^.- ¥^ y> UC-NRLF $B M3 TIE dJM^mi^ ^ I.IKRAK\- University of California. ( rl FT ■ "Accessions No.fJ^^WlPX • Class No. ■^l Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/essayonphilosophOOfitzrich OF TRB [UiriVEESITY THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. AN ESSAY ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, Contatnins an ainalssis of l^cason anti tfje EationaU of iLobe. BY P. F. FITZGERALD. "The logical formulae are the real predicates of God."— Hkgel. " The confidence of reason give. And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live I " — Wordsworth, Ode to Duty. " 'Tis a base abandonment of reason to resign our right of thought, our last and only place of refuge." — Lord Byron. " Unless we see that God is involved in our Self-Consciousness, His existence must be for us ever contingent and unnecessary." LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1882. \All rights re served. 1 3D 33 ss-pn PEEFACE, As the author is sufferins^ from weakness of sight, is engaged in preparing other essays for publication, is in delicate health, and dreads any further delay in giving to the public what is felt to be an important truth, I am intrusted to prepare this essay for the press. What the important truth referred to is I give in the author's own words. " Of the three discoveries to which I pretend, and which are the motive of this work, the first regards the intellectual nature of man, the second his afifectional nature, and the third his moral nature. The objection to metaphysics that has hitherto been deemed unanswerable is, that the primary fundamental beliefs of reason have them- selves no foundation in actual fact, but are mere philosophical assumptions. Now what I have en- deavoured to show is, that the substance or hypostasis of thought is Being — the Being of the individual Ego being in every case the standpoint of rational viii PREFACE, judgment. The necessary conception of the subjec- tive facts of feeling, thought, and will are thus seen to be the d priori grounds of the inferences or general ideas of reason — ratiocination being always in the ratio of Being. The above-mentioned objection not having taken account of this has led to the primary fundamental beliefs of reason being considered as having no foundation in actual fact, the diver- sity of judgment which has appeared to render absolute truth unattainable. Still it must be re- membered that the normal person or Ego, not the idiatic or isolated being, is alone accepted as a stand- point of humanity. The degree, relative and ab- stract, of emotional, intellectual, and moral devel- opment varies even in the cases of typical or repre- sentative men, but using history and biography as well as individual experience to help us to arrive at a correct conception of normal humanitj^, a generally admitted standard has been arrived at, and it is the elementary constituents of this standard of humanity upon which reason takes her stand and argues to Being universal, which cannot conceivably be a con- tradiction of our own Being, which is the subject of mental representation in the idea of Being. " The new view to which I pretend on the subject of the affections or emotions is the essential correlative reciprocity of their nature, whatever fancies we may make to ourselves concerning them; such, for instance, PREFACE, ix as I have often heard expressed in the case of married people, where one will state that though their husband or wife, as the case may be, is not truly companion- able, and so satisfactory to them, yet that they are themselves quite satisfying or satisfactory to their husband or wife. Now the law of the material universe is that action and reaction are equal and opposite, and the law corresponding to this in the spiritual world is that attraction is reciprocal and comple- mentary. The closer we look into the relativity of Being or the adaptation of beings to each other, the more we realise that the necessary imperfection of every finite being, so far from being a cause of dis- tress to us, is the source of .our greatest joy, for what is love but the clinging sense of mutual correlation for dependence ? Love is both the condition of our highest joy and the great aid to the fulfilment of the moral law, inasmuch as love or sympathy is the only real key to our duty to God and to our neighbour. " The third novelty I profess to have given is the answer to the great question of the day, which Mr. Mallock has put in these words, ' Is life worth living ? ' And to the complaint, continued from Greville to Mr. Punnett in ' Mind,' July number, that we are entirely without scientific guidance in regard to the agencies contributory to happiness, I reply : It is obvious, with regard even to the lower animals, that the recognised end of action is avoid- X PREFACE. ance of pain and endeavour after pleasure ; but in the rational being, joy of life is only completely attained through realisation of the ideals of feeling, thought, and will. That happiness does consist in the realisation of ideals is practically recognised even by the least reflective of mankind, only that by them it is made to consist of mere conformity to the conventions of the particular country or time to which they belong with regard to rank, dress, or sensuous beauty of form, all which things are quite inadequate to ontological satisfaction. * Heaven,' says a great Persian poet, * is the vision of fulfilled desire ; ' but this desire is spiritual according to the nature of the soul. It is the satisfaction of self-love, of social love, and of divine love. These are the essential desires that require fulfilment, as they alone give the satisfaction of Being which constitutes happiness." " The crowning principle of thought which emerges from these felt needs is the principle of Sufficient reason — the satisfaction of Being a happiness of the rational God conceiving Being, who alone is through reflective reason constituted capable of communion with his Creator, is necessarily regarded in reflective reason as the ^ Raisoii Suffesaule' for the existence of the material Cosmos, which, as Berkeley tauo-ht, has its rationale or raison d'etre in its subserving the purposes and exercising the intelligence of spiritual beings, for matter, if it exist, cannot be regarded as PREFACE, xi an end in itself and for itself by a creature whose understanding is of pure or real (noumenal) Being. Everything is explainable to us, constituted as we are, only on this principle of Sufficient reason, the ultimate good for Being ; as the means to this end pre- sent suflfering and even permitted sin are conceivably good as assisting through intellectual, emotional, and moral development a thorough realisation of the order of the universe." The author also adds, " I have to apologise for having presented quotations in verse in the form of rugged prose to back out my arguments; but as it has been said that * It is the audible where the value of measured verse is alone of value/ I must beg my readers to remember that it is simply as bearing logical testimony to the emotional nature of man, or to the principle of relativity, to the supremacy of its joys and to the bottomless depths of its anguish, that I have inserted these quotations from the poets." The original essay was written three years ago, and a few copies printed for private circulation. My work has been to draw out a scheme, rearrange the matter so as to bring under general heads those parts which treated of the same subject, to give form to thoughts expressed vivd voce, and combine with the printed text such new matter, together with that given me in notes by the author. I have striven as far as possible to give the author's own words, and as to the xii PREFACE. greater part, especially the conclusion, I have been able to do so. Where it was not possible, I have endeavoured to render faithfully the thoughts. There is one remark I wish to make. I have been very much struck, while engaged in this work, by observing that modes of expression and thoughts which one believes to be one's own are often to be found in other authors. With regard to the first, I suppose it is true that although, as Mr. Alexander J. Ellis states, ** we each have our own peculiar language," there is much that is common in modes of expression to the thinkers and writers of any given period — " a generic agreement with specific disagreement." As touching the thoughts, I suppose it is a certain characteristic way of looking at things common to minds of a certain order that accounts for two or more authors coinciding in thought independently of each other. I think it is of deepest interest that cer- tain germ- thoughts seem to spring up in the minds of many, perhaps far-scattered thinkers, at about the same period in the world's development. That this is so is, I believe, one of the " good gifts " of the Father of Lights ; and that it greatly aids the develop- ment, of which it is' probably the outcome, cannot, I think, be doubted. For it secures a much quicker and more appreciative reception for the works of those great thinkers in whose minds these germ- thoughts fructify ; and as in each of the comparative PREFACE. xiii few who are thus enabled to work out and develop them the development always assumes a different form, reflective of the personality of the thinker, the light must be greatly increased by the blending of all these scattered rays." The author of the present work feels that just as the rules of arithmetic afford a secure basis for all the monetary transactions of the world, so what is here given is a vade-mecum for rational thinking and for the conduct of life. *' The science of thought is the science or knovi? ledge of human life." M. S. Handley. Jvdy 1881. COI^TENTS. -0- PART I. SECTION PACK 1. The Great Want of a Clear Conception of the Natural or Typical Process of Thought 3 2. The Universe a Cosmos, not a Chaos — Physical Laws — Meta- physical 10 3. A Threefold Process — three Principles or Intuitions : Suffi- cient, Efficient, and Final Cause, and the Sciences depend- ent on these 11 4. The Genesis of the Ideas of Reason shown in the Mind of a Child 21 5. Importance of Realising the Necessary Inferences — this only done in Reflection 26 6. Being the d 'priori Condition of Thought — Unity of Thought and Being 50 7. Time and Space the Conditions of Imaginative Mental Repre- sentation 62 8. The Author's Views compared with the Comtist Doctrines of Agnosticism as to the Product, Purport, and Outcome of Thought 65 9. Our own Want of Development in Feeling, Thought, and WiU, the Cause of Want of Faith 70 10. The Fallacy of Altruism, or the Substitution of the Happiness of others for the Happiness of the Ego, instead of the Addition of the Happiness of others being necessary for that of the Ego 78 xvi CONTENTS. PART II. SECTION PAGE 1. Dualistic Attraction— The Law of Polarity the Law of the Universe 87 2. The Summum Bonum, Happiness or Perfection of Being the Divinely appointed Ideal of Human Conception, or Rational Mental Representation as end of Action or purpose in Action 93 3. Perfect Spiritual Harmony its Condition — The Conditions of. such Perfection of Being or Happiness are the Integrated Union of Two Complementary or Correlated Personalities together with Universal Spiritual Harmony . . .99 4. Quotations in Support of Doctrine 104 PART III 1. Morality Defined as the Sense of Responsibility to our Creator to Act according to the Rational Nature He has given us — Arising out of the Reflective Introspective Consciousness of "Self- Love, Social and Divine" — The Rational Obligation or Duty of Human Beings is Properly to Act always in Ac- cordance with each and all of these Constitutive Elementary Principles 135 2. Quotations in Support of Doctrine 185 3. Conclusion 189 OT tS^ IT part L AN ANALYSIS OP REASON. BEING THE SOURCE OF CONCEPTION— THE TRUE- THB REAL. ^ 1?/^ part L AN ANALYSIS OF REASON— BEING THE SOURCE OF CONCEPTION— THE TRUE, THE REAL. § 1. In pondering over the infidelity and secularism so prevalent at the present day, I have arrived at the conclusion that it is mainly owing to the want of a clear conception of what the natural or typical pro- cess of thought is. This want I have endeavoured to supply, feeling assured that a clear statement of the process is all that is needed to make spiritual truth self-evident. Had any philosopher, either ancient or modern, even attempted to draw up a definite scheme of sponta- neous mental action, explaining the normal process of thought and the genesis of mental representation or ideation, so as to make it evident that the founda- tions of our religious faith are rooted in the very being of man, I should not have felt the need of undertaking this work. It was only after a vain search for any firm ground in the works of others on which to rest, that I was forced upon myself for an examina- tion into the nature of the foundations ; and having, after long and careful thought, discovered the firm basis On which man's highest hopes are grounded, I 4 PHILOSOPHY OF wanted others to share the great benefit which I feel this knowledge confers. I do not, of course, intend to convey the idea that no trace of what I here produce can be found in any other writer. On the contrary, the principle having once been got hold of, confirmations of its truth, partial and dim statements, in sentences found here and there in diflferent parts of their works, may be discovered in writers of every school, though the full significance of what they really stated I believe the writers themselves were not aware of. For what I maintain is — that since, as has been shown by several writers, the end of all human action, the one never-absent motive in all that man ever either does or proposes, is always either to get some- thing that he regards as good, either for himself or for some one else, or to do the best he can for himself or for some one else, so the rational inference resultinor from this, which has been so clearly shown, is, that we cannot but believe that the good of all His creatures is the ultimate aim of man's Creator. Yet this teaching of the principle of sufficient reason has either not been accompanied by the doctrine of Efficient Causation, or, if this has been insisted upon, the Principle of Sufficient Causation has been omitted. What I feel has never before been advanced is the demonstration of the triform nature of thought, and this it is that I feel marks my theory as original. For although, as I have said, it has been shown by several writers that action is for the best SELF-CONSCIO USNESS. 5 for Being, those very same writers will probably ignore the Principle of Efficient Causation, or the knowledge of the relations which are for the good of the body or of the soul ; or men like Professors Huxley and Tyndall will, w^hilst endorsing the Prin- ciple of Efficient Causation, ignore that of Final Cause or moral purpose, or even that of Sufficient Cause or Being itself What I profess to have done, therefore, is to have been the first to show that intelligence or understanding is of the Ego or self-conscious, subject, and that from this understanding of Being ^e?^ se, which is directly known to us, from the feeling of our relation to other beings, we have the idea of relativity, and that from the feeling of power and the ability to resolve, or tendency or self-determination for the good for Being, we have the idea of action being for the good for Being, and also the idea of Being itself; for all concepts are of persons or of things, of Being or Existence in its modifications through relativity and tendency. Dean Stanley, in speaking of the education of after life, once said, '' Bishop Butler said that com- munities were liable to insanity equally at least with private persons." If then, says the Dean, we as communities, as churches, are liable to these fits of madness, it is so much the more *^ necessary that we should educate ourselves to be our own keepers." This expression is the complete statement of my object in ofi'eriug the present opuscule to the public : 6 PHILOSOPHY OF self- verification of wliat is rational in feeling, thought, and conduct, such as is recommended in the ancient rules, '' Do not unto others what thou wouldest not have done to thyself," and '' Love thy neighbour as thyself." This is what I assert to be equally the rule of reason and the test of truth, in feeling and thought as well as in action. Does my own experi- ence in the constitution of my own being, as a being powerful to affect other beings, and capable of being affected. by them, as a being whose tendency in action is the good for Being or for the preservation of the integrity of Being, and as a rational or intelli- gent agent, recognise similarity to my own feelings, thoughts, and actions in the feelings, thoughts, and actions of other beings ? Do I in any great work, such as a cathedral or the starry heavens, recognise the exhibition of my own attributes of personality — power, wisdom, and goodness ? In other words, in witnessing^ effects in some deorree similar to those which I can and do produce, am I not necessitated by reason or in reasoning from my own being, which alone is positively known to me, to conceive a similar cause for similar effects ? Professor Jevons defines reason to be the '* substitution of similars," i.e., the formal necessary assumption of similar causes for similar effects in all argument — comprehension being through and of similarity or identity of nature, the intelligible being only so to the intelligent. Before proceeding to my own definition of the SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 7 process of thought, I must call attention to the half- truth and half-fallacy of the great argument of the school of Locke and his French successors, that nothing comes into the mind but through sensation. This is true in as far as it is true that unless all the telegraphic signs are made which constitute a telegraphic message, the whole message will not reach its destination. Mr. Lewes in his "Problems of Life and Mind " has shown the correlation of neural tremors in the brain with every act of feeling, thought, and will. These are the signs to the Ego of what is going on in its own organism, in the organic system, in the head, liver, lungs, &c., or through the peripheral nerves transmitting their signs to the sensorium of what is going on in the external w^orld about us. But as the movements of the telegraphic apparatus are not thought or mental conception, so the neural tremors in the diflferent cerebral centres are also not feeling, intelligence, and will, but only the means adopted by the Divine Wisdom for our conveying or receiving messages to and from other spirits. Berkeley even supposed that sensation or sensible objects might be altogether arbitrary signs to us of non-existent things, or of a matter that was only appa- rently, not really, existing. But the advances made in physiology in late years have so clearly shown the intimate connection of physiology and psychology, that such a theory ceases to commend itself to our reason. In fact, our conceptions or mental represen- 8 PHILOSOPHY OF tations are servile repetitions of the forces present in our own being — of the material force which we actually employ to eflfect any movement of our own bodies, of the spiritual force which is shown by our feeling and making others feel pain and pleasure, joy and suflfering, and of our moral force or tendency to act always for the good for Being or preservation of the integrity of Being. Whenever we recognise eflfects similar to those produced by these integral forces of our own being, we categorise them as caused by one or other of these forces ; and this very act of classification or categorisinor under the head of o o similars is the direct result of the reproduction in our nervous organism of similar states (when remem- bering what has happened or imagining what may happen) to those that we have already lived through and in ; thus intimately is physiology interwoven with psychology : Mr. Lewes having shown that for feeling there is neural excitation, for logical classi- fication there is neural grouping, and for self-deter- mination, neuro-muscular discharge, although this discharge may manifest itself in no visible action, as in the formation by the vocal organs of words that are perhaps not uttered aloud. And as for our own senses to be impressed, there must be some external object to impress them ; so we cannot help according to our own normal experience (of course I am not speaking of the abnormal expe- rience of delirium, hallucination, or madness), postu- lating or assuming an external agency, of a similar SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 9 nature to tliat of our own body, as acting directly upon others when their senses are similarly affected. Again, even if direct or phenomenal action be con- ceivable, yet action for final cause cannot be predicated except of a noumenal or real being, to which kind of being all phenomenal action is ultimately to be traced. Thus all evidence is clearly seen to be based on self-evidence ; and that self-evidence is the only conceivable test of truth in the theory or compre- hensive principle of reasoning, is what I propose to endeavour to bring home to the mind and heart of my reader. Christians have hitherto limited self- examination exclusively to the sphere of conduct, but it is of equally stringent necessity for the attainment of intellectual and emotional truth — the intellect having causation for its object, the emotions relativity of Being or personal affections. The point then for consideration is, what are the necessary concepts or ideas of reason ? How do we arrive, first, at the subjective concept ; * secondly, at the abstract or universal ideas of reason which are the subject-matter of metaphysics ? What I shall endeavour to show is, that psychology is the ground or source of metaphysics, and that physiology plays a part in psychology ; logical conceptions being corre- lated by neural representations of the presentations of psychological activity through the processes of the * The concept is a form of consciousness — having our ovm. being for its object, " we cannot be conscious of nothing" — tendency of Being is the product of Being and relatively of Being — syllogistic synthesis of thou-ht. 10 PHILOSOPHY OF nervous system. We reason from similarity of eflfects produced by our own causal forces to similar causes to account for the production of these effects, and when we have the presence of a being similar to ourselves revealed to us, we cannot help inferring, Le., arguing or supposing, that his feelings, thoughts, and motive in action will be similar to our own. Thus all reasoning is from the known Ego to the unknown but inferred Non-Ego or object. § 2. The universe of which we are a part being a cosmos, not a chaos, just as there are physical laws determining physical action, so of course there are metaphysical laws d^etermining mental action ; and as no physical action can be performed in defiance of the former, so no metaphysical act or process of reasoning can be accomplished in violation of the latter. If a man asserts that he can perform any act which we know to be directly opposed by the law of gravity, we smile at the assertion. But the laws of the physical world are too generally known for such statements to be made. If the laws of reason were equally well known, the contradictions so often per- petrated in the very name of reason would be, to say the least, of much more rare occurrence. It is because of the extreme vagueness in the ordinary conception of thought that I have tried to represent the normal or typical process, feeling assured that if the true significance of these laws was once thoroughly understood, the firm indestructible basis SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, ii on whicli religious faith really rests would be per- ceived, and the position of infidelity be clearly seen to be untenable. § 3. First, then, let me call attention to the fact that thought is a process comprising three distinct acts of the mind : perception, apprehension, and compre- hension, which, taken together, constitute the idea, hegriff, intelligence. These three acts proceed from three great principles or sources of action. Our own being is such, we are so constituted that we are forced to conceive or mentally represent a Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Cause for every event and for every thing, by reason of our being conscious of such causation in our own being. Perception is that act by which we recognise Being or Existence. It proceeds from the Principle of Suf- ficient Cause, for, for everything we perceive there must be a Sufficient Cause, and this can only be noumena or real Being, although it may be made manifest to us either by signs, as when we recognise different emotions in others by certain marks on the countenance, or by sensations which the different physical bodies excite in the sensorium. Apprehension is the act by which we recognise rela- tions, either the relation of one thing to another, of a thing to a person, or of one person to another. It pro- ceeds from the Principle of Efficient Cause, for an imme- diate effect can only be produced by the mutual action and reaction of essentially associated, though it may -\ 12 PHILOSOPHY OF be unconscious, factors. These relations, which are apprehended as pleasurable or painful, may be various. There is a mechanical relation when one thing acts as a support for another ; chemical relation, which is a much closer, more intimate relation of the particles of one body with those of another ; and the mental and moral relations, which are spiritual ones, of love, friendship, adoration, moral sense of duty to act according to natural feeling and intelligence of cause ; but in all these relations the Principle of Efficient Cause is only the intermediate one, and, important as it is, it is not the one Princi^^le of Causation ; it holds an intermediate place between the Principle of Suffi- cient and that of Final Cause ; for although no good thing can be attained unless the right means for its attainment are employed, yet unless there is a pre- conceived, already designed end to be attained, no adjustment of means would be possible. Persons and things are created, and God, their Creator, has made His creatures for enjoyment; but in order that they may attain the joy He has pur- posed for them, they must enter into manifold rela- tions both with the things of sense and with one another, in order that all their powers and faculties being brought into play, the spiritual being may be so developed that the man may claim his birthright — a claim which the Great Father is sure to ratify, either in this world or the next, to those who have made good their title to it, and yet which He Himself cannot grant to those who have not yet done this. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 13 For altliough God has formed His creatures for happiness, it is the happiness of a rational creature — of man, whose nature is essentially moral and spiri- tual, and which, therefore, cannot be bestowed on him from without. God Himself cannot make those happy who refuse to obey His laws, and work out their own salvation by using the means suitable for self-development. This it is that constitutes the true value of the Principle of Efficient Causation. This principle being clearly understood, it will be known on what true happiness the perfection of our nature depends ; for until men learn on rational grounds to enter into those relations which tend to the develop- ment of their spiritual life, they can never know what joy is. And it is not only for the highest, but for every subordinate degree of happiness that self- development is needed. Society, nature, art, are all enjoyable according to the degree of development of the faculties of those who can delight in them. Eelations are directly felt without reflective com- prehension of the Principle of Sufficient Reason which comes after ; and it is only a relation positively experienced that can give us an idea of the negation or absence of a relation. It is because of this direct action of things or persons upon us that people are found who say that they never seek their own happiness. God has not left us to invent sources of enjoyment ; He has Himself provided them in the relations He has con- stituted to exist between each of us and other beings, 14 PHILOSOPHY OF SO that as we are gradually thrown into these rela- tions, we learn by actual experience in what enjoy- ment consists. This is verified as much in the different sensational relations of things to bodily health and comfort as in the spiritual sphere of emotional relations. Hence we seek both material and spiritual objects for their own sakes, and devote ourselves to great designs, political or benevolent, without thinking of their effect on our own happiness. Consequently a singular imprudence in pursuit of special objects is often exhibited, which on reflection we cannot approve of as being activity in accordance with the Principle of Final Cause. Comprehension is that act by which we recognise tendency of Being. It proceeds from the Principle of Final Cause ; for since everything that is done, either by God or man, must be done for some purpose, and we know that the end aimed at by man is always something that he considers good for Being ; and as there could be no principle of human nature im- planted by God, the archetyipe of which did not form part of His own nature, therefore we must believe good, the perfection of rational, self-conscious, and God-conscious beings, to be the final cause of the universe. Conception is the generic term for the entire process of spontaneous and reflective thought, per- ception, apprehension, comprehension constituting the species ; and we shall find that in every concep- tion we form, the notions of a Sufiicient, Efficient, and SELF- CON SCI O USNESS. 15 Final Cause are involved. These notions are all replies to *'qualis — notions of quality, of cause, which are the questions that circle around Being." "When this threefold process has been performed, we. have what we call *' thought a subject out." We have answered or sought for answers to the spontane- ously arising questions suggested to the mind by our own sensations, emotions, and volitions, or spontaneous self-determination. What produced this or that effect upon me ? By whom or by what means was it brought about ? and what was the good meant in it, or of what use is it ? cui bono ? a quoi bon ? But although these three acts constitute the entire process of spontaneous thought, and because it is the universal process, may be called the idea or understanding, which is of the Ego or Being _per se, yet by means of these separate acts of intelligence or mental representation manifold conceptions are stored up in the mind ; just as in the one act of seeing we see colours of every degree of light and shade, in the one act of hearing we hear many different tones, musical notes and discordant sounds, so in the one act of perceiving we perceive different persons and things, in the one act of apprehending we apprehend various relations, and in comprehend- ing comprehend the many forms of pursuit of good. Thus countless conceptions are formed, which we intuitively arrange in the order of these categories of thought, an order which is native and inherent in the mind itself, and which alone makes science possible. i6 PHILOSOPHY OF Keal thinking — thinking as thought — is thus seen to possess an imminent process or function, the function being the explanation of Being through Being. The order of thought is the order of Being — the object being understood by means of the subject, the universe by means of our own states of con- sciousness, which is the only medium through which the universe is revealed to us. All objects are classified by us according to the effect they produce on us, and their qualities predicated according to the relation in which they stand to us, the tendency of everything being necessarily conceived by us as good or not according as it tends to our well-being (happi- ness), or the reverse. All the sciences * have their source in one or other of the three Principles of Causation. The physical sciences, such as astronomy, physics, chemistry, have their source in the Principle of Efficient Causation, since all these sciences deal primarily with relations. The moral sciences, i.e., ethics and politics, in the Principle of Final Cause, since tendency of Being, object, aim in action, is the great point in each of these sciences. Ontology, zoology, botany, have their source in the Principle of Sufficient Cause, because these sciences have Being itself, spiritual Being or material exist- ence, for their subject-matter. * " The sciences are hut phases of the one fact of self-consciousness in re- flection. It is in seZ/-conscioiisness that the verification and genesis of the concepts of causation — the principles of science — are found. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 17 Having now stated the principles of spontaneous thought, it remains for me to speak of the supreme act of reason — reflection, or the introspective applica- tion of these principles to the consideration of the subject-object, or Ego. Introspective reflection is the one act that em- braces all the other acts of the reasoning process. Like the mirror of memory, it gathers up the scattered rays of consciousness, and gives back the perfect image of the Ego, so that in it we stand revealed to ourselves. This culminating act of the reasoning process has its own peculiar science, that on which all the other sciences depend, namely, logic, the science of the idea, i.e.y of the relation between the facts of Beino^ and thous^ht. The general ideas of reason which constitute metaphysics being but generalisations of the con- crete subjective concepts which have our own being for subject, it always gives us the greatest pleasure to find that the order of thought is the order of Being, and vice versa. Thus we realise the sense of truth. Mr. Lewes says in his "Problems of Life and Mind " that he has decomposed the working of the sentient mechanism into the three fundamental constituents ; and as his analysis of the sentient mechanism afi'ords the strongest confirmation of my theory, showing as it does how the three Principles of Causation have their source in the nervous system, that simultaneous corresponding nerve action, in 1 8 PHILOSOPHY OF fact, takes place with every act wliether of percep- tion, apprehension, or comprehension, I quote the following passage, p. 247, and also one from the " Unity of Nature," by the Duke of Argyle. " To illustrate this novel conception I proposed to name the Triple Process The Psychological Spectrum, It was not, perhaps, a very felicitous name, but the optical spectrum furnished the readiest image I could think of. That spectrum is said to be constituted by three fundamental colours — red, green, and violet — each due to a particular order of vibrations. Not only so, but each colour is found to contain among its conditions the orders of vibra- tion which characterise the other two ; that is to say, one colour owes its special character not to an order of vibrations absent from the others, but to the predominance of one order. Thus while there is a quantitative value specially assigned to red, there is in every red ray a certain amount of the vibra- tions characteristic of green and violet ; in green there are, over and above the special vibrations assigned to green, both red and violet vibrations; in violet, both green and red. What the physicist professes to demonstrate with regard to the optical spectrum, I profess to render acceptable with i:egard to the psychological spectrum. We shall presently see how every neural process is constituted by neural units — tremors which may be likened to the ethereal pulses — and how it is from the predominance of one order of tremors that mental states are quantitatively SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 19 and qualitatively individualised. According to tlie analogy I have indicated, the motor-impulse is bound up with the co-ordinating and sensory activities, as the red waves are bound up with the green and violet. The sentient structure is such that *it moveth altogether if it move at all,' every excitation beiug necessarily neuro-muscular and central ; just as the retina responds according to its structure, whether its threefold response be due to three dif- ferent kinds of fibre (according to Young and Helmholtz), or to three difi'erent modes of excitation. We cannot banish the red waves from the luminous sensation — we can only lessen their energy and pre- dominance ; and, as I maintain, we cannot extricate a conception from a motor element, a movement from a sensory element, a sensation from a grouping and a motor element — we can only recognise the pre- dominance of one or the other. "In reflex actions, automatic actions, gestures, and voluntary actions, there is a successive promi- nence of the sensory element and occultation of the motor element. In cerebral rehearsal, the motor element, although present, is in complete occultation ; so much so, that its presence has long been unsus- pected, and will be disputed. As the idea passes into act, and the motive becomes a volition, the motor ele- ment is more and more conspicuous ; conversely in the automatic and reflex actions, the sensory element is so obscured that its presence has not been recognised. /'The intermediate process (brain work) may be 20 • PHILOSOPHY OF either desire or though fc, logical combination of emotive or cognitive elements. The final process — discharge — may be a movement of limb, an expression of face, or a word : the word may be silent." "^ Perception, Apprehension, and Comprehension t may, to borrow an expression of the Duke of Argyle in " The Unity of Nature," be called ''the senses of man's mind." He says: ''The structure of the mind is seen to be a structure whose very property and function it is to take in and assimilate the truths of nature, and that in an ascending order according to the rank of these truths in the system and constitution of the universe. Our moral and intellectual perceptions of things, which in their very nature are invisible, come home to us as invested with a new authority in the light of the wonderful lanoruasje of the senses. It is the authority of an adjusted structure, of a mental organisation which has been moulded by what we call natural causes, these being the causes on which the unity of the world depends." " The spirit of interpretation is in communication with the realities which lie behind phenomena" * " Des actions reflexes qui sont plus speciales au cerveau . . . pro- duisent du c6t6 du mouvement des actions reflexes qui ne se traduisent pas immediatement par des contractions musculaires, mais qui se bornent a fournir les excitations et les images motrices les plus generales pour les mouvements futurs de la complexite la plus grande et pour des actions musculaires composees (actes)." — Griesinger : Traite des Mala- dies Mentales, p. 20. t Perception is of phenomena or effects. Apprehension is of causes physical or spiritual. Comprehension is of special tendency or moral purpose. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 21 (effects), "with energies" (causes) "which are kindred with its own " (nature). " The spirit of interpretation is in the nature of a sense. In the lower animals every external stimulus moves to some appropriate action ; in man it moves to some appropriate thought." " The sense of obligation applies to whatever course of conduct reason" (Keflective Keason under principle of sufficient reason) " may determine to be the most fitting and the best." " It is the essence of the theory of development that all things should have worked together for the good of the Being that was to be," — that was to be made in the spiritual image of his Maker, and so capable of holding communion with Him. § 4. If we watch the development of thought in the mind of a child, we shall see that directly he begins to think at all, he thinks in the manner I have described ; we shall see that it is the natural spon- taneous process, and that no one ever does think except under the three forms of Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Cause.'"'' No sooner does the child begin to act, to bring into play his muscular activity, and find that he can exert an influence in the world around him, than the germ of the idea of Sufficient Causation * Physiology, as a part of psychology, thus confirms this theory of mine of the genesis of the concept or of the categories of thought ; the psychological laws are the neural representations of the order present in the physiological or neural system. 22 PHILOSOPHY OF begins to unfold in his mind. He throws down his toys, pushes things away from him, tries to grasp anything that attracts him. Thus his own being, his spiritual life, is the Sufficient Cause of the effects which he produces. A little later he begins to form plans of his own, and with bricks, cards, &c., to make houses, lay out gardens, model farms, and other buildings ; and here it is that he begins to apprehend the meaning of Efficient Cause ; that, in order to produce certain effects, things must be brought into suitable relations with one another ; that for the top to spin, the string must be twisted round it ; for the horse to rock, the foot or hand must be pressed upon one end ; for the house to stand, the topmost bricks must have suf- ficient support from the lower ones. Of course it will only be these simplest mechanical relations, and those moral ones of people being kind to him, that the child will at first be able to understand, though even here the practical notion of the right position of the centre of gravity, the resistance of the air, and other facts of elementary physics, as well as those of certain acts being right or wrong, are beginning to spring up in his mind, the unloving conduct seeming bad to him whilst kindness appears right. And it is the same with regard to the principle of Final Cause, the idea of good or perfection of Being can only at first take the form of something that is .immediately pleasant to him. He plays with his toys to amuse himself because he likes to. It will SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 23 take some time for the highest idea of Final Cause to be conceivable by him. But while he is thus in his own young life acting out the idea in its threefold form, the entire process (involving as it does the three principles of Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Cause, which, though in thought we can distinguish, we can yet never really separate from each other) is constantly being presented to him in the various trades, professions, household occupations, and field-work that the people about him are engaged in, and thus he learns by degrees to enlarge his conceptions, comprehends that amusement is not the highest aim, and the aim becoming loftier, appropriate means will suggest themselves. But that the idea in some form is inwrought into the very being of the child we cannot help perceiving from the constantly recurring questions, Why must I learn this ? why do that ? what is the good of it ? And these very questions we are all continually asking either ourselves or others. The questions assume various forms. What is it ? who made it ? what is it for ? what is the good of it ? why must I do it ? But they all spring from the same root, the want that is implanted in the very nature of man, and which grows and deepens as his j)owers unfold ; the demand for the satisfaction of his reason, i.e., for answers that will satisfy these constantly recurring questions, and it is in proportion as the answers are satisfactory that the mind is at rest. But if it is thus natural to man to reason correctly, 24 PHILOSOPHY OF if it is the common heritage of the human race, how- is it that we so constantly complain of people acting so foolishly, being so unreasonable, of this or that custom being absurd, hurtful, injurious ? It is because this simple, unconscious, automatic process, though spontaneously acted out, requires ideal or generalised realisation in reflection. When once so realised, the truths involved in the reasoning process cannot be doubted, but they are not obvious, and direct spontaneous thought is so much easier than reflective, the" supreme act of reason, of which it remains for me to speak, that many neglect the latter almost entirely, and therefore few have understood that we can only be and do good in proportion to our realisation of the synthetic principle upon w^liich rational action is conducted, viz., the Principle of Sufficient Eeason; the wants of our ow^n spiritual nature being the only standard by which we can judge of the real needs of others ; the richness and fulness of our own life being alone that by which we know how to supply these needs ; for the only light by which we can discern in w^hat true right- ness of action consists is the light wdiich our ow^n life, our own being, sheds on the w-orld of nature and of spirit, thus enabling us to interpret both : and not discerning this, many have thought that to do violence to their own nature was to do that Avhich w^as pleasing to God. This has been the fruitful source alike of religious error and mistaken notions as to social duties. So many kinds of artificial SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 25 goodness have been invented, that men have need to be reminded that " obedience is better than sacrifice," God's way of making men happy (blessed) better than any man can devise for himself. The principle of " sufficient reason,'* which is the ground of reflective reason, and so of metaphysics, is ''Actual Being,'' that which is present in a being, being the only sufficient reason for his concepts regarding objects external, all knowledge being simply recognition of what is cognised in subjective experience. Metaphysics, as the science of conscious- ness, is the science of the grounds of our concepts — understanding is through sympathy with kind — and as the subjective understanding is a complex one of three forms of causality, which are all involved necessarily in one another. Being, relatively of Being, and tendency of Being, or purpose in action. It is not possible for reason (which is from actual Being) to ignore any one of the three forms of causality. Therefore, Professors Tyndall and Huxley cannot talk of the relations between chemicals and chemicals without implicitly believing in the existence of those chemicals or objects of thought that are related — so that when we see anything, from the performance of a steam engine to the adapted action of the con- stituents of the cosmos, can we, I say, help supposing the purpose or Final Cause of both to be other than the useful to, or the conducive to, the good for Being or beings? the Final Cause accounts for Efficient Causa- tion or established relations between thins^s and in the 26 PHILOSOPHY OF idea of purpose of an intelligent Final or originating Cause. Being itself is necessarily assumed — therefore our recognition of the exhibition of the attributes of Personality. Power, wisdom, and goodness in the order of the universe, and particularly in our own intelligent and moral being, is the " sufficient reason," in reflective consciousness, for our believing in a Per- sonal God, as for our loving or rather adoring Him ; adoration involving obedience in self-determination or spiritual action, whether in thought, emotion, or will. § 5. Eeflective reason is at once the badge of our spiritual nature and the most important operation of the human mind, it alone enablino^ us to read a meanino^ into all the work that has been wrought without its aid. For it must be remembered that it is only by means of scientific or subjective inference from our own states of being that we arrive at the knowledge of the external world, which we can never know directly. We feel different sensations, are affected in various ways, by light, by colours, by sound ; these changes in ourselves we are forced to ascribe to variety of being in the Non-Ego, diversity of causes from diver- sity in experienced effects. And while inferring the existence of the external world from the effects it produces on us, we are obliged to postulate real or spiritual Being as its source, as the substance of which power, wisdom, and goodness are the attributes or phenomena. The intuitive principle upon which we proceed in the exercise of reflective reason is that of SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 27 Sufficient Eeason. The question we ask ourselves on every occasion is — Have I a sufficient reason for such a belief, such a feeling, or such a hope ? Does the faith correspond with my intelligence of causation, does the feeling correspond with the impressions I have really received from the object ? Does the hope correspond with the intuitions of the moral sense ? If not, in whichever respect I am without a sufficient reason for any faith, love, and hope which should represent the actual principle of my very being, then I am believing, loving, hoping irrationally. This is the transcendental principle of reason which differen- tiates us from the lower animals. This we are obliged to do, because we know that our own works, everything by which we manifest ourselves to others, has its source in our own spiritual being, which answers to power, and in our intellectual and moral nature, which answers to wisdom and goodness ; and as the reasoning process may be summed up as ''the recognition of similars," so, that which we find in ourselves we predicate of athers ; and as we are thus enabled to understand the actions of other like beings from what we ourselves do, we cannot, when we turn our attention from its especial regard of ourselves and our fellow-creatures, and con- template the entire world at large, with its marvels of beauty and order, its vast expanse, its wonderful adaptation of means to ends — we cannot suddenly stop the natural current of thought, arbitrarily sus- pend the normal process of ratiocination, and because 28 PHILOSOPHY OF the mode of working differs in many respects from our own, chiefly as displaying a much higher degree of wisdom and power, therefore deny conscious intel- ligence in its Creator, any more than we are justified by reason in denying intelligence in the lower animals because their form of intelligence is of a lesser kind, and presents another form of variety from our own. And this is especially the case when we realise how nature speaks to us in just the same kind of way that the works of poets and painters do, only that all those feelings of awe, of wonder, of repose, of joy, which steal into our hearts as we gaze on or ponder over the works of high imaginative art, are deepened a thousand-fold when, instead of pictures or statues, it is the mountains themselves, dreary wastes, frown- ing skies, or sunny pastures on which we gaze. Works of art may be called in some degree imita- tions of nature, though we could not even imitate unless we could comprehend, and comprehension of an idea involves similarity of nature ; and works that are simply copies are not those that bear the stamp of genius, which is universally acknowledged to be ideally creative ; these, therefore, we cannot help taking as strong ground for the belief that all the noblest qualities we find in man exist in his Creator. It is also by means of reflection that we are enabled to distinguish the phenomena both of the outer and inner world from the soul or spirit. It is only thus, when the " I " in " I think," " I feel," is seen to be the ever-constant factor in the ever- varying world of phe- SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 29 nomena that the spirit awakes to self-conscious life, the life of pure or transcendental reason, in which the lower animals have no part ; and thus they can never know God, for the knowledge of God can only be attained by applying the simple spontaneous process of thought consciously to the consideration of the subject- object, or Ego in reflection. This is the necessary idea of a Creator, for it arises imperiously in the mind. Thus alike both for the external world, the world of nature, and the phenomena of our own minds, we are obliged to postulate spiritual beiug as the raison explanatoire, the only reason by which we can satisfactorily account to ourselves for the existence of either. Those who argue against this view, and try to prove (show) that we are only a '' bundle of perceptions," a " cluster of sensations," seem uncon- scious that in the very act of denying they cannot help affirming, and do actually affirm, the existence of something besides the *' bundle of perceptions ; " for there must be a perceiver of the separate qualities of things and attributes of persons, i.e,, a perceiving Ego. Mr. Shadworth H. Hodgson has given a compre- hensive summary of all the theories that have been formulated to account for the origin of consciousness in the finite individual. He says ("Time and Space," p. 149, § 19), " All theories possible and actual as to the origin of consciousness may be divided, first, into such as place its cause in an object outside of con- sciousness, inferred to be its cause from examina- tion of the phenomena, and such as place its cause 30 PHILOSOPHY OF in an object within consciousness, revealed by an analysis of consciousness itself. Another division of such theories is the division into such as are idealistic, seeking the cause of consciousness in an immaterial object or essence ; and such as are materialistic, seeking its cause in a material object and its properties. A third division is into such as place the cause of consciousness in an object or essence considered statically, and such as place it in a movement or an activity, which theories may be called dynamical. All theories must fall, since these divisions are each of them exhaustive, under one alternative at least of each of these three pairs. . . . There will thus be three classes of theories : first, those which infer an external immaterial object, called a soul, to be the invariable condition or cause of consciousness ; secondly, those which find by analysis an internal immaterial activity, called by Fichtethe Ego, by Schellingthe Eeason, by Hegel the Spirit, as the cause of consciousness, this activity being also the Absolute, the cause of all things as well as of consciousness, and the sum as well as the cause of all its effects ; and, thirdly, those which infer an exter- nal material object, such as the organised body, or the brain, or nervous matter, belonging to such a body, to be the cause or invariable condition of consciousness." This comprehensive summary enables me to point out a distinction which I believe is too little re- garded. I know that this is psychological, and that in psychology we can inquire into the origin or SELF. CON SCI USNESS, 3 1 cause of consciousness, but I think it would be so much clearer, it would prevent much confusion and uncertainty as to the meaning of writers, if, instead of saying consciousness, the expression *' the pheno- mena of consciousness" was used — for something, surely, must be the subject of consciousness — surely thinking supposes a thinking subject ; but I think it a pity the term should be so often used indifferently for man as a conscious being or for the phenomena of consciousness. Now this is the distinction to which I refer, and I think it is peculiar to my theory to insist upon Being as the only Sufficient Cause on which Efficient Causation and Final Cause depend. Of course, the l^henomena of consciousness would be explained by the Principle of Efficient Causation. For when we put a question in the form, What is the immediate cause of this ? we are applying the principle of Efficient Causation, and can ouly obtain an answer if that of which we are seeking the cause is a relation. We can ask what is the cause of a sound or a colour, because each is the result of a certain mode of air or ether vibrations on a sentient organism ; and we can ask what is the immediate cause of our experiencing certain emotions, such as joy, or pleasure, or aversion, because these are pro- duced by the relations of suitability or unsuitability, of harmony or discord, which exist between us and some other person or thing. But all the phenomena of consciousness, feeling, thought, and will can in 32 PHILOSOPHY OF Eeflection be ascribed only to a conscious spirit, the source of sensation, emotion, intelligence, and volition. When we state the fact that feeling implies some one who feels, thinking some one who thinks, every one acknowledges that it is true ; but when treating of consciousness, the important fact that it is we who are conscious seems often allowed almost to slip into oblivion, and then it is not realised that the essential nature of Being is spirit in some determinate state or form. Do we not mean by being conscious that ive, realising our own existence and distinguishing the Ego from the Non-Ego, are enabled by means of our organism to hold communion with other like beings and with the external world, for when this communi- cation is cut off, either in sleep or from any injury to the brain, we say the person is unconscious ? That there may be a semi-consciousness such as when dreaming does not affect the question, as this is known to be the result of a partial excitation of the organism. The important point is, that there is always the ive or I and the organism, we and our thoughts, we and the external world, of which our organism is a part — always tioo factors in conscious- ness, subject and object — and these two elements we can never separate, nor yet by any effort realise to ourselves or express as one. Those who deny spiritual Being and would resolve mind into a product of matter certainly attempt, as SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. MTJ'R I'^j'SB. ' - - Principal Caird shows, to explain the known m terms of the unknown, for the only immediate knowledge we have is of spirit. But the only explanation I can oflfer of what I mean by the word "spirit," is that it is the term chosen to describe the source of pheno- menal manifestations that are not material. The existence of matter we can only infer from the effects it produces upon our organism, in which molecular tremors are the signs to us of external objects, or suggestions, as Berkeley puts it. No analysis of the material world has been able to discover what its ulti- mate essence really is ; all that can be said of our own organism is that it is the medium of communication ' with the material universe. But just as we could not say that any part of the telegraphic apparatus is the sentiment we express, so the neural apparatus cnnnot be said to be the intellio^ent agent which receives or conveys impressions by means of it. That greatest of mysteries as to hoiv we feel the organism to be ours, though we have no direct consciousness of our bodies as part of our real being, remains ; but although the mystery itself is inscrutable, I think we can see a reason for its beinor so in the effect it has on the development both of the reasoning powers and the character, but especially the latter, — the feeling of awe and mystery, the wonder as to how death will solve it, beinor one of the most powerful counter-influences against frivolity. And for all we know, Berkeley may be right — right in his fundamental idea that perception is only 34 PHILOSOPHY OF an arbitrary effect produced in us by the divine will, although he fails to treat exhaustively many of the questions on which he touches, as Professor Fraser has pointed out ; and his mode of expression, especially in his earlier speculations, shows how much we owe to the recent advances in physical science, especially physiology, towards a science of psycho- logy. But although we really know what spirit is much more truly (intimately) than what matter is, and though we must believe in its existence, as it would have been inconsistent with Divine Perfection to 'deceive us, yet we cannot express its existence ; the reason of which is, as Principal Caird shows in his ''Philosophy of Eeligion," that language has its source in the metaphors of sense. We have not a spirit language, and it seems reasonable to believe it possible that we never should have — that some organism will always be needful to make finite spirit manifest. Thus though we can never prove that we are not our sensations,* we are each of us conscious that sensation does not resume all our being, and what we are conscious of is the ultimate of reason or necessary logical inference, t I have only slightly touched on all that we can know of God by applying the three principles of reason to the explanation of the universe. Besides * I find Professor Ferrier has given a proof of this, and I think his demonstration conclusive. t The Hindoo sage, Vassyayna, in his sixty-four arts, taught the drawing of inference, reasoning or inferring. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 35 the intelligence manifested in desim or definite purpose of good or happiness as the Final Cause of the spiritual universe, His omnipotence is exhibited in the efficiency of the means He employs for the ends that He has proposed to Himself, and the efficacy of the relations He has established between things to produce order. That there is in Him something responsive to our moral nature, that He is supremely good, is evident from His having made the pursuit of good or happiness to be our instinctive individual tendency and the categorical imperative of our duty to others ; and it is not likely that He would have made that the one constant motive in all our actions which w^ould be contradictory to His own. The absurdity of the supposition, the anarchy it would involve, is so manifest, that it seems almost needless to make the statement. This is the simple unstrained natural outcome of the idea as seen in Reflection, the intuitive appre- hension of Being, relativity and tendency of Being, through identity of Being with our own. It is the subjective revelation of w^hat other beings are, since we can only understand others through what we ourselves are; and this natural, spontaneous recognition, or logical, i.e., formal, " substitution of similars," is the exhaustive definition of reason (Pro- fessor Jevons). For a similar effect a similar cause is always and everywhere postulated ; for similarity of agency a similar agent ; from a similar agent similarity of purpose in action, or conformity of 36 PHILOSOPHY OF action with the nature of the agent : good from the good — bad from the bad — intelligence from the intel- ligent. And the Principle of Final Cause being obvi- ously the good for Being, the application of this prin- ciple to the destiny of man throws a light on what that destiny must be — a light which grows clearer and brighter in proportion as his spiritual life, his reason- ing powers, and emotional and moral nature become developed and grow strong. But it is only in reviewing the triune or triform idea, not from dwelling on one principle of thought taken separately, as though it were comprehensive alone, that truth regarding the destiny of man can be arrived at. Our consciousness is synthetical, par- taking of the unity of Being. The one undeniable fact or presentation in consciousness which makes the starting-point of thought or mental representation, is the sense of being. Efficient Causes, or the relations between things manifested by their action or reaction upon each other, cannot be stated or formulated in thought without not only implying, but explicitly affirming. Being or existence, which is the only Suffi- cient Cause of conception or mental representation. Things or objects of thought must exist to be able to be related to each other ; nor can the Principle of Final Cause or tendency of Being be predicated unless the thing or being of which it is the tendency exists. "Ex nihilo nihil." Nothing, no effect can be pro- duced by nothing, i.e., without a cause; therefore it is a necessity of mental representation or subjective con- SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 37 ception of Causation always to assume or recognise, or, as Professor Jevons has it, " substitute a similar " cause to account for a similar eflfect. Now we are con- scious of ourselves as powers, or causes, intelligent, emotional, and moral, or as powers existing, related, and acting naturally for the good for Being, or for the maintenance of the integrity of spiritual Being. And as in reflection or introspection, or retrospec- tive analysis of the Ego in the categorisation of its manifestations in feeling, thought, and will, or self- determination for the good for Being, the sub- ject or Ego becomes to us an object of considera- tion like any other object, a Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Cause is necessarily and equally to be inferred and assumed for the existence or being of the Ego, as for that of any other object, a Creator, Preserver, and ever to be depended uj)on Benefactor, as the necessarily or reasonably assumed source of a powerful, related and benevolent being. Now the idea of good or perfection of Being, since it is our own constant motive of action, is the one we are necessitated to assume, even when the mode of w^orking differs from our own, as it does in what we call " the Creation," the mystery of which, even the doctrine of evolution, sublime as are the vistas of ever-changing worlds it opens out to us, scarcely in any degree lessens, and after all the explanations attempted by different systems of philosophy, the only words that give us any satisfaction are, *' In the beginning God created the Heavens and Earth." We 38 PHILOSOPHY OF feel we can rest in tliem and wait"'^ Yet tliougli the hoio of all this world of wonders can be but dimly guessed at, the why is our one beacon-fire of hope, which no sorrow has power to quench ; for unfulfilled and un- realised as it is on this planet, we are necessitated by reason to postulate from this very disappointment of the moral sense or principle of intelligent action here, another or other states of existence in which the ideals of the feelings (emotions), of the intellect, which exacts the most perfect adaptation of means to ends, and of the principle of self-determination for good, which requires the perfection of Being, will be attained. It stands to reason that all these ideals will be realised by the Creative Being in the lives of the creatures to whom He has imparted the faculty of ideation; for the opposite conception, the suppo- sition that, to the utter confusion of reason, our individuality ends here, would induce the belief that our nature is, to use Sir William Hamilton s forcible expression, "a living lie," that hope of the good or perfection of being is a delusion and a snare. And this would involve the conclusion that the Supreme Being or Person is defective in the essential attributes of personality, or rational con- scious Being, namely, power, wisdom, and goodness. Imperfection of Being, with its consequent sufiering, is contradiction or negation of Being, the inane, * A First or Sufficient Cause being all that we require for the satis- faction of our intellectual faculty. " II ne s'agit que de nos conceptions necessaires," beyond these or contrary to these we cannot go. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 39 the unintelligible, perfection always being in pro- portion to amount of Being, the highest perfection being the greatest amount of Being, fulness of Being, fulness of life. We see this alike in the vegetable and animal and moral worlds ; each thing is perfect in its kind, and higher in its own kingdom, as it is rich in form, in colour, in strength, in grace, in beauty ; and then it is all these, with the added noblest qualities of intellect and heart, that give us our ideal of man. The absurdity of the conclusion is thus shown in that it would involve the effect being greater than its cause — the creature would be conceived as more perfect than his Creator; the subject of the moral law more moral than the Lawgiver. Now, although the good for Beiug is the constant motive in all that man undertakes — yet that he very often fails in accomplishing his end is only too evident ; but this we know arises from various causes — from weakness, from mistakes, through limitation of Being, and con- sequently of knowledge. But these causes in no way apply to the Supreme Personal Being ; He who has so formed us, that we cannot but seek good for our- selves and others, must Himself have good for His purpose is obvious to reason ; for if there is one fact of consciousness to which we cannot shut our eyes, it is to the fact that we never consciously seek or actu- ally desire our own harm ; and even those who seek to injure others, do so from some mistake, because their natures are so perverted, that they imagine that doing 40 PHILOSOPHY OF harm to others will conduce to their own good ; but this in no way invalidates the argument, because we are treating of the normal typical process, and no science takes injured or defective organs as specimens in describing their structure and function. And we know that when we give ourselves any kind of pain, it is in order to attain some good thing, some higher satisfaction, for the sake of which we feel the pain or discomfort is well worth bearing, or because we are under a misapprehension as to the real nature of happiness. And since we not only instinctively put forth our hands, close our eyes, or move our body, so as to escape some threatening danger, but also as instinctively rush forward to save any one we love or even any of our kind, can we, with all this weight of concurring evidence, when the organism, not only of man but of every sentient creature, acts automatically instinctively, for the preservation of the integrity of Being, its highest good, can we logically believe the Maker of these creatures to have any other motive of action than the perfection of Being, the greatest amount of good that each one is capable of enjoying, and this in an ever higher and higher degree as the subjects of it are capable of development ? . . . " I cannot go Where universal love not smiles around, From seeming evil still educing good, And better then again and better still In infinite progression." — Thomson. William Law (the Mystic, 1752) says, "I allow SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 41 of no other God but Love, who from eternity to eter- nity can have no other will towards the creature but to communicate good." The essential attributes of Spirit being power, wisdom, and goodness, can we suppose God to be other than infinitely good ? The ideas of reason are mental representations of what is present in the being of the Ego ; the idea is not of non-entity but of Being and its modifica- tions. It is only through similarity that we can understand each other, only know others in propor- tion as we can recognise in them similar or identical qualities ; and it being the essence of the idea to be universal in its scope, and all-comprehensive in its postulates, we can no more logically exclude the Supreme Person from our estimate of personality than the lowest or highest of our own kind. And besides, in no conceivable case would it be so absurd to sup- pose an exception to the moral law as in the case of the Giver of that law, the Creator of the instinctive individual tendency to good or well-being. He Who has made us feel that we shall have to answer for it if we are not true to reason, and do not respect the nature He has given to other like beings, who desire what is good for them just as we do ourselves. He is necessarily conceived of as being ''a Power that makes for righteousness," i.e., that wills and will accomplish the fulfilment of His typical idea in created beings. Bound as we are by our rational nature to do good unto others, it follows equally 42 PHILOSOPHY OF that we naturally expect good from others, empliati- cally including the all-powerful Possessor of all good gifts. And as this rational hope is so often — always to a considerable degree — disappointed here, like the phoenix born again out of its own ashes, out of the present disappointment of the moral sense, the flower of eternal hope is born — " Oh wunder aus der Asche meines Herzens es bluthet eine Blume.'' '''^ Even as the fallen foliage forms fresh soil for the coming life of the spring-time (renewed life from partial death), even as the vital germ pushes itself through the dull soil, and lives by what strove to bury it, even as the shadow on the dial, marks the presence of the sun ; and as from the darkest hour of midnight ^'springs the opal-tinted morn," so, born of deepest sorrow, joyous Hope comes forth— hope which the poets have loved to picture as the many- coloured iris, the messenger of the gods, the token of mercy, promising a life where there shall be no more crying or tears, and where the sejDaration of death shall threaten us no more. It is to this joyous time that hope really points ; this is the justification of the ways of Grod to man, for which the whole rational creation groaneth and travaileth ; and this we look for, not because we ourselves are good, though that we shall become so is involved in our expec- tation, but because of the necessarily postulated goodness of God, the Creator and Inspirer of love * " Adelaida," Beethoven. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 43 and hope. As we cannot choose but hope, hope is either a prophecy or a snare ; but the latter sup- position being, as it is, the self-contradictory, is inconceivable ; it must therefore be a prophecy that the trustful desire for good which it inspires will be fulfilled. We cannot conceive the nature of the Creator to be a contradiction of the nature of the rational creature whose capacity of discover- ing His existence and comprehending His works has no other possible source but the identity of his own being with the being of the Supreme.* Limited and partial though that identity must be, it cannot rationally be denied. M. Thiers wrote — " The crown of thorns man is doomed to wear here, is an illustration of the law of progressive deve- lopment." It is indeed given to the eye of the mind thus to cast its own horoscope ; and this man does, guided not by mere arbitrary fancy or vain imagination, but as he is bound to do by the laws of thought, the strict inferences of reason ; neces- sarily to conceive is implicitly to believe, though reflection may be required to make belief explicit. It is our own want of subjective development of feeling, thought, and will, that so limits our objective faith. " 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, Oh ! life, not death, for which we pant, More life and fuller that we want." Those who love not cannot recognise love in * He who can read " the handwriting on the wall " must be of the same nature as lie who wrote it. " Keco;;nition of similars." 44 PHILOSOPHY OF others ; those in whom intelligence is defective, or but little cultivated, do not comprehend design ; and those who are wanting in resolute self-determination, so that they allow themselves to drift or be driven into action, instead of rationally directing their own actions towards the accomplishment of a preconceived plan, not being very clear as to what their own pur- pose habitually is, do not in consequence very clearly apprehend the general law of action, which must always be action for the good for Being. As we are in what we hear and see, so we are also in what we feel and think, judge or determine. Not to love is to doubt of love ; not to reflect is to doubt of design ; and not to will strongly for good for ourselves and others, is not to believe in good as the natural uni- versal law of action. So little are the generality of mankind emotionally developed that ^' they have not desire enough for Hope — nor hope enough for desire." Hope is the emotion towards God. Hope is of the good for Being. What Descartes dwells upon as the chief require- ment in man is to have *' des iddes claires," so as to be able consciously to follow the dictates of reflec- tive reason. When we are tempted to imitate others, to do things commonly held to be right, to follow a course of conduct that would meet with general approval, but which we feel is not our own highest conception of duty, we should pause, reflect, and look to reason, which alone can resolve all our doubts, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 45 and show us tlie only right path for us to follow. The principle of Suflficient Keason is binding alike on feeling, thought, and will. But those who would thus obey the voice of reason have need of the highest courage, self-control, and gentleness, for they must often appear selfish to those who do not realise that things are so often " not what they seem ; " the highest kind of self-sacrifice is often that which appears the least like sacrifice at all, '' To do Thy will, Lord." Obedience to the will of God was what Christ taught, which is obedience to the law of reason ; and listening to this teaching, we shall see that to follow any lesser good, to put any lesser good in the place of a higher, is to destroy our own spiritual being, to act contrary to the principle of Sufficient Eeason, which is always the preservation of the integrity of, or action for perfection of, spiritual Being. The ideal is universal in truth, in force, in goodness ; and the nearer the life we realise is to the truth of human nature, the more of this human life it takes up into its own, the more moral, the more spiritual it is. "What we mean by the holiness of God is, that He possesses, in infinite integrity or perfection, the attri- butes of the Ego, or Person, power, wisdom, and good- ness. This is our rational or necessary idea of God. The holiness of finite beings consists in the endeavour to approach this integrity or perfection of Being. Thus Christ teaches, " Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect," i.e., endeavour to conform 46 PHILOSOPHY OF yourselves to the type of personality. And not only must we conform to the abstract type, cultivate those essential qualities, such as deep and intense feeling, clear apprehension of relations, and firm resolve to be true to these in action. ''Plato taught that each social unit should do that which it is most fitted to do, each thus receiving from the other the ele- ment of which it is itself most in need,'' ''^' without which there could be no perfect character, but this must be done after our own peculiar fashion, in accordance with the idiosyncrasies that God has allotted to each one of us. Thus if He has given you one talent, be true to that one ; if two, be true to those two ; if five, be true to the five. That A be really and completely A, and that C be thoroughly C, that each note give its full and perfect sound that it may help to swell the universal harmony, is the categorical imperative of the logical understanding, which is very far from requiring either the denial of, or the attempt to do away with, created idiosyncrasies. And while thus trying to mould our character in conformity with the law of reason, we shall see that the culture of the emotions must not be neglected, for the different logical axioms have each a corre- sponding emotion. That the Father or Creator of moral spirits should have correlated the emotions faith, love, and hope with the principles of thought, is an assumption that we are rationally bound to make ; for if a kingdom * Abbott, "Helleiiica.' SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 4'j be divided against itself how can it stand ? '' The ultimate subject of all educatiou," says Abbott, "is a living organism, whose vital power, thougli divisible in thought, is really one and undivided, that its vital wants are equally such, whether they be for fresh air, for useful knowledge, or for reli- gious truth." This latter science theology has only arrived at through introspective reflection on the subject or Ego, which in the frame of memory be- comes just as much an object to us as any part of the external world. For the explanation of this object of all objects — one's own soul — a Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Cause is more imperatively required than for any other object, because it is the object of the greatest importance to us. Even the knowledge of Efficient Causes does not reach the dignity of science, without reflection on our own consciousness of the efiects produced on us ; much less can it be expected that the Invisible Father should be revealed, excepting to our internal or spiritual consciousness. But as the Duke of Argyle says, in his present work on the Unity of Nature, " Man is accustomed to deal with the invisible, and to recognise it from similarity and relativity to his own essential being." The relativity of existences and of beings in general I have already treated of, under the principle of Efficient Causation, but I shall particularly endeavour to exhibit in its spiintuol form the conjugal bond, which in its in- tensest and only satisfying form is founded on essen- tial mutual complementariness of Being — that union 48 PHILOSOPHY OF of two beings only, in which an exact equilibrium of forces or perfect whole of Being, is constituted by the one presenting in excess the exact proportion of what the other is wanting in of faculty or power. Tennyson says " Love took the harp of life, — he struck its chords with might ; he struck the chord of self, it broke and passed in music out of sight." This is quite true in a sense, but it is '^ pour cause," as the French say, for the reason that the self is so cared for and ministered to by the very being of the beloved — that the sick hankering about self, that comes from the sad sense of weakness and forlorn- ness, has no longer any raison d'Stre. Duty is a relation of responsibility to God to be true to the nature He has given us, in all the various relations in which we stand to other persons, and to the things which He has made for our use and com- fort. The self-destructive cannot be right, because it is illogical as the contradiction or negation of Being. In an old Chaldean cylinder there occurs this expression, " Woe is me, for I have hurt my own self!" ''What shall it profit a man," says the Jewish Scripture, "if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul V* ** In the hour of death and in the day of judgment " we shall not be held responsible or called to account for the form of government which should prevail in France or England, but for how we have preserved our spiritual relations with the Father of Spirits, our Creator, and with our fellow-creatures, in all their difierent degrees of affinity to us. The SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 49 question is, '' What works for good or for ill in the soul of man ? '* The inquiry, How are we to act for the best ? resolves itself into the inquiry, ** What is the nature of the soul ? '' As action for the best for the body must be action according to the nature and needs of the body, so action for the best for the soul must be action according to the constitution and re- quirements of the soul. As the Stoics taught, virtue consists in a life in accordance with the rational nature of man. It is derived from ** vir," aman; thus virtue is the quality of manliness — the being truly a man. To know what sort of person a man is, or what his particular character is, you must know what are the ideals he holds of feeling, intelligence, and motive in self-determination or will. This is what Socrates' dictum, that a man is what he knows, really means. Faith is adhesion to the principles of spiritual or real Being — rational, loyal recognition of the attri- butes of Personality. Love is natural attraction for similars. Hope, or the expectation of receiving of the good for Being at the hands of all other rational, good, loving, or benevolent beings, is the continual correlative of acting oneself for the good for Being.'" Eational " substitution of similars," or expectation of similar motive in action in every fairly developed being. The only sufficient reason for action, or the only motive in action which approves itself to our reason, being action for the * I have been the friend of all men, said a dying Persian king ; why should I doubt that God will be my friend ? D 50 PHILOSOPHY OF good for Being; hence emphatically do we expect good from the Father, the Author of the emotional and rational thought- life of the universe. § 6. Hegel says — '* To thought it is absolutely neces- sary that there be being* The notion or idea repre- sents what is present in being. For the idea being has to go into itself." " The first predicate of thought is being, is I ; " all conceptions being but deduc- tions from the root concepts of the understanding of the Ego or Self. All rational ideas being the fruits of experience, they are generated in us by the funda- mental facts of our own being, by our experiences in feeling, thought, or intelligence of causation, and will, or motive in self-determination. And as these pre- sentations of experience can never be contradicted, they become formal a priori ideas of reason, every concrete case of actual experience when interpreted by the idea, is conceived as an illustration of one of these universal laws or categories of thought. The ideas, of reason in their ultimate analysis are simply inductions of universal and eternal laws, formed by reflecting upon the actually experienced modifications of being in the Ego. The three primordial forms of our own being are the moulds into which ideation is cast. The Ego is the ratio in ratiocination. If the Ego were dif- ferently constituted, its rational ideas would be diff'erent from what they are, just as if our bodies were diff'erently constituted we might have difl'erent ideas of space relations, there might be four instead SELF-CONSCIO USNESS. 5 1 of three dimensions of space ; the modes of our own being give form to our conception of Being, and only through our own sense of being, i.e., Being, relativity and tendency of Being, the subject-matter of thought, can we recognise Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Causes. This absolute union of thought and being was what Descartes taught in the celebrated '' cogito ergo sum," though the union is closer than the ''ergo" seems to imply ; the " sum " is involved in the " cogito." I think, being only a kind of contracted form of *'I am a thinking being," all activity sup- posing as it does an agent, being in fact a mani- festation of real Being, reflection, that supreme act of intelligent creatures, cannot even be conceived of as separate from being. " All that thought begin- ning could say to itself" (represent to itself), "as thought, could only be " am " or '' is ; " the first act or condition of thought would be the sense of being. *' Taking thought at its moment of birth, it could only say am " (Hegel). The ideas of reason repre- sent what appears in the particular and contingent as the universal and necessary, i.e., as a part of universal, immutable, and eternal order. There we have a system of noumenal logic, i.e., of universal thought. If thought were not universal, there could be no communication of it by one to another think- ing being ; in other words, we could not understand each other ; the understanding being of Self-hood, or of the ideal Ego, all reasoning concerning others is from this understanding. 52 PHILOSOPHY OF Kant said that ''scepticism is tlie severance of thought and being." This is true as far as scepticism itself is possible, one of those intuitions of genius only seen by those who have the power of looking into the heart of things; but we must remember that scepticism itself is only possible to a limited extent; we speak of a thorough sceptic, a complete sceptic, but no such being could really exist ; for although it may be possible to doubt of the being of God, of human beings, and of the existence of the external world, yet of these latter something must be believed if only that they are a vain show, the baseless fabric of a dream, and there remains the '* I think " from which at least no sceptic could dissever the '' therefore I am," and attributes such as intelli- gence or feeling cannot be logically thought of apart from some being of whom they are the attributes, which brings us back to the standpoint of Des- cartes. But one wonders more and more whenever one either reads or attempts to state the refutation of a sceptical, materialistic, or atheistic argument, how the holding of such opinion could ever have been esteemed a mark of intellectual superiority ; the mere statement of them brings out so forcibly their want of logical acumen and the overwhelming weight of evidence against them, that the reasoning must indeed have been sophistical that could have caused them to appear tenable. As the unity of thought and Being is absolute, complete comprehension can only result from identity SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 53 of being. Our knowledge of God can therefore only be a relative partial knowledge varying in proportion to tbe number of attributes we share with Him, and the degree of power in which they exist in us. Yet since it is of the very essence of thought that "the unknown cannot contradict the known," partial, inadequate, and limited as our knowledge of Him must be, it is not possible to doubt that we can truly though not exhaustively, know Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being. It is the same with regard to the lower animals, their differentia or the difference between them being constituted by the more or less of being w^hich each presents the one to the other class, and to the world of human beinojs that surround them : as thouo^ht cannot go beyond Being, our knowledge of them depends on what we ourselves are. Though with reo^ard to the lower animals our knowledo^e is much less, more difficult to realise than our knowledge of God. The life of mere sensation, and those lower forms of intellect that animals share with us, is so taken up into our higher life that we find it very difficult to bring the one vividly before us apart from the other, whereas those godlike qualities which belong to man's spiritual nature are so much more real to us, form so much larger a part of our conscious life, that we feel we do indeed know the Father of our Spirits. In sensation the molecules of man's organism thrill in responsive rhythm to the dance of the molecules 54 PHILOSOPHY OF outside of him ; thus does his own physical being positively reveal to him the static and dynamic order of the material universe, through his being actually a part-constituent of that order ; and equally through his own emotions of sympathy or antipathy does he divine, through sharing them, the emotions of other spirits. Emotion answers to emotion, as deep unto deep. Again, it is as being himself a designer or contriver of means to ends for the purpose of bringing about some good end that the signs of intelligence and goodness are manifest to him, or are recognised by him in the works and ways of others. It is the comprehension through his own faculty of ideation of the Divine idea in creation which is the condi- tion of man's delegated authority over nature and the lower animals. I hope I have now made it clear to the reader that there are various kinds of demonstration, i,e., emo- tional, intellectual, and volitional. Spinoza speaks also of physical or sensible demonstration. Eeflec- tive demonstration is sense transcending from the spiritual or noumenal being of the Ego. Demonstra- tion proceeds both from cause to effect and from effect to cause, and is thus both inductive and de- ductive. Eeflective deduction proceeds from cause to effect. Eeflective induction is inference from similarity of effects produced on us to similarity of cause producing them. Perceptive induction is from the individual to the class. Apprehensive in- duction is through or from similarity to our own SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 55 being — a similar cause is assumed for effects similar to those we produce. Comprehension is deductive, from principle to conclusion, from the nature of the conscious cause to the nature of the intended effect. Thus from a benevolent agent or intelli- gent moral cause, benevolent action or action for the purpose of good is necessarily postulated; the means pursued must be in consonance with the end, not subversive of it ; thus we cannot do evil that good may ensue, the end of action being perfection of Being. The relativity of our ideas of perception, apprehension, and comprehension to our own feelings, intelligence of causation and volition or motive in self-determination, is equally if not still more seen in our reflective judgments. That it is only in the light of reflection on our own experiences,"^^ in self- consciousness (self-consciousness being of the Ego as physical force, intelligent force, and will force), that we generalise the subjective concepts into objective postulates or general ideas of reason. It is because of his being thus a microcosm or epitome of the physical and metaphysical order of the universe that man can read off the laws or com- prehend the order of the macrocosm. The scientific or objective idea of the " uniformity of nature " is but a corollary from the inconceivability of our changing ourselves, and therefore of any agent changing itself, * Spinoza says, " To perfect the understanding is nothing else than to understand God and the attributes of God " (the -understanding is of Being or Personality), 56 PHILOSOPHY OF and so of any change taking place in tlie relations of any agents to each other ; all apparent change being only the exhibition of the different essential relations in which a thing stands to various other things. Thus though the a priori ideas of reason find their confir- mation in the d posteriori discoveries of the external order of nature, yet induction of law is always and only from the particular facts of Being or self-con- sciousness in reflection, verification being always in the last resort subjective or ration al/''*" The truth of the reasoning process may be confirmed objectively, but the induction and deduction by which we arrive at know- ledge are intuitive, subjective processes, and without faith in these, i.e., in the Ego, knowledge is unattain- able. It is only through our reflective faculty of gene- ralisation that the objective order of the universe stands revealed to us.f Thought is always relative to the * Kant stated that to the sense of our own organism we owe d 'priori physical concepts, necessary subjective concepts being the d priori con- •dition of all objective inference. t All explanation of the universe is rational, i.e., an explanation of effects produced on Being or consciousness. The "sufficient reason" for an individual believing a proposition to be true is, that it tallies or corresponds with his intelligence. The " sufficient reason " for his feel- ing love or attraction, or hatred or aversion, for a person is, that their nature is attuned to or harmonious with his own or the reverse. The " sufficient reason " for his approving or disapproving of an act, pro- nouncing it right or wrong, bad or good, is its appearing to him bene- ficent or maleficent. Whilst the abstract emotions of faith, love, and hope, admiration or contempt, apply to the abstract ideals of personality, including the Supreme or Perfect Being, as the sensuous imagination furnishes us with the ideas of material things through their property of sensihly affecting us — so the conceptive nnagination furnishes us with ideas of persons corresponding to the spiritual effects their attributes produce in us ; thus does all speculative reasoning, inductive or deduc- SELF- CON SCI USNESS, 57 Eo^o, inasmuch as it is the modifications of the Eoco, in sensation or emotion, that are the matters or occasions of thought, which is the mental represen- tation of the causes of those modifications."^'^ The causes present in the modification of Being in the Ego being always the causes rationally assumed to account for all possible effects, these are the " similars we substitute " instinctively. The empirical Ego or the cerebral and nervous system, whilst modifying the real Ego or noumenal substance of the soul, is felt to be distinct from it, or at least is seen in reflection to be so. The body being the means of communication between the soul and the external cosmos, the temporary lesion or partial disintegra- tion of it stops more or less completely its com- munication with the Non-Ego. When the circula- tion of blood through the brain or the matter of the brain is pathologically effected, the apprehen- sion of God through reflection is impeded equally with the perceptive processes, just as when the telegraphic apparatus is deranged it fails to be a medium of communication alike for trivial or for important messages. tive, spring from self-consciousness reflected on Being in general. The unity of apperception, or consciousness of the Ego or Self, as Kant says, accounting for the unity under which we apprehend objects. Though when once we have arrived at the inductive inference (from effect to cause) of a First Cause or Supreme Being, we then regard our own nature and that of all other finite beings but as faint and broken reflec- tions of the nature of the Supreme Being. * Spinoza speaks of physical demonstration through the senses or physical organism. 58 PHILOSOPHY OF The reason for the assumption of objective con- tinuity of identity, which underlies every act of thought, is the subjective sense of uniformity or con- tinuity of our own being. If A were not always recognised as A, and not A as no A, together with the excluded middle that nothing is both A and not A, thought or argument from similars could not exist, the certainty or unalterableness of the pre- mises or principles furnishing alone the ground of any conclusion. The principle of identity or correspondence with our own being, physical or spiritual, is the logical principle of phenomenal, objective classification, of reflective reasoning from analogy as to design or purpose, and of induction from efi'ect to cause as of deduction from cause to effect. It is through this principle that we predicate similarity of effect from similarity of cause, and similarity of cause from simi- larity of effect. Thus a salt spring cannot send forth sweet waters ; an effect cannot be a contradiction of the nature of its cause, the nature of a thing being its mode of action and reaction. " Effects," says Mr. Lewes, ''are processions of their causes." Effects are exhibitions of the activity of their causes. Thus the same principle underlies all these acts, though analogy is only partial similarity, not abso- lute or comprehensive identity. Thus Hegel says, ** The logical formulae are the real predicates of God." The real temple of God is the understanding of man, man's reasoning powers enabling him to perceive SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 59 identity of nature, to recognise simUarity of being, through signs or through the comprehension of design or purpose. As letters from an absent friend enable us to know that he is still alive, as well as reveal his thoughts and feelings to us, so God by sensible things speaks to us of the power of His Being, and the correspondence of our ideas with the Divine ideas manifested in creation reveal to us both the existence of God and our spiritual relation and resemblance to our Creator. And it is this sub- jective experience of Being that solves the enigma agitated by Plato as to how we must first know a thing before we can seek for it. It is the knowing ourselves as a cause that makes us seek for God, or the great First Cause. A First Cause or Suffi- cient Cause of our own and all existences, the Infinite Perfect Being we call God, being the only conceiv- able Sufficient Cause. Belief in God is the crowning- point of metaphysics, God being the only conceivable Sufficient Cause. In perception, material objects are perceived through sensation ; in apprehension and comprehension, spiritual objects and purpose in action are conceived through the emotions and volition of the Ego — apprehension being the recognition of simi- lars through relations which signify spiritual opera- tions. Thus through our own material organism we are sensitive to material contact, and through our spiritual being to spiritual intercourse. The eye recognises in the creation or cosmos manifestations or signs of its own attributes of power, wisdom, and 6o PHILOSOPHY OF goodness. Cognition is experience in feeling or con- sciousness of being — that wliich we have felt or ex- perienced in our own being we hioio — and this is the condition of the recognition of other beings, and of sympathy in their experiences. Thus objec- tive knowledge is not memory, as Plato taught, but recognition of the principles of our own being. Characteristics which we do not share with God are neither imaginable nor conceivable by us : only what is related to us as similar to us is recognisable by us, yet we necessarily believe that the unknown can- not contradict the known. This is the positive creed which the constitution of our own nature gives us, and which we are bound to hold under the penalty of self-stultification on the denial of it : Belief in a Sufficient Cause for the design manifested in creation; belief, i.e., in an Intelligent or Spiritual Creator; belief in good or perfection of Being or happiness as the Final Cause or idea of the Creator in creating; and belief in the efficacy of instru- mental or proximate causation to produce the pur- posed ultimate final good ; although, through our imperfect knowledge of the relations between things from which their action and reaction proceed, we cannot always immediately see how the necessarily anticipated good will be brought about by their in- teraction. It is, however, by the exercise of introspec- tive reflective reason, in its re-representation of the automatic process of thought in the " substitution of similars," that we arrive at the supreme object SELF- CO NSC 10 USNESS. 6 1 of aspiration — the sense of a personal and paternal Providence, the centre and the source of the love, joy, and hope of those capable of apprehending a rational cause — i.e., of the universe of thinking beings. And this faith brings with it reverence for all beings invested with the august attributes of per- sonality, a reverence from which proceeds the charity that ^' beareth all things and hopeth all things " of them and for them. The relations between persons are as yet but dimly seen and little understood. The reverence of piety or of pity, which is akin to love, must ever be due to every person as such. To be kind to all men is simply to be logical ; unkindness, by the terms, is as illogical as it is cruel and wicked."^ But in order that the true relations between persons may be understood, it is the duty of each and every one to reveal to others the relations, psychical and moral, which have been particularly revealed to or discovered by them ; just as the physicist is bound to communicate his knowledge of physical nature, or the medical practitioner his, or as the physiologist would communicate his knowledge of things or pro- cesses in their relations to the human frame, these being nothing less than the revelation of the laws of the universe. The "must be," i.e., that God must be good, must be wise, must be powerful, is the logical assumption of the absolute or perfect presen- tation of the attributes of personality in the Deity or * We ought morally or voluntarily to be what we really are, really one of our kind. Homer speaks of '' the kindly race of men." 62 PHILOSOPHY OF prototype. The Father, from whom the Son eman- ates, of whom He is therefore the image, cannot be otherwise rationally conceived. Schiller says, *' Harmony, truth, order, beauty, excellency, give me joy because they raise in me the active state of their designer, because they reveal to me the presence of a rational being, and lead me to divine my affinity to that being." § 7. As an analysis of the reasoning process would not be complete without some reference to those essential forms of thought. Time and Space, I can- not altogether omit to mention them ; but since the honour of first calling attention to Time and Space as forms of intuition belongs to Kant, and since Mr. Shadwick H. Hodgson has devoted an entire essay to the consideration of this subject, which, besides, forms so important a part in all his writings, that the manner in which the formal element modifies the diff"erent types of character and its bearing upon the classification of the sciences may be said to be his peculiar discovery. As the subject has been treated thus exhaustively, I suppose no one would feel it necessary to do the work over again, even if they felt they had the power. At all events, I feel that that is not my discovery, and its considera- tion has no important bearing on my especial sub- ject. 1 shall therefore merely indicate its connection with my analysis of the reasoning process. I fully realise the difficulty of the subject, but I hold that SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 63 of this one tiling there can be no doubt, viz. — that all thought must have for its object real noumenal Being or existence, its relation to the Cosmos or its tendency. '' Locke," says Reid, " had reduced all things to three categories — Substance" (or being), '^Mode" (ten- dency), *'and Relations." *^ In this Time, Space, and Number are omitted. Did he take sj^ace for a form of existence ? " Bayle says that " space or vacuum must be either substance or mode. It follows that there must be some incorporeal substance whose affection its exten- sion is. It must either subsist by itself or by some other thing which does subsist by itself." Is this vacuum, says Bayle, this indivisible and penetrable extension, a substance or a mode ? " The substance is w^here the mode is." (True intellectual system of the universe.) ''All bodies are situated in God" (Isaac Watts). '' If you have absence of body, then you have dark space." " Even the natural philo- sopher denies the existence of absolute emptiness ; given emptiness involves space." The idea of space must be abstracted from something. " Ideas are modes of a substance " (Dr. Watts) . " Ideas of space and time are conceptions of modes of being." I should rather say of conditions of finite being. Space and time are forms or conditions of thought, the frames in w^hich all our mental representations appear. By things objects of thought are meant. Until we know what substance is, how can we know if space be substance, or mode, or relation ? 64 PHILOSOPHY OF In order to describe lohen a thing happened, some commonly accepted standard of relation of succession of events is referred to : thus the Greeks referred to the Olympic games, the Eomans to the building of Kome, Christians to the birth of Christ, Mahometans to the Hegira or flight of Mahomet. When we speak of space and eternity, these terms comprehend all possible relations of beings to succes- sive states or co-existent circumstances ; but time and space are the ideas of the relation of beings to the external circumstances in which they are placed, by which imaginative representations of them are conditioned. The ideas of number, proportion, symmetry, and harmony seem to me to arise en- tirely out of the contemplation of human bodies and personalities. Perceiving ourselves, we say one ; see- ing another, we say two or diio or deux, and so on. Accustomed to a symmetrical arrangement of arms and legs in our own bodies, we formulate the law of symmetry or proportion as the order of nature. Finding accordant sounds pleasant, we generalise the concept and say harmony is beautiful, ''sweet as the oil that ran down Aaron's beard." *' Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity ! It is like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard." And this to allow comparison of the harmonies of one sense wdth those of another. And as it is the symmetry of the human organism SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 65 wliicli seems to furuish us directly with the idea of harmonious proportion, so disproportion, as a seeming contradiction of this, appears in consequence an error, a departure from the ideal, the ideal which is furnished to us by our own personality, spiritual and moral. History and biography, which are them- selves only intelligible through the personal history of the Ego, are of use to the individual by enabling him to compare his own idiosyncrasies with the typical attributes of the race arrived at by such comparison. Thus all notions or ideas are seen to be relative,'"* to the one being directly known to us, i.e., the Ego, these subjective concepts of relations between our own and other spirits and between our bodies and spirits becoming, when re-represented in reflective reason, generalised with regard to all Being and all organisms as such. Thus the body of doctrines or axioms of reason w^hicli we call metaphysics is arrived at, which proceeds upon the principle of non-contradiction of subjective Being. § 8. Professor Flint in his '^ Anti-Tlieistic Theories " has given a brief sketch denoting the salient points of Comte's Philosophy. I quote the passage, p. 1 80, * " It is according to analogy to suppose the cognitions of time and space coeval with the conscious life, because the nervous matter in which it arises occupies time and space ; objects appear in the con- scious life of the empirical Ego as extended spatial, not only be- cause they have extension themselves, but partly because the nervous matter as well as the object has extension." — "Time and Space," p. 218. 66 . PHILOSOPHY OF as it will tliS better enable me to show in what respects I dijSer from the Positive School as to what is the intent (inhalt), product, and purport, report or outcome, of thought ; as to what is the informa- tion attainable through ideation. " What then is the attitude of the Positive philo- sophy towards religion ? As represented by Comte it may be thus described : AVe know and can know nothing but physical phenomena and their laws. The senses are the sources of all true thinking, and we can know nothing except the phenomena which they apprehend, and the relations of sequence and resemblance in which these phenomena stand to one- another. Mental phenomena can all be resolved into material phenomena, and there is no such thing dis- coverable as either efficient ^'^ or final causation, as either an origin or purpose, in the world, as, conse- quently, either a creative or providential intelligence. The mind in its progress necessarily finds out pheno- mena cannot be reasonably referred to supernatural agents, as, at a later period, that they cannot be referred to occult causes, but that they must be accepted as they present themselves to the senses, and arranged according to their relationships of sequence or co-existence, similarity or dissimilarity. Wherever theological speculation is found, there thought is in its infancy." Now what I maintain, in distinct opposition to the Positivist doctrine, that we can only know pheno- * Comte uses tlie term "efficient" for creative cause. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 67 mena, and that there is no such thing discoverable as either Sufficient or Final Cause, is — that we do know, because we experience in our own being, both Suffi- cient and Final Cause ; and more than this, that the principle of Sufficient Causation, i.e., Being, neces- sarily precedes relations of Being, and that it is the principle of Sufficient Reason or Final Cause which is the very life of thought, material relations being only means to the end of noumenal Being. Logic is noumenal, and the noumenal is the con- dition of the phenomenal. Professor Flint says, " The term Positivism has been objected to both on philological and logical grounds." I certainly consider it a misnomer. True Positivism is surely the result of actual personal experience, whilst " the self-termed Positivist is, in fact, a most fantastic idealist ; " and when the evidential value of experience in self-consciousness is denied, the appeal to reason ceases, self-contradiction being the irra- tional. It has been said, " Physical science now claims dominion over the whole field of the * Knowable ; * this pretension surely ought not to be allowed to pass without criticism." Much more than this might be said, for the claim could only be founded on the denial of the noblest part of our nature. But to take even the lowest ground : physical science itself rests on metapliysical. Belief is a metaphysical pheno- menon ; for the very good reason that belief itself is the operation of a spiritual agent. The sense of the 68 PHILOSOPHY OF true as of the beautiful is spiritual, so also is tlie sense of the good. As M. Kenouvier says, " sensibility and the emotion are not terms in the series of the centripetal and centrifugal modifications given in the field of natural science." Ontology, indeed, deals only with spiritual consciousness, whilst psychology includes physical and spiritual consciousness. Materialistic theories are so mixed up with Positivism that one constantly feels one may be stating arguments that refer rather to the former theory than to the latter. But it is not my purpose to disentangle the argument ; in- deed, this has already been done so thoroughly, that it would be quite needless for me to attempt it. Division of labour certainly holds good in philosophy as much as in other departments of human labour, and there are so many distinct fields of work, that every one who is conscious of his own appointed part in the vast whole is thankful to avail himself of the labours of the others. And with Comte and his fol- lowers, as with all true thinkers, however erroneous part of their theory may be, there is always very much which excites our admiration and gratitude. Men are always better than their theories. " Nature," as some one has said, " is too strong for them," and therefore it is that we never do find a truly consistent Positivist, materialistic, or atheistic argu- ment. What I especially wish to establish is, that every theory which denies any one of the three prin- ciples of causation is essentially illogical, and that SELF- CON SCI O USNESS, 69 therefore the doctrine of agnosticism is abnormal and unnatural, invalidating as it does human intel- ligence, and involving us in self-contradiction, by refusing the title of positive experience to our intensest spiritual consciousness or life of emotion, intelligence, and volition, limiting it entirely to the consciousness of sensation, and altogether suppress- ing self-consciousness or the consciousness proper of reflection, and the ratiocination which is grounded upon it. Lewes says, '' The moral repugnance we feel at psychical phenomena being explained under mechani- cal principles is supported by intellectual repugnance at the attempt to explain biological phenomena in principles derived from phenomena of a simpler order." Memory of past individual experiences, ac- companied by comparison with history and biography, and the abiding power of personal verification, are the conditions of psychical science, which, far from being what Comte condemns as " efl'ete metaphysics," is no less real than physical science, being indeed the source of it, though no doubt psychology has made great advances in late years through the more accurate knowledge of physiology, which has shown us the modifications of the neural processes and their reaction. Comte's formula for science, "observation of phenomena aided by experiment and tested by verification," as the true rule of all science, can be carried out, and is of course of equal stringency, in 70 PHILOSOPHY OF metaphysics as in physics ; emotion, intelligence, and volition being the phenomena of consciousness. § 9. There is a fitness of means to ends in emo- tional aspirations or yearnings as well as in sensual appetites. Not to believe in the certain satisfaction of the former is as much a contradiction of the laws of thought, i.e. J of the necessary mental representation of the spiritual consciousness of noumenal as dis- criminated from empirical Being, as the refusal to eat would be an infraction of the laws or conditions of physical Being. Man in all his works aims at duration or perma- nence, and in proportion as the work is valuable we select materials for it that will last. For our statues we choose marble ; for our paintings, oil, which lasts for centuries ; for our cathedrals, massive blocks of stone. The one thing man dislikes is to have his work destroyed, to i'eel he has wrought in vain ; he wants the purpose for which he has intended anything to be fulfilled. Therefore to suppose that God formed creatures capable of lasting happiness, and kindled in them the light of hope only to destroy them and crush out the hope in despair, would be the height of self-contradiction, the utterly illogical. Our happiness, like our being, is conditioned. The conditions failing, life and joy fail ; for just as the body fails if the bread and wine which are necessary to sustain vital force fail, so the spiritual energy SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 71 fails if the spiritual communion of intellectual and emotional sympathy be wanting. Christ himself said, *' Man cannot live by bread alone, but by the word," or rational communion. Life and love, which is joy, are alike conditioned, made dependent by the Lord of all on certain conditions, especially that of the social iustinct being cultivated ; and the power of fulfilling these conditions is in a large manner placed in our own hands ; and we must rationally, i.e., in the ratio of our own experience, suppose it to be pleasing to Him when He sees these conditions fulfilled. The accomplishment of His own idea or end in design must surely be good in His sight : conformity to His design being, in fact, obedience to the Divine will. Thus do faith in the intrinsic or essential power of Being, the love of similars, and the hope in good, which together constitute the typical phenomena of our spiritual life, alike testify that joy for each indi- vidual is the law of man's will, and not the renun- ciation of egoistic joy; for by experienced joy sym- pathy is itself conditioned, whilst sympathy in the joy of others is an important factor in our own happiness, the joy we feel in love being the greatest of all our joys, and is the divinely appointed ideal of human action, and the sympathetically recognised universal aspiration ; for through it not only are we comprehensible to each other, but we are also rendered capable of the comprehension of the Divine Providence or government of the universe. " If we, being imperfect, give good gifts to our children, 72 PHILOSOPHY OF shall not tlie heavenly or infinitely perfect and powerful Father do so unto us ? " So runs our reasoning as necessarily as rivers flow to the sea. He who ''to himself is true," i.e., is true to natural emotion regulated by reason, and to the moral law of action — for the good for Being — is best fitted, most able, to be true to others, to do them justice in thought and to act kindly to them ; whilst the hard- ness of ascetics to others as well as to themselves is as notable and as much a matter of history as it is logically to be expected. However little developed some may have been by their life on earth, however distorted even their growth may have been, if good was the purpose of their creation, this end will assuredly be realised, and their happiness or perfection of being will be at length attained, i.e., in some future state ; for surely this must have been what Christ meant when He said, '' In my Father's house are many mansions," — that each soul would find a place for each stage of its development. This is the Spiritual Gospel of thought as thought, though the Divine event may be far ofi", scarcely as yet giving any sign. All being alike '' the children of the resurrection," with the infinite possibilities of infinite time and space stretch- ing out before them, the principle of Final Cause forbids despair, whilst it no doubt requires the exer- cise of rational patience. This patience is, however, rendered natural and easy to us by the objective law of development being the reflection of the subjective SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 73 law of tlioiight, the necessary conception of Final Cause, which is practically and spontaneously exhibited by us in our own instinctively adopted educational practice towards our children, training them as w^e do through effort, and even punishment, to the end that all their physical, intellectual, and moral powers may be developed : our constant aim is their highest possible development, the perfection of their entire be in or. It is because we thus resemble or are made o in the image of God that we ourselves are able to bear, as well as strengthen our children to bear, intelligently and uncomplainingly, the discipline or education through suffering that He imposes upon us, development towards perfection being recognised by us as the one subjective condition of happiness, w^hilst through the relativity of our nature certain objective conditions are required, or the presence of objects fitted to develop our emotional, intellectual, and moral nature. Life education, in its hio^hest sense, does, in fact, consist in these being furnished us. We have already spoken of suffering as consti- tuting one very powerful means of spiritual develop- ment ; joy is another, and both of these depend, in a high degree, on well-arranged social intercourse or spiritual communion, verification of individual integ- rity being only possible tlirough comparison with the type of kind inductively arrived at. As I intend entering more fully, in separate essays, on several subjects but slightly touched on in this more general one, I will only say here wdth regard 74 PHILOSOPHY OF to social intercourse, that the imperative requirement for intellectual and moral progress is the substitution of natural or real, i,e., essential, and therefore joy- giving or satisfactory relations, for the factitious, fictitious, and arbitrarily conventional ones which constitute the present social system, which is really one of organised disorder, rather impeding than fur- tliering the divinely ordained spiritual evolution of humanity, which should be the aim and object of all social institutions, for in that alone lies the hap- piness of man. We know not, indeed, how far the evolution of the race may be possible on this planet, but the nou- menal evolution of the individual is certainly not completed here ; hence we necessarily postulate " fresh fields and pastures new" elsewhere. Of course, the first steps towards establishing satisfactory social relations is the abstract recognition of the physical, metaphysical, and moral relations which constitute the real or actual order of the universe, these rela- tions answering, as they do, to the threefold division of man's spiritual nature into feeling, intelligence, and will : the right conditions for their being carried out must be needful for the harmonious develop- ment of man's nature. Mr. Herbert Spencer makes physical well-being depend on the correspondence of the organism with the external medium. Spiritual well-being or happiness is equally conditioned by felt harmony with other spirits ; above all, with the Divine Spirit or Creator, He being the principle not SELF- CONSCIO USNESS, 75 only of life, but of the all-compreliensive and ever- ruling unity instinctively sought for in nature. Mr. Mill and Professor Huxley have both elo- quently described the far greater importance as bearing upon happiness of the emotional than of the sensational element in life ; and Fichte says, '' Heaven or happiness does not merely lie beyond the grave ; its pure light is already diffused here. In the relations of reciprocal influence the moral or practical powers of man find their sphere ; '^ and first in order of importance amongst these spiritual relations stands our relation to the Father of Spirits, to the fons et origo of spiritual Being and of all existence, to whom, as the supreme type of per- sonality, adoration, obedience, and most unwavering faith are naturally or rationally due. So generally is this recognised, that we reprobate as sin any attempt to frustrate the Divine idea in creation. If this be the natural theory of right feeling and right action or virtue, the ignoring aud contempt of any natural and consequently divinely devised relation, instead of being meritorious (as, when it is an agreeable one, it is generally supposed to be by the ascetics of all denominations), is in the eye of reason, or according to the principle of the substitution of similars, i.e., judging from what our own feeling would be were we a creator ; for this, be it remembered, is the only cri- terion of rational judgment, or judging from our own knowledge of the parental relation, a grieving through contradiction of the Creative Spirit, who, from having 76 PHILOSOPHY OF so constituted U3 that we naturally desire tlie good tilings which He has prepared for us, must neces- sarily be conceived to intend that we should actually enjoy, and not that we should refuse or despise them. In some future essays I hope to treat separately of the ideals of the affections of the imaginative intellect, and of the transcendental intelligence or moral sense, answering to the three modes of personal Being ; the complete satisfaction of these constituting the one comprehensive rapturous ideal of the perfect or hapj)y life to which reason aspires or which reason expects. It is by faith in the ultimate realisation or fulfilment of this emotively and rationally postulated ideal that the just live and hopefully struggle. Vexatio dat intellectum. It is the having to struggle against causes of suffering that gives us intelligence ; i.e.y ideal realisation both of the conditions of evil and of the causes of good or perfection of Being ; and thus we are enabled to be victorious over the seen and temporal — the present suffering — because of the ex- ceeding glory of the prophetic vision of a here- after, in which we and all men shall have become perfected through that very suffering, when the knowledge of God will also be perfected through the fulness of joy which alone can fully reveal to us the perfection of His power, wisdom, and goodness. Then also we shall stand upon a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, for the existence and immor- tality of the spirit will have been indisputably demonstrated by its triumph over the death of the SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 77 body, which will at last be inevitably recognised, as it should rationally or ideally be now, as the mere changeable vesture of the spirit, or rather as a transi- tory, perishable medium of communication between the Ego and the Non-Ego. A Persian poet has said, " Heaven is the vision of fulfilled desire ; '' and in the Kig-Veda it is written, " Where the desire of our desires is attained there make me immortal/' Objective declarations that have their basis in subjective declarations are no mere rav- ings of the enthusiast or the madman, but necessary postulates of reason, the opposite of which is, as the self- contradictory, the utterly inconceivable. As per- fection is only predicable of known attributes or con- ditions of Being, so goodness is only conceivable as the satisfaction of natural desire or the realisation of divinely imposed desire : only by the combination of subjective perfection and objective satisfaction is the meaning of either completed. Heaven is the name we give to this naturally anticipated con- summation, heaven being the state in which all estrano'ement must cease between the Creator and the rational creature, where love will indeed be "lord of all," faith and hope having, passed into sight, whilst love endureth for ever and for ever ; for spiritual love is the most patent exhibition of the order of the universe, i.e., of the mutual relativity of Being, of created beings to each other, and of all beings to the great Creator. The relativity of earth and sun and moon is " what the wild waves say." 78 PHILOSOPHY OF Kelativity is tlie cause of tlie music of the spheres ; and above all, relativity is the watchword of the moral or spiritual universe. It is this sense of spiri- tual relativity, rooted deeper than consciousness, this deep-seated instinct of relativity, which, though it may not have been reflectively realised, is yet the explana- tion of the sorrowful yearning of the solitary soul ; and the first and last lesson of the moral sense and of the religious instinct is the recognition of spiri- tual relations and the prompting to action in accord- ance with those essential relations. As " the heavens are telliog the glory of God," so the Divine joy of spiritual relations bears the witness of reason to the goodness of Providence, as well as to the being of an all-wise Creator and certain ultimate Eedeemer, who will amply provide ultimate satisfaction for all the needs of His own implanting. As Tennyson says, ** Nothing treads the earth with aimless feet, sub- servient only to another's gain." ** My fellow-man, sent hither for his joy, an end — a self witbin thy world — a world." And as each concrete relation is but an instance of a universal law, we may rest assured of the fulfilment of the Divine design in each particular case. § 10. It remains for me to say a few words on the fallacy of the doctrine of Altruism, although all I have written is in reality a refutation of that teach- ing. If it be true that all our reasoning has its basis in experience, it follows that unless we desire happi- SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 79 ness for ourselves we have no standard of measure- ment by which to guide our conduct towards others, nothiug to give us a clue as to what others will desire. And more than this^ as Mr. H. Spencer has shown in his " Data of Ethics," those who, through neglect of due self-regard, have failed to maintain bodily well-being, end by becoming a burden instead of a help to others. Not that he is arguing in defence of egoism; on the contrary, he says, p. 315, " From the dawn of life, then, egoism has been dependent upon altruism, as altruism has been dependent upon egoism, and in the course of evolution the reciprocal services of the two have been increasing." The sacrifice of things not absolutely essential to our happiness for the sake of love or being beloved, which is essential to it, is not self-sacrifice, but the exercise of reflective reason in the choice of the best for Being. The proper or natural check of rational self-interest, or consideration for self, is as necessary to prevent extravagant generosity, or irrational self- sacrifice for our kind, as social love or sympathy is to prevent egotism or selfishness. The love of God, or reverence for the order of the universe, is the proper measure of both. Love of God and of our kind is thus seen not to be self-sacrifice, but the only true self-realisation. What I deem so hurtful is that doctrine of altruism, which is, in fact, nothing but a new form of the old doctrine of asceticism, which Kiugsley so strongly deprecated in himself and in others. Either I am 8o PHILOSOPHY OF utterly mistaken in all I have stated concerning self- consciousness being, in its three forms of feeling, in- telligence, and will for good, the basis of ideation or ratiocination, and the many are right who hold it to be an aberration from virtue to recognise or allow self to be in any way considered, or the constant exclusion of our own happiness from the idea of what is good or right to be done is a dangerous fallacy, because, under the guise of transcendent virtue, it undermines natural virtue, which requires of us only that we should do unto others as we would be done by — that we should love our neighbour as ourself, seeking his good as well as, not regardless of, our own. The rational egoism of Descartes, the egoity of Dean Swift — in other words, self-consciousness — and the consequent act of egoising spoken of by Stirling in his " Secret of Hegel," is not to be confounded with vulgar, unfeeling, and emphatically irrational egotism. Still apropos of egotism, it has often been remarked lately that the want of consideration for others so commonly exhibited springs more fre- quently from want of imagination than from sheer selfishness ; but I believe that it is rather rational reflection on the laws or order of self-conciousness that is wanting, both for benevolence and for bene- ficence towards others,'" the Ego presenting the type for mental representation or ideation. The is of real Being is the must he of duty, and the study of history or sociology enables us to eliminate * Morality is allowed to be the product of reflective reason. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 8i idiosyncratic aberrations from our idea of what is typical of humanity. What we call a " need " of human nature is the impulse to the exercise of faculty; needs and faculties are strengthened by exercise : once a need has been ideally realised in introspective reflec- tion, it can never again be absent from thought. Moreover, we feel the need to carry out our ideas into action. From needs therefore spring functions. Scep- ticism regarding the holiness of natural feelings and tendencies undermines the conditions or principles of thought, just as the scepticism w^hich denies the in- telligence of causation in its three forms takes from the comprehension of motive in an action. *' Ideas are modes of reflective consciousness or rea- son ; the ideal being to the ideas which it embodies as the concrete to the abstract ; or ideals may be said to be to ideas what the remote object is to the imme- diate object in perception." " The ideas belonging to the three great functions of consciousness furnish 'the God concept,' which is the synthetic idea of reflective or ]}UYe reason — an induction from self- consciousness." It is in the fact of our own Being that we find a sufficient reason or ground of inference of a Supreme Creative Being. Destroy our self-consciousness, and I confidently ask what measure have we of the feelings and require- ments of others ? The ladder by w^hich the angels descended from heaven to hold converse with Jacob of old rested upon the known solidly felt earth ; and it is from the actual facts of self-consciousness alone 82 PHILOSOPHY OF that we can ascend even now to the otherwise un- known empyrean of the principles of the must, and will, and ought to he. Above all, we take our stand upon the principle of Final Cause, which requires perfection of Being as the only conceivable object of the creation of rational beings. In the attempt of Comtism or altruism to surpass the moral teaching of Christ, I see nothing but a jumping over the saddle instead of into it, and a sad descent into the mud of the unreal, where natural emotions, rational conclusions therefrom, and natural purpose in action are chaotically confused or illogically denied, whilst being in fact {niente di meno) steadily acted upon. Epictetus wisely held that " whilst men think their happiness and their duty are not one or not at one, they will serve the first and neglect the last ; " not untrue at least in this to the natural constitution of their hearts, the imperative of personal feeling being unmistakably well-being or happiness, just as the imperative of duty is well-doing or goodness to others, helping on their perfection of being or hap- piness as well as our own. According to reason, the typical "is" or the ''is" of creative design is the '* ought to be " or ideal of conscience, which in no way exacts improvement on the creative idea, but reverence for it. The human ideal being the reflex of the Divine idea, moral action is action in accordance with the nature of things or with their design ; but emphati- cally is it consideration for the nature of persons, not even leaving personal idiosyncrasies out of account. SELF- CON SCI USNESS. 83 Eeverence for the constructor is always exhibited by respect for the construction, as I have before shown to be evident from our indignation at the destruction of anything we have ourselves constructed ; and it is equally true that reverence for the Lawgiver is properly exhibited by obedience to the law, and not either by merely saying, " Lord ! Lord ! " or by re- fusing to seek the joy which He has constituted the lodestar of our being. Zoroaster's resume of duty is '* obedience to the law in thought, word, and deed ; " and that this obedience be shown in the spiritual life, the life of faith, love, and hope, is the doctrine of Christianity, Christ Himself having asserted that love of God and man is in itself the perfect and sufficient fulfilment of the whole law, for love brings with it faith and hope. But those who do not believe in God cannot be accused of irreverence in thinkiog and acting as if it were possible to improve nature off the earth. " I will have obedience and not sacrifice," saith the Lord. This is the ever-present witness of reason. **I come, and my reward is with me." *' Unto him that over- cometh shall all things be given." These are still the promises of hope to him who is true to his real self and obeys the laws of his spiritual being, using, and not abusing, the good gifts of the Joy-giver, and not foro^ettino^ to share them as best he can with others by whom they are equally desired. The commandments of reflective reason are — Seek to know facts of Being, and truths of relation; as 84 PHILOSOPHY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. Solomon says, " Wisdom is the principal thing, and with all thy getting, get understanding." As you want joy of life, seek to love and be loved by your kind (for love alone and love only is enough for joy), so that you may have a standpoint for reflective conclu- sions. Adhere to the normal rule of action for the best for Being, your own and that of others ; and thus, as thought and Being are identical, you will have hope in the good as rational end of action. Kational concepts are of what is actually seen or experienced ; thus the relation of obedience in which the most intelligent of the lower animals actually stand to man enables us to apprehend in some degree the relation in which God stands to us of a nielior natura. The Buddhagossa speaks of him " who has entered into the beatitude of those who know the law." The organised triplicity of thought as a process of internal dialectic must never be lost sight of; only in dreams or insanity is thought actually decomposed, never in reflective reason, which always has Being in its unity and modifications for its foundation. "We come to the universe to learn what is." This is only directly revealed to us in our own nature or being. Our rational concepts are the results of our modes of consciousness. To omit any one of these in our mental representations of what is present in our own being, is to misrepresent the data for our logical conclusions. The triform unity of Being rationally compels the trinity of thought. part II. RATIONALE OF LOVE. RELATIVITY OF BEING THE SOURCE OF LOVE OR ATTRACTION— THE BEAUTIFUL OR HARMONIOUS. part 11. RELATIVITY OF BEING THE SOURCE OF LOVE OR ATTRACTION— THE BEAUTIFUL OR HARMONIOUS. § 1. PosiTiviTY and negativity of Being are the ground of reciprocal attraction between things. Com- plement arin ess or mutual correlativitj of being is of the essence of the order of the universe. Begin- ning very low in the scale, as low as we can go, we find this law in force — "Chemical compounds are freely decomposed by electricity ; when so decom- posed, those elements which appear at the positive pole are called electro-negative, while those which appear at the negative pole are called electro-positive. . . . Yet the difierence between the two classes, the electro-positive and the electro-negative, is one of degree only. Mercury, for instance, is negative to sodium and positive to iodine.'^ It is to this latter fact that I especially wish to draw attention, — that here, at the beginning of the series, *^the difference is only one of degree," because when we get to the other end of the series, and treat of man {homo) as a complementary being, we shall find that this fact, which still holds good, is one of great importance. As we gradually rise in the scale and pass in review the plant and animal worlds, it is still to the mutual 88 PHILOSOPHY OF attraction of individuals possessing like and yet unlike (opposite) qualities that the life and beauty that clothe our earth are to be ascribed. Truly it is " le mot d'ordre de Tunivers ; " everywhere we find it in operation — in the ebb and flow of the tide, in the great cycles of the solar system, in seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, life and death, sleeping and waking. Mr. Herbert Spencer has a de- lightful chapter on these rhythmic movements in his *' First Principles" (chap, xi.), in which he shows how universal is its application ; and I think we have here an illustration of that blending of opposites which Professor Caird affirms to be needful to the concep- tion of a spiritual organism. When we come to man, we find the highest exemplification of this law. In nothing is the wisdom and goodness or benevolence of the Creator more remarkably shown than in the beautiful order of the spiritual creation, in which the very imperfection of the individual becomes a cause of joy to it through the delightful sense of dependence upon another being which we call love. Spinoza's definition of love is '^ joy from an external object." I am myself disposed to think that goodwill towards one's self, the sense of the duty of acting for the best for one's own being, is a more logical term than self- love. We can only Jearn this dependence at first in our earthly relations, and gradually ascend to the heavenly, till trust in God is perfected. St. John said, " If ye love not the brother whom ye have seen, how can ye love God, whom ye have not seen ? " Not SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 89 that tlie two kinds are really separable, but rather that in the one we learn the other, the many-blencled ra3's being needed for the perfect whole. The de- pendence of the child on the parent, the sister on the brother, for sympathy and aid in sport and study, and, finally, in the climax of our life and power, in the absolutely reciprocal relation of love ; for only when it is absolutely reciprocal can the feeling par excellence called love be said to be felt. Not that they both lean on each other in the same way or for the same things ; on the contrary, as in physical nature, action and reaction are equal and opposite. Their need of each other is complementary and sup- plementary, the one exhibiting and affording to the other the support and accompanying sense of com- pleteness of Being, by supplying those very qualities in individual excess in which the opposite sex or individual is deficient or most failing in. Complementariness, which is the ground of rela- tivity, is the one thing that is always required for real union in order to constitute perfection of Being. Thus, taking the mere complementariness of sex, in the woman gentleness, sweetness, and patience are required and typically exhibited ; whilst in man, courage, strength, firmness in resolve are the qualities which are reciprocally presented and required. Still the human personality being modified as it is by here- dity or family qualities, by the immediate circum- stances that have surrounded the individual in childhood, perhaps even in gestation as regards the 90 PHILOSOPHY OF nervous system, makes the sexual complementariness but a very vague rule in deciding on the mutual suitability of any given pair : this is rather matter for serious individual observation, helped out by the ideal theory which I have offered to the public. For every feeling there ought to be a truly efficient, not an imagined or supposed cause. Our yearning for the perfection of Being in ourselves and others appears to arise out of a requirement of wholeness — that all should be there that constitutes personality. The Scotch have an expression for a daft person, " He is not all there;" there is not even the " all " of one of the complementaries, and, as I have shown, the two are always needed in order that the sense of perfected Being may be realised. I have spoken of the relativity of the comple- mentary colours and of certain musical notes. As in a musical duet two voices of different kinds are required — as, for example, a soprano and a bass ; so for, or in, a life duet the development of the two souls must be opposite (in different directions) to be harmonious or make a perfect whole ; as of sound so of colour, co-ordination of complementaries. And I might go on adding endless examples. I will mention but one other — the relativity of soul and body. The idea of duty or rational moral obligation arising out of the contemplation of the action and reaction of soul and body is what the Greeks called gymnastic, and what we moderns call hygiene — the SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 91 oLservation of the laws or conditions of bodily health, so that the body may not be a distorted medium for receiving and conveying impressions to the mind. Eegarding this relation it is especially needful that the subsidiary position of the body to the mind be continuously kept in view — its caducity, it being like the skin of a snake, something to be cast off — instead of reducing the soul to a mere caterer for the physiological needs of the body, and what is still w^orse, regarding the body, beauty of form, and symmetry of limb as the important point in the contraction of the conjugal relation. This dreadful aberration of emotion through sensation, or rather through a false idea concerning the relation of spirits to each other, may be distinctly traced to the want of the ideal realisation of the spiritual nature of man, and of his consequently postulated eternal destiny. As without holiness no man shall see God, so without the spiritual integrity which can only be attained through the divinely appointed natural means of development (qui vent la fin vent les moyens), no souls can experience in each other the Divine joy of perfect love consequent upon perfect spiritual union. Broad and pleasant seeming may be the ways of sense, but they lead literally to destruction ; while as the narrow and difficult path of spiritual development shines more and more unto the perfect day, so through the subdued but complete light of the joy of the har- mony of congenial spirits shall they, as Plato showed, 92 PHILOSOPHY OF best reacli together the last rung of the ladder of Being which leads up the world's great altar-stair to the presence of the Father of spirits. Love is the path and love the goal ; in this one case the means is the end,* so that instead of, as Pope wrote, *'Man never is, but always to be blessed," in the case of true love the ideal is really realised here. Hegel shows how Being is complementary and relative ; he speaks of ^' the generai^^egion of other- ness, where the other also finds its other. By the other-wise-being only is it capable of discrimination." " It is there, where its being is for another." " Your naturalness is your bping for other." "The same thing that thus goes over into another yet retains in this going over and in this other distinct reference to its own self" (Secret of Hegel). ''It is there where the something is, by, with, and for its own other ; both are mutually complementary and essential constituents in the all of things " (Hegel). Thus human character is complete only in the union of complementary dual idiosyncrasies. Love is the supreme exhibition of the law of polarity, of the mutual attraction of positive and negative ; the one human being is thus the complement of the other, the check or counterpart. Mutual and equivalent action and reaction is the law of emotional or spiritual life, just as it is the cause of motion in the physical world. As we see in the voltaic pile * Aristotle defines the B>ummum Bonum as tliat which is sought for its own sake, and not as means to an ulterior object. SELF- CONSCIO USNESS, 93 the action of Uyo different chemicals upon each other, so in a perfect conjugal union all the highest force of our nature is seen to be elicited. § 2. "To enjoy the bliss of Being, we must realise actually all our powers of feeling, thought, and will." " Enjoyment arises from the fitness of things to our nature/' from the '* correlated modifications of Being.'' The spiritual life is as strictly relative to suitable spiritual communion as the health of our body or its life is to suitable diet. The term " good " or " best "* has no meaning except in relation to the welfare of some individual ; it is the desired satisfaction of the hunger for joy, of the sense of the divine or perfect in life. And this sense of fulness of life or perfection of Being can only be realised in presence of the one complementary being, still the joy it causes is the source of rapturous gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts, for the reign of Divine ideas as accom- plished facts will constitute the long-desired " king- dom of God" come. Induction of destiny is from principles of Being, from fidelity of feeling or desire — Grifiith's " rational expectation of recovery of beloved object." " For to give means, with God, not to tempt and deceive with a cup thrust in Benjamin's sack. He resumes nothing. Be sure of this ; and if it seems that He draw back a gift, comprehend that * When we say, " This is the best knife I ever had," we mean this is the knife that best fulfils our purpose. Kobert Browning compares man to a cup for his Maker's use. 94 PHILOSOPHY OF it is ratlier to amend it and finish it up to your dream, or to keep as a mother will toys too costly till the children are fit for such joys " (Mrs. Browning). • " That such gains could ever be estranged — gains which could not be, except a special soul had gained them, or that they could do aught but appertain to immortality — is inconceivable to reason.'* But although this joy can only be attained through the union of two complementary beings, it is far from being exclusive of general spiritual communion. In the first place, as I have already said, it is the cause of the deepest gratitude to God, of loving, reverent adoration — " life in God together led," not exclusive of God. Then, as M. Guizot shows in speak- ing of his wife, it seems to unseal the fountain of good- ness and loving-kindness towards all men — " herself having reached the goal, she seemed only to think of the happiness of others," We can trace its bene- ficent workinsc throucrhout the whole ranofe of social intercourse. Spiritual union is the true ground of families holding together, a union founded on the complementariness of the elders is repro- duced in the children, and so they are harmoni- ous. It greatly increases the circle of our friends, because all those people to whom, as being our analogues, we should not as individuals be drawn, our deeper, fuller joint life gives us the power of universally appreciating. We understand our oppo- sites only through the beloved opposite, just as through the fifth we can make a harmony with the SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. ' 95 seventh. Then, again, in suitable marriages the children and relations on each side find pleasure in each other's society, as the members of the family are also complementaries, and the homes thus formed become centres of wide social influence ; for every one delights to visit those families in which harmo- nious relations prevail. And the force generated in this bright, refreshing atmosphere is available for all kinds of helpful work — of course in varying degrees, according as the profession, trade, or duties of the members of these families demand more or less of their time and strength. And all this is quite independent of rank, wealth, or position, except in so far as these are aids to personal development. The helpfulness that emanates from the labourer's cottage, though different in kind, is as deep a blessing and as great a comfort to those in the higher ranks as that which these are enabled to bestow in return. Now since the categories of reason are unaffected by time or space, holding under all circumstances, so that one person likes another as much when they are in Madrid as in London, in 1829 as in 1850 — 2.6., at all distances of time and space— can we help believing that this complementariness, which we find to be such a deep source of joy on earth, even amid all the imperfection that prevents the conditions of relativity from being but partially fulfilled here, will, in worlds better adapted for fulfilling the conditions, and where the individuals will them- 96 PHILOSOPHY OF selves be more developed — at length cause joy to be universal ? Thus in the plan of creation this most ideal or perfect form of love is at once the source of physical life and the nucleus from which all the other and lesser social affections radiate. The requirement of love in the noumenal or spiritual Ego is the result of its intuitive recognition of the relativity of its own being to that of another and complementary being. This is described in the Book of Genesis as the divinely acknowledged necessity or requirement of a help-mee^ unto Adam, the fitting, abiding com- panion, who lives in your life and in whose life you live. The existence of this instinctive yearning for '* the joy of mingled being," for the sense of rest and peace, which this supreme affection alone can give, is practically demonstrated in the base counterfeits of it that, like the homage which vice pays to virtue in hypocrisy, are so common — in the making love where no love is ; also most touchingly in the too frequently mistaken joy when the ideal object is only supposed to be found. Instead of choosing a poet, I quote the testimony of a philosopher (Schopenhauer) to the sense of the eternal in love. He says, '^ This yearning of love cannot take its substance from the needs of an ephemeral individual : the yearning which connects with the possession of a particular woman the ideal of eternal bliss, and the inexpres- sible pain that attends on the thought that it is not to be attained; this all-pervading presentiment of SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 97 endless joy or sorrow, which furnishes material for all the finest erotic poetry ; this yearning of the spirit, which in its particular object sees a never-to- be-recovered means of gaining or losing its end." I have made this extract from Schopenhauer's " Life and Philosophy" by Helen Zimmern, but I must admit that, whilst making this admission of the sense of the eternal in love, Schopenhauer makes it the ground of a distorted argument. ** That it must, therefore, be the yearning and sighing of the spirit of species." Now, if th^re is such a thing as the spirit of species, and it be a rational spirit, what it really must be groaning about, with groans not to be uttered, is the illogical unkindness of beings of the same kind towards each other, which is so gene- rally prevalent amongst mankind. But if kindness or mere humanity be confounded with love, what meaning at all has " love " by which it may henceforth be distinguished ? So great is the necessity of vivifying our personal affections, that we must forbear all tampering with and confound- ing together of the signs that ought to hold the respective departments asunder. Intellectual power is shown in the appreciation of natures method of difierentiation. Mrs. Brownino: has said, ** Go from me ! Yet I feel I shall stand hencefor- ward in thy shadow, never more alone without the sense of that which I have known, thy touch upon my palm. The widest land doom takes to part us leaves thy heart in mine, with pulses that beat 98 PHILOSOPHY OF double. What I do and what I dream includes thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes ; and when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, and sees within my eyes the tears of two." Such love alone is perfect joy. Whatever good- will any one person may have towards any other, if there exists not suitability, correlativity of spiritual nature between the two, no amount of good works performed for each other will avail for conjugal love, and the perfect sense of joy and fulness of Being arising out of it, it alone being by the terms the only form of love in which sympathy is perfect. Equivalential attrac- tion, which alone is perfect harmony of spiritual Being, is the requirement for perfect spiritual joy of life. " Thus do the lives of united souls make music." Theodore Parker has said that as one thing is not another, so it will not do in the place of another ; that the love of man does not dispense with the love of God, nor does the love of God dispense with that of man. Monks and nuns are signal departures from the Divine order. " I will have obedience and not sac- rifice, saith the Lord." When Moses asked to see God's face, God is repre- sented as replying, " I will make my goodness pass before thee;" and Mr. Mallock has expressed this principle of the Divine manifestation with singular force in this remarkable passage : — " God Himself seems to stand aside," as it were, not to disturb the SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 99 joy-giving effect of perfect mutual sympathy, which, by the terms, even an Infinite Being cannot give to a finite being. It is through His goodness in designing this absolutely joy-giving relation that God is Himself especially manifested to us as a God of love. § 3. We have seen that throughout the vast realms of nature this law of complementariness everywhere prevails, and we find that the result is always har- mony. This God Himself has taught us. He has made the law of human happiness, and shown us how alone we can be happy, on what the perfection of Being depends, so that man may be led to fulfil the con- ditions as far as in him lies ; for here again we find the two — God's part and man's ; for man alone can- not secure his own highest good, but neither can he be the passive recipient of it : we are '^ workers together with God." Wherever we begin, we shall find that the conditions must be fulfilled if harmony is to result — harmony, which is always joy-inspiring, though in very different degrees, according as it depends on physical correspondence — as the blended colours that delight the eye — or on the spiritual union of mental and moral qualities. In nature this is done for us ; but as Mr. Martineau has shown in the moral sphere that in order to attain the well-balanced char- acter in which the instincts are restrained within their normal limits and scope left for t^he free play of the higher powers, toe must bring about by conscious effort what nature does unconsciously, so we shall loo PHILOSOPHY OF find it ever is. " Struve records that at least one hundred and four binary systems exhibit the com- plementary colours — that is, the colour of one con- stituent belongs to the red or least refrangible end of the spectrum, while that of the other belongs to the violet or most refrangible extremity ; " and Principal Tulloch himself says, " If we add to these considera- tions the well-ascertained fact of the diversity of colour which distinguishes not a few of the double stars, we shall derive a still more striking impression of the peculiarities of existence to be found in the stellar spaces — peculiarities doubtless increasing in novelty and intricacy with the ascending complexity of the starry groups.""^ I have quoted this latter passage, not because of its bearing on the immediate subject, but because of the exemplification I feel it afibrds of my hypothesis, that there are worlds adapted to every varying stage of spiritual development, and that as we ascend the scale of Being the physical conditions will ever harmonise with the spiritual. But to return. Just as we find these complemen- tary colours in the stars, so we are told that in decorating our rooms, if we would avoid the efi'ect of heaviness or dinginess, the colours must be so combined that on retiring to a little distance it should appear white. A single colour always requires to be sustained by its complementary, as green by red ; then the whole rainbow is actually present, and the eye is satisfied because that which it gazes on is * " Theism," Rev. Principal Tulloch, p. 2>y. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. loi a completed whole. Mr. Lewes delighted in giving himself credit for having discovered the psychological spectrum constituted by the three primary elements of character — feeling, thought, and will ; and it is the same in the aesthetics of sound ; a single note gives no satisfaction to the ear, but if the fifth or comple- mentary sound is played with (as in harmony), or after (as in melody), the keynote, the harmonics of the whole octave are sustained and made present to the ear, which is thus delighted with the whole diapason of musical sound. And it is the same with the sense of spiritual completeness. In order that this may be realised, we require the presence ever with us of a complementary spirit, which, in union with our own, jointly furnish in balanced order and fulness the three attributes of personality — feeling, intelligence, and will ; these two together, like red and green, produce a soft stone- coloured white, the pure dazzling white being alone presented by the supreme and perfect Being ; only the uncreated Light shines with the full splendour of that unapproachable white which we use as the symbol for holiness. Each man naturally gravitates towards what he believes to be best for his own being, but this beneficent arrangement of the Creator is fatally thwarted in the case of each individual who is ignorant of what really "makes for his peace." What each person requires for the sense of the equilibrium of the attributes of personality, ^.e., the 102 PHILOSOPHY OF sense of fulness of Being, which is the secret of the perfect joy of the perfect suitability of com- plementary souls, is a helpmeet unto him or her. *' What care I how fair she be, if she be not kind to me?" If her or his good points are such as clash with mine, rather than harmonise with my own idiosyncrasies. F in music harmonises with A or C, but not with G or B, each keynote having its own dominant (chord of fifth), and spiritual harmonics equally re- present laws of nature. Then let us not, when seeking joy or happiness, join the general throng of promiscuous admirers of beauty, talent, or power, but let each one look for his or her own soul's delight. Of course, as finer difier- entiation marks progressive development in the scale of Being, the most highly discriminating will be the choice of the most highly developed. Thus many may vaguely suit the uncertainly or indeterminately de- veloped, so that we may hear of a man having been happy with one wife after another ; but even, in these cases, if we could cross- question such a man, we should certainly find either that neither were per- fectly suited to him, by the token that that utter joy, which looks neither before nor after, and which characterises a perfectly happy present, has been wanting, or that he did certainly prefer one to the other ; for, quantitatively or qualitatively speaking, i.e., with mathematical or logical exact- ness, if one person perfectly suited another, no SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 103 two being exactly alike, no other could suit him or her equally well. The cestus of Yenus, that made her irresistible both to gods and men, was said to be the power of making her lover feel that it was him, and him alone, she loved ; and only when this natural feeling is mutually felf or reciprocal can it produce a perfect mutual devotion, since none of the principles of reason admit of any variation or shadow of change. Hence what we predicate of the nature of the perfect, absolute Being, God, applies also to essential true relations between persons which are as unchangeable as individual personality itself. Love is indeed God's present witness to the truth an(J attainability of the ideal of feeling, so that from this one present and actual realisation we may con- fidently expect the same satisfaction of the ideals of the intellect and of the moral sense, or desire for the universal perfection of Being in another and per- fect state of being. In the ** ^dipus Tyrannus" of Sophocles are these w^ords — " Zeus ! if thou art rightly na'med the All-seeing and All-directing, let it not be hidden from thee and thy everlasting rule that men are disregarding oracles and that religion is pass- ing away." To this it might now be added that the belief in love seems also waning ; but as the categories of thought will resume their influence over human judgments when the present passing fashion of in- fidelity to man's spiritual nature or being has joined so many other passing fashions in the waters of Lethe, 104 PHILOSOPHY OF SO not only does '' hope spring perennial in the human breast," but with the restoration of faith in God and man love will finally show itself lord of all, both here and hereafter. That it is possible for this one ideal to be realised on earth, a crowd of witnesses from among the noblest and most honoured among men have borne testimony. They belong to all ages and almost every nation. I have chosen the following pas- sages as illustrative of the truth of this state- ment : — " Oh, my soul's joy ! If after every tempest come such calms, may the winds blow till they waken death, and let the labouring bark climb hills of seas Olympus high, and duck again as low as hell from heaven. If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy, for I fear my soul hath her content so absolute that not another comfort like to this succeeds in unknown fate." — Shakespeare. M. Guizot remarks in a letter to his beloved wife on the commonly received idea that " Man never is, but always to be blessed," that this can only be said by those who do not know deep, true, and pas- sionate love. " Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly condemned." — Song of Solomon, viii. 7. " Love gives itself, but is not bought ; It comes, — the beautiful, the free, The crown of all humanity, In silence and alone, To seek the elected one. . . . SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. V^^ »<**■ t' - No one is so accursed by fate, ^ .^r ^^^ No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Eesponds unto his own — Responds as if with unseen wings. An angel touched its quivering strings, And whispers in its song, * Why hast thou stayed so long 1 ' " — Longfellovfs " Eiidymion.^* *' And hearts, dear love, such seedlings are that need so little, even less than little on the earth, to bear the sunbeam blossom Happiness. A touch, a tender tone, a face that lingers near the door — no more — and yet hearts go uncomforted. A turn, a smile, a fond word said, a kiss — these things make heaven, and yet kind sad hearts go uncomforted." *' Each man, Hke the Roman emperor, stamps his own effigy on all he does. Each path has a separate experience — but thought-coin (i.e., the ideas of feeling, thought, and will) goes current over the wide world." " Desire is the spur to prayers ; hence the value of the writer who gives currency to ideals for men to strive to realise." A RIDDLE — MARI-AGE. "Mon premier est un tyran, mon second est un monstre, mon tout c'est le diable meme. Si vous aimez mon premier vous ue crainderez pas mon second, et vous aurez le bonheur supreme." " But there, where I have garnered up my heart, AVhere either I must live or bear no life. The fountain from the which my current runs or else dries up." — Othello (Shakespeare). " * Where the treasure is there will also the heart be.' * Mio tesoro — Mein schatz,' these are the expressions that love chooses." "Thus the true lover, though alone, is not lonely; his thoughts are ever with the beloved." io6 PHILOSOPHY OF " Let then thought hold sweet communion, Let us breathe the mutual prayer, Till in heaven's eternal union Spirit shall with spirit blend." " Oft as memory's glance is ranging Over scenes that cannot die, When I see that all is changing, Then I weep for days gone by. Cease, fond heart ! to thee is given Hope of better things on high ; There is still a coming heaven. Better than the days gone by." Shakespeare thus describes a happy marriage — ** He is the half part of a blessed man. Left to be finished by such as she, — And she is a fair divided excellence, Whose fulness of perfection lies in him. Oh, two such silver currents, when they join, Do glorify the banks that bind them in." " Yivre k deux, c'est vivre aux cieux." " What is this cold world to me ? Robin's not near. What was it I wished to see 1 what wished to hear 1 Where's all the joy and all the mirth Made this town heaven on earth 1 Oh, they're all fled with thee, Robin Adair ! " " As the chord is to the bow, So the woman to the man. Useless each without the other. Though she draws him, she obeys him ; Though she bends him, yet she follows " — " Iliawatha." '* And heaven itself descends in love. For love is heaven and heaven is love." — JFalter Scott. " Heaven is the eternity of perpetually increasing capability of giving and receiving happiness." — Hindoo, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 107 " Love is the guardian angel o'er our life presiding, Doubling the pleasures and the cares dividing." " What then can be more blessed than love ? " — Hindoo. "For this reason it is that it has been able to bear the many- thousand volumes which paint it." — Idem. " Thy presence makes December June." *'Mon esperance a moi, mon Dieu, c'est ma m^moire." — Lamaiiine. " Je m'oublierais moi-meme, Laurence ! avant toi, Renaitre sans se revoir, sans se reconnoitre ce serait remourir, Seigneur ! et non renaitre. A ta magnificence, P^re ! je me fie, tu rends cent milles Ibis ce qu'on te sacrifie, d'autres reveut leur ciel, mais moi j'ai vu le mien. Tout ^me est soeur d'une ^me et quand ces soeurs du ciel ici has se reucontrent d'invincible instincts Tun a Tautre les montrent. L'oeil ne cherche plus rien. L'^me n'a plus de vide. Par Tinfaillible instinct le coeur soudain frapp^, ne craint pas de retour ni de s'^tre tromp6. Que I'alouette chante ou non, h mon reveil, mon coeur ne depend plus d'un rayon du soleil, de la saison qui fuit, du nuage qui passe, son bonheur est en lui, toute heure, toute place, toute saison, tout ciel sont bons quand on est deux." — Lamartine. *' Leur coeur intarissable, et Tun h, Tautre ouvert, Leur est un firmament qui n'est jamais convert, lis y plongent sans ombre, ils y lisent sans voile, Un horizon nouveau sans cesse s'y devoile L'ame coule toujours et n'a plus de langueur Dans cet autre soi-meme ou tout va retentir Oil se regarde vivre, oil s'ecoute sentir." — Lamartine. " L'eclair qui revele k chacun I'etre qui le compile, et de deux n'en fait qu'un, mon coeur me I'avait dit." "Genius had seen it in her passionate dreams." — Shdley. The word "bon" is used in French as in Enoflish, meaning good as means to the naturally desired end of happiness, or perfection of being. jo8 PHILOSOPHY OF " En entendant le mot que I'un clierchait en soi on se comprend soi m^me, on dit, C'est moi. Ou admire le monde a travers ce qu'on aime." " Et la vie appuy^e, appuyant h, son tour, Est un fardeau sacre qu'on porte avec amour." — Lamartine. As Hegel says, if we lose ourselves, we also find ourselves in the beloved other. " I who looked for only God found thee. I find thee I am safe and strong and glad." — Mrs. Browning. "And God the Elohim said in Paradise, It is not good for man to be alone; he shall have a help meet unto him." — Genesis. " God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame." Nothing, says Sir John Lubbock, is more false and ungrateful than the saying, " It is too good to be true." " God's gifts surpass man's utmost imaginings." "And still my heart goes out to thee, not as to a single good, but all my good." " There I sit with love in the sun. And we two never have done, > Singing sweeter songs than are guessed at by one." — Mrs. Browning. A German song has — "Das war die Liebe nicht der geschah," — the love that passes away was no love. Let us live, let us love, for the acts correspond (in the spiri- tual life) ; thus alone is the yearning to completeness fulfilled. " Man desecrates the eternal God- word love by his rio morey and once." " Et je doutais de I'amour et du bonheur, et cette affreuse doute faisait le mal de tons mes jours, Dieu vous a envoys vers moi etj'e crois au bonheur et a I'esperance." French Song, *' Esperance." " Life's promises, like sheep-bells, die off from us on the desert hills, cloud crossed, yet through the silence shall pierce the death angel's call — SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 109 *' Come up hither, recover all ! Heart, wilt thou go ] I go — broken hearts triumph so." " Till the spirit enfold those manifest joys which it foretold.'* — ^schylus. " Oh, you earth's tender impassioned few, take courage to intrust your love to Him, so named, who guards above its ends, and shall fulfil." " The Lord watch between thee and me when we are absent one from another." — Mizpah. ** Think — the shadow on the dial, For the nature most undone, Marks the passing of the trial. Proves the presence of the sun." " Trust the blessed deathly angel's whisper, Sabbath hours at hand. So behold in sudden glory Thy transfigured smiles on thee." " Irks care the crop-full bird. Frets doubt the man-crammed beast." — Robert Browning. *' Trust God — the future I may face, now I have proved the past." — Idem. " An age so blest, that by its side, Youth seems the waste instead. My own ! see where the years conduct. At first 'twas something our two souls Should mix as mist do — each is sucked in each. Now on the new stream rolls, whatever rocks obstruct. Think when our one soul understands The great word which makes all things new. When earth breaks up and heaven expands. How will the change strike me and you In the house not made with hands ? " *' And join thee, all the fitter for the pause, 'Neath the low doorway's lintel." " That were cause for lingering, though thou calledst." no PHILOSOPHY OF " Leave Now for dogs and asses — man has /or ever.^* " No artist lives and loves that longs not once, and for one only, Putting to proof art alien (God's art) to the artist's once, and for one only. So to he the man and leave the artist." — Rohert Browning. " Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained — The reward of it all. But sudden the worse turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, and the elements rage ; The fiend voices that rave shall dwindle and change, Shall become first a peace out of pain, then a light ! Then thy breast, thou soul of my soul, 1 shall clasp thee again, and with God be the rest." — Rohert Browning on Death. " Du bist der Himmel mir verstimmt — Du bist der Friede — du bist die Euh." " Why else was the pause prolonged, but that singing might issue thence ? " — Rohert Browning. " The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky is music sent up to God. Enough that He heard it once ; we shall hear it by and by, when eternity affirms the conception of an hour." — Idem. " Psyche approached to Jove's right hand, To Psyche's lips he approached the ambrosial bowl : Drink, my daughter ! and acquaint thy soul with Deathless uses, and be glad the while. No more shall Cupid leave thy lovely side, Thy marriage joy begins, for never ending." — Apuleius, Metamo7-phoses. " Happy thou defended from entering thy Theseus' earthly hall, a heavenly house ! Kronion's self for kin — nor death nor age can find thee more." — Fivm Homer. " Je vis descendre du ciel un image brillant, qui s'approchait de moi, et qui recouvrait comme d'un voile transparent une femme. Son regard, son sourire, tons ses traits, en fin, realisaient SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. iii a mes yeux I'etre ideal que cherchait mon coeur dementi si long temps, et que j'avais d^sesp^r^ de rencontrer jamais. Tandis que je la contemplais avec extase, ces paroles se firent entendre : Ta confiance en moi ne sera point tromp^e. Regarde, voici la com- pagne que je t'ai reservee. Voici le bien (ou le bonheur), auquel aspirent vainement les hommes qui pensent que le bonheur est un calcul (au lieu d'un don divin), et qui demandent de la terre ce qu'on ne pent obtenir que du ciel. H^las ! le doute rentra bientot dans mon coeur, encore tout meurtri des mecomptes de la vie. Injuste et coupable defiance ! Oh, si j'avais pu pr^voir alors que toutes ces promesses seraient accomplies et que je retrouverai un jour sur la terre T^tre ador6 dont je n'avais fait qu'entrevoir I'image dans le ciel. Si j'avais su que mon bonheur surpasserait toutes mes esperances." — " Voyage Autour de ma Chamhre,'^ Xavier Le Maistre. " 'Tis sense, unbridled will, and not true love which kills the soul ! Love betters what is best, even here below, but more in heaven above. No mortal object did these eyes behold When first they met the placid light of thine. And my soul felt her destiny divine, And hope of endless peace in me grew bold. Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold ! The wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, Nor will he lend his heart to aught which doth on time depend. Yet hope may with my strong desire keep pace, And I be undeluded, unbetrayed ; for if Of our affections none find grace in sight of Heaven, Then wherefore hath God made the world which we inhabit ? (Why is the objective provided for the subject 1) Better plea love cannot have than that in loving thee Glory to that eternal peace is paid who such divinity to thee imparts as hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts. His hope is treacherous only whose love dies with beauty, which is varying every hour. But in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power of outward change, there blooms a deathless power that breathes on earth the air of Paradise." — Michael Angela, Sonnets. 112 PHILOSOPHY OF " Of happiest hope fulfilled shall nought remain 1 Shall not desire of meeting warm (keep) the heart 1 " " Shall the torch of joy be lit only to dash it out in darkness 1 Forbid it, Heaven ! " — Dante Rosetti. " Reason rather waits to see the debt to hope quite liquidated without deduction by decrease or separation, God's peace in ultimate possession." " I heavily from woe to woe tell o'er the sad account of fore- bemoaned moan, which I now pay as if not paid before. But still the while I think on thee, dear friend, again thou art restored and sorrows end." — Shakespeare^ s Sonnets. " Earthly happiness is like early spring flowers, at once mani- festation of forces at work in man and prophecies of what is to come." "The like seeks the like."— Big-Feda. " That the relations of things to each other are invariable is the most fundamental of our intuitions." '' Men love their fellows, says science, ultimately and originally from the same instinct that teaches animals, and, for that matter, the vegetable world also, to seek that in which they find com- fort, pleasure, and support." " Thou art my life ! my love ! my heart ! the very eyes of me, and hast command of every part to live and die for thee." — Bobert Herrick. ** Memory and hope alike repose in smiles upon the bosom of enjoyment." " Circumstances require severe exercise of intellect, and con- strain the spirit to seek its rest." *' The converse of soul with soul in love and truth alone imparts to each of us the consciousness of our own worth." " Du machts mich selber werth." " The subjective faculties and affections of the soul meet their corresponding objective occasions and fulfilments. Thus shall it ever be (by degrees) accommodated with fit conditions to dwell in any of the heavenly worlds to which it shall be destined by its moral affinities and mental development." SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 113 " Intelligence is truly sight, wanting which, into what abysses may we not fall ! " " The one person whose return you can confidently count upon is the one who returns to you as to the home of their own heart." *' Ne jamais la voir ni I'entendre, Ne jamais tout haut la nommer, Mais fidele toujours I'attendre, Tou jours I'aimer. " Ouvrir les bras et la d'attendre, Sur le n^ant les refermer, Mais encore toujours les lui tendre, Toujours I'aimer. ** Ne jamais la voir ni I'entendre, Mais dans les pleurs se consumer, Mais ces larmes toujours les repandre, Toujours I'aimer. " Ne jamais la voir ni I'etendre Ne jamais tout haut la nommer, Mais d'un amour toujours plus tendre, Toujours I'aimer." — Sully Frudlwmme. " Friendship is like love ; there are invariable laws of life that forbid it between some, though we can feel kindness or the general attraction of creatures for their own kind for all." " Love has sooner or later to come to an understanding with thought. In order to live, it must essay to know something about its object, until it stands out before love in clearer and clearer outlines." — Canon Liddon. ** The study of harmony is useful for the investigation of the beautiful and the good." — Flccto. " Order is rational ; the good (for Being) is the end of order." — Idem. " One in heart and one in love, We below and they above, One in all we seek or shun, One because our Lord is one." (Unity of Being j as the parent so the child.) 114 PHILOSOPHY OF *' The gloom by winter cast How soon the heart forgets When summer brings at last The sun that never sets ! So dawned my love for you, Chasing every pain ^ Than summer sun more true, 'Twill never set again." — Lapland Love Song. " Breath freezes on my lips to moan, As one alone, once not alone. I sit and knock at Nature's door, • Heart bare, heart hungry, very poor, Whose desolated days go on. And fallen too low for special fear. And here with hope no longer here. While the tears drop my days go on." — 3Irs. Browning. " But the darker the cloud of the present, the more brilliant gleams the rainbow of the promised future." " God sits upon the great white throne And listens for the creatures' praise. I hear Him charge His saints that none Among His creatures anywhere Blaspheme against Him with despair, However darkly days go on." — Mi^s. Browning. " Perhaps the cup was broken here That heaven's new wine might show more clear. Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I praise Thee whilst the days go on." — Idem. ''It is the soul's pervading presentiment of endless joy or sorrow that accompanies love that makes it so transcendent a joy, transcendent a suffering, surpassing everything merely earthly." — Idem. SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 1 1 5 "The Semitic myth," says Professor Hackel, "of Adam and Eve, and the old Greek legend of Helen and Paris, are only poetical exi3ressions of the immeasurable influence of love. All other passions that agitate the human breast are far less powerful in the progress of the world's history. It is the basis of family life, and consequently of the development of the state. It is the most powerful factor in civilisation, prompting the production of poetry, music, and the plastic arts. On the other hand, we fear in it the devouring flame which drives the unfortunate to ruin, and which has caused more vice, misery, and crime than all the other evils of the human race taken together. So wonderful is love, so immensely important its influence on mental life." " Paradise is represented by one man and one woman." Surely all social institutions ought to be based on the intelli- gent recognition of such a force. Herbert Spencer has given an equally eleborate Lob Gesang, or praise of love, in his " Principles of Psychology." " All thoughts, all feelings, all delights, all are but ministers of love to feed his sacred flame." — Coleridge. " Yulcan one day seeing two lovers looking so tenderly and enchantingly happy, asked them if he could do anything to oblige them. " Forger of the Gods !" they replied, " only, we pray thee, weld us together so that we can never be parted." (See the charming unique legend quoted in Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy.") And if there be any who doubt the power of love for giving perfect joy, let him meditate the words of Hafiz, the great Persian poet, who says : — " ' Who art thou that thou hast not known love?' said one unto me. *Eather,' replied I, 'what manner of man art thou that knowest it ? ' " Let him, I say, ask himself if he is not one of the many who, not having felt it, cannot know it. Of whom are the most touching love-stories tolcj? — Of Petrarch and Laura, of Abelard and Heloise, of the sage Alcuin, who loved the daughter of Charlemagne, of Michael Angelo and the Princess Colonna; and of men of our own time, such as Sir Samuel ii6 PHILOSOPHY OF Romilly, the great reformer of the civil law, of Stuart Mill, of Auguste Comte, of Charles Kingsley, &c. Such is the stuff of which true loVers are made. "In love Providence is justified even here." " The face of all the world is changed, I think, since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul. I, who thought to sink, was caught up unto love, and taught the whole of life on a new rhythm. The names of country, heaven, are changed away ; for where thou art, or shall be, there or here, are only dear." — Mrs. Browning. " Thou canst prevail against my fears, and fling thy purple round me till my heart shall grow too close against thy heart henceforth to know how it shook alone." — Pmiuguese Sonnets, Mrs. Browning. " A shallow love is an apprenticeship for learning a true and deep one." "There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire, face to face with its own desire." " The simoom of separation doeth its work. She turned her face to the wall of sorrow, She stooped her back like a crooked lyre, Attuned in concord with her heart's sadness." — Persian Poet. " Day when my crowned estate began to pine in that reverse of doom which sickened every living bloom and blurred the splendour of the sun." — {Death of the Beloved.) *'Day marked as with some hideous crime, when the dark hand struck down through time and cancelled nature's best." — Tennyson. *' The Sphinx of life stood pallid with her worst secret told." *' The shade by which my life was crossed. Which makes a desert in the mind. Has made me kindly with my kind, And like to him whose siglit is lost." — Tennyson. "My night of loss is always there." SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 1 1 7 "And thou, as one that once reclined on some unworthy- heart with joy, but lived to wed an equal mind — Abide. Thy wealth is gathered in when time hath sundered shell from pearl." — Tennyson, *' Behold the man that loved and lost" " Is this the end 1 is this the end ] The dust of him I shall not see; for all is dark where thou art not, the chambers emptied of delight." " Du bist die ruh, der friede mild, Die sehnsucht du, und was sie stillt." "Love is path and goal — means to, and end." The means are of the nature of the end. " A quell' amor, ch' h palpito delP universo intero — Misterioso altero, croc* e delizia al cor. Che quiero piu di te nell' universo intero, come nella terrena stanza." — Leojpardi. "Were there nothing else for which to praise the Heavens but only love, that only love were cause enough for praise." — Te7myson. " How can I show the happiness — how paint the depth of pain 1 " " If my heart be silent, what sign will speak of his worth ? " " I have no home by sea or shore, I have no place nor part For ever and for evermore ; But only in thy heart." — Jean Ingelow, " And oh, dear heart, in thy still rest, Eesign this earth of woes. Forget the ardours of the west Neglect the morning's glows. Sleep and forget all things but one, Heard in each wave of sea. How lonely all the years will run Until I rest by thee." ii8 PHILOSOPHY OF " And I see all clear, new earth, new heaven, New bodies redeemed from pain. New souls ! — Oh, not so ! with the soul that I know Let me find, let me find it again. Let me walk with him under any sky. Beside any land or sea. In what shape or make Thou will'st him to take, If like unto Thee — near unto Thee." *' Hark what I tell to thee, nor sorrow o'er the tomb — My spirit waits till thine shall come." — HaydvJs Canzonet. " Trocknet sie nicht, die Thranen der unendliche Liebe." — Beethoven; see also Ms '^ Adelaida." " Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer, Und weiter giebt sich dem Wunschen nichts mehr, Du Heiliger rufe dein Kind zuriick, Ich habe genossen das irdische Gliick, Ich habe gelebt und geliebt, Es rinnet der Thranen vergeblicher Lauf, Die Klage sie wecket die Todten nicht auf, Doch nenne was trostet und heilet die Brust Nach die siissen Liebe verschwundener Lust, Sind der Liebe Schmerzen und Klagen." — Schiller. " If we desire to recall past feelings, we must think of the objects of them." " Al core, al sguardo estatico la terra un ciel sembro." "A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart." " The day drags through, the storms keep out the sun, and thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on, even as a broken mirror, which the glass in every fragment multiplies, and makes a thousand images of one that was the same, and still the more the more it breaks. And thus the heart will do which not for- sakes, living in shattered guise, and still, and cold, and blood- less, with its sleepless sorrow-aches, till all without is old. Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold." — Byron. SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 119 " He who hath loved not here will learn that love and make his heart a spirit. He who knows that tender mystery will love the more ; for 'tis love's nature to advance or die. He stays not still, or decays or grows into a boundless blessing." — Idem. The principle of Final Cause, the third law of thought or action for good always, indicates that this painful fidelity points to the intended reunion of spirits. Such is the order of thought, and such we necessarily believe to be the Divine order. Fidelity would otherwise be a cruel gift and a meaningless quality of the soul. "Surely God, who made all, forgets not love's rewarding, forgets not the faithful." " Love is enough ! though the world be a-waning. And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining. Though the hills be held shadows and the sea a dark wonder, And this day draw a veil over all deeds past over. Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter, The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover. " Love is enough ! have no thought for to-morrow. If ye lie down this evening in rest from your pain, Ye who have paid for your bliss with great sorrow, For as it was once so it shall be again. And the world ye thought waning is glorious and good." " Love is Enough" Poem by JVilliam Morris, Love is no sacrifice. "Le sentiment placide et sublime de r^ternelle possession." — Geoi'ge Sand. " The name of love is longing." " Love is the desire of near- ness." " A good world it is, since we twain are together." "Still fresh desired, still strange and new, though known, needing no change my cup of joy to fill." "True love wakes sympathy with all humanity." " And are thy feet wandering on the ways ever empty of what thou desireth 1 " I20 PHILOSOPHY OF " And the cold cloud of death rolled onward to hide me, and, with joy and fear blended, leapt the heart in my bosom, and I cried, * The last land, Love ! Oh, hast thou abided? ' For I waked 'mid a story wherein Love is the light and the lord." " Love is enough ! cherish life that abideth. Lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him ; For who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth. Or what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth ? " — W, Mmris. " Live on ! for Love liveth, and earth shall be shaken By the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning, When the dead and their deeds, that die not, shall waken." ** The death of all doubt and beginning of gladness." " And how should thy love change howe'er the world changeth? Yet meanwhile, had I dreamed of the bliss of this minute, How might I have borne to live weary and waiting ! How might I have lived had I known what I longed for ! " " Love begets faith and hope." " Love is enough ! Ho ! ye who seek saving, Go no further, come hither ; There have been who have found it, And these know the house of fulfilment of craving, These know the world's wound, and the balm that hath bound it." — William Morris. " Be of good cheer, poor heart ! For though on a distant shore, Yet thou and thy love shall walk hand in hand For ever and evermore." — Sullivan's Song, ^^ On a Distant Shore" "The ideals of a people are represented in their songs." " As hypocrisy is the homage paid by vice to virtue, so make- helieve, to themselves as well as to others, is the homage paid by the profane vulgar to the ideal." Carlyle seems to have passed his whole life not only in writ- SELF- CONSCIO USNE SS. 121 ing about this make-believe, but in protesting against it at every step in real life. " NelP ordine cb' io dico sono accline Tutte nature per diverse sorti Piit at principio loro, e men vicine Oude si muovono, a diversi porti, Per il gran mar dell' essere, e ciascuno Con istinto a lui dato che la porti.'* — Dante^ ^^Paradiso" " Cry out, for be beedeth, Love, lead its home ! " "That so at last in bliss ye may believe." " Tbe rugged fields we needs must stumble o'er. Till the grain ripens that shall change no more." " In many a lesson of sweet love to learn love's meaning more and more. Love, who beyond all worlds shall dure." — W. Morris. *' L'amour vrai ne se blase point. Etant tout ^me il ne pent s'attiedir; autour d'elle on n'^tait que joyeux, elle, elle Itait beureuse." ** Avoir son necessaire tout est la Gwynplaine avait le sien Dea avait le sien. L'abjection du defigur^, allegee et comme sublim^e se dilatait en ravissement en croyance et une main venait au-devant de la sombre h63itatione de I'aveugle dans la nuit." " Gwynplaine n'^tait plus difforme 6tant aim^, une rose de- mandait la chenille en mariage sentant dans cette chenille le papillon divin." — Victor Hugo. " The greatest miracle which man is capable of understanding is that of the infinite simplicity of the means by the co-operation of which order is preserved in the universe." — Liebig. " Love is the true, the beautiful, the good. Love is life, love is joy, love is duty. Is not the principle of gravity the desire of nearness, attraction of similars 1 " " Duality and polarity are the same power j the principle of duality appears to pervade the entire universe." 122 PHILOSOPHY OF The contradiction of the principles of Being is inconceivable. Understanding is of substance or Being. All reasoning is from the constituted principles of man's being. The science of all sciences is Logic, which is the science of thought or of consciousness as such. " Sintesi ultima del sapere e deir essere." That which is essential, beautiful, or joy-giving, and good for man, is that which makes life worth living. And if we like to call love, most illogically, self-sacrifice, what is there in a name'? Never to sacrifice others is what duty requires of us, love forbidding. In the Life and Letters of the Eev. Frederick Eobertson of Brighton occurs this extract from Helps (Sir A. Helps) : — " A firm belief that at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. The angel and apostle of this coming revelation must be a woman indeed, but lofty, and pure, and wise, and, moreover, not through dusky grief, but through the ethereal medium of joy, and show- ing how sacred love should make us happy by the truest test of a love successful to that end." On this Eobertson himself remarks, " I think it would set a kind of setting light and glory upon the death-beds of those whose aspirations have been high, and whose work is done in this world, if, as they go out of it, they could see some hope for the race coming in, as at the dawn of a former salvation hearts old and worn with hopeless expectation cried, 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen,' &c. Meanwhile the flash of illumination coming suddenly, though gathered like summer electricity from a woman's heart, is a very precious thing, and one which harmonises with my own dim anticipations, that I mean to let my mind dwell on much, for it is to occupy one's self with a noble hope." Mr. Mill in his last and posthumous work recommended this hope as rational because joy-giving (or good for Being). Intuition of reason from experience. — Eobertson says again, " To speak decidedly is not necessarily to speak presumptuously. There are questions the decision of which has become an intui- SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 123 Hon, the result of years of feeling and thought which has been the day-star to a man's darkness, the fountain light of all his seeing, which has interpreted him to himself, made all clear where all was perplexed before, been the key to the riddle of truths which before seemed contradictory, become part of his very being, and for which he holds himself cheerfully prepared to sacrifice all that is commonly held dear. With respect to such convictions as these, to speak with hesitation or uncertainty would not be modesty but affectation." " The eternal moon of love, under whose motions life's dull billows move." " My life was a stagnant pool till the gentle Eulalie," &c. — Edgar Poe, *' La raison triomphe de la mort et travailler pour elle, c'est travailler pour I'eternit^." — Benan, " Oh, too late beloved, too soon adored by me ! For in the fields of immortality My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, A divine presence in a place divine. Or should have moved beside it on this earth, A shadow of that substance from its birth ; But not as now. I love thee ; yes, I feel That on the fountain of my heart a seal Is set to keep its waters pure and bright For thee, since in these tears true hearts delight. AVe — are we not formed as notes of music are, For one another though dissimilar, Such difference without discord as can make Those sweetest sounds in which all spirits shake As trembling leaves in a continuous air ? Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked. And towards the lodestar of my one desire I flitted like a dizzy moth, whose flight Is as a dead leaf in the owlet light, 124 PHILOSOPHY OF When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre. I would have followed though the grave between Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen, And in that silence and in my despair I questioned every tongueless wind that blew Over my tower of mourning, as if it knew Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul. No name could paint how beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me ! I am not thine j I am a part of thee 1 One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One heaven, one hell, one immortality, Like flames too pure and light and unimbued To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, Which point to heaven and cannot pass away." — Shelley, ' * Epipsychidion. " "I loved, I love, and when I love no more Let joys and griefs perish and leave despair To ring the knell of hope. He stood beside me, The embodied vision of the brightest dream, Which like a dawn heralds the day of life. The shadow of his presence made my world A paradise. All familiar things he touched, All common words he spoke, became to me Like forms and sounds of a diviner world. Calming me as the loveliness of heaven Soothes the unquiet sea. And yet not so, For he seemed stormy, and would often seem A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds ; But he was not of them, nor they of him. But as they hid his splendour from the earth. He came and went, and left me what I am, alas ! " — Idem, " Your words are The echoes of a voice which on my heart Sleeps like a melody of early days." — Fragment of an Unfinished Drama, SELF-COmNSCIOUSNESS. 125 " The breath of peace we drew j We felt the holy hush of love, Still felt the centre of the magic circle ; There was one fair form that filled With love the loveless atmosphere." — Idem. " Devrais-je dire que j'ai exists avant aujourd'hui. Non certes, car j'aime pour la premiere fois, et je sens que dusse-je payer ce jour Ik de ma vie ou ce qui est pire, des souffrances d'une longue vie, je remercierais Dieu avec enthousiasme de me I'avoir donn^. Oh, vivre de toute la puissance de son ^tre, toutes les situations, toutes les sensations, toutes les forces morales et phy- siques se r^velant avec une intensity, une clart^, et une pleni- tude supreme. Cast done la I'amour ! Ah ! j'avais bien raison d'y aspirer comme au souverain bien (summum bonum), dans mes premieres heures de jeunesse ! Mais que j'etais loin de savoir ce qu'un pareil sentiment quand il se reveille tout entier ren- ferme de joies et de puissance. II me semble que d'aujourd'hui je suis un homme. Hier, je n'6tais qu'un fantome. Uu voile est tomb6 de devant mes yeux. J'attribuais a la solitude et k la liberty une valeur qu'elles n'ont pas. Toutes choses m'apparais- saient troubles et fantastiques, C'est tout simple ; j'etais seul dans la vie, quiconque est seul est fou, et cette sagesse qui se preserve et se defend de la vie complete (mariage) est un veritable 4tat d'alienation. Mais vivre a deux, sentir qu'il y a sous le ciel un ^tre qui vous pr^fere k lui meme et qui vous foi'ce a lui rendre tout ce qu'il se retire paur vous le donner ; sortir absolument de ce triste moi pour vivre dans une autre ^me, pour s'isoler avec elle de tout ce qui n'est pas V amour. Mon Dieu, quelle Strange et mysterieuse f^licit^, et pour quoi est-ce ainsi ? Autre myst^re ! "La raison cette vision du vrai absolu r^pond que la seule femme qu'on puisse adorer est celle que vous a jet^ dans I'^tat surnatural ou me voici. Je suis ^veilee ; je ne rive plus ; j'aime, et je suis aime. Je vis dans cette region que je prenais pour un id^al imageux, pour une creation de ma fantasie, et que je touche, respire et poss^de comme une reality. Je vis par tout mes organes, et surtout par ce sixieme sens (reflective reason), qui resume et depasse tons les autres, ce sens intellectuel qui voit, entend et comprend un ordre de choses immuable, qui coop^re 126 PHILOSOPHY OF h Teuvre sans fins, sans limites de la vie superieure de la vie en Dieu ! Ah ! le positivisme, le convenu, le pretendu r^alisme de la vie humane dans la soci^t^. Oh, mon Dieu, laissez moi dans r^ternit^ le seul souvenir de I'heure ou je suis." — Geoo'ge Sand. **Live for life past death and doubt." ** Not to suffer is to want the conscience of the jubilant." — 3Irs. Broiuning, "Where there is no ideal there is no discontent." "The shadow on the dial proves the presence of the sun." "God be praised for anguish which has tried, for delight which has satisfied." " Desire was absent, that provides great deeds from out the greatness of prevenient thoughts." *' Behold, who blames a crooked course when not a goal is there to round the fervid striving of the games ] " — Mrs. Browning. " An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but igno- rance of aims makes it impossible to be great at all." "Living and loving, they cannot slacken their firm essential hold upon each other." " The best is yet to be ; The best of life, for which the first was made. Trust God — see all — nor be afraid." " The universal includes the particular, as the particular is an instance of the universal law or order. The beginning includes the end in reason. The nature of a thing involves its destination." " I see the whole design ; I who saw power, now see love. Maker, remake complete ; I trust what Thou shalt do. " " For us and love, failure only when God fails " (fails in truth, fails in goodness, fails in wisdom or knowledge of means to ends). "This world's use will have been ended." SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 127 " The evil is null — is nought — is silence (felt as painful), but implying sound." *'The reward is of the nature of the being, so is the punish- ment." " Intuitions realised exhibit the idea that lay at the heart of all their tentatives, and crystallise into neural representation of formal or universal laws of being " (logical grouping). " We are in no danger from other personalities than our own if we have possession of truth in respect to natural and spiritual, i.€., moral and religious, things." " The need that exists and is not felt is want indeed." " Keason is the eyesight of the soul." "Man guides himself by his past as well as by his present impressions, which, reacted on by thought, become experience." " Reason — the fountain light of all man's seeing." " Nous sommes incapables de ne pas souhaiter la connaissance de la v^rit^ et du bonheur." — Pascal. The wise virgins of the parable were " zweck massig ; " the foolish virgins, " zweck lossig." "Ce qui est vraiment ou r^element ndcessaire (pour le bonheur) ne peut etre un mal." " Tous les hommes d^sirent d'etres heureux, c'est le motif de toutes les actions." — Pascal. " Toutes nos actions et toutes nos pens^es doivent prendre des routes si differentes selon qu'il y aura des biens ^ternels k esperer ou non, qu'il est impossible de faire une demarche avec sens et jugement qu'en la r^glant par la vue de ce point qui doit ^tre notre dernier objet." — Pascal. " Les effets sont connus sensible tandis que les raisons ne sont visible qu'a I'esprit — I'esprit voit les causes " (or the principle of sufficient reason, which is the good for Being). — Pascal. 128 PHILOSOPHY OF " 'Tis a base abandonment of reason to resign our right of thought, our last and only place of refuge." — Loi'd Byron. " Chaque chose a sa voie, L'aigle vole au ceil, Le vautour k la tombe, Et la priere au ciel." As chemistry is the science of the reciprocal relations of mole- cules, morality is the science of the reciprocal relations of spirits, metaphysics is the science of the relation between thought and Being. This relation being one of utter correspondence. Self-love, prudence, and also social sympathy, are kept in balance or harmony by the love of God or sense of duty to Him, which requires the rational maintenance of each of these two principles as equally essential to Being ; to glorify God is to fulfil His design in creation. As the means cannot be contradictory of the end, Love being joy ^ hate or discord can never be the means to the end of joy. My object in accumulating and presenting to the reader the above quotations '''' has been to show that the subjective sense of completeness or *' fulness of Being " corresponds with the objective ideal of per- fection of Being ; but before bidding adieu to a public to which this work may not appeal, I feel it necessary to contradict a popular fallacy on the subject of con- jugal love. It has not only been thought by indivi- duals, but the theory is exhibited in the monastic institutions of all times and places, that in the dual life the satisfied heart closes itself against it kind, and even against the Merciful Ordainer of its joys ; but this, like many other widespread doctrines, is an * It was Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy " that suggested this plan to me of enforcing my argument by quotations. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 129 altogether illogical view of the supreme relation of love. Yes, I will call it the supreme, because the only equi- valent or absolutely mutual relation of love, though not the supreme form of love, which, of course, is divine love, or rather adoration of the Father of spirits. But what relation can be so close, so intimate, so near and dear by the terms (a finite being cannot also by the terms be the equivalent of the Infinite Being) as that of complemental union between two spirits thus made perfect through union, according to the divine constitution of their nature ? But so far from this union rendering the heart callous towards other beings, least of all to the Joy-giver, it is the well-known peculiarity of love that the more it gives the more it has to give. And for this, as for everything else, there is a cause or sufiicient reason in the nature of Being. The more a faculty is exercised the stronger it becomes ; the more unbroken is a habit of feeling — say that of benevolence, and we may, alas, say also that of malevolence — the. more triumphant is its em- pire over us. Of course, I am quite aware that when marriage is a mere partnership of worldly interests, the selfish- ness a deux may be harder, more impermeable than it could perhaps grow to be in the case of an isolated, and therefore more generally dependent, being. But real, because spiritual,"^* love, from feeling neither the weakness of fear nor the grudgings of envy, has * "Cette victoire de I'esprit sur la matiere aboutissant a la joie de rhoinme." — Victor Hugo. I I30 PHILOSOPHY OF not the causes for malevoleuce in itself which accom- pany the sense of depressed vitality, of loneliness, and desertion. To feel one's self " strong, beautiful, and free," is surely a trumpet-call, as to the knights of old, to break the prison bars of others, whether they be physical or mental. Still to fall back on the scientific analogy of complementary colours, though red and green together do really combine in some faint degree all the colours of the rainbow, and thus constitute a grey (French white), yet it is the One only good and absolutely perfect Being, the un- created Light, that shines in the full splendour of the pure white ray. So imperfect, finite, halting are even each pair of us, as a sample or type of per- sonality, that we can never dispense with Divine love as the crowning condition of human joy. This is the universal communion of souls for which we are sighing and meanwhile preparing here. Love is no Moloch sacrifice to be ofiered to the God of love, no hideous toll of mutilated members, crushed hearts, suppressed intellectual faculties, and disappointed hopes, but the aloe flower of developed spirituality, the wedding garment in which we must be clad to enter into the rest prepared for us from the begin- ning. For the Lord of that high feast of souls will not have it said to Him, " Lord, I knew Thee to be a hard man, reaping where Thou hadst not sowed," nor like Mr. Browning's Calibans Setebos, who in the horror of the tempest exclaims, " Lo ! lieth flat and loveth Setebos ! Maketh his teeth meet through his SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 131 upper lip, will let those quails fly, will not eat this month one little mess of whelks, so he may scape." Years ago I read this awful picture of E. Browning s of a savage's faith with a shivering sense of tradi- tionary sympathy. But since I have learned that the King of glory is the God of love, I have thought it right and fitting to strive to point out to others the way to joy, it being certain that only in perfect joy can the soul of man find rest. " Where the desire of our desire is attained, there make me immortal." I have produced this, "the great crowd of witnesses" to my principles, to show I am not a mere dreamer of dreams. ^ part HI. TENDENCY OR DESIRE FOR THE GOOD FOR BEING THE SOURCE OF MORALITY, OR THE DESIRE FOR THE UNIVERSALLY GOOD. part III. TENDENCY OR DESIRE FOR THE GOOD FOR BEING THE SOURCE OF MORALITY, OR THE DESIRE FOR THE UNIVERSALLY GOOD. Having now, I trust, shown that all reasoning is from our own being, the one thing positively known by us, and which is the only key to the knowledge of other beings, those who agree to the analysis of reason which I have given must, I thiuk, grant that just as food is the one thing necessary for bodily growth, so the one thing necessary for spiritual development is the loving communion of souls. And having, as I consider, proved that the highest, most perfect realisation of this communion is in the union of two mutually related complementary spirits, I think the truth that this is the rationale of love is placed beyond question, that it is a necessity of reason to believe it as well as a moral duty to act in accord- ance with it. That it is the relations of similarity, identity, equality, or analogy in which other beings stand to our own being that reveals to us the universality of the principles of Sufficient Cause (Being or actual ex- istence). Efficient Cause, i.e., the action and reaction of beings upon each other, which produces effects, i.e., 136 PHILOSOPHY OF immediate changes in states of Being leaving Being, and the natural tendency of Being untouched, and Final Cause, or tendency to the good for Being, I have endeavoured in the first part of my essay to show; but my chief aim in this painfully, perhaps tediously, worked -out demonstration has been to show that the one spiritual mean to the end of spiritual satisfaction or perfection of Being or hap- piness is love, as it is felt by persons in all its various degrees, according to the analogy or to the harmony of nature existing between them, in pro- portion as their various idiosyncrasies harmonise or are similar. Love alone answers Aristotle's definition of the requirement of the siimmum honum. It is an end in itself, i.e., blessedness in it- self, and not merely a mean to some further end.'" Confucius and some of the Jewish prophets insisted upon justice, mercy, and uprightness. Buddha preached love or charity in the form of self-abnega- tion and renunciation ; but it was reserved for the followers of Christ to realise the rational concep- tion of self-love as well as that of social and of divine love. *' Love thy neighbour as thyself, and the Lord thy God with all thine heart." Next came Swedenborg and Fourrier, the former of whom saw in part the greater perfection of the happiness of united pairs, the latter made this highest happiness to con- * The syllogistic movement of thouglit is seen in the tendency of Being as the outcome of individuality and relativity— general benevo- lence — Be 11 eficence. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 137 sist in class attractions, dividing men into phalanxes. / have endeavoured to show in full that such a naturally ordained union of two complementary spirits is ontologically necessary for mutual perfection of Being, leaving the resultant happiness out of con- sideration. Only the Father in heaven is perfect, i.e., possesses in absolute perfection all the attributes of Being, or personality. What Hegel calls the so-being of each creature implies limitation, deficiency in some point of Being or in development of Being, therefore the sexual union has been devised so that man and woman may each be the supplement of the other. When we speak of man or human nature, we mean man and woman ; thus each individual idiosyncrasy requires to be complemented for perfection of Being by another individuality in union with which the too much of one quality is balanced by the too little of it in the other, the result being the equilibrium of feeling and intelligence which we vainly seek for in one imper- fect human being. All the members of the race are, in fact, mutually dependent upon social communion for every accession to knowledge, and the added well-being which comes with it ; but the conjugal union is, as it has been truly said, not even altruistic — it is the con- dition of the sense of fulness of Being and joy in Being in the Ego or subject, and cannot, therefore, be treated as an accidental relation, so as to leave it open for books to be written and institutions to be founded upon the theory of the superiority of non-marriage to marriage. 138 PHILOSOPHY OF If the means to the end of joy and sense of perfec- tion of Being devised by the Creator be neglected, of course the penalty in this case, as in every other, is that the end, happiness or perfection of Being, is not attained. Although this subject of conjugal love is so important, not only as a means of happi- ness, but because of the powerful influence it exerts over the morals of the people, yet it is frequently considered subordinate to the frivolities of dress and fashion, and spoken of as a ''fluke" or a lottery, laughed at as sentimentality, or even regarded as rather a demoralising agent in character. If the whole order of the physical world depends on suitable physical relations, we may be quite sure that in the moral world right relations are of even greater importance, the relations, viz., of spirits to each other and to the Father of spirits, because here the relations are between conscious beings. In the Greville Memoirs this admirable remark occurs — " In this age of scien- tific induction surely instances ought to be accumu- lated and experiments made so as to arrive at the knowledge of what constitutes happiness." That there is only one relation '"'' in which it is to be found in the highest degree, the poetry of all ages, of all times and places, bears witness, namely, that of reciprocal and perfect mutual love. This has been confirmed by the biographies of many of the noblest * Victor Hugo, in " L'homme qui rit," says : " Deux lacunes se com- binaient pour se completer. lis se tenaient pour ce qui leur manquait : uu prodigieux besoin. Tun de I'autre etait au fond de leur amour. lis se suffisaient." SELF -C0N3CI0 USNESS. 1 39 of the race ; of course, only amongst them could one rationally look for the perfection of a relation which involves the high spiritual development of both factors in it. The essential relativity of being makes love to be both means and end ; we are happy in perfect love, and the realisation of the ideal is the end. Herbert Spencer in his "Social Statics" says, "We predict good or evil of this or the other scheme because of its accordance or discordance with cer- tain preconceived laws of life. * Obey or suffer ; * no exception from the penalty of disobedience is to be expected." Now although I have as much as possible limited myself to a constructive doc- trine, leaving to others the destruction of other and opposing doctrines, still there is one exception I must make to the general rule of composition I have adopted. As it has been remarked in a late contemporary review, "people have taken to be ashamed of desiring to be happy." Carlyle indeed scouted such an aim with contempt, yet, as Herbert Spencer says, " Do not the Brahmin, the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, and the Christian codes of morality alike say, 'You shall not do this and this because they produce evil, and you shall do that and that because they will produce good ' ? " Surely of all forms of asceticism the denial of the desire of well-beinor is the most preposterous. All other self-abnegation and mutiLation had as its professed object states of superior well-being, but now the very principle on which our I40 PHILOSOPHY OF physical organism or nervous system is constituted, the shrinking from lesion and the stretching out to- wards beneficent external influences, is made a mock of, or absurdity of all absurdities ; the desire for spiritual happiness or well-being is pronounced immoral. But the particular point of view which I must call atten- tion to from its being the pivot of my whole analysis of reason is this — that as all reasoning is from the known or experienced in Being, whilst every father and mother in this and every fairly civilised country both strive to produce physical well-being or health, which has been called the happiness of the body, and above all spiritual satisfaction or joy of life in their own offspring, however sublime they may think them- selves in pretending that they do not require happiness for themselves, they are violating the principle of contradiction in such a way that they are bound to show cause for supposing happiness, well-being, or the sense of perfection of Being, a desirable thing for others, as, if their own nervous system were so consti- tuted that they could take delight in pain or physical suffering and mental or spiritual distress, they ought equally to prick, pinch, and shove their children all day and every day, and above all to endeavour in every way to frustrate them in their attempts to attain the desires of their hearts. If, on the other hand, they admit that they desire to feel delight in Being, they are necessarily bound by reason, as the substitution or recognition of similars, to endeavour to give heart's ease to others, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 141 and to produce in them the good health, physical and moral, which leads to exhilaration of feeling or cheer- fulness. And as I have, as I hold, demonstrated that the end is only to be attained by the use of or through the means — namely, the putting ourselves en rapport with the objects that are conducive to our well-being — as we must procure food for our bodies, for their well-being, so for the well-being of our souls, spiritual union with one who possesses those attributes which form the complement to our own imperfect being, and spiritual harmony with all souls, above all, with that of the Father of spirits, is the indispensable requirement. Love is self-realisation, not self-sacrifice. In remorse we have the pangs of outraged self-esteem. The absence of love is the ennui of the heart. Love is the good for spiritual Being ; we are happy in loving, miserable in hating. Christ unhesi- tatingly pronounced that love was enough for duty — for duty as well as for joy. Love thy neighbour as thyself ; or, as the Italian word for love is, " voter hene,' desire and seek what is good for others as for thyself ; have regard for or consideration for the well- being of others as for your own, and love the Lord thy God with thy whole soul. But here, as opposed to the complementary union of souls, it has been said, it is selfishness to want to be happy oneself; surely conjugal love is a selfish kind of altruism, and therefore not admirable. Here we see a survival of the old devil- worship, in which the groans of the self-mutilated. 142 PHILOSOPHY OF self-immolated virtue are alone supposed to be accept- able to the Creator. Oh, hideous departure from reason I Why should He have created if only partly or wholly to destroy ? But until we revive the wicker baskets for our babes to be held in the scorching arms of Moloch, whilst still, on the contrary, we do everything to alleviate their slightest pains, and to give them every pleasure consonant with reason, and consequently with abstract well-being, we shall show how inconsequent, inconsistent we are with our own pretension of liking suffering and not liking to be happy ourselves. The order of thought has been shown to be the order of feeliog, of intelli- gence, of causation, and of will or natural self-deter- mination. The order of feeling is attraction for similars; the order of intelligence or knowledge is recognition of similarity in causes. The natural order of willing is to have the good for Being as motive ; feeling together with intelligence of causation help us to the knowledge of what is for the good for Being. "This is the age of inquiry into origins." I have endeavoured to show the genesis of all the great axioms of reason in the primary fundamental subjective concepts or understanding of the causes of the feelings, intelligence, and natural motivation of the Ego. " Neural excitation, grouping or logical classification, and determination to action according to these," when reflected on through memory, lead to generalisations of concrete instances, which, being endorsed by the experience of the race, become SELF- CONSCIO USNESS, 143 accepted as explanations of the cosmos and guides to action ; these form the groundwork of public education as well as of philosophy. All rational conduct must be in relation to the three principles of reason — the principle of Sufficient Cause (Being), the principle of Efficient Cause (relativity of Being), and that of Final Cause or tendency of Being. Out necessary ideal of the good for Being is the satisfaction of essential needs. " Our intellectual need is to know objects in their true nature." The need of our heart is companionship ; the need or requirement of our will is action in conformity with the imperative, emotional, intellectual, and moral needs of our nature. In reflective consciousness (observation of the subject-object) the mind proceeds in exactly the same way as in direct consciousness (according to the categories of the understanding). " Objects are the correlate of consciousness, as con- sciousness is the correlate of objects." The necessary inferences of reflective reason can no more be ignored or regarded as invalid than can the categories of the understanding accompanying existence. The stability and uniformity of nature obtain between remote and immediate objects of rational consciousness, and the sameness between the sequences of immediate and remote objects is equal. " Eeason," says Mr. Shad- w^orth Hodgson, " constitutes the subjective aspect alone its own object." "Keason works by means of voluntary redintegration s of consciousness. " " Keason compares one state of consciousness with another, in 144 PHILOSOPHY OF order to see which of them is most true and which of them is most good." '* When states of consciousness are rejected as bad, we are said to repent — to turn away from them ; " hence progress towards truth. Truth is thus seen to be purely rational, or related to Being and the consequent concepts of the understand- ing. In the system of Eapila, the first Hindoo writer on metaphysics, all things are made to minister to the soul ; and in the words of Hegel, everything in heaven and earth aims only at this, that the soul may know itself, may make itself its object, i.e., may work at its own development — w^ork out its own salvation. To these principles every rational being can ra- tionally and should conscientiously bear testimony, upon penalty of self-contradiction, which is the incon- ceivable to reason and the shocking to morality. To strive for self-reliance we must feel sure of our principles of action. Self-restraint according to prin- ciples of reason for the preservation of integrity, of physical and spiritual Being, is our duty to ourselves and to our Maker ; and in order to this, it is our duty to seek to ascertain what are the relations in which we stand to other beings and other existences, as it is only through the maintenance of favourable healthy or vital relations, and by the avoidance of depressing, deteriorating, and degrading relations, that we can effect the perfection of Being, or attain to the hap- piness which we are constituted so as to desire for ourselves and for those we love, and conse- quently to regard as the Final Cause or rational SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 145 purpose of action. No relations that are destructive of moral Being can be held with impunity, rela- tions being good or bad according as they are or are not supporting to the integrity of Being, or the perfection of being, which is the Final Cause of endeavour. In the rationale of love which I have offered to the public, it has been my object to show that just as the body requires daily bread, so the spirit of man requires daily communion with a com- plementary spirit, one which supplements his indivi- dual deficiencies of intelligence or character, for him to have the sense of fulness or completeness of Being, which is joy or health of spiritual Being, just as only a properly supported or nourished body can be a healthy one. Not that such union would tend to isolate such a pair from their kind, for each human being has his or her special gifts and faculties which make each or both of them in some degree dependent on all other rational beings, but it is no longer the hankering, dis- satisfied yearning of the solitary soul for its mate, but only a cheerful and friendly, but not too intimate, dependence upon the outer world, so that each one, or rather each pair, may go their way without breaking th e heart-strings of the other. Thus the mother can see with joy her best-beloved child in the arms of another with delight instead of with jealousy or regret ; and let it never be lost sight of that the conjugal relation is the ouly one that, in the nature of things, can be enduringly counted on for providing this support to the soul, not only because friend drifts away from 146 PHILOSOPHY OF friend, brother from sister, and child from parent, but because of the essential and unapproachable harmony of the complementary spiritual relation. Where the source or cause of joy of life is, there will a person voluntarily be. Neither of them is happy in the absence of the other. It has been remarked by philosophers that nothing is more striking in the order of nature than the simplicity of the means by which great effects are produced. The aspiration after perfection in every- thing, and most of all in our own being, the sense of perfection of Being or blessedness^ is only attained through love — the love of kind in all its degrees, proportionate to the affinities of the beings concerned, and through this love of the brother we have seen, as both Christ and Plato taught, the adoration of the invisible Father. These are the conditions of happi- ness or blessedness, these bringing with them the har- mony of all rational wills with the will of the Supreme Being, and the passing away of all grudges and envyings, each one having his own heart's desire. And if I am asked, why then is not this union now and always found upon this earth ? I reply that w^hat it is the object of spiritual development to attain and be fitted for cannot precede the educational process of development, which chiefly consists in ideal realisa- tion of the proper objects of rational desire, just as blessedness consists in the actual fulfilment of it. Through loneliness we learn our own insufficiency to ourselves for happiness, and learn to appreciate the SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 147 rest prepared for us from the beginning in perfect love, human and divine. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his " Social Statics," says, " Just as the attractions and affinities which are latent in separate atoms become visible when those atoms are approximated, so the forces that are dormant in the isolated man are rendered active by juxtaposition with his fellows." And he goes on to say, " Answering to each of the actions which it is requisite for us to per- form, we find in ourselves some prompter called a desire, and the more essential the action, the more powerful is the impulse to its performance, and the more intense the gratification derived therefrom." The sufficient reason or properly Final Cause of action is the good for our spiritual or real Being, but special desires become often so irresistible to us, like that of the miser to accumulate wealth, that they are gratified to the neglect of the end which all should subserve. Also, in his " Social Statics," Mr. Herbert Spencer says, " It is desirable that there should be a segrega- tion of those best fitted for each other's society; hence the sentiment of friendship." Otherwise we have the " lowering of society and wedlock to animal gregari- ousness.'' Now, as I have endeavoured to demon- strate that in the necessary recognition of similars, which constitutes reason, from contemplating in in- trospective reflection the subject- object or Ego, we are obliged to "substitute a similar" to ourselves, 148 PHILOSOPHY OF as Sufficient Cause, however superior to us in strength and perfection of attributes, to account for the existence of the Ego ; so when we see fidelity or unchangeableness of nature or purpose to be the distinctive characteristic of the noblest of the race, we cannot help inferring, arguing, or reasoning from analogy, that when the Supreme Being or Creator implants such fidelity to feeling in us. He Himself must have a benevolent purpose in so doing. We thus take this very subjective fidelity as a hostage of objective fulfilment of desire ; otherwise the truer, the tenderer, the nobler the nature of a human being, the more certainly and eternally would he be doomed to that damnation eternal or sufi'ering which even those who most support the doctrine have thought to be the lot of the faithless and frivolous. " Vandyke will be of the company," said the dying Gainsborough, and Victor Cousin remarks that in David's great picture of the death of Socrates, Plato is not repre- sented as looking at the face of Socrates, that he was so soon to see no more, but with raptured gaze upturned to the promised ideal life beyond ; for the promised land of reason is the fulfilment of the ideal in the human breast. Being, though under every variety of condition, still only Being, is the object of conception, as its perfection is the object of faith, love, and hope. Herbert Spencer says, " Were the expediency theory otherwise satisfactory, it would be still useless, since it requires nothing less than Omniscience to carry it SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 149 into practice." Whereas throiigli natural and rational desire the soul instinctively discerns the condition of happiness, so long as it never loses sight of the main- tenance of the integrity of all the personal attributes of feeling, intelligence of causation, and will for the good for spiritual Being. Herbert Spencer defines the moral sense as a natural impulse (tendency) towards upright conduct. As we receive gratification from honest and fair dealing, the sentiment of justice arises in us. All the important requirements of our being are fulfilled at the solicitations of desire. "As we are guided to our bodily welfare by instincts, and as also from instincts spring the domestic relationships, by which other important objects are compassed, it is highly probable tliat the same mental mechanism is employed in all cases." Even Bentham, after deriding a supposed moral sense, has to fall back upon the intuition ''that all men have equal claims to happiness," which is the satisfaction, not the renunciation of desire. " Amongst the Hindoos, sacrifice became a sort of magic ; their views of the power of sacrificial and other rites, and the efficacy of the work done, resembled the ojnts operatum of the middle ages." — Sir E. Colebrooke. My new doctrine of love consists in showing that love is its own reward, i.e., that it alone is joy, and there- fore no sacrifice of self. Love is the originator of the sense of responsibility or obligation ; from the strong desire of aiding others the idea of social duty is evolved, and where love is, there also are faith and hope. Self-consciousness or Egoism reflects its own ISO PHILOSOPHY OF felt internal unity of Being on externally recognised attributes of Being ; hence it is the Revealer of the Supreme Being or type of Personality. This is the rationale of the God-concept or necessary inference of Deity from reflection on the Ego and the rational order of the universe. Now with our bodies constituted as they are, for this planet and this planet only, all the particular phy- sical needs and the this-worldly advantages, generally so much coveted, do and will gradually fall ofi" from our scale of essential needs, but as long as our spiritual being lasts, spiritual afiinities and our essential need of spiritual sympathy must endure; therefore the instinct has existed in all ages and amongst all races of men that they will find their dead again, those that they have loved, and so must ever seek for in the land of the hereafter, in the kingdom of the blessed ; for " where thou art is heaven to me, and heaven without thee cannot be." This testimony of the heart, ascending like incense hour after hour to the throne of the Father who implanted in our hearts such love and such fidelity, is the witness, the comforter, the harbinger of the great salvation to come — salvation from sufi'ering worse than death — salvation from the death of the soul through sin, and broken-ofi* relationship with the Father of spirits and with His spiritual ofispring. As heaven is spiritual harmony, so hell is spiritual discord, and so the raison d'etre of love is for the end SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 1 5 1 or Final Cause of creation to be accomplished, namely, perfection of spiritual Being, happiness eternal. The only ground of equality conceivable amongst persons is moral equality in benevolence, many gifts to one spirit. Virtue (from r?V, man) consists in being such a person as God created us to be. God, not ourselves, provides the objective relations necessary to this, but we must be true to these relations or the end will not be accomplished. " The sense of iornorance is the secret of his wish to know " (Argyll, Moral Sense) to escape from the pain of it. Association of ideas or neural grouping precedes action, but grouping may be accidental through habit, instead of normal or rational. The sense of distress in or through not understand- ing argues the destiny of understanding the universe and the relation in which we stand to it and its Author. What we feel that we ouo^lit to do is to act accordinor to the nature God has given us, to be true to ourselves, to natural feeling, rationalised by intelligence of causa- tion ; this is what our conception of obligation resolves itself into — the natural, normal, therefore commanded, association of ideas with action, instead of a pig- headed or tiger-like action without reflection. One of the simple forms of obligation is gratitude, which involves the association of ideas. Moral judgment is an exercise of the moral sense, as intellectual judg- 152 PHILOSOPHY OF mentis an exercise of the intellectual sense, as aesthetic judgment is the judgment of the emotional sense. The sense of the true, the good, and the beautiful are psychological senses ; the senses of smell and taste are physiological. Judgment is always reflective. '^ In the analysis of mind we are dealing with one organic whole. Not one of its faculties " (of feeling, intelligence, or will) "can exist alone, or can exert its special function, without the help of the others." Keason apprehends one truth as the necessary consequence of another through the principle of identity or analogy. " Ee- flection passes in review the previous apprehensions of the intellect or the suggestions of desire." The supreme faculty of will determines the subject of investigation, or the direction of thought, or the course of conduct. " But all these faculties more or less involve each other ; memory is the indispensable servant of them all." Without memory there could be no conscience. We are always measuring our own conduct and that of others by the standard of the moral sense which upon reflection we have adopted, or which has been handed down to us by tradition, or imposed on us as by authority, social or political. The moral sense cannot work without the help of feeling and reason ; moral judgments are of approval or condemnation, according to whether purpose or action is for the good or conservative of the integrity of being, or deleterious or degrading to it. ^' The moral perceptions can only be felt by a moral agent. SELF- CONSCIO USNESS, 1 53 and its judgments formed in respect to the activities of a mind like its own." " The only moral element in conduct is motive." Freedom is necessarily assumed as a condition of moral action. '*A man's action is right or wrong according to his own knowledge." We may think people always responsible to a certain extent for failure of knowledge concerning the good. The absence of pur- pose of good, and so of ascertaining the means to the end, is itself immoral. A rational being knows that for the end to be attained the means must be studied. " There is no faculty of the mind," says Argyll, ''which is independent of the processes of development which result from its contact with the outer world," i.e., from being placed under appropriate relations, rela- tions being always the means provided in the Divine wisdom for the accomplishment of an end. '' Every exercise of the mind involves perception of some rudimentary truth." '' As men know in- stinctively what gives pleasure to themselves, there- fore they know what gives pleasure to others" (Argyll). " The things which give us pleasure are the satisfaction of the needs of life," and " the acquisi- tion of these is essential to well-being." **Man is naturally asocial" (i.e., idiosyncratically sympathetic) ''being; the desire of communicating plea- sure and knowledge to others is natural to him." " It is universally recognised as good that we ought to judge of what is due to and is desired by others according to our own estimate of the good or iesirable." " The in- 154 PHILOSOPHY OF stinctive feelinfy of moral oblio^ation is that we must judge of our duty to others by what we hold to be good for ourselves." '' The usefulness of a thing means its conduciveness to some purpose ; a good torture may mean a torture well calculated to gratify some sentiment of revenge." " It is right to strive for results that are beneficent, because it is being true to our own nature, which is of God's ordin- ance." *'The beneficent must be for the whole of Being.'' We may trust the Giver of the moral law that what is right for us to do is also best for us, " at last far ofi", at last to all." " The unity of our nature with that of our kind makes our recognition of goodness in the conduct of others towards ourselves inseparable from our own consciousness of the needs and wants of our own minds and bodies." What is wanted is " a higlier understanding of the enjoyments and aims of life." "Man is conscious of his own reason, and of the relation in which it stands to the measure- less intelligence of which the universe is full." " With the beasts," says Argyll, ** as regards all the enjoyments as well as all the work of life, equality is the universal rule ; the females are treated with a strange mixture of love, of loyalty, and of devotion." " Throughout nature every creature does handle the gifts which have been given to it for the highest purposes of its being," *' whilst man is prone to set up and invent standards of obligation which are low, false, mischievous, even ruinous." SELF'CONSCIOUSNESS. 155 " The love of one from which there does not spring the love of all is but a worthless thing." Whilst the love of God has been mistakenly opposed to the love of man, and God has been supposed only to delight in a broken heart, instead of His own assurance " that He doth not willingly, malignantly? but only for our own good, afflict us," being relied on, man's religion has been a corrupting instead of an elevating or moralising sentiment. Amongst the human senses there is one which is of the greatest importance for the happiness of man — the " individual sense," by which each estimates each. It is the emphatic form of the sense of rela- tivity. George Sand says, " Chaque organisation suit sa logique personelle," the instinctive recognition of similars or suitables, which accounts for true love at first sight, when we are more struck by idiosyncrasies than w^hen habitual intercourse has dulled our keen surprised sensibility to them. The rationale of this feeling, or rather the term that best defines it, is the sense of one's own Being finding its complement or completion in that of another. The less intense and vivid forms of the individual sense or judgment are seen in spontaneous liking or friendship. There are normal forms of judgment, and the forms ** of thought being self-identical, self-proven," there are also idiosyncratic estimates. Marriage is more than a partnership — it is a union, the most efiective in raising the nature of man. Marriage has its source in the highest capacities of 156 PHILOSOPHY OF our nature — love and faith. '* Every social movement crediting the authority of women would tend to develop in man the virtue he has always required of women — fidelity." " The women," says Emily Pfeiflfer, **are the moulds in which the souls of its men are set." It is essential that all forces which afiect human action should be duly accredited and openly applied. It is good for the sanity of intellect that feeling and action should sufier no divorce. Of what inner facts and principles, asks Plato, are the obvious facts and principles, without which society would not go on, the exponents ? The ex- planation of the growth of the state is, according to Plato, not historical, but psychological and logical. So it is with the chief social institutions, -such as marriage. ^' The maternal functions, which tend to tenderness of heart," and the consequent relation of the temporarily invalided and incapacitated member to the bread-winner and protector, both of mother and child, establishes an irreducible type of the relation between the sexes. Some author of reputation has remarked that Nature has committed the care of the feeble infant and ignorant child to the most timorous sex, and with good reason, pour cause, as the French say, that she may better watch over them. Plato held that if men could once realise what their true interests required them to do, they would do it. " No soul is willingly deprived of truth." Shelley has this line, *' These verses are too sad to SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 157 send to you, but that I know, happy yourself, you feel another's woe : " because the person who has not positively realised happiness himself cannot feel the awful negation of it ; hence they cannot be pitiful. Let not my reader confound worldly success with the happiness that makes life " worth living." The former, bringing no real joy, brings no gratitude to the Joy-giver nor pity for the bereaved. God created in man a being conscious, or capable of being con- scious, that His work is good, thus taking the created spirit into communion with Him. While all men need others, all are needed by others. *' Education should be a system for adjust- ing a person's surroundings to their higher needs." Abbott says, Plato's idea of the essence of educa- tion is most simply and comprehensively " nurture." To him the human soul is emphatically and before all else something living, something which in the strict sense \ve can neither create nor destroy, but which we can feed or starve, nourish or poison. It is the feeling of the assimilative power of the soul which leads Plato to attach such immense importance to the environment of life, and makes him more disposed to attribute moral evil to bad nurture than to inherent vice. " Against the all- powerful teaching of society he thinks no private teaching can hold its ground. The real agent that demoralises youth, the real educator is public opinion. Everybody admits in theory that the 158 PHILOSOPHY OF human self is a living being, requiring a certain environment to grow properly ; but we are liable to forget this when we have to do with the mental atmosphere. The power of vision of the eye of the soul, or the mind's eye, can neither be originally produced by education nor entirely destroyed by the want of it. The inherent vitality of the soul makes the question of its nourishment all-important, and precludes a merely mechanical treatment of it. The eye of the soul must be turned to the light, for which it has an intrinsic capacity. As in the case of other living things, such as plants and animals, the stronger and better the nature of the soul, the more important is it what nourishment it gets ; and a gifted soul in a corrupt society is like a good seed sown in a strange soil. It grows crooked and unlike itself, loses its proper virtue, and sinks at last to the level of its surroundings." Perhaps even lower, as not being protected by conventionality, which is a great support to the merely superficial and imita- tive, spiritual or affectional. Such relations are thus seen to be of as vital importance to the soul as sensuous or physiological ones are to the body; these it is therefore the primary function of the social state to provide in perfection. There are not only groans of the spirit not to be uttered, but also "pantings of hope" not to be uttered. As the groans are for perfection of Being, so the pantings of hope are for the perfection of Being ; for that is the only rationally postulated or intuited SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 159 conception of tlie purpose of God in creating a self- conscious rational spirit. That the desire for '' fulness of being and joy for evermore" which the Creator Him- self has implanted within us be fulfilled, this simply is the object, and no less than this, of our rational expectation at the hand of a necessarily affirmed, i.e., according to the laws of thought assumed, benevo- lent Creator — the eternal-damnation theory beiug a direct contradiction of the principle of Final Cause — as action for the good for Being is the only rationally conceivable motive in design. Cato says, " We must let go eyes and other senses, and make our way to the real truth,'* i.e., ontological truth, "abstracting ourselves from the immediate imaginative presenta- tions of time and space." Gazing only on the neces- sary concepts of pure reason, each principle of reason standing in equally strict relation to the principles of Being. Whenever we mentally interpret a thing, or, in other words, understand it, we give it the only sufficient reason for existing, namely, for the good for Being, for well-being, for happiness, which is per- fection of conscious Being ; but though this is sub- jective, yet it is objectively produced through its standing in relation to the appropriate objects for the development of personality. " Good is the ruling principle or end" (Plato), i.e. of the creation of anything. In the ^^Phsedo" the choice of the good and the best is represented as the essential characteristic of in- telligence, for it alone is truly and fully Being. The imperfection resulting in unhappiness is failure of i6o PHILOSOPHY OF Being, is palsy or withering of faculty, of life, and joy. " Human life suggests though it does not realise " perfection of Being. How could we necessarily pos- tulate another state of being if unconditional perfec- tion were realised here ? This sense of imperfection is the hostage of God's purpose to be fulfilled here- after, and the goad to the exercise of our faculties, which is the path of progress — development according to the end proposed by the Creator in creating us. " The self-contradictory maxims of popular morality" are illogical, and consequently absurd instead of elevat- ing. *' When the mental grasp of a principle is con- ventional and unintelligible, it is liable to be loosened by every objection.'' When we can give no rational account of a thing, resemblance is confounded with reality, a fragment with the whole, and, to quote Plato again, " Such a man is only half awake ; the good things which he supposes himself to secure are only images and shadows of the truth. What are the principles," he asks, " of justice and honour good for," if not for Being ? That it is which gives them their value. " Ideal truth is our only guide," i.e., the truths forced upon us by reason, which is the ratio of Being. Homo Mensura (Protagoras). Now things are not only good for Being, but also for the fostering of or maintenance of relations be- tween beings. In the Bible the principle of evil is called '*the Divider, the Accuser." Love is the spiri- tual relation between rational beings, supremely good for them ; therefore he who sows dissension, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. ^^2i ^^ like the awful pagan goddess Discord, with snakes for whips, is on the side of the principle of evil — the Divider. In the Arabian myths we find the form in which death is regarded as most woful is as ** the separator of companions." Only the science of ontology, arrived at in reflec- tion on the nature and attributes of the Ego, enables us to look upon death as " Celui qui separe et rassemhle" Only through this transcendental science of pure reason is the cypress wreath for the brows of death exchanged for the orange blossom of the golden and eternal marriage of souls. '' Im Leben fern, in Todte dein." Yes, only when in heaven we strike that "lost chord" again will the great Amen of souls be fully and truly spoken. '' To under- stand it here is the nearest approach to Heaven on earth." Faith in the ideas of reason is a sure ground of confidence. Intelligible reasons must be given for actions. Now the intelligible reason for the awful sufi'ering of bereavement by death can be clearly apprehended ; indeed no conceivable plan could more e]ffectually bring home to our reason the fact that " only love is enough " for happiness than when once we have known its vivifying, reviving power, to be deprived of it and plunged back into the isolation which the spirit hates as Nature abhors a vacuum. Thus in a future state of being we shall be fur- nished with the necessary experience to make it a happy one; whereas, if, like babes crying at not i62 PHILOSOPHY OF being able to reacli the moon, we were always as here in our ignorance seeking after things that profit not for real joy, there could be no more happiness hereafter than here. The highest type of personal affection is that of love emphatically so called, combining congeniality of character, mutual benevolence, and identity of interests, and this last is only found in the single relation of conjugal love : here affection and interest are on one and the same side. " Human complete- ness is happiness." A good sword is a sword that completely answers its purpose, justifies its raison d'etre. One of the senses in which the word good is used is as completeness (Plato). It is surely a rational inference that there should be correspondence between rational expectation or hope and the end. " What is rational is right ; " so we must needs expect the rational in the character and motive of the Supreme Being ; and as the con- crete subjective concepts of the spontaneous reason- ing process are necessarily generalised in reflective reasoning as abstract concepts of the universal laws of Being, to these generalisations the same absolute belief attaches as to the directly known facts of our own experience in being ; therefore there is no more uncertainty of the postulates of ontological science than of those of the physical sciences, which are indeed ultimately resolvable into metaphysical con- cepts of causation, of which the physical sciences are postulates or inferences. The metaphysician is thus SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 1 6s not a mere dreamer of dreams, but tlie true positive philosopher, whose subject is not hypothesis but " what is " (Plato). Renan says, " La raisdn triomphe de la mort, et travailler pour elle est travailler pour Teternite." Freedom is for self-realisation. " The chief good," says Aristotle, ** must lie in a life which leaves no want of man unsatisfied, whether these wants be external or spiritual, — a life in which man's self is fully realised, and which therefore attains his final end." " That alone which' gives a value to the sub- ordinate bonds of union between the members of a state is the final end of human life." What, then, is this final end or chief good, the pur- suit of which, and a common share in which, is the essence of the state ? Aristotle has answered this question thus — " A state is a community in good living, not in mere living." The state aims at nothinor short of moral character or well-beinor • the real law of the state aims at making the citizens good and just men. " Good living, noble actions, well-being or happiness, these are all various names for the chief good of man." " The end at which the state is said by Aristotle to aim is the full and harmonious development of human nature in the citizen ; or, in other words, the unimpeded activity of his moral and intellectual excellence or virtue." '' He is to be a man indeed," i.e., to have that virtue or virility which is to be really a man. *^ One of the ideas connected with the word 1 64 PHILOSOPHY OF good is completeness ; " and thus to be a complete man is his duty both to his Maker and to his fellow- citizens. But what I have undertaken to impress upon the minds of my readers is, that by the natural law of polarity or duality, completeness of nature is not attainable by any solitary human being, nor will mere occasional and transient meetings in business or pleasure with others not intimately connected with him produce the development of his emotional nature necessary for morality. There are three tests or criteria of a man's excellence — the emotional, the intellectual, and the moral : the question is, are faith, love, and hope all highly developed in him ? " The brain cannot think unless the heart beats," for this is what God requires of man towards Himself, and for this birth again into the spirit nothing short of a deep and tender love, such as the Maker has constituted to exist between the sexes in the holy union of the marriage of souls, will be found adequate. This is possibly the result of the physiological complemen- tariness which evidently affects our psychological nature, for unity results from complementary diver- sity. A community in the functions of a good life. " Are we not made as notes of music are, for one another though dissimilar ? " But the condition of a spiritual event is not the essence of it, so that the divine joy of spiritual love need never be expected to attend upon mere physical complementariness. Even the imperfect spiritual SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. 1 65 complementariness of mere friendship is a degree nearer to the perfect union of souls than any merely material union, or than one based on a merely material community of interests. To my mind, there- fore, and I believe according to the primary laws of thought, and to the principle of reflection, i.e., the principle of sufficient reason, the paramount duty of the state and of society in general is to provide as favourable conditions for the spiritual communion and marriage of adults as for the education of childhood and youth, regarding in the light of social sins the disintegrating unsocial qualities of pride, pomp, personal ambition, and extreme luxury in dress or the general appurtenances of the life of this world, remembering always its transitory nature and the naturally subordinate part it should play in the eternal life of a responsible and moral agent. Ambition is not the stuff of which the real bene- factors of mankind are made, though industry of any rational kind, however self-seeking it may be, is rendered, by the wisdom of Providence, helpful in- directly to mankind in general, whether we will it so or not. Nor are combative, antagonistic, insolent habits any more really conducive to the individual happiness of their possessor than to that of their f .'Hows. Love alone and love only is enough for joy of life, as it is also the fulfilling of the law of duty. " If ye give all your goods to the poor and your body to be burned, it profiteth you nothing if ye have not love." Love being the subjective condition i66 PHILOSOPHY OF of happiness wliich no formal fulfilment of rational obligation can supply. Both Aristotle and Plato make the existence of virtue to depend on the conditions being provided for it in the education of youth and in the institutions of the state. To give people freedom to develop in a vacuum is a farce. The proper social conditions failing for emotional development, frivolity, or the attaching importance to things that are unimportant, will characterise the women of a country, immoral sensuality being the perverted outlet of feeling in the men ; whilst in the lower classes the same want of proper channels being provided for the exercise and development of the affections results in acts of violence and crime. Mr. Abbott remarks in his "Hellenica," "that our theory of marriage" — I do not, of course, mean the manage de convenance theory - — " is the one respect in which we have made a clear advance in the science of life over the ancients." Our horror of slavery may also be counted another ; but just as it has been shown that slavery was not altogether an illogical institution in the dawn of civilisation, so the doctrine of might constituting right, upheld even lately by such a man as Mr. Carlyle, renders the past subjection of women by the stronger sex comprehensible. But when once the real definition of right has been arrived at, namely, that a rational being ^' has * " Transcendental reflection has nothing to do with objects (ex- ternal), nor is its aim directly to acquire conceptions of them. It is SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 167 the right to realise or develop its rational, i.e., emotional, intellectual, and moral i^ature, the com- plementariness of the sexes, their equal and reciprocal need of each other, entitling each to an equal con- sideration and respect, will be fully revealed, and woman will recognise the duty of cultivating her intellect as man does, and man will see the necessity of himself obeying the moral law in every respect, as much as he has hitherto insisted on its being obeyed by woman ; and thus the ideal life, instead of being only exhibited in a few rare instances, will no longer be the object of vain endeavours to the many. The soul in Plato's view is a triple being. One of its constituents is appetite, a craving for, will for satisfaction, sense of the good for being, desire ; the second, self-assertiveness ; the third, a capacity of attraction developing into love, sociableness. These elements form an harmoniously related whole. Of the constituent elements, feeling, thought, and will, Plato begins with tendency of Being to the good, then self- realisation or assertion of Being, and lastly, feeling of relativity, attraction for similars. With regard to self-assertion, self-respect, he says — '* A healthy physical life being the necessary ground- work of the higher psychical activities, there must be the state of mind in which we set ourselves to find out the subjective conditions under which we can acquire such conceptions of them. For it is only by the consciousness of tlie relations of given representations to our different sources of knowledge that we can determine aright their relations to each other." — Kant. " The comparison of conceptions is in reference to every one of the categories." — Idem. 1 68 PHILOSOPHY OF such an education as will regulate the appetites to contribute to the good of the whole soul. If we are convinced that in refusing to satisfy an appetite we are acting reasonably, i.e., ' according to the rational or better self/ we may feel dissatisfaction, but not the indignation which a man feels when he has let his appetites get the better of his reason. It is the con- sciousness of a self which deserves respect that makes us angry when we have disgraced ourselves. It is this in the form of honourable pride which makes us measure ourselves against others. It is this, in the form of not choosing * to be put upon,' which makes us resist what we think injustice, this it is that makes us face danger without flinching, and it is the feeling that there is no such self to fall back upon which weakens us when we know we are in the wrong" ("Hellenica"). " The main object of education is to predispose the soul intellectually and morally to the perception and execution of ideas and principles of which it does not as yet understand the full bearing, but upon which it will afterwards find that the welfare of itself and society depends " (Plato). " Allow, and if necessary compel, human nature to develop normally, i.e., provide it with the nurture its development demands." The chief cause of the ills of mankind is ignorance of their true good and neglect of their nobler nature. " Train their natures rightly and they will see what is the true good of mankind " (Plato). The summum SELF- CON SCI O USNESS. 1 69 honum does not lie in animal satisfaction of appetite, but in spiritual perfection of Being. Plato divides mankind into three primary kinds, according as one or other of the three psychical ele- ments predominates in the character. The inward man he asserts to be that which is most divine in man ; the philosophic element (or rational element in the soul) is what constitutes the real personality in man ; the philosophic form of the soul is the type of character, that has the love of knowing the nature of the truth, or, to use a Platonic phrase — " the nature of what is," i.e., of Being. " To Plato there is a revelation of God in the human soul, as there is in the physical world ; his celestial city, like * the kingdom of heaven,' is within us. And as it is this divine humanity which is in the truest nature the self, the other parts of human nature are conceived by Plato to find their highest activity and most real satisfaction in following and serving it as far as they are able. To become as human as possible is the highest (and therefore the most satisfactory) end of the half-animal nature which forms a part of man." "It is the nature of the philosopher to be ever struggling up to Being and not to abide in opinion." " Being is akin to being ; '^ it is through entering into relations with other beings, through that in our nature ivhich is akin to theirs, that we get hold of the nature of Being, and find nourishment and true life. The mingling of being with being begets intelli- I70 PHILOSOPHY OF gence ; and finding the knowledge of truth, he will cease from his travail, and not until then. "The practical man who believes in 'results' is disposed to regard psychological considerations as fanciful or far-fetched, and yet the most fatally unpractical thing in tlie world is to go on testing methods by results, which take every factor into account except the one upon which the whole result ultimately depends ; that factor in man is the human mind, and to discuss what kinds of educa- tion are in themselves the best, without considering mental organisation, is as idle as to discuss what is the best kind of food in the abstract without regard to the stomach which has to digest it." The philosopher or lover of truth, according to Plato, living in fellowship with what is orderly and divine, grows himself orderly and divine as far as he is able ; for it surely cannot be that a man can live in fellowship with what he admires without imita- ting it. " In the unchangeable order and beauty of the universe Plato saw the image on a vaster scale of the same reason which is imperfectly reflected in man. Such was the human nature for which, as Plato conceived, it was the function of education to provide nurture." Plato made the earliest lessons in education appeal to that element in the soul (sense of relativity) in virtue of which man is not a mere isolated atom and centre of resistance, but capable of attraction (love). SELF- CON SCI USNESS. 1 7 1 both to \Yliat is liioiier thau himself aud to what is like himself." The sense of beauty is the seuse of harmony or proportion, of symmetry of correspondence, or of fitness, as of dress to climate, or of propriety, as of conduct to express emotion. Mind speaks to mind in art, adaptation, or design ; to pretend to ignore this is Jesuitical, for it is as positive a fact of consciousness as a sensation of heat or cold. *^ It is the abeyance of healthy and inspiring emotions that drags so many men down." ^' Plato, in his *Eepublic,' gives a powerful picture of the consequences of neglecting the education of the reason through the imagination and the emotions, showing that the evil in life is quite as much due to negative as to positive conditions." (E. Abbotts "Hellenica"). The summum honum, spiritual harmony in all its different degrees, with other spiiits, and emphati- cally with the Father of spirits, is the end to which the soul aspires. The means to the end of perfec- tion of Being or happiness are one with the end. Love is the efficient cause of joy or sense of fulness or perfection of Being. Love is the fulfilling of the law or condition of happiness, and is itself the crowning bliss of Being. Development is through relativity of Being ; social government, proper adjustment of relations, and the relation of things to each other, is only revealed to us through their relativity to ourselves. The goal of all pursuit of truth is the 172 PHILOSOPHY OF kuowleclore of the relations in wliicli thin^js stand to us, and of the relations in which we stand to our fellow- creatures and to the Maker of all. We find in Hellenica this passage — " The question which remains to be asked is, what is the ultimate lesson which the human mind has to learn ? what, in Plato's techuical phraseology, is that unhypothetical First Principle upon which the whole structure of truth depends, and to grasp which is the crowning act of knowledge ? What is the ultimate principle to which all the ' hypotheses ' of knowledge are to be referred?'' My own answer to this question is — The principle of Sufficient Keason. What reason have you for the faith that is in you regarding anything ? What is your *^ sufiicient reason " (which in reflective reasoning takes the place of adequate causation in direct percep- tion) for believing, say, that it will rain to-morrow, or that calamity will certainly overtake such a man ? The one or only sufiicient reason, i.e., the only reason satisfactory to the mind, that we can give for any conviction is that in the presentations of our own being or experience efi'ects are the processions or manifestations of the activities of certain causes ; and when such causes are manifestly existing, apparently unbalanced and not outweighted in force by other causes, we naturally or rationally expect such or such efi'ects to follow ; or when we perceive such or such efi'ects, we necessarily or rationally attribute them to causes which we know to act after such or such a manner. The relations between beings or things SEL F- CO NSC 10 USNESS. 1 73 once apprehended through experience, the contra- dictory of them or the denial of them is the incon- ceivable. Truth is a system of belief derived from the understanding of being as a whole, therefore no part or principle can be fully known until its connec- tion with other parts and principles has been appre- hended. In proportion as any man can take or give account of any system or part of a subject he must have the entire system of belief before his mind. " Plato " (Hellenica) "regarded the study of dialectic as an educational study of the true method or logic of think- ing, which he regarded as the universal science or system of universal knowledge, in which not only the hypothetical principles of the mathematical and phy- sical sciences, but those of all other branches of human inquiry, found their place and justification, and were seen to depend upon a single unhypothetical prin- ciple " {i.e.. Sufficient Reason). " Science points to universal logical principles in which its problems find solution." * Plato insisted upon the theoretical neces- sity of such a universal science, " on the equal neces- sity of keeping the outlines of it before the mind." Abbott goes on to say that ** Plato was as con- scious as we are that no such universal science is in existence." Whether or no this demand has been met or suggested in some slight but true fashion in the present work, I leave to the public to decide. * " Principles of Causation, Sufficient, Efficient, and Final — the first is the principle of Metaphysics, the second tliat of Physics, and the third of Moral Science. 174 PHILOSOPHY OF Plato's system of education applies to the three forms or modes of our being — gymnastics answering to realisation or development of personal being, or egoity — music or harmony ausweriDg to sense of relativity, altruity, attraction, or correspondence, and desire or tendency to act for the best for oneself, becoming in reflective generalisation morality, or the will to act for the best for Being in the abstract. " The conception of Being leads us to look every- where for unity in multiplicity and diff"erentiation in unity, so that while no piece or principle of truth can be confounded with any other, no principle can be isolated from any other. As the morality of an action is strictly or logically relative to the motive of the subject in performing it, so the loveliness or lovableness or attractiveness of a person or thing is strictly relative to the nature or taste of the person or subject who is attracted by the object. Impressions made upon us are only real when thus estimated. A preconception or prejudice concerning a person or thing is not really an impression made upon us, or a real judgment made by us, consequently we can- not really form a conception of objects in this way, conception being of the causes of impression or feel- ing, of intuition or intelligence, and of purpose or motive, so that conception does not really arise but upon an impression really received. Plato regarded introspective reflection as so rare a gift that he called it the philosophical element, as if it did not make a part of the life of the ordinary SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 175 person. But it is certain that all science properly so called is the outcome of reflection. The one Being given or found in introspective analysis of consciousness, i.e., of reflective perception, appre- hension, and comprehension, is the unit multiplied or reflected in other existences. Our own ex- tended organism furnishes us with the ideas of the three dimensions of space, and the metaphysical ideas of causation are mere mental representations of the elementary principles present in our own Being or the Ego. Being, existence, essential normal relations, together with local and temporal relations, and relations of succession and of co-existence — and tendency in action to supply essential needs and satisfy natural desire for the good for Being — these are the a priori fundamental concepts of the understanding, out of which all the sciences, physical and moral, ontology, psychology, physiology, &c., arise, through ratiocina- tion or reasoning from them. All notions circle about Being, all relations are between beings or existences, and all purpose has the satisfaction of conscious Being for its aim and end. Thought, though tripartite, is as indivisible a pro- cess as the one being whose modes it represents. It is through the harmonious action of feeling, thought, and will (the whole man), that we appre- hend the nature of God. Whatever is a contradiction of the facts or con- stitutional elements of our consciousness cannot be considered verified or verifiable. 176 PHILOSOPHY OF The new birth is birth unto love human and Divine. The second death is separation from love. Education of feeling is through social life ; the effi- cient causes of subjective development are external influences. A collection of homogeneous units is not a unity in diversity. Love is the life of the soul — the sense of lovelessness, of neither being loved nor loving, is Death to the soul. Action ought to stand in definite relation to ideas of reason concerning the nature of Being, which is known only in reflective introspection. Duty is to act according to the rational or abstract human con- science derived from concrete personal consciousness. The reflective element or philosophic comes last. The sixth sense is reflective reason — the sense of the ideal. The reflective representation answers to or com- prises adequate causation in its three forms. The principles of Being or causation are the three forms of thought ; reflection summarises them, realises them ideally. Truth relates to Being, the denial or negation of which is the inconceivable, and therefore pronounced untrue, unreal. Being is a synthesis of feeling, thought, and will. These are the forms under which truth is apprehended. Space and time are forms of imaginative repre- sentation. Being recognises Being. *^ Homo mensura " (of SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 177 c inception) Protagoras. Eelatively of conception to individual Being. A benevolent state of mind is the condition of one's own peace and joy. It ought not to appear to be self-sacrifice to be prevented sacrificing the happiness of others to our own. It is not the poets who have invented love, but the sentiment of love that has invented the poets. The poet is the exponent of the afiectional relations of tlie emotions under the forms of the imagination — the man of science of the relations of reason, and the man of God, or the prophet or moralist, is he who expounds the relations of men to God, the Lawgiver, or the transcendental duty of men to God, which includes all other duties. '' The most important part of the eiFect of fiction is the kindling, expanding, and vivifying our social affectual activities," and the elevating our intellectual activities to greater moral heights. The question of questions is. Does material perception engross our attention to the exclusion of spiritual reflective per- ception of the attributes of personality, which are the " aids to conceptive (or spiritual) imagination," just as the impressions of the senses are aids to material imagination ? " The unconscious world has its end or its complement in that conscious Being in whom it excites pleasure, through apprehension of a spiritual activity displayed in its creation and providence, like or akin to his own. This is the M 178 PHILOSOPHY OF rational process, through recognition of similar attri- butes to our own, bj which the transcendental idea of duty is arrived at, together with the doctrine of a future state of perfection of Being or happiness. To pretend to deny that in introspective reflection, a Sufficient, Efficient, and Final Cause is required to account for the existence of the subject-object, as for that of any other object, is simply the denial of the laws of thought by which we conduct every act of our daily social life, and has therefore a semblance of intellectual dishonesty. Just as in the moral life " the just live by faith," in reflective reason and not by sight, so with regard to the existence of a Supreme Spiritual Being, we cannot look to our senses for evi- dence, but to the necessary postulates of reflective reason in its intuitive application of the organised laws of thought to the explanation of nature and human nature, and for the interpretation of the destiny of man. A great Persian poet, Omar Khayam, exclaims, *' The question is not whether God will for- give us, but if we can forgive Him for all the suffer- ings He has occasioned us." The answer furnished by refl-ective reason to this bold query is — Yes ! if these sufferings are seen, even here, to be the necessary instrument of the intellectual development of an agent gifted with free-will, who requires to make his own experiments, and to undergo many painful experi- ences for the proper and full understanding of the wisdom, beauty, and goodness of the divine order of the natural and spiritual world, so that he may SELF- CON SCI USNESS. 1 79 consciously and voluntarily adhere to it, and thus obey the Lawgiver, and arrive at the happiness or perfection of Being, rationally supposed to be the object of his creation. The unmorality and immorality exhibited by chil- dren and savages only shows, that until man arrives at the development of reflective reason through in- trospective self-consciousness, he is not capable of moralitv, which is based on the recoornition of man's relativity to his fellows and to the Supreme Being. For an exact and elevated ideal of morality to be attained, a large comparison of the customs, man- ners, laws, and conventionalities of ancient and modern peoples, and of special individual lives, is requisite ; for we learn as much by observation of errors in judgment aud their accompanying penalties in the case of other persons as in our own. Children cannot, therefore, be expected to be moral, except in the primary form of obedience to those assumed to be wiser and better, as they are more powerful than themselves ) such obedience is the first lesson in the self-control according to reason, which is of the very essence of morality^ such is the strict relativity of man's nature to the great First Cause, that his relations to his fellows have also their securest guarantee for fulfilment in the adoration of the Supreme Fount of all our being, which we call religion. The divinely ordained moral order of the universe is only so far maintained by man, inasmuch as he keeps inviolate the integrity of i8o PHILOSOPHY OF his own Being in feeling, thought, and will ; thus there is no rational severance possible between moral- ity and religion ; and this generation, given over to the exclusive study of efficient physical causes, will soon find it so to their cost if it be possible to rear any consecutive generations of infidels according to the present scheme. Faith, love, and hope are the sentiments towards the Supreme Being that arise out of our reflective recognition of our kinship to Him through similarity of the Divine attributes to our own, these constituting the medium of our appre- hension of spiritual Being, all knowledge being through relativity. If we disregard the natural relations in which we stand to each other and to the Father of Spirits, we lose all cue to what is the best for Being or the good in Being. Above all, the fundamental primary rela- tion of sex can never be ignored, influencing as it does the spiritual life of our race — all secondary conven- tional relations arising out of and never (rationally) contradicting the primary scheme of creation."^'' Of course, just as there are many children that die with- out having developed here their reflective power, so also there have been tribes of savaofes who, not haviuo^ evolved any prophets or reflective thinkers amongst them, have dwindled out of existence. But the truly awful consideration is, that many who have been born * Eeflective reason necessarily assumes the uniformity of spiritual as of physical natiire. It would be strange, indeed, if chemical affinities were enduring and spiritual elective affinities ephemeral. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. i8i iuto civilisation and possessed the faculty of reflective 2)0wer have individually, through refusing to culti- vate it, consciously lapsed into savagery — what is called evolved backwards, falling lower and lower in the scale of Being. Surel}^ this is the hell prepared by the Great Ordainer of natural laws for the warning of man. But even here the principle of Final Cause cannot be lost sight of or denied. The Buddhist doctrine of transmigrations was the early solution of the question of man's destiny, and even now there are forms of it that are not irrational, and so to be repudiated; but the scientific doctrine of evolution applied to man's spiritual nature enables us to con- ceive that when the brutalised telluric organisa- tion has been discarded by the spirit (still immortal, heaven-descended), reason may recover its reign in it in other spheres, and with another material frame ; for it is the nervous system that is the awful seat of intellectual and moral degeneration, as in madness or brain -softening. This is what may be called the fatal part of man's life ; this is probably the explana- tion of the seeminor stranoje statement in the Jewish Scripture, that " God hardened Pharaoh's heart," the rationale of which is that habits of disregard of con- scientiousness react upon, and remould, as it were, the course of nervous action, which is always in the line of least resistance, like all other forces. But to blame the Creator for this would be to blame Him for the most puissant medium of intellectual, emo- i82 PHILOSOPHY OF tional, and moral progress, through which facility in the art of right living is acquired as . much as in any other art by practice, and which so modifies the nervous organisation that such facility is, as it were, thus ingrained in the system, and handed down from generation to generation in particular families ; and Spinoza says, " The better fitted the body is to be impressed and to impress outward bodies in diverse ways, the more fit is the mind for thinking. Where- fore, for nourishing the body as it needs we must use many foods of difierent kinds, the human body being made up of very many parts of difi'erent kinds, which be in need of constant and manifold nourishment, that the body may be equally fit for performing all things which are within its natural power, and conse- quently that the mind may also be equally fit for perceiving many difierent things. Now, for achieving this the strength of any man would scarce avail, unless men lent one another their help ; therefore although men for the most part carry everything after their own fancies, yet from their constant fellowship there ensues far more convenience than harm ; so it is the better part to bear wrong from them with an even mind, and be diligent in what- ever is fitted to bring about concord and fellowship." '' Since, then, those things are good which assist the members of the body to perform their ofiice, and pleasure consists in this, that the power of man, in so far as he is composed of body and mind, is advanced or increased, therefore all things be good which SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 183 bring us pleasure, only superstition seemeth con- trariwise to liold that for good wliicli brings pain, and that for evil which brings pleasure. For the greater is our pleasure, the more do we pass to greater perfection, and therefore the more we partake of the divine nature. Nor can pleasure ever be bad when it is governed by a just regard for our interest as a whole " (or rather for our spiritual being). *' A man w^ho desires to help others by counsel or deed, so as they may together enjoy the chief good, will speak but sparingly of human weakness, but he will speak at large of man's virtue and power, and the means of perfecting the same, that thus men may endeavour, not from fear, but wholly in joyfulness, to live so far as in them lies after the command- ment of reason " (" Spinoza," by Frederick Pollock). So convinced is Spinoza that the order of the universe is strictly an order of reason, i.e., strictly relative to self-conscious or rational Being, that he goes on to say, " Except men, we know of no particular thing in nature in whose mind we may take pleasure and which we may join to ourselves by friendship or any manner of society ; and therefore, whatever there is beside men in the world, the reason of our con- venience doth not require us to preserve, but per- suades us, according to the diverse uses thereof, to jyreserve, destroy, or adapt it to our own use as we will." This is the light thrown by reflective reason on the prominent question of the present day, vivisection. For the being that alone is created to see God through i84 PHILOSOPHY OF Lis recognition of his own personal attributes of power, wisdom, and goodness, as they are exhibited in nature, and human nature is the one to whom dominion is given over the earth or the physical universe, and all that is therein. To say that the order of the universe is a rational order simply means this, that it was created with reference to the evolution of spiritual beings — beings capable of seeing that the Creators work is good, and therefore of consciously co- operating with the divinely ordained order — Beings gifted with conscience, or the intuitive knowledge that to struggle against this order, or to defy it as far as in him lies, is sinful or evil, i.e., as being the contradiction of the intention of the Great Creator, whose law or order is for the good for Being ; hence sin is also the seZ/'-contradictory, the irrational. Not to have faith in the goodness of the dispensations of Providence, however trying they may be to us, is to deny the perfection of the Divine Personality, is again to deny the necessary inference of reason from our own personality, that typical or normal action has for its principle the good for Being. I shall conclude this statement of the rational basis of morals, as of faith in God and hope of a future state of happiness or perfection of Being, as I have done my rationale of love, with a few quotations or axioms of reflective reason bearing upon the principle of Final Cause or Sufficient Keason for voluntary self-determination in feeling, thought, and will. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 185 *' Thought is a reflex of the Eternal mind, a glass to give man back the truth " (of Being). " The springs of Being are the springs of thought." If our nature were not akin to the divine we could not conceive the divine — conception being according to Being. " The outward finite life must be pervaded by the sense of the infinite and eternal, and so enjoyed, not separated." " And to this end all who have been filled with the divine idea have laboured, and shall still labour, that this consciousness in its purest possible form maybe spread throughout the race." — Fichte. *' Our idea of order is what we mean when we speak of putting together anything ourselves with a meaning and a reason." " Out of the understanding of the subject-object or Ego arises the belief in God through recognition of a similar mind and moral nature manifested in nature." The knowableness of things by us means their adaptedness to reason; we are thus really conscious of a Non-ego through recognition of similars. "God attracts us, says Newman, principally through the affections and the conscience. The light we see is not the less to be trusted because of the darkness beyond. To say we can believe nothing because we do not know all things, is to do violence to the constitution of our Being. Let us welcome thankfully the gradual widening of the region of light of which we have experience. It is altogether reasonable to believe that what we know not is in harmony with what we know, could we but see it." — MacLeod Campbell. " There is one token for us that we are meant for a higher and happier life than this in the fact that sorrow and sin always come upon us as a surprise, whilst happy days do not astonish us, nor does goodness awaken amazement in us." (This testifies to the instinctively conceived ideal of life, or rather divinely inplanted ideal within us of life as happiness.) " The order of nature is discovered or observed, not laid down by us." " The place of a people in the scale of human development is determined by the condition of its women." *' What we mean by truth is correspondence with our con- 1 86 PHILOSOPHY OF sciousiiess. The opposite or contradiction of consciousness is tlie inconceivable by reason. The negation of self-consciousness is the inconceivable or necessarily untrue." " It is only kindred griefs that draw forth our tears." Griefs, i.e., similar to those we have ourselves experienced. " The question will for ever remain, what education will best fit women to fulfil their relation to the other sex % " ** The maternal function tends to tenderness of heart, and the consequent relation of the temporarily invalided and incapacitated to the bread-winner and protector both of mother and child." " The rational relations between the sexes are based on vital relations." "What is present in Being is the source of truth, or of the representations of consciousness." " To get to the root of the secret powers that hold together tliis world of ours." — Faust. This can only be done by reason, *' substitution of similars." A Suffi Persian poet says, " Reason is the diver who plunges into the depths of Being for the pearls of truth." " No fact is so minute as to be incapable of aff'ecting such scien- tific generalisations as relate to it." President Edwards says, " If we expel Being out of our minds, we must think of the somewhat that the sleeping rocks do dream of" {i.e., nothing). " Speculation, to be rational, must be based on induction " (of laws from facts of experience). " The specialists provide the facts for the speculative mind." " Evidence can only produce conviction according to the under- standing of the individual." *' I can give you a reason," said Dr. Johnson, "but not an understanding." " The attainment of the knowledge of the true is the first duty of man." " Salvation from doubt is what man needs." " Science is founded upon facts ; conclusions must always be correlated with facts." " Science demands as a primary condition the absolute verifi- cation of the alleged facts with which it has to deal." (Verification is in the last resort reflective and subjective.) SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 187 *' Nothing has any existence except in consciousness, created or uncreated." If it made no effect upon a conscious being, exist- ence could not be predicated of it. *' Duty demands that we should follow truth wherever it leads." AYe are responsible to our Creator for the faithful use or exercise of our intellect. Aristotle says, " In matters of taste individuals are necessarily one-sided ; one is capable of appreciating one excellence, another, another." '• Faith in the ideas of reason is a sure ground of confidence ; they are the raw material of thought." " Materialism is but a physico-metaphysical philosophy." " Rhythmical self-completion " (marriage). " Gefiihl ist alle."— Goethe. Socrates quotes from the Greek poets, " God is ever drawing like towards like." Empedocles preached the gospel of love — Almighty love. *' It is feeling that to human thought is nourishment." *' Education should be a system for adjusting a person's sur- roundings to their higher needs." " One idea connected with the word good is completeness." " Good living or happiness." — Aristotle. " Benevolence the common bond." " An alliance has no common end ; its law is a mere contract " (mere external correspondence ; union is internal). "Principles must not be self-destructive." Surely the altruist will allow that. *' The brain cannot think unless the heart beats." " The study of harmony is useful for the investigation of the beautiful and the good." — Plato. " Order is rational ; the good for Being is the end of order." — Plato. " C'^tait la moiti^ de mon ame qui m'^tait rendue, je retrouvais la notion de la vie, solidarity humaine" (rational basis of morals). — George Sand. " The pig to the pig, the ass to the ass is beautiful." — Horace. *' I feel a unity in all aims, all hopes, since I have known you. Life seems symmetrical and coherent (correspondence i88 PHILOSOPHY OF of subject and object) and " vvoitli living." — Story of Avis (American). "But yet we hope that somehow good will be the final end of all." — Tennyson. ** To its own impulse every creature stirs," " Love is the spring of force and joy, which, penetrating all, sets the blind seed of Being, and from the bond of incomplete ideal essences wakes the harmony which is life." " Love the spring and cause of things. Love, with fiery accents calling, wakes the slumbering soul." — Epic of Hades. *' Once read thine own breast right, and thou hast done with fears. Man gets no other light, search he a thousand years. Sink in thyself; there ask what ails thee at that shrine." — Maltheiv Arnold. " 'Tis that the lot they have fails their own will to please." "Heaven is the vision of fulfilled desire." — Persian poet. "Yet thoroughly to believe in one's own self, so one's self were thorough, were to do great things." — Tennyson. " It seemed to her that these prayers, which bore the burden of centuries of half-inarticulate human longing, surrounded her like everlasting arms ; and upon the Church which held the cry of ages she leaned her head, as John did upon the bosom of his Lord." — The Story of Avis. " Qui veut la fin, veut les moyens." " Were we omniscient, or understanding perfectly what is required for our development, we might of our own free will entreat that no cup, however bitter, might pass by us untasted." " After long agony, rapture and bliss ; Bight was the pathway leading to this." The satisfaction of rational desire, not the extinction of it, as Buddha and the Stoics taught, is happiness. Dante describes the third heaven, where he sees Beatrice, and has the perfect vision of the Supreme Being, as " Dove il desio fini," and the long agony of patience with which the Saints cry, " How long, Lord ! how long ! " " Quand la vie est mauvaise on la reve meilleure, Des yeux en pleurs au ciel se Invent a toute heure ; SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, 189 Vespoir vers Dleu se tourne et Dieu Tentend crier, Laissez tout ce qui pleure p-i:ed to admit that there is no such arrans^ement and universal co-ordination." — Page Roherts, 'Good Words,' Aug. 1864. But surely the principle of sufii- SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 191 cient reason, wliicli is the governing principle of reflective introspective reasoning — the principle of rational conception, i.e., that the cosmos is always to be judged in relation to, or in the ratio of personal self-conscious being. I have actually stated that one co-ordinating principle of all knowledge — whether of sense or sense transcending. This is what I mean by the idea — consisting of three movements comprising man's whole being, i.e., in relation to his feeling, thought or intelligence, and will or moral tendency to the good for Being — '' the synthesis of nature and of life" required by Frederick Harrison as here ex- hibited — as also " of knowledge and ideas." Frederick Harrison has also truly said that '' when philosophy and science say it is no part of their function to give us a religion, it is an unworthy answer." I say so also, and I consider that my science of metaphysics and my philosophy furnish that re- quirement of man's nature — a religion of reflective Eeason. The essence of religion is further described as " faith in the existence of a supreme, eternal, beneficent Being reconciling the world unto Himself — yes, by reflective reason ; as mere perception reveals a world of hideous disorder, to which no sentient and rational creature coidd he reconciled ; so reflective comprehen- sion reveals a trustworthy Creator. The God concept is an idea of reflective reason, not of the untutored understanding ; but the inferences of reflective reason take their starting-point from the 192 PHILOSOPHY OF principle of sufficient cause within tlie category of tlie understanding, upon which the principle of sufficient reason proceeds. It is only by examining our ideas in the light of reflective reason that we know that they are true ; i.e., that our ideas are in accordance or conformity with the understanding of Being, which is the only sufficient reason we have to give for our belief. Emerson says : " We are natural believers. Truth, or the connection hetiueen cause and effect, alone interests us." It is only in reflective, intros- j^ecting reason, that we clearly realise this connection between cause and effect, i.e., by closely observing, i.e., cognising the effects or impressions produced on us, we arrive at the knowledge or recognition of their causes, through the substitution of similars, for a similar effect a similar cause is logically substituted. A German writer calls man, '' Ein Ursach suchendes Thier" — a cause-hunting animal. Above all, our ideas of what constitutes the good for Being are determined by our oivn experience, together with general biographical and historical relations of the experiences of others. Thus it is that we have come to see that pain and suffering, as aids to affec- tional, intellectual, and moral development, are not evil permissions of the Creator, but benevolent pre- vision of their salutary effects as means of advance to perfection of Being. Even the possibility of sin itself rouses the creature to the sense of the madness of bringing down the established order of the Creator upon himself as a consuming fire, instead of reaping SELF- CONSCIO USNESS. — 195" the benefit of it in his owu case as a life-giving warmth. Goodness is not conceivable without wis- dom and power — wisdom being the knowledge of means to an end, and power the energy which is necessary to execute its behests. The three functions of consciousness are indivisible in Being, and so in mental representation or thought. The nature of the object of the emotions can only be learned by an examination of the emotions occasioned in us. This is marvellously true of spontaneous emotion, only spontaneous emotion should be reflected upon to make sure that no irrelevant cause has afi'ected us. There are also emotions incidental to the general conception of universals, or abstract ideas, such as the true, the beautiful, and the good. Now false concep- tions may, and often are, made of these as well as of individual objects. All science comes of reflective reason — the exact knowledge of the true and of the beautiful or har- monious as well as the knowledge of the good. The rationale of truth as of love and of goodness can only be arrived at in reflective consciousness of our own being. " From the decision of self-conscious- ness," says Mr. Shad worth H. Hodgson ("Time and Space "), " there is no appeal, from the nature there exhibited there is no escape" — any more than the verdict given by a judge and jury can fail to represent the human nature from which it emanates. Again, Mr. Shad worth H. Hodgson goes on to say, *' Cogni- tions are the fruit of the exercise of consciousness, as 194 PHILOSOPHY OF a tree produces its fruit as a consequence and result of its development." *' Reason is the ultimate judge of truth and goodness ; what it declares to be such is such, as what the eye declares to be red is red." *' Everything known must have a warrant in con- sciousness." The d priori cognitions, from which all a posteriori inferences are drawn, are given in the understanding ; all reflective reasoning is upon the ground of this fundamental intelligence of causation in its three forms. It is only through the relations of thinors to the Eo^o that we can understand them : what is conformable to the nature of the ideal or typically perfect Ego is judged to be true in thought, beautiful in feeling, and right in action. An object is regarded as perfect when considered as fully developed in its nature. The unity of apprehension * is one of a state of being. It lays hold of, or is affected by similar attributes to its own, and enables us to combine them in one Supreme Person, and thus to reach the sense transcending belief (through reflec- tion upon the Ego) in a Supreme Being or Sufiicient Cause for the noumenal and phenomenal universe. And the emotion attending this conception, i.e., the religious sentiment, has manifested itself in some form or other amongst all the races of mankind, just as the belief in one's own ghost or sense-transcending being is equally universal, and it must be remembered * F. Harrison says, *' Philosophy and religion must remain impotent, a bywor