conditioned and unconditioned in philosophic nomenclature. We find that not only does one truth depend on another as evidence to our minds, but one thing as an existence depends on another. Everything falling under our notice on earth is dependent on some other thing as its cause. All physical events proceed from a concurrence of previous circumstances. All animated beings come from a parentage. But is everything that exists thus a dependent link in a chain which hangs on nothing? There are intellectual instincts which recoil from such a thought. There are intuitions which, proceeding on facts ever pressing themselves on the attention, lead to a very different result. By our intuitive conviction in regard to substance, we are introduced to that which has power of itself. True, we discover that all mundane substances, spiritual and material, have in fact been originated, and have proceeded from something anterior to them. But then intuitive reason presses us on, and we seek for a cause of that cause which is furthest removed from our view. It is a favorite principle with Aristotle that there cannot be an infinite series of causes; see, in particular, Metaph. 1. Minor, II., where he supports his doctrine by very subtle reasoning. The principle has been sanctioned by most profound thinkers; see Clarke, Demons. of Being and Attrib. of God, II., where the proposition is supported by very doubtful metaphysics. I am inclined to think we come to the principle by finding that in following various lines we come to a stop; particularly, in following substance and quality, we come to self-existent substance. Pursuing various lines, external and internal, we come to a substance which has no mark of being an effect; to a substance who is the cause, and, as such, the intelligent cause, of all the order and adaptation of one thing to another in the universe; who is the founder of the moral power within us, and the sanctioner of the moral law to which it looks, and who seems to be that Infinite Existence to which our faith in infinity is ever pointing, and now the mind in all its intuitions is satisfied. The intuitive belief as to power in substance is satisfied; the intuitive belief in the adequacy of the cause to produce its effects is satisfied; the native moral conviction is satisfied; and the belief in infinity is satisfied. True, every step in this process is not intuitive or demonstrative, — there may be more than one experiential link in the chain; but the intuitive convictions enter very largely; and when experience has furnished its quota, they are gratified, and feel as if they had nothing to demand beyond this One Substance possessed of all power and of all perfection.

If we would avoid the utmost possible confusion of thought, we must distinguish between these two kinds of conditioned and unconditioned: the one referring to human knowledge, and the discussion of it falling properly under Gnosiology; the other to existence, and so falling under Ontology. The conditional, in respect of knowledge, does, if we pursue the conditioned sufficiently far, conduct at last to primary truths, which are to us unconditioned. These are the first truths which we have been seeking to seize and express in this treatise. We cannot be made to think or believe that these primary truths should not be positive truths, and regarded as truths by all other beings capable of comprehending them. But it is to be carefully remarked, and ever allowed, that some of those truths which are original and independent to us, may be seen by higher intelligences to be dependent on, or to be necessarily interlinked with, other truths. We may by patient induction ascertain what are to us unconditioned truths; but it would be presumptuous in us to pretend to determine what truths are so in themselves, and are seen to be such by the omniscient God. Again, as to conditioned and unconditioned existence, it is quite clear that nothing falls under our notice in this world which is absolutely unconditioned. But the intuitive convictions of the mind, proceeding on a few obvious facts, lead us by an easy process to an unconditioned Being, — that is, whose existence depends on no other.

But the question is started, Can we conceive the Unconditioned ? Of truth unconditioned to us we can conceive. It consists, in fact, of that body of truths on which we are ever falling back in the last resort; in other words, of those original perceptions and principles which I have been seeking to unfold in this treatise. But can we conceive of unconditioned existence? I find no difficulty in doing So. Our intellectual and moral convictions are not satisfied till we reach underived being. I admit the word "unconditioned " is negative; it implies merely the removal of a condition. But we remove the condition, because we come to cases where our intuitive reason does not insist on it, and where our intuitive perceptions rest on underived existence. Pursuing any one of our native convictions, cognitive, fiducial, judicial, or moral, it conducts us to, and falls back on, an object of whom we have a positive conception, that is a Being from whom all conditions are removed, and whose existence and perfections are themselves underived, while they are the source of all power and excellence in the creature.

The above may seem to some rather a prosaic account of a sub

ject which has been lost in such high and dim speculations. But the question is, Is it the correct version? It seems rather an arbitrary use of language on the part of Sir W. Hamilton (Metaph. Lect. 38) to make the Unconditioned a genus including two species, the Infinite and Absolute. When the Unconditioned is referred to, let us always understand whether it means unconditioned in thought or existence.

CHAPTER V.

(SUPPLEMENTARY.)

THE ANTINOMIES OF KANT.

KANT tries to show that the speculative reason conducts to propositions which are contradictory of each other (Kritik d. r. Vern. p. 338). It follows that it cannot be trusted in any of its enunciations. Kant extricates himself from the practical difficulties in which he was thereby involved, by declaring that the speculative reason was not given to lead us to positive objective truth, and by appealing from it to the practical reason. It is, however, always competent to the sceptic to maintain that, if the speculative reason deceive us, so also may the practical reason. The doctrine which I hold is, that the reason does not lead directly nor consequentially to any such contradictions. In regard to some of the counter - propositions, Reason seems to me to say nothing on the one side or the other. In regard to others, there seem to be intuitive convictions, but the contradiction arises from an erroneous exposition or expression of them. It is of course easy, on such abstruse subjects, to construct a series of propositions which may seem to be contradictory, or in reality be contradictory, if they have a meaning at all. But these propositions will be found not to be the expression of the actual decisions of the mind. Let us examine the contradictions which are supposed to be sanctioned by reason. I am to content myself with looking at the propositions themselves, without entering on the elaborate demonstrations of them by Kant. These demonstrations proceed on the peculiar Kantian principles in regard to phenomena, space, time, and the nature of the relations which the mind can discover, and these I have been seeking to undermine all throughout this treatise. It will be enough here to show that Intuitive Reason sanctions no contradictions on the topics to which Kant refers.

FIRST ANTINOMY.

The world has a beginning in time, and is limited in regard to врасе.

The world has no beginning in time, and no limits in space, but is in regard to both infinite.

We have

Now upon this I have to remark, first, that as to the "world," we have, so far as I can discover, no intuition whatever. merely an intuition as to certain things in the world, or, it may be, out of the world. Our reason does declare that space and time are infinite, but it does not declare whether the world is or is not infifinite in extent and duration. We shall find under another antinomy what is our conviction as to God. Reason does not declare that space or time, or the God who inhabits them, must be finite.

SECOND ANTINOMY.

Every composite substance consists of simple parts, and all that exists must either be simple or composed of simple parts.

No composite thing can consist of simple parts, and there cannot exist in the world any simple sub

stance.

Our reason says nothing as to whether things are or are not made up of simple substances. Experience cannot settle the question started by Kant in one way or other. We find certain things composite; these we know are made up of parts; but we cannot say how far the decomposition may extend, or what is the nature of the furthest elements reached.

THIRD ANTINOMY.

Causality, according to the laws of nature, is not the only causality operating to originate the phenomena of the world; to account for the phenomena we must have a causality of freedom.

There is no such thing as freedom, but everything in the world happens according to the laws of nature.

One is the

Here I think reason does sanction two sets of facts. existence of freedom: the other is the universal prevalence of some sort of causation, which may differ, however, in every different kind of object. These may be so stated as to be contradictory. But our convictions in themselves involve no contradiction it is impossible to show that they do by the law of contradiction, which is that “A

:

is not Not-A." "There is some sc acts;" and "the will is free;" propositions are contradictory.

FOURTH A

There exists in the world, or in connection with it, as a part or as the cause of it, an absolutely necessary being.

Our reason seems to say that tin isted and must exist. When a God mind is led by intuition to trace up the underived substance. No conti lished either by reason or experien

A little patient investigation of c all these contradictions, of which t so much, are not in our constitutio fashioned by metaphysicians to su

СНАРТ

(SUPPLEM

ON THE RELATIVIT

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON has

Deen successful, as it appears to me, in fusing what he adheres to in the realism of Reid with what he has adopted from the forms of Kant. His own special theory is that of Relativity, which acknowledges a reality, but declares that we can never know it except under modifications imposed by our minds. It can be shown, I think, that there is a doctrine of relativity which has been proceeded upon, and expressed, though commonly in a loose way, by nearly the whole chain of philosophers from the earliest ages of reflective thought down to the time when Schelling and Hegel propounded the philosophy of the absolute, which has been overthrown by Hamilton. But it cannot be proven that the great body of metaphysicians would have acknowledged the peculiar doctrine of the Scottish philosopher. There is evidently a