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of our nature. This is, we suppose, the real doctrine of the Transcendentalists. Hence, Mr. Parker contends that we have spiritual senses, and that the idea of God is an intuition of reason. They question the unity of the intelligent principle in man, and seem to lay down the doctrine, that our knowledge does not differ objectively only, but subjectively also, that we know one class of objects by virtue of one subjective intelligent power or principle, and another class by another. It is this doctrine which misleads them and involves them in the greater part of their errors and absurdities. But this doctrine we have refuted in our last Review, as well as on several previous occasions. The faculty of intelligence is not complex, but simple. It may have various degrees and conditions, but in itself is one and the same, whatever the degree or sphere of knowledge. The subjective power, by which I know an object to be a tree or a house, is one and the same with the power by which I know the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, or that I ought to love my neighbour as myself. Consciousness is nothing but a peculiar modification of knowing, and is the same subjectively considered, whatever the object of which I am conscious. If, then, I am conscious of the infinite, I am conscious of it by my general power of consciousness, and this consciousness differs from any other consciousness only in so far as its object is different.

Strictly speaking, however, to say I am conscious of the infinite is absurd; for I can be conscious only of myself as the subject of my own phenomena, whether voluntary, sentient, or intellectual. The fact of consciousness is restricted by all accurate psychologists to the recognition of myself, as subject in the intellectual phenomenon to which Leibnitz gives the name of apperception. In every act I perform, that is, in every actus humanus, I always recognize myself as subject or actor, as distinguished both from the act and the object to which I act. This recognition is the fact of consciousness, and the only fact to which the term is ever rightly applied. Consequently, to say I am conscious of the infinite is to affirm my own infinity, which is false and absurd. Instead of saying we are conscious of the infinite, we should say we perceive, or mentally apprehend, the infinite, that is, the infinite is an object of our knowledge, or, in other words, we know the infinite.

But waiving these remarks on consciousness, which are conclusive in themselves, we deny that the consciousness of the

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infinite is an element or principle of our nature, for the simple reason, that we have no consciousness of the infinite. The infinite is conceived, but it is no object of knowledge. Knowledge of the infinite would be infinite knowledge, and infinite knowledge is possible only to an infinite subject, which man is not. Man is finite, and his knowledge is necessarily finite, and therefore limited to the finite.

This is a point we commend to the very serious attention of the Transcendentalists. They seem on many occasions, and when it suits their purpose, to be duly aware of the limited nature of our faculties, and the littleness and emptiness of our knowledge, as we see in the passage quoted from Mr. Parker, in which he is endeavouring to establish the fact of our own insufficiency for ourselves. Yet, with a consistency purely Transcendental, they contend that we may see God face to face, may have intuitive vision of the infinite!

The great endeavour of several of the later German metaphysicians, and of some of our own, as it was with the old Alexandrians, is to find in man's subjective power of cognition a faculty or principle by which he can cognize intrinsically the mysteries of faith. They find mankind believing in certain mysteries, which unquestionably transcend the reach of the ordinary understanding. These are believed, not by the few only, the élite of the race, men of rare genius and cultivation, but by the simple and uncultivated, the shepherd watching his flocks, and the rustic following his plough; and often by these more sincerely and more firmly than by the gifted and enlightened few. Whence is this? Surely these simple, unlettered, and unreasoning masses have not demonstrated to their own minds the intrinsic truth of these mysteries, and reasoned themselves into the belief of them; for few, if any, of them can assign even a tolerable reason for their belief, or render any satisfactory account of it. Is this belief a delusion, and is the human race wholly deceived in its faith? We dare not say it. To say so would be to blaspheme humanity, and, in blaspheming humanity, to blaspheme humanity's Maker. To assume that it is a delusion would be to deny all criterion of truth and falsehood, and to plunge into the ocean of universal doubt. Moreover, it would be anti-philosophical to make such assumption, for it would be to assume the reality of an effect, and a most stupendous effect, without conceding it any actual or even possible cause.

This faith, then, must have a solid and imperishable ground

somewhere. It must be well founded. Hence, say they, there must be in man some principle or faculty, overlooked by philosophers generally, which takes immediate cognizance of the objects of this faith. These objects all are, or imply, the infinite; therefore man must have the subjective power of cognizing the infinite. Therefore the infinite is cognoscible. Therefore the human race believe in the mysteries, because able, by the inherent faculties of the soul, to apprehend intuitively their intrinsic truth.

But what is this power? It is not sense, it is not intellect, it is not reason in its ordinary acceptation, but a faculty sui generis, which may indeed be called reason, but which cannot better be defined than by calling it a spiritual sense, or power of apprehending the invisible, of approaching the inapproachable, of knowing the unknowable, of comprehending the incomprehensible, of measuring the immeasurable! It is a mysterious and incomprehensible faculty, like the matters with which it places us in relation. All very intelligible, no doubt, to those who call darkness light, and finite infinite. But what is the evidence of the reality of such faculty? The only ground, it will be seen from our statement, for asserting the reality of such faculty is the well known fact, that mankind do believe, and always have believed, and, in spite of all obstacles, persist in believing, in mysteries whose intrinsic truth transcends both the senses and the understanding. But how could they believe in such mysteries, if they had no power above that of the senses and the understanding, by which their intrinsic truth is apprehended?

In reply, we may simply ask how a man who has never been in China can believe there is such a city as Peking? Assuredly, he does not perceive the intrinsic truth of the proposition, There is a city in China called Peking. Yet he believes it, and because he has, or believes he has, sufficient EXTERNAL evidence of the fact. The philosophers in question assume, that, since mankind believe in the mysteries, the intrinsic truth of the mysteries must be apprehended by them, which could not be, unless we had the subjective power of knowing it. But this assumption is unwarrantable; for faith is to believe what is not intrinsically known. The facts adduced only prove the faith of mankind in mysteries; and if it be faith, it is not knowledge. Therefore, the fact, that mankind believe in the mysteries, is itself not proof that the intrinsic truth of the mysteries is cognoscible, but that it is not cognoscible; and

therefore the faith of mankind in mysteries which transcend sense and understanding, instead of proving the reality of a subjective power of knowing what transcends sense and understanding, proves, so far as it goes, the reverse; for, if we had such power, our faith would not be faith, but knowledge.

The philosophers in question assume, as their point of departure, that what is believable is intrinsically cognoscible, and that what is believed is intrinsically known, an evident falsehood; for faith ends where knowledge begins, and what is an object of knowledge is not an object of faith, since faith is belief of what is not known. To establish, then, the fact they contend for, these philosophers must go a step further, and prove that mankind do not merely believe the mysteries, but actually know them. If they prove that the mysteries are intrinsically known by the race, then we will admit in the soul the subjective power to know them. But this the facts they adduce do not prove. These facts only prove that mankind believe them, from which we cannot conclude that they know them.

That this faith of the race has a solid and imperishable foundation we readily admit. But because it must have such foundation, it does not necessarily follow that the foundation is in a special faculty of the soul; for we can conceive the possibility, to say the least, of its being in authority which propounds and evidences them extrinsically to the human mind, as religious people contend and always have contended. The philosophers, when they assume the foundation to be in this special subjective faculty, then, merely beg the question. They take for granted the very point the conditions of the argument require them to prove.

Moreover, they reject, in asserting the cognoscibility of the mysteries, the very authority on which their whole reasoning is founded. They infer the solidity of the faith of mankind in the mysteries from the fact, that the race has always believed, and persists in believing in them. But the race, while it has believed the mysteries, has also believed that it did not know their intrinsic truth, and has always confessed that its faith in them was faith, not knowledge. Now, if you take the faith of mankind as authority in the one instance, why not in the other? Assuredly, it is worth as much in the latter case as in the former; because no man can know without knowing that he knows, and whenever he really believes he does not know, it is certain that he does not. A man may fancy that he knows when he does not, but he cannot fancy that he does not know

when he does. These philosophers, no doubt, are governed by a commendable motive; but they attempt what is not possible to effect. They would fain give a philosophical basis to the religious faith of mankind. They are far from wishing to overthrow or to weaken that faith; their ambition is to legitimate it, not to prove it, indeed, by evidence, but to demonstrate it, and to bring it within the province of science. But they should remember that what is of science is not of faith, that faith has its object always in a region into which science does not or cannot penetrate. It rests not on demonstration, but on authority, and may be proved, but never demonstrated. They would fain find in man an element which bears the same relation to it that the sense of sight bears to colors, or the sense of hearing to sounds, and that we attain to its objects as naturally and as simply as we do by our senses to the objects of the material world. But this element they cannot detect; they assert its reality, but do not and cannot establish it; for, after all they may say, each man knows of himself that to him the objects of his religious faith, however certainly, infallibly, evidenced, are not known. He believes, without doubting, that they are, but he does not know them.

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This is evident from Mr. Parker himself. To know the mysteries is to know the infinite; to know the infinite is to know God; and God, according to Mr. Parker, "is the substantiality of matter."- p. 170. And yet he says, in the passage we have quoted, "We can know little of material things; nothing but their phenomena." That is, the substance of things we cannot know. Yet, since God is this substance, "substantiality," we could know something more than their phenomena, we could know even their substance, if we could know God. Let it not be replied to us, that Mr. Parker has told us elsewhere, that we may know God, that we may approach the Infinite One face to face; for, if he unhappily contradicts himself, that is not our fault. He says, formally, that we can know nothing of material things but their phenomena, - also that God is the substantiality of matter, and if of matter, of course of material things. To this we hold him. The truth here got the better of his theorizing, and the man had the courage to tell it. It is idle to talk of man's power to cognize the infinite, to behold God intuitively, while you tell me that such is the limited nature of man's faculties, that even in material things he takes notice only of phenomena. In this last, Mr. Parker is right. We know only phenomena; and substances,

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