MODERN SECULAR PHILOSOPHY.

What has it done for religion? I will exemplify it by only two or three examples.

HUME.

Hume and Gibbon were, and still are, our best historians. Neither Carlyle nor Macaulay have come up to the mark. A true philosophy of history is a desideratum devoutly to be wished for; that is, a history connecting all events as effects, as judgments, proceeding from their great first cause, and thereby teaching the manner by which God governs the world.

Hume borrowed his philosophy from Plato. Ideas, said Plato, "are the only realities." Hence Hume said, Ideas are the only things I know. I do not see my soul. I doubt even my own consciousness! How, then, can I see myself? An external world is a blank, a nothing-my very senses tell me nought but lies! If all this be true, what, then, is man? what, then, is God? He died as he lived—an atheist. Hume never understood how he apprehended power in any cause. He saw that balls moved "to and fro," but that was all! Cause and effect, he said, were nothing more than a succession of events, like "thoughts, which in quick succession rise." But how absurd, seeing he disbelieved the existence of an external world! Sir W. Hamilton indorsed this mistake, and said, "Hume settled this truth for ever!" The human will has power. It is thus in itself a first finite cause. It sets the first ball in motion-this is an effect. Here we have our first notion of power in cause. Hence, from internal experience, we justly infer that every effect must have its own necessary cause. This was St Paul's first proof that verily there is a God, Rom. i. 20. The first ball strikes another-the first ball thus becomes a secondary cause, and so on, ad infinitum. We learn this by intuition, said Hume, and so also said Dr Thomas Brown. No, said Kant; "it is a pure à priori conception of the mind." Thus, when doctors differ, how can they possibly agree. Sir W. Hamilton's eulogium of Hume was certainly entirely out of place. Hume's latter end is its best contradiction.

"Mr Hume patronised the opinion, that the notion of causality is the offspring of experience engendered upon custom. But those have a sorry insight into the philosophy of that great thinker, who suppose that this was a dogmatic theory of his On the contrary, in his hands, it was a mere reduction of dogmatism to absurdity by shewing the inconsistency of its results. To the Lockian sensualism, Hume proposed the

own.

problem-to account for the phenomenon of necessity in our notion of the causal nexus. That philosophy afforded no other principle through which even the attempt at a solution could be made; and the principle of custom, Hume shews, could not furnish a real necessity. The alternative was plain. Either the doctrine of sensualism is false, or our nature is a delusion. Shallow thinkers adopted the latter alternative, and were lost; profound thinkers, on the contrary, were determined to lay a deeper foundation of philosophy than that of the superficial edifice of Locke; and thus it is that Hume became the cause or the occasion of all that is of principal value in our more recent metaphysics. Hume is the parent of the philosophy of Kant, and, through Kant, of the whole philosophy of Germany; he is the parent of the philosophy of Reid and Stewart in Scotland, and of all that is of pre-eminent note in the metaphysics of France and Italy."

KANT.

Kant doubted the truth of the testimony of consciousness to our mental unity, and to our mental identity. He, however, admitted the fact of the testimony of consciousness in perception; but what of that, when he held that the existence of an external world was no proof of the being of God! How could he, who doubted the identity of his own mind, believe in the existence of his Creator? His great error consisted in his rejection of all empirical knowledge. Pure reason, of itself, and by its own power, creates what he called "conceptions," such as 2+2 = 4. This, said he, is a general and universal truth, which is not dependent on experience in any degree whatsoever. But if this be true, is it not as clear that his "pure reason must of itself have necessarily conceived his very God! A conception is a creation of the mind; it springs out of it as Pallas sprang out of Jupiter's head. "God" is a "conception," therefore the mind creates its God! Again, nullus in sensu, nullus intellectu, holds for ever good. An infant knows not its right hand from its left. Hence the mind, without experience, could not possibly learn the simplest truth. The brain is the Ego's diagram, from which all its knowledge springs. The Ego is a unit by itself. How, then, could it, without experience, discover number two? It cannot see even its own brain; but the eye sees two arms, two hands, each having five fingers, also two fe, having each five toes; hence it perceives 1+1=2, t'. 5+510, 10+10=20. This I call empirical knowledge. The Ego's conception" is a simple judgment of pure reason, resulting from comparison. Hence our decimal table. Why is it that the mind cannot concept 21+21=434 at a glance?

D

It requires to reason out the result before it can form a judgment. No marvel that Dr Strauss became Kant's high priest. Kant was the great-grandfather of German neology! Drs Colenso and Renan have only lately joined this awkward squad.

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.

My space will only allow a few remarks on what Sir William called the Regulative Faculty. He adopted Kant's notions regarding "Conceptions," and shewed that the power by which the mind originates cognitions is simply the faculty usually called common sense, Pascal called it intuition. No philosopher ever denied that the mind has this power, yet it was only of recent date that the criterion was explicitly announced by which the native cognitions might be discriminated from the adventitious elements of knowledge. Those which originate in the mind "are not cognisable by themselves; they lie hid in the profundities of the mind until drawn from their obscurity by the mental activity itself (acting) upon the materials of experience." This is perfect mysticism. Did Sir William mean to say that the notion of number two, three, and four, &c., preexisted in the mind before the mind saw them exemplified in objects actually before its eyes? If so, all knowledge which is called a priori must have been also pre-existent, and, as Plato said, memory is only reminiscence of what the mind had known in its former state! Hence Sir William said, "That our knowledge has its commencement in sense external or internal, but its origin in intellect." This is downright nonsense. Again, "the derivative cognitions are of our own fabrication-we form them after certain rules." If these rules also pre-existed in the mind, what need is there for logical teaching? Again, "these cognitions are the tardy result of Perception, Memory, Attention, Reflection, and Abstraction." Sir William leaves out comparison, and judgments following thereon. Again, "The primitive cognitions, on the contrary, seem to leap ready armed from the womb of reason, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter; sometimes the mind places them at the commencement of its operations in order to have a fixed basis, without which the operations would be impossible; sometimes they form the crowning of all the intellectual operations." It would have been well had Sir William given examples to enable his ⚫ reader to understand what he really meant. His language is unintelligible. Again," The derivative or generalised notions are an artifice (?) of the intellect, an ingenious means of giving order to the materials of our knowledge." What are these "materials" if they are not derivative? Again, "The primitive and general notions are the root of all principles, the founda

tion of the whole edifice of human science." Sir William here first confounds those things which he said were different, and in the next place unites them into one root, out of which spring all those native principles which arise in the mind itself, and, as he said at first, originate therein. All this may be very profound, but it is scarcely intelligible. But to come to the point-" Leibnitz was the first who properly distinguished betwixt native cognitions or conceptions of the mind and those which are derived from experience." His criterion was "necessity," that is, "the impossibility not to think so and so." This simple criterion was the greatest discovery in the science of mind of which modern times can boast. 'Necessary truths," said Leibnitz, "such as we find in pure mathematics, arithmetic, and geometry, behove to have principles, the proof of which does not depend on examples, and, consequently, not on the evidence of sense, howbeit without the senses we should never have found occasion to call them into consciousness. This is what it is necessary to distinguish acccurately, and it is what Euclid so well understood in demonstrating from reason what is sufficiently apparent by experience and sensible images, logic, metaphysics, and morals, the one of which constitutes natural theology, the other, natural jurisprudence, are full of truths, and consequently their proof can only be derived from internal principles, which we call innate. It is true that we ought not to imagine that we can read in the soul these eternal laws of reason, ad aperturam libri, as we can read the edict of the prætor without trouble or research, but it is enough that we can discover them in ourselves by dint of attention, when the occasions are presented to us by the senses. The success of the observation serves to confirm reason in the same way as proofs serve in arithmetic to obviate erroneous calculations when the computation is long. It is hereby that the cognitions of men differ from those of brutes. The beasts are purely empirical, and only regulate themselves by examples; for, as far as we can judge, they never attain to the formation of necessary judgments; whereas men are capable of demonstrative sciences, and herein the faculty which brutes possess of drawing inferences, is inferior to the reason which is in them." It is truly delightful to read Leibnitz's lucid remarks, they are so superior to those of Sir William, who seemed inclined rather to confound than instruct his pupils.

If the innate powers of the mind be so great, and its intuitions be so truthful, why has it been subjected to the senses at all? These seem to be rather hindrances than helps to the mind, and yet, without empirical knowledge, human progress would seem an absolute impossibility. God has so ordained it for good, for how else could the mind be better instructed in the.

knowledge of its beneficent Creator? Nature is a diagram to the soul-it is a divine revelation. Every time we open our eyes we see God in nature's finite form. Every day the scene is changed the world to us is not always the same-our very friends in whom we delight are not the same. They may have left their habitation, or the place that once knew them knoweth them no more. It is a chequered scene in all its parts. A look in one direction fills the soul with joy; anon the soul is saddened, and there is none to soothe the sorrows of the bursting heart! "This is not our rest, it is polluted!" Still there remain enough of blossoms to teach us a lesson never to despair. "God still gives us fruitful seasons, and all things richly to enjoy "-for God is love. The mind is only kept more strictly to its first physical lesson, that it might learn it thoroughly. All nature teaches nought but God. Its first lesson is its Alpha and Omega-A, B, C. Space is a mighty tablet, on which is inscribed, by God's own finger, his fixed physical laws. _Number is innumerable; it tells of all Gods mighty acts. Time is ever on the wing! Be diligent, for behold it flies! ah, never to return! Now is the day of salvation! Now is the acceptable time! What is true science? It teaches men God's perfect law manifested in all his works. Mark the justified man, and behold him who is upright! He is like a circle, his soul is its central "point." His radii are all straight lines of thought. They never vary from the truth! What though the circumference of his thought be limited; he, like the smallest twinkling star, can shed his rays on earth to guide some helpless mariner when he is tempest-tossed, without helm or compass to lead him back to the gates of everlasting light! What is secular science? It is knowledge without a "Thus saith the Lord." What is a sceptic? As Philo beautifully hath said, "He is one who has departed from reason's 'royal road.' He has, I say, shunted himself

"The foolish man has not learnt to say anything firm or stable. But Moses does not think it right to incline either to the right or to the left, or, in short, to any part of the earthly Edom; but rather to proceed along the middle way, which he, with great propriety, calls the royal road, Numb. xx. 17. For since God is the only God of the universe, so, also, the road to HIM, as being the king's road, is very properly denominated royal; and this royal road you must consider philosophy,-not that philosophy which the existing sophistical (secular) crowd of men pursues-for they, studying the art of words in opposition to truth, have called crafty wickedness wisdom, assigning a divine name to wicked action-but that which the ancient company of those men who practised virtue studied, rejecting the persuasive juggleries of (Epicurean) pleasure, and adopting a virtuous and (Stoical) austere study of the honourable --this royal road which we have stated to be true and genuine philosophy, the LAW calls the word and reason of GOD; for it is written, "Thou shalt not turn aside from the word which I command thee this day, to the right hand or to the left.' So that it is shown most manifestly that the word of GOD is identical with the royal road, since Moses' words are, not to depart either from the royal road or from this word, as if the two were synonymous, but to proceed with an upright mind along the middle and level road which leads one aright."