barrier to intellectual cognition, it is the chief instrument in laying the foundation of our higher knowledge, which, in fact, ends in the consummate paradox and ultimate truth, that contradictories are one and universal negativity is the essence of thought. And Oken, another disciple of Schelling, only a little less distinguished than Hegel, in the true spirit and principle of this philosophy, proclaimed, that God is nothing, and nothing is God; so impossible is it for human reason to deny the existence of God, that a philosophy, which outrages the conditions of thought and ends in universal negation, makes that negation God.

It was in this state of the problem of realism, that Sir William Hamilton took up the subject. He showed the intellectual realism of Schelling and his school to be a scheme of mere negation. And he proclaimed, in its stead, the doctrine of natural realism. "A mental operation (says Hamilton) is only what it is by relation to its object; the object at once determining its existence and specifying the character of its existence." This restoration of the objective to its legitimate position, in the dualism of thought and existence, from which Kant had displaced it, Hamilton based upon Reid's doctrine of common sense. Natural realism, while it recognises the relativity of thought, excludes that void relativity of Kant which makes philosophy a scheme of mere formal relations, just as entirely as it excludes the intellectual realism of Schelling and his school, which identifies the objective and the subjective in a unitarianism of thought and existence.

We are therefore remitted, by all the efforts of speculation to solve the problem of knowledge and existence, to the doctrine of natural realism, that there is a real external world, which we know immediately, reposing upon the principle, that what our nature constrains us to believe as true and real, is true and real. And all, or nearly all the intellectualists, after the self-love, which, in speculation, is apt to overcome the love of truth, had abated, have abandoned their ambitious doctrine of omniscience, and acknowledged the catholic confession of philosophy proposed by Bacon, that in order to enter the temple of science, we must become as little children, trusting to necessary beliefs. In this spirit we have examined the pro

blem of God; and have, we submit, contrary to the doctrine of Kant, that theism is speculatively impossible, shown that atheism is not only speculatively impossible, but that we are, upon the empirical proofs, necessitated by the laws of thought to believe in a God.

But, though we have shown that we must believe in a personal God, of intelligence, will, and moral nature like our own, the question arises, is he omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect? as the proclivities of the human mind certainly urge men to assert. We cannot know that God is omniscient, or omnipotent, or morally perfect; for we have not, in our natures, any cognitive measure of these unlimited attributes. We can at most, therefore, only infer and believe that God possesses these transcendental attributes.

There is, however, as we have already shown, a philosophy which aspires to know God absolutely. That philosophy has proposed two modes for this knowledge. Schelling proposes an intellectual intuition free from all the conditions of sensuous intuition; and Hegel proposes a dialectical process free from the laws of thought. So unsatisfactory was the mode of each to the other, that while Hegel, as we have already said, calls the intellectual intuition a poetical play of fancy, Schelling calls the dialectical process a logical play with words. In fact, both modes of knowing are so absurd, ignoring, as each does, all the limitations of the human understanding, that it would have been a marvel in human error, if two such great thinkers had agreed in either mode. Each mode involves the doctrine of intellectual realism, and consummates its irrationality, as we have shown, in making God nothing, and nothing God. For, in fact, the absolute and infinite of this philosophy are subjective negations commuted into objective affirmations. But as thoroughly as all this has been exposed by Sir William Hamilton, there are respectable writers on metaphysics who still assert that man can know the infinite. Therefore it is, that we yield to the necessity of briefly considering the question.

If by knowledge we mean the immediate cognition of an object, then we can only know God by the intellectual intuition of Schelling. If we enlarge the notion of knowledge, so as to embrace whatever can be evolved in a dialectical process, then

we must have the dialectic of Hegel to know God. There is no other method of knowing God even conceivable by the most perverse ingenuity. To know God, therefore, we must follow either Schelling or Hegel. But if we admit, as we must, that consciousness is the prime condition of human intelligence, how can we cognize the infinite or absolute, when the fundamental law of consciousness is an antithesis of a subject thinking an object? Therefore, in the peculiar meaning of the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel, the subject has to become the infinite or absolute object in order to know it; for otherwise the subject would not be embraced in the absolute or all, (the absolute and infinite mean the all, in this philosophy,) which would be a contradiction.

The words absolute and infinite express the inconceivable in two counter forms. The word inconceivable has a valid meaning, though it does not involve the conception of the object which it denotes, but negatives the possibility of such a conception. All negation involves affirmation, and we cannot predicate non-existence except by reference to existence; therefore, when we predicate infiniteness or inconceivability, it is always by reference to some finite or conceivable thing. Negative thinking is realized only under the condition of relativity and positive thinking. It expresses the limitation and impotency of the human understanding in a form that indicates an attempt and failure to conceive; and though it is objective in expression, and denotes negation, yet the negation implies subjective impotency and not objective impossibility. Room is therefore left for belief of the objective possibility of that which, in our failure to conceive it, we call the infinite. Knowledge is, therefore, not the whole contents of human intelligence; but faith is given to supplement, by its less certain, but not less valid conviction, the impotency of reason or understanding. The conception, called the infinite, is generated in an attempt to separate the conditions of finiteness of relativity and non-contradiction--from a given object, that is, to conceive it absolutely; and the conscious failure leads to calling the object infinite or unfinishable in thought; and all that the conception embraces, in our attempt to think, from the finite to the absolute, is the indefinite, which we call the infinite. This

psychological genesis of the notion of the infinite, shows that belief in the infinite is not a mere instinct or feeling, but a necessitated conviction inseparably incident to the impotency of the understanding, being only a less certain conviction of reason. Though, therefore, the absolute nature of God is not directly manifested, and cannot be, to the reason of man, yet he is manifested under finite symbols and relations, which have a positive significance, and indicate, indirectly, that God is greater than the finite meaning of the symbols and relations; and the laws of our intelligence constrain us to believe, from what we know of him in his relations, in his incomprehensible majesty. In fact, we know that God is incomprehensible; for our consciousness testifies that nescience exercises an important function in our intelligent convictions in regard to the nature of God. This nescience of God is not atheism, but just the reverse; while the doctrine of absolute knowledge of God is atheism; for the philosophical conception, in which that pretended knowledge consists, is a mere negation, as we have shown. Though, therefore, final causes, together with our own personality, do not reveal the fulness of the Godhead to us, we are not on that account atheists, but theists, knowing in part, and believing more than we know; and hoping for the time when we shall know even as we are known.

There is no medium between apprehending an infinite being directly and analogically. That such being cannot be apprehended directly, we have shown. And that analogy debars absolute knowledge, is manifest. But so it be admitted, as it must, that all our intelligence of God is by analogy, it matters but little, practically, whether the mental conviction be called knowledge, belief, or faith.

Having, as we trust, shown that we are constrained, by the laws of thought, to believe, from the data of consciousness, in a personal God, who is incomprehensible; and thereby, having also established the doctrine, that we are compelled, by our intelligent nature, to believe a thing, though we may not be able to comprehend it, we are prepared to enter upon considerations which will conduct us to a position, from which we can take a speculative view of Christianity, as a supernatural revelation, from the God whose existence we have proved.

That man is a moral, and therefore accountable agent, and yet hemmed in by insurmountable impediments to free action, has always been more or less obvious to the common sense and the speculative reason of man. Hence human life has always been, to the mind of man, an insoluble paradox. The physical world so manifestly presents irresistible and irreversible courses of events, that their necessity, against all human power, has never been doubted. And when the courses of the moral world are scanned, the human mind is necessitated, by the laws of its intelligence, to predicate causation between the antecedents and consequents; and has never been able to construe, to consciousness, the difference between the forces of nature and the motives of a rational will, in determining necessary results, though they must be, and are, assumed as different in our practical convictions. So that, to the ancient Greek popular mind, both the physical and moral worlds seemed equally bound in fate. And yet sin seemed, to the pagan mind, a prime fact in the world, and punishment an inevitable retribution. It seemed to the Greeks as if there was an alliance and compact between the fates or powers of nature, and the furies or powers of conscience, to punish man for acts to which he is inexorably doomed, and for which, nevertheless, he could not but feel he was morally responsible. This terrible doctrine or belief, appears, in all its import, in the Greek drama, that living picture of Greek life. An inexorable fate seems to rule all the actions of the drama, to an inevitable destiny. Clytemnestra, who appears in so many dramas, by different poets, and is therefore a good example of the Greek conscience, does not, in her moral agonies, so much feel the remorse which results from conscious guilt, as the cruel torture of an inexorable fate. Though she had participated in the murder of her husband, the guilt of so foul a deed sat light upon her heart, even after she had reflected upon its turpitude; but she dreaded the furies as the scourges of fate. In Greek life, the pagan or heathen conscience attained its highest enlightenment; and the actors in the Greek drama reveal, in a striking manner, the various workings of the pagan conscience.

And the doctrines of the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, in regard to the great facts of the moral world, were 3

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