accomplish the act? We know absolutely nothing more about it than the fact that in normal circumstances, we can accomplish it. Further data are hopelessly beyond our reach. So with regard to all the great moral revelations set forth in our minds-the facts of moral consciousness. How they came there, we know not; how they operate, we know not; but there they are as facts, significant of Heaven, significant of not of Heaven. If our psychological speculators had but recognised and respected even this one plain truth, namely, that the nature of the mental processes is, in our present circumstances, quite inscrutable, they would have rendered themselves a little more venerable than they are. 1 - 7. Inscrutable nature of mind and matter generally.It is well to realise and confess the limitation of our knowledge. We are ever speaking of mind and matter: yet, as to their prime substance-what are they? As Pascal says, "We are unable to conceive what is mind; we are unable to conceive what is matter; still less are we able to conceive how they are united: yet this is our proper nature." So, Hume:-" Matter and spirit are at bottom equally known." 2 So, Sir William Hamilton:In so far as matter is a name for something known, it means that which appears to us" (better, presents itself to us) "under the forms of extension, solidity, divisibility, figure, motion, roughness, smoothness, colour, heat, cold, etc.; in short it is a common name for a certain series, or aggregate, or complement, of appearances or phenomena 1 Pensées, 3. 26. * Essays, vol. ii. p. 399. So Stewart,-"The circumstance which peculiarly characterises the inductive science of mind is that it professes to abstain from all speculation concerning its nature and essence, confining the attention entirely to phenomena." Life of Reid, p. 71. And Brown to the same effect. "It may always be safely presumed that he knows least of mind who thinks that he knows its substance best." Philosophy, vol. i. p. 193. (better, facts and laws) "manifested in co-existence," but of matter as a primal entity (materia prima), we know absolutely nothing. The same as to the mind. We only know it in its manifestations; we are wholly ignorant of the intellectual entity. The substance of Peter Smith's actual personality is as inscrutable to us all, inclusive of Peter himself, as the dog-star; and, as we have already seen, the disparate nature of mind and matter can only be inferred from the disparate character of their manifestations. "Who can in memory, or wit, or will, Or (i.e. either) air, or earth, or fire, or water find? The quintessence of these out of the mind?" 2 No one not even an alchemist; though whether spiritual or material, the facts are of the same importance. But whatever may be the actual materia prima of mind and matter respectively (a question as to which, I fear, we must be contented to remain intelligently ignorant), there can be no doubt that the characteristics and activities which they respectively manifest are wholly disparate. Thought magnificently transcends the little world of the corporeal senses. None of the properties of matter will apply to the operations of mind, and none of the 1 Lectures, vol. i. p. 137. It is the particular merit of the "Scottish School" to have observed these facts. "Whatever minor or major dif ferences there may be in the fulness of their exposition, or in the favourite views which they individually prefer, all who are truly of the Scottish School agree in maintaining that there are laws, principles or powers in the mind anterior to any reflex observation of them, and acting independently of the philosopher's classification or explanation of them. It refuses to admit any philosophic maxims except such laws or principles as can be shown by self-inspection to be in the very constitution of the mind." M'Cosh Scottish Philosophy, p. 7. 2 Sir John Davies: "Of the Soule of Man," Poetical Works, vol. i. pp. 39-40. 3 This is widely recognised; see, for example, Gibbon: Decline and Fall, vol. ii. p. 295. Mr. Clodd, however, knows all about it. 'We began,' says he, "with the primitive nebula, we end with the highest forms of con properties of mind will apply to the operations of matter. Conclusion as to the Unknowable through inaccessibility of evidence. It is then to be noted that multitudes of things are unknowable by us and likely to remain so, not necessarily from our intellectual incompetency, but by reason of the fact that no sufficiency of data are obtainable on which we might rise to the knowledge of such things. Nothing, I believe, will more readily contribute to the acquisition of real knowledge than to recognise, in the first place, the limits of the field in which knowledge is obtainable. It must clearly be to our advantage to confine our energies as closely as possible to the cultivation of that field, the knowable, vigorously restraining ourselves from wasting our faculties in mere conjectural labours. In all cases, the mind, as well as the body, requires a footing of fact to proceed upon-just as Archimedes required an extra-terrestrial fulcrum for the lever by which he was to move the world. The most magnificent of giants can do nothing but upon sound footing. Samson himself could not have carried away the Gates of Gaza-not even Delilah's hair-pins, but upon sound footing. What then shall the feeble, heavy person do, if deprived of such an advantage! We cannot proceed but upon the Given.—Facts—things Given, are to the scientific mind what the rungs of a ladder, or the steps of a staircase, are to the human body. It can really make no ascent whatever but upon facts, and inductions made upon facts. Meanwhile, of course, it would be extremely silly "should witness man so much misween That nothing is but that which he hath seen!" sciousness; the story of creation is shown to be the unbroken record of the evolution of gas into genius." The Story of Creation, p. 228. Mr. Clodd should sketch this "unbroken record of the evolution of gas into genius," and send it to Punch. The unconscious comicality of this portentous philosopher's notions, is as funny as the funniest creations of conscious humour. This, obviously, would be to reject the significance of the facts; although, as we have already recognised, their teaching is so powerful and convincing that we must. accept their instruction. They are even charged with instruction touching the invisible-what eye hath not seen nor ear heard. What is now submitted is that we can know nothing and do nothing but upon a basis of factsthe Given; and that much remains unknowable and, probably, must remain unknowable, because, with respect to it, we cannot obtain such a basis. (D) THE MYSTERIOUS We come now to speak of the mysterious. sciousness is made up of experiences experiences of a self and a Universe. Philosophy, regarded as knowledge, is nothing more nor less than the articulate interpretation of these experiences given us by consciousness through all its faculties and capacities. We have interpreted some of those experiences as implying an actual knowledge of certain things (things known); some of them as implying an obtainable knowledge of other things (the knowable); some of them as implying an unobtainable knowledge of a third set of objects (the unknowable from inaccessibility of data); and now we come to consider a fourth order of experiences, touching which we recognise a positive inability to know or comprehend, in which we clearly recognise the Mysterious, -the Infinite, or that which the Finite recognises as fact, but is unable to comprehend, intellectually. 1 1 Hegel, for example, failed to observe this fundamental truth. "It is not allowable in philosophy," says the unhappy man, "to make a beginning with 'There is, there are,' for in philosophy the object must not be presupposed." The Philosophy of Religion, p. 89 (Eng. and For. Phil. Library). Thus at the very outset of his pilgrimage, he involves himself and his victims in an imbroglio of sheer stupidities and fatuities. No one of the thousand-fold industries and activities carried on by man, can be started even, but upon the basis of the presupposed,—the Given. 1. In Space and Time.-Try for example to conceive a beginning or an end to Space or Time. Though compelled by the constitution of our minds to dogmatise Space and Time as existent and endless (Space in extension and duration; Time in duration), we are lost in the thought of either. We recognise their actual presence, but we cannot intellectually comprehend them. We recognise in ourselves a positive inability to comprehend them. We stand towards them in the relationship of Finite to Infinite. " 1 2. In Matter.-Or take matter. How did it begin to be? The problem is absolutely insolvable. "A beginning is uncreate," says Plato sapiently; "for everything that is created must necessarily be created from a beginning, but a beginning itself from nothing whatever; for if a beginning were created from anything, it would not be a beginning." Exactly; so that the "uncreate" beginning is hidden from us. Obviously, we can make nothing of it. The problem is infinite: requires, probably, none less than the Deity to deal with it. We shall show wisdom, therefore, by leaving this problem of the creation of matter, alone. It is, if possible, more inscrutable than eggs, although it is present with us in all its million-fold manifestations. To a large number of philosophers, unhappily, philosophy has been a kind of Tower-of-Babel enterprise, ending in a general confusion of tongues. Why? Either because they have failed to realise their intellectual limitations, or, if recognising them, have failed to be warned by the recognition. Standing before the Infinite, they seem to have had no awe of it. Wholly ignorant about it, they have yet chattered about it in multitudinous and stupefying volumes. They do not seem to know when they have reached the Bedrock of any subject; but go on blunting and breaking their tools on the nether adamant. It would Phaedrus, 51. 1 |