PART II.
AN EXAMINATION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PROPOSITION OF THE LIMITISTS, AND OF CERTAIN GENERAL COROLLARIES UNDER IT.
It has been attempted in the former pages to find a valid and final basis of truth, one which would satisfy the cravings of the human soul, and afford it a sure rest. In the fact that God made man in his own image, and that thus there is, to a certain extent, a community of faculties, a community of knowledge, a community of obligations, and a community of interests, have we found such a basis. We have hereby learned that a part of man's knowledge is necessary and final; in other words, that he can know the truth, and be sure that his knowledge is correct. If the proofs which have been offered of the fact of the Pure Reason, and the statements which have been made of the mode of its activity and of its functions, and, further, of the problem of the Universe, and the true method for solving it, shall have been satisfactory to the reader, he will now be ready to consider the analysis of Sir William Hamilton's fundamental proposition, which was promised on an early page. We there gave, it was thought, sufficiently full extracts for a fair presentation of his theory, and followed them with a candid epitome. In recurring to the subject now, and for the purpose named, we are constrained at the outset to make an acknowledgment.
It would be simple folly, a childish egotism, to pass by in silence the masterly article on this subject in the "North American Review" for October, 1864, and after it to pretend to offer anything new. Whatever the author might have wrought out in his own mental workshop,—and his work was far less able than what is there given,—that article has left nothing to be said. He has therefore been tempted to one of two courses: either to transfer it to these pages, or pass by the subject entirely. Either course may, perhaps, be better than the one finally chosen; which is, while pursuing the order of his own thought, to add a few short extracts therefrom. One possibility encourages him in this, which is, that some persons may see this volume, who have no access to the Review, and to whom, therefore, these pages will be valuable. To save needless repetition, this discussion will presuppose that the reader has turned back and perused the extracts and epitome above alluded to.
Upon the very threshold of Sir William Hamilton's statement, one is met by a logical faux pas which is truly amazing. Immediately after the assertion that "the mind can know only the limited and the conditionally limited," and in the very sentence in which he denies the possibility of a knowledge of the Infinite and Absolute, he proceeds to define those words in definite and known terms! The Infinite he defines as "the unconditionally unlimited," and the Absolute as "the unconditionally limited." Or, to save him, will one say that the defining terms are unknown? So much the worse, then! "The Infinite," an unknown term, may be represented by x; and the unconditionally unlimited, a compound unknown term, by ab. Now, who has the right to say, either in mathematics or metaphysics, in any philosophy, that x=ab? Yet such dicta are the basis of "The Philosophy of the Unconditioned." But, one of two suppositions is possible. Either the terms infinite and absolute are known terms and definable, or they are unknown terms and undefinable. Yet, Hamilton says, they are unknown and definable. Which does he mean? If he is held to the former, they are unknown; then all else that he has written about them are batches of meaningless words. If he is held to the latter, they are definable; then are they known, and his system is denied in the assertion of it. Since his words are so contradictory, he must be judged by his deeds; and in these he always assumes that we have a positive knowledge of the infinite and absolute, else he would not have argued the matter; for there can be no argument about nothing. Our analysis of his theory, then, must be conducted upon this hypothesis.
Turn back for a moment to the page upon which his theory is quoted, and read the last sentence. Is his utterance a "principle," or is it a judgment? Is it an axiom, or is it a guess. The logician asserts that we know only the conditioned, and yet bases his assertion upon "the principles," &c. What is a principle, and how is it known? If it is axiom, then he has denied his own philosophy in the very sentence in which he uttered it. And this, we have no hesitation in saying, is just what he did. He blindly assumed certain "fundamental laws of thought,"—to quote another of his phrases—to establish the impotence of the mind to know those laws as fundamental. Again, if his philosophy is valid, the words "must," "necessary," and the like are entirely out of place; for they are unconditional. In the conditioned there is, can be, no must, no necessity.
From these excursions about the principle let us now return to the principle itself. It may be stated concisely thus: There are two extremes,—"the Absolute" and the "Infinite." These include all being. They are contradictories, that is, one must be, to the exclusion of the other. But the mind can "conceive" of neither. What, then, is the logical conclusion? That the mind cannot conceive of anything. What is his conclusion? That the mind can conceive of something between the infinite and the absolute, which is neither the one nor the other, but a tertium quid—the conditioned. Where did this tertium quid come from, when he had already comprehended everything in the two extremes? If there is a mean, the conditioned, and the two extremes, then "excluded middle" has nothing to do with the matter at all.
To avoid the inevitable conclusion of his logic as just stated, Hamilton erected the subterfuge of mental imbecility. To deny any knowledge to man, was to expose himself to ridicule. He, therefore, and his followers after him, drew a line in the domain of knowledge, and assigned to the hither side of it all knowledge that can come through generalizations in the Understanding; and then asserted that the contradictions which appeared in the mind, when one examined those questions which lie on the further side of that line, resulted from the impotency of the mind to comprehend the questions themselves. This was, is, their psychology. How satisfactory it may be to Man, a hundred years, perhaps, will show. But strike out the last assertion, and write, Both are cognizable; and then let us proceed with our reasoning. The essayist in the North American presents the theory under four heads, as follows:—
"1. The Infinite and Absolute as defined, are contradictory and exclusive of each other; yet, one must be true.
"2. Neither of them can be conceived as possible.
"3. Each is inconceivable; and the inconceivability of each is referable to the same cause, namely, mental imbecility.
"4. As opposite extremes, they include everything conceivable between them."
The first and fourth points require our especial attention.
1. Let us particularly mark, then, that it is as defined, that the terms are "contradictory." The question, therefore, turns upon the definitions. Undoubtedly the definitions are erroneous; but in order to see wherein, the following general reflections may be made:—
The terms infinite and absolute, as used by philosophers, have two distinct applications: one to Space and Time, and one to God. Such definitions as are suitable to the latter application, and self-consistent, have already been given. Though reluctant to admit into a philosophical treatise a term bearing two distinct meanings, we shall waive for a little our scruples,—though choosing, for ourselves, to use the equivalent rather than the term.
Such definitions are needed, then, as that absolute Space and Time shall not be contradictory to infinite Space and Time. Let us first observe Hamilton's theory. According to it, Space, for instance, is either unconditional illimitation, or it is unconditional limitation; in other words, it is illimitable, or it is a limited whole. The first part of the assertion is true. That Space is illimitable, is unquestionably a self-evident truth. Any one who candidly considers the subject will see not only that the mind cannot assign limits to Space, but that the attempt is an absurdity just alike in kind with the attempt to think two and two five. The last part is a psychological blunder, has no pertinence to the question, and is not what Hamilton was groping for. He was searching for the truth, that there is no absolute unit in Space. A limited whole has nothing to do with the matter in hand—absoluteness—at all. The illimitability of Space, which has just been established as an axiom, precludes this. What, then, is the opposite pole of thought? We have just declared it. There is no absolute unit of Space; or, in other words, all division is in Space, but Space is indivisible. This, also, is an axiom, is self-evident. We attain, then, two poles of thought, and definitions of the two terms given, which are exhaustive and consistent.
"Space is illimitable.
Space is indivisible."
The one is the infinity of Space, the other is the absoluteness of Space. The fact, then, is, all limitation is in Space, and all division is in Space; but Space is neither limited or divided. One of the logician's extremes is seen, then, to have no foundation in fact; and that which is found to be true is also found to be consistent with, nay, essential to, what should have been the other.
Having hitherto expressed a decided protest against any attempt to find out God through the forms of Space and Time, a repetition will not be needed here. God is only to be sought for, found, and studied, by such methods as are suitable to the supreme spiritual Person. Hence all the attempts of the Limitists to reason from spatial and temporal difficulties over to those questions which belong to God, are simply absurd. The questions respecting Space and Time are to be discussed by themselves. And the questions respecting God are to be discussed by themselves. He who tries to reason from the one to the other is not less absurd than he who should try to reason from a farm to the multiplication table.
In Sir William Hamilton's behalf it should be stated, that there is just a modicum of truth underlying his theory,—just enough to give it a degree of plausibility. The Sense, as faculty for the perception of physical objects, or their images, and the Understanding as discursive faculty for passing over and forming judgments upon the materials gathered by the Sense, lie under the shadow of a law very like the one he stated. The Sense was made incapable of perceiving an ultimate atom or of comprehending the universe. From the fact that the Sense never has perceived these objects, the Understanding concludes that it never will. Only by the insight and oversight of that higher faculty, the Pure Reason, do we come to know that it never can. It was because those lower faculties are thus walled in by the conditions of Space and Time, and are unable to perceive or conceive anything out of those conditions, and because, in considering them, he failed to see the other mental powers, that Sir William Hamilton constructed his Philosophy of the Unconditioned.
2. Neither of them can be conceived as possible.
Literally, this is true. The word "conceive" applies strictly to the work of the Understanding; and that faculty can never have any notion of the Infinite or Absolute. But, assuming that "conceive" is a general term for cognize, the conclusion developed just above is inevitable. If all being is in one or the other, and neither can be known, nothing can be known.
3. They cannot be known, because of mental imbecility. If man can know nothing because of mental imbecility, why suppose that he has a mental faculty at all? Why not enounce, as the fundamental principle of one's theory, the assertion, All men are idiots? This would be logically consistent. The truth is, the logician was in a dilemma. He must confess that men know something. By a false psychology he had ruled the Reason out of the mind, and so had left himself no faculty by which to form any notion of absoluteness and infinity; and yet they would thrust themselves before him, and demand an explanation. Hence, he constructed a subterfuge. He would have been more consistent if he had said, There is no absolute and infinite. The conditioned is the whole of existence; and this the mind knows.
"4. As opposite extremes, they include everything conceivable between them."
What the essayist in the North American says upon this point is so apt, and so accords with our own previous reflections, that we will not forbear making an extract. "The last of the four theses will best be re-stated in Hamilton's own words; the italics are his. 'The conditioned is the mean between two extremes—two inconditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary.' This sentence excites unmixed wonder. To mention in the same breath the law of excluded middle, and two contradictions with a mean between them, requires a hardihood unparalleled in the history of philosophy, except by Hegel. If the two contradictory extremes are themselves incogitable, yet include a cogitable mean, why insist upon the necessity of accepting either extreme? This necessity of accepting one of two contradictories is wholly based upon the supposed impossibility of a mean; if the mean exists, that may be true, and both the contradictories false. But if a mean between the two contradictories be both impossible and absurd, (and we have hitherto so interpreted the law of excluded middle,) Hamilton's conditioned entirely vanishes."
Upon a system which, in whatever aspect one looks at it, is found to be but a bundle of contradictions and absurdities, further criticism would appear to be unnecessary.
Having, impliedly at least, accepted as true Sir William Hamilton's psychological error,—the rejection of the Reason as the intellectual faculty of the spiritual person,—and having, with him, used the terms limit, condition, and the like, in such significations as are pertinent to the Sense and Understanding only, the Limitists proceed to present in a paradoxical light many questions which arise concerning "the Infinite." They take the ground that, to our view, he can be neither person, nor intellect, nor consciousness; for each of these implies limitation; and yet that it is impossible for us to know aught of him, except as such. Then having, as they think, completely confused the mind, they draw hence new support for their conclusion, that we can attain to no satisfactory knowledge on the subject. The following extracts selected from many will show this.
"Now, in the first place, the very conception of Consciousness, in whatever mode it may be manifested, necessarily implies distinction between one object and another. To be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and that something can only be known as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not. But distinction is necessarily a limitation; for, if one object is to be distinguished from another, it must possess some form of existence which the other has not, or it must not possess some form which the other has. But it is obvious that the Infinite cannot be distinguished, as such, from the Finite, by the absence of any quality which the Finite possesses; for such absence would be a limitation. Nor yet can it be distinguished by the presence of an attribute which the Finite has not; for as no finite part can be a constituent of an infinite whole, this differential characteristic must itself be infinite; and must at the same time have nothing in common with the finite....
"That a man can be conscious of the Infinite, is thus a supposition which, in the very terms in which it is expressed, annihilates itself. Consciousness is essentially a limitation; for it is the determination of the mind to one actual out of many possible modifications. But the Infinite, if it is conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially everything, and actually nothing; for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing. But again, it must also be conceived as actually everything, and potentially nothing; for an unrealized potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of consciousness....
"Rationalism is thus only consistent with itself when it refuses to attribute consciousness to God. Consciousness, in the only form in which we can conceive it, implies limitation and change,—the perception of one object out of many, and a comparison of that object with others. To he always conscious of the same object, is, humanly speaking, not to be conscious at all; and, beyond its human manifestation, we can have no conception of what consciousness is."—Limits of Religious Thought, pp. 93-95.
"As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of positive thought—thought necessarily supposes conditions. To think is to condition; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought....
"Thought cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought; known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of this, all that we know either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of the different, of the modified, of the phenomenal. We admit that the consequence of this doctrine is—that philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of the conditioned, is impossible. Departing from the particular, we admit that we can never, in out highest generalizations, rise above the finite; that our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifestations of an existence, which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognize as beyond the reach of philosophy."
"In all this, so far as human intelligence is concerned, we cordially agree; for a more complete admission could not be imagined, not only that a knowledge, and even a notion, of the absolute is impossible for man, but that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such a knowledge even in the Deity himself, without contradicting our human conceptions of the possibility of intelligence itself."—Sir William Hamilton's Essays, pp. 21, 22, 38.
"The various mental attributes which we ascribe to God—Benevolence, Holiness, Justice, Wisdom, for example—can be conceived by us only as existing in a benevolent and holy and just and wise Being, who is not identical with any one of his attributes, but the common subject of them all; in one word, a Person. But Personality, as we conceive it, is essentially a limitation and relation. Our own personality is presented to us as relative and limited; and it is from that presentation that all our representative notions of personality are derived. Personality is presented to us as a relation between the conscious self and the various modes of his consciousness. There is no personality in abstract thought without a thinker: there is no thinker unless he exercises some mode of thought. Personality is also a limitation; for the thought and the thinker are distinguished from and limit each other; and the various modes of thought are distinguished each from each by limitation likewise...."—Limits of Religious Thought, p. 102.
"Personality, with all its limitations, though far from exhibiting the absolute nature of God as He is, is yet truer, grander, more elevating, more religious, than those barren, vague, meaningless abstractions in which men babble about nothing under the name of the Infinite and Personal conscious existence, limited though it be, is yet the noblest of all existence of which man can dream.... It is by consciousness alone that we know that God exists, or that we are able to offer Him any service. It is only by conceiving Him as a Conscious Being, that we can stand in any religious relation to Him at all; that we can form such a representation of Him as is demanded by our spiritual wants, insufficient though it be to satisfy our intellectual curiosity."—Limits of Religious Thought, p. 104.
The conclusions of these writers upon this whole topic are as follows:—
"The mind is not represented as conceiving two propositions subversive of each other as equally possible; but only as unable to understand as possible two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognize as true.... And by a wonderful revelation we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensive reality."—Sir William Hamilton's Essays, p. 22.
"To sum up briefly this portion of my argument. The conception of the Absolute and Infinity, from whatever side we view it, appears encompassed with contradictions. There is a contradiction in supposing such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with others; and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as one; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as personal; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot, without contradiction, be represented as active; nor, without equal contradiction, be represented as inactive. It cannot be conceived as the sum of all existence; nor yet can it be conceived as a part only of that sum."—Limits of Religious Thought, pp. 84, 85.
We have quoted thus largely, preferring that the Limitists should speak for themselves. Their doctrine, as taught, not simply in these passages, but throughout their writings, may be briefly summed up as follows.
The human mind, whenever it attempts to investigate the profoundest subjects which come before it, and which it is goaded to examine, finds itself in an inextricable maze of contradictions; and, after vainly struggling for a while to get out, becomes nonplussed, confused, confounded, dazed; and, falling down helpless and effortless in the maze, and with devout humility acknowledging its impotence, it finds that the "highest reason" is to pass beyond the sphere and out of the light of reason, into the sphere of a superrational and therefore dark, and therefore blind faith.
But it is to be stated, and here we strike to the centre of the errors of the Limitists, that a perception and confession of mental impotence is not the logical deduction from their premises. Lustrous as may be their names in logic,—and Sir William Hamilton is esteemed a sun in the logical firmament,—no one of them ever saw, or else dared to acknowledge, the logical sequence from their principles. They have climbed upon the dizzy heights of thought, and out on their verge; and there they stand, hesitating and shivering, like naked men on Alpine precipices, with no eagle wings to spread and soar away towards the Eternal Truth; and not daring to take the awful plunge before them. Behold the gulf from which they shrink. Mr. Mansel says:—
"It is our duty, then, to think of God as personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite. It is true that we cannot reconcile these two representations with each other, as our conception of personality involves attributes apparently contradictory to the notion of infinity. But it does not follow that this contradiction exists anywhere but in our own minds: it does not follow that it implies any impossibility in the absolute nature of God. The apparent contradiction, in this case, as in those previously noticed, is the necessary consequence of an attempt on the part of the human thinker to transcend the boundaries of his own consciousness. It proves that there are limits to man's power of thought; and it proves no more."—Limits of Religious Thought, p. 106.
Or, to put it in sharp and accurate, plain and unmistakable English. "It is our duty to think of God as personal," when to think of Him as personal is to think a lie; "to believe that He is infinite," when so to believe is to believe the lie already thought; and when to believe a lie is to incur the penalty decreed by the Bible—God's book—upon all who believe lies. And this is the religious teaching of a professed Christian minister in one of the first Universities in the world. Not that Mr. Mansel meant to teach this. By no means. But it logically follows from his premises. In his philosophy the mind instinctively, necessarily, and with equal authority in each case, asserts
That there must be an infinite Being;
That that Being must be Self-conscious,
Must be unlimited; and that
Consciousness is a limitation.
These assertions are contradictory and self-destructive. What follows then? That the mind is impotent? No! It follows that the mind is a deceiver! We learn again the lesson we have learned before. It is not weakness, it is falsehood: it is not want of capacity, it is want of integrity that is proved by this contradiction. Man is worse than a hopeless, mental imbecile, he is a hopeless, mental cheat.
But is the result true? How can it be, when with all its might the mind revolts from it, as nature does from a vacuum? True that the human mind is an incorrigible falsifier? With the indignation of outraged honesty, man's soul rejects the insulting aspersion, and reasserts its own integrity and authority. Ages of controversy have failed to obliterate or cry down the spontaneous utterance of the soul, "I have within myself the ultimate standard of truth."
It now devolves to account for the aberrations of the Limitists. The ground of all their difficulties is simple and plain. While denying to the human mind the faculty of the Pure Reason, they have, by the (to them) undistinguished use of that faculty, raised questions which the Understanding by no possibility could raise, which the Reason alone is capable of presenting, and which that Reason alone can solve; and have attempted to solve them solely by the assistance, and in the forms of, the Sense and the Understanding. Their problems belong to a spiritual person; and they attempt to solve them by the inferior modes of an animal nature. Better, by far, could they see with their ears. All their processes are developed on the vicious assumption, that the highest form of knowledge possible to the human mind is a generalization in the Understanding, upon facts given in the Sense: a form of knowledge which is always one, whether the substance be distinguished in the form, be a peach, as diverse from an apple; or a star, as one among a million. The meagreness and utter insufficiency of this doctrine, to account for all the phenomena of the human mind, we have heretofore shown; and shall therefore need only now to distinguish certain special phases of their fundamental error.
As heretofore, there will be continual occasion to note how the doctrine of the Limitists, that the Understanding is man's highest faculty of knowledge, and the logical sequences therefrom respecting the laws of thought and consciousness vitiate their whole system. One of their most important errors is thus expressed:—"To be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and that something can only be known as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not." "Thought cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of subject and object of thought known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of this, all that we know either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of the different, of the modified, of the phenomenal." In other words, our highest possible form of knowledge is that by which we examine the peach, distinguish its qualities among themselves, and discriminate between them and the qualities of the apple. And Sir William Hamilton fairly and truly acknowledges that, as a consequence, science, except as a system of objects of sense, is impossible.
The fact is, as has been made already sufficiently apparent, that the diagnosis by the Limitists of the constitution of the mind is erroneous. Their dictum, that all knowledge must be attained through "relation, plurality, and difference," is not true. There is a kind of knowledge which we obtain by a direct and immediate sight; and that, too, under such conditions as are no limitation upon the object thought. For instance, the mind, by a direct intuition, affirms, "Malice is criminal." It also affirms that this is an eternal, immutable, universal law, conditional for all possibility of moral beings. This direct and immediate sight, and the consciousness attending it, are full of that one object, and so are occupied only with it; and it does not come under any forms of relation, plurality, and difference. So is it with all a priori laws. The mode of the pure reason is thus seen to be the direct opposite of that of the Understanding and the Sense.
Intimately connected with the foregoing is a question whose importance cannot be overstated. It is one which involves the very possibility of God's existence as a self-conscious person. To present it, we recur again to the extracts made just above from Sir William Hamilton. "Consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other." Subsequently, he makes the acknowledgment as logically following from this: "that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such knowledge," i. e. of the absolute, "even in the Deity himself." That is, God can be believed to be self-conscious only on the ground that the human intellect is a cheat. The theory which underlies this assertion of the logician—a theory not peculiar to the Limitists, but which has, perhaps, been hitherto universally maintained by philosophers—may be concisely stated thus. In every correlation of subject and object,—in every instance where they are to be contrasted,—the subject must be one, and the object must be another and different. Hamilton, in another place, utters it thus: "Look back for a moment into yourselves, and you will find, that what constitutes intelligence in our feeble consciousness, is, that there are there several terms, of which the one perceives the other, of which the other is perceived by the first; in this consists self-knowledge," &c. Mark the "several terms," and that the one can only see the other, never itself.
This position is both a logical and psychological error. It is a logical error because it assumes, without argument, that there is involved in the terms subject and object such a logical contradiction and contradistinction that the subject cannot be object to itself. This assumption is groundless. As a matter of fact, it is generally true that, so far as man is concerned, the subject is one, and the object another and different. But this by no means proves that it is always so; it only raises the presumption that such may be the case. And when one comes to examine the question in itself, there is absolutely no logical ground for the assumption. It is found to be a question upon which no decision from logical considerations can have any validity, because it is purely psychological, and can only be decided by evidence upon a matter of fact. Furthermore, it is a psychological error, because a careful examination shows that, in some instances, the opposite is the fact; that, in certain experiences, the subject and object are identical.
This fact that the subject and object are often identical in the searching eye of human reason, and always so under the eye of Universal Genius, is of too vast scope and too vital importance to be passed with a mere allusion. It seems amazing that a truth which, the instant it is stated, solves a thousand difficulties which philosophy has raised, should never yet have been affirmed by any of the great spiritual-eyed thinkers, and that it should have found utterance, only to be denied, by the pen of the Limitists. A word of personal reminiscence may be allowed here. The writer came to see this truth during a process of thought, having for its object the solution of the problem, How can the infinite Person be self-comprehending, and still infinite? While considering this, and without ever having received a hint from any source that the possibility of such a problem had dawned on a human mind before, there blazed upon him suddenly, like a heaven full of light, this, which appeared the incomparably profounder question: How can any soul, not God only, but any soul, be a self-examiner? Why don't the Limitists entertain and explain this? It was only years after that he met the negative statement in Herbert Spencer's book. The difficulty is, that the Limitists have represented to their minds the mode of the seeing of the Reason, by a sensuous image, as the eye; and because the eye cannot see itself, have concluded that the Reason cannot see itself. It is always dangerous to argue from an illustration; and, in this instance, it has been fatal. If man was only an animal nature, and so only a receiver of impressions, with a capacity to generalize from the impressions received, the doctrine of the Limitists would be true. But once establish that man is also a spiritual person, with a reason, which sees truth by immediate intuition, and their whole teaching becomes worthless. The Reason is not receptivity merely, or mainly; it is originator. In its own light it gives to itself a priori truth, and itself as seeing that truth; and so the subject and object are identical. This is one of the differentiating qualities of the spiritual person.
Our position may be more accurately stated and more amply illustrated and sustained as follows:
Sometimes, in the created spiritual person, and always in the self-existent, the absolute and infinite spiritual Person, the subject and object are identical.
1. Sometimes in the created spiritual person, the subject and object are identical. The question is a question of fact. In illustrating the fact, it will be proved. When a man looks at his hands, he sees they are instruments for his use. When he considers his physical sense, he still perceives it to be instrument for his use. In all his conclusions, judgments, he still finds, not himself, but his instrument. Even in the Pure Reason he finds only his faculty; though it be the highest possible to intellect. Yet still he searches, searches for the I am; which claims, and holds, and uses, the faculties and capacities. There is a phrase universally familiar to American Christians, a fruit of New England Theology, which leads us directly to the goal we seek. It is the phrase, "self-examination." In all thorough, religious self-examination the subject and object are identical. In the ordinary labors and experiences of life, man says, "I can do this or that;" and he therein considers only his aptitudes and capabilities. But in this last, this profoundest act, the assertion is not, "I can do this or that." It is, "I am this or that." The person stands unveiled before itself, in the awful sanctuary of God's presence. The decision to be made is not upon the use of one faculty or another. It is upon the end for which all labor shall be performed. The character of the person is under consideration, and is to be determined. The selfhood, with all its wondrous mysteries, is at once subject and object. The I am in man, alike in kind to that most impenetrable mystery, the eternal I AM of "the everlasting Father," is now stirred to consider its most solemn duty. How shall the finite I am accord itself to the pure purpose of the infinite I AM? It may be, possibly is, that some persons have never been conscious of this experience. To some, from a natural inaptitude, and to others, from a perverse disinclination, it may never come. Some have so little gift of introspection, that their inner experiences are never observed and analyzed. Their conduct may be beautiful, but they never know it. Their impressions ever come from without. Another class of persons shun such an experience as Balshazzar would have shunned, if he could, the handwriting on the wall. Their whole souls are absorbed in the pursuit of earthly things. They are intoxicated with sensuous gratification. The fore-thrown shadow of the coming thought of self-examination awakens within them a vague instinctive dread; and they shudder, turn away, and by every effort avoid it. Sometimes they succeed; and through the gates of death rush headlong into the spirit-land, only to be tortured forever there with the experience they so successfully eluded here. For the many thousands, who know by experience what a calm, candid, searching, self-examination is, now that their attention has been drawn to its full psychological import, no further word is necessary. They know that in that supreme insight there was seen and known, at one and the same instant, in a spontaneous and simultaneous action of the soul, the seer and the seen as one, as identical. And this experience is so wide-spread, that the wonder is that it has not heretofore been assigned its suitable place in philosophy.
2. Always in the self-existent, the absolute and infinite, spiritual Person, the subject and object are identical. This question, though one of fact, cannot be determined by us, by our experience; it must be shown to follow logically from certain a priori first principles. This may be done as follows. Eternity, independence, universality, are qualities of God. Being eternal, he is ever the same. Being independent, he excludes the possibility of another Being to whom he is necessarily related. Being universal, he possesses all possible endowment, and is ground for all possible existence; so that no being can exist but by his will. As Universal Genius, all possible objects of knowledge or intellectual effort are immanent before the eye of his Reason; and this is a permanent state. He is an object of knowledge, comprehending all others; and therefore he exhaustively knows himself. He distinguishes his Self as object, from no what else, because there is no else to distinguish his Self from; but having an exhaustive self-comprehension, he distinguishes within that Self all possible forms of being each from each.
He is absolute, and never learns or changes. There is nothing to learn and nothing to change to, except to a wicked state; and for this there can be to him no temptation. He is ever the same, and hence there can be no instant in time when he does not exhaustively know himself. Thus always in him are the subject and object identical.
These two great principles, viz: That the Pure Reason sees a priori truth immediately, and out of all relation, plurality and difference, and that in the Pure Reason, in self-examination, the subject and object are identical, by their simple statement explode, as a Pythagorean system, the mental astronomy of the Limitists. Reason is the sun, and the Sense and the Understanding, with their satellite faculties, the circumvolving planets.
The use of terms by the Limitists has been as vicious as their processes of thought, and has naturally sprung from their fundamental error. We will note one in the following sentence. "Consciousness, in the only form in which we can conceive it, implies limitation and change,—the perception of one object out of many, and a comparison of that object with others." Conceive is the vicious word. Strictly, it is usable only with regard to things in Nature, and can have no relevancy to such subjects as are now under consideration. It is a word which expresses only such operations as lie in the Sense and Understanding. The following definition explains this: "The concept refers to all the things whose common or similar attributes or traits it conceives (con-cepis), or grasps together into one class and one act of mind."—Bowen's Logic, p. 7. This is not the mode of the Reason's action at all. It does not run over a variety of objects and select out from them the points of similarity, and grasp these together into one act of mind. It sees one object in its unity as pure law, or first truth; and examines that in its own light. Hence, the proper word is, intuits. Seen from this standpoint, consciousness does not imply limitation and change. A first truth we always see as absolute,—we are conscious of this sight; and yet we know that neither consciousness nor sight is any limitation upon the truth. We would paraphrase the sentence thus: Consciousness, in the highest form in which we know it, implies and possesses permanence; and is the light in which pure truth is seen as pure object by itself, and forever the same.
It is curious to observe how the Understanding and the Pure Reason run along side by side in the same sentence; the inferior faculty encumbering and defeating the efforts of the other. Take the following for example.
"If the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else, and discerned as an object of consciousness." The presence in language of the word infinite and its cognates is decisive evidence of the presence of a faculty capable of entertaining it as a subject for investigation. This faculty, the Reason having presented the subject for consideration, the Understanding seizes upon it and drags it down into her den, and says, "can be that which it is not." This she says, because she cannot act, except to conceive, and cannot conceive, except to distinguish this from something else; and so cannot perceive that the very utterance of the word "infinite" excludes the word "else." The Understanding conceives the finite as one and independent, and the infinite as one and independent. Then the Reason steps in, and says the infinite is all-comprehending. This conflicts with the Understanding's conception, and so the puzzle comes. In laboring for a solution, the Reason's affirmation is expressed hypothetically: "If it (the infinite) is actually everything;" and thereupon the Understanding puts in its blind, impertinent assertion, "it possesses no characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else." There is nothing else from which to distinguish it. The perception of the Reason is as follows. The infinite Person comprehends intellectually, and is ground for potentially and actually, all that is possible and real; and so there can be no else with which to compare him. Because, possessing all fulness, he is actually everything, by this characteristic feature of completeness he distinguishes himself from nothing, which is all there is, (if no-thing—void—can be said to be,) beside him; and from any part, which there is within him. Thus is he object to himself in his own consciousness.
This vicious working of the Understanding against the Reason, in the same sentences, can be more fully illustrated from the following extracts. "God, as necessarily determined to pass from absolute essence to relative manifestation, is determined to pass either from the better to the worse, or from the worse to the better. A third possibility that both states are equal, as contradictory in itself, and as contradicted by our author, it is not necessary to consider."—Sir William Hamilton's Essays, p. 42. "Again, how can the Relative be conceived as coming into being? If it is a distinct reality from the absolute, it must be conceived as passing from non-existence into existence. But to conceive an object as non-existent is again a self-contradiction; for that which is conceived exists, as an object of thought, in and by that conception. We may abstain from thinking of an object at all; but if we think of it, we cannot but think of it as existing. It is possible at one time not to think of an object at all, and at another to think of it as already in being; but to think of it in the act of becoming, in the progress from not being into being, is to think that which, in the very thought, annihilates itself. Here again the Pantheistic hypothesis seems forced upon us. We can think of creation only as a change in the condition of that which already exists; and thus the creature is conceivable only as a phenomenal mode of the being of the Creator."—Limits of Religious Thought, p. 81.
"God," a word which has no significance except to the Reason: "as necessarily determined,"—a phrase which belongs only to the Understanding. The opposite is the truth: "to pass from absolute essence." This can have no meaning except to the Pure Reason: "to relative manifestation." This belongs to the Understanding. It contradicts the other; and the process is absurd. The mind balks in the attempt to think it. In creation there is no such process as "passing from absolute essence to relative manifestation." The words imply that God, in passing from the state of absolute essence, ceased to be absolute essence, and became "relative manifestation." All this is absurd; and is in the Understanding and Sense. God never became. The Creator is still absolute essence, as before creation; and the logician's this or that are both false; and his third possibility is not a contradiction, but the truth. The fact of creation may be thus stated. The infinite Person, freely according his will to the behest of his worth, and yet equally free to not so accord his will, put forth from himself the creative energy; and this under such modes, that he neither lost nor gained by the act; but that, though the latter state was diverse from the first, still neither was better than the other, but both were equally good. Before creation, he possessed absolute plenitude of endowments. All possible ideals were present before his eye. All possible joy continued a changeless state in his sensibility. His will, as choice, was absolute benevolence; and, as act, was competent to all possible effort. To push the ideal out, and make it real, added nothing to, and subtracted nothing from, his fulness.
The fact must be learned that muscular action and the working of pure spirit are so diverse, that the inferior mode cannot be an illustration of the superior. A change in a pure spirit, which neither adds nor subtracts, leaves the good unchanged. Hence, when the infinite Person created, he passed neither from better to worse, nor from worse to better; but the two states, though diverse, were equally good.
We proceed now to the other extract. "Again, how can the relative," etc. "If the Relative is a distinct reality from the absolute," then each is self-existent, and independent. The sentence annihilates itself. "It must be conceived as passing from non-existence into existence." The image here is from the Sense, as usual, and vicious accordingly. It is, that the soul is to look into void, and see, out of that void, existence come, without there being any cause for that existence coming. This would be the phenomenon to the Sense. And the Sense is utterly unable to account for the phenomenon. The object in the Sense must appear as form; but in the Reason it is idea. Mr. Mansel's presentation may well be illustrated by a trick of jugglery. The performer stands before his audience, dressed in tights, and presents the palms of his hands to the spectators, apparently empty. He then closes his right hand, and then opening it again, appears holding a bouquet of delicious flowers, which he hands about to the astonished gazers. The bouquet seems to come from nothing, i. e. to have no cause. It appears "to pass from non-existence to existence." But common sense corrects the cheating seeming, and asserts, "There is an adequate cause for the coming of the bunch of flowers, though we cannot see it." Precisely similar is creation. Could there have been a Sense present at that instant, creation would have seemed to it a juggler's trick. Out of nothing something would have seemed to come. But under the correcting guide of the Pure Reason, an adequate cause is found. Before creation, the infinite Person did not manifest himself; and so was actually alone. At creation his power, which before was immanent, he now made emanent; and put it forth in the forms chosen from his Reason, and according to the requirement of his own worth. Nothing was added to God. That which was ideal he now made actual. The form as Idea was one, the power as Potentiality was another, and each was in him by itself. He put forth the power into the form, the Potentiality into the Idea, and the Universe was. Thus it was that "the Relative came into being." In the same manner it might be shown how, all along through the writings of the Limitists, the Understanding runs along by the Reason, and vitiates her efforts to solve her problems. We shall have occasion to do something of this farther on.
The topic now under discussion could not be esteemed finished without an examination of the celebrated dictum, "To think is to condition." Those who have held this to be universally true, have also received its logical sequence, that to the finite intellect God cannot appear self-comprehending. In our present light, the dictum is known to be, not a universal, but only a partial, truth. It is incumbent, therefore, to circumscribe its true sphere, and fix it there. We shall best enter upon this labor by answering the question, What is thinking?
First. In general, and loosely, any mental operation is called thinking. Second. Specifically, all acts of reflection are thinkings. Under this head we notice two points. a. That act of the Understanding in which an object presented by the Sense is analyzed, and its special and generic elements noted, and is thus classified, and its relations determined, is properly a thinking. Thus, in the object cat I distinguish specifically that it is domestic, and generically that it is carnivorous. b. That act of the finite spiritual person by which he compares the judgments of the Understanding with the a priori laws of the Pure Reason, and by this final standard decides their truth or error. Thus, the judgment of the young Indian warrior is, that he ought to hunt down and slay the man who killed his father in battle. The standard of Reason is, that Malice is criminal. This judgment is found to involve malice, and so is found to be wrong. Third, the intuitions of the reason. These, in the finite person, come after a process of reflection, and are partly consequent upon it; yet they take place in another faculty, which is developed by this process; but they are such, that by no process of reflection alone could they be. Thinking, in the Universal Genius, is the sight, at once and forever, of all possible object of mental effort. It is necessary and spontaneous, and so is an endowment, not an attainment; and is possessed without effort. We are prepared now to entertain the following statements:—
A. So far as it represents thinking as the active, i. e. causative ground, or agent of the condition, the dictum is not true. The fact of the thinking is not, cannot be, the ground of the condition. The condition of the object thought, whatever the form of thinking may be, must lie as far back at least as the ground of the thinker. Thus, God's self, as ground for his Genius, must also be ground for all conditions. Yet men think of an object in its conditions. This is because the same Being who constructed the objects in their conditions, constructed also man as thinker, correlated to those conditions, so that he should think upon things as they are. In this view, to think is not condition, but is mental activity in the conditions already imposed. Thus it is with the Understanding; and the process of thinking, as above designated, goes on in accordance with the law stated in a, of the second general definition. It follows, therefore,
B. That so far as the dictum expresses the fact, that within the sphere of conditions proper,—observing the distinction of conditions into two classes heretofore made,—the finite intellect must act under them, and see those objects upon which they lie, accordingly,—as, for instance, a geometrical figure must be seen in Time and Space,—so far it is true, and no farther. For instance: To see an eagle flying, is to see it under all the conditions imposed upon the bird as flying, and the observer as seeing. But when men intuit the a priori truth, Malice is criminal, they perceive that it lies under no conditions proper, but is absolute and universal. We perceive, then,
C. That for all mental operations which have as object pure laws and ideal forms, and that Being in whom all these inhere, this dictum is not true. The thinker may be conditioned in the proper sense of that term; yet he entertains objects of thought which are unconditioned; and they are not affected by it. Thus, it does not affect the universality of the principle in morals above noted that I perceive it to be such, and that necessarily.
Assuming, then, that by the dictum, To think is to condition, is meant, not that the thinker, by the act of thinking, constructs the conditions, but that he recognizes in himself, as thinking subject, and in the object thought, the several conditions (proper) thereof,—the following statements will define the province of this dictum.
1. The Universe as physical object, the observing Sense, and the discursive Understanding, lie wholly within it.
2. Created spiritual persons, as constituted beings, also lie wholly within it. But it extends no farther. On the other hand,
3. Created spiritual persons, in their capacities to intuit pure laws, and pure ideal forms; and those laws and forms themselves lie wholly without it.
4. So also does God the absolute Being in whom those laws and forms inhere. Or, in general terms,
When conditions (proper) already lie upon the object thought, since the thinker must needs see the object under its conditions, it is true that, To think is to condition. But so far as it is meant that thinking is such a kind of operation that it cannot proceed except the object be conditioned, it is not true; for there are processes of thought whose objects are unconditioned.
The question, "What are Space and Time?" with which Mr. Spencer opens his chapter on "Ultimate Scientific Ideas," introduces a subject common to all the Limitists, and which, therefore, should be considered in this part of our work. A remark made a few pages back, respecting an essay in the "North American Review" for October 1864, applies with equal force here in reference to another essay by the same writer, in the preceding July number of that periodical. At most, his view can only be unfolded. He has left nothing to be added. In discussing a subject so abstruse and difficult as this, it would seem, in the present stage of human thought at least, most satisfactory to set out from the Reason rather than the Sense, from the idea rather than the phenomenon; and so will we do.
In general, then, it may be said that Space and Time are a priori conditions of created being. The following extracts are in point. "Pure Space, therefore, as given in the primitive intuition, is pure form for any possible phenomenon. As unconjoined in the unity of any form, it is given in the primitive intuition, and is a cognition necessary and universal. Though now obtained from experience, and in chronological order subsequent to experience, yet is it no deduction from experience, nor at all given by experience; but it is wholly independent of all experience, prior to it, and without which it were impossible that any experience of outer object should be." "Pure Time, as given in the intuition, is immediately beheld to be conditional for all possible period, prior to any period being actually limited, and necessarily continuing, though all bounded period be taken away."—Rational Psychology, pp. 125, 128.
Again, a clearly defined distinction may be made between them as conditions. Space is the a priori condition of material being. Should a spiritual person, as the soul of a man, be stripped of all its material appurtenances, and left to exist as pure spirit, it could hold no communication with any other being but God; and no other being but he could hold any communication with it. It would exist out of all relation to Space. Not so, however, with Time. Time is the a priori condition of all created being, of the spiritual as well as material. In the case just alluded to, the isolated spiritual person would have a consciousness of succession and duration, although he would have no standard by which to measure that duration, he could think in processes, and only in processes, and thus would be necessarily related to Time. Dr. Hickok has expressed this thus: "Space in reference to time has no significancy. Time is the pure form for phenomena as given in the internal sense only, and in these there can be only succession. The inner phenomenon may endure in time, but can have neither length, breadth, nor thickness in space. A thought, or other mental phenomenon, may fill a period, but cannot have superficial or solid content; it may be before or after another, but not above or below it, nor with any outer or inner side."—Rational Psychology, p. 135.
Space and Time may also be distinguished thus: "Space has three dimensions," or, rather, there can be three dimensions in space,—length, breadth, and thickness. In other words, it is solid room. "Time has but one dimension," or, rather, but one dimension can enter into Time,—length. In Time there can only be procession. Space and Time may then be called, the one "statical," the other "dynamical," illimitation. Following the essayist already referred to, they may be defined as follows:
"Space is the infinite and indivisible Receptacle of Matter.
"Time is the infinite and indivisible Receptacle of Existence."
Both, then, are marked by receptivity, indivisibility, and illimitability. The one is receptivity, that material object may come into it; the other, that event may occur in it. There is for neither a final unit nor any limit. All objects are divisible in Space, and all periods in Time; and thus also are all limits comprehended, but they are without limit. Turning now from these more general aspects of the subject, a detailed examination may be conducted as follows.
The fundamental law given by the Reason is, as was seen above, that Space and Time are a priori conditions of created being. We can best consider this law in its application to the facts, by observing two general divisions, with two sub-divisions under each. Space and Time have, then, two general phases, one within, and one without, the mind. Each of these has two special phases. The former, one in the Sense, and one in the Understanding. The latter, one within, and one without, the Universe.
First general phase within the mind. First special phase, in the Sense. "As pure form in the primitive intuition, they are wholly limitless, and void of any conjunction in unity, having themselves no figure nor period, and having within themselves no figure nor period, but only pure diversity, in which any possible conjunction of definite figures and periods may, in some way, be effected." In other words, they are pure, a priori, formal laws, which are conditional to the being of any sense as the perceiver of a phenomenon; and yet this sense could present no figure or period, till some figure or period was produced into it by an external agency. As such necessary formal laws, Space and Time "have a necessity of being independently of all phenomena." Or, in other words, the fact that all phenomena must appear in them, lies beyond the province of power. This, however, is no more a limit to the Deity than it is a limit to him that he cannot hate his creatures and be good. In our experience the Sense gives two kinds of phenomena: the one the actual phenomena of actual objects, the other, ideal phenomena with ideal objects. The one is awakened by the presentation, in the physical sense, of a material object, as a house; the other, by the activity of the imaging faculty, engaged in constructing some form in the inner or mental sense, from forms actually observed. Upon both alike the formal law of Space and Time must lie.
Second special phase, in the Understanding. Although there is pure form, if there was no more than this, no notion of a system of things could be. Each object would have its own space, and each event its own time. But one object and event could not be seen in any relation to another object and event. In order that this shall be, there must be some ground by which all the spaces and times of phenomena shall be joined into a unity of Space and Time; so that all objects shall be seen in one Space, and all events in one Time. "A notional connective for the phenomena may determine these phenomena in their places and periods in the whole of all space and of all time, and so may give both the phenomena and their space and time in an objective experience." The operation of the Understanding is, then, the connection, by a notional, of all particular spaces and times; i. e. the space and time of each phenomenon in the Sense, into a comprehensive unity of Space and Time, in which all phenomena can be seen to occur; and thus a system can be. In a word, not only must each phenomenon be seen in its own space and time, but all phenomena must be seen in one Space and Time. This connection of the manifold into unity is the peculiar work of the Understanding. An examination of the facts as above set forth enables us to construct a general formula for the application to all minds of the fundamental law given by the Reason. That law, that all objects must be seen in Space, and all events in Time, involves the subordinate law:
That no mind can observe material objects or any events except under the conditions of Space and Time; or, to change the phraseology, Space and Time are a priori conditional to the being of any mind or faculty in a mind capable of observing a material object or any event. This will, perhaps, be deemed to be, in substance, Kant's theory. However that may be, this is true, but is only a part of the truth. The rest will appear just below. The reader will notice that no exception is made to the law here laid down, and will start at the thought that this law lies upon the Deity equally as upon created beings. No exception is made, because none can be truthfully made. The intellect is just as unqualified in its assertion on this point as in those noticed on an earlier page of this work. Equally with the laws of numbers does the law of Space and Time condition all intellect. The Deity can no more see a house out of all relation to Space and Time than he can see how to make two and two five.
Second general phase, without the mind. First special phase, within the Universe. All that we are now to examine is objective to us; and all the questions which can arise are questions of fact. Let us search for the fact carefully and hold it fearlessly. To recur to the general law. It was found at the outset that Reason gave the idea of Space and Time as pure conditions for matter and event. We are now to observe the pure become the actual condition; or, in other words, we are to see the condition realized. Since, then, we are to observe material objects and events in a material system, it is fitting to use the Sense and the Understanding; and our statements and conclusions will conform to those faculties.
We have a concept of the Universe as a vast system in the form of a sphere in which all things are included. This spherical system is complete, definite, limited, and so has boundaries. A portion of "immeasurable void"—Space—has been occupied. Where there was nothing, something has become. Now it is evident that the possibility of our having a concept of the Universe, or of a space and a time in the Universe, is based upon the presence of an actual, underlying, all-pervading substance, which fills and forms the boundaries of the Universe, and thus enables spaces and times to be. We have no concept except as in limits, and those limits are conceived to be substance. In other words, space is distance, and time is duration, in our concept. Take away the boundaries which mark the distance, and the procession of events which forms the duration, and in the concept pure negation is left. To illustrate. Suppose there be in our presence a cubic yard of vacuum. Is this vacuum an entity? Not at all. It can neither be perceived by the Sense nor conceived by the Understanding. Yet it is a space. Speaking carelessly, we should say that this cube was object to us. Why? Because it is enclosed by substantial boundaries. All, then, that is object, all that is entity, is substance. In our concept, therefore, a space is solid distance within the substance, and the totality of all distances in the Universe is conceived to be Space. Again; suppose there pass before our mind a procession of events. One event has a fixed recurrence. In our concept the procession of events is a time, and the recurring event marks a period in time. The events proceeding are all that there is in the concept; and apart from the procession a conception of time is impossible. The procession of all the events of the Universe, that is duration, is our concept of Time. Thus, within the Universe, space is solid distance and time is duration; and neither has any actuality except as the Universe is. Let us assume for a moment that our concept is the final truth, and observe the result. In that concept space is limited by matter, and matter is conceived of as unlimited. This result is natural and necessary, because matter, substance, "a space-filling force," is the underlying notional upon which as ground any concept is possible. If matter is truly illimitable, then materialistic pantheism, which is really atheism, logically follows. Again; in our concept time is duration, and duration is conceived of as unlimited. If so, the during event is unlimited. From this hypothesis idealistic pantheism logically follows. But bring our concept into the clear light, and under the searching eye of Reason, and all ground for those systems vanishes instantly. Instead of finding matter illimitable and the limit for a space, Space is seen to be illimitable and pure condition, that matter may establish a limit within it. And Time, instead of being duration, and so limited by the during event, is found to be illimitable and pure condition, that event may have duration in it. This brings us to the
Second special phase, without or independent of the Universe. We have been considering facts in an objective experience, and have used therefore the Sense and Understanding, as was proper. What we are now to consider is a subject of which all experience is impossible. It can therefore be examined only by that faculty which presents it, the Pure Reason. Remove now from our presence all material object in Space, and all during event in Time; in a word, remove the Universe, and what will be left? As the Universe had a beginning, and both it and all things in it are conditioned by Space and Time, so also let it have an end. Will its conditions cease in its ceasing? Could another Universe arise, upon which would be imposed no conditions of Space and Time? These questions are answered in the statement of them. Those conditions must remain. When we have abstracted from our concept all substance and duration, there is left only void. Hence, in our concept it would be proper to say that without the Universe is void, and before the Universe there was void. Also, that in void there is no thing, no where, and no when; or, void is the negation of actual substance, space and time. But pure Space and Time, as a priori conditions that material object and during event may be, have not ceased. There is still room, that an object may become. There is still opportunity, that an event may occur. By the Reason it is seen that these conditions have the same necessary being for material object and occurring event, as the conditions of mental activity have for mind; and they have their peculiar characteristics exactly according with what they do condition, just as the laws of thought have their peculiar characteristics, which exactly suit them to what they condition. If there be a spiritual person, the moral law must be given in the intuition as necessarily binding upon him; and this is an a priori condition of the being of such person. Precisely similar is the relation between Space and Time as a priori conditions, and object and event upon which they lie. The moral law has its characteristics, which fit it to condition spiritual person. Space and Time have their characteristics, which fit them to condition object and event. Space, then, as room, and Time as opportunity, and both as a priori conditions of a Universe, must have the same necessity of being that God has. They must be, as he must be. But observe, they are pure conditions, and no more. They are neither things nor persons. The idea of them in the Reason is simple and unanalyzable. They can be assigned their logical position, but further than this the mind cannot go.
The devout religious soul will start, perhaps, at some of the positions stated above. We have not wrought to pain such soul, but only for truth, and the clue of escape from all dilemmas. The only question to be raised is, are they true? If a more patient investigation than we have given to this subject shall show our positions false, then we shall only have failed as others before us have; but we shall love the truth which shall be found none the less. But if they shall be found true, then is it certain that God always knew them so and was always pleased with them, and no derogation to his dignity can come from the proclamation of them, however much they may contravene hitherto cherished opinions. Most blessed next after the Saviour's tender words of forgiveness are those pure words of the apostle John, "No lie is of the truth."
The conclusions to which we have arrived enable us to state how it is that primarily God was out of all relation to Space and Time. He was out of all relation to Space, because he is not material object, thereby having limits, form, and position in Space. He was out of all relation to Time, because he holds immediately, and at once, all possible objects of knowledge before the Eye of his mind. Hence he can learn nothing, and can experience no process of thought. Within his mind no event occurs, no substance endures. Yet, while this is true, it is equally true that, as the Creator, he is conditioned by Space and Time, just as he is conditioned by himself; and it may be found by future examination that they are essential to that Self. But, whatever conclusion may be arrived at respecting so difficult and abstract a subject, this much is certain: God, as the infinite and absolute spiritual Person, self-existent and supreme, is the great Fact; and Space and Time, whatever they are, will, can in no wise interfere with and compromise his perfectness and supremacy. It is a pleasure to be able to close this discussion with reflections profound and wise as those contained in the following extract from the essay heretofore alluded to.
"The reciprocal relations of Space, Time, and God, are veiled in impenetrable darkness. Many minds hesitate to attribute real infinity to Space and Time, lest it should conflict with the infinity of God. Such timidity has but a slender title to respect. If the Laws of Thought necessitate any conclusion whatever, they necessitate the conclusion that Space and Time are each infinite; and if we cannot reconcile this result with the infinity of God, there is no alternative but to accept of scepticism with as good a grace as possible. No man is worthy to join in the search for truth, who trembles at the sight of it when found. But a profound faith in the unity of all truth destroys scepticism by anticipation, and prophesies the solutions of reason. Space is infinite, Time is infinite, God is infinite; three infinites coexist. Limitation is possible only between existences of the same kind. There could not be two infinite Spaces, two infinite Times, or two infinite Gods; but while infinites of the same kind cannot coexist, infinites of unlike kinds may. When an hour limits a rod, infinite Time will limit infinite Space; when a year and an acre limit wisdom, holiness, and love, infinite Space and Time will limit the infinite God. But not before. Time exists ubiquitously, Space exists eternally, God exists ubiquitously and eternally. The nature of the relations between the three infinites, so long as Space and Time are ontologically incognizable, is utterly and absolutely incomprehensible; but to assume contradiction, exclusion, or mutual limitation to be among these relations, is as gratuitous as it is irreverent."