FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-191,9 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY arV13278 Symbolism Cornell University Library 3 1924 031 333 101 olin,anx The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031333101 SYMBOLISM Vide p. 354. SYMBOLISM OR MIND— MATTER— LANGUAGE AS THE ELEMENTS OF THINKING AND REASONING AND AS THE NECESSARY FACTORS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE BY JAMES HAIG, M. A. 'Heaven and earth shall f ass away, hut My Words shall not pass away" — MatL xxiv. 35. ' The Words thai I speak unto you, they are Spirit, they are Life." — John vi. 63. —Jesus of Nazareth. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXIX PREFACE I HOPE that the ordinary reader will not be deterred from reading this volume by the appear- ance of a few hard words. They may nearly all be skipped without loss, as in most cases I add the nearest plain English eqxiivalent. These words are the confused rubbish of divers philosophies ; and they stick in the brains of pro- fessors of logic and philosophy, without having any distinct meanings attached to them. But we cannot penetrate professorial or any other brains without using some of their own words. These words, therefore, are only for those who use or abuse them. Most of these words, Hke category, predicable, objective, subjective, ego, non-ego, &c., are alto- gether ambiguous, and might all be scored through with a pen without loss to the plain English reader who desires to think about this VIU PREFACE. ■wonderful universe of mind and matter in which we have been placed; or about his own body, soul, and spirit, which are fulfilling their little, but to him all-important, part — social, poKtical, religious — ^in the magnificent drama of the "world's history! My advice, therefore, to the ordinary reader, is to skip all those words, or parts of this book, which he does not at first comprehend ; and he may then, having arrived at some of the con- clusions, perhaps, be tempted to read the book once again, in order to fully understand the rea- soning, by which its conclusions are deduced. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION, . I. THINKING AND REASONING, II. THE OATEGOEIBS, III. THE PEEDICABLES, IV. LOGICAL TRUTH — AXIOMS, T. LAW OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE — FALSE, VI. NUMBER, .... VII. TIME, .... VIII. SPACE, .... IX. THE INFINITE AND THE ABSOLUTE, X. THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS, XL WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS, XII. THE RIDDLE OF PHILOSOPHY, XIII. AXIOMS, .... XIV. THE ONE AND THE MANY, PAGE XI 1 11 18 25 31 43 62 68 76 86 116_ 161 192 220 CONTENTS. XV, OEDEE— MOTION— FOKM, XVI. MATTER — STMMETET, XVII. THE HUMAN MIND— HAEMONTj . XVIII. LANOTTAGB, XIX. THE POSSIBLE— THE CEEDIBLE— THE TRUE, XX. JESUS AND SOOEATES, XXI. THE HOLY TRINITY, 248 285 859 393 450 491 524 INTRODUCTION. Language is the great enigma or puzzle ia human philosophy. The gentlest and most practical of all the apostles of Christ left us this deep truth, " If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able to bridle the whole body ; " and his Master Himself said, "For every idle word that men do speak they shall give account in the day of judgment; for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." Thus, in my opinion, the Demon of falsehood was seldom more successful than when he established the current opinion amongst man- kind that questions about words are worthless, and of no importance whatever. But every popular fallacy has always a seemingly true side. And most certainly, attaching over-import- ance to the letter — the mere sound and form of language — tends to destroy the spirit and meaning ; and, on the other hand, neglecting the letter altogether must have the same effect ; and must leave us in confusion. Thus falsehood has in this, as in most cases, two contrary suggestions to make, and both false — 1st, That the mere form and sound and symbol are of no import- ance — this is, or ends in, ambiguity and confusion; and, 2d, that the mere form and sound and symbol are all-important — ^this is, or ends in, hjrpocrisy — the letter xil INTRODUCTION. without the spirit — the outward form without the understanding or feeling thereof. Thus, the outward form and body of our thoughts — our words — ^may be always presented alternately, as at once everything to truth, and also as nothing to truth. Both alternatives are partly false, and both are partly true. Words are nothing to truth as felt by the indi- vidual, but everjrthing to truth as knowable by, or re- corded for, mankind in general. A rose by any other name will smell as sweet, and a truth in any other words wUl be as true as ever. The names or words are of no kind of importance to the individual, if the things and thoughts are truly felt and understood ; but if we seek to compel the assent of other men to our feeling or understanding, then the words become all-important : for we have to insist that our words embody the very truth, which he shall not dare to reject. Thus, in all discussions between man and man con- cerning Knowledge, Cognition, or Truth, words become aH-important to mankind, just as they become all-im- portant to the individual also, if the saying of Christ be true, that " by a man's words he shall be justified, and by his words he shall be condemned." But language cannot be at once all-important and of no importance ; and we must therefore seek to place it in its proper and true position of importance, which, I think, requires us to treat it as being, jointly with mind and matter, one of the three factors of all human knowledge, thought, and reason. — Thus words are to the individual, thoughts in the heart by which he wUl be judged — the motives to every action — and to mankind they are things, the subjects of discussion. INTRODUCTION. xiii But " the characteristics of philosophy " are " liberty and universality." Philosophy has the universe for its subject, aoA freedom from all dogmatic prejudice for its proper method of research. But Christianity has now become the great fact of humanity — the central fact in the history of those great nations who now govern nearly the whole world ; and the universal acceptance of some outward form of Christianity seems already but a ques- tion of time. But if your philosophy does not account for or explain this central fact, — Christianity — where is its universality ? if you ignore and avoid the fact, where is your freedom ? * If you follow Auguste Comte, and can find no place for Christ alongside of Buddha, Con- fucius, Zoroaster, and Socrates, where is the universality of your philosophy ? If you ignore or overlook Christ's doctrines and influence, are you not the slaves of a narrow-minded dogmatic prejudice ? As Christians, we may accept Christ's exclusion from Comte's galaxy of human greatness, as an involuntary testimony to Christ's Divinity ; but then, we must say that, such philosophy is neither universal nor free. The humble Carpenter of Nazareth has, at the present moment, left the greatest impression ever made by any one man on the history of mankind ; and His words and principles must be better worth study than those of any other man who ever lived. If you purposely avoid them, you are the self-confessed slave of a dogmatic prejudice ; if you ignorantly overlook them, then your philosophy is devoid of wisdom both in depth and breadth. But the narrowness of your dogmatic prejudice is equally evident if you deny the possibility of mind exercising powers over matter, or addressing suggestions * Professor E. Nayille of Geneva, Problfeme du Mai, 313. XIV INTRODUCTION. and voices to the mind of man — if you deny both the demon of Socrates and the spirit of 'Christ — what is this but a self-imposed prejudice? For surely Socrates was no enthusiast, and your prejudice must be self-chosen — a mere .wilful opinion, without any reasonable foundation. It is one thing to fight with unfair weapons, and quite another to hoist the ensign by which you have resolved to stand. I deny that my reasoning ' can be properly charged with any dogmatic prejudice whatever; because its foundations are self-evident and consistent with themselves. And I assert the very contrary of the Comtean dogma;* I assert that true reason or ihtelligence can only be founded on faith. What I think self - evident I openly declare and ' assume to be self-evident, and who can deny my assumptions ? I think man's lody, man's mind, man's wm-ds — ^matter, mind, language — are all three self-evident to every man who breathes, in his own person and actions, and all evidently distinct and different from each other. And I assert that, every man who denies this in language, must fall into verbal self-contradiction and logical confusion. But I say — ^strange and remote as the con- clusion may now appear to the reader — that if you grant me this self-evident distinction, you have logically granted me the greatest of all Christian mysteries, the lo^cal doctrine of the Holy Trinity ; as well as the fuU refutation of all the philosophies current in the world, all of which overlook the true position of human lan- guage. You have granted me logically, the truth of Symbolism, as soon as ever you grant me, mind, matter, and a spirit and meaning to our words ! * " L'intelligence, seule base possible de k Foi."— A. Comte, Cat. Pos p. 148. SYMBOLISM ETC. CHAPTER I. THINKING AND REASONING. Thinking is internal reasoning, or reasoning to our- selves. Eeasoning is external thinking, or thinking expressed in signs, symbols, words, intelligible to others. The one is private and peculiar to the individual man ; the other is the same thing when made common to all mankind possessed of language and sufficient intelli- gence to comprehend it. But no man can ever know the thoughts or thinking of another. He knows, or may know, the words or reasoning which are said to embody the thoughts, but he can never know the thoughts themselves which exist in the mind of his feUow-man. The words and their logical connection or application — the reasoning — are the common property of both or all men ; but the thoughts of each are necessarily, or never-ceasingly, confined to himself alone, and to those Beings or Minds superior to man who may be able to read Thought. A 2 CHAPTER I. Whenever, therefore, men speak of thoughts or thuik- ing, — that is, of any internal and metaphysical subjects whatever, — the phenomena of consciousness — or the consciousness of internal phenomena — ^they, of necessity, are only speaking of the WOKDS which are assumed and admitted to embody the thoughts. They assume it to be granted that certain words express or embody the thoughts in question, and then proceed to discuss and modify or refute the words. Therefore all discussions whatever concerning thinking, and the whole internal world of man's mind — all metaphysical questions what- soever — are of necessity merely discussions about human words — i.e., about certain conventional signs mutually assumed and adopted in the beginning as names for the internal phenomena — the noumina — of the human mind. So far as the Invisible Universe of mind is con- cerned, therefore, we must commence and end with WORDS. Thinking, or its conclusion — Thought— as a general name for aU human Cognition, common to man- kind, concerning Mind, and the whole science of meta- physical truth, can be only a science of human words, signs, symbols — a logic — the logic of MIND. It can be nothing more. Strange as it may appear to some despisers of verbal questions, and denied as it may be by all the experiential and positive philosophers of the day, the same observation is strictly true of the whole world of MATTER — of the whole External Universe of sense without us — all our reasoning on material questions can be only a science of words, signs, and symbols — a Logic of matter. External things make different impressions on each man's nerves: — the ideas, conceptions, representations, im- ages, or mental pictures, whatever name we give to those THINKING AND REASONING. 3 internal things, which each man receives or makes in his own mind of or concerning the external things, are necessarily all different in each man who breathes. The thoughts resulting, or invented, or produced, are different in each man's mind. The words which we make or adopt to express to ourselves or others what we think or suppose to exist in this external world or universe without us, are necessarily merely conventional, and must be mutually framed or adopted, as sufficient and proper to express our own individual and private thoughts of the external objects, or the causes, as they are called, of our internal sensations. But these con- ventional words, which are called the names of the ex- ternal things, are themselves the only things about which we can reason or hold any discussion, or have any ques- tions in truth; because they are the only things or ob- jects which men have, or can have, in common. Consider — that the things themselves make different impressions with different pencils of light or other media upon our different nerves. But we cannot compare the impressions, the ideas, the images, whatever they are, the things within ; all are different and distinct, and cannot be brought together, or compared in any way jointly by mankind, until they are embodied in mutual words. The resulting words, signs, or symbols, which are purely conventional at first, and mutually adopted, are in fact the only things actually passing from mind to mind — WOEDS are the only common objects which men possess jointly, or can compare together, in any possible ques- tion or discussion that can be raised between man and man. Man's Mind must start with a symbol or symbols. In shprt, mankind have nothing else whatever in common, either respecting the internal universe of Mind 4 CHAPTER I. or the external universe of Matter, which they can pos- sibly compare together, except only the mutual words which they have agreed to use in common for the pur- pose, and in order to express their individual thoughts concerning the universe without or the universe within. Some may think the conclusion sad or shocking, hum- bling or revolting — they may wilfully refuse to accept or believe it ; but it is utterly indubitable that men's powers of reasoning together must begin and must end with words — with language — conventional signs and symbols mutually agreed on and adopted ! Every step in our reasoning is like the first, a mutual or conventional step from words to words. Our reasoning must begin and end with words — our Reason has no other mutual in- strument and no other mutual object ; and though the Faith of every man is quite fixed, and as certain to him- self as the rock on which he stands, that language is not all that exists in this universe, yet it is all that exists in human cognition — it is all that men can compare together in every question and every discussion, and it forms every possible conclusion at which men can jointly arrive by their most earnest and careful thinking and reasoning. Whether the reader is or is not convinced — and I do not expect him to be convinced — by this short prelim- inary argument, that true logic is the exclusive empire, or at least the only field of human reason in general ; yet it is at least clear and manifest that " before men can think or reason on any subject whatever, certain pre- liminary assumptions are always necessary and unavoid- able; and if men could agree upon what must be taken at first for granted, no doubt a great many disputes would disappear. We cannot reason about nothing. Therefore, in the first place, it is clear that the reasoner THINKING AND REASONING. 5 always assumes the existence of the thing about which he proposes to reason. In the second place, it is equally certain that the reasoner cannot propose any question concerning the thing to be discussed without he first assumes the possibility of such question. Thus certain Existences and Possibilities — or, to use their logical names. Categories and PredicaUes — are imavoidably necessary, and must be always iassumed in every discussion, before men can possibly think or reason together in any way whatever. But there is a third necessary assumption before we can arrive at any positive truth. Every absolute con- clusion necessarily assumes and implies that there is nothing in the whole universe that can overturn it. And therefore, in order to arrive at any absolute truth, by our thinking and reasoning, if such be possible, it is unavoidably necessary that our preliminary assump- tions must exhaust and embrace the whole universe of existence ; for, otherwise, the part originally omitted in our contemplation may possibly invalidate or over- turn our conclusion, which, therefore, is not absolutely true. Every one who asserts anything as being posi- tively and absolutely true, has already, in fact, assumed some system of the universe ; for he has asserted that there is nothing in the universe that can overturn his conclusion. The common scoff of some modern philosophers, that the medieval schoolmen limited the universe to the categories and predicables of Aristotle, is in fact a scoff at the necessary and fundamental laws of all thinking and reasoning whatever. They themselves must limit the universe in the assertion of any absolute truth. If men are dissatisfied, as they justly are, with Aristotle's 6 CHAPTER I. fundamental assumptions, then it becomes their duty to suggest and adopt better 'ones; for thus only can 'any truth be established by thinking and reasoning. The scoffers themselves must limit the universe to their own categories whenever they venture upon any assertion whatever, as being positively or absolutely true; for men can arrive at no absolute conclusion whatever without making some similar fundamental and universal assumptions. Thus there are three fundamental and necessary im- plications and assumptions required before any rational discussion can even commence. If your opponent chooses to deny either the existence of the thing in question ; or the possibility of the question or thought about it proposed for discussion ; or, thirdly, if he says your fundamental thoughts of the universe are ambigu- ous or incomplete, so that the part confused or omitted affects the whole question about the thing, the discus- sion of that question cannot reasonably commence, much less be brought to any true and absolute conclusion. His preliminary objection not only prevents any rational conclusion, but prevents any rational discussion. It is simply absurd to attempt to reason with any one who will admit nothing ; but it is equally absurd to reason with a man from fundamental principles which he denies. We can only reason with him from those fundamental assumptions which he is willing to admit and submit to. Every attempt to evolve the universe out of nothing- ness, or out of consciousness, or in any other way than by assuming Logical categories and predicables and axioms — i.e., self-evident things, possible questions, and self-evi- dent principles — is merely doing secretly what ought to be done openly; pretending to assume nothing, when you. THINKING AND REASONING. '7 are in truth assuming words for your consciousness, and axioms or principles affecting those words. It is doing secretly, and without acknowledgment, what ought to be honestly acknowledged. Even if we start, like Hegel, with a logical contradiction; "that Being and nothing are the same, and yet that they are not the same ; for Being is werden, Becoming or growing." We have there- by already assumed the word beinff in two senses : as a thing and a question, as a noun and a verb ; some-thing and no-thing; being the noun, and being the verb : and we have assximed the axiom that Being the noun is werden growth or action, and, as a manifest consequence, that a thing is, what it does ! or is action, and that the universe is a flux ! Such attempts are mere logical frauds, or arise from logical ignorance. Few men, however, sift their thoughts sufficiently to know what assumptions they are really making when they reason. And in most controversies we still hear the words "substance," "species," "essential difference," " property," and " accident," &c., bandied about from side to side, as if this fundamental language of Aristotle — his categories and predicables — his fundamental words, thoughts, and things, were still acknowledged as bind- ing on aU reasoners, instead of being fundamental as- sumptions, now universally disputed, and more or less rejected. Hence, in my opinion, chiefly arises the apparent hopelessness of all modern controversies on religion and philosophy, in morals and politics, on all those all- interesting questions which involve man's Mind — his rights, powers, and duties — his state on earth, his rela- tions with heaven. Neither disputant ever knows or asks what the other 8 CHAPTER I. admits or assumes as fundamental, and very often neither knows, nor has in the least fixed in his own mind, all that he himself assumes as being fundamentally true, either as things and facts, or as possible questions or theories. "We thus constantly find in the present day the very same questions raised, and discussed as eagerly and as hopelessly as they were by the Greeks before the days of Aristotle, nearly 3000 years ago. The chance of any rational and satisfactory conclusion seems as far off as ever, and the practical materialist, the positive philoso- pher of the day, triumphantly exclaims, "Philosophy has proved its incapacity by centuries of failure." "Let us stick, therefore," says he, "to our laboratories and workshops, to our steam-engines and telegraphs, for all else is nought ! ! " Thus the highest and most important questions which man can discuss concerning himself and his position on earth — concerning his history, civilisation, and conduct here ; or concerning his possible futurity hereafter — his hopes and aspirations beyond this short and passing ex- istence, involving as they do all man's internal thoughts and secret motives— which are daily and hourly affecting his conduct in life and his expectations beyond life — are aU considered by such philosophy to be subjects of idle speculation, on which no true conclusion can ever be established; and a degrading practical materialism, which dignifies itself with the title of EationaUsm, or the Positive Philosophy of the Experience and Observa- tion of Matter, is assumed to be the only proper subject of man's thoughts, and the only proper object of man's duties and actions. But interesting and important as the world of matter THINKING AND REASONING. 9 must ever remain to man upon earth, its interest and importance is but as a passing cloud; for it is infinitely less than the interest and importance which we ought to attach to the world of mind. The cognition or truth of the one aflfects the human body, and is as the passing shadow; whilst that of the other affects the human soul, and is to it, as the sun in the iirmament of heaven is to all material beings, the perpetual source of light and life. The states and relations of bodies on earth are no doubt of very great interest and importance, but they all depend fundamentally on the states and relations of the human soul. If there is not life in the soul — if there is not, either in the individual or in the nation, some worthy motive or mental principle really at work within, forcing on to action without — the external and resulting work will be neither really great nor really worthy. We may raise a pyramid, but our efforts will be useless ; we shall in time disappear, and our works will become mere objects of historical speculation and permanent contempt. But to reason at all, we must assume a universe of existence, and our categories or classes of existences are mind, matter, and language, which last includes in its most general sense Action.* These three embrace every possible object of human contemplation, and are each distinct from the other two, and not to be mentally confounded with either. The only possible questions which we can discuss concerning these three things are * An action is only the outward sign or symbol of the inwkrd thought or motive, and is therefore properly included under the general term JtmgvMge or symbolism. We do not and cannot understand an action tiU we supply or suppose some intention or motive for it. ro CHAPTER 1. reducible to two predicables — their states and relations — their States, when considered by us as unities — ^their Eelations, when considered jointly as pluralities. These fundamental assumptions impose corresponding liabili- ties ; for we are bound and liable at every turn to be called on to say whether we speak or reason of a mental thing, a material thing, or a mere sign or symbol, and whether we are discussing its state in itself — i. e., as ONE ; or its relation to something else or to several things — i. e., as many. CHAPTER II. THE CATEGORIES. Mind, matter, and language, are our categories or classes of existences. They include all things -whatso- ever — God and man, the universe without, the universe within, all human knowledge and action — all conceiv- able existences. Nothing exists or can be contemplated which is not one of the three — either a mental thing, a material thing, or a logical thing. They include all, and each is clearly distinguished from the other two, and the man who denies the existence of any one of the three is, we assert, clearly self-contradictory ; for if he denies the existence of matter, he denies the existence of his own body, and contradicts himself by his bodily action or words. If he denies the existence of mind, he denies the existence of his own mind, and expresses a thought which denies the existence of all thought ; and if he denies the existence of language — the outward sym- bol of the mind within — he logically contradicts his own words. Nor can any one of these three be confounded with either of the others of them. And if any man at- tempts, in obedience to the law of parcimony, as it has been termed, which forbids more assumptions than are necessary, to deny the distinction between mind and matter, and to assert their identity with Spinosa and He- gel, and so says that the two may be one and the same 12 CHAPTER 11, thing, his words again convict him of self-contradiction. For every word, sign, and symbol is itself a vibration of matter, but every vibration of matter is not a word or language. In order to be a word or language, the vibration must have a human meaning. The word is a material vibration, but the meaning cannot possibly be material; the meaning in the mind must be the mental, the spiritual understanding and appreciation of the material word or vibration. The word is motion — the motion of matter; but what is the meaning of the word, without which the word is dead ? The vibration is not matter, but a form of motion in matter ; but the meaning of the word, the meaning itself, cannot be material, it must be something else — it must be spiritual! For even if we suppose the word or material vibration in passing through the human brain, there creates a nervous brain-cell, and affects the human soul, creating a cellular material form, by which we remember the word, yet the meaning of the word cannot be that brain-cell — that material, idea, image, or impression. The meaning must be some- thing else, which we can transmit, which passes on to other men. It must be the spiritual, the mental, and internal appreciation of the brain-cell, or of the word, which is distinct from matter, and all its ordinary forms and motions, and passes from man to man ; and without this spiritual and purely mental mean- ing, the word or vibration itself, which passes from mind to mind, would not be a word or language at all, but a mere dead vibration or undulation. Thus the meanings of his words do continually con- vict the 'materialist of self-contradiction, as the ac- tions of his own body and the vibrations of his own THE CATEGORIES. 1 3 tongiie continually convict the idealist of similar self- contradiction ! Both admit the existence of language, both insist on the meanings of their words! Each is guilty of verbal self-contradiction, and misuses his words in order to deny their partial existence. The one denies the matter of which his words are a physical motion or vibration; the oth«r denies the mind by which they are spiritually appreciated, weighed, and valued. Thus the distinction between mind and mat- ter, and that they are separate and distinct things, and not one thing, is forced upon every man by the very meanings of the words which he adopts, and uses or misuses. The word is a material vibration, possessing a mental signification ; it is a spiritual meaning or men- tal conception, embodied in a bodily action or material motion. Thus the materialist, who admits only matter and impressions ; and the idealist, who admits only spirits and ideas, are both equally refuted by their own words and their meanings : for though the words which the material- ist uses may make impressions on me, yet my impressions are certainly not his meanings, and may be quite differ- ent from what he desired or intended ; and his meanings must have existed before the words were uttered, and therefore could not be impressions. So the words the idealist uses may produce ideas in my spirit, but his meanings are not my ideas, and may be quite different, and his meanings must have existed before the words were uttered, and, when uttered, his words were some- thing before they reached my spirit or produced my ideas. That something which the word of the idealist is after it leaves his spirit, and before it reaches my spirit, is a something which is neither an idea nor a t4 CHAPTER II. spirit, and can only be a motion or form of matter — not a spirit and not an idea. And thus the meanings of the words which the materialist and idealist use, which exist before the words are uttered, and afterwards, are cer- tainly neither matter nor impressions, nor spirits, nor ideas. But it can be equally well shown that the materialist and the idealist both palter and trifle with the words they use; for words are not matter, but motions and forms; not im- pressions, but that which causes and produces the impres- sions, and therefore a third thing, neither matter nor im- pression, so that the materialist has three things — matter, impressions [and words before they make impressions]. And in like manner the idealist must have spirits, ideas [and words before they create ideas], which in both is confusing words [motions and forms] with either matter or spirit. But motion and form is neither matter nor spirit, but the work of spirit upon matter and with it when it takes the form of words. And we may well suppose matter the work of God, who brought it into existence by the word of His power, saying, " Let there be light, and there was light;" just as man creates words with his mind to influence the minds of others, and to be used by them ; so God has created the uni- verse to influence the minds of inferior spirits, and has made it subject more or less to their powers, their influence, and their enjoyment. The division, therefore, of existence into mind, mat- ter, and language, is a sound logical division; it is both complete and clear. All its parts together embrace and express all that exists ; and each of its parts is clear and distinct from aU the others. No one can think or truly say that- mind is matter, or matter mind, or either THE CATEGORIES. 1 5 of them only language ; or that anything has ever been ideally thought or sensibly felt by man which is not included in one of the three. The most mysterious and difficult subjects which Philosophy has discussed and squabbled over have been motion, action, force, form, number, space, time, cause, resemblance, and the rest which some have termed " dif- ferent forms of the impulse of the mind to generalise ; " and the existency of which some have denied altogether, and which others have insisted, are not ideas or things at all, but that some of them, time and space for example, are mysterious inexplicable "forms" necessary to enable us to frame our ideas or to think at all ! These deserve our attention and demand our explication. We admit and confess our obligation to show that such well-known and obvious subjects of human thought, as time, space, number, cause, &c., are included in the widest gene- ralisation which we believe to be true. To say that such things are not ideas or thoughts, but " necessary forms," or mysterious somethings, which enable us to frame our ideas, appears to me to sap the foundations of all truth ; it is to build our knowledge on the shifting sands of the unknown, and to make unknown some things necessary to human knowledge, and so to foimd knowledge itself upon the unknown — a contradiction ! We reject all such mysteries. We build upon man's body, man's soul, man's language, his matter, his mind, and his words — three things which each man knows for himself, with the utmost certainty possible. We buUd on nothing else, and on no mystery whatever. It is each man's ditty, and it should be his pleasure, to form as true and complete conceptions of these three — mind, matter, and language — as God will enable him. l6 CHAPTER II. We have in ourselves examples of all; none can de- prive us of them. Mind, matter, and language are the first and last division, both of the universe of existence and of human knowledge in general. The thing know- ing, the thing known, and the thing which embodies and expresses the knowledge, the subject, the object, and the word, which unites the action of the object and the con- ception of the subject into one — these three — are within the grasp of every human intellect ; but objects them- selves are threefold — ^mental, material, and verbal — ^the first is a subject, and the last a word, and matter is distinct from both ; for the words object and subject are confusing and ambiguous. But if any one should think or say that language, being composed of words, by our own admission, partly material or partly mental — a vibration of matter with a mental emotion or signification — that therefore the laws of logical division hereafter laid down are violated, in that they — words — are not sufiiciently distinguished from mind and matter, or confuse the two ; we answer that it is not so. For, though words or language con- sist of vibrations of matter, with mental meanings or significations attached thereto, yet words are neither matter nor mind, but only a state of matter and state of mind conjoined in unity together. Vibrations are not matter or material, but a state of matter — a shifting form of material particles. Motion is not matter, but a state of matter — a relation of material particles. And the meanings or significations of our words are not minds, but states of mind — spiritual agitations and emo- tions, FOKMS or perceptions of the soul, but not the mind itself, nor parts of the mind itself, but states and condi- tions of the soul, the emotional part of the mind. THE CATEGORIES. 1 7 As the external word is a vibratioa of matter, so its internal meaning is an emotion of mind. The two must be conjoined to constitute a word, which is a state of matter conjoined to a state of mind, but neither material nor mental in itself. Words and language, therefore, though always consisting or com- posed of vibrations or undulations of matter connected with perceptions or emotions of mind, are neither mind nor matter themselves, nor even partly composed of either raind or matter. Motion is not matter, and emo- tion is not mind— the one is a state of matter, and the other a state of mind. Words are, therefore, to every man who thinks, clearly and distinctly a third thing — neither matter nor mind, neither partaking of matter nor partaking of mind — but, nevertheless, they arise and are created by the union and conjunction of the motion of matter with or by the action or emotion of mind — by the union of certain vibrations or undulations of matter with certain perceptions, agitations, or emotions of mind at- tached thereto. Words are the conjunction of motions of matter with emotions of mind. Thus all three. Mind, Matter, and Language, embrace all existence; but all three are separate and distinct from each other, and cannot be confounded together by any rational being. And the division of the Universe into mind, matter, and language, is both clear as to its parts and complete as to its entirety. CHAPTER III. THE PREDICABLES. "We have said that it is impossible to reason -with the man who denies, either the existence of the thing, or the possibility of the question, proposed to be discussed. We then have no fundamental assumptions, or words in common, from which we can begin to reason. We must then try and go back to something which we both still hold and admit in common, in order to begin our rea- soning. If a man denies the existence of matter, and declares himself an Idealist — or of mind, and professes Materialism — we can only fall back on the existence of human knowledge or Language, and the possibility of understanding it. We. are driven to words and their meanings. We ask, what is a word with no meaning, but a vibration, an undiilation, or Motion of matter? and what is its meaning but an emotion, an agitation, or con- ception or form of mind? And the disputant is reduced to the necessity of either denying the existence of words without meanings, or the existence of meanings without words to express them. Our words with meanings prove the real existence of our minds or understand- ings; and our words, or marks and sounds, without meanings, prove the existence of matter independent of our minds, of which matter, such words are motions, un- dulations, or vibrations. But the truth is, that all men THE PREDICABLES. 1 9k admit, in some form, the existence and distinction of mind and matter ; and then through bad logic, or bad intentions, or bad habits, contradict themselves, and hide their self-contradiction under a cloud of words ! If a plain man were to declare that his own body, or its unsentient parts, were only a " permanent possibility," we might at first think he was joking. But if he assured us in serious language, in the midst of a deep philoso- phical work, that, " in any other sense, he did not believe in the existence of matter," — i. e., except as '' a perma- nent possibility of sensation," — it is clear, in such case, that he does not consider matter as an existence or thing, but a possibility or question about a thing — a state or relation of Mind. This makes matter a state of Mind, just as the Materialist makes mind a state of Matter.* Berkeley was more reasonable, for he said that the phenomena, which we call substance or matter, were the language of God to man. This made matter, at least, independent of man's sensations and mind — a thing or existence — a language of nature — not a pos- sibility, but an existence or thing, independent of the human mind ! We stiU had, in Berkeley's view, the language of God, or external things ; the thoughts * The same author, of course, as he proceeds with his language and reasoning, finds himself under the necessity of treating his mind as " a flux, " " a series ; " but of what ? It can only be of particles of matter ! a state of matter ! Thus, the magician or logician who takes the phi- losophic world by stonn, shifts his position, from time to time, as his argument re(][uires, and makes his mind matter, or his matter mind, just to suit his logical conyenience ! Of course the result is neither Materialism nor Idealism, but positive Scepticism ; for he attacks and refutes Conceptualism without reaching faith in words or Symbolism, which includes faith in matter and faith in mind, the Creator of all. Positivism, if consistent, would be the negation both of reason and of faith. ^O CHAPTER III. of man, internal things; and human words or lan- guage, logical things. But to call matter a "possi- bility " is not Berkleianism, hut logical confusion — the confusing of existences with possibilities ; the confusion of things with questions about things ; the confusion of categories and predicables. It is logical ignorance, or logical confusion. The error of Berkeley, in my opinion, is this, that matter or the phenomena of nature is, more or less, sub- ject to man's will, and also to other wills than that of God. Man can bring things together which produce phe- nomena — what we call natural phenomena — according, and more or less subject, to the human will. And there may be possibly many other wills, good and bad, in the universe, between God and man, to whose wills also natural phenomena — what we call material phenomena — may be more or less subject. To call material phe- nomena the language of God, therefore, is to make God's language more or less subject to the wills of men, and possibly of angels and devils. It cannot be true or right to call what is subject more or less to my will — to call the phenomena which I can produce, or forbear to produce, at pleasure — the language of God. It is that part of God's creation which He has subjected in part to my will, and in part not to my will. I call it, therefore, part of God's creation — matter — which God may, and no doubt does, sustain by His almighty power, but which He has given for the use and instruc- tion of man on earth.* * But even the operations of angels and of devils can only present themselves to man as phenomena of matter — i. e. , visible or sensible to which he can "turn aside ; " and which he should examine without fear; as a great aud good man did to a "great sight" a "bush burning with fire, and yet not consumed ! " THE PREDICABLES. 21 But to confound matter with a "possibility" is to confuse things with questions — is to confound cate- gories and predicables, or nouns with verbs ! Matter exists, and is the name for a certain class of things or existences. Predicables are possibilities which may or may not exist ; which may begin and grow, and change and decay and cease, and possibly begin again. It is a fundamental error to call matter a state of mind ; or pure mind, a state of matter. They are two things or existences, distinct from each other. It is an- other fundamental error to overlook the deep importance of language, which is a third thing, neither matter nor mind, but a conjoined or united state of matter with a state of mind, a material vibration with a mental emo- tiou. Having assumed these existences, the simplest possible question we can ask is, "Whether we are to think of and consider them separately and apart, or conjunc- tively and together — their states, considered as unities or alone; their relations, considered as not alone but conjunctively, or as pluralities ? Are we to consider the thing as one or as many ? is the first question any one can reasonably ask — its state as a unity, its relations as a plurality ? There is no difference, in fact, between states and re- lations ; for any number of things may be put together by the mind as a unit, and the relations of the num- ber are the states of the unit. So any unit may be divided into many parts or powers or qualities; and the state of the unit is merely the relations of such parts or powers or qualities. For example, the state of the solar system at any moment, or its states for any time, are the relations of its parts and powers in space. We must hereafter consider Number, Time, and 22 CHAPTER in. Space, which all seem to be involved in aU the states and all the relations of all things in the Universe. But it is evident that all Aristotle's predicaUes are either states or relations. " Genus " is the origin, class, or family history of a thing in time and space ; its original state and successive states is its "genus" and history. "Species" is the form, shape, and resemblance, which are evidently states or relations in number, time, and space. So "essential difference," "property," and " accident " — all are evidently reducible to states of things as unities, or their relations to other things, as pluralities. But the greater part of Aristotle's cate- gories are, in fact, not properly things, but questions about things ; not existences, but possibilities ; not properly categories, but predicables. All of them, in fact, except substance, are not things, but questions. " Quantity," " quality," " relation," " action," " passion,'' "when," "where," "posture," and "habit," are all evi- dently not things, but states or relations of things. They are questions and possibilities, not things or exis- tences themselves. They are all answers to the ques- tions — How much ? how many ? how like ? Or how ? when ? where ? and are all states of the one, or relations of the many. But it may be justly asked. Are not predicables, of which we can speak and reason, like quantity and qua- lity, or actions and passions — in short, aU states and relations — are they not also all things — "conceptions present to the intellect " — and justly called things as well as spirits, bodies, and words are called things ? What, then, is the distinction between existences and possibilities? between things and questions? between categories and predicables ? It appears to me that the THE PREDICABLES. 23 difiference between these fundamental assumptions is like unto that between permanence and variableness, between forms and motions, between motions without progress, which are only undulations, and forms without fixity, which are only ideas ! between " being " the noun and "being" the verb.*' It is this difference or distinction which gave rise to Zeno's old paradox about motion, which is not a thing, but a relation of things, a state of things. The first step of the human mind is to distinguish things that are per- manent as categories, and things that are variable or only possible as predicables ; to mark out what is con- tinuous and permanent amidst the perpetual flux of nature. Man falls back on himself, on his own identity, the permanence of his mind, his Ego, and gropes with his language to mark out true and real distinctions. The one and the many — ego and non-ego — object and subject — facts and theories — mind and matter, — all these distinctions, as we shall show, are imperfect or confused divisions, and have given occasion for infinite * This seems the fundamental juggle of Hegelianism. Of course, every Predicable can become a thing, a thought, a concrete, in place of an abstract conception. Every noun can be used as a verb to express some action or relation of the noun ; and the German language, from its general use of its verbs substantively, without any article to distinguish, affords greater facility for this confusion than English. But we can play thejeu de mots in English also with the present participle in mg ; and we find a little of it with such words as being, knowing, helieving, action, motion, &c. All language is undulation, which implies both motion and form— fixed limits to the wave inform, and TOo^iora between those limits, and yet progression beyond them into the succeeding un- dulation ! Here Newton's illustration of "throwing pebbles into the ocean of existence, and counting the ripples which they make," assists our mind in its conception of its own operation in acquiring human truth. Every word is a pebble flung into the infinite depths of the human soul. 24 CHAPTER III, logomachy. But before we can reason witli words and signs, we must discuss the laws or axioms of logic, and the nature of language. But I say that all possibilities are states of one or relations of many ; and all existences are either spirits, bodies, and words, or mind, matter, and language. Thus, the distinction between categories and predi- cables is the distinction between existence and possi- bility. Categories are things we assume to exist, predicables are questions we assume to be possible. Both are fundamental assumptions from which our rea- soning must start, and on which it must always depend ; and till men can agree on these fundamental assump- tions, all discussion is an idle waste of words. But the laws of logical truth lie at the foundation of all human truth. We must have and assume a priori, categories, predicables, and axioms — existences, possibilities, prin- ciples — aU self-evident, and from which we may and must start, or else our reasoning cannot even begin to be. But the worst of all possible foundations for truth is to begin with a verbal lie ! a verbal contradiction ! a falsehood ! It were better to be silent for ever ! CHAPTER IV. LOGICAL TRUTH AXIOMS, Whatever truth may exist concerning mind and mat- ter, it is clear that all human truth, all human know- ledge, must be embodied in words, signs, and symbols, before it can possibly become the common possession of mankind. Logical truth, therefore, lies at the foundation of all human truth whatever. We must begin with words and language ; we must first establish what these are, and in what their truth consists. If our words, signs, and symbols, whatever be their force or meanings, are so arranged and put together that in and by themselves they violate logical truth, they are logically false, and manifestly and necessarily cannot be admitted to embody any truth whatever, either concerning mind, matter, or language. I reject the pretended law of Excluded Middle, and say that the fundamental laws of logical truth are three, the self-evident axioms of language : — 1. The Principle of Identity. 2. The Principle of Contradiction. 3. The Principle of Logical Division or Distinction. The first, or principle of Identity, is the law of logical liberty, or free speech, which authorises every reasoner to assert, if he pleases, the identity of two words, and 26 CHAPTER IV. of the thoughts and things they mean and represent. Every man has in argument the never-ceasing right to assert that the two words A and B mean to his mind the same material thing, the same mental thought, or are two words verbally and logically interchangeable. The second law, or principle of Contradiction, forbids direct logical falsehood. It is stated simply thus : Two contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same place at the same time, here and now. That is — Logical truth requires that no man shall directly contradict himself, and say that A is B ; and here, at the same time, say that A is not B. That is direct logical falsehood, self-contradiction — a lie, the most odious violation of truth. He who contradicts himself, stands seK-refuted, and violates truth, whatever his words may mean. But a man may well and truly say that A is B here to-day, and that it is not B at some other time, or in some other place. The law of Excluded Middle is the converse of the law of Contradiction, but I reject it altogether as a -necessary law of logical truth. The law of Excluded Middle, means that one of two contradictory propositions must be true, and is laid down thus : " A must be either B or not B ; there is no third possibility." This law I reject, for reasons to be stated hereafter. But, I think, it is obvious that whenever A is only partly B, or only sometimes B, we are justly entitled to deny both general or universal propositions. They are both ambiguous, and both false. The third law of logical truth is the principle or law of logical distinction or Division which has been grossly neglected by most writers on logic; and its neglect occasions most of their errors and ambiguities. LOGICAL TRUTH — AXIOMS. i27 This law forbids logical ambiguity — i. e., indirect logical falsehood. This law has two branches — 1st, .that the parts of the division must be clear ; 2d, that the parts must be complete. The violation of this law has been the source of almost all the ambiguities that have disgraced philosophy from the days of Thales or Pythagoras. The meaning of the first branch of the law is, that if we think it needful to distinguish the parts of a wholebydistinctnames,the parts shouldbe clear — i.e., not overlap or be confusible with the other parts. Logical truth' manifestly requires that none of the things called by the name of one part should be possibly included or confounded with any of the things included under the other part or parts — i. e., each part should be clearly distinguishable from all the others. The second branch of the law requires completeness in the division, and means that all the parts taken together should com- prise the whole intended to be divided — i.e., that no part of the thing intended to be divided should be left out or forgotten. If the first branch of the law is violated, the distinc- tion is not clear; if the second is violated, it is not com,plete. In either case, we are landed in an indirect logical falsehood — i. e., an ambiguity. For if a proposition is verbally ambiguous, it is false in one or both mean- ings. When the parts are not clear, the things errone- ously included under two distinct names render the application of these names ambiguous ; and when the division is not complete, the part omitted may possibly falsify or contradict what is asserted as to the other parts. But although the parts of a logical division must be 28 CHAPTER IV. both clear and complete, it is not necessary that the mental or physical things themselves should be men- tally or physically separated or separable. The law is a logical, not a mental or physical, law. Division is a logical distinction, and the meanings of the words may be clearly distinct in the mind, though the things are not in themselves separated or distinct ; otherwise we could not distinguish, logically, the parts of a unit, or recognise the divisions of a whole, or distinguish our minds from our bodies, or either from the thoughts and words we possess. We may, for example, assert that man is composed of body, soul, and spirit, and treat of them as logically distinct and separate, though in our present stage of existence they are inseparable, and all incapable of being separately examined, or their boundaries clearly defined. Yet man's mind is not his body, nor his body his mind ; and in like manner his mind is divisible into soul and spirit ; and his soul may be subject to the material influences of light, heat, magnetism, or electricity, and yet his spirit may not. And though we cannot separate them in this world, yet we should constantly remember the great and constant distinction between the three. Good divisions are very difficult to discover ; but it is clear that if our words are confused, then the general propositions made with such confused words are con- fused — that is, partly false. And if our words are im- perfect or incomplete, then the general propositions made with such imperfect or incomplete words are themselves imperfect or incomplete — i.e., partly false. And what is partly false cannot be wholly true — i. e., the general proposition is false. Hence it follows that LOGICAL TRUTH — AXIOMS. 29 both contradictories, made ■with such confused and im- perfect words, can be, and ought to be, denied in spite of the law of excluded middle. This law of excluded middle has, in fact, done more to puzzle and confuse philosophers, and to disgrace the name of philosophy, than any other part of logic. And we must therefore proceed to examine it more at large, in order to fully justify our rejection of its obligation as a law of logical truth. But there are two divisions of the universe much in use at present, which are the worst possible, for they violate both laws of logical division — viz., Ego and Non-Ego, and Object and Subject. They are neither complete as a whole, nor clear as to the parts, and therefore violate both laws of logical distinction. ] st, They both ignore language or words, and so are not complete. Words are partly egoistic and partly non-egoistic ; partly objective and partly subjective. Before the word is uttered, it is part of the subjective ego ; after it is uttered, it is part of the objective non- ego. Therefore neither division is complete, for lan- guage is wholly omitted. But, 2d, The parts are not clear. Your ego is pdrt of my non-ego ; and my ego is part of your non-ego ! so that we are necessarily always speaking of different things. But besides this, our egos never remain the same for two moments of time ! They vary with every breath we draw, and every morsel we eat ! No logical distinction can be worse than ego and non-ego — they are bad English, bad logic, and end in false philosophy. The same observation applies to object and subject ; for the objects and subjects are difi'erent to each man, and the object can become subjective in thought, and 30: CHAPTER IV. the subject can become objective, or the thing we are thinking of. The parts, therefore, overlap each other, and are partly interchangeable. In short, these cele- brated divisions are as evil as possible, and violate both laws of logical distinction ; and no truth can be arrived at by resting or depending on such false and ambigu- ous words ! Both these distinctions — ego and non-ego, and the objective and the subjective — are always sup- posed to comprise the whole universe known to man- kind, and are always so used ; and yet the parts of eacb are not only ambiguous and interchangeable, but each distinction also overlooks and omits the foundation of all human truth — viz., human LANGUAGE. CHAPTER V. LAW OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE FALSE. The law or principle of Excluded Middle means the logical necessity that one or other of two directly con- tradictory propositions must be true. The law has been described and laid down by an eminent logician as follows : — "Of two directly contradictory propositions, one or other must be true. . . . This axiom is the other half of the doctrine of contradictory propositions. By the law of contradiction, contradictory propositions cannot both be true: by the law of excluded middle, they cannot both be false. Or, to state the meaning in other lan- guage, by the law of contradiction, a proposition cannot be both true and false : by the law of excluded middle it must be either true or false — there is no third possi- bility." * I assert that this law or principle of excluded middle is in many cases absolutely false, and therefore cannot possibly be binding as a general law of logical truth. * J. S. Mill's ' Examination of Sir W.Hamilton's Philosophy,' p. 414, 415. Again, he -says : — "A is either B or not B. That, indeed, rests on the principle of Excluded Middle, or rather is the very formula of that principle. Sir W. Hamilton calls this the principle of disjunctive judgments." But I think Mr Mill's is the more 'accurate expression, for the reasons which he himself has given. — Ibid. It is sometimes also called the axiom of contradiction and identity. 32 CHAPTER V. This so-called law has puzzled and deluded philosophers from the earliest ages, and to it may be traced most of the fallacies and paradoxes which have disgraced philo- sophy from the days of Zeno to the present time. And if we admit the principle as binding on our intellect, most absurd propositions have been and can be logically proved beyond all question, Zeno first applied this doctrine to motion and time and space. Achilles could never overtake the tortoise, the greyhound could never overtake a hare; for the thing must be either overtaken or not overtaken. If it is overtaken, the fact is already past ; if not overtaken, it is still yet to come, and the law of excluded middle excludes the third possibility — the present time. The infinite divisibility of space and time may be equally ap- plied to maintain the same paradox, which still puzzles some unmathematical conceptualists. In fact, very few, except mathematicians thoroughly imbued with the science of Descartes and Newton, even yet perceive the falsehood and fallacy of the pro- position, " A thing must be either moving or not mov- ing." Both alternatives may be false, and a thing may be beginning to move, neither moving nor not moving, and that beginning to move may last ten thousand years ! For example, as it has been observed, a canal of water is beginning to move when you open a tap at one end ; but if the canal is long enough, and the tap slow and small enough, the canal will not be moving for ten thousand years, though it has been running out at one end all that time, and all that time has been beginning to move; yet the canal is not all moving, or all not moving, and during all that time the canal is neither moving nor not moving, but only beginning to move ! LAW OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE FALSE. 33 The canal as one thing is neither in motion nor not in motion, but only beginning to move ; for Motion is a Relation between two and not a predicable of one ; and when we speak of a state of motion, and say a body is in a state of motion, we mean either the Ee- lation of its own parts to themselves, or internal mo- tion ; or else the Eelation of the whole to some fixed point or to space, or its external motion in space. Motion in itself, is not matter, but a State of matter. But the same paradox by the law of excluded middle 'may be proved of any Eelation ; for a relation exists in neither Eelative — it is neither in the relative nor out of the relative. Thus by this law there is no beginning to life, and no end to a walking-stick ! The end of your walking-stick is neither on the stick nor off the stick ; it is neither a part of the stick nor beyond the stick — it does not exist either as a part of the stick, for then it is not the end ; nor apart from the stick, for then the stick is without an end. In short, the end of your walk- ing-stick is, like a mathematical surface, " inconceivable," to those who are bound by the law of excluded middle. But to the mathematician, Newton disposed of all such paradoxes, when he discussed the ratios of vanishiag mo- tions — the ratios of velocities at the moment of their ceasing altogether — and exhibited the proportions of in- finitesimals, in the second and third degrees — infinitely less than things themselves infinitely little ! Of course the Materialist, and the Conceptualist in his materialistic mood, rely on the law of excluded middle to refute all such things as the points, lines, and surfaces of the mathematician, as well as the proportions of van- ishing ratios infinitely less than what is infinitely little ; aU of which, by the law of excluded middle, become 34 CHAPTER V. absurd, inconceivable, and non-existent. But no person sbould presume to reason about the human mind without some study of the mathematics of infinitesimals. Till he has done so, the door of philosophy is shut to him, according to the rule of the ancient Academy of Plato. But not only motion and the relations of mathema- tical quantities may be shown to be non-existent by the law of excluded middle, but every possible relation, and every attribute which depends upon a relation, are equally non-existent. Fatherhood, brotherhood, sonship, or the meaning of every abstract term, may be declared to be" non-existent; for all abstract words are constituted and created from and by relations and resemblances which exist neither in the things nor apart from the things, but between the things ; for these Conceptions are con- ceptions present only when the intellect is capable of creating or realising the mental resemblance ; and at other times nowhere and non-existent — for Eelation and Eesemblance are wholly mental ! Number and Time and Space, the Infinite and the Absolute, all relations. Divine and Human, the wisdom, power, and goodness of God and man, aU virtue and all obligation — in short, every possible Eelation between any two beings — can be disproved by means of this law of excluded middle; and we thus may behold the spectacle of a " theologian taking advantage of the temporary oc- cupation of a theological chair to prove [by the law of excluded middle] that theology cannot exist;" for theo- logy is altogether relative ! But, happily, common sense is stronger than bad logic. In fact, no part of human knowledge is logically secure if the law of excluded middle is binding ; for all human knowlege is a Eelation between object and subject ex- LAW OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE FALSE. 35 pressed in words, and it exists neither in the Object nor without the Object, neither in the Subject nor without the Subject — for then it could not pass from Subject to Subject — and the law of excluded middle forbids the third possibility ! This law, therefore, is the main weapon and chief instrument of the materialistic and positive phi- losophers of the day ; and by it they attempt to support the dogma of the schoolmen, " that nothing can be in the intellect which was not first in the senses," and that all ideas are derived from and founded on Experience, and that we can have no ideas independent thereof All which is false ! For we have ideas of God, Spirits, and thousands of abstractions which we have created, but never experienced at aU; but this requires future con- sideration. However, as we have divided all things into Mind, Matter, and Language, it is easy to show by a few examples, that this supposed law of excluded middle is false in each department; and being sometimes false, is not a law universally true or binding. It is false in three cases : — 1st, When one or other of the terms employed, A or B, is logically absurd or non- sensical ; 2d, "When the thoughts of A and B are men- tally ambiguous or incompatible ; Sd, "When the things A and B are physically variable and composite with each other in number, time, and space — i.e., when A is partly or sometimes B, and partly or sometimes not B. For example : — 1. Suppose that it were asserted that " all fish must be either abracadabra or not abracadabra," we can well deny both alternatives, for both are logically nonsensical. 2. Suppose that it were asserted that "a musical sym- phony must be either as sweet as a rose or not as sweet as a rose," we can agaiin deny both absurdities, because 36 CHAPTER V. the thoughts or sensations are incompatible or ambigu- ous. Both are sweet, but we cannot compare the sweet- ness of hearing with the sweetness of smell. No man can be bound by any law of Logic to accept one or other of such dubious, ignorant, or ambiguous proposi- tions. 3. Suppose that it were asserted that " water must be either oxygen or not oxygen," we can well and pro- perly deny both propositions, for both are false. It is false to say that water is oxygen, when it is only partly oxygen. It is also false to say that water is not oxygen, when every particle of water is oxygen, plus something else. In all such cases we are well entitled to deny both alternatives, in spite of the law of excluded middle, for both are false, imperfect, or ambiguous ; and we are entitled by such denial to call upon the reasoner to cor- rect his language, to improve his mental perceptions, or to extend his physical knowledge. If your propositions are not framed with correct words, according to the true relations of Thoughts and Things, I can well deny both the afiirmative and the negative. If the words are absurd, or the thoughts and things, A and B, are ambiguous or imperfect, I can justly decline to be fixed with either alternative made with such absurd words or ambiguous or imperfect thoughts and things ; and in spite of any such supposed law of excluded middle, I may justly deny both contradictories or both contraries. In fact, this law of excluded middle implies and as- sumes that there is nothing, — i.e., no state of mind, when we speak of thought or Metaphysics, — between the affirmative and the negative, — between belief and dis- belief. But there are three things and three states of LAW OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE FALSE. 37 mind between them. There are douht, ignorance, and indifference. What is doubt but partly believing and partly disbelieving? What is ambiguity but partly truth and partly not truth ? What is incompatibility but partly thinkable and partly unthinkable ? So when we speak of matter or physics. There are, in relation to our senses, three states of matter — solid, fluid, and gaseous. And fluids penetrate solids, and gases penetrate fluids, and also gases and fluids inter- penetrate each other; and besides their physical mixture, there is also their chemical combinations, with the real nature of which we are wholly ignorant. But neverthe- less, although man himself cannot penetrate matter, yet matter can not only penetrate different kinds of matter, but may also penetrate man's body ; and for all that we at present know on the subject, a Spirit in the form of a gas might penetrate man's Brain, or even man's Soul, just as the fumes of brandy or ether or tobacco may penetrate a man and deprive him of some or all his bodily and mental senses. But this law of excluded middle ignores all these possibilities, and insists that the visible or sensible A must be either B or not B ; whereas it is manifest that the visible and sensible A or B may be iaterpenetrated, even materially, with some (to man) insensible fluid or gas, which might render all our logic, as well as the law of excluded middle, utterly absurd upon the subject of the physics of such matter. Both physics and metaphysics are therefore clearly beyond the limits of this pretended law of logic. This law of excluded middle was first applied by Zeno in his paradox about motion, which stiU puzzles the conceptualists. But it is equally applicable to every relation, which may be thus shown to be neither in the 38 CHAPTER V. relative nor without the relative; and so to exist nowhere but in the human mind or imagination. Thus, this law becomes the stronghold of materialism, scepticism, false rationalism, and false morality or no morality — for all attributes, and all abstract relations whatever, even pure Logical Inference, perceived only by the mind and not by the body, can be absolutely denied as possessing any existence whatever! And, likewise, aU the relations between man and God, and between man and man, can in like manner be proved to be non-existent, except, as they may say, in the illogical brains of priests, pietists, and moralists, who have not sufficiently studied and sub- mitted to Positive philosophy and to the law of excluded middle; and so mistake their weak imaginations for the laws of nature, which this logical law of excluded middle can clearly show to exist nowhere and at no time, neither in the Things nor apart from the Things — ^neither now nor in eternity ! neither here nor there ! and nowhere ! for where does a Law of Nature really exist ? All the philosophical rubbish of twenty centuries hangs and depends and is built on this supposed logical law of excluded middle, which, as a general law of logical truth, is wholly false, and in no respect binding on the human intellect. Of course, logicians have long seen the falsehood of some of the conclusions founded on this law, and have generally endeavoured, under the title of fallacies or the laws of Fallacies, or of Probabilities, &c., to take back what they have previously granted, or are bound to grant, under this assumed law of excluded middle. Ancient and mediaeval Logic has thus been guilty of inconsistency and self-contradiction, but Aristotle pro- bably less so than many of his followers. But the LAW OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE FALSE. 39 proper and only correct way is to deny the whole obli- gation of the law of excluded middle, and to assert, as I do assert, that it is not binding on any intelligent human being ; but that whenever human words are ambiguous or imperfect, men are well entitled to deny both the afi&rmative and the negative ; because, when composed with such ambiguous or imperfect language, whether relating to thoughts, things, or words, both general pro- positions may be false. Between the affirmative and the negative in thought and fact and language, there are doubt, ignorance, and indifference, all of which have left their marks in the corruption and ambiguity of our words. Matter admits of gaseous and fluid Interpenetrations, and, with Mind, is equally open or obnoxious to doubt, ignorance, and indifference, caused by such material Confusions. Thus then, the law of Contradiction is entirely sound and obligatory, and forbids logical falsehood. No man has a right to say, here and now in words, that a thing is loth A and not A ; that is logical falsehood. But the general converse of this, or the law of excluded middle, is not binding on any man. The thing may be neither properly A nor properly not A, because A may be in itself absurd or ambiguous ; and this may happen, as we have said, in three cases : — 1st, When the word A is absurd or nonsensical. 2d, When the thing is materially composite with A in space or time ; for then both propositions are materi- ally and logically imperfect. 3d, When the thought of the thing is mentally in- compatible with A; for then both propositions are men- tally and logically ambiguous. In all these three cases both the affirmative and the 4Q CHAPTER V. negative may be justly denied, notwithstanding this pretended law of exclusive middle. This law of excluded middle, it may be also observed, secretly assumes that we are speaking of the things themselves, and not of our ideas of things, or of our words for our ideas of things. And the philosopher who admits the distinction between mind and matter con- tradicts himself if he 'admits the law of excluded middle; and this contradiction can, I think, be made manifest thus: — For if we admit the distinction be- tween mind and matter, then each man's words are the names, not of things themselves, but of his ideas or . mental images of things ; and when he says " A is B," he means, only according to his ideas. But when he says, "A must be either B or not B"^i.e., when he as- serts the law of excluded middle— he is no longer using his words as names for his ideas, but as names of the things themselves ; and he is thereby attempting to fix nature or his opponent, with the reality of his ideas, under the name of the reality of things themselves ; about which, he who admits the distinction between mind and matter, admits that he cannot speak at all. For, whoever admits the independent existence of mind, and that mind and matter are two and not one, admits that he can neither know nor speak of anything but what is in his mind — i. e., not of things themselves, but only of his ideas of things. But this law of ex- cluded middle always implies that we are speaking of the very things themselves, as they are in nature and in the sight of God, as positive realities, and not merely as human idealities, or matters of human faith and mental certainty embodied in Words. Thus, the man who asserts the law of excluded middle LAW OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE FALSE. 41 logically denies the existence of the human mind, as dis- tinct from matter ; as well as the existence of all abstract ideas. But this, I think, will appear more clearly here- after. First, let men acquire distinct ideas of mind, matter, and language — of spirits, bodies, and words — as positive and indubitable realities — and then the logical and philosophical fetters of this law of excluded middle drop from our awakened intellect as an ancient, but empty and contemptible, logical incubus* * The argument in the text may be put technically thus : — In the universal affirmative, by the laws of all logic, the predicate is not dis- tributed — i.e., part of its comprehension is left out of consideration altogether, and is not thought of or spoken about at all ; therefore, when we deny the universal affirmative to be true, we are affirming nothing of that part of the predicate not distributed. But when we also deny the universal negative, both the subject and predicate are distributed, and both the universal propositions are false, if any part of the subject is contained in the predicate. Thus, if A and B have a common part, C, C A I 1 1 I 1 B C it is false to say, " Every A is B," and it is also false to say, " No A is B." Both are equally false whenever A and B have a part in common. Or, according to the logic of Aristotle, "Both contraries may be false, though both cannot be true." The error of modern logicians has, in my opinion, arisen from illicit dealings with the copula, and from the connecting improperly the sign of negation with the predicate itself, and so converting unlawfully the negative proposition into a new affirmative. Thus, "A is B," and "A is not B," are thought of at one time, and the latter is then changed into A is (not-B), which is a new " affirmative," in which, of course, as an affirmative, (not-B) is not distributed, and is become a wholly dif- ferent proposition from (No A is B). But the conclusion of the law of the excluded middle — viz., "A must be either B or (not-B) " — is then alleged concerning two terms, B and (not-B), neither of which have been distributed — i.e., not wholly thought of, or in general previously settled or spoken about in any way ! Of course, writers on logic try to get out of this quagmire of inacour- 42 CHAPTER V. ate language or inaccurate thought in various ways, generally in the chapter on fallacies. But one ingenious way adopted by a clever mathematical logician may be mentioned here — viz., by making a universe not a universe ! or creating a new universe wholly undefined of every universal term (for who can define a new universe for the nega- tive of each universal term ?) — i.e., by saying that A and (not- A) and B and (not-B) are two universes of some particular kind, not " the one Universe "—with which, therefore, philosophy can have nothing to do, as philosophy is wholly engaged with " the one Universe." In discus- sing the copula "is" and "is not," this author lays down the law of excluded middle in the usual form, " That is and is not are contradic- tory alternatives. One must, and both cannot, be true." — (De Morgan's ' Logic,' p. 50.) But he then soon afterwards abandons the well-known logical distinction between the words contrary and contradictory, and treats them as synonymous (p. 60), though he candidly admits all I require — viz., that " contraries may both be false, but cannot both be true " (ibid.) ; and therefore, that the law of excluded middle, as applied to universal propositions by Mill and Hamilton, is false. Professor De Morgan's able book appears to me to involve the confusion, tempt- ing to a mathematician, of "existence " with " equality." But " exis- tence" only requires one, and "equality" requires two; and we can cer- tainly reason about the continuous existence of one thing without con- sidering its equality with anything else. The difference, which he appears to ignore, between " Horse (is not) man," and " Horse is (not-man) " (p. 137), appears to me to be this ; that from the first we can logically deduce "No horse is a man," and " No man is a horse," which is defined and positive knowledge ; but from the other, " All horses are (not-men)," we can only deduce, " Some (not-men) are horses." But we cannot possibly deduce logically that "No horse is a man;" and Swift's filthy tale might be therefore true in the one case and not in the other, for some (not-men) might be rational, and might be horses. This seems to me a very considerable logical difference. But such arguments are hardly worth serious consideration. CHAPTER VI. NUMBER. We have thus laid before the reader all our funda- mental assumptions : — Three Categories or distinct Existences — Mind, Mat- ter, and Language ; all three self-evident to every man in his own person. Two Predicables or classes of possibilities — questions concerning these existences — viz., their States as unity ; their Belations as plurality. Three Axioms, or self-evident principles or laws of logic — the laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Divi- sion. Besides these fundamental assumptions, we hope that we have enlarged the domain of human liberty by abolishing the law of excluded middle, showing it to be false and unfounded ; and have endeavoured to relieve the human mind from a logical falsity which has pressed it downwards for two thousand years — the very absurd notion, as it now appears to me, that if A is an ambiguous or imperfect term, and T deny the truth of a proposition involving it, that thereupon (not- A) is, or has become against me, less ambiguous or less imperfect; and that I am obliged to admit that the thing is not A ! whereas I may intend to assert, and may assert perhaps* justly, that both the affirmative and the negative are 44 CHAPTER VI. false, because they both involve the imperfect or ambi- guous thing or thought or word which I reject. Having thus, as we hope, established logical truth on the sounder basis of the laws of contradiction and divi- sion, or logical distinction, the most natural step might appear to be to discuss first the nature of language, or of words, signs, and symbols in general. But men learn their words and language, before they can remember, from their parents, tlieir companions, and their teachers. And before we (any of us) can re- member how it occurred, we have all learnt three great abstract words, thoughts, or things, and to use and apply them as, more or less, the measures and make-sures of all material things — viz., NUMBEE. — TIME. — SPACE. We all, more or less, understand and apply them, from the child who counts his marbles and measures his toys and longs for his play-hour, up to the astronomer who calculates and measures the least possible distance and possible times of the dog-star Sirius, or the nearest of the fixed stars. What then, in the first place, is number? We all study abstract numbers before we study language in the abstract ; we study arithmetic before we study philosophy. Pythagoras, more than 2000 years ago, pronounced number the beginning of all science, the foundation of aU certainty. The modern philosopher, riding on his positive or materialistic hobby, pronounces, by the law of excluded middle, "number in the abstract" to be nothing at aU. "All numbers," says he, " must be num- •bers of something ; there can be no such thing as num- bers in the abstract ! Ten must mean ten bodies or ten NUMBER. 45 sounds or ten beatings of the pulse." And, of course, to the materialist, by the logic of the excluded middle, ab- stract number, like all other abstract words, has, "strictly- speaking, no signification" — i.e., none visible, or sensible, or material. For aU abstract words, including the word number, are all names for mental relations or resem- blances, which the mind perceives or invents between certain things, when it gives them a class name. But this relation or resemblance does not exist in any- one thing ; and if not in any one, then not in all the things taken together. The relation or resemblance itself is not in the things, but between the things, and only in the human imagination, in the human mind, which to the positive materialist is nought and nowhere ; and the signification of the abstract term is also, by the law of excluded middle, nought and nowhere, neither in the things themselves nor out of the things themselves — nothing but a " general abstract idea " which, in the sense of a material image, Berkeley showed to be a "stark-staring absurdity!" In short, abstract ideas, to the positive materialist, are worse than nothing, neither existing in time nor space — a mere phantasm of ill-regulated imaginations, not confining and restricting themselves to the positive, or to concrete matter ! to the sensible and visible ! Of course, by such reasoning, number in the abstract, together with force, cause, resemblance, &c., are proved to be nothing at all. Yet Number is an abstract word very intelligible to us all ; and we all learn arithmetic, or the abstract laws of number. However, as we believe in the existence of mind and language, as well as in matter — and as we assume that words are positive existences, independent of matter — 46 CHAPTER Vr. and as we deny the obligation of and reject the law of excluded middle — we say that abstract number is, like all other abstract words, a class name for a number of units; and each unit is a sign, a symbol, a word made entirely alike all others. Units are only Kie-words ! — i. e., when all words become, or are supposed, alike, they become units, marks of unity, and their class name is Number ; or numbers of numbers of like units pro- nounced with the mouth, or made with the pen or printer's ink, or only thought of by the mind when we do a sum of arithmetic in the head ; where they have no visible, sensible, or material existence whatever, that we know of, but are only mere units in the mind, or thoughts, made all alike, and numbered as mental units in mental arithmetic. Ten is the abstract name for ten units, ten anythings or ten nothings ; ten words, signs, or symbols. Numbers are words. Such are numbers in the abstract — i.e^, abstracted from the Universe of mind and matter ; and in the con- crete they are things, thoughts, or words, merely con- sidered as units or ones, and joined together by a class name. Any arithmetical number is merely a bundle of units marked and known by its sign or name, and thereby distinguished from all other such bundles which have different signs, symbols, or names, all of which are words invented by man to distinguish the bundles from each other. I deny, therefore, that number in the abstract is nothing, and show thus what it is. For I say, numbers are signs, symbols, words. Nor do we get or make our numbers by tentation, or by any uncertain or doubtful process, or by induction ! On the contrary, I assert that we make them all logically, and get them all by irre- NUMBER. 47 sistible logical necessity — by deduction; and that a man must contradict himself who does otherwise, or who de- nies numerical deduction. I assert that every man who uses words, and thereby admits the existence of language, must contradict him- self, or become an inaccurate logical shuffler, who doubts any accurate arithmetical calculation — for all sums in arithmetic are only accurately and logically demon- strated substitutions of symbols. But, of course, many men are both poor arithmeticians and poor logicians ! But let us strictly deduce our numbers, and so, by sound words and language, teach materialistic philoso- phers to think accurately about number. Having assumed or been granted in the beginning three categories and two predicables, then, by the law of identity, I am at liberty to set down what has been already granted in a new form, thus : — Abstract Terms. Mind = 1 = 1 = One. + Matter = 1 + 1 = 2 = Two. + Language = 1 + 1 + 1 =3 = Three. + (Their States) = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 =4 = Four. + (Their Eelations) = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5 = Five. And, if you cannot continue the process much further than you like, you are a very poor arithmetician, and require to study ; for we can evidently count five as a new ^m^t, and add one thereto after the manner of the ancients, and use the old symbols, and say five + 1 = vi ; or, after the manner of the Arabians, take a new symbol and say = 6, and so on by tens to a million or more, without any possible conclusion — i. e., without end, or 48 CHAPTER VI. to infinity ; and so can frame all numbers on the bi- nary, quinary, decimal, or any other system* But supposing the education of the arithmetician in symbols perfected, yet the positive philosopher and pious worshipper of induction steps forward and says, You have not yet proved that two -f- two make four ! ! But I say that I have to eye, ear, and understanding proved, deduced, and demonstrated that fact; for, as soon as I have set down my two two's as units, and counted them, or divided my four units into two two's, then, by the law of identity, I say that they are visibly, actually, sensibly, logically, and mentally demonstrated to be the very same things ! I have myself made them so; and you must contradict yourself in words, signs, and symbols, and deny what you have first granted — ^viz., my first words, signs, and symbols, or deny the law of * In a former publication I showed that numbers could be deduced from one, two, three — ^the categories, mind, thing, and word — as the three units then assumed ; and now I include the predicables, unity and plurality, as four and five, as two further units, to show that every distinct ctssumption is a distinct unity — to avoid any supposed super- stition about one, two, and three. Bnt I still think the remark cori'ect, and worthy of observation, — "If we had commenced with assuming at first two existences or distinct things only ; or if we could hold the opinion that human knowledge necessarily implies only two things — say subject and object, or ego and non ego — we should have at once fallen into a dubiety or uncertainty in the deduction of Numbers, quite independent of materialism or dogmatic idealism. For if we only had had one, two, as the foundation of numbers, instead of one, two, three, in our first conception, we could not feel quite sure what the next most simple or most natural step should be, for there would be two steps equally natural. Two is formed by adding one to one ; and the next like step might, therefore, have been two to two, and so on, making each new number by adding the former number to itself. We should, therefore, have remained uncertain or dubious, between what are called the natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., and the series, 1, 2, 4, 8, &c. Both of these might have been said to be equally natural. But having assumed knowledge, as one unit in the beginning. NUMBER. 49 identity — or else two and two are four, and have been four, and will be four, from all eternity to all eternity, in every intellect that ever did or ever can exist. " Oh, but pray, suppose a miracle," says the pious inductive positivist, though belonging to the class who usually scoffs at miracles and prayers as irrational and weak imaginations of unphilosophical minds ! By all means, as I believe in many miracles, and in the efficacy of earnest prayer ! Let us then suppose this miracle " not beyond the bounds of Omnipotence ! " But can I go on to suppose a contradiction, a false- hood, in my mun chosen and selected signs, symbols, words — a miracle worked by Omnipotence ? Can Om- nipotence alter my words, signs, and symbols ? I hum- bly deny it. Though a much less' Spirit than Omnipotence may be able to confuse my mind, and puzzle my intellect. if three units are given in our first cognition, or conception of know- ledge, the mind cannot jump from three to three times three ; and is, as it were, compelled to recognise the individual unity of the three factors — thing, mind, and word — and to discuss their combinations, and to proceed hy the steps of one, two, three, to the natural series of numbers, adding unit after unit, in place of adding units or things to themselves. " The same dubiety or uncertainty which I have illustrated by the two series, 1, "2, 3, &c., and 1, 2, 4, &;c., seems to me to result from all attempts to reduce human knowledge or philosophy to an antithesis — in short, to a couple ; thoughts and things, ego and non ego, subject and object, facts and theories, and so forth ; from which antithesis, as I conceive, no kind of certainty can result. I say, therefore, with great respect for many of these great philosophers and learned men, that the foundation is insecure and uncertain, and involves all philo- sophical questions in its own dubiety. It compels them to endeavour to sustain their system by new assumptions, forms of thought, intui- tions, necessary conceptions — such as Space, and Time, and Cause, &c.,— which enable any bold sceptic to blow the whole fabric to pieces, by refusing to admit all or some of these assumptions. "—' Philosophj', or the Science of Truth,' p. 39. D so CHAPTER VI. if I am -wilKng to submit to the spirit of falsehood ; yet no person can possibly alter my words chosen by myself against my wUl ! However, for the sake of argument, suppose this miracle ! Behold the miracle proposed and supposed by induc- tive philosophy ! " Consider this case. There is a world in which, whenever two pairs of things are either placed in proximity or are contemplated together, a fifth thing is immediately created, and brought within the contemplation of the mind engaged in putting two and two together. This is surely neither inconceivable, for we can readily conceive the result by thinking of common puzzle tricks ; nor can it be said to be beyond the powers of Omnipotence. Yet in such a world, surely two and two would make five. That is, the result to the mind of contemplating two two's would be to count five. This shows that it is not inconceivable that two and two might make five ; but, on the other hand, it is perfectly easy to see why in this world we are absolutely certain that two and two m^ke four : there is not an instant of our lives in which we are not experiencing the fact," &c.* Now there is here a very manifest illogical shuffle be- tween "create" and "make," — ^between "creating a fifth" and " making five " ! In this miraculous world, when- ever a man looked at his four fingers and saw two and two, a fifth would be "immediately created," possibly between them ! But how does this fifth so created by miracle prevent his seeing that two and two make four, more than does the now, then, and always exist- ing thumb? This is not in any way explained. Suppose the fifth created. Surely the having one over does not alter two and two, or tend to confuse it in any way with five, more than the always now existing thumb confuses the four fingers in counting * Essays by a Barrister. Quoted with approbation by J. S. Mill on Hamilton, p. 69, n. NUMBER. 5 1 four, or two two's. The thumb is a standing perpe- tual miracle, as Sir Charles Bell has shown us. If the miracle was intermittent, and only occurred when we set to work to count by two's, or make out and deduce our multiplication table, I ask. How would this inter- mittent miracle prevent our counting as we do now? Would the growing of the fifth finger prevent our reach- ing six or ten, as we now do, and why? Does the inter- mission alter the human Sense, capacity or power to count five, six, seven units ? If the perpetual miracle of the thumb does not, why should the intermittent miracle, say of a new middle finger, first growing, then disappearing, have that effect ? The whole argument is, in fact, an illogical shuffle be- tween "creating a fifth" and "making five," as if the two thoughts were the same, and beyond the power of man's intellect to distinguish ! As it seems to me, such an intermittent miracle would not have even the least tendency to interfere with an intelligent man counting and numbering just as he now does. If man's intellectual powers remained the same,_ in this miraculous world, as they exist at present, he could and would still require to count, and must continue to construct his numbers, just as we now do by logical and symbolical deduction, or else logic must cease to be logic, and symbols cease to be sym- bols, and the human Mind cease to be an Intelligence ! But I object to supposititious, as well as superstitious, miracles, which will not bear discussion, and are in themselves absurd. There are no two things in this world exactly alike ; and the creation of a fifth different from the previous four, in place of preventing counting, would stimulate 52 CHAPTER VI. the art, by so readily gratifying man's desires for more and more! Omnipotence has granted man certain powers, and in so doing has limited His own powers. He has granted to man the power to make signs, and to number them; the power to think and to conceive number, space, and time, and to measure them ; and the power to create and make a history for him- self! God has Himself thereby limited His own powers, by the creation of free spirits or minds, intel- ligent gods like Himself, but with limited powers and capacities. He has limited His own powers : and though He might, no doubt, annihilate the whole human race, yet He cannot most certainly annihilate human numbers or human history! Number, space, and time, man's great abstract and true Conceptions, once granted, cannot be anni- hilated even by God ! Omnipotence Himself could not annihilate these human words, and thoughts, and signs ; for they are portions of the divine Essence of Truth, which He has Himself subjected to human thought ! and in respect to such verbal and mental creations, we are ourselves as gods, intellectually! To suppose this annihilation, therefore, is to suppose a contradiction, and to suppose God the author of a con- tradiction ! This assertion, that God cannot annihilate arithmetic, does not trench on God's greatness, or the powers of Omnipotence, as Schlegel and some pious philosophers have thought; but it asserts the true dig- nity of the human mind, as being made in the image of its Creator. Man also is a creator within his proper limits. He is the creator of human words, signs, and symbols, and for all these he is responsible ! God might annihilate NUMBER. 53 man, but that would not annihilate history, or arith- metic, or true science ! * Numbers then are words, signs, symbols, the most per- fect and certain language which man is capable of creat- ing — the beginning and foundation of human certainty. And thus starting from our original assumption of categories and predicables, we are clearly able to deduce strictly, and demonstrate mathematically, all numbers, and aU their numerical relations. Thus we can deduce all arithmetic, by strict logical deduction, from our first assrmaptions in logic and philosophy. To suppose a miracle working or creating a contradic- tion in my own words, signs, and symbols, is to suppose God not only the author of falsehood, but is to suppose man no longer man, no longer master even of his own symbols, of his own thoughts, nor of the signs which he himself has created ! But man's words, signs, and sym- bols are man's own Creation, and depend upon his vnll for their meaning and signification ; and to suppose a miracle interfering with this, is to suppose God not God, and man no longer man — no longer an intelligent Being ! f But the fundamental error of the inductive philo- sophy of the day is this contradiction — viz., that it supposes all abstract ideas dependent on, and derived from, and founded on experience, although no man ever * " Ye are all gods," said Christ, and "the words of Scripture can- not be broken." " God doth know," said the tempter, tempting our first parents with knowledge, " that ye shall be as gods, knomng good and evil," confirmed by God Himself, when He said — " Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil, " capable of distinguish- ing some truth and some falsehood — some Tcnowledge ; and there is good logic as well as good morality — lad logic and lad morality. t The same answer applies to the other supposed miracle of the same author — an infinite railway preventing a man living thereon from acquiring the idea of parallel right lines never meeting, because he 54 CHAPTER VI. experienced one single abstract idea in the whole course of his experience ; and these inductive philosophers are themselves inclined or obliged to declare that abstract ideas are nothing whatever — ^that abstract numbers, for example, are nothing at aU ! iibstract Numbers are, in truth, no material thing whatever, and are only human mental conceptions and human words. But of course, therefore, to the materialist neither abstract ideas nor the meanings of his words have any existence whatever. But yet they are very real to us all, and we all know them to really exist in the mind as thoughts and words to reason with. But the truth is, that all Arithmetic is built up step by step by Deduction, each step being deduced from the preceding ones; and it is absurd to suppose that we arrive at twice two by induction, but at five times five or nine times niue by deduction ! The simplest step is learning to count one by one ; and the arranging the units in bundles tied together by a name or sign. That is logical deduction. "When we have added by units, then we proceed to add by twos, threes, and other bundles, or simple addition. Then we proceed to the complex addition of equal bundles as complex units, which is multiplication, three four's, or four three's, &c. And each step is deduced and demonstrated to eye, ear, would always see the infinite railway vanish in a point ; as if in such a case a man could never learn the laws of perspective ! Why should a man living on this infinite railway lose his capacity to learn perspec- tive ! Could he not learn that his senses deceive him by walking to the point of junction, and measuring ? If not, then the miracle sup- poses man no longer man, hut deprived of his senses and judgment by the endless rails ! The whole argument illustrates how completely all our knowledge is obtained, not from experience, but hj judgment between experiences, by correcting our first thoughts by subsequent thoughts — by attention, comparison, reflection, &c. NUMBER. 55 and understanding by the fingers, or by the abacus, or on a slate. Symbolically and Mathematically, arithmetically and logically, by accurate science, to him who learns arith- metic, not as a mechanical art, but as an abstract Science. This is deduction and demonstration, not induction, which implies tentation of a number of like instances. But in arithmetic we proceed step by step not induc- tively, but deductively, by the Laws of Logical Identity. All arithmetic consists of words, signs, symbols, only, put in order and arranged by our internal sense of num- ber; and the varying capacities of children for number- ing, from the poor idiot who cannot learn to count five, graduated up to the extraordinaiy phenomena exhibited by calculating boys, who can do in their heads in half a minute sums that would take a good arithmetician a long while with a slate and pencil, afford one of the best proofs we have that men are born with innate senses and capacities. Of these, the natural senses of arithmetic or number — of music and harmony or time — and of geo- metry or space — afford the most obvious examples. Children are born with, and exhibit from their earliest years, the most varied tastes and capacities or internal senses for the clear understanding and comprehension and application of these three things, or thoughts, or necessary forms, or whatever we are to call them, Number, Time, and Space. I call them distinct words for clear ideas of mental, physical, and verbal existences or things. Men ma,j dispute and differ about innate ideas ; but no observant man can doubt the innate varying capaci- ties, powers, or senses of children for arithmetic, music, or geometry ! Number, time, and space are not only words and things, exterior to man's mind, which he deals 56 CHAPTER VI. with and measures without him, but he possesses dis- tinct natural innate senses or powers for each of them. One child is naturally, from its earliest years, quickest with numbers; another is naturally most capable at music; a third most able at geometry; just as one is short or far sighted, and another is dull or quick of hearing, or another weak or strong in muscular move- ment. And this occurs under like circumstances, and even in the same family. One might as well doubt the original capacities of the body as those of the mind. We might as well doubt the innateness of the senses of hearing and seeing, as the innateness of the senses of number, time, and space ! Upon and by means of these innate senses, powers, or capacities we build up by demonstration and deduction the sciences of arithmetic, music, and geometry. The senses are innate ; but the useful and agreeable applica- tions are acquired by experiment and observation, or by imitation. Most men learn more by the last than by any original observations or experiments whatever. But the natural mental capacities of children for perceiving the necessary relations of arithmetical numbers, or of musical tones and harmonies, or of geometrical quanti- ties, vary as much as does the muscular strength of the body in different children. We have numbers in the mind ; we can add, suTDtract, multiply, divide in the mind. We have thoughts of numbers, but we cannot speak or reason about general thoughts ; we can only speak or reason about general words for our thoughts, symbols for our numbers, signs for our ideas of things. The words, signs, or symbols which we call Numbers NUMBER. 57 are the signs of thoughts in the mind, but we can only speak and reason about the words — the symbols. They pass from mind to mind, and are common to both minds. We assume our categories, mind, matter, language, three general terms — three units, three thoughts, three things ; and from one, two, three units we can deduce strictly un- ending numbers. Each number is a sign, symbol, word, signifying many in one — many units in one bundle, tied together by the name or symbol. Each number is the combination of our two predi- cables ; it is many in one. It is one number, and it is many units — at once one and many ! It is many units in one unit. It is a new unit from which we can again start, and add to or multiply it, by like complex units. Each number is a state as a unit, and yet stands in necessary relations to all other numbers. It is one by itself, it is many to others. Every number is thus a word or name for many like units, each unit being itself a sign or symbol equally applicable to all material, mental, and verbal things. "We can number our material sensations, our mental thoughts, our words. But no two sensations are the same, no two thoughts are identical. There are no two words but differ. No two moments of time are the same, no two points of space are the same ! No two things in this universe can begin at the same moment and occupy the same space and time, or be the same number to Him who can number and mea- sure all things ! Number, then, is a perfect language ; it is divine and perfect, for it is eternal and necessary and indestructible; and no two numbers can be confounded together, except, - indeed, by human imperfection and incapacity. It is S8 CHAPTER VI. divine, because it partakes of tlie eternal, unchangeable, and necessary qualities of the One Infinite, whose infinite perfections infinite number is alone capable of measuring, - The never-ending infinity of numbers is the scientific foundation for all true thoughts of infinity and the in- finite. Man multiplies his numbers, and finds himself lost in the infinity of his own creations ! No one can doubt, but that God has bestowed upon man the innate sense and capacity to number. Numbers, therefore, are demonstrated to be verbal things or language. We deduce and demonstrate our numbers from our first assumption of categories by the law of identity. Mind, matter, and language are our first units, and numbers are a perfect language, as divine as humanity can create. No two words in this language are alike — no two words can in this language be con- founded with each other ! Each number is a different and distinct symbol, with a different and distinct mean- ing — a name or word which every careful arithmeti- cian can always understand. Each number is one word, or name for many units ; and as all numbers are words, so we shall find that all words are numbers. In the concrete, numbers are signs or symbols, visible sensible words ; in the abstract — i.e., abstracted from the Universe of mind and matter — numbers are abstract words signifying all the units in the number, just as every abstract word signifies all the imits called by that abstract or general name. Numbers are the beginning and foundation of all scientific truth and certainty, and infinite number is the true foundation of all our ideas of infinity and the in- finite, so far as it can be considered and dealt with by the human intellect. NUMBER. 59 The laws of numfcer, then, are eternal, unchangeable, and necessary. Nor do we trench on Omnipotence in so saying; for we only speak of human signs, symbols, words — man's own creations, for which he alone is responsible. The marks, signs, symbols, created by humanity, by man's intellect, by the creative power of the human mind — these are the subjects of number, of arithmetic, and the foundation of all human science. Number also affords the best proof that language is a thing entirely distinct from mind and matter, because numbers and their laws are not only eternal and un- changeable and necessary, or never-ceasing, but number exists wholly independently of time or space. Numbers occupy neither space nor time. Though they are eternal and unchangeable, they have no particular duration, they have no jjarticular extension. They exist, and have always existed, and must always exist for ever and for ever, and everywhere, in every intellect capable of crea- ting the numbers ; but they have no limited duration such as we call time, nor no limited extension such as we call space. Numbers are wholly independent of both. AVe number our times and spaces, and time and space can be measured and limited by numbers ; but we do not and cannot time or space our numbers. We apply number to space and time, but not space or time to numbers. Numbers are words or language, and quite independent both of the mind's duration and of matter's extension. If we could conceive God's own creation of the whole universe of mind and matter annihilated ; yet surely that would not affect number or the laws of number, which would still exist as potential symbols, as arithmetic, to all minds capable of numbering. Five times five would 6o CHAPTER VI. still remain twenty-five, and all arithmetic would still remain unaltered ! Though numbers, therefore, are only poor human signs, symbols, words — ^yet they partake of that Divine image in which man was created. They are man's own creations, and their relations are as un- changeable and as never-ceasing as God Himself. What, then, is time ? What is space ? Those " neces- sary forms," as Kant called them, which he assumed as given a priori or self-evident, yet not ideas or thinkable, but some inexplicable somethings, required to enable man to think a thought or frame an idea, and without which we could have no ideas ? But Kant forgot Number ! But whatever time and space may be, I think number, as I have explained it, also affords the best refutation of Positive materialism, for the materialist cannot possibly make abstract niunber in any way fall into his sys- tem. Numbers, in the abstract, are to the materialist nothing. There is not a particle of matter in all arith- metic ; yet a great deal of thought and mind, and a vast quantity of signs, symbols, and words, are employed in the science of abstract numbers. But yet abstract num- bers, says the materialist, are nothing ! How absurd and self-contradictory to every abstract thinker ! The brain works and works all about nothings, and then the nothings prove useful — very useful indeed ; and then, the Positive materialistic Utilitarian tells us that numbers are nothings ! — useful, but nothing ! In short, words with meanings have no place in the philosophy of the Positive materialist, and numbers are words with meanings. A materialist cannot have any meanings to his words, and be consistent. Numbers, however, are equally applicable to all mate- rial, and all mental, and all verbal things ; but in them- NUMBER. 6l selves, when we speak of them, they are verbal things — words, signs, symbols ! We make, in thought, our units alike. "We arrange them into bundles and name them. "We choose our basis two, five, ten, &c., and every single step is strictly deduced and demonstrated to eye, ear, and understanding, from the preceding ones ; and we must either admit each step, or be guilty of self- contradiction or verbal falsehood in words, signs, or symbols, first granted and then denied. Numbers, therefore, are a perfect language, and I say that all languages are framed after the fashion of num- bers. Number is the first and simplest deducible scien- tific cognition ! It is given by every sense, for we can count touches, sights, sounds, tastes, and smells ; and is therefore the fit measure of all other things, and it is the beginning and foundation of all human certainty. But number itself is not visible, tangible, or sensible ; number is not material; we have a mental sense or capacity to number — i. e., to arrange, methodise, and order our verbal signs or symbols ; and when so arranged we call them numbers — numbers of words or symbols. But numbers are in no respect material. Number, therefore, properly falls into our category of laTiguage. Numbers are the simplest of all verbal things — abstract language, signs, symbols. And all human science must be founded upon number ; which itself, as we have shown, is strictly deducible from our first as- sumption of three words, thoughts, and things — mind, matter, and language — and Number is the most abstract conception of Language. CHAPTER VII. TIME. As Number is the most abstract conception or mental form of Language, so Time is the most abstract percep- tion and internal sensation or form of the mind itself. Language, in the most abstract sense of general signs and symbols, is number. Mind, in its most abstract sense of continuous mental existence or duration, with- out thought, is time. If we abstract all express ideas or thoughts out of our words, leaving our words exist- ing applicable indifferently to all things and to every- thing, they becom,e wnits, or numbers of units. So if we abstract aU powers and capacities and thoughts and ideas out of mind, leaving the mind still existing, and capable of possible activity in future, its mental exist- ence is then duration or time. Just as numbers are verbal things — purely verbal things — or like-units combined together ; so times are mental things — purely mental things — or like-seconcZs, — like second thoughts, united. Numbers are units ; times are seconds — successive units, not twos, like numbers or units coexisting ; but twos like seconds or units of thought, succeeding each other in the mind, and noted or numbered by the mind in Time. Every like word is a coexisting unit; but every like TIME. 6^ thought is a consecutive second. It is a unit like the first thought ; but it has succeeded it in time, and is, therefore, a second of Time in the Mind. As numbers are verbal things or words ; so times are mental things, or perceptions existing nowhere but in a mind. Time is the duration of the human mind, and we measure that duration by seconds numbered. Any second thought, remembering the first one, is a second of time — a night, a day, a moon, a sun, in a certain posi- tion repeated, is time. Time is thought and memory combined — i. e., mental continuance. Time is the mental sense of a second thought conjoined to the memory of its likeness to the first thought. "When this occurs, then a second of time has struck ; a like consecutive thought, remembering the first, produces a second of Time. " As numbers are bundles of ones, so times are bun- dles of seconds — one, two ; one, two ; or the tick tack, tick tack, of the pendulum. We number the thoughts which like things cause in the mind, and so feel time. The recurrence and numbering of like days, like nights, like moons, like suns — the recurrence and numbering of like solar appearances — the recurrence and numbering of like thoughts of any kind — that combination of thoughts produces in the mind, and is our sensation of Time. " However the thoughts are produced in the mind, if they are alike, we remember the former one ; and with the second, the thought of time, or the succession of thoughts, arises or is produced in the mind. In short, as we obtained and deduced by logical identity our numbers from language or symbols, so we obtain and deduce by mental identity our times from successive minds, or successive mental Thoughts. 64 CHAPTER Vir. "The recurrence or numbering (for recurrence involves number), of like mental states — the repetition or num- bering of like mental phenomena of any kind — ^in short; the enumeration of like minds, thoughts, ideas, percep- tions, or mental states of any kind — produces, and is, the sensation of time passing and past in every man's mind. " Here we cannot appeal to our external senses, or to our logic, for the likeness of the units of time ; for the unit of time is, like Inference in Logic, a purely mental existence — viz., the mental succession of like thoughts. But we appeal to each man's internal sense of time whether it is not a positive undeniable fact, that like thought?, like mental phenomena of any kind, remem- bered so as to be numbered first and second, does not produce in the mind the feeling and sensation of time past between them. Therefore we say that we deduce time from like minds, like thoughts, and make sure of, or measure our time by means of our first deduction — viz., numbers." We number our like thoughts, and so measure our times ! " But time itself is this recurrence and numbering of like thoughts ; and for this mental fact we must, and can only, appeal to the general human sense of Time. If not this, what is time in the mind ? Think ! Have you any sense of time when the mind is thoroughly biusy and occupied ? No ! Time has passed, as every one acknowledges, unseen and unfelt. But if we re- peat an idea, if we look up and see the old familiar scene around us, a stroke of time has struck, and we ask the time, or look at our watch ! Whenever the same — that is, a second like state of mind — occurs, or is forced on our attention, that is time, or realises or produces our sensation of time — our perception of time in the mind. TIME. 65 "To my mind, Time seems the negative of perfect mind ; or the imperfection of mind. It is the obstruc- tion to continuous and persistent thought by the familiar sound or sight, or other material interference, with pure thought which, as it were, compels the mind, enclosed in a body, and acting through that body, to take in once more the old familiar state of mind or thought, and so to feel a second of time — a negation of its own perfec- tion — which would be an eternal present time. " However, it has forced itself clearly on my mind, and I trust will force itself also clearly on the mind of the reader, that we have a very distinct and marked idea of Time, arising in an imperfect mind surrounded by matter. And that the true view of Time is, as human duration, the negative of perfect mind ; and that times are simply the enumerated or numbered states of mind, produced by like phenomena causing a repetition and enumeration of old familiar thoughts in the human mind. " There are two acknowledged facts that strongly sup- port this conclusion : 1st, How shortly and impercep- tibly time passes to the mentally active. Days, weeks, years, life itself, flies by to him who is always employed. But, 2d, How long time is to the man of one idea. The same thought constantly recurring, and forcing the mind to repeat itself, and remember the one thing, and so to number continually like thoughts — for example, grief, sickness, fear, remorse ; an eternity of remorse, times wasted or misemployed, followed by times constantly remembered ; and if no change were possible, the same eternal past, the endless, hopeless future, ever pressing the human imagination, can alone be felt — then, with the mind fixed on one idea, ever the same, and ever recurring, E 66 CHAPTER VII. and ever remembered, that hopeless duration of a single idea arises in the mind, under which the human mind itself perishes in monomania, with its one ever-recurring idea perpetually fixed in the memory, destroying the human mind for a time. Such is Time ! — the numbering of one idea continually repeated for ever. " Just as our general idea of Number is as a bundle of like units, so our general idea of Time is as a bundle of like seconds. Numbers are bundles of like words or states of Language, and Times are bundles of like minds or states of Mind. Units enumerated are numbers; thoughts enumerated are times. Numbers are repeated symbols ; times are recurring thoughts." We have therefore deduced and established a very clear idea of number as the most abstract language. When all meaning but verbal existence or symbolic ap- plication is taken away, language is number ; and so we insist that we have also deduced and established a very clear idea of time as abstract mind, when aU thought but one possible thought or possible mental existence repeated has been taken away — that is duration or time. Take away or abstract all meaning out of the symbols, and we can number them as units ! Take away or abstract all thov^hts out of the mind but its own perception of its own recurring existence in a thought ; and that is duration or time ! As numbers are enumerated symbols, so times are enumerated thoughts. Number is the first great human abstract, and time is the second. Accurate time is the product of thought and number ! AU abstract words, as we shall hereafter see, are pro- ducts. Infinite number is the product of unity into in- finity or unendingness, and infinite time is the product TIME. ()•] of infinite number into some thought or perception which is the chosen unit of time. The tick of a sidereal clock, a sidereal second, a sidereal day, or the passage of a fixed star across the meridian, or of the sun across a fixed star, &c., registered and numbered, are our measures of Time. Number is language, time is inind t — each abstracted to the utmost ; and so, if we abstract matter to the utmost, we have Space ! CHAPTER VIII. SPACE. Space is matter mentally abstracted as far as possi- bility will admit — i. e., absolutely and altogether. Mat- ter is the concrete ; space is the abstract. What do we mean by space but the possibility of the existence of matter ? It is surely absurd to say that we have no idea of space. We all have a very clear idea of space-^strictly of the space ; a visible image of space ; as, for exam- ple, the space between two separated bodies. Put three cubes touching ! and then, that is in time, take the middle one away ! Is not the space it occupied a clear unit of space ? Or, take any hollow globe : is not its interior an image or idea of space which we might enlarge infinitely? Of course we all now know that the space we see between the cubes, or in the globe, is not empty space. We know that it is full of air or full of light, though in our infancy we were ignorant even of that. But why cannot we abstract and mentally take away all the air and all the Hght, just as we physically took away the solid cube, or the fluid contents of the globe when filled with water ? We do so ! Every man in existence who can speak or reason on the subject has done and does this, and SPACE. 69 fully understands and has an idea of space, clear and distinct, and speaks of emptiness or space I the empty space between bodies ! — matter being abstracted. Is not this a mental image, strictly an idea, a thought as clear and positive as almost any idea a man can form, though the idea is invented from matter? But then it is surely false and absurd to say with Kant that we have no ideas of space or of time ! It is true that we cannot think matter without exten- sion, and we say that extension is an attribute of matter ; but this is not because we think space first, or because space is given to us a priori, or before the thought of matter ; but because our idea of space is subsequent to, and is derived or deduced from, our idea of matter, by the process we call abstraction ; or by the mental power of imagination or invention — by deduction. It is reversing the natural order in which ideas are formed, or come into the mind, to think or assume space first, and matter afterwards. On the contrary, we first invent matter to explain our sensations, or the effect of external matter, and then invent space to explain matter absent in time, and capable of returning to fill the space it formerly occupied. It is unscientific — that is, inaccurate, and dangerous to truth — to assume either, more than is absolutely need- ful to explain the phenomena, or anything whatever which one can trace higher, or show to be deduced from something more obvious or more certain. We must be- gin with what is most certain and obvious, not with what is less obvious. And certainly, when Kant assumed that space and time were not ideas, properly speaking, but something inexplicable, " necessary forms," " given to us a priori;" something " not thoughts or ideas themselves," 70 CHAPTER VIII. but yet necessary to enable ns to think at all, or form ideas at aU ; that is, not satisfactory or reasonable to my mind, and I deny it ! And for a proof, by example, I give the instance of number, which we think of and understand abstracted from either time or space. The abstract idea of three, or ten, or twenty, or a million, involves neither space nor time. It is independent of both ; it occupies no space, and endures no time in par- ticular. It is eternal and necessary and unchangeable in every intellect which can count or think the number. It is absurd to ask, where does three or five or fifty exist, or what time does it endure ? Each number exists every- where, and endures, and has endured, and will endure, from all eternity and to all eternity. To be sure, the number is only a mere human word, sign, symbol — a thought, an idea or imagination ; an existence, a being, or a thing — a mental thing as well as a verbal thing — but we all understand it ; we all know what three, five, and fifty are ; we all can use and apply each of them. But three occupies no space, and yet is everywhere, and endures no time, and yet must endure to all eternity, a never-ceasing and unchangeable combination of mental units. Numbers are words, thoughts, and things wholly indestructible. The annihilation of man himself would not annihilate the number three, or any number. Instead, therefore, of thinking that we have no ideas of number, time, or space, I assert that they are the very clearest ideas that man can frame. We all have them, and know more or less how to applj' them, in order to measure and make sure of external things, or some of the phenomena of external nature. Day by day, and age by age, man improves his me- thods and contrivances for using these great abstract SPACE. 71 things or ideas, numbering phenomena, and measuring their duration and extension ; and I assert that the whole object of material or physical science is, in fact, the proper application of number, time, and space to external things. Men receive their ideas of these great abstract things so early that they forget how they acquired them. From our earliest years we have learned how, in some degree, more or less, to count numbers, to compare duration or time, and to measure material quantities or spaces. We have internal senses or capacities for number, time, and space, just as we have external senses of hearing, seeing, and smelling. Our sense of numbering is just as certain as our sense of seeing, and our sense of time is just as certain as our sense of hearing. We not only hear the undulations of air, but in our minds we mark and num- ber their concords and their discords, their coincidences, which we feel and like ; or interferences, which we dis- like, or their fulness or sharpness, or their pauses, which we approve. Every child can do so more or less, and shouts and marches in unison with the beat of a drum or the sound of a trumpet. We have therefore by nature, internal senses of number, of time, and of space, just as we have our ordinary senses of seeing, smelling, and hearing external things. We learn to number one, two, threfe, and then we apply our numbers to duration and extension ; to num- ber our days and our hours ; to measure our sizes, our weights, our quantities, which are mere modifications or states and relations of space and time. Whatever doubt the reader may have had, or still re- tains, about my deduction of time from mind and num- ber—from numbers of like thoughts or perceptions— no man, I think, can really doubt the true origin of man's 72 CHAPTER Vni. idea of space; that it is derived and deducible from number and time and matter; that space is the negative of matter, the possibility, in time, of one or more bodies existing to fill the space ! Space is matter thought of, and then wholly abstracted ! The first and most obvious existence is matter, that hard and resisting something against which we knock our heads in infancy; and to the child at first the atmo- sphere is space, in which there appears no matter to in- terfere with its actions. As we live and learn, the strength of the wind, and the hardness of his football, teaches the child that his space is full of matter. We become philosophers, and read of Torricelli, and make a vacuum without air, but still full of light ; and we study Newton, Laplace, Fres- nel, and Frauenhofer, and find our space unending, and practically infinite, but still full of the waves and un- dulations of light — imponderable matter which exists even in the gloom of the deepest mine, ready to shine around us if we only seek it properly, and the noblest material image of the Deity — ^that imponderable light pervading infinite space, so that even the Christian can say, " God is light," and " Our God is a consuming fire " — the possible light and fire of Mind. But our discovery that the atmosphere, and that the spaces between the stars, are all full of the matter of Light, does not in any way weaken or alter our first or infantile idea of space, when we thought Space for our ball or our playthings, empty of matter. Space is the negative of matter ; as we first originally met it, or imagined it in the infancy of science or in our own infancy; so it still remains. The idea of emptiness is just as clear to the child as to the philosopher. SPACE. 73 The idea of space still involves the three ideas of matter, and number, and time — matter abstracted in time, and capable of refilling the space. "We still put three cubes touching, and then in time take away the middle one, and say there before our eyes is our visible idea or image of space, our unit of space, the extension which the middle c\ibe formerly occupied and may occupy again — that is a unit of space, matter being ab- stracted. We first think matter or body ; but our unit of space is mentally deduced and derived from it by number and time, and mentally abstracting the matter ! Space is to matter what time is to mind, and what number is to language ; i.e., they are the most abstract conceptions possible of each. The materialist, of course, may declare all of them three great infinite nothings! Space is nothing; and time is nothing; and number is nothing — nothing MATEEIAL ! But who believes them to be nothing ? We live, and move, and have our being in these three things. Our bodies live, and move, and have their being in space; our minds or spirits live, and move, or continue, and have their being in time ; and our very souls or intelligences live, and move, and have their being in Language and in Number, which is the foun- dation of all human certainty, the origin of all human science, for we can number everything that our spirit or Intellect can really know. If human existence and human science are nothings, then time, space, and number are nothings. But they are all three as real as ourselves — as our minds, as our intellects, as our own actual existence. Time is abstract mind ; space abstract matter ; num- 74 CHAPTER VIII. ber abstract language. But number is tbe simplest of the three ; it is involved in the other two, and aids us to measure them. We cannot think time without num- bers of seconds of time ; nor space without numbers of parts or units of space ! Number is as one continuous Line ; divide it in two by the point of present time, and we have an eternity of time a -parte ante, and an eternity of time a parte post. The line when moving forms a surface ; the surface, re- volving, forms our space — a conception as solid, though ideal and mental, as the material universe of light, which, immense though it be, is but a point of that great infinite space which might or may become the blackness of darkness for ever and ever ; in which all sense is extinguished, and the possibility of light alone remains — that infinite Space, which yet exists to the mind, infinitely extending beyond the whole visible uni- verse, where falsehood and fraud may be banished for ever ! The idea of space is, I insist, therefore, as clear as the idea of matter. It is the negative or abstract of matter ; but to the mind is as clear and positive as the universe of matter itself. The idea of time is also as clear as mind. It is the negative of perfect mind, the memory of two thoughts past ; of seconds and the relation existing between them as succeeding each other. Time is as clear and positive as mind itself, but is not mind itself — but the abstract Existence or Duration of Mind. And number is that negative or indifferent symbolic language*, which is equally applicable to all bodies, and to all thoughts, and to all words, considered as many and as one — number is abstract Language. SPACE. 75 Thus we have assumed the earliest and most obvious conceptions, mind, matter, and language, known to all men from their own bodies, spirits, and words ; and from these three we deduce and demonstrate, by unanswer- able reasoning, those great infinite things, thoughts, and words — infinite number — infinite time — infinite space ! But what is infinity ? and have we no positive or clear idea of infinity or unendingness ? Infinity must be scientifically learnt from Number alone ! We must always endeavour to proceed from what is simple, and obvious, and self-evident to all men ; and must require them to grant only \yhat cannot reasonably be denied ; and thence we must deduce truth and certainty on those subjects which to them formerly may have seemed all full of doubt and confusion. Logical Deduction is the only source of scientific Truth ; and every falsehood the world has ever for a time adopted, on scientific sub- jects, has been the result of hasty and presumptuous Induction. CHAPTER IX. THE INFINITE AND THE ABSOLUTE. Assuming that ideas are purely mental things, and admitting and assuming the existence of mind distinct from matter ; then our ideas of matter, being strictly the developed meaning of the word Matter in the mind — our ideas of matter are not matter, but mental things about matter. Matter is not and cannot be the same as our idea of matter, for the one is, by our first assumption, out of and distinct from our mind, and ideas are mental things in the mind, and not distinct from it, except as a parti- cular body or bodies, which are parts of matter, may be supposed to be distinct from matter in general : so ideas are not mind, but are in the mind — they are, properly speaking, not parts of mind, but creations of the mind, by its powers of conception and judgment. Mind is one and indivisible, and does not admit of parts except metaphorically. But ideas are the result of some active emotion or affection of an intellectual mind, which action is to mind as motion is to matter, or as multiplication is to number ; and ideas are states or relations of mind itself, and in no respect matter or material things. Ideas, then, are to the mind what phe- nomena, or the sensible actions and passions of matter, are to matter. Ideas are the actions and passions of THE INFINITE AND THE ABSOLUTE. 'J^ mind iu activity — thinking and emotion expressible in words. The phenomena of mind may be called noumena; but the phenomena of mind are not properly phenomena — appearances common to many or to mankind — but are private mental appearances; not motions, but emo- tions, peculiar to the individual or to each mind which is capable of creating and perceiving or feeling them. Ideas are mental to the individual, but must be verbal to more than one man, or to mankind — all ideas are WORDS in the Mind. Of course the materialist is here out of the question. He is contradicted, and ought to feel himself refuted, by the meanings of his own words ; for his own words are vibrations or motions of matter. But what matter can there be in the meaning of a motion, an undulation, a vibration, a word ? The motion itself is not material, or a part of matter. Motion is not matter, but a state of matter. Then what possible matter can there be in the meaning of the motion, the intellectual understanding or comprehension of that vibration or motion, which mo- tion or vibration itself is not matter ? Motion is a state or relation of matter — an internal state or an external relation of matter. But if motion itself be not matter, how can the idea or meaning of the motion be matter ? If our words be as they are, mere motions, vibrations, or undulations — motions of matter, their meanings cannot possibly be material things or matter ; and the materi- alist is always refuted by the very meanings of his own words. The materialist must always be in the most helpless state of logical self-contradiction ! But ideas, as we assumed, are purely mental things in the mind ; and we have deduced and demonstrated our 78 CHAPTER IX. ' ideas embodied in the words number, time, and space — ideas clearly deducible, as we insist, from our very ordi- nary and assumed words and ideas, mind, matter, and language — all of which are typiiied and symbolised to us in ourselves. The result is, that number has been demonstrated to be an idea of language, time an idea of mind, and space an idea of matter — three great abstract ideas — things, words. We assert that no one who can speak and reason correctly and accurately can possibly doubt these con- clusions, if they grant our first assumptions. The com- mon sense of mankind must admit and recognise these three, things, thoughts, and words — mind, matter, lan- guage! The common reason of mankind must admit, also, that from these three we can deduce and fully demonstrate unanswerably to the intellect that number is an idea of language, time an idea of mind, and space an idea of matter ; when matter has fled away, or been abstracted in idea, space remains. The mind has extin- guished matter. But what is infinity, that hopelessness of an end — that endlessness which we all attribute to number, time, and space ? Infinite number ! infinite time! infinite' space ! But ALL are infinite — the infinite MANY may be all included in the absolute ONE. True and accurate science must ever be formed by the assumption of the least possible number of original and undeniable conceptions or words for the beginning and foundation of our reasoning, and thence by deducing as strictly as possible — i.e., by demonstrating to our senses, and understanding the more complicated conceptions — we must thus arrive at those remoter thoughts which are, and are consistent with. Fact and Truth ! THE INFINITE AND THE ABSOLUTE. 79 Step by step, with laborious accuracy from generation to generation, has science been built up, and its halls have been illuminated with the torch of truth, handed down from school to school, and from nation to nation. The sceptic, the Pyrrhonist, professes to doubt every- thing ; but, by the laws of reason, he must hold his tongue, or contradict himself verbally in each assertion of his universal doubt ; for those who assert the non- existence of truth or knowledge contradict themselves, for they assert their certainty that no certainty can exist, their knowledge that no knowledge exists — a manifest contradiction; they assert as the truth that no truth exists, which is in itself, verbally and logically as well as mentally, absurd and self-contradictory. "We might, therefore, according to the law of Parci- mony, have assumed at first only one existence about which we can dispute, or about which we can have any question, and have called that existence, Knowledge or truth. But in that case our view would have been limited to human knowledge and human truth ! That first assumption of knowledge or truth would have given us a thing or object to be known, a mind or subject to know it, and a word or traject passing from human mind to human miud to embody and express the knowledge or the truth. General human knowledge cannot possibly exist without these three. But object, subject, and tra- ject, or things, thoughts, and words, though a popular division, is a bad division of human knowledge, and is a worse division of the Universe. The object can become a subject, and the subject may be a word. The thing in question may be a thought, and the thought in question may be only a word ; and thus the laws of logical division are violated, for the 80 CHAPTER IX. parts embrace and overlap eacli other! The sound logical division, therefore, is Mind, Matter, and Language, ■which embrace the universe, and are all clear and dis- tinct from each other. But every man contains in himself a mind or spirit, and also in himself a body or matter ; and also in him- self his words or language ! Each is distinct from the others, and the whole microcosm of man, when general- ised into mind, matter, and language, embraces the whole universe of existence, and comprises all knowable, all disputable, all existing things. From mind, matter, and language we deduced and demonstrated certain ideas of number, time, and space, as the carefully-framed ab- stracts of language, mind, and matter respectively, and the true, and accurate, and only scientific origin of all our ideas of Infinity is, I assert, the infinity of Numbers ! Some men have never learned number except as an art, and not as a science ; as the useful art of the grocer instead of the foundation science of aU sciences — the fundamental truth deduced with logical certainty at every step, and the very foundation of all human science. Every human science depends for its certainty on Num- ber. Even space and time must be measured by num- ber, but Number can be only measured by itself, and by accurate deduction and reason — by self-evidence. Number affords to man the clearest and most accurate and scientific idea of infinity — the infinite and the ab- solute — the MANY and the ONE. There is no number, however great, but what we can add to it and multiply it. Numbers are endless. The Infinity of number is self-evident to any one who can count. We all know that numbers are endless and infinite, and the infinity of time is clearly nothing but a unit of time added to. THE INFINITE AND THE ABSOLUTE, 8 1 or multiplied by numbers without end — i.e., endless days, or years, or ages, or times — our units of times ! Time is made infinite by number. But so, I say, is space ! The infinity of Space is merely a unit of space added to and multiplied without end — a great growing globe, its radius doubling, tripling, expanding infinitely on aU sides — a unit of space, multiplied or added to, tin it extends infinitely beyond the limits of the whole material universe of life and light, and of heat and motion, into the " blackness of darkness for ever " ! That is infinite space — endless finite spaces added to and multiplied by number ! But to any one who thinks clearly, and understands arithmetic, the infinity of numbers is far more extraor- dinary and incomprehensible than the infinity of Time or of Space. Man loses his conceptions in the thoughts of infinite duration and infinite space — great endless units of time and space, beyond which we can conceive no- thing greater than themselves proceeding for ever and ever into infinite Space and infinite Time. But infinite Space and infinite Time are positive and fixed infinites, beyond which, or greater, or longer, or larger than which, no conception can be formed of space or time, which is not already included in the words infinite space and in- finite time. And the notion that these infinites are not positive, is absurd and self-contradictory; for they are here and now. But we cannot take infinite Number as a great unit like infinite space, and set it down in a word, sign, or symbol as endless or infinite, without being able to ima- gine and prove scientifically an Infinity infinitely greater than itself— an Infinity of infinities, exceeding each other by infinity ; for, however fast and by whatever system 82 CHAPTER IX. ■we suppose our numbers to grow and develop themselves, we can always suppose some system of Number pro- ducing an infinite number infinitely greater than the infinite number produced by the first system, and also produced in less time, with less trouble to our imagina- tion. In number our symbols are ever growing, and must grow, with scientific certainty, from one infinite to an infinitely greater infinite. Newton demonstrated that there is no kind of absurd- ity in supposing one Infinite infinitely greater or infin- itely less than another Infinite. But numbers afford the simplest proof of the same fact, for however, and on whatever basis, we construct our numbers, we can always suppose them endless, and to go on to infinity, and can always exhibit an Infinity infinitely greater than any former Infinity — the Power, as it is termed, of the for- mer One. For example, our ordinary numbers- — 1, 2, 3, &c., to infinity — however continued, can always be taken as the mere roots of another series — 1, 4, 9, &c., to infinity ; in which the second Infinite is the product or power of the first infinite, and thus infinitely greater than the first In- finite. And so we can go on and on, piling series on series, and Infinity upon Infinity ; and we may and can have a series of Infinites in which each step of the series is infinitely greater than the last step ; and yet, by the laws of numbers, the first step is infinite ! and every step beyond is infinitely greater or less than the previous one ! Space also affords us, however, the same conception of one infinity being greater or less than another infinity ; for any solid angle with its sides infinitely produced con- tains an infinite space ; but this is by dividing Infinite THE INFINITE AND THp ABSOLUTE, 83 space into lesser infinite spaces, which are all contained in the one great Infinite Space ; but no one number can be made or supposed to contain all numbers, as one infinite space is made to contain all infinite spaces. Thus Number, which is only human language, affords to the thoughtful mind, the best example both of the greatness and humility of man. It tells him that, humble as he may be, yet his thoughts and symbols are infinite; and yet that he may be, and must be, infinitely less than God his Creator! It teUs him that he may or must endure for ever, and yet that his infinite duration may be infinitely less than the duration of God ! It tells him that the infinite space — the sphere of that light to which he has been introduced, and which he is himself capable of contemplating — is doubtless infinitely less than the great infinity which is the Habitation of the One Infinite Author of all things, who in Himself is wholly incomprehensible ! the Infinite of all infinities, the only Absolute One. Man contemplates infinite time and infinite space, and thinks of their growing immensities, and then he is exhausted, and exclaims. Can anything be greater than infinite space continuing for infinite time ? But Number reminds him both of his greatness and of his infe- riority; and teaches him of the possibility of infinites which are infinitely greater than any infinity which he can conceive possible ! an eternal time which is always Present Time ; an infinite space which in every part is always comprehensible to its Inhabitant ; yet that these may be nothing, in comparison with those infinite intel- lectual and moral perfections of the Deity, which are wholly beyond our conceptions. If a man feels himself lost in the infinity of time or 84 CHAPTER IX. space, he turns to the words, signs, and language, and to the numhers which he himself has constructed, and they tell him by demonstration — mathematical, arithmetical demonstration before his eyes — that there is the infinitely little as well as the infinitely great ; they tell him of a series of infinites, each infinitely greater than the former one, and of another series iu which each is infinitely less than the preceding one ; and that though man's words may be infinitely little, yet that the word of God may be infin- itely great — One to whom " all power may be given in heaven and in earth," the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega ! whom to know is life eternal, light, and life ; and whom not to know is the blackness of darkness, even of intellectual and spiritual darkness, for ever and for ever ! Man thus finds himself at once both elevated and lost in the infinity of his own numbers, which are his own verbal creations ! and if he is wise, he humbly seeks his Creator as a little child seeks its parent, to guide and protect even his intellectual progress in its search after truth, in the fuU confidence that what He, as a Parent, has promised. He also is able to perform ! " The spirit of truth shaU guide you into aU truth," said a Jewish peasant, who yet also said, " I am the way, the truth, the life," "Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart;" who, claiming to be the greatest, yet became Himself the least, the despised, the rejected of men ; for in man " God's strength is made perfect in weakness ;" and God's object is to teach us to overcome hatred by love, evil by good, and all visible material Forces by invisible mental Powers. But the Infinite Absolute One is not nought and is not everything ; for He has created minds or spirits like THE INFINITE AND THE ABSOLUTE. 8$ Himself, and He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, and withdraws Himself from those minds who render themselves unfit habitations for His Holy Spirit. He is not far from any of us, for " in Him we live, and move, and have our being." Even before one single ray or spark from His divine Spirit has yet illumined the intellectual and spiritual darkness of our interior, He is round about us, and beholdeth all our thoughts and ways. Nature and revelation both declare unto us that the fear of the Lord is the be- ginning of wisdom ; and that man can only reach truth, even intellectual truth, by dimly and humbly feeling for the divine Spirit within ! ever ready to reveal itself to him who humbly asks for it. There is to man a spirit of truth and a spirit of error ; we are free to choose either the one or the other. But scientifically, number is to all cognition and all human science what God is to the universe — ^the be- ginning and the end — the Alpha and Omega — the primal source of scientific truth, and the end and object to which all science and all cognition must ultimately seek to reduce itself "We do not know anything accu- rately tin number intervenes and forms a part or share of the cognition. And this is true, in my opinion, even of all our knowledge of the infinite and absolute Crea- tor of the universe Himself, as He can be truly known to man ! For no theology can be true which does not begin and end with that doctrine of Unity in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, which worldly science may treat with scorn, but which lies at the very foundation of every true conception of God, as the infinite and the absolute One. But the Infinite and the Absolute, even of all Space 86 CHAPTER IX. and Time and Numter, afford a most insnfiBcient and inadequate conception of the Deity, even as man is able to tliink of Him ; because they embrace only the intel- lectual and not the moral attributes of God. But what possible verbal, or intellectual expressions can be in- vented for His justice, His mercy, His long-suffering, His Love ? But we are here only concerned with the intellectual conception of the Infinite and Absolute ; and are not in any wise discussing the Moral. But the intellectual conception of all Infinity is strictly confined to Time and Space and Number. It is only metaphorically that we can speak of infinite justice, or infinite mercy, or infinite love. All justice is in itself, and by its very nature, infinite and perfect, or it is not Justice — ^but partial jus- tice ; all mercy is in itself, and by its nature, infinite and perfect, or it is not Mercy — but pretended mercy ; and all love is in itself, and by its nature, infinite and perfect, or it is not Love — but affected love. It is only to avoid such partial and pretended and affected hwman conceptions, that we speak of infinite justice, and infinite mercy, and infinite love. But who can reconcile infinite justice with infinite mercy ? The true solution is not Calvinism but is to be found in that third conception. Infinite Love, which is God Himself working with infinite Numbers, for an infinite Time, through infinite Space. But to the pious and humble Christian this becomes no longer symbolism, but reality ! God is the only Absolute ; and our Eelations to Him are not obli- gations on His part, but only on ours. But God has created the human Mind, within its own limits, abso- lutely Free. Justice requires Liberty, but only liberty of Thought — of Mind J not liberty of matter or body. CHAPTER X. THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. Ideas we have assumed to be purely mental things — thiugs in the mind, internal things,the meanings of our words, obvious internally to aU who speak and think and reason ; with which ideas we furnish our minds as we pass through life, but of which, in our infancy, so far as each of us can remember his own history, we had and possessed nothing whatever. Let it be granted, as I do frankly and fully grant, that our minds came into this world wholly unfurnished with ideas or mental images of any kind : whence have we obtained this " furniture of our minds " ? What is the origin of our ideas ? The original state of our minds being nought, whence has come their present state, full of thoughts and ideas ? The philosophy of the day, very positive, at least in illogical dogmatism, since the time of Locke, replies at once, " From experience ! " All men's ideas are derived from, and founded on, experience ! " Solve first the ques- tion ; Have men any ideas independent of experience? and then begin to speculate." — " Philosophy has proved its incapacity by centuries of failure." Let us then stick to th.Q positive, to our steam-engines and telegraphs! and give up all discussion of so-called philosophical ideas not de- rived from experience — i. e., sensible positive experience. 88 CHAPTER X. My solution of the question is at least as clear and as positive as theirs, for I assert that none of our ideas are derived from, or founded on, experience, and that all our ideas are just as independent of experience as we choose on reflection to make them. Man never yet experienced an idea, and he never will ! It seems to me mere con- fusion of thought and language to say that he has done or can do so. It confuses mind and matter. The whole difficulty here is, that as the origin of our ideas is lost in the mists of infancy, we are all more or less well furnished with ideas before we can begin to discuss their origin, or to think of the mind's original state of emptiness at its birth, before it is furnished with any ideas. Let it be at once also admitted that the senses aije the only avenues to the mind, and that if we could take an infant at birth and put out its eyes and destroy its hear- ing, taste, and smell, and carefully divide the nerves of touch, so as to paralyse its limbs, its organic life might possibly still continue for a time — but it must and would remain a hopeless idiot, without any of the things which we call ideas in its mind. Its education could not commence, and its mind must remain as when it was born, in a state, which, for the sake of argument, I admit to be a state, so far as we know, wholly unfur- nished with ideas — such as we all conceive them to be when we speak of ideas as mental things, thoughts — the meanings of our words, the furniture of our minds. But all general Experience is bodily. There is no such thing as common mental experience ; there is no possi- bility of two minds joining hands, and feeling the same electric shock, or the same earthquake ; or of two minds looking through the same telescope, or with the same THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 89 pair of eyes, or hearing with the same pair of ears. Our minds cannot, in any manner that we know of, jointly experience the same comparison, conception, or judgment, even though we express the result in the same words; yet it is not the truth that we can jointly experience any one mental phenomenon — thought, emotion, or idea. We may, indeed, sympathise at the same time at the same words ; but the pathy is sj/m-pathy, not icZeo-pathy, if we may say so. The utmost any one can allege is, that we can join our bodies together, and jointly expe- rience the same bodily shock. But does the shock of our bodies, and not the judgment of our minds, produce an idea in each mind 1 can any one, admitting the ex- istence of mind, pretend that either knows the other's idea? Now, do our ideas originate in the shock — the bodily experience, or in the judgment — the mental act ? That is the only question. Does the idea depend on the shock, or is it independent of the shock ; and is it, or not, a purely mental creation of the judgment originat- ing in the mind, and dependent on the mind's povMrs to understand the shock, and wholly independent of the shock, which we may perhaps never experience our- selves in any way? If the senses be the avenues to the mind, before men discuss the origin of our ideas they ought to strive and acquire some clear conceptions of the roads or avenues by which it is said our minds have acquired all their ideas. The peasant knows as well as the philosopher the distinction between the part of his body which has neither sense nor feeling, and that part which has both. He knows that his hair and nails, for example, have no feeling, and that if a finger or limb were cut off, stiU, 90 CHAPTER X. that his mind and intelligence woidd not be in any wise affected. But at first the ignorant man might well suppose that the greater part of his body is conscious ! How- ever, physiology quickly demonstrates before our eyes and microscopes, that a very few ounces of our bodies include all that is directly connected with the conscious phenomena of our internal mind. The cranio-nervous .system, or network of nerves, all running .into the brain from the surface of the body, with the optic and aural and other cranio-nerves, forming, together with the brain itself, some fifty to eighty ounces of mat- ter, is the only part of the body connected with the mind, and all the rest is as unconscious as the hair or the nails ! But it is also certain that the matter of the nerves and brain themselves is itself wholly unconscious. If a nerve is cut through, the part of the nerve cut off from the brain becomes unconscious, and is wholly removed both from sensation and from will. The lower part or limb supplied by that nerve has, after it is cut through, no feeling or sensation whatever, and is no longer obedient to the will of the patient, and the nerves within that part are equally senseless. It is wholly paralysed both for sensation and perception, and for will and action, muscles and nerves, and all. But the mass of the brain itself is also wholly un- conscious, and may be cut without the patient feeling or knowing what has been done. In fact, in some accidents, nearly one half of the brain has been cut off" and taken away without the patient having lost all wiU or all consciousness, and without his knowing what operation had been performed on his brain itself; which, THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 9 1 nevertheless, is the very centre and seat of what we call human consciousness and human intelligence, the very organ or instrument of the human mind. Thus mind itself retires before us, if not to the pineal gland, as Aristotle supposed, yet to the deepest recesses of the interior of the brain ; and we are driven by the obvious facts of physiology, demonstrated before our eyes and microscopes, to admit and to conclude, that whatever the human mind or soul may be, it must be seated and situated somewhere within the brain, or con- nected in a manner unknown with the inner ends of our in-carrying nerves, which are themselves, through- out their course, wholly unconscious ; and it would be as reasonable to say, that the man at the European end of the Atlantic cable knows from the telegraphic signals the face of his correspondent in America, as to say that a man through his in-carrying nerves knows the Face of nature ! Man's mind, whatever the human mind or soul may be, is separated from external nature by an innumerable network of minute nervous filaments, aU of which are themselves insensible and unconscious. Each of these filaments, passing from the external world into the inner recesses of the grey cellular matter of the brain, is itself a bundle of minute tubular fibrils — so minute as to be only visible under a powerful microscope, and towards the surface of the body they disappear under the greatest microscopic powers we possess. Millions of these minute in-carrying filaments or fibrils might lie together in the tenth of an inch ; and whatever experimental knowledge the mind can acquire of external nature, has all passed along these minute filaments which flash inward to the inner recesses of 92 CHAPTER X. the brain — the vibrations, or currents, or operations pro- duced by external material objects. But besides these infinitesimal iw-carrying nerves of bodily sensation, and alongside them, enclosed in the same sheath or outer covering, but without uniting in any part of their course to the brain itself, lie the out- carrying nerves of will and action. If the iN-carrying nerve is cut or paralysed, sensation and perception cease. We become, in the part of the body supplied by that nerve, unconscious of the outer world. If the OUT- carrying nerve is cut or paralysed, the limb is paralysed, and the power of the will ceases. We can no longer move the part, or express our will or wish therewith. Disease and accidents often produce both this numb- ness, or want of sensation and perception, and also this paralysis, or destruction of the power of the will over the part or limb. Sometimes the one is lost, and some- times the other ; sometimes both together ; and some- times the paralysis of will and sensation is partial. The patient can only exercise his will in certain directions, and not in all, as usual ; or he can only feel certain sen- sations, and not all the usual ones. He can walk side- ways, but not straight ; or drag his limb, but not lift it. We behold a man who can still taste with his tongue, but he cannot speak. He is paralysed in his control of the organs of voice, but he can write his wiU or wishes on a slate. His wUl remains, but he cannot direct his voice and tongue. We behold another who has lost sensation in a limb, and does not feel the fire burning, and yet retains the power of his will over the motions of the limb, and when he sees the danger can withdraw the limb from the injury which it does not itseK feeL The whole perception by the mind within of the THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 93 ■world without depends on these minute im-carrying nerves of sensation, and the whole action of the mind within upon the outer world depends on these mi- nute OM<-carrying nerves of will. And what is very remarkable, and never to be forgotten, is, that the inner ends of these iw-carrying and ow^-carrying nerves are, under the microscope, visibly distinct and separate from each other, and lose themselves, as it were, in the grey cellular matter of which the brain is chiefly composed — a mass of microscopic globular cells which, in addition to the white nervous filaments, the nerves of sensation and will which pass between the brain and the surface of the body, compose and complete the substance or composition of the Brain. The iw-carrying and the out- carrying nerves have physically distinct and separate ends within the brain itself We have thus in our cranio-nervous system a double apparatus — an immense number of infinitesimaUy minute tubular fibrils or telegraphic wires— to carry in bodily sensations, and an immense number of like but separate fibrils or telegraphic wires to carry out the mind's determination and will. The two parts are separate and distinct, and visibly so under the microscope, at the inner ends of the nerves in all our brains. There is, therefore, a physical hia- tus — a gulf of separation— between the inward im- pression and the outward action. This gulf is not filled up by matter, but by mind. What passes out is not, and cannot be, that physical vibration which passed in ! It has passed from the in-carrying nerves through the mind, and has there ceased to be material, and has be- come mental, and then has passed into the out-carrying nerves of will and action. It began by being a bodily 94 CHAPTER X. sensation — a vibration of matter. But before it leaves the mind it has become a mental perception — a thought, an idea, a desire, a will, embodied in the resultant word , or sign or action. " The sensual has passed into the intellectual, and the intellectual into words " or outward actions, which are equally signs or symbols of thoughts and of mental actions. Thus each nerve, when carefully viewed under a micro- scope, is a mere bundle of excessively minute tubular filaments, each of which appears to be filled with a sort of central fluid pith, and in no instance does the minutest fibril from one appear to penetrate the others so that there might be any intermixture of their com- ponent particles ; and there can be therefore, as far as we know, no physical or material confusion or intermix- ture in the discharge of their functions amongst those that reach the brain. Each sensation from each filament is probably separate and single. But then, again, not only are the in-carrying fibres for sensation and the out-carrying motive fibres, though both shut up in the same sheath, distinct and separate from each other, but each sense has a distinct species of nerves for its own use, and the nerves appropriated to one sense do not transmit the sensations or perceptions of another. If the optic nerve is touched, there is trans- mitted to the brain, not the feeling of touch, but the sensation of a flash of light ; and if the aural nerve is touched, there is transmitted the sensation of sound. The same is the case if the touch is caused by a current of electricity. And from what we know of the pressure of fluids readily transmitting undulations, the fluid pith of the interior of the tubular fibrils of the nerves may be, and must be, well adapted to transfer the outer touch THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 95 or undulating stroke from the surface of the body to the inner ends of the in-carrying nerves of sensation in the brain. But a rnan might just as -well disbelieve our tele- scopes, and insist that the sun moves round the earth, as disbelieve our microscopes, and insist that we have any direct or immediate knowledge of the outer world, or can know or be conscious of anything except some minute vibrations or undulations, which are mere mo- tions and forms, at the inner ends of our in-carrying nerves of sensation. Now there are but two alternatives — either to deny wholly the existence of mind and its action between the inner ends of our in-carrying nerves and the outer ends of our out-carrying nerves, which, in fact, the experien- tial materialistic dogmatists generally do, if they are consistent — i.e., deny the existence of mind altogether ; or else to admit that our ideas are not derived from ex- perience, but are all derived from and founded on reflec- tion and judgment — in short, from and by means of mental invention and intuition, by attention, compari- son, and conception, or other mental powers. The thing that passes along our in-carrying nerves may be called, if you please, a sensation or perception, but it is certainly bodily and material, and is in no respect mental ; it can only be some motion, vibration, or undulation of the matter of our own bodies. At the inner end of our in-carrying nerves matter ceases, and if we admit mind, the mind begins to act. Attention begins, comparison commences, resemblances are mentally perceived, conceived, and invented, and by judgment are accepted or rejected ; and the result is an idea — a mental thing — in the mind ! But this resultant 96 CHAPTER X. idea is not obtained from experience, but from the action and invention of the mind to explain to itself the experience of the bodily senses. The Body experiences "vibrations — motions and forms very minute ; and the Mind invents ideas to explain their causes. In the most obvious as well as the most recondite ideas, the action which creates the idea or the thought is entirely mental! We have never, in fact, in the whole course of our lives, experienced one single idea or thought ! It is mere confusion of language and of thought — confounding the body and the mind — ^to say that our ideas, or any of them, are derived from or in any way founded on experience, for we never experience ideas of any kind. What is probably meant by the more sensible of the experimental philosophers is, that we experience sensations and perceptions of the body : and then the mind, by attention, imagination, and judg- ment, invents ideas which it thinks will explain to itself and others how such sensations and perceptions are produced or caused. We experience bodily sensa- tions ; we invent mental theories or ideas. But the comparisons, the resemblances, the analogies, the judg- ments, the conclusions, are all purely mental operations, and the resultant ideas or thoughts are purely mental things, not derived from or founded on any experience whatever, but are all invented by our mental powers to explain our bodily experiences ! and the resulting ideas are as wholly independent of experience as mind is distinct from matter. Nor is it even strictly true, as Locke said, that we experience "the materials of our ideas." We experience the materials for thinking our ideas. We experience bodily facts : but a bodily fact is not an idea^ or the material of an idea. The idea is THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 9/ the theory which combines the facts, the analogy the resemblance between the facts. We do not experience analogies or resemblances ; we invent them by our own powers of comparison and judgment. They exist only in the mind — not in the bodily facts, not in the things, not in the experience. No man ever experienced a comparison : no man ever experienced an analogy, nor a resemblance, nor a judgment. "We experience the materials for thinking — for using our minds. We only experience bodily sensations ; we invent mental analo- gies, resemblances, comparisons, ideas. We never expe- rience mental phenomena; we imperience (if we may make a word for each man's private individual thinking in the mind, which can form no part of general human knowledge) — ^we mperience or create ideas, and we em- body our ideas in words. The error of experiential philosophy appears to me to partly arise from supposing that sensation and percep- tion are mental phenomena, and also from a loose way of using these words, as well as the words conscious and consciousness. The dog and the man have both of them sensations and perceptions, and in some way may be said to have consciousness of each other's pre- sence. But the man is mentally conscious that he is conscious ; and he individually examines his conscious- ness by the second and higher mental consciousness, comparison, judgment, &c., of which the dog does not appear, so far as we know, to partake. It is this consciousness, in the second degree, which is mental. It is this knowledge of our knowledge, and feeling that we feel, and being conscious that we are conscious, which is alone mind, and which the materialist denies, and therefore says that such ex- G 98 CHAPTER X. pressions are merely "tautological." Whereas there is' the greatest possible difference (the whole difference between mind and matter) between feeling and knowing per se, and feeling that you know and knowing that you feel ! It is not consciousness which gives us the phenomena of mind, but self- consciousness — conscious- ness in this second degree — introspection of ourselves. Accordingly the materialist attempts to confound con- sciousness with the reflex action of the nerves. But there are in the human body divers ganglions of nerves or nerve-centres — ^little brains, they might be called — scattered about along the spinal marrow and elsewhere, for the preservation of particular parts of the body,' which possess and produce unconscious reflex actions of apparent intelligence, but of which the man is wholly unconscious till the danger is past. But I believe that it is clear beyond question that, though the consciousness of the lower animals may possibly, for all we yet know, be reflex action, produced by and tracing its origin to the original impression made by the outer world on the in-carrying nerves, yet the inner seZ/- consciousness of the man is not reflex action ; and though it may become by habit and usage almost instinctive, yet that it is never completely free from mental attention, reflection, and judgment, the self-will and self-consciousness — the wilfulness which is the essential characteristic of the human mind in thinking. Sensation is material, but thought is men- tal, and all ideas are mental inventions. In short, there are but fifty to eighty ounces of matter in the human body in any way connected with the sen- sation or consciousness of the human mind. All the rest of man's body is whoUy unconscious, and wholly THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 99 ■unconnected witli his mind or will, except indirectly through the unconscious sympathetic system, by affecting his general health of body. But, again, these few pounds of nervous matter are also, as a mass itself, wholly unconscious, when and if cut off from the brain-centre, which we cannot investigate, but where must be the seat and centre of the will and mind, if we admit mind to exist in our frames. And this unconscious nerve-matter is so arranged as to make the distinction between mind and matter more and more probable, the more the nerves and the nervous system are investigated. This wondrous network of nervous filaments, which are mere conduit - pipes, mere telegraphic wires, can only carry in vibrations or impressions, only motions and undulations, through the matter of our nerves. But these filaments are so infinitesimally minute on the surface of the body, that ten thousand millions of them possibly could lie side by side in the space of an inch; for when one of these minute nerve-fibres reaches the surface or periphery of the body in the case of touch, which is the coarsest of our sensations, each filament branches out into finer filaments, which are lost under the powers of our microscopes ; and possibly, therefore, many thousand millions of 'them might lie side by side in the tenth of an inch. But these infinitesimally min- ute tubular threads, and such minute undulations or motions as they can convey, are the only things which reach the mind or brain ! Whatever man's mind knows of the outer world, has therefore been necessarily invented by the mind from the mental discussion and comparison of the minute waves or motions which pass along and through these 100 CHAPTER Xi microscopical filaments ! And as we know that sounds and sights are actual vibrations, undulations, or motions of the elastic mediums of air and light, it is clear that our aural and optic nerves must transmit, in some way we know not how, these motions or vibrations to the matter or fluid pith of our in-carrying nerves. Where the in-carrying nerves visibly cease and terminate, the mental actions — the Attention, the Comparisons, the Eeflection, the Conceptions, the Judgments — must be- gin and proceed and conclude before the out-carrying nerves of human will, agitating the voice or limb, become instinct with the mental life imparted to them by the mind, and create a word or action. It is very reasonable also to suppose from analogy that all our nerves of sense are like those of sight and hearing, and only transmit vibrations, undulations, or motions inwards ; and that heat or gravity, electricity and magnetism, are merely vibrations also transmitted by the nerves of touch, smell, and taste respectively, just as light and sound are transmitted by the optic and aural nerves. But all our ideas must be obtained from reflection, and by mental comparison and judgment of these minute motions of our own nerves in our brains. It is move reasonable to use such words as nervous motion or vibration, rathet than the old one "animal spirits," to express the material actions of the nerves produced by the operations of the outer world. Animal spirits, if we were to adopt such language, could only mean those imponderable matters which we call light, heat, gravity, electricity, and magnetism operating on our nervous organisation, the phenomena of which we investigate as matter, not as mind or spirit. But if we admit the existence of the human mind at THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. lOI all distinct from the human body, then certainly, what- ever the human mind does know of the outer world is not from experience, but from imperience or invention — the mental comparison of internal bodily motions ; and all our ideas are, and have always been, merely accumu- lated judgments formed by our mental powers, our atten- tion, comparison, reflection, invention, and judgment, upon these infinitesimally minute nervous vibrations or " somethings," capable of passing along nerve-filaments, of which many millions could coexist in a circle the tenth of an inch in diameter. It cannot be otherwise. But I say that it is a clear contradiction in terms ; first, to admit the distinction — the verbal distinction — between mind and matter ; and then to say that the material vibrations or somethings which pass along our bodily nerves, and which alone we get from experience, and which are merely material motions, are or can be ideas or mental things which we never experienced in our lives. It is a logical contradiction. We never experience a comparison, an analogy, a resemblance ! We experience vibrations, motions, and forms, in our nerves, bodily facts, but not mental theories or resemblances ; but it is our mind which sees the re- semhlance, which makes the comparison, and builds up and creates the ideas. Our minds create their mental furniture by our mental powers. We do not know what goes on in our nerves, but we do know, by reflection on our microscopes, that our mind and consciousness do not exist in the nerves themselves ; and that they are merely the roads, the avenues, the telegraphic wires, or channels of communication which pass from the outer world to the mind within, carrying only material motions inwards ; and bringing outwards, in the shape of words r02 • CHAPTER X. and actions, the mental emotions ^which we call ideas. Motion is a state of Matter, not a sta!te of Mind. But experience is limited to material motions. It is certainly, therefore, imperience or invention, the act of the mind, the result of attention, comparison, reflection, judgment, &c., and not experience, which gives us all our ideas, all our mental furniture ; and it is merely confusing mind and matter, or body and spirit, to assert the contrary. The visibly-separate ends of our in-carrying nerves of sensation, clearly separated from the ends of our out- carrying nerves of will by tlieir separation, assist us to perceive that the whole immense gulf of the human mind is interposed between the two parts of our bodies, the in-carrying and out-carrying apparatus. And though the one terminates and the other begins in the grey cellular mass . of the brain side by side, yet the mind of man and his spirit may range the universe before he says " I will," or makes " I dare not " wait upon "I would;" or before he frames the word which is to express his idea of the thing. These minute grey cells, consisting of myriads upon myriads of microscopical cells, infinite as they seem in number, with an opaque nucleus or point in each form- ing the mass of the braia, may well be the material storehouse of our memory, where material sensations are photographed or laid up to be ready for the mind's use when required ; but the ideas, the emotions, the mental things, cannot be given us by any experience from with- out, but must be all invented by attentive comparison, reflection, conception, and judgment, &c., within the mind. ' We thus experience material motions, but we imperi- THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 103 ence or invent mental conceptions, representations, ideas, which we embody in the words and signs which we send forth along our motory nerves of will outwards. Thus the bodily organ or instrument of our mind is the brain and nervous system ; but no experience gives our mind any of these ideas or mental furniture. Experience gives our bodies sensations, or gives vibra- tions of our in-carrying sensory nerves. The mind in- vents all its ideas by attention, comparison, reflection, conception, judgment, exercised by means of its mental senses of number, time, and space ; and it invents words wherein to embody the ideas, which words, though in- tended to explain and to record what we often call our experience, are, in accurate logical truth, the production of the mind alone, and of its senses and powers — of its • senses of number, time, and space ; of its powers of attention, comparison, reflection, invention or conception, and judgment, inventing theories to explain our supposed facts. Thus, some part of the brain of man may be the organ or instrument of our intellectual functions ; some part the organ of our emotions and passions ; some part the organ of our senses — our internal senses ; of number, time, and space, and of all our self-consciousness ; and some part may be the organ of our volitions. But the grey cellular mass of the brain is, on the one hand, con- nected to the in-carrying filaments or sensory nerves, separate for each special sense, passing into the brain from the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and the whole surface or periphery of the body — the locality of touch ; and on the other hand the brain is connected with the spinal cord and the nerves of motion, and in man and the higher animals the brain gives and possesses that cour 104 CHAPTER X. trolling power over the nerves of voluntary motion which are distributed to the motor jnuscles ; and these out-carrying or motory nerves are therefore called the nerves of volition, and the muscles are called voluntary muscles, by which, at pleasure, we move our limbs. But we do not use our whole brain in every mental act. Now, just as the astronomers and their telescopes have for ever overthrown, to those who can think and reason, the most obvious decisions and judgments of our senses and intellect concerning the motions of the heavenly bodies, and compelled us to disbelieve our senses and experience, — which, as we usually say, tell us that the world is fixed and immovable, and that the sun, moon, and stars rise and set and move round the world every twenty-four hours, — so I say that the surgeons and their microscopes have most effectually put a stop to our reason and judgment, believing that the human miTtd actually sees and hears and feels the outer world, or gains its ideas by experience. Every false idea has always been said to be founded on experience. But we do not experience falsehoods ; we experience bodily sensations, and often invent ideal falsehoods or falsities which we afterwards reject. We do not experience mental ideas, but material sensations; and our minds from time to time invent ideas which, as we think and say, help to explain and account for our accumulated experiences ! And every word involves a mental theory of external existence. At first, for example, we invented the idea that the world was fixed in the centre of the universe, and that the sun, moon, and stars moved round it every twenty- four hours, and backwards and forwards " in cycles and THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. I05 epicycles, orb on orb, contrived to save appearances." The whole Ptolemaic system, which is false, was invented to explain experiences. It was not experience, but the mind that contrived all this, and framed its ideas, which we now perceive to be wholly wrong and false; and not only independent of, but, as we now know, contrary to, our present experience, as we say ; and as we now think, the old experiential idea is utterly absurd and incredible ! We have stiU. aU the ideas of the Ptolemaic system, and deem them a pure invention of the mind, and altogether independent of, and contrary to, true experience, which we now see that the human mind formerly wrongly interpreted, and endeavoured to ex- plain by the very absurd ideal inventions of the fixity of the world and the motions of the heavenly bodies round it ! It is surely a most perverse use of language to say that false ideas are derived from, or founded or depend- ent on, true experience ! The rising and setting of the sun are not founded on experience, but are false inven- tions of the mind — ideas, or theories altogether false ! But our experience is not false, not even that experience which induced man to invent the idea that the sun, moon, and stars rise and set and go round the world in twenty-four hours. The experience is true, but the idea is false, and is wholly independent of experience, though it was invented to explain it ! The experience that the sun rises is still as true as ever, but the idea is wholly false. So the idea is equally false that man sees, hears, feels, smells, and tastes external things; and the surgeons with their microscopes and their experi- ments and observations on our nerves completely over- throw the idea that we feel the external world — an ro6 CHAPTER X. Idea which is entirely false, for we only feel things in the brain. The human mind is separated from the outer world by those myriads of infinitesimal tubular nerve-threads which are themselves wholly unintelligent and blind and senseless, and so small that millions might be rolled up in the tenth of an inch ; and though themselves with- out either sense or will, yet each seems capable of car- rying a distinct impression, undulation, or vibration — '■ mere motions and forms — to the brain ; and also along- side of them others like them, capable of carrying the will of the mind outwards to our limbs or organs of motion and tongue. All this, again, is not experience, but a theory — an idea to explain our microscopical experience. The mind is at the inner end of these minute insensible telegraphic wires, and the outer world is at the outer end — ^that is the idea of the man who believes in ,both matter and mind, as I assume the reader does ; and all that the mind can possibly know of this outer world of matter must necessarily have passed to it in the form originally of those infinitesimally minute somethings or vibrations or undulations, the motions which pass along these minute nerve-fibres. Our bodies experience bodily vibrations or motions, and our minds invent ideas or theories. All our ideas, as they now exist in the mind, must have been invented and created by the attention, reflection, conception, judgment, &c., of the mind from time to time, correcting our previous false ideas, and so we have arrived at all our present ideas and our present judgments concerning this outer world ; which itself is a mere theory in the mind expressed by the words matter and external universe— =-but is a fact so indubitable to THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 10/ every one possessed of a iDody, that we all assume it to be true ; and to deny it, is to deny our own bodily exis- tence! But what the mind beholds is not the outer world, but the minute undulations, motions, and forms which reach the brain ; but which motions exist only in the nerves of each man's own body caused by the outer world. To say, then, with " common-sense " philosophers, that man sees and feels and is conscious of the outer world as we now all behold it and speak of it, is just as false a representation or explanation of the facts before our microscopes, as to say, that the sun, moon, and stars actually rise and set and move round this world in twenty-four hours is a false representation and explana- tion of the facts before our telescopes. Most of us have neither looked through the telescopes nor the microscopes, but we receive the words of the as- tronomers and physiologists who have, and which words we can verify or disprove whenever we choose to look for ourselves. But the cardinals who shut their eyes when requested to look at Venus as a crescent emerging from the sun's rays in Galileo's telescope, are the prototypes of the positive philosophers of to-day, who say that all ideas are derived from and dependent on experience ! For the experiential philosophers shut their minds' eyes to the manifest fact, that every idea is the act of the mind, independent of experience, setting experience against experience, feeling this and feeling that, judging between opposing experiences, comparing and contriv- ing and numbering and timing and spacing our bodily sensations ; thinking, supposing, inventing, conceiving, and mentally concluding on questions or matters other than and always wholly beyond any experience what- I08 CHAPTER X. ever ! siicli as atoms, undulations, velocities almost in- credible, &c. Galileo's telescope gave us the experience of Venus as a crescent ; but it is the mind that thence concludes that the world is flying through space eleven hundred miles per minute, contrary to all experience ! The comparison between two experiences is not an experience but a comparison — a mental act ; the invent- ing of some deep-seated resemblance between two expe- riences is not an experience but a mental perception and invention — the conception of a state or relation — pos- sibly not existing in nature at all ; like the idea of that savage tribe who thought that eclipses were caused by a great wild beast eating and consuming the sun, which they ought to drive away by noise, and by beating their tom-toms ! or like the ideas of the ancients, that the earth is the centre of the universe, and a flat plain surrounded by water; or the idea of the poor New Orleans slave, that the normal state of things in the world is to have the water higher than the land, and to keep it always out with levies and dykes ; or the whole Ptolemaic system itself — ^these are not experiences, but false ideal inductions. All false ideas are said to be founded on insufficient experience, and aU true ideas to be founded on sufficient experience; but this is a false mode of speaking and using words. And it is a perversion of language to con- found the act and invention of the mind with the expe- rience or sensation of the body. All ideas are rela- tions, mental things, which have no proper existence out of the mind — the relations between many things, or the relation between the many parts or powers of one thing, and called its states. Ideas exist only in the mind, and are its own inventions and creations by means of atten-' THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. I09 tton, comparison, reflection, conception, judgment, powers of mind ; and it is a mere perversion of language to say or think that men's mental things are founded or de- pendent on bodily experience, which has no means of giving us one single idea, one single comparison, one single resemblance, or one single judgment ! It is one thing, and the duty of every man, to strive and contrive, if possible, to reconcile together his mental ideas and his bodily experience — for the object of all ideas is to explain and account for bodily experiences as far as possible ; it is q^uite another, and entirely false, to think or to say that our mental ideas are really and truly dependent or founded on our bodily ex:perience — it is to make nature or God the author of falsehood ; or in- differentlj', both of truth and falsehood. We can only experience matter, and matter is only the type of mind ; and we never experience mind or purely mental things, and we exercise our internal mental powers to invent ideas, theories, mental things, and we embody them in words in order to express our thoughts about our bodily experiences. The mind and its powers are the original and only active source of all our ideas, and none of our ideas are, properly speaking, derived from or founded on experience. Experience does not give us mental theories, but material facts ; experience is wholly bodily. The mind invents the theories, and struggles, and properly struggles, to make them accord with the facts. The body experiences bodily facts ; the mind in- vents mental theories, and every idea involves a theory, and every word expresses an idea. In fact, to take our example, nothing can be more ab- surd and inconsistent than for a man who believes and says that the earth goes round the sun, to say at the fllO CHAPTER X. same time that his ideas are founded on or derived froin experience, or that truth is to be built on induction. How does the fact stand? Millions of millions of men in all ages have seen, and still do feel and see, the earth fixed, and the sun to rise and set every day, and move round the earth, and also move through the fixed stars every year, and have never at any time experienced any sensation or fact whatever to the contrary ; and then they are told to believe, and do profess to believe, that a man at the equator is travelling twenty-four thousand miles every day of his life, and that this great world and all its inhabitants are flying through space constantly at the rate of eleven hundred miles in a minute ! a rate of travelling which takes away one's breath to think of. And then we are told that all this violation of all the experience of all mankind in all ages, and in the present age, is all established by a few astronomers looking through their telescopes, and seeing the star Venus sometimes as a full moon and sometimes as a thin cres- cent. Not one person in five hundred could explain in- telligibly how this bears in any way at all on the ques- tion of the earth's motion round the sun ; and stiU fewer could measure the relative sizes and distances of the heavenly bodies, or could explain or exhibit an experi- ment with a pendulum in azimuth to prove the earth's motion on its axis ; and yet the experiential ideas of all men in all ages, and of ourselves at the present time, are set aside, and men disbelieve their senses as to motions which they see with their eyes every day, and believe in the unexperienced and unperceived and positively frightful velocities of this whole world on its axis at one thousand miles an hour at the equator, and at eleven hundred miles in a minute through space round the sun. THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 311 going on at this enormous velocity from day to day and year to year, and without any man ever experiencing it in the least ! I say, if men really believed in experience as the origin and foundations of their ideas, they would still believe, like the cardinals, in the stability of the world, in spite of Galileo and all subsequent astronomers, and all their ideal calculations ; for they are wholly ideal. But all men in fact and truth see in their heart and mind that it is not experience or bodily feelings that we really believe in, but it is in the effects of mental atten- tion, comparison, reflection, conception, or invention and judgment, by which alone any ideas, true or false, are created, that men really believe in, even though they are wholly opposed to all the past and present experience of themselves, and of all mankind ; for we never do expe- rience Our mental conclusions, but we calculate and in- vent them. Our minds remain for ever attached to the inner ends of our nerves, hopelessly separated by them from the universe exterior to our bodies, but judging and calculating between divers experiences of the body. Thus, however, the thoughts and discoveries, the men- tal conceptions and inventions of the few, overrule the constant experience of all the rest of the world. But how do the few get their thoughts? By observation and experiment ? not at all ! but by comparison of divers observations — by reflection on sensations other- wise inexplicable — by the mental exercise of conception — ^by invention and calculation and judgment that so it must be — by the careful exercise of their mind and of their mental powers, dealing indeed with material sen- sations of the body, not ideas, but working mentally with the mind, and in their mind, creating mental rela- 112 CHAPTER X. tions or ideas possibly existing nowhere, and to be after- wards, perhaps, discarded by the mind ; and by finding and inventing appropriate words, signs, and symbols, in order to express such mental ideas and creations of the intellect, wholly removed from all bodily experience whatever. It is mere logical confusion between mind and matter to think otherwise. It is equally false to say that we have innate ideas born with us, and to say that all our ideas are founded on ex- perience. We have internal innate senses and powers and capacities, such as our senses of number or of time or of space, just as we have innate external senses, as we might for distinction call them, of seeing, hearing, touch- ing, tasting, and smelling, though these also are all in- ternal in the brain. Children of the same family differ as much in respect of their capacities for arithmetic, music, and geometry, which are the abstract sciences of number, time, and space, as they A'ary in short sight and long sight, in bodily strength, or quickness of hear- ing. They vary in muscle, and they vary in nerves, and they vary in mind and spirit and intellectual acumen. However, the fact is rendered by our microscopes utterly indispiitable, that the human mind is separated from all external nature by a wonderful nervous system of minute filaments or infinitesimal tubular threads of matter filled with a fluid pith, in themselves and in itself wholly insensible ; and the mind knows nothing whatever of the outer world but certain infinitesimaUy small somethings, which are able to pass along these threads or filaments, the millionth of the tenth of an inch in diameter. And all that we know, or suppose we know, of this outer world, is the result of our mind's internal attention, comparison, reflection, conception, THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. 113 and judgment, by applying our external senses of seeing hearing, tasting, smeUing, and touching; and our internal senses of number, time, and space, &c., to the effects of external things on our bodily nervous system. We must therefore either become materialists, and deny altogether the existence of mind, and so deny not only the existence of number, time, and space, but of all abstract ideas whatever, and all the abstract meanings of our words ; or else we must admit with Berkeley and his true followers, " that the reality of the objects we per- ceive still remains a profoimd and apparently insoluble problem," and I say, must ever remain so, while the Body, the bodily veil of our nervous system, remains constantly interposed between our minds and the external face of nature, or that exterior cause which agitates our nerves. But the reality of the universe of Mind or Spirit, external to ourselves, is as much beyond our means of knowledge as the reality of the universe of Matter. For even if we beheld a spirit or ghost, or mind made visi- ble — or heard a Divine voice — or even what some would term an inborn or inborne idea or revelation — it is, and must be, something which acts through either our in-carrying or our out-carrying nerves — i. e., it must be our own spiritual appreciation of the sight, or the sound, or of the impression on the souL We must believe that the Divine afflatus either passes into our minds through the nerves — or, being something different from our- selves, impresses our souls, and passes out of our minds through our nerves ; and in either case we have no means without faith of judging of its reality, independ- ent of ourselves. With faith we may judge and reason ; but without some faith, we cannot even begin to reason, either about Reason or about Paith. H ri4 CHAPTER X. The reality, therefore, of any Spiritual World other than ourselves, and different from the current of a man's, individual thoughts, remains a more profound and more, insoluhle problem even than the reality of the external world ; for observe that we are less able to distinguish the spiritual non^ego than the material Tion-ego; we are less able to separate the other spiritual object from our Mind, than we are able , to separate the other material object from our Body. The suggestion of .Hume is the natural corollary of the suggestion of Berkeley ; and, having abolished both mind and matter, if we really have faith in our argument, we may proceed to abolish language also, and deny the law of contradiction, and say with Hegel, " Being and nothing are the same, and yet they are not the same " ! and so conclude that " nought is everything, and everything is nought." And when we have reached this sublime or ridiculous eclipse of both faith and REASON, we may then possibly think it reasonable either to take a dose of hellebore, or lay some foimdation for FAITH in the truth of our WOEDS — mind, matter, lan- guage. For if we believe in mind, we believe in God ; and if we believe in matter, we believe in the Universe ; and if we believe in language, we believe in ourselves. And then we may and must logically discover, that in place of faith being founded on reason, the reverse is the fact, and that all reason must be founded on faith ; and we may then, perhaps, become more humble, and conclude with St Paul, that " if a man thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know it." But if a man sets out by resolving to ielieve in the existence of nothing but what can be proved by reason, then he had- better shut his eyes and his ears,* THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS. IIS or contemplate his navel like a Buddhist ; for he can never helieve in anything hut the existence of himself As to matter, our minds cannot possibly reach the outer world ; and as to mind, there is the double diffi- culty of first reaching the outer world, and then pene- trating to its causes or cause, involving the other minds which operate without us and upon us ; and as to lan- guage, we have to penetrate to the meanivgs of the words — the mental force of each material motion within our own soul and spirit ; and thence we have to judge of the mental force or capacity which created the words we have received as true — a threefold or triplicate difficulty to be afterwards considered. But we conclude that ideas are purely mental things, and are not derived from or founded on any experience whatever, but are the creations and inventions of mind itself, created by the exercise of its innate senses and powers, and they are all embodied in WORDS in order to fix and consolidate our own ideas, and to transmit our ideas to other minds. Ideas of sensation are, properly speaking, ideas of matter. Ideas of reflection are, pro- perly speaking, ideas of mind. But besides these two, we have other ideas which are partly of matter and partly of mind, vibrations of matter with mental mean- ings, which are WOKDS or language. But no ideas what- ever are, properly speaking, founded on or derived from experience. And I say that all ideas are words, signs, symbols, and are logically nothing else. The origin of all our ideas is simply the origin of LANGUAGE. CHAPTER XL WORDS SIGNS SYMBOLS. They commit a great error who treat " the speech of man as of the same nature with the signs with which animals express their feelings and purposes ; and they leave out of sight the essential character of language. For the essential nature of language consists, not in its expressing particular feelings and purposes, but in its expressing thoughts and things in a general manner. Words ex- press abstract thoughts, each of which may be applied to innumerable particular objects ; and human reason can deal with thoughts so abstracted, and can by means of them express truth, which it is her peculiar privilege to contemplate. But there are in animals no germs of this power of abstraction — of this apprehension of general abstract truth" ! * But we have not to discuss the language of animals, or the cries of intelligent beasts, or their signs or actions, but the words, signs, and symbols — the instruments of human science — the medium of human cognition — whereby one man can convey his thoughts of things to his neighbours, or to all mankind possessed of sufficient intelligence to comprehend the words, to apprehend the thoughts, to understand the things in question. We have shortly discussed the origin of our ideas on * Dr Whewell. WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. I17 the assumptions that all men have minds distinct from their bodies, and that aU ideas are purely mental things ; and we say that all mental things, when made generally intelligible, as subjects for human discussion, are merely words. But if, as Locke thought, and some moderns still think, the whole stress and real difficulty of philosophy and its disputes is the true origin of our ideas, and you refuse my definition of idea as a mental thing, the whole dis- pute becomes a mere question of words. The word idea, and every other word you choose to select — thought, con- cept, representation, &c. — ^lias three different significa- tions : 1, a bodily signification — the motion, impression, or bodily vibration ; 2, a mental signification — the thought, idea, or emotion in the mind ; 3, a verbal sig- nification — the word, sign, or symbol itself. But "it is absurd to expect to settle questions by means of our words tUl we have first settled what our words are in scientific truth." What are words ? The ancient materialist exclaimed, " I see a table ; I don't see the idea of a table " ! " That," said Plato, " is because you look with your eyes, and not with your mindy" which was merely assuming the distinction be- tween mind and matter, and assuming those words as intelligibly distinct to all! Then the materialist or experimental philosopher dissects the eye and exhibits the sidri — ^the physical image on the retina, or in a camera obscura, and he exclaims, " Behold your ideas ; they are only physical impressions, or images on the nerves." And then he says, " An idea is therefore only a bodily image or impression carried to the brain and stored up in a brain-cell " ! But Berkeley nearly hit the mark when he asks, "What is a 'general idea' ?" 1^8 .;.,: CHAPTER XL and declared Locke's "general idea" of a triangle, which is neither equilateral, isosceles, nor scalene, but aU three at once, a " stark staring absurdity" ! — a self-contradic- tion — a physical image of a sensible thing called a tri- angle, which is not an image of any possible or existing sensible thing ! ! But, nevertheless, every word in every language, and in all reasoning, and in all philosophy and logic, is a general term generally supposed to be the name of some general idea; and to the materialist every general word and every general idea must be a nonen- tity, a " stark staring absurdity," a form, an image of no material thing in particular ! And so they, the materialists, must abolish number, time, and space, cause, resemblance, force, and the rest ; and also, every abstract or purely mental relation whatever. All gene- ral words are nought ! or they contradict themselves, and for a time turn idealist, and say ideas are every- thing. At one time all is material and concrete and positive ; at another all is mental and abstract, and ideal or conceptional I One philosopher will only speak of concrete and posi- tive facts, and the other of concepts and conceptions, and abstract theories. Both equally neglect or leave out of its proper place — i.e., confound and confuse — the reality of words and language. Berkeley, however, was very near hitting the truth when he observed that all material phenomena may be considered as the " language of God," and only erred in supposing it necessarily or always of God, and not of other minds also. And Locke was also near the truth when he observed that all the language of metaphysics is probably only the metaphorical language of physics. WORDS— SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 1 19 " I doubt not," said he, " but if we could trace them to their sources, we should find in all languages the names which stand for things which fall not under our senses to have had their first rise from sensible ideas " * — i.e., the words for mind are only the metaphorical language for matter; a truth which is self-evident to the thoughtful, for how could it possibly be otherwise (though probably Locke was' the first tO' clearly put it forward) ? How can any man explain to another what goes on internally in his mind or brain but by taking a sensible external material metaphor, and making it the image or sign of what he desires to explain, and then says that the like metaphorically goes on within his brain or mind ? Na- ture herself compels man to use matter as the type and symbol of mind, and to use the language of matter meta- phorically for mind and its operations. And so the language of physics and metaphysics gi'ows up, and men think they are disputing about things (ma- terial things) and thoughts (mental or immaterial things) ! But all the while they are only, as we assert, disputing about the words which express both thoughts and things, and are the assumed symbols of each — the visible symbols of their thoughts of matter, and the material symbols of thought itself. " But no philosopher has ever given, and I say that no philosopher can possibly give, any sufficient reason why we are to stop at the inner ends of our in-carrying nerves, and think that we are disputing or can possibly dispute about the unknown something there produced in the mind, and called an idea, or a thought or con- cept, instead of going on to the outer ends 6f our out- carrying nerves, and to the efi'ect made by the mind * Locke, in. iv. 3. I20 CHAPTER XI. upon the larynx and the pen, to the actually known or knowable effect about which alone we have any mutual knowledge, or can possibly dispute — viz., the word which the human mind has created, and caused the outward vibrations to create and produce externally as an actual /actor of human knowledge— a symbol of our thought of the thing— the word. "The word expresses and embodies the idea. The word is the creation of the mind, the best evidence of its existence. It is the very substance and body of the idea itseK. The word denotes the thing and connotes the thought, and is the word — the very thing and thought in question. " The unknowable thing has passed into the idea, the thought; the unknowable thought or idea has passed into the word ; and the words are the only things or general ideas or thoughts which can be known or dis- cussed as they are actually iu themselves by any chUd of man, let him talk or write as long as he may. To acknowledge and to submit to this truth is the iirst step in all true philosophy." All human knowledge is symbolism — the proper use of signs, symbols, words, language, invented by the human , mind to describe and explain mind, matter, and language. The whole history of mankind, and of his mind, and of his civilisation, must be rewritten from this point of view. What are the words, the signs, the symbols which express the principles that have governed man's mind, his motives, and his actions — all must be produced and examined; for the individual is governed and im- pelled by the idea, and mankind in general are jointly impelled and governed by the word. The true and real inspiration of evil is and always WORDS— SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 1 2 1 has been the suggestion of some false word or image, which helps to hide the truth ; and the inspiration of truth is only the suggestion of true words, and true symbols. This overlooking and undervaluing the import- ance of words and language, the paramount importance of words in every human question, seems to me the true source of the vain materialism with which the world of man is filled — at one time panatheism, at an- other pantheism ; the two poles between which the materialist and idealist perpetually osciQate in doubt, ignorance, and confusion, not properly valuing or un- derstanding the words they use. If any man says, " Surely I know more of the real nature of this world when I have learnt the great truths of gravity or chemical affinity, or chemical composition and reduction, than I did before." I answer, No ! you do not. You have learnt to think with Newton, with Lavoisier, and with Dalton, and to use Newton's words, and Lavoisier's words, and Dalton's words. You have learnt to think with the great modern astronomers and chemists, and to use their words. Neither they nor you know anything more about the realities of matter and the universe than you did before. You have learnt a number of appearances, phenomena which affect the human senses, and have learnt to give them orderly names, so as to speak correctly with yoiir fellow-men who have examined the same appearances, and have agreed to use the same names and words to express those nvmbers of appearances. Both they and you are as ignorant of all the realities in the things you speak of as ever savage was. You have learnt some new human words, signs or symbols — the breath from our larynx and tongue, or black marks from the ends of our 122 CHAPTER XI. fSeils ; and how to make and use those words, signs, and symhols, in consonance and mutual agreement with your well-instructed feUow-men, and therewith to fix and consolidate your own individual mind. But you have learnt nothing more whatever ; and any other imagination of your heart is mere folly, emptiness, and delusion. " But surely, when I have learnt the truth concerning chemical combustion ; when I have learnt to look on the smoke and the ashes as containing all the matter consumed ; when I have seen a grain of metal consiimed in a bright flame, and know that the ashes produced are greater in weight than the metal burnt ; and when I can say the metal burnt is all here, and something else besides, and I wiU now take that away and restore the metal as before — surely I have learnt something more than language — than words. These are facts — these are theories ; this is not lan- guage ; this is chemistry — chemical reduction and com'- position, chemical combustion. This is not words, but thoughts and things, — things before my eyes — thoughts before my mind's eye ! What folly it is to call all this words and language !" Hold, my worthy chemist ! What are these facts — these theories — these things — these thoughts? What is this combustion, or this reductmu and composition 1 Merely accurate words for human thoughts of material things. You have measured by number and space and gravity the ashes and the smoke, but you know no more what fire is than the savage who never heard the word combvstion, and worships the sun. You have developed this word combustion, or these words reduc- tion and composition, accurately, under the advice and assistance of the great chemists of the past age, thinking WORDS— SIGNS— SYMBOLS. 1 2 ^ their thoughts about things, their minds about matter j and you have adopted their words. You have made their observations your own observations, and their experiments your own experiments, and have drunk in and imbibed their words, as well expressing the whole phenomena of fire. But what fire is you have yet to learn. The savage thought it probably a demon. Zoro- aster and the Parsees thought and think it god ; and what do you think it, my worthy chemist? God is light, says the Christian ; but is light God, most worthy materialist ? or is there no God, most worthy positivist ? AVhich of you know more about fire in itself than the poor savage who thought fire a demon 1 You have fine words — combustion, reduction, combi- nation — and now know what the modern chemists think about these words, and how they apply these words to practical uses ; but you are as ignorant about the real nature of fire as the savage. But your know- ledge of all these words and their chemical meaning is still knowledge, true cognitions so far and no further than the accurate measure of number, time, and space have been able to carry the chemists and yourself in understanding these words ; and so we may say God is the light of the mind, and that Light, is His most worthy material emblem, as the one source of life ; for " our God is a consuming fire," if so be that you have learnt the truth concerning Him. But what fire, and Light, and atoms, and their un- dulations, &c., are, you have yet to learn, most learned chemist, whether you be materialist, idealist, or con- ceptualist. But just as the great chemists developed combustion and reduction into clear scientific words, so we must 124 CHAPTER XI, develop mind, matter, and language into clear scientific words — at least, into better words than the words of materialism or of idealism or of conceptualism, for all these, so far as they are true, are contained in symbolism, which wraps all that is true of each in one, ; for all that man knows or can know are words symbolical of the truth within and without him. And light and fire are worthy symbols of God and His Holy Spirit, if so be that you believe in the word^ which I believe to be Spirit and to be Life — the spirit and life of the soul. Let us not, therefore, shrink from the clear avowal, and the manifest fact and truth, that all human truth can only be true words, signs, and symbols — pure sym- bols received into our minds, and then individually un- derstood — mathematical truth, verbal truth, symbolical truth. Words are necessary to our thoughts, and our thoughts are words within us. But are words "the names of things themselves," or merely " the names of our ideas of things ;" or have words, " strictly speaking, no signification?" Till we settle these questions, we are mere logical and philosophical shufflers. Men are no doubt placed in this world to investi- gate phenomena, and to gain by experience. " My son, get wisdom," is the language both of nature and of God. But till we have some common verbal interpretation of the phenomena, the wisdom is of the individual, and not of the race. We must have a word for it, or the phe- nomenon is dead. We may remember it ourselves, and repeat it as an experiment ; but if we attempt to rea- son about it or to think of it, even to ourselves, we must have some internal idea, some image within us, a symbol — some inchoate, word, or perhaps inarticulate symbol, about which we think and reason. WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 12$ The -word is the external body of the thought, and without the word the thought perishes and dies. " Language is not the dress of thought, it is its living expression; and it controls both the physiognomy and the organisation of the idea it utters." * " Language is not a tool, or even a machine, hut is of itself an informing vital agency; and so truly as language is what man has made it, just so truly is man what language has made him."t " Language is often called an instrument of thought, but it is also the nutrimeiit of thought, or rather it is the attnosphere in which thought lives : a medium essential to the activity of our speculative power, although invisible and imperceptible in its operations ; and an element modifying by its qualities and changes the growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds." X But " we think, indeed, to a considerable extent by means of names, but what we think of are the things called by those names. There cannot be a greater error than to imagine that thought can be carried on with nothing in our mind but names, or that we can make the names think for us." § " ' I believe,' said Leibnitz, ' that languages are the best mir- rors of the human mind, and that an exact analysis of the signi- fication of words would make us better acquainted than anything else with the operations of the understanding.' But there are tribes that have no numerals beyond four ; should we say that they do not know if they have five children instead of four ? They certainly do, as much as a oat knows that she has five kit- tens, and will look for the fifth if taken away from her. . . . They would not know as our children know that two and three make five ; i. e., they cannot reason beyond four, but only that two and three make many. " \\ Such are some of the ordinary popular floating no- tions about language and words ; but it does not appear, so far as I know, that any philosopher since the days of Plato has clearly perceived, and held fast and maintained, the truth, which I say is indubitable by any man who can reason ; that not only Mind, but Matter also, are to * Marsh Lect. Eng. Language, p. 454. + Ibid., p. 460. t Dr Whewell. § J. S. MiU. || Max Miiller. 126 CHAPTER XI. the human reason, and to every philosopher, merfely words or Symbols in which he has faith; and that words, signs, and symbols are the only thoughts or things about which any human minds can possibly dispute or reason. But it is most certainly so in every nation and language under the sun, even in the language of the tribes that cannot count beyond four, and in the Chinese, where every word or sign, at least the most' ancient words, are " at once verb and noun and adjective and adverb," as well as amongst ourselves ; all cogni- tion, all knowledge, all science, must begin and end and wholly consist of words and symbols. Now it is at least clear that until we can come to some understanding or fixed agreement or arrangement about our words, it is perfectly idle and useless to set to work debating and disputing about other things, whether things of matter, or things of mind, or things of language, and philosophy includes all three. It is as useless as throwing stones into a muddy pool in order to make it clear by that operation ; though if there were an outlet to the pool from which we coidd draw our water, it is possible that our stones might help to filter it at last. Now the scientific outlet to the muddy pool of philosophy is, in my opinion, number. We all have very clear and indubitable ideas of number and of arithmetic, how one number includes many units, and though many, yet is one — a new unit always capable of being added to and multiplied with and by ; and how each unit can be subtracted from and divided with and by — treated, in short, at once both as infinite and absolute, as absolutely one and yet infinitely mci,ny — many fractions, each itself a new unit. All language, then, is composed of words ; which ate. WORDS— SIGNS— SYMBOLS. I27 as we have already observed, common and accepted vibrations or undulations of matter, which all men can hear or see, but with mental meanings or significations in the miTid attached thereto ; but which meanings are private and unknown, except to the individual. Words are living /orms of thought — motions of matter producing forms in the soul. A sound is not a word till we fill it with thought. A sign is not a part of human language till it is understood by the mind ; till we know its force, its meaning, its signification, and application in our minds. Every sound or motion in nature is not a word ; but if man can repeat it, then it may become the sign of the thing, or of the thought caused by the action of the thing which causes the sound, as cuckoo is the name of a bird, or tick is the name of the action of a clock. But, till men join in creating and adopting the word, they have no general idea in common. But all language and every language is composed of the names of individuals, or of the universal term or general class — i.e., of the one or of the many. But we do not reason of the individuals, except as types or examples and symbols of their class ; and thus by the induction that as we find John or Ponto, so we shall find all men or all dogs. Sometimes this is a reasonable and sometimes a very unreasonable in- duction, but every general term adopted assumes it to be true and universal But we can only reason with general terms or class -names — the universal words which compose the language. Thus all language and every language (excepting the names of individuals) is composed of these general terms; which logicians reduce all to nouns, as. the subjects or 128 CHAPTER XL predicates of a sentence or proposition ; and gramma- rians reduce all to nouns and verbs, and philosophers to things and relations. And so in logic, categories are class-names for things, and predicables are class-names for thoughts, or relations of things. But as all words for reasoning in every language are these general terms, general names, or universals, so each signifies and means the whole number of things in the class called by the name. Every word is thus a number, and means the many things combined by our thoughts of the nature of the things, and called by the word under one name ; and the word signifies also and is the mental product of the thoughts or resemblances between the individual members of the class, which has caused man to give them the common class name. It denotes the things by its connotation of thoughts. The word is the one generalised thought of all the classed things. "We have already demonstrated that arithmetical num- bers are general terms or universals — i.e., words signi- fying all the units comprised imder the name. Ten means all the units in ten, and fifty all the units in fifty. Pure arithmetical numbers, therefore, are general terms, the only perfect ones in any language ; for each arithmetical number is distinctly marked and separated from every other number, and cannot be confounded with it by any one who understands the language of arithmetic, whether our numbers are formed on the binary, quinary, decimal, or any other system of arith- metic, and we proceed to infinity — that is, without end, or till we choose to leave off. Every one who can count always perceives clearly the hopeless endlessness. of our numbers ! WORDS— SIGNS— SYMBOLS. 1 29 But as all numbers are general terms, so I say that all general terms are numbers. This is a truth which every peasant who ever spoke, as well as every philo- sopher who ever wrote or spoke, has in words admitted and must admit. All men have admitted and exercise the power which man possesses to generalise, or make general terms or class -names. And the meaning of every general term in every language under the sun as spoken by mankind, is, that it shall stand for and represent the class — i. e., the whole number of things called by the name or term. Every word can be re- duced to a general term. Whenever we use the words man or tree, we always, whether peasant or philosopher, mean the whole number of things called men or trees. Man means all mankind, the whole number of men who ever did, or do, or will, exist. The same is true, not only of visible bodily things, but of all invisible mental things. We mean by virtue the whole number of mental thoughts and bodily acts called virtuous, or by the intellect, the whole number of things possessing mental powers or processes called intellectual. In short, every class, kind, or family is the whole number of units called by the name of the class. General terms or names, therefore, signify to every man who understands the language the whole number of the units of the class called by the general name. Every man who speaks intelligibly in every language admits this, that every general or universal word is a number, the whole number, so called; and that when we say Plants live and grow, we mean that the whole number of things properly called plants do so; and that when we say Stones do not live, we mean that I 130 CHAPTER XI. the whole number of things properly called stones do not live. Well, then, a general word is a whole number, and a number is a number of units. But the units meant by a word are not the units meant by a number, which we must now call an arithmetical number, to distinguish it from a verbal number. But still they are units. One plant, stone, man, or planet is a iinit quite as much as one dot or one stroke, or as an arithmetical unit made on paper, and called one unit. The units of every word are different from the units of other words, but they are all units — men, trees, laws, virtues, or attributes ; minds, bodies, words, or causes, ratios, or resemblances, all are numbers of units expressed in words, just as ten, or twenty, express a number of units. But we say also that all general terms are products — complications of thought. Now, as we made our arith- metical units alike by drawing strokes upon paper for example, so we make our verbal units alike by drawing words upon paper to express their supposed likenesses, which was commonly called by the Greeks defining the general term. It is merely taking other words, signs, or symbols, which we make, for the thoughts, which go to form or complicate the product, or generalised thought in question. If we look through distorted lenses or coloured spectacles, our units are likely to be drawn distorted or coloured. But it is the object of discussion to remove the spectacles^ or say, for exam- ple, to remove the. stereoscope, and show one solidity vanished, and two pictures, both flat, instead of one picture apparently quite solid. What passes for the most solid truth is sometimes altogether flat, stale, and unprofitable-; but all our words are numbers of things WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 131 and products of thoughts — the names of our thoughts of things. If, for example, I take a definition, and say that every man is composed of body and mind, and again, that every man's mind is composed of soul and spirit, then, vrhen I speak of mankind, T mean the whole number of units, each unit being composed of body + soul + spirit, that ever were or ever can be called men; and my word man, mankind, or men, means, and includes, and expresses all the bodies, all the souls, and all the spirits of mankind. Arithmetical units are simple units, but men are compound units. But each body is also a unit, and each soul is also a unit, and each spirit of man is also a unit, so that my word man, mean- ing the whole number of men, means the sum of the sums of these compound units, and that, I say, is a pro- duci, or man = body X soul X spirit, or a spirit into a soul into a body. This is clearly demonstrable. Some men never learn arithmetic except as a useful practical art; but to the arithmetician who has properly learnt the grounds and elements of his science, I say that this is manifest. The summation of eqiial compound units is multiplication. Everybody knows that three times four means adding three four's — i. e., three com- pound units of four each — or four times three is adding four three's — i. e., four compound units of three each — that is, in multiplication to find the product we add com- pound units, in the one case of four, in the other case of three — therefore arithmetical numbers are bundles of simple units, and products are bundles of compound units; and general words, or verbal numbers, are all products of compound units. Of course the reader will understand that the defi- 132 CHAPTER XI. nition, or choice of likenesses, the family or class like- nesses, which makes man ticket a bundle of such com- pound units with a name, word, or general term, depends entirely on the true or false perceptions which our minds have obtained of one or more of the units. We can either choose what we believe to be true likenesses, as I have done in saying body, soul, and spirit for my definition of man, or else false likenesses, and find very little difficulty in making general terms to express our meaning. But we cannot leave well-established likenesses out of well-known and understood words, if we wish to be understood. Sometimes men do not wish to be under- stood, and more often the likenesses are neither well known nor weU established. But no one can possibly deny the fact that every general term or name means and expresses both the whole number of things, and also the product of the thoughts, expressed by the general terms, which express the likenesses of the class of com- pound units called by the name. I subjoin in a note * * To proTe this truth ; that every general tej-m is the prodiict of the general tenns, which express the likenesses of the class of compound units called hy the name, to those philosophers who get over geometri- cal problems " by mtuUion from a figure," I give the following demon- stration by a figure. Let the following figure be any number of units arranged in equal sums — ■ 1 -I- 1 H- 1 -)- 1 &c., to n + + + + 1 -)- 1 H- 1 -f 1 &c. + + + + 1 -I- 1 -I- 1 -f 1 Ac. + &c. to n'' If we stop at any time and count the units in the horizontal and per- pendicular lines respectively, we have any two multipliers, say 4 and 3, and we have three sums of four each, looking at the page as it now WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 133 a more strict or scientific demonstration of this truth, first published many years ago ; but the general reader will probably admit, as proved by the example above, stands, and four sums of three each by turning the page sideways, therefore n x n' = n' xn, and by multiplication, therefore, we mean the addition or summation of equal sums — i. e., the addition of the com- pound units called sums, when we say four times three or three times four J and a product is a sum of compound units. We here, it will be observed, make our sums of compound units equal without abstraction, in pure numbers; for we have nothing to leave out, nothing to ab- stract — that is, having in the beginning made our units as nearly equal as we could, we are wholly ignorant of their differences. But if we learnt to count on our fingers, we should have to abstract, or ideally cut off the differences of our fingers, of course ; until we learnt to make equal signs ; or, if the number cannot be arranged in equal sums, then it is a product -1- part of a compound unit, which occurs in accurate mathe- matical language, but never occurs in the language of existence, i.e., of logic and philosophy ; where the units are necessarily things, in- dividuals, or atoms ; not like numbers and mathematical quantities, infinitely divisible. This demonstrates and deduces the meaning of the word "product." Now the mind goes through the same process exactly with every abstract or general term whatever, in considering the units alike ; and all philosophers say, and truly say, we abstract by not attending to the differences, though they be wholly or partially perceived. They say the mind knows that one man differs greatly from another man, or one tree differs greatly from another tree ; and that when we speak of man in general, or trees in general, we abstract or leave out of our consider- ation our knowledge of these individual differences, and attend to the likenesses only. All philosophers and all languages agree in this, and it is true, so let us put the process into a visible figure. Take the abstract word, man or mankind. Each man, we have said = body + soul -I- spirit. That is, ray word, for each man, means one body + one soul + one spirit + a difference, say, a different colour, a longer body, or a greater soul, or a finer spirit ; and we use the mathematical symbol of equality instead of the copula, the logical symbol of existence ; therefore — Differences. John = body + soul + spirit Thomas + — body soul + spirit all &c. &c. -I- &c. + &c. And abstracting by cutting off the differences, as we have done by the 134 CHAPTER XI. that every general abstract term expresses at one and the same time the product of the abstract likenesses of its class of units, and also the whole number of units themselves. The distinction between denotatives and connotatives, upright line, then : all men = all human spirits + all human souls + all human bodies ; which words all, &c. , are again sums of the compound units, body, soul, and spirit, the abstract general words so called ; therefore our abstract or general term, Man = Body x Soul x Spirit ; the prodiLCt of the general abstract terms body, soul, and spirit. Or, taking letters, let A be an abstract term, and a a' a", &c., the units called by the name A ; and let the likenesses be expressed in the same manner by letters. We then have the whole class or abstract word A = all a's — a = b + c + d a' = b' + c' + d' &c. = &c. Differences abstracted. + X + y + &c. + x' + y' 4- &c. And abstracting the differences known or unknown, as we have done by the upright line, we have all a's = A = all b's + all c's + all d's = B. C. D, or the Product of the abstract or general term B, into the abstract or general term C, into the abstract or general term D ; for it is evident that the same process must be gone through with all the b's and all the c's and all the d's, therefore a = b + c + d, and the abstract general term A = B. C. D, where B, C, D, are all also abstract terms. There- fore every abstract general term = the product of the likenesses of a unit of the class ; such likenesses being themselves considered in the abstract. Some may object that the proper representation of the abstract term A would be B + C + D, and not the Product B. C. D ; but this would deny that the summation or addition of compound sums is what we mean by a Product, which I have first proved ; but, of course, the com- plication of verbal numbers of things is diffei-ent from the multiplica- tion of arithmetical numbers of units ; because the imits are different and the mental process may be diff'erent, but yet the symbols for unit- ing all into one class may well be and must be the same ; for the sym- bolical process is entirely alike. And all diificulty, perhaps, is removed by considering or assuming each compound unit not as a sum, but as a product of its likenesses ; or a = b. c. d, and the abstracted differences as additions to a product — i.e., a = b. c. d ■)- x, and abstracting the X then A = B. C. D. in all true logic. This, therefore, is the whole WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 1 3 5 or attributives, appears to my mind mere mental con- fusion. It introduces grammar into logic, and intro duces into philosophy, secretly, and not openly, the notion " that one thing cannot be the attribute of another thing, a proposition which denies the existence of mind and of all mental things, and assumes that there is some fun- difference between a number and an abstract word — the number is a number of simple units assumed to be like by man ; the word is also a. number of compound units assumed like by man, and being com- pound, is the prodiict of the abstract likenesses taken to form the class called by the name of the abstract term. If we had called man a rational animal, then ' ' Man is Eeason x Animal ; " and so for any other definition we please to give. Of course the reader will see that we ultimately arrive at the most abstract term known on the subject, which is itself x unity ; for exam- ple, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, afiBnity, polarity, matter, form, and so forth. We thus arrive at abstract terms indecomposable, so far as human knowledge has yet extended. Perhaps, still more properly speaking, it might be said that A varies as, or is a, function of the product, B.'C. D. This function depends, of course, on the internal relations of b. u. d — the likenesses which pro- duce the general word ; but logically, we cannot distinguish between a product and the unknown function of a product. Thus, for example, the great discoveries of Newton were simply these— viz., that pokce is the product, M. S. — , or of Mass into the Space divided by the Time ; and that gkavitt is the product of M. — , or of Mass divided by the Distance squared. Thus the meanings of the words mass and gra- vity, which had before been quite uncertain, became scientifically defined. The definition of knowledge as the product of mind, T things, and words should be written thus, M. ™ where M is not matter, but mind, and T. and "W. things and words. For knowledge increases with the powers of mind and with the number of things, but does not increase, but diminishes with the number of human words or signs required to express the knowledge. In self-knowledge, of course, the whole three become unity. And so, as stated hereafter in the text, this thought of the composition or produot'of self-knowledge does not violate the unity of the Godhead, when we consider it as a Trinity in Unity. 136 CHAPTER XI. damental and admitted contradiction or distinction be- tween an object and its form, colour, or other attributes ; but if this be the fact, it should be proved, or openly assumed. It is quite true that in ordinary language men dis- tinguish between thoughts and things, between mental and bodily existences. But this distinction is the fundamental distinction between Minds and Bodies, and not a distinction in Words. All words in logic are at the same time denotatives and connotatives, and mean mental existences — i.e., mean at the same time both thoughts and things. And although a man chooses to say he is reasoning about external bodily existences, or other men's mental existences, yet it is clear, as we have already shown and proved, that he is only reasoning, and can only reason, about what is in his own mind ; about his own thoughts of such external bodily or mental exist- ences, and not about the external existences themselves. But to assume as well founded, an original distinc- tion in words, and to call the names of some sensible objects differently from other words called names of bur ideas, or of connoted or connotable attributes of such objects, is to enable the reasoner to assume at any time as well founded a distinction in the things themselves — i. e., between the visible or sensible objects and the mental likenesses or attributes we discover in and attri- bute to them ; for we must have words to denote our connotations, and then such logic becomes utter confu- sion — the confusion of mind and matter. We say, therefore, that every name, whether general or individual, every word, whether universal or singu- lar, has, in honest and true logic, some meaning, some thought, some idea attached to it, and is, at the same WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 1 37 time, both denotative and connotative, and it denotes an existence solely by its connotative meaning. We can turn every word into an adjective, and be perfectly understood, so far as the meaning is fixed. This is true even of proper names singular. Socratic, Platonic, Kantian, connote certain loose ideas of the individual's philosophy. So in any family any pecu- liarity of the individual is attached to the individual name. Such expressions as "Coming John over me" would be perfectly understood if John had any peculi- arity sufficiently marked to justify the expression ; and every individual has such peculiarities known to his intimate associates. All England rang for some years with the name of Burke the murderer, and every kind of violent destruction was for a time called " Burking." The Eeform Bill was to be " Burked," &c. And now we hear of " Bismarking " Baden and Wurtemburg, &c. ; all which is perfectly understood. So, a fortiori, all general names are always at the same time both deno- tatives and connotatives, and signify both thoughts and things. The distinction, in short, seems to me only a covert and secret way of quietly assuming a distinction between certain things and certain other things ; be- tween some ideas of external objects and some ideas of other objects, not objects of our external senses — i. e., of assuming mind and matter as a distinction of words and not of things, and so establishes a confusion between Mind and Matter themselves. If such distinction exists, it must be either proved or openly assumed, and not confounded by a distinction of words or logic only. All words are merely assumed as names to denote things, and to connote the ideas or thoughts of those 138 CHAPTER XI. relations, or resemblances, which give rise to, or are at- tached to the things in or by the mind. All words are, in truth, the bodies or embodiment of thoughts ; and it is as absurd and erroneous to treat words as being ever at any time mere marks or denotatives, as to treat the dead body of a man as being a man : to treat a dead body without a mind as a man is, in truth, the same thing as to treat a word as a mere mark or denotative only. If a word ever becomes such, it is dead ; it ceases to be a sign of anything whatever ; it has become an empty and unmeaning sound, an unintelligible blot, without thought attached to it. It is the duty, therefore, of every one who reasons about words to express the factors which in his opinion go to form the words — i.e., to define his words by the resemblances which make the things alike. If he says the word is simple and indecomposable, then he is bound to show how, or by what observation or experi- ment, and by what comparison and reflection thereon, the thought can be produced in his mind ; to show what act of body, and what action of mind, may produce the thought to which he intends his word to be applied by his fellow-men. But the truth has hitherto been almost entirely or too much overlooked, that the word or symbol is always a necessary /actor in all human knowledge, even in self- knowledge. Knowledge is not, as almost all philoso- phers have held, " a relation which supposes two terms only — ^the knowing mind, the thing known — and that the knowledge is the relation .between these two." Knowledge is not " the two unities which become one unity." Knowledge is not "object -f- subject;" and " object -f- subject " is not " the absolute in cognition." WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 1 39 And I say that this is clear and manifest to all who think ; for knowledge or human cognition — i.e., general cognition known or knowable to aU mankind in general, and about which we can reason or dispute — is not a re- lation between two, but is the Product of three factors-^ the thing or object ; the mind or thought ; the word or symbol — each having an existence and continuance of its own, and each operating to produce the knowledge or cognition in every intelligent human being. There must be, then, three factors, and they must all three con- tinue, in thought or memory, to exist distinctly and to be combined in one Cognition, or, there can be no cog- nition cognisable by man in general. The wise and the ignorant, for example, may receive the same shock, the same stroke, on their nerves, even from the same vibration, undulation, or electric current ; but the wise man revolves the shock, the stroke, in his mind, and compares it with other shocks, and observes some mental, material, or verbal resemblance, and in- vents a word to express and embody his idea — his gene- ral idea — and then, and then only, possesses a cognition about which he can discourse — i.e., cognisable by man in GENEEAL. The ignorant creates no word ; he perceives like an animal only ; he does not generalise or abstract, so as to be understood, and passes on as ignorant as ever of any general human cognition. The word gives life to the cognition, and without the word the cognition, as human knowledge, cannot be said to exist, but dies before it is born ; for without the word the sensation or perception passes off, and the cogni- tion, as general knowledge, is never born, or is dead before it lives for mankind. The word is the embodiment of the thought, which 140 CHAPTER XI. combines into one the object and subject and word, or rather the thing and the thought and the word, all operating in and through and by the word. Knowledge, therefore, is not a relation of two, or two unities that be- come one unity, but is a trinity in unity intellectually combined. The thing passes into the thought, the thought passes into the word, but all are engaged in the cognition. We must believe in the existence of the thing and in the existence of the thought, and actually possess the word itself, which is the living expression and material body of our real thought of the real thing in question, or else our human cognition cannot be said even to have com- menced its existence, for without the word the cognition is dead ere it lives. But still the question remains, " Of what use is this arithmetical theory of language ? Supposing that we admit that you have proved that language is a factor, a necessary factor, in every human cognition, and that all language is composed of general terms, and that every general term is a number of units, and is a product of thoughts, the relations or resemblances which are them- selves the mental factors of "the class numbered in the general term, of what use is such a theory, even if we admit it to be a fact ?" The answer requires fuller de- velopment ; but we say at once that we thereby get rid of " the fundamental contradiction and antithesis of aU philosophy ; " we get rid, in fact, of the whole system of German transcendental philosophy — of the supposed " contradiction of the one and the many " — of the inter- minable and absurd logomachy about " the two unities that are one imity " — about " everything being nought, and nought being everything ;" and we get rid of the WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 141 confusion of philosophical dualism — of "object + suh- ject," and ego and non-ego, and of the philosophical confusion of twenty centuries — the heathen philosophy and metaphysics that have erected themselves into Socratic systems of Eeason altogether opposed to the humility of simple faith in Jesus Christ. We get rid of the whole, and bring mankind back to true common- sense and to intelligible science ! And as to faith ? — that cannot come from any system of words whatever, but from one woed — a Spirit sought and found. Language in its most general sense, however, in- cludes action. It involves the operation of mind upon matter, and of matter upon mind. Every action is, in truth, a motion of matter unintelligible without a pur- pose; and every action is therefore a word, sign, or symbol of the capacity and intention of the actor. All action necessarily implies an actor or mind. Matter does not act except as it has been made and constituted to act by the Creator. Gunpowder does not explode except the spark is applied by some per- son, and according to its constitution. The action of a steam-engine is the action of him who made and of him who directs the engine. Chemical action will not com- mence till the elements are brought by some person within the necessary limits and circumstances. So all material action — attraction, repulsion, chemical action, electric action, &c. — all imply a mind or minds origi- nally constituting and directing — at first making, and then placing the bodies within the spheres of attraction or repulsion, either in chemical contact or in electrical rwpport, or otherwise in a position to act and react according to their natures. There is always a mind or minds behind every material 142 CHAPTER Xr. action; and it is always necessarily assumed or supposed; and the action is not properly the action of the matter, hut is properly the joint or several actions of the mind or minds which created and constituted and arranged and directed the energy or forces of the matter so as to operate the action. Matter is like a steam-engine, dead and inert until it has been placed by mind in the surrounding circumstances which call forth its latent energy — i.e., those forces given to it by its creator. It is better and more proper, therefore, to say chemical or electrical force, than chemical or electrical action, when referring to our arrangements. The action is the effect of the directing mind; the force is the effect of the applied matter. Every action, therefore, is properly a word, sign, or symbol of the mind producing the action ; and in this sense it was that Berkeley called the phenomena of nature " the language of God," of which man is the ap- pointed interpreter. And when spoken of the great and original powers and motions of matter, this is, I think, a true and correct view. But we must never forget, that God has certainly placed many of the powers and mo- tions of matter (we know not how many) under the con- trol even of man's mind; and we have no reason to doubt, but every reason from analogy to believe, in the existence of other intermediate superior or inferior spirits between man and God — either as angels higher than men, or else lower than men, as devUs — ^who have in various ages, and under divers circumstances of the world's history, exhibited their powers and influence over persons and things on earth — from the demon who tempted our first parents to sin, to the demon who spoke voices to Socrates, and taught him many things true and WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 1 43 liseful, and saved Ms life, as he tells us, when flying from battle, but nevertheless left him in the lurch at last, and would give him no advice, and even forbade him to med- itate how he should conduct his public defence against that accusation of blasphemy for which he died. Every action is therefore a material motion of matter directed by a mind ; and motion is the action or opera- tion of matter abstracted from its mental cause, and considered only in reference to the material force pre- ceding and producing the motion in space and time. As mind is the supposed and invisible mental cause of action, so force is called the supposed and invisible material cause of motion. But every cause implies a mind. When we abstract the mind from the action — i.e., the invisible mental power of the actor out of his visible action — we have an action without mind — i.e., mere motion of matter. And when we abstract mind out of cause, the cause becomes a force or energy, a material force only — i.e., the state and relations of the matters preceding the material motion in question, and then exercising their natural energies ! So when we divide the universe into mind, matter, and language, we must divide their sorts of operation into actions, motions, and influence. We properly say the action of mind — motion of matter — and influence of language. But though we all agree in believing that the uni- verse, exclusive of mankind, is composed of mind and matter, spirits and bodies ; yet to the philosopher, who knows that these things are in themselves, as God's crea^ tions, wholly beyond man's knowledge and cognition, and that man only knows the minute motions and forms, the effects of these things at the inner ends of his in-carrying 144 CHAPTER XI. nen-es in his brain, if he deems his thoughts of mind and matter, as objects of human cognition, to be accurate; then he is bound to say that, the cognisable universe external to himself, is composed of the WOKDS mind and matter and language, as he to himself understands and realises these words ; for he otherwise asserts that to be cognisable which is not cognisable. He reasons to him- self and others about these words mind and rnatter, about spirits and bodies, their true meanings, their true contents, true states, and true relations. Because, if he believes the truth of his words, he must believe, of course, in the real existence of spirits and bodies, of mind and matter, and in the truth of all that he utters about them. But his helief is not cognition, for that would contra- dict his microscopic investigation of human physiology. His knowledge in words, of the visible microscopic phenomena of the human cranio-nervous system, forbids him altogether from believing that the human mind knows, or can possibly know, anything whatever of external things, except certain microscopic somethings which he believes to be vibrations, undulations, waves of his own nervous pith or matter — minute motions and forms only — at the inner ends of the in-carrying nerves situated in the human brain. And so man's knowledge of "mind" and "matter" is necessarily reduced to the verbal contents and meanings of those words or formulae in his own mind, or else his philosophy contradicts his physiology, and the language of the philosopher contradicts the knowledge and the language of the physiologist. The trae philosopher, the Symbolist, is not less a be- liever in matter than the Materialist ; nor less a believer WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. I4S in mind than the Idealist ; nor less a believer in ideas, thoughts, impressions, intuitions, conceptions, and repre- sentations, &c. &c. &c., than are the word-warriors re- spectively of each opposing school of successive philo- sophers who have hitherto appeared in the world's his- tory ; but have overlooked and neglected language and logic as the science of all human Truth. The symbolist accepts what is true in the foundation of all ; he accepts mind, he accepts matter, he accepts language. But he goes on to say that, when he has accepted mind and matter as fundamental things, and general human conceptions, they have thereby become words in human cognition, and so are to the true philo- sopher swallowed up and included in the third category — LANGUAGE. He does not mean or allege that mind and matter are less mind and matter than before, be- cause he asserts that all human cognition of these things consists of words — fundamental words — assumed in the beginning as a division of the Universe, including there- in all mankind and all philosophy and all cognition. If the reader cannot see or understand this, he seems to me simply slow, or verbally confused, or deficient in abstract comprehension of the actual contents and mean- ings of the words — mind, matter, and language — ^which he has himself admitted and adopted as fundamental and true. If he wiU fir.st remember that it is clear, that of the general things or general thoughts, other than his own idiosyncratic conceptions, represented by the words mind and matter, he knows and can know nothing — ^that lan- guage is the only philosophic medium between his mind and other minds — that by adopting the words mind and matter, he has laid fetters on his own thoughts of the universe, — ^he will see, I hope, that to think or attempt K 146 CHAPTER XI. to get out of those fetters is logical self-contradiction ; and that to say he knows or can know anything of mind or matter, except as words, is to stand self-confuted by his own language in open and manifest contradiction to itself If the reader sees this, as I trust he must do, clearly, he wiU also see that the first possible or most abstract and concrete state or relation of these three words, mind, matter, and language, is as his own Division, into one and many — i. e., as number in general in the abstract ; or as three like units in the concrete, composing the universe as one; i.e., as a division 1 + 1 + 1=1 (Uni- verse) ; whence all arithmetic can be deduced as signs, symbols, or language — a science of abstract signs, which is, by demonstration and deduction, altogether pure, eternal, and necessary, and such as cannot be otherwise in any intellect capable of receiving and comparing and registering the human signs or symbols of which it is composed. But of course the mathematical reader is not to confound mental or material existence with verbal equality because we use the same signs for each. We must not confound logical equivalents with mathe- matical equations — nor philosophy with mathematics — nor mind with language. Having thus by deduction arrived at numbek as the first necessary state or relation, the most abstract form of language, we can deduce time as the first necessary state or relation, the most abstract existence, of mind ; and SPACE as the first necessary state or relation, the most abstract conception or thought of matter. And the reader who started with the common-sense belief of his childhood in mind, matter, and language, finds that he has deduced, with absolute logical certainty. WORDS^SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 1 47 and is lawfully and logically and scientifically in posses- sion of the three great abstract words, ideas, and things, number, space, and time, which we all, more or less, un- derstand, and by which all scientific philosophers mea- sure the universe. Number, in short, is abstract lan- guage ; time is abstract mind ; and space is abstract matter ! But how do we measure or make sure of time and space ? I say that it is always by number. We take a unit of time — a day, a month, a year — and add and mul- tiply them into ages and centuries ; or we divide a day into its parts — an evening and a morning, an hour, a minute, a second ! So of space we take a unit of space. A barleycorn's length, a thumb's breadth, or an inch — a cubit, or forearm's length — an ell or yard, the length of the whole arm (a guard) from the shoulder to the middle- finger nail, — such were the rude measures of our ances- tors ; and these were multiplied and divided by number. Thence we have gradually arrived at an arc of the earth's meridian, or the length of a second's pendulum in a fixed latitude, or the world's radius at the equator, — all of which are merely imaginaiy and indefinite nu- merical units as measures of space, of which, perhaps, the most proper and most easily tested and corrected is the length of the second's pendulum in a fixed lati- tude ; because it unites number, time, and space with this earth on which we live. Thus time, space, and number are the most abstract states (or relations in and to themselves) respectively of mind, matter, and language, and become words, thoughts, and things, accurately explained and strictly deduced. Spirits exist iu time, bodies in space, and words in numbers infinite. And as mind and matter are to the 148 CHAPTER XI. true philosopher only words to his logical reason, thoughts to his personal mind, and things to his spirit- ual faith, so the infinity of space and time is only the infinity of number applied to finite spaces and finite times ; and the only three pure sciences are those of number, space, and time — universal arithmetic, uni- versal geometry, and universal harmony or music, in their largest senses. In this sense arithmetic would include every science of abstract language, arithmetic, algebra, the calculus and logic; which last is merely the laws by which we properly substitute one verbal expression for another, as its equivalent, in ordinary language. But Language presents itself to the mind, either as a proposition or word expressing mental ma- terial existence, or else as mental relation and harmony, or else as equal in logic — i.e., either as an existence, as an analogy, or as an equation. There are certain simple scientific questions which from the earliest times have puzzled men of science, but which God has rendered it impossible for imperfect minds to solve. These are, for example, to find the square root of 2, or double the cube ; to find a perfect musical scale ; to find the exact length of or square the circle; and to find a law of prime numbers may probably be added to these. Foolish men, not sufiiciently humble, by long puzzling over these apparently simple questions, have driven themselves into a state of lunacy. All fractions of two are open to us to choose from, as one would think ; and yet we cannot find what frac- tion of two multiplied by itself is exactly two ! All numbers and aU scales are open to us, as we think • and yet we cannot find a perfect scale of harmony! All WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. I49 lengths and all fractions of length are open to us, as we think; and yet we cannot find any true and exact ex- pression for the length of a circle, whose radius is given as one. All lengths are open to us to choose from, and nothing seems simpler than to have two cubes, one of which is exactly the double of the other ; and yet we cannot, with all the numbers of arithmetic and all proportions and all fractions open to us, fix on the exact proportion, the true and exact relation, of the two sides of these two cubes ! Whatever you say, the mathematician who goes a step further can prove you to say falsely ! Most of these questions seem simple enough, and quite possible enough, and yet we can neither prove them to be impossible nor find a perfect solution — a true and perfect symbol or expression. Man has, as it were, at the very outset of science, to learn humility. These questions involve number, time, and space. To find the square root of 2 seems to involve only number. Why in three thousand years has it never been found ? To square the circle or double the cube seems to in- volve both number and space ; but why have they never in three thousand years of inquiry been accurately solved ? A perfect musical scale involves number and time and space perhaps, and has remained a desidera- tum for three thousand years ! Why has it never been found ? Thus man's thoughts and conceptions are easily shown to be more perfect than all his signs, symbols, and lan- guage yet invented. His intellect is pure mind, but his symbols are involved and complicated with matter. His mind is made in the image of God— a spirit ; but his language is his' own creation, the vibrations of mat- ISO CHAPTER XI. ter counted and measured "by his mind, and registered in signs, words, symbols. When men are inclined to boast of their knowledge and science, one might justly reply to them. Why ! are not men contemptible insects, who, with aU their intellect, in three thousand years have not yet found the square root of 2 ; or doubled the cube ; or squared the circle ? Do these first, and then boast of human science ! Give us the accu- rate fraction which, multiplied by itself, is exactly 2 ! or square the circle, or else become humble, and acknow- ledge that you know nothing, which is the truth ; for all our knowledge is only human signs and symbols ! mere breath from our mouths, or black marks from the ends of our fingers ; vibrations, undulations within us, measured and compared by the mind. The fact seems, to my mind, to be this; that there is a certain insoluble relation between the three prime numbers, one, two, and three, just as there is an insol- uble relation between the right line and the circular line when the two lines become purely mathematical. If we assume a line to be length without breadth, then the relation between the right line and circle is an infi- iiite relation. There is something fundamentally absurd or self-contradictory in thus supposing the circle straight- ened out ! How can a circle become straight ? it is im- possible, or a contradiction ; and the numerical relation between the two conceptions is like the approach of a curve to its asymptote, which always approaches but nfever reaches it — an infinite relation inexpressible in finite terms; it can never be expressed perfectly in merely human terms — signs or symbols, except as be- come infinite. The human mitid as an intellectual spirit is perfect ; WORDS— SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 151 but it has to work with matter, whose motions or vibra- tions can be varied infinitely in the human soul, the seat of reason, emotion, and wiU ; and language, which partakes of both mind and matter, being a motion of matter duly recognised as a, form by the mind, of neces- sity is unable, and refuses to express with perfection that which is purely spiritual. Language is motion and form combined into one; but form is fixed, and motion not fixed ; and when we suppose a form to move as in an undulation or vibra- tion, we are combining space and time, or mind and matter, and are seeking in number for a fixed /orm, the symbol of that which we start with considering as un- fixed or infinitely different ! So it is also when we seek a perfect musical scale, which is, in fact, seeking a fixed numerical value for the infinitely unfixed combinations of harmonious vibrations or undulations in time and space. Harmony, we know from experiment, is the union in space and time of spatial vibrations or undulations of a given medium, like air or light. There is a harmony of colours as well as harmony of sounds, and no doubt also a harmony of all our other senses. But seeking a per- fect musical scale is like seeking to square the circle or to find the square root of 2 — it is seeking to fix a mate- rial form of Harmony, which is purely spiritual, either into matter, or into language, which are not spiritual — i.e., a contradiction. These questions show to us that man is like God, in his spiritual mind or Spirit, j9e7/«c^ and. /ree,- yet infi- nitely less in his freedom than God, in that his spirit is connected with matter, which he did not himself create, and from which he can never be free. 152 CHAPTER XI. But that part of a man's mind which we call his soid is neither free nor perfect ; it is connected with man's body, and subject to many of the influences of external matter through the body ; but, nevertheless, the spirit of man, though thus connected with the matter of the soul, and through the soul with the matter of the body, is both free and perfect — at once infinite and absolute. " Ye are all gods ! " said Christ Himself to His fellow- men ! There is a part of us divine, and made in the image of God ! It is the spirit and intellect — proud, haughty, and unsubdued — which, like a demon, is ready to treat its own soul and body as merely counters it has to play with, even in a contest with the Creator Himself — the intellect of man, unsubdued by the Holy Spirit of God through Christ, is the fit habitation of the devil! We can, however, solve suchlike mathematical ques- tions nearer than any assignable quantity. We can go on to infinite mathematical perfection ; but it is by going on, not by stopping — and we can never reach it. But utility limits the intellect asthebody limits the mind ; and utility, which is the great material teacher, brings back the intellect from its abstract flights, and shows us that such intellectual exercises soon become out of all rela- tion to man's bodily position on earth. Though utility itself has exhibited its own madness in its search after perpetual motion, the philosopher's stone, &c. It is only when the moral intervenes that man can be properly told to go on to perfection, and to be "perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect." On moral and intellectual subjects alike, however, we may avoid foolish and un- learned questions, which only generate verbal strife. Langiiage and words and numbers seem to be and are infinite, and man seems at first to be completely their WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 153 master ; but, on the contrary, he is their slave. Words are the fetters which man often, to his own destruction, places upon his own intellect. Symbols, which he is free to choose, nevertheless bind his soul. Signs, which he himself freely creates, fetter his understanding. " By his words he shall be justified, and by his words he shall be condemned ; " and yet he has without question an unlimited choice of symbols ; but for every idle word which he speaks, he will have to give account in the day of judgment. To interpret language in its most general sense, is to interpret not only all the words, signs, and symbols which man uses, but is to interpret also, all the actions which he has ever performed or can perform. And of course, therefore, the true philosophy of history, which is the true interpretation of human action, is to trace that human action to all its mental motives, and in all its states and relations. And when we consider how there are no actions which men commit, which are not influ- enced by what they call their principles of action, or their motives— which at bottom are only the ideas, the shibboleths, or words and symbols of their sect, their nation, their party — or else of their ambition, or their private conceptions or enthusiasm — all symbols of mind ■ -—we must perceive that Language must play a much greater r6le in the philosophy of history than has ever hitherto been assigned to it. If a mountainous country, for example, produces superstitions, superstition, no doubt, produces creeds, and creeds produce devotees, and devotees produce human history, under certain circumstances. Is the history, then, caused by the mountains, by the super- stitions, or by the creeds — i.e., by matter, by mind, or 154 CHAPTER XI. by language? The matter influences a few minds at most. The mind influences the individual ! The indi- vidual, with his Language, his creed, his symbolism, making the mountains respond to his language, moves the mass to devotion, and the devotees make history. But it is not mountains only that have made history, but also the deltas of the Nile and Ganges, the triple delta of China, the delta of the Ehine; and are the islands to be left oMi, Delos aiid lona ? The mind, in- all cases, without doubt, created the language ! But, shades of Comte and Buckle! did the matter create the miiid? Most men will perhaps at once perceive, and frankly admit, that the national, religious, and party flags under which we fight, and for which many men have been and are ready to die, are merely ideas, conceptions, prin- ciples, words, signs, and symbols, which they who adhere to them have adopted as parts of their very nature, and of their existence as intelligent men. But it is these watchwords which have always produced the greatest events in human history. Thus ideas and principles, which have worked out human civilisation, are merely words, symbols, language — the language of the nation, sect, or party. But the private and secret idiosyncrasies — the pri- vate conceptions, ambitious, and enthusiasms or fanati- cisms, which also have played their rdle in human his- tory — are also nothing but mental ideas and conceptions, which may be and are reduced into words ; and the ac- tions which they have produced are the true symbols of the original ideas or conceptions. The actions caused by ambition or enthusiasm are surely the very language which they speak, sometimes, of course, with the false attempts to cbnceal the truth. WORDS-^SIGNS^SYMBOLS. 155 of the Pharisee or the Jesuit, of the statesman, the lawyer, or the warrior. The leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod — hypocrisy or statesmanship; or else the leaven of the Sadducees and lawyers — disbelief in the invisible or in the spiritual, — all are expressed or to be found in the words and familiar cant of the epoch — of the individual — the party, the sect, or the nation. In fact, if we believe in Christianity as the very centre and key of all human history and human civilisation — if we believe that Christ "has made us unto our God kings and priests," and that we, as Christians, in the true sense of the word Christianity, as a Spirit, " shall reign upon earth ;" all human history becomes reduced to lan- guage — to the words and actions, which from the earliest age have tended to retard, and the words and actions which have tended to promote, the ultimate triumph of Christianity ! The philosophy of history is, in fact, that Divine wisdom, which has prepared mankind for the ultimate triumph of love and truth — for the final triumph of the Spirit of Christ, over aU nations and all tongues. And this wisdom of history, as it appears to me, must be sought for and found in the science of language — in the science of the words, signs, and symbols which have governed and still govern mankind — as the true wisdom is to be sought for and may be found, as I believe, in the words of Christ himself Language is the efficient luler of human souls, either acting separately as individuals, or conjointly as a people. The one human soul submits to and adopts the language separately, and one or more submit to or adopt it conjointly with others ; and these are the effi- cient cause of human history. And -language, there- fore, ultimately rules the destiny of nations. 156 CHAPTER XI. Any other conception or principle of human history necessarily ends either in pure materialism or in an idealism — which is the worship of a mere mechanical and physical reason — in atheism or pantheism ; whilst, on the other hand, fixing on Language, as the fundamen- tal principle and efficient cause of human history, leaves fuU room for the admission of the influence both of matter and of mind ; for the wisdom both of God and of the devil, both of good and of evil spirits — for the in- fluence of mind — and also, as well — for the power and influence of those physical and material circumstances, which have tended to modify for a time the current of human affairs. Hegel starts with the assumption that reason is " the sovereign of the world, and that the history of the world, therefore, presents to us a rational process." — That " reason is the substance of the universe, the in- finite energy " — " the infinite complex of things " — " the true" — "the eternal" — "the absolutely powerful" — "its own infinite material" — as Well as "the infinite form which sets this material in motion." "The do- main of history," he tells us, " is this hypothesis " ! and he ends with the conclusion, " that what has happened, and is happening every day, is not only ' not without God,' but is essentially ' His work.' " " This," says he, " is the true Theodicsea — the justification of God in his- tory — the process of the development and realisation of SPIRIT — the history of the world " ! This is an idealism which leaves no room for matter ; which either denies the existence of evil, or makes God responsible for such existence ; which considers Buddha, and Confucius, Zoroaster and Socrates, as forerunners of Christ, and equally, or perhaps more highly, inspired WORDS— SIGNS— SYMBOLS. 157 than Christ Himself; who, on these principles and in such case, becomes only the narrow resultant of " the Hebrew myth " — partaking of the narrow religious pre- judices of the mountain tribe of Judaea, though still more or less, perhaps, inspired by the Eeason of the universe. Comte and Buckle, on the other hand, turn to a mate- rialism and positivism, which make the " grand Stre de I'humanit^" — man and his history — the mechanical result of the mingled influence of light and darkness, of sea and land, of mountain-chains, fertile deltas, and sandy plains, of animal or vegetable diets, and throw- ing theology and metaphysics, and language also, to the dogs, as the mere idle dreams of the infancy of man- kind, worthy of the attention only of priests and chil- dren, treat human history as the mere effect of material causes ! Their system necessarily terminates in a pure materialism similar to that of the Chinese and Con- fucius, who anticipated Christ by five centuries in pro- claiming the golden rule of " doing as we would be done by," or as Comte expresses it, "Vivre pour I'autrui." Upon this principle of universal materialism, Brahma and Vishnu and Siva, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Jupiter and the God of Abraham, as well as the Divine Eea- son of Hegel, and the Divinity of the " grand §tre de I'humanit^" of Comte, — all become equally violations of " the Eeason " of individual humanity, which is the true god of the rational positivists, or the positive ration- alists, as well as^of the German idealists. Both these schools equally forget and omit human language ; and the one denies practically the existence of mind, and the other the existence of matter. All other schools are mere confused modifications of these two — dwelling for a time on the material, and for 158 CHAPTER XI. another time on the ideal, influence in human, history, but never clearly perceive that both must merge in the influence of language — of the words, signs, actions, sym- bols, which are aU subject to man's free will and free choice, and yet are all symbolical of pure mental emo- tion, intellect, and will — of Minds, the authors of human history — minds which are either good or bad, but that the bad are limited and restrained by matter. Matter is the first creation of the one God self- revealed to Adam and Abel and Enoch — to Noah and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — to Moses — the God of the Jews, who first said, " Let there be light, and there was light " ! — And to suppose another source of mental truth is to divide and dualise the Deity; and to say that all human wisdom is from the one source, is to confound the Deity with the Season and intellect of mankind ! We cannot now pursue this scheme of history. But mind is active and matter is passive; matter is the fetter, the limit, which God, the first mind, has placed on all created minds, because through this matter they must necessarily act. And as matter is the visible type of invisible mind, so language is the symbolical action of mind, using matter as its instrument. Human language, therefore, necessarily becomes the fundamental element in all human histoiry ! for man is ruled bywords, governed bywords, directed and excited by words, urged to action by words. And. all his, actions are the mere symbolical result of all the words and language which his Mind has submitted to and accepted for. its direction and government within. Positivism, as it appears to me, means nothing but mechanical 'materialism, leaving out of consideration WORDS — SIGNS — SYMBOLS. 1 59 the great hidden Mechanic who first made and moved the matter. If He is pre -supposed, He is mind or spirit ; and matter must be deemed either distinct or not distinct from spirit. If not distinct, the system becomes idealism ; and thought and Eeason, or Spirit and Ideas, take the place of the mechanical and positive. But if matter be thought distinct from spirit, the reasoner usually falls into some system of eclectic conceptualism, and vainly endeavours to distinguish his idea or con- ception under some form of language not previously adopted — either in whole or in part — not perceiving that every idea, every thought, every conception, can only be generalised into a cognition, common to man- kind, in words and by larigitage. The symbolist admits and submits to this truth, and perceives and admits that the external phenomena of sense are all generalised into the word matter; the internal noumena of individual thought are all general- ised into the word mind; but that both, and all their phenomena and noumena, only become the objects of the conjoint cognition of mankind by the third general- isation of both into words or symbols, accepted by the sect, the party, the nation, the tongue, in which they become established instruments of thinking and of acting. Language, then, being symbols or words known, ac- knowledged, and accepted, they — the words — are used and treated as being the very thoughts and things themselves ; which to doubt or deny, offends the con- science of the whole community, who deal out death in this world and damnation in the world to come, as hardly sufficient to expiate the offence against the established mode of speaking! If the minority are l6o CHAPTER XI. strong, they argue and resist — if weak, they dissemble and sneer,-^tiir some man loves a true thought better than a false and empty form of language, and dares to face the martyrdom which Truth has usually met with! But martyrdom is not the test of truth, and men have freely given their life's blood in support of what is false. Just as we too often, alas ! behold " the animal within us first kill the man and then end by kOling himself," so we may behold a wicked spirit within first poison the intellect and then destroy the soul ; and the great instruments of such mental destruction are only false SYMBOLS, or symbols falsified by spirit. How and by what means Man is to distinguish true symbols from false symbols — true words from false words — ^thus becomes, to our human intellect, the ques- tion of questions; the end and object of all purely intellectual thinking and reasoning — ^the great riddle of Philosophy — the science of Truth. CHAPTER XII. THE RIDDLE OF PHILOSOPHY. It has been said that many philosophers have written on philosophy without having " once touched on or understood the fundamental question — viz., how that first perception, seeing, or cognition of the individual object itself takes place." It is said "the true riddle to be solved is not how order and connection are brought to bear upon the whole multiplicity of objects already known and treasured up in the memory, but as to how any single image first enters the consciousness, or, if you wiU, how an impression, a motion, or determination of the psychical organ converts itself into something known." This is said to be the grounds and reason, and to exhibit the cause and extent, of " the contempt poured by speculative philosophers in general upon the logic of Aristotle — viz., because it does not serve to explain this fundamental problem," "but always pre-supposes ready-prepared notions, and deals with them by a pro- cess of combining and decomposing, instead of diving into their genesis and origin"!! In short, this won- derful, transcendental philosophy is expected to enable A to explain to B his and their knowledge without any words or ready-prepared notions in common ! The first, if not the whole, question and difficulty manifestly arises L 1 62 CHAPTER XII. from such philosophy overlooking or neglecting the true position and importance of human language and of gene- ral terms ; and from being ignorant of the fact that men have no possible power to speak of anything whatever but words only, some of which must be assumed at first, or taken for granted in the beginning of every discussion. The first cognition takes place in the creation or adoption of a word! — i.e., a mutual sign, mark, or symbol, internal and external, made in order to ex- press the cognition to one's self and others. And till men can mutually adopt a general term, or a set of general terms, to express some cognition admitted, they cannot possibly discuss anything whatever — nei- ther the first nor any subseq[uent cognition! This is manifest and beyond dispute to all who can think and reason. Men, by their nature, as minds or intelligences shut . up in bodies, cannot possibly know anything until they have formed a thought of the thing; and they cannot possibly reason or speak to one another of things, but only of their individual thoughts of things ; and the thoughts are private and individual, and not general or mutual: so that men or mankind cannot possibly speak of general thoughts of things, but only of their general and mutual wor& invented or adopted for their thoughts of things. To deny this is merely to deny the existence or distinction of mind, matter, and lan they produce in our own nerves. Man must therefore begin and must end with signs, words, symbols — only motions and forms, and reduce them to order in num- ber, time, and space — to symmetrical and harmonious Eelations ! These symbols when accepted are the only motions and the only forms which are mutually common to man- kind in general ; the words we create or adopt within us, and make our own by understanding them, and feel- ing them, and acting upon them : these are cognitions to all who adopt them, these are real thoughts and real things to the general human mind. But the scientific object of human life is to make them accord and har- monise with the motions and forms which we receive in our nerves from external and internal phenomena and noumena ! Our worldly object is to render truth useful. These words, signs, and symbols, are all that is con- cerned in general human cognition. They are motions, they are forms, but are neither more nor less than words — symbols. And our only accurate measures of all motions and all forms, are order in number or Kela- tion ; order in space or Symmetry ; and order in time or Harmony. But some objector may still say that we are not sure that the human nerves do transmit vibrations, undula- tions — i.e., motions and forms. We have never detected 276 CHAPTER XV. either in our own nerves or the nerves of others any such vibrations. It may be a mere unfounded theory, after all, that the human nerves do transmit vibrations, ■waves, undulations, or motions, or forms, in any shape or way ; and the theory of vibrations and undulations in the human nerves may hereafter disappear like the theory of animal spirits, or the theory of Leibnitzian monads. But the theory of vibrations in our nerves is better founded than the theories of animal spirits or of monads. It is founded on analogy and fact. We have in our aural nerves and in our ears a mechanical apparatus which can leave no doubt on the mind of the observer, that the actual vibrations of the atmosphere are transmitted to the drum of the ear and to the Brain. We have the whole apparatus before us, such that none can doubt its construc- tion, intention, and operation, in transmitting the actual vibrations of the atmosphere produced by the resonant body to the aural nerve. We can actually measure and show to the sight, written in dust or liquids, the motions and forms of those atmospherical undulations which pro- duce in us the sensation of sound and the harmony of music. And we find, moreover, that some vibrations of the atmosphere are too fast to be heard and some are too slow, while others are too sharp and others too full to be heard by human ears. None who examine the ob- vious facts before their eyes and ears, can doubt for a moment, but that the human ear and aural nerve is merely an apparatus for registering the numbers and times and extensions — the Motions and Forms of atmo- spheric vibrations or undulations, within certain limits ; beyond which limits, either too fast or too slow, too ORDER — MOTION — FORM. 277 large or too little, no feeling of sound is produced in our heads. Sound, therefore, beyond all douht and question, con- sists of merely motions and forms of atmospheric waves, undulations, vibrations, measured by number, space, and time, according to the powers and capacities of the human aural nerve — i.e., our sense of hearing. The same is strictly true of light and the optic nerves. It is a more difficult and a more delicate experiment to detect the vibrations of light, and to show their coin- cidences and interferences, and how they may be made to counteract one another and produce by reaction dark- ness, just as two sounds may be made to counteract each other, and produce silence ; but the undulations of the medium of light may now be considered as certain as the undulations of the atinosphere itself ; and that our sense of light and colours is like our sense of hearing, a mere sensual method of registering the numbers, times, and spaces — the Motions and Forms of the vibi-ations or undulations of the elastic niedium called light ; and that the rays of heat are too slow, and the actinic or chemical rays are too fast for our optic nerves to perceive them as light, though we can show, that they are there, in the solar spectrum, but beyond its visible limits. Thus two of our senses, hearing and seeing, are un- doubtedly produced by undulations — motions and forms — which reach our nerves ; and our nerves are their conductors to the brain. And our nerves consist of minute canals of fluid pith, contained in tubular ner- vous fibrils or hollow fibres. What takes place in our nerves we do not know ; but we do know that they, the nerves themselves, are in- sensible, and that if the nerve is cut through, the com- 278 CHAPTER XV. munication witli the brain and sensation is cut off, and the part separated from the train is insensible. The canal is divided, and communication has ceased. Therefore the only possible conclusion is, that the vibrations or undulations — the Motions and Forms — which we detect not only producing physical effects on matter without us, but striking the outer ends of our nerves, are thereby conducted to the brain, and that the human mind is capable, as we know it is capable, of detecting the numbers and times and extensions of the several vibrations, undulations, or motions and forms so transmitted by the nerves. The sound, the light, the touch, do not enter our bodies, but send their thrills to the brain by our nervous canals. The highest note the human ear can hear requires about three thousand vibrations in a second of time, the lowest about three hundred vibrations in a second. Be- tween these limits we hear the vibrations of the atmo- sphere as sounds ; beyond these limits, either faster or slower, we do not hear anything ; and between these limits we detect all the varied sounds from the sharpest and most delicate tinkle, to the deepest and lowest hum. And an ear for music also enables a man to register and mark their concords and discords, their coincidences and interferences in number, time, and space — i.e., their motions and their fomis. The ear detects not only the note, or number and time of the vibration, but also the pitch or timbre, which appears to depend partly or alto- gether on the space or extension of the vibration or undulation. * * This is not the popular notion ; but it is clear in stringed instru- ments that the pitch depends on the length of the string ; for we can alter the pitch of a piano by moving the keys bodily to the right or ORDER — MOTION — FORM. 279 Marvellous as is our sense of hearing, that of sight is still more astonishing, for it is certain that our eyes and optic nerves easily detect the difference of colours ; but, " according to the theory of undulations, when the rate of vibration of a ray is altered, a different sensation of colour is produced in the optic nerve." " The analytical examination of the question is said to show that to produce a red colour a ray of light must have 37,640 undulations in an inch of space, and 458,000,000,000,000— say 458 billions, or million mil- lions — in a second of time ! Yellow light must have 44,000 in an inch, and 535 billions in a second of time ! Whilst the effect of blue is produced by 51,110 undula- lations in an inch of space, and 622 billions of waves in a second of time ! "* And no doubt the different shades of the same colour are produced by, the different exten- sions, or sizes and shapes, and combined motions, of these minute waves which yet our optic nerves enable our minds so easily to detect ! Just as a fuller tone or pitch is produced in music by an enlarged and fuller wave of air, so a fuller tone of colour is probably pro- duced by an enlarged and fuller wave of light ; which left ; and in an organ with fixed pipes we alter the hUk of the vibra- tion when we alter the number and time ; for we force a greater num- ber into the same space in the same time. Therefore the bulk or shape or space — the form is the pitch or timire. * Mrs Somerville says, " the length of an undulation of the extreme violet ray of the solar spectrum is the — l? — of an inch, and the .' t- 1,000,000 ' length of an undulation of the extreme red ray is the - — ^ of an " * 1,000,000 inch, and the length of the undulations of the intermediate rays can be computed by the undulatory theory of light." — Molecular and Micro. Science, p. 148. Our nerves can detect these differences, but we are still only conscious of the middle waves, and there are faster and slower, and greater and less waves, of which, by Our own nerves, we know nothing. 28o CHAPTER XV. fulness, or tone, our eyes enable us to detect at once, in spite of their inconceivable number and velocity, and infinitesimal or inconceivable minuteness ; just as our ears detect pitch or timbre in music. Analogy, however, or the ordinary Harmony of Na- ture, compels us to believe that our other senses are formed on the same principles as those of hearing and sight ; viz., that all our senses are merely mental powers to detect the numbers, times, and spaces — the Motions and Forms of vibrations and undulations — the waves which strike our nerves, and are produced and prolonged into our nerves of touch, taste, and smell, just as light and sound are carried into our nerves of sight and hear- ing. Touch is possibly or probably the organ of gravity or heat, taste the organ of magnetism, and smell the organ of electricity. These three Senses seem, therefore, by analogy, to be undulations and vibrations like light, and possibly or probably in the same universal fluid medium ; but with- out measured facts, such ideas are only speculations — possibilities. But none can doubt but that our senses of Hearing and Sight are merely mental powers to de- tect and register in the soul or mind, the numbers and times and spaces, of the motions and forms of waves or undulations, propagated through the fluid pith of our nerves into the cellular matter of the brain. If we beat with a hammer, a piece of iron till it is red- ' hot, we have produced in the iron both heat and light made out of our own nerves and muscular system, and by mere force of gravitj', transferred by our muscles to the iron. If we then decompose water by means of the red-hot iron, we have probably, by means of gravity, converted our own muscular and nervous heat ORDER — MOTION — FORM. 28 1 and light into electricity or magnetism ; and we know that we can convert electricity into magnetism, and magnetism into electricity, by employing them at right angles to each other. Thus it seems most probable that all five — flight, heat, gravity, electricity, and magnetism — are all merely modified vibrations of the same fluid medium — of that ether which is supposed to pervade the whole universe of matter — and are, in short, only vibrations, or motions and forms, which our senses are qualified by nature to estimate by number, time, and space, and weight; which motions and forms actually exist in man's nervous fluid and muscular tissue and brain. Thus we begin with the human will to hammer a piece of iron, and end with the imponderable vibra- tions of light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, all pro- duced by the force of gravity ! However, I say that it is clear and indisputable by any one tolerably acquainted with human physiology, that, if you admit and assume that our bodies are mat- ter and our souls are mind, the external universe of matter never itself reaches our minds at all ; and that what does reach our minds are merely vibrations, un- dulations, waves, motioTis, and forms, less than we can easily conceive, waves of our own nervous system, mere motions and forms at the inner ends of our in-carrying nerves — motions and forms in our brains, which we can probably register and record in the cellular tissue of the brain, for the future use of the memory and intellect. These motions and forms, received from the outer universe of matter, are not in any wise distinguishable (except mentally as sensations) from the motions and forms which, as human conceptions, constitute human words, signs, and symbols. They are all motions and 282 CHAPTER XV. forms, and notMng else, whether received from without at the inner ends of our nerves, or transmitted from within to the outer ends of our larynx or pen ! But when we have thus reduced the external universe of matter, as felt by our bodies in the brain, to motion and form ; and have reduced mind to the invisible in- terpreter of these infinitesimaUy small forms or motions ; the individual is left alone with his God, or his demon or angel, and with the vibrations of his own nervous and muscular system ; some of which he distinguishes as aris- ing without him, and others as arising by his own will within himself; and he distinguishes the first as mat- ter, and the second as mind, either alone or in commu- nication with his God, or his demon or angel, but with no other mind whatever except by and through language, mutually agi'eed on for convenience in Society. Thus it is only when man proceeds to attempt to com- municate his cognitions to other mental Beings, which he conceives to exist without himself, and like himself in bodily and mental capacities — ^it is only then that he feels compelled to invent the third term, language, for the motions and forms, which his own mind creates in his own nervous and muscular system ; in order, first, to explain fully his thoughts to himself, and next, in order to communicate his cognitions to others. Careful lan- guage enables man to fix and limit his own thoughts, as well as to communicate them to other men. And as soon as man has thus obtained the recognition of his three terms, mind, matter, and language, he can then proceed, as we have done, to deduce strictly and by logical demonstration to insist on number, space, and time — on -motion and on form ; not the letter only, but the spirit ; not the body without the mind, but the ORDER — MOTION— FORM. 283 motion of the body and its ultimate /orm combined with the emotion of the mind and its completed conception or metaphorical form and emotion, in the word, sign, or symbol ; of which combination, the motion and form of the symbol, is the only part in human cognition mutu- ally cognisable, or known by mankind in common. The consequence of course necessarily foUows, that in all cognition, and to mankind in general, the last or final generalisation into language leaves the motions and forms which we recognise and distinguish as matter and mind, only linguistic, logical, or symbolical, and thus resolves these things (matter and mind) not merely into things with the realist, but also into ideas with the idealist, and also into words or symbols with the truthful sym- bolist. Any thought beyond or inconsistent with this view of the foundations of cognition is not built on faith by reason, but is built by bad logic on faith with- out reason — faith in matter without mind, or in mind without matter, or in some ambiguity and confusion — conceptualism between the two. But true reason can- not exist or begin to be without true faith ! Motion is mentally limited to matter fluctuating in space, and form is mentally limited to matter fixed in space. But each is capable of varying symmetrically or harmoni- ously from nothing to infinity. But when matter or language transmits an undula- tion to the brain, the motion becomes a wave-line and the form a cell — that is, the wave-line of an undulation results in a cell, or the motions of a vibration tend to produce the form of a cell or succession of cells in the brain, so far as we can know or judge, from reflection on undulations. Thus we may conceive the motions of the nervcus 284 CHAPTER XV. tissue ending in the cellular matter of the brain as the ultimate material product of nervous agitations. Of course when we have reached the cellular matter of the brain we are as far off as ever from a thought, an idea, a mental thing. The mind and the soul must create or adopt its own words and furniture, the ideas it thinks good, beautiful, spiritual and true. The outer world, whatever it is, has reached our nerves as motions, and fixed itself in our brains a,s forms. The mind, by attention, comparison, reflection, concep- tion, and judgment — all its mental powers — arrives at an idea, and embodies the idea in a word — a new Form and a new Motion ! Both the idea and the word, which is its body, are the product or creation of Mind ; and they can be sent forth along the out-carrying nerves to' excite and nerve or strengthen and influence other minds, in a manner at present wholly unknown, by means of the many " isms " — enthusiasm, fanaticism, patriotism, materialism, ideal- ism, asceticism, rationalism — and all the other spiritual influences over mankind ! But aU matter, so far as man can know it, consists of Motions and Forms of his own in-carrying nerves ; and all human language consists of Motions and Forms in his out-carrying nerves ; and the whole object and busi- ness of the human Mind is to reduce to Order, and to arrange, all these divers external and internal Motions and Forms so as to satisfy and harmonise with its own individual convictions, or the necessary and never-ceas- ing verbal first principles and axioms, which it has per- ceived and accepted in its inmost spirit, as being Good, Beautiful, and True, CHAPTER XVI. MATTER SYMMETRY. Matter, or the external universe as known to man, is, in the strictest sense of the words, nothing but Motions and Forms — a mere species, or natural form of language; which man has gradually to interpret from infancy to old age. It is not, as Berkeley supposed, always or of necessity the language of Ood; for that would deny either the existence of intermediate or inferior spirits, or else their powers of influencing the phenomena of mat- ter, as well as the powers of the human mind over the phenomena of matter. But as the will and spirit of a man can exercise divers powers over matter, and can produce or refrain from producing, at will, certain phenomena of matter, many more than we at present believe possible ; so we may well and reasonably suppose, that other and more powerful Spirits may possess the same or much greater powers, over matter, and over its phenomena. But man's right and his duty is, to turn aside and fear- lessly investigate every material phenomenon, in the fuU confidence, that the laws of God are paramount above all matter and all spirits, and that all their powers, and all their phenomena and actions, are proper subjects for humble investigation and free examination by God-fearing men. 286 CHAPTER XVI. But by calling matter or sensation, the language of God, we commit the error of leaving no room in the universe for the powers of intermediate or of inferior spirits. Man has certain powers over matter, and can within his limits suspend the laws and the language or action of matter. Are we to conclude that there are no spirits in the universe but God and man, or that they — those intermediate spirits — have no powers over our sensations ? ■ This is a vast assumption, a most monstrous limi- tation of God's powers and actions, and quite contrary to the analogy of nature. Positive philosophers, the votaries of reason, or "Socratic men," do not like to hear of the " demon of Socrates " ! but one cannot read the solemn serious words put into the mouth of Socrates on the subject by Plato, and doubt the opinion either of the master or of the disciple. The reality of that demon and of his voices, as well as the reality of that Delphic demon who pronounced Socrates "the wisest of mortals," was at least the creed, the faith, of the great Grecian master of reason. No one can read his language and disbelieve his faith both in the oracle and in his own demon as his spiritual guide. To call the sensations of our bodies or external nature the language of God, denies, therefore, the powers of the air and the powers of darkness, or confounds them with the powers of God Himself. Such language of Berkeley plays the game of pantheism, just as Locke's language played the game of atheism and materialism when he derived all ideas from experience, and so unintentionally denied mind or spirit, of which we have no experience. Yet both were pious and earnest Christians ! But they both overlooked the true position and importa,nce of human MATTER — SYMMETRY. 287 language, while, in fact, both were writing treatises on words. Neither man nor other spirits can set aside God's fundamental laws of matter, but they can work with and according to those laws, and can suspend the operation of one law by the application of a higher law — as man suspends the present operation of the law of gravity, by holding a stone in his hands from falling to the ground ; or suspends the law of cohesion, by applying the laws of chemical affinity ; or suspends the laws of chemical affinity, by applying the laws of heat and electricity — by methods well known to us aU. But aU. the phenomena of the external universe are motions and forms, to be duly and carefully interpreted into human words or language. Matter reaches the sur- face of our bodies, and there produces those undulations and vibrations of our nervous system, minute motions and forms, which pass into the brain ; and all our ideas of the external universe have been and must be framed by our mental powers, to explain and express these bodily sensations in human words, signs, and symbols. Our bodies are the tentacula and testing instruments of our minds; and the eagerness and delight of the infant when it clutches a new object not before known to it, are only the types of the pleasures of the philosopher who has discovered a new element, or a new phenomenon of an old element, or a new relation between old phenomena. The infant delightedly cools its burning gums with its new coral, and the philosopher delights his intellect by establishing a new bar in the solar spectrum, a new chemical effect of the actinic rays, or a new relation between the motions of the universe, and light, heat, gravity, electricity, or magnetism. 288 CHAPTER XVI. But in all such cases, man is merely interpreting, by the use of his mind, the so-called language of nature into human ideas and words — ^the undulations and vibra- tions of his nervous bodily system — for the gratifica- tion of his bodily feelings, or of the intellectual desires of his soul. It is by comparing sensations of the body with other sensations of the body — ^it is by this repeated attention, comparison, and reflection — all mental operations — that all our judgments concerning the external universe of matter have been built up and established. It is not by experiencing ideas, but by framing comparisons, and forming judgments of the mind, that we acquire know- ledge. Our bodies experience bodily sensations ; our minds frame mental perceptions or conceptions, thoughts or ideas by attention, comparison, reflection, ending in judgment and a word. We must never forget the triple generalisation. Sensa- tion is not thought or thinking. We must first generalise the many impressions, qualities, powers, or phenomena produced, into an object or thing, before we can think or have a thought about it. We must then generalise the many objects or possible objects into the general idea of the class ; and we must, lastly, generalise the many ideas or thoughts of the class into the word or general term, which we and our fellow-men are willing to accept, or have adopted, in order to express our thoughts or gen- eral idea of the things as a class — ^which word we call the universal or general name of the class of things ; and about this word alone, can men reason together. In discussing matter we have four things to compare together, and to think about — the states of the supposed MATTER — SYMMETRY. 289 particles of matter ; the supposed states of the nerves of the human body; the mental relations, or proportions and likenesses, in number, time, and space, which we invent, or think we have discovered to exist, between the states of particles and their effects on our bodies ; and lastly, and fourthly, the words which embody the whole result of our mental comparison. All our words relating to matter express its states and relations in reference to man's bodily and nervous system. Solidity expresses what will not yield readily to our bodily pressure, and fluidity that which will so yield ; and gaseity or aeriformity that which, like the air, we cannot easily feel with our sense of touch on passing our bodies slowly through it. But Locke's distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of matter, as well as the Eealism and Conceptualism foimded on Eeid's refutation of it — both appear to my mind utter verbal confusion. But the confusion still serves to puzzle men of clear heads and great reputation, and is still therefore deserving of a careful examination.* Now, according to Locke, the primary ideas or qualities of matter are " solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number," which he thought are "constantly found by sense in every particle of matter of sufBcient bulk, and inseparable from it." But the secondary are colours, sounds, tastes, * Dr Whewell said : " I 'believe that the distinction of primary and secondary qualities is still right in the main. . . . We cannot measure secondary qualities in the same manner in which we measure pri- mary qualities, by a mere addition of parts. The difference has given Mrth to the two words ' extended ' and ' intense.' In the one case they are units of which the extension is made up ; in the other, they are de- grees by which the intensity ascends." — Hist. Scien. Ideas, book iy. ; Ph. Ind. Scien., i. p. 268 et seq. T 290 CHAPTER XVI. stnells, &c., "which are in truth nothing in'the objects themselves but powers to produce sensations in us by their primary ^ qualities." Now the whole question turns, I thiiik, on the ambiguous use of this word sen- sation to mean sometimes a thing in the body, and some- time§ a thing in the mind ! Which is it? Of course we must choose one ; or else we are choosing to confound mind and matter. I think and say that sensation is a thing in the body, shared with man by the lower ani- mals ; and that attention, perception, comparison, and reflection, and all ideas, are things in the mind. But take the primary qualities, as they are called : in order ■^-they are " number," " extension," " figure," " motion " or "rest," and solidity." We have already out of these, defined and discussed our ideas of number and space or extension, and shown them to be in no respect qualities of Matter, but deriva- tives from matter and language. Numbers, we say, are verbal things, signs, symbols, arranged by the mirid, and not in the things numbered at all ! But aU numbers, surely, are wholly independent of matter, and of our peculiar definitions of the numbered things. Number, in the abstract, is in the mind of the person who per- ceives and counts the number, not in the matters num- bered ! Number, independent of the signs or symbols,- which I would define as being numbers of words com- mon to aU, is whoUy ideal in the mind, and is not either in the matters numbered, or in their parts. If you annihilated the matter, surely its number, or the num- ber you counted of its unities or constituent parts or qualities, would not be in the least afifected. The things are gone, but their number remains — where? MATTER — SYMMETRY. 29 1 ' — of course, in the mind, whicli counted it, an idea for ever. ■ Then extension is simply space, or the thing which the mind conceives when it abstracts matter altogether, and there is no matter. Matter fills space ; but space is not an attribute or quality of matter, but only the mental idea, thought, or conception which never-ceasingly re- mains when we suppose matter wholly annihilated ! Space or extension is matter abstracted — the mental conception of the possibility of no-matter being there ! Hxtension, I say, is Space. The extension of a body is certainly not in the body, or a quality of the body, but is the quantity of space it fills or occupies. The space or extension would not be afiected if the body were anni- hilated ; it is an abstract mental conception — an idea. The space would remain — ^the measured or unmeasured extension would stiU be there, ready for a new creation of the matter! We cannot mentally annihilate space so long as a mind exists capable of creating matter and thinking space. The like is true oi figure or Form; which I divide with the mathematicians into plane figures, or mere out- lines on a plane surface, and solid figures which include a certain bulk of space like a cube, or a sphere, or the form of a statue ; but surely every figure or form is the mere relations of the parts of extension or space. We can all conceive an empty figure, which would remain if the matter or body were annihilated. The shape, figure, or form of a body is no part of the body, but consists of the relations of the space it occupies. Long, short, wide, thick, thin, square, round — every figure that can be conceived — is a mere relation of space, and quite inde- 292 CHAPTER XVI. pendent of the matter which may assume the form or figure, just as the form of a statue existed, or exists ideally, in the uncut block of marble, and really in the mind of the artist. Then motion and rest are not in the body, or part of the body, and are not qualities of the body itself. Motion is not matter, as we have said, but a state or relation of matter. Eest is the negative, or absence of motion. But motion is a relation of two, not a quality or affection of one. As we have before said. Motion must be either from a point or to a point ; from ourselves or towards ourselves. The body moves, but the motion itself is only the relation it bears to some other point of space by which the motion is observed and measured. A body may be in motion, but the motion itself is not in the body, but in the space ; in the space out of the body, if the motion be external, or within the body if the motion be internal. But motion is not properly a quality in the body itself, or an attribute of matter, but is its relation in space to the space in which it moves. It is clearly absurd to say that motion is matter ; and it is equally absurd to say that motion is a quality of matter in itself. Motion is a mental state or relation, a mental attribute or possibility, to which matter is liable and subject ; but it is no part of or quality in the body itself, or in the matter itself. Motion is a relation which body bears to space in gene- ral, just as figure is its relation to space in particular. It is mere confusion to confound the variable possibilities of motion and figure with the matter itself, or the body itself. When a solid becomes fluid, or a fluid becomes aeriform, what has become of its figure, its extension, or its motion or mobility. Eest is only the absence or MATTER — SYMMETRY. 2^3 negative of motion, and is a mere mental perception of tlie relation wMch matter bears to space in general; and so motion is a mere relation, of which rest is the negative. None of these are qualities of matter in itself. Lastly, solidity! Surely we must say of solidity, that it is in the hody ; or in the matter itself, or is a quality or attribute of matter itself, and not a mere perception of mind ! I say, most certainly not ; it is oidy a rela- tion to the human senses — only a word invented to ex- press a mental idea or reflection on our own sensations by our bodily senses. It is merely thoughtlessness, as I think, that can in any way suppose solidity mainly, or peculiarly, or in any wise a quality of matter itself, or anything but a word to express a certain mental relation between what we call matter and our human bodHy senses of touch. All unorganised matter seems to have three forms — the solid, the liquid, the aeriform or gaseous. If solidity be a primary quality of and in the matter itself, then, of course, fluidity and gaseity or aeriformness are also primary qualities of matter, and in the matter itself. But let us take an example, and say we stand on a glacier. We find it a hard solid body of ice, 1000 feet thick, perhaps, and we chip it with our axe or alpen- stock, and find it brittle and sharp-edged matter ; and yet it flows — flows on and on slowly like a river, every particle moving (to our bare senses imperceptibly) over every other next it, faster in the middle, slower at the sides. What are we to call this phenomenon of this brit- tle matter ? The word " Viscidity " is objected to, but it' is as good as any other word. Well, then ! viscidity, if that be the proper word, is also a primary quality of matter, and not in the mind or a mental idea, but in 294 CHAPTER XVI. matter' itself ! But surely this is most absurd; for we melt the ice and boil the water, and in a few minutes the viscid, solid, elastic, brittle, hard, impenetrable mat- ter has passed through all its forms! Where is the solidity gone to ? If you say, as the ikct is, that the state of particles has been altered, then solidity is only a state of particles, like colour or sonorousness, capable of affecting our senses in a particular way, just like colour, smell, or taste, or any of the secondary qualities which are admitted to be states of particles. If solidity is in the matter itself, so is the sound and smell. Both are merely states of the particles of matter capable of affect- ing our nerves in particular ways. Solidity affects our nerves of touch, and smell affects our olfactory nerves, and sound affects our aural nerves. Locke's distinction is, therefore, utterly unsound. If we are to say that solidity is in the matter, then so is colour, and so is sound. If we are to say that colour and sound are merely certain states of particles of mat-^ ter capable of producing vibrations of light or vibrations of air so as to affect our nerves, then so is solidity and extension and figure and motion, only certain states of particles capable of producing vibrations of our nervous fluid, or some mediuin, heat or gravity, and so affecting our nerves of touch ending in the brain — nothing more and nothing less ! Shall we then conclude with Dr Eeid and the philo- sophy of common sense that, " If natural philosophy is not a dream, there is something in bodies which we caU colour, and heat, and sound;" and say also with. the same Dr Eeid that "Bishop Berkeley gave new light to: the subject by showing that the qualities of an inanimate thing, such as matter.is conceived to be, cannot resem- MATTER — SYMMETRY. 2Q5 ble any sensation ; that it is impossible to conceive any- thing like the sensations of our minds, but the sensa- tions of other minds ? " Which leg of realism or concep- tualism or of the philosophy of common sense shall we logically limp upon ? Shall we say that the things that we are talking of are in the bodies themselves, or out of the bodies themselves ; in our minds themselves, or not in our minds themselves ? Are we to speak of things themselves out of our mind, or of conceptions in the mind, or of concepts ? And if of concepts, is the con- cept a thing in the body to suit the materialist, or a thing in the mind to suit the idealist, or each by turns and neither long with the English positivist, who thiaks his body " a possibility " and his mind " a flux" 1 Now the truth is, that the whole confusion arises from such words as sensation, conception, concept, which are, altogether logically ambiguous between mind and body. Fix your words, and the difficulty will vanish> Solidity, colour, sound, &c. — aU the qualities of matter — ^are material things, something or another, states of parts or particles in external matter. They are things^ i.e., sensations, also material things, in the human body ; and they are things, mental things, conceptions, con- cepts, or words in the human mind and logical under- standing. In short, all are at the same time things, thoughts, and words — things in ma^fer'-^-thoughts in mind — and words in Truth. Take the case of sound. The resonant body vibrates, commimicates those vibrations to the atmosphere, and the atmosphere to the 10,000 nerves or some of them which constitute the aural nerve. The sound in the (external body produces a vibration of the atmosphere, iand this produces the soum.d, a sensation in the nerves 296 CHAPTER XYI. of the body, hearing ; just as one undulation produces a succeeding undulation, which follows or is the effect of the one that went before it. But the sound in the mind is not yet reached. The dog and the man both hear or feel the sound in their bodies, the vibrations of their nerves ; but the man reduces them to number and time, and space, and feels and hears concords and discords, and pitch, and timbre, and fulness, and sharpness, and makes what was at first the sensual, into the intel- lectual. There is a quality in the resonant body — son- orousness ; a sensation in the sensitive body ; and a harmonious perception in the sentient himaan mind. And if we do not distinguish between these three distinct things, we, of course, faU into confusion. But fix and adopt distinct words — ^the material state of the thing, the bodily vibration, or state of the human nerve, and the mental state of the human mind, which we call sound — discord or concord, and the confusion will dis- appear in correct language. But which is to be called, and what is sovmd in the mind? There is motion in the sonorous matter, and motion in the sensitive nerve ; but if the motion in the matter is either too fast or too slow, the nerve does not vibrate, or the soul does not perceive. The soul, there- fore, only perceives as sound certain relations, in number and time and space, between the matter of the sonorous body and the matter of the sensitive nerve — only certain of their mutual motions ! The soul therefore only per- ceives certain motions and forms of vibrations, and not others too fast or too slow, too large or too small, for the soul's capacity to distinguish; and it can count and mark their numbers and concords and discords and harmonies — the combinations in time and space and MATTER — SYMMETRY. 297 number of those undulations within the limits of the soul's capacity. The same musical tone may penetrate both souls, but they can only reason about the name or sign they mutually agree to give to it. But we know that our senses can be improved by attention and exer- cise of the soul's powers and capacities. But till we adopt correct vjords we cannot reason of any of these things, and then only of the words we have chosen. Most writers do not distinguish or mark when they mean sensations of the body or perceptions of the mind ; or consciousness of the body, or consciousness of the mind ; and the materialist denies the whole difference, and sets out by saying that, to say, "I feel that I feel," is tautological ; whereas I say and set out by say- ing the contrary, in assuming the existence and distinc- tion of mind and matter ; and say, I feel with my mind that I feel with my body ; I am conscious in my mind that my body is sentient. In short, I feel that I know, and I know that I feel, and I am mentally or spiritually conscious both of my bodily and of my mental conscious- ness. I can reflect on one or both. But you don't know that I feel, or feel that I know ; and I don't know that you feel, or feel that you know. The sensations Of your body and the perceptions of your mind are wholly dif- ferent and distinct from, and quite incomparable with, the sensations of my body and the perceptions of my mind, except as words mutually adopted and agreed on. But our words are in both our bodies, and in both our minds, and our words we can and do compare ; so men forthwith seize on their common words, — sound and solidity — and dispute whether the sound and the solidity are in the man or in the bell ! One declares that they are both in the bell, another that they are both in the 298 . CHAPTER XVr. . man; Locke halves the difference, and says that the sound is in the man and the solidity in the bell ! and a man with all the talents and erudition and universal knowledge of the late Dr WheweU, pronounces, after nearly two hundred years of verbal disputation, that " Locke's distinction is still right in the main " ! What an exhibition of human philosophy, and the confusion of human words 1 And then comes the illogical English pbsitivist or materialist, who believes both or neither at his own logical pleasure, and can scoff at all ; and invites us to pronounce that philosophy " has proved its incapacity by centuries of failure," and to stick to our steam-engines and tele- graphs, to our observations and experience of matter only, and neglect our minds and morality and theology ; yet finds himself somehow under the absolute necessity of theorising about metaphysical entities, called statics and dynamics, laws and causes,, and forces and affinities; ^nd at last exclaims, "we are forced to theorise! a •theory is necessary to observation, and a correct theory to correct observation "! * And so we flounder on with the; positiviSt into abstract and concrete science; and he attempts to show the theological entity (mind) swal- lowed by. the metaphysical entity (language), and the two now, or hereafter, to be swallowed by the positive entity (matter), and we behold ai new philosophy and a new.' set of confused words, and thoughts to correspond; •added tb all those that haVB preceded them, equally sounding and equally solid, equally ambiguous, and if possible, even more false ! ■. Eetumiiig' to our group of the qualities of , matter, of which s61idity' and sound :are the two examples we have t '■- .' - - . *; Lewes, Biog. Hist. Phil., p. 657. ' •' . - . MATTER— SYMMETRY. 299 cliosen, it c'anndf be denied, 1st, tliat they are words; 2d', that they are thoughts; and ' 3d, that they are something or another which come from without us, and are, there- fore, mafermHhings — things, thoughts, and words!. But the thing vibrates or operates, and passes into the body and dies in tbe thought ; the thought passes out of the body and dies in the word ; and the word is what we are disputing about. We think of the things, and speak of our individual thoughts, and reason and dispute about our words, and if men will not settle, and arrange, and reduce to order their words and symbols, then they can never settle their ambiguous questions ; for the word is the only thought or thing we ean discuss or reason about. Every word involves a thought or a theory, and is a thing. And we cannot, in truth, distinguish the thing from the thought, or the thought from the words that express it, except by inventing or adopting new and clearer words — still words and nothing else. Solidity is, 1st, a material thing, a state of the particles of matter ; but it is, 2d, a relation between certain mate- rial things and their actions on our nerves of touchy a motion of our bodies, and an emotion of our minds. "When our bodies cannot easily penetrate matter we call it solid. But sound also is a material thing, and a state of the particles of matter, and also a relation between certain material things and their actions on our nerves of hearing. Solidity and sonorousness are the words or names which the mind invents to express these sup- posed particular states of the particles of matter, and also these relations of certain -States of matter to our bodily nerves. They are both the same kind of pheno- mena; and Locke's distinction that the one, solidity^ 30O CHAPTER XVI. is in external matter itself, and that the other, sound, not in matter itself, is certainly unfounded, and mere confusion of mind and matter; and as it appears to me, the confusion arose from his confused use of the word sensation, and from sonorousness not being so common a word as solidity. Locke did not distinguish properly between sensations of body — which are not ideas till the mind has attended to and reflected on them and embodied them as perceptions in words — and so- called sensations of mind, which are all from attention and reflection of the mind upon itself. Solidity and sound, or sonorousness, are concrete words to express sensations of the body produced by some external objects vibrating or acting on our nerves. But we must not confound the sensations of the body — which animals and men eq^ually share in — and the per- ceptions of mind, which are expressed in our words. A dog hears sounds and feels solids, but he knows nothing about the solidity or sonorousness of the bodies them- selves, which are words for mere ideas invented by man's miud, by means of attention and reflection. One body is more or less solid, and another more or less sonorous than another, and men invent ways of compar- ing external matters, and then confound their mental ideas of the things — relations to our bodies — with the thing itself; and then invent such concrete words as solidity and sonorousness, which they then caU qualities of matter itself, forgetting and overlooking the internal mind which first perceived the relations, in the eager rush to apply the relations to the pleasure or utility of ourselves or of mankind. But the concrete words solidity and sonorousness are mere ideas in the mind, and express the perceived rela- MATTER — SYMMETRY. 3OI tions of certain bodies to our body, and then we proceed to investigate the causes or states of the particles in the external bodies. But ideas of matter are, to our minds, material things, and so we begin to talk of the things, of which we have invented ideas, as being in the matter itself, and not in the mind which holds the idea. And the convention of language permits and allows us so to do. For every word is supposed, by that false conven- tion, to mean an external thing which all men can see with their eyes or mind, either mentally or physically, as well as his neighbour — and so both are in the bodies, and both are in every mind, but both are wholly un- known either to science or to cognition, except as words. But though ordinary language justifies the philosophy of common-sense, and the modern realist, in speaking of solidity and sonorousness and all other relations be- tween matter and our nervous system as being qualities in the matter itself, yet that is no sufficient reason for philosophers confounding mind and matter, and confus- ing the mere thoughts of men's minds, with any essential quality of matter in itself; and stiU less does it justify Locke's confusion in saying that one relation of matter to our nerves is in the matter itself and not in us, and that another like relation of matter to our nerves is in us and not in the matter. That is mental and logical confasion, even though accepted by Dr "Whewell as " right in the main " ! Both solidity and sonorousness are mental relations between certain states of matter and certain states of our bodies ; and are, strictly speaking, neither in the one nor in the other, but are merely words for relations between them. They are words in reasoning, ideas in thinking, and bodily and mental relations in Logical reality; hav- 302 CHAPTER XVI. ing no reality, however, except in the mind capable, through its body, of framing the ideas and using the words. The thing is not distinguishable from the thought, and the thought is not distinguishable from the word. Solidity and sonorousness are not distinguish- able except in words, from oilr thoughts of these things, nor are our thoughts distinguishable from the words we have invented. The words express, like all concrete words, what we call a fact, or experience, and involve the thought, or theory, or idea, which gives rise to the word. They are bqth facts in matter, theories in mind, and symbols in language, and all three at once, but we can only reason about oiir symbols. But then it is said that we use the word " extend- ed " in reference to the primary qualities, and the word " intense " in reference to the secondary qualities ; and measure the first by units and the second by degrees! This is not strictly true ; for we measure the numerical proportionate lengths and numbers of musical sounds ; and have now discovered the numerical proportions in length of red light and violet light; and an intense so- lidity is quite as intelligible as an intense sonorousness ! But, in fact, " intensity " and " degrees " are not science, but pseudo-science ; which it is our business, as men of science, to reduce to Extension and Time and Number. We call solidity specific gravity, and make it numer- ical by taking as a unit the weight of distilled water ; and as science improves, we shall no doubt improve our numerical measurements of sound, colours, &c. ; for be- fore the days of Newton, Forces also were intense, and possessed degrees; but he taught us how to measure force numerically. But Eeid did not himself properly distinguish between MATTER— SYMMETRY. 3b| sensations in the liuman body and perceptions in the Iranian inind, which are as distinct and different as body and mind, because he did not see clearly, or adhere to his partial glimpse of the truth, that perceptions in all cognition and philosophy are only words* Nor have any philosophers, as I conceive, properly distinguished between these two words sensation and perception, and the words or symbols which from time to time are in- vented by the mind to express its perceptions or ideas, both about the sensations of the body and the powers and perceptions or ideas of the mind. For the words which men generalise into general terms, in order to express all the sensations of all human bodies and all the perceptions of all human minds, are not the names of things, according to the false convention of ordinary language, but are all the result of, and produced by, the process of triple generalisation — a final process which leaves us all, of course, speaking only about words, as the only things we jointly know. But by assuming at first the obvious existences mind, matter, and language, we can deduce therefrom, as I submit, very clear ideas of time and space and number, which are our accurate measures of all material things ; and we cannot be said to have true or acciirate science of any matter, or any of the departments of matter, till we have reduced its phenomena to these great measures by measuring it numerically/ in space and time ! IJow much space, and what length of time, the Form of matter in question fills up and occupies ; and with what symmetry, and with what harmonies, and aU. its changes or phenomena in spaces and times, and the symmetries and harmonies, which occur during that • Ante, p. 179. ■ 304 CHAPTER XVI. existence — this, i.e., matter all and its changes, is the true field of positive material philosophy ! and a very- ample field it is. We confine, therefore, our -word sensation to the body, to that nervous system which man shares in a greater or less degree with the lower animals. Then Matter and all its qualities and phenomena are neither more nor less than the words, which the Mind of man is, from time to time, able to invent in order to explain to itself the sensations of its own Body. But we must believe our words if true. Matter is entirely our own faith in our own bodily sensations — not a permanent possibility, but a self-existing fact. Doubt does not enter the head of a child, and we acquire in childhood a faith in external matter which never leaves us. But even the greatest sceptic never doubts his own bodily sensations, which are often repeated, and which he can repeat at pleasure — ^they are not possibilities, but actualities. The possi- bility relates not to Matter or material things, but to the changes and variations between them, or to their states and relations. Berkeley called our sensations " the language of God," and Eeid called them "the signs of external objects;" but neither name is strictly correct, and such language tends to confuse matter with language. Our sensations are matter, or material; our bodily sensations are all that we can know of matter ; and we can properly say that all our knowledge of matter is verbal or Language ; and that matter is only the concrete term invented by man to express his abstract thought of what affects his body. The thing that affects our body, and produces bodily sensations, is matter. The body itself is matter, and language is the vibration of matter. But the mind MATTER — SYMMETRY. 305 immediately distinguishes between the bodily sensation and the thought of it — ^the memory of it, the conscious- ness before and after — i. e., in time or second thoughts, which is abstract mind. And the word fixes and estab- lishes the triple distinction both to ourselves and to others. Thus sensations are motions and forms of matter, and reflections are emotions of mind. But both are distinct from language, which is mutual to more persons than one. But both matter and mind become words or lan- guage in the very act of naming them to ourselves, and to other men. When Berkeley wrote, — " I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend either by sense or reflection — ^that the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands really exist I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence I deny is that which philosophers call matter or material sub- stance,"* — he evidently agreed with the common opinion of the mass of mankind as to the real existence of the material world as an external sensible world, though he disputed the propriety of calling it substance or matter ! — a mere question of words. So again, when Berkeley wrote, " To say that a die is hard, extended, and square, is not to attribute those qualities to a subject distinct from and supporting them, but only an explanation of the meaning of the word die," f he was for the moment what I profess to be, a nominalist or symbolist; but one cannot be both a Berkleian and a symbolist at the same time without self-contradiction. We cannot in philo- sophic truth reason about general ideas of either matter or mind, but only about our words for them. • Princip. H. K., xxxv. t Ibid., xlix. V 306 CHAPTER XVI. Por the error of Berkeley consisted in saying that thing or Being, the most general name of all, " is reducible to two kinds" — to wit, "spirits and ideas" — omitting lan- guage, and concluding that material substance does not exist, because our spirits have only an. idea of matter ; and Berkeley was deceived by that ancient Aristotelic word substance, which is ambiguous, and was equally ap- plied by the schoolmen to spiritual and to material sub- stances, confusing the two together* But he was also partly deceived by Locke's ambiguous use of the word sen- sation — ^by his ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection, which really mean ideas of matter and ideas of mind, all equally ideas, as Berkeley well showed ; and partly by his forgetting the matter of his own body. Berkeley thought only of his own mind as a spirit, and so adopted the division " ideas and spirits," which Hume seized upon to show that spirit also could be annihilated by the very same arguments which annihilate matter ! And, to the horror of the religious world, the wholly unanswer- able arguments of a pious bishop to abolish the ambigu- ous use of the word " substance " were by Hume used to discredit the possible existence of God and rehgion and miracles, and all ideas on such subjects ; just as in the present day we find the arguments of conceptualists and theological professors on " the absolute " used by the positivist to show that theology must be impossible and * The Greeks also used the word ouo-m in the same way ambiguously ; and thence arose the Homoousian and Homoiousian controversy; just as the Latin word siibstance is equally ambiguous and confused, and so produced the controversy of Transubstantiation. But behind the question of words and Reason, there is, of course, always the question of faith. And the Calvinist and Zuinglian play with the English word ^mderstwndins^, just as the medieval controversialists used substcmce — ambiguously ! MATTER — SYMMETRY. 307 absurd ! But, nevertheless, Body is self-evident to every- body, and Mind is self-evident to every mind, and Lan- guage is self-evident to every reasoner. But the whole question is a question of the truth of words and of proper logical division — of finding and mak- ing and inventing a logical division of what is seK-evident to every thinker and reasoner — ^viz., of " Being — the one most general name of all" — " the universe." Faith does not depend on or begin with reason, but reason does de- pend on and begin with faith in what is self-evident. The greatest sceptic cannot reason about nothing, but must begin with something, which to him is everything; and we cannot reason about the all or the many, or the everything or the something, till we logically divide it into all those distinct and self-evident parts which we propose to examine and consider, and verbally conclude upon. We thus divide the All, into things, thoughts, and words ; or, more properly, according to correct logical Division, into mind, matter, and language. Eeason, therefore, cannot overturn its own foundation, which is faith. But bad and false reasoning may shake and puzzle weak faith. And if our first distinction is in any way ambiguous, all our reasoning is liable to the same ambiguity ; and the omission of language, which includes in the abstract action (the action and reaction and influence of mind and matter), from our division of the universe, leaves our universe imperfect, or, humanly speaking, dead, for human ideas without words are born dead ! Thoughts, words, and things, as we have said, overlap each other in parts ; and mind, matter, and language, therefore, is the true logical division of which philosophers have been in search. We each of us have a mind ; we each of us have a 308 CHAPTER XVI. body; and we each of us have our actions of that body- directed by that mind, which are our words and sym- bols of the thought within. To other men those actions are language or words. To God our words are actions. "We are, as Hegel told us, what we do ! Our deeds are words, and our words are deeds, in the sight of Him who sees the internal moving power, the active will within, which produces every word and every deed. For a deed without intention is a word without meaning, a mere idle unmeaning deed or word. But for every idle word that men do speak they shall give account in the day of judgment; for by their words they shall be justified, and by their words they shall be condemned. God sees and jiidges by that course of reasoning in our hearts which has been not only the proximate, but also the original, though often remote and distant, cause of every word and every action ! Matter, then, is only our mutually adopted word for the source, origin, or assumed external Cause, of bodily sensation ; mind is only our mutually adopted word for the source, origin, or assumed internal Cause of our mental reflection ; and language is action — the action of the mind through the body. Thus the words sensation and reflection present to my mind no other difference than matter and mind. Sen- sations are the passions of the body, and reflections are the actions of the mind. To say that we get some ideas from sensation, and some from reflection, seems to me only confounding body and mind — we get all ideas from attention, comparison, &c., and reflection. But, nevertheless, if the reader wishes to be a true disciple of positive philosophy, and of experience, and of reason without faith, we might say, that he must in such MATTER — SYMMETRY. 309 case cling with philosophic tenacity to the indefinite use of this word sensation, or to the like use of the words conception or perception, or of some other words, which are conveniently applicable, indefinitely and ambigu- ously, to either a thing in the brain or a thing in the mind, to a thing in the body or a thing in the soul ; and he will then probably find the undulations of the body, easily reflected back by his mind, into his confused and ambiguous words; and a pleasant or xmpleasant flux or current will be established to the confusion of his reason ; which current will carry him, if he pleases to rise so high, to the loftiest pinnacles of positive philo- sophy ; and he can then, by and with ambiguous words, establish necessity as a law of mental nature ; utility as the only criterion of good and evil; induction as the only source of truth ; and the grand 4tre de Vhimianiti, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as the latest and greatest revelations by man to man ! — all being only conclusions from ambiguous words persever- ingly used by men whose first principles are false, and whose logic is worthless. Man, however, must believe his sensations, the actual vibrations of his body, until he is better informed ; and until he is better advised by attention to further sensa- tions, and by the exercise of his powers of comparison, reflection, and judgment, he must admit them to be what he first supposes them to be. But man's whole intellectual life is spent in correcting one sensation by reflection on another sensation, one supposition by another supposition — in short, by the exercise of comparison, reflection, and judgment, and the careful recording of the result in words and language. For example, a man sits in his chamber absorbed in 3IO CHAPTER XVI. thought, and a clock strikes ! If he is sufficiently ab- sorbed, he does not hear it at aU ! If he hears it, but not in time to count the strokes, he takes out his watch and learns the time of day. If he did not hear it at all, yet the drum of his ear was certainly struck all the same ; for others did, and his nerves vibrated all the same ; for they are matter ; yet are we to say that there was no sensation ? Certainly, if you choose to call attention and what follows in the mind sensation, then you and I differ about the word sensation, which you are taking to mean something in the mind while I defined it to mean something in the tody ; so we are at issue on a question of words ! And you must turn idealist and deny the existence of matter altogether, or you confuse body and mind together by applying the word sensation ambiguously. But I would say that there was sensa- tion, but that the mind did not attend to it. But the example shows the independent existence of mind, and also the necessity of settling whether by the word " sensation" we mean the reflex bodily action of the matter of the nervous system of an animal — which is my meaning for the word sensation — or whether it is to be applied to attention, comparison, reflection, conception, judgment, whose results are words and rational or human actions. Of course language is necessarily conventional in form in order to be understood ; but we are bound to use unambiguous forms, and not to confound or hide the distinction between mind and matter by relying without distinction, upon a word like sensation or per- ception, which may be made either material or mental at .pleasure. Without doubt, when a child first opens its eyes, it MATTER — SYMMETRY. 311 feels, as Cheselden's patient said he felt, as if everything touched it. When it puts out its hand and finds that some things can he grasped and others not, then by means of its touch and mental reflection it corrects to some extent its eyesight — i. e., by reflection on touch, it cor- rects sight. By means of other sensations of the body duly reflected on by the mind, what we call its know- ledge of the external universe gradually increases. But none of its ideas — its mental knowledge — ^is, properly speaking, from sensation or from experience, but from the first and throughout it is from the internal exercise of its mental powers judging between sensations — i.e., from attention, from comparison, from reflection, from conception, and judgment (ending in the invention, or adoption of a word) ; but all mental powers, acts, and conclusions are not in the least bodily or sensational or Experiential, but aU are mental and reflectional and im- periential, otherwise we are confounding and confusing mind and matter. There is nothing more to be said ; but that, if a man denies this, he denies the fundamental distinction be- tween mind and matter, and so contradicts himself, and may think that his mind is " a flux " and his body " a possibility " ! Of course that is his concern, not ours ! and we can do nothing more with our [logic but exhort him to fix his mind into something more than a flux, and to realise his body into something more than a pos- sibility, and to find the clear distinction between the two respectively and language. We cannot argue about unknown fluxes or possibilities, aU belonging to other men ! That is impossible ! The acts of the mind in obtaining knowledge of ex- ternal matter are five — attention, comparison, reflection. 312 CHAPTER XVI. conception, and judgment — and the judgment is com- pleted in what we call a thought, and is embodied in a word, sign, or symbol of many like thoughts combined in one name. Eeflection seems the central portion of this whole process, and the word reflection generally stands for the general action of the pure mind or spirit connected with consciousness and the brain. Of course the materialist would wish to turn the word reflection into reflex-action, which may be deemed the action of a nervous system conscious of external nature, but unconscious of itself. There are many such gan- glions of nerves, or little unconscious brains, in the hu- man body, where a rational action for the protection of the part, is unconsciously performed by the reflex action of the nerves, proceeding to and from the ganglion. The convulsive movement for the protection of our lungs, when, as it is called, a drop or a crumb goes the wrong way, is a familiar example of the reflex action of nerves unconnected with the brain, but producing an apparently rational action unconsciously. For it is cer- tainly a rational action to prevent the food intended for the stomach from going into the lungs, which might be, in all probability, death ! But every morsel we eat passes over the entrance to the limgs, and a little unconscious brain is provided by nature which guards the orifice by its sensation and reflex action on the necessary muscles, just as an animal shrinks from pain, or perhaps a sensitive plant from a touch. The reflex action of the nerves wUl not explain seZ/-consciousness, or mental action, or reflection on one's self, which is the central action of the mind in the production of a thought, or the choice of a word. We are not able to distinguish when or where the MATTER — SYMMETRY. 3 1 3 sensation of the body ends, without mental attention ; though sometimes afterwards, as in the case of the clock striking while we are absorbed in thought, and on look- ing up perceive that the clock has struck without our attending to it — ^minutes before ; or when we perceive that a person has come into the room whose entrancp we must have seen without taking notice of it, and in many other phenomena of the absent man, we are as- sured of the fact; but it is to contradict our first assump- tion of the actual distinction between mind and matter, to refuse to distinguish the sensation of the body from what is often improperly termed the sensation or per- ception of the mind, of which the first step is attention, and the last a thought and word. Although we have all forgotten the early exercise in infancy of our reflective powers, which have taught us all our general knowledge of the world of matter, and have induced us to believe that external things are as we generally all suppose them to be, and speak of them as being — as solid, fluid, gaseous, in form ; placed at various distances from ourselves in space, and variously affecting us and each other in time — yet the whole of it has all been learnt by our reflective powers. And it is ■ as much the produce of reflection that we believe the sky and trees are at a distance from our eyes, or that bodies are solid or otherwise, as it is that we believe in the rotation of the earth and the courses of the planets round the sun. And as it is surely improper to say that we have learnt, not by reflection and mental calculation, but by experience, that a man at the equator is travelling round at the rate of 1000 miles an hour, or that the whole world is found by experience to be flying through space at the rate of 1100 miles in a minute ; so 314 CHAPTER XVI. all and every truth we know of external nature, is like- wise learnt, not by experience, but by reflection and judgment. For many years the infant and the chUd are wholly engaged in correcting their judgments about the world of matter, and in teaching themselves the relative dis- tances and importance of external things, and their re- lations to their own bodies and to one another, and their past, present, and future states ; and these judg- ments, repeatedly recorded in the mind, become so fixed by habit that it is difficult in later life to surprise the mind with a new sensation of the body, and compel it to go through the whole original process of learning, in ordinary things of matter, by attention and comparison and reflection. We are compelled to surprise, or put, our nerves in some very unusual position, in order to entrap the mind intothe act of judgment on ordinary things. For example, when one limb or part of the body becomes so partially cold that the other parts do not know it by touch at first touch — a phenomenon which occurs to many per- sons, and which has several times occurred to myself — and we start at touching ourselves in bed, as if we had touched another person ; or when we cross two of our fingers, and touch a pea, or crumb, or sharp comer or angle, with the distant and opposite, in place of the adjoiniug, sides of our fingers ; and we then feel two peas or crumbs or angles in place of one; or when we hold a pencil perpendicular to the forehead, and exactly between the eyes, and see double ; and in other such cases, we can often still, by such unusual acts, detect the gradual process by which the mind has, out of an infinite number of separate sensations by each nerve-filament MATTER— SYMMETRY. 3 1 5 made up and arranged the general knowledge, which we all possess of the enter world, into habitual judg- ments, which have become almost instinctive. Every nerve-fibre to the child, must, I think, carry- originally a distinct impression to the brain ; and it is only by repeated judgments that we unite many feelings into one contiauous surface, which we call a body or matter when we feel it. So the remarkable phenomena of the stereoscope, and the fact of our seeing solidity, or solid Form, by means of our two eyes, but not seeing double, afford also a very- satisfactory proof that all our knowledge of external nature is the result of mental reflection and judgment, and that we get no ideas from sensation alone, but that our bodily sensation only affords us, not ideas, but only the bodily materials out of which our ideas are invented by mental reflection and judgment, by attention and repeated comparisons, and the exertion of oul- powers of conception, till our judgment is made up; and it then gradually becomes habitual. All of this process, in respect of most things around us, is lost in the mists of infancy; but it explains the earnest gaze and steady grasp of an intelligent infant, to which every new sensation in every nerve is a new miracle, rousing its curiosity and inviting its faith by its permanence, and its attention and reflection by its variety. But though every child may be said to acquire know- ledge and possess cognition before it can speak, yet such language is improper ; for this knowledge and this cogni- tion is only private, indi-vidual, inchoate, and imperfect ; and forms no part of that general knowledge or general cognitioa to which men refer when we use those gene- 3l6 CHAPTER XVI. ral terms. Cognition means general cognition — ^mutual and general to mankind, not individual and peculiar to one; and to become a cognition about which we can speak, it must be expressed or recorded in words, signs, or symbols, mutually intelligible; and these only form a part of that geTieral human cognition about which we can speak and reason. Till words, therefore, are adopted or invented, cognitions are only private peculiar idio- syncratic reflections, like the indescribable thrills of a nervous individual, or the unspeakable words of St Paul, about which it is absurd to reason, and impossible to have any question or discussion. The whole external universe is, in fact, to the thought- ful, one great continuous miracle ; everything is a mir- acle to the thoughtful man, reflecting on life, and light, and growth, and chemistry, and electricity, and geo- logy, and astronomy. The whole external and internal imiverse* becomes more and more miraculous to the thoughtful observer, every year that he lives ; and the delight and thankfulness of an infant to its parent for a new toy is but a humble type of the reverence and pleasure produced by a new phenomenon to the humble searcher after physical or psychical truth. ' All nature is a miracle of sensation, and of wonderful relations, which the mind of man discovers, from age to age, amongst the things which we see, and hear, and feel, and smell, and taste; and instead of abolishing and superseding the religious and metaphysical side of human nature, thoughtful observation and experience rather intensify and extend it; for the more we know, the more inexplicable and miraculous it all becomes ; and the more wonderful becomes man's own mind and intelligence itself, which has invented and created the MATTER — SYMMETRY. 3 1 7 thoughts and words, which express the discovered men- tal relations, which his mind perceives between external things operating on his senses. If, therefore, we admit the fundamental distinction of tody and soul, or of mind and matter, we must equally distinguish between the actions of the mind and the passions of the body. Sensations are the passions of the body, and wholly distinct from reflections of the mind. Sensations are the phenomena of the sensitive plants and the nervous organisation of the lower animals and of man. That may be, by an abuse of language, if you please, called human consciousness ; but it is in no respect se(/-consciousness, or the internal reflection or action of mind or spirit on itself or its own Soul and Body. Man seems wholly incapable of investigating any mind but his own. We can know no more of the pro- cess in a dog's mind, if he can be said to have a mind, than we can know of attraction or chemical affinity; but we do each of us know and feel the active opera- tions of our own mental organisation, and we describe it, as well as we can, by the metaphorical use of words originally invented to describe material pheno- mena, now used metaphorically as symbols of mental operations. But we must not confound the passions of the body, which are sensations, with the actions of the mind, which are reflections in general The lowest act of the mind is attention, but it is an action, not a passion. We all feel at times that attention is an effort, an act, an original internal act of mind. Sensation begins without, and is bodily ; attention begins within, and is mentaL We are se^/'-conscious of our attention, and 3l8 CHAPTER XVI. can originate and increase, and to some extent control, it, and can refuse our attention and turn to something else. But there are passions of the Soul, as well as, pas- sions of the Body. For the mind of man is not pure spirit. He has a mind composed of soul and spirit, and his soul becomes dull, as well as his senses become blunted. He is not always .able to control his attention, when his soul is duU, or sleeping, or dead ! And living men may often have dead souls ! — souls dead to everything spiritual. But it is sufficient to insist that, whoever admits the existence and distinction of mind and matter — ^who is not an idealist or a materialist — must equally admit that, sensations are the passions of the body, and wholly distinct from aU. the actions of the mind, which we call reflection, or else he contradicts himself; and also that at- tention, comparison, reflection, conception, and judgment are wholly reflective actions of the mind, and purely mental. All ideas, then, are from reflection ; and what Locke caUed ideas of sensation are ideas of matter, and his ideas of reflection are generally ideas of mind. The Language and doctrines of materialism help to drown the soul in sensible things ; but yet all sensible things are only known and judged by super- sensible things ; and things visible can only be seen by things invisible. The first realisation of the truth that "we do not see with our eyes, but with our reason," is in fact a revelation of intellect ; and though it has been known ever since the days of Plato, yet it has to be newly learnt individually by each man in succession as he begins to grow in knowledge. It is the chief object of positive philosophy to ignore and obscure this truth, and to abolish the human mind MATTER — SYMMETRY. ^1(^ and all abstract ideas, and especially cause ; and so to obscure all intermediate causes, and ignore the first Cause ! And all those who use the words sensation, percep- tion or conception, concept, impression, representation, &c., ambiguously, either for things in the brain or for things in the mind, play into the hands of the positive materialist, and give him logical weapons against the existence and truth of the metaphysical and the theolo- gical, which involve or require the mind alone ! Hume's argument from and abuse of the word impres- sion, and his conclusion that no amount of testimony can never justify our belief in a miracle — i.e.,'ouv belief in any violation of what we suppose to be the ordinary course of nature — is best answered, in my opinion, by the assertion, that the original and absolute course of nature never can be known to us ; and therefore that the faith, which we have in what we are all accustomed to call the course of nature, is merely blind credulity in some system of words and phrases in which we have educated ourselves, and which, if we are' eager and de- sirous after physical knowledge, we are every day our- selves rectifying and altering ! The course of nature is to the infant the daily supply of food put into its mouth whenever it cries, and the being shielded from every terror in its mother's arms ! From this we pass on by degrees until perhaps we arrive at the contemptuous maxim, "Aide toi et le del tojidera " / But when we have grown in true wisdom, we shall and must return to a faith like to that of our infancy ; and combine a faith in God the Father with a conviction that all the knowledge of man concerning matter and its laws, is as nothing compared with the 320 CHAPTER XVI. powers of spirit — that " all things are possible to him that believes," and that man's own powers are only lim- ited by his want of faith — his want of that true faith, which is the image and reflection of the Divine Spirit and the direct gift of God Himself — a Divine faith which is made perfect in love. But, in fact, the man who admits the distinction be- tween matter and mind, and then uses the ordinary words idea, impression, representation, conception, thought, or sensation ambiguously, either to mean things in the body or the brain, and also to mean things in the mind or spirit, actually confounds and confuses his admitted dis- tinction between mind and matter ; and so he contra- dicts himself, and violates the laws and limits of his own logical division. But the mere animal sensation and consciousness of the body, is wholly distinct from the SELF-consciousness and internal reflection of the man, as a spirit or mind, distinct from matter. The examination of a man's internal self-conscious- ness in his attention, comparison, reflection, conception, and judgment about the bodily phenomena which exter- nal matter produces in him, gives to every individual a new internal universe of thoughts, ideas, and words, more real to himself, in the case of every one who thinks carefuUy, than the external universe of matter in which he believes from his infancy. For our own mental exist- ence, when once perceived, is more certain, and more real, than any bodUy nervous sensation whatever. As soon as a man clearly knows and sees with his mind, that the external universe of matter is not and cannot be known to him directly by his mind, but only by and through certain sensations of his body ; when they happen to be sufficiently attended to by his mind; and MATTER— SYMMETRY. 32 1 that these sensations of his own body are only known to him by repeated attention, comparison, reflection, and by their mental results in ideas, conceptions, and judgments, — all voluntary acts of his own mind ; and that these, again, which are the thoughts of his heart and his dearest convictions, are only known to himself and to God, or readers of the heart ; and that to enable other men to share or participate in his thoughts, whether they be thoughts of the matter without its, or thoughts of the mind within us, the whole must be translated from the invisible region of his individual mind, into the sensible language of reason and of logic ; — he must then see and perceive, and be convinced in his own mind, that the visible can only be known by the invisible ; and that the invisible and visible are equally matters of faith, and not of reason ; and that we can only speak or reason about either, when they have been both reduced into mutually-adopted human WOEDS — not that words are all that exist in the eyes of faith, or the eyes of reason founded on faith, but that they are all that is in any wise subject to the proper domain of human argument and of human reason — ^they are all that can exist in human cognition ! The universe of matter, for the purpose of reason and for argument, exists only in and through the world of mind, and the world of mind is an individual world peculiar to each man, and exists to other men or to mankind — i.e., becomes general only — as a world of WOEDS, received and accepted or invented by man in general as a family, and not merely by man as an indi- vidual ; of whose individual peculiarities we cannot reason at all to other men, except as mere ideal sup- positions, without any self-evidence whatever. 322 CHAPTER XVI. Words, therefore, contain and embody all our reflec- tions, and our reflections contain and embody all our sensations ; and when we have proceeded to generalise our words for common use, we are no longer talking about our sensations or our reflections, but only about our mutual WORDS for possible and hypothetical sensa- tion and reflection in general. With words we must begin every argument and every discussion, and with words only can we conclude ! Every sensation can only become an object of cognition when it has passed into our reflection, and our reflection can only become an object of cognition when our reflection has been em- bodied in a word, or words. Then the word becomes, if mutually adopted, the general name of the whole number of things assumed as causing the sensation, and the pro- duct of all the thoughts which our judgment and reflec- tion have invented and adopted on the subject of the thing or class of things ; and we are reasoning, and can only reason, about the word. We can develop the word as a formula into other words, signs, and symbols, and we can do no more. But each man may individually return to his observa- tion and experiment, and may vary and verify or cor- rect the former sensations of his body, or the former reflections of his mind, and thereupon, by Comparison and Eeflection, may invent new and better words, signs, and symbols, in order to enable his fellow-men to share and participate in such improved sensations and reflec- tions ; but he is still only substituting one set of phrases for another set of phrases, and is no nearer penetrating the actual realities of creation. AU we can say of such an inventor or observer is, that his thoughts of things seem to us to be more accurate and distinct. But we MATTER — SYMMETRY. 323 may positively assert and prove that such words are more logically consistent and clear ; and more correctly represent our own true thoughts of matter or of mind. And we may also, starting from the reasoner's own prin- ciples, show and prove that, his alleged words, for his supposed thoughts of matter or of mind, are logically absurd, and he himself logically ambiguous or self-con- tradictory ; but out of this logical cage of symbolism there is no possible escape. Thus the man who un- dervalues words, signs, symbols, logic, undervalues the only intellectual foundation of all human truth. All words are the bodies of ideas, but all words are firstly, only sensible images, or images of sensible things — of matter. Like the word "reflection" itseK — a bend- ing back — all words for our mental operations are only metaphors of sensible or material things. Man has no means of telling other men what he feels in his miad, but only, by using a sensible image metaphorically. Thus all words are at first bodily sensations named, and aU ideas are from mental reflection metaphored. But aU ideas are independent of, but should be made to accord with, experience, not inexperience ; but all words are originally invented as images of bodily experience, and are used only as metaphors when applied to mental operations or ideas. But Locke's distinction of primary and secondary qualities of matter, falsely pretends to reason of some things in matter itself, out of all relation to the nerves of the human body ; and is therefore a distinction manifestly false and unfounded in experi- ence. Solidity and Sound are equally material things, mental things, and verbal or scientific things. As we have said, however ; Locke was probably the first to observe this fact, — that all words for the mind. 324 CHAPTER XVI. and all its operations and its ideas, are at first meta- phorical ; — and it is of necessity that such is the case ; for as mind is invisible and impalpable, and man has no means of comparing mind with mind, or of com- municating what passes in his own mind to another, ex- cept by language and words ; and sensible facts are the only facts which men can suppose they have in common, this use of metaphor is manifestly quite unavoidable. Man can only take some common sensible image and spiritualise it into a metaphor — just as spirit itself is breath, and angel is messenger, and idea, reflection, con- ception, perception, &c., are all different physical facts adopted to express metaphysical phenomena. So every physical operation may be used as a metaphor of Mind. The nature of man, and of man's mind shut up in his body, necessarily prevents any other course. Thus all metaphysical language is of necessity metaphors of phy- sical facts, and the spiritual and immaterial can only be taught, as it were, in the language of materialism ; and the inner life, of necessity, can be understood, only by the images of external life, and the life of the mind is only a spiritual conception framed from the life of the body. " The flesh lusteth against the spirit;" matter contends with mind, and mind with matter, in the human person ; and all words are of necessity originally material images, and all ideas are mental things, merely metaphors of visible matter, or of visible material things. The condition and limit of the human mind, is the necessity of using material methods of action. But Force can only act on the body, and Language is the only instrument which can operate on mind ! Men's bodies may be ruled by material force, but men's spirits can only be ruled by force of language, and the man who MATTER — SYMMETRY. 325 is thoroughly master of words will ultimately rule the minds of men. Thus our senses give us all the mate- rials for framing our ideas of body; but all our ideas, both of body and of mind, are framed by the mind alone, and are independent of experience ; but are intended by the mind, to explain or theorise our sensible experience, and to show why we have, or can have, such and such bodily experiences. But aU our words are of necessity material images adopted to express our ideas both of body and mind. All our ideas are from mental attention and reflection, and are by judgment embodied in words, which are of necessity these bodily images; and- the emotions of mind are but faintly imaged by the motions of body. Thus the body is the type of the soul, and the soul itself is again spiritualised by metaphors of metaphors into the never-resting and imperious Spirit, which treats both soul and body as its own slaves or subjects. But the phenomena of external, visible, and sensible matter must be used as the types of invisible mind. The mystery of Language is the mystery of man, and the source of all philosophical disputes ; but it is, how- ever, well worth while dwelling on this confusion of sensation and reflection — ^this error of supposing that all ideas are founded on experience — because this notion is the efficient cause of most of the materialistic sceptic cism which exists in the world. Once grant that all ideas are founded on experience ; and the ideas of mind, spirit, angel, devU, God, must give place altogether, or trust to loose arguments concerning the trustworthiness of pro- phets and apostles, and concerning the authenticity of the works and words attributed to them, thousands of years since, as compared with the mow-experience of 326 CHAPTER XVI. subsequent ages and of ourselves. But assuming, as we must a priori, as given and assumed, in the very meanings of every word we use, — the existence of mind and spirit wholly distinct from matter, and that each man shares in such a spirit or mind ; then the necessity or possibility of mental communion with the One Eternal, and his spiritual friends or enemies, becomes no longer a doubtful question, but an absolute certainty to the thoughtful human being, who contemplates the nature of man and the universe, and sees with the clearness of demonstration and conviction, that any other thought is absurd and self-contradictory ; that minds, spirits, and Grod do and must exist, and that their actions are and must ever be miracles to us, who are wholly and necessarily ignorant of their powers over the material imiverse. And our won-experience does not affect the question. We thus only experience bodily sensations of matter, and we invent all our ideas ; but we can either adopt, or invent words, which we can make the symbols of our ideas of things. Any other language than this denies the existence either of mind or matter, or confounds and confuses matter and mind together. We cannot tell where the sensation of the body ends ; or where the perception or attention of the mind begins ; the limits of matter and mind in our own persons are not clearly revealed to us by nature ; but that fact affords no reason to any accurate or truthful mind to deny the existence of pither of them ; or to confuse and confound the two together; for the distinction is self-evident and admitted, in every word we use. Matter is very obviously divisible into Living and Dead — into organised and unorganised. All unorganised MATTER— SYMMETRY. 327 or dead matter appears from induction and analogy to be capable of assuming three states ov forms — ^the solid, fluid, and gaseous or aeriform state — all -which I have shown to be nothing in themselves but states of matter in relation to man's living body. Solidity, fluidity, gaseity or aeriformmss, are not things in the matter itself, but only supposed states of its sup- posed ultimate particles or atoms in relation to the human body and its nerves. And these atoms and their states and relations are whoUy imaginary and in- visible forces and causes. If the human body cannot penetrate without destroy- ing the cohesion of the matter — that is, permanently dividing or separating one into two, it is solid; if the body can penetrate the matter without destroying the unity or cohesion, it is fluid, like a drop of quicksilver on a table, or a drop of water in dust ; and if it seems to the human body indefinitely expansible, and to present little or no resistance to human motion, and yet retains weight, it is gaseous, its particles no longer seem to attract, they repel each other. But all these states may be also referred to the force of gravity. Solid is where cohesion resists the force of gravity to alter its outward form, and fluid where the cohesion is not sufficient to resist gravity in altering the outward form, and vapour is where there is no form given by gravity — or where the repulsion of the par- ticles is greater than the attraction of gravity. All these three forms are states of matter in relation to man's bodily nerves, and to the globe itself. But there is a fourth form of matter— viz., the imponderable mat- ter or matters of light, heat, electricity, and magnetism. Thus we have gravity and levity in matter, or, as we 328 CHAPTER XVL must say in relation to the globe, ponderable and impon- derable matters ; and all the ponderable matter, so far as we can judge from indaction, appears to be able to take on itself each of these three states or forms of solid, fluid, and gas or vapour. But the most powerful, quick, and influential matter known to man in the universe is not ponderable, but matter imponderable — that is, out of all measurable relation, to the earth's attraction or gravity. Of this imponderable matter light seems to pos- sess the central position, and its motion seems to be an undulation or elastic wave. At the violet or quick end of the solar spectrum we find invisible rays quicker than light — waves too quick for our nerves of sight; these are the actinic or chemical rays, which are chemi- cal or electrical, but we cannot see them: and at the red or slower end of the spectrum we find the heat- rays, which we can feel but not see, which are, again, too slow for our nerves of sight ; and possibly, if we could, by spreading or polarisation, convert the vibra- tion of light into a vibration entirely at right angles to its original course as light, we might find that it pro- duced gravity and magnetism. This we may possibly guess from finding that the attraction of a magnet is increased in power by the action of a current of electri- city through an enveloping helix at right angles to the magnet itself, and that the action of gravity can be applied to produce heat and light. But wonderful as are the powers of these imponder- able matters, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, they are phenomena of a matter at present wholly imponder- able by man, or, out of aU measurable relations, with the earth on which he lives — that is, at present we have not discovered that this matter has any weight whatever MATTER — SYMMETRY. 329 in relation to the glote itself — their gravity, in fact, is nothing, but their powers seem unlimited, and, in short, we find that the less the matter the gTeater its power. But still, of course, light, heat, electricity, and mag- netism are only words for bundles of phenomena ; and gravity, both on the authority of Newton himself, and according to the principles of symbolism, is a mere human thought and word to express a bundle of appearances, and not anything really existing in external nature. " I do not take gravity," said Newton, " for an essential property of bodies;" and the time, I venture to think, is probably fast approaching when we shaU have to give it up altogether, except as an action or vibration, like magnetism, at right angles to light, heat, and electricity — a slow vibration, in fact, of which we can see and feel only a part; and this, I think, will appear as soon as we can bring the internal heat of the globe into measurable relations, by means of number, space, and time, with the lengths of our day and year, and the laws of light, heat, electricity, and magnetism. But specula- tion must go hand in hand with observation and ex- periment; and we must justify comparison and analogy by showing that they accord with aU the known facts or observations on the subject ; that is, we must show that our words are accurate and just deductive explanations of external Motions and internal Forms. Matter, as we have said, cannot be mind, because it affords us no meaning or interpretation for the words or language we use ; and in relation to our globe, matter is ponderableandimponderable; and ponderable matters are either dead or living ; and life is a state of matter which constitutes an organism or living being, which has been called "a constant form of circulating matter." The 330 CHAPTER XVI. Form is constant — the matter is in Motion ; but I would add to this organisation and other powers ; in which we must search for correlation, symmetry, and harmony. • But if we now turn our attention to ponderable or- ganised matter ; we find that the human body itself is an organised solid ; but that all its noitrishment must become fluid, and be converted into chyle, before the body can assimilate and take it into its organised sys- tem ; and also that all this fluid must pass to the lungs, and there partake of the breath of human bodily life, the air or atmosphere, possessing in its due proportion the gas called oxygen, before it can be converted into living blood fit to nourish the tissues of the body. Now this wonder- ful organisation of the human body appears to have no other object than to keep up during life the internal specific heat of the vital organs of the human body; and if proper food, solid and liquid, in proper quanti- ties, be not given to the body, or if it be deprived of air with a proper proportion of oxygen in it, the body decays or dies ; but still, up to the time of its death, it keeps up its own internal specific or blood heat at the proper temperature, and this even by the consumption of its own bodily tissue. If the circulation or motion fails to keep up the organic heat, the organism dies, and the matter becomes a dead form of organised matter. The body, as it were, destroys itself, and commits organic suicide, if we may so speak, in order to keep up its own internal organic blood-heat, without which the motion ceases and the form is dead. But what heat is we do not know, except that we believe it now to be some modification of the material medium, or matter called light — a vibration or motion, an imdulation of some matter, too slow for our eyes to MATTER — SYMMETRY. 33 1 see, but not too slow or too fast for our nerves of touch to feel. Heat seems the imponderable matter of organic bodDy life. But heat itself seems only a vibration, wave, or undulation of some imponderable jelly or fluid. Now the human body is the type of the human soul, and the food of the soul, as I conceive, consists of sym- bols, and its breath is faith, and the human soul is possibly organised light, electricity, or magnetism. But what I wish to point out here is this — viz., the practical bearing of some of these speculations, upon that species or form of material beauty which we call symmetry. All the food of the human solid body has first to be converted into fluid in order that it may nourish the body ; and as these fluids pass along and through the human body in every direction, no doubt partly by en- dosmose through membranes, and partly by capillary attraction ; the attraction and circulation of fluids in the minute tubular, capillary, ducts and fibrils of the human body seems one of the fundamental facts in the build- ing up of the whole human frame, including, of course, its crauio-nervous system, and even the brain itself. But hydrostatics teach us that, as fluids press equally in every direction, the hyperbola is the curve which the surface of fluids must assume in the capillary tubes of organised bodies; and therefore that curve must actually exist in the human nerves and brain, from the capUlary attraction of the tubular ducts or fibrUs, on their central fluid pith, in the course of its being used, or wasted, and reformed. The hyperbola is a curve with its centre, if we may so express it, outside, which requires to be balanced with a similar curve on the opposite side of the centre ; a curve which approaches indefinitely near, but never 332 CHAPTER XVI. attains true contact with, two right lines called the asymptotes, that pass through its centre. The hyper- bola possesses many resemblances to the course of the human mind and reason towards truth and beauty. For example, I say that all symmetry is to be traced to, and can be only truly founded on, the hyperbola ! Every form of true physical symmetry must, I say, take the hyperbola for its basis ! This, I think, is a very remarkable fact, and I am not aware whether it has been before promulgated, but it can be made very easily clear and self-evident. A very interesting portion of Dr Whewell's ' Hist. Sc. Ideas ' is devoted to the idea of symmetry, illustrated by much more varied learning than I can pretend to offer. He there says : " It may be said, perhaps, that the idea of symmetry is a modification or derivative of the idea of space and number — that a symmetrical shape is one which consists of parts, exactly similar, repeated a cer- tain number of times, and placed so as to correspond with each other. But on further reflection it wiU be seen that this repetition and correspondence of parts in symmetri- cal figures are something peculiar; for it is not any repetition or any correspondence of parts to which we should give the name of syminetry in the manner in which we are now using the term. Symmetrical ar- rangements may, no doubt, be concerned with space and position, time and number; but there appears to be implied in them a fundamental idea of regularity, of completeness, of complex simplicity, which is not a mere modification of other ideas." He also says that the axiom or principle of symmetry is, " that all the sym- metrical members of a natural product are, under like circumstances, alike affected by the natural formative MATTER — SYMMETRY. 333 power. The parts which we have termed symmetrical resemble each other not only in form and position, but also in the manner in which they are produced and modified by natural causes." * He applies this to bo- tanical symmetry and to crystallography ; but the fact will be self-evident on a little inspection, that all simple symmetrical figures and forms must arrange themselves according to the four curves of an hyperbola and round its centre. You will find that in every kind of symmetry there are certain points that cling, as it were, to the right lines, the asymptotes and co-ordinates. But of course the angle of the asymptotes may or must be varied to suit the symmetry required, where we wish to introduce a symmetiy not perpendicular and square. Of course for complicated symmetry we may require more hyperbolas than one, but no arrangement can be truly symmetrical which cannot be inscribed in one or a number of hyperbolas ! Let us illustrate what we mean by a figure. The principle of the hyperbola is that every right line drawn through the centre is bisected, so that it is, as it were, the converse of a circle, in which the same principle is true ; but in a circle all the right lines are equal to one another, but in an hyper- bola every adjoining pair are unequal. If all right lines drawn through the centre are all bisected and all equal, the curve is a circle ; but if they are all still bisected, but all the adjoining ones are unequal, then the curve is an hyperbola, of which, we give three examples. Take the right-angled, or any angled hyperbola, where the lines X Y are the asymptotes ; then wherever the * Hist. So. Ideas, lib. vii. cap. i. art. v. vol. ii. p. 72-76 ; and Phil. Ind. Sci., vol. i. p. 428. 334 CHAPTER XVI. right line A B is drawn through the centre it is always bisected. And this is true of every angled hyperbola. Now it is evident that, with this curve whatever like figure we draw, meeting the hyperbola in like points, it has symmetry ; or make any number of like branches or curves cutting or touching the hyperbola, in like points, and springing from the centre, and the result, is symmetrical. Of course we are not bound in aU symmetries, if we draw one line, to draw all the eight equal lines ; for though symmetry means " regularity and completeness " — or, as Dr Whewell expressed it, " complex simplicity," — i.e., it must be at once "complex" and "simple," at once " regular " and " complete." A complex figure may sometimes be best seen with a few lines symmetrically omitted. They must be, as Dr W. says, " symmetrically suppressed," and they are always so found in nature. MATTER — SYMMETRY. 335 Nothing but the hyperbola, or a number of hyperbolas, will satisfy this desire, which, I humbly think, is the natural desire of the mind of man for symmetry ; and it is founded on the natural constitution of the human body, and of all living organisms possessing capillary tubes. Symmetry always requires that every point be in some way balanced by another equal and opposite, un- less it be itself a central point or clinging to the axis or to the asymptotes ; and in symmetry the central points must all cling to the axis or asymptotes. Let any person of artistic taste try this and he will find it so ! There is, as it were, a sense in man's mind which re- jects as unsymmetrical, all points that will not fall into some balanced complexity round some assumed point, of which the hyperbola furnishes the true and proper solution. The hyperbola, in short, is the locus or line containing all the symmetrical points round its centre. And this explains the reason of the fact, obvious to all artists, that if symmetry be destroyed by shortening or elon- gating any arm or branch of a symmetrical figure, it cannot be restored by merely equalising the correspond- ing and opposite arms or branches ; but the whole figure has generally to be recast, and the angles at which the branches are arranged must generally be entirely altered. The reason is, that there is only one angle in the sym- metrical hyperbola, for each particular lerigth of branch or arm, and if you elongate or shorten any one branch, you must at the same time increase or diminish the angle at which that branch cuts the axis of the figure passing through the centre. Now this may have a very useful and practical artis- 336 CHAPTER XVI. tic application; for if we have a centre and a certain number of points given us to be introduced, we can find all the other points which can be in symmetry with those given points, either in one or more hyperbolas, by drawing the hyperbola, or the least number of hyper- bolas, which will take in aU. the required points. Again, if we have any number of points to bring into sym- metry, we have only to assume a centre, and hyperbolas made with that centre through the given points, will do aU the rest for us, and show us where all our symmetri- cal points must be placed in order to symmetrically balance aU the given points. The hyperbola can always be so assumed as to make three or four points of any figure regular, and the curve will then afford an infinite number of points all in symmetry with each of them. And also, if an artist has to alter a line in a figure already symmetrical, the hyperbola wiU at once tell him the angle at which each length of line must be put, so as to be in symmetry with the rest of the figure, and without having to recast the whole design. But, on the whole, I think it is sufficiently clear that the true laws of symmetry must be founded on the hyperbola ; but of course there is also circular sym- metry where the branches and angles must be all equal, as in pentacrinites. By varying the angle of its asymptotes, the hyper- bola also affords infinite variety of shapes and forms. By taking them at right angles, it allows of the most regular figures. In short, it is, from its very nature, compounded of contrast and similarity, of simplicity and complexity, of variety and regularity. It possesses in itself all those qualities which go to form man's idea MATTER — SYMMETRY. 337 of general symmetry, under the utmost variety of length and position ; and if ever the laws of organised heings are to be reduced to mathematical order and precision, it must, I think, be done in a great measure by means, and by the use of the hyperbola and its properties. Man's body only partakes of symmetry as does all other organised matter in the world. All or most or- ganised matter, possessing life and growth, appears to have in it a circulation of fluids in capillary tubes ; and each organism appears to possess a symmetry of its own, and a modification of some higher or lower sym- metry, which pervades organisms, higher or lower than itseK. In stiidying, therefore, due and proper classification of natural organisms, I commend to natural philoso- phers, the reduction by measurement in number, space, and time, of their observations of the symmetrical branches of an organism, to an hyperbola of a fixed angle, and thus to endeavour to ascertain the limits to which its variations tend to proceed. But it is most certain that, all organisms possessing a circulation of fluids through capillary tubes must possess a symmetry of gi'owth closely connected with some fixed hyperbola which must be the law of its life and growth. The normal size of its capillary tubes and the normal density of its fluid sap, combined with its specific heat, will probably afford grounds more certain than any we have hitherto discovered for the classification of organisms, by establishing some fixed law of hyperbolic symmetry and some fixed law of organic growth, the fffrm and the motion, which constitute the creature, and make it to be what it is. T 338 CHAPTER XVI. AH plants appear to have a tendency towards a spiral growth, in the points, which appear to be symmetrical. The symmetrical points are never directly over one another ; and the same is true of shells and many of the lower classes of animal life, which have what we call a symmetry repeated in their mode of growth. Now a certain spiral may be conceived to arise in this way : Suppose an hyperbola to revolve slowly on its axis, and to form a solid hyperbola, such as must exist in every capillary tube. Now the motion of a particle of organised matter in growing up the hyperbola follows this spiral ! It is moving upwards in an hyperbola, but the hyperbola itself has a twist or twirl at the same time. In fact, just as the earth moves in an ellipse with its nodes revolving; and just as all the planets move in ellipses, but their nodes move round ; and thus, as Sir John Herschel tells us, their actual motion in space, so far as we at present know, is " a complicated spiral; " — so I say that the motion of every particle of an organ- ised plant, is motion in an hyperbola, which hyperbola has itself, as it were, a slight tortuous motion ; and the vital force acts in an hyperbola with such a twist. This, one may say, is matter of demonstration ! That is to say, the two discoveries of the " rise of liquids in capillary tubes," and the " force of endosmose," or absorption, or vis a tergo, or whatever primary prin- ciples are assumed as causes of the growth of organ- isms, then certainly by mathematical necessity they lead our minds to this hyperbolic spiral ! The particles rise in hyperbolas ; and the absoi-ption, circulation, and other forces must result in a twist or spiral. Thus, to put what I mean in an intelligible form by a figure. MATTER — SYMMETRY. 339 Suppose A a fluid rising in a capillary tube, forming the curve B C D in its upper surface. Then the curve B C D is an hyperbola, because the fluid pressing equally in every direction, the rise to B and D above the level, is due to the constant force of capillary attraction; the product xy and x''^, &c., wherever taken will be constant ; and the consequence is, that its shape is a constant hyperbola, for the same sap and like tubular vessels due to the deviation from the ordinary laws of fluids produced by capillary attraction — the curve on the surface of the rising liquid is always an hyperbola indefinitely approaching the side of the capillary tube. Now it is a well-known matter of observation that all plants acquire a twist as they grow. There is in many, a very distinct approach to symmetry, but the symmetry gradually acquires a twist. This is, no doubt, the resultant of all the other forces — light, heat, gravity, absorption, endosmose, the revolution of the earth on its axis, &c. — ^which affect the growing particle, besides capUlary attraction, in its ascent from the earth; and the general resultant motion or course of every growing particle in every organism is onward spirally. But in every plant that exists, it is as certainly true that the growing particles perform their ascent and move in hyperbolas, with complicated spirals thereon dependent on the light of the sun, its heat, and the gravity and rotation of the earth, &c., as that the planets move in ellipses, and in complicated spirals in those ellipses. It is, in short, mathematically demonstrable that if we assume capillary attraction, or the attraction up- 34° CHAPTER XVI. wards of fluids iu minute tubes of matter of greater density than themselves — a fact which may be made visible to the senses, and a motion the result of other forces upwards — then it is mathematically certain that, their combined force must form a spiral on the surface of the curve, which may be called the solid hyperbola, hav- ing the centre of the capillary tube for an axis. The rise continues, and if any regular disturbance whatever occurs, the particles must rise in a spiral, at the same time that they rise in an hyperbola. The particles are gradually absorbed into the growing plant, but their course is clear and manifest, as an hyperbolic spiral, or a spiral traced on a solid hyperbola. And the symmetry of the plant is the result. Such, then, is the course of the planets — an ellipse converted by disturbances into an undulating spiral! Such, also, is the course of growth in every plant, and of any particle of that plant which grows in capillary tubes ! Its course is in an hyperbola converted by disturbances into a spiral or slightly contorted wave ; but stiU an hyperbola in form, becoming a spiral by motion. Such, then, is the course of the vital fluids in the human nerves, and in every animal and in every plant — ^in every organism that possesses liquids moving and growing in capillary tubes. As the planets move in ellipses, so, I think, the particles of all organised bodies move in hyperbolas. In both cases, to our minds, the effect of the disturbance from forces not connected with their supposed primeval force, or their vital force, is simply to alter the motion slightly into a spiral, without in the least affecting the original ellip- tical or hyperbolical motion. Plants grow in hyperbolical spirals. Planets move iu MATTER — SYMMETRY. 341 elliptical spirals ! And the one is quite as certain as the other, to any one who admits both capillary attraction — the attraction of imponderable atoms ; and the attrac- tion of gravity — the attraction of ponderables. But some timid believer wiU. exclaim : Why, this is materialism ! If your theory can.be true, the positivists and Spiuosists and Hegelians must be right ; and all organic nature, including man himself, is only one great machine of material undulations in elliptic and hyper- bolic spirals, vibrating, like the disturbances of the planetary system, in secular ages of thousands of mil- lions of years ! But this is again confounding mind and matter, and confusing the laws of the human body with the laws of the human soul and spirit. If, then, we divide external matter into organised and unorganised; we find that unorganised matter is subject to form and Symmetry in space ; but organised matter is subject to both motion and form, combined, that is, to Symmetry in space, and also to Harmony in time. As chemists or philosophers investigating unorganised matter, we must search for forms — the angles and sym- metry of crystallisation — ^the relation of each kind of unorganised matter to heat, light, electricity, and magnet- ism, and must strive to measure by number, time, and space the angles and forms of crystallisation, the tem- perature of its three forms of solid, liquid, and gaseous states ; in short, we must search for its freezing and its boiling points ; and all its allotropic forms under the influences of light, electricity, and magnetism, and for its expansive and other /orces, when brought into rela- tions with other matter, either organised or unorganised ; but always reducing all our observations, as far as pos- 342 CHAPTER XVI. sible, to number, space, and time, and to weight, or its relation or attraction to the globe we live on. Thus we have to search for symmetrical forms, and for measur- able /orces or correlations in unorganised matter. But, as natural philosophers investigating organised matter, we have to search not only for form and sym- metry in the organism, but also for its motion or law of growth ; and the constant motion and form combined will -give us a curve. We have therefore to search for the curve which fulfils both its form of symmetry and its motion of ^owth — in short, as I conceive, the angle and amount of its tortion or twist, in proportion to, or in harmony with, its symmetrical parts. If I am right in supposing that the symmetry of every plant and some or most animals may be always included in some hyperbola, then we must strive and measure the angle of that hyperbola as being a fixed angle for each distinct genus or species, and also its spiral tortion, which must depend on its law of motion or growth. But we have also that difficult subject of temperature in plants and animals, for the measurement of which, as well as of angles and tortious, we have very inefficient instruments for investigating such minute variations and changes. But all must be reduced to number, space, and time, if we seek for accu- rate science, and if heat be motion, there must be some correlation between its temperature and the law of growth in every organism. But we cannot observe till we have a theory, nor ob- serve truly without a true theory. We must begin with a theory, and then must measure by number, space, and time to test our theory. But observations and experi- ments concerning matter, not accurately reduced to number, space, and time — to order, correlation, symmetry MATTER — SYMMETRY. 343 and harmony — are useless. We must have accurate latiguage before we can have true science. The thoughts or words which define and limit the class, and become thereby the definition of the word, are, as we have shown, the recognised likenesses or resemUcmces which each unit of the class must have to every other unit, or is supposed and admitted to have, in the discus- sion — ^their acknowledged states and relations, in which they all resemble, or are supposed to resemble each other. But nature is not bound by our definitions, and in nature perhaps there are very few absolute lines to be drawn, or perhaps none. An infant newly bom, or an idiot, is not less than a man because they are devoid of reason ; but that is no sufficient reason for refusing to call man a rational animal. Nor could we very easily find the limit at which a planet becomes so small as to be treated and thought of merely as an aerolite, nor what amount of density would make a comet turn into a planet. But stni the thoughts or words which define any assumed word, are the perceived or assumed resemblances of the individuals. Not one, but all the individuals must possess all the likenesses assumed or discovered ; and the difficulty in science always is, to fix upon those resem- blances which are most essential — that is, which are such, that without them, the mind refuses to number the individual with the class. Some men's minds seize on one, and some on another resemblance, and each thinks his own idea essential, and the other non-essential. But that, must ever remain very loose and inaccurate science, which is contented with types and loose notions wholly unfixed, founded on some individual assumed as the type of the class. Man, or the man of science, in natural objects, should not be contented with a type, but 344 CHAPTER XVI. is bound to search for the likenesses, or resemhlances, in nwnber, time, and space — such, for example, as one- lobed and ^wo-lobed seeds, which in natural botany give us plants whose growth is quite distinct ; the one, or monocotyledons, growing within, like palm-trees and onions ; the other, or dicotyledons, growing and increas- ing without, like oak-trees and beans — endogens and exogens ; to which we must add those with no seeds or unknown seeds, acrogens and cryptogens and, perhaps, dictogens, as science improves her means of observation. But any sort of numerical classification, however, such as the Linnsean system, is better than loose type classification, and affords greater convenience to the memory; though it affords little information to the mind, unless we happen to have seized on some true natural analogy which brings together into the same class indi- viduals with many resemblances, such as the number and position and form of the teeth in vertebrate animals, and one and two lobed seeds in plants. Then we find that though, in general, nature does not work by jumps or leaps, yet that there are some remarkable analogies attached to such numbers ia nature, such as, for example, the jump from plants which grow in the middle to plants which grow on the exterior. One cannot be two, nor two one, nor outside inside ; but there may be plants which grow every way, or from points, buds, and gener- ation ; but such examples as Cuvier's remarkable pre- diction of a marsupial animal from examining a single jawbone, teach us that our business as men of science is to search for and to measure numerical, symmetrical, and harmonious correlations between the parts of every organism. But the great source from which classification may MATTER — SYMMETRY. 345 properly- proceed is, I think, symmetry for organised bodies, and the accurate measurement in space for un- organised matter — the exact angles which certain crystals tend to adopt, and the temperature at crystal- lisation and vaporisation ; the exact angles and pro- portions — in short, the hyperbolic spirals — which plants tend to adopt, and the specific temperature, if possible, as well as the numerical relations of the branches and leaves and parts of leaves, and fruit and flowers, phyl- lotaxis, &c., and, if possible, the measured proportions of its growth in time and space, in length and breadth and height — these alone, give certain ground for true classi- fication. Until we can find and measure fully, some accurate relations in number, time, and space in the individual unit, we have not yet read Nature's language properly and scientifically, and we have not yet reached a natural class ; for the great Architect does not work at random, but with definite numbers, spaces, and times, sym- metrical forms and harmonious motions. And number, space, and time, are out only sources of scientific Truth and Certainty. But nothing can be more false or illogical than to suppose this inconsistent with the powers of mind over matter. For all -Minds must work in accord with some laws of the Creator. All nature is full of numerical and symmetrical mar- vels yet to be discovered, and harmonies and analogies which, when found out, wiU astonish by their beauty and simplicity ; and men hereafter will wonder at our blindness, as we wonder that the distinction between endogens and exogens, between aqueous and igneous rocks, &c., should have lain hid so long from men's eyes and understandings. Therefore I say to observers. 346 CHAPTER XVI. measure, measure, observe, observe, by number, time, and space, as did Kepler and as did Newton, as bave done all gi'eat discoverers in natural science — measure, measure, calculate, calculate ; for the great Mecbanic of tbe universe does not make mistakes in number, time, and space, but follows the laws of accurate mathematics. But observations and measurements, without thought and comparison and reflection and judgment, are of little use. It is the thought and reflection and judgment which form the science, not the observation or the experiment. We neither know how to observe, nor how to experiment, till we have got some rational idea or theory. But in all cases we must go back to mind, matter, and language, and to number, time and space — to states or unities, to relations or pluralities. We must ask ourselves, are we speaking of a spirit, a body, or a mere word ? are we considering it in itself, as one and complete, or are we considering merely its relation to some other, and what, thing ? and on what fixed measurements or resemblances in number, time, and space, of the several individuals of the class, have we formed our classification — i.e., our de- finitions. Consider, for example, the relations between the sound of a cod-fish and the sound of a musical instrument. The resemblance is a trumpery accident of language, and merely a verbal question, though both things are material phenomena. But consider the relations be- tween the law of Moses and the law of gravity. Here the resemblance is not merely verbal, for both are verbal rules or orderly words laid down by a Lawgiver. But the subject of the one is mind, and human conduct or action ; the subject of the other, matter, and material action or attraction. The question whether the one was MATTER — SYMMETRY. 347 revealed to Newton, just as the other was revealed to Moses, is affected by the totally different natures of the subjects, mind and TrMtter. 1, Neither may have been revealed. 2, Both may have been revealed ; or, 3, One may have been so, and the other not. But it is mani- festly idle for three men to discuss such a question till they agree to argue either as materialists, or as idealists, or as symbolists ; for they are all three using mind and matter in different meanings ; the first thinking mind a state of matter, the second thinking matter a state of mind, the third holding both mind and matter to be dis- tinct as things, distinct as thoughts, as well as distinct words. But any definition of sound at once puts a stop to any possible discussion of the relations, between the sound of a cod-fish, and the sound of an organ. But a definition of the word law by no means puts an end to all relations between the laws of the Decalogue and the law of gravity, for both are laws in the same sense — viz., as verbal rules (or words X order) ; and there may be many more reasons for admitting the probability of the Supreme Mind revealing mental rules of human conduct, than of His revealing material laws of visible planets. But the sanction or punishment for violating the law of gravity with our bodies is generally immediate — a broken bone, perhaps, or only pain ; but the punish- ment for violating the laws of the Decalogue — theft, murder, adultery — is not immediate, but only prospec- tive, and is often escaped, so far as we can externally judge, in this world altogether. Thus, the future life of the soul comes directly in question in discussing the revelation of mental rules of virtue, but not in discus- sing the revelation of the laws of the material universa- 348 CHAPTER XVI, We must therefore always first ask, Is the thing in question a mental thing, a material thing, or only a verbal thing ? We must then search for material sym- metry or mental symmetry or verbal symmetry, for it is some resemblance, or some symmetry, which constitutes every class of objects. The source of all spatial symmetry, as I have said, is the curve hyperbola, which is also the curve that liquids assume in capillary tubes. The solids deposited or fixed in our nerves and brains, therefore, probably follow the laws of the hyperbola, affording to man that dim sense 6f symmetry which he perceives in nature. The hyperbola for space, and the harmonic scale for time, and divers numerical relations to man's senses, will probably afford many correlations, much more accurate, than any we have at present, amongst natural objects of growth, whether animal or vegetable. But the chief source of the knowledge and science of nature is, no doubt, the laws of undulations or vibrations, or of motion withoutprogress, and/or-m without fixity ! If it be asked what is meant by such language, I point to aU. the motions and forms of the universe be- fore our eyes. For tens of thousands, or perhaps mil- lions of ages, this planet of ours, has moved round and round the sun, but, so far as we at present know, has made no progress. Every particle of every wave or undulation of the air, of light, of the ocean, makes its circuit, and returns to its original position of rest, it moves but does not progress. Yet the wave or undula- tion, which is itself a form, progresses through the ocean of air, or light, or water ; for each particle of the wave, though it has moved without progressing, has moved some other particle to take a similar course. MATTER — SYMMETRY. 349 and return again to its first position. All the particles of a wave are in this state of motion without progress ; and the undulation itself is a form without fixity. The wave or undulation is never the same at two consecutive instants of time, yet we can, if we please, measure the rate or rapidity of the motion of the wave through space ; and we can also, if we know the orbits of its particles, determine the depth, and height, and length, and breadth, and thickness of the undulation, and its maxima and minima, its greatest and least form or condition. Between these two limits it vibrates, never at two moments the same, a form without fixity in space, and in the abstract, a motion without progress in time; for each particle of the undulation performs its circuit, and returns to a state of rest. But yet, when the wave or undulation has passed on in space and time to other scenes and regions new, we can measure the progress of the waves through space, though every par- ticle of the medium has again returned to rest, and the undulation may have passed away for ever. Newton died ignorant of this law and its planetary applications, and believing that the variations or per- turbations of the universe, whose principal law he had himself discovered, must ultimately destroy the vast machine which he had developed ; but we now know, as far as we can know any such thing, that aU these perturbations have their secular limits in Time and Space, and then slowly return to their primeval state ; again, perhaps, with or without modifications, of which we can know nothing, to renew their course, extending over millions of millions of ages, without tending to destroy the machinery, so far as we can see, and under- stand its movements. All the motions of this great 350 CHAPTER XVI, uuiverse, so far as we know them, are, in fact, mere vibrations, pulsations, undulations, motions without pro- gress, ultimately destined, so far as we can judge, to return to their original states, ready to commence a new vibration or undulation at the command of their Maker, either the same or different, effected by pulsations, of which now we can know nothing, except only, our thoughts of their possibility, in the will of their Creator. But the stability of the universe is merely a mathe- matical idea, formed from our equations, or verbal ma- thematical expressions for the laws we have discovered. It is not a conclusion from induction ; for what can we know of the creation, or continuance of many such planetary systems, in order to draw such a conclusion about our one system ? But we deduce it from the very nature of the equations, the formulte, the general verbal expressions which we have been compelled to frame, in order, in words, signs, and symbols, to express the in- tuitively supposed relations of the few observations we have made ; and so have made our symbols reason for us. This is the true triumph of abstract symbols, when the piilsation of a planet, is not revealed to us by a tele- scope, but by & formula, by a few verbal symbols worked out by a mathematician in his closet, and then verified in the heavens above. Or when the fringed colours, dancing forms, in a minute ray of light passing through a crystal, are not discovered by the microscope, but by a meditative philosopher scanning a few a;'s or y's upon a piece of paper in his closet ; that is the triumph of language, of a formula, of symbolism carefully developed, from assumed self-evident axiom? concei'ning Motions and Forms ! ' . : . : ' : MATTER — SYMMETRY. 3SI Definition is the very soul of reasoning ; but until we have a theory we cannot make a definition. With it, well performed, we may scan the heavens, and sitting in our closets, predict the future of the universe. With- out it, we can do nothing ; and if Ul performed, we shall only flounder in confusion, and ambiguity or false- hood. He who neglects definition is as a mariner upon a dark ocean, without either compass or hope of observa- tion ; for till we can symbolically define what we seek for, even our best observations are utterly useless and misunderstood ! Some fundamental error in one defini- tion confuses and confounds all our mental reasoning and physical observation. The observer and experi- mentalist are utterly blind, until the mental intuition has given them the thought, the idea, which is the true clue, to some part of the meaning of what their eyes have looked upon, but which their inward eye has not beheld.* Let us explain a wave or undulation by a figure. AAA If we suppose A B an undulation producing the wave- lines X Y produced by a centre of force, c, whose maxi- * "Great masses of knowledge are daily perishing before our eyes without possibility of recovery, because our eyes are not open to them. On this account a theory is of so much more consequence in these sciences of observation than in those conducted by way of experiment. , . . In sciences of observation it is perhaps not using too strong an expression to assert that the Theory is the science."— Sir J. Herschel's 3S2 CHAPTER XVI. mum form is the sphere, or ellipsoid A B, and its mini- mum form the sphere, or ellipsoid a b, the motion without progress of the particles passing from a to A and 6 to B may evidently be any circular, elliptical, or other curve, returning into itself, and may vary from the perpendicu- lar right lines, which would form the polar wave at rest ; or from an elastic hall as a minimum, to a horizontal right line, which would represent the maximum rapidity of a vibration in the horizontal line ; and we must con- ceive this centre of elastic force expanding in all direc- tions, and collapsing in all directions, from the mini- mum a 6 to the maximum A B, with the progress on- ward of the curve, varying with, and producing, the forms of the wave-lines X Y. Then the particles of an elastic fluid have aU motion without progress, and the elastic wave A B has form without fixity in space or size ; for the wave itself, A B, may have any spherical, or even circular or elliptical and spiral form, continually vibrat- ing in thousands and millions of ways, as at D and E. But the resulting wave-line becomes a constant and fixed form for each variety of elastic motion; so that we have, as it were, a positive and fixed form of two wave- lines produced by motion without progress, and form without fixity, forming by the solid wave, or undula- tion, a series of spherical or eUipsoidical or other cells, of which a section in any plane are the wave-lines X Y. And on the one hand, being given the fixed forms, and times of the wave-lines, we might, as it were, possibly re- integrate and deduce therefrom, the vibrating motions 'Essays on Terrestrial Magnetism,' p. 66. "Within the period of re- corded observation the magnetic needle has passed from 11° east of the true meridian to 24° west in London and Paris. But we have not half investigated the magnetic effects of rotation, hefore a centre of magnetic force, either with solids, or with fluids enclosed in solids. MATTER — SYMMETRY. 353 and forms which were adapted to produce such fixed wave-lines; and on the other hand, being given the orbits or motions without progress of the particles, and the undulations or forms without fixity, which they produce, we might deduce the wave-lines and the alter- nate form of cell produced thereby in plastic matter. It is evident, also, that a variation in the orbits of the particles might produce an undulation spherical in its general appearance, yet covered with spiral or other net- work of infinite variety ; and the resulting cell or wave- lines would be like the impress from a die of infinitely varied forms, and the cell itself just like a mould from which an elastic gutta-percha ball is cast, covered with spiral or other lines in relief upon the surface of the sphere, producing infinite and various symmetry in the ultimate memorial cells, produced in the brain; and the laws of light show that our minds are so constituted as to be able to weigh, measure, and appreciate forms and motions inconceivably small — for numbers of millions give us no actual conception of size. And the time may possibly come when astronomers wiU have to think of the earth and planets not only as mere par- ticles of matter, performing complicated spirals in im- mense undulations, between their ecliptic limits of variation; but the law of gravity itself as consisting of both attraction and repulsion, and as only a particular instance of the laws of light, heat, electricity, and mag- netism. But without measured facts such thoughts are idle speculations. But the moon, also, considered in reference to the earth and sun, and without regarding the variations and irre- gularities which only complicate without altering the principle, illustrates the doctrine of undulations ; and, in z 354 CHAPTER XVI. reference to earth and sun, she may be said to move in a spii-al wave-line. The moon moves round the earth in an ellipse, but just as if she was attached to the earth, by an elastic spoke of a- wheel, which wheel may be considered as her orbit, in form an ellipse, but so nearly a circle that, upon the scale of this page, the difference is inappreciable. Now, if the sun {vide Frontispiece, wpper figwre) be the centre, and the outer circle be the line which joins aU. the positions of full moons, and the inner circle the line which joins all the positions of new moons ; the orbit of the moon may be conceived as a wheel or small cycle, as shown at /, rolling round between these two curves thirteen times in every year, but pulled after, or pushed before, the earth alternately in every month as the earth pursues its annual course at the rate of 1100 miles in a minute — i. e., while the earth pursues its own orbit once round the sun between the curves, dragging the wheel with it, the moon goes round like the spoke of such a wheel about, thirteen times. Now, if we suppose the wheel to roll from left to right, on the inside of the outer curve, the path would be retrograde, like the moons of Uranus, and would form a sort of cycloldal curve,* with sharp points or cusps at the full moons ; but if we sup- pose the wheel to roll from left to right on the outside of the inner curve, the path would be direct like our moon, and the cycloidal curve would be reversed, and the sharp points, or cusps, would be at new moons, as * A cycloid is the curve which a point in the circumference of a wheel takes through the air as the wheel rolls along the ground, and has many curious qualities ; but the hreadth of the moon's orbit is only the 400th part of the breadth of the earth's orbit ; so that on the scale of the curves in the frontispiece, the space between the outer and inner curves of new and full moons would be scarcely visible, or less than the 160th of an inch. MATTER — SYMMETRY. 355 both are shown in the upper figure; and the real path of the moon is a wave-line, always concave to the sun, produced by this cycloidal motion from new moon to fuU moon, and from full moon to new moon, all round, combined with its much faster motion round the sun, following the earth in its orbit, but varying according to many other inequalities. Of course, as the earth moves onward in its annual orbit round the sun, the moon is sometimes ahead and sometimes behind the earth in its course, and is dragged behind or pushed forward accordingly. But its course through space may be represented as a cycloidal wave produced by an epi- cycle rolling on a cycle flying round the sun ; and this illustrates how the facts and experiences on which the Ptolemaic system of cycles and epicycles, was buUt up, are embraced by the system of Copernicus. For it is evident that as the earth E moves in its orbit round the sun from left to right, the moon has to move from n to /, and back again from / to n — from new moon to full moon, and from full moon to new moon, backwards and forwards, all round the annual cycle, in some kind of wave-Hue always con- tained within the breadth of its own orbit; but more like the concave undulations of elongated cycloids pulled out nearly straight, than like the bell-shaped waves which the smalhiess of the scale has compelled our artist to draw in the lower figure. And if, as is probable, the sun moves round some unknown centre, the earth also must move in some other wave-line, of which the breadth of the earth's orbit is the latitudinal limits — -just as the breadth of the moon's orbit is the latitudinal limits of the wave-line above described, be- tween the positions of new and full moons respectively. 356 CHAPTER XVI. But then it is also evident that the moon's orhit does not come to a sharp cusp or full stop either at new or full moon; for the moon's orbit is so small, that if rolled round thirteen times like a wheel, it would only roU about one-thirtieth part of its course round the sun ; and accordingly the spoke, by which we suppose the moon attached to the earth, is pulled behind the earth, and pushed before the earth alternately, every fourteen days, by some force unknown to the astrono- mers, for all the other twenty-nine parts of its annual orbit. Therefore at full and new moon the moon's own proper motion, produced by this unknown force, ope- rates at right angles to the attractions of both the earth iand the sun. But the inclination of the plane of the moon's orbit, and the retrograde motion of its nodes, and divers inequalities in the moon's motion, make the undulation into a waving spiral; and its motion becomes a flat spiral wam-Une, forming a wave about 480,000 miles high, the breadth of the moon's orbit; and a spiral some 40,000 miles wide, double its inclination to the ecliptic, and passing, twice every month, through the plane of the earth's centre of gravity. Now human words, though the scale be less, are in all respects, undulations or vibrations of particles in fluid or aeriform mediums, such as we have attempted to describe; and fixed resulting wave-line cells may be supposed to be formed in the plastic cellular matter of the brain, and may be laid up in the human memory as in a storehouse,'"for future use and employment ; and thus may the winged words of folly or of wisdom be stereotyped upon the human brain — as signs and sym- bols, the meanings of which the Spirit has stored up in the Soul, either for its own instruction and edificatioui or to its own destruction and ruin. MATTER — SYMMETRY. 357 But observe also, that the undulations received from without into the nervous medium, whether they be like an electric wire or like a fluid conduit pipe, may be, and must be, in fact, more or less affected in their passage through that bodily medium and by its plastic forces ; and the resulting wave-lines or brain-cells will be hyperboli- cally modified by that nervous medium, just as that nervous medium itself may have been modified by the actions and words of the spirit which governs it. And thus the wave-line of truth, which nature's harmony would impress, may be corrupted and defiled in the soul and body itself, by the wilful actions of the body ; and the spirit is not instructed in the truth, by reason of the approaches to the soul, having been obliterated, ob- structed, or defiled by the bodily actions, words, signs, and symbols, directed by the spirit itself, which may have been invented, or knowingly adopted by the in- dividual against truth and good conscience. Thus true words, which move and impress the right- eous and conscientious, and lead them to the truth, fall unheeded, or perverted by the wilful self-corruption of the wicked, and are recorded by his own words refusing to accept or acknowledge, what he might have known to be the truth, when duly offered for acceptance ; and his words of refusal go forth from the human spirit into the outer universe, and are there recorded tiU. the Day of Judgment, wherein the truth shall be made manifest ; and his Spirit may be then convicted, by his own words, of that self-inflicted mental obliquity, which he has ex- hibited in and by his own wilful choice of symbols in order to confuse and confound the truth. We must ever remember that there is no greatness or littleness with God, or in ITature as known to Him. Light is an admirable and most wonderful instrument, 35 8 CHAPTER XVI. and, as we now know, can detect the ten millionth part of a grain of any substance, if it exist in a given solu- tion ; hut what is physical light itself in comparison with the infinite knowledge of the Searcher of Hearts ? We are lost in astonishment at the miracles of spectrum analysis ; hut what are they, to the weighing of the human soxil, the reading of every cloud that has passed across the mind, and has been weighed in unequal scales by the wicked spirit of a man 1 But God knows all, and the self-chosen balances, with which our spirits have weighed each idea, and each suggestion, and each motive, will be fully exhibited and brought to light in the words, which we have wilfully chosen for ourselves, in order to confuse the truth, and to satisfy our own souls, in refusing to admit it as Truth, or to follow it out, though we knew and felt it to be the Truth. But when we have reached the furthest limits and most delicate vibrations of matter; although they may help us to conceive and comprehend the subtle laws to which the human soul may be subject; we are yet, as far off as ever, from an abstract thought, an idea, or the secret and mental meanings of our words ; aU of which are dependent on the free will and arbitrariness of man's never-dying Spirit, treating both his Soul and his Body as his slaves and instrimients, either in order to attain some object which he chooses to say shall be his own ; or to worship some idol that he sets before his mind, as an object of passion, prejudice, or desire ; or of beauty, goodness, or Truth. CHAPTER XVII. THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. PuEE mind is Spirit — God alone — incomprehensible, eternal, immortal, invisible, the blessed and only Poten- tate, above the highest heavens, and beyond the farthest star, and yet not far from any of us ; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being ; and without doubt He is to be found by us, if we seek Him diligently, as the one only true God, the Creator of all matter, and of aU inferior minds, who is no respecter of persons, in any place or nation. But of Him we are not here, in dis- cussing Symbolism, called on to speak or write at all — for of Him no true symbol can or should be made ; and yet every thought and word and deed, every sign and symbol, should be in devoted and happy submission to his Almighty Power. But until we have formed some distinct notion or conception of man's mind, and have framed words to express it, we cannot rationally discuss either man's state here — i.e., his politics, or relations to other men; nor his relations with God, and possible state hereafter — i.e,., his religion. The materialist, of course, starts with the assumption that man has nothing properly called mind, and is only organised matter — i. e., he assumes that his mind is a state of matter, a " flux,'' " series," or " current," depending only on the action of beef or 360 CHAPTER XVII. rice, potatoes or maize, the foggy and depressing effects of delta or bog, the elevated imaginations or supersti- tious fears of high hills and mountains, of storms and sunshine, of earthquakes and rocks ; or else on the effects of opium and whisky, of tea or tobacco, &c., all acting materially as the prime agents in producing his state here — i. e., his science, civilisation, and politics ! But as to any imaginary hopes of hereafter — i. e., as to his religion, or personal relation with God — on these prin- ciples, it were as reasonable to speak of the religion of a cultivated sensitive plant, or of an improved and civilised race of pigs ! With such men — the rationalist and positive philoso- phers of the day — the believers in universal Law, and deniers of all miracles as being impossibilities — it is logically absurd to reason from the Jewish or Christian assumption that man is a spirit — a person with spiritual relations to a personal God ; or that he is a being who can love the Lord his God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength (Matt. xii. 30) ; or (which is starting with St Paul's assumption) that each man is compounded, not of matter only, but of body, soul, and spirit, as three distinct parts of every man who breathes (1 Thess. V. 23).* They practically deny a priori the existence of mind or spirit, distinct from matter. * 1 do not think that St Paul differed from Jesus. A man's "strength " is no part of the man, hut rather that predisposition and Power which he can choose, and seek and find for himself, and out of himself, if he pleases — that which is poured in or upon, or which he has had given to him within, from without, (o-xui ; and the "heart" and "soul" and "mind" of Jesus are the same as the "body," "soul," and "spirit" of Paul, but considered in their several relations to God and man ; for God can read the heart and soul and mind, all secret and within, but man must guess at both the internal soul and invisible spirit through the visible sensible body, by its actions and words. THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 36 1 But we must assume some self-evident conception, or aodom about mind before we can possibly reason about it [ante, p. 192). Mind is self-evident ; but what is mind, and -what is self-evident about it 1 I say that it is self- evident that man's mind is invisible; but consists of two parts — a soul, subjective — i. e., subject to laws and powers and influences ; and a spirit, free from and above all laws and powers and influences whatever, made in the image of God its Creator, and only limited by the passions and weaknesses of the body and soul to which it is tied, and over which it can rule absolutely, accord- ing to their capacities. I say that the distinction of body, soul, and spirit in each man is self-evident. Now it seems to me impossible to understand the most ordinary phenomena of a man's own mind, unless we adopt and acknowledge this division of his mind into soul and spirit. There is a part of a man's mind which is emotional and subjective — subject to some laws like the body, and not wholly free like the Spirit, which last can either yield or resist, even to the death. The soul stands between the body and the spirit. It possesses intellectual perceptions, emotional desires, and spiritual sentiments, subject nevertheless to certain laws or rules from which it cannot escape, any more than the body can escape from hunger, thirst, growth, decay, and organised action, while life remains. So there are in the soul analogous or corresponding desires and neces- sary impressions and actions, over which man's Spirit has not absolute control. His soul and spirit are both imprisoned in a subject body, but his spirit is also im- prisoned in a subjective soul. The phenomena of logic and rhetoric, of inference and persuasion, of patriotism, enthusiasm, fanaticism, &c., are wholly unintelligible to 362 CHAPTER XVII. my mind, without I assume this division of the human mind into soul and spirit. Just as I divide man him- self into body and mind, so I find myself necessarily compelled to divide mind — the human mind — into soul and spirit. But it is simply absurd, and a waste of time, to rea- son with any opponent, from a fundamental assumption which he denies and contradicts. You must first prove to such a man that there is such a thing in man as mind or soul or spirit — that there is a thing distinct from the organised, ponderable, gravitating, chemically-acting, or life-possessing body — a thing consisting of something more than a "flux," or a " series," or a " current," — some- thing more than a mere state of the gravitating or che- mical particles of the human body, obeying the laws of vital chemistry, or of electro-biology, or the influence of the Sun ! But we have from the beginning assumed the distinction of body and mind as clearly self-evident; and now we must assume the like distinction of soul and spirit ; for we think these also self-evident. But I have already observed that the materialist, who denies the independence or distinction of mind, is best answered logically by an appeal to the meanings of his own words ! What are his words ? — say motions ,and forms in his brain. Well, then, what are the mean- ings of his words ? Are the meanings of his words also motions and forms, or, as the symbolist must say, other words 1 The meanings of his words cannot be material, but must be mental— ^not a current, but the forms of a current — and man must necessarily possess a mind dis- tinct from his body, to apprehend and comprehend these forms, or else his words have no meanings ! :'' What then, however, is the sfirit which directs and THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 363 animates and gives force to both the words and their meanings within the man's brain, and within reach of his spiritual influence ; and what occasions the ordinary phenomena of earnest reason, or powerful eloquence? Is not this Spirit ? These mental meanings, which we all perceive and acknowledge, are a thing quite distinct from matter, and from all its forms and motions, mechani- cal and chemical and vital; they are states and rela- tions of these forms and motions ; but they have a Spirit of their own. To deny that this spirit of our words — this life or animation of the mind — is a thing distinct, animating our words and meanings, our intelli- gence, emotions, and sentiments, appears to me a clear denial of the most obvious fundamental facts of human nature, considered as distinct from animal nature. We thus arrive at an ultimate fact, the existence in the human mind of an animating Spirit, quite superior to the mere subjective or intelligent and emotional soul; to deny the existence of which must appear to every rational man, as I think, a self-contradiction. Thus haAdng reached the distinction of body and mind as distinct things, by considering the meanings of our words ; so we reach the distinction of soul and spirit, so as to divide man into the three distinct parts — body, soul, and spirit, by considering the animating spirit with which those meanings, as emotions and sentiments in the soul, are received and dealt with. It seems to me, I repeat, quite impossible to explain either the actions of ourselves and others, or the most obvious facts of human history, relating to enthusiasm, fanaticism, mysticism, patriotism, &c., without this dis- tinction of soul and spirit as two distinct parts of the invisible mind of man. There are not only men of one 364 CHAPTER XVII. idea, as it has been humorously called, but there are classes, professions, sects, tribes, nations, peoples, and tongues, who have adopted some certain thoughts, ideas, words, phrases, principles, the true understanding of which is of the very essence of human history. But it remains aU. unintelligible until we assume in man a subjective smol and a free and governing spirit ; and aU historians practically assume this. None of us, perhaps, are altogether free from these idols of the soul, which seem to adhere to and pollute the human mind — these fixed ideas, conceptions, thoughts, axioms, principles, as they are usually termed — the shib- boleths of all parties, professions, sects, peoples, and nations — ^which yet are only words; but yet they adhere to, and either corrupt, or invigorate, or influence the humau mind, and all human action. But surely it is not the spirit made in the image of God that is affected by them — it is not the Spirit that is affected by false principles and axioms; but it must be — ^that physical organism — that part of the human mind itself,, to which we give the name of soul, as distinct from spirit. It is not the body of man, or the spirit made in the image of God, but it is that intermediate spiritual organ- ism, the soul, which is affected and influenced by these enthusiastic, or fanatical, or mystical, or patriotic, or false idols of party, or sect, or tribe, or nation. The fact exists, and is admitted by all, and no rational ex- planation of the fact can, I think, be given, without postulating an organism — a distinct existence — part of and within man ; neither his body nor his spirit, but his Soul — a mental organism within the man — called soul both by Paul and by Jesus Christ; and which THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 365 irnist be admitted by all men wbo desire to speak or reason rationally and intelligibly concerning man's Mind. Let lis illustrate this by an example, which is unfortu- nately too common, and too easUy found in all classes of society ; and we will adopt the description given by an able physician. But we must try and keep, if pos- sible, in our minds, distinct thoughts of the hrain, — which is vibrating, undulating, ponderable matter — the soul, — which I conceive to be an emotional and intel- lectual and sentimental organism of imponderable mat- ter, subject to mental perceptions and impulses, and not always vibrating in accord with the pulses, either of the brain or the body, but still subject to mental laws little understood; and third, the governing, or what should be the governing, spirit, — wholly incomprehensible, and made in the image of its Maker, but ever ready to speak of my Soul and my Body. " The higher class of animals have, like man, a special apparatus for harmoniously combining all the machinery of the body — a central telegraph-office — ^the seat of the will and of conscious- ness. This is the brain and nervous system. It is in the brain that those changes take place which are coincident with desire and aversion, and of all other changes in the consciousness. K the brain is sufficiently injured, the man becomes unconscious ; but for all that the soul may not cease to act — it certainly does not cease to exist. But we know nothing of it except as it is manifested through the body, so that we have to investigate the conditions of the brain if we would know the state of the soul. Now under ordinary circumstances we know nothing of the working of each particular organ [of the body], nor even their existence. It is only physiological science that teaches us the existence and structure and functions of these organs. Without this, man knows nothing of his heart,- or lungs, or stomach, or brain ; nor need he, so long as all goes on harmoniously. So soon, however, as disease or disorder takes place, the play of the organs is revealed ; he must eat the bitter fruit of the tree of 366 CHAPTER XVII. knowledge, and he now not only knows that he has organs, but he also finds out that he must seek and obtain a knowledge of the method, by which the divine Artificer has constructed them, and the duties he has allotted to each, if he would get relief from pain. This is medical knowledge. Medicine is therefore one of the blessings which God has given to fallen man to alleviate the consequences of the primal curse." "No systems of speculative philosophy which leave the functions of the brain out of consideration ever have been or can be truly practical — that is, available to the moral and spiritual elevation of man, or to the relief of his infirmity and diseases of body and mind. Yet the whole question, thus evaded, rests for its solution upon one simple intelligible principle. When the brain works as the organ of the mind in accordance with the will of God — that is, either intellectually or morally, a pleasant state of the consciousness is felt. That is the state of a good conscience — [love], hope, joy. Under the contrary circumstances, an un- pleasant or painful state occurs — that is, an evil conscience — [horror or hatred}, anxiety, sorrow. But these changes in the corporeal organs may also occur from mere material causes. It may work feebly, languidly, imperfectly, and as a consequence pain is felt. But it is stiU mental pain — ^the only kind of pain the brain itseK can feel. " Headaches are not in the brain, it is believed, but ia the mem- branes covering it. Now the commonest, of this hodUy mental pain, is the so-caUed depression of spirits ; the more diseased and the more permanent, is shown in the various forms of insanity called Tnelancholia. It was from such a bodily mental pain, dependent on a morbid state of brain, that the late lamented Hugh Miller perished [by his own hand]. He experienced misery so intolerable that he could endure existence no longer. Strange fact in the history of human nature, that the organ which is exempt from the acute pain of the ordinary kind [the man does not feel his brain cut and sliced] should, when thus diseased, be the source of inexpressible anguish ! Such a state is common to aU over-stimulation, and the consequent debility. It consti- tutes the 'horrors' of the drunkard — a state of agony so over- whelming that language fails to describe it ; but drunkards have said that fear of no consequences, however terrible, would avail to turn them from seeking an immediate relief from it by wine." * * Professor Thos. Laycock's Leot. , p. 11-13. THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 367. I am incompetent to improve on tliis description of the connection between brain and mind, or of a very nnbappy but notoriously true state of body and mind. But here we have the body and the soul in actual contact, or mutual action and reaction — the soul over- come by the body, yet the spirit spiritually free, know- ing and feeling at the very moment of the last plunge — into eternity or into drunkenness — its own freedom and responsibility, yet, as was falsely said of Job, " ready " to curse God to His face ; or to take the last plunge, even into eternity — the slave of some evil spirit ! It is utterly impossible to explain or even understand such struggles of the conscience, of which many other examples will occur to every reader, without assuming the distinction between soul and spirit — a subjective impressionable soul, conscious of its own existence and mental powers, but distinct and separate, both from the body and from the spirit, which often loses its control of both body and soul. The brain, as matter, cannot look into itseK as the soul, the intellect, emotion, and con- science can do ; and the soul is not the spirit, which finds its control gone and lost over its own soul ! The dis- tinction, therefore, of body, soul, spirit, as three distinct parts of man, is, I think, clear and self-evident. But it may be asked. Is in such case the wiU free ? The materialist answers, " Certainly not ! it never was ! " The idealist can only say, " God knows ! " The symbolist answers, " Certainly! the spirit was free, but the soul was enslaved ! " But how enslaved ? I answer, to a false material spirit — the spirit of wine, of ether, of opium, of tobacco, for example, possessing powers over the body. The living body becomes so penetrated that the soul becomes entirely enslaved to the material spirit. 368 CHAPTER XVII. Now observe that alcohol, ether, and the fumes of opium and tobacco, &c., are such that they do not undergo bodily digestion, and so far, are free from the ordinary laws of the human body and its life. Brandy or ether introduced into the specific heat of the human organisation evaporates at once or gradually, and at once penetrates the tissues of the whole human body ; and so the fumes of opium or tobacco more or less penetrate the bodily tissue, and produce effects on the human organisation — effects (if I may so speak) independent of the ordinary laws of animal nourishment. For example, alcohol introduced into the stomach is instantly or so quickly evaporated that in a few seconds it is more or less found penetrating the whole body, and evapor- ating from the lungs and from the skin ! The gas of alcohol and the gas of ether, and, no doubt, also the fumes of opium, tobacco, and other stimulating drugs, obey laws superior to the laws of human bodily life ; they approach nearer to the nature of pure Spirit, and help metaphorically to teach us, by their operation on the human body, the possible operation of good or evil spirits upon the human soul — perhaps pleasant at first, and possibly even useful, if good ; but if evil, dangerous demons ! — if the spirit and the soul, or if the soul alone, surrenders to them its superiority, its power over the Body; or its own individuality, its freedom, its wUl. To deny the existence of spirits superior in their powers to man is both to contradict the whole analogy of nature, and to curtail the omnipotence and powers of the Creator ; and it is also in direct opposition to the whole history of mankind. We may well smile at and despise superstitious terrors, without violating reason and curtailing the powers of the Creator. But we are THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 369 not here discussing so wide a question, but only estab- lisbing the distinct parts of a man's mind — his sub- jective Soul — ^his free and governing Spirit. All that we know of human nature^ — of our bodies and our minds — therefore, requires that we should distinguish the two parts of the human mind — a soul — as I conceive, an organism of imponderable matter, such as light, heat, electricity, and magnetism exhibit to our senses, — and some higher principle, a spirit, made in the image of God Himself, incomprehensible, but for ever and ever combined and connected with matter, or some of its forms, as body and soul combined. The mind of man, therefore, to me appears, as it did to St Paul, to be composed of soul and spirit, of which the most reasonable and probable explanation seems to be, that the soul is an organism composed of some im- ponderable matter ; and that the spirit is made in the image of God the Creator, and wholly incomprehen- sible. The spirit of a man knoweth the internal and individual and unknown things of the spirit of man within him — as St Paul says, " no man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man that is in him." But our spirits are to our souls, as our souls are to our bodies ; and our souls are certainly organisms, and sub- ject to certain laws. Just as our living bodies are sub- ject to some only, of the laws of ponderable matter ; so our living souls may be subject to some of the laws of imponderable matter. To understand, therefore, the history of man, his past, present, and future career, we must assume, postulate, and demand his three parts as "body," "soul," and "spirit," or "heart," "soul," and "mind." In relation to the great invisible God, who can read the heart and 2 a 370 CHAPTER XVII. thougiits and intention, they are all three invisible and secret— they are "heart," "soul," and "mind ;" but in relation to other men, one is visible and two invisible ; and thus we must speak of our body, soul, and spirit. We must worship God, therefore, with aU the strength of our heart and soul and mind ; but we may act on our feUow-men with aU the strength of our body, soul, and spirit, subject to the physical circumstances and mental influences by which we are surrounded, and by which the whole man and his relations may be and are more or less affected. Without this distinction, man's history on earth is a chaos of confusion. The positive rationalist and materialist are, therefore, fundamentally wrong and self-contradictory on this sub- ject in denying spirit altogether; they are refuted by the meanings of their own words ; and the idealist and the conceptualist are ambiguous and confused, either in denying the body, and confounding the letter and the spirit, or ia confusing together the body, soul, and spirit. The triple distiactions of mind, matter, and language — of spirits, bodies, and words — as the true parts or division of the wnimrse; and the like distinction of body, soul, and spirit, as the true parts or division of man ; alone afford, as we think, a safe and sound foun- dation for our reasoning, either concerning the universe of matter without us, or concerning the history of mankind, or concerning the universe of mind within ourselves. Man's mind, therefore, consists of a soul and a spirit ■■ — a spirit incomprehensible and wholly non-material — a free wiU or free mind — made in the image of God ; and a soul or organised being, which dwells in our cra- nio-nervous system, possessing certain powers and capa- cities and feelings and sympathies, subject to some laws. THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 371 aiid possibly composed, of that imponderable matter of whicli light, heat, and electricity and magnetism, are varied phenomena. But our souls are certainly, I think, organised beings, and subject to certain subjective laws, affected by other spiritual beings, and, as I conceive^ nourished or fed by signs, symbols, words, and simili- tudes, influenced by sympathies, and possibly, corrupted and injured by excesses in wilful sympathy, with some one or more of the many "isms" — spiritualism, fanati- cism, patriotism, &c. &c. And it is not in the least un- reasonable, to attribute such powers and influences, which we see and feel to be incapable of material measure- ments, as being caused by Spirits, either worse or better than mankind. We " know not what spirit we are of," and we must " try the spirits whether they be of God." But our bodies may be overcome and controlled by ma- terial spirits or gases, as well as our souls may be over- come by false words and false symbols and false Spirits, if our spirit wilfully yields its independence ! The soul is itself, moreover, a trinity in unity of emotion, intellect, and wiU combined in one, and stiU always presided over, and governed by its immortal spirit ! Almost all metaphysical writers have perceived and acknowledged the triple distinction of sense, under- standing, reason — feelings, perceptions, and sentiments ; or, as I call them, emotion, intellect, and wiU — ^the three departments, or constituents, of the human soul. Unless, therefore, we separate the soul firstly from the grosser gravitating and chemically-acting matter, the hod]/, in which it is lodged, and secondly, from the superior presiding and governing Spirit, absolutely free, which rules the whole body and the whole mental spirit, but which, in itself, is subject to no laws, we cannot ra- 372 CHAPTER XVII. tionally understand, or explain intelligibly, many of the most obvious of the phenomena of man's mind. Take, for another example, the triple generalisation, which is chiefly intellectual, and neither sentimental nor religious — 1st, The generalisation of many qualities and powers into one object, like the colour, form, smell, &c., of a rose into one rose — that is, mere emotion or perceptivity in the mind or soul ; 2d, there is the second generalisation of many different colours, many different forms, and divers smells of many divers roses, into the one class of roses — that is, the intellectual thought or internal activity, the perception, by the will, to perceive and think all these many resemblances, and to classify all these emotions into one thought. But, 3d, there is lastly the general intellectual combination or generalisa- tion of aU the emotions and thoughts of aU men, past, present, and future, concerning all the roses that ever did, or ever can, exist, which are all embodied in the logical and intellectual meaning of the word rose as a general term — that is, the third generalisation, which is wholly and completely intellectual or conceptual, and logical, but which is also wilful, though subject to the laws of the soul in its receptivity, activity, and conscious discharge of its conscious actions, but which is, in fact, the assumed scientific force and meaning of the word rose, according to our honest conscience — can any one suppose that in all this mental and intellectual process there is not a governing spirit more or less guiding and influencing our final conclusion ? Now, we cannot fully comprehend the action of the human mind, without perceiving this tiiple action of the soul as emotional in its receptivity, wilful in its judg- ment, and intellectual in its action ; but there is stiU. a THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 373 spirit, conscientious or unconscientious, governing and guiding the whole operation. Every word in science and philosophy has this triple meaning or generalisation — the objective, the subjective, and the trajective, which last is the logical and intellectual or scientific meaning. Every word is a thing, a thought, and a word which we adopt honestly or otherwise — ^that is, which our 'Spirit adopts. But observe, as I have so often said, that it is only this third generalisation — ^the word — ^which is common to all mankind, and for this the spirit, not the soul, is ultimately responsible ! N'o one man can possibly kaow either the objective or the subjective meanings of another man's words. Even when two men look at and smell the same rose, the objects and subjects are entirely different in each man, though, from the^ likeness of mankind, we assume them to be the same, and say they see and smell the same rose. What the soul of each sees and smells are different undulations, different motions and forms, at the inner ends of each one's distinct in-carrying nerves in the brain, or sensorium in the head, and we have no means of comparing one with the other. The objects of each one's mind are different, the emotions are dif- ferent — then the subjects, impressions, or subjective thoughts of those emotions in each one's mind are also different ; and it is not tiU we arrive at the third and final or complete intellectual generalisation into a word that we reach any common, mutual, or intermediate action of the two souls, which can be mutually com- pared together by the two men, or by mankind. Now, in aU this process there is surely a spirit (be it true or false — ^yet a spirit) engaged, quite independent of the mind or Soul, subject to the process ending in 374 CHAPTER XVII. the word. The word mutually adopted to express their thoughts about the emotions produced by a rose — the word or general term rose — does pass and repass from mind to mind inteUectuaUy ; but with what spirit is it received and examined ? The very vibrations or motions and forms made by A's words pass into B's nervous system as the word, and of that word alone can the two men reason together; but in what a dif- ferent spirit may each receive it, even according to their botanical, personal, or other prejudices, which one man yields to and the other resists. Men cannot reason about their objective emotions, or subjective thoughts, tiU they have adopted, by their spirits' own choice, new and different words, for the different subjective emotions and perceptions (other than what the mere word rose will express) of those parts of the mental process in which they differ. And without we distinguish the soul from the body, and the soul from the spirit which directs the soul and body, and also without we distinguish the soul itself into its triple parts — the emotional — the wilful or active judgment — and the intellectual tact, or intellect, we shall fall into error and confusion, and cannot truly compre- hend even the simplest action, the emotion or thought or conception, of the human psychical organ, in its most ordinary state of activity, even in perceiving and think- ing and speaking of a rose. It seems to me, therefore, utterly useless and absurd for men to attempt to reason of mental phenomena, ■ whether as consciousness, or emotions, or impressions, or representations, or thoughts, until they perceive and acknowledge these fundamental truths — ^viz., 1st, that we are by our natures incapable of reasoning of things THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 375 themselves, either as objects or as subjects themselves, but only as words, signs, and symbols mutually received and adopted (we may believe, of course, what we please about them, but we cannot reason about our idiosyncratic beliefs, but only about our mutual symbols or words) ; and 2d, that we cannot reason correctly about man or man's mind, or about our mental phenomena of any kind, unless we assume and admit the triple dis- tinction of body, soul, and spirit — as composing each intelligent, and sentient, and active-minded man. Nothing, therefore, seems to me more false in fact and truth, than the fundamental assertion of the materialist, that "to say I feel that I feel" is tautological, and only means " I feel ;" or to say that " I am conscious of my consciousness " can only mean, " I am conscious." This denies, a priori, the existence of the human soul or mind altogether. It denies that which distinguishes a man from the brute — that which feels, and observes, and reflects, and judges its own secret actions and feelings. The brute feels and is conscious, and shows by the clearest evidence, by his outward acts, that he feels and is conscious ; but this is the private individual feeling and consciousness of the body and mind of a brute. Until there is an internal self-reflection which feels the feeling, and is conscious of the consciousness, and judges thewUl or conclusion — ^the inner part of man — he has not begun to act, or wiU, or think as a man. It is only this internal personal se?/-consciousness, or consciousness in the second degree — that power which observes and generalises the feeling of the body, into a thought or consciousness in the mind, and the thought in the mind, into the general word — that is properly mental or psychical. The first feeling is bodily; the 376 CHAPTER XVII. feeling that -we feel is emotional, or in the soul or mind ; the expression of that feeling in a word, is intel- lectual, the three generalisations of the emotion, and of the thought of it, and the word for it, are all still in the soul ; and then the third generalisation of the thought, which becomes the word for it, and is still in the soul, is under the fuU. control of the Spirit. But then the • spirit animates and directs the word to go forth for evil or for good, with false intentions or with true inten- tions — and by that word and by those intentions that spirit shall be judged ! But we must not forget that, though man is a trinity, of body, soul, and spirit, he is also a unity within, of heart, and soul, and mind, — all equally invisible to every one but God. Wlien, for another example, by way of illustration, we read in a certain story, that certain scribes reasoned thus in their hearts : " Why doth this man speak blasphemies ? Who can forgive sins but God alone ?" — their thought was an action of heart, and soul, and mind aU in one, though no word was uttered by them ; but the words and symbolical action, which are said to have followed : " Why reason ye these things in your hearts 1 whether is it easier to say, ' Thy. sins be forgiven thee,' or to say, ' Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk'?" — we cannot understand the story without this triple distinction of body, soul, and spirit. For, if we consider these words attributed to Jesus, and the miraculous action that is said to have followed (and my argument is quiU independent of the truth of the story), I ask, did the words and symbols adhere to the hody or to the ^irit, or were they not adapted to adhere to and remaia fixed as symbols in the soul — a symbol of divine power over body and soul, continuing THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 377 in the souls of the listeners from that day forth for ever? Can we possibly londerstand the story, be it true or false, without the triple distinction of body, soul, and spirit in mani Yet we do-all thoroughly understand the story ! And when the sick of the palsy "arose and took up his bed, and went forth before them, and they were all amazed, and glorified God!" how shall we understand the whole story, whether true or false, unless we assume and believe in body, soul, and spirit 1 It seems to me impossible even to apprehend the meaning of such a story or event, whether true or not true, without we assume or postulate a body, soul, and spirit in man. The words and symbolic action did not affect the body, and left the spirit still free to judge. That might still say, this miracle is by the power of Beelzebub, or it is by the power of God, or it is by fraud and collusion, and the sick of the palsy was only an impostor in confederacy with Jesus. The spirit of the Scribes and Pharisees was stiU free, the body was also unaffected, but the soul and the soul's memory would carry the whole words, and scene, and circumstances to the day of death and resurrection, as judged by the spirit. But unless man possesses those three parts, body, soul, and spirit, I do not think that such a story, which we all fully understand, could be properly or possibly understood or comprehended; and the truth or false- hood is quite beside the question of the understanding or comprehension of a story, but our understanding the story is conclusive as to the necessary, or self-evident distinction of body, soul, and spirit. But, it may be said, the old war-horse is roused by the sound of a trumpet to the memory of former fields, and 378 CHAPTER XVII. makes a mimic charge; the Swiss peasant melts into patriotic tenderness at the sound of the Ram des Vaches, and many such animal or other influences may be named. Has the war-horse a soul as well as the Swiss ? The fanatic also may gloat with holy fervour over some memory of a spiritual act, ending in a material triumph. The dog win hunt in his dreams ! Has the dog also a soul, as well as the fanatic. But the distinction between such cases is shown, 1st, by the power of self-observation and self-reflection, or looking within upon ourselves — the power of knowing that we feel, and feeling that we know — which neither the dog nor the horse appear to possess, and which men in general call their mind or personality ; and havmg thus postulated mind — the human mind— distinct from the not self-regarding or not self-examining mind of the animal ; — ^then the distinction between soul and spirit is, also, shown by the power and influence of words, signs, and symbols, only adapted to the understanding of human thinkers. For words have and do exercise an influence on the soul, not dependent on the mere motions and. forms of the words themselves, but on their symbolic meanings; and this power and influence, our spirits can effectually or to some extent resist and con- trol, or else can yield and submit to, without any struggle, but these meanings still affect some parts of our mind — i.e., the soul,- — according to certain obscure and unascertained laws, of which fanaticism, enthusiasm, mysticism, patriotism, spiritualism, &c. &c., afford many weU-known instances, both before, and ever since the days, when the first crusaders, listeniag to Peter the Hermit, exclaimed, " It is the will of God ! onwards to the holy sepulchre !" THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 379 But the part of our minds affected by these words and symbols — principles— is what I call the soul; and it is something, as I think, wholly distinct, to our mental consciousness, from that part of our mind which directs, animates, regulates, and controls the effects of such words and symbols, and resists, or yields to, the power and influence of their meanings. The inferior part thus affected we call our soul, and the superior directing and controlling part we caU our spirit, self-existent and incomprehensible, and made in the image of God Him- self. Therefore, I say, for the clear understanding of the most obvious phenomena of human language — signs, symbols, actions — and their effects on the human mind, the distinction of soul and spirit is absolutely necessary. But not so with the dog and the horse, who do not pos- sess the power of introspection, or mind or soul, at all, like man, but seem to possess merely a flux, a series, or current of their animal circulation, or mere nervous vibrations, which rouse them to memory, or joy, or courage, or anger, but which — so far as we know or can understand the constitution of animal minds — are mere material affections of the body, and not properly or in anywise mental or psychical, in the same way that man's own internal se^-reflection or se^-consciousness is mental or psychical. Thus, then, man is to his fellow-man what each man is to himself — a trinity in unity of body, soul, and spirit. But to God who, as a Spirit, deals with, or is in relation to, the invisible and internal man only, man is heart, soul, and mind (Biavoia), penetrating intelligence ; and man's true strength must be sought and found in God alone, to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Take for another example the legal question of 380 CHAPTER XVII. whether the effect of certain acts of a man amounts to murder or to theft. To he a murder, there must not only be homicide, or the death of the victim, by, or in consequence of, the act of the body of the mur- derer, but there must be also the felonious intention, the malice prepense, the spirit and intent with which the act was commenced ; and this is evident, because there must not be such a delusion of soul or mind as renders the man irresponsible for his actions ; although he fully intended the death of his victim. On all these three questions the surrounding circumstances may throw light before we can form a just judgment; and without these three parts of man — the body, to do the act, the soul, to arrange and contrive, and the spirit, to direct — we cannot truly and properly understand or discuss the ordinary legal question of murder or no murder. Al- though the language of the lawyers is not always, or entirely, accurate, yet it will be found that the three parts are always assumed. So in the case of theft. There must not only be the asportation or bodily taking away of another's goods, but also the animus fv/randi, or intention, and internal state of mind or soul intending to deprive him of his property, at once knowing and wilful — i. e., an act of the body, a state of the mind or sovl, and an intention of the spirit, directing and controlling the whole act of the alleged thief Of course, in the arguments of the la^vyers, the soul and spirit, or understanding and intention, are sometimes confused and mixed up to- gether, for lawyers are not accurate metaphysicians ; but without this double nature of man's mind, whe? ther called understanding and reason, or perceptions and sentiments, or intellect and will — without these THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 38 1 two parts of man's hidden mind, we cannot perfectly understand, or even properly comprehend, a lawyer's argument, whether a certain act amounted to murder or to theft.* Body, soul, and spirit are therefore involved in every act of man upon earth ; and without taking all three into con- sideration, we cannot properly comprehend any question of law or of politics, or of external or visible, as distinct from internal and invisible, religion. We necessarily fall into error or confusion unless we assume two parts of the invisible mind of man, the soul and the spirit. But when we speak of man in relation to God — who judges the internal man, and reads the heart, and towards whom aU outward forms of the body are nothing, ex- cept as they proceed from the heart and spirit or in- visible man, and "Who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth — then it is more proper to speak of loving God * Of course there are materialistic lawyers and jurists of great repu- tation, as well as philosophers, who attempt to reason about animiis and intention, while denying the mind's existence. But their shuffling logic always hetrays them ! Such jurists deny the distinction between "Persons," and "Things," and "Law," and "Equity," and cannot, or rather mil not, for example, distinguish between.,the logical and legal mewmmg of a signed contract, as construed by an acute lawyer, and the real and mutual mtention of the possibly stupid parties who signed it, and who both, possibly, by previous and subsequent acts, have showed most plainly their joint meaning to be dififerent from the meaning put by the lawyers on the contract they have signed. But an English judge in equity goes into the whole question of intention as affected by accident, mistake, or fraud, and prevents a wrong by set- ting aside or reforming the contract. Such materialistic jurists call such judicial acts legislation, which is logically most absurd ! It is preventing the law itself— the words of perhaps stupid legislators— from being used as an instrument of fraud and oppression; and we owe the permanence of English law to the separation of law and equity, and to the existence of our Courts of Equity as safety-valves against legalised wrongs. As Lord Bacon said, orrmmo me placet hcec separatio. 382 CHAPTER XVII. ■with internal heart, and soul, and intelligence, than with body, soul, and spirit ; because the outward act of the body is nothing to a pure Spirit, except as it proceeds from the invisible heart heartily. So prayer to God also involves and requires the heart, and soul, and intelligence (S/aw/a). Tt is not the kneeling of the knees, nor the gabbling of the words, which constitute prayer ; there must be also the kneeling with the heart, and the feeling of the words. There must be the earnest direction of the whole inward man, heart, and soul, with and by an intelligent Spirit, for without these, prayer in spirit and in truth, to the eye of God, does not and cannot exist. In short, then, we can have only a form of godliness without the spirit thereof, — a state predicted of the Church in the latter days, — unless heart and soul and mind, or body, soul, and spirit, — all, join in each act of piety or religion. It may be true that " in the present state of our know- ledge, a sensorium within the brain is an entire miscon- ception," and even that " our present insight enables us to say, with great probability, ' no currents, no mind,' or even 'no phosphorus, no thought;' " and it may be true that "the nerve force is neither electricity nor mag- netism." But nerve force, and vital force, and mech- anical force, and chemical force, as well as light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, are all mutually convertible, and have a common origin, even in gravity, if you please [ante, p. 280). But we know nothing whatever of any of these forces, except only divers methods of applying them, and of finding them generally in nature, and in the external objects in the universe. But it is perfectly idle and irrational, to confound the human spirit with THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 383 any one or more of them ; because tlie supposition will not explain the obvious facts — the spontaneity of the human -will over all. Developing thought uses up the brain, and devel- oping a steam-engine uses up the muscles ; but there must be a mind or spirit to develop both the one and the other, in order to use up the brain, as well as to use up the muscles. But the mind that acts is both sub- jective and is free — i.e., consists of two parts, a subjec- tive soul, and a free spirit. There is no doubt as to our physical organisation, both in soul and body. " The activity of an organ is sus- tained at the expense of the matter of which it is com- posed. No thought passes through the mind but an eq^uivalent portion of the substance of the brain is con- sumed ; no nervous current flows along the nervous con- ductors, but a corresponding portion of nervous tissue is used up; no muscular movement, no glandular secretion, takes place, without a proportionate waste of muscle and gland." The body is the instrument of the spirit in the use of our brains, as well as in the use of our muscles. " Able-bodied men in their ordinary labour use from 2 lb. to 5 lb. and upwards of their actual weight twice a-day." And a literary man, no doubt, in like manner, loses so many ounces of his brain in his peculiar labour, and the bodily waste must be in both cases repaired, or bodily 'pain and sickness must result. The one produces a steam-engine or gasometer, and the other a work on politics or religion. The motive of the one is to feed his hungry wife and children, and of the other, to promote the welfare of the many children of humanity, or the worship of God. But there is a mind, or spirit, or will, supreme director in both cases. 384 CHAPTER XVII. and it is directing the muscles and muscular current for their end, and also the brain and cranial cellular current for their end; and it might as well be said that the steam-engine or gasometer is the secretion of the man's muscles as that political or religious thought is the secretion of the man's brain. AU that man has ever done upon earth, mental, physical, or verbal, in religion, politics, mechanics, or language, are the products of mind. But that mind is not the body ; and yet it is partly subjective and under the influence of symbols, and partly free, and able to struggle against such verbal or symbolic influence. But the whole humanitarian result has been produced by language — ^by signs, symbols, actions — first selected and shown by the mind, and gradually applied, by the free spirit, to man's practical purposes. If you say that the blows of the mechanic's hammer are not words, signs, or symbols, I reply, without doubt or question, that they are so. They have each a direction, an intention, an adaptation, directed by the mind, to the ultimate result designed and formed in the mind, with a view to produce the end intended, whether that end be a steam-engine or a gasometer, or a political law or a reli- gious dogma. And in both and in all such cases, that end must have been originally a symbol in the mind of the mechanic, the politician, or the dogmatist, and possibly producing many results not foreseen by any" of them. The materialist errs in denying the invisible mind, the origin of every thought, word, and deed. The ideal- ist errs in denying the visible matter, which, though it may be, to man perhaps, in the abstract, a mere negation, or temporary absence, of the First Mind, is not therefore THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 385 uotMng, but sometliing unknown to man, except as a relation to the known; and the conceptualist confuses and confounds the two — ^mind and matter — together, by his concepts, which must ever remain unknown, except by the symbols — the language which is the only instrument of the mind's power over either mind or matter. Tor even the poorest mechanic himself must have realised something like an intelligible symbol in his mind, of what is intended, before he can create its visible representative in the instrument or fictile object which he produces as the result of his labour. But we should equally err if we refused to distinguish the two parts of man's mind — ^the soul, subject to sym- bols, sympathies, and impressions, &c., and the free gov- erning spirit, subject to nothing in the whole universe, free to choose and free to act — even to ruin or destroy its own soul, and its own body. Mind alone is the source of power, and symbols are the instruments by which the mind indirectly operates on matter, even in the grossest as well as in the most refined and sesthetio productions. And in the mind of the abstract reasoner, a Phryne pleads her cause and speaks a language with her naked beauty, as perfect and as eloquent as if it were the language of Demos- thenes. All actions are merely the symbols of the mind with- in, and we must judge those actions, not by themselves or their outward effects, but by their symbolic intention — the mental motive which produced the action, and of which it must be deemed the symbol, be that symbol true or false, according to some law or system previously adopted and laid down. The human mind, then, consists of soul and spirit. 2b 386 CHAPTER XVII. The soul is probably an organism of imponderable matter. Its life is spiritual. Its food is symbols — symbols which embody intellectual thoughts, human emotions, divine or demoniac spiritual principles; and it is subject to certain laws which may be sought put and investigated, as the laws of other imponderables are investigated, but with this difference — ^that they are unorganised imponderable matters, and the soul is an organised imponderable, pos- sessing a life of its own, and more or less subject to the spirit of the man. "We cannot say that the soul is the brain, but the soul's presence may be the spiritual life of the brain, just as the vital powers are the life of the body. But the chemistry of ponderable matter is not the chemistry of organic life ; nor can the chemistry of imponderables be deemed the chemistry of the life of the soul, nor can the laws of electricity and magnetism be considered the laws of the human soul. The human body is not subject to the laws of inor- ganic chemistry, during life, but is subject to the laws of a higher species of chemistry. The muscles during life can sustain a weight which, when dead, would tear them asunder. The stomach during life can contain, and does contain, substances which, when dead, chemi- cally decompose it. So it is with the human soul. It is not, during life, subject to the ordinary chemistry of imponderables — of light, electricity, or magnetism. The soul possesses a higher chemistry of its own. It is governed by a spirit, which also is its life; and that spirit can resist or can yield to the influence of signs, symbols, language — of rhetoric, oratory, pietism, or fanaticism ; or to the influences of splendid ceremonial, of the grandeurs of the rising or the setting sun, — of pantheism, rationalism, idealism, materialism, or to the THE HUMAN MIND— HARMONY. 387 doctrines and principles of utility or expediency — in short, to emotional, sentimental, and intellectual sym- bolism. Can any rational person deny the extraordinary power and influence of mere symbolic dogmatism, on each and every of these subjects ? The organic construction of the human soul is a very obscure part of human nature. But it is mere irrationality to deny it altogether, or to confound the truly subjective and often passive and im- pressionable part of the human mind — the soul — with the active and controlling part — ^the spirit ; and it is an equal error to confuse or confound the soul with the brain. How can a likeness, symbol, or type, the mean- ings of our words, influence the Brain ? The soul is an organised being, often dead while yet the man's body lives — dead to all that is true, good, and beautiful; dead in spiritual life, yet not altogether dead, or capable of altogether dying on earth. For after death comes the soul's judgment, and while there's life of the body on earth, there's hope of true life for the soul. And the food of this organism, within us all, is thought, ideas, conceptions, the inward and spiritual feelings, perceptions, and sentiments which are attached to SYMBOLS, signs, words, — symbolic actions, language. Without such spiritual realisations, • which can be known only to the individual, and to Spirits higher than man, the symbols have no life whatever — ^but are dead and empty forms and motions — passing sounds and shadows. Concerning this spiritual department of the human organism — either soul or spirit — none but the indivi- dual and his Gods can have any knowledge ; for no man "knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a 388 CHAPTER XVII. man that is in him ; " and the true Christian will leave such to the one Shepherd and Bishop of souls ; but he is not precluded from using language earnestly to pro- mote that influence. But spiritual influence cannot be truly promoted by material force over the human body; for what is gained in the outward and visible forms, is lost, and more than lost, in the inward and spiritual emotion. The distinction, then, between the human soul and the human s^rit — ^the governing spirit of the man — is as clear as possible to the attentive self-observer and thinker ; and the soul has three distinct subjective depart- ments corresponding to the good, the true, and the beau- tiful. None but men who have not sounded the depths of their own minds, can, as I conceive, doubt that beauty, goodness, and truth have all their own subjec- tive departments in the human soul ; while the Spirit is free to choose its own course in respect of all and each. But how do we use our souls and spirits in thinking? It is useless to dogmatise on such deep and unknown sub- jects. What seems to me certain is, that the spirit is per- fectly free and absolute, but that the soul js not free — and that the soul is an organism subject to laws. It thinks truth, it feels beauty, it loves and discerns good- ness, according to the laws of its nature, and subject to these laws ; and yet it is capable from time to time, under the influence of the spirit, of more or less violat- ing these laws ; just as the body is capable of violating and disregarding, within certain limits, the laws of ani- mal life, and with like consequences in both cases, of pain — ^bodily pain and mental pain. But it wiU be observed, that the three departments of THE HUMAN MIND — HARMONY. 389 the soul show us clearly that truth is concerned with language, beauty with matter, and goodness with mind — i.e., chiefly concerned, for they aU run into each other; for the soul is one, though it has these three departments, which have been generally observed by all thoughtful reasoners. But each is possessed by the other two ; and is also, in its turn, possessed by them. Truth and beauty possess a goodness of their own, and in its turn goodness possesses both a truth and a beauty ; and so all round with each of the three. The simplest element of truth, is orderly number, of beauty, is orderly space, of goodness, is orderly time — i.e., harmony with the Divine Spirit in time and for eternity — the beginning and end of human perfection. But it is the language of beauty and of goodness that requires truth; and philosophy, as the science of all truth, though we call her divine and beautiful in refer- ence to her thoughts and subject matter, is still only a science of language. " Mind, mind alone, bear witness . earth and heaven ! the living fountain in itself contains of beauteous and sublime" — but that is, beauty and goodness and sublimity are abstract, subjective, mental, known only to the individual who can feel and see them; and it is only their outward and visible forms, signs, symbols, language, that men can really discuss — their symbolic truth. But this is equally true of good- ness and of truth, as well as beauty. All men are, and must for ever remain, involved in this prison of symbols, from whose fetters they can only escape by forging new and better fetters for themselves, by and with the assist- ance of the one Divine Spirit. The seven lodily senses are two, whose organs are internal — himger and thirst ; and five, whose organs 390 CHAPTER XVII. are external — seeing, hearing, touch, taste, and smell — aU of which last seem modifications of touch. The three intellectual senses are — number, time, and space. The five intellectual powers are — attention, compari- son, reflection, conception, and judgment; and the mental result of the exercise of both senses and powers is a symbol, the only object of human cognition. Words, signs, symbols, language only, are common to many men. The mental meanings of their words are the property not of mankind, but of the individual man alone. But the soul possesses many uninteUectual passions and sentiments. But the two internal bodily senses of hunger and thirst are not in any way under our control, either to will or not to will. They arise within from the healthy exercise and natural waste of the material body. But one of these causes — healthy exercise — is under our own control. So also there is in the soul, a hunger and thirst after righteousness and truth, also not under our control, either to will or not to will. But they also arise within the soul from two causes ; one of which is the healthy exercise of the soul's powers. Of the other cause we need say nothing — waste or not waste. But over the healthy exercise, of the soul's powers and senses and capacities, our spirits do exert very considerable control. In fact, the exercise of the body and that of the soul are both and equally under the control (to a very con- siderable extent) of our spirit, and wiU — the active exer- tion of the free spirit. Both body and soul are possibly swimming in a current ; but the spirit can choose either to swim with the current, or against the current, or across, and so independently of the current, according to the THE HUMAN MIND— HARMONY. 39 1 laws of the mechanics of matter, and, if we may so speak, of the mechanics of subjective mind or soul. In my opinion, the phrenologists have given far the best analysis of the human mind, and its natural powers and tastes and capacities and sentiments. But if man has, as he probably has, such natural senses or capacities as form, weight, and colour, as well as constructiveness, &c. ; in order to judge of these things intellectually, our business is to reduce forms, weights, and colours, &c., to measurements of number, space, and time. If we have, as we no doubt have, natural senses or capacities for constructiveness, symmetry in space, or harmony in music, our business is still to reduce these intellectually to measurements in number, space, and time ; and so we produce the sciences of geometry, and optics, and acoustics, and mechanics, and music, and statics, and dynamics, &c. Statics and dynamics are the sciences of weights on the balance, and of weights not on the balance, but producing motion ; or of forces producing motion and forces preventing motion. But all forces must be reduced to weight, or to the force of earthly attraction. But we ought to distinguish between the animal passions, like sexual love and love of offspring, friendship or social love, &c., and the active capacities, like con- structiveness, destructiveness, &c., and the intellectual perceptions, like form, colour, harmony, and imaginative powers, causes, resemblances, comparisons, &c., and divine sentiments, like justice, conscientiousness, firm- ness, veneration, and benevolence — all these are subject to laws of the soul ,- but the spirit over all is free. But it is not my object to map out the human Mind, but merely to clearly distinguish it into its fundamental 392 CHAPTER XVII. parts — its self-evident elements, the soul and tlie spirit; without which we cannot properly or correctly investigate or understand either its phenomena or nou- mina. whichever we please to call our own private individual consciousness of self; or even the ordinary events of human history. Men cannot, I think, accurately think or reason about the human Mind; until they have divided it into the subjective sotJL and the free spirit. But hav- ing made this division of the human mind, which seems to me, altogether obvious and self-evident, the whole discussion between liberty and necessity sinks into the region of confusion and ambiguity. Both sides are partly true and partly false. The soul is subject to some laws of necessity, but the spirit possesses indubitable liberty. And thus foreknowledge becomes entirely consistent with freedom, and election entirely consistent with justice and with truth. But this is not the place for developing these conceptions. CHAPTER XVIII. LANGUAGE. All human language, considered as accurate knowledge or science, consists in definition or limitation. There is no greater mistake than that of the modern philoso- phers who despise the Aristotelian logic and syllogism, because, as they say, the conclusion is already con- tained in the major premiss ! It — the conclusion — is only a particular limitation or application of the gene- ral truth already admitted in the major premiss ; and therefore the conclusion, they say, tells you nothing you did not know before. But it is this very limitation which makes and constitutes all science to the human intellect. To connect the particular limitation or appli- cation with the general and assumed truth is the true and only operation of the intellect. To draw your particular applications down until you can lay your finger, as it were, on the visible thing or action which is right or wrong, or true or false — that is all that the intellect can do ; for we must always begin with some general assumption or theory — a major premiss. "Great masses of knowledge," says Sir John Her- schel,* "are daily perishing before our eyes, because our [mental] eyes are not open to them. In sciences of observation, it is perhaps not using too strong an ex- * On Terrestrial Magnetism, Essays, p. 66. 394 CHAPTER XVIII. pression to assert that the theory is the science." Why is this ? Because if we have no theory, we are unahle to connect our observations, or know what to observe. But the theory is the general truth, or supposed truth, which enables us to make observations and to string our observations together, either for or against it. Without some general thought or assumed principle, we cannot even set about, either observation or experiment in any rational manner, so as to understand what is actually passing before our eyes. How many ages passed before we began to under- stand in the least the formation of the rocks beneath our feet ! But start a theory, the igneous or the aque- ous origin of rocks, with Werner or Hutton, and men can begin to reason, and then only can begin to ob- serve properly — ^that is, either for or against the theory or thought assumed. We must start with the general, or we cannot reason about the particular, or even ob- serve it. Even hasty generalisation is better than none, for without some generalisation we can neither observe nor reason. Our intellect is barren or dead. There are always three questions to ask in classing and defining our things, thoughts, and words — 1st, Is the thing in question a spirit, a body, or a word ? — are we speaking of mind, matter, or language ? 2d, Are we considering or thinking of it as a (mental, or physical, or verbal) state in itself as one thing, or as a (mental, or physical, pr verbal) relation to other and what things ? — its states, its relations. 3d, What are the self-evident resemblances perceived by the mind which all the individuals of the class possess ? The last is usually termed definition or essential pro- LANGUAGE. 395 perties which make the things to be thought what they are, and which cause us to adopt a class name for the things ; but it always involves the fundamental concep- tion, theory or axiom of the science. But we must never forget that we can only know the thing by and through the thought, and we can only know the thought by and through the word. The thing in itself remains ever wholly unknown to mankind. The thought itself is only known to the individual man who thinks it. And it is only the word — which is the general name for the assumed general thought of the thing — about which we can speak or reason together. The word is both the thing and the thought, in all true science and cognition, and in all common reasoning together. But then we must properly define and limit, and divide and distinguish, our words. But syllogism may be, and was, no doubt, elaborated to a very useless degree, and helped at last to " darken counseL" For the syllogism is no clearer than the rules de omni and de nulla from which the whole theory of syllogism can be deduced. The rule (that what we affirm or deny of the whole group or class, may be truly affirmed or denied of every particular group or class or individual contained in it) is certainly a self- evident truth easier of application than the laws of syl- logistic reasoning drawn out and applied in a formal manner. Every one can reason more or less ; but what generally prevents men seeing the truth, is some stupid dogma founded on what they call observation or experi- ment, misunderstood or misapplied — either an ambigu- ous word or false axiom ! When we examine the relations of mind, matter, and language amongst themselves, we find and see that it 39^ CHAPTER XVIII. is evident; that Matter is the instrument of Mind over matter, and Language is the iastrument of Mind over mind. But mind not only in itself contains the living fountains of beauty and sublimity, and of goodness and truth ; but also contains, and is the only source and spring of all force and aU. influence — of all orderly form and motion — of all possible relations, and of all symmetry, and of aU harmony — of all wisdom and beauty, and truth and goodness, as well as of all power and all strength. Mind is involved in every cause, in every action, in every conclusion ; and Language — symbolism through and with.matter,is its only instrument. What we call the force and power of matter are only those qualities bestowed on it by its Creator, and of the real nature of which, Man knows absolutely nothing ; he knows only that he can, by approximating or separating divers parts or por- tions of matter to or from each other, produce certain material actions and motions, and can so effect his own mental designs and intentions over matter. We can take the motion of the atmosphere, and the motion of water, and can transmit their motions to sails, mills, and other matters ; or we can take the gravity of a weight falling down, and can make it move machinery ; or we can take the expansive forces upwards of steam and vapours, and use them in the same way against the force of gravity. Our minds can thus use matter as an instrument in thousands of different ways, but only and always as our tool and instrument over matter or matters. Our bodies are in all cases, at our first start, the instrument for effecting these purposes. Ultimately the human body, directed by the mind, does the whole labour of LANGUAGE. 397 man on the globe, by merely approximating or separat- ing divers portions of matter. But aU this is only the sphere of utility; and mind is wholly unaffected by Matter itself, and can only be influenced by language ; which we have shown to be the motions and forms of matter made and produced by mind, as words, signs, and symbols. This is the sphere of morality. If my argument on the nature of language is true and unanswerable — if it be true that every word in every language is simply a number of things and a ^product of thoughts — then it necessarily follows that, as the number expressed by a general term is always all — i.e., infinite and universal, and altogether indefinite and undefinable, words must be limited and defined by marking down and defining the thoughts which are joined and complicated, in order to produce the general thought or idea of the class. These thoughts, we have shown, are the resemblances or likenesses perceived by the mind between the units forming the class. Each unit of the class must possess all these resemblances on which the class is founded by the mind, or it ceases to be a unit of that class — ^it ceases to be properly numbered or included with all the other units under the name of the class. Words are so easily made, or else altered by even a point or a letter, that that writer stands self-condemned as a teacher of falsehood who knowingly uses one word in two senses or two meanings. He is false to himself by self-contradiction or ambiguity, and is to others a teacher of falsehood ; and if he does so unknowingly ; then as soon as the meaning of the word becomes doubtful to himself, he should cease to use that word till it has become clearer to his mind. To profess and 39^ CHAPTER XVIII. to act otherwise is to range yourself openly on tlie side of the demon of falsehood. But clearly the proper way to make out and define a word, according to this theory of language, as we have developed it into number, is to make out a list, or num- bered line, of aU those likenesses which each individual of the class must possess, in order to deserve the name of the class, and to be numbered with all the other units. And these likenesses are all substantives — tlwiu/hts or mental things — and should be therefore set down in a numbered liM, not in a grammatical sentence, but as the substantive factors of the word to be defined. Of course, for philosophers, or men of science, to argue and reason with one another without defining their words, is about as reasonable and useful, as might be, the mutual confabulations of two men who do not understand each other's language, and are blind to each other's signs. But how words are to be defined has always been a great subject of doubt and debate. The Aristotelian logic, whose three first predicables were genus, species, and essential difference, defined words by their genus and essential difference — that is, created every word as an outward material form or species — ^the limited generality of some more general term ; and added to the more general term, the peculiar property which was supposed to be its essential dif- ference: as when man was defined as a reasonable animal, man was treated as being a species of animal, peculiarly, or in essential difference, endowed with rea- son, of which no other animal possessed any. Its genus was animal, and its essential difference was rationality. But as we have shown that eveiy word is a nurriber LANGUAGE. 399 of things, and a product of thoughts, and that the num- ber of things to which the name can be applied is wholly infinite and undefined, the only true possible limit or definition of the word, or general term, consists of the factors which complicate the product, or general thought; and until we have effected this by enumerating in a list aU the thoughts which are peculiar to every unit of the class, or which produces the whole idea of the class in our minds — its states as a unity — i.e., a sufficient num- ber of them to fix the class— until this is effected, the word is ambiguous and undefined ; or else it should be openly assumed as self-evident; and these assumptions, by the law of parcimony, must be as few as possible. Nothing is more unpleasant to a shuffling reasoner than to be asked to define his words ! He likes to treat every one of his words lilce an established coin, which all the world are bound to take ; and being taken and accepted, he proceeds to declare its value as the finest gold, when it may be truly the most sorry pinchbeck. But, nevertheless, the factors of every word, are the resemblances or likenesses of its units — the things called by the name. But what is EESEMBLANCB ? The human mind possesses instruments in the nerves of the body, infinitely superior not only to its powers of description in language, but to any mechanical in- struments that man has yet invented. The delicacy of the human touch, for example, can detect an unevenness in a polished plane surface of metal which no kind of instrument yet produced can detect ; and so perfect is Touch, the coarsest of our senses, that the finest parts of the finest machinery have still to be finished by the 400 CHAPTER XVIII. human hand ! But Eesemblance or difference is not itself material. The aural nerves can detect shadows and reflections in a note for which our mathematical analysis is at a loss to account. And spectrum analysis seems to ex- hibit the powers of our optic nerves as absolutely infi- nite in discrimination ; for with our eyes we detect not only the shadows of shades of colours dependent on the billionth of the shape of a wave or undulation, of which . millions must be contained in the space of a letter or full stop on this page, and of which every shade must vary the form — but our eyes, by light, also detect the existence of the millionth part of a grain of material substance dissolved in a liquid. The powers of the optic nerve are beyond all thought and aU conception infinite. But harmonious resemblance is not itself material. But man's mind has, I think, a natural sense of resem- blance founded on comparison — founded on the purely natural senses of relation, symmetry, and harmony — i. e., of number, time, and space. We all often see and feel a likeness without being able to say in what it consists. But it is the business and object of science to measure these resemblances, and to define and limit them by number, space, and time ; so that resemblance in gene- ral, seems to me, merely an unscientific or inaccurate description or perception of our senses of number, time, and space when in action — ^but not yet scientifically measured. Eesemblance is the sense, and comparison is the power — a natural sense and a natural power in the mind itself. But all resemblance, if our intellects were as perfect as our senses, would and ought to be measurable by LANGUAGE. 401 number, space, and time. Our senses are infinitely more delicate, than our intellectual powers undeveloped. But by our internal power of comparison, and our inter- nal sense of resemblance, the mind perceives a resem- blance between two things, whether external material things, or internal mental things ; but it is altogether vague and uncertain and unscientific, and must remain unscientific, until we can reduce that resemblance to number, space, or time. Eesemblance is in itself alto- gether mental. It teUs us nothing to say there is a resemblance ! But when we can say that there is a numerical re- semblance, a symmetrical resemblance, a harmonious resemblance, in number, time, or space — that becomes scientific. And to find numerical, temporal, or spatial resemblances between things, is the proper object of the man of science. Eesemblance appears to me, there- fore, merely a vague unscientific term, an undefined and indecomposable abstract term, for science, yet to be discovered, in number, space, and time. But all abstract words are, like the names of external things, the products of certain resemblances perceived by the mind, and themselves abstract ; and if we seek to be accurate and scientific in the use of such words, we must, and ought to fix what these factors of the word in question are to be, and that is the only true and correct method of definition. We should always be ready to put down the factors of every word we insist upon using as a word of science ; or else openly declare the word self-evident and fundamental. But ultimately we must arrive at general words which are assumed as self-evident, like mind, matter, language. From these fundamental assumptions we are logically 2c 402 CHAPTER XVIII. bound to deduce all others, such as number, time, and space, state, relation, &c., and resemblance itself, which is the mental connection between two or more things by which the mind combines them under one name, is merely a name for some undefined relation inaccur- ate and unscientific, between the things. And so we generally speak of mental relations and of physical resemblances and verbal analogies very indefinitely and ambiguously tiU reduced to number, time, and space. Men in general would admit that the human mind possesses a general sense of resemblance — a power to perceive likeness — an internal natural sense, or power, to catch some likeness or resemblance, between two or more things or thoughts, to some extent bom with all of us, but capable of being improved by education and exercise. But the human capacity to perceive resem- blances varies according to the person and subject- matter; and resemblance, and its opposite, contrast, exist only in those minds which are able to form them. One man has a strong sense of music, and quickly perceives and hears musical resemblances and contrasts, concords and discords, not perceived by others. Another, possibly an artist, perceives resemblances in forms and colours which the musician wholly overlooks, because the artist has a natural and an educated sense of form and colour, and the musician has the same only of sound. But we may descend from that to size and weight, and to a butcher or grazier, for example, who will teU to within a few pounds the proportional weights of a number of oxen as various as possible in appearance, and of which the artist and musician have no idea or means of comparison whatever; while of music and LANGUAGE. 4O3 * art, of concord and discord, or of form and colour, the butcher and grazier have little or no correct sense whatever. So a mechanic or machinist will perceive a me- chanical resemblance between two machines as differ- ent as possible in form, and, if they understand the science of mechanics, will be able to show the same principle employed in both. But music, form, colour, size, weight, constructiveness, are all natural senses, and all involve the sense of resemblance, and vary from infancy in most men, though greatly improvable by exercise and education. But in all these and other cases of physical resemblances, we must, for the purpose of scientific classification, endeavour to define and reduce our resemblances so as to be measurable by number, time, and space, which are our only scientific measures of all material things. Nothing can be said to be classi- fied scientifically until it has been reduced to measure- ment by space, time, and nwriber. Till then, it is merely sesthetic and emotional, not scientific or intellectual. THINGS, THOUGHTS, — CATEGOEIES, PEEDICABLES. All Aristotle's categories and predicables are also loose abstract terms, expressing resemblances not by him reduced to number, space, or time, and so not accurate or scientific. Every pseudo - scientific term expresses a resemblance not strictly reduced to number, time, or space. Let us go through Aristotle's categories seriatim. But categories generally mean things, and predicables mean thoughts; but things and thoughts are confused expressions, for there are material, mental, and verbal things, and a thought is a thing, and both are words. Therefore we should always distinguish 404 CHAPTER xvrn. material things, from mental things, and both, from verbal things. Ouff/a, or SUBSTANCE. This was a confused expression or general term, like thing, applicable either to matter or mind indifferently, and even to logic, as we say the substance of a proposi- tion. The ambiguity of substance should exclude it from strict science, and the same is true of all transla- tions of it, such as Being, existence, &c. And the same is true of thing and thought until reduced to number, space, and time — our only measures in science, where ambiguity and mystery are intolerable. QUANTITY is likewise altogether loose and confused, until we have a unit of quantity. Then it becomes a number of units, and definite and scientific, and then it is ^onoi/ — how much — i.e., how much and how many of the units assumed, or selected as the fundamental measxire of quantity by number, space, and time. quality is evidently a loose inaccurate unscientific expression, which each careful man endeavours to reduce to accu- racy by number and space, and by time where that is involved. The master estimates the quality of the work- man by the quantity of work, and the time taken to produce it. We struggle to reduce quality to quantity, which is more evidently number, space, and time, whenever we think or try to think definitely of quality. The corn-merchant, for example, measures the bulk LANGUAGE. 405 and the weight — the number of pounds in the number of bushels — units of gravity into units of space ; but will add also an immeasurable appreciation of quality — colour and uniformity of grain — resemblances not yet scientific, but very apparent to the merchant. The wine-merchant tries the quantity of alcohol by distilla- tion and quantity in a given bulk of his liquid, but has no measure for aroma, &c. And the scientific chemist rejects quality altogether, as far as he can, and reduces everything to weight or gravity and number ; yet he also often finds some immeasurable defect in purity affect his experiments — i.e., a purity or quality which he has not yet learnt how to measure or reduce to time, space, or number, and thus, he gets into electrical and magnetic conditions, allotropic states, &c. But most trades have an established standard of purity or quality, like the corn - merchant with his bushel - weight, or the goldsmith with the precious metals, and many other established trades with under- stood qualities, generally measurable by some definite quantity, whereby the quality, mm, or how like, or of what sort, becomes reducible to the quantity, maov, or how much — which is itself reducible to number by units of quantity. RELATION, or ■T'gos ti, is evidently a very loose general expression for any sort of comparison between two or more things, and is some resemblance between them. Every comparison gives us a relation or resemblance between tvjo at least which, as to all external things, must and can be only reduced to scientific certainty by proportion in number, symmetry 406 CHAPTER XVIII. in space, and harmony in time — i.e., in order that we may reason accurately or scientifically about it we must get ultimately to number — for space and time are also numerical, and only rendered certain by number. Of course, it is easy to puzzle ourselves over the artificial or natural relations perceived or invented by the mind, if we do not endeavour to reduce tbem to some numerical certainty ; and Motion is a rela- tion in space; but for metaphysicians since the days of Newton to feel confusion about motion is, I venture to think, only to exhibit their own careless ignorance of the mathematics, the accurate thinking, or science, on the subject of motion, as it has been reduced by the moderns to the science of dynamics. But you will say, all relations are not numerical, such as fatherhood, brotherhood, sonship, or citizenship. I say that fundamentally they are all numerical — you must begin with number in some way or other. A man cannot have two mothers, or, properly- and accurately speaking, belong to two families. Every relation must begin with two or more, as numbers to be compared together; and we must, to be accurate and scientific, then go to comparisons in time and space— the children of one parent, or the citizens of one state — and haviag first fixed the numbers to be compared, then proceed to other comparisons in space and time ; otherwise our minds are in confusion ! The limits of the citizenship, for example, must be fixed in space and time, in law and cause, which we must consider hereafter. But every relation is at bot- tom numerical, and all its ramifications must be made, as far as possible, numerical in space and time, or your science is not science, but pseudo-science, depending on LANGUAGE. 4*7 loose types and looser thoughts, and on language alto- gether uncertain. For Law is order in language ; and Cause is order in mind — the power or force of mind which preceded an origin, and produced a material thing or mental thought, a new state, or new relation, as we shall show hereafter. ACTION and PASSION, ffo/E/n and iriaexw, have only confused unscientific significations tiU the actions and the passions are measured by number, space, and time, and until they can be reduced to motion and form or rest, scientifically, as material motions. But relation and action and passion are equally applied to mental and physical things, and the applicability of space and time and number to mind must be contem- plated as symmetry, Imrmmiy, and relation. We need not delay over the rest of Aristotle's cate- gories — z.e.,when, where, posture, and habit — ^the imxi, ««, j/s/tf^a;, EX£;v — evidently are only loose expressions for cer- tain relations or resemblances of space and time, which are themselves only rendered scientific by number. We cannot reason about any such things scientifically till we know what is meant ; and the only accurate means we have of knowing, what is meant, is to bring them down to our only measures of external things, number and time and space, whereby they may become somewhat definite and scientific, and are made measur- able by mankind in general. Aristotle's Predicables — " the five words " — deserve a little more careful consideration ; in order to show how the looser discussions of the ancient and middle-age logicians naturally fall into the more accurate thinking 408 CHAPTER XVIII. of modem philosophy and science, as it must be reduced to number, time, and space. GENUS, SPECIES, DIFFERENCE, PROPERTY, ACCIDENT. Tsvo;, genus, is properly race — origin, and history in time and space; and s/Sss, species, is evidently— /orm or appearance in space ; and, when taken or applied to material things, becomes a new genus, race, or origin. Nothing shows more clearly as a matter of fact the power of language, — that language is a positive factor of knowledge amongst mankind ; and not only of verbal knowledge, but also a cause and factor of action and passion, of human history, and of human happiness and misery upon earth, — than the history of these words — " substance," " genus," and " species ; " to which we may well add "essential difference" and " property" and " accident," Aristotle's five predicables, which still, to a great extent, govern men's minds, and bamboozle men of science, and leave them in confusion and ambiguity. In fact, if we do not watch and carefully guard our- selves, from the use and influence of Aristotle's predic- ables, we shall find ourselves hampered in the trammels of materialism, through our words. For in their original meanings they are aU, altogether materialistic. Tevos, the race, origin, and history in time of the thing visMe, and sensible — i.e., material ; eidog, the form, shape, and appear- ance in space, of the thing visible and sensible — i.e., mate- rial ; S/apoga, the essential difference, distinguishing char- acter, difference, or property, generally material or visible and sensible, of the thing, making the thing to be a thing distinct from all other material things ; idiov, all other private and peculiar properties of the thing visible and sensible; uu^/Ss/Sjjxos or accident, all other accidental pecu- LANGUAGE. 409 liarities whatever, and, of course, generally materialistic — these five heads or divisions, the predicables of Aris- totelian logic, form an admirable but very loose summary of all material knowledge about anything — its history, form, and chief and other peculiarities, accidental or otherwise. We may use them all, and leave spirit or mind out of consideration altogether. It is, in fact, the language of materialism loosely developed for common everyday use, with the mental accuracy, and ideal characteristics, of number, time, and space altogether thrown into the background. The indeliniteness of the word outr/a, being, — substance, — or existence, combined with the miracles of Christ, in my opinion, alone prevented Europe from stagnating into complete materialism, like the Chinese or Hindoos, under the influence of Aristotle's language. The neces- sity of explaining miracles, such as the feeding of multi- tudes with a few loaves and fishes, to believers in Christ, or the necessity of discussing the ovaia, being or nature of Christ himself, probably saved Europe from the total materialism of Aristotle's language. And so it became mere nominalism or verbalism; and whole races, and peoples, and tongues, and governments in the Churches of the East or West, or Greek and Latin Chiirches, became subject to one or other use of the indefinite word oveia or substance, and fought and murdered each other for this word " substance" or " o\j6ia." Trace the history of Arianism, or the material inter- pretation of the word omuio., in the East — or trace the history of Eomanism, or the material interpretation and use of the word substance, in the West, and we have great part of the history of the Greek and Latin Churches ; and that history exhibits the influence and 410 CHAPTER XVIII. power of these abstract symbols. But men must still choose their spiritual or material meanings. And so the indefinite use of the word sein in Ger- many and being in England to signify either a verb or a substantive, still confuses the question whether Mind or Spirit is a thing in itself, or only a predicable — a state of matter ! a mere think ! or a flux ! or a series ! or a possibility ! or a motion, life ! ! And great philosophers and theologians still furiously dispute about such inde- finite or ambiguous words. But men must make up their minds on the real mean- ings of their terms before they can possibly reason with any truth or accuracy at all. "We do not know and never can know anything whatever about the reality of matter or of mind except in our own proper persons, in our own individual bodies, and in our own souls, with- out any power to transmit the truth except in words alone. It is absurd to shuffle with our words and deal ambiguously with them, as if they were more than words. It is falsehood and self-contradiction in one or both ambiguities concerning Things and Thoughts. It is a fundamental question, which no other man can determine for us, but which each determines for himself, whether our mind is a state of our body, or our body a state of our mind ; or whether they are one and the same, or are different things, thoughts, and words. If mind and matter, or body and soul, is only a verbal distinction, it ought to be abolished ! but try and abolish it, and see what absurd confusion and self- contradiction you immediately fall into ! In fact, we are unable to abolish the meanings of our words, or their effects and influence on other minds and bodies as well as on our own, and the materialist and LANGUAGE. 41 1 utilitarian contradict themselves whenever they speak and reason. Their words and actions are fundamentally contradictory. The word is a vibration, and its meaning may be an impression, let us say, on the soul ; but what is it that sits aloft in judgment upon that impression, and exer- cises judgment over both soul and body? Is it not something distinct, the spirit of the man, the wiU, the self-conscious something or another, totally distinct from the body, which felt the sound, and from the soul, bodily if you please, which received the impression ? Do we not all know well in our heart of hearts that there is something — a positive thing, our self, our spirit, our free mind — ^which does feel itself wholly different from, and makes itself judge over, the actions of our bodies, and the impressions of the souls ; that there is that internal something, that self, which is neither body nor soul, but is a human judge supreme, sitting within the body and the soul, which are impressed by the words — the Spirit ! However, it is a most idle work to reason with indefinite words ! That ought to be contemptible to the man of intellect. But before we can reason accurately, about mind and matter, we must make up our minds as to the fundamental assumption, either that they are tvjo things or one thing ; and that involves our first predicable number ! That is the very first question that we can put to ourselves about mind and matter — are they two or one ? and till you answer that, you are a mere shuffler with ambiguous words, either con- sciously or imconsciously dishonest. If you start with the assumption that they are one, then it requires no argument to prove; but it follows at once that either your mind is a "flux" or your body a "possibility." 412 CHAPTER XVIII. But you cannot have both, as desired by some positive, but very defective, though illustrious, logicians ! That is bad logic ! that is .shuffling with words ! That is being an idealist when we talk of body, and a materi- alist when we talk of mind ! A Flux, is a material motion, a Possibility, a mental doubt. If you start by saying that two things are one here and now, then you contradict yourself if you, here and now, forthwith call them two. That is plain self- contradiction, whatever your opinion may be on the question, whether truth is from induction or deduction, or whether that " twice two is four " is a deductive or iiiductive truth ! However, the reader of my argument is always sup- posed and assumed to believe that mind and matter — that body and spirit — are two things, and not one thing; two always, and everywhere distinct and different, and never one and the same. That we honestly assumed and avowed at the beginning, and shall, we hope, main- tain to the end. Though I go on to say that, the mental and secret sense and force and meaning oi words overthrow logically the materialist ; just as their mate- rial sense and aural force, as vibrations, overthrow logi- cally the idealist ! But it is clear, that all the abstract words involved in Aristotelian logic, are all loose and inaccurate expres- sions, primarily materialistic, and not necessarily in any wise idealistic ; and it is also clear, that they can only become accurate and scientific, or be reasoned about accurately, by us modems, who believe in both mind and matter, when they are reduced to measurement in time, space, and number, so far as all external and material things are concerned ; and that number, space. LANGUAGE. 413 and time are our true mental senses for measuring external things. But there are some other abstract words now in much use, the meanings of which it is very desirable to clear up a little. Order, method, system, law, cause, &c. These are in all our mouths, and require some little consideration. OEUEK, METHOD, SYSTEM. There is certainly a natural sense, or desire for Order, varying in its power, in children from their earliest years. We all have an innate sense of order more or less — a natural desire to arrange things in order. But, besides being a natural internal sense in the mind, what is its scientific force and meaning as a word in common use 1 I think order primarily is the simplest scientific state of nuniber. Number comes first, but order after- wards to arrange the number. We cannot have order till we have a number ; but if we have a number, the mind desires to place them in order in number, in order in time, in order in space ! But order in time requires a number of times, at least two — first and second ; order in space or extension also requires number of parts to become orderly. There is no order in one space ; but we can divide it or add to it, and then put its parts or its additions of space and their contents in order, one after or before the other orderly, and measure space by units of space. When we have a number of things in disorder, they are still a number, but not reduced to order, which is an accurate or scientific state of things ! If we number them, we put them in order by ones as units. After that we may order them in time, and fix the second of time at which each of them first existed, if they did not come into existence, all at the same 414 CHAPTER XVIII. time — that is, their genesis or origin and history in time. Then we may proceed to order them in space, and may fix all their several and relative extensions and distances by niimber and time with such care and accuracy as our measures of space and motion admit of. But as soon as we are involved with space and time, there arises motion of material things, and/orm and succession in time. But Order is the product of number and mind — that is, a scientific state or arrangement of numbers. A number of things are in order when they are reduced by the mind to a scientific state. All order agrees in this, that the things will be TcTiown and recognised by their order — i.e., the order in which we have placed them. Method is a kind of order, generally involving not only number, but also space. It is a more compli- cated order, signifying orderly travelling along a road, and we may have a material order, which is a method, and a mental or temporal order, which is a system. We should say, a well-defined method and a harmonious system. These seem to me the scientific force of order, method, and system. Thus Order primarily is the product Number . State. Method is „ Order . Space . State. System is , , Method . Time . State. But this relates to material things, like a method of con- struction or a system of drainage — a metaphorical road or way for our mind to take in space and 'time. But a systematic method and methodical system are two different things — the one should be symmetrical and the other harmonious. But metaphors are dangerous in all reasoning, unless we are more than ordinarily careful to distinguish between mind and body. But a method should be symmetrical, and a system bar- . LANGUAGE. 4x5 monious, as a general rule ; thus orde,r is verbal, method is material, and system is mental, and symmetry is of matter, and harmony is of mind. LAW. We hear a great deal about Law nowadays, and everybody uses the word, but very few could say at once what general or universal meaning is attached to this general term, law. It is so easy to make and distin- guish signs, that there is no excuse for any philosopher or man of science having two meanings for one general term, though we are all very liable, in the eagerness of controversy, to overlook our departure from one fixed meaning, and find ourselves confounding and confusing two meanings into one word. But it is the object of aU true science to be careful and accurate, and to avoid such ambiguity, which is the indirect form of falsehood — a form of falsehood very often quite unconsciously committed. " Law is the product of (words and order). All laws are orderly words laid down by lawgivers. And so the laws of gravitation are orderly words from the writings of Newton, and the laws of the decalogue are orderly words from the writings of Moses; the laws of population are orderly words from writers on popu- lation, and so on." " Law is not action, but a rule of action," says Sir J. Herschel. But Law is not strictly a physical rale, or a mental rule, but a verbal rule of action, and equally applicable to matter or to mind. All laws are words, forming the rule by which things and persons are reduced to order. There is no mystery or theology about the laws of nature ; they merely mean those verbal rides which men have invented or discovered, for reducing natural things to order. Grand mouthing pre- 4l6 CHAPTER XVIII. tenders to science, with little love of truth, love to talk of " the universal reign of law " ! But this merely means the universal reign of orderly human words ; a conclusion far removed at present from mankind, and entirely theologial, of which we need not be in the least alarmed, if properly understood. For every natural Law presupposes and presumes the existence of a Lawgiver in nature quite distinct from the grand 4tre d'humanit^! When orderly words reign in the universe, there will be less confusion about the word cause, and about the First Cause. AU laws, then, are the product, (words X order), and are to us verbal rules, invented by man, or discovered by man, or revealed to man, and are ap- plicable to all causes which they can explain, and reduce to rule and order. But what is cause ? CAUSE. The hatred of certain philosophers for the word cause is a veritable superstition ! Every cause involves mind or power, and so is applicable to God, who is the first cause and the source of all power, even those powers which are abused to evil, as well as those which are used to do well. God has created minds or free powers, but He is not responsible for their evil actions. But power is to mind : as force is to matter: and as influence is to language. Mind exercises power, matter exerts force, and language exerts, and professes to exert its influence ; and great and wonderful have been the influence and disputation produced by the word cause in philosophy. To confound " order in time" with cause, we all know and feel in our hearts is a falsity ; because, though every cause precedes its effect, yet that precession in time we all know and feel in no respect implies our ordinary LANGUAGE. 417 sense of the relation of cause and effect, any more than that the first night was the cause of the first day, and every night is the cause of every day, or that Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands, if its building, in fact, preceded their accumulation. So the logician is driven to beat about the bush, and then says they are " not fundamentally different " ! And, of course, everybody is entitled to say by the law of identity, if he pleases, that he will use "caiise" to mean antecedent, and antecedent to mean cause. And no one can object, if he woiild and did adhere honestly, to that use of the word ; and does not (which he infallibly soon will do) use it like ordinary people, so as to include the idea of power; and thus more or less admit the thought of mind, without confessing its existence. But such use of the word confuses and confounds men's thoughts of cai^se, which evidently always in- volves power and action, with two things which have nothing to do with causation — time and order. Let us first take the lawyer's use of the word Cause, and examine it in the first place.* A cause at law is an action between a plaintiff and defendant. The plaintiff comes first, and the defendant comes after ; and when they, the parties, are both pre- sent together, there is a legal hubbub — in short, a few WORDS between them ; and the cause comes into court before a judge, an admitted possessor of a certain amount of power, wisdom, and goodness. The judge applies or lays down the law in words, and the cause is at an end ; the plaintiff and defendant sink into their new positions * The following pages as to the meaning of the word " cause " are talten from 'Philosophy; or, Science of Truth,' p. 246, to which I have seen no attempt at an answer. 2d 41 8 CHAPTER XVIII. in peace, and the law-cause is at an end, and has become, in lawyer phrase, a law case, laid by for future reference. Just as we put a book in our bookcase, good and bad ; so we put our law cases registered altogether till we want them. Therefore, we have a law cause, the product of Parties X Action X (power, wisdom, and goodness) ending in a law case. But mind is a product of power, wisdom, and goodness, in greater or less development. Therefore, a cause is the product of Parties x Action x Mind ; and the thing produced is a case of law or law case. Thus the lawyers, at all events, mean by cause a thing composed of parties, action, and mind, producing an effect or new arrangement of things and parties, called a law point or law case. The cau«e ends in a case ; the TJ in the word, expressing the mutual action of the par- ties, having been settled and excluded by the Power of the judge. Now, I say that not only all lawyers, but all English- men — and most other nations also — commonly use the word Cause in this manner — ^viz., as a confused action of parties settled by the Power of Mind of a judge. Sup- pose, therefore, that in place of bringing into court a plaintiff and defendant, two persons, we brought into court an acid and an alkali, two things, or an electric cur- rent and some water — in short, any active material things, or things in activity ; and a hubbub follows between them, action and reaction, ending in a neutral salt in the first case, and two gases in the other, or some other effect or consequence of the action in every case. Well ! the cause begins, proceeds, and ends ; and in place of an acid and an alkali, we have a neutral salt ; or, in place of water, we have two gases ; or at the end of the action and reaction we have some other effect or conse- LANGUAGE. 419 quence ; we have, in short, in every such cause, a case of chemical law. We thus have two or more law points, or law cases in chemistry. Well, then ! is the difference very startling, or, in truth, is there any difference what- ever to our human apprehension between the Lawyers' and the Chemists' use of the word Cause ? Two or more things or particles, not minds or persons, come or are put together, as a cause, and there ensues a hubbub or hurlyburly between them, which we do not in the least understand, but which we call the cause or antecedent, and it ends in an effect or consequent, a case of natural law. And the chemist or natural pljilo- sopher, in his laboratory, endeavours to pick out the law of the chemistry case, just as a lawyer in his chambers, endeavours to get at the law of his law case. In the one case we have persons, or parties, in action, in the other case we have thiTigs in activity. This is the plain un- sophisticated truth, and every Englishman so speaks, and verbally admits it, when he uses the word Cause. We have certainly yet to learn why we Englishmen are to use the word cause in any other sense, in the courts of natural philosophy, than we do in the courts of our country ; or why we are to leave the power, wis- dom, and goodness of the judge out of court in the one case, and not in the other. For my part, I will not leave it out till some sufficient reason be given; and, therefore, in the cause between the acid and the alkali, or electricity and water, or any other cause in natural philosophy, I refer the consequent, the neutral salt, or the two gases, to the due and proper application of Power or mind by the Supreme Omni- potent Judge, by Himself or His agents, universally •present in Court; just as I refer the iinal arrangemefaifc 420 CHAPTER XVIII. Ijetweeii plaintiff and defendant at 'Westminster to the application of power or mind by the judges there, and endeavour, by searching and examining all the circum- stances from the beginning of the cause to the end of it, to find out the law which the authorities must reason- ably have intended to lay down. We cannot refer to the judge himself in the one case or the other ; but we can if we choose, in both cases, start a new and similar cause, or try to do so in order to hear or see a new and more lucid judgment if possible. The advantage which natural philosophy has over the practice of the law is, that you are more sure of not receiving different answers to the same question in the one case than in the other ; but how Cause can be con- founded with Law, or how an antecedent or former state of things can be confounded with the law, the dead rule according to which, the living power, wisdom, or good- ness of the judge produces a new state of the same things, or how Cause can be confounded with Succession in Time, appears to me a most surprising abuse of words. Cause is, parties, action. Mind. Effect is, parties, new arrangement. And Law is the verbal expression or rule which the judge lays down, or which the lawyer or the looker-on adopts in order to express the change which has taken place, devised by his judgment from the facts of the whole cause, carefully examined from the beginning to the end. Law is words in order — orderly words. Lawyers misinterpret cases, and so do natural philo- sophers. It is often needful at law to go and search the records of an old cause to find who all the parties were, and whether there were not some other parties than those mentioned in the reports, in order to account for LANGUAGE, 42 1 the strange conclusion. But it would be a most sur- prising effort of reason if we came to the conclusion that the judge had left the court, and that the judgment pro- ceeded without him, and that the cause was settled by the parties ending their difference according to the clock at Westminster — that is to say, by order in time — or tossing up which should go first and which last, or ending in "a phenomenon with no cause at all!" A consequent without an antecedent ! We say, therefore, that in the courts of nature the Judge is always present, by Himself or His agents, whenever a cause ends in a case of natural law. And we say that a law of nature is merely our words to try and explain to ourselves the reason of the cause ending in an effect or case of the law. When we are puzzled, we try, if possible, to put the parties or particles to the question, as Bacon recommended. We take them separately, and, if. possible, crucify them till they tell us their whole history, and how they came, and what they would do in other circum- stances, and whether they are single or double, and so forth ; and turn them round and round, and back- wards and forwards, and inside out, if possible, both while the cause proceeds, and before it begins, and after it ends, and we register every answer they give us ; and, without doubt, the Great and All-powerful and All-wise and AU-good Judge in the Courts of Nature approves of man's searching disposition. He says, " My son, get wisdom !" And Nature is the great mathematician and the great Mechanic constantly at work applying the wisest laws, which it is man's duty to search for and discover. External nature was intended to rouse our sluggish 422. CHAPTER XVIII. spirit, to elevate us from the pleasures of sense to the' pleasures of intellect, and from the pleasures of intellect to the glories of that Divine goodness which is dimly- shadowed in the best feelings of mankind. But what possible excuse is there for any man who admits the existence of an Omnipotent -God, to hide this plain state of the case with " order in time," and " the uniformity of the succession of events ;" and, as it were, to use the very goodness and clearness and certainty of God's law as a reason for turning the judge out of his own court, in the decision of the cavse between his own subjects, his own creations, his own particles of matter. N"ow, how is this absurdity attempted to be supported ? Pirst, by shuffling cause, which does of necessity, accord- ing to all proper usage, imply compound parties, and some action between them, into a sitigle antecedent ; and secondly, by shuffling the new state of the parties when the cause is concluded, also into a single consequent, and calling this new state of parties the effect of the first state ; just as if this new arrangewierai was effected with- out any mental power or interference whatever, as if arrangememfe were made by blind particles of now- thinking things of their own accord, and according to the most beautiful, sublime, and subtle laws that man can conceive in his loftiest mind, and express in intel- ligible words and symbols ! However, if materialistic philosophers choose to use the word Cause in a manner different from all other men, who understand by cause an action between two or more persons, and thence by analogy transfer it to action and reaction betjveen two or more external things or particles, and consider caiise as an action between two or more things ending, in both cases, in some new ar- » . LANGUAGE. 423. T&hgetnent of persons or things, by the fiat of a power- ful, vdse, or good Judge, or his agents, they are bound to give us some clear and intelligible new meaning for the old word cause. "What produces the thought of cause in their mind ? In short, if it be not, as I say, the product of parties, action, mind, ending in a new arrangement of the parties, the persons, or things, called the law case — ^either the municipal law case, or the natural law case, or the moral law case — ^what do they mean? Can these philosophers give us any meaning without being self - contradictory ? Can they avoid talking of a consequent which had no antecedent — i.e., "a phenomenon with no cause at all" — or of " order in time," with no order at all — i.e., a variety of distinct causes for the same effect? We are not bound to give up our plain intelligible words for self-contradictory trash. But the most amusing excuse of some of these philo- sophers who propose to turn the Great Judge of the Universe out of His own natural court, and to make causes between things decide themselves by order in time or the clock at Greenwich Observatory, and with- out His presence and action and power, is what may be called the infra dig. argument. It is, in short, be- neath His importance ; it is infra dig. for the Great Judge to be called in to settle a question between an acid and an alkali, or two atoms of matter. In short,, let us speak it with reverence. He must be too busy to attend to such a multiplicity of trifles as we from habit think the wondrous laws and operations of nature in the meanest particles of matter. What a wretched shuffle this is, to try and hide God's particular providence, His. omnipresence and omniscience, and in thought to try 424 CHAPTER XVIII. land exclude Him from this wondrous universe which He has created, and now sustains at every moment in every particle ! In short, this confusion of Cause and Law seems a mere opinion, founded on a personal dis- like to the thought of God's particular providence, to God's omniscience, and to His omnipresence. Weak and wicked man strives to thicken the vail that separates him from his Maker, and would rather think of this universe as a great clock wound up by a watchmaker, and then mankind and all left to work itself down, free from aU responsih'ility to any Being ; but, of course, leaving the original maker of the watch responsible for all irregularities. That seems the whole secret, and the whole reason that exists for confounding law and cause. Materialistic philosophers not only dislike to acknow- ledge the free will of man, and his fall and just punish- ment, but Would, if possible, conceal from themselves God's omnipresence and omniscience. His Divine jjar- ticular Providence operating in the meanest particles of matter. However, we shall continue to hold, both in the laws of nature and in the laws of man, that Cause is the pro- duct o{ parties, action, and Mind ; and that Law is the verbal rule or order laid down, the product of words and order, which brings, verbally, the old state of parties into the new arrangement. There are very many causes in nature of which we are ignorant ; but our business is to search for the first or antecedent arrangement of all the parties or things concerned, and thence to find some verbal rule which will reduce them to the new or conse- quent arramgement. The order and the uniformity are a part of the law — that is, of our verbal expression of it — and not any part of the cause or of the effect. But all LANGUAGE. 425 our discoveries are still only human words. Our verbal expression of the law must, of course, be orderly and uniform, or it is no law at all — i.e., not by us laid down properly for an intelligent creature to understand. As soon, however, as the judge is admitted to be always in court, and nothing too mean for his attention, all other difficulties will vanish from the devout and conscientious mind, and he will seek the laws of nature with that faithful humility and reverence which are most fitted to enable us to discover what is both true and useful. But some poor bewildered mortal may possibly ex- claim, "Why, this is Pantheism ! Is God in every par- ticle of matter, and in every action and reaction that takes place between every two or more petty particles ? To which I answer. Is the judge at Westminster in the parties to the cause, or mixed up with their squabbles, which he settles and determines ? No ! Well, then, why are we to suppose any such folly in a natural cause or a natural action ? The power and wisdom and good- ness of the Judge are not in the particles of matter, but everywhere, except in the free will of evil minds, operat- ing and enforcing good, wise, and powerful laws, and only just as long as He thinks fit ; but the Judge Him- seK is Mind, not matter, nor in any matter. Pantheism is as absurd and as self-contradictory as Pan- Atheism. This is only the constant old shift or shuffle between the foUy of materialism and the folly of dogmatic ideal- ism. When driven from one refuge, the defeated philo- sopher flies to another equally absurd. Thus, however, we are not obliged to use the word cause -in two senses, or in none at all. The analogy between persons and things, between parties and parts, between minds and bodies, is perfect throughout, but 426. CHAPTER XVIII. fhey cannot be confounded. If the devout mind' will but always remember who the Great Judge, by whose laws, discovered and laid down by man in human words, all causes between material things and their parts and particles, are settled, he will be in the best frame of miiid to discover the truest verbal expression for those laws, after he has carefully examined a cause or case of natural law. But if you persist, like a child, in asking for some verbal expression for what you and I cannot understand, I can but fall back on the verbal expression revealed to Moses in the infancy of man's moral educa- tion, and say, that the Spirit of God moves on the face of the earth, and is ever ready to enter the chaos of human free will, and to say, Let there be light, to the humble and penitent searcher for the light of Truth. " If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ? " " I have no toleration for false words, and don't wish to have any." If I think them evil malefactors, I desire to crucify them with the truth. It is such words as " strictly speaking," " not fundamentally different," &c., which suffice to baffle the most powerful intellects. " Order in time is not fundamentally different from causation !" Why, this admits a difference, and says it is not fundamental. Does fundamental mean to fovmd- a-mental-thing-ujpon, oxfind a mental thing for? Well, if we cannot found a mental thing upon the difference, and yet admit there is a difference, we should admit our ignorance, and not call two different things by the same name. " The succession of events," otherwise called the law of causation ! Night the cause of day, day the cause of night ! Every first the cause of every second ! and .'LANGUAGE. 427 every second the cause of every third ! and so on ; any amount of absurdity rather than confess ignorance and become humble. Now, is it that men cannot /ownrf, or cannot find, a mental thing ; and not being able to find or found, think themselves entitled to eonfov/nd order in time ■with cause, though they know and admit that they know them to be different f We thus have discussed shortly law and cause, by reducing these words to their factors ; and hope that if any reader who in times past has found his mind in anywise bewildered between formal causes and efficient causes, and moral causes and final causes, will candidly read over and consider the verbal solution which we have given, he will discover that it is a pathway clear and distinct across the weary wilderness of words, through which even great philosophers have vainly endeavoured to pass, in the settlement of this question ; and that he will acknowledge that our explanation is one which can be rendered throughout perfectly clear and intelligible. Of course it depends on our assumption that the word Cause is a product of (parties, action, judge) ; or in ex- ternal nature (things, action, Mind) — i.e., the mind of God, whenever we refer to external nature, subject to Him. It of course assumes that there is only one mean- ing for the word cause, and it adheres to that meaning throughout, and shows that in his most ordinary lan- guage man still confesses the Maker whom he sometimes wishes to deny. When the things become mental things — i.e., human persons — and the action becomes human words, and the mind becomes a hiTman judge, we have a law cause ; but when the things are external bodies or particles, and the action not the words of persons but the works of particles, and the mind becomes the 428 CHAPTER XVIII. Creator of the universe, or His agents, then the cause hecomes a cause in Nature. But, on the one hand, to confound the mind of the universe with the work of particles of matter, is, we say, mere superstition and idolatry; and, on the other, to deny His presence in every natural cause, in every action of every particle of matter, is to deny His omnipresence, omniscience, and power. There is not a hair of our heads that is not numbered. There is not a sparrow falls to the ground but by His will ; not one of them "forgotten before God." There is not a particle of matter which works or operates but by His express knowledge, permission, power, and wiU. This truth of a Divine particular Providence is a truth as far removed from superstition and idolatry as it is from infidelity and blasphemy ! THEOLOGICAL, METAPHYSICAL, POSITIVE. The true relations between these three words — thoughts and things — has, as I conceive, been wholly misunderstood ! The first relates to Spirits, the second to Language, the third to Matter ! The language of metaphysics, as I have already observed, is altogether metaphorical, and is necessarily so ; for metaphysics being of the human mind alone, and each mind being secretly enclosed and altogether hidden in the indi- vidual breast and brain, metaphor, or the use of ma- terial images in a mental sense or meaning, is the only possible method and means for one man to tell to another man anything whatever concerning his mind ! The mind is hidden except to the individual ■whose mind it is, and other men can only be made to LANGUAGE. 429 understand its mental operations by jnetaphorical lan- guage, of which all the metaphors must be taken from external things and their relations or actions. Thus all metaphysical language is metaphorical. But the true understanding or development of mind itself as a general subject of human knowledge can only be a mental language, and that a metaphorical language, of which the first word is mind or spirit or breath. Matter is the type of mind, and the utility of matter is the type of the morality of mind. This metaphorical language is the constant language of the Pounder of Christianity. " The stone which the builders rejected has become the headstone of the corner," is said of Christ himself His mind is the corner-stone of the moral world. He is our rock on which we buUd, and He himself has become our great exemplar, and His language our comer-stone, our mental guide to buUding up our own religion and morals. AU this is to the Christian intelligible meta- phor ; but it is also philosophical truth. The life of matter is the type of the life of the mind ; and the breath of our bodies is the type of that Holy Spirit from whom, and in whom, and by whom all our true mental life must begin, proceed, and grow. When we speak, there- fore, of the metaphysical, the word clearly refers to human language only, aU of which is the language of metaphor ; and metaphysics are wholly physics meta- phored within our brains as mind, and representing mind or spirit and its relations to matter and to minds. But when we speak of theology and the theological, we speak not of the human mind alone, but of its rela- tions to other minds. " Ye are all gods," said Christ, adopting the words of David and applying them to 430 CHAPTER XVIIT. mankind ; and a^ spirits made in the image of G6d, men are all: gods — spirits made in the divine image; and theology is the relations that exist between men as spirits and God as the one great Spirit; and the theo- logical is necessarily only the logic of theology — i.e.^ of the relations of mind or spirit — so the Positive is that whicL relates to things positive— i. e., posited in space, Or material things alone ! Thus the theological is of spirit, the metaphysical of language, and the posi- tive of matter alone. But the logic of theology does not pass into the logic of metaphysics, nor the logic of metaphysics into the logic of physics. The logic of physics, on the contrary, passes by metaphor into the logic of metaphysics, and the logic of metaphysics passes by spiritual symbolism into the logic of theology. Matter is the type of mind, and the human mind, in its capacity for power, wisdom, and goodness, is the humble type of the God who made it in His own image I and man's business on earth is to strive and seek to revive and recreate, or perfect in himself, an image or imitation of God's power, wisdom, and goodness, and the best method of doing so has been best pointed out by the words and action of Jesus of Nazareth. The truth, in fact, is the very reverse of that sup- posed by the author of poative philosophy. His sup- position is indeed pure materialism. The theological does not pass away altogether, for that is to aboHsh mind or spirit ; nor does it pass into the metaphysical, or into mere forms of words, forces, causes, principles ; but rather the metaphysical passes into the theological'. Nor does the metaphysical pa'ss -away altogether and leave only the ^positive ; for in fact we can only know .. LANGUAGE. 43 1 the positive through, the metaphysical, while at the same time the language of metaphysics is the metaphorical language of physios, and the positive is only the scien- tific language of matter or physics accurately and scien- tifically understood by the mind, and expressed in accurate language. Theology is the science of spirits, metaphysics the science of language, and the positive is the science of matter; and mind, matter, and language are fundamental existences known to ourselves, to exist in ourselves, and they must ever continue to exist while man exists ; for man shares in all three as a spirit thinking within a body acting and speaking symbols. The shallow notion of Auguste Comte, therefore, that the history of man is the passing of the theological into the metaphysical, and the swallowing up of both in the positive, is in substance, I repeat, pure materialism. And the idea arose from confounding the mental history of each individual, which to some extent also is the type of the history of the race, with the truth of fact ! The child is most theological, the youth most metaphysical, and the man most positive. The fetichism of the infant, passes into the verbaUy-acquired metaphysical principles of the youth, and the metaphysical principles of the youth are modified by the practical experience of the man. So far Comte's idea is a true description of the history of each individual mind, and also partially a true description of the history — ^the mental historj' — of the human race. But it is just as false to think or say that the indi- vidual's mind perishes as he grows up, as to think or say that theology can ever perish. It is just as false to say that language ceases to the man of action, as to say 432 CHAPTER XVIII. that metaphysics can ever disappear. We cannot even comprehend the positive — i.e., matter — without meta- physics ; for the first comparison which we make, or likeness, or resemblance, which we perceive is metaphy- sical and mentaL Men, indeed, both as nations and as individuals, may sink into the positive as mere mate- rialists ; but their mind continues to exist, and their language will live to bear witness of the truth, and to condemn the folly and the madness of the base materi- alism into which their mind has fallen ! This is true of individuals and of nations ; and this is all the truth that exists in the grand principle of the Positive Philo- sophy, which well exhibits its own self-contradiction, by its own metaphysics and its own author's theology. Thus, for example, we behold positive philosophy reduced to its " binary combinations " of the " objective and subjective," to " statics and dynamics," and to the sciences of " number and extension and motion," in vio- lation of what its author calls our " just repugnance to ternary combinations" !* But the objective and sub- jective, and rest and motion, and number and extension, are all metaphysical, and, moreover, confused metaphy- sics ; and the worship of the " ^tre supreme " — the " d^esse de I'humanit^" — the woman of thirty with a child in her arms — all this is not only theology ! but false and very absurd theology ! The inconsistencies of the philosopher do not prove the falsehood of his doctrines ; but the theological can never disappear — it is mind ; the metaphysical can never be got rid of— it is language ; and the positive, which is the science of matter, can only be truly understood by uniting the reverence for the theological with the * Hotre juste repugnance aux combinaisons ternaires. — Cat. Pos. 150. LANGUAGE. 433. intelligence of the metaphysical, and by reducing mate- rial phenomena to human words, for the metaphysics of matter, in childlike submission and reverence towards the Creator of all things. And instead of " intelligence being the only possible basis of faith," — of such faith as Auguste Comte can suggest, or of any other — faith is the only possible basis both of the intelligence and reason, and also of the material and positive. We must begin with faith before we can reason ; we must believe in the material before we can posit it in the intelligence ; we must ourselves create the metaphysical and ideal beings and existences, Number, Time, and Space, before we can have any posi- tive general human knowledge — true or accurate Science — of the material beings by which we are surrounded. And thus the fundamental doctrine of the "philosophie positive" — of the Theological being swallowed up in the Metaphysical, and both in the Positive — is a mistake in the very elements of knowledge and reasoning ; and the materialist must return to the theological faith of his infancy, and correct the metaphysical principles of his youth, before he can even begin to truly understand, and properly appreciate the Positive, in which his soul is wrapped ; and his positive physics must be reduced to metaphysics before his intelligence can truly compre- hend them. Nor does this present to the intelligent Symbolist any theoretical difficulty whatever ; for he perceives and knows that the human mind can only know the mind of God through words and signs and symbols, which to be true, must be revealed by God himself, and implanted and nourished and vivified by the Eternal Spirit of God ; and the human mind can only know* external nature 2 E 434 CHAPTER XVIII. througli words and signs and symbols, invented and adopted and improved from age to age by man himself, feeling himself the faithful child of God, and the humble interpreter of God's works and words. These combine unity in variety, and variety infinite in form — ONE gene- ralised into variety of matters, and ONE also into variety of MINDS, and the third into the true mental comprehen- sion of the language which describes them both. But the actions of inferior spirits are not the actions of God; they have been created free, and God is not responsible for their evil deeds ; and the phenomena of matter and of mind are without doubt more or less subject to the actions and influence of minds inferior to God, but created with powers, great or little, over the phenomena of matter. The origin of evil, like all origin, must ever remain a mystery to man ; but God is not the Author of evil ; for that would be a contradiction. Thus the theological is the product (Language x God), The metaphysical that of (Language X Human Mind), And the positive that of (Language x Matter). In fact, every theology professes to be the relation between some words and God ; metaphysics the relation between some words and the human Mind ; and the posi- tive is the relation assumed or acknowledged by us, as self-evident and true, between some words and Matter. Such distinctions are inaccurate and useless until we limit and define the relation in question by number, time, and space, and therefore we should adhere to mind, matter, and language — spirits, bodies, and words, as the fundamental things we have to reason about. We shall consider the question of miracles in the next chapter on the possible, the credible, the True. LANGUAGE. 435 EXISTENCE, EQUALITY, PKOPOKTION. These three words are indefinite and amMguous, until we limit them to mind, matter, and language ; by num- ber, time, and space ; of which the various sciences afford ample proof. There is material existence, mental existence, and verbal existence, which last is the states and relations of words in grammar. So there is equality and proportion in number, time, and space, and in mind, matter, and language. We have already explained order, symmetry, and harmony. Order is a state of number; symmetry an orderly state of space ; and harmony is order in time and space. LETTER and SPIRIT. These words, as applied to symbols, explain them- selves. The letter is the logical, verbal, legal, formal, external, outside state or relation of symbolic action, or language ; and the spirit is the internal, emotional, mental, and sentimental relation of the same action or language; — all which must be quite unintelligible to those who refuse to recognise the distinction of soul and spirit as the two parts of the human mind corre- sponding to the letter and spirit of words and actions. ACTIVITY, LIBERTY, NECESSITY. These three words properly relate to matter, mind, and language respectively. Activity is of matter ; — what we term the spontaneous actions of matter on other mat- ter, when placed within the proper sphere or motion, seem all reducible to attraction, repulsion, and circula- tion, or to vibration and undulation. The same particles 436 CHAPTER XVIII. which at one moment violently attract and adhere to each other, on the application of some imponderable matter, like heat or electricity, violently repel each other. We see, in motion, the facts of attraction, repul- sion, and circulation, but only guess and make theories about the causes and reasons for such strange likes and dislikes or proceedings — we hide our ignorance in a word like the affinity or activity or attraction — of matter. Liberty is properly of spirit alone ; it is the internal consciousness and conviction of that Spirit which is within each of us, and which speaks of my body, my soul, my actions, my words, my thoughts. But if it be. true, as I think is self-evident, that body and soul are both materi- al, and subject to the laws of biology and psychology, both being sciences at present very little understood; the word liberty, does not strictly or primarily apply to either body or soul, which are only the instruments of the human spirit ; but no man can deprive himself of the secret conviction that his spirit is free, although his body may be enslaved to a man by law, and his soul also hopelessly enslaved to bad habits, bad spirits, bad sentiments, bad principles, or false words. The only necessity known to man is entirely verbal and symbolic. There is a fundamental falsehood and absurdity in speaking of material necessity or mental necessity, though we are all too often in the habit of so speaking — ^what we properly mean by such lan- guage is merely the legal necessity of obeying certain verbal laws which we have discovered to affect our bodies or our souls, or else, bearing pain or death, the sanctions of such laws over our souls and bodies. But we do not know why such material laws exist. The laws of symbols and cognition are also verbal rules, and LANGUAGE. 437 we often have discovered their necessity — {.e., absolute verbal necessity, — like the laws of logical inference, of mathematical curves and lines — ^the laws of number, space, and time, &c. — all such scientific knowledge is necessary truth ; which cannot possibly be otherwise in any intellect. But it is all merely verbal and symbolic. For example, the law that a body vibrating in the curve called a cycloid, attracted by the force of gravity, is independent of space — that is, that it must vibrate fifty miles in the same time that it will vibrate five inches; that is a necessary theoretical truth, founded on the law of gravity, and the nature of that curve, and nobody but one who is ignorant or stupid can doubt it. So again Dalton's law of definite proportions is a necessary truth, founded on the word atom, or ulti- mate particle, and no one but a person who is either ignorant or stupid can doubt it, as I have elsewhere proved.* But it is much easier to demonstrate stu- pidity, in logic or mathematics, than in politics or sociology. Necessity, therefore, as known to man, has only reference to human words, signs, and symbols. When men of science speak of certain curves and motions and forces and atoms, they are talking of words whose scientific meanings are fixed; and they can crucify a falsity with logic. But metaphysics and politics and sociology are not yet scientific, and there- fore the spirit of falsehood can in such pseudo-sciences well contend with the spirit of truth, by means of false or ambiguous words. And so in discussing Ne- cessity, the devil is able to mix up the body, soul, and spirit of a man altogether in a parcel of false and am- biguous metaphysical words, so as to puzzle some of * Philosophy, or Science of Truth, p. 207. 438 CHAPTER xvin. the best and purest minds the world has ever seen. But the days of his end approach, and the light of truth begins to dawn over the whole world. Happy is it then to know that, as thoughts without words are dead, so words without deeds are hypocrisy ; and " that a cup of cold water given in the name of Christ shall in no wise lose its reward," however false may be, our theology and metaphysics. But activity is material ; liberty is spiritual ; and the only necessity known to mankind is mathematical necessity, which is altogether mrhal or relating to words and symbols. OKIGIN OF LANGUAGE. The origin of language is, like every other origin which man can search for, lost in the mists of antiquity. In this, as in all other questions of origin, man finds himself in the middle of a series, of which the earlier and the later terms, or the greater and the lesser terms, are equally beyond the limits of his senses and powers. But as language peculiar to one person, would not be lan- guage at all, until accepted and adopted by one or many others, language presupposes mind and matter ; i.e., as- sumes numbers of persons or vaany minds, as mutually employing the words or material symbols of the language itself. And when we examine the likenesses or resem- blances of the words of all languages to each other, we ultimately find that, we can reduce them all to the two classes of nouns and verbs, for things and actions, or things and thoughts— in short, for matter and mind ; for all things are at first supposed material, and mind is at first assumed as the cause of every action. And go our assumed predicables — states of unity and relations of plurality — are fundamentally the very same distinc- LANGUAGE. 439 tion, turned into the triple possibilities to be examined — a state is a possible fact; and a relation a possible theory — ^respecting mind, matter, or language itself. It is self-evident that every articulate proposition in words, expresses a thing and a thought about it — a thing, which must be reducible to our categories or classes of things — mind, matter, or language; and a thought, which must be either a state or a relation of the thing. It is absurd, therefore, to attempt to enume- rate all states and relations, for they are, like things and thoughts, innumerable; but we divide them into the possible, the credible, the true — all either affirmative or negative. But the error of all languages has been the error of all philosophy, the overlooking the true position and in- fluence or states and relations of language itself ; for, in fact, untU men have words, they can neither have any . science nor any philosophy concerning either thoughts or things ; but all human necessity, properly so called, is entirely verbal, or symbolic, and confined to words, signs, and symbols, invented by man himself. We can only reason of intellectual necessity, which is verbal. And as the origin of our ideas is the origin of lan- guage, so the science of language is the whole science of truth— not of truth as it can be known to God (of which we can know nothing), but of truth as it can be known to man — not of the truth, of things in themselves, of which we can know nothing ; but of things in relation to man's nervous system, which we can investigate, and for which we can invent names. All attempts to reduce language to imitations and interjections, or to what has been humorously called the Bow-wow theory and the Pugh-pugh! theory, must yield to the acknowledged self- 440 CHAPTER XVIII. evident assumption of man's body and man's mind, as being distinct and different; and as so made by all nations and aU tongues, and self-evident to every individual. The true origin, and source of language, is the pos- session and self-perception of a body and a mind — i.e., of matter and mind — things and persons — nouns and verbs. And most probably, in the origin of each tongue each word became both noun and verb by the method of using it, either alone or conjunctively, to express the thing itself or some observed action or relation, the mental application of the thing ; as is still the case in Chinese. The division of languages into the three kinds, mono- syllabic, agglutinative, and organic or inflectional, is a grammatical division. The two first are like addition, by ones, and by many ; and the last like multiplication of numbers. But the logic of the monosyllabic Chinese, or the agglutinative Finns or Hungarians, is no doubt the same as that of Sanskrit,- Greek, or English, for human reason is the same everywhere. At least we find Chinese state-papers as logical and acute from their own (the Chinese) point of view as English state papers are — and it is by the assumptions of things, thoughts, and words — of definitions, postulates, and axioms — of words, questions, and principles, — all fundamentally the same, that all reasoning proceeds. And all reasoning must always be at bottom, only varied forms of our ori- ginal assumptions of mind, matter, and language — of spirits, bodies, and words, which are the self-evident foundation of all human tnith to all mankind ; and to which, all men in fact and truth do subscribe and sub- mit, even when they wish to avoid it, and profess and declare they will reject it ! For in these symbols man LANGUAGE. 44! is effectually caged and imprisoned ; and when he tries to get out and escape, he becomes forthwith involved in very self-evident contradictions. It is a very acute and true remark, proved by Pro- fessor Peacock, and approved by Dr Whewell, as to the universality of symbols, that "if general symbols ex- press an identity when supposed of any special nature, they must also express an identity when general in their nature," and that thus our symbols become more gene- ral than our thoughts ; and " our symbols thus reason for us."* But all accurate and logical language is symbolic, and more general, than we can be aware of. But in order to understand properly the origin and nature of language, we must not only distinguish be- tween body, soul, and spirit in each and every man, but also between the three organic departments or phenomena, of man's body of which the vegetative or vital force or power is one ; and the organic, mus- cular, or animal system of our bodies is another; and the cranio-nervous self- reflecting system is the third ; and we must also distinguish the three depart- ments of man's soul, suited and related respectively to beauty, truth, and goodness — emotion, intellect, and wUl; all of which are very distinct in our thoughts of the body and soul of man — distinct not only from each other, but also all entirely distinct from the govern- ing Spirit of the whole man, which always feels, and thinks, and speaks of my body, my soul, my organic and nervous systems, my ideas of beauty, or of truth and of goodness, in my own soul ! The languages of most nations confess the self-evident truth of the distinction between beauty, goodness, and truth. • WheweU, Phy. Ind. Sci., i. 143. 442 CHAPTER XVIII. That governing Spieit, ever restless and never sleep- ing, though it will occasionally take pity on its servants, the body and the soul, and may tell them to sleep on and take rest when overworked or over-agitated, yet that spirit never feels in itself the want of that rest which soul and body may both loudly declare to be absolutely necessary for further existence upon earth! But that Spirit sits aloft, supreme judge over language as uttered by the body and the soul; although the materialism of some nations, as of the Chinese, operates to corrupt the language applicable to soul and spirit. Men who have not realised this description as true in themselves, have not yet sounded the depths of their own nature in body and soul, and have not yet realised the distinct and superior existence of that spirit in man which has been the source of all enthusiasm and all fanaticism and all patriotism, and all the many other isTTis — ^in short, of all that has been noble and true, or base and. false, in human history ! Now the influence of Language appears to me to be exercised entirely over the human soul, not over man's body, and not over his spirit. The body is not influ- enced by words, signs, symbols, and the spirit is alto- •gether superior to them; the spirit is free to choose, adopt, reject, either the truth or falsehood— to force, in fact, the soul even to lie to itself, and to make the body lie to others respecting its own words, signs, symbols. Hence the deep truth of that principle of the least intellectual but most gentle and most practical of all the apostles of Christ, " If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body " — a very deep truth, not yet understood by utilitarians and positive philosophers. But the influence of Ian- LANGUAGE. 443 guage, as it seems to me, is wholly on the soul ; and words, signs, symbols, if understood and received and adopted, are internal existences in the soul — ideas, images, &c.; and we may worship the outward visible symbol in our soul, and so become idolaters ; or we may confound the letter and spirit of the word, sign, or sym- bol, and possess a form of godliness without the spirit, and become therefore liars, hypocrites, and Pharisees; whilst all the while the good or the evil human Spirit, as the case may be, sits supreme over all, and either con- fesses or denies the fall — whilst those good and evil Spirits, which can, from without, read man's thoughts, may sympathise or mock. Words, signs, symbols, therefore — language received into and understood by the soul — are and become ideas known to the individual man, but of course they remain impossible to be Tcnown to other men but by guess-work from the outward effect in other words and actions. But God and nature teach us to use matter and its motions, as the metaphorical types of mind and its emo- tions; and to make metaphors of metaphors, like the letter and the spirit, applicable to the Soul or material part of the mind, and metaphorically to the divine or wholly immaterial human Spirit. But it is mere confusion about language and ideas that produces such questions or principles as the fol- lowing : — " It is not man's mind which puts him in possession of ideas, but it is ideas — that is, knowledge — which puts him in possession of a mind." "The mind does not make ideas, but ideas make mind." " Matter makes mind, and not mind matter." " It is not the poetic mind which creates the ideas of beauty and sublimity 444 CHAPTER XVIII. which it utters, but those ideas which, entering into a man, create the poetic mind." " And so in moral truth, it is not our moral nature which makes the distinction between right and wrong, but the exist- ence of right and wrong, and the apprehension of them by us, which create our moral nature" ! "I have no moral nature before the distinction between right and wrong is revealed to me ; my moral nature exists subse- quently to this revelation. At any rate, I acquire a moral nature not after, yet in the very act which brings me the distinction." In all suchlike false views of human nature, the influence of language over the soul is clearly perceived, and almost openly acknowledged, but lan- guage itself and its powers are left out of consideration. We must strive and think a little more clearly and logi- cally about ideas and symbols ; for the Greek or Cala- brian brigand, or Irish assassin, will curse the glorious sunset which delays or defeats his attack on the admir- ing victim. Ideas enter into our mind, but how ? As words, sym- bols, language — as intellectual ideas, true or false ; emo- tional ideas, poetical or otherwise ; moral ideas, good or bad. Morality, ethics, astronomy, &c. — ^their principles enter our minds, but it is only by means of words, signs, symbols — ^by means of actions, rhetoric, &c. — they enter into our very soul, and we feel the force, and are carried away, as it were, bythe influence ! They seem, in loose language, to create our minds ! But it is surely some previous mind which created the words, the signs, the symbols, the actions, the rhetoric ! They either may enlighten and purify, or darken and corrupt, our souls, according to our own choice and application of the symbols. But the soul was there before, with its emo- LANGUAGE. 445 tional capacity, its intellectual capacity, its moral capa- city ! the words, the ideas, the rhetoric can only awaken, they do not create the mind. This phenomenon exhibits only one mind by its words and actions — its language, penetrating and influencing another mind, and thus awakening deep responsive emotions, truths, moral prin- ciples; but God and nature are quite impartial, and leave the choice of the human spirit free to use or abuse. The free spirit of man sits above all this — carping, disputing, denying, suppressing, or otherwise encour- aging, urging, driving, impressing, the words, the very ideas upon its own servant, the soul, according to the wilful mood of the spirit. The moral capacity is there by nature ; the emotional capacity is there by nature ; the intellectual capacity is there by nature ! God created the soul as He created the body, and gave it the spirit in His own image, free and supreme and absolute over all, both soul and body. But both body and soul may have inherited a weak, a diseased, a corrupt constitution; for parents transmit their physical and psychical natures to their children to at least the third and fourth generations. But each man's spirit is supreme and free, though its body and soul — its instruments — may be bent or distorted. All nations and all tongues recognise these truths. This supreme spirit in man is free to choose and adopt, or to reject and refuse the words, the symbols. It may absolutely refuse to impress them as ideas upon the souL It may with little or great, or true or false, moral justice, or benevolence or veneration, either accept or refuse to submit its soul to the elevation or the degrada- tion, the moral or immoral influence, of either words or ideas. It may turn away, and proudly and wiKuUy and 446 CHAPTER XVIII. wickedly reject, the most earnest appeal, the most true and righteous sentiments ; and may cavil and sneer at what it well knows it cannot answer, and ought to accept and submit to ! And it may successfully darken and obliterate the ideas which have been actually impressed on the soul and the soul's conscience. But if we forget or deny the nature and influence of language, or the distinction and difference between body, soul, and spirit, we cannot properly comprehend these most ordinary phenomena of the human mind, or man's language about them ; and we then resort to psychical fictions about association of ideas instead of language — ^human sympathetic approbation in place of mental influence ; utility to ourselves or to others, and the cold influence of the golden rule of doing to others as we would be done by, instead of selfishness or materialism ; and to false principles of a like sort, as operating even in this world, and being on the whole best for ourselves here ; and if not, then possibly of our being rewarded for our selfish or careless labours in the next world, if there be a next world ! But the whole warmth of the Spirit of truth arid love is in such case wholly absent from our moral and intellectual and emotional soul; and our spirit has not yet sought the only source of true life — the one and only true Spirit — that sent by Jesus Christ upon earth to abide with us for ever. But association of ideas, love of approbation, utility, and customary morality, &c., are only the passive sub- jection of our souls to the influence of the words and signs and symbols, which we have imbibed and adopted from the current language in which we have been edu- cated and brought up — ^the shibboleths of our society, party, sect, or nation — no doubt creating a current LANGUAGE. 447 of language, whicli few men have courage or strength either to resist or avoid. But the only true source of strength is not within but without us ; but " the king- dom of God is within us," and it only does not come over our souls, because we do not pray for it as we ought ; and because our spirits are not willing to receive its approaches, even when we say or profess to ask for it, and gabble our paternoster on our knees. The influence of language, then, is the one great power over the human soul, and it comprises in itself all such powers as association of ideas, love of approbation, ethical customs, utility, expediency, &c., which all have a certain verbal and symbolic influence over the human souL But if we feel any doubt, whether to choose humility of mind to God, and submission of body to man with Jesus Christ ; or otherwise to choose pride of mind to God, and resistance of body to man, with all those philo- sophers and patriots who say all men are born free and equal, and "aide toi et le del t'aidera," or who insist that what is useful must be just, instead of the very converse, or what is just must be useful ; and who refuse to see that it is quite as easy to differ and dispute about what is useful, as it is about what is just — then it is full time such doubt should cease, and men should make up their minds to choose between light and darkness, and should try and fix their souls and intelligences, upon sound and accurate language, not only in science, usually so called, but in morals and politics. And that can only be done by having one fixed meaning for each and every word we use ; and the only true method of defining our words is to set down in a list, all the like- nesses or resemblances which each individual of the 44^ CHAPTER XVIII. class must possess, in order to be properly included in the class as one of the individuals comprised in such class. "We will conclude the chapter by setting down some of the definitions we seek to establish. The universe is the product . (mind, matter, language) ; or (spirits, bodies, and words). Things or existences, therefore, are of three kinds, men- tal, physical, and verbal ; and the word thing is ambigu- ous till it is so distinguished. Questions or possibilities are primarily of two kinds STATES as unities, eblations as pluralities. Knowledge is the product of (mind, thing, and word). The first abstract, scientific state of language is number. „ „ state of matter is space. „ „ state of mind is TIME. "Which three are all abstract necessary deductions from our first assumptions — mind, matter, and language — and are the only measures of the universe. Pure Spirit is God alone. Man is (body, soul, and spirit) (in one). Matter is (mass, force, and form) producing sensations, or (motions and forms in the body). Words are motions and forms (in the soul). The soul is (emotion, intellect, and will) ; or power, wisdom, and goodness (or badness). Order is a state of number; Symmetry is order in space ; Harmony is order in time and space. Infinity is fundamentally numerical, or endless number. Infinite number is unity into infinity. Infinite space is number, matter negative, and time. LANGUAGE. 449 Infinite time is number and mind, or (thoughts — states of mind). Cause is (parties, action, mind). Effect is parties and passion (or new arrangement). Law is words and order. Life is matter, form, organisation, absorption, secre- tion, reproduction (so far vegetable life) ; add sensation for a zoophyte, and nervous action for an animal, The soul is an organism of imponderable matter — the habitation of the Spirit — an absolute Intelligence — which can control the Emotion, Intellect, and WUl of the Soul within certain limits; just as the Soul can within certain limits, control the human Body. 2f CHAPTER XIX. THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE THE TRUE. The materialist is to us lundamentally refuted as soon as the distinct existence of mind and matter becomes self-evident; and tlie necessitarian is to us fundamen- tally refuted as soon as the distinct existence of soul and spirit becomes self-evident ; and the spirit and meanings of our own words, give us this self-evidence. But of course, one mere assumption as self-evident is no better than its contrary, as alleged by any other man to be self-evident ; for self-evidence is necessarily indi- vidual evidence, and does not affect those who deny it. To logically refute the materialist from his own prin- ciples and assumptions, we must resort to his own words and their meanings. And we can then show that the materialist, to our minds, contradicts and refutes himself in the very meanings of his own words — as being mere motions, and forms, of which the meanings cannot be matter. So, in order to logically refute the necessi- tarian from his own principles and assumptions, we must resort to his own actions, and to their spiritual intentions or objects; and we can then show that, to our minds, the necessitarian also contradicts himself by the manifest intentions of aU his own actions. "We have inconsistency in action, and self-contradiction in words. The one — the materialist — refutes himself, THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 45 1 as we think, in and by every word he speaks ; and the other — the necessitarian — refutes himself, as we think, in and by every deed he does ! But the necessitarian is doubly refuted to our minds when his words and arguments are considered as deeds — that is, as words with meanings uttered in order to influence the actions of others ; for we cannot add to a flux or a current already in existence by the mere flow- ing of the current itseK. The attempt to do, or to think so, is both mechanically and mentally absurd ! But there is nothing either mechanically or mentally absurd in swim- ming with the current, or against the current, or across the ciirrent, with a spirit and a wOl of your own ! and in the one case, by swimming with or against the current, you alter the time ; and in the other case, by swimming across the current, you may alter the place of that final catastrophe, towards which the current may be neverthe- less hurrying yourself, or the race to which you belong ! But we all think this, only because we each assume the existence of a free spirit in ourselves, and attribute the same free spirit to all other men. Humanity, " the grand Being of mankind," of which races may perish, but the Being itself survives, — like those marsh plants, which perish and decay into black peat below, but throw out fresh rootlets, and green branches on the surface above, — ^is no doubt a great and wonderful organism, of which, and of whose his- tory, we can only study a limited portion. But we are aH certainly born into a current, without our con- sent, and from which we cannot altogether escape so long as we have bodies and souls. Both body and soul are subject to laws and influences, which we have not our- selves enacted or created, and from which we cannot in 452 CHAPTER XIX. any wise free ourselves altogether. As to our bodies and our souls, therefore, the arguments of the materialist and necessitarian are wholly unanswerable. They — ^the soul and body — are both subject to certain laws and influences, and are both involved in a current from which there is no escape in this world. But under cover of this practical truth, the material- ist and necessitarian hide an absolute falsity ; for above both body and soul there is, by the confession con- tained in the words and actions of all men whom- soever, a ruling and controlling spirit within each man, who deems, and feels, and speaks, and acts his feel- ings, that his soul and body are his own instruments, and, to some extent, his own slaves, which he can cause and make either to swim with or against or across that current, which he nevertheless feels to be in fact sweep- ing him along ! We are clay from the hands of the potter, and floating in a current from which there is no escape ; but we know and feel, each and every one of us, that we have within us, a struggling and undying spirit commanding on board our care-worn and sin-defaced vessel No other explanation wiU fit the facts of the case. Man's soul and body are subject to law, but his Spirit is free and absolute. The Possible merely opens the question ; and is the passing from indifference or ignorance to doubt. The Credible embraces a sphere which includes the most remote improbability which is possible, and also the most certain probability on which we might readily stake our physical existence — our Soul and our Body. But the Intellect is the only seat or sphere of the truth, that men can discuss. Emotional truth, and sentimental truth — ^the Truth of Love or hatred — are not subjects of THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 4S3 human discussion, but of human action. "We are limited by our human nature to the discussion of the truth of symbols. But if we admit the existence of God ; and also of Spirit in man ; it becomes the most absurd viola- tion of the harmony and analogy of the universe, to deny the existence of demons and angels. It is most absurd to suppose that the universe of mind only in- cludes God and man ! What is man and his ephemeral existence, as compared with the ages "which geology and astronomy lead us almost necessarily to believe in ? Was God alone before the days of Adam ? However, it seems to me altogether and entirely cre- dible a priori that there should exist a hierarchy of mind two-fold — the one inferior, and the other superior, to man. Any other conception is absurd upon the face of nature — a burlesque upon man's knowledge of the universe, of which this world, and man's history on earth, form so very trifling a part, in time and space ! Good and bad Spirits must exist ! It is the first conviction of infancy, of the infancy of the individual as well as of the infancy of the race, that mind or spirit exists ! At first, as infants, we suppose a sentient intelligent spirit, with feelings and priaciples and sentiments like our own, to be the cause of every event and every motion, and then, at that age, spirit is the cause of everything. But it is the act of a fool, if, in avoiding this early error, we rush into the opposite ex- treme, and say, in the manhood of our thoughts — " there is noGod," or "there is no Spirit ;" or that "God and spirits have wholly withdrawn Himself and themselves, and that there is now nothing but matter and its never-ceasing uniform laws !" — ^if we say that " all else is the dream of our infancy, or the weak logic of our youth ! " This is 454 CHAPTER XIX. folly greater than the ignorance of childhood ; for the hasty and false generalisations of infancy, knowing nothing but its own mind, and of youth, knowing only the principles it has been taught, do not in any wise disturb the fact, of the action of the self-regulating spirit within, or of its own knowledge, from which the hasty induction concerning a,ll action was drawn. The existence of man's mind — his spontaneity, and his free will and intention, and his power to bear or forbear, to seek or not to seek, to act or not to act, to submit or to resist — is not less certain in the old man than in the young infant ! The actual existence of a man's own mind, distinct from, and to some extent, superior to the laws of his body, is as certain at all periods of a man's life as it is at first. The laws of matter become better understood, but they are consistent with, and do not in the least overturn, either the existence of mind or spirit itself, or a reasonable belief in the laws of man's mind and the operations of other spirits. It was a hasty generalisation, no doubt, of our infancy, that every event, and every sensible action or motion, was the direct action of a mind or intelligence like our own himian mind, with a sense of pleasure and pain, and good and evil, in everything. It is equally foolish as children, to beat our toys for hurting our bodies, and as men, to despise the professor, the priest, or philosopher, for having deceived our minds or souls. Every event is neither a miracle performed by God, nor one performed by an angel or a devil ! But does it, therefore, follow that there is neither God, nor angel, nor devil ; neither minds that do good nor minds that do evil, excepting only mankind ? Men certainly do good and do evil ; and we have the priest at one elbow, and the THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 455 philosopher at the other ; and the wise man will humbly despise them both, but only so far as, either makes him- seK, or seeks to make himself, to our minds or souls, the Way— the Truth^the Life. " The existence of a First Cause-^-of a God — is," said Descartes, "as certain as any mathematical problem;" and the existence of matter as the subject of general laws, which, so far as our own personal experience goes, appear to be invariable under the same circumstances, by degrees becomes also clear and certain, so far as our own and our friends' experiences extend. Be it so ! But does this ex- perience abolish our first and constant mperience within, of the existence of oui* own mind, and the experience without, of existence on earth of other creatures like to ourselves, and possessing parental and other powers over us for good or evil, and with minds and wills and inten- tions like ourselves, sometimes good and sometimes evil? How does the material experience of after-life alter the mental experience of all our life ? Do not the facts of mind remain as certain as the facts of matter ? Are they not from the beginning and throughout, as Berkeley thought, more certain ? It is the hasty induction, and self-contradiction, of the materialist and positive philosopher to say, that the ex- istence of mind becomes less certain because our minds have acquired some knowledge of the existence and laws of matter. Nor are all logical and metaphysical principles false because some men have entertained, and been satisfied with, certain false principles. The exists ence of falsehood no more proves the non-existence of truth, than the existence of matter proves the non-exist- ence of mind. True axioms or general principles may be few, but it is self-contradiction to say there are none. 4S6 CHAPTER XIX. for that is to say — it is true, that there is no truth — a clear falsity in words. We have the three things presented before us as soon as we have reached years of maturity, each distinct from the other two^mind, matter, and language or action ; and the proper act of the rational man is to study their relations, and not to say, with the ignorant savage, that all is theological ; or, with the presumptuous rationalist, that all is metaphysical ; or, with the fool, that all is material and positive, and that there is no God ! We must combine all three — mind, matter, and language — into one consistent universe ; for that is the proper act of a rational being placed in the centre of such a won- derful creation, partially subject to his body and soul, and wholly subject to his free spirit to examine and judge intellectually. For example, although it may be very reasonable to reject miracles and demoniac agency as the common and ordinary explanation of aU the early facts of human history — although it may be very reasonable to search for the physical facts, which helped in the production, or limited the production, of human events — yet to deny the possibility of miracles and demoniac agency altogether, has no foundation either in fact or reason ; and merely amounts to the denial of the existence of mind altogether, or to the denial of the existence of any minds but those of God and living men ! This is the mere insanity, of illogical, self-contradictory, positive materialism. Why are we to leave this immense empty gulf between the helpless, imperfect, impotent spirit and mind of man, and the aU-powerful mind of the one supreme Creator ? No reason can be given for such an irrational conclusion THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 4$ 7 as that there are no angels and no devils, so utterly con- trary to all the analogies of nature ; and thus a belief in a hierarchy of minds, of angels and devils, seems to me the only rational conclusion from purely rational prin- ciples. There must be a twofold hierarchy of minds — from God, through legions of angels, to a good man; and from a good man down to legions of demons. For example, what possible reason can there be for any one who believes in the ordinary facts of Grecian history disbelieving in the fact of the oracle at Delphi ? And, if there was an oracle at Delphi, can any reason- able man disbelieve the historical fact that it pronounced Socrates " the wisest of men " ? or can we disbelieve the fact that Socrates himself believed that he had a demon or familiar spirit whom he could consult, and by which he did, in fact, constantly regulate his conduct, and whose voices he thought he could hear and distinguish, and to whom he attributed the salvation of his life after the battle of Delium, by the voice telling him by which road to fly, and which forbid him to deliberate, as to how he should defend himself on his final trial at Athens ! If there was no such a being as the demon of the oracle at Delphi, then each priestess was a rogue ; and if there was no such being as the demon of Socrates, then, of course, Socrates was either rogue or fool or enthusiast ! But the existence of the oracle, the responses it issued on many occasions, the belief of. Socrates himself, and his sometimes, as he thought, successful, and sometimes, as he thought, unsuccessful, attempts to consult his demon, are facts in history just as certain as the exist- ence of Socrates himself. Plato may be a romance, and Xenophon a forgery, and aU Grecian history, in the days of Socrates, a myth ; 458 CHAPTER XIX. but till they are shown to be such, rational men must accept such things as facts to be explained — the fact of the existence of the oracle at Delphi; the fact that it pronounced Socrates the wisest of mortals ; the fact that Socrates said and believed that he had a familiar spirit, whom he had often consulted, and whose voices he thought he could hear, and said that he had heard ; the fact that he tried to cogitate and prepare, before his trial, his last defence for his life, and that on that occasion, as he said, that his demon " expressed its displeasure," or in fact failed him ; and he, being left to his own devices, adopted that most injudicious defence, which mocked his judges, and so contributed to his condemna- tion! It is impossible to read Plato's Theages or his account of the calm rebuke of Socrates to his young disciple,, questioning the existence of the demon whom Socrates consulted, or Xenophon's account of what passed between Hermogenes and Socrates, and doubt the lelief of Socrates himself in his demon — in the voices which came from his demon, and whose warnings he said he had so often heard, and which, he thought, had contributed to make him the wisest of mankind -- — it is impossible, to believe that all these sensible and reasonable people were engaged in some foolish, enthu- siastic, or other conspiracy to deceive mankind. But the belief of Socrates and Plato and Xenophon, does not bind our belief Certainly not ! Nor does the general belief of the Greeks in the oracle of Delphi bind our belief. But the belief of the Greeks and the belief of Socrates are quite as much historical facts as the reign of King James over England, or the burning of witches in the days of Bacon, They are facts to be explained. The positive philo- THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE— THE TRUE. 459 sopher offers his explanation, which is, that though the belief existed, there was no foundation for it but the infantile ignorance of Socrates, and the fraud of the priestess at Delphi and her accomplices ! and to support his solution he appeals to modem experience, or de- nies the existence of mind altogether, or says, " Well, if there be a Creator, He has whoUy withdrawn from all interference with the laws of matter, and never at any time permitted angels or demons to interfere with the course, of human affairs, or of any man's mind ! " Socrates, forsooth, was an enthusiast, and deceived himself, and was also deceived by the priestess of Apollo and her confederates ; and though Plato reports the experience of Socrates correctly, and evidently believed like his mas- ter, yet the reason and experience of Socrates and Plato, of Athens and of Delphi, are set aside by the reason and NON-experience of Comte and Strauss and Buckle, and of Paris and London ! But how can now- experience set aside experience ? And are the thoughts and logic and philosophy of Comte or Mill and Buckle in any way superior to the thoughts and logic and philosophy of Socrates and Plato ? WiU the verbiage of the "philo- sophie positive" out-reason the condensed reason of Plato's republic 1 But authority is out of the question when the question is not of faith but of reason ! If we admit, therefore, the existence of Mind as a thing and class of things, distinct from matter (and to deny it, is to deny the constant internal opinion and experience of all mankind in general), then it is absurd and unreasonable to set aside the calm and dignified reason and experience of Socrates and Plato for the empty verbiage and nori-experience of positive philoso- phy ; and though it may not suit the objects of the 46o CHAPTER XIX. hierarchy of evil spirits to exhibit themselves or their powers, as they did in the days of Socrates, by oracles and by voices exciting the worship and reverence of mankind to themselves and those they inspired — and although the progress of Christianity has put to flight some open exhibitions of demoniac power over man, and the powers of darkness may have lost some of their terrors, yet the demon who taught Socrates and Plato the false doctrine that " Virtue is a kivd of knowledge " may still make secret verbal suggestions to the human mind, and strive to reach his end, rather by secret subtility over man's intellect than by open exhibition of material force and power ! But, it will be said, " Do you want us to believe in witches and witchcraft, and in demons and aU demoniac possession, and in Saint Dunstan catching the devil's nose with a pair of tongs, and aU. the rest of the well- authenticated miraculous history of the last three thou- sand years, down to the last apparition of our Lady of Salsette ? " I answer, that I want you to exercise your reason, and not to rush hastily from one foolish extreme into the opposite folly — both equally stupid and irra- tional. I want you to believe that there are spiritual influences and spiritual powers beyond and superior to all we can know of matter and of man, and neither to be feared nor despised by the God-fearing man — Spirits, powers of light and powers of darkness, without which man's state on earth is, and must ever remain, an inex- plicable and irrational enigma. For evil exists, and God is not the author of evil — that is a clear contradic- tion ! And man, as God's creation, will not explain the evil that exists upon earth ; nor can we reasonably sup- pose either that the first man was the first good being THE POSSIBLE-^THE CREDIBLE— THE TRUE. 46 1 who fell into evil, nor that the first man was created evil by God. And superstition and fanaticism with the false reasoning of Socrates and others, may be all equally the inventions, and due to the suggestion, of evil spirits more powerful than unassisted man, — than man unas- sisted by God ! In fact, I think it wholly unreasonable to disbelieve in the twofold hierarchy of good and evil spirits ; and I thipk it more reasonable to believe, not only in the hierarchy of good and evil spirits, but that in the age of Buddha, six hundred years before Christ, the devil began to anticipate the intention of the God of love to pour His holy spirit without measure on a man, Jesus, who, being thus equal with God, should die as a man for the world, in order, by the greatness of His love, to constrain men to yield up their powers unto God ; and, therefore, as I conceive Satan anticipating the life and death of Jesus, may have inspired the intellect of Socrates to take such a course as might lead to his own death for blasphemy against the gods of Greece, so as if possible to inspire the human intellect to set itself above and in opposition to the God of love, or in substitution for love. The in- tellect of Socrates is still the leading intellect of profane wisdom, and he is stUl the chief leader admired by the votaries of reason, and is now placed in opposition to and comparison with Christ Himself; and one of the last strongholds of Satan is the calm reason and dignified intellect of Socrates, whom, for my part, I believe to have been inspired to take the course he did by Satan himself, and that the demon of Socrates was the great arch-enemy of mankind. There is nothing impossible or incredible in this; which merely supposes voices whispered into the ear of Socrates. 462 CHAPTER XIX. But, in fact, a miraculous suspension of the ordinary laws of matter for one or a few occasions is always pos- sible on the lowest principles of mechanism; but its credibility depends on different principles. If all truth be founded on our own general experience and induc- tion, then it is certain that what is contrary to our gen- eral experience, and therefore to all our induction, is contrary to truth. And as every individual miracle is necessarily contrary to general experience and all induc- tion, then it is quite certain, upon such principles, that every miracle is contrary to truth ; and no amount of historical or other testimony could ever possibly estab- lish one solitary miracle, even to ourselves. Our own solitary experience even, of one single instance which we cannot repeat, ought to be set aside as contrary to general induction. This style of argument has troubled many weak souls in many ages and times, and is now taught as philo- sophy at our universities; but nothing is more fun- damentally false on the general principles of reason. No truth whatever can be founded on induction ; and the constant observation and experience of ten thousand years before, and of ten thousand years after, would not justify us in positively denying one single, event, how- ever contrary to such uniform experience for twenty thousand years. Even if the universe were a mere piece of mechanism, governed by the invariable laws of solid matter and of numbers; by the ordinary laws of mechanics, the maker of the machine is able to introduce a solid material stop at the beginning, which will permit a law to prevail for any number of millions of times, then produce one single exception, and- then allow the old law to prevail THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 463 again invariably for ever and ever to tlie end of the machine. So that, according to the most grovelling laws of human machinery, the sun might stand still for twelve hours or for twenty-four, or a man might be born of a virgin once in five thousand years or five million years, and never such another event take place either before or since ! So also the maker of the machine could and might introduce certain stops at the beginning which would occasion any certain number of violations of a law at irregular intervals, within a certain period of the machine's work, and yet never before or afterwards, during the existence of the machine, in anywise inter- fere with the operation of the general law. So that a single miracle or any series of miracles might, on the merest mechanical and physical principles of solid matter, occur in violation of the general laws of nature in a certain age, and never again occur, either before or afterwards, through countless ages of time ! All this, I say, is evident to every man of competent mathematical and mechanical instruction, on the coarsest principles of material and mechanical necessity ; and is true of nature, if we assume the universe to be a mere material machine, made by a maker. To deny this merely exhibits the mathematical and mechanical in- capacity of the reasoner, his intellectual incompetence to discuss the question not only as a philosopher but as a mechanic ! But in truth, machinery is but a coarse method of effecting the will of an imperfect mind, which can only act according to laws superior to itself, and thus according to laws which limit its powers. But the act of a machine is, in all respects, the act of its maker and director. 464 CHAPTER XIX. However many mechanical contrivances may have been interposed or caused to exist between him and the result, the machine and all its productions are the pro- ductions of its maker ; and these mechanical views of a imiverse governed by invariable laws, or what is called "the imiversal reign of law," are only hazy, confused, and ignorant methods of striving to hide the denial of the existence of minds or spirits inferior to God, but yet possessed oifree will and of certain powers over matter, and capable within their limits of suspending the ordi- nary laws of material nature. In fact, the universal reign of imchangeable law is merely another logical form of materialism, and is an at- tempt to deny the existence of Mind or Spirit with free will, and to make out the universe to be a large self- regulating mUl, and the Miller departed to a far country, and altogether indifferent to its fate, and responsible for aU hitches ; which of course are not to be deemed evils, or produced by any inferior free spirits, like devils or men, but designed obstructions, intended by the Creator Himself to produce ultimately a more useful kind of web ! Such is the stupid but popular philosophy of the day. But wisdom is justified even of her mechanical chil- dren ; and no man possessed of a competent knowledge of mathematics and mechanics can suppose it anteced- ently impossible for an aU-powerful Creator to construct a machine which should at a certain time, on one, two, or more occasions, as He had originally arranged, stop the earth for a day, or raise a dead man to life, or make a few loaves and fishes swell into sufficient food to give a solid meal to five or seven thousand persons, and the like never again to occur during the continuance of THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 465 that machine. There is, and can be, no sort or kind of antecedent impossibility whatever, in the question of miracles, even on pure mechanical and materialistic principles. Those, therefore, who admit the existence of matter only, and its universal laws, and their Maker, are guilty of a mechanical self-contradiction, if they deny a priori, the possibility of any one or more miracles — ^violations of all previous and succeeding laws — occurring in any age, or within any space or time. If they only posses- sed sufficient mechanical and mathematical science they would know better, and perceive their seK-contradiction or violation of the necessary laws of mechanical Truth. There can be no law to prevent a machinist introduc- ing a stop into his machine from the beginning M'hich no looker-on at the results could ever detect from its visible working for millions of ages ! Every framer of an equation can introduce a constant which is a limit ; and a prime number which is itself a miracle may turn up at any time unforeseen by all except by Him who knoweth aU things, and all prime numbers to infinity. The possibility of miracles is therefore certain on the strictest mechanical and logical principles — on the lowest principles of rational materialism. If we admit the existence and intelligence of God the Creator, we must admit His superiority to men, matter, and to the ordinary laws of matter which have been created and framed by Himself. Mr Babbage, to whose writings I am indebted for this view of miracles, has told us in his Chapter on Miracles* that, on the mechanical principle of ma- chinery, of wheels, and cogs, and stops, &c., of solid * Passages from Life, &c., p. 387. 2g 466 CHAPTER XIX. matter, a calculating engine could be framed in whicli it would be possible so to set it, that it should proceed, " 1st, For any given time according to any given law ; 2d, That at the termination of that time it should cease to act according to that law, and should commence ac- cording to any other given law that might be devised, and then continue to act according to this new law for any other given period ; 3d, That this succession of a new law coming in and continuing during any devised time, and then giving place to other new laws in endless but known succession, might be continued indefinitely." He applied this to explain, according to law, the suc- cessive creations of life as developed in vast epochs of geological time. And he also tells us that it was not necessary that these laws should be all different — ' "But the same law might, when the machine was set, be ordered to reappear after any desired interval ; and such a change of law might be ordered to take place only on one or any limited number of occasions, and the old law might be restored, and con- tinue for ever after. " Thus, we might suppose an observer, watching the machine, to see a known law continually fulfilled until after a lengthened period, when a new law has been appointed to come in. This new law might, after a single instance, cease, and the first law might again be restored, and continue for another interval, when the second new law might again govern the machine as before for a single instance, and then give place to the original law. . . . Thus, that one or more men, at given times, should be restored to life, may be as much a consequence of the law of existence ap- pointed for man at his creation as the appearance or reappearance of the isolated cases of apparent exception in the arithmetical machine." " But the workings of machines run parallel to those of intellect. The analytical engine might be so set that, at definite periods known only to its maker, a certain lever might become movable during the calculation then making. The consequence of moving it might be to cause the then existing law to be violated for one THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 467 or more times, after which the original law would resume its reign. Of course, the maker might confide this fact to the person owning the engine, who would thus be gifted with the power of prophecy if he foretold the event, or of working a miracle at the proper time if he withheld his knowledge from those around Viim until the moment of its taking place. " Such is the analogy between the construction of machinery and the occurrence of miracles." * The fact is, that on the coarsest mechanical principles of considering the universe as an ordinary machine known to its maker, and left to work itself down, a miracle must he always possible. Mr Bahbage gives a further illustration, which I think may be developed much further than he has explained it, even as far as to show the possibility at least of a prophet saying, with true and visible effect, "in the sight of Israel, — 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon,' and the sun stood stiU, and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves on their enemies. So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down for a whole day ; and there was no day like that before it or after it."f "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord;" and men are but insects, to fulfil His decrees. But Mr Babbage says : — "A further illustration may be taken from geometry. Curves are represented by equations. In certain curves there are por- tions, such as ovals, disconnected from the rest of the curve. By properly assigning the values of the constants, these ovals may be reduced to single points. These singular points may exist on the branch of a curve, or may be entirely isolated from it ; yet these points fulfil, by their positions, the law of the curve, as perfectly as any of those which, by their juxtaposition and continuity, form * Passages from Life, &c., p. 390. t Joshua x. 11-14. 468 CHAPTER XIX. any of its 'branches. Miracles, therefore, are not the breach of established laws, but are the very circumstances that indicate the existence of fax higher laws, which, at the appointed time, produce their preintended effects."* In short, every miracle, in place of terrifying, should lead us, in humble confidence in God and in His provi- dence, to step aside as Moses did, and examine the fact like sensible men, with reverence and attention. But, for example, in order to understand the laws discovered by Kepler and Newton of the earth going in an ellipse round the sun, we must conceive the centre of gravity of the earth attached to the centre of gravity of the sun by an elastic spoke of a wheel, or radius- vector, or elastic string, sometimes shorter and some- times longer, attaching the earth to the sun, so that when the earth moves fast it was short, and when it goes slow it was long, so as to fulfil the law of equal spaces in equal times ; for the earth is sometimes fast and sometimes slow, as compared with the sidereal clock. Now any man can understand and appreciate this fact, that the earth, to use and apply a well-known illustration, is to the sun just as a pea is to a globe two feet in diameter — or as a mere pin's head to a cab-wheel or a barrel — so that what seems a very mighty and very extraordinary thing to the pea or pin's head may only be a very trifling thing indeed, to the wheel or barrel. Suppose now, for example, that the centre of gravity of the wheel, or barrel, were only moved round the breadth of a pea ; that would matter very little to those animals, if any, who happened to live on the wheel, or barrel ; whilst the same movement, to those animalculae who * Passages from Life, &c., p. 391. THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 469 miglit live on the pea, might seem a very great change, if affected by the movement — a very wonderful and miraculous alteration ! Now the centre of gravity of the earth follows the centre of gravity of the sun, as if attached to it by this elastic cord, and goes round it in an ellipse so nearly like a circle that if it were drawn on this page, the reader would not be able to detect, by his eyesight alone, that it was not a circle. Now suppose that the centre of gravity of the sun were to move and make a small circle in twenty-four hours, then most certainly, so far as we know at present the mechanism of the heavens, the earth would in its orbit also make a precisely similar circle in the same twenty-four hours, and would return to its old orbit again as soon as the centre of gravity of the sun returned to its original posi- tion. And if the reader thinks that the small loop in the earth's orbit is not or might not be strictly and mathematically in every point an ellipse round the centre of gravity of the sun, he does not yet understand the mathematics of curves, nor the composition of motions ! But I say that the effect of such a slight movement in the centre of graA^ty of the sun,if it revolved so slightly as I have described — that is, just as it were the move- ment of a cab-wheel moving a pea's breadth — if the sun so moved in twenty-four hours, properly adjusted to the earth's diurnal rotation — I say the effect on the earth might or would be to make that day upon the earth twenty-four hours in place of twelve, and the night twenty-four hours in place of twelve ; for the same face of the earth might be constantly turned to the sun for the whole twenty-four hours, if the movement of the 470 CHAPTER XIX. centre of gravity of the sun were adjusted in proper relation to the earth's daily rotation. Nor would such a movement have any other effect on the earth itself, so far as we know, beyond making the one day twelve hours longer, and the one night twelve hours longer than usual, except only the effects possible on the trade-winds and the tides, and on the currents of the atmosphere and ocean — not appreciable away from the ocean. And I say further, that the apparent effects on any particular point of the earth's surface (let us say in Judea) might easily be, to make the sun ap- parently stand stni in the heavens over Gibeon, and the moon apparently stand still in the valley of Ajalon. With the utmost respect for the reader, I say that if he doubts the possibility of such an event (on the assumed hypothesis of the centre of gravity of the sun making this small revolution in twenty-four hours) he has not yet properly understood the discoveries of Kepler and Newton, or the effect on a curve of altering the constants of its equation ! Every point of such a loop in the earth's orbit might and would still be mathe- matically part of an ellipse round the centre of gravity of the sun, and would mathematically, be precisely similar to all the rest of the earth's orbit ; and no change what- ever might have taken place upon the earth itself, so far as we know, except in the tides and currents of the atmosphere and ocean, which would be quite inappreci- able in the land of Judea. The simple fact is, that we know nothing at present of the proper motions in space of the sun and fixed stars, though the time seems fast approaching that we shall know more, if it be true, as alleged, that the spectrum analysis has been applied to measure the motion of the THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 47 1 dog-star Sirius, and has shown it to be travelling more than twice as fast as the earth in its orbit. It is at present becoming more and more certain, that the sun, with all its planets, is travelling through space, possibly round some distinct centre ; and as we know nothing whatever of the movement of the sun in its course, it is idle to speculate on the possibility of its centre of gravity making a revolution so trifling as that of a few thousand miles in twenty-four hours. But the thing is quite possible, so far as we know ; and in such a case, if the revolution was duly arranged in proper relations with the earth's dally motion on its axis, the sun might appear to stand still in the heavens for the period of a whole day. And the same cause which might make the sun appear to stand still might or would make the moon also appear to stand still; for it would not in any way alter the relations of the sun, moon, and earth, which, by the ordinary law of the compositions of motions, would still appear and be at the same dis- tances from each other ; and if the sun stood still, the moon also would appear to stand stiU. And if any man doubts the possibility of this, I can only here say that he has not properly studied the laws of equations, and the laws of the composition of motions; or pretends to a knowledge, which he does not possess. Although, therefore, the materialist or positivist can be refuted on this subject, on his own materialistic principles, and is, in fact, on this, as on other subjects, utterly self-contradictory, according both to the laws of logic and of mechanics; and in fact, while admitting the universe to be a machine, he yet at the same time denies to it the ordinary laws of mechanics ; yet his funda- 472 CHAPTER XIX. mental error, we say, is in denying the existence of that supra-sensual world of spirits, which are by their crea- tion free, and at liberty to choose good or evU ; and are, within the limits assigned to them, capable of resisting even the will of Him who made them. The fundamental error is, the denying the existence of the spiritual world. If we are Deists, and believe in a Creator of this wonderful universe as a Being possessed of intelligence ; or if we believe at all, as rational creatures must, who look at the world aroimd them, we must believe in an intelligent First Cause. If our own intelligence forces us to believe in the power and wisdom and goodness of God the Creator, who made such a universe of beauty and utility as this is ; and we hesitate about the origin of evil and of all the misery on earth, and are perhaps in- clined to attribute it to ignorance and defects of intelli- gence in man, which will hereafter disappear ; we are guilty of self-contradiction in supposing that, the evil and misery that exist are the creation of a Being, or the results of creation by a Being, aU-good, aU-wise, and all-powerful ? The two notions are self-contradictory ! God cannot be the author of evil; and reason alone would necessarily lead us to a species of Manicheeism, or a belief in a dual Godhead — a principle of good and a principle of evil — ^Kght and darkness — Ormuzd and Ahriman contending with each other — the doctrine of Zoroaster ; the worship of light and fear of Darkness. But if we say, yet there is a principle of good even in things evU, and the good will work out the evil, yet how came the evil there upon Deistical principles? Why did not an all-powerful, wise, and good God make aU things perfect from the first ? Nothing explains this, except the Christian principle that " God is love ; " that THE POSSIBLE— THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 473 His Spirit is love; and the revelation of Christ — ^that as such Spirit, God loves and desires worship in spirit and in truth. Yet the fear of God, is the beginning of ■wisdom ! The question of the origin of evil, which has appeared and still appears to many so difficult and mysterious and inexplicable, appears to my mind, in one sense, soluble by a very few simple considerations. Free will or liberty is the .origin of evil — not the free will of man alone but the free will of all spirits. Free, will is the essential characteristic of aU mind or spirit, just as necessity is the essential characteristic of all body and matter. It is a contradiction in the nature of things to sup- pose pure mind or spirit without free will ; and it is a like contradiction in things to suppose matter not sub- ject to necessity! God cannot work contradictions ; He cannot create and uncreate at the same time ; He cannot be the author both of order and confusion. A mind would not be a mind if it did not possess free will. A spirit would not be a spirit if it were not free. It is absurd and self-contradictory to say or think, that God created evil, or even that He, properly speaking, permits evil. He bears and forbears, and is long-suffering towards evU. He loves the CAdl-doer while punishing his deeds ; but the free spirits that God has created, have themselves created aU the evU that exists. To create a spirit with a bias towards good is to create a spirit which is not properly a spirit — a spirit which is not free ; a spirit which could not possibly worship in spirit or in truth. But God seeks such unbiassed worshippers ! and of necessity to avoid a contradiction, God must create free spirits. 474 CHAPTER XIX. The first occasion on which Jesus is reported, to have openly announced Himself as the Messiah, He proclaimed this great truth — Dusty, and wayworn, and thirsty, and tired, He sat by the side of a well of water, that type of the Holy Spirit, and said to a guUty woman, " I that speak unto thee am He — ^the Messiah." — "God is a spirit ! and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." — " The Father seeketh such to wor- ship Him." But if God created a spirit with a bias to the truth, or to things good, such a spirit could not possibly worship in spirit and in truth. Its worship would be necessarily biassed and mechanical, good or bad, according to its original bias. But if the intention of God is to overcome evil with good ; to constrain by the greatness of His own love, not a poor biassed machine, but a free and noble spirit, to love Him and to worship Him in spirit and in truth, with aU its heart, its soul, its intelligence, its strength— then a biassed spirit would contradict that intention. The truth of a spirit with a bias, and not perfectly free, would not be its own but its maker's truth — a, mechanical truth — the truth of a machine working in its appointed groove ; and however good, and beautiful, and useful, perhaps, its truth might be, yet it would not be spiritual truth, but mechanical truth — material truth - — in comparison with pure mind, utterly worthless and contemptible. For a pure spirit must be a free and a true spirit, and must have freely chosen its objects of worship — ^its truth, and goodness, and beauty — must have chosen them of its own free will, and wholly un- biassed by any force but love, which has no material force, and yet is spiritually the greatest force of aU, for God is Love. THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 475 There is no difference in principle between a man for some sixty years violating the laws of God, and visibly preventing the good from prevailing on earth — a fact which aU or most men will from history readily admit to be possible — and a devil for six thousand years in- visibly violating the laws of God, and so delaying the accompKshment of God's good intentions amongst man- kind. The one is visible, the other invisible ; but both are equally credible and certain. Now, if the origin of evil be free will, then the con- test against evil, can only be effectually carried on by man, by his submitting his will to the will of God, as a little child submits to a tender parent, in full' love and confidence. The fear of God is the beginning of wis- dom ; and its full fruition is that child-like love, which casteth out fear ! Matter is the type of mind, and the human body is the type of the human soul, and the human soul is the type of Spirit. The matters, that have least matter in their composition, like the imponderable fluids or gases, of which light, heat, and electricity are the chief pheno- mena, are those which have the greatest and most extra- ordinary powers, and yet are wholly independent of gravity or weight. The less the weight of the matter is in nature, the greater is the power which it possesses. And so, I think, the body is the type of the soul ; and the nourish- ment of the body is the type of the nourishment of the soul; and the life of the body is the type of the life of the soul ; and the deadness of the body the type of the deadness of the soul. A child enters into this world, and its body must first breathe with its lungs the air, the atmosphere, the breath, the spirit of heaven. Its breathing is a 476 CHAPTER XIX. burning or combustion — a fire which preserves its animal heat, which is the life of the body ; so the Spirit of God is the true life of the soul. With its lungs the child imbibes oxygen, and with its stomach it imbibes liquids and solids, the three forms of matter — solid, liquid, and aeriform. The solids must become liquids in order to nourish the body, and the liqmds must be mixed with the blood, impregnated by the air in the lungs, before they can be converted into living muscles and tendons, and give force and power to the body. But the gases of evaporating spirits and ethers, and possibly of all liquids, quickly pass through the animal tissues, and stimulate or nourish the nerves — just as water and wine give immediate relief to great ex- haustion by their vapours, as I conceive, penetrating the tissue of the body. The analogy might be carried further; but the ponderable and visible Body is the credible type of the imponderable and invisible soul; and the invisible soul is the material type of the immor- tal Spirit. But the possible merges or is lost in the credible, and the credible merges and is lost in symbolic truth, which can be weighed or appreciated and understood, only by Spirit in the soul ; nor is there anything unreasonable or incredible in supposing and believing that the first true birth, and constant nourishment, of the soul, only begins and continues or grows with the in-breathing of the Holy Spirit of God — that the combined visible and invisible act and action of — being born of water and the Spirit — where water is the type of the Holy Spirit, and its appointed sign and symbol, chosen by Christ Himself, may be the operative symbol intended by God to impress the souls of aU mankind with the THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 477 idea of that mental purity required for worship in spirit and in truth, combined with the seeking first the king- dom of God to be duly and effectually exercised over the soul — using as its first petition, " Thy kingdom come." So long as the soul continues to breathe the Spirit of God its life continues, and " God is in us of a truth." And our spiritual meat and drink should be to do the will of our Father in Heaven after the pat- tern of our great exemplar, who said, " My meat is to do the win of Him who sent me, and to finish His work." The in-breathing of the Holy Spirit through the words of Christ, and the very eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ Himself through His own appointed symbols — for He said, " My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed; — My words, they are spirit, they are life: — It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing " — Here, and here alone, it is at least possible and entirely credible, that there may be found the true nourishment of the soul upon earth by the appointed signs, the symbols,' the words of Christ Himself, appointed and given to us for the inward strengthening and nourishment of the soul in its volun- tary approaches towards God — ever more ready to give than we are to ask. Such ideas of the reality and powers of Divine symbols are entirely possible and credible on abstract principles of reason to him who believes in God and in the body, soul, and spirit of man. But the only origin of evU, as I conceive, is free will, and the contest with evil can only be effectually carried on by submitting and subjecting our own wiUs to the win of God; not in our own strength, but by seeking the promised aid and assistance of the Holy Spirit, to 478 CHAPTER XIX. be sought for in the words, signs, and symbols given to us by Christ Himself, used and applied not in the letter but in the spirit. AU this presents little difi&culty to any true Chris- tian. But let us beware ! There is one sin which hath never forgiveness, neither in this world, neither in the world to come ; and that is, " the speaking a word against the Holy Ghost" — the blasphemy which con- founds the outward sign or symbol with the Holy Spirit itself, of which it is a sign — the abusing and the degrading of the very symbols given by the Divine Spirit, into objects of superstition, into idolatry, and blasphemy — ^that seems to me, speaking and using the very words which the Holy Spirit itself has given, against the Holy Ghost Himself. Thus, when we take the words, the signs, and symbols — the outward visible signs only — and say. Behold these ! they are divine ! these ! they are God ! and thus confound the outward visible forms and symbols with the inward spirit itself symbol- ised — the Holy Spirit — God Himself — that seems to me the most dreadful of all errors — idolatry or blasphemy. Is not this speaking the very words of the Spirit against the Spirit Himself? We reason in our hearts with the very signs, and symbols, given by the Holy Ghost Himself, and convert them into filthy idols, to be worshipped in place of God, and producing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit ; by making not only the words of God of none effect, but by making them the very instruments of Satan himself for the destruction of souls. I say, therefore, let us beware ! for this is to reason in our own hearts with divine symbols and outward forms, and to speak blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in His own signs and symbols, and thereby THE POSSIBLE— THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 479 to confound the letter of our own outward symbols, and ceremonies, with the Holy Spirit — with God Himself. Prayer, secret prayer to God, is perhaps the only source of sufficient spiritual force to escape such dangers ; and as it is the appointed means for our obtaining that Holy Spirit which the Father has promised to give to them that ask Him — " If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them who ask Him " — so it seems the only means of guarding ourselves from abusing those holy symbols which He has Himself ordained in the Church, which He has founded. But it seems to me clear and manifest that, if God seeks worshippers in spirit and in truth, then it was a matter of necessity that He should create spirits per- fectly free to choose the good or the evil at their pleas- ure, for the freedom of the will is clearly essential for worship in spirit and in truth. And God, by desiring such worship, has laid such necessity on Himself to create free spirits ; and the restraints of a material body or material soul do not in any way prevent the freedom, of the wiU — or of the spirit — any more than a current interferes with a man's swimming. It interferes with his progress, but not with his efforts. So the spirit may be willing, though the flesh is weak, and our wiU is free, though our actions are limited. But man's free will is a different question from the origin of evil, which we may reasonably suppose to be caused in the beginning by the acts of- one or more of those inferior spirits, created by God, free to choose either the evil or the good. Some or one of these, as men do every day, may have converted the very powers bestowed by the goodness of God to the promotion of 480 CHAPTER XIX. evil. The powers of such evil minds may possibly, and credibly, exceed anything we have any conception of, and the Devil may be very well able to say to every man, in and by temptations, according to his natural capacity, "AH the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them, will I give unto thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." And if the DevU can foresee the course of human affairs for much less than six hundred years, he can cer- tainly make this promise, and could fulfil it, although still subject to God's laws. And yet he may have no power over the humblest worshipper of God in spirit and in truth. He may be able to bestow riches and power and honour and worldly prosperity on him who is vrilling wilfully to deny the truth, which he knows in his heart, or to follow the paths of worldly utility and expedi- ency against his better conscience — and if it were not so, bad men could not acquire worldly success ; but his powers are limited in this world and its affairs, and the time of his end on earth is drawing nigh. But the man who thinks that his efforts on behaK of the good or the true should be rewarded with worldly honour or power is evidently in truth setting this world above the next, and loving it more than God and His cause, and forgets that his poverty, obscurity, and worldly misery may be one of the very instruments of God Himself for the promotion of God's own ends. The notion, in fact, of making the best of both worlds, and of doing good, from the, Tnotive. and for the purpose of obtaining worldly rewards, is in fact incon- sistent with God's true kingdom, in the heart; which kingdom is not of this world, but is " within us" and is not material but mental and spiritual. Such ethics are THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE— THE TRUE. 48 1 the ethics of utility and expediency — ^the worldly ethics of the Body, and not the spiritual ethics of the SouL Liberty therefore, the freedom of created spirits, is the true source and origin of evil ! Without liberty there could not possibly be worship in spirit and in truth ; for spirit necessarily implies freedom, and truth necessarily implies wisdom. If God did not create free intelligence — ^the spirit free, or capable of liberty, and intelligent, or capable of truth and wisdom — He could not possibly have those worshippers in spirit and in truth ; which Christ declared that God desires or seeks. And evU, therefore, as I conceive, is caused, not by God, but by the free spirits which God no doubt created pure, but some of whom have fallen from their first estate of purity ! Matter is the limit and restriction which God has placed upon spirit ; and true faith renders aU spirits (so long as the faith is true) independent of matter and all its laws, for its laws do not exist to the truly faithful, so far as spirit is concerned. Spirit is free from the laws of matter, which only apply to matter, and not to spirit. But the union of matter and spirit in one per- son, limits the powers of the spirit, but does not in any wise interfere, with spiritual freedom within those limits. If we had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, it is per- fectly possible, according to all that we know of matter, that we could violate all the laws of worldly matter, and command a mountain to depart and be cast into the sea, and that it would obey us. But faith in matter is opposed to faith in mind ; and while we have bodies, and exist on earth, we cannot deprive ourselves alto- gether, of faith in matter, which is part of ourselves, for it involves faith in our own material existence, and it 2h 482 CHAPTER XIX. is self-contradiction of our own bodily existence, to deny the existence of matter. But nothing that we know or ever can know of matter can ever render it absurd, or impossible, to think that the matter which might be condensed into a grain of mustard-seed, or into a pin's head, might not be capable of expanding beyond the limits of the universe of light, and be as superior to the powers of the known impon- derables — light, heat, electricity, and magnetism — as they themselves are superior to material weight or gravity, or as a stroke of lightning is superior to thi blow of a hammer ! There is nothing absurd or incon- sistent with aU we know of matter, in supposing that human faith may be a matter, as superior to electricity as electricity is superior to gravity, which can only pro- duce a species of contact, but leaves matter itself still impenetrable or unpenetrated. Thus, whilst electricity can enter and penetrate between the particles of matters themselves, so human faith perhaps might be conceived to be a matter, which could penetrate between soul and body, between ponderable matter and electrical matter, or between soul and spirit, and able to separate all matter into its original elements — just as electricity penetrates the mass of solids, and can di\'ide water, or any compound matter, into its component simples. There is nothing absurd, even in a materialistic point of view, in such a materialistic conception of human faith as being a diffused matter, as superior to the laws of imponderable matter, as electricity itself is superior to the laws of gravity and to some of the laws of chemistry, or chemical affinity; and the possession of the weight of one grain of human faith or such matter might make a man master of the world. THE POSSIBLE— THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 483 At present, the imponderable fluids or fluid, of light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, possess no appreciable matter that we can measure ; and yet they are, or it is, the most powerful and penetrating of aU matters, and are therefore the best types of pure mind or spirit. Why should not the human soul be organised electricity — and human faith itself, a matter, infinitely more power- ful than electricity ? We know as a matter of physiological fact, that the human mind or will can send a current of electricity through the bodily muscles which will enable those muscles to bear a strain which, immediately after death, would tear them asunder — that is, the human will shows itself superior to the laws of cohesion and gravity in its own person, and in its own bodily and material organi- sation. That alone is a miracle, a suspension of the ordinary laws of ponderable matter in the human body by the will of the human mind ! Fanaticism, enthusiasm, the spirit of party, of sect, of nation, are but the miraculous government of matter by mind ; and they have often set at naught and violated some of the ordinary laws of matter and of human organisation and life. He is but a poor ignorant philo- sopher and statesman who ignores these things, and thinks that mind is wholly subject either to the laws of matter or the laws of life and organisation. When the proper moment and motive come, spirit is superior to them aU, and can set aU material calculations at defiance, and can set aside aU the laws of ponderable matter ! It is only materialistic ignorance, or want of faith in mind, which can ever doubt these truths. Those who take to the sword shall perish by the sword, whenever the advent of some principle of mind greater than that 484 CHAPTER XIX. which led to the adoption of the sword shall make its appearance upon earth! While mental principles are equal, God is like gravity on the side of the great bat- talions ; but when the mental principles are not equal, then the great battalions will find God not on their side, and one man can drive a thousand before him ! And " nothing shall be impossible to him that believeth." But when roused by falsehood and fraud, or wrong and oppression, we rely no longer upon any arm of the flesh, but trust ourselves to God alone, and feel our faith and our power increased, we may well call to mind the words of him who first took to the sword on behalf of his Master, and nevertheless, only a few hours afterwards, denied Him thrice, yet lived to write words which should be engraved on every Christian's heart, " Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake,"* &c. Now, the simple truth is, that the laws of induction, which are the laws of observation and experiment, do not apply to the suprasensual world — to the world of spirits ! It is confounding matter and spirit to say or think so. It is logical confusion; it is asking that the invisible and insensible shall be at the same time visible and sensible. Matter is visible and sensible, and open to observation and experiment which may be re- peated ; and the laws of induction give us very good rule- of-thumb guesses as to its nature and properties from time to time. But spirit is wholly invisible and insensible — incomprehensible — and not open to observation or experiment in general, but only to individual and special intuitive imperience, from which no general induction can possibly be drawn for any human being other than * 1 Pet. ii. 13-20. THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 485 the individual himself who has possessed such special intuitive mperience, affecting Emotion, not Intellect. What is spiritual can only be spiritually discerned ; it cannot, from its nature, be subjected to any general ob- servation or experiment by others than the individual himself. If I vras to say that an angel descended last night into my bedroom, and spoke to me, in the form of a dove, or man, what can any other man say to disprove it 1 If we ourselves have never imperienced spiritual power or spiritual weakness, spiritual sym- pathies or spiritual antipathies — either wilful power in ourselves over other men's actions, or involuntary sub- mission in ourselves to others, or to their influence — then no possible observation or experiment can exhibit to us the wills or spirits of other men in spiritual action, or any other spirit than the spirit which men or mankind exhibit in their history and their actions, the spirit of man — humanity and inhumanity. By our own want of faith in mind and spirit we are self-condemned to be materialists, or, in modern language, rationalists. But notwithstanding, spirit does exist, and in ourselves. The fact is, also, that if inductive philosophers be- lieved in their own doctrine of truth being established by induction, from numbers of instances they are bound to believe and accept the grossest forms of witchcraft, of apparitions, and of miracles, of the most offensive and absurd description, happening in all ages of the world ! The inductive philosopher, in fact, has, on his own prin- ciples, no satisfactory answer to make to such language as the following : — "Those that can believe that all histories, up till 250 years ago, are romances ; that all the wise and learned up till that time had agreed to juggle mankind into a common belief of ungrounded 486 CHAPTER XIX. fables ; that the sound senses of multitudes of men may deceive them ; that hvunan laws are built on chuneeras ; that the gravest and wisest judges of the most civilised nations, up till that late period, have been murderers, and the sagest persons fools or de- signing impostors — those that can believe this heap of absurdities are either more credulous than those whose credulity they repre- hend, or else they have some extraordinary evidence of their own persuasion — ^viz., that it is absurd or impossible that there should be a witch or apparition ! " * How does the present fact render the past impossible or incredible ? We perceive no demon now, therefore Socrates did not ; we hear no voices now, therefore Soc- rates conld not hear some, though he himself, in the simplest possible language, tells you the occasions on which he did hear, and also the occasions on which he did not hear, his famiUar guide, instructor, and friend ! But, in fact, this is not reason, but merely wilful dog- matic presumption, that spirits do not exist. The materialist, the purely inductive philosopher, the rationalist of the present age, are in a state of logical self-contradiction and confusion on this subject of mir- acles. How can the materialist deny to the Almighty the ordinary powers of the mechanist over solid material mechanism? Or how can the inductim philosopher deny the obvious and necessary induction from all the miracles, in aU ages, recorded in the 25,000 lives of saints contained in the BoUandist collection, for ex- ample, besides all those of the Bible and of antiquity, because he himself has never experienced a miracle or an apparition? This is not induction, this is not even rationalism, but it is mere irrationality, logical folly, and dogmatic presumption ; or else it is that * Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus, p. 4, quoted. Lecky's Ration- alism, p. 128. THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 487 judicial blindness which necessarily foUows the adop- tion of false fundamental principles. But the dedvxtive philosopher can proceed, if needful, to sift the wheat from the rubbish, the truth from the superstition, and try every alleged miracle, not only as a question of evidence but of spiritual intention, by the mental laws of truth and goodness. When, therefore, it is thought and said that — " Having once recognised that the condition of the material uni- verse, at any one moment, is simply the result of everything which has happened at all preceding moments, and that the most trivial disturbance would so violate the general scheme as to render anarchy inevitable, and that to sever from the total mass even the minu- test fragment would, by dislocating the structure, bury the whole in one common ruin, we, thus admitting the exquisite adjustment of the different parts, and discerning, too, in the very beauty and completeness of the design, the best proof that it has never been tampered with by the Divine Architect who called it into being, in whose omniscience both the plan, and the issue of the plan, re- sided with such clearness and unerring certainty that not a stone in that superb and symmetrical edifice has been touched since the foundation of the edifice was laid, are, by ascending to this pitch and elevation of thought, most assuredly advancing towards that far higher step which it wiU remain for our posterity to take, and which will raise their view to so commanding a height as to insure the utter rejection of those old and eminently irreligious dogmas of supernatural interference with the affairs of life which super- stition has invented, and ignorance has bequeathed, and the present acceptance of which betokens the yet early condition of our know- ledge, the penury of our intellectual resources, and the inveteracy of the prejudices in which we are still immersed," * the plain answer to all this is, that the poverty of intellect and the prejudice are rather with the rationalist historian who is plainly ignorant of mechanics ; and does not, or cannot, see that on the coarsest principles of mechanical Law, a stop introduced by the maker into the machine « Buckle, Hist. Civ., ii. 489-90. 488 CHAPTER XIX. at the beginning might provide, for example, that once, and only once, during the whole duration of mankind, through countless ages of time, a virgin might con- ceive and hear a son, and such an event never before or afterwards take place during the thousands or millions of years that man might have to dwell upon earth; or, to proceed with our coarse mechanical answer to a stupid mechanical misconception, answering according to the folly — that other original stops, so introduced, might provide, that such a man, so bom of a virgin might, by the breath of his mouth, perform all recorded miracles, and remain in the grave for three days and then rise from the dead — and then rise with his body to Heaven ; and, as matter has no known limits, the very body with which he died and rose again might be con- verted, by organic chemistry, into a gas or vapour as much more refined and powerful than electricity, as electricity is more refined and powerful than a piece of clay — so refined as to penetrate the whole world and universe, being, after forty days, on chemical principles, sent back, purified by its vibration or career and orbit to and from heaven, to dwell and remain permanently as Spiritualised ether, throughout the universe, and upon earth, capable of combining, in some organic chemistry, with the very hearts and souls of faithful believers, thereby forming a new and more perfect organic crea- tion with the human heart and soul ; which combination might endow the soul with more extraordinary powers during life on earth, and might ultimately reascend with such faithful souls, by organo-chemical attraction, to heaven, after their bodies had perished in the grave ! ! JFoolish as such a materialistic answer, to a foolish materialistic objection, may be, and really is ; yet neither THE POSSIBLE — THE CREDIBLE — THE TRUE. 489 mechanics nor chemistry forbid the possibility of such miracles, either on the Christmas-day of the year 4004, or on the Easter Sunday and Day of Pentecost of the year 4037, or thenceforth, and now continually operat- ing according to the pre-established laws of the human organism. There is, in fact, on materialistic principles, nothing either irrational or impossible in such a mech- anical and chemical conception of the great miraculous events in Christian history, and of the continuing mir- aculous operation of the Christian sacraments. And such a diffused and etherealised body of our Lord might now be ready, even on the coarsest chemical principles, always to unite, as orthodox Christians believe that it does spiritually unite with, and strengthen the hearts of the faithful who duly present themselves to receive its symbols with earnest and thorough faith. We know nothing either in mechanics or in chemistry which forbids the possibility of such miraculous events accord- ing to some laws superior to any yet discovered by man! And the " penury of intellectual resources, and the in- veteracies of prejudice," do not fall on or immerse the rational Christian, but rather fall upon and immerse the unchristian historian who has attempted to argue upon a subject which, evidently, he had only half considered ; and has presumed to dogmatise upon matters of which both he and we know nothing whatever. "We may reasonably, as materialists, believe all that even the most superstitious Christian theologians have ever re- quired as being according to, and not inconsistent with, any one known mechanical, chemical, or physical prin- ciple of matter. But such objections to Christian miracles and to 49° CHAPTER XIX. Christian doctrines, as well as the above answer to them, are only the coarsest materialism — entirely in- consistent with the existence of spirit, and with the existence of the free will of a self-examining and self- governing mind. We may answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit ; and the " universal reign" of such laws of matter, as man is able to discover, is the very height of philosophic folly ; but certainly does not, on materialistic principles, preclude the existence of higher laws than any yet discovered. To the earnest and sincere Christian, such questions are not matters of reason but matters of faith — spiritual faith, consistent with all logical and mental and physical reasoning, which no reason is able to overthrow, and which the history of the gradual diffusion of Christianity, and the gradual adoption of Christian principles, tend to strengthen and establish, as the stream of Christianity spreads and widens over the whole world. But we can- not confound matter with mind, or breath or ether with Spirit, or the Symbol with the Reahty, either in the visible or in the invisible universe. CHAPTER XX. JESUS AND SOCRATES. About six hundred years before the birth of Christ, four celebrated systems of virtue and of religion or no-religion were introduced upon earth, and they may, for the sake of arrangement, be identified with four celebrated men who appeared in four distant centres of civilisation — Buddha in India, Confucius in China, Zoroaster in Persia, and Socrates in Greece. The first still numbers more disciples than any other religion on earth, and to the last — the Rationalism of Socrates, may be well traced the chief intellectual opposition which Christianity meets with in the present age, or probably which it has ever, in any age, met with, since the time of the apostles. Asceticism and self-mortification, with the worship of a false Trinity and a man-God, makes the Buddhist ; Materialism, and the golden rule of doing to others as we would be done by, and the worship of our ancestors, mark the disciples of Confucius ; Fan- theism, virtue and the worship of nature, mark the disciples of Zoroaster; and pure nationalism, and a recognition or easy worship of the gods of our country, and the doctrine that virtue is a species of truth, characterise the disciples of Socrates and the civilis- ation of Greece. In fact, we may consider Socrates as the mere cvl- 492 CHAPTER XX. mination of Grecian Reason ; and as Pythagoras and Buddha, and Confucius and Zoroaster were, or were nearly, contemporaries — we may very properly say that, asceticism in India, materialism in China, pantheism in Persia, and rationalism in Europe, all took their rise, or commenced upon earth, about the sixth century, before the birth and death of Jesus Christ ! If man were a being altogether subject to some fixed and un- changeable law, these four varieties of human virtue could not possibly have grown up and been developed all in the same age in such different and distinct centres of civilisation. The law of man, if man had a law wholly binding him in any way, must have produced in the same age resemblances, and not such great varie- ties, in general results. But what men can be supposed more different than the Indian faqueer hanging to a hook fastened through the muscles of the back — the unbelieving and world - easy Chinese, — the moral and sun - worshipping Parsee, — and the philosophic European rationalist. Christian or unchristian, — atheist, pantheist, rationalist, or formalist — all different and all false! In my opinion, these four false systems were all the inventions of Satan, the great enemy of mankind, the adversary of the simple truth as it is in Jesus Christ. Satan may be, as I conceive, an Evil Being capable of looking forward and prognosticating earthly events some six hundred years, and of anticipating within some such limit the wisdom and intentions of God. And the power to influence the course of events upon earth, subject to certain laws, and the power of inspiring mankind are, as I conceive, within the limits of his powers. In the age of Isaiah, B.C. 740, at least, the mysteries of the Gospel may JESUS AND SOCRATES. 493 have been anticipated by Satan; and the nature and ex- istence of Buddhism shows, in my opinion, that Satan can anticipate the course of worldly events six hundred years. For, as St Paul wrote, "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness — Qod manifest in the flesh — justified in the spirit — seen of angels — preached unto the Gentiles — received up into gloiy ; " or as Isaiah had previously said — " Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, or Ood with us ! " Satan may have expected the birth of a Divine Being. But if, during the age of Socrates, such an evil being could have anticipated the death of our Lord for blasphemy, he might possibly be able to inspire Socrates with profound wisdom, and have power to bring about the death of Socrates in a good old age of seventy years for blasphemy, to operate as a counter- weight to the voluntary sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This is what I think did happen and is now happen- ing as to Socrates. We have the ancient facts related to us in the simplest possible terms by the immediate friends and followers of Socrates himself ; and we have the present influence of Socratic principles, as rational- ism in opposition to Christianity, before our eyes. The demon of Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest of mankind; and Socrates himself, in the most earnest words, declares his own inspiration by a demon. But that demon, whom he consulted on all occasions, and whose "voices" he heard, and to whom or to whose " voices " he was indebted for his life, though his counsel was sought by Socrates as usual, yet his reason and pru- dence abandoned him on his last trial, and his demon allowed Socrates, or inspired him secretly, to make that most injudicious defence, and that ironical argument as 494 CHAPTER XX. to his proper punishment, which certainly led up to and caused his death for blasphemy. The wisdom of Socrates certainly abandoned him on his last trial, and thus the most wise and pious of hea- thens, the honest politician, the earnest patriot, the un- paid and unselfish teacher of morality and virtue — of that virtue which is identifi:ed with knowledge and wis- dom and mere intellect-^became by his death, on a charge for blasphemy against the heathen gods> the human parallel of Jesus ; and Socrates is now held up to our admiration by the rationalist as not only Christ's equal but His superior. It was so amongst the rational opponents of early Christianity, and it is so now. The name " Socratic men " may still well describe both the rationalist Sadducee within the Church of Christ on earth, as well as the rationalist infidel without.* Of course, the modern Sadducees, — whether nominally Christian or not, who deny the existence of angels and devils,' who, contrary to the whole analogy of nature and the whole history of man, suppose that man's spirit * Ever since the days of Clement of Alexandria, who died a.d. 212, and said, " God is the cause of all good things, and He probably gave philosophy to the Greeks before the Lord Himself came in order to call them to His service ; for philosophy acted the part of a school- master to the Greeks, as the Mosaic law did to the Jews, for the pur- pose of bringing men to Christ "—this opinion, of heathen wisdom coming from God, has greatly prevailed amongst the most learned Christians. But I think it wholly false ; and believe that Satan was the real author of Grecian philosophy, as well as of all the grosser superstitions which the world has ever seen ! In the present age Christian rationalism and materialism are more dangerous than Chris- tian Buddhism and Pantheism— Satan can assume the form of an angel of light and virtue, and did so, as I think, in Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Socrates. But the days of Christian Buddhism and Pantheism seem to have ended ; but rationalism and materialism have still some future ! JESUS AND SOCRATES. 49S is the only evil spirit in existence (if he [has a spirit, and not merely an organised body like the lower ani- mals) — suchreasoners, deny the possibility of the question I am considering — viz., who inspired Socrates? But those who do admit the possible existence of good and bad Spirits superior to mankind must hold one of three opinions. 1st, Assuming that the argument of Bishop Butler is sufficient to justify a rational belief in some revelation or communication from God to man, we must either be- lieve some divine revelation in the Bible as Christians do, or else, 2d, that all good men in all ages were true forerunners and successors of Christ, and all inspired by the same God who inspired Jesus — that one true and only God — who, as they think, was equally worshipped by Abraham and Moses, by Buddha, Confucius, Zoro- aster, and Socrates ; by Plato, by Jesus, and St Paul ! Either Jesus was inspired, as the Scriptures relate, or all good and wise men are inspired by God, or, 3d, there is no revelation. The second and third are probably the most prevalent opinions of those modern Socratic rationalists who do not avow a wish to break off from or part with Christianity, but merely wish to dilute it with, Socratic principles — patriotism, submission to the laws of our country, outward conformity to established religion, com- bined with more active performance of the duties of citizenship — ^the general inculcation, or worship of hu- man reason, or of man — or the grand Stre of humanity, and other doctrines which they found upon reason, but cannot find amongst the doctrines of Jesus — ^together with the extirpation of aU Christian enthusiasm. In fact and truth, they would rather substitute the utility and virtue of Confucius, combined with the 496 CHAPTER XX. patriotism and rationalism of Socrates, in place of the enthusiastic moral doctrines of Jesus and His apostles. They would rather leave out love, and substitute truth ; they would rather leave out the heart, the kingdom of God within us, and the seeking after His righteousness, as a desire of love ; and substitute in their place the kingdom of man, and that calm virtue which is a kind of wisdom, as Socrates taught, and the doing good to others, as Confucius recommended. They prefer this cool kind of reasonable virtue, as a religion, to Chris- tianity and its spiritual principles. We must remember, however, that as a matter of his- torical fact, all the worship of ONE Supreme Being, aU the unitarianism which now exists upon earth, may be historically traced to the two sons of Abraham — to Chris- tianity and Mohammedanism, to Isaac and Ishmael. The idolatry of the whole world, as well as the fre- quent idolatry of Jewish and Christian peoples, is also a very remarkable fact ; the tendency of the human race to gross idolatry in every age must not be forgotten. Abraham and Moses, and their descendants and followers, have done something to preserve alive the worship of the one Supreme Being; but what have Buddha and Confucius, or Zoroaster or Socrates done ? Is not Abra- ham still the father of all the faithful — of all those on earth who, either in outward forms or by inward spirit, profess to worship the one true God and Father of us all ? Certainly there is no pretence for saying that his- tory records, that any single people or tongue or nation have ever adopted or established the worship of one God except the Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, who trace their religion or national descent, and their moral history, to the two sons of Abraham. JESUS AND SOCRATES. 497 Christians are Jews by adoption — ^by ingrafting, as St Paul says. " He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he who is one inwardly, by circumcision of the heart ; in the spirit, and not in the letter ; whose praise is not of men, but of God !" This St Paul says to the Eomans. But Jesus Himself said, " I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." It is only, therefore, as being inwardly Jews, and circumcised in spirit, that we can claim to be Christians at all, unless we deny Christ's own words and St Paul's paraphrase and ex- planation of them. Our title to be Christians, therefore, is only by and through Judaism; and Christians are spiritual Jews, not by Jewish ceremonies and forms outwardly, but by Christ's forms and spirit inwardly.* Now, when we attempt to compare the fate of Jesus with that of Socrates, and to estimate their principles, we find that Jesus was sacrificed by the combination of three parties or three principles — ^the chief priests, the Sadducees, and the politician or political governor — priests, infidels, and political utilitarians, considering expediency in reference to the mob — hypocrisy, infi- delity, and political utility — "lest the Eomans come and take away our place and nation." Socrates was sacrificed by pure democracy alone — by a superstitious democracy acting lawfully. A popular tribunal of more than 500 members deliberately and formally and law- fully condemned Socrates to death; but perhaps you will say, that it was for his blasphemy of many demons, by his teaching and advocacy of one supreme God, superior to them all ! Yet he mingled the worship of * We have the Jews amongst us, still a very peculiar people — worthy citizens, puzzling to the politician. They support their own paupers, and neither enlist in the army nor are found in the poor- house ! 2l 498 CHAPTER XX. all indiscriminately ; and the last act of Socrates was to request the sacrifice of a cock to j^sculapius. It is the mingling of light and darkness that is now, most dangerous to truth. As long as terror answered his purpose, Satan used terror and signs and wonders and portents, and demoniac agency of terrible kinds ; but the religion of Christ, as the great civiliser of modern nations, has already relieved mankind from these terrors of darkness, and has made us free. The contest has ceased to be one of emotion — of spiritual terrors, but has become one of reason and intellectual ambiguity. Xenophon records, what he had heard from Hermo- genes himself, that when Hermogenes remarked to Socrates that he ought to consider what defence he should make at his approaching trial, and remonstrated with him on his neglecting to prepare for it, Socrates replied : — " ' But, by Jupiter, Hermogenes, when I was proceeding a while ago to study my address to the judges, the daemon testified disap- probation.' 'You say what is strange,' rejoined Hermogenes.' 'And do you think it strange,' said Socrates, 'that it should seem better to the Divinity that I should now close my life ? Do you not know that down to the present time I would not ■ admit to any man that he has lived ntlier better or viith moreplea- gure than myself I For I consider that those live best who study best to become as good as possible ; and that those live with most pleasure who feel the most assurance that they are daily growing better and better. This assurance I have felt to the present day to be the case with respect to myself ; and associating with other men, and comparing myself with others, I have always retained this opinion respecting myself ; but not only I, but my friends also maintain a similar feeling with regard to me, not because they love me (for those who love others may be thus affected towards the objects of their love), but because they think that while they associated with me they became greatly advanced in virtue. If I shall Uve a longer period, perhaps I shall be des- JESUS AND SOCRATES. 499 tined to sustain the evils of old age,* to find my eyesight and hearing weakened, to feel my intellect impaired, to become less apt to leam, and more forgetful, and, in fine, to grow inferior to others in all those qualities in which I was once superior to them. If I should be insensible to all this deterioration, life would not be worth retaining ; and if I should feel it, how could I live other- wise than with less profit, and with less comfort ? If I am to die unjustly, my death will be a disgrace to those who unjustly kill me ; for if injustice be a disgrace, must it not be a disgrace to do anything unjustly? But what disgrace will it be to me that others could not decide or act justly with regard to me 1 " ' Of the men who have lived bdfore me, I see that the estima- tion left amongst posterity with regard to such as have done wrong, and such as have suffered wrong, is by no means similar ; and I know that I also, if I now die, shall obtain from maiikind far different consideration from that which they wUl pay to those who take my life ; for I know that they wUl always bear witness to me that I have never wronged any man, or rendered any man less virtuous, but that I have always endeavoured to make those better who conversed with me.' Such discourse he held with Hermogenes and with others."t Now, of Socrates himself I am not speaking, and do not wish to speak, except with the deepest respect, for having lived and died righteously, according to the light which was in him ; and we, as Gentiles, have no reason to doubt but that " of a truth God is no respecter of persons, and in every nation he that feareth Him [xmder any form], and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him," and wUl meet with a just judgment. But of the Spirit which directed Socrates I can and wiU speak as cer- tainly a lying and deceiving spirit, though assuming the form of almost an angel of light ; for I say the spirit of Socrates is the spirit of reason and self-pride, instead of the spirit of humility and faith. But all mankind are now perfectly free to examine and judge * Socrates was seventy years old at the time of his death. + Memoir, hook iv. cap. 8. ' SOO CHAPTER XX. between them — between the demon of Socrates and the spirit of Jesus. Bat if any one thinks there is less reason on the side of Jesus than on the side of Socrates, he must attempt to prove his position ; and that he can never do, and certainly has not yet done. If Socrates taught us to die calmly through reason, Jesus taught us the same lesson through faith ; but true reason can only be founded on true faith. Now, the spirit of Socrates appears to me exactly what Jesus warned us to beware of — " the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod," — " I thank Thee, God, that I am not as other men are," or, as Socrates says, " I will not admit that any man has lived better than myself;" and that spirit of the human governor of men which Herod showed when he killed John Baptist for his oath's sake and those that sat at meat with him, or Pilate showed when he washed his hands before the multitude, and delivered an innocent man to the death of the cross, because " a tumult was made," which he thought might be appeased by letting a mob have their own way in doing murder on innocence. So Socrates, partly in the same spirit, refused to fly when escape was offered him, and preferred to gratify that pride of martyrdom which says, " I know that if I now die I shall obtain /rom men far different consideration than those who now take my life." Which principle is quite different from that command of Jesus, "When they persecute you in this city, flee ye to another." Thus we find humility and faith on the one side, and reason and pride on the other. And so the demon helped Socrates to prefer the admiration of the grand Stre d'hu- manitd, as Comte would say, to the personal humility of JESUS AND SOCRATES. CO I flying from evil men. But by taking the cup to aid in his own death, rather than disobey the law, which law he was wise enough to perceive and declare unjust, Socrates died in pride of reason rather than in humility of faith. Thus Socrates obeyed his demon, or the spirit which was permitted to inspire him. But the spirit of Socrates was itself, in its very faith, gmlty of unrea- son ; for his demon being the spirit of reason, yet in- consistently forbade Socrates to use reason, or even to meditate on what was reasonable in the preparation of his defence. But the spirit of faith, on the contrary, is consistent in saying, Eely upon faith, and when you are brought before rulers and princes for my sake, take no thought how or what ye shall speak ; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. The spirit of faith is entirely consistent with itself in so directing ; but the spirit of reason, in so direct- ing Socrates, was altogether inconsistent with reason itself. But it may be said. How can that be right advice from Jesus, and wrong advice from the demon of Socrates? The circumstances of the two cases are alike, and the advice given is alike, and the practice is alike, — ^how can the spirit of Jesus be right, and the demon of Socrates be wrong ? The answer is, that two different principles are at issue — the spirit of faith and the demon of reason ; and the first is logically consistent, and the second is self- contradictory ; and it merely shows that reason must be built on faith, and not faith upon reason. There are times in every man's life when he has to choose, either to act rightly in faith, not seeipg the 502 CHAPTER XX. reason, or to take the course of apparent utility and expediency — to choose between the courage and the course which are founded on humility and conscience, and the courage and course which are founded on piide and utilitarian reasoning or expediency. We cannot reconcile the doctrines of Socrates and Jesus ; though they both taught immortality and claimed inspiration by the Divinity. To deny the possibility of all inspiration, a priori, is not philosophy, but is to start with a dogmatic pre- judice inconsistent with and contradicted by facts. There never was a man less enthusiastic, or less likely to invent a lie about his demon, than Socrates. Enthu- siasm and self-deception may be suggested to account for the claim of Jesus to inspiration, and there is a certain plausibility in the suggestion, founded on the language of Jesus, which is the language of faith. But there is no plausibility whatever in making the same suggestion for the great master of Grecian reason ; for his language is throughout, the language of the calmest Eeason. Of the doctrines of Jesus, and of the manner and cir- cumstances of His death, there can be, in my opinion, no more reasonable doubt, or less doubt, than there can be of the doctrines of Socrates, and the manner and circumstances of the death of Socrates.* But both were * I'assume the authenticity and historical character of the four evan- gelists just as I assume the same of Plato and Xenophon. In my opin- ion, hut for the great importance of the issue, the authenticity of John would never have been attacked. The internal evidence of the fourth Gospel appears to my mind conclusive against the possibility of its heing a romance or a forgery subsequent in date to the synoptical Gos- pels. Being certainly later in date, no forger or romancer could pos- sibly, to my mind, in writing the fourth Gospel, have departed so far and so widely from the previous Gospels, and in so many minute and JESUS AND SOCRATES. 503 teachers of morality and religion, and both died for their opinions as blasphemers. Were they both in- spired by God, or neither of them ? or was Jesus inspired by God and Socrates by the devil? Neither wrote a book. Both taught openly and orally much that is good and religious and mbral and true ; and what they said has been, with much care and particularity, preserved to us by their own immediate and faithful disciples and followers — by men who had either heard themselves the words spoken, or had received them from those who had heard them ; and who had no possible or conceiv- able motive for deceiving the world or anybody on the subject. Both taught the worship of a Supreme Being, but Socrates mingled with that, the worship of inferior divinities and founded all on the reason of man ; the other founded aU on faith, — the faith of children in a Father. Both died under a charge or accusation for blas- phemy ; the one partly through the jealousy of the chief priests and democratic violence of th^ Jews calling out, needless particulars, without any apparent purpose. For example, the inventing Malchus as the name of the high-priest's servant, whose ear Peter cut off — the particular way in which Peter denied his Master, and stood at the door of the palace without, and how he was brought m by the " other disciple," and the different persons to whom he made the denial, as compared with the synoptical Gospels on the same story ; such particulars, so minute and different, afford to my mind conclusive evidence that no forger or romancer in the second or third century ever wrote the fourth Gospel. But circumstantial evidence of the trifling kind I have referred to is the most reliable, and it is conclu- sive, until it can be explained away. This is independent of the whole moral doctrine of the Gospel, which may strike different minds differently. But who can suppose a romancer or forger, in the second or third centuiy, inventing these trifling differences with the synoptics at hand ? It is contrary to reason, and tends to defeat the supposed object of either forger or romancer, and therefore is incredible. 504. CHAPTER XX. " Crucify Him, crucify Him ! " combined with the poli- tical expediency of the Eoman and Jewish governors ; the other, possibly but in a very remote manner through the jealousy of the sophists who taught reasoning for money, but more immediately through the democratic anger and superstitious hostility of a public assembly of more than five hundred Athenians, who had by the laws of Athens the legal right and power to judge and condemn Socrates on that charge of blasphemy ! The parallel is without doubt a very remarkable one, and both are at least very remarkable men ; for it is im- impossible to conceive a finer exhibition of mere human intellect and honest virtue prosecuting the study and teaching of reason and rationalism, than that of So- crates teaching and preaching, without pay or reward, the doctrines of pure Eeason ; and of Virtue, as a form or species of reason ; and the fulfilment of and obedi- ence to all civil duties, and the complete submission to the laws of his country, as exhibited in his teaching, and by his life and by his death. Nor is it possible to conceive a finer exhibition of faith and love, and of humility and tenderness, towards the poor and the ignorant and the needy, but without the least tincture of patriotism, or Judaical legality, or narrowness of thought or action, than is exhibited in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, teaching righte- ousness and denouncing hypocrisy, infidelity, woridh- ness, and expediency during the three years of which alone we have any authentic account relating to his life. The active principles of the one were reason, utility, and the pride of man; those of the other were faith, love, and the humility of a little child. The one worshipped intellect, the other love. The one refused to JESUS AND SOCRATES. .505 escape from death, even when escape was offered him after his condemnation, and died, in obedience to the laws of his country, by his own hand taking the cup of poison proffered by the law, and calmly reasoning with his friends, and was smiling and witty, and tho- roughly intellectual down to the last hour. The other, indeed, died without resistance or reviling, like a lamb led to the slaughter, yet in perfect possession of his manhood, saying to his judge on earth, " Every one that is of the TRUTH heareth my voice," to which the judge, as we know, replied, "What is truth?" a question which Jesus left then unanswered, and which remains unan- swered to the present hour ; except that Jesus said, " I am the "Way— the Truth — the Life." But if we attempt to pursue the parallel between Jesus and Socrates to their teaching and doctrines, we are soon landed in inextricable difficulty. The doctrine of Socrates is of the world, and adapted to the world ; but the doctrine of Jesus is not of the world, nor adapted to the world as it exists at present. We may indeed render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but the world is not yet prepared, if stricken on the right cheek, to offer the left ; nor if sued at law for our coat, to sur- render our cloak also ; nor to resist not the evil ; nor are we prepared to love our enemies, nor to bless those who curse us, nor to do good to those who despitefuUy use us. If Christianity consist of all the doctrines of Christ, we may still, like the learned Hindoo, well ask, " Where are the Christians?" The civilisation of Christianity is still so far ahead of all Christian nations ; that we may well hope for futvxre progress. But Socrates appeared inspired to maintain, through- out his life, that knowledge is both truth and virtue — S06 CHAPTER XX. whence it follows that sin is merely ignorance ; a doc- trine which remains in dispute in every age since passed, and down to the present hour. Is ignorance of the truth the true origin of evU, and is philosophy its cure ? Socrates would answer in the affirmative, or his reason tends to that. Jesus did not answer His judge, but acted His reply to the question, " What is truth ?" by dying, having said, " I am the truth " — " If ye continue in My word, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," — free from sin and ignorance and evil. The charges against Socrates were three : — 1. Contempt of the established religion. 2. The introduction of new divinities. 3. The corruption of the young. According to Diogenes Laertius, the sentence of con- demnation was carried by a majority consisting of 281 votes. "Socrates says himself, 'Had but three votes only fallen differently, I should have been acquitted ;' and his accusers would probably have had to pay the penalty of 1000 drachmas for an unsustained prosecu- tion !" But when asked what punishment he desired and deserved, Socrates "so exasperated his jurors by his irony in asking, instead of a slight punishment, that he should be openly rewarded with the highest honours of the State — that of a maintenance at the public expense in the Prytaneum," — that eighty additional votes were given in favour of the sentence of death. Thus Socrates died, full of years (he was seventy), and in full possession of his mental powers ; andPlato records in the 'Phsedo' the calm philosophical conversations of the last few hours of his life on the immortality of the soul. He refused to escape when an escape had been prepared JESUS AND SOCRATES. 507 for him by his friends, and calmly received and swal- lowed the cup of poison in obedience to the laws of his country, and submitted to the bigotry and injustice of his countrymen, proud of his human reason ; but in fact obeying "the divine monitor," by which, as he said in the first Alcibiades, "I am accustomed to re- gulate my actions " even in the choice of friends and associates. During one of his last conversations, Socrates gravely rebuked one of his followers for doubting the reality of his spirit or demon, to whose presages or warnings he had habitually referred his conduct. " This monitor," he said in his apology, " I have had from my boyhood — a voice which warns and restrains me constantly from what I am about to do, but never urges me on to do." But the very remarkable fact, already mentioned, is worthy of notice, that Socrates observed to Hermogenes, that he " had essayed twice to consider what he should say in his defence against the accusation which lost him his life, and twice had he been prevented by those secret divine intimations which he interpreted as a voice ad- dressed to him on each occasion, forbidding the prepara- tion of his defence." Thus Socrates, the very hero of Reason, may be said to have died a victim to Faith in his demon, who forbade a reasonable preparation of that defence, which by influencing three votes out of 556 would have saved his life. Thus calmly dying by the decree of a superstitious democratic assembly, and exhibiting an example of virtue in life and nobleness in death, almost unsur- passed, Socrates has been, ever since Christianity spread in the world, the greatest encouragement of S08 CHAPTER XX. those votaries of piety and virtue, who set up reason in opposition to that simple faith, that only true faith, which must he founded not on reason but on love ! For, as Christians, we must love God, not because it is reasonable, else it were not love but logic, but be- cause He first loved us, and gave Himself for us ; that we, being sinners in His sight, might be redeemed from the just punishment of our sins ! Independently of aU revelation, however, concerning the existence of the powers of darkness, how is it pos- sible for any reasonable man to deny the existence of the Demon of Socrates and to suppose Socrates a self-deceiv- ed enthusiast ? It is quite contrarj' to all the analogies of the universe to suppose that man is the only evil spirit or mind in creation. An evil man, for the grati- fication of a few moments' pleasure, purposely leading the innocent into what he well knows to be evU, and to produce misery, is not the only devil; and what difference in principle is there, between an evil man for sixty years, and a devil for 6000 year.?, violating God's laws and delaying the accomplishment of God's designs amongst mankind ? We behold the one, and may well believe the other. Before the coming of Christ it may possibly and pro- bably have been the design of Satan to obtain idolatrous worship and influence on earth by terror and open exhi- bitions of his power, by demoniac influence of divers visible and sensible kinds. Whereas, since the sending on earth of the spirit of love and submission and faith, the holy spirit of God Himself, such exhibitions may either be impossible, or they may be restrained by laws of which we know nothing, or, in the opinion of Satan, they may be impolitic^ and unsuited to the age of the JESUS AND SOCRATES. 509 •world for the promotion of idolatry and error. And he may find it easier to propagate evil amongst mankind by those false religions and false doctrines and systems of which Socrates, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Buddha were the chief or original high-priests — the four false principles of moral reason,— of moral materialism, — of the moral religion of nature, and lastly the moral re- ligion of personal asceticism, self -mortification, and external observances, aU which are inconsistent with the faith of a little child in God as its Father as taught by Jesus Christ. " Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." When it is argued that the open demoniac agency which is supposed to have existed up to the age of Christ must be a delusion — ^mere human error — or it would stiU exist, and, therefore, that all such stories are to be discredited, as a rational man in the present age discredits such stories if reported of the next village or street ; I answer, that follows by no means. Satan and the devil's powers may have been either curtailed and diminished, or he may prefer deceiving by falsehood to terrifying and governing men by open display of power. Devils not only may exist, but may vary from age to age both in their powers and display of power. But the fact remains, that it is quite consistent with the highest reason and with analogy to believe in a hierarchy of evil spirits who may take and find pleasure in the deception of the race of mankind, just as an evil man takes pleasure in the deception of youth and inno- cence, and in leading them to what he knows in his heart must ruin them ! But yet it gives him pleasure to make them as evil as himself, by courses leading to 510 CHAPTER XX. their own ultimate misery, as lie well knows from his own experience. But to suppose that man is the only devil is on principle absurd, and quite contrary to abstract reason and to the whole analogy of the uni- verse and of nature. It is not unreasonable to believe in the existence and powers of evil spirits; but it is unreasonable for a man, who believes in God, to fear them ! If then there be, as there must be, in order to account for the existence of evU, a hierarchy of evil spirits, greatly more powerful than man, their plans and prac- tices for misleading mankind may have greatly changed since the introduction of Christianity. It may now be their design to recommend the religion of pure reason and rationalism, of which the foundations were laid by the inspiration and death of Socrates under the express influence and direction of the demon who guided him ; or the religion of materialism and utility, of which the foundation was laid by Confucius, and by the revelation to him by anticipation of the doctrine of Christ, " Do unto others as you should wish they should do unto you." Satan may surely promote virtue which leads to spiritual pride, and forgetfulness of God, and prevents that child-like humility which Christ makes the essential preliminary for entrance into His kingdom. Or it may now be the plan of the devil to encourage Pantheism, and a kind of worship of light and life, the powers of nature in its most beautiful material form, but abstracted from all petty idols and oracles such as a Christian Zoroaster might have taught; or some species of formalism and ritualism with outward observances and the doctrines of self-mortification, such as a Christian Buddhism might approve; or the devil may seek to JESUS AND SOCRATES. 511 combine witli this, all or part of some religion of " Al- truisme," or of modern philosophic self-denial and pre- tended living for others, with a worship of humanity, as the only Mre supreme, " under the form of a woman of thirty, with a child in her arms," such as Auguste Comte offers to us ; or in fact any religion of outward forms and symbols, rather than the religion of the heart taiight by the humble carpenter of Nazareth, the de- spised peasant of a despised race — a man who could exclaim such unreason as this, " I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them xmto babes ! Even so. Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight!" and yet could say of himself, "he that depiseth me, depiseth Him that sent me." Observe the contrast between the wisdom of all phil- osophy and the truths of that religion which requires a man to be born again, of water and of the spirit in outward form and inward grace from above, and to become as a little child, or else denies him entrance into the kingdom of heaven! Except a man be born again, and from above, entrance is by Jesus denied him into the kingdom of God ! Human wisdom and human prudence are as nothing. Ye must become babes, and be a new crea- tion, and be new born by the Spirit of God, or the very entrance into God's kingdom is shut against you by Jesus Christ! This is too humbling to the pride of reason, and Socratic and utilitarian Christians reject it ; and Christian Pantheists and Christian Buddhists ex- plain it away, and convert it into aesthetic and elegant naturalism, or mere outward formalism. This, in fact, is the fundamental distinction between the wisdom that is of God and that which is of man I 512 CHAPTER XX. We see, nowadays. Christians who profess belief in God, and in the divine mission of Jesus Christ as part of a grand system of Pantheism ; but are ashamed to avow their belief in the existence of the devil and of demons and demoniac possession, as revealed in Scripture; and endeavour to explain away all evi- dence of demoniac agency in the history of the world and in the history of their own religion, as if the whole must be necessarily false. Two false principles are at work within their minds — 1st, That experience is the source of truth ! 2d, That their non-experience, and the non-experience of modern times, can overrule the expe- rience of former ages. Both principles are false. Truth is ideal, truth is of the mind ! and no truth is or ever can be derived from or founded on experience, for we experience no ideas, and we experience no minds, except only such internal suggestions, if they can be called ex- perience, which are individual imperiences, unknown to all other men ; and then, indeed, we may experience, not only mind, but words, ideas, and suggestions, not of truth — but of the devil, devilish ! But experience, in its ordinary sense, as capable of repetition by ourselves and others, is not the source of any truth, but is the test of utility and expediency; and the non- experience of the whole world cannot overrule the imperience of our own individual souls ; and the non-experience of modern ages cannot overrule the ex- perience of former times. The power which demons and oracles and signs and wonders exerted in the world is a fact ; and it is not pos- sible for reason either to overthrow the fact of the powers of Satan, or to overturn the true explanation of the fact of the greater power, or at least the greater visibility of JESUS AND SOCRATES. 513 the power of Satan in former times, as compared with our own — a fact, which has accompanied, and possibly, or probably, has arisen from Christianity. And those who think the contrary are defective either in sound logic or in true philosophy, or in both ! For it is simply absurd, to think of Socrates as a fanatic or enthusiast professing to hear voices from boyhood which he did not hear. The religion of Jesus, therefore, diEfers from that of Socrates and all other votaries of reason, down to the worshippers of the Eire supreme of humanity, in this fundamental point, that we can consistently and logically found reason on faith ; but we cannot found faith upon reason, and even Socrates himself founded his own reason upon faith in his demon. And Socrates in and by his death, and the way in which it was brought about, gave a practical refutation of the doctrine that reason should be supreme, and was thus logically inconsistent with himself. The religion of Christ begins with God — the one God, the Alpha and Omega, the Pirst and the Last — God blessed for ever, the Creator of all things, even of those evil minds that are devoted to evil, and who withdraw themselves from God and from His light. " No man can come to me," said Jesus, " except the Father which hath sent me draw him." But this God is a Father ; and, said Jesus, " if ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" The invitation, therefore, is general, not to con- sult your reason or your priest, but to pray in faith to God. But the doctrine of Jesus was and is, that " Except ye 2 K JI4 CHAPTER XX. ■ 1)6 1)0111 of water and the Spirit, ye ,cannot enter into the kingdom of God." " Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born from above." The external form or symbol of admission to Christianity, must and will extend over and govern the whole world, and within that outward name and form aU divine truth must arise amongst mankind. But by spirit must be meant that internal spirit, the inward essence of all truth, that Holy Spirit which is God Himself, who, in His own good pleasure, in His own good time, wiU give that Holy Spirit to all who ask Him, and who worship Him in spirit and in truth. But God is not only a Spirit, and must be worshipped by the true worshippers in spirit and in truth, but God is love, said the beloved disciple, and the true worshipper must love God, not because his reason so tells him, but because God first loved him, and has saved him from his sins through Jesus Christ. This has been in all ages and in all churches the true civilising influence of Christianity. But I say that virtue is not based on truth, as So- crates supposed, but truth is based on virtue ! Virtue is not a species or form of truth, but truth is a species or form of virtue ! The demon who inspired Socrates with his notions of truth and virtue was not the spirit of truth, but was the spirit of error and falsehood. It is clear to any one who wiU think honestly that truth is only a form or species of virtue, and that virtue is not a species or form of truth. Justice or conscien- tiousness is the virtue which enables us to see the truth. Justice and mercy and love and veneration are aU virtues, but are not based on truth, but, on the con- trary, truth is based on justice of mind — i. e., conscien- tiousness — in judging conflicting statements. This error JESUS AND SOCRATES. $15 of Socrates, that virtue is based on trutli, and is a spe- cies of human knowledge, lies at the foundation of all the confusion that exists on moral subjects. We cannot too strongly fix it constantly in our minds that virtue is not based on truth, but that truth is based on virtue. The moral is not based on the intellectual ; but, on the contrary, the truth of intellect is based on the moral. The kingdom of God, the moral kingdom, is with- in us ; and we must seek first the kingdom of God, and if we are humble enough, sufi&cient intellectual truth may and will be given to us. " If any man," said Jesus, " is willing to do God's will he shall know of the doctrine." But the question of the existence of a moral sense in the human mind, bestowed on it by nature or God, has often been much confused by confounding and confus- ing the moral and intellectual departments of the soul. A sense or capacity is intellectually blind ; but yet, on its own subjects, is not the less a natural sense bestowed upon us by God — a sense with its own proper objects and subjects for its enjoyment or its disgust, for its gratifica- tion or the reverse. We have, for example, a sense of colour ; but it is matter of custom and of education whether black or white shall be the symbol of mental sorrow or grief Europeans think the first and the Chinese the last ; but it would surely be a very silly conclusion from this difference to say that man has no natural sense either of black or white, or of colour, or of mental pain, sorrow, or grief. We have a physical sense of colour and a mental sense of grief when our affections are violated or wounded, but our senses are by nature intellectually bUnd. We may have a natural sense of justice, that we should seek Sl6 CHAPTER XX. justice and do it ; but that moral sense may be, and no doubt is, intellectually blind by nature as to -what is justice ; and our intellects do not know by nature wbat true justice really demands, and must seek it by a very- long and difficult intellectual process, but always and througliout feeling and exercising our sense of justice. The most odious tyrants and persecutors that have ever lived have been men possessing a strong sense of justice and of right, blinded by an evU conscience, feeling and thinking and fully persuaded that aU their evil deeds were entirely right and just and proper, both in the sight of a just God and of just men, and generally on the principles of utility, expediency, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The greatest perversions of justice recorded in his- tory have been done from a perverted sense of justice, and by men of the highest honour and virtue and inte- grity in matters not connected with their blinded con- science. Jesus alone explains this — " If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" — an intellect corrupted by Satan. They thought they were doing God service; they thought they were promoting the greatest happiness of thfe greatest number ; which last was in fact the actuat- ing principle of Hildebrand and Dominic, when they thought that by persecuting and burning a few heretics they would secure the mass of mankind from moral and religious contagion on this earth, and from eternal unhappiness hereafter. They thought they were killing the few, as a matter of just and wise expediency and utility, to secure the greatest happiness of all the rest of mankind to all fature ages ! — Eobespierre thought the same. JESUS AND SOCRATES. 517 The abuse of any sense proves its existence just as well as its use. It lias always been to our senses of right, of justice, of benevolence, of veneration for all that ig thought to be divine and true and holy and conscien- tious, and always to expediency and utility, in their highest worldly sense of promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of mankind, that the most atro- cious religious, political, and social crimes, ever com- mitted, have always appealed during their progress, and for their promotion and justification amongst men — from the earliest crimes and persecutions down to the latest ! Christ himself died partly a victim to the same false doctrine ; " It is expedient that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not," said Caiaphas — a mere sacrifice of justice in the case of one for the true happiness of all the rest. " If we leave him alone, all men will believe on him," and there will be a rebellion ; " and the Eomans will come and take away our place and nation," said the chief priests and Phari- sees! The sacrificing this one deluder of the people will save all from destruction. Csesar Borgia himself would have equally justified himself by an appeal to the moral sense, to the blinded moral sense, that his designs were politically useful and necessary ; and that it was expedient to deceive and poison a few leading individuals, and so avoid wars and battles, in which, without doubt, far greater numbers would have perished or been slain, and much greater misery would have been inflicted on a much greater number. All persecutors, and all wicked men in all ages have, as readily as good and moral men, appealed to the moral sense, though perverted and blinded, of course, by wicked Sl8 CHAPTER XX. intellectual principles of morality — by the principles of rational utility and worldly expediency. They always have insisted that their Deeds were either a just ven- geance for crimes which the law afforded no adequate or efi&cient means of properly judging, or otherwise pun- ishing ; or that they were justified in their evil deeds by that highest rule of moral expediency, the avoiding the lesser of two evils-r-i.e., seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest number by doing only a little injustice to the few or to the one. In their hearts, aU bold and great criminals have so excused themselves ; and petty criminals have excused themselves by the principle of utility ! — Only a little wrong, of no great consequence to the victims, but of much greater utility to those who are to benefit by the wicked deed ! — This has been their language in all ages. The sense or capacity to know right from wrong and good from 'evU is, in fact, acknowledged and appealed to by all men, good and bad ; and even the moralists: themselves who deny its existence are quite as ready as any others to appeal to its iafluence when and wher- ever they can quote it as being on their side; as, for example, in the proposed abolition of the punishment of death, or the establishment of universal equality. " It is better to save life than to destroy it." " Equality is equity " and just. Thus the doctrines of utility and expediency, and the principle of seeldng the greatest happiness of the greatest number of men upon earth, appear to me some of the vilest falsehoods that ever were palmed off upon the darkened conscience of man- kind, and they are founded on the Socratic principle that virtue is a species of knowledge attainable by Eeason. But Socrates in this was inconsistent with JESUS AND SOCRATES. 519 himself, and believed in a moral sense of justice and goodness to be discovered by reason; while Jesus taught that it must be enlightened by God. Every crime that has ever been committed amongst men has always been justified to the perpetrator's con- science when he contemplated the doing of it by these false principles ; viz., it wUl be on the whole more use- ful ; it is on the whole most expedient ; and it wiU on the whole produce greater happiness, and to a greater number of more worthy men, than if it is left undone. One or a few may suffer just a little, but what is that to the glorious prospects of unlimited happiness, and the great utility to many, ourselves possibly, of course, included, if we are happily fortunate in all the circum- stances, and finally succeed — and if not, then we die ; but we intended well — to benefit the poor and needy and miserable, to repair the injustice of the rich, to substi- tute equality, or some approach to it, amongst men, — and that is equity even in the sight of God, if there be a God. But then God ! — He knows our hard case, and the injustice and oppression we have suffered at the hands of the great and the rich in all ages ; and He has left us all free to right ourselves as well as we can with our own right hands and our strong will, and our true intelligence superior to the social and political and re- ligious prejudices around us. If the crime be a great one, it is national, and for the true interests of the many ; if it be a petty one, yet it is then for the poor, who are the many, and it is only helping to equalise the gross injustice of law or society. And if it be a private crime on the individual — murder, incest, or adultery — it is clearly individual and private, and will never be found out, and does not affect 520 CHAPTER XX. general utility or expediency, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, in any appreciable degree ; and if it does, then it adds to the ultimate number of the happy ; or only one man is killed or robbed, and his inheritance or the plunder will benefit many, who will have jointly far greater happiness than he alone could ever enjoy. There is no crime under heaven that cannot be justi- fied by the principles of worldly utility, apparent ex- pediency, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number of men upon earth — developed by human reason. But hereafter ? and not upon earth ? Pugh ! The utilitarian moralist can know nothing of that, especially if all truth, be founded on induction from what we see and feel here — here on earth ; and must not our reason be guided by visible experience ? In fact, if the plunder or inheritance is to be divided and enjoyed, as they always may be, by more than one, every theft and murder not found out (and of course, by the calculus of probabilities they never are expected to be found out) is both useful, expedient, and adds to the sum of the human happiness of the greater number ! And every great political crime has always avowedly been com- mitted in the interests or for the promotion, of utility, expediency, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Thus these principles may be used to justify every social and political crime. The fact that the perpetrator generally intends, or hopes to share in, that increase of utility and happiness, does not affect the question, for he is one of the greatest number ; and if his share should prove, as he, perhaps, hopes, the lion's share; he can always propose to rectify that at leisure in a long future career of worldly- JESUS AND SOCRATES, 52I prosperity, and so exhibit and prove the noble motives of his noble crime. But utilitarian morality must always proceed on such practical principles of -worldly individual conduct, and must leave the future to rectify the future, when, and if, further material adjustment is required on earth ! But Socrates is in no respect responsible for the later development of Eationalism. He is only responsible for the fundamental principle on which they are based ; viz., that wisdom and virtue are the same, and that the evidence of what men know is what they do — principles which sap the very foundation of moral responsibility. Now my conclusion is, and this, at least, is certainly true, that about 400 to 600 years before the first advent of Christ, four celebrated principles of religion and philosophy were started in this world by four most celebrated men in four distuict centres of ancient civili- sation : — the religion of reason by Socrates — rationalism ; the religion or no religion of materialism and utility by Confucius ; the worship of nature or light, the great power of visible nature — i.e., pantheism and virtue — ^by Zoroaster ; and the religion of self-mortification, and the worship of an incarnate God, by Buddha ! Every false religion may be, I think, reduced to these four: pha- risaism or self-righteous mortifications ; materialism and deism; idealism and pantheism; and rationalism or the pride of reason ! and aU these four seem to have been introduced into the world, in India, China, and Persia, and Greece, some 400, to 600 years or so before the birth of Christ. And in various shapes these four false principles have all more or less corrupted Chris- tianity, and still do corrupt it, and stiU oppose them- selves to the simplicity and humility of Gospel truth. 522 CHAPTER XX. founded on love of God. Not the least dangerous of the four in the present day is the admirable nobility and purity and calmness of the example of Socrates, and the dignified pride of pure reason or rationalism not per- ceiving, or not acknowledging, the fundamental truth, that all reason must be built upon faith, and that no true faith can be founded on reason. But by the con- trolling will and providence of God, Socrates was, no doubt, compelled to acknowledge openly the existence and assistance of the Demon by whom he was guided ! and thus exhibited the inconsistency of his own principle ia and by his own faith. Jesus, then, and the religion taught by Jesus, does not appear to me, therefore, properly contrasted with Socrates, or with the reasonable religious piety which Socrates taught ; but seems to me rather the central point of Teoth, between the reason of Socrates and the materialism of Confucius on the one hand, and the pan- theism of Zoroaster and the asceticism, or self-mortifi- cation of Buddha on the other ! A reasonable piety, ending in materialism, seems to me contrasted with a pantheism ending in some kind of seK-mortification — the religion of Socrates, ending in utility in this world, as one extreme, — and the religion of the Hindoo fakeer, hanging on a hook by the muscles of the back, ending in happiness in the next world, as the other limit, seem to me the two extremes of rational and natural religion according to every philosophical view of religion. The religion of Jesus — that is, the Eevelation that -" God is a spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth," and can only come to Him through the truth and spirit of Jesus — ^stfinds midway between the two, respecting the one. JESUS AND SOCRATES. 523 and pitying the other. So it has stood, and so it must stand, until the end! equally removed from the mere reason of the rationalist, and from the self-immolation of the fanatic, yet combining all that is true or useful in the principles of both. The time is at hand. It is already evident that a few years, or hundreds of years, must make " the king- doms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ." " Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth ?" or will He only find a form of godliness without the spirit thereof? All other civOisations of the world are decaying, and expiring and fleeing away before the civilisation founded on the words of Christ. It has come about, hitherto, strangely but surely, and is surely progressing, for Christ's words are still humanising and civOising the most civilised nations of the globe ; and the more truly Christian they become, the more powerful they are. Christian morality exalteth the nations that adopt it, and that keep Christ's words. It was not a probable thing when the peasant of Nazareth uttered these words to the Jews of Jerusalem who believed on Him, " If ye continue in my word, ye shall know the triith, and the truth shall make you free," yet, it has come to pass, to a great extent, and is coming to pass, more and more, every day and hour. The future career of Christianity, and of Christian nations, is certainly greater than any- thing which has yet taken place. It is but a question of time — Christ must, in outward name, ultimately govern the whole world ; and even those who want faith seem mentally compelled to work for that consum- EiC-xon. CHAPTER XXI. THE HOLY TRINITY, Descaetes, the founder of modem mathematics, said that the existence of God was as certain as any mathe- matical problem. St Paul more logically said, " Before a man can come to God he must first believe that Se is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him." We must first have faith in the existence of God, and in the action of God — His possible relations to ourselves — before we can have any religion whatever ; and we must first have faith in existence and in action before we can even think, or move our minds, or reason at all ; for all reason must be founded on some faith. We drink in faith with our mother's milk — ^faith in matter; and it is often the only faith we retain to the end, for it often, as amongst the materialists, extin- guishes all other faith. But as we grow in stature and wisdom, we drink in faith in mind; and as we begin to reason with ourselves and others, we drink faith in lan- guage, but doubt of its force and meaning ! Descartes weU. said, that those who asserted that "there could be nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses," — which was the mediaeval form of the modem dogma that "all ideas are derived from experience," — " must, to be consistent, deny the existence of God and spirit," neither of which is part of our sensible Experience. THE HOLY TRINITY. 525 But God, we may say, is only good, and the good is what is pleasant or useful; and spirit is only breath or air, and that in action is human life ; and light is the only source of life ! And so we can make utility our God, and physical life our mind, and matter a "possibility," and naind a "flwa" — a series of thoughts about wheat and rice, interrupted by stupid superstitious obstructions about virtue and vice. The ingenious capacity of man to make words to darken counsel and hide the truth is infinite and un- limited. We, however, have been reasoning for men who believe in their bodies, and in their minds, and in their words ; and in all three as wholly distinct from each other. But for those sceptics who call the first — their bodies — either permanent or dubious "possibilities ;" and the second — their minds — ^fluctuating " series," which may cease to be either a flux or a series by ceasing to flow, we have to fall back on words or language. A word we must as- sume, call it what you please — God, thought, cognition, knowledge, truth, thinking, reasoning, philosophy—what- ever thing or thought they choose to talk about; one word is sufficient for our argument — ^thought or know- ledge. If there be a thought at all, there must be an object and a- subject, and the relation between them, one, two, three ; a thing, a thought of it, and a word for it ; which last is our name for the thought of the thing. The ego, the non-ego, and the action or passion, or both combined in one, which the combination and action of the two necessarily supposes to exist — all three must exist in every cognition — ^the sensible, the insensible, the symbolic. The very (1) . possibility, (2) the doubt, and (3) the 526 CHAPTER XXI. doubt of the possibililiy, or the possibility of the doubt — these three must exist even to the very greatest scep- tic who doubts everything. They may be all called possibilities, or all called doubts, or all called words, or all called thoughts, or all called things ; but if the man thinks or speaks at all, he is of necessity involved in these three — the factors of his thought or thinking — and these three are one in himself individually when he begins to speak, and out of himself when he speaks of them generalised in others, as being involved in the words he uses. And whether his assertion is negative or affirmative, it is all the same. There is the thing denied, the thing denying, and the verbal expression of the denial, as well as the thing affirmed, the thing affirming, and the verbal expression of the affirmation. Every expressed conception of man's mind whatever, never-ceasingly in- volves these three factors, whether of thought, of know- ledge, or doubt — the object, the subject, the traject — which third is only the word that passes from man to man, or mind to mind, the intellectual bridge, the logi- cal symbol or connection, the relation which is needful to complete the general conception, if common to more minds than one. But, at all times and in every place, in every human being, these three are one. They are three to every man who thinks, and they are one to every man who thinks. They are the three factors of his every thought. The object, without ceasing to be itself, must yet pass into, or act upon, or become, the subject ; the subject must pass out to, or act upon, or become, the object ; and the action or passion, or both combined, between them, must be expressed, and perceived, and acknow- THE HOLY TRINITY. 527 ledged in the word, which is the relation or connection between the two, and which is created by the subject to express the object, or the relation, or union, or effect of the combination between the subject and object, and which, the word, always is at the same time objective and subjective and verbal. Put it how you can, they are three and they are one — ^three factors of one conception — ^three conceptions co-operating in every thought — ^three things, each dis- tinct and essential to thought, and yet such that they, as a trinity, co-exist together in unity, or are considered both as a unity and yet as a trinity in every cognition. If we start with the assumption or admission of one unknown existence, which we suppose to be, and call thought OP knowledge, the nature and truth of which we are all to try and discover by means of our inteUect and reason, then we have abundantly shown that the nature and constitution of man's mind or reason is such that the very first rational step forces, as it were, d priori by deduction, from the very nature of the thing supposed, and from that assumption of thought or know- ledge as possibly existing in the human mind, and that there follows, this necessary or never-ceasing result or conclusion — that this unknown existence which we are in search of cannot be thought of or conceived without self-contradiction, except as a UNIT compounded of THKEE factors, themselves units — not parts, hut factors, of the so-called thing thought or knowledge which we profess to be searching for. These three distinct things or thoughts or words, whatever we please to call them, are not added together in our first conception of thought or knowledge, but are independent /actors of that know- ledge, complicating or compounding the one thought 528 CHAPTER XXI. or thing whicli we have assumed to be properly called knowledge or thought in the mind. It is not the mere addition of mind, thing, and word, as three things that produces or compounds thought or knowledge in our supposed first conception. Our addi- tion or enumeration of them as three is a subsequent operation. Our numbering of them, or reducing them to number, is an operation wholly subsequent to our first conception of the three, as object, subject, and traject, or thing, thought, and word. It is some necessary active interconnection, some mutual complication and combination, some action and reaction together, of the three distinct things, or v/mts, as we are bound to call them, that produces and com- pounds our first unit, our first cognition, our first con- ception of knowledge or of thought — the thing, the mind, the word, all, complicated into one, yet all dis- tinct from each other. So long as we are, and remain, ignorant of the true nature of these three distinct things, which we may call a thing, a miad, and a word, we can only properly take and assume the same symbol or sign for each one. We call that symbol unity ; and being by supposition wholly ignorant of the true nature of the original exist- ence, as well as of the true nature of the three com- ponent factors thereof, except only that the mind of man forces him to recognise them as three, and as dis- tinct factors producing ih.Q first conception. Then the very first symbolic form of human thought and know- ledge, as OToe conception, necessarily becomes the logical and mathematical truth — THE HOLY TRINITY. 529 UNITY into UNITY into UNITY is and equals unity. This, then, is the first possible formula, and only true conception, which the human mind can make of in- definite thought or KNOWLEDGE — a unity of three dis- tinct unities complicated or multiplied together — the thing knowing, the thing known, and the thing called knowledge; which is at once both the thing known and is the thing knowing, and is the action or passion between them, the symbol operating to produce and embody the knowledge. It is not number in general, or " the unity of the syn- thesis of the many fold " — to use Kantian phraseology — ^but it is " the unity of the synthesis of a- three fold," that we find in our first conception. The first manifold which the human mind can possibly conceive or build up together is the three fold in the first cognition. This form of human thought is not assumed, but deduced and proved, from the very natm-e of the human mind in thinking. It applies to every possible human conception whatever. 'No one who speaks can deny it, without self-contradiction in words, open and manifest. This is the first /orm, therefore, which any knowledge assumes in the human mind, beginning at the true begiuning, of supposing man wholly ignorant, but assuming that some knowledge or thing exists for the human mind to conceive, discover, and contemplate, in order to satisfy the restless craving of the human intel- lect. And this is true whether the object be without or within the mind, or the mirid within or without the object. The beginning and the end, the first and the last, the only true conception of the human mind in action, is as 2l 530 CHAPTER XXI. a unity in trinity, a trinity in unity. There is not only no absurdity or contradiction in this view of knowledge and of truth, hut the constitution of the human mind necessarily — i. e., never-ceasingly — compels and requires the admission of this logical truth as its first step. It is not that no other can be said to be conceivable, but that any other conception becomes self-contradictory. The dogmatic materialist and the dogmatic idealist both profess to conceive a form of knowledge compounded of two. factors instead of three. But each must contradict himself in stating his conception. The one denies the existence of his own body, the other denies the existence of his own mind. The one denies the body which pro- claims the knowledge, and the other denies the mind which understands and possesses it, and both confuse and obscure the words which contain the knowledge. The conceptualist, or object + subject philosopher sup • poses an action and passion without a result ; and the word which expresses and unites both object and sub- ject, which is at once objective and subjective, and embodies the knowledge, is by him wholly omitted. This, however, I submit, is that logical, that verbal Trinity which has been dimly seen by many great philosophers, from Plato downwards, who have never held it fast as a fundamental metaphysical truth and fact. But the logical is very different from the objective and subjective trinity when we attempt to apply this doctrine to man's conception of the Deity. The neces- sary admission of this great fundamental truth of the human mind can be thus, however, demonstrated intel- lectually to all who will admit the most obvious exist- ences — mind, matter, and language ; and who will not, logically and mentally, contradict themselves. And it THE HOLY TRINITY. 53 1 is also demonstrated to all those who profess to believe in any truth or any knowledge whatever, as consisting of an object to be known, a subject to know it, and a verbal expression or word to embody the knowledge. Let self-puzzled or word-puzzled philosophers dwell on the fact that, no knowledge can exist in the human intellect which does not admit this doctrine of a trinity in unity as a fundamental truth, and that every intel- lect which denies it is clearly self-contradictory. They must deny either the thing, the thought, or the word which they have at first admitted. Men can always find reasons for not believing what they do not love or like, but honest intellect must admit it — ^this trinity in unity, this unity in trinity — as the first and last, the beginning and the end, of human knowledge. There is, we assert, neither absurdity nor inconsist- ency in the idea of three equal units being our mental factors of one unit, wholly undistinguishable from either or each of its factors — it is a logical and mathematical Truth. But it is also a Moral Truth. Every arithmetician knows that the necessary laws of number require it ; and plain reason confutes the errors of scepticism, and shows that this trinal sym- metry in unity is the fundamental law of the human mind, the dimmed image of its Maker. Every concep- tion of the human mind implies it. Every cognition is a trinity in unity, a unity in trinity — three units the factors of one unit — three things the factors of one thing. This threefold exists in the first human concep- tion and in the last ; and it is the fundamental con- dition of all human knowledge and aU human thought — of every human conception, about which man can speak and reason. 532 CHAPTER XXI. Now, when we proceed to apply this logical and mathematical doctrine to man's knowledge of his Maker — ^to God, as man ought to conceive Him to exist as an Object of knowledge — we find that the pure intel- lectual conception and the pure moral conception are wholly different and incommensurable. The heart, or active wiU of man, the seat of Emotion, is wholly different from his Intellect, the seat of mental percep- tion, and both are different from his moral Sentiment or principles. But man cannot reason in truth correctly without confessing in words and signs logically the greatest of all revealed truths, as a truth of the human intellect, that every human cognition is a trinity in unity, a unity in trinity ; and if every cognition is such, then, of course, logically, the cognition of God is such. But this is logic. This is a mere cold intellectual con- ception, and not necessarily connected with the emo- tions or sentiments. We must try and get out of the sphere of human conceptions into the sphere of real existence. It may be, and is, clear to the intellect, and not to be gainsaid or denied intellectually, that if, as Theists, we admit the real existence of one God, a God of sdf- knowledge, then, as the self-knowledge of man is a trinity in unity, that Being, whose unity we admit as Theists, must be, according to every human conception, a trinity in unity, a unity in trinity ; because, according to the constitution of man's mind, any other human conception of a God of self-knowledge must and would be self-contradictory, and would deny the original ad- mission of the nature of self-knowledge and of God. I say that men who use the words God, Knowledge, Pbkson, Factoe, must either logically contradict them- THE HOLY TRINITY. 533 selves, or admit the truth, the verbal truth, of unity in trinity, and trinity in unity, as applied by Christians to the real existence and nature of a God of self-know- ledge. For all self-knowledge, according to man's intellectual nature, does of necessity imply three dis- tinct things, factors of one thing, — ^how combined we know not, even in the least knowledge we possess. Tlie object, the subject, and the word are combined as factors in our least cognition. But how they are combined, or how they produce cognition, we know not, even in the least cognition. And, of course, we are infinitely more incapable of knowing their nature and relations in refer- ence to our knowledge of the nature of the First Cause of all things. Each man feels and knows in his own mind the clear distinction between emotion, intellect, and will — ^the three factors of the human mind, which we each per- ceive in ourselves. Each of these has a distinct mental activity, a life of its own, and is in itself a mind. The calm intellect, the strong emotion, the resolute will, are all different, and cannot, even in man, be confounded together, though they aU three exist together more or less in each of us, and in every earnest action. They are factors of the human mind, each distinct ; and each by itself is mental or a mind. But how they are com- bined into ONE human miod we do not know. But when we venture to think or speak of the real internal nature of that one supreme God in whose image we are made, and concerning His emotions, iutelleotr, and will (if we can apply such language to God), then His nature must be infinitely more incomprehensible to man than man's nature is to himself. The Deity be- comes wholly and altogether incomprehensible, and we S34 CHAPTER XXI. can only speak or reason about man's conception or cognition of the infinite and absolute one. But, nevertheless, the verbal, the logical truth of the trinity in unity, and unity in trinity, of the Godhead is, I say, strictly dedueible from the two assumptions of God, and of knowledge such as may be possible for man to conceive and know ; if He be considered as an Object to be known, a Subject which can know it, and a SYjasoL which can express the knowledge. It is the law and constitution of the human mind, and of human cognition ;, and unless we verbally con- tradict ourselves, we can neither deny that to man's conception there are and must he three persons, factors, units, in the Godhead, nor that there are three factors in human knowledge. Intellectually, the two doctrines rest upon the same fundamental fact, that man cannot conceive knowledge or self-knowledge except as the product of things, minds, and words. A thing, a mind, and a word — three things — are the necessary or never-ceasing factors of each and every human cognition and conception, and therefore of every true human cognition and conception of a God and of self-knowledge, and of that Being whom we term the God of self-knowledge — the Great and Living First Cause. But men, of course, can verbally deny both truths ; but if they attempt to prove or sustain what they say, they must contradict themselves and call A and not-A by the same name. They may deny that knowledge is the product of things, minds, and words ; they may deny that self-knowledge is the product of object, subject, and thought, each indistinguishable in man's Self-knowledge, and yet each intellectually distinct from the others; THE HOLY TRINITY. 535 they may deny tlie trinity in unity, and unity in trinity of man's self-knowledge ; and may deny that the mind the object, and the mind the subject, and the mind thought of, are either not three or that they are not one ; but, nevertheless, they are both one and three in every dear and honest intellect which is unwilling to contradict itseK — three units multiplied and forming one unit. They are three distinct thoughts and yet one distinct thought at one and the same time — three distinct things intellectu- ally, and yet one thing actually. And there is no greater difficulty in conceiving three distinct Persons in one God, and each in Himself God, and yet no more three Gods than man's mind as an object and man's mind as a subject and man's mind as a thought, when engaged in thinking about itself, are three minds. They are not three distinct minds, but one mind thinking of itself, possessing a nature created in the image of God, and capable of self-reflection and self-examination and self- direction — three selfs in one self, all distinct and yet the same. This we all know and feel to be true and reasonable in ourselves ; and the Christian doctrine of three Persons in one God, each Person in Himself God, and yet not three Gods, is equally reasonable, and most certainly true ; and no man, without self-contradiction, can logically deny it. The factors of self-knowledge are personce of self, or otherwise we must say that self is not- self. But some may object, " You only prove that every conception is a unity in trinity, and thence you may deduce that the human conception of God is such, but not that God Himself is such ; and the same reasoning would go to show that the sun or moon is a unity in trinity because our conceptions of them are such ! " But 536 CHAPTER XXI. this is to- confound matter and spirit, and to confuse mind and body. A mind or spirit is a being of self- knowledge, a conception formed by reflection on the workings of our own minds in se^/-reflection, when we feel ourselves observing ourselves, and thinking thoughts embodying ourselves, our very spirit, in words — when we perceive that our own mind is an object, a subject, and a thought, action, or word ; at the same time, one in three and three in one. But God is a Mind or Spirit ! And we say and conclude logically that God, in whose image we are made, must logically be such a Being to man's conception, and this quite indepen- dent of the special revelation given us by Christ. We may reject Christ's revelation, but we cannot logically reject this triune conception and form of God, if we accept the doctrine of God as a Spirit, in whose image man's spirit or mind has been created — without self- contradiction. We may reject the revelation, but we cannot, without logical self-contradiction, deny that such a God must be, to man's most accurate conception, a Unity ia Trinity, a Trinity in Unity, a self-regarding, self-directing Spirit, capable of developing His very spirit in a word, symbol, or outward character and person as the Great Exemplar of the God of Love, the express image of the Divine Pather in all His thoughts, words, and deeds as a God of love ! The fact that Christ is such a divine Being may of course be denied ; but the reasonable and logical possibility of His being such cannot be denied without logical self-contradiction. But, then, we are not here concerned with theology, but logic and philosophy.* * Mr Babbage is one who believes in God and in miracles, and we are indebted to him for the best refutation, on materialistic principles. THE HOLY TRINITY. 537 This truth of Trinity in Unity, of Unity in Trinity, as received by the Christian Church, is therefore a neces- sary, never - ceasing, and undeniable intellectual and logical truth; and every intellect which refuses to receive it is self-contradictory — ^in Logic ! But deep and mysterious as is the doctrine of the Trinity, and necessary as it is to the truthful inner con- victions of the Christian, it is still only a verbal truth. No man can say more than that men must and ought so to think and speak of the Deity. No man, perhaps, ■would be so presumptuous as to say, or even to think, that he has attained any knowledge of the real nature of his Creator because he has learnt both from revelation of the false notion of the impossibility of miracles (ante, p. 464) ; yet observe the juxtaposition of these three paragraphs : — (1) " The Athanasian Creed is a direct contradiction in terms. If three things can be one thing, then the whole science of arithmetic is at once annihilated, and those wonderful laws which, as astronomers have shown, govern the solar system, are mere dreams. If, on the other hand, it is attempted to be shown that there may be some mystic sense in which three and one are the same thing, then all language, through which alone man can exert his reasoning faculty, becomes useless, be- cause it contradicts itself, and is imtrue." (2) " The gi-eat basis of virtue is truth — ^that is, the constant appli- cation of the same word to the same thing." (3) " The first element of accurate knowledge is number— the foun- dation and measure of all he knows of the material world. " — Babbage, Autob., p. 404. How strange it is to find such passages immediately following each other as above, and yet that such an able author should never have seen that there is nothing either absurd, mystic, mysterious, contra- dictory, or false in three numbers being one number, or three units being factors of one unit/ The factors are all equal ; and yet the product is arithmetically equal to, and no greater than, any one of them ! There is no mystery here to any one who knows number and arith- metic ; and, on the contrary, it is logical and arithmetical truth, and number is the basis of truth. Now if, as a psychological phenomenon, one thinks and asks one- 538 CHAPTER XXI. and from reason to speak and use certain words and symtols for the moral building up of his own thoughts or mind after the manner of the Bible, or in the words of trinitarian Christianity. The moral application of the doctrine is distinct from its intellectual perception. Man may gabble the words of the Church without the Holy Spirit having yet touched his heart. N"ay, his intellect may be clear, and he may be able to reason and confute, and yet his will may be evil, and his heart unborn of the Holy Spirit, unregenerated, and repro- bate in thought and mind ; calling Christ " Lord, Lord," but not doing, or attempting to do, the things which He said, and worshipping the Father neither in spirit nor in truth ! But the real nature of God in Himself remains, and must ever remain, whoUy unknown, ex- self, What could possibly prevent such a clear-headed author from see- ing the truth, that the first paragraph above quoted is in direct logical contradiction to the last — i. e. , that ' ' the first element of accurate know- ledge is number," and that ' ' if three things can be one thing, then the whole science of arithmetic is at once annihilated," — that these are two propositions directly self-contradictory, according to arithmetic itself; because any three numbers may be and are one number, and three equal units as factors multiplied and complicated together, arith- metically, are only one unit ; if, I say, we ask how the author was blinded to the truth, and wrote the above contradiction, I answer that it seems to me that it was in consequence of the Socratic doctrine con- tained in the middle paragraph — viz., that the great basis of virtue in man is truth — i. e. , that virtue is a species of knowledge, as Socrates was inspired to maintain. This falsehood, that virtue is founded on truth, in place of truth being founded on virtue, aided and followed by the philosophical doctrine that words are the names of things, and not the names of our thoughts of things — viz., that " truth is the constant application of the same word to the same thing," instead of to the same thought of the thing, shows clearly, from the immediate context of the "material world," that the author was evidently mixing up and con- fusing in his own mind the two things matter and mind, and so came, before his thought was completed, to think of things as only material things —but thoughts and words are also things. THE HOLY TRINITY. 539 cept iu words, signs, and symbols. But the humble Christian will try to use tho verbal truth in the way his Saviour and his Bible teach him. He will pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit to worship the Father in spirit and in truth, through and by the instruction of the Son. " If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ?" The intellectual conception and the moral conception of the Trinity in Unity are distinct and different just as the intellect of man differs from his moral sentiments and religious emotions. " No man cometh unto me ex- cept the Father draw him," said Jesus ; and it requires an infinite Spirit to inscribe the true moral conception of the Trinity upon the fleshly tables of the human heart. But it is not only an intellectual but a moral truth that the first existence is to the human mind a Trinity — the Creator, the Eedeemer, the Sanctifier — the three co-equal units in the first unity — the Father, the Spirit, and the Word of God, who is Christ the Lord, our great exemplar, the only true and perfect symbol of divine love ! When, therefore, a Jewish peasant coming forward as the long-foretold and long-promised Messiah publicly announced the doctrine, "I and my Father are oTie," " He who hath seen me hath seen the Father," and " the Father shall give you another Comforter, even the Spirit, of Truth : He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you, and ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you," — He revealed a truth which, incom- prehensible as it may be to man's mind, and altogether above reason, and not deducible thereby, concerning God and Man ; is yet not only consistent with the highest 540 CHAPTER XXI. reason, but any other human conception of the Deity necessarily ends in self-contradiction, and is incon- sistent with ' the very constitution of the human mind itself! God is an object of worship, a Creator and Father. He is a subject, or mind or spirit, comhining with, comforting, and supporting, or dwelling in and with aU. good minds ; and He is also the divine woed or symbol, the highest human exemplar, a man possessing the divine spirit "without measure," or, as the Church of Alexandria expressed it, "inferior to the Father as touching His manhood, but equal to the Father as touching His Godhead." The distinct personality of the SON and holy spirit is a marvellous revelation, but it is consistent with the highest reason. The Trinity is not three relations of God to mankind, but three Per- sons in one Deity, or three Eolations to Himself. And if any man argues that such a conception of the Deity is a conception of three Gods, we answer that he is as logically absurd and inconsistent as if he argued that the conception of human self-knowledge is a conception of three men or minds, and not, as we have shown it to be, a conception of one man or mind existing in three neces- sary minds in relation to himself — emotion, intellect, and wUl, as an object, a subject, and the word or thought — the necessary connection or relation or emotion between them — without which a man or mind as a being of self- knowledge cannot logically exist, or be rationally con- ceived by any thoughtful and careful human being. Thus are the deepest truths of revelation, which a child can apply to his own self-improvement, consistent with the highest reason on which a man can exercise his intellect. THE HOLY TRINITY. 54I The great first Cause, therefore, the first great exist- ence, the Deity, the Godhead, is of necessity — i.e., never- ceasingly, to the human mind, according to man's in- tellectnal constitution, a Unity in Trinity, a Trinity in Unity ; and any other conception of the Deity is self- contradictory. But the religious and emotional applica- tion of the doctrine of the Trinity, to the edification or building up of a Christian spirit in man, is of course altogether distinct and different from the logical and intellectual conception of that doctrine. We are not, in this work, in any wise concerned with the religious or emotional use of the doctrine, — That is properly the subject of moral sentiment in the Soul, and not of pure intellect or Philosophy, and to the latter we confine our argument. Man has free choice, and free will, and can always refuse to believe either in mind or in any of its facts. He may even feel, like a fool, a pride in choosing wrong. If he were not given this freedom, he could not worship in spirit and in truth. His spirit would be bound, and his truth questionable. But Man cannot find any logical refuge, any intellectual shelter, which will stand the test of rational examination in denying this great revealed truth of the Trinity in Unity, the Unity in Trinity, of the first great Cause — of Him who is the author of all that truly exists except the actions of Evil Minds — those evil existences or evils which inferior but evil minds, have themselves created not by His divine permission, but in consequence of His creation of Free Will. The origin of evU for ever invites discussion. —Why has God permitted the existence of evil 1 But the difficulty is beyond man's solution, as it seems to me, except it be, as I believe, the consequence of 542 CHAPTER XXI. the creation of Free Will without which there could he no worship of God in Spirit and in Truth. But Man was not the first spirit created with free will to see the Truth, and choose the Evil — i.e., the Lie; but like all origin, the origin of evil is insoluble to man, except, as merely moral, and intellectual speculation. True Religion, however, is not Theology ; it is neither logical nor intellectual; for religion is emotional, and sentimental, and practical. Though consistent with the highest reason and intellect ; yet religion is properly confined to the emotions, the sentiments, the actions — deeds, not words ! We cannot properly understand this till we have perceived and adopted the division of the soul into its three departments, or component minds — emotion — intellect — and will. The last is the govern- ing sentiment which directs the whole soul, but is itself still subject to the spirit, by which a man chooses to govern himself, or to be governed ! The theological doctrine of the Trinity, has, therefore, only an indirect bearing upon the emotional and senti- mental convictions of the soul ; but without these last the whole question and doctrine become merely logical symbols, without religious thought or religious reality ! But neither the love of God, nor the love of man, admit of any purely logical or intellectual definition ; and the attempt to define or limit them logically or intellectually, is for the time death to the emotion or sentiment! Love perishes if we attempt to define or limit it by any symbolical Forms — i.e., in the mere intellectual conception. But nevertheless the purely intellectual perceptions of Truth and Beauty, in motion and form, may ulti- mately deepen and increase the warmth of the real THE HOLY TRINITY. 543 emotion and sentiment ; and a man may become through his intellect, more ready, even to die, for either his love of God, or his love of man ; and nowhere does the Bible exhibit more clearly the depths of its divine wisdom, than when it makes human love, the symbol or type of the most perfect union between God and man — when it elevates man into the friend or the spiritual equal of his God — or when it sums up the union of the human race with its divine Creator in the apocalyptical symbol of the marriage of the Lamb — " And he saith unto me. Write ! Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb." — Eev. xix. 9. This, however, is not the place for any discussion be- yond the bare intellectual or logical discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity ; but this doctrine of the Christian Trinity seems the efficient cause of many of the real or affected doubts of the authenticity of those books of Scripture which mainly support it, especially the Gospel of St John ; just as the doctrine of the resurrection is at the bottom of the doubts furbished up against divers books of Scripture by eyewitnesses of the fact. Men first determine with themselves, that the doctrine of the Trinity is absurd, and that miracles are impossible, and then they set to work to invent and throw doubts on those parts of Scripture which were written by eye and ear witnesses who heard Christ's words, and did eat and drink with Jesus after He rose from the dead, and who beheld His miracles, and the majesty of His human glory, full of power and grace and truth. If the Existence of God and the Evidence of Christi- anity had been made so clear and free from all difficulty, that no man could possibly doubt, it is manifest that 544 CHAPTER XXI. the freedom of the human spirit would have heen, to some extent, overthrown or interfered with, and worship in spirit and truth would have been, to that extent, impossible. But when once the necessary existence of Spirit is admitted, and the possibility of miracles per- ceived ; and the self-contradiction of those who deny either, is made logically manifest ; the objections to the Divine origin of Christianity, and to the Divine nature and character of its Author, as well as the objections to the Providential Eecords of its early History, become mere human cobwebs, which the first touch of the Divine Spirit will brush away for ever ! THE END. PEINTED ET'WILrjAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBUROU. WORKS ON MENTAL PHILOSOPHY FUBLISEED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS. I. LECTUEES ON METAPHYSICS. 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