Now, to us reasoning of this sort, if it proves any thing, proves that nothing is provable, and that nothing remains for us but doubt and uncertainty, in relation either to natural or revealed religion. Indeed, the author himself says expressly, "certainty is not attainable, only probability." We have for ourselves a strong dislike to the method of removing objections to revelation by proving the unreasonableness of reason. If reason is not true and infallible in her own sphere, revelation is not provable; for though it may itself transcend reason, it can be proved to be a revelation only by facts or evidence addressed to reason and within reason's competence. He who establishes skepticism demolishes with the same blow both science and faith. Mr. Mansel certainly does not intend to be a skeptic, or to favor skepticism; but by maintaining that reason is in perpetual contradiction with herself, at once affirming and denying contradictory propositions, he undermines science, and throws doubt on every thing, renders all so-called knowledge uncertain.

The author, if he had followed his strong English common sense, without aiming at any philosophical subtilty or refinement, would have served his purpose far better. We do not and cannot accept his philosophical system, if system it can be called. We encountered it in Dr. Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. We encounter it, latterly, in most Oxford scholars who pretend to any philosophy. It is Kantism, as modified by Sir William Hamilton, and has been refuted again and again in the pages of our Review. The gist of Sir William's philosophy is, that the Infinite is unthinkable, inconceivable, and marks for us merely the negation of thought. The essential principle of the Kantian philosophy is, that the categories are forms of the human mind, and that we can know or think objects only under the forms or categories of our own understandings; that is, the form of the thought, whatever it be, is imposed by the subject on the object, not by the object on the subject; or we think things so and so because such is our mental constitution, not because things are so and so a parte rei, inde

pendent of us or of our thought. But Kant and Sir William Hamilton agree that we cannot think things as they are in themselves, and that we can have direct and immediate intuition only of phenomena. The noumenon forever escapes us, although we are forced by the constitution of our nature to believe the noumenon really exists. Now, we, our readers very well know, reverse this famous theory, and maintain that we see things so and so because they are really so and so, not because such or such is our intellectual constitution. Mr. Mansel, following the renowned German and the illustrious Scotsman, maintains that the object of knowledge, of consciousness—a very equivocal term, which he nowhere defines-is never the thing or reality itself, but the thing under the forms of our understanding. He thus makes the subject pro tanto object; and, apprehending the object only under the forms of the subject, he can never say that the object is not, as Fichte maintains, simply the subject taking itself as its own object, or, what is the same thing, a product of the subject thinking-pure philosophical egoisin, which resolves all into the ego, the Ich, or I, and its phenomena. Fichte only deduced from the doctrine of Kant, his master, its legitimate consequences, as Schelling's doctrine of Identity is, at bottom, only Fichteism, less boldly and scientifically stated.

Assuming that the understanding thinks its object only under the forms of the subject, Mr. Mansel denies that the Infinite or the Absolute can be thought, since these forms are finite and present only the finite. He does not appear to be aware that the absolute, the unconditioned, the eternal, the Infinite of which he speaks after Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, is a pure abstraction, and therefore a sheer nullity. Absolute being is pure being, and pure being, Hegel says truly, is identical with no being, because he understands by pure being abstract being. Mr. Mansel proves clearly, without appearing to be aware of it, that abstractions are unintelligible, because simple nullities. No philosopher worthy of the name asserts that we can think the absolute or the infinite-not, indeed, because thought conditions or limits the object, but because neither is, or exists, a parte

rei. Only the real can be thought. We think real and necessary being, which is absolute, not the absolute abstracted from the real and necessary being. We have no intuition. of the infinite, but we have intuition of God, who is infinite, absolute, unconditioned, eternal. We think not an abstract infinite, but we think the infinite in the sense that it really is, that is, as infinite being. God is infinite, but we can never say the infinite is God, save by that figure of speech by which we put the abstract for the concrete. We cannot, of course, think the infinite infinitely, in its own infinite. nature or essence, with an infinite thought on its subjective side. But to think the infinite finitely, is still to think the infinite Being, though inadequately, because the finiteness. attaches to the subject thinking, not to the object thought. The argument used by Mr. Mansel, after Sir William Hamilton, to prove that the infinite-understanding not an abstract, but a real infinite, that is, the infinite God-can bethought by a finite being only under finite forms, is based on the false assumption, that the form of the thought depends on the subject, not on the object. Certainly, we can represent, or re-present, the infinite Being to ourselves in reflection, only under finite forms, for, in the reflex reason, our own personality intervenes, and imposes on its thought its own limitations; but in intuition, which presents the object, the object is thought under its own forms, and is thought as it is, a parte rei. The pretence that we cannot think the infinite, because our thought limits the object thought, the unconditioned, because thought itself conditions its object-the great argument relied on by Sir William Hamilton-we cannot accept; for the object is thought only as presented, and is itself the same, whether thought or unthought. To think it implies. a change or modification in us, but none in it: to say we cannot think the infinite, because we cannot think it without thinking the finite, and, if we think the finite, we must think it as distinguished from the infinite, then, as a limitation of the infinite will not answer; because the finite neither in fact nor in thought limits the infinite. The difficulty arises from dealing with abstractions instead of

realities, and in assuming that finite existence stands opposed to infinite Being. If you conceive the finite as standing on its own bottom, as so much real being, this, undoubtedly, must be conceded to be the case; but conceive the finite existence as the creature or product of the infinite Being, and then, instead of being thought as a limitation, it is thought as a manifestation of infinite power. The error is in conceiving the finite as real being, and therefore as limiting the being called infinite, which, of course, would deny the infinite, for the quantity of being represented by the finite would need to be added to the other side to get infinite being, and the infinite can never be obtained by addition.

The finite must be distinguished from the infinite, but to distinguish is to limit, and what is limited is not infinite, says our author. What is limited is not infinite, we grant: but to distinguish the effect from the cause, is not, even in thought, to limit the cause. The fallacy is, in assuming that the relation between infinite and finite is the relation of coexistence, whereas it is the relation of cause and effect, Creator and creation. The creature does not limit the Creator, or the effect condition the cause; for the being of the creature is in the Creator, of the effect in the cause, as St. Paul teaches: "In him [God] we live and move and have our being." The distinction of the finite--understanding by finite creature, not independent being-from the infinite, limits the finite, but not the infinite, for the finite and infinite, in this case, do not stand in the same category. The creature takes nothing from, and adds nothing to the Creator; and however you increase or diminish the number of creatures, however exalted or however low you suppose them, the sum of being, to use one of Mr. Mansel's own expressions, remains the same. If Mr. Mansel had paid more attention to the facts of intuition, or to the intuitive data, which include the ideal elements of all our knowledge, and not confined himself so exclusively to the order of reflection, he would have seen that his reasoning is very unsound, and that the apodictic element of all thought is the intuition of real and necessary, and therefore, infinite Being.

Mr. Mansel adopts the teaching of Sir William Hamilton, that all our knowledge is simply knowledge of relations, is relative, and never absolute knowledge. We understand not how so acute a philosopher as Sir William could fall into so great an error. Relations in themselves are nullities, no object of knowledge, and, therefore, if we know only relations, we know nothing at all. Relations are nothing without the related, and hence we must know the related or not know relations. Finite existences, he tells us, are relative existences, and as we know only them, we have knowledge not of the absolute, but of the relative only. He is the dupe of a word. If existences are only relative they have not their being, and, therefore, are not intelligible in themselves; for only being is intelligible in itself, since what is not cannot be known. They are and can be intelligible only in the other term of the relation, and, therefore, are and can be known only in knowing the absolute, or being to which they are related, and on which they depend. Finite existence, then, is unintelligible without the cognition of infinite Being. Lay aside the abstract terms of reflection, take things as presented in intuition, and it will be seen that we know the relative only in knowing the absolute, or the unrelated,—the finite only in knowing the infinite, that is to say, only in knowing absolute and infinite Being, God, from whom finite and relative existences proceed, and in whom they have their being and their intelligibility.

We cannot agree with Mr. Mansel that a knowledge of the infinite presupposes on the part of the subject infinite. knowledge. I may know that God is, and is infinite, without knowing all that he is. Let us drop vague and abstract terms. The infinite is God, real and necessary being. Now, in saying that we know God is, we never pretend that we know all that he is, or that we know him as he is in himself, in his interior essence. Reason can answer fully and with absolute certainty the question, An sit Deus? but we certainly do not pretend that it can otherwise than very inadequately answer the question, Quid sit Deus? If we