[Footnote 355: ][ (return) ] North British Review, October, 1864, pp. 415, 416.
3. The whole of this confusion in thought and expression results from the habit of confounding the sensuous imagination with the non-sensuous reason, and the consequent co-ordination of an imageable conception with an abstract idea. The objects of sense and the sensuous imagination may be characterized as extension, limitation, figure, position, etc.; the objects of the non-sensuous reason may be characterized as universality, eternity, infinity. I can form an image of an extended and figured object, but I can not form an image of space, time, or God; neither, indeed, can I form an image of Goodness, Justice, or Truth. But I can have a clear and precise idea of space, and time, and God, as I can of Justice, Goodness, and Truth. There are many things which I can most surely know that I can not possibly comprehend, if to comprehend is to form a mental image of a thing. There is nothing which I more certainly know than that space is infinite, and eternity unbeginning and endless; but I can not comprehend the infinity of space or the illimitability of eternity. I know that God is, that he is a being of infinite perfection, but I can not throw my thoughts around and comprehend the infinity of God.
(iv.) We come, lastly, to consider the position of the Dogmatic Theologians. [356] In their zeal to demonstrate the necessity of Divine Revelation, and to vindicate for it the honor of supplying to us all our knowledge of God, they assail every fundamental principle of reason, often by the very weapons which are supplied by an Atheistical philosophy. As a succinct presentation of the views of this school, we select the "Theological Institutes" of R. Watson.
[Footnote 356: ][ (return) ] Ellis, Leland, Locke, and Horsley, whose writings are extensively quoted in Watson's "Institutes of Theology" (reprinted by Carlton & Lanahan, New York).
1st. The invalidity of "the principle of causality" is asserted by this author. "We allow that the argument which proves that the effects with which we are surrounded have been caused, and thus leads us up through a chain of subordinate causes to one First Cause, has a simplicity, an obviousness, and a force which, when we are previously furnished with the idea of God, makes it, at first sight, difficult to conceive that men, under any degree of cultivation, should be inadequate to it; yet if ever the human mind commenced such an inquiry at all, it is highly probable that it would rest in the notion of an eternal succession of causes and effects, rather than acquire the ideas of creation, in the proper sense, and of a Supreme Creator." [357] "We feel that our reason rests with full satisfaction in the doctrine that all things are created by one eternal and self-existent Being; but the Greek philosophers held that matter was eternally co-existent with God. This was the opinion of Plato, who has been called the Moses of philosophy." [358]
For a defense of "the principle of causality" we must refer the reader to our remarks on the philosophy of Comte. We shall now only remark on one or two peculiarities in the above statement which betray an utter misapprehension of the nature of the argument. We need scarcely direct attention to the unfortunate and, indeed, absurd phrase, "an eternal succession of causes and effects." An "eternal succession" is a contradictio in adjecto, and as such inconceivable and unthinkable. No human mind can "rest" in any such thing, because an eternal succession is no rest at all. All "succession" is finite and temporal, capable of numeration, and therefore can not be eternal. [359] Again, in attaining the conception of a First Cause the human mind does not pass up "through a chain of subordinate causes," either definite or indefinite, "to one First Cause."
[Footnote 357: ][ (return) ] Watson's "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. p. 273.
[Footnote 358: ][ (return) ] Id., ib., vol. i. p. 21.
[Footnote 359: ][ (return) ] See ante, pp. 181, 182, ch. v.