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.