of Spencer, we can bear with equanimity the pitying and condescending tone in which he informs us that our culture has probably not been sufficient to enable us to accept the great truth which he has revealed. His doctrine of the unknowable, his doctrine of the nature of the ego, and of volition, all contradict what he himself calls the universal postulate. Any belief that invariably exists in the mind, that you cannot by any effort of the imagination, even for a moment, suppose to be false, that belief is true. This is Spencer's universal postulate. And he not only admits, but strongly maintains that the existence of the ultimate cause is avouched to us by this canon. Yet he says that we must assign to this cause no attribute whatever. But this is impossible; we cannot, by any act of the imagination, even for one moment, conceive of the existence of a being, except by conceiving it with attributes; the existence is conceived only by the conception of the attributes. You cannot for one instant divest yourself of the belief that the Ultimate Cause of the universe is a cause; and that is the assigning to it of the attribute of power, of causal energy.

Morcover, it is impossible for a cultivated man, like Spencer, who has by education learned to distinguish what he sees,it is impossible for him to behold the rational, intelligible, and beneficent order of the universe, and not attribute intelligence and benevolence to the Ultimate Cause. He deceives himself with words when he says that he can. He betrays, in many passages of his writings, his ineradicable faith that there is no vice in the constitution of things, that every thing is in the process of harmonious evolution, that all things work together for good to those who surrender the private to the universal. His very law of evolution, which his overenthusiastic friends think the greatest utterance of human language, is an implicit announcement of the presence of thought and beneficence in every part of the universe in every geologic age. And, without reference to Spencer's law, every student of natural science acts upon a steadfast faith that the operations of nature follow a rational, intel

ligible, order; he cannot, even momentarily, divest himself of this faith; and this is equivalent to saying that he cannot divest himself of the belief that the Ultimate Cause of nature is intelligent. When Spencer supposes that he has done so, it is simply because he has fastened on the finite side of our conceptions of intelligence; and he very properly refuses to assign the limitations, and deficiencies of human intelligence to the Infinite Creator. But his doctrine of the unknowable is an unwarranted inference from propositions concerning the infinite, doubly unwarranted; first, because it is illogically drawn; secondly, because his premises contain the infinite; and we can never reason to finite conclusions from infinite premises. Whether the eye was made for seeing, whether the rose was made to please man, these are finite questions, and no conclusion on these questions can be reached by starting from a consideration of the infinite. On the other hand, relations which hold in the finite, may, from the law of their changes as their relatives pass through the indefinite, be proved to hold in the infinite. The ultimate source of all, infinite, eternal, unbounded, may then be unknowable; while yet there are innumerable truths concerning him, accessible to man without recourse to revelation. Tà yàp ἀόρατα Αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασι νοούμενα καθορᾶται, ἥ τε ἀἴδιος Αὐτοῦ δύναμις καὶ θειότης.

When St. Paul declares that the invisible power and divine attributes of God are clearly seen, he announces what we understand to be sound philosophy in regard to intuitions; he asserts the power of the soul to see, to recognize the presence of beings around us. Two theories concerning intuitions have, at different times, exerted a retarding influence upon philosophy. The first was that of innate ideas; the doctrine that we are born with knowledge, an error arising it is said, first from a misinterpretation of Plato, confounding perception with imagination, and making both wholly subjective phenomena; this error was warmly attacked by Locke. The second and more important theory is that of Kant's forms of thought, which has been vigorously controverted

by Herbert Spencer in his first principles of psychology. But after confuting the views of the Kantians, Spencer falls into an opposite error. His discussion relates only to the intuitions of space and time, which many transcendentalists, from a misinterpretation, it is said, of Kant, assert to be not the perception of realities outside the mind, but simply forms. given by the mind to external realities revealed by experience. Spencer shows very clearly that space and time do not belong to the mind, but to the external universe; proving his thesis by metaphysical argument, and by psychological induction. But he immediately rushes into the error of Comte, concluding that space is an attribute of matter, "the relation of coexistence," and time is the "relativity of position among the states of consciousness," that is sequence of thoughts. Thus space would be confounded with extension, and time with duration; errors as mischievous as those of the transcendentalists. The empiric philosophy of the Latin race, leading them thus to confound space with extension, destroyed their interest in geometry; not a single mathematician and scarce one physicist, appears in the annals of Rome, from her foundation to her fall.

The intuitions are true acts of perception by the soul; the most satisfactory simplicity and truthfulness is given to our philosophy by thus enlarging the field of perception until it embraces all cognizable existence. This may be illustrated by this very example, the intuition of space.

To assert, with some of the transcendentalists, that space is a form of thought imposed by the mind upon the universe, is a violation of Spencer's universal postulate, a contradiction of the common sense of mankind. For we cannot even for an instant imagine the possible non-existence of space. Kant himself, whose logical canon has been, it is said, misconstrued into the denial of the objective existence of space, certainly affirms the impossibility of the mind divesting itself, even momentarily, of its faith in the objective existence of space. On the other hand, to assert with the empiricists that space is mere co-existence of the parts of the universe, that it is

mere extension in matter, is equally a contradiction of common sense, and a violation of the universal postulate. For it is impossible to think space conditional on the existence of matter. It is difficult to believe matter infinitely extended, it is impossible to believe space otherwise. And if space be merely an attribute of matter, why is it impossible to imagine space annihilated? and why do we deem the truths of geometry necessary truths?

The empiricists would explain this sense of the necessary existence of space, by the uniformity of our experience. Spencer in adopting this line of argument, contradicts his own universal postulate. Moreover, the explanation explains nothing; how can uniformity of experience generate the conception of the necessity of the thing experienced? The extension of matter is no more uniform an experience than is its existence; and yet Spencer himself, says we can conceive of annihilating matter, but not of annihilating space.

Its

But the third doctrine concerning space is the common sense idea, that space is space; not a form of our thought, nor a form of matter, but existing independently of our thoughts, and of the presence of matter; a simple, indefinable entity in whose infinite extension the finite extensions of matter are included; in whose eternal durations, the changes of the material world find their time of manifestation. existence is revealed to me by inward sight, just as the existence of an outward world is revealed to me by sense perceptions. I see space, that is the reason I believe it exists, and cannot with the transcendentalists make it a law of my own mind, nor with the empiricist make it an attribute of matter. I see it, and I see in it no other attributes than that of extension in three dimensions, upon which, and upon the abstract imagination of position, derived from matter, the science of geometry is built. I see space extending indefinitely in all directions; and can see no possibility of limiting it in any direction. Its simplicity and infinity and eternity relieve me from any necessity of supposing a cause for its existence; and I am entirely at a loss to imagine its

relations to the Ultimate Cause of the material and spiritual universe; other than this, that space is a field wherein that Cause has arranged the Kosmos.

We see space, but it is because the eye has been educated to see it; by a process which is so admirably described by Spencer, that it seems strange that he does not recognize its meaning. The eye is educated to see space, as the ear is educated to hear harmony. An untutored ear frequently fails to recognize harmonies, and hears only melodies; but the same ear, after cultivation, recognizes the relations of simultaneous tones with the greatest exactness. The physicist demonstrates that this perception of harmony is the perception of a really existent external fact. Thus also the metaphysician shall demonstrate that the perception of space attained by geometrical cultivation is the perception of a really existent entity about us.

This power of inward perception reveals to us other things than the existence of space and time. The clear sight of the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and godhead, is not by vision of the outward eye; but it is real, it is a direct inward vision of the divine attributes. Without some power in the soul to see what is divine, theology would be as impossible as a knowledge of painting is to the blind, or of music to those born deaf. No instruction can lead a man to receive and accept truths, unless he has, at least, some native capacity to see those truths. Of course, a man may believe more than he clearly understands, - there is some truth in Hamilton's saying, that the horizon of our faith is much wider than the horizon of our knowledge. We may even believe that a proposition is true when we do not understand it at all; but in that case we do not strictly believe in the proposition, but only in a proposition about it. Much more may we believe that a proposition is true, when in addition to believing that it embodies truth, we understand and believe a part of the truth which it embodies. But we cannot believe in the truth which it embodies, unless we see with our own vision, however dimly and partially, both the terms and the relation.