however, may both be reduced to the law itself of the Conditioned.*

The Conditioned is, therefore, that only which can be positively conceived; the Absolute and Infinite are conceived only as negations of the Conditioned in its opposite poles.

Now, as we observed, M. Cousin, and those who confound the Absolute and Infinite, and regard the Unconditioned as a positive and indivisible notion, must show that this notion coincides either, 1°, with the notion of the Absolute, to the exclusion of the Infinite; or 2°, with the notion of the Infinite, to the exclusion of the Absolute; or 3°, that it includes both as true, carrying them up to indifference; or 4°, that it excludes both as false. The last two alternatives are impossible;† as either would be subversive of the highest principle of intelligence, which asserts, that of two contradictories, both cannot, but one must, be true. It only, therefore, remains to identify the unity of the Unconditioned with the Infinite, or with the Absolute-with either, to the exclusion of the other. But while every one must be intimately conscious of the impossibility of this, the very fact that our author and other philosophers a priori have constantly found it necessary to confound these contradictions, sufficiently proves that neither term has a right to represent the unity of the unconditioned, to the prejudice of the other.‡

The Unconditioned is, therefore, not a positive concept; nor has it even a real or intrinsic unity; for it only combines the Absolute and the Infinite, in themselves contradictory of each other, into a unity relative to us by the negative bond of their inconceivability. It is on this mistake of the relative for the irrespective, of the negative for the positive, that M. Cousin's theory is founded and it is not difficult to understand how the mistake originated.

This reduction of M. Cousin's two Ideas of the Infinite and

* [See Appendix I. (A) for the applications of that doctrine.]

+ [The Absolutists, however, find it necessary to assert it; which they do more or less explicitly. Thus Cusa (Opera, pp. 3, 4, 26, 66, &c.); Bruno (De Minimo, p. 17, et alibi). And to speak only of the more recent: Schelling (Akad. Stud., p. 127, and ninth letter of the Briefe ueber Dogmatismus); Hegel (Krit. Journal, vol. ii. pp. 159, 160.) These references might be indefinitely multiplied.]

[The first three cases had, indeed, been realised in the Eleatic school alone. The first by Parmenides, the second by Melissus, the third by Xenophanes. The fourth has not, I presume, been explicitly held by any philosopher; but the silent confusion of the Absolute and Infinite has been always common enough.]

Finite to one positive conception and its negative, implicitly annihilates also the third Idea, devised by him as a connection between his two substantive ideas, and which he marvellously identifies with the relation of Cause and Effect.

Yet before leaving this part of our subject, we may observe, that the very simplicity of our analysis is a strong presumption in favour of its truth. A plurality of causes is not to be postulated, where one is sufficient to account for the phænomena, (Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem): and M. Cousin, in supposing three positive ideas, where only one is necessary, brings the rule of parsimony against his hypothesis, even before its unsoundness may be definitely brought to light.

In the third place, the restrictions to which our author subjects intelligence, divine and human, implicitly deny a knowledge— even a concept-of the Absolute, both to God and man." The condition of intelligence," says M. Cousin, " is difference; and an act of knowledge is only possible where there exists a plurality of terms. Unity does not suffice for conception; variety is necessary; nay more, not only is variety necessary, there must likewise subsist an intimate relation between the principles of unity and variety; without which, the variety not being perceived by the unity, the one is as if it could not perceive, and the other, as if it could not be perceived. Look back for a moment into yourselves, and you will find, that what constitutes intelligence in our feeble consciousness, is, that there are there several terms, of which the one perceives the other, of which the other is perceived by the first in this consists self-knowledge,-in this consists self-comprehension,-in this consists intelligence: intelligence without consciousness is the abstract possibility of intelligence, not intelligence in the act; and consciousness implies diversity and difference. Transfer all this from human to absolute intelligence; that is to say, refer the ideas to the only intelligence to which they can belong. You have thus, if I may so express myself, the life of absolute intelligence; you have this intelligence with the complete development of the elements which are necessary for it to be a true intelligence; you have all the momenta whose relation and motion constitute the reality of knowledge."In all this, so far as human intelligence is concerned, we cordially agree; for a more complete admission could not be imagined, not only that a knowledge, or even a notion, of the Absolute is impossible for man, but that we are unable to conceive the possibility

-

of such cognition, even in the Deity, without contradicting our human conceptions of the possibility of intelligence itself. Our author, however, recognises no contradiction; and, without argument or explanation, accords a knowledge of that which can only be known under the negation of all difference and plurality, to that which can only know under the affirmation of both.

If a knowledge of the Absolute were possible under these conditions, it may excite our wonder that other philosophers should have viewed this supposition as utterly impossible; and that Schelling, whose acuteness was never questioned, should have exposed himself gratuitously to the reproach of mysticism, by his postulating for a few, and through a faculty above the reach of consciousness, a knowledge already given to all in the fact of consciousness itself. Monstrous as is the postulate of the Intellectual Intuition, we freely confess that it is only through such a faculty that we can imagine the possibility of a science of the Absolute, and have no hesitation in acknowledging that if Schelling's hypothesis appear to us incogitable, that of Cousin is seen to be self-contradictory.

Our author admits, and must admit, that the Absolute, as absolutely universal, is absolutely one; absolute unity is convertible with the absolute negation of plurality and difference; the Absolute, and the Knowledge of the Absolute, are therefore identical. But knowledge or intelligence, it is asserted by M. Cousin, supposes a plurality of terms-the plurality of subject and object. Intelligence, whose essence is plurality, cannot therefore be identified with the Absolute, whose essence is unity; and if known, the Absolute, as known, must be different from the Absolute, as existing; that is, there must be two Absolutes-an Absolute in knowledge, and an Absolute in existence which is contradictory.

But waiving this contradiction, and allowing the non-identity of knowledge and existence, the Absolute as known must be known under the conditions of the Absolute as existing, that is, as absolute unity. But, on the other hand, it is asserted that the condition of intelligence, as knowing, is plurality and difference; consequently the condition of the Absolute, as existing, and under which it must be known, and the condition of intelligence, as capable of knowing, are incompatible. For, if we suppose the Absolute cognisable: it must be identified either

1° with the subject knowing; or, 2 with the object known; or, 3, with the indifference of both. The first hypothesis, and the second, are contradictory of the absolute. For in these the Absolute is supposed to be known, either as contradistinguished from the knowing subject, or as contradistinguished from the object known; in other words, the Absolute is asserted to be known as absolute unity, i.e. as the negation of all plurality, while the very act by which it is known affirms plurality as the condition of its own possibility. The third hypothesis, on the other hand, is contradictory of the plurality of intelligence; for if the subject and the object of consciousness be known as one, a plurality of terms is not the necessary condition of intelligence. The alternative is therefore necessary :-Either the Absolute cannot be known or conceived at all; or our author is wrong in subjecting thought to the conditions of plurality and difference. It was the iron necessity of the alternative that constrained Schelling to resort to the hypothesis of a knowledge in identity through the Intellectual Intuition; and it could only be from an oversight of the main difficulties of the problem, that M. Cousin, in abandoning the Intellectual Intuition, did not abandon the Absolute itself. For how that whose essence is allcomprehensive unity, can be known by the negation of that unity under the condition of plurality; how that which exists only as the identity of all difference, can be known under the negation of that identity, in the antithesis of subject and object, of knowledge and existence:-these are contradictions which M. Cousin has not attempted to solve,-contradictions which he does not seem to have contemplated.

In the fourth place.-The objection of the inconceivable nature of Schelling's Intellectual Intuition, and of a knowledge of the Absolute in identity, apparently determined our author to adopt the opposite, but suicidal, alternative,-of a knowledge of it in consciousness, and by difference.-The equally insuperable objection, that from the Absolute defined as absolute, Schelling had not been able, without inconsequence, to deduce the Conditioned, seems, in like manner, to have influenced M. Cousin to define the Absolute by a relative; not observant, it would appear, that though he thus facilitated the derivation of the Conditioned, he annihilated in reality the Absolute itself. By the former proceeding, our author virtually denies its possibility in thought; by the latter, its possibility in existence.

C

The Absolute is defined by our author, "an absolute cause,a cause which cannot but pass into act."-Now, it is sufficiently manifest, that a thing existing absolutely (i.e. not under relation), and a thing existing absolutely as a cause, are contradictory. The former is the absolute negation of all relation; the latter is the absolute affirmation of a particular relation. A cause is a relative, and what exists absolutely as a cause, exists absolutely under relation.* Schelling has justly observed, that "he would deviate wide as the poles from the idea of the Absolute, who would think of defining its nature by the notion of activity."† But he who would define the Absolute by the notion of a cause, would deviate still more widely from its nature; inasmuch as the notion of a cause involves not only the notion of a determination to activity, but of a determination to a particular, nay, to a dependent, kind of activity,-an activity not immanent, but transeunt. What exists merely as a cause, exists merely for the sake of something else,-is not final in itself, but simply a mean towards an end; and in the accomplishment of that end, it consummates its own perfection. Abstractly considered, the effect is therefore superior to the cause. A cause, as cause, may indeed be better than one or two or any given number of its effects. But the total complement of the effects of what exists only as a cause, is better than that which, ex hypothesi, exists merely for the sake of their production. Further, not only is an absolute cause dependent on the effect for its perfection,-it is dependent on it even for its reality. For to what extent a thing exists necessarily as a cause, to that extent it is not all-sufficient to itself; since to that extent it is dependent on the effect, as on the condition through which alone it realises its existence; and what exists absolutely as a cause, exists therefore in absolute dependence on the effect for the reality of its existence. An absolute cause, in truth, only exists in its effects: it never is, it always becomes; for it is an existence in potentia, and not an existence in actu, except through and by its effects. The Absolute is thus, at best, something merely inchoative and imperfect.

[Πᾶν αἴτιον, ὡς αἴτιον, διανοίᾳ ληπτὸν τυγχάνει ἐπί τινος, καὶ πρός τι νοεῖται· κ. τ. λ. (Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom. L. viii., p. 785, ed. 1688.) See also Maimonides (More Nevochim, P. I., c. 69) in reference to the Meddabarim or Mahommedan sect of Speakers in the Law; and Ænesidemus in Sextus Empiricus, passim.]

+ Bruno, p. 171.