a basis and a demonstration of their fundamental principles, such as they have never been considered as having.

All persons who are of a thoughtful or philosophic turn of mind feel and acknowledge that it is not enough to tell us what men do naturally believe or what we ought to believe and accept as first principles, in order that we may be led to such conclusions as we ought to hold or think we ought, in regard to religion and duty. The method is fallacious, and too superficial. To adopt principles with a view to the conclusions we want to draw and hold, is an inversion of the true order, and the only order and method that can give us an abiding system, or enduring results. We must begin by building on the rock, the solid foundation of indisputable and abiding facts, and build up with a logic that is faultless. And this is what our method will enable us to do for the principles that are generally held and advocated by the disciples of this school.

With the view I have been presenting, we have a metaphysics that is knowledge in the strictest sense and the only proper sense of the word. We shall see, realize and confess that we know as much of mind, what it is and how it acts and stands related to other things, as we do of any of the pieces of matter around us; what it is, how it acts and stands related to other objects.

We sometimes hear it said that we do not know what the mind is in itself, or, for that matter, what matter is in itself. But what does "in itself" mean in this connection? It is not one thing in appearance and another in fact or in itself. It is only as it is in appearance. Or do we mean to say that we do not know what it would be if it were not in relation to other things? Well, perhaps we do not. No one of these objects, not the mind of man nor any material object in existence ever existed except in relations to other things, and never can so exist. If there are but two things in existence, they must be, as Hegel has abundantly shown, in relations to each other, and if the time ever comes when there is but one thing in existence, there will be either nothing to be seen or nobody to see it.

Doubtless these relations may yet be changed, and will be certainly different in our next state of existence. But the present is enough for the present, and we may be sure that we shall be so changed as to be adapted to our next state of existence, whenever it shall please the Author of our being to call us into it.

We have, then, a universe of two co-ordinate parts, mind and matter, the one as substantial and as real as the other, and over and above them all a One, Whose nature, so far as we can comprehend it, or form any idea of it, in our present state of existence, is in no respect that of the material objects around us, but it is rather so much like the mind within us that we may truly say that we are "made in His image" and hope to know more of Him, understand His thoughts and ways better in another world.

If the doctrine of this paper be true, it will give a new force and significance to the oft-repeated doctrine that words can be explained only by reference to things. And this we always do in the natural sciences. Things are the same for all. God creates them, but man creates his own thoughts, and many of them are purely fictions representing no existing reality anywhere. Hence the obscurity of the German metaphysicians, they do not believe in things, but only in thoughts, and use words accordingly, and often with no refer ence to the things that exist, and with no regard to the relations they do or possibly can sustain to each other. It is, therefore, not only that we meet with new words and technical phrases in reading their works, but also that, in attempting to find a meaning for them, by reference to the things that actually exist and make up the universe, we find ourselves utterly at fault.

The following has been given as a specimen: "In the fifteenth century of Thursday afternoon occurred one of the most stupendous circumstances of the everglade perpetuity." It is grammatical, smooth, rather grandiloquent, but it is very metaphysical.

In this discussion I have used the word idea in its common acceptation as implying that it is a reality in the mind representing objects or the properties of objects. But I have been very careful not to advance any doctrine or make any statement that really implies that it is anything more than a mere convenient fiction. The acquisition of knowledge is as if there were imperceptible elements that pass into our minds in the very act of cognition, and the subsequent processes of imagination, memory and reasoning are most easily explained on this hypothesis, and by this use of terms, just as in geography, we best indicate the location and extent of places, mountains and rivers, oceans and continents, by referring to and speaking of the equator, the parallels of latitude and the meridians of longitude as if they were realities. If, therefore, ideas are to be regarded as convenient fictions, no statement that I have made will need anything more than a mere change in its form; the truth I intended to assert will remain the same..

This, however, is more than can be said of any form or statement of the doctrines which assert any form of innate or a priori ideas. We classify the facts of nature, given by sensation, and call them heat, light, electricity, gravity, etc. We even make fictions of these so called "forces of nature" and speak of them as real causes. What we really mean is that the material objects of nature when they are hot act so and so, the same objects when luminous act so and so, the same objects when electrically excited act in accordance with what we call the laws of electricity. But it is the material objects of nature always and in all these cases and classes of phenomena that act and are the real agents and causes. So in mental philosophy, the Scotch Reid and his followers began to use this form of classification. One class constituted perception; another imagination; and another reason; another will,

and so on. Locke speaks of these classes as mental faculties, and warned men against regarding them as parts and organs of the mind. Reid called them 66 powers, " and since his time both words are in use; and we have come to regard them as Locke foresaw and warned us against doing, as realities in mind, and not mere words and fictions of the mind's creating. But, as in motion, it is only the material objects that act, so in consciences. It is the mind that perceives; the mind that imagines; the mind that remembers; the mind that wills; and when we speak of "the reason,' """ the memory,"

," "the will," etc., we can mean, if we really know what we mean, and are not repeating parrot-like words that we have learned by heart and to repeat in verbis magestri, the mind perceiving or acting in the way of perception, imagination, will, etc.; they are not parts of the mind, but only modes of its acting.

It is generally conceded that " Locke's System" as it is called, that is, the theory that all one's ideas come from sense-perception was, to a large extent, the parent of Paley's System of Moral Philosophy, a system now repudiated, I believe, by all professed teachers of moral philosophy, and has also given sanction to those views of political economy and social relations which have led to the application to it of the epithet of the "dismal science." Had the other part of Locke's theory been recognized and received as much attention and as full an application as the sensational part, it would have given us a spiritual philosophy which, doubtless, would have changed, to a large extent, the current of thoughts and speculation among the English speaking people. It would have started out with the fact as its leading doctrine that we know mind or self better than anything else; know it first and last, and know it, moreover, as that which is best worth living for and providing for in this world as well as the next. We should have seen, by a careful study in that direction, that loyalty and devotion to some superior being is essential to its welfare and healthy acting, and that, so far as our own souls are concerned, as well as in regard to our fellowmen, it is better to err, if err we must, in the direction of self denial rather than self indulgence, and on the side of generosity, and of suffering wrong, rather than in a direction of meanness and wrongdoing.

I have not time or space to follow out all of the results of this view of the elements of knowledge - their origin, their nature and their limits. But I think that when it is fully carried out, as I have no doubt it will be, it will be found to throw a stream of light along the whole line of metaphysical discussions, and to afford a new and more satisfactory solution of some of what have been regarded hitherto as their most important as well as most difficult problems. It will draw a new line between what may be regarded as the domain of knowledge and of certainty on the one hand, and what is mere speculation and conjecture on the other. And it opens up a way to a region of faith and a realin of objects.

which are, and ever must be, while we live here, objects of faith, and of faith only. It is by laying hold of them that we gain our purest impulses, our most unfailing courage, our strength in weakness, our most enduring hopes and our unceasing aspirations after something higher, holier and more satisfying, as well as more enduring, than anything this world and the objects of sense can afford. Faith looks through and beyond all the objects of mere knowledge, and lays hold of what is now beyond immediate cognition. Faith is the most uplifting of all the influences that can act upon us or within us here. It is the tie that binds us to God and to eternity. But then, faith must rest upon knowledge. Even while our church spires point to heaven they must stand on the firm foundation of the solid earth beneath. If faith without works is dead, so assuredly faith that is not based on knowledge is most sure to be mere caprice or senseless superstition.

Our senses are adapted to the world around us, or at least we know of the world around us only what we have the organs of sense to perceive; and it is conceivable, or at least supposable, that we may have other senses and come to take cognizance of facts and relations of things of which we have no conception at present. But this thought is especially suggestive in regard to the future world and a spiritual state. The senses we have here might be and probably would be of no use there, and facts and objects that we now see not, "that the eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived" as yet, may come to be the most obvious facts and the best known of realities when we enter that world where our corruption shall put on incorruption, and our mortality be clothed with immortality, and we shall both see as we are seen and know as we are known.

VII.

THE RELATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION TO RELIGION.

By President WILLIAM DE W. HYDE, Bowdoin College.

The higher education can only indicate its lofty claims by showing its vital connection with the every day concerns of average men and women. Let it be suspected of exclusiveness, and it will be distrusted. Let it be judged impractical, unrelated to the real interests of the people, and popular support, both of money and of men will be withheld.

Last year, in a most thorough and conclusive manner, the material and social benefits which higher education brings to the community were here set forth. To-night I shall endeavor to indicate the points of contact between the higher education and those spiritual aspirations which it is the function of religion to satisfy.

This is a subject on which two diametrically opposite views have been held. In a general way, allowing for individual exceptions on either side, it may be said that the Latin church has regarded the relation as external and arbitrary; a matter of judicious expediency if not a tolerated evil. Tertullian, the father who contended for the materiality of both the soul itself, and its future environment, refused to allow a Christian to be a teacher in secular schools where Greek and Latin mythology were taught; and only on the plea of necessity did he permit the children of Christians to acquire" sæcularia studia, sine quibus divina esse non possunt; Cyprian, the father whose political philosophy is indicated in his remark that "Kingdoms do not rise to supremacy through merit, but are varied by chance," likewise in the references he deigns to make to "Pagan philosophy" is strenuous to separate it as far as possible from Christian faith. Jerome, trained himself at Rome in classic literature, conceded the reading of authors like Terence and Virgil to the young as a necessity, but regarded a love for them cherished and indulged in later life as criminal.

Augustine also laments the delight he found in youthful study of the Latin poets, and though he, like Jerome, defends the employment of such learning as an efficient aid in the defense and exposition of Christian truth, yet he defends it by the analogy of the Israelites who took the gold and raiment of the Egyptians, leaving behind the idols and superstitions; and at length falls back on the practical utility of such studies as helps in the technical work of the preacher.