stances ever pressing on the attention constrain men to proceed on their spontaneous principles, which are sound, even when the speculative principles are altogether infidel. He who is hungry will partake of food, he who sees an offensive weapon about to strike him will avoid it, even though they be not prepared to avow, as philosophers, that there are any such gross things as bread or iron in the universe, or though they may doubt, as metaphysicians, whether food be fitted to nourish, or a sword to kill. It is not in such urgent matters of animal comfort and temporal interest that scepticism is wont to manifest itself, but in far different subjects, and especially in leading persons to doubt of the great truths of morality and religion, the practical action in which is more under the control of the will. Even here there will be times when the spontaneous belief or impulse will overmaster the speculative unbelief, as when moral indignation, implying a belief in the reality of sin, is excited by a mean or dishonest action, or when disease has seized us, and death seems in hard pursuit, and threatens to hurry us to the judgment-seat. Such occasions will call forth the action of conscience, in spite of all efforts to repress it. But when there is nothing of this description to arouse the native feeling, unbelief may succeed in keeping us very much out of the way of all that would call the internal sentiment into activity, and for days, or weeks, or months together it may seldom arise to utter a protest or create a disturbance of any description; and, even when the deeper moral or religious powers come forth to assert their authority, there may be a vigorous, and, so far, a successful warfare waged with them; that is, they may be so far repressed as not to command the will, or lead to any practical operation. Hence the evil of scepticism, in chilling the ardour of youth, and confirming the hardness of age, in repressing every noble aspiration and every high effort, while it leaves the soul the servant or slave of the lower, the sensual, the ambitious, the proud, or the selfish impulses of the heart.

SECT. IV. ON THE CONDITIONED AND THE UNCONDITIONED.

Leibnitz complained of Sophie Charlotte of Prussia that she asked the why of the why. There are some truths in regard to

which we are not warranted to ask the why. They shine in their own light; and we feel that we need no light, and we ask no light, wherewith to see them, and any light which might be brought to aid would only perplex us. In all such cases the mind asks no why, and is amazed when the why is asked; and feels that it can give no answer, and ought not to attempt an answer. Other truths may be known only mediately, or by means of some other truth coming between as evidence. I need no mediate proof to convince me that I exist, or that I hold an object in my hand which I call a pen; but I need evidence to convince me that there are inhabitants in India, or that there is a cycle of spots presented in the sun's rotation. In regard to this class of truths I am entitled-nay, required to ask the why. Not only so; if the truth urged as evidence is not self-evident, I may ask the why of the why, and the why of that why, on and on, till we come to a self-evident truth, when the why becomes unintelligible. Now we may say of the one class of truths that they depend (to us) on no condition, and call them Unconditioned; whereas we must call the other Conditioned, for our rational nature demands another truth as a condition of our assenting to them.

But this is not precisely what is meant, or all that is meant, by conditioned and unconditioned in philosophic nomenclature. We find that not only does one 'truth depend on another as evidence to our minds, but one thing as an existence depends on another. Everything falling under our notice on earth is dependent on some other thing as its cause. All physical events proceed from a concurrence of previous circumstances. All animated beings come from a parentage. But is everything that exists thus a dependent link in a chain which hangs on nothing? There are intellectual instincts which recoil from such a thought. There are intuitions which, proceeding on facts ever pressing themselves on the attention, led to a very different result. By our intuitive conviction in regard to substance, we are introduced to that which has power of itself. True, we discover that all mundane substances, spiritual and material, have in fact been originated, and have proceeded from something anterior to them. But then intuitive reason presses us on, and we seek for a cause of that cause which is

furthest removed from our view.' Pursuing various lines, external and internal, we come to a substance which has no mark of being an effect; to a substance who is the cause, and, as such, the intelligent cause, of all the order and adaptation of one thing to another in the universe; who is the founder of the moral power within us, and the sanctioner of the moral law to which it looks, and who seems to be that of Infinite Existence to which our faith in infinity is ever pointing, and now the mind in all its intuitions is satisfied. The intuitive belief as to power in substance is satisfied; the intuitive belief in the adequacy of the cause to produce its effects is satisfied; the native moral conviction is satisfied; and the belief in infinity is satisfied. True, every step in this process is not intuitive or demonstrative there may be more than one experiential link in the chain ; but the intuitive convictions enter very largely; and when experience has furnished its quota, they are gratified, and feel as if they had nothing to demand beyond this One Substance possessed of all power and of all perfection.

If we would avoid the utmost possible confusion of thought, we must distinguish between these two kinds of conditioned and unconditioned; the one referring to human knowledge, and the discussion of it falling properly under Gnosiology; the other to existence, and so falling under Ontology. The conditional, in respect of knowledge, does, if we pursue the conditioned sufficiently far, conduct at last to primary truths, which are to us unconditioned. These are the first truths which we have been seeking to seize and express in this treatise. We cannot be made to think or believe that these primary truths should not be positive truths, and regarded as truths by all other beings capable of comprehending them. But it is to be carefully remarked, and ever allowed, that some of those truths which are original and independent to us, may be seen by higher intelligences to be dependent on, or to

1 It is a favourite principle with Aristotle that there cannot be an infinite series of causes; see, in particular, Metaph. 1. Minor, 11., where he supports his doctrine by very subtle reasoning. The principle has been sanctioned by most profound thinkers; see Clarke, Demons. of Being and Attrib. of God, II., where the proposition is supported by very doubtful metaphysics. I am inclined to think we come to the principle by finding that in following various lines we come to a stop; particularly, in following substance and quality, we come to self-existent substance; see Supra, p. 239.

be necessarily interlinked with, other truths. We may by patient induction ascertain what are to us unconditioned truths; but it would be presumptuous in us to pretend to determine what truths are so in themselves, and are seen to be such by the omniscient God. Again, as to conditioned and unconditioned existence, it is quite clear that nothing falls under our notice in this world which is absolutely unconditioned. But the intuitive convictions of the mind, proceeding on a few obvious facts, lead us by an easy process to an unconditioned Being-that is, whose existence depends on no other.1

But the question is started, Can we conceive the Unconditioned? Of truth unconditioned to us we can conceive. It consists, in fact, of that body of truths on which we are ever falling back in the last resort, in other words, of those original perceptions and principles which I have been seeking to unfold in this treatise. But can we conceive of unconditioned existence? I find no difficulty in doing so. Our intellectual and moral convictions are not satisfied till we reach underived being. I admit the word "uncorditioned" is negative, it implies merely the removal of a condition. But we remove the condition, because we come to cases where our intuitive reason does not insist on it, and where our intuitive perceptions rest on underived existence. Pursuing any one of our native convictions, cognitive, fiducial, judicial, or moral, it conducts us to, and falls back on an object of whom we have a positive conception, that he is a Being from whom all conditions are removed, and whose existence and perfections are themselves underived, while they are the source of all power and excellence in the creature.

SECT. V.-(SUPPLEMENTARY.)—THE ANTINOMIES OF KANT.

Kant tries to show that the speculative reason conducts to propositions which are contradictory of each other (Kritik d. r. Vern. p. 338). It follows that it cannot be trusted in any of its enunciations. Kant extricates himself from the practical difficulties in which he was thereby involved, by declaring that the

1 The above may seem to some rather a prosaic account of a subject which has been lost in such high and dim speculations. But the question is, Is it the correct version? It seems rather an arbitrary use of language on the part of Sir W. Hamilton (Metaph. Lect. 38) to make the Unconditioned a genus including two species, the Infinite and Absolute. When the Unconditioned is referred to, let us always understand whether it means unconditioned in thought or existence.

speculative reason was not given to lead us to positive objective truth, and by appealing from it to the practical reason. It is, however, always competent to the sceptic to maintain that, if the speculative reason deceive us, so also may the practical reason. The doctrine which I hold is, that the reason does not lead directly nor consequentially to any such contradictions. In regard to some of the counter-propositions, Reason seems to me to say nothing on the one side or the other. In regard to others, there seem to be intuitive convictions, but the contradiction arises from an erroneous exposition or expression of them. It is of course easy, on such abstruse subjects, to construct a series of propositions which may seem to be contradictory, or in reality be contradictory—if they have a meaning at all. But these propositions will be found not to be the expression

of the actual decisions of the mind. Let us examine the contradictions which are supposed to be sanctioned by reason. I am to content myself with looking at the propositions themselves, without entering on the elaborate demonstrations of them by Kant. These demonstrations proceed on the peculiar Kantian principles in regard to phenomena, space, time, and the nature of the relations which the mind can discover, and these I have been seeking to undermine all throughout this treatise. It will be enough here to show that Intuitive Reason sanctions no contradictions on the topics to which Kant refers.

FIRST ANTINOMY.

The world has a beginning in time, and is limited in regard to space.

The world has no beginning in time, and no limits in space, but is in regard to both infinite.

Now upon this I have to remark, first, that as to the "world," we have, so far as I can discover, no intuition whatever. We have merely an intuition as to certain things in the world, or, it may be, out of the world. Our reason does declare that space and time are infinite, but it does not declare whether the world is or is not infinite in extent and duration. We shall find under another antinomy what is our conviction as to God. Reason does not declare that space or time, or the God who inhabits them, must be finite.

SECOND ANTINOMY.

Every composite substance consists of simple parts, and all that exists must either be simple or composed of simple parts.

No composite thing can consist of simple parts, and there cannot exist in the world any simple substance.

Our reason says nothing as to whether things are or are not made up of simple substances. Experience cannot settle the question started by Kant in one way or other. We find certain things composite: these we know are made up of parts; but we cannot say how far the decomposition may extend, or what is the nature of the furthest elements reached.

THIRD ANTINOMY.

Causality, according to the laws of nature, is not the only causality operating to originate the phenomena of the world; to account for the phenomena we must have a causality of freedom.

There is no such thing as freedom, but everything in the world happena according to the laws of nature.

Here I think reason does sanction two sets of facts. One is the existence of freedom the other is the universal prevalence of some sort of causation, which may differ, however, in every different kind of object. These may be so stated as to be contradictory. But our convictions in themselves involve no contra

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