Part 4 (1/2)
”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 encompa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sages, 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 pa.s.s 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. l.u.s.trous 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 s.h.i.+vering, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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--G.o.d'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, a.s.serts
That there must be an infinite Being;
That that Being must be Self-conscious,
Must be unlimited; and that
Consciousness is a limitation.
These a.s.sertions 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 rea.s.serts 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 a.s.sistance, 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 a.s.sumption, 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 ant.i.thesis 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 const.i.tution 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 G.o.d'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 ant.i.thesis 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, G.o.d can be believed to be self-conscious only on the ground that the human intellect is a cheat. The theory which underlies this a.s.sertion 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 const.i.tutes 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 _a.s.sumes_, 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sumption. 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 ill.u.s.tration; 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 ill.u.s.trating 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 apt.i.tudes and capabilities. But in this last, this profoundest act, the a.s.sertion 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 G.o.d'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 inapt.i.tude, 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 a.n.a.lyzed. Their conduct may be beautiful, but they never know it. Their impressions ever come from without. Another cla.s.s 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 a.s.signed 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 G.o.d. 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.