Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

A relation is a relation of things known, so far known, known qua that relation. We know that we are related to our fellow-men, because we know what we are, and what our fellow-men are. We know in what relation we stand to God, because we so far know God and know ourselves.

The settlement of these points will be found to have a more direct bearing than might at first appear upon our argument. If man's soul be material, we have really no ground on which to proceed in inferring that there is a spiritual God. The subtlest form of infidelity in our day proceeds on the principle that man knows nothing of the nature or reality of things, or that he can know nothing except relations between things unknown. It no longer takes the form of rationalism, pretending to discover truth which in fact revelation has made known, and in the end setting itself above revelation: it makes human reason proclaim that it cannot discover any truth beyond and above the phenomena of sentient experience. It does not just deny that there is a God, this, it says, would be unphilosophical, — but it declares that God, if there be a God, is and must be unknown. It does not say that man has not a soul; but it identifies that soul with the body, and thus leaves no evidence that the soul may live after the body dies. It is of course unreasonable to seek after this unknowable God if haply we may find him, or to imagine that we are bound to pay him worship, or that we have any duties to discharge towards him; and as to the other world, if there be

DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY.

123

another world, we may not draw from it any fears of punishment or hopes of blessedness. In meeting this fundamental scepticism, we need to stand up for the veracity of the human faculties, and to show that the same powers which guide correctly in the business of life and in the pursuits of science are legitimately fitted to conduct to a reasonable belief in One presiding over the works of nature and providentially guiding our lot. This baldest of all the philosophies, which have sprung up in our world, is requiring reason to abnegate one of its indefeasible rights, is cutting the root which supports man's most aspiring hopes, is denying to the soul its highest exercises, is shearing it of its chief glories. It is unlawfully circumscribing that noble view which reason opens, and laboring to keep man gazing for ever on the ground like the beast, when his destiny is to look out on that distant horizon and upward to the glories of heaven.

V.

MENTAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE THEISTIC ARGUMENT. - OUR IDEAS LEAD US TO BELIEVE IN GOD AND CLOTHE HIM WITH POWER, PERSONALITY, GOODNESS, AND INFINITY. GOD SO FAR KNOWN. CRITICISM OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER.

GOD SO FAR UNKNOWN.

IN N these Lectures I have been looking first at the physical world as it is regarded by modern science. But the physical facts do not show that there is a God, unless we take along with them certain general principles. This induced me in my last Lecture to turn to Mental Science, when I showed, first, that the mind exists; and, secondly, that it has the capacity of acquiring knowledge. I am now to show that, in the exercise of this its capacity, it can rise to the knowledge of God and clothe him with infinite perfections.*

Let us understand what I maintain in regard to man's capacity of knowledge. I hold that he has a power of intuition; that is, of looking directly on things without him and things within. But I cer

In this Lecture I have used the principles established in my work on the "Intuitions of the Mind," to which I refer those who may wish to see the foundation on which I build more fully

discussed.

MAN KNOWS THINGS.

125

tainly do not stand sponsor for such innate ideas as Locke exposed till they perished with no one to protect them. Nor do I defend those a priori forms which the mind, according to Kant, imposes on things, giving to things what is not in the things, or announcing beforehand what things are, or what they should be. Out of these a priori forms, categories, and ideas, able men in Germany constructed in the last age a solemn and ambitious speculative philosophy, which has had its brief season in Britain and America, and may still be seen lingering among us, like venerable gray locks on the heads of men above fifty. But, like the foliage in the fall, it has faded into the "sere and yellow leaf;" and, though still shining in gorgeous colors, its destiny is to die; when, as it contains some elements of truth, it may help, I hope, to form a fruitful soil, so different from a barren sensationalism, out of which something better may spring. What I stand up for is a much less proud and pretentious thing: it is not a form to be imposed or superinduced on things, but a power of looking at things. This knowledge is, at first, only of individual things, of things in the concrete, as they present themselves. But out of this it can draw great abstract and general truths, rising out of great depths and mounting to great heights, constituting a body of philosophy based on the earth, but towering to heaven. It is because we have this original knowledge that we can add to it derived knowledge. Having this acquaintance with individual things, we can rise to general laws

about things. Having begun with realities, not with mere impressions, ideas, and phenomena, all that we reach by the abstracting, generalizing process is also real; and this not only a reality in thought, but, thought being rightly conducted, a reality in things.

And, among other things which we thus perceive directly and intuitively, I hold that there is Power; not Power in the abstract, but things exercising Power. This gives the principle of Cause and Effect. I know that I have come to a keenly agitated question. It is acknowledged on all hands that the law of universal causation is sanctioned by an enlarged experience. It is confessed to be the widest law which the mind of man has reached. No exceptions have been found to it, in any part at least of the physical universe, near or far. But some of us maintain that it is more; that it is a conviction of our mental nature, not a conviction above objective things, but a conviction in regard to things. I hold, our consciousness witnessing thereto, that we perceive things, both within and without us, not merely as having existence, but as having potency. We cannot know directly any object without us, except as having power upon us. When we act, we are exercising power. Potency, or property of some kind, is an essential element of things as known to us. When a thing is known to me, I know it, not as an impression, an idea, a bare phenomenon: I know it as exercising power on me or some other thing. Thus knowing power intuitively, we are

« НазадПродовжити »