ness of our intellect, but from its power; it is because we not only see no limit to being, but see that there is no limit; that there is being beyond every limit.

The mathematicians in their dealing with the infinite have learned, not only theoretically but practically, that when infinity appears in the premises no finite conclusion can be drawn. They invariably conduct their reasoning on finites, and the relations of finites; and afterwards substituting the infinite for the finite in the results, find finite relations between the infinites. But the metaphysicians dealing with ontological problems have seldom attained this practical wisdom. From the days of Plato down to the latest philosopher of our own century, the metaphysicians of every school, religious and irreligious, have been apt to start with axioms and definitions concerning the infinite or the inconceivable, and to deduce by syllogistic reasoning important parts of their systems. This process has naturally and inevitably led to inconsistent, clashing results. Each system of metaphysics has embraced truths and falsehoods, which no man has succeeded in separating; because every man has proceeded, more or less frequently and constantly, on the wrong method, attempting to deduce finite consequences from infinite premises; arguing from the infinite, and not toward it. The example of the geometers ought by this time to have taught them that, while we can go through indefinites towards infinites, we cannot retrace our steps.

The metaphysician says that the march through indefinites can never reach the infinite. But that is an error. The march through indefinites can reach the infinite, provided the march be always at an accelerating pace. And although we cannot conceive the infinite, as such, we can conceive, and conceive correctly, the result of this attainment of the infinite, when the result is finite. Nor is it impossible that we should thus get at two finite results, each true, and yet contradictories; their infinite distance preventing us from reconciling them; in which case we must accept both, in spite of their apparent contradiction.

This is unquestionably true in mathematics, and true also in metaphysics. Philosophers frequently prove, in a perfectly satisfactory way, each of two contradictory theorems. If we should take these questions up from their finite sides, looking, as Lessing says, to the key of common sense to see what answers we ought to get to the problems, we might, by peculiar processes of investigation, remove the indeterminateness of some, explain the contradictory nature of others, and thus increase the field of certainty. Some of those questions which we did not thus settle, we might demonstrate to be in their nature insoluble; as the mathematicians have shown for the extraction of surd roots, and the squaring of the circle; or in their nature unimaginable, like time neither before nor after a given epoch; and thus we should remove them from the sphere of controversy.

Kant's distinction between the pure and the practical reason, Hamilton's between the cognitive faculties and faith, Mansel's between speculative and regulative truths, are all untenable. The two sets of our faculties and the two sets of truths, thus distinguished, are substantially one, and their separation is an uncalled for concession to that school of philosophers who would bound our knowledge by that which can be logically deduced from the testimony of the senses. Time and space lie as distinctly out of the sphere of sensation as any spiritual entities can; and if we resist Comte's definition of the mathematics (degrading them, as Cicero complained that the Romans did, to the mere art of measuring), if we show that this definition cannot account for the action of the human mind, nor explain the triumphs of either ancient or modern geometers; we may also resist Mill's definition of the mind as a congeries of the possibilities of sensation, and Spencer's as the state of consciousness, and Spinoza's as the sum of our thoughts; show that such definitions cramp and pervert both psychology and ontology; and refuse to make the smallest concession to any philosophy that would make mind a mere modification of matter. The idealistic extreme were far more rational.

The fundamental power of the mind is its power of perception; its power of recognizing objects of thought and thinking about them. The science of logic explaining certain of the processes of thinking, does not and cannot offer any explanation of the fact of perception. What I see, I must believe that I see; and my only power of criticism, is the power to separate clearly the perception from the related or dependent truths which I may by unconscious and rapid inference (i.e. perception of relation), have drawn from it. The objects of direct perception may be divided into five classes: the first containing time and space; the second, the external world; the third, our fellow men; the fourth, our own internal sphere of consciousness; and the fifth, the inef fable First Cause. Our perceptions of these five objects differ in clearness; and in the fruitfulness of inferences which may be drawn from them; but it is, so to speak, the same mental power of sight which reveals to us each of the five classes of objects, and it is the same power of seeing relations that draws its inferences from what is seen in the objects. Theology stands on a different basis from physics, because its object, or subject-matter is different, rather than because it requires the exercise of different powers of mind in its treatment.

We see space and time by the mental eye, and recognize their relations to us, and ours to them. We deduce magnificently long trains of successful argument from these perceptions; but we find also mysteries absolutely insoluble, even in these simplest of all objects; we are forced to confess after all our ingenuity in inventing calculuses, that we are, even in geometry, fenced in by an impenetrable wall of the unknowable. Not on that account do we consider the acquisition of geometrical knowledge impossible. But precisely the same is true concerning each one of the five great fields open to human sight, including the grandest and most sublime, that of theology.

We see that there is, ever present, a Divine Cause of all things, and cannot refuse to see it. We recognize our re

lations to him, and his to us, and draw the most sublime and cheering inferences from them. If it is replied that he is both infinite and absolute, and cannot stand related, the answer is obvious; that objection argues from the infinite to the finite, and cannot be sound; it would be justly parodied by saying that space is indivisible and infinite, and cannot therefore stand related, and cannot furnish a basis for geometry. It is true that the mysteries of the Divine Being transcend all our powers of reason and of imagination. But this does not render all knowledge of him impossible, so long as we perceive his presence and action ever about us, and may even reverently and gratefully say we see him, ever present in our souls and in the world.

Mansel, in his admirable Bampton Lectures, states with wonderful clearness and force the impossibility of our attaining to an exhaustive knowledge of God; but he not only draws from this feebleness of our faculties the just inference that we are to approach religious reasonings with great caution and modesty; he also, in several passages, seems to deny our ability to judge at all of divine things, or to attribute. any meaning whatever to the terms in which God is described as holy, just, merciful, and true. In his desire, apparently, to exalt the value of revealed religion, he, in these passages, destroys his power to accept the evidences of revealed religion. If we have no knowledge whatever of God, except through the scriptures, how can we judge whether the scriptures came from God?

Herbert Spencer quotes with approval both Hamilton's and Mansel's statements of the impossibility of man's arriving at the knowledge of divine things, but draws from the doctrine very different conclusions from theirs. As before remarked, he points out the error of supposing that the infinite is simply the not finite, the unthinkable in magnitude or finitude. He shows that we have not merely the negative notion of "without bounds"; but the positive notion of "something without bounds"; that the idea of the infinite is the result, therefore, not of weakness, but of strength. Further, he

attempts to show that the Ultimate Infinite, the Cause of the universe, although necessarily conceived as existent, is, nevertheless, in every one of its attributes, totally inconceivable and unknowable. This he declares to be the final result, both in science and religion; both come to the acknowledgement of an utterly inscrutable and unknowable origin of all things. Religion, according to him, is the feeling of awe and mystery awakened by our having the presence of the unknowable constantly pressed upon our recognition. Science is the knowledge which leads up to and defines the limits separating the knowable from the unknowable. He speaks quite sharply of those who predicate personality of the first cause, and asks whether there may not be a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion. The ultimate cause, he says, cannot be in any respect conceived by us, because it is in every respect greater than we can conceive. Therefore, he concludes, we must refrain from assigning to it any attribute whatever; because any attribute conceivable by us would degrade the ultimate cause. And this position, Spencer declares is that religious position which is most religious.

Yet this position is inconsistent with the fundamental postulates of Herbert Spencer's own philosophy; inconsistent also with the principles by which he proves, against Mansel and Hamilton, that our idea of the infinite involves a positive side, an affirmative of existence. Moreover, this doctrine of Spencer, like Comte's Positive Philosophy, asks us to hold the mind in unstable equilibrium, always believing in the existence of a being, to which indeed our attention is perpetually directed, but to which we cannot, and must not, assign any attribute whatever. Compliance with this commandment is simply impossible. I know beings only through their attributes; I recognize their being only through the recognition of their attributes; and cannot, therefore, recognize the existence of the Ultimate Cause, except by his attributes.

After reading this impossible and self-contradictory demand