[25] Perhaps we should rather say, "they cannot be alien to our
nature." The word _personality_ is used by philosophical writers to
denote that which is _peculiar_, as well as essential, to our
individual self. In this strict sense the moral and spiritual
affections are _impersonal_, according to the doctrine of the context,
which treats them as constituting a participation in the Divine
nature. The metaphysical reader will perhaps perceive here a
resemblance to the theory of Victor Cousin, who maintains that the
_will--the free and voluntary activity_--of the human being is the
specific faculty in which alone consists his _personality_; and that
the intuitive reason by which we have knowledge of the unlimited and
absolute Cause, as well as of ourselves and the universe as related
effects, is independent and impersonal,--a faculty not peculiar to the
subject, but "from the bosom of consciousness extending to the
Infinite, and reaching to the Being of beings." "Reason," observes
this philosopher, "is intimately connected with personality and
sensibility, but it is neither the one nor the other: and precisely
because it is neither the one nor the other, because it is in us
without being ourselves, does it reveal to us that which is not
ourselves,--objects beside the subject itself, and which lie beyond
its sphere." At the opposite pole to this doctrine, which makes the
perceptions of "Reason" a part of the activity of God, lies the system
of Kant and Fichte, which represents God as an ideal formation,--it
may be, therefore, a _fiction_,--arising from the activity of the
"Reason." This faculty is treated by these German philosophers as
merely _subjective and personal_; its perceptions, even when they seem
to go beyond itself, are known only as internal conditions and results
of self-activity; its beliefs, though inevitable to itself, are simply
relative, and have no objective validity. The faiths and affections
which this system regards as purely human, are considered by the other
as divine. The doctrine maintained above, though resembling that of
Kant in one or two of its phrases, far more nearly approaches that of
Cousin in its spirit. It is scarcely necessary to observe that, in
this note, the word "Reason" is used, not as equivalent to
"Understanding," but in the German sense so long rendered familiar to
the English reader by the writings of Mr. Coleridge. It includes,
therefore, (in its two senses of "_Speculative_" and "_Practical_,")
the "Moral Perceptions" and "Primitive Faiths of the Conscience,"
spoken of in the text.