principle is therefore pleonastic, otiose, useless; and its assumption, so soon as the old is signalised, becomes philosophically absurd. 66 But what here carries the absurdity to a climax, is, that those who call in the separate Principle of Causality," find, that if unconditionally allowed, their hypothetical principle would, in fact, disprove the moral nature of man. Accordingly, some, in obedience to their hypothesis, surrender themselves to a hopeless fatalism; while others, though they accord an unlimited authority over the world of matter to their " Principle of Causality," arbitrarily withdraw from its legislation the world of mind. They postulate an unlimited law, and yet that law they will not allow, without limitation, to legislate. In order to save the liberty of man, they would exempt the actions of the Will from the causal series : though unable to make this liberty conceivable; or to show either, why it is unthinkable, or how, though unthinkable, it is not therefore impossible. On the contrary, they outrage the authority of our primary beliefs; Reason, Intelligence, ultimate Consciousness is held, and that within its legitimate sphere, to stand in contradiction with itself; the mind is displayed, even in its highest faculties, as a complexus of insoluble antilogies.—What is this but an undeveloped scheme of absolute scepticism? In the doctrine of the Conditioned all is reversed. There, thought is not displayed as fundamentally repugnant with itself. Within its prescribed domain, it is shewn to be consistent; and that it only becomes self-contradictory when tran. scending the sphere of those limits which discriminate from each other its legiti mate from its illegitimate exercise. The antilogies in thought are, indeed, all equally illegal; and as none of them can prove, so none of them can disprove, any thing. But as these antilogies result only from the transcendence of thought, instead of man "reasoning but to err," reason, within its bounds and laws, may be presumed impeccable; "Nam neque decipitur Ratio nec decipit unquam," in the words of Manilius. Liberty is thus shown to be inconceivable, but not more than its contradictory, Necessity; yet, though inconceivable, Liberty is shewn also not to be impossible. The credibility of Consciousness to our moral responsibility, as an incomprehensible fact, is thus established; and we obtain through a strictly scientific demonstration,- "Fatis avolsa Voluntas." II.) "Not MORE ONEROUS causes," &c.-This condition, though necessarily involved in the Law of Parcimony, has not been articulately expressed in the enouncements of it hitherto promulgated. On the special ground of this condi tion, the theory now proposed is also entitled to a decisive preference. It is comparatively cheap. 1.)—In the first place, it only supposes a general,—a common,— an already established principle; and the mental phænomenon of the causal judgment is only one out of a variety of other judgments which it necessitates. The "Principle of Causality," in the counter theory, is, on the other hand, special and express; it is supposed to determine this judgment, and this judgment alone. Accordingly, it is comparatively onerous or expensive. 2.)—In the second place, the doctrine of the Conditioned explains the necessity of the causal judgment by a negative impotence; whereas the "Principle of Causality," in the opposite doctrine, is a positive power. The one theory founds upon a known and natural finitude of mind—an inability to think an absolute commencement; the other, overlooking this recognised or recognisable limitation, postulates an unknown inspiration of knowledge- in fact, a revelation, that whatever begins to be, must originate from some existence antecedent. The one hypothesis is thus, again, comparatively cheap, the other comparatively dear. 3.)-In the third place, the principle assumed in the doctrine of the Conditioned is not itself hypothetical; that is, this doctrine adopts, as a medium of explanation, what is already a proved reality, an established existence, an acknowledged fact. All is different in the counter theory. Here "the Principle of Causality" is itself hypothetical. It is not otherwise known to exist, and to exist independently of what it is only created-only called into being, in order to explain. It is devised to render conceivable the fact of the necessity of the causal judgment; and this fact, again, affords the only ground for the hypothesis of its reality. We imagine it, hypothetically, to be, in order that we may again hypothetically employ this hypothetical entity. If we correct the inaccuracy of Newton's expression, it becomes probable, and, if we take into account the analogy of his practice, it becomes almost certain, that he meant to denounce the postulation of hypothetical facts, as media of hypothetical explanation. The word "verae" must mean only causes themselves real, facts otherwise known to exist for to suppose it to mean true, that is, the true causes of the effects;-this would be both a futile begging of the question, and would not distinguish his own hypothesis of the sidereal movements from the self-styled romances of Descartes and the lawless conjectures of preceding theorists. In fact, there is a curious conformity, if I may venture to say so, between Newton's procedure and our own. Gravity is the great constitutive principle in the world of matter; whilst Causation is the highest constitutive, and Causality the highest regulative, principle in the worlds both of matter and of mind. In elevating, therefore, Gravitation from the earth to the moon,to the solar system,-to the stellar universe at large,-in elevating Gravitation to a common law of matter, Newton extended a principle, whose reality was recognised in one, to every part of the physical creation; and thus superseded a multitude of supposititious causes, variously excogitated to account for an apparent variety of phænomena. And it was precisely on the ground, that, while equally saving the phænomena, the Newtonian hypothesis was more parcimonious, and less hypothetical, than previous astronomical theories, that, at first at least, it found favour and acceptance. On the other hand, we would draw forth the hitherto neglected modifications of the mental impotence of the Conditioned, and by reducing their diversity to unity, raise it, from a verbal collection of partial, obscure, and heterogeneous limitations, to a really one generic, manifest, thoroughgoing and simple law of thought; for it is by this delitescent principle, — delitescent, but whose truth, oneness, and universality cannot, when fairly stated, fairly be disallowed, that we would explain a multiform plurality of phænomena, for each of which, at present, a separate power, of worse than problematical existence, is hypothetically postulated, hypothetically to account. It is, I say, precisely on the ground,—that the single assumption of the Conditioned, (a known impotence, explaining, as a common principle, the causal and sundry other necessary judg ments), is a cheaper and less hypothetical assumption, than the hypothesis of an unknown power, expressly excogitated to account for the causal judgment, and the causal judgment alone ;—it is precisely, on this general ground, that there is vindicated, to this explanatory doctrine, the claim of even a superior preliminary probability. Such are the abstract, or preliminary, grounds on which this opinion, merely as an hypothesis, appears entitled to preference. But, apart from these, this hypothesis alone accounts for the remarkable phænomenon which the question touching the Liberty of the Will-touching the Necessity of Human Actions—has in all ages and in all relations exhibited. This phænomenon is the exact equilibrium in which the controversy has continued; and it has been waged in Metaphysics, in Morals, in Theology, from the origin of speculation to the present hour, with unabated zeal, but always with undecided success. For, as Hume observes,-"The question of Liberty and Necessity is the most contentious of metaphysics, the most contentious of science." Some three centuries ago, (c. 1560,) the famous Bernardin Ochinus wrote, and addressed to Queen Elizabeth, his "LABYRINTHS; that is, a disquisition touching the Freedom or Bondage of the Human Will, and the Foreknowledge, Predestination, Liberty of God." He discusses the conjunct questions with great acuteness, from every point of view; and his conclusion is,—“ that he thanks God for having herein vouchsafed to him the knowledge of a Learned Ignorance." "The only outlet from the mazes is," he says, "to know, that an outlet there is and can be-none." A century later than Ochino, and probably with an eye to his Labyrinths or Mazes, Milton represents the fallen angels engaged upon the problem : "Others apart sat on a hill retir'd, In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high The same polemic has had the same result in the most recent speculation. The question now, as heretofore, divides the schools of philosophy, divides the sects of religion. As I have elsewhere observed :—“The champions of the opposite doctrines are at once resistless in assault, and impotent in defence. Each is hewn down, and appears to die under the home-thrust of his adversary; but each, again, recovers life from the very death of his antagonist, and both, like the heroes of Valhalla, are ever ready in a twinkling to amuse themselves anew in the same bloodless and interminable conflict." But, "Quod genus hoc pugnæ, qua victor victus uterque ?” Whence this impossibility of defeat, this impossibility of victory; and yet also this ceaseless impulse to renew the useless and never-decided warfare? This phanomenon, if not absolutely singular, in respect to equilibrium, is, in other respects, obtrusively remarkable. I say, not absolutely singular; for I have in recollection the counter impossibility of thinking body, composed of parts either extended or unextended,—the balanced insolubilities of Atomism and of Dynamism,—“ The Labyrinth," as it was called in the Schools, ("Labyrinthus, sive de Compositione Continui.") But if not altogether singular in theory, this phænomenon is peculiarly interesting in practice, and on that account pre-eminently demands an explanation; the doctrine, therefore, which best accounts for it, is entitled not only to preference, but to acceptance and favour. And herein the doctrine of the Conditioned stands alone; for this doctrine can supply not merely the only satisfactory solution, but the only solution of the problem at all. Previous philosophers have all held, that this conflict and this equilibrium of intelligence, in the question touching the Liberty or Necessity of human actions, emerges from the due exercise of thought, within its legitimate boundaries; consequently that this antilogy results from the natural, inevitable, and insoluble antagonism of reason or intelligence with itself. Those philosophers who embraced the alternative of Necessity, virtually extenuated, as delusive, those ultimate data of intelligence, which attribute to man, as the author or master of his actions, a moral agency, responsibility, liberty,-an undetermined freedom to initiate an action. Those philosophers, again, who embraced the alternative of Liberty, virtually extenuated, as delusive, in so far as our volitions are concerned, that necessity of intelligence, which constrains us to seek the commencement of every event, external or internal, in some antecedent, itself determined by a higher antecedent. The one class, did not attempt to render comprehensible an infinite series of relative or determined commencements; the other class, did not attempt to render comprehensible an absolute or undetermined initiative. Both implicitly charged reason with promulgating, in the last resort, contradictory facts,-facts which could not both be true, and of which neither could be conceived as possible,—facts consequently, which were equally entitled to acceptance, and which proved, when the implicit was unfolded into the explicit, that intelligence itself was unworthy of credit,-as, in effect, a source of delusion and inexplicable error.-"Have we not eaten the fruit of lies?" One philosopher, however, stands apart, that is Kant. His doctrine, in this respect, is peculiar; it is not one-sided and inexplicit, nor is its application only inferential. He holds, that the phænomenal world must be distinguished from the noumenal or world of Things in themselves: that Space and Time are mental forms under which alone we perceive external things, as phænomena, but (though in this he varies) Space and Time have no reality, out of us, with Things in themselves, or as Noumena (ovтws ovтα). They have a subjective but not an objective validity. In accordance with this doctrine, he explicitly declares Reason (or Intelligence) to be, essentially and of its own nature, delusive; and, thus more overtly than the others, he supersedes (what constitutes the fundamental principle, and affords the differential peculiarity of the doctrine of the Conditioned,) the distinction between Intelligence, within its legitimate sphere of operation, impeccable, and Intelligence, beyond that sphere, affording (by abuse) the occasions of error. Kant thus fully vindicates his right to the title of "the All-becrushing" (Der Alleszermalmender.) He abolishes not only Metaphysic and Rational Psychology, but Philosophy itself; and the Kantian doctrines are among the ruins. (B.) PHILOSOPHICAL TESTIMONIES TO THE LIMITATION OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, FROM THESE, which might be indefinitely multiplied, I shall arrange under three heads. I omit the Sceptics, adducing only specimens from the others. I. Testimonies to the general fact, that the highest Knowledge is a consciousness of Ignorance. There are two sorts of Ignorance: we philosophise to escape ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance; we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the goals from which, and to which, we tend; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life is itself only a wayfaring from grave to grave. Τίς βίος ;—Εκ τύμβοιο θορὼν, ἐπὶ τύμβον ὁδεύω. We never can emerge from ignorance. If, as living creatures, "we are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life so, as cognisant intelligences, our dream of knowledge is a little light, rounded with a darkness. One mortal, one nation or generation of mortals, may flare a flambeau, and another twinkle a taper; still the sphere of human enlightenment is at best a point, compared with the boundless universe of night surrounding it. Science is a drop; nescience is the ocean in which that drop is whelmed. The highest reach of human science is indeed the scientific recognition of human ignorance; "Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire." This "learned ignorance" is the rational conviction by the human mind of its inability to transcend certain limits; it is the knowledge of ourselves,-the science of man. This is accomplished by a demonstration of the disproportion between what is to be known and our faculties of knowing,-the disproportion, to wit, between the infinite and the finite. In fact, the recognition of human ignorance, is not only the one highest, but the one true, knowledge; and its first fruit, as has been said, is-humility. Simple nescience is not proud; consummated science is positively humble. For this knowledge it is not, which "puffeth up;" but |