(4) Its geometrical properties are eternal. So with regard to the geometrical properties of space generally, we are under an a priori necessity of thinking that they cannot alter or be altered. By the constitution of our minds, we are compelled to think that the diameter of a circle must be less than its circumference; the diagonal of a square less than the sum of its four sides, through time and eternity.

The Mary-Stuart Blanket.-Or think of the matter in the concrete. According to the great geniuses (e.g. Mill, Buckle, Caird, etc.) who deny the validity of the Common Sense, there is no reason why the Mary-Stuart Blanket at Holyrood (a rag about one foot square) should not be sufficient "wrappage and overall" for a very tall man in a very cold night. Let the anti-Common-Sense men reflect on the situation in a spirit of candour, and I think they will be constrained to confess that such a supposition is necessarily and eternally impossible. So also, it is quite conceivable that a whale should be able to swallow a minnow; but I ask all the Futilitarian geniuses to be good enough to confess that it is necessarily and eternally inconceivable that an ordinary minnow should be able to swallow a full-grown whale.

Nor do we need any induction from particulars to arrive at such truths. We do not need to experiment with a whale and a minnow; we do not ask ten thousand strapping fellows to make trial of the Mary - Stuart Blanket in order that we may report on its shortcomings. If we did, our thousand experiments would not yield that note of necessity which belongs to the truths of which we have been speaking. On the strength of pure thought, we know them beforehand. We proclaim them as primary,

1 The anti-Common-Sense philosophers would "require the aid of pantomime to tell us what they mean "—if even this expedient would suffice to render themselves intelligible. No kangaroo that ever lived could jump like these men.

a priori, self-evident cognitions, embracing all possible

cases.

(5) Space seems to be uncaused.-Again, with all reverence, we seem to be under the necessity of thinking of space and its properties as uncaused. As Reid, a reverent man, remarks-"Space is so much allied to nothing or emptiness, that it seems incapable of annihilation or creation." A curious point, this. 1 Whilst we cannot but think

of ourselves, or of anything finite, as caused, we seem to be compelled by the very constitution of our minds, to think of space and its properties as uncaused, necessary. Indeed, the notion of necessity implies the absence of cause. Thus Aristotle:" What we know scientifically is necessary matter. . . . Things that absolutely exist from necessity are all eternal; and things eternal are both uncreated and indestructible." 2

Nor can we vary any one of these spacial truths by so much as a hair's-breadth. Not only is the contradiction of any necessary truth unthinkable-e.g. that space is illimitable; but the very slightest deviation from that proposition is equally unthinkable. For example, to say that "Space is nearly boundless" would be as unthinkable. as the proposition, " There is no space."

2. Time

By the constitution of our minds we are also forced to conclude that Time exists, has always existed and must always exist. We can think of Time as unoccupied by Nature, but we cannot think of Nature out of Time. We are forced to think of it also, as infinitely divisible. That is to say that whilst, on the one hand, we are unable to

1 Essays on the Intellectul Powers, ii. 19, p. 324.

2 Nic. Ethics, Bk. vi. iii. 1-2. There are three notes attaching to first principles-those of ultimacy, necessity and inexplicability. v. Veitch's Hamilton, p. 57.

think of a maximum of Time, so, on the other hand, we are unable to conceive a minimum of Time. We also think of it as uncaused. Notice again, that not only is the contrary of any of these propositions unthinkable, but the least deviation from, or modification of, any one of them, is equally unthinkable.

who deny the Timeperpetrated by those "Orioli said he had

Absurdities perpetrated by those judgment.-Notice the absurdities who fail to recognise such truths. tried to reconcile Genesis with geology on the principle of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, i.e. that the creation being before time had no succession 1: "-that was to say, I suppose, that you might have birth, growth and death of any organism taking place simultaneously; that you might have fruit on a tree simultaneously with the planting of the seed! According to these speculators, we should, perhaps, have to consider it possible that a man might be older than his father; as, the historians seem to relate, in the case of Ahaziah the son of Jehoram.2 Such nonsense can men speak when they depart from Common Sense and refuse to think clearly.

Carlyle's rhapsody on Time.-It is surprising to find that so fine a thinker as Carlyle should have fallen into balderdash on this question. Deepest of all illusory appearances are your two grand world-enveloping appearances, Space and Time. . . . In vain, while here on earth, shall you endeavour to strip them off." One cannot even think them off: it is a task impossible to thought. He continues" You can at best but rend them asunder for moments to look through." You cannot do anything of the kind, unless you are truthfully able to aver that, through the rending, you can see something that is uninfolded by He writes further:Space and Time. 'The curtains of yesterday drop down, the curtains of to-morrow are drawn

"

1 Purcell Life of Cardinal Manning, vol. i. p. 388.

2 Cf. 2 Chron. xxi. 20 and xxii. 2.

up; but yesterday and to-morrow both are." Quite a mistake. To-morrow cannot be spoken of in the present tense; yesterday can no longer be spoken of in the present tense. The one is past irrevocably; the other is a future which we may never see; and we are utterly unable to unite them in the thought of a present now. To-day there may be hope; to-morrow there may be no hope. To-day there is life; to-morrow, death. Did not the great Thomas, in his lifetime, know beyond question that he was growing older every day? All the powers of rhetoric cannot unify to-day and to-morrow into a present now. "Pierce through the Time - element, glance into the Eternal," he continues. We cannot. Eternity is but infinitely extended Time or Duration-from Everlasting to Everlasting. "Think well," says our wise man, in another part of the same book, and thou wilt find that "Space is but a mode of our human sense; so likewise, Time; there is no space," quoth he, "and no Time." 2 With all respect to a great man and a great thinker, this is mere senseless rhapsody, inconsiderately adopted from the Germans, and only worthy of "the restless, loud-rattling, slightly furnished head" of one such as his Jacob Dupont. He is but sentimentalising contrariously to the simple, but imperdurable facts of consciousness. "Welcome (even) the beggarliest truth, so it be one, in exchange for the royalest sham." We cannot begin to think but under Space and Time conditions. We can think of nothing apart from, or outside of a Where and a When. We cannot imagine the possibility even of a spiritual being seated nowhere and in no time-out of space or out of time. It is incogitable and absurd. A philosopher could as easily bite off his own nose, or jump out of his own skin, or stand below his own feet, as cogitate or intellectually discern either his

1 Sartor Resartus, Bk. iii. c. viii.

2 Пb., Bk. i. c. viii. Strange that he should have suffered himself to be so victimised by Kant on this point.

own soul or his own body, or anything else, situated outside of space or outside of time. Think of the delightful absurdity of the case when a foreigner gravely says to you-as once happened in my own experience: "I sall be delight to go mit you last Monday."

If any one should be rash enough to say-"I can think of a thing outside Space," I immediately ask-Where? If any one should be rash enough to say "I can think of action out of time," I immediately ask-how he distinguishes between the beginning and the end of the action. Thus it is pure nonsense, and not "pure reason at all, when Kant and his followers speak of space and time as mere forms of external sensuous intuition." I cannot see how Almighty God even, is to make our perceptions of Space and Time more certain and plain than He has already made them.

Notice also that Eternity-i.e. infinitely extended Time, is a thought far transcending the information given us by our bodily senses. Upon the same thought, Sir John Davies rightly founds an argument for the Immortality of the Soul:

"For even the thought of immortality,

Being an act done without the body's aid,
Shows that herself alone could move and be
Although the body in the grave were laid.”1

The revelation to us of endless time is mentally derivedi.e. it is intuitive, a priori.

With regard to the much and tediously debated question as to how we originally came by our apprehensions and conceptions of time and space-i.e. whether we have them mediately or immediately, we are unable to speak positively, as, from the nature of the case, it is impossible to apply the experimental method to the determination of the question. Personally, I am of opinion that it is by immediate intuition in both cases, as from the 1 "Of the Soule of Man," Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 96.