nothing, and whether a cause without an effect, or an effect without a cause, or sometimes one and sometimes the other. Has it ever been fairly considered, that the irregularity of the arrangement of the stars as seen by us, is conclusive that they are not infinitely distributed through space? The Milky Way, for instance, has observable bounds; but in things material contained in space, a bound anywhere to a part implies a bound somewhere to the whole; and beyond this ultimate bound is space without stars or other contents; but space without contents is nothing, or at least, only something that may be, will be, being only a parasite of matter, appearing and disappearing with it; but if there is no space, there is no place; and thus the primitive atom, protoplasm, or other entity as per nomenclatures, existing nowhere, hooked itself on to nothing, and thus became by degrees the visible world. around us. At any rate, we may leave it to those whom it may concern, that is, to those who take the materialistic view in all things, to account for the immense holes left in creation. But to resume we are peremptorily assured that what we have stated above are the sole means and sources, and the inexorable bounds of all we know or ever can know; and we are thus being gradually walled up, with a crust of bread and a pitcher of primitive water, and bidden to be thankful. Whatever the subject, whether the Invention of the Cross, or its disillusionation; whether the detection of the original protoplasm, or the determination of loose-lying æons into precise epochs, or the self-working of the preconscious into the conscious,* or the deadlock of the spiritual and molecular facts,† or the antique Fetish, Dheva, Deus, or Shining, improving itself into the God of the Sect called Christians, and then returning back to its earlier hyperhypostasis, there is nothing that is not so bounded; means and appliances beyond these are none; nothing anywhere, but what you call the victories of Science and Philosophy, but we find to be restlessness, monotony, failure. It is just the case and argument of the mouse that ran up the clock, to see what made it tick so, and then ran † Part 4, p. 27. * Part 4, p. 14. down again on its striking one; Μᾶς ὁδε ωρολογειον ἐφήλατο δεινοσοφίστης· Τοῦτο τορὼς ἐβραχ, “Εν.”· κ'αυθις όγ' ἀψ έδραμεν. The argument is briefly this-all our knowledge is derived from the senses; and the percepts, and therefore also the concepts of the senses, taken in their widest meaning, are in themselves finite; therefore there is to us no infinite; and we are all that is, therefore there is no infinite; and all beyond this is mere delusion and unrighteousness. Yet we may well be content, for we can construct all we want out of the finite, and have no need of the infinite, which we may take up or let alone at pleasure; and why then should it not be our pleasure to let it alone? But the infinite is always about our ways, and the thought of it will and does come to us continually, for good, for evil, or for nothing; and the dread of that nothing, is to the unprivileged worse than every thing. From this we seek relief, and for that purpose place ourselves under you, as teachers whom we highly revere, but do not in the least understand. Sometimes indeed we venture to confess, but always with a diffidence and humility at least equal to your own, that you seem to us to talk words; as when one of your Hierophants highly commends Epicurus as the wisest of men, for holding "that death is no concern of ours, because until it comes it is nothing, and when it comes we are nothing;" whereas it is only the coming that concerns us at all; for the present is the past the instant it comes; and so also in some of your happiest and most peremptory conclusions, some necessary considerations seem to be not very inconveniently dropped altogether, so that your Zopia, though doubtless always what she says she is, gains something of the look of her thread-dropping sister Amoσopia; as for instance, when you ask in a way far more imposing than any assertion, "Can that which is the cause of life and thought think and feel?" you take for granted that there was a cause of life and thought; whereas the entire contention is that there was none, because life is the cause of, and was before, all things; and again when you argue with so much force and vivacity, that the infinite cannot reveal itself to the finite, because the one is finite and the other infinitebut we will give your own position in your own words. Αριστον μὲν ὕδωρ. * The elements of all knowledge are positive facts, and there are no positive facts other than such as come in our way; and these come to us through the senses, but, "all that is supplied to us by the senses is finite, and whatever transcends this is a mere delusion. The word is well applied to several serial correlative concepts, but not to an absolute exclusive concept; if the senses tell us that all is finite, and reason draws all her capital from the senses, what right have we to speak of an infinite?"+ This may be found quoted with marks of high approval by divers very distinguished Comptistes and others, and it looked so smooth and fine at first sight, that we were almost caught. But what is that in us which receives ideas, and is conscious of these percepts? And what was it before those ideas and percepts, by which it became sensible of time and space and of things finite, came to it? for time is only succession, and space the multiplication of place. There must be something that perceives, before there can be percept. Has that something nothing in it subjective? Has it no life of its own? Are the ideas which visit it themselves life? Might we not just as well say that light is sight? Percepts are common to all with like organs of perception, but concepts vary in the individuals. The former in themselves are neither good nor evil, but are moulded into either by the concept, which is *Chief of nature's works divine, Water claims the foremost line.-West. This is the best and only translation that we remember at present, of the opening words of Pindar's first Olympian Ode. By water is to be understood, the original element of all things. Nature is called by implication, divine, through the Christian prejudices of the translator. In an evil hour, some one added on Water, water everywhere, And not a drop to drink. There is no definite article in Latin Grammar; but Latin Literature draws all her capital from this Grammar. Then what right have you to speak of a Greek definite & To, to a Latin scholar who is nothing but a Latin scholar, when the natural and just conclusion to him must be, that there is no oтo anywhere? ever on the watch, as the hawk for its quarry; then what is that which before the percept came, was, and was potentially good or evil, that is, possessed some primitive quality not yet associated with material things? Given for the sake of the argument, matter as a concrete reality, and the visible world as a compound of atoms, and we have at once an allowable serial concept of infinite atoms spread through infinite correlative spaces, the unattainable total concept of these last springing, so to speak, first and continually outwards from the four walls of the room in which we happen to be; and thus and so far as we have atoms or concepts of atoms, or parts and pieces to multiply or divide at pleasure, your position fairly holds. But is that all? Is there really nothing in this ever vexed world of ours, but what is subject to the law of these serial fancy-drawn parts and pieces? The word "spirit" conveys a sufficiently definite idea. By common consent founded on common experience, there is such a thing as spirit in or pertaining to man, and you yourselves do not say that there is not, but only that it is not what we take it to be. Be it then what it may, and suppose for the sake of the argument, that it is only a quickening of atoms bound up in certain integuments, which we call the body, and that when the integuments give way, that is, when the body dies, the spiritual atoms disperse, and there is no longer anything to quicken, or in other and your own words, when the "molecular fact" ends, the "spiritual" one, which during the natural life was always coming and going, sleeping and waking alternately, also ends with it, yet in the meantime, in itself, in its properties, modes, and actions, is there not in it something that does not always or necessarily savour of the finite? We take it for the present, as we have a right to do, at its best and highest, and free from the contagion of the grosser senses, and apart from the dull frivolities of common life. Being at one with the will, for they cannot be separated, though the latter may be acted upon from without, it works with the intellect as an instrument, or as a master directs it, but it is not one with it, nor does it at all resemble it. The intellect may be bright and clear, or dull and inapprehensive, and may suffer fatigue and weariness, but likes and dislikes, sorrow and gladness, are of the spirit only. The spirit receives, and is variously affected by ideas derived from the intellect, as well as from the senses, but this affection is apart and distinguishable from both of them. According to some, our ideas are the impressions or shadows of things that are or have been; and this is just where so many mistakes come from, and get made into patchwork counterpanes to cure agues; a mistake is made, and instead of being thrown away, is pieced on to another, and another, and another after that, and so on, and then the whole is stuffed with flock and emptiness, and made a show of, to conceal the want of good warm blankets within. A distant object is dimly discerned by two persons travelling together on the same road, and they both take it for the same thing, and then one of them shuts his eyes; the other on nearer approach and as they pass finds that it is really something else; but the one who shut his eyes has got into an argument and will not take his companion's word, and as the object cannot now be seen, ends as he began, by maintaining that it was what it was first taken for. Next, suppose ourselves to be Literary Inquirers desirous of learning the truth of the matter; in this conflict of evidence we could decide nothing; for there would be no reason whatever why we should not refuse to take the word of either, and determine that it was nothing at all; and indeed we should be bound so to do, because instruction, like bitter medicines, is no good unless well shaken, and here the more we shook the question, the more the object would disappear. Now it was the man that kept his eyes open, that was the cause of this embroglio, for if he had said nothing about it, we should have accepted what the blind man told us. True, he would have told us wrong; but it would not have been found out, and might in the end have answered all the purposes of truth. And this will be found to dispose of the Scriptural question, for good and all. But in all seriousness, the "eternal, not ourselves tending to righteousness," of a certain distinguished Free-lance, skirmishing apparently on his own account, for he neither leads |