AN EXAMINATION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PROPOSITION OF THE LIMITISTS, AND OF
CERTAIN GENERAL COROLLARIES UNDER IT.
It has been attempted in the former pages to find a valid and final
basis of truth, one which would satisfy the cravings of the human soul,
and afford it a sure rest. In the fact that God made man in his own
image, and that thus there is, _to a certain extent_, a community of
faculties, a community of knowledge, a community of obligations, and a
community of interests, have we found such a basis. We have hereby
learned that a part of man's knowledge is necessary and final; in other
words, that he can know the truth, and be sure that his knowledge is
correct. If the proofs which have been offered of the fact of the Pure
Reason, and the statements which have been made of the mode of its
activity and of its functions, and, further, of the problem of the
Universe, and the true method for solving it, shall have been
satisfactory to the reader, he will now be ready to consider the
analysis of Sir William Hamilton's fundamental proposition, which was
promised on an early page. We there gave, it was thought, sufficiently
full extracts for a fair presentation of his theory, and followed them
with a candid epitome. In recurring to the subject now, and for the
purpose named, we are constrained at the outset to make an
acknowledgment.
It would be simple folly, a childish egotism, to pass by in silence the
masterly article on this subject in the "North American Review" for
October, 1864, and after it to pretend to offer anything new. Whatever
the author might have wrought out in his own mental workshop,--and his
work was far less able than what is there given,--that article has left
nothing to be said. He has therefore been tempted to one of two courses:
either to transfer it to these pages, or pass by the subject entirely.
Either course may, perhaps, be better than the one finally chosen; which
is, while pursuing the order of his own thought, to add a few short
extracts therefrom. One possibility encourages him in this, which is,
that some persons may see this volume, who have no access to the Review,
and to whom, therefore, these pages will be valuable. To save needless
repetition, this discussion will presuppose that the reader has turned
back and perused the extracts and epitome above alluded to.
Upon the very threshold of Sir William Hamilton's statement, one is met
by a logical _faux pas_ which is truly amazing. Immediately after the
assertion that "the mind can know only the _limited and the
conditionally limited_," and in the very sentence in which he denies the
possibility of a knowledge of the Infinite and Absolute, _he proceeds to
define those words in definite and known terms_! The Infinite he defines
as "the unconditionally unlimited," and the Absolute as "the
unconditionally limited." Or, to save him, will one say that the
defining terms are unknown? So much the worse, then! "The Infinite," an
unknown term, may be represented by _x_; and the unconditionally
unlimited, a compound unknown term, by _ab_. Now, who has the right to
say, either in mathematics or metaphysics, in any philosophy, that
_x_=_ab_? Yet such dicta are the basis of "The Philosophy of the
Unconditioned." But, one of two suppositions is possible. Either the
terms infinite and absolute are known terms and definable, or they are
unknown terms and undefinable. Yet, Hamilton says, they are unknown and
definable. Which does he mean? If he is held to the former, they are
unknown; then all else that he has written about them are batches of
meaningless words. If he is held to the latter, they are definable;
then are they known, and his system is denied in the assertion of it.
Since his words are so contradictory, he must be judged by his deeds;
and in these he always assumes that we have a positive knowledge of the
infinite and absolute, else he would not have argued the matter; for
there can be no argument about nothing. Our analysis of his theory,
then, must be conducted upon this hypothesis.
Turn back for a moment to the page upon which his theory is quoted, and
read the last sentence. Is his utterance a "principle," or is it a
judgment? Is it an axiom, or is it a guess. The logician asserts that we
know only the conditioned, and yet bases his assertion upon "the
principles," &c. What is a principle, and how is it known? If it is
axiom, then he has denied his own philosophy in the very sentence in
which he uttered it. And this, we have no hesitation in saying, is just
what he did. He blindly assumed certain "fundamental laws of
thought,"--to quote another of his phrases--to establish the impotence
of the mind to know those laws _as fundamental_. Again, if his
philosophy is valid, the words "must," "necessary," and the like are
entirely out of place; for they are unconditional. In the conditioned
there is, can be, no must, no necessity.
From these excursions about the principle let us now return to the
principle itself. It may be stated concisely thus: There are two
extremes,--"the Absolute" and the "Infinite." These include all being.
They are contradictories, that is, one must be, to the exclusion of the
other. But the mind can "conceive" of neither. What, then, is the
logical conclusion? _That the mind cannot conceive of anything._ What is
his conclusion? That the mind can conceive of something between the
infinite and the absolute, which is neither the one nor the other, but a
_tertium quid_--the conditioned. Where did this _tertium quid_ come
from, when he had already comprehended everything in the two extremes?
If there is a mean, the conditioned, and the two extremes, then
"excluded middle" has nothing to do with the matter at all.
To avoid the inevitable conclusion of his logic as just stated, Hamilton
erected the subterfuge of _mental imbecility_. To deny any knowledge to
man, was to expose himself to ridicule. He, therefore, and his followers
after him, drew a line in the domain of knowledge, and assigned to the
hither side of it all knowledge that can come through generalizations in
the Understanding; and then asserted that the contradictions which
appeared in the mind, when one examined those questions which lie on the
further side of that line, resulted from the impotency of the mind to
comprehend the questions themselves. This was, is, their psychology. How
satisfactory it may be to Man, a hundred years, perhaps, will show. But
strike out the last assertion, and write, Both are cognizable; and then
let us proceed with our reasoning. The essayist in the North American
presents the theory under four heads, as follows:--
"1. The Infinite and Absolute as defined, are contradictory and
exclusive of each other; yet, one must be true.
"2. Neither of them can be conceived as possible.
"3. Each is inconceivable; and the inconceivability of each is referable
to the same cause, namely, mental imbecility.
"4. As opposite extremes, they include everything conceivable between
them."
The first and fourth points require our especial attention.
1. Let us particularly mark, then, that it is _as defined_, that the
terms are "contradictory." The question, therefore, turns upon the
definitions. Undoubtedly the definitions are erroneous; but in order to
see wherein, the following general reflections may be made:--
The terms infinite and absolute, as used by philosophers, have two
distinct applications: one to Space and Time, and one to God. Such
definitions as are suitable to the latter application, and
self-consistent, have already been given. Though reluctant to admit into
a philosophical treatise a term bearing two distinct meanings, we shall
waive for a little our scruples,--though choosing, for ourselves, to
use the equivalent rather than the term.
Such definitions are needed, then, as that absolute Space and Time shall
not be contradictory to infinite Space and Time. Let us first observe
Hamilton's theory. According to it, Space, for instance, is either
unconditional illimitation, or it is unconditional limitation; in other
words, it is illimitable, or it is a limited whole. The first part of
the assertion is true. That Space is illimitable, is unquestionably a
self-evident truth. Any one who candidly considers the subject will see
not only that the mind cannot assign limits to Space, but that the
attempt is an absurdity just alike in kind with the attempt to think two
and two five. The last part is a psychological blunder, has no
pertinence to the question, and is not what Hamilton was groping for. He
was searching for the truth, that _there is no absolute unit in
Space_. A limited whole has nothing to do with the matter in
hand--absoluteness--at all. The illimitability of Space, which has just
been established as an axiom, precludes this. What, then, is the
opposite pole of thought? We have just declared it. There is no absolute
unit of Space; or, in other words, all division is in Space, but Space
is indivisible. This, also, is an axiom, is self-evident. We attain,
then, two poles of thought, and definitions of the two terms given,
which are exhaustive and consistent.
"Space is illimitable.
Space is indivisible."
The one is the infinity of Space, the other is the absoluteness of
Space. The fact, then, is, all limitation is _in_ Space, and all
division is _in_ Space; but Space is neither limited or divided. One of
the logician's extremes is seen, then, to have no foundation in fact;
and that which is found to be true is also found to be consistent with,
nay, essential to, what should have been the other.
Having hitherto expressed a decided protest against any attempt to find
out God through the forms of Space and Time, a repetition will not be
needed here. God is only to be sought for, found, and studied, by such
methods as are suitable to the supreme spiritual Person. Hence all the
attempts of the Limitists to reason from spatial and temporal
difficulties over to those questions which belong to God, are simply
absurd. The questions respecting Space and Time are to be discussed by
themselves. And the questions respecting God are to be discussed by
themselves. He who tries to reason from the one to the other is not less
absurd than he who should try to reason from a farm to the
multiplication table.
In Sir William Hamilton's behalf it should be stated, that there is just
a modicum of truth underlying his theory,--just enough to give it a
degree of plausibility. The Sense, as faculty for the perception of
physical objects, or their images, and the Understanding as discursive
faculty for passing over and forming judgments upon the materials
gathered by the Sense, lie under the shadow of a law very like the one
he stated. The Sense was made _incapable_ of perceiving an ultimate atom
or of comprehending the universe. From the fact that the Sense never has
perceived these objects, the Understanding concludes that it never will.
Only by the insight and oversight of that higher faculty, the Pure
Reason, do we come to know that it never _can_. It was because those
lower faculties are thus walled in by the conditions of Space and Time,
and are unable to perceive or conceive anything out of those conditions,
and because, in considering them, he failed to see the other mental
powers, that Sir William Hamilton constructed his Philosophy of the
Unconditioned.
2. Neither of them can be conceived as possible.
Literally, this is true. The word "conceive" applies strictly to the
work of the Understanding; and that faculty can never have any notion of
the Infinite or Absolute. But, assuming that "conceive" is a general
term for cognize, the conclusion developed just above is inevitable. If
all being is in one or the other, and neither can be known, nothing can
be known.
3. They cannot be known, because of mental imbecility. If man can know
nothing because of mental imbecility, why suppose that he has a mental
faculty at all? Why not enounce, as the fundamental principle of one's
theory, the assertion, All men are idiots? This would be logically
consistent. The truth is, the logician was in a dilemma. He must confess
that men know something. By a false psychology he had ruled the Reason
out of the mind, and so had left himself no faculty by which to form any
notion of absoluteness and infinity; and yet they would thrust
themselves before him, and demand an explanation. Hence, he constructed
a subterfuge. He would have been more consistent if he had said, There
is no absolute and infinite. The conditioned is the whole of existence;
and this the mind knows.
"4. As opposite extremes, they include everything conceivable between
them."
What the essayist in the North American says upon this point is so apt,
and so accords with our own previous reflections, that we will not
forbear making an extract. "The last of the four theses will best be
re-stated in Hamilton's own words; the italics are his. 'The conditioned
is the mean between two extremes--two inconditionates, exclusive of each
other, neither of which _can be conceived as possible_, but of which, on
the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one _must be
admitted as necessary_.' This sentence excites unmixed wonder. To
mention in the same breath the law of excluded middle, and two
contradictions with a mean between them, requires a hardihood
unparalleled in the history of philosophy, except by Hegel. If the two
contradictory extremes are themselves incogitable, yet include a
cogitable mean, why insist upon the necessity of accepting either
extreme? This necessity of accepting one of two contradictories is
wholly based upon the supposed impossibility of a mean; if the mean
exists, that may be true, and both the contradictories false. But if a
mean between the two contradictories be both impossible and absurd,
(and we have hitherto so interpreted the law of excluded middle,)
Hamilton's conditioned entirely vanishes."
Upon a system which, in whatever aspect one looks at it, is found to be
but a bundle of contradictions and absurdities, further criticism would
appear to be unnecessary.
Having, impliedly at least, accepted as true Sir William Hamilton's
psychological error,--the rejection of the Reason as the intellectual
faculty of the spiritual person,--and having, with him, used the terms
limit, condition, and the like, in such significations as are pertinent
to the Sense and Understanding only, the Limitists proceed to present in
a paradoxical light many questions which arise concerning "the
Infinite." They take the ground that, to our view, he can be neither
person, nor intellect, nor consciousness; for each of these implies
limitation; and yet that it is impossible for us to know aught of him,
except as such. Then having, as they think, completely confused the
mind, they draw hence new support for their conclusion, that we can
attain to no satisfactory knowledge on the subject. The following
extracts selected from many will show this.
"Now, in the first place, the very conception of Consciousness, in
whatever mode it may be manifested, necessarily implies distinction
between one object and another. To be conscious, we must be conscious of
something; and that something can only be known as that which it is, by
being distinguished from that which it is not. But distinction is
necessarily a limitation; for, if one object is to be distinguished from
another, it must possess some form of existence which the other has not,
or it must not possess some form which the other has. But it is obvious
that the Infinite cannot be distinguished, as such, from the Finite, by
the absence of any quality which the Finite possesses; for such absence
would be a limitation. Nor yet can it be distinguished by the presence
of an attribute which the Finite has not; for as no finite part can be a
constituent of an infinite whole, this differential characteristic must
itself be infinite; and must at the same time have nothing in common
with the finite....
"That a man can be conscious of the Infinite, is thus a supposition
which, in the very terms in which it is expressed, annihilates itself.
Consciousness is essentially a limitation; for it is the determination
of the mind to one actual out of many possible modifications. But the
Infinite, if it is conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially
everything, and actually nothing; for if there is anything in general
which it cannot become, it is thereby limited; and if there is anything
in particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being
any other thing. But again, it must also be conceived as actually
everything, and potentially nothing; for an unrealized potentiality is
likewise a limitation. If the infinite can be that which it is not, it
is by that very possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a
higher perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no
characteristic feature by which it can be distinguished from anything
else, and discerned as an object of consciousness....
"Rationalism is thus only consistent with itself when it refuses to
attribute consciousness to God. Consciousness, in the only form in which
we can conceive it, implies limitation and change,--the perception of
one object out of many, and a comparison of that object with others. To
he always conscious of the same object, is, humanly speaking, not to be
conscious at all; and, beyond its human manifestation, we can have no
conception of what consciousness is."--_Limits of Religious Thought_,
pp. 93-95.
"As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the
conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of
positive thought--thought necessarily supposes conditions. To _think_ is
to _condition_; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the
possibility of thought....
"Thought cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible
under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought; known only in
correlation, and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of
this, all that we know either of subject or object, either of mind or
matter, is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of
the different, of the modified, of the phenomenal. We admit that the
consequence of this doctrine is--that philosophy, if viewed as more than
a science of the conditioned, is impossible. Departing from the
particular, we admit that we can never, in out highest generalizations,
rise above the finite; that our knowledge, whether of mind or matter,
can be nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifestations of
an existence, which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognize as
beyond the reach of philosophy."
"In all this, so far as human intelligence is concerned, we cordially
agree; for a more complete admission could not be imagined, not only
that a knowledge, and even a notion, of the absolute is impossible for
man, but that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such a
knowledge even in the Deity himself, without contradicting our human
conceptions of the possibility of intelligence itself."--_Sir William
Hamilton's Essays_, pp. 21, 22, 38.
"The various mental attributes which we ascribe to God--Benevolence,
Holiness, Justice, Wisdom, for example--can be conceived by us only as
existing in a benevolent and holy and just and wise Being, who is not
identical with any one of his attributes, but the common subject of them
all; in one word, a _Person_. But Personality, as we conceive it, is
essentially a limitation and relation. Our own personality is presented
to us as relative and limited; and it is from that presentation that all
our representative notions of personality are derived. Personality is
presented to us as a relation between the conscious self and the various
modes of his consciousness. There is no personality in abstract thought
without a thinker: there is no thinker unless he exercises some mode of
thought. Personality is also a limitation; for the thought and the
thinker are distinguished from and limit each other; and the various
modes of thought are distinguished each from each by limitation
likewise...."--_Limits of Religious Thought_, p. 102.
"Personality, with all its limitations, though far from exhibiting the
absolute nature of God as He is, is yet truer, grander, more elevating,
more religious, than those barren, vague, meaningless abstractions in
which men babble about nothing under the name of the Infinite and
Personal conscious existence, limited though it be, is yet the noblest
of all existence of which man can dream.... It is by consciousness alone
that we know that God exists, or that we are able to offer Him any
service. It is only by conceiving Him as a Conscious Being, that we can
stand in any religious relation to Him at all; that we can form
such a representation of Him as is demanded by our spiritual
wants, insufficient though it be to satisfy our intellectual
curiosity."--_Limits of Religious Thought_, p. 104.
The conclusions of these writers upon this whole topic are as follows:--
"The mind is not represented as conceiving two propositions subversive
of each other as equally possible; _but only as unable to understand_ as
possible two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their
mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognize as true.... And by a
wonderful revelation we are thus, in the very consciousness of our
inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with
a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere
of all comprehensive reality."--_Sir William Hamilton's Essays_, p. 22.
"To sum up briefly this portion of my argument. The conception of the
Absolute and Infinity, from whatever side we view it, appears
encompassed with contradictions. There is a contradiction in supposing
such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with others;
and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. There is a
contradiction in conceiving it as one; and there is a contradiction in
conceiving it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as
personal; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal.
It cannot, without contradiction, be represented as active; nor, without
equal contradiction, be represented as inactive. It cannot be conceived
as the sum of all existence; nor yet can it be conceived as a part only
of that sum."--_Limits of Religious Thought_, pp. 84, 85.
We have quoted thus largely, preferring that the Limitists should speak
for themselves. Their doctrine, as taught, not simply in these passages,
but throughout their writings, may be briefly summed up as follows.
The human mind, whenever it attempts to investigate the profoundest
subjects which come before it, and which it is goaded to examine, finds
itself in an inextricable maze of contradictions; and, after vainly
struggling for a while to get out, becomes nonplussed, confused,
confounded, dazed; and, falling down helpless and effortless in the
maze, and with devout humility acknowledging its impotence, it finds
that the "highest reason" is to pass beyond the sphere and out of the
light of reason, into the sphere of a superrational and therefore dark,
and therefore _blind_ faith.
But it is to be stated, and here we strike to the centre of the errors
of the Limitists, that a perception and confession of mental impotence
is _not_ the logical deduction from their premises. Lustrous as may be
their names in logic,--and Sir William Hamilton is esteemed a sun in the
logical firmament,--no one of them ever saw, or else dared to
acknowledge, the logical sequence from their principles. They have
climbed upon the dizzy heights of thought, and out on their verge; and
there they stand, hesitating and shivering, like naked men on Alpine
precipices, with no eagle wings to spread and soar away towards the
Eternal Truth; and not daring to take the awful plunge before them.
Behold the gulf from which they shrink. Mr. Mansel says:--
"It is our duty, then, to think of God as personal; and it is our duty
to believe that He is infinite. It is true that we cannot reconcile
these two representations with each other, as our conception of
personality involves attributes apparently contradictory to the notion
of infinity. But it does not follow that this contradiction exists
anywhere but in our own minds: it does not follow that it implies any
impossibility in the absolute nature of God. The apparent contradiction,
in this case, as in those previously noticed, is the necessary
consequence of an attempt on the part of the human thinker to transcend
the boundaries of his own consciousness. It proves that there are limits
to man's power of thought; and it proves no more."--_Limits of Religious
Thought_, p. 106.
Or, to put it in sharp and accurate, plain and unmistakable English. "It
is our duty to think of God as personal," when to think of Him as
personal is to think a lie; "to believe that He is infinite," when so to
believe is to believe the lie already thought; and when to believe a lie
is to incur the penalty decreed by the Bible--God's book--upon all who
believe lies. And this is the religious teaching of a professed
Christian minister in one of the first Universities in the world. Not
that Mr. Mansel meant to teach this. By no means. But it logically
follows from his premises. In his philosophy the mind instinctively,
necessarily, and with equal authority in each case, asserts
That there must be an infinite Being;
That that Being must be Self-conscious,
Must be unlimited; and that
Consciousness is a limitation.
These assertions are contradictory and self-destructive. What follows
then? That the mind is impotent? No! It follows that the mind is a
deceiver! We learn again the lesson we have learned before. It is not
weakness, it is falsehood: it is not want of capacity, it is want of
integrity that is proved by this contradiction. Man is worse than a
hopeless, mental imbecile, he is a hopeless, mental cheat.
But is the result true? How can it be, when with all its might the mind
revolts from it, as nature does from a vacuum? True that the human mind
is an incorrigible falsifier? With the indignation of outraged honesty,
man's soul rejects the insulting aspersion, and reasserts its own
integrity and authority. Ages of controversy have failed to obliterate
or cry down the spontaneous utterance of the soul, "I have within myself
the ultimate standard of truth."
It now devolves to account for the aberrations of the Limitists. The
ground of all their difficulties is simple and plain. While denying to
the human mind the faculty of the Pure Reason, they have, _by the (to
them) undistinguished use of that faculty_, raised questions which the
Understanding by no possibility could raise, which the Reason alone is
capable of presenting, and which that Reason alone can solve; and have
attempted to solve them solely by the assistance, and in the forms of,
the Sense and the Understanding. Their problems belong to a spiritual
person; and they attempt to solve them by the inferior modes of an
animal nature. Better, by far, could they see with their ears. All their
processes are developed on the vicious assumption, that the highest form
of knowledge possible to the human mind is a generalization in the
Understanding, upon facts given in the Sense: a form of knowledge which
is always one, whether the substance be distinguished in the form, be a
peach, as diverse from an apple; or a star, as one among a million. The
meagreness and utter insufficiency of this doctrine, to account for all
the phenomena of the human mind, we have heretofore shown; and shall
therefore need only now to distinguish certain special phases of their
fundamental error.
As heretofore, there will be continual occasion to note how the doctrine
of the Limitists, that the Understanding is man's highest faculty of
knowledge, and the logical sequences therefrom respecting the laws of
thought and consciousness vitiate their whole system. One of their most
important errors is thus expressed:--"To be conscious, we must be
conscious of something; and that something can only be known as that
which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not." "Thought
cannot transcend consciousness; consciousness is only possible under the
antithesis of subject and object of thought known only in correlation,
and mutually limiting each other; while, independently of this, all that
we know either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a
knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of the different, of
the modified, of the phenomenal." In other words, our highest possible
form of knowledge is that by which we examine the peach, distinguish its
qualities among themselves, and discriminate between them and the
qualities of the apple. And Sir William Hamilton fairly and truly
acknowledges that, as a consequence, science, except as a system of
objects of sense, is impossible.
The fact is, as has been made already sufficiently apparent, that the
diagnosis by the Limitists of the constitution of the mind is erroneous.
Their dictum, that all knowledge must be attained through "relation,
plurality, and difference," is not true. There is a kind of knowledge
which we obtain by a direct and immediate _sight_; and that, too, under
such conditions as are no limitation upon the object thought. For
instance, the mind, by a direct intuition, affirms, "Malice is
criminal." It also affirms that this is an eternal, immutable, universal
law, conditional for all possibility of moral beings. This direct and
immediate sight, and the consciousness attending it, are _full_ of that
one object, and so are occupied only with it; and it does NOT come under
any forms of relation, plurality, and difference. So is it with all _a
priori_ laws. The mode of the pure reason is thus seen to be the direct
opposite of that of the Understanding and the Sense.
Intimately connected with the foregoing is a question whose importance
cannot be overstated. It is one which involves the very possibility of
God's existence as a self-conscious person. To present it, we recur
again to the extracts made just above from Sir William Hamilton.
"Consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and
object of thought known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each
other." Subsequently, he makes the acknowledgment as logically following
from this: "that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such
knowledge," _i. e._ of the absolute, "even in the Deity himself." That
is, God can be believed to be self-conscious only on the ground that the
human intellect is a cheat. The theory which underlies this assertion of
the logician--a theory not peculiar to the Limitists, but which has,
perhaps, been hitherto universally maintained by philosophers--may be
concisely stated thus. In every correlation of subject and object,--in
every instance where they are to be contrasted,--the subject must be
one, and the object must be _another and different_. Hamilton, in
another place, utters it thus: "Look back for a moment into yourselves,
and you will find, that what constitutes intelligence in our feeble
consciousness, is, that there are there several terms, of which the one
perceives the other, of which the other is perceived by the first; in
this consists self-knowledge," &c. Mark the "several terms," and that
the one can only see the other, never itself.
This position is both a logical and psychological error. It is a logical
error because it _assumes_, without argument, that there is involved in
the terms subject and object such a logical contradiction and
contradistinction that the subject cannot be object to itself. This
assumption is groundless. As a matter of fact, it is _generally_ true
that, so far as man is concerned, the subject is one, and the object
another and different. But this by no means proves that it is _always_
so; it only raises the presumption that such may be the case. And when
one comes to examine the question in itself, there is absolutely no
logical ground for the assumption. It is found to be a question upon
which no decision from logical considerations can have any validity,
because _it is purely psychological_, and can only be decided by
evidence upon a matter of fact. Furthermore, it is a psychological
error, because a careful examination shows that, in some instances, the
opposite is the fact; that, in certain experiences, the subject and
object are identical.
This fact that the subject and object are often identical in the
searching eye of human reason, and _always_ so under the eye of
Universal Genius, is of too vast scope and too vital importance to be
passed with a mere allusion. It seems amazing that a truth which, the
instant it is stated, solves a thousand difficulties which philosophy
has raised, should never yet have been affirmed by any of the great
spiritual-eyed thinkers, and that it should have found utterance, only
to be denied, by the pen of the Limitists. A word of personal
reminiscence may be allowed here. The writer came to see this truth
during a process of thought, having for its object the solution of the
problem, How can the infinite Person be self-comprehending, and still
infinite? While considering this, and without ever having received a
hint from any source that the possibility of such a problem had dawned
on a human mind before, there blazed upon him suddenly, like a heaven
full of light, this, which appeared the incomparably profounder
question: How can any soul, not God only, but any soul, be a
self-examiner? Why don't the Limitists entertain and explain this? It
was only years after that he met the negative statement in Herbert
Spencer's book. The difficulty is, that the Limitists have represented
to their minds the mode of the seeing of the Reason, by a sensuous
image, as the eye; and because the eye cannot see itself, have concluded
that the Reason cannot see itself. It is always dangerous to argue from
an illustration; and, in this instance, it has been fatal. If man was
only an animal nature, and so only a _receiver_ of impressions, with a
capacity to generalize from the impressions received, the doctrine of
the Limitists would be true. But once establish that man is also a
spiritual _person_, with a reason, which sees truth by immediate
intuition, and their whole teaching becomes worthless. The Reason is not
receptivity merely, or mainly; it is originator. In its own light it
gives to itself _a priori_ truth, and itself as seeing that truth; and
so the subject and object are identical. This is one of the
differentiating qualities of the spiritual person.
Our position may be more accurately stated and more amply illustrated
and sustained as follows:
_Sometimes, in the created spiritual person, and always in the
self-existent, the absolute and infinite spiritual Person, the subject
and object are_ IDENTICAL.
1. Sometimes in the created spiritual person, the subject and object are
identical. The question is a question of fact. In illustrating the fact,
it will be proved. When a man looks at his hands, he sees they are
instruments for _his_ use. When he considers his physical sense, he
still perceives it to be instrument for _his_ use. In all his
conclusions, judgments, he still finds, not himself, but _his_
instrument. Even in the Pure Reason he finds only _his_ faculty; though
it be the highest possible to intellect. Yet still he searches, searches
for the _I am_; which claims, and holds, and uses, the faculties and
capacities. There is a phrase universally familiar to American
Christians, a fruit of New England Theology, which leads us directly to
the goal we seek. It is the phrase, "self-examination." In all thorough,
religious self-examination the subject and object are identical. In the
ordinary labors and experiences of life, man says, "I can do this or
that;" and he therein considers only his aptitudes and capabilities. But
in this last, this profoundest act, the assertion is not, "I can do this
or that." It is, "I am this or that." The person stands unveiled before
itself, in the awful sanctuary of God's presence. The decision to be
made is not upon the use of one faculty or another. It is upon the end
for which all labor shall be performed. The character of the person is
under consideration, and is to be determined. The selfhood, with all its
wondrous mysteries, is at once subject and object. The I am in man,
alike in kind to that most impenetrable mystery, the eternal I AM of
"the everlasting Father," is now stirred to consider its most solemn
duty. How shall the finite I am accord _itself_ to the pure purpose of
the infinite I AM? It may be, possibly is, that some persons have never
been conscious of this experience. To some, from a natural inaptitude,
and to others, from a perverse disinclination, it may never come. Some
have so little gift of introspection, that their inner experiences are
never observed and analyzed. Their conduct may be beautiful, but they
never know it. Their impressions ever come from without. Another class
of persons shun such an experience as Balshazzar would have shunned, if
he could, the handwriting on the wall. Their whole souls are absorbed in
the pursuit of earthly things. They are intoxicated with sensuous
gratification. The fore-thrown shadow of the coming thought of
self-examination awakens within them a vague instinctive dread; and they
shudder, turn away, and by every effort avoid it. Sometimes they
succeed; and through the gates of death rush headlong into the
spirit-land, only to be tortured forever there with the experience they
so successfully eluded here. For the many thousands, who know by
experience what a calm, candid, searching, self-examination is, now that
their attention has been drawn to its full psychological import, no
further word is necessary. They know that in that supreme insight there
was seen and known, at one and the same instant, in a spontaneous and
simultaneous action of the soul, the seer and the seen as one, as
identical. And this experience is so wide-spread, that the wonder is
that it has not heretofore been assigned its suitable place in
philosophy.
2. Always in the self-existent, the absolute and infinite, spiritual
Person, the subject and object are identical. This question, though one
of fact, cannot be determined _by us_, by our experience; it must be
shown to follow logically from certain _a priori_ first principles. This
may be done as follows. Eternity, independence, universality, are
qualities of God. Being eternal, he is ever the same. Being independent,
he excludes the possibility of another Being to whom he is necessarily
related. Being universal, he possesses all possible endowment, and is
ground for all possible existence; so that no being can exist but by his
will. As Universal Genius, all possible objects of knowledge or
intellectual effort are immanent before the eye of his Reason; and this
is a _permanent state_. He is an object of knowledge, comprehending all
others; and therefore he _exhaustively_ knows himself. He distinguishes
his Self as object, from no what else, because there is no else to
distinguish his Self from; but having an exhaustive self-comprehension,
he distinguishes within that Self all possible forms of being each from
each.
He is absolute, and never learns or changes. There is nothing to learn
and nothing to change to, except to a wicked state; and for this there
_can be to him no temptation_. He is ever the same, and hence there can
be no instant in time when he does not _exhaustively_ know himself. Thus
always in him are the subject and object identical.
These two great principles, viz: That the Pure Reason sees _a priori_
truth _immediately_, and out of all relation, plurality and difference,
and that in the Pure Reason, in self-examination, the subject and object
are identical, by their simple statement explode, as a Pythagorean
system, the mental astronomy of the Limitists. Reason is the sun, and
the Sense and the Understanding, with their satellite faculties, the
circumvolving planets.
The use of terms by the Limitists has been as vicious as their processes
of thought, and has naturally sprung from their fundamental error. We
will note one in the following sentence. "Consciousness, in the only
form in which we can conceive it, implies limitation and change,--the
perception of one object out of many, and a comparison of that object
with others." Conceive is the vicious word. Strictly, it is usable only
with regard to things in Nature, and can have no relevancy to such
subjects as are now under consideration. It is a word which expresses
_only_ such operations as lie in the Sense and Understanding. The
following definition explains this: "The concept refers to all the
things whose common or similar attributes or traits it conceives
(con-cepis), or _grasps together_ into one class and one act of
mind."--_Bowen's Logic_, p. 7. This is not the mode of the Reason's
action at all. It does not run over a variety of objects and select out
from them the points of similarity, and grasp these together into one
act of mind. It sees one object in its unity as pure law, or first
truth; and examines that in its own light. Hence, the proper word is,
_intuits_. Seen from this standpoint, consciousness does _not_ imply
limitation and change. A first truth we always see as _absolute_,--we
are conscious of this sight; and yet we know that neither consciousness
nor sight is any limitation upon the truth. We would paraphrase the
sentence thus: Consciousness, in the highest form in which we know it,
implies and possesses _permanence_; and is the light in which pure truth
is seen as pure object by itself, and forever the same.
It is curious to observe how the Understanding and the Pure Reason run
along side by side in the same sentence; the inferior faculty
encumbering and defeating the efforts of the other. Take the following
for example.
"If the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that very
possibility marked out as incomplete, and capable of a higher
perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic
feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else, and
discerned as an object of consciousness." The presence in language of
the word infinite and its cognates is decisive evidence of the presence
of a faculty capable of entertaining it as a subject for investigation.
This faculty, the Reason having presented the subject for consideration,
the Understanding seizes upon it and drags it down into her den, and
says, "can be that which it is not." This she says, because she cannot
act, except to conceive, and cannot conceive, except to distinguish
this from something else; and so cannot perceive that the very utterance
of the word "infinite" excludes the word "else." The Understanding
conceives the finite as one and independent, and the infinite as one and
independent. Then the Reason steps in, and says the infinite is
all-comprehending. This conflicts with the Understanding's _conception_,
and so the puzzle comes. In laboring for a solution, the Reason's
affirmation is expressed hypothetically: "If it (the infinite) is
actually everything;" and thereupon the Understanding puts in its blind,
impertinent assertion, "it possesses no characteristic feature by which
it can be distinguished from anything else." _There is nothing else from
which to distinguish it._ The perception of the Reason is as follows.
The infinite Person comprehends intellectually, and is ground for
potentially and actually, all that is possible and real; and so there
can be no else with which to compare him. Because, possessing all
fulness, he is actually everything, by this characteristic feature of
completeness he distinguishes himself from nothing, which is all there
is, (if no-thing--void--can be said to _be_,) beside him; and from any
part, which there is within him. Thus is he object to himself in his own
consciousness.
This vicious working of the Understanding against the Reason, in the
same sentences, can be more fully illustrated from the following
extracts. "God, as necessarily determined to pass from absolute essence
to relative manifestation, is determined to pass either _from the better
to the worse, or from the worse to the better_. A third possibility that
both states are equal, as contradictory in itself, and as contradicted
by our author, it is not necessary to consider."--_Sir William
Hamilton's Essays_, p. 42. "Again, how can the Relative be conceived as
coming into being? If it is a distinct reality from the absolute, it
must be conceived as passing from non-existence into existence. But to
conceive an object as non-existent is again a self-contradiction; for
that which is conceived exists, as an object of thought, in and by that
conception. We may abstain from thinking of an object at all; but if we
think of it, we cannot but think of it as existing. It is possible at
one time not to think of an object at all, and at another to think of it
as already in being; but to think of it in the act of becoming, in the
progress from not being into being, is to think that which, in the very
thought, annihilates itself. Here again the Pantheistic hypothesis seems
forced upon us. We can think of creation only as a change in the
condition of that which already exists; and thus the creature is
conceivable only as a phenomenal mode of the being of the
Creator."--_Limits of Religious Thought_, p. 81.
"God," a word which has _no significance_ except to the Reason: "as
necessarily determined,"--a phrase which belongs only to the
Understanding. The opposite is the truth: "to pass from absolute
essence." This can have no meaning except to the Pure Reason: "to
relative manifestation." This belongs to the Understanding. It
contradicts the other; and the process is absurd. The mind balks in the
attempt to think it. In creation there is no such process as "passing
from absolute essence to relative manifestation." The words imply that
God, in passing from the state of absolute essence, ceased to be
absolute essence, and became "relative manifestation." All this is
absurd; and is in the Understanding and Sense. God never _became_. The
Creator is still absolute essence, as before creation; and the
logician's this or that are both false; and his third possibility is not
a contradiction, but the truth. The fact of creation may be thus stated.
The infinite Person, freely according his will to the behest of his
worth, and yet equally free to not so accord his will, put forth from
himself the creative energy; and this under such modes, that he neither
lost nor gained by the act; but that, though the latter state was
diverse from the first, still neither was better than the other, but
both were equally good. Before creation, he possessed absolute plenitude
of endowments. All possible ideals were present before his eye. All
possible joy continued a changeless state in his sensibility. His will,
as choice, was absolute benevolence; and, as act, was competent to all
possible effort. To push the ideal out, and make it real, added nothing
to, and subtracted nothing from, his fulness.
The fact must be learned that muscular action and the working of pure
spirit are so diverse, that the inferior mode cannot be an illustration
of the superior. A change in a pure spirit, which neither adds nor
subtracts, leaves the good unchanged. Hence, when the infinite Person
created, he passed neither from better to worse, nor from worse to
better; but the two states, though diverse, were equally good.
We proceed now to the other extract. "Again, how can the relative," etc.
"If the Relative is a distinct reality from the absolute," then each is
_self-existent_, and independent. The sentence annihilates itself. "It
must be conceived as passing from non-existence into existence." The
image here is from the Sense, as usual, and vicious accordingly. It is,
that the soul is to look into void, and see, out of that void, existence
come, without there being any cause for that existence coming. This
would be the phenomenon to the Sense. And the Sense is utterly unable to
account for the phenomenon. The object in the Sense must appear as
_form_; but in the Reason it is idea. Mr. Mansel's presentation may well
be illustrated by a trick of jugglery. The performer stands before his
audience, dressed in tights, and presents the palms of his hands to the
spectators, apparently empty. He then closes his right hand, and then
opening it again, appears holding a bouquet of delicious flowers, which
he hands about to the astonished gazers. The bouquet seems to come from
nothing, _i. e._ to have no cause. It appears "to pass from
non-existence to existence." But common sense corrects the cheating
seeming, and asserts, "There is an adequate cause for the coming of the
bunch of flowers, though we cannot see it." Precisely similar is
creation. Could there have been a Sense present at that instant,
creation would have seemed to it a juggler's trick. Out of nothing
something would have seemed to come. But under the correcting guide of
the Pure Reason, an adequate cause is found. Before creation, the
infinite Person did not manifest himself; and so was actually alone. At
creation his power, which before was immanent, he now made emanent; and
put it forth in the forms chosen from his Reason, and according to the
requirement of his own worth. Nothing was added to God. That which was
ideal he now made actual. The form as Idea was one, the power as
Potentiality was another, and each was in him by itself. He put forth
the power into the form, the Potentiality into the Idea, and the
Universe was. Thus it was that "the Relative came into being." In the
same manner it might be shown how, all along through the writings of the
Limitists, the Understanding runs along by the Reason, and vitiates her
efforts to solve her problems. We shall have occasion to do something of
this farther on.
The topic now under discussion could not be esteemed finished without an
examination of the celebrated dictum, "To think is to condition." Those
who have held this to be universally true, have also received its
logical sequence, that to the finite intellect God cannot appear
self-comprehending. In our present light, the dictum is known to be, not
a universal, but only a partial, truth. It is incumbent, therefore, to
circumscribe its true sphere, and fix it there. We shall best enter upon
this labor by answering the question, What is thinking?
First. In general, and loosely, any mental operation is called thinking.
Second. Specifically, all acts of reflection are thinkings. Under this
head we notice two points. _a._ That act of the Understanding in which
an object presented by the Sense is analyzed, and its special and
generic elements noted, and is thus classified, and its relations
determined, is properly a thinking. Thus, in the object cat I
distinguish specifically that it is domestic, and generically that it is
carnivorous. _b._ That act of the finite spiritual person by which he
compares the judgments of the Understanding with the _a priori_ laws of
the Pure Reason, and by this final standard decides their truth or
error. Thus, the judgment of the young Indian warrior is, that he ought
to hunt down and slay the man who killed his father in battle. The
standard of Reason is, that Malice is criminal. This judgment is found
to involve malice, and so is found to be wrong. Third, the intuitions of
the reason. These, in the finite person, come _after_ a process of
reflection, and are partly consequent upon it; yet they take place in
another faculty, which is developed by this process; but they are such,
that by no process of reflection _alone_ could they be. Thinking, in the
Universal Genius, is the _sight_, at once and forever, of all possible
object of mental effort. It is necessary and _spontaneous_, and so is an
endowment, not an attainment; and is possessed without effort. We are
prepared now to entertain the following statements:--
A. So far as it represents thinking as the active, _i. e._ causative
ground, or agent of the condition, the dictum is not true. The fact of
the thinking is not, cannot be, the ground of the condition. The
condition of the object thought, whatever the form of thinking may be,
must lie as far back at least as the ground of the thinker. Thus, God's
self, as ground for his Genius, must also be ground for _all_
conditions. Yet men think of an object _in its conditions_. This is
because the same Being who constructed the objects in their conditions,
constructed also man as thinker, _correlated to those conditions_, so
that he should think upon things _as they are_. In this view, to think
is not condition, but is mental activity in the conditions already
imposed. Thus it is with the Understanding; and the process of thinking,
as above designated, goes on in accordance with the law stated in _a_,
of the second general definition. It follows, therefore,
B. That so far as the dictum expresses the fact, that within the sphere
of conditions proper,--observing the distinction of conditions into two
classes heretofore made,--the finite intellect must act under them, and
see those objects upon which they lie, accordingly,--as, for instance,
a geometrical figure must be seen in Time and Space,--so far it is true,
and no farther. For instance: To see an eagle flying, is to see it under
all the conditions imposed upon the bird as flying, and the observer as
seeing. But when men intuit the _a priori_ truth, Malice is criminal,
they perceive that it lies under no conditions proper, but is absolute
and universal. We perceive, then,
C. That for all mental operations which have as object pure laws and
ideal forms, and that Being in whom all these inhere, this dictum is not
true. The thinker may be conditioned in the proper sense of that term;
yet he entertains objects of thought which are unconditioned; and they
are not affected by it. Thus, it does not affect the universality of the
principle in morals above noted that I perceive it to be such, and that
necessarily.
Assuming, then, that by the dictum, To think is to condition, is meant,
not that the thinker, by the act of thinking, constructs the conditions,
but that he recognizes in himself, as thinking subject, and in the
object thought, the several conditions (proper) thereof,--the following
statements will define the province of this dictum.
1. The Universe as physical object, the observing Sense, and the
discursive Understanding, lie wholly within it.
2. Created spiritual persons, _as constituted beings,_ also lie wholly
within it. _But it extends no farther._ On the other hand,
3. Created spiritual persons, in their capacities to intuit pure laws,
and pure ideal forms; and those laws and forms themselves lie wholly
without it.
4. So also does God the absolute Being in whom those laws and forms
inhere. Or, in general terms,
When conditions (proper) already lie upon the object thought, since the
thinker must needs see the object under its conditions, it is true that,
To think is to condition. But so far as it is meant that thinking is
such a kind of operation that it cannot proceed except the object be
conditioned, it is not true; for there are processes of thought whose
objects are unconditioned.
The question, "What are Space and Time?" with which Mr. Spencer opens
his chapter on "Ultimate Scientific Ideas," introduces a subject common
to all the Limitists, and which, therefore, should be considered in this
part of our work. A remark made a few pages back, respecting an essay in
the "North American Review" for October 1864, applies with equal force
here in reference to another essay by the same writer, in the preceding
July number of that periodical. At most, his view can only be unfolded.
He has left nothing to be added. In discussing a subject so abstruse and
difficult as this, it would seem, in the present stage of human thought
at least, most satisfactory to set out from the Reason rather than the
Sense, from the idea rather than the phenomenon; and so will we do.
In general, then, it may be said that Space and Time are _a priori_
conditions of created being. The following extracts are in point. "Pure
Space, therefore, as given in the primitive intuition, is pure form for
any possible phenomenon. As unconjoined in the unity of any form, it is
given in the primitive intuition, and is a cognition necessary and
universal. Though now obtained from experience, and in chronological
order subsequent to experience, yet is it no deduction from experience,
nor at all given by experience; but it is wholly independent of all
experience, prior to it, and without which it were impossible that any
experience of outer object should be." "Pure Time, as given in the
intuition, is immediately beheld to be conditional for all possible
period, prior to any period being actually limited, and necessarily
continuing, though all bounded period be taken away."--_Rational
Psychology_, pp. 125, 128.
Again, a clearly defined distinction may be made between them as
conditions. Space is the _a priori_ condition of _material_ being.
Should a spiritual person, as the soul of a man, be stripped of all its
material appurtenances, and left to exist as pure spirit, it could hold
no communication with any other being but God; and no other being but he
could hold any communication with it. It would exist out of all relation
to Space. Not so, however, with Time. Time is the _a priori_ condition
of all created being, of the spiritual as well as material. In the case
just alluded to, the isolated spiritual person would have a
consciousness of succession and duration, although he would have no
standard by which to measure that duration, he could think in processes,
and only in processes, and thus would be necessarily related to Time.
Dr. Hickok has expressed this thus: "Space in reference to time has no
significancy. Time is the pure form for phenomena as given in the
internal sense only, and in these there can be only succession. The
inner phenomenon may endure in time, but can have neither length,
breadth, nor thickness in space. A thought, or other mental phenomenon,
may fill a period, but cannot have superficial or solid content; it may
be before or after another, but not above or below it, nor with any
outer or inner side."--_Rational Psychology_, p. 135.
Space and Time may also be distinguished thus: "Space has three
dimensions," or, rather, there can be three dimensions in
space,--length, breadth, and thickness. In other words, it is solid
room. "Time has but one dimension," or, rather, but one dimension can
enter into Time,--length. In Time there can only be procession. Space
and Time may then be called, the one "statical," the other "dynamical,"
illimitation. Following the essayist already referred to, they may be
defined as follows:
"Space is the infinite and indivisible Receptacle of Matter.
"Time is the infinite and indivisible Receptacle of Existence."
Both, then, are marked by receptivity, indivisibility, and
illimitability. The one is receptivity, that material object may come
into it; the other, that event may occur in it. There is for neither a
final unit nor any limit. All objects are divisible in Space, and all
periods in Time; and thus also are all limits comprehended, but they are
without limit. Turning now from these more general aspects of the
subject, a detailed examination may be conducted as follows.
The fundamental law given by the Reason is, as was seen above, that
Space and Time are _a priori_ conditions of created being. We can best
consider this law in its application to the facts, by observing two
general divisions, with two sub-divisions under each. Space and Time
have, then, two general phases, one within, and one without, the mind.
Each of these has two special phases. The former, one in the Sense, and
one in the Understanding. The latter, one within, and one without, the
Universe.
First general phase within the mind. First special phase, in the Sense.
"As pure form in the primitive intuition, they are wholly limitless, and
void of any conjunction in unity, having themselves no figure nor
period, and having within themselves no figure nor period, but only pure
diversity, in which any possible conjunction of definite figures and
periods may, in some way, be effected." In other words, they are pure,
_a priori_, formal laws, which are conditional to the being of any sense
as the perceiver of a phenomenon; and yet this sense could present no
figure or period, till some figure or period was produced into it by an
external agency. As such necessary formal laws, Space and Time "have a
necessity of being independently of all phenomena." Or, in other words,
the fact that all phenomena _must_ appear in them, lies beyond the
province of power. This, however, is no more a limit to the Deity than
it is a limit to him that he cannot hate his creatures and be good. In
our experience the Sense gives two kinds of phenomena: the one the
actual phenomena of actual objects, the other, ideal phenomena with
ideal objects. The one is awakened by the presentation, in the physical
sense, of a material object, as a house; the other, by the activity of
the imaging faculty, engaged in constructing some form in the inner or
mental sense, from forms actually observed. Upon both alike the formal
law of Space and Time must lie.
Second special phase, in the Understanding. Although there is pure form,
if there was no more than this, no notion of a system of things could
be. Each object would have its own space, and each event its own time.
But one object and event could not be seen in any relation to another
object and event. In order that this shall be, there must be some ground
by which all the spaces and times of phenomena shall be joined into a
unity of Space and Time; so that all objects shall be seen in one Space,
and all events in one Time. "A notional connective for the phenomena may
determine these phenomena in their places and periods in the whole of
all space and of all time, and so may give both the phenomena and their
space and time in an objective experience." The operation of the
Understanding is, then, the connection, by a notional, of all particular
spaces and times; _i. e._ the space and time of each phenomenon in the
Sense, into a comprehensive unity of Space and Time, in which all
phenomena can be seen to occur; and thus a system can be. In a word, not
only must each phenomenon be seen in its own space and time, but all
phenomena must be seen in _one_ Space and Time. This connection of the
manifold into unity is the peculiar work of the Understanding. An
examination of the facts as above set forth enables us to construct a
general formula for the application to all minds of the fundamental law
given by the Reason. That law, that all objects must be seen in Space,
and all events in Time, involves the subordinate law:
_That no mind can observe material objects or any events except under
the conditions of Space and Time_; or, to change the phraseology, _Space
and Time are_ a priori _conditional to the being of any mind or faculty
in a mind capable of observing a material object or any event_. This
will, perhaps, be deemed to be, in substance, Kant's theory. However
that may be, this is true, but is only _a part of the truth_. The rest
will appear just below. The reader will notice that no exception is made
to the law here laid down, and will start at the thought that this law
lies upon the Deity equally as upon created beings. No exception is
made, because none can be truthfully made. The intellect is just as
unqualified in its assertion on this point as in those noticed on an
earlier page of this work. Equally with the laws of numbers does the law
of Space and Time condition all intellect. The Deity can no more see a
house out of all relation to Space and Time than he can see how to make
two and two five.
Second general phase, without the mind. First special phase, within the
Universe. All that we are now to examine is objective to us; and all the
questions which can arise are questions of fact. Let us search for the
fact carefully and hold it fearlessly. To recur to the general law. It
was found at the outset that Reason gave the idea of Space and Time as
pure conditions for matter and event. We are now to observe the pure
become the actual condition; or, in other words, we are to see the
condition _realized_. Since, then, we are to observe material objects
and events in a material system, it is fitting to use the Sense and the
Understanding; and our statements and conclusions will conform to those
faculties.
We have a concept of the Universe as a vast system in the form of a
sphere in which all things are included. This spherical system is
complete, definite, limited, and so has boundaries. A portion of
"immeasurable void"--Space--has been occupied. Where there was nothing,
something has become. Now it is evident that the possibility of our
having a concept of the Universe, or of a space and a time in the
Universe, is based upon the presence of an actual, underlying,
all-pervading substance, which fills and forms the boundaries of the
Universe, and thus enables spaces and times to be. We have no concept
except as in limits, and those limits are conceived to be substance. In
other words, space is distance, and time is duration, in our concept.
Take away the boundaries which mark the distance, and the procession of
events which forms the duration, and in the concept pure negation is
left. To illustrate. Suppose there be in our presence a cubic yard of
vacuum. Is this vacuum an entity? Not at all. It can neither be
perceived by the Sense nor conceived by the Understanding. Yet it is a
space. Speaking carelessly, we should say that this cube was object to
us. Why? Because it is enclosed by substantial boundaries. All, then,
that is object, all that is entity, is substance. In our concept,
therefore, a space is solid distance within the substance, and the
totality of all distances in the Universe is conceived to be Space.
Again; suppose there pass before our mind a procession of events. One
event has a fixed recurrence. In our concept the procession of events is
a time, and the recurring event marks a period in time. The events
proceeding are all that there is in the concept; and apart from the
procession a conception of time is impossible. The procession of all the
events of the Universe, that is _duration_, is our concept of Time.
Thus, within the Universe, space is solid distance and time is duration;
and neither has any actuality except as the Universe is. Let us assume
for a moment that our concept is the final truth, and observe the
result. In that concept space is limited by matter, and matter is
conceived of as unlimited. This result is natural and necessary, because
matter, substance, "a space-filling force," is the underlying notional
upon which as ground any concept is possible. If matter is truly
illimitable, then materialistic pantheism, which is really atheism,
logically follows. Again; in our concept time is duration, and duration
is conceived of as unlimited. If so, the during event is unlimited. From
this hypothesis idealistic pantheism logically follows. But bring our
concept into the clear light, and under the searching eye of Reason, and
all ground for those systems vanishes instantly. Instead of finding
matter illimitable and the limit for a space, Space is seen to be
illimitable and pure condition, that matter may establish a limit within
it. And Time, instead of being duration, and so limited by the during
event, is found to be illimitable and pure condition, that event may
have duration in it. This brings us to the
Second special phase, without or independent of the Universe. We have
been considering facts in an objective experience, and have used
therefore the Sense and Understanding, as was proper. What we are now to
consider is a subject of which all experience is impossible. It can
therefore be examined only by that faculty which presents it, the Pure
Reason. Remove now from our presence all material object in Space, and
all during event in Time; in a word, remove the Universe, and what will
be left? As the Universe had a beginning, and both it and all things in
it are conditioned by Space and Time, so also let it have an end. Will
its conditions cease in its ceasing? Could another Universe arise, upon
which would be imposed no conditions of Space and Time? These questions
are answered in the statement of them. Those conditions must remain.
When we have abstracted from our _concept_ all substance and duration,
there is left only _void_. Hence, in our concept it would be proper to
say that without the Universe is void, and before the Universe there was
void. Also, that in void there is no thing, no where, and no when; or,
void is the negation of actual substance, space and time. But pure Space
and Time, as _a priori_ conditions that material object and during event
may be, have not ceased. There is still _room_, that an object may
become. There is still _opportunity_, that an event may occur. By the
Reason it is seen that these conditions have the same necessary being
for material object and occurring event, as the conditions of mental
activity have for mind; and they have their peculiar characteristics
exactly according with what they do condition, just as the laws of
thought have their peculiar characteristics, which exactly suit them to
what they condition. If there be a spiritual person, the moral law must
be given in the intuition as necessarily binding upon him; and this is
an _a priori_ condition of the being of such person. Precisely similar
is the relation between Space and Time as _a priori_ conditions, and
object and event upon which they lie. The moral law has its
characteristics, which fit it to condition spiritual person. Space and
Time have their characteristics, which fit them to condition object and
event. Space, then, as room, and Time as opportunity, and both as _a
priori_ conditions of a Universe, must have the same necessity of being
that God has. They _must_ be, as he _must_ be. But observe, they are
pure conditions, and no more. They are neither things nor persons. The
idea of them in the Reason is simple and unanalyzable. They can be
assigned their logical position, but further than this the mind cannot
go.
The devout religious soul will start, perhaps, at some of the positions
stated above. We have not wrought to pain such soul, but only for truth,
and the clue of escape from all dilemmas. The only question to be raised
is, are they true? If a more patient investigation than we have given to
this subject shall show our positions false, then we shall only have
failed as others before us have; but we shall love the truth which shall
be found none the less. But if they shall be found true, then is it
certain that God always knew them so and was always pleased with them,
and no derogation to his dignity can come from the proclamation of them,
however much they may contravene hitherto cherished opinions. Most
blessed next after the Saviour's tender words of forgiveness are those
pure words of the apostle John, "No lie is of the truth."
The conclusions to which we have arrived enable us to state how it is
that primarily God was out of all relation to Space and Time. He was out
of all relation to Space, because he is not material object, thereby
having limits, form, and position in Space. He was out of all relation
to Time, because he holds immediately, and at once, all possible
objects of knowledge before the Eye of his mind. Hence he can learn
nothing, and can experience no process of thought. Within his mind no
event occurs, no substance endures. Yet, while this is true, it is
equally true that, as the Creator, he is conditioned by Space and Time,
just as he is conditioned by himself; and it may be found by future
examination that they are essential to that Self. But, whatever
conclusion may be arrived at respecting so difficult and abstract a
subject, this much is certain: God, as the infinite and absolute
spiritual Person, self-existent and supreme, is the great Fact; and
Space and Time, whatever they are, will, _can_ in no wise interfere with
and compromise his perfectness and supremacy. It is a pleasure to be
able to close this discussion with reflections profound and wise as
those contained in the following extract from the essay heretofore
alluded to.
"The reciprocal relations of Space, Time, and God, are veiled in
impenetrable darkness. Many minds hesitate to attribute real infinity to
Space and Time, lest it should conflict with the infinity of God. Such
timidity has but a slender title to respect. If the Laws of Thought
necessitate any conclusion whatever, they necessitate the conclusion
that Space and Time are each infinite; and if we cannot reconcile this
result with the infinity of God, there is no alternative but to accept
of scepticism with as good a grace as possible. No man is worthy to join
in the search for truth, who trembles at the sight of it when found. But
a profound faith in the unity of all truth destroys scepticism by
anticipation, and prophesies the solutions of reason. Space is infinite,
Time is infinite, God is infinite; three infinites coexist. Limitation
is possible only between existences of the same kind. There could not be
two infinite Spaces, two infinite Times, or two infinite Gods; but while
infinites of the same kind cannot coexist, infinites of unlike kinds
may. When an hour limits a rod, infinite Time will limit infinite Space;
when a year and an acre limit wisdom, holiness, and love, infinite Space
and Time will limit the infinite God. _But not before._ Time exists
ubiquitously, Space exists eternally, God exists ubiquitously and
eternally. The nature of the relations between the three infinites, so
long as Space and Time are ontologically incognizable, is utterly and
absolutely incomprehensible; but to assume contradiction, exclusion, or
mutual limitation to be among these relations, is as gratuitous as it is
irreverent."