[15] There are sundry elements in every intuition on which we do not here enlarge, as they are necessary features rather than criteria, characteristics rather than tests. Two of them may be merely stated—1. Every intuition is ultimate, and carries its own evidence within itself: it cannot appeal to any higher witness beyond itself; and 2. The fact or facts which it proclaims, while irreducible by analysis, must be incapable of any other explanation.
[16] Similarly with the action of the infinite and absolute cause. The creative energy of that cause is not inconsistent with its changelessness. To say so, is to introduce a quantitative notion into a sphere when quality is alone to be considered. A cause in action is the force which determines the changes which occur in time. But the primum mobile, the first cause, need not be itself changed by the forthputting of its causal power.
[17] 'I take the notion of a cause,' said Dr. Thomas Reid, in a letter to Dr. Gregory, 'to be derived from the power I feel in myself to produce certain effects. In this sense we say that the Deity is the cause of the universe.'—(Works, Hamilton's Edition, p. 77).
[18] As one who sustains a fatherly relation is at the same time son, brother, citizen, member of a commonwealth, and member of a profession; or, as we describe a being of compound nature, such as man, who is both body and soul, by the higher term of the two.
[19] We use this word according to its ancient meaning, as descriptive of the way in which the inspired soul of a prophet or a poet 'became possessed of his truths,' in distinction from his other function as an 'utterer of truths.' And we refer only to those poets who, as 'utterers of truth,' have spoken of the spiritual presences of nature, amongst whom, Wordsworth is chief.
[20] De l'Existence de Dieu. Part II. ch. i. s. 29.
[21] Theism, pp. 13, 14.
[22] 'Quiet reigned at home; the public offices kept their old titles;... Tiberius initiated all his measures under the mask of the consuls, as if it was the old republic.... Yet at Rome there was a race for servitude; consuls, senators, and knights alike.'
[23] See 'Merivale,' vol. iii. p. 464.
[24] Roscoe's 'Life of Lorenzo de Medici,' p. 6.