Ontology, once in time, he endeavoured to save liberty itself; and, through liberty, morality, by a distinction between the phenomenal self of consciousness, and a real self of which we are not conscious. The self of consciousness, he said, is a phenomenon existing in time; and, as such, is necessarily determined by antecedent phenomena. If, then, phenomena were things in themselves, freedom would be impossible. But beyond the field of consciousness there must exist a transcendental self, the ground and support of the phenomena; and to this transcendental subject, as under no conditions of time, we may legitimately attribute a power of self-determination, or free causality. To this attempted solution obvious objections may be raised. In the first place, it may be urged that our real personal existence is the existence of consciousness; and no higher guarantee of reality can be admitted. The self of consciousness is the true self; that which is beyond consciousness, if such can be supposed, is in this case the phenomenon.

In the second place, we are not compelled in thought to postulate the existence of any transcendental self at all; for consciousness itself presents the permanent subject of its own phenomena. In the third place, liberty is so far from being incompatible with consciousness, that it is directly given in consciousness itself; for I am immediately conscious that the temporal antecedents of my volition exercise no coercion upon it. Kant's solution is, in fact, the very reverse of the truth—it is the self of consciousness which is really free: the hypothesis of necessity can only be maintained by the gratuitous supposition of a law of causality beyond consciousness, by which I am determined without knowing it. Such a perversion of the truth, on the part of so profound a thinker, can only be explained as a consequence of that suicidal position maintained as a canon of psychology by the philosophers of the last century; namely, that I have no immediate consciousness of myself, but only of my successive mental states,—a position which can only be described as one among many pernicious results of that reaction of physical upon mental science which, under the abused name of inductive philosophy, was permitted to poison with its crude analogies the very fountain and source of philosophy itself. The same consciousness which tells me that I am compelled to believe in the existence of a material world when I am not directly conscious of it, tells me also that I am directly conscious of myself, and that I exist in and by that consciousness. To overlook the distinction thus clearly laid before us is to confound with each other the two poles of speculative philosophy, the subject with the object, the necessary with the contingent, the permanent with the transitory, the ego with the non-ego.

Beyond the attributes manifested by consciousness as essential to personality, the ontology of the soul has no province. It cannot assume those attributes as the basis of any further demonstration; for the principles of demonstration are inapplicable to real objects. Neither the simplicity of the soul nor its immortality can be demonstrated as a necessary truth; for they are not implied in the conception of personality, and beyond that conception we have no intuition of necessary relations. The favourite representation of the soul as a simple substance, indivisible, and therefore indestructible, is one which, except so far as it is synonymous with continuous existence in time, is either untrue or unmeaning. If interpreted to mean that the conception of personality comprehends only a single attribute, it is untrue; if intended to state that the soul is not composed of parts coadjacent in space, it is unmeaning, except on the principles of materialism. A material atom is an intelligible expression, whether the object which it denotes is conceivable as really existing or not. A mental atom is as utterly unmeaning as the opposite expression of a mind composed of atoms. Immortality, again, however surely guaranteed upon other grounds, cannot be represented as a necessary attribute of personal existence. That which did not exist once, may, without any absurdity, be supposed not to exist hereafter. The power which was sufficient to create is also sufficient to destroy; and if man is destined to exist for ever, it is from no inherent immortality of his own, but solely because such is the will of his Maker. That we are designed for a future life, may indeed be inferred from the direct testimony of consciousness, in so far as it reveals the existence within us of feelings and principles which do not find their full satisfaction in this life; but this inference, however legitimate, does not fall within the province of metaphysics.

Of the Real in Theology.

In treating of the third branch of ontology, that of rational theology, it is necessary to take a different course from that adopted by the majority of those metaphysicians who have attempted theological reasoning at all. In the number of these, however, we cannot include those philosophers, whose systems, however veiled under the language of theism, or even of Christianity, exhibit a conception of the Deity which virtually amounts to pantheism. A personal God cannot be identified with all existence; and an impersonal Deity, however tricked out to usurp the attributes of the Godhead, is no God at all, but a mere blind and immoveable law or destiny, with less than even the divinity of a fetish, since that can at least be imagined as a being who may be offended or propitiated by the worshipper. But, however much we may sympathize with the purpose of those philosophers who have endeavoured to demonstrate, a priori, the existence and attributes of a personal God, we cannot help feeling that such demonstrations, whatever may be their apparent logical validity, carry no real conviction with them to the believer or to the unbeliever. And the reason of this is not far to seek. No demonstration from conceptions can prove the real existence of the object conceived; and, till this is done, the demonstration of the attributes of a hypothetical object proves no more than the connection between certain thoughts in our own minds. The actual existence of an object can never be shown by thinking about it; for imaginary objects are as capable of being represented in thought as real ones. Reality must be tested, not by thought, but by intuition; we must be able to point to certain facts of consciousness in which the object of which we are in search is actually presented before us; or, at least, which can only be accounted for on the supposition that such an object exists. But this

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1 See only legitimate argument from the simplicity of the soul to its immortality is of a purely negative character. We are not authorized to say that we know the soul to be simple, and that therefore it is indestructible; but only that we do not know the soul to be compound (indeed, that the epithets compound and simple, as applied to the soul, have no meaning), and, therefore, that we cannot infer its mortality from the analogy of bodily dissolution. And this is, for the most part, the limit within which the argument is confined by one of the soberest as well as deepest of thinkers, the admirable Bishop Butler. The majority of philosophers, however, have not seen so far in their reasoning.

2 See Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B. III., Hauptsatz, S. The same grounds of objection are also applicable to other reasonings of this kind. Compare Waterland's Dissertation on the Argument a priori for a First Cause.

3 See ante, p. 602. argument from the facts of intuition is not *a priori*, but *a posteriori*: it does not commence with a general conception, in order to exhibit by analysis the subordinate conceptions comprehended in it, or to construct in imagination a corresponding object; but it starts from certain facts of experience, manifested in the outer or inner consciousness, in order to determine the nature of the object which those facts present or point out to us.

We must therefore begin our inquiry by asking, What are the facts of consciousness which appear directly to indicate the existence of a spiritual being superior to ourselves? Two of the intuitions of the internal consciousness appear especially to possess this character—the feeling of dependence, and the sense of moral obligation. To these must be added, as an indirect and collateral witness, the consciousness of limitation, which, by suggesting, though not immediately presenting, the unlimited as its correlative, serves in some degree to interpret and connect the other two. The argument from causation, though holding an important place among the evidences of natural religion, can hardly be placed among those direct indications of consciousness which come within the legitimate province of metaphysics. We are immediately conscious, indeed, of the necessity of supposing a phenomenal antecedent to every event; but we are not immediately conscious of a necessity of conceiving that the series of phenomena is limited or unlimited. Nay, rather, we are conscious of two counter inabilities, which hinder us from conceiving either an absolutely first cause, or an absolutely unlimited series of causes and effects. We have thus two contradictory hypotheses, one of which must be believed, though neither can be comprehended; and the evidence of reason being thus neutralized, we are bound to adopt that alternative which is most in harmony with the remaining testimony of consciousness. But, in so doing, we obey a moral, not an intellectual obligation; and our conviction, as far as the argument from causation alone is concerned, is not that of reason, but that of faith. The conclusion from the evidences of design in the works of creation, which is but a special form of that from causation, is likewise not an immediate suggestion of consciousness, but the gradual product of experience and comparison, arguing by analogy from what we have learned concerning the works of man to what we may infer concerning the works of God. Such arguments have great value in their own place, as illustrative of, and auxiliary to, the convictions forced upon us by our religious and moral instincts; but they are based upon reflection, not upon intuition; and, though they may serve to enlarge our conception of the Deity when once formed, they do not explain its origin and formation.

The province of the metaphysical theologian is confined to those evidences which belong to the direct testimony of the intuitive consciousness, as manifested in the feelings of dependence and moral obligation. The feeling of dependence is something very different from the mere recognition of the relation of subject to object in consciousness, and of the consequent limitation of the one by the other. It is a feeling that our welfare and destination are in the hands of a superior Power; not of an inexorable fate or immutable law, but of a Being having at least so far the attributes of Ontology, personality that He can show favour or severity towards those dependent upon him, and can be regarded by them with the feelings of hope and fear and reverence and gratitude, and be addressed in the words of prayer and praise. It is a feeling similar in kind, though higher in degree, to that which is awakened in the mind of the child by his relation to his parent, who is first manifested to his mind as the giver of such things as are needful, and to whom the first language he addresses is that of entreaty. With the first development of consciousness, there grows up, as a part of it, the innate feeling that our life, natural and spiritual, is not in our own power to prolong or to sustain; that there is One above us on whom we are dependent, whose existence we learn, and whose presence we realize, by the sure instinct of prayer. That this feeling is natural to us, is manifested by the universal practice of mankind—every nation, however degraded may be its form of religion, having some notion of a superior being, and some method of propitiating his favour. We have thus, in the sense of dependence, the psychological foundation of one great element of religion—the fear of God.

But the mere consciousness of dependence does not in itself exhibit the character of the Being on whom we depend. It is as consistent with superstition as with true religion—with the belief in a malevolent as in a benevolent deity; it is as much, if not more, called into exercise by the painful and terrible aspects of nature as by the pleasing and encouraging. It indicates the power of God, but not necessarily his goodness. This deficiency, however, is supplied by the other psychological element of religion, the consciousness of moral obligation. It is impossible to maintain, as Kant has attempted to do, the theory of an absolute autonomy of the will; that is to say, of an obligatory law resting on no basis but its own imperative character. The will, or practical reason, with its law of immutable obligation, is in itself a fact of the human constitution, and it is no more. Kant's fiction of an absolute law, binding upon all rational beings whatever, has only an apparent universality; because we can only conceive other rational beings by identifying their constitution with our own, and making human reason the measure and representative of reason in general. Why, then, has one part of my constitution, as such, an imperative authority over the remainder? What right has one part of the human consciousness to represent itself as duty, and another merely as inclination? There is but one answer possible. The moral reason, or will, or conscience—call it by what name we please—of man, can have no authority, save as implanted in him by some higher spiritual being, as a law emanating from a lawgiver. Man can be a law unto himself only on the supposition that he reflects in himself the law of God. If he is absolutely a law unto himself, his duty and his pleasure are undistinguishable from each other; for he is subject to no one, and accountable to no one. Duty itself becomes, in this case, only a higher kind of pleasure—a balance between the present and the future, between the smaller and the larger gratification. We are

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1 The counter arguments on either side are exhibited by Kant, in his first antinomy of pure reason. The same conclusion, however, is evident, without argument, from the direct testimony of consciousness. For to conceive an absolutely first member of the causal series is to conceive a beginning of all time, and thus to be conscious of a relation of time to an object out of time, and therefore out of consciousness; and to conceive an infinite series of causes and effects, we must carry our thought through an infinite succession of objects—a process which would require an infinite time to complete.

2 In consequence of not distinguishing between these two, Schleiermacher (Christliche Glaube, sect. 4) has fallen into the error of representing our relation to the world as a feeling of partial dependence, and our relation to the Deity as one of absolute dependence. Thus represented, God can no longer be conceived as a person, but is nothing more than the world magnified to infinity; and the feeling of absolute dependence becomes the annihilation of our personality in the being of the universe. Of this feeling, the Intellectual exponent is pantheism.

3 See Metaphysik der Sitten (Abschn. II., pp. 61, 71, ed. Rosenkranz). Thus refusing to acknowledge an intuition of God as a moral lawgiver, Kant is compelled to rest the evidence of the existence of the Deity on an assumed necessity of rewarding men according to their deserts, a necessity which implies an all-wise judge who can estimate merit in every degree. For an able criticism of Kant's theory, see Müller, On the Christian Doctrine of Sin (vol. I., p. 73, of the English translation). Ontology, thus compelled, by the consciousness of moral obligation, to postulate a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the moral nature of that Deity. The conception of this standard in the human mind may indeed be faint and fluctuating, and must be imperfect; it may vary with the intellectual and moral culture of the nation or the individual; and in its highest human representation it must fall far short of the reality. But it is present in all mankind, as a basis of moral obligation and an inducement to moral progress; it is present in the universal consciousness of sin—in the conviction that we are offenders against God. However degrading may be the practices into which men have fallen, under systems of false religion, it may be safely asserted that no man, and no nation of men, ever consciously deluded vice as such. The voluptuous deities of the pagan mythology were deified as regards their enjoyments, not as regards their vices: their acts were contemplated as divine, not because they were breaches of morality, but because the worshipper falsely conceived them to be ingredients of happiness. The god of a nation of savage warriors may delight in revenge and bloodshed; but the supposed divinity of his acts does not consist in their cruelty: they are attributed to him because their infliction is an evidence of superiority; perhaps, also, because their endurance is a test of heroism. Even the worship of an evil principle is a worship of power, not of vice. He causes vice in man, but he is not himself vicious; for he transgresses no higher obligation of his own nature; and, even thus, he is not, in the proper sense of the term, God; for his worship implies no obligation to obey. The Deity, however falsely conceived, still represents a moral standard in the minds of his worshippers: the idea of the perfect goodness of God, as implied in the imperfect goodness of man, may be corrupted and degraded, but is never wholly extinguished. The consciousness of right and wrong, of duty and disobedience, even in its most perverted form, involves the consciousness of a being to whom duty and obedience are due; whose nature, however imperfectly represented, is necessarily conceived as moral; and whose commands, emanating from that nature, are manifested in the authority which they communicate to the moral principle in man.

But though we have thus the direct testimony of consciousness to the existence of a superior being, on whom our life and welfare depend, and from whom our moral obligations emanate, the being thus manifested does not yet realize the full idea of the Deity. For neither in dependence nor in moral obligation can we have an immediate intuition of the Infinite. The dependent is not absorbed in that on which it depends: the consciousness of our personal existence is not annihilated when we feel its relation to a higher power. Self and not-self still divide the universe of existence between them; and neither can be regarded as exhausting it. But that which coexists with the finite cannot be itself conceived as infinite; otherwise the infinite and the finite together must be conceived as greater than the infinite. Nor yet can the finite be conceived as merged in the infinite; for this would be to conceive myself as existing and not existing at the same time. In like manner, it is impossible to conceive an infinite moral nature; for each moral attribute, as coexisting with others, limits and is limited by the rest; and the very conception of morality implies law, and law is itself a limitation. Yet, on the other hand, we cannot escape from the conviction that the infinite does in some manner exist, and exists, though we know not how, along with the finite; and though we can form no positive conception of its nature, we cannot regard the limits of our conception as the limits of all possible existence. We know that, unless we admit the existence of the infinite, the existence of the finite is inexplicable and self-contradictory; and yet we know that the conception of the infinite itself appears to involve contradictions not less inexplicable. In this impotence of reason we are compelled to take refuge in faith, and to believe that an infinite being exists, though we know not how, and that he is the same with that Being who is represented in consciousness as our sustainer and our lawgiver. For the contradictions involved in the denial of the infinite are positive, and definitely self-destructive; as we directly conceive the universe as limited, and yet as limited by nothing beyond itself; whereas the contradictions involved in the assumption that the infinite exists are merely negative, and might be soluble in a higher state of intelligence; as they arise merely from the impotence of thought, striving to reduce under the conditions of conceivability that which is beyond its grasp. Thus they are not contradictions manifested in the infinite itself, but only limitations in our power of comprehension. We are compelled, therefore, by reason, as well as by faith, to acknowledge that the infinite must exist; though how it exists, reason strives in vain to fathom, and faith rests content with the duty of believing what we cannot comprehend.

Hence we are compelled to admit that theology as well as cosmology, viewed as a branch of philosophy, is not a true ontology, but only a higher kind of phenomenology. We believe in the existence of an infinite God; and we know also that we cannot conceive Him as infinite. Our

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1 The theory which places the standard of morality in the Divine nature must not be confounded with that which places it in the arbitrary will of God. On the latter, see the remarks of Sir James Mackintosh, Second Dissertation, ante, vol. i., p. 312; and of Millar, Christian Doctrine of Sin, vol. i., p. 95. God did not create morality by His will; it is inherent in His nature, and coeternal with Himself; nor can He be conceived as capable of reversing it. But God did in some sense create human morality, when He created the moral constitution of man, and placed him in certain circumstances, such as those of mortality, of property, of sexual relations, &c., by which the eternal principles of morality are modified during this present life. On the foundation of morality in the nature of God, see Cudworth, Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, b. i., ch. iii.; b. iv., ch. iv. vi.

* Schleiermacher (Christliche Glaube, sect. 4, 5) maintains a different view. He resolves the religious consciousness into a feeling of absolute dependence, in which the consciousness of our own individuality and activity in relation to a distinct object of consciousness disappears in that of a passive relation to the infinite God. In this view he is followed by Mr. Morell, who says that man, "in the presence of God who is self-existent, infinite, and eternal, may feel the sense of freedom utterly pass away, and become absorbed in the sense of absolute dependence." (Philosophy of Religion, p. 75.) Without dwelling on the difficulties and apparent contradictions involved in the notion of an absolute dependence which is the reverse of independence, it may be said that this view appears to be open to one fatal objection; namely, that it makes our moral and religious consciousness subservient of each other, and reduces us to the dilemma that either our faith or our practice must be founded on a delusion. The actual relation of man to God is the same, in whatever degree, as may be conscious of it. If man's dependence upon God is really not destructive of his personal freedom, the religious consciousness, in denying that freedom, is a false consciousness. If, on the contrary, man is in reality passively dependent upon God, the consciousness of moral responsibility, which bears witness to his free agency, is a lying witness. When Schleiermacher assumes the existence of three degrees of consciousness,—1. That of the infant, in which there is no conscious distinction of the subject from its object; 2. The middle state of distinct relation between self and not-self; and 3. The highest or religious consciousness, in which the relation again disappears,—he overlooks the fact that the second and third are not successive stages in the mental development, but must alternate with each other during a single life, one preceding over his moral duties, and the other over his religious feelings. On what ground is one of these states to be regarded as higher than the other, except in so far as it more truly reveals to us our actual state in the sight of God, as free or absolutely dependent? And as this state must be always the same, whether we are conscious of it or not, it follows, that in proportion as one of these states reveals to us the truth, the other must be regarded as testifying to a falsehood. Ontology, highest conception of the Deity is still bounded by the conditions which bound all human thinking, and therefore cannot represent the Deity as He is, but only as He appears to us. Such a representation, though sufficient for all the practical purposes of religion, is unable to satisfy in full the demands of a philosophical curiosity. But a sounder and more sober philosophy will tell us why these demands cannot be satisfied;—why the highest problems of speculative theology must and ought to be abandoned as insoluble. It tells us that our whole consciousness is relative, and therefore cannot comprehend the absolute; that our whole consciousness is limited, and therefore cannot comprehend the infinite. It tells us that a comprehended infinite could be no infinite at all; for comprehension itself is a limitation; and the unlimited must necessarily be the incomprehensible. To know God as He is, man must himself be God. The pantheist accepts this position, and identifies the Divine mind with the universal consciousness of mankind. The theist accepts it also, and is content to worship where he cannot understand.

If this limitation of philosophical theology be admitted, the ground of many a controversy, and the root of many a heresy, is cut from under it at the very commencement of inquiry. In acknowledging the existence, and at the same time the incomprehensibility, of the infinite, we at once confess that we have sufficient grounds for belief, but not for theory. If we have no conception of the infinite attributes of God as such, we may not so interpret those attributes as to place them in antagonism, either to the direct testimony of consciousness, or to the plain language of Scripture; nor yet, on the other hand, can we distinctly show their compatibility with either, though we are bound to believe it. How, for example, can we reconcile man's free-will with God's foreknowledge? Rather, why should we attempt to do so, when in the attempt we must needs substitute our limited conception of the Divine nature for that nature as it is. We know not how an infinite intelligence contemplates succession in time; we know not whether his consciousness is subject to the law of succession at all. Eternity, in relation to the Divine mind, may be, as the schoolmen called it, a **nunc stans**, in which there is neither past, nor present, nor future. Foreknowledge may be merely a means of accommodating the representation of Divine omniscience to human faculties. To speculate in any direction,—to adopt a theory of *scientia media* on the one hand, or of absolute predestination on the other,—is to deify our own ignorance; to make the human conception the measure of the Divine reality. Why, again, cannot we conceive infinite power as undoing that which is already done. If the sun has risen this morning, why can we not conceive that even Omnipotence can now cause that it shall not have risen? Simply, because we cannot conceive infinite power at all;—the limitation is not of omnipotence in itself, but of all power as the object of human thought. How, again, can we reconcile the exercise of two Divine attributes with each other? How can infinite mercy pardon every sin, and yet infinite justice exact the utmost penalty? How can we tell, when we can conceive justice and mercy only in their finite forms, as they are capable of existing in human consciousness? It is obvious how the same principles may be applied to controversies concerning those deeper mysteries of the Christian faith which rest on the evidence of revelation only. But into this sacred ground it would be foreign to our present argument to enter.

**OF THE REAL IN MORALITY.**

The ontology of morals is subject to the same limitations with that of religion. If the standard of perfect and immutable morality is to be found only in the eternal nature of God, it follows that those conditions which prevent man from attaining to a knowledge of the infinite as such, must also prevent him from attaining to more than a relative and phenomenal conception of morality. And, in truth, man's moral, like his religious consciousness, will vary according to his state of mental and moral culture: he may have higher or lower ideas of duty, as he may have higher or lower ideas of God. But it does not, therefore, follow, as was maintained by the sophists of old, that each man is the measure of all things to himself, and that morality is nothing more than the law which any man or nation chooses to enact for a certain time within a certain sphere. The very expressions, a *higher* and a *lower* standard, imply that there are degrees of right and wrong, even in relative and phenomenal morality;—that one human conception of duty may be more perfect than another, even if none can attain to absolute perfection. There is such a thing as an enlightened and an unenlightened conscience; though no man may presume to say that his own conscience has attained to the greatest amount of enlightenment of which even human nature is capable. It is a mark of the progressive character of natural morality and religion, that no new advance in knowledge contradicts the *principles* which have previously been acknowledged by the conscience; however much it may modify the particular acts by which those principles are to be carried out. To be zealous in God's service is a principle of religious duty common to Saul the persecutor and to Paul the apostle; though its result in action is at one time to destroy the faith, and at another to preach it. And it is a mark of the same character, that each fresh advance in moral and religious knowledge carries with it the immediate evidence of its own superiority, and takes its place in the mind, not as a question to be supported by argument, but as an axiom to be intuitively admitted. Each principle of this kind recommends itself to the minds of all who are capable of reflecting upon it, as true and irreversible as far as it goes; though it may represent but a limited portion of the truth, and be hereafter merged in some higher and more comprehensive formula. The principles, for example, that virtue, relatively to the human constitution, consists in observing a mean between two extremes, or in promoting the good of others, or in a reasonable self-love, all represent views containing a portion of truth; though none can be considered as exhausting the whole truth. While human nature is complex in itself, and susceptible of various relations and various duties arising out of those relations, it is not to be expected that all human virtue should be reducible to a single attribute, or capable of expression in a single formula. Yet its general character is not therefore doubtful, because it admits of being viewed in various special relations. Two men who differ in their definition of virtue will yet generally be agreed

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1 So far from it, that the above ground is constantly taken by the antagonists of the sophistical doctrine, for the express purpose of refuting it. Thus Plato, in the Dialogue especially devoted to the refutation of the dogma of Protagoras, that "man is the measure of all things," asserts that some portion of evil must needs exist in our mortal nature, and that we must endeavour to escape from it by an imitation, according to our power, of the Divine justice and holiness. (Plato, p. 176.) And Aristotle, after stating, as opposed to his own view, the sophistical position that all justice is conventional and variable, remarks, —καὶ ἐν τῇ πράξει τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἡ ἀληθής ἀρετή ἀναγνοῦσθαι μετὰ τῆς ἀναγνώσεως. (Eth. Nic. v. 7.) Even the comic poet, in his Dialogue between the Unjust and the Just Discourse, representing respectively the sophists and their antagonists, puts into the mouth of the latter the same argument:

ΑΔ. ἐνδέχεται γὰρ ἂν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀρετή ἀναγνοῦσθαι μετὰ τῆς ἀναγνώσεως. ΑΙ. ὅτι τοῦτο ἔστιν ἀληθὲς. ΑΔ. ἐνδέχεται γὰρ ἂν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀρετή ἀναγνοῦσθαι μετὰ τῆς ἀναγνώσεως. ΑΙ. ὅτι τοῦτο ἔστιν ἀληθὲς. (Aristoph. Nubes, 902.) Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his," expresses the conviction of one who, though far from righteous himself, was yet compelled to acknowledge the existence of a higher human standard than his own rule of conduct. "As much as it has been disputed," says Bishop Butler, "wherein virtue consists, or whatever ground for doubt there may be about particulars; yet, in general, there is in reality an universally acknowledged standard of it. It is that which all ages and all countries have made profession of in public: it is that which every man you meet puts on the show of: it is that which the primary and fundamental laws of all civil constitutions over the face of the earth make it their business and endeavour to enforce the practice of upon mankind—namely, justice, veracity, and regard to common good."

Nevertheless, there is an useful lesson to be drawn from the frequent fluctuations of men's moral theories, as well as from the general agreement of their practical confessions. It is not unusual for philosophers to reason as if they were possessed of an absolute, and not merely of a relative standard of morals—as if they had attained to the conception of eternal morality, as it exists in the nature of God, instead of to that temporary modification of it which is adapted to a particular state of the constitution, and stage of the progress, of man. The works in which Kant and Fichte have attempted to construct an a priori criticism of revelation, upon moral grounds, are remarkable instances of this departure from the limits of all sound philosophy. Both assume that the sole purpose of revelation must be to teach men morality; and both assume that the morality thus taught must be identical to the minutest particular with the system attained by human philosophy—which last is supposed to be absolutely infallible. Hence Kant maintains that the revealed commands of God have no religious value, except in so far as they are approved by the moral reason of man; and Fichte lays down, among the criteria of a possibly true revelation, that it must contain no intimation of future reward or punishment, and must enjoin no moral rules which cannot be deduced from the principles of the practical reason. Whereas, in truth, the principles of the practical reason are susceptible of additional enlightenment with every stage of man's progress in this life (and it may be also with every stage of his progress in the life to come), and revelation, in two sentences, has conveyed to us a principle of human morals, which the philosophy of ages had toiled after in vain, and which the philosophy of a later day has been content to borrow without acknowledgment, and to pervert in attempting to improve—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."

OF THE REAL IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF TASTE.

With the ontology of morals is not unfrequently associated that of taste. The good and the beautiful were in the Greek language often expressed by the same word; and are by many regarded as alike expressing absolute and immutable principles, equally independent of human opinion, and equally objects of philosophical inquiry. But, in truth, the object of the so-called philosophy of aesthetics appears, even in its highest form, to have far less of an absolute and immutable character than belongs to the objects of metaphysical inquiry, even within the limits to which they have been confined in the preceding pages. The beauty of an object appears to depend, not so much on the character of the object itself, as on the feeling of pleasure which it excites in the spectator; and this, again, on the accidents of his present constitution. This appears to be the case even with the moral beauty of an action, when that quality is viewed apart from the other ingredients of its moral character. The consciousness that a certain action is morally pleasing to me is not necessarily connected with that of its moral rectitude; though the two have frequently been confounded together in the various theories concerning the moral sense. But it is easy to conceive that moral obligation might remain undiminished, even if no gratification were derivable from the observance of it; while, on the contrary, it seems impossible to conceive the existence of an obligation to be pleased, apart from the apprehension of the moral character of the act. The beauty of sensible objects appears to exhibit still more fully the marks of a merely phenomenal and relative character. A slight change in the shape and refractive power of the eye would alter all our perceptions of the form and colour of objects, and, with them, the impressions of beauty and deformity derived from this source. And if the senses themselves are confined to the apprehension of phenomena, how can the beauty of the objects of sense lay claim to a higher character? Can we then assert that sensible beauty is a reflection and imitation of ideal beauty, even in the same manner and degree in which our perceptions of moral duty aim at and imply a divine standard of right and wrong? Even the fluctuation in the opinions of various individuals and nations, though far from being a decisive criterion in any case, appears to be acknowledged by the general sense of mankind to be a test more conclusive in questions of taste than in those of truth or rectitude. The very name taste seems to imply something subjective, and, to a considerable extent, arbitrary. The maxim, "De gustibus non disputandum est," may be the exaggerated expression of a popular conviction; but, at any rate, it carries no such shock to the natural feelings of mankind, as does the sophistical assertion that the distinctions between truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, are based on convention, and not on nature. Nor is it difficult to detect the foundation of truth which underlies the exaggeration. The maxim is true, in so far as it virtually asserts that beauty is subjective, not objective; an affection of the person who is conscious of it, existing only in and by that consciousness, not a permanent quality, existing in things, and capable of being expressed by a general notion. But it is exaggerated, in so far as it apparently denies the existence of a common sense of beauty, among men of cultivated minds, by virtue of which similar affections will be produced in different minds by the same object. But this admission, while it saves the standard of taste from the

1 See Bishop Butler's Sermon on the Character of Balanus. 2 See Kant's Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, and Fichte's Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung. 3 See Kant's criticism and attempted explanation of these precepts, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, B. I. Hauptst. iii. (p. 209, ed. Rosenkranz). 4 See especially M. Cousin's Lectures, Du Vrai, du Bon, et du Bien, where absolute beauty is referred to the same Divine standard with absolute goodness and absolute truth: and so Hutcheson entitles his treatise An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. 5 See Kant, Kritik der Urtheilkraft, sects. 1, 6, 15. (Werke, iv., pp. 46, 56, 76.) The sublime, as well as the beautiful, is admitted by Kant to be not a quality of things, but a feeling of our superiority over nature. (Ibid., sect. 28, p. 122.) 6 See Kant, Kritik der Urtheilkraft, sect. 17. (Werke iv., p. 81.) 7 See Kant, Kritik der Urtheilkraft, sects. 6, 22. Kant resolves the feeling of beauty into an indefinite consciousness of fitness with reference to an end (Zweckmassigkeit), but without the representation of any definite end. He admits, however, that this consciousness is merely subjective, and that there can be no objective rule, capable of determining beauty by conceptions. charge of arbitrariness and instability, at the same time removes the philosophy of taste from the province of ontology, and limits it to a psychological investigation of those relations between the imagination and the understanding which give rise to the consciousness of beauty in an object actually present.

CONCLUSION.

We have thus indicated, rather than discussed, some of the manifold aspects of the great fundamental problem, which, various in its external forms, but one in its real import, has stimulated the researches of thoughtful men in all ages, under the names, used for the most part synonymously, of First Philosophy, Ontology, or Metaphysics—the problem, namely, to distinguish that which is from that which seems to be. Whether we look to its earliest definite statement, in the dogma of Parmenides, that being is one and unchangeable, and that variety exists only in the fancy of men; or to the boast of Zeno, that he would explain all things if there were only given to him the one;—whether we examine Plato's conception of the science of dialectic, as that which contemplates real existence by the aid of the pure intellect, illuminated by the brightness emanating from the essential form of good; or ask the question which the same philosopher describes as embracing at once the deepest mysteries of philosophy and the pettiest quibbles of sophistry, How can the one be many, or the many one;—whether we adopt Aristotle's definition of the first philosophy, as the science which contemplates being as being, and the attributes which belong to it as such; or, with Descartes, assume the fact of our own personal existence, manifested in consciousness, as the one primary and indubitable truth;—whether, with Leibnitz, we regard the sensible world as composed of an aggregate of unextended monads or metaphysical points; or, with Kant, divide objects into noumena and phenomena, things as they are in themselves and things as they are related to human faculties; or, with Fichte, postulate the existence of an absolute self, implied by, though not given in consciousness; or, with Schelling, attempt by intellectual intuition to reach the point of indifference in which the relations of subject and object are merged in the identity of both; or, with Hegel, found a philosophy on the hypothesis of an absolute thought, identical with absolute being, and susceptible of development into the various modes of personal and impersonal finite existence; or, with Herbart, find a common object of all metaphysical inquiries in the solution of the contradictions which present themselves in experience—in all these, and other different statements, we recognise only verbal varieties of one and the same fundamental distinction—a distinction which, however perverted in artificial systems, must have a natural origin in the human mind; which must be given in one mode of consciousness, or else it could not have been invented in any.

We have endeavoured to ascertain the primary and representative fact of consciousness in which this distinction is given,—a fact upon which all the secondary and representative varieties of it must be based; and thus to fix the limits within which a science of real being is possible, and beyond which it cannot be carried. This fact seems to be discoverable in the relation between a permanent self and its successive modifications, which forms the condition of all human consciousness. If this be admitted, ontology, in the highest sense of the term, becomes identified with psychology; and the future task of the metaphysician will consist in exhibiting the conditions involved in the idea of personal existence, and solving the difficulties to which that idea appears to give rise. To attempt to accomplish this task in detail would require a far greater space, and a more minute examination, than is possible within the reasonable limits of an article like the present. We must content ourselves with having pointed out the fact that such problems exist, and stated the reasons for believing that they are not to be abandoned as insoluble.

Beyond the range of personal existence we have no positive conception of real being, save in the form of those more permanent phenomena which constitute our general conceptions of certain objects, as distinguished from the transitory phenomena with which those conceptions are at certain times associated. Here ontology is but a higher kind of phenomenology: its object is not a thing in itself, but a thing as we are compelled to conceive it; and to attempt to give to this branch of philosophy a more absolute character is to substitute negative ideas for positive,—to desert thoughts, and to take refuge in words which have no real meaning, save in relation to a different mode of consciousness. We do not, therefore, attempt to solve the higher problems of cosmology and theology, nor even to indicate the conditions under which they might be solved. But we have attempted to show why they are insoluble, and what is the origin of that delusion which has led men in various ages to fancy their solution possible, and to devise systems for accomplishing it. The failures of great minds are often not less instructive than their successes; and the time that is spent in wandering among the mazes of metaphysical speculation will not be wholly lost, if it teach us that knowledge which it is the end and aim of all sound philosophy to inculcate,—the knowledge of ourselves and of our faculties; of what we may and what we may not hope to accomplish; of the laws and limits of reason; and, by consequence, of the just claims of faith.

(II. L. M.)

1 See Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, sect. 34.