fines us to a slight reference chiefly to Scottish opinions. In its deepest relation, the philosojjhy of Hume, in all its ramifications, is a peculiar and characteristic Theory of Causalion. SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 173 of our British philosopliical and theological literature. The speculation did good service after its fashion, by proving the impossibility of discovering, through obser- vation, more than various uniformities of succession in the changes of the universe. Does a " cause" mean a tertium quid, which may be perceived through the senses to be distinct from the mere succession of events ? The illusion which might suggest this question, Hume, Brown, and Mill have helped to remove ; and they have thereby dispelled a haze which had previously obscured the provinces of experimental research. Observation of successive nature can only reveal phenomena succeeding one another. The practical recognition of this obvious maxim of the Scottish philosophers has illuminated the atmosphere which surrounds scientific observers. But is the " causal judgment," then, the gradual issue of our experimental intercourse with an external uni- verse, in which the events succeed one another in con- stant and orderly sequences, and is it formed in the mind, in these circumstances, either by induction, or by the force of habit ? This favourite hypothesis, in harmony, as it is, with Locke's solution of all mental fticts by means of the direct or indirect action of the objects of experience upon the mind, seemed insufficient to account for the irresistible force and the universality of the causal judgment ; nor can observation, which only reveals suc- cessive events, account for the peculiar ingredient in the meaning of the word cause which is not contained in any modification of succession. Accordingly, the leading Scottish philosophers since Hume, with Kant in Ger- 174 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY, many and Cousin in France, have recognised, in this irresistible causal judgment, attributes which cannot be explained either by induction or by the habit of observ- ing events, and far less by any single act of observation. With various modifications, they wisely hold in common the opinion, that this curious mental state is due to some- thing deeper than a perception of the changes in the external world, or even than the consciousness of volition and its results. Causality is, in short, a necessity, which, according to Keid, compels the mind to recognise a cause ;" according to Brown, a " constancy in sequences ;" and which, according to Kant, connects events in thought as a condition indispensable to our thinking about them at all. But it is a necessity which they unanimously regard as an unaccountable law of the mind — " a primary datum of intelligence." Sir William Hamilton coincides with these philoso- phers in the opinion that any modification of experience is insufficient to explain this mental phenomenon of causality. But he differs from them too. He professes to solve the difficulty which has so long puzzled the metaphysicians, by means of that law of the necessary confinement of all thought " in the conditioned interval between unconditioned contradictory extremes or poles," which, as we said, he has copiously illustrated in our judgments concerning Space and Time. This alleged discovery is, perhaps, the most characteristic expression of the genius and tendency of the new Scottish Philo- sophy. Those who wish to interpret that Philosophy in its deeper relations to the future history of opi- SCOTTISH METAI'HYSICS. 175 nion, must here be willini; to descend beneath those forms of expression in Avhich we daily give utterance to our irresistible causal judgment, in order to appreciate the subtle and ingenious interpretation put upon them by Sir William Hamilton. We shall here quote the passage in the Discussions which most effectively ex- pounds the proposed theory : — " The phenomenon of causality seems nothing more than a corollary of the law of the conditioned, in its ap- plication to a thing thought under the form or mental category of existence relative in time. We cannot know, we cannot think a thing, except under the attribute of existence ; we cannot know or think a thing to exist, except as in time ; and we cannot know or think a thing to exist in time, and think it ahsolutely to commence. Now this at once imposes on us the judgment of causa- lity. And thus: — An object is given us, either by our presentative, or by our representative, faculty. As given, we cannot but think it existent, and existent in time. But to say, that we cannot but think it to exist, is to say that we are unable to think it non-existent, — to think it away, — to annihilate it in thought. And this we cannot do. We may turn away from it ; we may engross our attention with other objects ; we may, consequently, ex- clude it from our thought. That we need not think a thing is certain ; but thinking it, it is equally certain that we cannot think it not to exist. So much will be at once admitted of the present ; but it may probably be denied of the past and future. Yet if we make the ex- periment, we shall find the mental annihilation of an 176 ESSAYS IJS riilLOSOPHY. object, equally impossible under time past, and present, and future. To obviate, however, misapprehension, a very- simple observation may be proper. In saying that it is impossible to annihilate an object in thought, in other words, to conceive as non-existent what had been con- ceived as existent, — it is of course not meant, that it is im- possible to imagine the object wholly changed in form. We can represent to ourselves the elements of which it is composed, divided, dissipated, modified in any way ; we can imagine anything of it, short of annihilation. But the complement, the quantum, of existence, thought as con- stituent of an object ; — that we cannot represent to our- selves, either as increased, without abstraction from other entities, or as diminished, without annexation to them. In short, we are unable to construe it in thought, that there can be an atom absolutely added to, or absolutely taken away from, existence in general. Let us make the experiment. Let us form to ourselves a concept of the universe. Now, we are unable to think, that the quantity of existence, of which the universe is the con- ceived sum, can either be amplified or diminished. We are able to conceive, indeed, the creation of a world ; this, indeed, as easily as the creation of an atom. But what is our thought of creation ? It is not a thought of the mere springing of nothing into something. On the contrary, creation is conceived, and is by us conceiv- able, only as the evolution of existence from possibility into actuality, by the fiat of the Deity. Let us place ourselves in imagination at its very crisis. Now, can we construe it to thought, that the moment after the SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 177 universe flashed into material reality, into manifested being, that there was a larger complement of existence in the universe and its author together, than, the moment before, there subsisted in the Deity alone ? This we are unable to imagine. And what is true of our concept of creation, holds of our concept of annihilation. We can think no real annihilation, — no absolute sinking of some- thing into nothing. But, as creation is cogitable by us, only as a putting forth of divine power, so is annihila- tion by us only conceivable, as a withdrawal of that same power. All that is now actually existent in the universe, this we think and must think, as having, prior to crea- tion, virtually existed in the creation ; and in imagining the universe to be annihilated, we can only conceive this, as the retractation by the Deity of an overt energy into latent power. — In short, it is impossible for the human mind to think what it thinks existent, lapsing into non- existence, either in time past or in time future. " Our inability to think what we have once conceived existent in time, as in time becoming non-existent, cor- resiDonds with our inability to think what we have con- ceived as existent in sjjace, as in space becoming non- existent. We cannot realize it to thought, that a thing should be extruded, either from the one quantity or from the other. Hence, under extension, the law of uUimcde incompressibllify ; under protension, the law of cause and effect. "I have hitherto spoken oidy of one inconceivable pole of the conditioned, in its application to existence in time, of the absolute extreme, as absolute commence- M 178 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. rncnt and absolute termination. The counter or infinite extreme, as infinite regress or non-commencement, and infinite progress or non-terraination, is equally unthink- able. With this latter we have, however, at present nothing to do. Indeed, as not oljtru.sivo, the Infinite figures far less in the theatre of mind, and exerts a far inferior influence in the modification of thought, than the Absolute. It is, in fact, both distant and delitescent ; and, in place of meeting us at every turn, it requires some exertion on our part to seek it out. It is the former and obtrusive extreme, — it is the Absolute alone which constitutes and explains the mental manifestation of the causal judgment. An object is presented to our observation which has phenomenally begun to be. But we cannot construe it to thought, that the object, that is, this determinate complement of existence^ had really no being at any past moment ; because, in that case, once thinking it as existent, we should again think it as non-existent ; which is for us impossible. What then can we — must we do ? That the phenomenon presented to us, did, as a phenomenon, begin to be, — this we know by experience ; but that the elements of its existence only began, when the phenomenon which they constitute came into manifested being, — this we are wholly unable to think. In these circumstances how do we proceed ? There is for us only one possible way. We are com- pelled to believe that the object (that is, the certain quale and quantum of being) whose phenomenal rise into existence we have witnessed, did really exist, prior to this rise, under other forms. But to say that a thing SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 179 previously existed under different forms, is only to say, in other words, that a thing had causes." — (Pp. 591-4.) It is further maintained by Sir William Hamilton that the inability we experience to separate a phenome- non from its substance in thonght, may be accounted for by the Law of the Conditioned, which forbids us to con- ceive existence unconditionally limited. But as he has not formally expounded the process through which the judgment of substance is thus imposed upon the mind, we shall confine our attention, in the remarks which follow, chiefly to his proposed reduction of the causal judgment. This proposed analysis of the judgments of Causality and Substance is a singularly ingenious speculation, and one as comprehensive in its scope as is human know- ledge, with which the mental facts, for which it professes to account, are universally blended. But some diffi- culties seem to lie in the way of a recognition of this new doctrine among the articles of philosophic faith, as a perfectly sBtisfactory account of the meaning and necessity of these judgments. A few of these we shall now take the liberty to indicate. But before doing so we must remark, how difficult it is to infuse a common meaning into the words and phrases proper to philosophic discussion, and to retain that meaning there in its origi- nal integrity. Nowhere are writers more apt to be at cross-purposes with their readers, than when they are employing the small stock of abstract words which are the instruments of speculation, but which living thought so seldom visits. The meaning which has been lodged 180 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. in the words is apt to ebb away, even while the thinker himself is in the act of using them ; and the mob of critics, who do not send the living stream of reflection appropriate to the vocables of philoso})hy through the pages of a philosophic discussion, necessarily reject, as unreal, a meaning which transcends the level of the state of mind in which they address themselves to the discussion. In our comments we must not forget this general principle, as we hope ourselves to have the benefit of it. When the great modern astronomer would verify the application to the planetary system of that law of motion upon earth which is illustrated in the fall of a stone or an apple, he vindicated its applicability, by proving that the rate of motion in the celestial and the terrestrial bodies corresponds. After Locke had announced his proposed generalization of human knowledge into Ex- perience, he sought — in the spirit of the inductive method — for what we may term crucial instances of his proposed induction, that he might thereby vindicate experimentally his proposed theory. Now the explana- tion of the " causal judgment" proposed by Sir William Hamilton, which carries consequences so weighty in its train, may be studied from the point of view of that inductive metJiod from which the Science and Philosophy of Britain thus drew their inspiration in the past. We may here accordingly refer to the Facts of mental experi- ence. We may investigate that third question already raised, — what is the character of the " mental necessity" of which we are conscious in every causal judgment; SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 181 and, especiallj', does it correspond with those acts of intelligence and belief which illustrate the highest law of the weakness of thought ? There is one species of necessity with which we are familiar, in our notions and judgments concerning space and time. Thus v/e cannot imagine " an absolute commencement of time," or " an absolute boundary of space," although we may put in words an expression of the implied unthinkable judg- ments ; — and we cannot imagine " a square circle," for any proposition in which the implied judgment might be expressed is only an empty sound. The science of Geometry may be roughly said to supply a collection of specimens of this sort of necessary judgments. The contrary of these geometrical truths cannot be conceived or imagined. Now it is here that, in the spirit of the British Philo- sophy, we may apply the scrutiny of the inductive method to the proposed theory of causality. Is the causal judgment the efflux of a mental necessity, similar in kind to this:, for example, which reigns in the region of mathematical demonstration ? Are we unable to conceive the absence of a cause, when a change is per- ceived or imagined by us, in the same way as we are unable to conceive a square ciicle or an absolute com- mencement of time ? Sir William Hamilton has pointed out the weakness of the attempts to resolve the causal judgment into the Principle of Contradiction, which have been made in the opposite schools of Locke and Leibnitz ; — a method of proof in which it is virtually ranked among merely logical judgments, (analytical 182 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. judgments a prio7'i,) and in which the metaphj'sician argues in a circle when he would make good his point. That every efect must have a cause may he proved after this fashion ; but that every change must have a cause is not so implied in the meaning of the word change that the contrary proposition is a logical contradiction. But, while we are satisfied that the causal necessity is thus to be distinguished from a merely logical or formal neces- sity, we are not equally satisfied that it may be regarded as precisely similar in kind with the necessity which be- longs, for example, to our judgments concerning space and time. We can only indicate in outline our view of some lines of thought which cannot here be de- scribed. First of all, then, we hesitate to recognise the truth of the assumption that we are unable to represent to our- selves in imagination an absolute commencement — an unconditional limitation of existence ; even as without doubt we are unable to conceive an absolute commence- ment or unconditional limitation of time. We do not feel that existence, as applicable to causality, can neither be added to nor taken from in imagination, just as time or space can neither be absolutely increased nor absolutely diminished in thought. We do seem to be able to ima- gine an absolute negation of existence at one moment and the existence of the universe in the next. In short, we do not feel, in the illustration drawn from '•' creation," that we are compelled to recognise the necessity — for the imagination of a " previous form of existence," as often as a change is perceived or imagined. And we are con- SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 183 firmed in this hesitation by the express testimony of Hume and the implied testimony of Keid. In the next place, is not the rehition of an effect to its cause conceived to be different in kind from that of a contained part to a containing whole out of which it has been evolved ? Is the universe of changes, as known, merely a variety of forms implicitly contained in an absolute identity of existence ? Varied illustrations might be offered, not easily to be reconciled with a de- scription of the causal judgment, which asserts that no niore is implied in it than simply an assertion that the ol.)ject in which the change is manifested must have previously existed under a different form ; or than an inability to "deny in thought that the object which we apprehend as beginning to be really so begins," — with the implied necessity to affirm " the identity of its pre- sent sum of being with the sum of its past existence." — (P. 5SG.) Is not this to represent the causal judgment as an affirmation that every " change" must be only an apparent, and not a real commencement of existence — that it must be one of the many forms common to the only real, and yet unknown existence, which underlies them all ? But tloes that expression truly exhaust, or indeed adequately represent, the meaning of the word cause, and of the affirmation that all changes must be caused ? Here we must distinguish, it is true, between creation and new modifications of created existences. But take any actual instance even of the latter. We witness the movement of a planet, and the pheno- menon occasions a causal judgment. But does that 184 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. judgment signify merely our inability to avoid imagining that the motion previously existed in a different form ? Kather do we not, through that judgment, express a belief, of which we can conceive ourselves rid, concerning things or real existences : — that there must be more objective existences in the universe than merely the changing object which we observe ? The conviction of a cause is elicited, not merely by a constant succession of events, but also by a single or isolated event ; and Dr. Brown has doubtless misunderstood the question, in so far as he has confined his regard to the contempla- tion of " invariable succession." On the occasion of a single change, belief is projected, as it were, into the realm of things not yet observed, and of which we may never have any observation ; but though we may, in consequence, remain always in ignorance of the special conditions of the supposed change, the conviction that objective conditions there miist be still abides in the mind. This belief, or indirect perception, propels scien- tific research in quest of them. And it has the charac- teristics of a mental state, different in essential particulars from that which is experienced when we try to realize in imagination an absolute beginning of time, or the contrary of the mathematical axioms and of any of the necessary deductions from them. Farther, that change of foim% loitli an identity of existence does not satisfactorily represent what is believed in (what may be called) the causal state of mind, might be suggested by the circumstance, that the question concerning the cause of this universal flux and reflux of existence, and of each separate element in SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 185 it, remains in unabated force, after each new manifesta- tion of existence has been thus recognised in imagination to have existed previously. Causahty thus appears, in onr actual mental expe- rience, not as an inevitable manner of conceiving, but as an inevitable expression of a human 6eZ/f/ regarding real things. And does not this belief forbid us to trans- form ivhat is judged to he real luhether conceived of or not, into the subjective issue of a mental impotence to imagine either of two contradictories — an Absolute or an Infinite Existence ? Surely something has been omitted in any description of the causal judgment which seems to imply that a cause is merely a result of the abstract conditions which hinder human thought from realizing unconditioned existence. Are we not conscious of believing, and therefore of knowing, in the finite causes of the finite effects around us, realities, which may not, except by discharging the very life of its proper conviction out of our causal judgment, be withdrawn from this part of our knowledge ? Are not the objects which suggest that judgment anchored, as it were, in a sphere, not beyond knowledge, where they resist the stream which carries the parts of space and the periods of time into the negation of an Unconditioned ? If so, they cannot be virtually created through the impotence of man to realize the Absolute in existence. Nature is known as a collection of finite existences, real although finite, and not as the result of a series of ineffectual struggles, by the imagination, to realize unconditioned limitation of existence in time. Are we then to recognise 186 ESSAYS IN nilLOSOPHY. as specimens of the same universal mental law, on the one hand, the inabiUty to exhaust time in imagination, and on the other, this alleged inability to exhaust exist- ence in time, with its implied abstract necessity for con- ceiving every new phenomenon to be onlv another form of an identical existence ? We are carried irresistibly, by a sublime force of the philosophic imagination, to- wards an Unconditioned time, when we try to conceive any finite period as the whole ; this is, as it were, a wave of the philosophic imagination, surging up to its extreme limits. But it is surely on more than a mere wave of the imagination that we are carried back from a real event to its real cause. It is on the solid ground of the intellectual common sense, where we find ourselves in cognitive intercourse with existences, which the very causal judgment itself, as one of the manifestations of the common sense, forbids us thus to sublimate into the Unconditioned. If, then, we contemplate the proposed Law of the Conditioned, in analogy with the spirit of the British type of philosophic method, as an inductive generaliza- tion, gathered through a series of mental experiments on our necessary judgments concerning space^ time, and existence^ it does not seem that we can include in that induction, a mental fact, which is virtually a judg- ment concerning real things, — a belief, suggested by every real event, that there is more real existence in the universe than itself Belief cannot subsist in an abso- lute negation of knowledge with respect to that which is believed ; although the needed knowledge may some- SCOTTISH METArUYSICS. 187 times be only a bare judgment of objective existence. To know or believe that an object really exists, implies the addition of a new mental element, which seems to exclude the mental act in which it is essentially con- tained, from the range of a law that may account for acts of mind which relate to space and time. In brief, it might seem that the causal judgment is not necessary to thought, if the word " necessary" means that we cannot realize in representation, an object non- existent now, and in existence an hour hence. But the causal judgment is necessary to thought, in the sense that we cannot realize in belief Wx-Ai there is no cause of a perceived change. Every object in which a change is observed, suggests the inevitable belief, that it is not the only object in the universe, and that the changes which it manifests are dependent on the existence of other ob- jects. This inevitable belief, with which the causal judgment is charged prior to all experience, is a part of the mental phenomenon to be accounted for ; and we may not assume that this belief in objective existences is contained under the abstract conditions of the thinkable, just as a belief in the speculative truths of mathematics is involved in the inability to realize in imagination the reverse of the successive conclusions contained in that science. In regard to causality, the problem seems to be, — to account for a necessary belief concerning objec- tive existence, which, although not contained in the abstract conditions of the representable, is yet forced upon the mind even when it is in ignorance of the cause of any particular change. As in Logic, we find speci- 188 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. mens of analytic judgments a priori ; and, in Mathe- matics, of synthetic judgments a Yjriori, which we may call speculative ; is not the Causal Judgment a specimen of a class of judgments prior to experience and synthetic, yet not merely speculative or ideal, but charged with a conviction concerning what is real, and the absence of which can, moreover, be realized in thought ? But even if the causal judgment be evolved, like geo- metrical necessity, so that we cannot conceive a change, except as a new form of a previous existence, it may be doubted whether an inability to conceive implies, or is equivalent to, a necessity to believe. In this view, we might proceed to follow the new speculation deductively — as we have already suggested how it might be exa- mined inductively, and endeavour to determine the con- nexion between a conviction of real existence on the one hand, and a mathematical or ideal necessity of thought deduced from the abstract conditions of the thinkable on the other. Assuming the operations, in the mine of a 2Jriori abstractions, to have been successful, in the dis- covery that the ideal existence of a cause is implied in any possible mental representation of change, it is still a question whether we can firmly cross from the ideal to the real and objective on these lines of abstract thought. We shall not here engage in a kind of discussion which has often been already raised, for instance, by the ab- stract proof of the divine existence proposed by Des Cartes, or the abstract demonstrations of the foundation of Natural Theology, by Dr. Samuel Clarke and others. We are content thus to suggest speculations which bear SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 189 some analogy with this new scientific demonstration of the necessity of a cause on tlie occurrence of a change.* But what is the true Theory of Causation ? it may be here asked. If the causal judgment can neither be resolved, by psychological induction, into the Law of the Conditioned, nor deduced by scientific demonstration from that abstract Law, may it not be at least associated meanwhile with some other recognised order of our men- tal phenomena ? We do not here profess to offer any theory for the satisfaction of this question. But perhaps we may gain a deeper insight of the question itself, if we contemplate it in association with the universal ten- dency of man to believe in the existence of a Super- natural Being, whose attributes transcend human ima- gination. Every event which can be imagined — every conceivable addition, through the causal judgment, to our knowledge of real objects, leaves the mind dissa- tisfied. All visible changes " cry out" for an origin which transcends imagination. We do not, of course, in thus referring to them, account for either of these beliefs — far less for the one by means of the other. We only suggest, as a topic for meditation, the analogies between the conviction which is inevitably experienced when a change in any object is observed, and the mys- terious faith in the existence of a First Cause, wdiich * In reference to the preceding criticism of the derivation of the causal judgment from the doctrine of the Unconditioned, the author desires to state, that he hopes on a future occasion to expound and illustrate, in more detail, the views given in the text; supplying at the same time such modifications as more matured thinking may suggest. 190 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. underlies human life, and is developed in the study of those indications of intelligence with which the arrange- ments of nature are charged. Might not the recognition of this causal belief, with its manifold forms, help to relieve the theological argument founded upon the exhi- bition of design in a finite universe, from the inconse- quence of professing more in the conclusion than was implied in the premises ? The primary theistic judg- ment is perhaps just one of the many modes in which our rudimentary conviction concerning the relations of real existence expresses itself. In its lower form, that rudimentary conviction may be manifested in what is called the judgment of Causality. In its higher or theo- logical forms, it expresses our faith in the existence of a Cause which transcends imagination, and fully satisfies the craving which every perceived change suggests. But, apart from experience, each form of the belief implies a knowledge of existence and nothing more. It is an expression of our conviction that every conceivable change — every phenomenon which begins to exist, is dependent on something beyond itself, so that if that " something" had no real existence, the change could not have been realized. And the profound conviction of the universal dependence of conceivable changes on an in- conceivable Being or First Cause, might be elicited both by the act of Creation, and by the phenomenal modifi- cations of the created universe subsequent to creation. The study of the particular antecedents of particular consequences by degrees adds intelligence to our original causal belief. Our vague supernatural judgment, too, is SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 191 gradually matured into a conviction of the Personal God, through reflection on our own moral agency ; through the study of the plans of the Divine Free Agent, whose designs constitute that meaning in Nature of which Science is the interpretation ; and, finally, through in- tercourse with God in His miraculous revelation. That our elementary heliefs may he thus educated into an intelligence which far transcends their original dimness, we have ample proof, in the contrast hetween the rudi- mentary perception of matter, and the comparative blaze of light which physical research has shed upon the outer world.* Let us add, that this suggestion of the con- nexion between the belief developed by every change, and the belief in a Supernatural Cause of the universe may, of course, be combined with more than one special hypothesis concerning the precise relation of the Divine Being to each separate successive change. The rival theories of Occasional Causes, and a Pre-established harmony, at variance, as they seem to be, in regard to a problem which is perhaps indeterminate, may continue their controversy, if it be really more than a merely verbal one ; and different philosophical hypotheses con- cerning the transcendent meaning of a miracle, founded on these rival schemes, may continue to find favour. Thoughtful minds may meantime consider whether a study of the Causal, in association with the Theistic judgment, be not fitted to yield some nourishment for the growth of a Philosophy, spiritual yet not illusory, * The study of Berkeley's theory of vision, and similar speculations, may illustrate tbis sentence. 192 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. physical and yet not merely mechanical, and which might interpret the Ideas of Plato and the Forms of Bacon, in analogy with the style of thought pecidiar to this age. But we must return from this digression. We have pointed to some of the difficulties which may seem to meet us, when we apply either an inductive or deductive test to Sir W. Hamilton's solution of our judgments concerning Cause and Substance. But apart from the question of its consistency with the facts of our mental experience, some readers may be unable to reconcile parts of these memorable speculations of Sir William Hamilton with the other principles of his own Philoso- phy. A recognition of the faith and intuition named Perception, for example, is represented as a safeguard against Scepticism, and perception is described as a direct cognitive intercourse of man with the material world. But what virtue or meaning is there, it may be asked, in this faith, if a deeper insight reveals a higher law, which resolves substances and causes, and thus all finite realities, into results of negative judgments, involved in the ab- stract conditions of the thinkable by which existence is, so to s-peak. Jinited ? The Unconditioned becomes the only reality ; and yet the Unconditioned, as a negation of all knowledge, and thus of the knowledge of its own reality, cannot be an object of human belief. Even the vista of moral liberty seems to open upon us, only that we may witness the moral agents disappearing, with sub- stances and causes, mental and material, in the darkness of the negative and Unconditioned. SCOTTISU METAPHYSICS. 193 A lull development of the Philosophy of the Condi- tioned might, we believe, remove many of these difficul- ties respecting its harmony with mental facts, and its internal consistency. In the present slight sketch of the recent evolution of Scottish metaphysics, we have only indicated some tendencies which seem invincible, if an exhaustive theory of the necessary conditions of pure thought is gradually to become the universal solvent of the mysteries of mind. When the thinker with- draws himself into the sphere of abstract metaphysical demonstration, and yields to its influences, he is perhaps apt too soon to be persuaded that, when thus engaged, he has been solving the relations of our real knowledge and putting actual human judgments through the ordeal of philosophic criticism. At any rate, a metaphysical evolution of the ideal conditions of thought, which does not coalesce with our experience of the intellectual life, — which divorces thought from Existence — and seems to recognise a Belief that is wholly void of intelligence, has only imperfectly developed the theory of human know- ledge. Here at the close of this long disquisition, we find that we are hardly upon the threshold of our subject. In our course we have fixed our attention chiefly upon the principle of progress which distinguishes the Scottish National Metaphysic, as that is revealed even in its his- toric rudiments ; and we have referred to symptoms in the speculations of Sir AVilliam Hamilton that may seem to some of his readers to imply a departure from N 194 ESSAYS IX PHILOSOrilY. the method of doctrinal research by which reflective studies in Scotland have hitherto been characterized. Even on this comparatively narrow foundation of his- torical criticism, we ought, with a view to an adequate appreciation of these new elements of Scottish specula- tion, to study them in connexion with the critical method and system of Kant and the school of rational psycho- logists. And a just judgment of the elevated place which Sir William Hamilton occupies, as the represen- tative of the national intellect, applied to speculations more abstract and comprehensive than any in which that intellect has hitherto been engaged, requires some favourable comparison of his philosophical fragments, and of the system into which they tend to form them- selves, with the opinions of two other great masters of modern speculation — Schelling and Cousin. But we should be giving a proof that we have not yet learned the most precious lesson which can be drawn from meta- physical contemplation, if we ventured, especially in what must be the closing stage of our present journey, to explore these labyrinths. The Philosophy of the Conditioned is exhibited in these Discussions in some of its ap2i^'i<"-ci'i'ions as well as in its ab- stract character. But our space is more than exhausted. An interesting course of thought might be pursued, in re- ference to the great outstanding phenomena preseiited in past controversies of opinion in Philosophy and Theology. As it is, we would only suggest the value of some more precise and available canon of conciliatory criticism, than the mere proclamation of human ignorance concerning all SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 195 which transcends contemporaneous and successive nature. How can faith be maintained amid an absolute negation of knowledge, which implies a total suspense of judgment ? Belief may consist with an imperfection of knowledge, but how shall it be applied at all to that of which we can know nothing, and which, on this ground, admits a conciliation of all doctrinal affirmations that do not involve logical contradiction ? Philosophy and theology, in as far as they are regions of faith, and yet regions of mystery, can neither, on the one hand, be wholly con- signed to the unknown, nor, on the other hand, lie conquered by reasoning. Are they not eminently the middle ground, from which we wander, alike when we indulge in a universal suspense of judgment, and when we demand 'premises for evenj judgment which we accept as an article of faith ? Sir William Ha- milton promises that " a world of false, pestilent, and presumptuous reasoning, by which philosophy and theo- logy are now equally discredited, would be abolished" in the recognition of our impotence to comprehend u'hat hoivever loe must admit. But this principle has not yet been pursued by him, in its articulate application to the chief doctrines of theology. In itself it might suggest more than a long Essay. It is a great but profoundly interesting research that is needed, in order to deter- mine whether beliefs, app)arently discordant in intelli- gence, may be really in harmony, and to detect those doctrines which, as mutually contradictory, cannot co- exist. The sanguine mind may fondly imagine Phi- losophy to contribute some help, in the Christendom of 196 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. the Future, to undo, by a comprehensive conciliation, a part of its own work of excessive elaboration of dogmatic forms of thought and expression in the Christendom of the Past ; and thus to atone for the increasing anarchy of sects, which speculation has encouraged in the Church, by a revision of theological science which should distinguish dogmatic forms that are essentially exclusive from those which may co-exist in thought. For con- ducting the Church towards this Ideal of Christian Science, we look with more hope to the presence and slowly- diffused influence of individual minds, of the comprehensive type and animated with the Christian spirit, than to any synod or conclave of theologians for- mally met to adjust doctrinal differences. We close this Essay with an expression of our gratitude to Sir William Hamilton for the help which the results of his many years of labour must yield, to those who desire to promote expansive thought and the philosophic spirit in every department in which the human intellect may be employed. Whether or not the leaders of Scottish thought, in coming generations, shall see in all the philosophic watch-towers which he has reared for the reflective review of human knowledge, the points from which a complete and satisfying survey of the mysteries of our intellectual life may be attained, at any rate, every true lover of such enterprises, in time to come, must wonder when he meditates on the logical symmetry of the intellectual work of Hamilton, or when he is led to occupy a contemplative position on any one of its un- SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 197 finished monumental pillars, adorned so richly with me- morials of the philosophic labours of former ages. Even if he should terminate his study of this unfinished struc- ture of Scottish speculative genius, in the opinion that it afibrds only an inadequate position for a full review of Human Knowledge, he must still go forth from his meditations among these master-works of one of the most extraordinary minds of modern times, in a humbler spirit, and move thereafter with a more cautious tread, when he has returned to take his part either in the vexing controversies of common life, or in those deeper questions which perplex the spirits of men from age to ao:e. ESSAY lY. THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM: A DISQUISITION ON OUR IGNORANCE OF THE INFINITE. I ESSAY lY. TflE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM: A DISQUISITION ON OUR IGNORANCE OF THE INFINITE/^ Can God be known by man ? — If a negative answer must be returned to this question, our deepest feelings are, it seems, founded on illusion, and human regard should be contracted within the limits of this earthly life. Pieligious belief cannot exist when its nominal object is wholly unknown ; and all the words which express what is called theological knowledge should be excluded from language as unmeaning sound. We cannot obtain such knowledge either naturally or super- naturally. Can a Being in any sense be " revealed" who is absolutely incognisable ? Is not the revelation impossible, or at least incapable of being attested by evidence ? — But if this result is at variance with our moral aspirations, and even with the necessities of reason, an offirmative reply seems, on the other hand, involved in inextricable intellectual difficulties. How can the infinite God be in any way an object of our thoughts ? * See North British lievicw, No. XLIII. (November 1854.) 202 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. To conceive an object is in some sense to define it. Definition implies limitation, and an infinite object cannot be limited. JMoreover, unlimited Being is not only inconceivable Being. His very existence does not logically consist with the existence of any other being besides. In every act of knowledge I must distinguish myself from the object known by me. Every object that exists must therefore be either limited — by the sub- traction from it of my finite being, or, as infinite, must absorb me and all the universe into itself. An infinite Being, existing in plurality — as One among many, seems an express contradiction ; while the only logical solution of the difficulty lands us in the doctrine of Spinoza. Atheism or Pantheism are thus the only alternatives, when the response to our question is logically weighed. The mental habits of the majority of mankind permit them to evade the horns of this dilemma. The unre- flecting multitude are not disturbed by the intellectual horn ; the decay of religious belief unhappily relieves some acute reasoners from the pressure of the other. But is the harmonious development of religious faith and speculative reason impossible ? Neither Scepticism on the one hand, nor Fanaticism on the other, can silence this question. Faith in God has, in all ages, been the stay of men. But the history of mankind also proves, that subtle speculation has more than once withdrawn the object of that faith from the reason, and therefore from the hearts of thoughtful men. In modern times, Spinoza* has directed a remorseless logic to the Theory * See the "Ethics" of Spinoza: Part I. The force of Spiuoza's rea- THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 203 of the Universe. The mind of Europe, especially of Germany, has been influenced by similar trains of rea- soning within the last half century, in a manner which ought to satisfy the guides of theological belief, that the dilemma now referred to may be a serious obstruction to the religious, because to the intellectual life of some. The condition of mind occasioned by the discussion of Theism, after this fashion, has so much affected even our own insular habits of thought, that some form of the dilemma is, at the present day, the chief force which draws grave and earnest persons among us into the meta- physical arena. They want to escape from the contra- dictions which speculative reasoning has accumulated on their course of religious faith, — and that not by the dis- honest process of shutting their eyes to them, but by the manly and candid one of thinking more deeply. soning depends upon tlie assumption implied in his definition of the word " Substance," (i.e., idqtiod in se est et per se concipitur ; hoc est id, cujus conceptus non indiget conccptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat,) joined to his definition of the word " God." Hence " una substantia non potest produci ah alia sjtbstantia, (Prop. VI.) Omnls substantia est necessario infinita," (Prop. VIII.,) and Pk.eter deum nulla dari neque coxcipi POTEST SUBSTANTIA, (Prop. XIV.) The First Part of the " Ethics" should he studied by philosophical theologians, as an illustration of the consequences of assuming that the logical faculty of man is co-extensive with Being, and able to solve the problem of unconditioned existence. We can here only name the " Refutation de Spinoza par Leibnitz," just pub- lished for the first time from the Hanoverian MSB., by an accomplished French scholar, M. Foucher de Careil, (Paris, 1854,) — an interesting recent addition to our continental literature of philosophy. — The real significance of the theology of Spinoza is the great metaphysical question of this age. For an account of this singular recluse, see his " Life" by John Colerus, minister of the Lutheran Church at the Hague ; and also the " Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Spinoza," by Amand Saintes. Editions of the works of Spinoza have multiplied in this century. Germaiiy has sup- plied three, and in France they have been translated by Saisset. 204 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. A motive of this sort has at least given birth to the Essay of Mr. Calderwood.'^- It is the latest, and a sig- nificant addition to our Scottish speculative literature. The author has betaken himself to that highest part of the metaphysical field wliich our earlier Scottish philoso- phers had not overtaken, and into which our living ones have now advanced. This small volume represents the fact, that Scottish metaphysicians of this generation are preparing to investigate a more comprehensive ques- tion than that which busied their predecessors, in the last and early part of the present century. Here a word of explanation may be appropriate. Metaphysic is the study of reason f in its ultimate relations to Being. (Metaphysics and Logic are the two cognate departments of intellectual philosophy, or the theory of human knowledge. The metaphysician views knowledge in relation to existence, and thus as a collection of beliefs ; the logician as pure thought, and therefore without respect to real objects. — The initial part of metaphysic is an investigation of the origin, limits, and certainty of our knowledge of the material world. The higher metaphysic contemplates the founda- tion and nature of theological knowledge, the relation of creation and human personality to the Being and Go- * The Pliilosnpliy of the Infinite, with Special Eeference to the Theories of Sir W. Hamilton and M. Cousin. Edinburgh, 1854. f Heason, i.e., the power by which we distinguish objective reality from illusion — must not be confused with lieasoniuff, which is the chief modification of Reason in its logical and scientific function. In " percep- tion" and " self-consciousness" Reason recognises Matter and our own Personality as real. Whether Infinite and Divine Being be an object of human Reason, is the debated question referred to in this Essay. THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 205 vernment of God, and the problem of Existence viewed as an all-comprehensive unity.) The Scottish votaries of this study were at first attracted to the material world, and the relation of reason to finite beings. Is matter, they inquired, an object of human knowledge and thought ? We all know the Scottish persever- ance and sagacity which Keid and his associates de- voted to this question. The problem regarding in- finite Being Eeid declined, even in the form in which it was proposed by Dr. Samuel Clarke.* The " decay of Natural Theology in England," with which Leibnitz re- proaches Clarke in the opening sentence of their famous Correspondence, might with more justice be addressed to Scotland,! whose men of thought have not until recently devoted themselves to a part of metaphysics that brought honour to England in the golden age of its purely specu- lative literature — the half century which followed the * See Reid's "Essays on the Intellectual Powers," iii. 3. •j- We cannot find a text-book of Metaphysics in the whole range of Scottish literature. Reid's speculations on matter, — scattered throughout his philosophical works, include nearly all that our country produced in the early period of Scottish metaphysics. Natural or Rational Theology, as the higher branch of Metaphysics, is almost unknown in Scotland — a very different study having usurped the name. Not to speak of Hutcheson, another predecessor of Reid, — Andkew Baxter, in his " Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul," (London, 1737,) has pushed these researches, in some respects, into liighcr departments than either Reid or his suc- cessors. The " Inquiry" contains some remarkable speculations on Time and Space, and bears marks of the influence of Clarke, and the school of English metaphysics which followed the publication of Locke's Essay. — — Hume has discussed Time and Space, and especially Causation, in his earlier work, and also in his Essays, while his speculations on Natural Theology suggest some of the profoundest questions that have ever been raised in the higher Metaphysics. His view of Causation is in fact the Key to all that Hume has written in Philosophy aud Theology. 206 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. publication of Locke's Essay (1690-1740) — which wit- nessed the controversies of Locke with Stillingfleet — of Clarke with Butler, and of Clarke with Leibnitz — and their reverberations in the writings of Collins and Law, Joseph Clarke and Jackson.* In these circumstances, we welcome the appearance of Mr. Calderwood's recent work on the "Infinite," — a theme so interesting to every elevated mind. We augur good results from the application of Scottish genius to a class of questions whicli have been too much abandoned to the bigoted adherents of a sect of foreign metaphysicians. IMr. Calderwood expatiates over this high region, whose character and main outlines are well indicated in the headings of his chapters. As a symptom of the fact, that thoughtful persons at the present day are engaged in the same quarter, his volume might be styled a " re- presentative" book. It is the reverse of representa- tive, however, in the sense of servile discipleship. It is the most independent metaphysical Essay we have read for a long time ; and this freedom is united to an acuteness whicb justifies high expectations from the future efforts of a writer, who, in this his first work, has done so well. The work is not, indeed, conspicuous for literary art, nor as a record of very extensive philosophical reading ; but it possesses energy and perspicuity, those essential attri- * The mystical Platonism of John Norris — the Engh'sh Malcbranche. — belongs also to this period. Tt is developed in his " Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World" — (2 vols. London, 1701-4) — a work which touches often on the loftiest questions in Philosopliy. In the one volume the author treats of Existence as Absolute, and in the other in its relation to the Human Understanding. THE INSOLUBLE PHOBLEM. 207 biites of a philosophical style. The volnrne reveals a Scottish student of metaphysics, manfully addressino; himself, in the experimental fashion, to the most exalted problem which can engage the human mind. The PuiLOSoriiY of the Infinite is associated with the chief metaphysical controversy of our time. We shall first of all endeavour to explain the opposite con- clusions in this controversy, with some of the reasonings by which they are respectively maintained. The highest question in the Theory of Human Know- ledge has, within tlie present generation, been discussed by the two chief representatives of philosophy in Scotland and France. It may be thus presented : — Is the problem of Being, as an all-comprehensive unity, capable of scien- tific solution or not ? — can the nature of God, and. the relation of Creation to the Divine Being, be explained ? M. Cousin professes to solve this difficulty, in an affirmative answer to the question. He studies thought and knowledge experimentally. He thinks he has dis- covered two ideas, which, as relative and correlative, imply each other. There qxq finite thoughts, illustrated in all the phenomena of the mental and material world : and each of these necessarily suggests an Infinite Being, — for correlatives imply each the other. Try the mental experiment, he would say, and you will find that you cannot exclude either finite objects or the Infinite from your knowledge. They are the very elements of Reason ; and, as they cannot be expelled, they belong not to your reason nor to mine, but to the universal reason — to the very nature of things. In knowing them we virtually 208 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. participate in the Divine Reason ; and discern the ele- ments of Being, as all intelligence, created and Divine, must discern them. This correlation of Finite and Infinite is necessary to all intelligence, as such. It fol- lows that the relation of God to creation — of the Intinite to the finite — is essentially comprehensible. Not merely is creation possible, but it is necessary ; inasmuch as finite beings, and the Infinite Being, are inseparable elements of all knowledge and all existence. This solu- tion of our problem is proposed by the great French metaphysician, as a compromise between the Trans- cendentalism of Germany, — which rejects experiment as an organ for removing the mysteries of knowledge, and what we may call the Descendentalism of his French predecessors, — who rejected as illusory all knowledge that cannot be explained by means of the finite objects of sense. (Mr. Wright's translation of Cousin's Lectures on " The True, the Beautiful, and the Good,"-^ may be mentioned as the best English introduction to the specu- lations of a philosopher and educational leader of whom France has so much reason to be proud. — The theory of M. Cousin should be compared with the theory of Des Cartes.) Sir William Hamilton, on the contrary, regards the problem as insoluble, and holds that M. Cousin's two elements of knowledge are both, as plural, only finite — an indefinitely great finite Being on the one hand, and an indefinite number of small finite beings on the other. Eeasoning like the following is directed by our Scottish philosopher against the position which M. Cousin pro- . * EJinbui-gb : T. & T. Clark, 1854. THE INSOLUBLE PKOBLEM. 209 fesses to have secured. — Every act of knowing, of which man is the subject, is an act in which the object known must be distinguished from him who knows, and as such it is limited by him. Thus the Infinite, so far as we are concerned, becomes finite in the act beco7ning known. It is only in a negative sense that M. Cousin's assertion of an infinite object, as well as finite objects in know- ledge, can hold good. Finite implies infinite, merely in the same way as the presence of any object suggests its absence — for the science of contradictories is one. Is it said that the Infinite, alleged to be an object of our thoughts, is more than a mere negation of this sort ? Put the assertion to the test of a mental experiment. Your alleged Infinite must, by the logical law of contra- diction, be either a lohole or 7iot a whole. Try to realize either of these, i.e., either an object so large that it can be no larger, or an object that is infinite. These are the only possible ways of logically reaching what is not finite. But in both of them we find a bar to our pro- gress, when we make the attempt. Both are alike to us inconceivable. We can only oscillate between them. Call the one Absolute and the other Infinite, and we have given names to the two, and only two, possible ways in which we may weary ourselves in trying to realize an object that is not finite. On the whole, aught beyond the finite is " incognisable and inconceivable." God, as not finite, cannot be known. " The last and highest consecration of all true religion must be, an altar To the unknoion and unknowable God."* * A volume of history miglit be written on the answers (articulate and O 210 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. So far the controversy wliich has introduced this problem to our Scottish ineta})hysicians and theologians. Mr. Morell, a popular interpreter of so many philoso- phical systems, evades the discussion of it with a slight allusion to the rival systems of the French and Scottish philosophers. " We freely confess," he adds, " that we are not yet prepared to combat, step by step, the weighty arguments by which the Scottish metaphysician seeks to establish the negative character of this great funda- mental conception ; neither, on the other hand, are we prepared to admit his inference. We cannot divest our minds of the belief, that there is something iiositive in the glance which the human mind casts upon the world of eternity and infinity. Whether we rise to the con- templation of the Absolute through the medium of the true, the beautiful, or the good, we cannot imagine that our highest conceptions of these terminate in darkness — in a total negation of all knowledge. So far from this, there seem to be flashes of light, ineffable it may be, but still real, which envelop the soul in a lustre all divine, when it catches glimpses of infinite truth, infinite beauty, and infinite excellence. The mind, instead of plunging into a total eclipse of all intellection, when it rises to this elevation, seems rather to be dazzled by a too great effulgence ; yet still the light is real light, although, to any but the strongest vision, the effect may inarticulate) which have been given to this great question — in Indian and Greek Philosophy — in the Mediaeval speculations, and in the meta- physical systems of Modern Europe. The Sankhya of the Indian Gotama anticipates modern efforts to connect the Absolute and the Eelative, by means of the relation of cause and effect. THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 211 be to hlind rather than to illumine."^- Mr. Calderwood more manfully applies logic and not rhetoric to the con- troversy. According to Aristotle,! it is just to vote our thanks, not only " to those whose researches yield con- clusions which accord with our own, but also to those who seem to reason less adequately, — for they contribute something, even if they only exercise our speculative habit." We believe that more than this is due to Mr. Calderwood, dissenting as we do from some of his criticisms and inferences, and even of his premises. With some important modifications, he adheres on the whole to the opinion of the French metaphysician ; and endeavours to meet in detail the arguments by which Sir W. Hamilton maintains, that only finite objects can be known. In his own opening words, — " The work now pre- sented to the public is intended as an illustration and defence of the proposition — that man has a positive con- ception of the Infinite. It is an attempt_, by a careful analysis of consciousness, to prove that man does possess a notion of an Infinite Being ; and, since such is the case, to ascertain the peculiar nature of the conception, and the particular relations by which it is found to arise." The author's view of the result of his investigation is thus condensed on one of the closing pages of the Essay : — 1. Man does realize a positive notion of the Infinite. * " History of Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 50-i. + " Metaphysics," I), ii. 1. 212 ESSAYS IN rHILOSOPHY. 2. This notion of the Infinite is not realized by any course of addition or progression (either in space or time) which, starting from the finite, seeks to reach the infinite, and it is not the result of any logical demonstration. 3. This notion of the Infinite is in fact an ultimate datum of consciousness, involved in the con- stitution of the mind, and arising in various relations. 4. This notion of the Infinite, though real and positive, is only partial and indefinite, capable of enlarge- ment, but not of perfection. To the second and third of these propositions we yield a qualified assent. Some of our objections to the first and last we shall indicate in the sequel. The discus- sions associated with all the propositions carry us towards objects which have always interested contemplative minds. We avail ourselves of the opportunity they afford for considering some of the relations of the great problem into which human knowledge, viewed as an organic whole, ultimately resolves itself. But we shall follow our own course, and our somewhat desultory re- flections may pass for what they are worth, with those metaphysicians and divines who " go sounding on their dim and perilous way" among these high objects. This question concerning the Infinite Being, though till recently a novelty in Scotland,* is no novelty in the * We must protest against the misprision of the Scottish School — the method and results of its recent researches — in a little tract just pub- THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 213 history of human opinion. It has been debated for ages ; — and when we compare the latest with earlier forms of the debate, we learn that mental toil has not been thus con- tinuously expended wholly in vain. Every metaphysical work, out of Scotland, of any moment, contains much regarding God, and the highest relations of finite beings. The world's greatest philosophers represent theological contemplation as the highest exercise of reflection. As involved in this, the nature and limits of religious spe- culation have been disputed from age to age, while un- sound judgment in regard to these limits is and has been the parent of numberless disputes besides. The possi- bility of a knowledge of Grod, and the nature of such knowledge, have been debated by heathen philosophers and Christian fathers, by scholastic divines and modern continental metaphysicians. Those who seek for evi- dence of this may find it dispersed throughout the extant literature of ancient, mediaeval, and modern times ; or they may turn to Cudworth, — whose " Intel- lectual System" has been, like Bayle's " Dictionary," the half-way house in which so many of the learned have found their learnins;.* lished, entitled, " An Inquiry into Si)ecnlative and Experimental Science," by M. Vera. (London, 1855.) The author (an ingenious Hegelian) misunderstands the relation of our recent national metaphysic to the " Speculative " method. * See the Intellectual System, (London,' 1678,) passim, and especially pp. 638-G41, in which the Atheistic objection, " that there can be nothing infinite," is considered. Cudworth distinguishes the Absolute from the Infinite, and maintains, that " though we cannot fully comprehend the Deity, nor exhaust the Infiniteness of its perfection, we may yet have au idea of a Being absolutely perfect. . . . As we may approach near to 214 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. But the question whether the Divine Being can be linown by man is not new even among British debates. Not to refer to other instances, a hundred and twenty years ago it engaged two bishops* of the Irish Church. In the most elaborate part of the Minute rhilosopher of Berkeley, the sceptical Lysicles professes to accept " an unknown subject of absolutely unknown attributes," as on the whole nearly as good as no God at all, while Crito and Euphranor contest the doctrine as an atheistic one : — " You must know, then," remarks Lysicles, at one of the turns of that beautiful Dialogue, " you must know that at bottom the being of a God is a point in itself of small consequence. The great point is, what sense the word God is to he taken in. I shall not be much disturbed a mountain, and toncli it with our hands, though we cannot encompass it all round, and enclasp it within our hands." — This analogy of Cudworth fails, however, like every one drawn from finite objects. A mountain is only finite. There is thus no analogy between our imperfect grasp of an indefinitely gre^t finite object, and our intellectual relation to the Infinite Being. Cudworth adds, that " whatsoever is in its own nature absolutely inconceivable is nothing ; but not whatsoever is not fully comprehensible by our imperfect understanding." — Surely whatever is in no sense an object of our reason must be " nothing," as far as we are concerned ; but it does not follow, that whatever cannot be an object of our logical con- ception or faculty of comparison, is also, and in like manner, " nothing." * By the way, the nature of our knowledge of God, and the sufficiency of the analoffical hypothesis to account for theological knowledge, have engaged not a little attention from the episcopal bench. Besides Berke- ley and Brown, we have the names of two Archbishops of Dublin and three English prelates associated with these questions. We refer to Dr. King's Discourse on " The right Method of Interpreting Scripture, in what relates to the Nature of the Deity," which has been edited, with notes, by Dr. Whately ; Copleston's " Inquiry into the Doctrines of Ne- cessity and Predestination," pp. 115-141, &c. ; Hampden's Bampton Lec- tures ; and the metaphysical writings of Bishop Law, especially his " Notes" on Archbishop King's Essay on the " Origin of Evil." THE INSOLUBLE PROBLE^L 215 though the name be retained, and the being of a God allowed in any sense but in that of a mind, which knows all things, and beholds human actions, like some judge or magistrate with infinite observation and intelligence. This I know was the opinion of our great Diagoras, who told me he would never have been at the pains to find out there was no God, if the received notion of God had been the same with that of some Fathers and School- men. Euph. Pray, what was that ? Lys. You must know Diagoras, a man of mucli reading and inquiry, had. discovered, that once upon a time, the most profound and speculative divines, finding it impossible to recon- cile the attributes of God, taken in the common sense, or in any known sense, with human reason and the appearance of things, taught that the words Knowledge, Wisdom, Goodness, and such-like, when spoken of the Deity, must be understood in a quite different sense from what they signify in the vulgar acceptation, or from anything that we can form a notion of or conceive. Hence, whatever objections might be made against the attributes of God they easily solved, by denying those attributes belonged to God, in this or that, or any known particular sense or notion ; which was the same thing as to deny they belonged to him^at all. . . . But all men who think must needs see this is cutting knots and not untying them. For how are things reconciled with the divine attributes, when these attributes them- selves are in every intelligible sense denied ; and, conse- quently, the very notion of God taken away, and nothing left but the name, without any meaning annexed to it. 216 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. In short, the belief that there is an unknown subject of attributes, absokitely unknown, is a very innocent doc- trine, which the acute Diagoras well saw, and was, there- fore, wonderfully delighted with this system." ''' But the alleged heresy is defended with acuteness and learning in " The Divine Analogy," a work which ap- peared almost contemporaneously with the " Minute Philosopher." This ingenious treatise appeared in Lon- don in 1 733. Its author, Peter Brown, Bishop of Cork and Boss, published, a few years earlier, a volume on the " Pro- cedure, Extent, and Limits of the Human Understand- ing."f The " Divine Analogy" may be read in connexion with the subject of this Essay. It is an attempt to reconcile the possibility of theology with the principle that God is absolutely incognisable. The author refers to an array of passages in Heathen and Christian writers, which assert, in the strongest terms, the impossibility of any knowledge of the Divine Being. | He maintains, * See Berkeley's "Works, vol. ii. pp. 56-65. •f- Bishop Brown was an original and independent thinker in Philosophy and Theology. According to his theory, our knowledge of God and the spiritual world is founded on an analogy with the ohjects of sense. He is the author of an " Answer to Toland's Christianity not Mysterious." Brown died about 1735. I The hyperbolical language attributed to the Fathers of the Christian Cliurch hardly falls short of the monstrous paradox of Oken, which iden- tifies God with Nothing. " We cannot," says Bi.shop Brown, " be said only to have indistinct, confused, and imperfect apprehensions of the true nature of God, and of his real attributes ; but nove at all in any degree. The true meaning of the word ' incomprehensible ' is, that we have no idea at all of the real true nature of God. . . . The Fathers mean not that we cannot /m% comprehend' the true nature of God and his attributes, but that we are not capable of any direct or immediate appre- hension of them. Agreeably to this, their common epithets for God are THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEBI. 217 that it has been the catholic opinion of theologians and philosophers, that we cannot know God and his attri- butes, even imperfect!}', as they are in themselves ; and that this catholic opinion is the sound one. The con- cluding chapter of the " Divine Analogy" is devoted to a criticism of the passages in the " Minute Philosopher" from which the preceding extract has been taken. It is interesting thus to connect the present with the past. But we are here concerned with the discussion in its present phase, and the volume of Mr. Calderwood presents many convenient positions for so contemplating it — one or two of wliich we shall now take the liberty to occupy. The second and third chapters of the " Philosophy of the Infinite" are devoted to what some may, perhaps, regard as merely verbal criticism. It is, indeed, difficult so to connect these discussions about ivords, with the living current of human interest, that they shall not de- generate into pedantry, and degrade the thoughtful man that he is L'^i^uyvuirro;, {inore than imlcnoxcn,) kvu-jraoKTo;^ {loithout existence,) avoutnoi, [without substance;) and Dionysius asserts that the term oturia (substance) cannot properly be applied to God, who is viri^oiirto;, {above all substance,) avavs (without mind or soul.) And what is more remarkable, some of the ancients rejected even the word perfection as very improperly attributed to God ; for this reason, that they apprehended that He is beyond all bounds of perfection." — Pp. 63, &c. God, some Fathers were wont to say, is nothing of the things which exist, i.e,, He cannot be included among the objects of the universe. The curious work entitled, " S. Dionysii Areopagitse De Divinis Nomi- nibus," must be known to those who are at all conversant with the literature of this great problem. It occupies more than four hundred pages in the folio edition of the " Dionysii Opera." (Antwerp, 1633.) 218 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. into the sectarian metaphysician — that pillar-saint of literature. But an examination of these chapters may convince such persons that the study of words to which they might introduce the reader is, for the most part, oF that higher kind, which requires at each step a mental experiment, and reflection on logical and metaphysical laws. In one of them, a criticism of Sir W. Hamilton's favourite " contradictories" — the Absolute and the Infi- nite — conducts us through a course of meditative exer- cises upon infinity ; and in the other, our intellectual relation to what is neither finite nor relative is analyzed, in reference to the applicability of the term " negative notion" to express the relation. The author refuses to recognise any other " Absolute" than an " Infinite-Ab- solute," and professes to agree " with philosophers gene- rally" in the belief that there is only one existence that is not finite, relative, and dependent. We do not think these chapters, however, the most satis- factory part of the book. Instead of recognising tioo un- conditioned beings, the chief defect of Sir William Hamil- ton's theory seems to be, that it hardly leaves room for the recognition of any. For what is the real tendency of his statements about an " infinite" and an " absolute ?" Not that they are two contradictory heiiigs, but rather two contradictory modes in one or other of which thought must transcend what is finite and relative, — if it can do so after a logical fashion, at all. — Is it affirmed that our intellect can take the measure of the all-comprehensive unity of Being — that the problem of the universe can be solved by man ? Then let us try the experiment of THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 219 conceiving the nameless One, whose relations we profess to define. There are just two ways in which the rules of logic permit us to do so — the way of adding for ever and the way of rising beyond all possibility of addition — the way of conceiving an infinite not-ivhole, and the way of conceiving an absolute luhole. In neither of these ways can the veil which hides Being be removed. Thought cannot infinitely expand itself, and yet it can- not cease expanding. But there can be no third road out of the darkness. The understanding is thus confined, on account of its intellectual structure, between these extremes. — Now this is a logical rather than a metaphy- sical experiment — an experiment upon the possibilities of human thought, and not a statement regarding ob- jective existence. Mr. Calderwood has reversed this aspect, and has, moreover, attributed a distinction as old as Aristotle to Sir William Hamilton.* * Mr. Calderwood strenuously maintains that tlio Infinite is also Ab- solute, adding, that it is " obvious that the Infinite is perfect and whole. If anything," he says, "be perfect and complete, the Infinite must; for if it were imperfect or incomplete, it would be no longer infinite. If any- thing be total the Infinite must, for if there were any want of its totality it would cease to exist." — (P. 29.) And yet he adopts Aristotle's defini- tion of the Infinite — oZ as/ Tt i%u iirrt. (That of which there is always something beyond.) But in the very passage which contains the defini- tion, Ai-istotle carefully distinguishes from the Infinite the Absolute or Perfect — af Ss jmjjSjv 'iS,ti>, rai/r' IffTi t'iXuov xa.) eXov. (That of which there is nothing beyond.) We are somewhat at a loss how to reconcile this dis- crepancy in Mr. Calderwood, in so critical a part of the question in debate. To explain Plato's theory of the Infinite in knowledge, we should require to discuss his renowned doctrine of Ideas — a task, by the way, that has been performed with marvellous clearness and beauty in Archer Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy." — The reader may be referred to the' whole discussion concerning the Infinite (ro Hcrn^ov) in Aristotle's Physics, (lib. iii. ch. 4-13.) Aristotle maintains our ignorance of the 220 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. But is the darkness then impenetrahle ? Can man know only the finite objects of this transitory world ? When we speak of the Infinite Being, are we only " darkening; counsel by words without knowledge ?" In the cave of Plato, a world beyond is at least dimly and figuratively recognised. And all the great Platonic minds have aspired — but not through perception and logical intelligence — to the perfect and unchangeable, as the only reality. Cousin, however, boldly proclaims, that this higher world is discerned through the under- standing, clearly enough to reveal the relations of this finite universe to the Infinite, and thus to give a founda- tion for reasonings about their mutual relations. — But this, argues Sir W. Hamilton, is no Infinite nor Absolute either, which can thus take its place in our thought on a level with ourselves and the finite objects around us. The very act of thinking about a so-called wo^-finite has rendered it definable, if not definite, as far as our know- ledge is concerned. There may^ indeed, be " something beyond," — inconceivable and " negatively" known. But when the understanding tries to expand for its reception, thought becomes illogical, and thus destroys itself in the veiy act. It is the negation of thought, and not any positive object, that is reached when we try to transcend Infinite in various passages. — See also Locke's Essay, (b. ii. cli. 17) — where lie maintains that we have only a " negative" notion of infinity ; and compare the same with the corresponding passages in the " Nouveaux Essais" of Leibnitz, and Cousin's " Lectures on Locke." Curious readers may trace the hypothesis of negative notions of the human mind, and also the distinction between the infinite and the absolute or perfect, through a long period in the history of philosophy. We have not space for detailed references. THE INSOLUBLE TROBLEM. 221 the world of defined ohjects, and, as it were, to realize unlimitedness in the concrete. These are the extremes of opinion concerning this highest problem of human speculation. The one theory- seems to represent it as capable of being solved ; the other, not merely as insoluble, but as really no j)roblem at all. — Is not the true opinion a mean between these extremes ? Does it not recognise our knowledge of the facts — finite beings and the Transcendent Being — which occasion the difficulty on the one hand ; and on the other, the impossibility of any solution of their relation by human understanding ? This would account for contradiction emerging, whenever a solution is irrationally attempted, and teach the need for withdrawing our faculty of compa- rison and reasoning from a region for which it is unfitted. Are we wrong when we suppose that M. Cousin, who speaks so eloquently and impressively of the " incompre- hensibility" of God, and grants that we are unable " ab- solutely to comprehend God," wishes his theory to be interpreted in harmony with the principle that the Great Problem is fundamentally insoluble ; and that when Sir W. Hamilton indulges his matchless logical ingenuity in eliciting the contradictions which follow an illegitimate application of reasoning to the Infinite and Eternal, his demonstration does not touch the pillars on which the Facts themselves rest — mysteriously irreconcilable and yet known to be real. On this intermediate hypothesis, while we have what may be called a metaphysical knowledge of material and finite beings, — which may be converted into science by 222 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. reasoning and induction ; we have a metaphysical knowledge of Transcendent Being, — as not an object of logical definition and scientific reasoning at all. We believe, and therefore know, that the Infinite One exists ; but whenever He is logically recognised as a term in thought or argument, either the object, like the argu- ment, becomes finite, or else runs into innumerable con- tradictions. We hold, in one sense, with Cousin, that Transcendent Being is not tvholly unknown. How else can we account for this controversy at all ? Yet we hold with Sir W. Hamilton, that, as transcendent or uncon- ditioned. Being cannot be scientifically known. But the Scottish philosopher seems to cut away every bridge by which man can have access to God ; and the French phi- losopher seems to plant the Infinite cis an indefinitely hnown finite, in every region of human knowledge. But it is time to pass to the evidence by which alone any hypothesis on this subject can be converted into a solid theory. The last few paragraphs can hardly be saved from the charge of scholastic pedantry, unless we connect their words and formulas with wholesome facts. This investigation, like every other philosophical one, must be ultimately based on mental facts,''- We must endeavour to carry into those dark and intricate regions * Some minds, confined by the habit of observing only what is external and material, seem unable to apprehend the meaning of the term " fact," when applied to an object that cannot he seen and handled. If their in- trepidity in speculation be equal to their rashness in assertion, they must reject Christianity — which deals essentially with spiritual facts — as well as Metaphysics. THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 223 the torch of experiment, which has ilhiniinatecl so many subordinate parts of knowledge, but which most specula- tors about the Infinite have cast aside. We cannot propose a method for investigating the character of theological knowledge more appropriate than the examination of Time, Space, and Causation, which is suggested by the three leading chapters in Mr. Calderwood's Essay. Eternity — Immensity — Omnipo- tence — these terms, when we try to utter them intelli- gentlj', seem to carry thought beyond its sphere. When, in an hour of unusual contemplative effort, we seek to realize their meaning, Keason is foiled by an obstacle quite unlike those which are met and removed by vic- torious Science. The obstacle is not like that against which the brave mathematician struggled, before he witnessed the solution of his problem rising out of fami- liar axioms and principles ; nor like the outstanding phenomena in the material world, which have so often surrendered to induction. On the continents of finite being, the boundary line of the unknown is gradually receding, as the increasing army of investigators discovers fresh analogies, or detects in new phenomena illustrations of old theories. But we all know St. Augustine's deliver- ance about Time ; and we have read of the sage Simoni- des, who, when asked by Hiero about God {quid, aut quale sit Deus ?) demanded a day to prepare his answer — and then another and yet another day — the obstacle to a reply gathering strength the longer the question was struggled with. The ages of past human history have removed the veil which concealed from science 224 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. many a region on the intellectual globe, and future ages will continue to spread the light of this species of know- ledge. But the achievement of realizing Eternity, Im- mensity, and Deity in human thought, must remain to the end as remote from accomplishment as it was when they kindled the imagination and reason of man at the outset of our race. These are eminently the words which suggest that insoluble problem in which all the difficulties of theological and philosophical knowledge are wrapped up, — the due appreciation of which might conciliate many controversies, and give relief to pious minds troubled by the seeming variance of Faith and Keason. Time* is, at least, a formal and typical illustration of the mysterious problem whose elements underlie every part of human knowledge. It is at once unlimited and 7'evealed in 'parts. Interminable duration is out of logical relation with terminable duration — Eternity with a series of moments — an Eternal Being with the succession of time. We cannot limit Time, and yet we cannot reconcile Eternity with the succession of finite periods. The infinite and finite here seem to exclude one another, and yet both must be recognised. Eternity involves contradictions, when it is virtually limited by * We need hardly remind the reader of an ambiguity in the word Time, which is sometimes applied exclusively to a limited succession of events, e.g., human life in this world, the i^resent mundane system, &c. It is thus distinguished from Eternity, or (as some assume it to he) uiwlumge- ahle existence. We employ " Time" as the verbal representative at once of the finite and the transcendent meaning. THE INSOLUBLE PR0BLE3I. 225 being inacle an object of human thought. Thus to limit the illimitable is to convert it into a bundle of contra- dictions, illustrated in every attempt, from Aristotle to the antinomies of Kant, to apply reasoning in a region from which the faculty of comparison should be with- drawn. Mr, Calderwood expatiates on the "irrestrictive" character of Time, but denies that it can be even rela- tively limited. He thus obscures that aspect of this in- tellectual mystery which, in our view, constitutes its chief value. We must here pause a little, and refer to two pas- sages in his book, in one of which Time is contemplated in its transcendent, and in the other in its finite manifes- tation. " Time," according to our author, " is a condition of thought, inasmuch as no object can be realized in thought without it ; but it is not a condition in the sense of limiting the object of thought, or even in any way influencing that object, otherwise than in afford- ing it mental or subjective existence. On the other hand, though Time is realized only as a concomitant of the object of thought, the object does not in any sense limit or restrict Time, On the one hand, Time does not limit the object, and on the other, the object does not limit time Time is not restrictive or exclusive ; most other conditions are exclusive. We therefore denominate time an irrestrictive condition of thought We must think Time ; we cannot think it as finite ; therefore we must think it as infinite. On the evidence thus presented, we maintain that in our conception of Time we have a conception of the Infinite/' (Pp. 87-91.) 22G ESSAYS IN PHILOSOrHY. Now it is true that some necessary conditions of thought are not irrestrictive. This very phenomenon of Time itself seems to suggest that even the logical laws and relations, while true and necessary within their own sphere — do not possess this character ; for unlimited Time is an object to which they cannot be applied. We know that Time is unlimited, but we cannot logically conceive its unlimitedness. When we seem to do so, we virtually limit it in thought. If we can really form this concep- tion, what is its character ? — As infinite, it cannot be a tuliole : there must be " always something beyond." But in conception and reasoning we can deal only with luJioles and their correlative parts. The statement that we have an " indefinite" conception of infinite Time, hardly sug- gests this peculiarity. The knowledge is not merely indefinite but absolutely indefinable, and therefore be- yond the sphere of thought, viewed as a faculty of com- parison. It is that part of our " knowledge" which can- not be dealt with by the logical faculty. — But is not Time also revealed in parts and portions ? This ques- tion Mr. Calderwood answers in the negative. To us the true answer seems to illustrate in a new aspect the logi- cally inconceivable character of Time. " It has been strongly maintained," says our author, " that we can think Time relatively limited, though we cannot think it absolutely limited. For example, it is said we can think a series of events occurring in Time ; we can select the first and last of these ; and then we can think the portion of Time beginning with the first event and terminating with the last, and thus obtain a notion THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 227 of time as relatively limited. Now, if we carefully exa- mine our consciousness in such a case as this, it will be obvious that even here we have no conception of limited time We realize the objects in Time, but we do not realize them as limiting Time When we observe two vessels at sea we recognise the ocean between the ships, but it is equally true that we perceive the ocean beyond them."— (Pp. 91, 92.) Neither unlimited nor limited Time, viewed in the abstract, can be conceived as a whole. Yet the parts in a series of successive events are in mysterious relation to Eternity. They seem to be iMvts of that which is 7iot a whole, while the understanding can only compare (finite) wholes with parts. The very analogy of the ships on the ocean so far indicates this. We perceive the ocean beyond them ; — but a part of it is between them. The analogy, however, is a misleading one ; — as every analogy must be, between the relation of finite to the infinite on the one hand, and any two finite correla- tives which the mundane universe presents on the other. Tlie ocean is finite as loell as its parts. The analogy requires not a finite but an infinite ocean. This illus- trates by the way — apart from the objection that might be founded on the peculiar nature of the causal relation, the vice of a common illustration, which represents the changes in the universe as waves on the ocean of Infinite Being. We inevitably slide into the notion of a finite ocean, in which the waves are parts ; instead of an infinite ocean whose " waves" can bear to it no conceivable relation at all. So it is with every attempt to apply the understand- 228 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. ing of man to solve the problem of Being ; it either fails, or issues in Pantheism. The logical organ of comparison is applicable only to finite objects ; the relation of what is limited in Time, Space, or Degree, with the Infinite, cannot be a logical correlation. While it does not con- tradict the logical laws, it transcends their sphere. In this contemplation of the relation of finite periods to Eternity, we thus come in sight of the one insoluble problem of human knowledge. As Berkeley says, " the mind of man being finite, when it treats (logically) of things which partake of infinity, it is not to be wondered at if it run into absurdities and contradictions." But the study of Time prepares us for more than a vague expectation of this result. It proves not merely that the problem may be insoluble, but that it must be so, and that every endeavour to solve it, alike in these regions of Space and Time, and in the concrete world of physical existence, is the parent of confusion and con- tradiction.* But is Time itself a real Being, or is it only &form or condition of knowing real beings — a form common, it may be, to all intelligence, human and divine, but existing only as knoivn ? Has Time an existence — not dependent on any intelligence, created or even uncreated ? What * These insunnountatle difSculties connected with Time are discussed hut not abated by Plato in the Timseus. Eternity, he says, is one, bui (limited) time proceeds in succession. The former is fixed, the latter a created and changing state. Eternity (uImv) is that which always is (ri ail ov.) A similar theory is held, among others, by Cudworth, (" In- tellectual System," pp. 664, &c.,) and by Bishop Law, in a modified form. The Platonic view of Eternity is propounded by Mr. Maurice in his volume of " Theological Essays." THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 229 is Time, when viewed, not as a law of human reason, nor as a modification of mental and material beings, but ab- stracted from all the minds and matter in the universe ? A similar question has been raised in regard to Space. Perhaps we have not faculties for adequately enunciating, far less for answering, the question. Our readers may like to know whether Mr. Calderwood ranks himself among the worshippers of an absolute Time and an absolute Space, — these " idols of modern English- men," as Leibnitz calls them. We quote the passage which relates to the metaphysical character of Time, and refer our readers to a corresponding one concerning Space: — " What is Time ? Is it only in our thoughts, or has it also an objective and external existence ? In answer to this we reply, that it seems of the nature of our con- ception of Time to recognise it as something external. When we think of Time, we think of it as something which exists without us and apart from us. . . . So far from Time being regarded as a mere product of the human mind, it seems plain that Time would have existed even though the human race had never been brought into being. Since this is the case, it is manifest that to maintain that Time is purely subjective is to contradict consciousness, and thus to overturn the basis of philosophy, . , . Our conception of Time seems analogous to our conception of substance. ... If Time be an external existence, the question immediately arises, is it an attribute of the Deity, or is it an infinite existence separate from the Deity ? The former (hypo- thesis) is, we think, in direct opposition to our concep- 230 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. tion of Time. When we think of an event occurring in time, we do not think of it as occnrring in God, nor would we thus descrihe it. But if Time he a separate yet infinite existence, how can there be two existences, both infinite, yet each independent of the other ? This is a difficulty which we cannot profess to remove, and yet it is a difficulty which arises solely from our ignor- ance of the nature of Time." — (Pp. 97-99.) We are not so sure that this circumstance entirely explains the difficulty. It is perhaps partly due to assumptions about abstract Time, which our mental experience, when it has been purified from prejudice by metaphysical analysis, does not verify. What is the history of past metaphysical discovery but a history of the gradual retreat of prejudices, in many respects analogous to the opinion that Time is an Infinite Being ? — Perhaps the chief " discoveries" of which metaphysics admits are these conquests of prejudice by reflection, through which the native and spontaneous judgments of reason recover the authority of which sense and ill- regulated mental association had deprived them. Illus- trations of this are innumerable in the history of philo- sophy. We are satisfied if we can point to such results, when we are assailed by the clamour of those who complain that the conquests of metaphysics (like those of Christianity itself) are chiefly in the mental and moral world — the amelioration of intellectual habits, and the expulsion of powerful prejudices. Victories like these are surely the parents and protectors of all useful discoveries, in the physical sciences, and in the arts THE INSOLUBLE rrvOBLEM. 231 which render this earth a more convenient habitation for man. But to return to our subject. Any one who meditates about Time, can worlc out only an imperfect expression of liis meaning, when he tries to go beyond that record of the facts of mental experience which is open even to those least accustomed to reflect. Leibnitz, with the continental metaphysicians in general, may be taken as the representative of the hypothesis, that Time and Space exist only as modes of thought. Clarke, and most of our British metaphysi- cians, regard them as in some sense transcendent objects of knoiuledge.^ The varieties of modern opinion gravi- tate towards one or other of these extremes, — the one of which we may style the Formal, and the other the Ontological, extreme. It is difficult to discover language fit to express an intermediate hypothesis. But may we not avoid the monstrous supposition of two huge entities, without resolving Time into a mere manifestation of human thought or reason ? If we could imagine the annihilation of all beings, created and uncreated, are not these words " time" and " space" still applicable to the nothingness which should ensue ? Even in sug- * Neither of tlieso counter doctrines is explicitly developed in their " Correspondence." Leibnitz calls Time an order of successions, and Space an order of co-existences. Clarke regards them as attributes of the Infinite Being. But we have here the seeds of the rival hypotheses. We have not room here to indicate the history of their development. Almost every conceivable hy2iothesis concerning Time and Space has been actually maintained by one or more of the philosophers. We may refer to Edmund Law's " Inquiry into the Ideas of Space, Time, Immen- sity, Eternity, &c." (Cambridge, 1734.) — Kant's " Kritik," First Part. (Transcendental ^Esthetic.) — Cousin's " Cours d'histoire de la Philosophie &\\ xviii^ Siccle," 17^ lejon, &c. — Hegel's " Logic," B. I. 2, &c. 232 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. gesting this view, we are sliding into the ontological hypothesis. We have no words proper to express ab- solute nothingness vieiued as a receptacle of beings. Yet while we cannot class Time among real entities — only with the negation of such entities — is it not the myste- rious condition of real existence as well as of our know- ledge of it ; presenting, as it were, 'potentially, that insoluble problem, which we find actually when we reflect upon Being and Causation ? (Is there divinity in Time and Space ? They have seemed to some ingenious minds eminently suggestive of Deity ; and well-known " demonstrations" of the exist- ence of God have been rested on hypotheses regarding their nature.* In them we have indeed ample recep- tacles, as it were, — ready to admit a Being who cannot be defined by the rules of the logical reasoner. We are prepared to ask, when we have completed our contem- plative journey through this region of human intelli- gence, whether there be any Being — to take possession ? And if there be an Infinite Being, is there also room for finite beings besides ? But the esse is not either logically or metaphysically implied in the j^osse. Per- haps after all, any force which resides in the a priori part of Clarke's so-called demonstration, lies in the unconscious appeal to our sense of analogy. The fact that a Being transcending logical conception is thus rationally possible, is felt to give some presumption of * See Clarke's "Demonstration," Prop, iii., iv., &c. ; and also Mr. Gil- lespie's ingenious " Argviment for the Being and Attributes_,of God," with Lis " Examination of Autitheos's Hefutation" of the same. THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 233 reality. The transcendent receptacle suggests the trans- cendent occupant. In Space and Time we have traces of an intellectual organ which is not satisfied with finite objects of reasoning. Must not One really exist, whose mysterious relation to finite beings suggests a problem, which reason may raise, but which reasonmg cannot resolve ? Are we wrong in the conjecture, that it is unconsciously through a channel of this kind, that these abstract conditions of knowledge and existence have carried some speculative minds up to the Divine object of knowledge, when they supposed themselves to be tra- velling thither on the level railroad of demonstration ?) What evidence, it may now be asked, does an experi- mental study of our notions of Time and Space contri- bute, towards an adjustment of the controversy concern- ing the Infinite and our theological knowledge ? It may be answered, that they exhibit in posse, if not in esse, the data of an insoluble problem. They have revealed at least the possibility of relations in existence, which transcend the capacity of human reasoning. They illus- trate how reason may have resources for raising questions, while it has not logical capacity even to apprehend the answer to them. But whether the possible problem be also, as real, an intellectually and morally urgent one, no exclusive study of the characteristics of abstract Time and Space can determine. We therefore turn from these mysterious abstractions, to the concrete beings revealed in the worlds of sense and reflection — in a word, to the phenomena of Causa- 234 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. tion. We have found ourselves unable to realize Time and Space in knowledge, either as absolutely limited or as unlimited. In Causation, we find ourselves un- able on the one hand, to believe that we, and the finite objects of the material world, are independent of aught beyond ; and on the other, to realize logically, independent and infinite Being. Eeason cannot be satisfied with a Finite-absolute universe. All finite beings — the greatest conceivable complement of finite beings, as dependent, force intelligent belief beyond THEMSELVES, ou Something transcendent, which supports and accounts for them, and which they practically reveal. Try the experiment. The supposition of a_/mYe Deity — however great his power may be — suggests, with the same intellectual force that the most insignificant event does — the existence of a still greater power to account for His existence. As long as any being is finite, and thus a pos- sible object of human conception and reasoning, it implies a cause, — a something beyond itself, — even as the greatest conceivable portion of time implies Eternity. Thus Omnipotence no more excludes or absorbs finite powers, than Immensity excludes or absorbs portions of space, or Eternity periods of time. Just as the application of human reasoning to the relation of finite periods to eternity — by virtually defining the infinite — gives birth to a host of contradictions, so the Pantheistic paradoxes issue out of a similar illegitimate application of rea- soning to the Infinite Power. A power without limit cannot be reconciled in conception with a finite and created power. When we try to conceive them, the THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 235 latter is by the very act absorbed into the former. But we may not deny the absohite, tliongh we must the relative or conceivable possibility of their co-existence. There is room in the irrestrictive conditions of Being, for what cannot be received by the restricted capacity of human thought. A Being that cannot be logically limited may exist, and beings within the logical limits — finite beings, may also exist. I may believe in the reality of both terms, but I cannot logically know their correla- tion. The attempt to realize it produces such paradoxes as a past and future Eternity, and an all-compreliensive Unity, without the sphere of whose Being there never- theless exist finite entities. As in Time so in Causation, the difficulty is logi- cally insurmountable by a finite intelligence. The very existence of the difficulty is in truth a mark of intel- lectual finitude. We could find no logical formula for the relation between a succession of 'periods and eternity. Each seemed to exclude the other. Not less out of human reach is a formula which should express creation in its relation to Deity. Here, too, each seems to ex- clude the other. The truth is, if unconditioned existence (God -f- created being) may be regarded as virtually two finite ivholes, — one of them no doubt indefinitely great, and as such called an infinite power, — then a Being transcending each is required to account for both of them. This is the critical part of the discussion. We regret that we cannot, without modification, subscribe fully to the opinions of either the Scottish or French metaphysi- 236 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. cian, when these are rigidly interpreted.* Here we fear we can hardly preserve clearness, in the narrow limits to which we are confined. * We are glad, however, to observe that 1^1. Cousin, in his later writ- ings, has so explained, if not modified his earlier doctrine as to approach very near to what we deem the truth on the question of our knowledge of God. The following extract from one of his latest works will be read ■vrith interest : — " We say in the first place that God is not absolutely incomprehensible, for this manifest reason, that, being the cause of this universe, he passes into it, and is reflected in it, as the cause in the effect ; therefore we recog- nise him. ' The heavens declare his glory,' and ' the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made ;' his power, in the thousands of worlds sown in the boundless regions of space ; his intelligence in their har- monious laws ; finally, that which there is in him most august, in the sentiments of virtue, of holiness, and of love, which the heart of man con- tains. It must be that God is not incomprehensible to us, for all nations have petitioned him, since the first day of the intellectual life of humanity. God, then, as the cause of the universe, reveals himself to us ; but God is not only the cause of the universe, he is also the perfect and infinite cause, possessing in himself, not a relative perfection, which is only a degree of imperfection, but an absolute perfection, an infinity which is not only the finite multiplied by itself in those proportions which the human mind is able always to enumerate, but a true infinity, that is, the absolute negation of all limits, in all the powei"s of his being. Moreover, it is not true that an indefinite effect adequately expresses an infinite cause ; hence it is not true that we are able absolutely to comprehend God by the world and by man, for all of God is not in them. In order absolutely to compreliend the infinite, it is necessary to Jiave an infinite poioer of comprehension, and that is not granted to us. God, in manifestinq himself, retains some- thing in himself which nothing finite can absolutely manifest; conse- quently, it is not permitted us to comprehend absolutely. There remains, then, in God, Iwyond the universe and man, something unknown, impene- trable, incomprehensible. Hence in the immeasurable spaces of the uni- verse, and beneath all the profundities of the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new manifestations. God is to us, therefore, in- comprehensible ; but even of this incomprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea ; for we have the most precise idea of infinity. Aud this idea is not in us a metaphysical refinement, it is a simple and primitive con- THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 237 In our last Essay, we offered some remarks on Sir W. Hamilton's Theory of Causation. We shall not return to that subject at present. We coincide in some of Mr. Calderwood's criticisms, nine in number. But we must specially except the eighth, in which he seems to charge Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy with Pantheism. That eminent metaphysician expressly confines the application of his hypothesis to finite causation ; and the whole ana- logy of his philosophy excludes the possibility of a theory of Creation. In this latter view we coincide. The appli- cation of a merely human intelligence to solve the relation of finite and transcendent Being must, as we have already said, end in Pantheism or Atheism. Either finite beings are absorbed, as modifications of the Infinite Being ; or else Deity is excluded as not consistent with the reality ception wliicli enlightens us from our entrance into tliis world, both lumi- nous and obscure, explaining everything, and being explained by nothing, because it carries us at first to the summit and the limit of all explana- tion. There is something inexplicable for thought, — behold then whither thought tends ; there is infinite being, — behold then the necessary prin- ciple of all relative and finite beings. Season explains not the inexpli- cable, it conceives it. It is not able to comprehend infinity in an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some degree in its indefinite manifesta- tions, ivhich revecd it, and tchich veil it; and, further, as it has been said, it comprehends it so far as incomprehensible. It is, therefore, an equal error to call God absolutely comprehensible, and absolutely incompre- hensible. He is both invisible and present, revealed and withdrawn in himself, in the world and out of the world, so fomiliar and intimate with his creatures, that we see him by opening our eyes, that we feel him in feeling our hearts beat, and at the same time inaccessible in his impene- trable majesty, mingled with everything, and separated from everything, manifesting himself in universal life, and causing scarcely an ephemeral shadow of his eternal essence to appear there, communicating himself without cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at once the living God, and the God concealed, ' Deus vivus et Beus absconditus.'" — (Cousin's Works. 1st Series, vol. iv. sect. 12.) 238 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. of finite agents. We are thus left oscillating between an Infinite universe* and a Fi7iite-ahsolute universe.f But here some may complain of defect in the theory of Sir William Hamilton. The Scottish philosopher sug- gests no means for extricating us from this state. In what we incline to regard as the true doctrine, reason is recognised as, on the one hand, spontaneously re- jecting the hypothesis of a Finite-absolute universe ; and on the other as incapable, in the exercise of its logical functions, of realizing the Divine Being, whose existence we are nevertheless forced to recognise. Every attempt to compare scientifically what we may call the Finite-relative objects, which constitute the worlds of mind and matter,! with the inconceivable Being, must occasion contradictions in the speculations which it sets agoing. We are bound to accept hoth^ and the latter can be known only as practically revealed through the former. § But ivliy thus bound ? What mental force thus in- clines the balance ? In sense and reflection we have a direct revelation of an indefinite number of finite objects. Our knowledge oi finite beings is ultimately secured, — not by the support of argument or inductive proof, but by a mysterious organ, which we may call Intuition, and * The universe of Pantheism. •}• The universe of Atheism. But these two extremes virtually coincide. I The universe of Theism. § " The metaphysical knowledge of God," says Bishop Berkeley, " con- sidered in His absolute nature or essence, is one thing, and to know Him as he stands related to us as Creator, Eedeemer, and Sanctifier, is another. The former kind of knowledge {wliatever it amounts to) hath been, and may be, in Gentiles as well as Christians, but not the latter, which is life eternal." THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 239 which supplies to thought, through experience, the ma- terials of physical science. But why does not this per- ceptive intuition satisfy us ? Why may we not regard the finite objects thus revealed as absolute, indepen- dent, and self-contained ? — In reply to questions like these, this author offers what he calls " the common theory" of the causal judgment. On the whole, he maintains the existence of two — unaccountable — con- victions :—(l.) That there is a cause for the existence of every object in its present form. (2.) That all things, except God, had an absolute commencement ; that is, that there was a First Cause. In connexion with the second of these alleged ulti- mate convictions, we quote the following interesting and suggestive passage v — " The upholder of Atheism will observe, that we do not profess to prove the existence of a First Cause. We do not profess to demonstrate the fact. We maintain that it is above proof — that it is beyond all demonstration. We maintain, that it can be neither doubted nor demon- strated, but is a truth necessary to the mind — a truth which must be believed. Not, indeed, a truth which is always present to the mind, — not a truth which cannot be shunned ; but a truth which must be realized if we seek to account to ourselves for the origin of all things ; a principle which, when raised in the mind, cannot be doubted, and, in arising, stands supreme. We do not uphold the argument from design as a demonstration logically exact. On the contrary, w^e maintain, that we never can have a logical demonstration of the existence 240 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. of God. The creation of the universe is only a finite manifestation of power, and from that we can never infer the Infinite. Every snch argument is incompe- tent, as embracing more in the conclusion than is in- volved in the premises. . . . All the use we would make of what has been called the argument from design is as an illustration — as presenting a course of thought in which the conception of a First Cause will arise — as originating an inquiry which, if prosecuted, must ter- minate in belief. Let any man honestly carry out the inquiry in reference to the origin of all things, and he will find that he can no longer doubt — that by the con- stitution of his mind he must believe in the existence of an infinite and eternal First Cause." — (Pp. 175, 176.) To assume that our belief in the Transcendent Being is founded merely on an induction formed from the finite and dependent objects of sense and consciousness, is no doubt absurd. Paley's proof does not fully meet the want expressed by the religious scepticism of our time, — which complains of weakness beneath the foundation on which his museum of the ideas and de- signs in creation is constructed. Induction yields an indefinitely great finite being, but not the Infinite Power. So far we agree in the opinion expressed in this para- graph. But we incline to a different and simpler state- ment of the convictions which carry us beyond the imme- diate objects of sense. The two " ultimate" convictions referred to in the preceding extract may, we think, be resolved into one. Here we must explain our meaning. We have said that the finite universe of matter and THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 241 mind is known in a twofold aspect. We attribute a real, and likewise a dependent existence to the beings con- tained in it. In Perception, the material world is re- cognised as real ; in Induction, as dependent. We can- not expel either of these convictions. At present, we concentrate our attention upon the second of them. Here our author, following the " common theory," proclaims tioo mental forces which inevitably draw us beyond the dependent phenomena — the causal and supernatural convictions. Now the causal, as it seems to us, is only the supernatural judgment in another aspect. We can- not discover any evidence of a necessity* in reason that compels the belief in finite causation or the uniformity of the laws of nature. We are no doubt intellectually unable to regard a finite object or change as self-originated or self-subsisting. But it does not follow that objects and changes depend on other finite objects and changes. Creation itself is not necessary ; far less are we conscious of any irixsistihle conviction that the finite universe must contain 7nore finite objects than loe perceive it to contain. Our knowledge that it actually does so, as well as what we know of the harmonious co-ordination of its parts and sequences, seems to be the growth of expeiience, regulated by the associative and logical laws. We thus gradually learn that we ourselves, and all the objects directly known through sense-perception, are implicated in a great and regular scheme, whose aiTangements are * " Necessity" is an ambiguous term. We have metaphysical neces- sity, i.e., in human reason ; logical necessity, i.e., in pure thought ; and physical necessity, i.e., founded on the experienced uniformity of the laws of nature. "We refer here only to the first. Q 242 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. uniform and significant. On the basis of tliis convic- tion, gradually formed in the human race and in its in- dividual members, we learn to interpret these arrange- ments, and thus form the physical and social sciences. But it is also true that every change — nay, every finite being, must be viewed as a dependent being ; and " power" is the correlative of dependence. Try the experiment. We find that every object of logical thought demands an explanation, and also that a scientific explanation, when offered merely by induc- tive experience, leaves the demand unsatisfied. " The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind," as Mr. Hume says, " only staves off our ignorance a little longer." The ascertained law of gravitation sheds light on the mechanical changes of the universe, only to re- veal the darkness which envelopes the cause of the gravi- tation-law itself. The really necessary^ causal judg- ment has, as it seems to us, another reference altogether than to Laws of Nature, and uniformities of succession among the finite changes of the universe. It is a gene- ral expression of the fundamental conviction of reason, that evei'y finite event and being depends f on, and * See note on preceding page. + But this " DEPENDENCE " WO Cannot define. The facts and laws of Science and Supernatural Revelation may both be said to display the character of God, but not the rationale of their own dependence on the infinite and adorable One. It is a materialistic assumption on which Pantheists fall back, when they suggest the analogy of a finite substance and its phenomena. Atheists and Manicheans do away with the depend- ence altogether, the former wholly, the others in part. Enlightened Chris- tian Theism regards it as in an emphatic sense unique, and incapable of being made an object of scientific reasoning. A world of debate thus dis- appears as irrelevant. The hypothesis of " occasional causes " is dismissed THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 243 practically reveals, infinite or transcendent Power. It is a vatrue utterance of dissatisfaction with an abso- lutely finite universe — totum, te7'cs, atque rotimdum — and of a positive belief, not only that finite objects exist, but they do not exhaust existence, seeing that they depend on God. Thus, as every portion of time seems to lose itself in Eternity, so every finite being and power suggests the Infinite Power in mysterious relation to it. The term First Cause may here, as inadequate, mislead us. Assume, as Divine, a necessary cause, adequate only to the creation of the known mental and material worlds. As finite, this assumed deity becomes dependent, and the question of a prior aud greater cause immediately rises in the mind. We are intellectually dissatisfied, — so long as the object of which we are in quest is luithin the range of the logical laws, and therefore recognised as a power only indefinitely great. The dissatisfaction projects reason beyond the realm of finite, and there- fore scientifically cognizable existence. The mental necessity which thus conducts us to the Transcendent along with the rival one of a " pre-established harmony ;" and we have a demonstration of the impossibility of a scientific or speculative account of the relation of the Infinite Being — i.e., of Existence regarded in ita ultimate or mysterious character — to finite and dependent beings, whether in Creation or Providence (natural and miraculous) ; or to moral agents, — unfallen, fiillen, or restored. We may have definite practical rules, as it were, in regard to these questions, — and so much knowledge as the rules involve. We may have Facts, but not a Theory of them. If bo, may we say, that much labour has been worse than wasted by divines in embarrassing simple statements of Scripture with the formal dress of theory — in offering solutions of problems which Eevelation — natural and supernatural — only states, because the human understanding could not hear the solution 1 244 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. Being and Power — with or without the intervention of finite beings and second causes — is the root of the only truly necessary causal judgment we can discover. Our conviction of the uniformity of nature, on the other hand — which sometimes passes under that name, ap- pears to be the gradual issue of our experience of the regular evolutions of the created universe, and especially of our consciousness of volition. It is the former and not the latter mental force that irresisiihly carries us beyond the narrow sphere of direct experience aloft the great ■^-orld's altar-stairs That slope through darkness up to God. In this view, the causal judgment illustrates, but is not occasioned by the weakness of human thought. Finite objects and events must be regarded as absolutely dependent. Our knowledge must be credited so far as it goes; and even if we could solve the insoluble pro- blem of unconditioned existence, we should not thereby extricate finite beings and events from the mysterious relation of dependence. Even then should we not re- cognise finite objects as dependent on one another — which we have already learned to do through experience ; and on God — which we are now compelled to do by the necessity of reason ? Being, in its ultimate relation to reason, may be (im- perfectly because in relation only to the finite knowledge of man) described as manifested in two extremes — the one finite and plural, with which the faculty of compa- rison may deal ; the other infinite or transcendent, which THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 245 cannot be included in our logical generalizations. Rea- son thus presents two corresponding faculties or organs for the apprehension of real beings: — Intuition and Experience, governed by the logical and associative laws; and Faith, to whose "object," as transcendent, the relations of human knowledge cannot be applied. The problem of Metaphysics, regarded as the science of knowledge in its relation to Being, may be put thus : — Given Experience and Faith, lodged in a mind governed by the laws of association and formal logic, — to account for actual human knowledge. In short, the Atheist's universe, and the Pantheist's universe, are both metaphysically impossible. The for- mer excludes transcendent, and the latter absorbs finite existence. The Dualism implied in creation and provi- dence is logically inconceivable, because beyond the range of human thought ; but it is originated and main- tained in belief by an unaccountable necessity of human reason. Now we may believe what we cannot scientifi- cally rationalise. Thus the balance falls on the side of the Dualistic alternative; and we escape from the mental oscillation, to which we were hopelessly abandoned, by a theory which recognises in human knowledge what can- not be logically conceived and reasoned about. The application of these remarks to the nature and limits of theological knowledge is interesting. Specula- tive Theology is the science of God. If the lessons sug- gested by this Essay are sound ones, the original ele- ments of our theological knowdedge do not consist of arguments ; and the forms of argument cannot be ap- 246 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. plied to the solution of the problems suggested by the Divine existence. The foundation and structure of theology are thus beyond the range of human science. Reason, and not reasoning, contains the elements of a question, to which reasoning cannot provide nor even entertain a scientific answer.* The foundation of theology is a mysterious Faith, which may be practically developed, but which cannot be reached, through reasoning. We have already re- ferred to professed '■ demonstrations " of Infinite Being founded on these possibilities of existence — time and space. And we have indicated our judgment with regard to the inductive or physical prooff of the exist- ence of God. We can no more infer infinite Being from the exhibition of an indefinitely great universe, than we can rise to eternity by an indefinite addi- tion of times, or to Immensity by an accumulation of finite spaces. Inductive generalization cannot draw from finite data more than they contain. We can- not thus account for an intellectual necessity which — unable to accept as self-existing what is only finite, carries belief beyond the sphere of generalization. Reason originally recognises real existence — whether finite or Transcendent — through a shorter and readier process than deductive or inductive reasoning. We call this * Theology here differs from the Physical Sciences. In the latter the foundation is mysterious. The existence and ultimate qualities of the material world, for example, are not known by means of reasoning, but through perceptive intuition. But when thus known, systems of physical science may be reared, with the help of inductive and deductive reasoning. "h Sometimes called by divines a posteriori. THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 247 recognition perception or intuition when it deals with the worlds of sense and self-consciousness ; and we call it faith when, in the causal judgment, Keason addresses itself to the Being regarded as mysteriously trans- cending our faculty for speculation. The function of reasoning is, in a manner, intermediate between Intuition and Faith. Inductive reasoning creates the physical sciences, and thus virtually enlarges the sphere of our perception y^ in so doing it discloses the riches of the universe, and thus practically reveals the character of the Being on whom all depends. Intuition provides the materials, and Faith the stimulus, to inductive research. Faith is not the ground of our scientific belief in the actual harmony of nature ; this is learned from our experience of the uniformity and significance of the laws of the universe. Yet, by recognising the dependence of nature on God, Faith indirectly occasions the rational activity which, in a course of well-regulated experience, arranges the discoveries of science. Thus experience, — supported on the one side by our lower, and on the other by our higher rational instinct — extends knowledge and builds up the sciences. But, secondly, if reason thus provides the elements of the deepest problem of human knowledge, in the de- pendence of the finite universe (which may be scientifi- cally known) on God, therein practically but not scien- tifically revealed, why, it may be asked, can reasoning not work out a speculative solution of this problem, * See Bacon's " Novum Organnm," lib. ii. ; Comtc's " Philosophic Positive ;" and Mill's " Logic," especially b. iii. 248' ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. which is thus proposed to it ? We hear, for instance, of a science of astronomy, and a science of history. Both profess to interpret parts of the great revelation of Divine Providence contained in the worlds of matter and human society ; and yet both are admitted to aim lawfully at scientific results. If the limits of human thought do not hinder the success of attempts to explain the phenomena of the starry heavens, and the race of man, how are they less consistent with endeavours to explain the mysteries of creation, and providence, and grace ? A little reflection discovers that the essential analogy is wanting. To discover the harmony of de- pendent events, physical or human, is not to define the basis on which they ultimately depend. The experi- mental sciences are confined by their profession within the narrower of these regions. Every step in scientific theology, — and not the first step merely, must be taken in that region which lies beyond the limits of our comprehension. If the inductive sciences, contrary to the remonstrances of Lord Bacon, are to be blended with Speculative Theology, their scientific character must disappear. We have more than one well com- pacted system of a section of the laws by which the created universe is regulated ; and if we are satisfied to call this system a science, we have many sciences far advanced towards perfection. But if we are to regard each of these sciences as a segment of speculative theology, and a separate phase of its insoluble p)roblem, then the intellectual hindrance, which bars even the entertain- ment of any proposed solution of this last, must restrain THE INSOLUBLE TROBLEM. 249 the progress of human research in every department. It is quite true that all things in the worlds of mind and matter may be analyzed into mystery. Mysteries lie at the foundation of all our physical and social sciences. But they do not constitute the matter or substance with which the science, as such, deals. In fact, the sciences become mysterious, only when their respective sets of phenomena are contemplated in their relation to God, i.e., when they are made to touch the insoluble problem of which metaphysics demonstrates the existence in the heart of theology. These views invest sound theological studies and con- templations with an intellectual dignity, which was re- cognised in former ages by the liighest spirits of the human race ; and we cannot but deplore that this sublime region is so often disturbed by the disputes of perverted metaphysics, and the ignorant intolerance of sectarian zeal. We fear that devotion to theology can- not be affirmed of this age and country, when we witness the bigoted aversion of our men of letters to its very name, and also the meagre current literature which that illustrious name now represents. It cannot be that the study of the Being who is revealed in all the changes of the physical and moral worlds, and in the mysterious event for w4iich previous history was the preparation, as later history is its consummation — after whom Plato, in his highest musings, sought not wholly in vain — whose miraculous manifestations have occupied the most power- ful intellects and the largest characters of the race — in whose temple of contemplation may be found Augustine 250 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. and Anselm, Melanchthon and Calvin, Pascal and Leib- nitz — the study which our own Bacon styles " the sab- bath and port of all man's labours and peregrinations," — it cannot be that this august study is abandoned in the literature of our age, on account of any real want of fitness to the highest aspirations of the reason and the heart of man. Perhaps the course of thought suggested by this Essay may afford some explanation of the omin- ous fact, that so few of our highest minds are devoted to theological contemplations, and that the very term, with all its cognate literature, is set aside, by common con- sent, as expressing what is too sectarian and professional to be permitted to mingle with the great tide of human affairs. Theological study is, as Bacon represents it, the cul- minating act of human reason. Grod can be definitely known by us only in the finite and dependent pheno- mena which form His ivorks and His vjord ; and it may be demonstrated that these phenomena cannot provide any means for answering the questions which specula- tion originates. All definite and systematic theological knowledge is the fruit of induction ; but at the same time of an induction which must difi'er essentially, in the character of its results, from that which is the organ of the physical and social sciences. It can yield only a series of pyxictical solutions of an absolutely insoluble problem. When we try to go beyond the natural and supernatural phenomena, which constitute this practical Kevelation of Grod, in order to construct a science of the transcendent and adorable One, we are punished by the THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 251 confusion in which the revealed facts themselves become involved, — and we can escape this punishment only by restraining our logical and scientific forces within their appropriate territory. Eeasoning itself demonstrates, that contradiction of thought must follow any attempt to find the rationale of the " revelation" of God, pre- sented in Providence and Holy Scripture. The only " theology" that is possible is thus the fruit of an induc- tive study of a series of events and documents, all of which reveal God, — as far as man can receive the revela- tion, and also the weakness and narrowness of human understanding, which cannot entertain, far less work out, a scientific theory of what the phenomena thus practi- cally manifest. Revealed theology — whether the Eevelation be con- tained in the evolutions of nature or in the words of a book — is thus a body of practical knowledge,* rather than a science of speculative truths concerning the ab- solute relations of man to God. The one is demanded by the cravings of the human heart ; the other is not in analogy with the human faculties. The Bible is not a speculative solution of the insoluble problem : philo- sophy can demonstrate that a solution of that sort is im- possible. It is a mass of practical information, which guides our religious life in the necessary absence of any solution ; and which we must receive in the conviction * This is quite consistent with the possibility of a systemcdk arrange- ment of what is thus practically revealed, and of deductions from the re- velations. To what extent the Eevelation of God may, by human industry, be thus presented, is a question which does not concern us here, and which at any rate we do not presume to touch. 252 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. that it demonstrably involves insuperable logical diffi- culties. There is thus a chasm between the metaphy- sical faitlt which conducts us to the transcendent Being, and the religious hiowledge in which alone that Being can be definitely manifested. The Kevelation is not an opening for the advance of reasoning into the unap- proachable region, to the margin of which reason had spontaneously travelled, and in so doing exhausted the logical capacity of man. It is rather a practical substi- tute, offered to us in our speculative impotence, and which cannot itself be made an arena for speculation. The Bible is not a supernatural development of the higher metaphysics ; and it loses its significance and moral cohesion, when its contents are dealt with by theo- logical and metaphysical controversialists as if it were. It is only with modifications that we can accept the well- known illustration of Locke, when he says that the man who takes away reason to make way for revelation "puts out the light of both, and does much the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a tele- scope." We cannot regard the Revelation of God — whether made naturally or supernaturally — as in any respect an instrument, which admits human speculations into the inaccessible territory from which we are shut out by the structure of human thought. The use of Reason in relation to Revelation is, on its own showing, negative rather than positive ; and scientific theology is impossible, not because we want the data, but the faculty for dealing with the data. Hence it is not possible, THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 253 either for Keason to construct, or for Revelation to un- fold, the theory of man's relations to God. The tele- scope is an extension of our power of perceiving through the senses. The Works and the Word of God are not properly regarded as a scientific extension of our meta- physical Faith. If the Bible were a communication in regard to the vexed controversy regarding a Plurality of Worlds, the analogy of Locke might hold good. There is nothing in the character of human intelligence to for- bid the entrance of a solution of the one problem. The logical conditions of knowledge forbid even the enter- tainment of a solution of the other.* We might fill a volume, if we ventured to apply these general views, in a criticism of the treatment which Divine Revelation has received, in ancient and modern theological discussion. The history of religious contro- versy is, in how great a measure, the history of vain at- tempts on the part of speculative divines to find a Pro- crustes-bed of science into which the Facts of natural and biblical theology may be harmoniously fitted, and of the resistance offered by the Facts to the unphilo- sopliical treatment. The sound metaphysician receives the revelations of man's free-will, and also of God's fore- knowledge and foreordination, — of the exhortations to prayer, and also to human activity, — though he cannot scientifically explain their consistency ; and he does so * " As for perfection or completeness in Divinity, it is not to be sought ; for lie tliat ^viil reduce a knowledge into an art (science) will make it round and uniform : but in Divinity many things must be left abrupt." — Bacon's Advancement of Learning. 254 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. because he knows that they are the varied practical solu- tions of a problem which he further knows must be Bpeculatively insoluble. His metaphysic opens room, as it were, for the Divine teaching, which theological ra- tionalists — heterodox and orthodox — either reject, or torture into a semblance of consistency with the forms of science. Neither a theory of the created universe, and of the human part of it in particular, nor a theory of the inaccessible Being on whom all depends, is re- vealed. They are not capable of being revealed. A child cannot be taught the full scientific significance of the Newtonian theory of the material world ; but he may be taught useful rules which others have derived from it. If an infant were to apply its undeveloped reason and experience to the rules which it has thus been taught, in order to discover their most general principles, it would be acting less irrationally by far, than those who study the revelations of God to man, as if they were the scien- tific solution of the insoluble problem. The infant is more able to grasp the science out of which the rules issue, than human intelligence is to comprehend a science of the unspeculative knowledge, which must form the substance of any Eevelation of God. We shall be delighted to learn that any of our readers are willing to pursue the course of meditation to which the volume that has suggested this disquisition natu- rally invites them ; and that they are disposed to travel along that highest and quite unique walk of inductive research, on which lie the natural and miraculous Facts THE INSOLUBLE PROBLEM. 255 of Divine Kevelation, in a spirit becoming those who are examining a region, in which every object is a direct illustration of a problem that the philosopher can iwove to be insoluble. Defended on this course by true meta- physics against the false, the student of the " ways of God" learns that the greatest human minds have not been mistaken in assigning the loftiest place to Theology, which should be the grandest department of modern, as it was of mediseval and ancient literature. Bacon is too sanguine, when he predicts that a sober treatise on the office of human reason in Divinity " would be like an opiate in medicine, and not only lay the empty specula- tions which disturb the schools, but also that fury of con- troversy which raises such tumults in the Church." But we may, perhaps, hope for some less comprehensive ad- vantage from the maxim, that " man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out where the problem begins," — applied by the few to the study of all Divine Revelation, in the spirit of Bacon and Pascal. ESSAY V. THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTIMANISM. ESSAY Y. THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. " There is a movement forward," says the author of the " Kestoration of Belief," " which is not merely de- sirable, not merely possible, but almost certain to come about. This is a thorough and absolute emancipation of biblical interpretation from the trammels that have hitherto been imposed upon it by our polemical theolo- gies. When once this liberation has been effected, the utterances of the Scripture will have room to take a new hold of the human mind, — accepted as true in their sim- plest meaning ; and then a genuine counterpoising of moral and spiritual principles will freely develop itself in a manner that shall give rest to the heart ; luhetlier or not a systematic coherence can he secured for scientific theology.'" — We quote these words from a volume which contains logical sagacity and philosophic comprehension, as well as the magnanimity and courage of faith, in richer profusion than any other work bearing on religi- 260 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. ous matters that has been addressed to the present gene- ration. The " Eestoration of Belief" may, in many respects, take a place, among the books of the nineteenth century, corresponding to that justly conceded by us to the " Analogy" of Butler in the literature of the last age, or to the " Thoughts" of Pascal in that of the age preceding. Our quotation, it will be seen, refers expressly only to " biblical" interpretation, and to the " revelation" of God contained in Scripture. But the lesson it contains may be applied to the interpretation of any Revelation of the Divine Being, — as well that contained in the events of the material world, or in the facts of human conscious- ness, as on the pages of the Bible. And the movement referred to suggests the need for an emancipation of reli- gious knowledge from the trammels, not of polemical theology only, but of unphilosophical assumption of every kind. That movement must clear away for itself the obstructions which metaphysical ingenuity has sup- plied to unbelief ; and not less those which ecclesiastical prejudice has opposed to the reception of the facts of Divine Revelation in their mysterious integrity. We mention both these together, — as we often observe a common foundation of dogmatic assumption, on which unbelievers, on the one side, reject or sit in judg- ment on divine mysteries, and certain theologians, on the other, endeavour to enforce consistency within an order of ideas whose psychological character forbids any attempt to comprehend them within the narrow enclo- sure of a human system and finite knowletlge. The THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 261 latter 'overweening conceit is a mainstay of modern Atheism. Thus expanded in its application, the foregoing extract may suggest as an ideal at which to aim, — the deliver- ance of religious thought and research from the bondage of a false metaphysics, which, in theological hands, has wantonly added difficulties of its own to those insepara- ble from the employment of a finite understanding in such questions. Thus a way into our foith may be opened, for the entrance of Revealed Facts, in their col- lective purity, unvitiated by the vain endeavours of op- posite parties to attain a " systematic coherence," which matters so high cannot receive in any finite intelligence. Revelation, in its intellectual aspect, can be appreciated only by those who have reflected deeply on our theologi- cal ignorance. Through an increase of that reflection, we may hope for an increase of a genuine inductive spirit, in that part of modern thought which has hitherto most firmly resisted the influence of Bacon, — we mean the department of Theology. In the present state of theological opinion, this much-needed reform is promoted as much by those who remove metaphysical obstructions to fiiith in mysterious truths whose ramifications pene- trate every part of natural and supernatural theology, as by others, who add to our information of what has been positively revealed regarding the Divine Being, in the changes of nature or the texts of the Bible. The one class make room for the material gathered by the other. We have no intention to discuss, as matters of biblical doctrine^ any of the numerous questions in ecclesiastical 262 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. history and controversial divinity, investigated by Mr. Mozley, with exemplary candour, in his able and learned work on " Aiigustinianism,"* which forms a valuable addition to theological literature. We are drawn to his book, as we find pervading itf an interesting endeavour to apply the solvent of Eeligious Philosophy, to a well- worn debate in the schools of metaphysics and theology. We are glad to see in that attempt one among other signs, that a long and discouraging controversy is leading divines to interpret more deeply, — because more with the aid of philosophical reflection on the nature and boundaries of finite knowledge, — the inspired words w-hich express the best of all metaphysical lessons — We KNOW IN PART. Mctaphysic only proves by rational reflection, what in them is expressed through Divine in- spiration. It is true that we must not overrate the influence of philosophical reflection on human knowledge, either in directly solving difiiculties for rationalism, or in chasing away, from the region of religious belief, dogmatic as- sumptions which, for the most part, retain their hold over their theological victims by other means than intel- ligent apprehension. We are here glad to quote from Mr. Mozley some eloquent sentences, much in sympathy with our own opinion. " Philosophers," he says, " have from time to time * A " Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination." By J. B. Mozley, B.D., Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. London, 1855. + See especially cliapters ii. and xi. THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 2G3 prophesied a day when a better understanding would commence of man with himself, and of man with man. They have risen up from the survey of the past with the idea that it is impossible that mankind can go on for ever repeating the same mistakes ; that they must one day see the limits of human reason, distinguish what they know from what they do not know, and draw the necessary con- clusion, that on some questions they cannot insist on any one absolute truth, and condemn each other accordingly. But the vision does not approach at present any very clear fulfilment. The limits of human reason are per- haps better understood in the world now than they ever were before ; and such knowledge has evidently an effect on controversy, modifying and chastening it. Those who remind men of their ignorance use an argument which, however it may fall short of striking with its full philosophical strength, and producing its due effect, appeals to an undeniable truth, before which all human souls must bow. And the most ardent minds, in the very heat of controversy, have an indirect suspicion that a strong ground has been established in this quarter. On the other hand, this knowledge of the limits of human reason is not, and perhaps never will be, for reasons which I have given, very acute or accurate in the minds of the mass ; while the tendency to one-sided views and to hasty assumption is strong, and is aided by passion and self-love, as well as by better feeling mis- applied. On the whole, therefore, while improved philo- sophy has perhaps entirely destroyed some great false assumptions which have reigned in the world, so that 264 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. these will never rise again, it cannot subdue the temper loliicli makes such assumptions. It is able occasionally to check and quality, but it cannot be expected that it will ever habitually regulate theological thought and controversy. It will from time to time step in as a monitor, and take advantage of a pause and quiet inter- val to impress its lesson upon mankind, to bring them back to reflection when they have been carried too far, and convert for the time a sense of error into a more cautious view of truth ; but it will never perhaps do more than this. Unable to balance and settle, it will give a useful oscillation to the human mind, an alterna- tion of enthusiasm and judgment, of excitement and repose."— (Pp. 339, 340.) There are two modes in which perplexities of specula- tion, and the " trammels" of polemical theology, may be removed from the path of those engaged in inductive research among the facts of Divine Eevelation. Of these the one is direct and positive ; the other indi- rect or negative. That is, we may find ourselves ration- ally at liberty to accept all the oifered facts, — notwith- standing the seeming contradictions which they involve when received in their integrity, — either (1.) through a comprehensible resolution of their apparent contradic- tions, or (2.) through a demonstration that such contra- dictions result from the very finitude of human know- ledge, and that a finite intelligence must be content to live for ever, satisfied with this incomprehensible and merely negative solution. The popular mind naturally craves for direct satisfac- THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 2G5 tion. It cannot, when it becomes alive to a difficulty, be readily made to receive as the or)ly possible conclu- sion, a scientific proof that for us there must here re- main a difficulty for ever. It has been encouraged in this tendency by the circumstance, that many meta- physicians have vainly sought positive solutions of mysteries necessarily implied in the finitude of know- ledge; and that "systematic" di\'ines have dealt with the incomprehensible ivords and propositions in which such mysteries are expressed, as if they were not incompre- hensible at all, but part of the territory of ordinary in- telligence. Philosophy has now, as it seems to us, almost reached the stage in its progress, at which the second of the two modes already referred to shall be more generally recognised, as alone and sufficiently available. The spirit of Bacon, together with the speculations of Locke, and Kant, and Sir William Hamilton, have wonderfully advanced our knowledge of the true theory of our ne- cessary ignorance.* The full practical application of that theory corresponds with the " movement forward," in the theological province, hopefully descried from afar by the author of the " Kestoration of Belief." * The theory of our a priori ignorance — that man must seek for what appears, in order to gain the only knowledge that is for him possible of what is — must abandon the ideal of a " universal science," totum, teres, atque rotundum, — and instead gradually accumulate a knowledge, that must be to him, on the whole, essentially imperfect and anomalous, be- cause finite, — its imperfection and ultimately mysterious character being the very evidence of its finitude — this surely is the lesson of all true Philoso- phy from Plato downwards. But these moderns have, in ditierent ways, helped to give a scientific expression to that lesson, in a form congenial to the wants of the modern mind, and especially of theology. 266 ESSAYS IN rniLOSOPriY. Mr. Mozley, in this volume, endeavours to apply the illustrations of human ignorance which may be dis- covered in reflection on the boundary of knowledge, to a group of speculative difficulties, by which free progress, both in theological research and in the Christian life, has been too much hindered. Viewed on its philoso- phical side, that group has appeared to demand a com- prehensible reconciliation of man's conviction that he is free and responsible for his actions, with the universal and necessary conviction that every event must be caused ; on its theological side, it has suggested the ap- parent inconsistency of human agency — unfallen, fallen, or restored — on the one hand, and Divine Power, or more specially Divine Grace and Predestination, on the other. That " every event must be caused," seems the germ of Pantheistic Fatalism ; " I am the creator of my own actions," appears to be a first step towards Atheism. In the view of these perplexities, rival sects and angry controversies have been maintained, in the Pagan and also in the Christian world. One party first pretend to define, and then exclusively reason from, the axiom which expresses the necessity of " a cause," and the infinity of the power of God. They virtually take for granted that the meaning of that axiom can be comprehended in finite knowledge, and thus conclude logically, that what- ever happens (whether an act of will or a change in the material world) must happen, and could not possibly be other than it is. Their opponents, too, virtually confine the full meaning of " causal necessity" within the limits of human comprehension — but after another fashion. I THE METAniYSICS OF AUGUSTJNIANISM. 2G7 They take for granted that causation in the abstract is sufiQciently intelligible to require the assumption, that their favourite dogma of free action in man must be in- consistent with absolute power in the Supreme Being ; and conclude accordingly that the omnipotence and omniscience of God are modified by the acts of his creatures. But what if both these counter assumptions contain by implication an unphilosophical theory of human knowledge and an oversight of the phenomena of our theological ignorance ? They do so, if it can be demon- strated, that " causal necessity" becomes ultimately an unintelligible necessity, — that the proposition which ex- presses it {i.e., " every change implies a cause") must be an incomprehensible proposition, as long as our intelli- gence is finite or imperfect. Philosophical reflection upon its character must settle this point. At any rate, such reflection reveals many other incomprehensible ideas and beliefs. They are the foundation of those we regard as perfectly intelligible. " Omnia exeunt in mysterium," This must be so unless our mental experi- ence is the measure of existence, and its necessary truths the boundary of being. Every metaphysical assumption employed in theology, — this one regarding Causality and Divine power among the number, — ought, therefore, to be subjected to the ordeal of reflection upon its ultimate meaning, before it is permitted to find its way into the " heartless syllogisms" of controversy. Mr. Mozley wisely turns his eyes in this direction in the opening chapters of his book. Let us avail ourselves 268 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. of an extract from his description of certain incompre- hensible ideas and convictions, which form the back- ground of the familiar beliefs of ordinaiy experience. We may, by reflecting upon them, see our theological ignorance as in a metaphysical mirror : — " It will be evident to any one at all conversant with philosophy, and who will summon to his mind a few instances of the different kinds of truths to which it calls^ our attention, and which it assumes and uses in its argii- ments and speculations, that there are tivo very different kinds of truths upon which philosophy proceeds — one, of which the conception is distinct and absolute ; the other, of which the conception is indistinct, and only incipient or in tendency. Of ordinary facts, such as meet the senses — of the facts of our internal consciousness, our own feelings and sensations, bodily and mental, we have distinct conceptions, so far at least, that these are com- plete and absolute truths embraced by our minds. On the other hand, there are various truths which we partly conceive, and partly fail in conceiving ; the conception, when it has begun, does not advance or eome to a na- tural termination, but remains a certain tendency of thought only. Such are the ideas of substance, cause, infinity — and others, which we cannot grasp or subject to our minds, which, when we follow them up, involve us in the utmost perplexity, and carry us into great ap- parent contradictions. These, as entertained by our minds, are incipient truths, not final or absolute ones. In following, or trying to follow them, we feel that we are in a certain right way, that we are going in a certain THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 269 true direction of thought ; but wo attain no good, and arrive at no positive apprehension. ... I cannot form the least idea of what substance is. I find myself only going in the direction of something which I cannot reach, which mocks all pursuit, and eludes all grasp. . . . While the movement towards a cause, or some kind of idea of one, is part of our rational nature, I find, on reflection, that I can form no distinct conception whatever of what a cause is. . . . My reason, as surely as it leads me up to the truth tliat there is a cause of things, stops at that point, and leaves me in utter per- plexity and amazement as to what a cause is. It is a wonder, a mystery, an incomprehensible truth. My rea- son forces me towards the idea of something, of which 1 can give no more account to myself than I can of the most inexplicable article in a creed. . . . Time, space, and number do not end, but go on at the very last ; that is the very latest intelligence we have of them, — at the last intelligence, as it were, they are ultimately going further. They go forward not only to the end, but at the end. . . . We are conscious of the germs of various ideas which we cannot open out or realize as whole or consistent ones. We feel ourselves reaching after what we cannot grasp, and moving forward in thought to something we cannot overtake. I move in the direction of a substance and a cause in nature which I cannot find ; my thought reaches after infinity, but the effort is abortive, and the idea remains for ever only he- ginning." — (Pp. 17-22.) These quotations illustrate the manner in which Mr. 270 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. Mozley guides reflection towards phenomena that are presented in our mental experience, when human reason endeavours to overleap its bounds, and thus l)ecomes conscious of the necessary imperfection of its knowledge, when that knowledge is regarded as an organic whole. The examples offered by him are, of course, not new to the metaphysician ; they are the commonplace of meta- physical literature. But the application to theological discussion of the principle they suggest can never, we fear, be practically old or out of place. No more whole- some discipline can be applied to the theological mind of this age than familiarity, by reflection, with this order of truths. They form the very firmament of the heaven on which the theologian gazes in his hours of religious thought, and from which he must not be suffered to turn away when he proceeds to manufacture his syllo- gisms. We follow Mr. Mozley with ranch advantage over this initial stage. But disappointment, or at least some doubt about his meaning, meets us, when we advance with him to apply the principle that may be drawn from that wonderful part of our mental experience, — in order to explain or reduce the perplexing antagonism between the causal and the moral judgment — between Divine Power and human liberty — between an exclusive theory of necessity and an exclusive theory of voluntary freedom. In place of proving that a negative or incomprehensible solution is possible, — by giving evidence that causality is per se ultimately mysterious, and, as such, incapable of being knoivn to contradict moral freedom in God and THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 271 man, — he proceeds to argue as if the incomprehensibility of the maxim that " every event must be caused," arises merely from our sense of originality as agents being ia " contradiction" to it. He appears to affirm that the class of propositions which express causal necessity and the Divine Power, contradict the other class of proposi- tions which express the conditions of moral responsibility, — and then he asks ns to believe both, on the ground that both are invincible instincts. Instead of shewins lioio these two classes of propositions, apparently contra- dictory, truly employ an order of w^ords whose seeming inconsistency cannot, — by reason of the kind of meaning they convey, — be affirmed to be real inconsistency, he speaks as if causation and its group of cognate words have become mysteries, only through the consciousness we have that our acts are original. The co-existence of a belief in causality with a belief in moral agency, is in- deed incomprehensible ; but is it so because the two beliefs are known to be contradictory, and not rather because causality and Divine Power cannot be fathomed by finite intelligence ? Let us, in the first place, hear Mr. Mozley :— " The maxim that there must be a cause of every event once granted, the conclusion of a necessity in human actions inevitably follows. But though the maxim that ' every event must have a cause,' is un- doubtedly true, what kind of truth is it ? Is it a truth absolute and complete, like a fact of sensation or reflec- tion ? or is it a truth indistinct, incipient, and in tend- dency only, like one of those ideas which have just been 272 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. discussed ? it is a truth of the latter kind, /or this simple reason^ that there is a contrary truth to it. When we look into our minds, and examine the nature and charac- teristics of action, we find that we have a certain natural and irresistible impression or sense of our originality as agents Here, then, are two contradictory instincts or perceptions of our reason, which we must make the Lest of, and arrive at what measure of truth a mixed conclusion gives. We certainly have both these percep- tions, and one must not be made to give way to the other."— (Pp. 24-26.) Here the fact of our consciousness of liberty is the proof offered by Mr, Mozley that our knowledge of causality in the abstract is incomplete or mysterious. But again, the causal judgment may be viewed not as a merely abstract proposition ; it may also take the fonn of a theological one. Belief in causal necessity may be considered under the form of belief in Divine or Absolute Power. How does Mr. Mozley deal with it in this altered form ? How does he connect incomprehensibility with Omnipotence ? " What," he asks, " is tliis truth of the Divine Power, or Omnipotence, as we apprehend it ? Does it belong to the class of full and distinct, or of incomplete truths ? Certainly to the latter, for there aj^pears at once a counter truth to it, in the existence of moral evil, loliich must he referred to some other cause than God, as lodl as in that sense of our oivn originality to which I have just alluded. The Divine Omnipotence, then, is a truth which we do not understand."— (P. 29.) THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 273 In these and other passages, the evidence of the in- comprehensibility of the abstract causal judgment, witli its counterpart faith in Divine Tower, is said to lie in the fact that another truth " contradicts" it. But this " contradiction" is the very obstacle which has puzzled mankind, and the mere statement of it, — along with the dogmatic inference that it must somehow be the index of a latent mystery, is hardly a step towards either a positive or a negative resolution of the perplexity. We want proof, that a free agent is possible, — in abstract consistency with all that can be Icnoion by man concern- ing causation and the power of God, and apart from any revelation of liberty in human consciousness. We ask for evidence, independent of the assumed fact of moral freedom, that causality or Divine Power must be incom- prehensible. Now, instead of an analysis of our ignor- ance of what is ultimately implied in causal necessity, and a consequent proof that that necessity must be ulti- mately mysterious, ivhether or not any fact apparently contrary to it be revealed, — that it is thus, abstractly and in itself, capable of affording harbourage to truths which cannot be reconciled, because, as embraced by it, they cannot be comprehended, and therefore cannot be known to contradict one another, — instead of a proof of this sort, which we had looked for on emerging from the general evidence that such truths there are, we find our- selves kept, through many pages of this volume, in the presence of two classes of propositions, of which the one class is said to contradict the other, — and which, on that account, are, it is assumed, imperfectly comprehended. s 274 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. But may we not prove concerning this same belief in the necessity for a " cause," that when we try to exhaust its meaning, it becomes absolutely unintelligible on our hands, and cannot therefore be turned against any al- leged revelation either of common sense or of the Bible ? To assert that man must believe both of two " contra- dictory" propositions, is either to encourage absolute scepticism, or to discourage our spontaneous faith in one or other of the counter propositions. If both are intel- ligible propositions, every logical thinker is compelled to make his election between them, and to follow out that election into its consequences. But to offer an indepen- dent proof that, while apparently contradictory, they are really incomprehensible, opens a way for the mysterious retention of both, without offence to logic. It converts into a fact above reason what had seemed to subvert its fundamental law. Now, is not the philosophical proposition, that " every event must have a cause," — or, if we prefer the theo- logical translation of it, that "all changes are due to the Divine Power," — one which, apart from any revela- tion in "consciousness or otherwise of our originality as agents, must, from its intrinsic character, escape every endeavour of human reason to comprehend it ? If this be so, it is unintelligible, not because the fact of moral liberty contradicts it, but because it is in its own nature mysterious. To answer the question we must ask another. What is implied in an event being caused'^ We cannot here THE METAPHYSICS OF ATJGUSTINIANISM. 275 discuss this question in detail. It is a long chapter in the higher metaphysics. We can only refer to the part of the discussion essential to our present purpose. All profound thinkers will allow that causation implies the external existence of something. That " something has existed from eternity," is necessarily involved in our knowledge of any event presently existing in time. The causal necessity thus contains in itself an assertion of the mystery of eternal existence. In fact, one of the most effectual means we can take, when we desire to have an illustration of the fiuitude or imperfection of our knowledge, is to try to exhaust the meaning of the pro- position " every event must have a cause," in that eter- nal (and therefore incomprehensible) regress to wdiich it necessarily binds us. The causal necessity is thus found to contain in its bosom the mystery of Eternity, — which is to say, in other words, that it expresses, by im- plication, and, perhaps, in its most striking form, the mysterious conviction that human knowledge is not com- I^lete. The words Eternity, and Eternal Existence, are symbols of this negative conviction. Causality shares ultimately the incomprehensible character that belongs to Eternity. Can speculation accomplish more, towards our extri- cation from a dilemma that has made Augustinianism the centre of so much debate, than is implied in the proof which it thus can ofi'er of the essential incompre- hensibility of the very words in which that dilemma is expressed ? Enough surely if metaphysical speculation can prove so much — and thus disarm the " causal neces- 276 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. sitj'," at least as an element in human reasoning, of its supposed power to exclude free agency as contradictory to itself. Providence and G-race, Prescience and Pre- destination, when applied to God, are then recognised as terms which express different phases of our incompre- hensible faith in Divine Power, — or, more generally, in Eternal Existence. Each of these words suggests a meaning which reflection can prove to be mysterious, and not an idea of our ordinary knowledge at all. It is not for man to affirm, in these circumstances, that Eternal Existence, imperfectly signified by these ana- logical words, is irreconcilable with moral agency in creation, or with any other revealed fact ; — though the proposition, " every event must be caused," seems irre- concilable with free causation, when that proposition is interpreted in a definite and therefore superficial mean- ing, and before reflection has analyzed the ignorance that lies concealed in its familiar terms. Whatever either now is, or now begins to be, implies, and in that sense " reveals," something that is eternal. It is lost, as it were, in the mysterious idea of Eternity. That incomprehensible idea necessarily conceals from man a positive theory of the ultimate relation, — either to one another, or to the Eternal Being revealed by them, — of any of the finite objects that are known to us. Events viewed in time become ultimately incomprehen- sible. They are lost in the Power, Prescience, and Pre- destination of God ; and it is the function of reflective philosophy to prove, by mental experiment, that these words in one sense possess, and in another are void of THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 277 significance. The Divine Power and human free-will go on side by side, till, as Mr. Mozley well says, " they are lost sight of and disappear in the haze of our concep- tions, like two parallel straight lines which go on to in- finity without meeting." As it seems to us, metaphysics may afford the kind of relief now indicated in this long vexed controversy. If so, the need for relief has been occasioned by the rest- lessness of speculative minds, and the unpliilosophical assumptions of systematic divines, who have degraded a mystery of finite intelligence into a fact of ordinary knowledge, and treated it as if human reason could fathom the Eternity of Being and the Power of God. Let us, then, try habitually to reanimate the old words with their loftier meaning, and accept all that is revealed in the works and word of God, to our senses or to reflec- tion, in the faith that even speculation itself has (incom- prehensibly) opened room for it all. Perhaps Mr. Mozley is not adverse to this more definite application, to the mysterious truth, involved in Augus- tinianism, — because already implied in human reason, — of the mental experience to which, at the outset, he sum- moned our attention. At any rate, he has hardly availed himself of that wonderful experience to the degree we think he might. He too indistinctly points the way through the speculative obstructions against which his operations were originally directed, towards the point at which the possible harmony of truths, assumed in modern debate to be contradictory, may be dis- cerned. 278 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. But he oflfers us some admirable lessons of religions philosophy by the way. Of these we regret that our narrow space forbids us to enrich our pages with more than one or two examples. Here is a considerate apology for an indisposition to entertain those compre- hensive views of the essential nature of finite know- ledge, which might sometimes annihilate controversy, by proving scientifically that the matter to which the dis- pute refers is not properly within the sphere of logical adjustment, and cannot be rendered systematically co- herent : — " Are not the generality of men spared a severe trial, with probably an unfavourable issue, in not having in the first instance this deeper sense of ignorance at all ? Is not their ignorance veiled in mercy from them by a kind Providence ; so that, with respect to these truths, they go on for their whole lives, thinking they know a great deal moi^e than they do 1 Nor does this apply to the uninstructed and uncultivated part of mankind only, but perhaps even more strongly to the learned and con- troversial class. For, certainly, to hear the way in which some of this class argue, and draw inferences from the incomprehensible truths of revelation, carrying them, as they say, into their consequences and logical results, upon which, however remote or far fetched, they yet insist as if they were of the substance of the primary truth itself ; to judge, I say, from the long and fine trains of infer- ences drawn by some theologians from mysterious doc- trines, endless distinctions spun one out of the other in succession, and issuing in subtleties which baffle all com- THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 270 preli elision, and are, in short, mere words and notbinn: more, but for which, so long as at each successive step there has been an inference, (or something which to the controversially wound-up intellect or fancy at the time appeared such,) these persons claim the most absolute deference ; as if some subtlest conception of the argu- mentative brain, some needle's point so inconceivably minute, that not one man in ten thousand coidd even see it once if he tried for his whole life, were of the very foundation of the flxith ; to jndge, I say, from such a mode of arguing from religious truths, one cannot avoid two reflections, — one, that such persons do not know their own ignorance ; the other, that it is probably a mercy to them that they do not. They do not know their own ignorance with respect to these truths ; for if they did, they would see that such incomprehensible truths were not known premises, and could not be argued from as such, or made the foundation of unlimited in- ference : and that they do not know it, is probably a mercy to them ; for the very same hasty and audacious temper of the intellect which leads them to build so much upon such assumptions, the nature of which they have never examined, would, had they examined it, and so ar- rived at a real perception of their incomprehensible nature, have inclined them to reject such truths. Thus, in com- passion to the infirmity of man, a merciful Providence hides his ignorance from him ; and by a kind deceit, such as parents use to their children, allow him to sup- pose tliat he knows what he does not know. He is thus saved from unbelief, and only falls into a well-meaning. 280 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. though foolish and presumptuous, dogmatism." — (Pp. 3225--323.) And, after all, in the present case, philosophical reflec- tion on human ignorance only proves scientifically what the common sense of mankind, undisturbed by presump- tuous dogmatism, has already settled spontaneously. By common sense, the mystery of divine power, and the mystery of our originality as agents, are both accepted in their integrity. " What," asks Mr. Mozley, " do the common phrases employed in ordinary conversation and writing upon this question — the popular and received modes of deciding it, whenever it incidentally turns up — amount to but this solution ? Such phrases, I mean, as that 'we must hold man's free-will together with God's foreknowledge and predestination, although we do not see lioio they agree ;' and other like formulae. Such forms of language for deciding the question evidently proceed upon the acknow- ledgment of two contradictory {?) truths on this subject, which cannot be reconciled, but must be held together in inconsistency. They imply that the doctrine of pre- destination and the doctrine of free-will are both true, and that one who would hold the truth, must hold both. The plain natural reason of man is thus always large and comprehensive ; not afraid of inconsistency, but admit- ting all truth which presents itself to its notice. It is only where minds begin to philosophize that they grow narrow, and there begins to be felt the appeal to con- sistency and the temptation to exclude truths. Then begins the pride of argument, the ingenuity c^f construe- THE METAPHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 281 tion, the carrying out of ideas and principles into succes- sive consequences, which, as they become more and more remote, and leave the original truth at a distance, also carry the mind of the reason er himself away from the first natural astj^ect of that truth as imperfect aiid 2'>cir- tial, to an artificial aspect of it as lohole and exclusive." —(P. 327.) But we have more than exhausted our space. We must be satisfied with a passing glance at a general principle in Philosophy of great present interest. The theological struggle of this age, in all its more important phases, turns upon the philosophical problem of the limits of knowledge, and the true theory of human ignorance. In all investigations and statements regard- ing the Power, Knowledge, Predestination, and other acts or attributes of God, we must employ that class of words which may be called incomprehensible, and which — whether they are found in the Bible or in books of Phi- losophy — cannot be animated with complete or consistent meaning. No effort of any finite intelligence can rescue these words from that predicament, or exclude, from this department of thought and theology, doctrines which seem to contradict one another, only because we are hindered by the limitation of our faculties from exhaust- ing their meaning.* Does not the evidence of this fact * The reader will find some excellent remarks on the position of incom- prehensible truths in theology, in a letter by Mr. Mausel, on " Man's Conception of Eternity ; an Examination of Mr. Maurice's Theory of a Fixed State out of Time." We are glad to quote the following sentences : " Pantheism and Anthropomorphism are the two alternatives of religious thought, the one representing the negative, the other the positive side. 282 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. prove, that metaphysical science has outgrown the style of ai'gument that has been employed, esjjecially loithin tlie last tiuo centuries, by both parties, in the controversy to which this Essay relates ? The stagnation of philosophical reflection, in the minds of too many professional divines, naturally indis- poses them to that habitual reconsideration of the in- comprehensible meaning of such words, which is needed for preserving the simplicity of theological truth amid the temptations of controversy. Can a lurking confusion If we aspire to comprehcnil tlie infinite, we are di'awn by inevitable con- sequence into tlie negations of Pantheism. If we represent the Deity under finite symbols, these must be drawn from the phenomena of human consciousness, and be thus based on a more or less refined Anthropomor- phism. But an Anthropomorphism of this kind, if we accept its language and modes of thought as regulatively true, without attempting to determine its spectdative significance, in so far from being either logically illegiti- mate, or theologically unsound, that it is one which meets us in almost every page of Holy Scripture, which is implied alike in the letter and spirit of its teaching, and which furnishes the only mode in which that teaching can be applied to any practical use. . . . Eevelation, to have any practical effects, must be adapted to the constitution of its human recipient, not to that of its Divine Author. Such an adaptation apparently implies the existence of a more absolute form of truth related to a more perfect intelligence. But of such absolute truth our conception is negative only ; we know it only as the condition of an intelligence which is not ours. Eevelation cannot make this conception positive, which would be possible only by a change in the laws of our mental con- stitution ; nor yet, while it remains negative, can it be turned to any practical account, except to remind us of the limited nature of our facul- ties, and to warn us to be prepared for intellectual difficulties beyond our power to solve. Our practical concern lies rather with the positive and partial forms under which the invisible things of God have been made discernible to the eye of man — forms which it is our duty to accept as relatively true, for the purpose of our intellectual and moral training during this present life ; though we cannot determine how much of them is speculatively true for every form of intelligence, and how much is rela- tive and dependent upon the existing laws of human consciousness." TnE METArHYSICS OF AUGUSTINIANISM. 283 of Divine Revelation itself, with their own interpretation of certain words and phrases, also have its influence among divines, in destroying, by the adoption of an exclusive view, the " spontaneous inconsistency" of Common Sense on these matters ? All the revelations of God are, without doubt, infallibly true, and given by inspiration ; but it can hardly be supposed that Pro- testant interpreters of revelation really mean that they, too, are inspired and infallible — still less that divines, whether Protestant or Romanist, profess to be able to render comprehensible words, whose meaning, wherever found, is, and must continue for ever, mysterious in all finite knowdedge. Yet the language of some theologians has induced their less charitable readers to attribute to them these impious paradoxes. However this may be, we owe a cordial welcome to others, like Mr. Mozley, whose labours tend to remove obstructions, which presumption has placed in the way of a free application of the inductive method to natural and supernatural theology. On this account we view with satisfection the attempt made in the treatise now before us, ambiguous as we cannot but regaixl that attempt, to apply the solvent of Philosophy to an ancient controversy. That satisfaction is increased when we find that the work unites, in an unusual degree, good sense and lofty serenity, with discussions hitherto too much surrendered to orthodox and heterodox bigotry, or to the morbid musings of minds pre-engaged by vicious metaphysical assumptions. We are glad, too, to have this evidence that Oxford in this generation 284 ' ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. can entertain, with considerate appreciation and historic impartiaUty, the profound ideas of Augustine and Calvin ; and can see in the mysteries to which such ideas relate, facts common to human reason, and not peculiar to a sect of Christian divines. When compared with the superficial criticism of a past age, and the in- tolerance which for generations many Anghcan Church- men have displayed towards these venerable doctrines, this circumstance suggests a hope of better times. Let us trust that a deeper and more comprehensive mode of viewing this and other theological questions may con- tinue to prevail in England, among those who look to Christianity as the source of national wellbeing, and the best practical solution of the speculative difficulties of mankind. Nor do we exclude Scotland from our hoj)e, if the large religious spirit of Chalmers is permitted to retain its liberal and benignant sway. ESSAY YL FERRIER'S THEORY OF KI^OWING AND BEING. ESSAY YI. FERRIER'S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. This book=»= is a curiosity in speculative literature. No man, its author tells us, has for these two thousand years seen the true flesh-and-blood countenance of a single philosophical problem. Metaphysicians, and espe- cially those of Scotland, have, it seems, been at cross purposes. They have been beating the air instead of cultivating their sublime religion. They have been searching for they know not what. They have been worshipping they know not what. The real mysteries that surround us have become commonplace under their hands, and nonsensical words and maxims have been in- vested with mystery. Their very dialect is an abomina- tion to others, and an unknown tongue even to them- selves. The dark words of one generation have become darker in the comments of the next. Even the partial illumination in the old Greek schools — the hazy insight of the early sages — has disappeared amid modern pe- * Institutes of Metaphysic : The Theory of Knowing and Being. By James F. Ferrier, A.B., Oxou. ; Professor of Moral Philosophy and Poli- tical Economy, St. Andrews. Edinburgh and London, 1854. 288 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. dantiy and sectarianism. We have turned from things to words — fi'om discoveries sustained by demonstrative proof to contradictory guesses. At the best, our library of modern speculation is a series of vain endeavours to decipher a long-lost hieroglyphic. The greatest minds of the race in each age have, it seems, unaccountably surrendered themselves to the illusion, and the Meta- physical Literature of the world is the result of this extraordinary hallucination. But now at last, in this new system of Mr. Terrier, we are invited to contem- plate the cosmos instead of the chaos of speculation. The intellectual magician who boldly offers to remove the disorder that has been gathering for two thousand years, and to let in the light of the noonday sun on the darkest path of human research, of course invokes a special attention when he thus claims to be our guide. And seldom have we encountered a companion in whose society we could more agreeably pursue our journey. In travelling with Professor Ferrier over these pages, we have beguiled weary hours — seduced by his ingenious paradoxes, his humorous illustrations, and his quaint yet graceful style. The hoary incrustations of philosophical terminology actually melt away beneath the sunshine of his genial enthusiasm. We are conducted over the arctic wastes of abstract thought as happily as if we were on a journey through the regions of poetry or ro- mance. Then Mr. Ferrier is not more attractive as a companion than he is original and adventurous as a guide. He is ready to follow speculation wherever speculation chooses to carry him, disregarding the pre- FERRIER S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 289 cedents alike of his vulgar and his philosophical prede- cessors. The piire air of mental liberty is alone agree- able to him. From Pythagoras to Hegel his sympathies are all with those who have pursued truth, however far she might lead them from the prudent conventions of popular opinion. No Scottish, perhaps no modern meta- physician, has ever played with a more pleasant freedom over the sublime mysteries of existence. Indeed, the graver class may be apt to complain that in a neigh- bourhood so awful, their guide wantonly abandons him- self to the amusements of the intellectual gymnasium, and seems sometimes more ready to exhibit dexterous escapades by the way, than to conduct them to the rest- ing-place for which they are longing. We were drawn to this volume with more sympathy and higher expectations, than to almost any philo- sophical book that has recently appeared. We have found it a work of logical and literary art, abounding in passages of great beauty. But when we contem- plate the ONE prominent conclusion which constitutes its professed discovery, apart from the suggestive and highly entertaining mental processes through which we have been made to pass on our way to it, we must frankly acknowledge our disappointment and surprise. Our guide boasts that he has broken into "the innermost secrecies of nature," and that he can now " lay open the universe from stem to stern," He offers to carry us over the obstacles which have foiled so many generations of philosophers, on a level railroad of Demonstration, straight into the citadel of existence. But we do not T 290 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. sec in all his elaborate structure the keystone of a scien- tific arch, on which we can cross the chasm where so many metaphysicians have perished. We travel so far on the old road, and when we are told that we have crossed the dark abyss, we find on examination that we are where we were before, with our guide endeavouring to persuade us that the darkness and the abyss are spec- tral illusions of our own. What is solid in Mr. Ferrier's system has long been familiar ; and its so-called Dis- covery must be viewed as a dogma not merely unproved, but assumed in the foce of opposite proof. Instead of seeing in this new Theory of the Universe the great discovery that its author proclaims, we are compelled to regard it as tending to obscure the wisest lesson which Philosophy has taught to mankind, and the one which of all her lessons mankind, we sometimes hope, are reallv beginning to learn. But we must indicate some of our reasons, and not merely make assertions. We shall try to keep our re- marks within narrow limits, and resist the temptation to follow Mr. Ferrier into many interesting digressions, that we may always have before us the doctrine which forms THE ESSENCE OF HIS THEORY. The acceptance or rejec- tion of that doctrine turns upon the deepest question in speculation, and, through speculation, in human know- ledge. ■ Seventy pages of an Introduction place us in front of the question to which all metaphysic worthy of the name, attempts to find either a positive or a negative answer. fereier's theory of knowing and being. 291 In these pages we have a view of the nature and proper mode of pursuing metaphysical truth ; and also some ingenious reasons in explanation of the anarchy which is said to prevail among its students. The rest of the volume is a development of the Discovery to which the author asserts his claim. Let us pause for a little in the Introduction, to learn ivhat Mr. Ferrier means by Metaphysics ; and also why and lioio a science worthy of that venerable name ought to be produced. It is well to fix the word to a meaning as definite as possible. While a small minority of thoughtful persons have for ages been pursuing a tolerably marked line of contemplative research, under this name, the majority of mankind, — finding the research uncongenial to them, have disturbed those engaged in it, by carrying away their watchword, and employing it as a vague term of reproach. The metaphysicians themselves have at last become confused, in doing and describing their work, when the word that was invented to designate it is found labelled on the backs of men who are doing nothing at all — or perhaps mischief. We thank Mr. Ferrier for helping to rescue it from this predicament. He has no- where offered a formal definition. But he has associated the name with a volume which expressly, and in a very exclusive manner, professes to deal with the chief question, which, in some one of its many phases, has kept meta- physicians busy since men began to reflect, and which must continue to do so until reflection has died out in the human race. To find the relation of knowing and £92 ESSAYS IN THILOSOPHY. being — of our knowledge to absolute existence — of thought to the infinite — of intelligence to the uncondi- tioned, are technical expressions for a task which, in one form or other, meets every man who tries to analyze his knowledge and to read its deeper meaning. It is easy to caricature the metaphysical problem, and the formulas in language which have been invented to express the higher refinements of thought. We meet men who deny that philosophical words and phrases can have any meaning at all, because they have no mean- ing for them ; or who translate them in a way tha justifies the denial. What rational being cares to con- sider whether, in the superficial meaning of the words, the external senses are worthy of trust, or whether his own personal identity is preserved from day to day ? Every sane man of course believes, in some sense, that he him- self and other intelligent beings exist, and that matter exists, and that the course of nature may be depended on. Yet grave modern philosophers, it is said, have been wrangling only about these truisms — to the amusement if not the profit of their audience. And no doubt shallow pedants, with souls void of the reflective genius which alone transmits life beneath these " masks" of a deeper controversy, have mingled in the fray. But the life itself of modern thought lies under the forms in which it thus takes expression. The metaphysician does not seek to prove — what everybody grants in some sense — that he himself exists, or that matter exists, or that God exists. He does not give any extra evidence that what men see and touch and taste is real — that our feelings, ferrier's theory of knowing and being. 293 thoughts, and volitions, are actually experienced by us — or that other intelligences than our own may reason- ably be inferred to exist, through the marks of design made known to our observations. But he asks what existence means, and must mean, when thus variously employed.* May the word be applied to what is not and cannot be an object of human knowledge and thought ; or is every such application of it, whether in popular or in scientific discourse, the expression of an illusion and the parent of an error ? All the ultimate controversies of mankind converge in dependence on the formula which should be used to ex- press the relation of Eeason to Being — of what is com- 2:)reJiendcd by us to what is. Is our knowledge in any respect identical with existence ; or, on the contrary, may we believe what cannot be known, what seems even to contradict the very essence of our knowledge ? Must every set of propositions, whose collective meaning seems contradictory, while each separately is mysterious, be excluded from belief — on the ground that our knowledge, in its essence, must be absolute ? In these questions lies the strength of dogmatic Ontology, with its dry bones of definition ; and also of reflective Philosophy, with its theories of perception and causation — of the absolute and unconditioned. They invite positive or negative solu- * " Nothing," says Berkeley, " seems of more importance towards erecting a firm system of sound and real knowledge, which may be proof against the assaults of scepticism, than to lay the beginning in a distinct explication of what is meant by Thing, Reality, Existence : for in vain shall we dispute concerning the real existence of things, or pretend to any knowledge thereof, so long as we have not fixed the meaning of these words." — Principles of Human Knotvledge. 294 ESSAYS IN I'HILOSOPHT. tions of the problem, Is an unknowt:^ possible ? does existence depend on being positively known ? AVhetlier they like the name Metaphysician or not, all men more or less entertain this question. They are unconsciously solving it in the positive way, Avhen they dogmatize, as so many are wont to do, about the ultimate possibilities of things; and even pervert positive evidence, in interpreting it consistently with their dogmas. It has in fact been answered formally by metaphysicians, and practically by mankind at large, in hotlt ways ; — while a third party sceptically evade it altogether. Some employ our intelligence as the measure of Being ; and conclude, that what cannot be reduced by definition within its laws must be excluded from belief. Others interpret all their positive knowledge, through the Faith that lohat is may transcend their intelligence. The scep- tics of every order regard all beyond Sense or common experience as matters in which we have no concern. We have thus ontological metaphysicians, philosophical metaphysicians, and sceptical metaphysicians. But the ontological and sceptical extremes meet ; and we may divide metaphysicians into Ontologists and Philoso- PHEES.* The former profess to answer positively the question in our last paragraph. The latter confess that it cannot receive any definite reply, but deny that it is therefore insignificant. Ontology and Philosophy are * We use Philosophy here in its etymological meaning, in which it is supposed to meet absolute Being with love and longing, rather than with intelligence. Ontology seems more akin to Sojjhistry, and pliilosojjhy was originally used to express antagonism to the sophists. TERRIER S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 295 the two metaphysical streams. They rise on the same intellectual summit, and flow ever after in opposite directions. It may be difficult to detect the difference at their source, but it becomes more obvious, when, in our progress through the various " climates of opinion" we find mankind virtually formed into two great sec- tions, as they, consciously or unconsciously, incline to merge faith in kuowdedge, or knowledge in faith. Mr. Ferrier, with his definition of absolute existence, takes his place among the Ontologists. He cannot fairly claim a designation which substitutes Love for know- ledge, Faith for intellectual comprehension.* The " Theory of Knowing and Being" is, we have said, the classic ideal of Metaphysics. We agree with Mr. Fer- rier in accepting that theory as the proper object of the study. But great part of his book is occupied in illustra- ting the (what he calls) degraded position and unbecom- ing attitudes of professed metaphysicians, — especially of modern British psychologists. There is no doubt that, in the century and a half which has elapsed since Locke's Essay became popular, the vocabulary, and, on a superficial view, the objects of the study, have been changed in this country. This change, so far as it implies an abatement from the old ideal, has been partly occasioned by the disinclination for the rarefied atmosphere around the source of the two streams, so characteristic of middle- class Englishmen ; and still more by the speculative apathy common with them to mankind, which fails to introduce their living meaning into technical words in- vented to express profound thought. The tension of 29C ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. mind which this department of intellectual service calls for is too great, too constant, and too unexciting to the vulgar taste, to permit more than a few in each age and country to engage in it with earnestness. But the British idea of the problem of metaphysics is not, after all, so far wide of his own as Mr. Ferrier seems to imagine ; however opposite the British solution of that problem may be to the one now offered in these " Institutes." It is true that metapliysic is the science or theory of Being. But the only knowledge of this kind that is possible to us may be — and we believe is — the theory of the ultimate or necessary relations of 02ir Knowing to Being. Now this restricted view coincides well enough with that of our best British psychology, with its "'' facul- ties," and "mental states." What are these but the issue of faltering endeavoui's to define existence as knoion hy us, i.e., to construct the science of human knowledge ? Many of our " mental philosophers," since Locke, have perhaps discredited this ideal, and have treated the human understanding as they would any of the ordinary phenomena in nature, — forgetful that the theory of human Knowledge, in its ultimate relations, is, by im- plication, a theory of Being ; and that intellectual pheno- mena are related to all phenomena as their ideal side. Psychology has in consequence so far ceased to be Philosophy de facto, but not de jure. It still conducts to the loftiest of human sciences, even though its \'otaries may forget the dignity of their position. In short, the " science of the human mind," with " its hopeless inquiry about faculties, and all that sort of ferrier's theory of knowing and being, 297 rubbish," is simply an attempt to define the ultimate relations of our Knowing to Being. But wluj should we engage at all in this severe kind of intellectual labour ? Why transcend the useful routine of common life on these speculative altitudes ? Meditative exercises of that kind cannot be the staple of the mental experience of mankind, or the sole employ- ment of any man. Why should they be the chief busi- ness even of a few ? We cannot now discuss this large question, nor criti- cise even the portion of these " Institutes," in which the motives that have hitherto sustained reflection among men, and the ends secured by its continued activity, are analyzed. Their main defence of the study, — so far as it differs from the common one, is suicidal. The author cuts the branch on which he has to stand. He employs the Reason which he condemns, to correct, per saltum, its own fundamental errors ; and declaims against the philosophers for attempting, through inductions founded on our reflex experience, to make a gradual approach to the system of universal truth. His system is essen- tially polemical. His ideal metaphysician is an intel- lectual warrior ;* — but he is sent to the fight deprived * We need liardly note, that every professed pliilosopliical doctrine, from Socrates downwards, is virtually polemical — i.e., meant to correct human reason as it is, and to bring it nearer to its ideal. MTio more clearly illus- trates this than our own John Locke, whose Essay is a polemic against prejudices ? His ardour in this cause has produced a hluntness in his weapon, which has exposed him to the keen-edged speculation of less practical and earnest combatants. But the fact that the metaphysician is 298 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY, of his weapons, and with his i)osition lost, " The ori- ginal dowry of universal man," says Mr. Ferrier, " is inadvertency and error," The principles now universally received as ultimate, under the name of Common Sense, have, he thinks, perplexed knowledge, rendering it inco- herent and contradictory. The multitude have therein inadvertently worshipped illusions, and the psychologists — those sham metaphysicians, have pandered to the vul- gar taste, and confirmed the people in their idolatiy. They have " reconciled " Philosophy with the Faith of Common Sense, hy making it the servant of absurd pre- judices ; instead of taking the manlier course of explod- ing, by the application of thorough-going reasoning, prevalent beliefs that ]\Ir, Ferrier assents are really void of consistent meaning. Metaphysic, in its genuine as- pect, is, he would say, a continual struggle with the Com- mon Sense of mankind. Its aim is to take the place of Common Sense. But Faith, we reply, is the soul of work. We cannot carry on even this work of warring against the original beliefs of mankind, without retaining some of them to give us life and strength. The Theory, indeed, does not wholly overlook this. It tries to retain a part of the Common Sense, as the basis of its operations, in the war which it declares against the tvliole. But we must examine the position which Mr. Ferrier thus re- serves for his metaphysician. Perhaps the principle which reserves it may either secure a broader basis, or else hinder any. a polemic does not determine liis mode of warfore ; and it is here that we separate fi-oni Mr. Ferrier. ferrier's theory of knowing and being. 299 Through "the compulsory reason" alone, we are told, can we conquer for ourselves a deliverance from our " original dowiy of inadvertency and error." The " ordi- nary opinions of mankind" are contradictory ; and Psycho- logy is their proclaimed guardian. Metaphysic, as pole- mical, must explode Psychology. But it is too modest to make the attempt, unless it can bring a stronger force than mere "probability" against it. Metaphysic must, therefore, according to Mr. Ferrier, be an d priori science. We can address ourselves to the problem of Being, only in what may be called the demonstrative^ as distinguished from the observational, state of mind. The necessari/ part or the essence of Being, is what the speculative reformer must define and display scientifi- cally. He wants to discover " what is" as it mnst be — leaving it to the students of the various physical sciences to observe and generalize the contingent phenomena of the universe. Existence is studied by him, not in any of its variable manifestations, material or mental, but only in those which are essential, and apart from which it could not be existence, but absurdity and contradiction. We may, perhaps, be tempted to ask whether there is any atmosphere of " necessary truth," in which existence, as such, must be thus enveloped ? The method of con- structing knowledge anew, on the foundation of a single abstract proposition rescuetl as a " necessary truth" from the ruins created by philosophic doubt, has already been several times tried with indifferent success — as Spinoza and his recent successors can prove. But we need not perpWx ourselves about this question at the 300 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. outset, hot US wait the issue of this fresh attempt. If Mr. Ferrier, or auy one else, has thus discovered the Essence of Being, there is an end to the question. The neglect of most metaphysicians to use this Demon- strative Method is the author's explanation of their noto- rious aberrations. Mr. Ferrier everywhere inveighs against his predecessors and contemporaries, — especially those in Scotland, for abandoning the " necessary truths," or for confounding truths that are " necessary," with others void of that distinguished mark. In his hands, at all events, no truth can be admitted into Metaphysics that is not either an axiom or a deduction from axioms. All through the structure he promises to rear, we are to live in an unin- terrupted blaze of demonstration, like that of Euclid. The work is to be a " mass of demonstrations," " a chain of clear demonstration carried through from the first word to the last," " one large demonstration from the beginning to the end." It is not a system of mathe- matics, and does not include that department ; but it thus far resembles it, that when we relapse from a rigour of reasoning equal to that in pure mathematics, we may take this as a sign that we are wandering out of the metaphysical province. It is indeed true that all the vulgar, and the great majority of professed thinkers, have iiitherto thus gone astray. But this is not to be won- dered at. The real wonder would have been, had the case been different. The actual case only illustrates the necessary lav/s of human progress and of the history of opinion. The deepest truths must come last. Men must traverse the surface of knowledge, before they recognise terrier's theory of knowing and being. 301 those axioms which yield trains of demonstration about the essence of Being. Hence, in tliese years of " pro- gress," they have created Physical Sciences, while they have hardly made a commencement in Metaphysics. But now, in this modern Theory of our ingenious countryman, speculation hopes to return to the point from which originally she set out, and to travel thence with a clearer vision and a firmer tread. We may now, at last, breathe, we are told, only the atmosphere of " ne- cessary" truth, from the beginning to the end of our metaphysical enterprise. But how are we to know luhen we are doing this ? how distinguish that pure air from the denser atmosphere of probability and vulgar knowledge ? What kind of ne- cessity is referred to, when it is said, that the truths about Being we are to search for are only the necessary truths ? An illustration may convey the reply. That I am writing at this table is oiot a necessary truth about Being. It is only one among many other possible forms or phenomena. I can fancy myself walking in my garden or travelling to the moon. I can, in short, know Being in innumerable other forms. I can conceive every ob- ject to be difierent from what it is. In all this ex- perienced fluctuation or contingency, I have sufficient proof that, at least, phenomena which may thus be changed at will are not necessary. They may be con- ceived to be different from what they are. But that a thing is and is not at the same time — that A is not A — is a contradiction in terms. A confradictio7i cannot 302 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. possibly bo true. No volition, linman or divine, can make it true. An invincible necessity forces us to reject a contradiction. Now, if we can find any propositions concerning " what is," which cannot be rejected without a contradiction in terras, these surely are necessary. In them we may find the definition which limits Being. The logical axioms of Identity and Contradiction, as they are technically called, are the most general expres- sions of that necessity. The opposites of all metaphysi- cal truths must contradict these axioms ; they must affirm that Being at once is and is not. Now, can we thus develop Metaphysics from Formal Logic ? Are there any truths about existence that are fenced in by this purely logical necessity ? If so, in what quarter can we find them ? Mr. Ferrier answers these questions by evolving his system, — and in an order which he says is, like all else in metaphysics, " necessitated not chosen." What is that order ? The nature of the necessity explained in the last para- graph implies the answer. What is, is at least what is known. Knowledge thus far conta,ins existence — even though the question of the possibility of unknoivn exist- ence should remain undetermined. And the " neces- sity," which is the organ of discovery in Metaphysics, appertains to knowledge. It is felt in the act of know- ing. Keflection must, therefore, in the first place, be applied to Knowledge. We must try to find the essence of knowledge — some element whose presence creates knowledge, while its absence implies a contradiction ; and which thus limits knowledge, as such, by the infalli- FERRIER S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. SOP. ble logical law. The first part of every system of meta- physics must, therefore, be an EriSTE]\ioLOGY or theory of knowledge. — But is this theory co-extensive with Metaphysics ? Knowing is, indeed, a manifestation of Being. But, perhaps, it is not the onhj one — and so the definition of Being slii)s through our hands. Our theory of existence as known cannot perhaps be transferred to existence absolutely. Accordingly, we must try to direct our scientific resources agfiinst the vaunted region of Ignorance. We must have an Agnoiology or theory of ignorance, as well as an Epistemology. If we are suc- cessful in our assaults on knowledge and on ignorance, then at last we have the theory of Being, — for that theory must express the essence of Being either as knoiun by us, or as unJcnoivn to us. No third aspect of Being is logically possible. It vs^ould imply a contradiction in terms. — The problem of Ontology is therefore solved, in a limitation of absolute Being by the definition yielded in the theories of knowledge and ignorance. Any sur- plus of scholastic formulas and " common sense" beliefs that violate that definition, and in Avhich human reason has hitherto played the fool, must pass for ever away into what Mr. Ferrier calls the " limbo of contradiction." If we can conquer a theory of Knowledge and a theory of Ignorance, we must have a positive Ontology within our power. Can we then, in following this order, find anything we are obliged to affirm of Being, as such, on pain of con- tradicting ourselves, i.e., implying that what is said to exist at once is and is not ? (If we can, tliat is Meta- 304 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. j)bysics.) Let us try to condense Mr. Terrier's very confident reply, diffused as it is through forty-one De- monstrations, which, with their comments, are spread over more than four liundred pages of his Institutes. All Knowledge involves a relation. We know, only as we know something. The " something," defined in know- ledge, is technically called its ohject ; and the " known," by which it is defined, represents the subject^ i.e., the element variously named " ego," " self," " intelligence," &c. Both these elements are essential in knowledge : but one of them is variable or contingent in its forms, the other identical amid all the changes of its correlative. An indefinite variety of " objects" {e.g., solid and ex- tended objects, commonly called Matter ; and states or feelings of Mind) may be contained in knowledge. The " subject," or pure intelligence, must be the one feature which is identical, invariable, and essential, in all this variety. But these two elements — the former, in any one of its innumerable forms, the latter, in its invariable form — are both necessary to constitute any knowledge. If either be abstracted, the knowledge {i.e., existence as knoivn) relapses into a contradiction. Take away the " something," i.e., an object, and the " known" becomes nonsense ; it cannot, without a contradiction in terms, be called knowledge. Or, withdraw the act of " know- ing," i.e., the subject, and again the " object" is con- verted into nonsense, and only through a contradiction can be styled knowledge at all. To maintain that knowledge can survive the abstraction of eithe?^ element, FERRIEU'S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 305 is as absurd as to affirm that a circle can want its centre, or that A can be not A. This, surely, is a position any one may occupy without opposition. No man can deny explicitly that existence as known must be a relation which implies this syn- thesis ; because no man can deny that knowledge im- plies both a consciousness of knowing, and also an object that is known. It may therefore, according to Mr. Ferrier, be taken as the one fundamental axiom in metaphysics, — to be employed against those who deny it implicitly, i.e., who contradict it in various ways in- advertently. The Theory of Knowledge is jnst a syste- matic employment of the axiom in this service. Trains of demonstration resting on it are ai^plied in succession to explode contradictory propositions which, by implica- tion, deny that all knowledge implies an "object — known." Modern metaphysics — under the name of Psychology — is crowded, it is said, with such propositions ; and under its protection, they, with the brood of noxious errors which they nourish, have undisputed possession of the popular mind. Men habitually profess to include in knowledge, an "object" separated from the act afknoic- ing ; or a " knowing" that is void of any object. Thus they nonsensically distinguish subject from object, not merely in the act, as they may do, but also out and independently of the act of knowledge, which they can- not do consistently. An unknown object, (z.e., an object separated from knowing) is a contradiction ; and a self or subject not engaged in knowing any object is also a contradiction. The "ordinary" distinction of subject u 30G ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. and object"'- is therefore absurd. They can no more be separated than the centre can be separated from the circle. But they may be theoretically distiDguished from one another, as the centre may be thus dis- tinguished from the circumference of a circle. The axiom may be now applied in detail to the various "objects" of knowledge. That Matter and Mind, for example, are known, and can be thought and reasoned about by us, — each per se, i.e.^ in separation from the other, — must be, by implication, a contradiction in terms. The supposition implies that an object is known and yet not known at the same time. All that men can really know or conceive must be Jcnoiuledge of matter and know- ledge of mind. This must be, until we can get at the object apart from the act — in other words, know with- out knowing. We cannot, as it were, strip objects of the acts of knowing by which they are made objects, and then contemplate them apart. Hitherto, men have spoken about matter and mind — self and not-self — as if either could be known out of relation to the other. Ac- cording to ]Mr. Ferrier, a frightful progeny of psycho- logical hypotheses has been founded on a misleading figure of speech — Materialism, Idealism, Eealism, Con- ceptualism, Nominalism, &c. The chaos of metaphysics, over which we have been moralizing, has been brought about by a systematic violation of this fundamental necessity. The vulgar have hitherto assumed, and psychologists have professed to study a so-called "know- * I.e., in which " snhjcct" stands foi" an independent self, and " oLject" means an independent not-self. ferrier's theory of knowing and being. 307 ledge" luhich is not knowledge at all, hit slieer con- tradiction. They have tried to study unknown ob- jects, and acts of knowledge abstracted from all objects. They might as well try to study a centreless circle, or a stick with only one end. Let us remove the contradic- tion, and then we may have the theory of knowledge. Knowledge is and must be a fusion of knowing and known. Try to dissolve it by psychological analysis, and the universe must read nonsensically. Preserve the union, and the hieroglypliic becomes pregnant with meaning. Mr. Ferrier, in possession of this strong scientific posi- tion, now directs his logical artillery with apparent vigour and effect. It is demonstrated by him, that unknown matter cannot be known-matter, nor unknown mind known-mind, — that abstract universals, and particulars abstracted from a universal, are alike contradictory, — that a faculty called sense, and commonly said to give the knowledge of matter, must be a faculty of non-sense — that a knowledge of unknown Substance, or of an un- known Absolute, must be a contradiction in terms — and he suggests, that, on the whole, we should reverse the old application of these favourite metaphysical terms, " substance," and "absolute," "phenomenon," and "rela- tive" — at least, if we are to preserve our traditional re- spect for the two former, and to retain the latter in the new system, in a place of inferiority corresponding to the one they have been wont to occupy in the old ! With this deliverance of the region of Epistemology from its barbarous possessors, and introduction of order and intelligence into the language of the conquered 308 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. territory, Mr. Ferrier triumphantly closes his first cam- paign. In truth, the really arduous part of his work was either previously accomplished, or it is still before him. But to proceed. While it is clear as the sun at noon that we cannot hnoio what flatly contradicts the essence of knowledge, may "unknown" existence not still he concealed in our ignoPvANCE ? May it not be that there is something which transcends the "objects" of sense and self-consciousness ; and also those reached through the inductive reasonings for which they supply the ma- terial ? May we not believe, accordingly, that what is known by us in sense is (ontologically) something more than even the "necessary" elements of our knowledge ; and that what is known by us in self-consciousness is (ontologically) something more than even the "neces- sary" elements of our transient consciousness ? Does it follow, on pain of contradiction, that, because a thing cannot be hioion out of the relation of knowledge, it may not exist irrespective of knowledge and definitions ? — There is proof enough that there may be unknown objects of which loe are ignorant. A man born blind is ignorant of colour ; and, nevertheless, men not born blind know that colour exists. And we, with our five senses here on earth, may be ignorant of what is revealed to the inhabitant of Saturn, with his fifty senses ; while he in turn is perhaps ignorant of the peculiar revelations made through our five. Thus far all is clear. But can intelligence be ignorant of what is contradictory ? Can " A is not A" find refuge in any region of ignorance ? An indefinite number of known objects, which are not fekrier's theory of knowing and being. 309 objects in o?m' knowledge, may find refuge there. But ignorance cannot contain ohjecls that are not objects. i^ow, whatever (so-called) object is not a known-object is already demonstrated to be a contradiction. All be- hind or beyond known-exiHteucQ must be the contradic- tory ; and we cannot, without absurdity, be said to be " ignorant" of that. The sphere of knowledge, and the sphere of ignorance, must thus far coincide. The latter sphere is indeed wider than the former, — but only inas- much as it may conceal indefinite modifications of the contingent or variable element in knowledge. It cannot conceal what is not a modification of known-existence (/.e ., of objec t subject.) Here, then, says Mr. Ferrier, we may at last display in triumph the final definition of Being — the want of which has so long confused human reason. We cannot, except at the expense of a contradiction in terms, sup- pose that Being is neither contained, in our knowledge nor concealed in our ignorance. Whatever is must be either known or not known by us. But both what we know and what we are ignorant of must be known- existence. There may be various Idnds of known-exist- ence — various contingent modes of knowing, but un- hnoivn existence is not existence at all, but only an absurdity or contradiction. Whatever is must be an object-known. It need not, of course, be known by me, nor by any human intelligence ; but it must be the ob- ject of an intelligence, in order to escape contradiction. In short, known-existence is the only real exist- ence ; and any belief or proposition which implies the 310 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. reality of what is not an object of any intelligence, must be virtually a contradictory belief or proposition. At the best, it conceals a contradiction in terms. In this conclusion Ontology triumphs over Philosophy. The " insoluble problem" of Eeason has been solved. Ab- solute Being is measured in a definition wrought out by human intelligence, and expressive of a human theory. And, through this conclusion of Eeason, a series of propositions, long venerable in the Faith of mankind, seems to disappear for ever. Not to refer to Fichte and the Germans, the germ of this curious Theory may be found in the works of an author of popular celebrity in British literature. The system of Bishop Berkeley, so far, resembles the new doc- trine ; and Berkeley alone, of all British metaphysicians, receives Mr. Ferrier's enthusiastic praise. Nor have we any desire to abate the praise. Only we may for a moment place the good Bishop's theory beside Mr. Ferrier's, developed as it is with less pedantic formality. We quote the following from among many other pas- sages in Berkeley, relating to the nature of Being : — " That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas, formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow. And it seems no less evi- dent that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together, (that is, whatever objects they compose,) cannot exist other- wise than in a mind perceiving them. I think an in- tuitive knowledge may be obtained of this, by any one FERRIERS THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING, 311 that shall attend to ivhat is meant hy the term exist when applied to sensible tilings. The table I write on, I say, exists, i.e., I see and feel it ; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed, meaning thereby, that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an odour, i.e., it was smelled ; there was a sound, i.e., it was heard ; a colour or figure, i.e., it was perceived by sight or touch. That is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things, without any relation to their being perceived, (known,) that seems perfectly un- intelligible. Their esse is percip)i, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds of thinking beings which perceive them. It is, indeed, an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, moun- tains, rivers, and, in a word, all sensible objects have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being per- ceived by the understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. . . , Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven, and furniture of the earth, — in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, — that their being is to be perceived or known. To be convinced of 312 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. which, the reader need only reflect, and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing, from its heing perceived. From what has been said, it follows that there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives." — Principles of Human Know- ledge, iii.-vii. Berkeley's theory differs from ~M\\ Terrier's in being, at least, more cautiously vague. He does not define known-existence as Mr. Ferrier does — in distinguishing its necessary and invariable element from its contingent and variable one. He says that Matter must be known. Bat he does not define absolute knowledge. His theory, accordingly, is only indefinitely, if at all, an ontological one. Berkeley absorbs the mafericd tvorld in knowledge. These Institutes absorb Absolute Being in a definite Mnd of knowledge, — thereby excluding from belief every pro- position which cannot be reconciled with that definition, Berkeley, trained in an earlier school, evades a demonstra- tive Ontology. Mr. Ferrier, carried with a later generation on the strong tide of German speculation, has developed the Psychology of Berkeley into a kind of Scottish Hegelianism. The theory of Berkeley may be criticised as a theory of human reason in its relation to the mate- rial world ; this Theory of Knowing and Being must be criticised with reference to its boasted definition of Absolute Existence. The Idealism of Berkeley, regarded only as a psychological sentence of extermination on un- known Matter, is a far less presumptuous thing than Mr. Terrier's ontological sentence of extermination on whatever is not known as an ohject in relation to a subject. FERRIERS THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 313 Mast mankind henceforward join Mr, Ferrier in this sentence, it" they are to preserve the dignity of rational beings ? Only when they are ready to accept, as an absolute or ontological truth, that psychological necessity of tlie human mind on which the Theory rests. If we may assume, without proof, and without explaining the men- tal phenomena which seem to forbid the assumption, that the essence of our knowledge is absolute — com- plete — perfect, then no extraordinary strength of reason- ing is required to reach Mr. Ferrier's conclusion, — that there cannot he " an unknown," i.e., an object divorced from a subject, or a subject divorced from an object. In short, the Theory must presume that it is already on ontological ground in its very first proposition, if it is really on that hitherto inaccessible terrritory in its last. But the real difficulty it has to meet is the diffi- culty of defending the absolute meaning, which the first proposition in the Epistemology requires to have, in order that it may carry the conclusion contained in the tenth demonstration of the Ontology. The Theory rests on a single necessary truth. In this respect it resembles the system of Spinoza. That system is blind to all that is not expressed or implied in favourite axioms ; and it is thus enabled to boast of its " demonstrative" charac- ter. The method used by theorists of this class tempts them to turn the blind eye to all beyond the narrow foundation on which alone the " demonstration" can be made to stand. Mr. Ferrier's Theory has taken no pre- cautions against that temptation. In the first place, 314 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. there are other truths, equally necessary and axiomatic, which we cannot reconcile with the selected one. Are we, for instance, obliged to believe propositions whose meaning, taken collectively, cannot be known or con- ceived as an " object" at all ? Does not our knowledge, even in its necessary or essential elements, thus bear upon it the marks of imperfection, and explode in a series of contradictions when it is dogmatically assumed to be absolute ? Mr. Terrier, in his horror of Psychology, has not encountered these questions. In a book which proclaims itself the " Institutes" of Metaphysic, the reader is astonished to find no allusion to the phenomena in our knowledge, which alone, we may almost say, have raised metaphysical curiosity ; and which have hitherto foiled every attempt to resolve Absolute existence into the only hind of knoioledge ive have any experience of. The group of propositions, regarding Immensity, Eter- nity, and Causation, — apparently contradictory when the relation of subject and object is assumed to be absolute in knowledge, but which are fixed as necessarily in Eeason as that fundamental law itself — are passed in silence. These marginal propositions of Faith, as we may call them, are the barriers which hitherto have closed every speculative approach to Ontology. The seeming contradictions in our knowledge, revealed in the propositions now referred to, imply that the unknown cannot be made to fit in to any conditions — necessary or contingent — of existence as known to us. We find, when we analyze our knowledge into all its elements, that we FERRIERS THEORY OF KROWING AND BEING. 315 believe, and must continue to believe, seeming contra- dictories. But in another view, these contradictory neces- sities of our knowledge may nourish Faith while they thus limit Reason. Whether or not we can define ichat is, we can at least tell what is not. We, of course, agree with Mr. Feriier that truth cannot contradict itself. Absolute knowledge cannot be contradictory, though our knowledge may become so when it is assumed to be per- fect or absolute. And so we conclude that our marginal knowledge — and by implication our entire knowledge, for it is an organic whole — is not absolute or perfect, but only relative to our condition and circumstances in this and in a future life. Through these beliefs in apparent contradictories, we find our knowledge charged with Faith in an unknown, in which the apparent con- tradictions may be reconciled. For if our knowledge seems thus fundamentally contradictory, we must cither with the Sceptics reject it altogether, or, with the Philo- sophers, read in these abnormal phenomena the signs of its imperfection or finitude. The former is the alterna- tive of Rationalism ; the latter is the instinct of Faith. This most sublime and instructive aspect of human knowledge is suggested in the phenomena of Space, Time, Number, and Causation, — in the ground or Sub- stance of the known universe, — and in the revelations of the physical and moral government of God. A curious spectacle might be formed if we were here to bring to- gether, and present, as it were, in a tabular view, these abnormal intellectual phenomena by which our Reason is limited — as they have risen on the metaphysical wheel 316 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPny, for our edification, from Aristotle to the antinomies of Kant. We might thus have a panoramic view of Keason in its demonstrated weakness — our knowledge in its experimentally proved finitude. When, with the help of the speculations of departed men of thought, we reflect upon the ultimate propositions in our know- ledge, we find that we are daily believing and acting upon truths which, taken separately, are partially intelli- gible, while, taken collectively, they are to us nonsensical and apparently contradictory. Even the " necessary truths" of human knowledge contradict one another, when they are presumed to be known, i.e., logically comprehended. This wonderful fact has been the occa- sion, as it has been the difficulty, of all our previous Ontologies and high speculations. These " antinomies of reason" were illustrated by us in our Essay on the " Insoluble Problem" which they suggest, and to which we may refer as pointing towards some evidence for the assertion, that our knowledge cannot be presumed to be absolute without an act of intellectual suicide. In this profoundest part of our mental experience, we have proof, as irresistible as demonstration, that Faith in an unknown is wrought into the very fibres and tissues of all human knowledge. When we try to realize collec- tively, under a law of relative knowledge,* the beliefs to which we have just referred, we find the nascent know- ledge becoming contradictory in the experiment. Scep- tics, like Hume, have inferred from this result that our knowledge is an illusion ; instead of drawing, with * E.g., under tlie law of subject + object. FERRIERS THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 317 Pascal, the wiser lesson that it is only imperfect, and that the apparent contradictions result from the illegiti- mate assumption that it is essentially complete/"' Mr. Ferrier overlooks hoth the inference and the lesson, and without more ado converts a primary law of finite know- ledge into the essence of being. Hume's metaphysical speculation may indeed be read in a good sense. It is vulgarly called a system of uni- versal scepticism — as if that were possible. It is rather an emphatic and unqualified exposure of the apparent contradictions which illustrate the finitude of human knowledge ; with almost no reference to the Faith which these very contradictions may be made to nourish. The intellectual giant took this bold way of illustrating what human reason is worth when it would be as God. The lesson which the spectacle teaches must, however, depend upon the spectator. But Pascal is eminently the philo- sopher, as contrasted with the Dogmatist on the one hand, and the Sceptic on the other. How sublimely he * " It was a truth," says Cudwortli, " thongh abused by the Sceptics, that there is ccKoc-aXuvrov ti, sometliing incompreliensible, in tlie essence even of the lowest substance. For even Body itself, which the Atheists think themselves so well acquainted with, because they can feel it with their fingers, and which is the only substance that they acknowledge either in themselves or the universe, hath such puzzling difficulties and entanglements in the speculation of it, that they can never be able to extricate themselves from. We might instance also in some accidental things, as Time and Motion. Truth is hir/ger than our minds, and we are not the same with it, hut have a loicer jMrticipation only of the intel- lectual nature, and are rather apprehende7-s than comprehender-s thereof. This is indeed one badge of our creaturely state, that we have not a per- fectly comprehensive hioivledge, or such as is adequate and commensurate to the essence of things.'^ 318 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. shadows forth our human intelligence as poised between absolute knowledge and absolute ignorance : " Voila notre etat veritable. C'est ce qui nous rend incapables de sa- voir certainement, et d'ignorer absolument. Nous vo- guons sur un milieu vaste, toujours incer tains et flottants, pouss^s d'un bout vers Tautre. Quelque terme oil nous pensions nous attacher et nous affermir, il branle et nous quitte ; et si nous le suivons, il echappe a nos prises, nous glisse, et fuit d'une fuite eternelle. Kien ne s'arrete pour nous." — ((Euvres ii. 70-1.) In sundry other passages of Pascal, how impressive is the description of what we have called the marginal phenomena of our finite intelligence — those which give us the consciousness of intellectual finitude, and which convey into the word Infinite the only meaning it can, without a contradiction, contain. But to return. We complain, then, that these " Institutes" of Meta- physics disregard all the facts which most urgently invite metaphysical contemplation. They overlook the pheno- mena which forbid the conversion of psychological neces- sities into absolute truths ; and which thus induce the Faith that — unable to follow the seeming contradictions of our actual knowledge either into absolute scepticism or absolute knowledge — sees in these contradictions only a sign that Being must transcend our finite comprehension. We are promised the play of Hamlet, and yet Hamlet makes no appearance. This is an " oversight" as un- accountable as any of those with which Mr. Ferrier can charge the popular mind. He has not a word to say about the "necessary truths" in our knowledge which seem to im- ferrier's theory of knowing and being. 3J9 ply something that cannot be " an object" of knowledge at all — in the only comprehensible sense of the word object. Even apart from these mysteries of Faith, we have no right to take for granted that our knowledge is the measure of absolute knowledge. If even it did not thus contain the signs of its own imperfection, which reclaim against the dogma, the assumption is at least gratui- tous. Why must intelligence be realized essentially in the human way ? Is the Divine Knowledge one with ours in its fundamental principles ? A query is here at least more becoming than an axiom. Yet that axiom, and its obvious applications, constitute this system, and contain its so-called discovery. Surely all the beautiful elaboration of the literary structure is required to conceal the weakness of the scientific foundation. The schoolmen, we may remark, have exhausted spe- culative ingenuity on the unprofitable problem of the Divine Knowledge.* And they have at least supplied, in their failure, a course of profitable experiments on the limits of our Reason, when we go forth on the enterprise of defining any other knowledge than our own, or try to find consistent expressions for the mysteries of Faith, which would cease to be mysterious if they could be con- sistently expressed. The theologian, like every other deep thinker, must believe and act upon pro})ositions that seem contradictory to intelligence because it is finite, * The reader is referred ■with cmpliasig to the Prima Pars of the " Summa Theologiaj " of Thomas Aquinas, in which tliat great philoso- phical theologian and theological philosopher marks out the nature and limits of Theology, and the character of its objects as transcending the measure of human reason. 320 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. and that can be proved to seem thus in consequence of its finitude. Faith in an unknown, in the various phases of that faith, seems the distinguishing mark of intellec- tual finitude. The words " infinite" and " absolute" are only abstract expressions of a conviction that the only knowledge (known-existence) in our experience is essen- tially imperfect and anomalous. This conviction, from the dawn of reflection to the present hour, has obtruded itself in forms against which the most subtle dialectic is of no avail, — and it may therefore well refuse to yield to Mr. Ferrier's simple summons to surrender. Know- ledge, as it must be experienced by us, is dogmatically affirmed by him to be the absolute measure of knowledge as such. What cannot be reconciled with the '' necessities" of our mental experience must be swept away, as neither knowledge nor existence, but the implied contradiction of both. But the contradiction which this Theory professes to avoid in its axiom, is itself a direct result of the un- philosophical assumption, that our necessary knoivledge is the essence of knoivledge human and Divine. The contra- diction disappears when the assumption is withdrawn, and is, in fact, a warning not to make the assumption. Contradictions which are found in the heart of our know- ledge, when that knowledge is presumed to be absolute, seem to proclaim articulately that the Essence of Being cannot be revealed to us. The sages of every age have thus interpreted the proclamation. And men in general, if not on the scientific grounds suggested by Psychology, are at least spontaneously convinced that what is cannot be contained in what is hioivn — from which it follows that ferrier's theory of knowing and being. 321 no absolute definition and limitation of Being can be deduced from any axiom in our knowledge. Supported by this evidence, we may decline to allow that our necessary knowledge is absolute, at least in the sense required by Mr. Ferrier's system ; and in so doing, we reject his first proposition, in the only meaning of that proposition fjom which his theory can be demon- strated. Far from ai)plying to " Being," it becomes in- applicable to any " Knowing" except our own. The anomalous phenomena revealed when we reflect upon Reason as it is manifested in Faith, forbid us to assume that the "necessary truths" are -perfectly known by us, and that in them our knowledge is absolute. Mr. Fer- rier leaves out the rebellious elements, and then consti- tutes the equation. We, on the contrary, accept these elements, and are thus fortified in our spontaneous Faith that Being, — whatever it may be, and whether definable or not, — is at least not definable by man. We know a series of correlative " objects" revealed in sense or sell- consciousness, and made the basis of inductive inferences ; and we further know that what is thus relatively known, explodes in contradictions, when we assume an absolute perfection in this relative knowledge. In a word, it is Mr. Ferrier's proposed solution of the ontological problem that is unphilosophical, if not con- tradictory. The theory that the problem is insoluble — i.e., that all our knowledge rises out of what is myste- rious — need involve no contradiction, while it saves the knowledge we actually have from many. In the boasted Demonstration which forms this system, the conclusion X 322 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. is either founded on the assumption that a law of our knowledge is absolute ; or else it implies the contradic- tion that we can attain to absolute truth through an intellectual experience that is only psychological and human. In this dilemma it must choose its horn. And its author frankly makes his choice. It is, he says, " impious," " sinful," " irreligious," to deny that any knowledge can transcend the necessary law of ours. Mr. Ferrier, whose foremost claim is to have constructed " a purely reasoned system," offers in the sequel a body of reasoning which might be condensed within a paragraph, although it is diluted into a volume, — and rests the weight of his paradox on the dogma, that that paradox cannot be rejected without " sin." We quote a relevant passage : — " It (the system) may seem to adopt a somewhat pre- sumptuous line of exposition in undertaking to lay down the laws, not only of our thinking and knowing, but of all possible thinking and knowing. This charge is answered simply by the remark that it would be still more presumptuous to exclude any possible thinking, any possible knowing, any possible intelligence, from the operation of these laws — for the laws here referred to are necessary truths — their opposites involve contradictions, and, therefore, the supposition that any intelligence can be exempt from them is simply nonsense ; and, so far as senselessness is a sin, this supposition is sinful. It sup- poses that Reason can be Unreason, that wisdom can be madness, that cosmos can be chaos. This system escapes that sin. It is therefore less presumptuous, and more becoming in its moral spirit than those hypocritical in- FERRIER S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 323 quiries, which, by way of exalting the highest of all rea- son, hold tliat this may, in certain cases, be emancipated from its own (?) necessary laws, and that these laws should be laid down as binding, not universally, but only on Imraan intelligence. This resti'iction is loicked as ivell as weak" — P. 55. " Weak" or " wicked" as it may be, we cannot fly in the face of facts. Till the seeming contradictions, whose ramifications traverse finite knowledge, are reconciled with a definition of Absolute Existence, we must continue to regard what is known by us as incapable of limiting what absolutely is. Only then (if even then) can an " unknown" be eliminated. We cannot, to escape the charge of impiety, accept a theory of Being which fails to reconcile the counter-necessities of Keason that are involved in Faith. But in truth Mr. Ferrier cannot afford to take a lower position than the one he vindicates in this strange fashion. He has to fulfil his promise to produce a Sys- tem which cannot be rejected on pain of falling into a contradiction in terms ; and the purely formal law of Logic, with which Mr. Ferrier marvellously identifies his axiom, does not help him as long as it is empty. That law is worthless for the purpose of discovery, and avails only for preserving consistency in our thoughts. Formal Logic, as the theory of non-contradiction, develops/orms of consistent thinking out of the two axioms, — '' A is A," and " A cannot be not A." It thus yields negative, but not positive definitions of Being. We learn from it what existence is not, but we do not conversely learn 324 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. what it is. In this sense, we hold with the old Greeks, that Logic, — as the science and art founded on these prin- ciples of Identity and Contradiction, is the foundation of Metaphysics, and the proper introduction to all philoso- phical studies. But in the new Theory of Knowing and Being, the law of Contradiction is armed with weapons not its own, — though they are indispensable in the pole- mical service in which it is the7'e employed. Significant terms are substituted for the naked symbols of Pure Logic ; and the formula, thus loaded, is employed as freely as if it were empty. As Kant would say, it is changed from an identical or analytic to a synthetic proposition. Mr. Ferrier substitutes " knowledge must be knowledge," for "A must be A." But he intends by '" knowledge" what is essential to knowledge in human experience. And so the axiom means, by implication, " Human knowledge must contain absolute knowledge," — a proposition which, instead of being identical with " A must be A," is re- moved from it by the whole diameter of philosophical controversy. A resolution to follow the Demonstrative Method from the beginning to the end of his metaphysical enterprise, seems, in short, to have blinded Mr. Ferrier to the nu- merous facts in our knowledge, which forbid his trans- lation of a law of Logic into a law of Existence. He despises psychology and experience. Yet he is obliged to rear his system on an observed fact in finite know- ledge — wantordy elevated, in the face of the opposite evidence already referred to, to the empty dignity of the identical proposition on which Pure Logic rests. But FEKRIEJl S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 325 Metapliysics, — thus virtually resting on observation, while professing to rest on the law of non-contradiction, can- not be more than the loftiest department of experimental research, — appropriately named " speculation," in con- sideration of its comprehensiveness and grandeur. A " demonstrative" Ontology is at variance with the na- ture of a finite intelligence, — whose only possible know- ledge of Being must be formed on a systematic obser- vation of the various relations of existence which are gradually revealed in sense and self-consciousness. These Institutes, then, while they declare war against observation and experiment in metaphysics, nevertheless rest unconsciously on a selected part of our rational experience. With them there is a favoured part and a neglected part. The favoured part is the observed fact that in finite knowledge an " object" can be known only in relation to the " subject." The neglected part contains the counter-necessities of reason, which seem to prove (obliquely) that the knowledge, thus limited, cannot be absolute. When tve try to place these counter-necessi- ties in harmony with Mr. Ferrier's selected " necessary truth," the foundations of our knowledge appear to teem with contradictions. To subvert the Faith of mankind, weapons very different from the axiom directed against it in this Theory must therefore be employed. Common belief must be trusted till it is actually proved, hy a more ongorous induction of our knowledge as an organic ivhole, to be unworthy of trust. This lawful polemical weapon has already expelled many a prejudice which seemed to find protection in the uneducated Eeason, and may be ex- 326 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. pected gradually to secure a still nearer approach to the philosophical formulas best fitted to express the ultimate relations of our knowledge to existence. The crotchets of " demonstrative ontologists," — urged by metaphysi- cians, theologians, and in physical research, have hither- to been the great obstruction to a true interpretation of the Divine works and the Divine word. Thus far we have confined our view to the so-called discovery claimed in the new Theory. Mr. Ferrier claims to be original, through his employment of an axiom over- looked and hence traversed by metaphysicans, but be- fore which the vulgar prejudices of common sense con- cerning existence, hitherto protected under shelter of our ignorance, must now inevitably give way. We quote a passage in which the claim is announced : — " It is scarcely credible that, at this time of day, any philosophical opinion should be absolutely original, or that any philosophical truth, of which no previous hint exists in any quarter, should now for the first time be brought to light. Nevertheless, the doctrine now under consideration is believed to be altogether new. If it is not, the present writer will be ready to surrender it to any prior claimant who may be pointed out, and to give due honour to whom honour is due. But, meanwhile, this system may be permitted to hold possession of it, as its own peculiar discovery — a circumstance which is men- tioned, because those who may favour these Institutes with their attention may perhaps have some inclination to know wherein more particularly their originality may consist. They claim, for the first time, to have an- TERRIERS THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 327 nounced the true laiv of ignorance, and to have deduced from it its consequences." — P. 425. We hardly tliiuk that in this respect his claim to origi- nality is likely to be seriously disputed. When Mr. Ferrier has convinced the thinking world that his " discovery" is a real one, it is time enough to examine its pedigree. Meantime, as far as Ontology is concerned, we have, in the forty-one Demonstrations of these Institutes, a develop- ment of inferences so obviously contained in the dogma on which all the reasoning depends, that even the meta- physical ingenuity and literary accomplishment of the reasoner can hardly conceal their barreimess. But have that ingenuity and learning accom})lished nothing ? They may fail to convince the world that the " discovery," which this book was written to announce, consists with a true and comprehensive interpretation of a/? that we experience in our knowledge. But is that experience altogether unproductive in the author's hands ? If we cannot receive this theory as an Ontology, may w^e not receive it as an improvement of our Modern Psychology ? It is possible that these Institutes may develop better the science of human understanding {i.e., Being as hnoivn hy us), while they leave the science of absolute Being in the darkness in which they found it. We have already said, that the mode of research which Mr. Ferrier professes to follow in Metaphysics, tends to withdraw his attention from the chief obstacles to the reception of his dogma, in the only sense in which it can 328 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. serve his purpose. We now add, that the principle on which he justifies speculative studies at all, is apt to give a darker colour to his picture of previous systems of speculation than the history of opinion warrants. With him metaphysic is a war of extermination. The theory must make antagonists if it caxmot find them. If Onto- logy must be abandoned, it must at least wage war with the psychologists on some other ground. Accordingly, Mr. Ferrier has unconsciously put the doctrines of the despised "mental philosophers" under a strain that has made them despicable — wdiile he has at the same time served himself heir to their genuine opinions. When the illegitimate assumption which alone renders his system original has been withdrawn from it, and the application of his axiom has thus been confined to the only positive knowledge tue have any experience of, his well-informed readers must feel that they are expatiating in a familar territory, as they follow the evolutions of his system. They are contemplating only an old and still current psychological theory of human knowledge. The paradox of these Institutes is found to be the commonplace of modern philosophy; and their "counter propositions," which are said to represent the modern doctrine, exist hardly anywhere out of l\Ir. Ferrier's own imagination. The fundamental principle of this Theory, — when thus modified and limited to our intelligence, is only the fiirai- liar maxim that human knowledge is relative ; and that its highest relations &xe, first those it bears to the limits of our intellectual structure as finite beings, and secondly, to that structure, as developed and modified through mental FERRIERS TnEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 329 nssociation or external circumstances. Among tbc.se re- lations, accordingly, studious men have been seeking, from age to age,forthe roots by which the sciences are nourished, and for the rules which should regulate their cultivation. We need hardly refer to detailed evidence in defence; of this statement. It is familiar to every tyro in Philo- sophy, that tbe nearest approach a man can make to a philosophic abstraction from the particular objects of our knowledge, has been gained when he contemplates all objects on their ideal side — i.e., as they illustrate our necessary and contingent modes of knowing. Here lies the difference between Ontology and Philosophy proper. The philosophers take for granted that this contempla- tion must be (to us) the culminating part of knowledge — the part which displays the elements necessary to every manifestation of ivhat is — material or immaterial, human or Divine — that can come within our experience, either now or in the future life. The vain struggle for a logical Ontology receives from their hands the only satisfaction that is possible, in a theory of knowledge as experienced in human consciousness. But this humbler Investigation need not (as it has too often been) be divorced from the lofty aspiration which may have moved the transcendental speculation. On the contrary, as a perpetual memorial of our finitude, the enlightened study of human imderstanding lends strength to the Love and Faith, in which the noblest attributes of hu- manity find vent. But how have these ultimate relations of our knowledge been actually developed in the despised modern Psycho- 330 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. logy ? Take two modern philosophers, notable, as the representatives respectively of the two opposite systems of mental science, — we mean Locke and Kant. Locke's theory contains by implication, and Kant's in a developed form, the essence of Mr. Ferrier's theory — after its vaunted " discovery" has been eliminated. Indeed, the principle is implied in the first aphorism of the Novum Organum. The phenomenal world is, with Bacon, the only positive- ly known world. Being, as known by man, is, accord- ing to the whole spirit of his philosophy, the succession of " appearances" experienced in sense and self-conscious- ness; and of which we attain a growing knowledge through systematic analogy or induction. But in the last analysis this implies that Being, as comprehended by us, is only our own cognitive experience. Locke would say our own " ideas ;" — and accordingly, his Essay is an attempt to generalize known-existence, in the technical form of an inquiry into "the origin, limits, and certainty of human knowledge." Locke's account of the human understanding is Mr. Ferrier's theory of known-being — imperfectly worked out. It difiers from these Institutes in two respects. — In ih-Q first place, the English metaphysician, in his zeal against innate ideas, fails to indicate formally the elements com- mon to our knowledge as such. The " ideas" of Locke are the " subject -\- object" of Mr. Ferrier. Even the " simple" ideas, so renowned in the Essay, are " complex" ideas in the doctrine of the Institutes. Every idea (cog- nition) must contain, according to Mr. Ferrier, both the one necessary element, and also one contingent element. TERRIERS THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 331 In the second place, Locke carefully guards against the assumption which is the boast of the Institutes. He does not take for granted that oin^ intellectual world — our w^orld of ideas or cognitions — contains any perfect or absolute element at all. He says, indeed, that our know- ledge is limited to our ideas ; but he does not infer from this that Substance* is nonsensical, and Matter a contra- diction. Locke does not pretend to fathom the ocean of Being ; he only endeavours to measure the length of our intellectual line. But if Mr. Terrier is the first to draw the ontological inference which Locke in his wisdom has not drawn, he neither is, nor professes to be, the first who has discovered the tivo elements essential to human knowledge. The Essay of Locke has long been modified, or rather sup- plemented, by the Kritih of Kant ; and the supple- ment develops the theory of knowledge which the earlier system had failed fully to unfold. Amid all his scliol- astic pedantry, which conceals from the unscientific reader the virtues of his system, Kant has ably inter- preted certain hieroglyphics in our knowledge that had previously been imperfectly understood. No sound spe- culative system can now overlook the elements which he has compared and contrasted as " necessary" and " contin- gent" — d, iwiori and a posteriori, &c. They give a com- * For Locke's somewliat vacillating theory of Being or Substance, the reader may refer to his Letters to the Bishop of Worcester, contained in his Collected Works, Vol. IV. See also the Bishop's Ansioer, (Loudon, 1697.) — A great deal of curious discussion, suggestive of the theme of this Essay, may he found in the English Controversies of the era of Locke. See the " Anti-Scepticism" of Henry Lee, (1702,) and Perronet's two "Vindications" of Locke, (1736 and 1738.) 332 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. mon basis and limit to the indefinito varieties in the experience of individuals. They help to amend that comprehensive formula which describes hiunan know- ledge in its most comprehensive aspect, and the gradual amendment of which is the best scientific reward of metaphysical labour. But Kant does not profess to imply a definition of Absolute Being in his contribution to the definition of our knowledge. He expressly excludes from his theory all knowledge except our own. Thus wliile, with Locke and Kant, the chief modern systems of Psychology contain the new theory expressly or by implication, the Kantian system formally develops that analysis of knowledge, which Mr. Ferrier ventures, in the face of opposite proof, to apply also to absolute exist- ence. The fact that what is true in his system is very old, may abate the discouragement that is apt to rise, when the metaphysical labours of the past are contemplated in the lurid lightwhichMr. Ferrier is apt to throw upon them. The theory of these Institutes, — when thus translated out of Ontology into Psychology, is an interesting exposi- tion of 07ie of the " necessary truths" of human intelli- gence. It is a general recognition and partial application of the essential relation in our knowledge — that in which, as Pascal says, " we strike a tincture of our own com- pound being on all the objects we contemplate" — a rela- tion which seems inevitable in all finite knowledge. But there are other relations, not less implied in finite intelligence than the law of knowledge as objec- tive, of which it takes no account ; — and, therefore, even viewed as a system of Psychology, it is defec- ive. The axiom of the Theory, which includes more ferrier's teeory of knowing and being, 333 than enough when it is represented as only a form of non-contradiction, includes less than enough when it is regarded as an expression of all the elements that arc necessary in our finite knowledge. When interpreted as a logical system, it errs by excess ; when it is read as a theory of psychology, it errs through defect. Take a single illustration. We cannot, acccnxling to the Theory, strip existence of " knowing," and yet con- tinue to know it. To us it must, as an object, be always Jcnoivn existence, i.e., our knowledge. But if it is true- that we cannot divorce an object from the subject, it is equally true that we cannot divorce cognitions from one another ; or, at least, that we are inevitably dissatisfied with any isolated cognition. A finite intelligence cannot know without converting Being into ''an object" — his knowledge ; but a finite intelligence can as little detach a present known-existence from the mystery of Eternal existence. It is as impossible to deny that something has ahvai/s been, if something now is, as it is to deny that an object must be known in order to be an object at all. We find the knowledge of an absolute " object"* as impracticable as the knowledge of existence out of rela- tion to a subject. At least, if Mr. Ferrier has roi)resented the latter impossibility as a logical contradiction, other metaphysicians have done the same by the former. The basis of Dr. Clarke's " Demonstration," (among many other examples,) involves the assumption,! that to sepa- * We of course here use the term object according to the defiuitiou in the Theorj-, i.e., suhject + oLjeut. f An " aissuuiptioii " open to objections partly simihir to tliose already referred to, in connexion with Mr. Ferrier's identitication of lih funda- mental "necessary truth" with the logical law of contradiction. 334 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. rate a present "object" (i.e., subject -f object) from Eternal existence is a contradiction in terms : — " It is absolutely and undeniably certain/' he says, " that something has existed from all eternity. This is so evident and undeniable a proposition, that no Atheist in any age has ever presumed to assert the contrary ; and, therefore, there is little need of being particular in the proof of it. For, since something now is, 'tis mani- fest that something always was. Otherwise the things that now are, must have risen out of nothing, absolutely and without cause — which is a flat conti'adiction in terms. . . . Whatever exists has a cause of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature, and then it must have been of itself eternal ; or in the will of some other Being, and then that other Being must, at least in the order of nature and causality, have existed before it. That something, therefore, has really existed from eternity is one of the certainest and most evident truths in the world." — (Demonstration, pp. 14, 15.) In a word, the " necessary truth" of causality, like the " necessary truth" of ohjective knowledge, becomes, in the last analysis of it, unintelligible.* And besides these two, there are several other truths, equally necessary in finite knowledge, and equally mysterious, which these Institutes neither describe nor explain.f They thus virtually omit one of the two phases of human Eeason. They analyse Eeason as Intelligence, while they overlook Eeason in Faith — struggling as it there is with the im- * The reader is here referred to the preceding Essay, — on the " Meta- physics of Augustinianism." \f An approach to some of the truths in question is perhaps made in Observations" on the last Proposition in the "Institutes." FERRTER S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 335 perfect and apparently contradictory beliefs which alone illustrate our Ignorance philosophically, and which have taught wise men from age to age that luliat is must transcend lohat is hioivn to he — that no finite intelli- gence can escape from the cave of Plato. But where, we must ask in conclusion, has Mr. Ferrier found the illogical theory of knowledge and existence, which he draws up alongside his own, in the " counter propositions" of these Institutes ? His own theory is offered as a development of Logic ; the system presented in psychological books is, it seems, a development of Anti-logic. It is replete with contradictions. But we are not conducted by any notes of reference to the con- crete counterparts of this contradictory system. We have no clew to the books in our philosophical libraries which illustrate or vindicate the charges. They are, it is true, pointed especially at our Scottish philosophers, who are singled out as the chief culprits. We cannot, of course, in this brief review, compare each counter pro- position with the literature of philosophy, nor even with the Scottish department of that literature, in order to test the representation. But let us take, as a specimen, that article in which Scottish psychologists are said to have sinned most grievously. They assert, it is said, that Matter, or at least some of its qualities, may be known ])er se, i.e., out of relation to any intelligence. " Natural thinking," says Mr. Ferrier, " advocates our knowledge of material things per se, and psychology, if it abandons this position, contends at any rate for our knowledge of certain material qualities ^^er se." 33G ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. Now let US turn to the expressed opinions of Dr. Eeid and his associates : — " What is body ?" asks Dr. Keid. " It is, say philo- sophers, that which is extended, solid, and divisible. Says the querist, I do not ask what the properties of body are, but what is the thing itself ; let me first know directly what body is, and then consider its properties. To this demand I am. afraid the querist will meet with no satisfactory answer; hecause our notion of body is not direct, but relative to its qualities. We know that it is sometJiinfj extended, solid, and divisible, but we know no more. Again, if it should be asked. What is mind ? It is that which thinks. I ask not what it does, or what its operations are, but what it is. To this I can find no answer ; our notion of mind being not direct, bid relative to its operations^ as our notion of body is relative to its qualities."^' In short, matter is known by us only through the relations which it bears in our knowledge, i.e., its quali- ties. And mind, too, is only known to us through its relations in experience, i.e., its operations or states. In other words, the "qualities" of matter, and the " opera- tions" of mind are dependent on being known ; and we cannot tell what either matter or mind are, except as thus contained in knowledge. Nevertheless, we believe in the mysterious independence, both of that which is known as extended, and of that which is known as oper- ating — an independence of ih.Q perception in the former * " Essa3's on tlic Active Powers of Man," I. cli. 1. — See also " Essays ou the Intellectual Powers," 11. cli. 17, 19, &c. FERRIERS THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 337 case, and of self-consciousness in the latter. We cannot accept the mere knowledge as also the absolute existence. It may, perhaps, be said that — as unknown — we cannot decide that the unknown " extended substance," and the unknown "substance that feels and wills" are mutually independent, and that thus mind and matter may be absolutely the same. But, as Mr. Stewart remarks, this is " only an hypothesis, which amounts to nothing more than a mere possibility," and even if it were true, " it would no more be proper to say of mind, that it is ma- terial, than to say of body that it is spiritual." * It is true, that our Scottish psychologists lay stress upon the distinction between the Primary and Secondary qualities of matter ; and Dr. Keid even says, that we have a direct knowledge of the former, and only a rela- tive knowledge of the latter. Hence a verbal ambiguity. When we examine the statement more closely, we find the meaning to be, that some qualities of matter — i.e., the Primary, are known as directly as the operations or states of our own minds are known ; whereas others — i.e., the Secondary, are known otily through the medium of a species of mental states, viz., of our sensations. Pieid seems to refer, in short, not to the original relation which constitutes knowledge as knowledge, but to the secondary relations through, which knowledge is in- creased. We know the qualities of matter, partly through their relation to certain mental states ; and partly immediately in the direct relation of conscious- ness. In this sense we may be said to be " conscious of * " Elements," Vol. i. p. 48, (Sir William Hamilton's Edition.) Y 338 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. objects" as extended, as we are "conscious" of mental feelings that are not extended. But, out of knowledge (i.e., out of consciousness) both are alike unknown, — unless we apply the term knowledge to the Faith, that neither existence hnoion as extended, nor existence hnoion as sensation, volition, &c., is absolute Being, Here the philosophy of Scotland comes into relation with the philosophy of Berkeley. We are alike conscious of the extended world of matter, and of our own feelings. We live in our perceptions of matter, as we live in our mental states. But, apart from the perceptions and the mental states, we are ignorant of the Absolute Existence revealed in these opposite forms. Being — as known in per- ception, is the antithesis of Being — as known in self-con- sciousness. But of their transcendent relations we can say nothing absolutely ; and we are ready to believe anything that is sufficiently attested in consciousness, and that is not hnoivn to be contradictory. This analogy between Scottish " Realism" and the Idealism that is commonly counted its opposite, has not escaped the notice of the philosopher who has modified and developed the princi- ples of Reid with the most signal success. " The general approximation of thorough-going Realism, and thorough- going Idealism," says Sir William Hamilton, " may at first sight be startling. On reflection, however, their radical affinity will prove well founded. Both build upon the same fundamental fact — that the extended ob- ject immediately perceived is identical with the extended object actually existing. For the truth of this fact both can appeal to the common sense of mankind ; and to TERRIERS THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 339 the common sense of mankind Berkeley did appeal not less confidently, and perhaps more logically, than Eeid. Natural Kealism and Absolute Idealism are the only systems worthy of a philosopher ; for as they alone have any foundation in consciousness, so they alone have any consistency in themselves."* We unite with the Idealist in regarding states of mind and qualities of matter as alike immediately known in the fundamental relation which constitutes finite knowledge. But we recede from Ideal- ism when, with Mr. Ferrier, it becomes ontological ; and, in its oversight of the imperfect knowledge of Faith, fails to analyse the philosophic ignorance that is im- plied in a finite intelligence both of mind and matter. The attempt to confine the universe to the limits that are necessary in human knowledge, reacts on that know- ledge itself, and, by involving them in contradiction, paralyses the mysterious beliefs which are its life. Self-consciousness and world-consciousness are two co- ordinate phases of our relative knowledge. They consti- tute its starting-points. But the knowledge to which they are the starting-points is not self-contained or absolute. The one phase seems to be ultimately lost in the mystery of personal identity, and the other in the mystery of parts infinitely divisible. Both phases, in these and other forms, sink beneath the horizon of our knowledge in clouds of mystery. The ultimate propositions regarding Mind and Matter are only imperfectly intelligible ; and thus, though seemingly contradictory, cannot be known to con- tradict one another. Perception and self-consciousness * Hamilton's " Collected Works of Eeid," p. 817. 340 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. are both, so to speak, charged with the Faith that such knowledge is not absohite Being, and cannot yield ma- terials for an Ontology — that all our descriptions and definitions of the mental and material systems must be relative to our knowledge of these systems — that neither mind nor matter can be perfectly known until God is perfectly known. An exhaustive or absolute knowledge can alone either reconcile or else conclusively expel the beliefs, irreconcilable by us, which are lodged in tlie heart of every human cognition. The fundamental Faith that contains them, and to which all propositions not hioivn to be contradictory are possible, is the only real antagonist Mr. Ferrier has to meet when he goes in quest of a definition of Being. He may therefore overlook the antagonists he has conjured up, in the counter-pro- positions and counter-demonstrations of the contradictory system which he has placed beside his own. Most of those adversaries, we do believe, depend for their exist- ence on being conceived by him. In this Faith — diffused as it is through all the mani- festations of human intelligence, and even vindicated as it may be by the seeming contradictions for which it opens the possibility of a transcendent reconciliation — let us reverentially watch and wait for the Revelation of the Divine Ideas, offered to us in the works and in the word of God. Only in this condition of mind can God be known by man. Only thus, we may add, can one man be known by another. Nay, thus only can we know ourselves. We read ourselves in our own actions. ferrier's theory of knowing and being. 341 We read others in their actions. We may read the will of God in all. Yet we must read the phenomena, both of the moral and material universe, in the Faith that there are transcendent distinctions too — distinctions which are the foundation of that system of moral govern- ment through which we are passing — which mysteriously reconcile personal responsibility with human dependence on Divine Power, and thus " vindicate the ways of God to man." It is in theology especially that the separate rays of the light of finite knowledge seem to converge, and then to set in mystery. Every part of any know- ledge must be limited, and therefore mysterious, until God is comprehended, for every part of knowledge seems ultimately to converge in the Divine. Man fails to ex- haust the meaning of the propositions which express the Omnipotence of God, and also those which announce the conditions of Moral Kesponsibility in the creature. The only definite meaning that can be introduced by us into the one of these sets of propositions, may thus contradict the only definite meaning that we can introduce into the other. But what is not comprehended, nor reconciled with the objective law of knowledge, cannot be pro- nounced absolutely contradictory; and may be accepted as the only mode in which it is possible for human reason to approach a transcendent truth. We know enough about " potential existence" to regulate our course nnder the Divine moral government ; even though we cannot de- fine speculatively, the absolute relations of man to God, or translate into logical formulas the theory of the uni- verse. What the Divine Being absolutely is we cannot 342 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY. tell ; but we can read diligently the language of His works and His word. Let us then interpret both, free from the artificial restraints of Demonstrative Ontolog3^ In this mortal life, at least, every system of the kind must be an artificial restraint ; for it cannot embody the perfect truth. And the intellectual barrier may be found as insurmountable after death and in a better world, as we find it amid the moral darkness which sur- rounds us here. But when the moral darkness has there passed away, we shall find ourselves in the enjoyment, not indeed of a logical theory of Absolute Existence, but of an unbroken humility and love, in which we may serve the Kevealed God while we are eternally ignorant of Being. In parting from Mr. Ferrier, on a system so opposed to the one he has offered to the world, we cannot re- frain from a renewed expression of our sympathy with his meditative ardour, and of our admiration for his speculative ability. We have confined this Essay exclusively to a review of the one fundamental principle of his Theory. But we have thus denied ourselves the pleasure of accompanying him into the bye-paths and resting-places, especially of historical criticism, with which he has so agreeably enlivened his course. In these, too, we might, had we followed him, have found ourselves involved not seldom in friendly controversy ; but we should also have had the pleasure of recom- mending some valuable interpretations of systems ill understood, and opinions inadequately appreciated. And FERRIER S THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING. 343 both among the details, and in the leading principle from which we have so widely differed, we meet an indepen- dent devotion to speculations that we love, as rare as it is refreshing in these degenerate days. When we turn from these pages to the dull wilderness of common- place which spreads over much of the literature that now calls itself philosophical, we remember the inclina- tion of the philosophic Roman — Errare malo cum Pla- tone, quam cum istis vera sentire. i APPENDIX. A r P E N D I X. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLASS-ROOM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [Extracts from an Introductory Lecture in the Class of Logic and Metaphysics. '\ Gentlemen, — Your presence in this Philosophical Class-room proves that you hope somehow to receive advantage from the stimulus and society of Academical life and intercourse. You hope to obtain, in a term of attendance here, information regarding the nature and uses of those branches of study which we profess to pursue in this place, — information which could not be obtained, — or at least could not, you suppose, be obtained so well — by means of solitary reflection and private reading in books of Philosophy, You also expect to receive within College walls an addition to your mental strength, — to your intellectual resources and faculty for intellectual work, — which the discipline and mutual sympathies of Academical fellowship may seem peculiarly fitted to con- vey. In short, you look to the Class-room as a channel through which a mass of neiu information, as well as a stream of fresh mental strength may be carried into your minds. Are these expectations well founded ? May a College 348 THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLASS-ROOM Philosophical Class-room be with reason thus regarded, as a means for conveying knowledge which cannot be re- ceived by the student through any other channel ? May it be viewed as an arena for creating, through a system of intellectual gymnastics, a mental power which cannot be as well evoked by the contests and collisions of un- academic life ? Two or three hundred years ago, or even two or three generations ago, these questions were less urgent. There was then no need to raise them at the commencement of an academic course. Then the number of extra-aca- demic channels for conveying information was much less numerous than it is to-day. Then too the intelligence of the popular or extra-academic mind was less awake than it is now, and was awake over a narrower area, Noio the printing press is issuing books of all sizes, and on all subjects, so that he who runs may read. The knowledge formerly inclosed within College walls may now be received by the wayside. The secrets of the class-room may be obtained in the local library and the bookseller's shop. The stimulus of intellectual competi- tion, occasioned by diffused popular intelligence, may appear to some a sufficient substitute for the anti- quated gladiatorship of academic halls. It may seem as if the vast and daily increase in the number of books, in these days sown broadcast over the land, is rendering the class-eoom less and less a necessary channel for conveying information, — at least to reading persons, regarding Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, History, the Physical Sciences, or Theology. On all these sub- jects we in this Nineteenth Century are surrounded by IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 349 streams of knowledge. What need for turning away from these innumerable streams, and coming up here for a tedious term of months, to receive a scanty draught, that has been withdrawn, for the purposes of the class- room, from the now illimitable sea of the world's Litera- ture ? These notorious circumstances in our times may invest with some interest the question of the office or function of the Philosophical Class-room, — its proper office and function for intelligent young men, in the middle of the nineteenth century, — with a wilderness of excellent books in Philosophy outside its walls, — and an intellectual sti- muhis,too, which pervades society outside more powerfully than we can hope to rouse it within our academic circles. " The works or acts of merit towards learning," says Lord Bacon, " are conversant about three objects : — the places of learning, the books of learning, and the persons of the learned. For as water, whether it be the dew of heaven, or the springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, unless it be collected into a recep- tacle, where it may by union comfort and sustain itself .... so this excellent liquor of Knowledge, whether it descend from Divine Inspiration, or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places appointed (as Universities and Colleges) for the receipt and comforting of the same." — {Adv. of Learning.) Colleges and Universities are meant to be centres of attraction, for collecting together numbers of persons, in order tliat they may accomplish collectively, and through 350 THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLASS-ROOM social study, what cannot so well be accomplished in isolation. They are social organizations created for maintaining and promoting the higher and more diffi- cult class of studies. They assume that social study has many advantages, of which solitary study is destitute. They profess to provide a special system of means for rendering social study effective. But a college class-room, with its internal discipline, is not the only means for making philosophical study a social business. There are other ways in which meu may be brought into intercourse with other men, beside this of meeting daily in a Class-room, in order to be there associated with one who professes to instruct them. Some of these are suggested in the passage quoted from Bacon. For example, books provide the means for social study. When we are really reading a book, we are holding intellectual intercourse with its author. We are trying to think his thoughts, though we are not beholding his personal presence. When many books are collected round us, written by various authors, dead and living, we are brought within the reach of what ought to be a strong social stimulus. If not present and living men, at least distant or departed men are speaking to us through their writ- ten words. We may thus listen to the voices of the illustrious dead, and of the greatest among the living. If colleges and universities were only vast repositories of books, they would still be what we have already called them, — " social organizations" for bringing men bent on study into intercourse with other studious minds. But an academic institution, w-hile it includes a library, must IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 351 vet be more than a mere library, A library that brings and keeps an array of books in the immediate neighbour- hood of the student, is, of course, a part of every acade- mical organization. But it is not supposed to constitute it, or to be its characteristic feature. Again. Apart from the class-room, another social purpose may be served by academic buildings. Instead of the authoritative lecture of a teacher, they may supply means and occasions for promiscuous debates to members of the Univ^ersity, on themes of Philosophy and learning. Debates and disputations are associ- ated with the past history of the European universities. Doubtless they are, in one form or another, an im- portant social stimulus. In some form — more or less organized — they belong to every earnest academical community. We cannot collect together hundreds of intelligent persons, for the purpose of social study, without occasioning a collision of mind with mind, in the friendly intercourse of academic life, that should form one of its most valuable means of intellec- tual exercise and progress. The Debating-room, as well as the Library, is, in the nature of things, an essential part of the academical machinery. Here, then, we find the question with which we set out made narrower and more definite in its application. It is not now the question of college education versus de- sultory education in Philosophy. It is the question of college education, hy means of tlie 'peculiar appliances of the Lecture- rocm, over and above the appliances of the Library and the Debating-room. Why should an aca- demical institution (in the department of Philosophy) be 352 THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLASS-ROOM more than a depot of hooks and a centre of spontaneous debates or discussions ? I am glad to put the question in this more precise form for two reasons : — 1. It suggests what ought not to be forgotten, — that the Library and the Debating- room form parts of a complete academical institution. They typify, as it were, two great means of social study — means which should meet us in the University, as they must both, in some form or other, accompany us through life. Intercourse with books, and intercourse with thinking men, form the very intellectual atmo- sphere of human life — that atmosphere which the terms or sessions of college life should prepare us to breathe, and which should exist in a condensed and yet reduced form in the Library and the Debating-room. 2. The form which the question has last received, suggests the special relation of the Philosophical Class- EooM to the Philosophical Library and Debating- room. The first should be the introduction to the two last. I think I can show that it is as indispensable an introduction as ever, — in some respects more so ; notwithstanding the vast increase of modern books and libraries, and the far wider social area of modern debates and discussions. It should provide a key to the philosophical, and through that to the general Library, and also the power to use the key ; and it ought to brace the student for the philosophical, and through that for the general debates and conflicts of opinion in human life. It should send forth men better fitted to encounter the written and oral expressions of opinion, given forth by other men, — better fitted to work their way towards IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 353 Truth, amid all the social turmoil and confusion of this earthly pilgrimaf^e. There is still a place, I affirm, for the College Philoso- phical Class-room — with its living instructors, tutorial or professorial — were it only as a means towards bene- ficial intercourse in after life with our libraries and our living thinkers. This assertion may be illustrated in more ways than one. I need hardly refer to the peculiar office and value of oral as compared with written instruction, nor to the charm which somehow is found to belong to the living voice. The advantage, nay the need for a pre- sent and living centre of authority and instruction, in addition to a dead or distant one, is recognised by all who have reflected on the wants of human na- ture. On that I do not need to enlarge. ■ " The Professor," it has been well said, " ought to be the science or subject vitalized and humanized in tlie students' presence. ... It is not the knowledge com- municated, which may be got by books — but it is the magical effect of the presence of a great living teacher — the grandeur, the purity, and the freshness of his manner in dealing with a subject, and expressing himself upon it. . . . Such a man, lecturing on one subject, throws rays of light into the minds of his students on all subjects." I quote these words in the knowledge that they must suggest to your minds a contrast between what might be the issue of living intercourse with a great teacher, and what alone you z 354 THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLASS-PvOOM can hope to obtain in the intercourse of this class- room. I would not have you to overlook the dignity and glory of the professorial function in its nobler ilhistrations, because of the far inferior specimen of that function which I can offer to you. But to return. There may be a few perhaps, who, in the modern taste for independence of judgment and free thought, would depreciate an authority which pro- visionally lays an arrest upon the liberty, or shall I rather say the license, of juvenile speculation. I do not anticipate any feeling of this sort among you. I believe I may take for granted that you are willing, for a time at least, to adjourn an unlicensed liberty of individual j udgment, to sit meanwhile under the shadow of the old and received system of speculation ; and, in this way, to learn whether or not you may sit pei-manently under its protection, — whetiier or not your allegiance to Truth must force you still to search for other shelter. Only through such temporary surrender, at the outset of your pliilosophical course, can you expect to gain strength for a journey through the labyrinths of spe- culation, or for an encounter with the conflicting tides of opinion to which we are exposed, on a voyage over the ocean of modern literature. If I may speak from my own experience, I know no mental exercise more invigorating and ennobling, than such tentative and at least temporary absorption of the mind, under the do- minant influences of a classic work in Philosophy, or of a modern metaphysical system. I pass, however, from these somewhat vague aspects of IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 355 the matter to one or two definite principles, through wliich the office of the Modern Philosophical Class-room, — as in some respects more than ever the basis of philosophical study, may be made apparent. The immense bulk to which the world's Library of Philosophical books has grown makes us independent, it is said, of the Lecture-room as a channel for convey- ing philosophical knowledge. With numberless foun- tains elsewhere, why need we still come to this old- fashioned well ? Now this question might, so far as the mere exhibition of knowledge is concerned, be per- tinent enough, if all the other fountains gave forth pure water — if every fresh addition to logical and metaphysi- cal literature were, either a restatement of one uniform and universally received system, or else an addition to such a system, resting on what went before. As it is, the very magnitude of our i)hilosophical library is the strongest reason for asking you to pause and ponder for some months, in an academical class-room, before you make an independent assault upon it. Instead of uniform- ity in its lessons, there is much outward sign of discord. Instead of a cosmos, our books in logic and metaphysics and ethics seem on the surface to represent a chaos of opinions — a very Babel of discordant tongues. I believe, indeed, that the chaotic state of this part of human know- ledge has been very much exaggerated — that there is much more real harmony in the evolutions of philosophic thought than might appear on the surface of men's words. I am confident that this is so. Nevertheless, the various schools of logical and metaphysical teaching, which are 356 THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLASS-ROOM represented in popular treatises and courses of instruc- tion in these departments, seem to interpose like a dark cloud between the student who addresses himself to this portion of Literature, and the Truth which every ear- nest and enthusiastic student must be seeking. The larger our philosophical library, the more dense the cloud becomes, and the more need for an intellectual chemistry by which the preparations of previous speculation may be tested, and, it may be, induced to combine. Perhaps I am not far wrong when I say, that, as a deficiency in the number of philosophical books, and books of every sort, was the obstacle to intellectual pro- gress some centuries ago, so now, in this age, the obstacle is of the opposite kind. Not the absence, but the over- abundant presence of Books is the evil and temptation of these times. In other ages the mental aliment sup- plied by books could not be found. In this age it is pressed upon men in every form ; and we are all suffering, in consequence, from intellectual indigestion. Then the Lecture-room was needed, as almost the solitary chan- nel, for conveying philosophical and other knowledge. Now the Lecture-room is needed to protect the inexpe- rienced student from the influx of innumerable other streams of knowledge and crude opinion, which he might be tempted to receive through the channels of surround- ing literature. No small part of the moral strength and courage of all classes of readers is needed, for presenting an effective resistance to the temptations offered by surrounding literature — for remaining firmly and man- fully ignorant of much that is valued by the unreflect- IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 357 ing, in order that they may make a solid conquest of some narrow portion of Truth. The vigour and per- severance in quest of hooks, that is rightly called for in one set of circumstances, may, in another and different state of society, be employed in keeping ourselves aloof from the huge and ever-growing Library of the world's literary creations, that we may devote ourselves to a few long-tried classical ones as our guides. A term of study in the modern philosophical class-room should help to form tliat sort of mental vigour. It should teach the true proportions and salient points of the vast mass of Philosophical Literature which, as it were, stands in array before the student, — and point out the portions in that mass where it is most important that he should effect a lodgement. So much for the philosophical Class-room, viewed as a safe passage into the philosophical and general Library. But it may also be contemplated as a necessary intro- duction to the academical Debating-room, — and to the debates and conflicts of life. In the one case we have glanced at its relation to intercourse with the dead and distant, through their writings. In the other, we might enlarge on its relation to social intercourse with persons who are living and present among us, through means of spoken words. I will here only refer in general to the superficial and desultory character which is apt to belong to ?