which ultimately insures the overthrow of the argument and the consequent deductions. Our narrow limits forbid the insertion here of the analysis and refutation of the celebrated à priori demonstration of the being of God by Des Cartes and Clarke, which we had written out. We can only call attention to the fact that the Pantheism of Spinoza is necessarily involved in the ontological and psychological arguments for the existence of God, which form the fundamental principles of Des Cartes.* If a clear idea is necessarily a true one, and the idea of God, and of his self-existent essence, the clearest we can entertain, it is necessarily an exclusive one; and whatever extent, modification, or significance may be given to the term God, by the clear apprehension of individual reason, or individual fantasy, will be the legitimate representation of the facts of absolute existence. These two principles, earnestly entertained, and logically developed, lead directly to Spinozism. Nor can we regard the pre-established harmony of Leibnitz-with its attendant doctrines, the vis viva, monadology, and the identity of indiscernibles-as anything else than disguised, mutilated, and illogical Spinozism. The vis viva of Leibnitz was merely a modification of the vis creatrix of Des Cartes; and the pre-established harmony itself simply a curtailment of Spinoza's twin-attributes of being or substance, thought and extension. In all such cases, as in all strictly developed systems of metaphysics, (though most strikingly exemplified by Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Oken,) elaborated by the human mind, as the ultimus arbiter sententiarum, without recognising its own dependence upon revelation, inspiration, and an unexplained concurrent in the production of thought,-God and the universe are necessarily reduced to the dreamy creations and impalpable phenomena of our own minds. Such, we think, is the result to which modern systems of metaphysics have manifestly come; and their condition may perhaps reflect back some light upon the theory we have been attempting to explain. In philosophy, as in religion, we have no firm ground to stand upon, unless we recognise the dependence of the human mind on higher inspiration than its own; without this, it is borne about to and fro, "dubitans, circumspectans, hæsitans, multa adversa reverens, tamquam in rate in mari immenso."† To return from this application of our principles to theology. M. Comte, as the representative of the Positive school, regards all our science as nothing more than the co-ordination of observed facts by theories, expressed under the form of definite laws; which * See the argument of Des Cartes in Morell, pp. 118, 119. † Cic. Tusc. Disp., lib. i, c. xxx, § 73. laws, however, indicate merely the co-existence, antecedence, or sequence of phenomena.* Hence, the object of science and systematic philosophy must be to lay down rigorously these laws, which are to be received as the formal links of observed correlation, but are not to be received as the series of genetic causation. With this, science has nothing to do.† The regular recurrence of the phenomena, in all departments of observation, is a preliminary assumption requisite to the constitution of a body of science; but this assumption daily receives new confirmation as our knowledge expands. So far we agree with M. Comte; and think that he has rendered valuable service to the cause of science by laying down stringently and precisely the barrier which it cannot hope to pass. We limit our agreement, however, merely to strict systematic science and philosophy; for his explanation indicates truly their limits, but without touching the fundamental doctrines on which they rest. Beyond these confines, however, lies the vague region of things cognizable, though neither explicable nor comprehensible; those primitive convictions, which we cannot trace to their sources, because they constitute the original, underivative cognitions of the human mind, and the basis of all possible reasoning. Their truth (relatively to humanity) we always admit by implication in our action; and we are bound to recognise them also in our explication of the processes of thought, if we would not destroy the possibility of even our phenomenal, though systematic, science. We are bound, then, to recognise the validity of assumptions, which our science does not, and cannot explain, but without whose recognition our science cannot be constructed, nor advance a single step. Science confesses their necessity, and sanctions them by requiring their aid as the indispensable basis of all scientific interpretation and development. We agree with Kant cordially in drawing a distinction between practical and scientific knowledge; but we do not, like him, dissever the one from the other-nay, we rather make their substantial identity prominent. We agree with Reinhold in assigning a perfect authority to the consciousness; but we exclude its operation from the details of scientific systematization. We agree also with Jacobi in regarding faith as the implicit, inexplicable principle of assent to intellectual judgments-as the sufficient and indispensable bridge by which we pass from practical conviction to scientific theory; but we regard it also as the bond of union * Comte, Cours de Phil. Pos., tom. i, pp. 4, 5, et passim. † Ibid., tom. vi, pp. 659, 710-713, 843. This is recognised by Aristotle, Metaph., x, c. 4, p. 1061, and Herschel, Disc. Nat. Phil., part ii, c. i. F between the vague generalities of indistinct conception and the precise significance of sensational phenomena. Science is the systematic solution which the mind, after analysis and reflection, gives in subordination to its explicable powers of the phenomena of the universe, (in this case, Tò ovvoλov, not тò τāv;) consequently it can systematically embrace only so much as those mental powers are able to observe, interpret, and co-ordinate with its own observed processes. Practice is governed less by such scientific knowledge than by the whole range of human capacities, explicable or not, limited only by those conditions which Providence has prescribed to their operation, the reasons of which can be neither detected nor explained, though it may be possible to discover the range of their legitimate influence, and the necessary limitations to be imposed upon their valid employment. Hence, in our ordinary transactions we act upon conjecture, which is that state of mind in which evidence of some sort, though not sharply defined or capable of accurate estimation, certainly preponderates, but in which the determining cause of action is undoubtedly a belief beyond, and, in some cases, independent of logical evidence. We receive the truths of religion distinctly by faith*-a faith which, to perfect its results, requires the more direct co-operation of the Divinity-because the work is not one of the merely rational understanding; and, furthermore, because the logical evidence is never adequate to the convictions to be produced, the conclusions being always wider than the sum of the data which we can use as premises. But science, in its development, discards conjecture, and it rejects the direct employment of faith, as being often delusive and contradictory to its strict logical concatenation. In the inception, however, of science, we avail ourselves of conjecture, which frequently furnishes the materials of our analysis, or the thread for our guidance; and we require the assistance of faith to determine the fundamental data, including the relative or provisional certainty of our knowledge, from which science proceeds. If, at this stage of our inquiries, we reject the aid of faith, or undemonstrated conviction, (åvaπódeiktai ȧoxaí,) the result will be a mere dry and formal science, founded upon a logical contradiction, and without any principle of coherence or intelligible reality; and, ultimately, this spectral formalism will work itself out into the very body of our science, and the original * We declare distinctly and uncompromisingly against the doctrine of Saisset and Morell, that the credibility of revelation is dependent upon the fallible judgments of men. We cannot consent to recognise human faculties as a legitimate measure of things divine; and we think that Mr. Morell's logical dogmas logically lead to a purely logical infidelity. hollowness of the system will render all our knowledge vague and unsatisfactory. In some of the old books is given the portrait of Nobody; he is represented by the hat, ruffle, bodice, breeches, stockings, and shoes, which form the ordinary integuments of civilized humanity. But this human vesture is filled only with wind, and thus presents a fitting denizen of the Isle of Ruach, whose inhabitants live upon wind.* Such must be all science which does not avow its ultimate dependence upon faith. We may illustrate this exposition. Cause and effect, so far as capable of explanation by human reasoning, and, therefore, so far as explicable by science, or so far as admitting legitimate co-ordination in scientific systems, can only be resolved, as Hume and Brownt have shown, into the antecedence and sequence of events, not contingent, nor mutually dependent upon a higher antecedent, as in the case of day and night, but connected together by habitual, direct, and exclusive relations. Our own consciousness, however, assures us that cause and effect are something more than thiswhat more we cannot define; the analogies of our own being, as Sir John Herschel has so well pointed out, serve to strengthen this conviction; and we are compelled to assume by faith, at the outset of our science, the reality of cause and effect as one of our fundamental data, without which all our science would be shadowy, indeterminate, and devoid of certainty. But we must not go beyond the simple recognition of this truth; in developing our science, we must not build inferences or deductions upon it, because this would be drawing within the legitimate sphere of systematic speculation that which can only be recognised as lying beyond it. Herein is the point in which we consider that we mainly differ from Jacobi, as we differ from Kant, in harmonizing science and practice, by recognising as the basis of science those leading truths which our practice constantly and instinctively adopts. Herein, also, we differ widely from Comte, for he would attempt to exclude from both science and practice the recognition of anything in the facts which we observe, or are conscious of, beyond the phenomena themselves. But we have shown, at the commencement of this discussion, that even in the recognition of phenomena there is a process involved, which cannot be phenomenal, whatever else it may be.‡ The growing length of this essay warns us that we have not the Rabelais, Faictz et Dietz de Gargantua et Pantagruel, No. iv, chap. xliii. † Hobbes, Glanville, and Malebranche preceded them: so did Aristotle, though obscurely, Metaph., iv, c. 2, &c. So Leibnitz. Phænomena sensuum veritatem rerum absolute non magis promittunt quam somnia. De Conf. Fid. cum Rat., § 65; Op. tom., i, p. 105, 1 space requisite for the further development of these views, nor even for those necessary explanations which might guard against their misconception or imperfect apprehension. It also denies us the opportunity of completing our original design by the cautious and critical examination of the different metaphysical systems now in vogue, with such light as the conclusions to which we have come might have afforded us. This has, indeed, been done in the progress of our inquiries, sufficiently to enable an earnest seeker after truth to apply to them the principles we have laid down, if he should find them to be correct after a diligent and candid examination; for speculations on such topics, we can assure our readers, are not to be comprehended and appreciated without careful study. We can only add, here, that our modern systems of metaphysics, and, indeed, all strict systems-(we except Bacon and Aristotle, rightly comprehended without the neglect of either side of their philosophy; but they did not pretend to construct systems)-have erred, and paved the way for strictly consequential infidelity, by attempting to transcend the legitimate limits of the human mind, and to incorporate into their systems what, by its nature, could not fall within their sphere; or by the converse fallacy of denying that which the reason recognises, though it recognises it as inexplicable. The root of error is, in both cases, the same-it is the old sophism of Protagoras, that man is the measure of the universe, with the dependent sophism of Des Cartes and Leibnitz, which has often unconsciously reappeared, that a clear idea is necessarily a true one. It is but too true that philosophers have been so blinded by the glare of their own creations, so hedged in within the narrow limits of their fondly-adored systems, so protected by them from the perception of everything that militates with them, or is not included in them, as rarely to have recognised the solemn and palpable truths expressed in the aphorism of Goëthe: "Wohl unglückselig ist der Mann, Der unterlässt das, was er kann, Und unterfängt sich, was er nicht versteht; Persius, speaking of his own philosophical studies, under Cornutus, beautifully remarks: "Premitur ratione animus, vincique laborat.” How fully is the line exemplified by the "Critical History of the Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century!" How strikingly illustrated by the whole history of metaphysics! and how deeply cognizant of its truth must every man be, who, without being dazzled |