and suicidal to urge the difficulties connected with space and time as a reason for setting aside our intuitive convictions respecting them, say in regard to their reality. Doubtless we are landed in some perplexities by allowing that they are real, but we are landed in more hopeless difficulties and in far more serious consequences, when we deny their reality; and there is this important difference between the cases, that in the one the difficul ties arise from the nature of the subject, whereas in the other they are created by our own unwarranted affirmations and speculations. But what are space and time? is the question that will be pressed on us. To this I reply, that it is true of them, as of the objects of every other intuitive conviction, that we cannot explain them except by referring to our original perception. All that has been attempted in this section is to bring out clearly what is involved in the intuition. But it will be asked, Are they substances, are they modes, or are they relations? To this I reply, that these questions relate not so much to the nature of space or time as the classification of them, and that they are not to be classified with substances, modes, or relations. We cannot call them substances, for we do not know that they have power or action. Nor can we call them modes, for we have no intuitive knowledge of any substance in which they inhere. And they are certainly more than relations of one thing to another, for we know no two or more things which by their relation could yield space and time. They are not then to be arranged with such cognitions as these. They seem indeed to be entitled to be put in a class by themselves, and resemble substances, modes, relations, only in that they are existences, entities, realities. Certain mystical divines and philosophers are accustomed to 1 Leibnitz held space and time to be relations given to objects by the mind. "Je tenois l'Espace pour quelque de PUREMENT RELATIF, comme le Temps; pour un ORDRE DE COEXISTENCE, comme le Temps est un ORDRE DE SUCCESSIONS" (Op. p. 752. See also pp. 756, 769, 461). He speaks of space and time as being "rapports," and as "idéal." Leibnitz thus prepared the way for the more systematic doctrine of Kant. Samuel Clarke argues powerfully that space and time are realities, but makes them attributes, properties, or modes, of an eternal substance (see his Letters to Leibnitz). D. Stewart, with his usual wisdom, says that 'space is neither substance, nor an accident, nor a relation;" adding, "But it does not follow from this that it is nothing objective" (Dissert. p, 596). speak of space and time as having no reality to the Divine mind. It follows, I think, that if they have no reality to the God who knows all truth, they can, properly speaking, have no reality at all. If our convictions testify (as I have endeavored to show) that they have a reality, it follows, I think, that they have a reality to the Divine mind. Again, there are some who talk of an Eternal Now: "Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an Eternal Now does ever last." These verses of Cowley embody, as definitely as can be done, a view which was countenanced by certain expressions of Augustine, and systematized in the scholastic ages, and which has ever since been floating in the statements of divines in speaking of God and Eternity and Time. But the language has either no meaning, or if it has, it lands us in hopeless contradictions. It would have been very different if divines had contented themselves with stating that they do not know how space and time stand related to the Divine mind. We are here in the midst of a mystery, which we have no faculties to clear up. We know that space and time exist; we know on sufficient evidence that God exists but we have no means of knowing how space and time stand related to God. There may be truth in the statement of Joannes Damascenus, that "God is his own place, filling all things, and being over all things, and Himself containing all things," but how much truth cannot be determined by the limited mind of man.' The view taken by Sir Isaac Newton-" Deus durat semper et adest ubique, et, existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit,"—is certainly a grand one, but I doubt much whether human intelligence is entitled to affirm dictatorially that it is as true as it is sublime. It is by placing the subject beyond the human faculties that we are able to meet an objection urged with great logical power by Kant, and usually thought to be insuperable.' If space and time be real and infinite, then we have two infinites; and if God be 1Ο θεὸς ἑαυτοῦ τόπος ἐστι, τὰ πάντα πληρῶν, καὶ ὑπερ τὰ πάντα ὤν, καὶ αὐτος συνέχων τὶ πάντα (De Orthod. Fid. Ι. 13). 2 Scholium at close of Phil. Nat. Prin. Math. 3 Kritik d. r. Vern. Die transcen. Esthet. also infinite, our difficulties are increased. For it is absurd, if not contradictory, to suppose that there can be two infinite thingsthat God can be infinite while space and time are also infinites. Now to this I might without the possibility of a positive refutation, urge, firstly, that there may, for aught we know, be nothing inconsistent in supposing that there are two things, as space and time, the one unbounded and the other without beginning or end, and that there can even be nothing contradictory in supposing that space and time on the one hand, and God on the other, may have infinite attributes. They could be held as contradictory only in the supposition that the existence of unbounded space and unending time were, in the nature of things, inconsistent one with another or with the existence of an infinite God; which it may safely be said can never be proven. As to how they could subsist together, is a question we are not obliged to answer, for we must believe many separate truths, each on its evidence, without being able to trace a connexion, or so much as to say that there is a how between them. But I plant myself on far firmer ground, when I maintain, secondly, that while I believe that space and time are infinite, and that God is infinite, I am not necessarily obliged to hold that the infinity of space and time is independent of the infinity of God. Who will venture to affirm that the statement we have quoted from the great Newton may not be true? Who will venture to affirm that space and time, being dependent on God, may not stand in a relation to God, which is altogether indefinable and utterly inconceivable by us? True, we are constrained to believe that space and time have an existence independent of us, but we are not compelled to believe that they have an existence independent of everything else, and least of all independent of God; we must keep ourselves from falling into the heathen sin of deifying Chronos. In such a subject, where we have no light from intuition or from experience to guide us, true wisdom shows itself in refusing to assert or dogmatize, or even to speculate; and when it has observed this rule for itself, it is the better able to rebuke doubt and scepticism, when they would bring forth their difficulties from regions which are beyond the reach of human knowledge. CHAPTER III. THE INFINITE. THE subject now opening before us is a profound one. In meditating upon it we feel as we do when we look into the blue expanse of heaven, or when from a solitary rock we gaze on a shoreless ocean spread all aronnd us. The topic has exercised the profoundest minds since thought began the attempt to solve the problems of the universe, and has been specially discussed since Christian theology made men familiar with the idea of an eternal and omnipresent God. All that I profess to do is to endeavour to discover by induction what is the mind's idea and conviction in regard to infinity. A priori cogitation is not to be tolerated in its proffered determinations of what our idea of Infinity should be or must be. Logical dissection and division, instead of aiding, may only lead us into hopeless difficulties. Lofty generalizations embracing all other objects, may have no application to an object which from its very nature must be sui generis. I. TWO NEGATIVE PROPOSITIONS may be established. (a.) The mind can form no adequate apprehension of the infinite, in the sense of image or phantasm. In saying so, I do not mean merely that we cannot construct a mental picture of the infinite as an attribute. Of no quality can the mind fashion a picture; it cannot have a mental representation of transparency, apart from a transparent substance, and just as little can it picture to itself infinity apart from an infinite duration, or infinite extension, or an infinite God. But it is not in this sense simply that the mind cannot apprehend the infinite, it cannot have before it an apprehension of an infinite object, say of an infinite space, or an infinite God. For to image a thing in our mind is to give it an extent and a boundary. When we would imagine unlimited space, we swell out an immense volume, but it has after all a boundary, commonly a spherical one. When we would picture unlimited time, we let out an immense line behind and before, but the rope is after all cut at both ends. When we would represent to ourselves almighty power, we call up some given act of God, say creating or annihilating the universe; but after all, the work has a measure, and may be finished. In the sense of image, then, the mind cannot have any proper apprehension of infinity as an attribute, or of an infinite object. (b.) The mind can form no adequate logical notion of an infinite object. For apprehension may be considered as an act of the understanding as well as a mere act of the phantasy. We can conceive, we can think about much, which we cannot image. We can meditate and reason about such things as law, government, duty, religion, while yet we can form no mental picture of them. The grand question in this discussion is, Can we form an intellectual notion of an infinite object, say of an infinite God? And I feel constrained to admit and maintain that human intelligence can form no proper or adequate conception of an infinite existence. By what process can it be supposed to construct such a conception? Certainly not by abstraction, for abstraction separates, takes away, diminishes. It is just as certain that it cannot compass this end by generalization, for generalization merely groups objects by attributes known, and unless we have infinity first in the individual, we cannot have it in the general. Nor can we reach it by addition, multiplication, composition; these will give the enlarged, but not the unlimited a distance of a quintillion of quintillions of years, or ages, has as distinct a termination as an ell or an inch. Nor can the understanding attain it by a process of ratiocination, for unless the infinite were in the premiss, no canon of reasoning would justify its having a place in the conclusion. If the intelligence does not find the infinite in the perception with which it sets out, it never could fashion it by cutting or carving, by construction or supraposition. So much may be allowed to those British philosophers who have |