Part 6 (2/2)

We are conscious of infinity, _i. e._ we are conscious that we see with the eye of Reason infinity as a simple, _a priori_ idea; and that it is quality of the Deity.

2. We are conscious of the infinite Person; in that we are conscious, that we see with the eye of Reason the complex _a priori_ idea of a perfect Person possessing independence and universality as qualities of his Self. But we are not conscious of him in that we exhaustively comprehend him. As is said elsewhere, we know that he is, and to a certain extent, but not wholly what he is.

In further discussing this question Mansel is guilty of another grave psychological error. He says, ”Consciousness is essentially a limitation, for it is the determination to one actual out of many possible modifications.” There is no truth in this sentence.

Consciousness is not a limitation; it is not a determination; it is not a modification. It may be well to state here certain conclusions on this a.s.sertion, which will be brought out in the fuller discussion of it, when we come to speak of Mr. Spencer's book. Consciousness is _one_, and retains that oneness throughout all modifications. These occur in the unity as items of experience affect it. Doubtless Dr. Hickok's ill.u.s.tration is the best possible. Consciousness is the _light_ in which a spiritual person sees the modifications of himself, _i. e._ the activity of his faculties and capacities. Like s.p.a.ce, only in a different sphere, it is an illimitable indivisible unity, which is, that all limits may be in it--that all objects may come into it. If, then, only one modification--object--comes into it at a time, this is because the faculties which see in its light are thus organized;--the being to whom it belongs is partial; but there is nothing pertaining to consciousness _as such_, which const.i.tutes a limit,--which could bar the infinite Person from seeing all things at once in its light. This Person, then, so far as known, must be known as an actual absolute, infinite Spirit, and hence no ”thing”; and further as the originator and sustainer of all ”_things_,”--which, though dependent on him, in no way take aught from him. He may be known also, as potentially everything, in the sense that all possible combinations, or forms of objects, must ever stand as ideals in his Reason; and he can, at his will, organize his power in accordance therewith. But he must also be known as free to create or not to create; and that the fact that many potential forms remain such, in no way detracts from his infinity.

Another of Mr. Mansel's positions involve conclusions which, we feel a.s.sured, he will utterly reject. He says, ”If all thought is limitation,--if whatever we conceive is, by the very act of conception, regarded as finite,--the infinite, from a human point of view, is merely a name for the absence of those conditions under which thought is possible.” ”From a human point of view,” and _we_, at least, can take no other, what follows? That the Deity _can have no thoughts_; cannot know what our thoughts are, or that we think. But three suppositions can be made. Either he has no thoughts, is dest.i.tute of an intellect; or his intellect is Universal Genius, and he sees all possible objects at once; or there is a faculty different in kind from and higher than the Reason, of which we have, can have, no knowledge. The first, though acknowledged by Hamilton in a pa.s.sage elsewhere quoted, and logically following from the position taken by Mr. Mansel, is so abhorrent to the soul that it must be unhesitatingly rejected. The second is the position advocated in this treatise. The third is hinted at by Mr. Herbert Spencer. We reject this third, because the Reason affirms it to be impossible; and because, being unnecessary, by the law of parsimony it should not be allowed. To advocate a position of which, in the very terms of it, the intellect can have no possible shadow of knowledge, is, to say the least, no part of the work of a philosopher. ”The condition of consciousness is” not ”distinction” in the understanding-conception of that term. So consciousness is not a limitation, though all limits when cognized are seen in the light of consciousness. According to the philosophy we advocate, G.o.d is a particular being, and is so known; yet he is not known as ”one thing out of many,” but is known in himself, as being such and such, and yet being _unique_. When Mr. Mansel says, ”In a.s.suming the possibility of an infinite object of consciousness, I a.s.sume, therefore, that it is at the same time limited and unlimited,” he evidently uses those terms with a signification pertinent only to the Understanding. He is thinking of _amount_ under the forms of s.p.a.ce and Time; and so his remark has no validity. He who thinks of G.o.d rightly, will think of him as the infinite and absolute spiritual Person; and will define infinity and absoluteness in accordance therewith.

If the views now advanced are presentations of truth, a consistent rationalism _must_ attribute ”consciousness to G.o.d.” _We_ are always conscious of ”limitation and change,” because partiality and growth are organic with us. But we can perceive no peculiarity in consciousness, which should produce such an effect. On the contrary we see, that if a person has little knowledge, he will be conscious of so much and no more. And if a person has great capabilities, and corresponding information, he is conscious of just so much. Whence, it appears, that the ”limitation and change” spring from the nature of the const.i.tution, and not from the consciousness. If, then, there should be one Person who possessed the sum of all excellencies, there could arise no reason from consciousness why he should be conscious thereof.

Mr. Mansel names as the ”second characteristic of Consciousness, that it is only possible in the form of a _relation_. There must be a Subject, or person conscious, and an Object or thing of which he is conscious.”

This utterance, taken in the sense which Mr. Mansel wishes to convey, involves the denial of consciousness to G.o.d. But upon the ground that the subject and object in the Deity are always identical the difficulty vanishes. But how can man be ”conscious of the Absolute?” If by this is meant, have an exhaustive comprehension of the absolute Person, the experience is manifestly impossible. But man may have a certain knowledge, _that_ such Person is without knowing in all respects _what_ he is, just as a child may know that an apple is, without knowing what it is. Again Mr. Mansel uses the terms absolute and infinite to represent a simple una.n.a.lyzable Being. In this he is guilty of personifying an abstract term, and then reasoning with regard to the Being as he would with regard to the term. Absoluteness is a simple una.n.a.lyzable idea, but it is not G.o.d; it is only one quality of G.o.d. So with infinity. G.o.d is universal complexity; and to reason of him as una.n.a.lyzable simplicity is as absurd as to select the color of the apple's skin, and call that the apple, and then reason from it about the apple. So, then, though man cannot comprehend the absolute Person _as such_, he has a positive idea of absoluteness, and a positive knowledge that the Being is who is thus qualified. Upon the subsequent question respecting the partiality of our knowledge of the infinite and absolute Person, a remark made above may be repeated and amplified. We may have a true, clear, thorough knowledge _that_ he exists without having an exhaustive knowledge of _what_ he is. The former is necessary to us; the latter impossible. So, too, the knowledge by us, of any _a priori_ law, will be exhaustive. Yet while we know that it _must_ be such, and not otherwise, it neither follows that we know all other _a priori_ laws, nor that we know all the exemplifications of this one. And since, as we have heretofore seen, neither absoluteness nor infinity relate to number, and G.o.d is not material substance that can be broken into ”parts,” but an organized Spirit, we see that we may consider the elements of his organization in their logical order; and, remembering that absoluteness and infinity as qualities pervade all, we may examine his nature and attributes without impiety.

Mr. Mansel says further: ”But in truth it is obvious, on a moment's reflection, that neither the Absolute nor the Infinite can be represented in the form of a whole composed of parts.” This is tantamount to saying, the spiritual cannot be represented under the form of the material--a truth so evident as hardly to need so formal a statement. But what the Divine means is, that that Being cannot be known as having qualities and attributes which may be distinguished in and from himself; which is an error. G.o.d is infinite. So is his Knowledge, his Wisdom, his Holiness, his Love, &c. Yet these are distinguished from each other, and from him. All this is consistent, because infinity is _quality_, and permeates them all; and not amount, which jumbles them all into a confused, _indistinguishable_ ma.s.s.

In speaking of ”human consciousness” as ”necessarily subject to the law of Time,” Mr. Mansel says, ”Every object of whose existence we can be in any way conscious is necessarily apprehended by us as succeeding in time to some former object of consciousness, and as itself occupying a certain portion of time.” In so far as there is here expressed the law of created beings, under which they must see objects, the remark is true. But when Mr. Mansel proceeds further, and concludes that, because we are under limitation in seeing the object, it is under the same limitation, so far as we apprehend it in being seen, he a.s.serts what is a psychological error. To show this, take the mathematical axiom, ”Things which are equal to the same things, are equal to one another.”

Except under the conditions of Time, we cannot see this, that is, we do, must, occupy a time in observing it. But do we see that the axiom is under any condition of Time? By no means. We see, directly, that it is, _must be_, true, and that in itself it has no relation to Time. It is thus _absolutely_ true; and as one of the ideas of the infinite and absolute Person, it possesses these his qualities. We have, then, a faculty, the Reason, which, while it sees its objects in succession, and so under the law of Time, also sees that those objects, whether ideas, or that Being to whom all ideas belong, are, _in themselves_, out of all relation to Time. Thus is the created spiritual person endowed; thus is he like G.o.d; thus does he know ”the Infinite.” Hence, ”the command, so often urged upon man by philosophers and theologians, 'In contemplating G.o.d, transcend time,'” means, ”In all your reflections upon G.o.d, behold him in his true aspect, in the reason-idea, as out of all relation.” It is true that ”to know the infinite” _exhaustively_, ”the human mind must itself be infinite.” But this knowledge is not required of that mind.

Only that knowledge is required which is possible, viz., that the Deity is, and what he is, _in so far as we are in his image_.

Again; personality is not ”essentially a limitation and a relation,” in the sense that it necessarily detracts aught from any being who possesses it. It rather adds,--is, indeed, a pure addition. We appear to ourselves as limited and related, not because of our personality, but because of our finiteness as _quality_ in the personality.

Hence we not only see no reason why the complete and universal Spirit should not have personality, but we see that if he was dest.i.tute of it, he must possess a lower form of being,--since this is the highest possible form,--which would be an undoubted limitation; or, in other words, we see that he must be a Person. In what Mr. Mansel subsequently says upon this subject, he presents arguments for the personality of G.o.d so strong, that one is bewildered with the question, ”How could he escape the conviction which they awaken? How could he reject the cry of his spiritual nature, and accept the barren contradictions of his lower mind?” Let us note a few sentences. ”It is by consciousness alone that we know that G.o.d 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.”

”Personality comprises all that we know of that which exists; relation to personality comprises all that we know of that which seems to exist.

And when, from the little world of man's consciousness and its objects, we would lift up our eyes to the inexhaustible universe beyond, and ask to whom all this is related, the highest existence is still the highest personality, and the Source of all Being reveals Himself by His name, 'I AM.'” ”It is our duty, then, to think of G.o.d as personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite.” We may at this point quote with profit the words of that Book whose authority Mr. Mansel, without doubt, most heartily acknowledges. ”And for this cause G.o.d shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be d.a.m.ned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” ”I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.” Either G.o.d is personal or he is not. If he is, then all that we claim is conceded. If he is not personal, and ”it is our duty to think” of him as personal, then it is our duty to think and believe a _falsehood_. This no man, at least neither Mr. Mansel nor any other enlightened man, _can_ bring his mind to accept as a moral law. The soul instinctively a.s.serts that obligation lies parallel with _truth_, and ”that no lie is of the truth.” So, then, there can be no duty except where truth is. And the converse may also be accepted, viz.: Where an enlightened sense of duty is, there is truth. When, therefore, so learned and truly spiritual a man as Mr. Mansel a.s.serts ”that it is our duty to think G.o.d personal, and believe him infinite,” we unhesitatingly accept it as the utterance of a great fundamental truth in that spiritual realm which is the highest realm of being, and so, as one of the highest truths, and with it we accept all its logical consequences. It is a safe rule anywhere, that if two mental operations seem to clash, and one must be rejected, man should cling to, and trust in the higher--the teaching of the n.o.bler nature. Thus will we do, and from the Divine's own ground will we see the destruction of his philosophy. ”It is our duty to think of G.o.d as personal,” because he is personal; and we know that he is personal because it is our duty to think him so. We need pay no regard to the perplexities of the Understanding. We soar with the eagle above the clouds, and float ever in the light of the Sun. The teachings of the Moral Sense are far more sure, safe, and satisfactory than any discursions of the lower faculty. Therefore it is man's wisdom, in all perplexity to heed the cry of his highest nature, and determine to stand on its teachings, as his highest knowledge, interpret all utterances by this, and reject all which contradict it. At the least, the declaration of this faculty is _as_ valid as that of the lower, and is to be more trusted in every disagreement, because higher. Still further, no man would believe that G.o.d, in the most solemn, yea, awful moment of his Self-revelation, would declare a lie. The bare thought, fully formed, horrifies the soul as a blasphemy of the d.a.m.ned. Yet, in that supreme act, in the solitude of the Sinaitic wilderness, to one of the greatest, one of the profoundest, most devout of men, He revealed Himself by the pregnant words, ”I AM”: the most positive, the most unquestionable form in which He could utter the fact of His personality.

This, then, and all that is involved in it, we accept as truth; and all perplexities must be interpreted by this surety.

In summing up the results to which an examination of the facts of consciousness conducted him, Mr. Mansel utters the following psychological error: ”But a limit is necessarily conceived as a relation between something within and something without itself; and the consciousness of a limit of thought implies, though it does not directly present to us, the existence of something of which we do not and cannot think.” Not so; for a limit may be seen to be wholly within the being to whom it belongs, and so _not_ to be ”a relation between something within and something without itself.” This is precisely the case with the Deity. All relations and limits spring from within him, and there is nothing ”without” to establish the relation claimed. This absence of all limit from without is rudely expressed in such common phrases as this: ”It must be so in the _nature of things_.” This ”nature of things” is, in philosophical language, the system of _a priori_ laws of the Universe, and these are necessary ideas in the Divine Reason. It appears, then, that what must be in the nature of things, finds its limits wholly within, and its relations established by the Deity.

With these remarks the author would close his criticism upon Mr.

Mansel's book. We start from entirely different bases, and these two systems logically follow from their foundations. If Sir William Hamilton is right in his psychology, his follower is unquestionably right in his deductions. But if that psychology is partial, if besides the Understanding there is the Reason, if above the judgment stands the intuition, giving the final standard by which to measure that judgment, then is the philosophical system of the Divine utterly fallacious. The establishment of the validity of the Pure Reason is the annihilation of ”the Philosophy of the Unconditioned.” On the ground which the author has adopted, it is seen that ”G.o.d is a spirit,” infinite, absolute, self-conscious, personal; and a consistent interpretation of these terms has been given. We have found that certain objects may be seen as out of all relation, plurality, difference, or likeness. Consciousness and personality have also been found to involve no limit, in the proper sense of that term. On the contrary, the one was ascertained to be the light in which any or all objects might be seen under conditions of Time, or at once; and that this seeing was according to the capacity with which the being was endowed, and was not determined by any peculiarity of the consciousness; while the other appeared to be the highest possible form of existence, and that also in which G.o.d had revealed himself. From such a ground it is possible to go forward and construct a Rational Theology which shall verify by Reason the teachings of the Bible.

REVIEW OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER'S ”FIRST PRINCIPLES.”

In the criticisms heretofore made, some points, held in common by the three writers named early in this work, have been, it may be, pa.s.sed over unnoticed. This was done, because, being held in common, it was believed that an examination of them, as presented by the latest writer, would be most satisfactory. Therefore, what was peculiar in thought or expression to Sir Wm. Hamilton or Mr. Mansel, we have intended to notice when speaking of those writers. But where Mr. Spencer seems to present their very thought as his own, it has appeared better to remark upon it in his latest form of expression. Mr. Spencer also holds views peculiar to himself. These we shall examine in their place. And for convenience'

sake, what we have to say will take the form of a running commentary upon those chapters ent.i.tled, ”Ultimate Religious Ideas,” ”Ultimate Scientific Ideas,” ”The Relativity of all Knowledge,” and ”The Reconciliation.” Before entering upon this, however, some general remarks will be pertinent.

1. Like his teachers, Mr. Spencer believes that the Understanding is the highest faculty of the human intellect. This is implied in the following sentence: ”Those imbecilities of the understanding that disclose themselves when we try to answer the highest questions of objective science, subjective science proves to be necessitated by the laws of that understanding.”--_First Principles_, p. 98.

His ill.u.s.trations, also, are all, or nearly all, taken from sensuous objects. In speaking of the Universe, evidently the _material_ Universe is present to his mind. His questions refer to objects of sense, and he shows plainly enough that any attempt to answer them by the Sense or Understanding is futile. Hence he concludes that they cannot be answered. But those who ”know of a surety,” that man is more than an animal nature, containing a Sense and an Understanding; that he is also a spiritual person, having an _Eye_, the pure Reason, which can _see_ straight to the central Truth, with a clearness and in a light which dims and pales the noonday sun, know also that, and how, these difficulties, insoluble to the lower faculties, are, in this n.o.ble alembic, finally dissolved.

2. As Mr. Spencer follows his teachers in the psychology of man's faculties, so does he also in the use of terms. Like them, he employs only such terms as are pertinent to the Sense and Understanding. So also with them he is at fault, in that he raises questions which no Sense or Understanding could suggest even, questions whose very presence are decisive that a Pure Reason is organic in man; and then is guilty of applying to them terms entirely impertinent,--terms belonging only to those lower tribunals before which these questions can never come. For instance, he always employs the word ”conceive” to express the effort of the mind in presenting to itself the subjects now under discussion. In some form of noun, verb, or adjective, this word seems to have rained upon his pages; while such terms as ”infinite period,” ”infinitely divisible,” ”absolutely incompressible,” ”infinitesimal,” and the like, dot them repeatedly. Let us revert, then, a moment to the positions attained in an earlier portion of this work. It was there found that the word conceive was _utterly irrelevant_ to any subject except to objects of Sense and the Understanding in its work of cla.s.sifying them, or generalizing from them, so, also, with regard to the other terms quoted, it was found that they not only presented no object of thought to the mind, but that the words had no relation to each other, and could not properly be used together. For instance, infinite has no more relation to, and can no more qualify period, than the points of the compa.s.s are pertinent to, and can qualify the affections. The phrase, infinite period, is simply absurd, and so also are the others. The words infinite and absolute have nothing to do with amount of any sort. They can be pertinent only to G.o.d and his _a priori_ ideas. Many, perhaps most of the criticisms in detail we shall have to make, will be based on this single misuse of words; which yet grows naturally out of that denial and perversion of faculties which Mr. Spencer, in common with the other Limitist writers, has attempted. On the other hand, it is to be remembered, that, if we arrive at the truth at all, we must _intuit_ it; we must either see it as a simple _a priori_ idea, or as a logical deduction from such ideas.

3. A third, and graver error on Mr. Spencer's part is, that he goes on propounding his questions, and a.s.serting that they are insoluble, apparently as unconscious as a sleeper in an enchanted castle that they have all been solved, or at least that the principles on which it would seem that they could be solved have been stated by a man of no mean ability,--Dr. Hickok,--and that until the proposed solutions are thoroughly a.n.a.lyzed and shown to be unsound, his own pages are idle. He implies that there is no cognition higher than a conception, when some very respectable writers have named intuitions as incomparably superior.

He speaks of the Understanding as if it were without question the highest faculty of man's intellect, when no less a person than Coleridge said it would satisfy his life's labor to have introduced into English thinking the distinction between the Understanding, as ”the faculty judging according to sense,” and the Reason, as ”the power of universal and necessary convictions,” which, being such, must necessarily rank far above the other. And finally he uses the words and phrases above disallowed, and the faculties to which they belong, in an attempt to prove, by the citation of a few items in an experience, what had already been demonstrated by another in a process of as pure reasoning as Calculus. No one, it is believed, can master the volume heretofore alluded to, ent.i.tled ”Rational Psychology,” and so appreciate the _demonstration_ therein contained, of the utter incompetency of the Sense or Understanding to solve such questions as Mr. Spencer has raised by his incident of the partridge, (p. 69,) and the utter irrelevancy to them of the efforts of those faculties, without feeling how tame and unsatisfactory in comparison is the evidence drawn from a few facts in a sensuous experience. One cares not to see a half dozen proofs, more or less that a theory is fallacious who has learned that, and why, the theory _cannot_ be true. Let us now take up in order the chapters heretofore mentioned.

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