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?