true doctrine of relativity, if only we could express it accurately. It should be admitted: (1.) That man knows only so far as he has the faculties of knowledge; (2.) That he knows objects only under aspects presented to his faculties; and (3.) That his faculties are limited, and consequently his knowledge limited, so that not only does he not know all objects, he does not know all about any one object. It may further be allowed: (4.) That in perception by the senses, we know external objects in a relation to the perceiving mind. But while these views can be established in opposition to the philosophy of the absolute, it should ever be resolutely maintained on the other hand: (1.) That we know the very thing; and (2.) That our knowledge is correct so far as it goes. We admit a subtle scepticism when we allow, with Kant, that we do not know the thing itself, but merely a phenomenon in the sense of appearance; or, with Hamilton, that we perceive merely the relations of things. I have endeavored to show that the mind begins with the knowledge of things, and is thence able to compare things (see supra, p. 58). A still more dangerous error follows where it is affirmed that our knowledge is always modified by the percipient mind, and that we add to the object something which is not, or at least may not, be in it (see supra, pp. 28, 29).

Dr. Mansel, in his able and learned Bampton Lectures, has applied this doctrine of relativity to the knowledge of God, with the view of undermining, which he has successfully done, the theology of the absolute. I am prepared to show, by a large collation of passages, that the great body of Christian divines have maintained two important points in regard to our knowledge of God. One is that man cannot rise to a full knowledge of God, and that there is much in God which we cannot know. This arises, they show, from the greatness of God, on the one hand, and the weakness of man on the other. But they also hold as another point, that man may truly know God by the light of nature, and still more specially by the light of revelation. No doubt they differ in the language which they employ to set forth their views; their mode of statement and illustration is often vague and loose; and they frequently employ the phrases and distinctions of philosophic systems whose day has long gone by. Still it can be shown that they meant to set forth both these truths. To quote only a few passages from the Fathers: Irenæus is translated, "Invisibilis quidem poterat eis ipse (Deus) propter eminentiam ignotus autem nequaquam propter providentiam" (Contra Omnes Hæret. ii. 6). Tertullian says: "Deus ignotus esse non

debuit" (Adv. Marcionem, iii. 3). In like manner Lactantius : "Deus igitur noscendus est in quo solo est veritas " (De Ira, i.). Augustine illustrates what we can know of God thus: "Aliud est enim videre, aliud est totum videndo comprehendere" (Epist. Class. iii. 21; see another passage, supra, p. 138). The great body of Christian divines have certainly not maintained (1.) That God can be known only under forms or modifications imposed by the thinking mind; (2.) That our idea of God's eternity and omnipresence is simply negative; or (3.) That man has a faith in an infinite God, with no corresponding knowledge or idea. I admit, at the same time, that there have been some respectable theologians holding a doctrine somewhat like that of Hamilton and Mansel. In particular, Bishop Peter Browne maintains that the true and real nature of God and his attributes is "utterly incomprehensible and ineffable;" but then he acknowledges that the Fathers did not lay down the distinction on which he proceeds, nor 66 pursue it logically through all the particulars of our knowledge, human and divine; " and he complains in his work on The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of the Human Understanding, 3d edit., that, so far from his views being generally received, now, twenty-five years after their publication, "the many pious and learned defenders of the faith either declined proceeding on the foundation there laid, or have generally given only some general, short, and imperfect hints of the analogy."

CHAPTER VI.

(SUPPLEMENTARY.)

EXAMINATION OF MR. J. S. MILL'S METAPHYSICAL SYSTEM.

By far the ablest opponent of intuitive truth in this country, in our day, is Mr. John Stuart Mill. It will be necessary to examine his own metaphysical system: I speak thus because he has in fact a metaphysics underlying his whole logical disquisitions. He says, indeed, in the introduction to his Logic, that "with the original data or ultimate premises of our knowledge, with their number or nature, the mode in which they are obtained, or the tests by which they may be distinguished, logic in a direct way has, in the sense in which I

conceive the same, nothing to do." Yet Mr. Mill is ever and anon diving down into these very topics, and uttering very decided opinions as to our knowledge of mind and body, as to the foundation of reasoning and demonstrative evidence, and as to our belief in causation. This I exceedingly regret; the more so that his logic in topics remote from first principles is distinguished for masterly exposition, for great clearness, and practical utility. If it be answered that a thorough logic cannot be constructed without building on the foundations which metaphysics supply, then I have to regret that Mr. Mill's metaphysics should be so defective. His philosophy might seem to be that of Locke; but in fact it omits many truths to which Locke gave prominence, as, for example, the high function of intuition. Mr. Mill's metaphysical system is that of the age and circle in which he was trained; it is derived in part from Dr. Brown, and his own father, Mr. James Mill, and to a greater extent from M. Comte.

The only satisfactory metaphysical admission of Mr. Mill is, "Whatever is known to us by consciousness is known beyond the possibility of question " (Logic, Introd.). What does this admission amount to? First, as to self, or mind, he says, "But what this being is, although it is myself, I have no knowledge, other than the series of its states of consciousness." As to body, he says the reasonable opinion is that it is the "hidden external cause to which we refer our sensations" (Logic, 1. iii. 8). Sensation is our only primary mental operation in regard to an external world; and perception is discarded "as an obscure word" (compare Dissertations, Vol. I. p. 94). "There is not the slightest reason for believing that what we call the sensible qualities of the object are a type of anything inherent in itself, or bear any affinity to its own nature. "Why should matter resemble our sensations?" (Logic, 1. iii. 7). Speaking of bodies, and our feelings or states of consciousness, he says: "The bodies, or external objects which excite certain of these feelings, together with the powers or properties whereby they excite them, these being included rather in compliance with common opinion, and because their existence is taken for granted in the common language, from which I cannot deviate, than because the recognition of such powers or properties as real existence appears to be warranted by a sound philosophy." It is curious to see how extremes meet. Mr. Mill seems in every way the opponent of the Kantian school. Yet he quotes with approbation and evident delight the words of Sir W. Hamilton, "All that we know is therefore phenomenal, phenomenal of the unknown" (1. iii. 7).

I have to ask my readers to compare this philosophic system with the account I have submitted in this treatise, and judge for themselves in the light of consciousness. He admits that whatever is known by consciousness is beyond possibility of question; but I hold that by consciousness we know much more than he admits. He allows that we know "Feelings," - the favorite but most inadequate language of the French sensationalists and of Brown. I maintain that our consciousness is of Self as Feeling, and not of Feelings separate from Self. If he ask me to define Self, which I maintain that we thus know, I ask him to define Feeling, which he acknowledges that we thus know. It will then be seen that neither can be defined, because both are original perceptions of consciousness. He admits as indisputable only what we are conscious of. I maintain that we must admit all we intuitively know, and that we know body immediately. Mr. Mill, following Brown, maintains that we know body by inference, as the cause of what we feel. Brown can get the inference; for he holds resolutely by the doctrine that we intuitively believe that every effect has a cause; and discovering phenomena in us which have no cause in us, he seeks for a cause without us. This process would, I think, leave the external world an unknown thing, and could never give us a knowledge of extension (which not being in the effect we could not place in the cause); still we might thus argue that an external world existed. But how can Mr. Mill, who denies intuitive causation, get the external world at all? Where, indeed, is he to get even his causation as an experiential law? For in a mind shut up darkly from all direct knowledge of anything beyond, the most common phenomena must be sensations and feelings of which we can never discover a cause, or know that they have a cause. Kant saved himself from the consequences of his speculative system by calling in the Practical Reason; and Hamilton accomplished the same end by calling in Faith. I think that these great were entitled to appeal to our moral convictions and to our necessary faiths. These I hold to be beyond dispute, no less than our consciousness or our feelings. But Mr. Mill makes no such appeal to save him from the void; and he abstains from expressing any opinion as to the great fundamental religious truths which men have in all ages intertwined with their ethical principles, and from which they have derived their brightest hopes and deepest assurances. He is silent on these subjects, as if, on the one hand, unwilling to deny them, and as if he felt, on the other hand, that by his miserably defective philosophic principles he had left himself no ground on which to build them.

men

Mr. Mill's derivative logic is admirable; but it is difficult to find what the final appeal is to be. "There is no appeal from the human faculties generally; but there is an appeal from one faculty to another, from the judging faculty to those which take cognizance of fact, the faculties of sense and consciousness (III. xxi. 1). This would seem to make sense and consciousness the final appeal. But all that sense gives, according to him, is an unknown cause of feelings, and all that consciousness gives is a series of feelings. He says, very properly, that we should make "the opinion agree with the fact; " but he seems to leave us no means of getting at any other facts than floating feelings.

I have already noticed his defective account of our moral perception (see supra, p. 225), and of our belief in causation (p. 214), and I may yet have occasion to refer to his theory of mathematical axioms (infra, p. 348). It now only remains at this place to show that he has given an utterly erroneous account of the tests or criteria of primitive or fundamental truth. He is obliged, as for himself, to admit some sort of test. We must admit, he says, "all that is known by consciousness;" and he says there is "no appeal from the human faculties generally." I do regret that he has never patiently set himself to inquire what is the knowledge given by "consciousness," and in the testimonies of the "faculties generally." This would have led him to truths which he ignores, or contemptuously sets aside. He examines the views of the defenders of necessary truth on the supposition that the test of such truth is that "the negation of it is not only false but inconceivable " (Logic, II. v. 6). He then uses the word "inconceivable" in all its ambiguity of meaning. By "conceivable" he often means that which we can apprehend, or of which we may have an idea, in the sense of an image: "When we have often seen or thought of two things together, and have never in any one instance either seen or thought of them separately, there is, by the primary law of association, an increasing difficulty, which may in the end become insuperable, of conceiving the two things apart." He then proceeds to show that what is inconceivable by one man is conceivable by another; that what is inconceivable in one age may become conceivable in the next. "There was a time when men of the most cultivated intellects, and the most emancipated from the dominion of early prejudice, would not credit the existence of antipodes "(ii. v. 6). I acknowledge that the tests of intuition have often been loosely stated, and that they have also been illegitimately applied; just as the laws of derivative logic have been. But they