finite, determined thought, &c.; (we would style it the Conditioned.) These two elements are relative and correlative. The first, though absolute, is not conceived as existing absolutely in itself; it is conceived as an absolute cause, as a cause which cannot but pass into operation; in other words, the first element must manifest itself in the second. The first two Ideas are thus connected together as cause and effect; each is only realised through the other; and this their connection or correlation, is the third integrant element of intelligence.

Reason, or intelligence, in which these Ideas appear, and which, in fact, they make up, is not individual, is not ours, is not even human; it is absolute, it is divine. What is personal to us, is our free and voluntary activity; what is not free and not voluntary, is adventitious to man, and does not constitute an integrant part of his individuality. Intelligence is conversant with truth; truth, as necessary and universal, is not the creature of my volition; and reason, which, as the subject of truth, is also universal and necessary, is consequently impersonal. We see, therefore, by a light which is not ours, and reason is a revelation of God in The Ideas of which we are conscious belong not to us, but to absolute intelligence. They constitute, in truth, the very mode and manner of its existence. For consciousness is only possible under plurality and difference, and intelligence is only possible through consciousness.

man.

For the

The divine nature is essentially comprehensible. three Ideas constitute the nature of the Deity; and the very nature of ideas is to be conceived. God, in fact, exists to us, only in so far as he is known; and the degree of our knowledge must always determine the measure of our faith. The relation of God to the universe is therefore manifest, and the creation easily understood. To create, is not to make something out of nothing, for this is contradictory, but to originate from self. We create so often as we exert our free causality, and something is created by us, when something begins to be by virtue of the free causality which belongs to us. To create is, therefore, to cause, not with nothing, but with the very essence of our being,-with our force, our will, our personality. The divine creation is of the same character. God, as he is a cause, is able to create; as he is an absolute cause, he cannot but create. In creating the universe, he does not draw it from nothing; he draws it from himself. The creation of the universe is thus necessary; it is a

manifestation of the Deity, but not the Deity absolutely in himself; it is God passing into activity, but not exhausted in the act.

The universe created, the principles which determined the creation are found still to govern the worlds of matter and mind.

Two Ideas and their Connection explain the intelligence of God; two laws in their counterpoise and correlation explain the material universe. The law of Expansion is the movement of unity to variety; the law of Attraction is the return of variety to unity. In the world of mind the same analogy is apparent. The study of consciousness is psychology. Man is the microcosm of existence; consciousness, within a narrow focus, concentrates a knowledge of the universe and of God; psychology is thus the abstract of all science, human and divine. As in the external world, all phænomena may be reduced to the two great laws of Action and Reaction; so, in the internal, all the facts of consciousness may be reduced to one fundamental fact, comprising in like manner two principles and their correlation; and these principles are again the One or the Infinite,-the Many or the Finite, and the Connection of the infinite and finite.

In every act of consciousness we distinguish a Self or Ego, and something different from self, a Non-ego; each limited and modified by the other. These, together, constitute the finite element. But at the same instant when we are conscious of these existences, plural, relative, and contingent, we are conscious likewise of a superior unity in which they are contained, and by which they are explained;-a unity absolute as they are conditioned, substantive as they are phænomenal, and an infinite cause as they are finite causes. This unity is GOD. The fact of consciousness is thus a complex phænomenon, comprehending three several terms: 1°, The idea of the Ego and Non-ego as Finite; 2°, The idea of something else as Infinite; and 3°, The idea of the Relation of the finite element to the infinite. These elements are revealed, in themselves and in their mutual connection, in every act of primitive or Spontaneous consciousness. They can also be reviewed by Reflection in a voluntary act; but here reflection distinguishes, it does not create. The three Ideas, the three Categories of intelligence, are given in the original act of instinctive apperception, obscurely, indeed, and without contrast. Reflection analyses and discriminates the elements of this primary synthesis; and as Will is the condition of reflection, and will at the same time is personal, the Categories, as

obtained through Reflection, have consequently the appearance of being also personal and subjective. It was this personality of Reflection that misled Kant: caused him to overlook or misinterpret the fact of spontaneous consciousness; to individualise intelligence; and to collect under this personal reason all that is conceived by us as necessary and universal. But as, in the spontaneous intuition of reason, there is nothing voluntary, and consequently nothing personal; and as the truths which intelligence here discovers come not from ourselves; we are entitled, up to a certain point, to impose these truths on others as revelations from on high: while, on the contrary, reflection being wholly personal, it would be absurd to impose on others what is the fruit of our individual operations. Spontaneity is the principle of religion; Reflection of philosophy. Men agree in spontaneity; they differ in reflection. The former is necessarily veracious; the latter is naturally delusive.

The condition of Reflection is separation: it illustrates by distinguishing; it considers the different elements apart, and while it contemplates one, it necessarily throws the others out of view. Hence, not only the possibility, but the necessity, of error. The primitive unity, supposing no distinction, admits of no error; reflection in discriminating the elements of thought, and in considering one to the exclusion of others, occasions error, and a variety in error. He who exclusively contemplates the element of the Infinite despises him who is occupied with the idea of the Finite, and vice versa. It is the wayward development of the various elements of intelligence which determines the imperfections and varieties of individual character. Men under this partial and exclusive development are but fragments of that humanity which can only be fully realised in the harmonious evolution of all its principles. What Reflection is to the individual, History is to the human race. The difference of an epoch consists exclusively in the partial development of some one element of intelligence in a prominent portion of mankind; and as there are only three such elements, so there are only three grand epochs in the history of man.

A knowledge of the elements of reason, of their relations and of their laws, constitutes not merely Philosophy, but is the condition of a History of Philosophy. The history of human reason, or the history of philosophy, must be rational and philosophic. It must be philosophy itself, with all its elements, in all their

relations, and under all their laws, represented in striking characters by the hands of time and of history, in the manifested progress of the human mind. The discovery and enumeration of all the elements of intelligence enable us to survey the progress of speculation from the loftiest vantage-ground; it reveals to us the laws by which the development of reflection or philosophy is determined; and it supplies us with a canon by which the approximation of the different systems to the truth may be finally ascertained. And what are the results? Sensualism, Idealism, Scepticism, Mysticism, are all partial and exclusive views of the elements of intelligence. But each is false only as it is incomplete. They are all true in what they affirm; all erroneous in what they deny. Though hitherto opposed, they are, consequently, not incapable of coalition; and, in fact, can only obtain their consummation in a powerful Eclecticism—a system which shall comprehend them all. This Eclecticism is realised in the doctrine previously developed; and the possibility of such a catholic, such a perennial, philosophy was first afforded by the discovery of M. Cousin, made so long ago as the year 1817-" that consciousness contained many more phenomena than had previously been suspected."-Such is a summary of M. Cousin's system.

The present course is at once an exposition of these principles, as a true theory of philosophy, and an illustration of the mode in which this theory is to be applied, as a rule of criticism in the history of philosophical opinion. As the justice of the application must be always subordinate to the truth of the principle, we shall confine ourselves exclusively to a consideration of M. Cousin's system, viewed absolutely in itself. This, indeed, we are afraid will prove comparatively irksome; and, therefore, solicit indulgence, not only for the unpopular nature of the discussion, but for the employment of language which, from the total neglect of these speculations in Britain, will necessarily appear abstrusenot merely to the general reader.

Now, it is manifest that the whole doctrine of M. Cousin is involved in the proposition, that the Unconditioned, the Absolute, the Infinite, is immediately known in consciousness, and this by difference, plurality, and relation. The unconditioned, as an original element of knowledge, is the generative principle of his system, but common to him with others; whereas the mode in which the possibility of this knowledge is explained, affords its discriminating peculiarity. The other positions of his theory, as

deduced from this assumption, may indeed be disputed, even if the antecedent be allowed; but this assumption disproved, every consequent in his theory is therewith annihilated. The recognition of the Absolute as a constitutive principle of intelligence, our author regards as at once the condition and the end of philosophy; and it is on the discovery of this principle in the fact of consciousness, that he vindicates to himself the glory of being the founder of the new eclectic, or the one catholic, philosophy. The determination of this cardinal point will thus briefly satisfy us touching the claim and character of the system. To explain the nature of the problem itself, and the sufficiency of the solution propounded by M. Cousin, it is necessary to premise a statement of the opinions which may be entertained regarding the Unconditioned, (Absolute and Infinite), as an immediate object of knowledge and of thought.

These opinions may be reduced to four.-1°, The Unconditioned is incognisable and inconceivable; its notion being only negative of the Conditioned, which last can alone be positively known or conceived.—2°, It is not an object of knowledge; but its notion, as a regulative principle of the mind itself, is more than a mere negation of the Conditioned.-3°, It is cognisable, but not conceivable; it can be known by a sinking back into identity with the Infinito-Absolute, but it is incomprehensible by consciousness and reflection, which are only of the relative and the different.4°, It is cognisable and conceivable by consciousness and reflection, under relation, difference, and plurality.

The first of these opinions we regard as true; the second is held by Kant; the third by Schelling;* and the last by our author.

1. In our opinion, the mind can conceive, and consequently can know, only the limited, and the conditionally limited. The unconditionally unlimited, or the Infinite, the unconditionally limited, or the Absolute, cannot positively be construed to the mind; they can be conceived, only by a thinking away from, or abstraction of, those very conditions under which thought itself is realised; consequently, the notion of the Unconditioned is only negativenegative of the conceivable itself. For example: On the one hand

* [But not alone by Schelling. For of previous philosophers, several held substantially the same doctrine. Thus Plotinus : Έστι δὲ τὸ ὃν ἐνέργεια· μᾶλλον δὲ τὰ ἄμφω ἕν. Μία μὲν οὖν φύσις τό τε ὄν, ὅ τε νοῦς· διὸ καὶ τὰ ὄντα. Καὶ ἡ τοῦ ὄντος ἐνέργια καὶ ὁ νοῦς ὁ τοιοῦτος· καὶ αἱ οὕτω νοήσεις, τὸ εἶδος, καὶ ἡ μορφὴ τοῦ ὄντος, καὶ ἡ ἐνέργεια· κ. τ. λ. (Enn. V. l. ix. c. 8.)]