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METAPHYSICS;
OR, THE
SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION.
BY
JOHN MILLER,
PRINCETON, N. J.
NEW YORK:
DODD & MEAD, PUBLI S HERS,
75I BROADWAY.




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year I875, by
DODD & MEAD,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.




TO THE MEMORY
OF
MY  FATHER.








CON T EN TS.
fAGE
INTRODUCTION.............       ~............................  7
BOOK I.
PSYCHOLOGY; OR, THE  SCIENCE  OF  PERCEPTION
AS SUCH.
CHAPTER I.
THE CONSCIOUS CURRENT................................... 21
CHAPTER II.
A CERTAIN PHENOMENON OF THE CONSCIOUS CURRENT......  22
CHAPTER  III.
A NAME FOR THAT CERTAIN PHENOMENON...................  23
CHAPTER IV.
PERCEPTION THE ONLY PHENOMENON OF THE CONSCIOUS CURRENT  25
CHAPTER V.
THREE ASPECTS OF PERCEPTION..h.......................... 27
CHAPTER VI.
CONSCIOUSNESS............................................. 27
CHAPTER VII.
ALL CONSCIOUSNESS PERCEPTION..........................  29




vi                              Contzents.
CHAPTER VIII.
I'AGE
ALL PERCEPTION CONSCIOUSNESS.............................   30
CHAPTER IX.
EMOTION........................................  32
CHAPTER X.
ALL EMOTION  PERCEPTION..................................   33
CHAPTER XI.
ALL PERCEPTION  EMOTION..................................  35
CHAPTER XII.
COGNITION................................................  36
CHEAPTER XIII.
ALL COGNITION PERCEPTION.................................  37
CHAPTER XIV.
ALL PERCEPTION COGNITION.................................   38
CHAPTER XV.
No SIMPLE PERCEPTIONS....................................   39
CHAPTER XVI.
WORDS..................................................  39
CHAPTER XVII.
I)EFINITION..........................................          40
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION...............................   42
CHAPTER XIX.
LAW  I:-PERCEPTION AS INCESSANT.........................             43




Contents.                        vii
CHAPTER XX.
PAGE
PERCEPTION AS TRANSIENT.................................. 44
CHAPTER XXI.
PERCEPTION AS LIMITED....................................  44
CHAPTER XXII.
PERCEPTION AS A CONSCIOUS CURRENT.............6........  46
CHAPTER XXIII.
PERCEPTIONS AS ASSOCIATED IN ORDER......................  46
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE LAWS OF ASSOCIATION................................. 48
CHAPTER XXV.
LAW II:-LAw  OF THE STRONGEST EMOTION................. 50
CHAPTER XXVI.
LAW III:-PERCEPTION AS FADING.......................... 52
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE LAW  OF THE STRONGEST EMOTION THE ONLY LAW OF
MENTAL ASSOCIATION...................................  54
CHAPTER  XXVIII.
KANT'S THREE GREAT CLASSES OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE MIND  54
CHAPTER XXIX.
VOLITION...................................................    58
CHAPTER XXX.
VOLITION HAS BUT TWO PROVINCES..........................  59




viii                          Contents.
CHAPTER XXXI.
PAGE
LAW IV:- PERCEPTION AS IT AFFECTS THE BODY IN ITS NERVOUS, MUSCULAR, AND SANGUINEOUS SYSTEMS.............  59
CHAPTER XXXII.
MUSCULAR VOLITION........................................  62
CHAPTER XXXIII.
ATTENTION.............................................  69
CHAPTER XXXTV.
ATTENTION THE ONLY PROVINCE OF VOLITION NOT MUSCULAR..  69
CHAPTER XXXV.
WILL, IN ITS SECOND PROVINCE, NO SEPARATE. ACT AT ALL;
ATTENTION ENTIRELY ACCOUNTED FOR BY THE LAW OF
THE STRONGEST EMOTION...............................  71
CHAPTER XXXVI.
ALL VOLITION PERCEPTION..................................           73
CHAPTER XXXVII.
LAW V:-PERCEPTION AS RECURRING........................  75
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
LAW  VI: —PERCEPTION AS CONTINUOUS......................  76
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MEMORY...................................................          78
CHAPTER XL.
RECOLLECTION..............................................   81
CHAPTER XLI.
IMAGINATION...............................................  82




Contents.                          ix
CHAPTER XLII.
PAGE
ANALYSIS.............................................. 82
CHAPTER  XLIII.
ABSTRACTION............................................    83
CHAPTER XLIV.
JUDGMENT, COMPARISON, DEDUCTION, REASON.................. 83
BOOK I I.
LOGIC; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS
KNOWLEDGE.
CHAPTER I.
KNOWLEDGE...................................... 85
CHAPTER II.
CONSCIOUS KNOWLEDGE..................................... 86
CHAPTER III.
INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.....................................  86
CHAPTER IV.
GROUND OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE..........................  88
CHAPTER V.
DEGREE OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE........................  89
CHAPTER VI.
EXTENT OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.......................... 89




x                         Contents.
CHAPTER VII.
PAGE
INFLUENCE ON INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION................................................... 90
CHAPTER VIII.
EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE..................................... 92
CHAPTER IX.
GROUND OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.........................  93
CHAPTER X.
THREE KINDS OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.................... IIO
CHAPTER XI.
DEGREE OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE......................... I I4
CHAPTER XII.
EXTENT OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.......................... II5
CHAPTER XIII.
INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE AS EMBRACING EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE. II5
CHAPTER XIV.
INTUITIVE KNOWTLEDGE AS DISTINCT FROM EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.................................................  I I8
CHAPTER XV.
INTUITIVE BELIEFS SO CALLED.............................. I23
CHAPTER XVI.
No SUCH THING AS INTUITIVE BELIEFS SO CALLED........... 134
CHAPTER XVII.
THE DOCTRINE OF INTUITIVE BELIEFS NOT NECESSARY FOR
PURPOSES OF EXPLANATION..................... 145




Contents.                    xi
BOOK  III.
ONTOLOGY; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS
THE KNOWLEDGE OF BEING.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
ONTOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLOGY............... 15I
CHAPTER II.
ONTOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF LOGIC...................... 152
CHAPTER III.
How COULD PERCEPTION BEGIN............................. I54
CHAPTER IV.
PERCEPTION NOT IN A CURRENT NO COGNITION OF BEING...... I56
CHAPTER V.
PERCEPTION NOT IN AN ORDERLY CURRENT NO COGNITION OF
BEING............................................... I59
CHAPTER VI.
PERCEPTION IN A CURRENT OF BUT ONE ORDER NOT A COGNITION
OF BEING............................................... I6o
CHAPTER VII.
TWO ORDERS OF PERCEPTION.............................. I6I
CHAPTER VIII.
ONE ORDER CONTINUOUS IN THE CURRENT, AND PRODUCED
WHOLLY BY ITS LAWS............................... 1. I64
CHAPTER IX.
THE OTHER ORDER, IN THE CURRENT, BUT NOT CONTINUOUS IN
IT, NOR PRODUCED WVHOLLY BY ITS LAWS................ I64




xii                         Contents.
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
PERCEPTION IN ITS CONTINUOUS ORDER, SELF TILL MORE IS
ADDED TO IT........................... I67
CHAPTER XI.
PERCEPTION IN AN ORDER NOT CONTINUOUS, THE NOT-SELF TILL
MORE IS ADDED TO IT...................... 168
CHAPTER XII.
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION, GIVING RISE TO THE CONTINUOUS
ORDER, GIVE RISE TO THE IDEA OF BEING............... I71
CHAPTER XIII.
SENSATION..................................................   172
CHAPTER XIV.
SMELL...................................................... I73
CHAPTER XV.
TASTE....................................................    74
CHAPTER XVI.
HEARING............1....................................... I74
CHAPTER  XVII.
SIGHT............................................  176
CHAPTER XVIII.
TOUCH.....................................................    178
CHAPTER XIX.
SENSATION AS IT CONTRIBUTES TO THE IDEA of NOT-SELF....   179
CHAPTER XX.
SENSATION AS IT CONTRIBUTES TO THE IDEA OF SELF.               18I




Contents.                     xiii
CHAPTER XXI.
PAGE
BODY.............................................. I8I
CHAPTER XXII.
BODY AS IT ADDS TO THE IDEA OF SELF..................... 183
CHAPTER XXIII.
BODY AS IT ADDS TO THE IDEA OF NOT-SELF................ I83
CHAPTER XXIV.
WILL, POWER, AND CAUSE................................... I87
CHAPTER XXV.
WILL, POWER, AND CAUSE, AS THEY ADD TO THE IDEA OF THE
NOT-SELF.........................................   192
CHAPTER XXVI.
WILL, POWER, AND CAUSE, AS THEY ADD TO THE IDEA OF SELF. I95
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE IDEAS OF SELF AND NOT-SELF AS THEY ADD TO EACH
OTHER............................................... I97
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE IDEA OF OTHER SELVES AS IT ADDS TO THE IDEAS OF SELF
AND NOT-SELF.......................................... 200
CHAPTER XXIX.
EFFECTS OF THEOLOGY ON THE IDEA OF BEING.............. 202
CHAPTER XXX.
EFFECTS OF SCIENCE ON THE IDEA OF BEING................ 203
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE WORD BEING.......................................... 204




xiv                       Contents.
CHAPTER XXXII.
PAGE
THE  WORD  EXISTENCE.....................................   205
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE  W ORD  SUBSTANCE.....................................  205
CHAPTER XXXIV.
SELF AND NOT-SELF HIGHLY COMPLEX IDEAS................ 206
CHAPTER XXXV.
EFFECT OF LANGUAGE ON THE IDEA OF BEING................ 217
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CAN WE BE SAID TO BE CONSCIOUS OF THE NOT-SELF?........ 2I9
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CAN WE BE SAID TO BE CONSCIOUS OF SELF?................. 220
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Is BEING NOTHING BUT PERCEPTION?..................      22I
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Is THE IDEA OF THE NOT-SELF INTUITIVE OR EMPIRICAL?.... 224
CHAPTER XL.
IS THE IDEA OF SELF INTUITIVE OR EMPIRICAL?............. 226
CHAPTER XLI.
ARE WE CERTAIN OF OUR OWN EXISTENCE?............  227
CHAPTER XLII.
ARE WE CERTAIN OF ANYBODY ELSE'S EXISTENCE?........... 229
CHAPTER XLIII.
INTUITIVE BELIEFS, SO CALLED, UNDER THE LIGHT OF ONTOLOGY............................................. 230




Contents.                      xv
CHAPTER XLIV.
PAGE
"PERCEPTION," IN ITS MODERN SENSE, A FIGMENT, BEING BUT
AN INSTANCE OF INTUITIVE BELIEF SO CALLED.......... 236
CHAPTER XLV.
SENSATION AS KNOWLEDGE.................................. 237
CHAPTER XLVI.
SENSATION AS KNOWLEDGE OF THE NOT-SELF................ 239
CHAPTER XLVII.
SENSATION AS KNOWLEDGE OF SELF........................ 240
CHAPTER XLVIII.
IS ALL PERCEPTION SENSATION?.............................. 242
BOOK IV.
PATHICS; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS
EMOTION.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I.
AN ATTEMPT TO INVENT ADEQUATE NAMES.................. 247
CHAPTER II.
PATHICS UNDER THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLOGY.................. 249
CHAPTER III.
PATHICS UNDER THE LIGHT OF LOGIC.......................  253
CHAPTER IV.
PATHICS UNDER THE LIGHT OF ONTOLOGY................... 255




xvi                    Contents.
PART I.
EUDEMONICS; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS
AN EMOTION OF PLEASURE OR OF PAIN.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
EUDEMONICS IN ITS RELATION TO PATHICS.................. 260
CHAPTER II.
EUDEMONICS IN ITS RELATION TO AGATHOLOGY............. 260
CHAPTER III.
EUDEMONICS IN ITS RELATION TO ETHICS................... 261
PART II.
AESTHETICS; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS
AN EMOTION OF TASTE.
CHAPTER I.
DEFINITION.............................................. 262
CHAPTER II.
THE DIFFERENTIA OF BEAUTY............................... 265
CHAPTER III.
ESTHETICS UNDER THE LIGHT OF AGATHOLOGY.............. 266
PART III.
ETHICS; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS AN
EMOTION OF CONSCIENCE.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I.
EMOTION AT EMOTION................................... 269




Contents.                       xvii
CHAPTER II.
PAGE
EMOTION AS IT WIDENS ITS VOCABULARY............... 271
CHAPTER III.
EMOTION AS IT LEADS TO ACTION........................... 27I
CHAPTER IV.
EQUIVOCALS................................................ 272
DIVISION I.
THE MORAL QUALITY.
CHAPTER I.
OF MORAL SCIENCE.                                            276
CHAPTER II.T,
OF THE MORAL QUALITY........................        276
CHAPTER IIIL
OF WHAT THINGS ARE MORAL..                                   277
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT THE MORAL QUALITY SHALL BE CALLED.                    278
DIVISION  II.
THE MORAL DUTIES.
CHAPTER I.
OF WHAT THINGS ARE MORAL............................. 280
CH APTER II.
OF BENEVOLENCE........................................... 280
CHAPTER  III.
WHETHER BENEVOLENCE IS A VIRTUE.... 281




xviii                         Contents.
CHAPTER IV.
PAGE
WHETHER BENEVOLENCE IS THE ONLY VIRTUE............... 283
CHAPTER V.
OF A LOVE TO THE MORAL QUALITY ITSELF............... 284
CHAPTER VI.
PROOF THAT THERE ARE BUT Two VIRTUES................  286
CHAPTER VII.
OF LOVE TO GOD....................................... 286
CHAPTER VIII.
OF LOVE TO SELF....................................... 287
CHAPTER IX.
WHY SELF-LOVE HAS BEEN THOUGHT A VIRTUE.............. 287
CHAPTER X.
OF NATURAL AFFECTION............................. 288
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE LOVE OF GOOD MEN............................ 290
CHAPTER XII.
OF   GRATITUDE.............................................  290
CHAPTER XIII.
OF   JUSTICE................................................  29I
CHAPTER XIV.
OF HONESTY........................................... 292
CHAPTER XV.
OF TRUTHFULNESS.............. 294




GContents.                      xix
CHAPTER XVI.
PAGE
OF CHASTITY...............................................  296
CHAPTER XVII.
PROOF FROM SCRIPTURE...................................... 297
CHAPTER XVIII.
WHETHER ONE OF THE Two VIRTUES IS EQUAL TO THE OTHER.. 299
CHAPTER X-IX.
WHETHER BENEVOLENCE IS ALWAYS EQUAL TO ITSELF...... 300
CHAPTER  XX.
WHETHER THE OTHER VIRTUE IS ALWAYS EQUAL TO ITSELF.. 301
CHAPTER XXI.
OF WHAT THINGS ARE MORAL IN GOD......................  305
CHAPTER XXIl.
OF GOD'S LOVE TO HIS OWN HAPPINESS.................... 306
CHAPTER  XXIII.
OF GOD'S LOVE TO HIS OWN HOLINESS............ 307
CHAPTER XXIV.
OF GOD'S LOVE TO THE HOLINESS OF OTHERS............... 309
CHAPTER XXV.
OF GOD'S LOVE TO THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS............. 310
CHAPTER XXVI.
OF SIN................................................... 311
CHAPTER XXVII.
OF THE QUALITY OF SINFULNESS............................. 312




xx                         Contents.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PAGE
OF WHAT THINGS ARE SINFUL....................... 312
CHAPTER XXIX.
PROOF THAT THERE ARE BUT Two SINS..................... 3I3
CHAPTER XXX.
OF SELF-LOVE.314
CHAPTER XXXI.
OF MALEVOLENCE................................              315
CHAPTER  XXXII.
OF HATRED OF VIRTUE..................................... 317
CHAPTER  XXXIII.
OF ENMITY TO GOD........................................ 318
CHAPTER XXXIV.
OF LOVE TO WICKEDNESS...................................    3I9
CHAPTER XXXV.
OF WHAT THINGS WOULD BE SINFUL IN GOD...............  320
CHAPTER XXXVI.
OF GOD'S CHIEF END...................................... 320
CHAPTER  XXXVII.
OF GOD'S CHIEF END IN CREATION AND PROVIDENCE......... 322
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
OF OPTIMISM............................................... 323
CHAPTER XXXIX.
OF OBJECTIONS TO GOD'S NOT BEING ABLE TO CREATE A BETTER UNIVERSE, FOUNDED UPON HIS OMNIPOTENCE........ 324




Contents.                     xxi
CHAPTER XL
PAGE
OF OBJECTIONS TO GOD'S NOT BEING ABLE TO CREATE A BETTER UNIVERSE, FOUNDED UPON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL.. 525
CHAPTER XLI.
OF MAN'S CHIEF END...................................... 327
CHAPTER XLII.
OF THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE FOREGOING SYSTEM.. 328
DIVISION  III.
THE MORAL CHARACTER.
CHAPTER I.
THE MORAL QUALITY A QUALITY ONLY OF SINGLE FEELINGS. 329
CHAPTER II.
OF CHARACTER........................................... 330
CHAPTER III.
OF CHARACTER IN ITS CONNECTION WITH COD............... 33I
CHAPTER IV.
OF CHARACTER IN ITS CONNECTION WITH HAPPINESS......... 333
CHAPTER V.
OF REWARDS................................             334
CHAPTER VI.
SUMMARY OF THE PRECEDING............................... 335
CHAPTER VII.
OF COVENANTED REWARDS.................................   338




xxii                          Contents.
CHAPTER VIII.
PAGE:
OF MERIT.......................... 339
CHAPTER IX.
OF PUNISHMENT........................................ 339
CHAPTER X.
OF COVENANTED PUNISHMENT............................... 341
CHAPTE.R XI.
OF VINDICATORY JUSTICE..................................  342
CHAPTER XII.
OF GUILT.................................................. 343
CHAPTER XIII.
OF ATONEMENT........................................... 344
CHAPTER XIV.
OF FORGIVENESS..................................... 345
CHAPTER XV.
OF JUSTICE................................................. 347
CHAPTER XVI.
OF RIGHTEOUSNESS....................................... 349
CHAPTER XVII.
OF DESERT...............................   350




Contents.                     xxiii
BOOK V.
THEOLOGY; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS
KNOWLEDGE OF THE BEING OF A GOD.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THEOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLOGY............... 353
CHAPTER  ITI.
THEOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF LOGIC..................... 354
CHAPTER III.
THEOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF ONTOLOGY................. 355
CHAPTER IV.
GOD AS LIKE OTHER BEINGS....................... 356
CHAPTER V.
GOD AS UNLIKE OTHER BEINGS............................ 358
CHAPTER VI.
THE MISCHIEVOTUS EFFECTS OF MAKING GOD RESEMBLE OTHER
BEINGS WHERE HE DIFFERS FROM THEM................. 361
CHAPTER VII.
THE MISCHIEVOUS EFFECTS OF MAKING GOD DIFFER FROM
OTHER BEINGS WHERE HE RESEMBLES THEM............ 364
CHAPTER VIII.
PANTHEISM................................................ 368
CHAPTER IX.
POLYTHEISM............................................... 380




xxiv                     Contents.
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
EVOLUTION................................................ 38I
CHAPTER XI.
EVOLUTION UNDER THE LIGHT OF ETHICS................ 383
CHAPTER XII.
EVOLUTION UNDER THE LIGHT OF REVELATION.............. 385
CHAPTER  XIII.
EVOLUTION UNDER THE LIGHT OF ONTOLOGY................ 397




METAPHYSICS;
OR, THE
SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION.
IT is a doctrine of this book that there are no simple ideas. It has been a usual doctrine that simple
ideas cannot be defined. It is the doctrine of this
book that no ideas can be defined; that definition is
a mere approach to a boundary; and hence the endless
lists; no thought ever having attracted much discussion' without great vagrancy in defining it; that vagrancy being greatly increased as thought wanders off
from the concrete; abstract thought, and, above all,
speculative thought, being endlessly at sea, and hard
to fix by any understood limits.
Metaphysics, therefore, has been endlessly defined;
and, therefore, we will be more pardoned for saying,
that it has never been defined at all.
Metaphysics, in fact, is no certain thing; and indeed, how can it be, till men have adjusted a certain
Metaphysics? It may be compared to islands of floating logs. They have no place; nor indeed any final
shape. They are driven by the winds. Name such
islands, and to-morrow they may be one or ten. It
would puzzle you to define a horse, and yet there is




Is8                -4Ml etaphlysics.
some fixity about that mammal.  But Metaphysics
has not yet taken shape; and, therefore, defining it is
like measuring Prometheus for a'coat. As consciousness becomes more searched, and its shapes more
settled, Metaphysics will become more fixed; and then
different men will be thinking of the same thing; for
how possibly can you define an object, if, like substance, or like cause, or like atoms, or intuitive belief,
the men you speak to each treat that object differently,
and half of them deny the very existence of the thing
for which you carve the definition?
So let us open a door, and, as into the woman's
department of an insane asylum, plunge into the
clamor:Aristotle defined Metaphysics as " the art of arts
and science of sciences "; Pythagoras, as " the knowledge of things existent as existent"; Plato, as "the
greatest music"; "the Physicians, as " the medicine of
of souls." Leibnitz defined it as " the science of sufficient reasons "; Hobbes, as " the science of effects by
their causes"; Descartes, as " the science of things,
evidently deduced from first principles"; Wolff, as
"c the science of things possible inasmuch as they are
possible "; Condillac, as "the science of truths sensible and abstract"; Fichte, as "the science of the
original form  of the ego or mental self"; Schelling,
as " the science of the absolute"; Hegel, as " the
identity of identity and non-identity;" and Hamilton, as "the  science of effects as dependent on
their causes."*
Babel evidently must date from Peleg: and if men
must divide their views, and claim the luxury of invent* Hamilton's Lect., pp. 35, 37, 4I.




Introduction.               19
ing systems, how possibly can there be one definition?
The islands must float and form, — and if at length
some bold promontory arrest the whole of them, matters will be different. They will grow to the main
land of knowledge. They will get the soil and the
fruit, and even the flowers, of some particular spot;
and though, even then, they will not be unchangeably
defined, they will be settled into one, and take fewer
speeches' to tell their boundary.
If Perception, for reasons hereafter to be given, is
the only thing in the conscious current, we should like
to choose its part of the shore for anchoring Metaphysics. We have become persuaded of five aphorisms: —First, under Pyschology,-that there is nothing
consciously in the mind but Perception; second, under
Logic, —that there is nothing intuitively known but
Perception; third, under Ontology,-that unless being
is Perception it is not intuitively known; fourth, under
Pathics,-that Emotion is numerically the.same as
Perception; and fifth, under Theology, —that unless
God is Perception He is not intuitively known.
These make Perception the total consciousness; and,
reserving our account of what Perception is till we
come to treat it, we will view Metaphysics as the
"Science of Perception."
This will be our name, therefore.
And we will arrange for five Books; —the First,
Pyschology, or the Science of Perception As Such;
the Second, Logic, or Perception put to use; not
statical, as in Psychology, but dynamical, moving forward into what we call knowledge; Logic, therefore,
or the Science of Perception as Knowledge; third,
Ontology, or the Science of Perception as the Knowledge of Being; fourth, Pathics, or the Science of Per



20                Metaqphysics.
ception as Emotion; and fifth, Theology, or the
Science of Perception as Knowledge of the Being of a
God.
If this exhausts the subject we are right in defining
Metaphysics as the " Science of Perception."




BOOK I.
PSYCHOLOGY;
OR, THE
SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS SUCH.
CHAPTER I.
THE CONSCIOUS CURRENT.
A CURRENT to which the term conscious belongs,
is incessantly passing through every mind in its waking
moments. All that we know of mind, and all that
we know of matter, and all that we know of anything,
is comprised in all that may be known of this current.
If this is not admitted at once, it will be claimed as
demonstrated in this discussion, the object of which
will be, by the means of observation as in chemical or
geological science, to mark all that is, and all that is
not, consciously present in this diverse, but continual
current of our consciousness.
CHAPTER II.
A CERTAIN PHENOMENON OF THE CONSCIOUS CURRENT.
LOOKING into the current by aid of consciousness,
we see one phenomenon, and that an unceasing one.
It is that which has employed the metaphor of seeing,
and sometimes of the other senses, to describe it. The
words, apprehension, cognition, perception, discerning,




22                  PsychologIy.           [BOOK I.
and the like, are of course not synonymous, as no
words are; but they are all instances of this phenomenon. They all serve immediately to mark it.  For
though they are ambiguous to the last degree, each
one having at least three meanings; cognition, for
example, meaning a mental power, or a mental act, or
a mental object; yet, without staying now to discriminate the list, any or all of them will help us to our
point, which is, that everywhere in the conscious current there is a phenomenon like that of vision, of
which vision is itself an instance, which consists in
beholding, apprehending, perceiving, whatever you
choose to call it, and which consists in something
common to all these, and which consists of what the
mind is aware of when it thinks of itself as standing by
a window, and seeing interminable objects. They may
be inward.or outward, present or absent, imagined or
remembered, just as the mind considers or determines
that they came or were originated, but they all have
one mark,-that they are sights in some way, or perceivings, and the train of them is incessant: they never
slumber, but are ever passing in continuous procession
before the mind.
-An impatient challenger will say:-Why spoil nice
distinctions? A metaphysical system is to be begun
by taking neat discriminations that the world has
labored upon, and throwing them all together like
types out of a case. And my only answer is, that I am
a positive* philosopher; that I am an empiricist; * that
I begin at the beginning; that I know nothing about
sensation at the start, or self or external matter, (I
mean, logically I do not); that I find the types all out
of the case, and am to sort them by what I see; and
* In the better sense of these words.




CHAP. III.]    The Nahe, Perception.            23
as I have a volume to print of absolute realities, it is
important for me to know that it is to be eternally
set up out of these metal pieces and nothing else; and,
after I have determined that, I can turn them up, and
look at the letters, and, if you please, distribute them,
if only you have once confessed that you have nothing
else, and that they contain the whole language of our
possible consciousness.
CHAPTER III.
A NAME FOR THAT CERTAIN PHENOMENON.
THE name for the mental seeing of which we have
been speaking shall be Perception.
The reasons for this are three:First, that as far as this system shall appear to
have any truth it will wrest away the word from
false uses to which moderns have applied it. Sensation
has been held to mean the conscious phenomena of
the mind under the direct impressions of sense, and
Perception those additional phenomena in which the
mind cognizes by a different power the being and
relations of external things.
We deny any such distinction; and believing, therefore, that Sensation includes all, we keep Perception
for another use.
Second, that use is ancient. It is popular; and
can be found in any dictionary. To frame another
was a wresting from an understood to an artificial use;
as when Sir William Hamilton speaks of our being
conzscious of external matter. Such things rarely prosper. The lines that have been ploughed by the intercourse of ages will in the end assert themselves again.
It is better, if a man wants a term, to frame a new




24                  Psyc/zology.            [BOOK I.
one. Then, if his discovery holds, it will be kept distinct, without the danger of warping back under the
efforts to get home again of an old and differently
understood expression.
Thirdly, the term  is convenient.  Apprehension,
or cognition, or feeling, or sight, all have more specific
uses. Idea would have been a good term; but it has
no verb to answer to it. Moreover, it has not the three
senses of Perception which are all convenient.  So
impossible is it always to give notice, that it is convenient to have a term which the intelligent reader will
understand himself when it undergoes the change.
Usage has so triplified all these words for the sake of
the convenience. And virtue, as first a quality, second
a feeling, and third a character; and taste, as first a
sense, second a flavor, and third a sensation; and
truth, as first a truth, second the truth, and third my
truth, or truthfulness,-are all like the term which we
have chosen, which we forewarn the reader thus early
he will have to discriminate when we employ it without
warning in any of three entirely distinct meanings; as
for example first, as the power to perceive, second, as
an act of perceiving, and third, as the object perceived;
a shifting not easily misunderstood, and more likely to
guard the discourse from an improper sense than if a
different word were invented for each of the changes
we have thus prefigured.
Perception, therefore, or having ideas or discernments of whatever sort, is a grand phenomenon of the
conscious current.




CHAP. IV.]   The Whole Current, Perception.       25
CHAPTER IV.
PERCEPTION THE ONLY PHENOMENON OF THE CONSCIOUS CURRENT.
IT is the great task of this treatise to show that
Perception is the only phenomenon of the conscious
current.
To do this we must, of course, appeal to Consciousness.
And in doing that we will in this chapter ask the
more immediate questions of that very near and very
familiar informant.
Let the reader, therefore, charge himself with the
inquiry whether, in the first place, perceptions are ever
absent from the mental current. Do they not merge
into each other? Are they not continuous? Is it not
so, now as I raise the question? Was it not so always,
as far as he can trace it in his memory?  If Perception
is perpetual, then this current exists in the mental
current; and if anything else exists, it lies round it,
or makes another current; and if that be so, let us
know distinctly what that other current is. Can we
conceive of consciousness without that stare of perpetual vision, like the Sphinx looking off into the
desert? And as one hour is but an epitome of a lifetime, let a man try to any amount he pleases, and see
if the stream is not a perpetual stream of ideas, a
watching of an everlasting procession, a gaze never for
one moment pretermitted, and having in it wife and
family and world and time and hope, and whatever
belongs to this successive and never for one moment
to be arrested personal experience.
Now, out of the principle already brought forward
of respect for language, I do not for one moment doubt
2




26                 Psychology.            [BooIC I.
that there is such a thing as Will and Knowledge and
Emotion, and that th'ese are in the current. I do not
for one moment blind my mind to the fact that people
will laugh at such a starting forth upon an argument,
possessed of a perfect consciousness that they will and
feel as well as perceive, and that they do so in the current; nor dare I forget that men will cast off impatiently
the thought that everybody in a city, for example, or
on a crowded battle-field, does nothing more mentally
than perceive, and thereby produce all the changes
that are concerned in each enterprise of men.
A fair way, however, of defending such a view is in
detail. We have chosen a phenomenon. We have given
it a name. We have identified it as in the current. We
have asked whether it be not always in the current; and
whether it be not itself a current; whatever cornpanions or coexistences it may have along with it under the
introspections of the mind. We have not denied a sense
to Will, and to Emotion, and to Knowledge, and to
Consciousness, or to any other of the accredited words
in the vocabulary of man. But then we do not deny
the meaning of house, or the meaning of structure, or
the meaning of shelter, or the meaning of walls and
roof,' and yet we should be sorry to suppose that, totally distinct as these meanings were, it necessarily
came to be the case that the thing intended to be described might not in the end turn up as in its substance the same.
Now let us take these diverse phenomena. We will
encounter three of them in the next chapter. We will
show  that Consciousness, Emotion and Cognition
are but Perception in its three aspects. We will
then go on to each of them, and show, by a consideration of each, the whole psychological nature of what




CHAP. vI.]         Consciousness.              27
we call Perception. There will intervene the Laws of
Perception. We will then go on to Will, and show,
what no man will be ready to suppose, that'Will is not
a Faculty, because not even a simple operation of the
mind, but a highly complex operation, in part of perceptions of cause and of power, which are the last to
be acquired. A little infant scarce has a will, when
its simpler visions are of the very brightest kind. We
will show that Will, not philologically, but in esse,
means Perception, just as house means building, and
that Kant's favorite analysis into Cognition, Emotion
and Conation will stand very well a philological test,
but will utterly break down as dividing actual perceptions.
We will then treat of Abstraction and Comparison,
and other miscellaneous acts, reducing them by the
same analysis; hoping to make clear as the conclusion
of this First Book-and the foundation of those that are
to follow it, this philosophical dogma:-That there
is nothing consciously in the mind but different
Perceptions.
CHAPTER V.
THREE ASPECTS OF PERCEPTION.
THERE are three aspects of Perception,-Consciousness, Emotion, and Cognition.
CHAPTER VI.
CONSCIOUSNESS.
LET no one suppose when we speak of Consciousness as an aspect of Perception that we mean an instance of it. If Consciousness were a mere instance of




28                  Psychology.             [BooK I.
Perception, it would answer well enough to the statement that there was nothing else than Perception in
the current of the mind; but it would bring at once
the cavil as to an over-generalization.'True enough,'
it would be said;'there is a cognizing feature in Consciousness. The element of sight or vision or mental
discerning is seefi in it; but sight of a blue cloud, and
sight of a joyful sense, and sight of a mental volition,
are so intrinsically different, that the generalization is
harmful. We have simplified  too  much. And it
will be a gain in analyzing to unloose that clasp again,
and separate these forms of perceiving into different
faculties and acts.'
Vital, therefore, to our scheme, is the analysis which
makes Consciousness not an instance but an aspect of
Perception, that is to say, a mere word for describing
one fact about Perception. It belongs to every perception. It belongs only to Perception. It is but a
name for Perception, as dwelling is the name for a
house; not that Perception means Consciousness, for
they imply different traits of the same mental act; but
it means Consciousness just as much as color means
light; and we know that nothing can be received by
the eye (unless it be darkness) except light, and,
moreover, nothing, just as obviously, but the one simple
thing color.
I know we are conscious of volition, and conscious
of emotion, and if these acts, I mean volition and
emotion, were not perceptions, I would be willing to
admit that Consciousness in this case was a special
and distinguishable instance. But recollect, we intend
to prove that these are perceptions. It is but an instance of Perception being conscious of itself. And as
it is impossible to conceive of a perception being un



CHAP. VII.]   A l Consciousness Perception.     29
conscious; as an unconscious perception would be an
absurdity, like a sight that was not a sight, or a perceiving that did not perceive,-I think I am back at
my thesis that Perception and Consciousness are one;
not one significantly, for color and light are not one,
but one in the act meant; that is Perception is called
Perception because of one aspect of the act, and Consciousness just simply because of another.
If a friendly hand steps in to help us to a thought,
viz., Consciousness rather refers to self, and Perception to not-self, we discard the discrimination. Perception also refers to self. That is, the word has
been mixed with ideas about a perceiving power or
agent. It takes an agent to perceive, just as much
as it takes an agent to be conscious. And one word
no more implies a thinking agent than the other. Both
start the ghost of self equally and the ghost of other
things. There is no difference between Consciousness
and Perception except a very great one, that while
they are descriptive of the one act, one is descriptive
of the perceiving in itself, and the other of an awareness of itself inseparable from the very nature of perceiving.
CHAPTER VII.
ALL CONSCIOUSNESS PERCEPTION.
CONSCIOUSNESS is not a vague sense like warmth
stealing over the system. It is not a dull guard like a
duenna watching her charge, and sleeping sometimes,
just keeping an eye to Perception busy at its work;
but it is minute like Perception itself. You take an
ether and pour it on type." Let it be of the rarest
sort. And let it harden like adamant, and without




30                   Psychology.             [BooK I.
shrinking in a grain; and it will not take the print of
what it rests upon with such inimitable edge as Consciousness of the Perception that it unveils. Consciousness is Perception.
Let me be conscious, for example, of a sensation of
color. I am not conscious of a vague expanse, but I am
conscious of everything revealed in the sensation. If
it be the color of the blue sky, I am conscious of just
how much is perceived: the shape of the clouds, and
their edge, and their angles, and their surface, their
difference of hue, and their difference of place, and
their difference of figure, the moon and stars, or a
comet, or a nebular mass, if these are the things that
we are conscious that we perceive. And if they raise
any emotion, we are conscious of the length and course
and degree of the emotion. If they move the will, we
are conscious of it, and exactly what will and how much.
We are conscious of just as much as we perceive, and
we are conscious of it just as clearly. And consciousness gets all that perception gets, and will report it to
us in the way of metaphysical research. And there is
no part of consciousness that is sensational, or that we
merely feel in contradistinction to a detailed intelligence reporting everything that belongs to the perception photographically to the mind.
CHAPTER VIII.
ALL PERCEPTION CONSCIOUSNESS.
ON the other hand all Perception is Consciousness.
Not only is all Consciousness *Perception, that is,
every conscious gaze a perceiving, and all of it a perceiving of that that we are conscious of, but all Percep



CHAP. VIII.]   All Perception Consciousness.     31
tion is conscious. And if all Perception is conscious,
that is, every part of it;-if when I perceive a triangle
all is conscious-the perception of the sides conscious,
and the angles and the interlying space: if when I
perceive a strain of music all is conscious, the changes,
and the tone, and the time, and the note; to the last
tittle of the perceptive thought that I have of any part
of it, I think you cannot refuse the verdict that the
whole of Perception is Consciousness. For if there be
not the smallest part of the whole perceptive phenomenon that is not conscious, and that of the same
realities, the perception and the consciousness may be
different indeed in what they are intended to denote,
but not in what they are intended to cover as phenomena of mind.
And therefore, intending as we do to reject Perception in its modern sense, and "Intuitive Beliefs " as
utterly absurd; intending to reject the Hamiltonian
idea of a Regulative Faculty, and all that German
creed about a vernunfi and a verstand and their intrinsic difference; intending to deny Brown's teachings
about Cause and Effect, and all the different ideas
about Substance that have been asserted hitherto, we
are glad to have such a fund in Perception and Consciousness itself. Outness and Substance and Ego and
God and Matter and Cause and Power and Will and
Muscle and Motion, when they have fairly given up to
us all that we perceive, that is all of which we are conscious, by the help too of memory and certain continuous features of our thought, will be found to have given
us a stock in trade on which we may boldly start without any help of these Kantian or Cartesian ideas.




32                  Pyschology.            [BOOK I.
CHAPTER IX.
EMOTION.
EMOTION is that feeling of Pleasure or Pain that is
found in every Perception.
This itself will be regarded as a new doctrine.
But take the slenderest touch upon the person;
take the most cursory thought; take the perception
that two and twelve make fourteen; take anythingI think it will be hard to find any act so entirely
indifferent as not to give any pain or any pleasure, or
perhaps one or two forms of pleasure of a microscopic
sort along with it to the mind.
We will show hereafter that pain and pleasure are
what keep thoughts in the current, and that if these
sink into a condition of indifference they fail of their
place and yield to others that are elbowing into the
mind. (See B. I., Chap. XXV.).
What is this pain or pleasure?
Some may say:-Too wide a generalization again!
The pain of an aching tooth, or the pain of a halting line in poetry-what possibly have they together?
Now I confess that our theory in this respect must
rise or fall with our theory of Perception.
If Perception be too widely generalized, and, above
all, if we do not bring Volition particularly to be an
instance under it, then I admit that Emotion will be
confused. But if Perception be the only conscious
phenomenon, Emotion cannot be more diverse than
that. And, in fact, that will be the very rule of the
diversity. Emotions will have the same diversities as
Perceptions. If an aching tooth and a halting rhyme
give different forms of pain, so are they different
objects of Perception.




CHAP. X.]       All Enotion Perception,               33
We must watch the proof.
If Perception proves good enough as a fasciculum
for all our thoughts, Emotion will answer for all our
Pains and Pleasures.
CHAPTER X.
ALL EMOTION PERCEPTION.
BUT now Emotion is Perception.
I put my hand upon the stove; —what do I perceive?  I perceive heat.  What more do I experience?
I experience pleasure. Now is the heat first, and the
pleasure afterward? Is the heat one feeling, and the
pleasure another?  Is not the pleasure the feeling of
heat? And if you come to understand yourself perfectly, is not the confusion that hangs about the thing,
only and entirely this, that philologically both terms
are needed; that philologically they are entirely different; but that out of this philologic discrepance two feelings do not. emerge, but only one, called pleasure, as
discrepant from pain, and called heat,:* as discrepant
from other perceptions or emotions of sense, all of
which are either pains or pleasures.
If I have an emotion, therefore, I have a perception;
and the emotion and perception are the same.
If I have an emotion of pleasure at seeing a wire
bridge, or in reading a line of Homer, of course there
is something in the bridge or in the poetry that gives
the emotion. It is not the paint or the cold iron in the
one, or the printer's ink or the shape of the letters in
the other. It is something that can be distinguished in
* Heat as a mere word, is rather objective than a feeling. Sense of
heat would be a truer expression. Heat is the attributed something,
evidences of which are otherwise visible, that produces the sense or
leads to the emotion.
2'*




34                        Pyscihology.                   [BooK I.
our contemplation. Now be it the curve of the bridge,
or be it the smoothness of the line, certain it is that the
pleasure-imparting feature must be perceived. It is in
perceiving the curve or the rhyme that the pleasure is
received. And consciousness will bear out unquestionably this assertion-that while perceiving the curve and
perceiving the pleasure are different acts (see chapter on
Abstraction), perceiving the curve and perceiving what
gives the pleasure are not different acts. Perceiving
the curve and perceiving the pleasure are different acts,
just as perceiving a tune and perceiving the sweetness
of a tune are different acts.  This last is an abstraction from the other. But perceiving the curve and perceiving the beauty of the curve are not different acts, for
the beauty cannot be abstracted. It is not a separate
perception. It is only a convenient term for the power
of the curve to give the pleasure.@    And, therefore, the
perception of the beauty, and the perception of the
curve are one, and the  emotion  is a fact of the perceiving, a thing that belongs to it, an aspect of the
perceiving act, a thing that can be separated from it as
color can be from light, but a thing that cannot be sep* I am  not speaking now of beauty in a sort of reflected sense.
These dualties work the mystery. It is too early to grapple with this
other sense. I am speaking of beauty as the trait of the curve that gives
pleasure. I say, that is not to be separated from the curve itself. There
is a meaning of beauty that makes it a sort of painting of the pleasure
upon the curve outwardly; much as though the curve were blue, and the
blueness, though a sense, were imagined as painted upon it. It will be
very necessary to go into these things. Beauty does not happen to be
a name of the feeling (and therefore we have to say, sense of beauty);
but meaning generally the empirical trait that produces the feeling, it
also makes objective the pleasure itself; that is, it sometimes means the
emotional sense, as though it were actually painted on the curved line.
These niceties, though they are mere dictionary facts, still have to be
gone into to keep the subject clear. We will advert to them again on a
better occasion.




CHAP. XI.]   AXI Perception, Emotion.           35
arated from it in any sense of one not being a mere
feature of the other.
CHAPTER XI.
ALL PERCEPTION EMOTION.
IF I come in from the cold, and hold my hand to
the fire, all my Perception must be Emotion in that
particular case. My perception of a genial heat, and
my perception of a genial pleasure, are identically the
same, except, with reference to the old and never-tobe-forgotten fact that heat and pleasure are significantly different. Philologically they are diverse and
usefully discriminated; pleasure indicating that aspect
of the heat in which it is opposite to pain, and heat
that aspect of pleasure in which it is of a distinct perceptive kind.
If I lie upon my bed at night, and hear a strain of
harmony, the consciousness must be the same; all the
harmony being pleasure, and all the pleasure being
harmony; care only being taken,: as; in the other case,
to preserve happily discriminated the philologic force
of both expressions.
Now, if Perception and. Emotion be the same ion
these simple acts,, why may they not be in all experience?
My Perception of a bridge is ten thousand things.
My Perception. each moment is a crush of contending
experiences.. If I could analyze each one into parts,
and bring down my thought to the simplest alphabet
of seeings,, is it not obvious that the point could never
come where the heat or the harmony or the scent,
confessedly emotional throughout, should cease to be




36                 Psyc/hology.           [BOOK I.
so, and where colder thoughts supervene that are not
entirely pervaded with the character of Emotion?'
Is not the obvious theory that comes out when we
bring the thing in this way under the edge of each
man's conscious consideration, that he has no unemotional ideas; that feeling is as inseparable from thought
as light from color; that a man feels a truth if he ever
sees it, and sees a truth only  when he feels it; and
that that feeling is so co-constitutional with the sight,
that all the emotion perceives and all the perception
feels equipollently and alike all that is the object of the
one or of the other?
CHAPTER XII.
COGNITION.
COGNITION is that aspect of Perception that gives
it its name; that is, its perceptive or apprehensive
aspect.
Knowledge, as we shall see hereafter, is a word of
two meanings. It means Conscious or Unconscious
Knowledge. Unconscious Knowledge is nothing more
than the power to know when the occasion arrives; as
when I know Greek, or know my own interest. It is
merely potential knowledge; and is in fact nothing
more than the perceptive capacity, however it may be
fed. The matters so knowable are called knowledge
in the objective sense.
Conscious Knowledge is all that belongs to the
present inquiry, as when I say,'I know blueness, for I
have the sensationl ow';:' or,' I know rightness,' or, if
you please,' I know the beatrtiful, for I am looking at
benevolence or looking at a lily this very moment.'
It is true that Conscious Knowledge is to be




CHAP. XIII.]   A41H Cognition Perception.       37
divided * into Intuitive and Empirical, and Empirical
into three sorts or species easily distinguished; each
and all of which, if conscious, are in the current, and if
in the current are mere perceptions; unless some one
can still show us something consciously cognitive that
is not perceptive, that is, not a difference in sense only
between Perception and Cognition (which would be
easy, as no words are absolute synonyms), but a difference numerically between a perceiving viewed as
emotional or conscious, and a cognizing viewed as
informing us at the time of this or that perceivable
reality.
CHAPTER XIII.
ALL COGNITION PERCEPTION.
IF Cognition included Unconscious Knowledge, of
course Perception, which is a conscious act, would have
nothing to do with so much of Cognition as included
the unconscious part. But it has been already intimated
that Unconscious or Potential Knowledge is not knowledge at all in a sense pertinent to our inquiry. It is
an extending of the word Knowledge to take in another
and ulterior fact as to what the mind might could or
would cognize in certain circumstances. All Cognition
is Perception; but it must be distinctly understood as
conscious Cognition at the time. This word Knowledge will continue to give us difficulty, till, under the
head of Logic, we discriminate its use, and dissect off
that sense which answers to Perception, and that wider
sense which means only what could be perceived if the
proper occasion could be given. In this last sense, of
course, it is not true that all Cognition is Perception.
* See Logic.




38                  Psychology.             [BooK I.
Again, if there be any such things as Intuitive
Beliefs, Cognition is not Perception. The doctrine of
Intuitive Beliefs pretends a knowledge of many things,
and pretends to give it firmly and beyond a cavil, and,
when I come to understand the ground, it is not that
I perceive them, or perceive the proof of them, but
that I have an inborn conviction or Intuitive Belief
of what I am said to know.
I cannot stop for this doctrine, because it belongs
to another place.* I can only challenge it. I frankly
admit that it is very prevalent. It is the most catholic
error of modern times. If it were true, all my theory
would be at an end. If it be false, I can easily trust to
your consciousness to admit that Cognition, unhelpedout by any mysterious principle of belief, must fit itself
distinctly to what is left, and must be a perceiving act
in every case of a conscious cognition.
CHAPTER XIV.
ALL PERCEPTION COGNITION.
WHETHER all Cognition be a Perception, which
may be doubted, if Substance or Causation are cognizable by being believed without being perceived, still
it would remain true that all Perception is Cognition.
One can prove this by imagining the opposite.
Can we perceive anything without knowing it? and is
there any part of the perceived thing, or of the perceiving itself, that we do not perceive and therefore know?
The whole of Perception, therefore, is knowledge.
* See Logic.




CHAP. XVI.]          Words.                   39
CHAPTER XV,
NO SIMPLE PERCEPTIONS.
I WISH here to interject a chapter setting forth the
fact that there are no simple perceptions. It will bear
upon Definition and the use of words. I do not mean
only that there are no simple perceptions that occur in
thinking, or that there are none found in nature. I
mean far more than that: I mean that we cannot conceive of a simple perception. By no abstraction of
thought can we have what by a change of term may
be called a simple idea. A note of music might seem
near it, but can we separate that from time, and from
the change from silence to the audible note?  Color
does not answer so well, for it is inseparable both from
space and figure.
All thought is complex, therefore; and perception
is a complex act; and the simplest is the beginning
of complex knowledge.
CHAPTER XVI.
WORDS.
IF there are no simple perceptions, it follows of
course that there ate no simple words. If we cannot
conceive of simple ideas, and yet could call them by
names, it would follow that we could call by names
things that we cannot conceive.
Words are the names of perceptions, using perception in all of its three meanings. They are not more
numerous than perceptions; for though consciousness,
emotion, and cognition are but three aspects of the one
perception, yet perception can bend an eye upon each




40                  Psychology.            [BOOK I.
of these three aspects, and they become, alike, perceptions in turn. Color, light, and beauty may be each
peculiarities of the same illumination, but I can bend
a perception upon each, and have a perception of each
peculiarity.
CHAPTER XVII.
DEFINITION.
IF there are no simple ideas, the common maxim
that a simple idea cannot be defined is, of course, a
philosophical nullity.
The doctrine has been that a simple idea cannot be
defined, but that a complex one can be; and that the
province of definition, as a consequence, is the treatment of complex ideas.
The reason that a simple idea cannot be defined,
has been thought to be that it cannot be made simpler; and that, therefore, consciousness must be called
in, as in the instance of yellow color, for example, without definition, to witness the meaning of the idea.
Now it is a fundamental article of our metaphysical belief that this is what consciousness has to do in
every case; that there are no absolute definitions; that
what has been asserted usually of simple ideas is totally
untrue of them, for the all-prevailing consideration that
no such ideas are possible; but that what has been
asserted of simple ideas is true of all ideas, and very
much for the reasons that have been employed to
establish that impossible proposition.
Definition, which means the fixing of a boundary, is
a thing that has never been reached in any conceivable
instance. We hold that it only approximates an idea,




CHAP. XVII.]            Definition.                      4r
so that it can be perceived in consciousness. We do
not deny the word, or discard it at all; we reverence
all language; but we hold that definition marks the
boundaries of thought about as well as a pointer dog
a flock of partridges.  It is a matter of hints, exceedingly successful if the mind can lay hold of the
thing intended. And the proof that it is nothing more
is to be found in the fact, first of all, that men are
never agreed in definition, and second, that no absolute definition can be quoted in all the literature of
mankind.
It appears, therefore, that there are no simple ideas;
that there are, therefore, no simple words; that words
from the necessity of the case are very imperfectly defined; and that definition is but a hint thrown into our
consciousness. The noblest definition is preponderantly undefined. Take the most exact that are ever
given. They have no boundary. Take the most simple. They are complex enough tobe incorrect. Labor
to the very last, and you will devise a thing that shades
out into something else.  " God is a Spirit, infinite,
eternal and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power,
holiness, justice, goodness, and truth ": a famous definition no doubt, yet, in fact, what does it define? What
is a spirit?  How is God a Spirit? *  Are not all spirits
of which we have a bounded comprehension our
spirits?  And are not our spirits totally different, and
scarcely analogous in the most distant respects, to the
Almighty?
* We doubt much whether the passage, Jo. iv. 23, means as definitely
"God is a Spirit," as it is translated. Christ is speaking of worshipping
"in spirit," and then adds by way of confil;mation, " Spirit is God." That
is, we are to worship with our higher lights and feelings, and those
are gifts. " The Lord is that Spirit." If we live, it is not we that live,
but Christ that liveth in us.




42                  Psyc/ o logy.            [BooK I.
Definition, therefore, like thought itself, is rather a
hint than a direct translation of the reality.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LAWMS OF PERCEPTION.
IF consciousness, though a separate idea, is not so
separate an act as to forbid the thought that there is
nothing consciously in the mind but Perception, the
Laws of Perception can give us no trouble as separate
consciousnesses, or indeed by any separate claim whatever. The Laws of Perception are the mere order of
being perceived that is found by observation in the
perceptions themselves,
I am conscious that perception is incessant; but
when I say I am conscious of that law, I do not mean
that I am conscious of the law at all as I am conscious
of the perception; I do not mean that there are two
things in the current, perceptions and laws of perception, which I see jostling each other as coordinate
phenomena. I only mean, I see perceptions. And I
am conscious of the law that they are incessant, only
as another way of saying that I am conscious of perceptions always; which is really, that I am  conscious
of perception, and just conscious of it all the time.
Now I do not aver that my being conscious of perception always is in such a sense no different phenomenon from perception as to be involved ini perception.
On the contrary it is an inexplicable law. There is no
reason in the act why it should be always our act, i. e.
why it should continue unceasingly. Yet though not
involved as consciousness for example is in the very
act of perception, in such a sense as that perception




CHAP. XIX.]    Perception as Incessant.         43
might not occur without it, yet it is involved in the
act of perception in such a sense as that it is no separate object of consciousness, and is in fact the mere
peculiarity of perception that it is seen to be consciously incessant.
The Laws of Perception are six: —that it is Incessant; that it follows the Strongest Emotion; that it is
Fading; that it affects the body in its nervous, muscular,
and sanguineous systems; that it is Continuous; and
that it is Recurring. These six are fundamental and
inexplicable. We can give no cause, though we can
see the final cause. We cannot reduce these six to
anything more simple in the mind; yet we can plainly
see why the six should be so ordered, and how the
power, wisdom, and goodness of God can be clearly
manifested by the results of these comprehensive Laws
of our Perception
CHAPTER XIX.
LAW I:-PERCEPTION AS INCESSANT.
PERCEPTION, in our waking moments, is absolutely
unceasing.
To suppose this in the conscious nature of perception is an absurdity. WVe are conscious of perception.
We have found that it is unceasing. But that we are
conscious that it is in its nature unceasing is an absurdity in terms.
That the mind is essentially active means only that
we observe it to be. That the mind cannot close its
eye is false. It does so to all but a few passing impressions. That the mind cannot be conceived of as
at rest is utterly an error. It probably is so in sleep,
and if not, is always conceived of as being. And if it is




44                  Psycholzogy.           [Book I.
said, It cannot be conceived of when we are awake,
that is a truism, and only means that the mind is
observed to be awake, and its perceptions incessant.
CHAPTER XXo
PERCEPTION AS TRANSIENT.
IN mentioning six laws of perception we have intended laws that are primary, and which are all the
laws that are witnessed in the conscious current. YTet
these laws combine into others which are of course not
primary, which are convenient to mention, and which
have much to do as merciful provisions of thought.
Such a law is the law of Perception as Transient.
Perception as Incessant would be very grievous if
there were no provision to shift and change it. An
eternal looking at one thing like the Sphinx in the
desert would be intellectual death. There must be a
scene-shifter.  Such an effect has this law of Transience. It is not a primordial law, but flows from two
others, the second and third as above enumerated. If
we could wait, it would emerge when those come to be
considered (Chaps. XXV. and XXVI.), but we need it
now. Several laws that we shall notice are not primary, were not mentioned in our list, but are convenient consequences to mark thus early in our discussion.
CHAPTER XXI.
PERCEPTION AS LIMITED.
IT will be seen hereafter that Recurrence, which is
one of the laws of Perception, throws within its reach,
if I may use a material expression, great stores of ob



CHAP. XXI.]    Perception as L~nited.          45
jects. It will be seen still further on, that Sensation
is another great store-house of possible perception.
And indeed each moment in the body presses upon
the scene an amount of objects that would make millions and millions of our present amount of consciousness. Perception selects, therefore; or to express it in
another shape, there is a law of Perception as Limited.
We cannot state the limit, or say how large a picture
may come upon our conscious vision. We cannot even
state how small a one may; for, as we have already
shown, a simple perception is never even conceived of
by the mind. It is exceedingly far from being the case
that the mind has but one idea in it at a time if by idea
be meant one simple conception, just as a printer takes
up one simple type. But if by idea be meant more
what the names implies, IDEA, the thing seen, the thing
actually perceived, then we are moving in a circle; the
mind's having but one idea means only that it has what
it has, one mind-full or one perception; and the truth
in consciousness is, that though these minds-full are
very different, yet they are limited; or in other words
the mind does not go off discursing over whole
horizons, or all stores both of sense and memory, but
measures out for itself dainty portions; a law that we
will find not primordial but depending upon others
that we will mention; but then a noble trait, making
all the difference between wide and discursive nothingnesses, and a series of,pictures of convenient form and
connected management in our vision.




46                 Psyc/hology.            [BOOK I.
CHAPTER XXII.
PERCEPTION AS A CONSCIOUS CURRENT.
PERCEPTION, therefore, being Incessant, and then
being also Transient, and then, still more than that,
being also Limited, we have as a consequence, or rather
as the expression of these three laws in one, the phenomenon with which we set out, viz. the phenomenon
of a Conscious Current; in which we found, first very
modestly, that there were perceptions, secondly, that
there were always perceptions, third, only perceptions,
and now that the Conscious Current itself is but the
effect of three laws (two of which are to be traced to
others), namely, the laws that we have already considered, that is to say, the Incessant, Transient, and
Limited nature of the one phenomenon of mental perception.
CHAPTER XXIII.
PERCEPTIONS AS ASSOCIATED IN ORDER.
IT is found by experience that perceptions are
associated in order. They do not follow each other in
utter confusion, but by method. When they are
ideas of sense, of which we shall speak hereafter, we
do not see the corner of a house mixed up with the
summit of a mountain, or the hind legs of a cow with
a rock that may be in sight beyond her; but we perceive the cow or the house as a collected whole, and
are blind to the rock and the mountain. We are conscious of sights that mean something, and let stray
adjuncts fall out of our knowledge at the time.
In the regions of the past the law is similar; it is




CHIAP. XXIII.]  Perceptions as in Order.        47
one of eclectic pictures or grouping. Memory does not
bring to us indigested heaps, but curt topics. And in
the current, thought follows thought not wildly but in
form. The order of perception is the most beautiful
order in the universe. Now how is this?
It is not an order which the first conscious experience detects, and which becomes an ultimate phenomenon. We find a cause for it. And though cause is
a new idea, which we have not yet the facilities to
explain, yet we must use the word like many another,
in anticipation of its detected sense.
Perception is not in ranks of beautiful and connected pictures as a mere statical fact with no material
at all to go further and explain it, but it is suggested
as well as associated. We arrive at the conclusion
that perception occasions perception, and occasions
connected and apt perception; in other words that
the beauty of their order is not a final and inexplicable
fact in our perceptive consciousness, creating, therefore,
a distinct and original law, but that we may state
further in two particulars:-First, that there is a cause
at work which produces the order, and second, that
the operation of the cause springs from the laws already
stated of the perceptions of the mind.
I had thought of having two chapters, one headed
Perceptions as Associated, and the other, Perceptions as
Suggested; the one referring to the mere order of perceptions, and the other to the power of perceptions to
produce that order, the one by suggesting another; but
as neither law is original, and both have been sufficiently premised, I go on rather to the laws which are
original, considering, however, as we go by, that prolific source of metaphysical debate, the Laws of Association, as they have been attempted to be methodized in the catalogues of different times.




48                 Psychology.             [BooK I.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE LAWS OF ASSOCIATION.
BY the Laws of Association are intended the laws
of a law. And it is exceedingly important to find out
what that law is before we attempt to arrange the laws
that regulate it.
Now that law is in fact two. We have already seen
that there is a law of perceptions as having order, and
another as producing order, the one phantasmical simply, the other causal. By the one I say, I have seen
my thoughts, and they occur to me in beautiful order;
by the other I say, I have seen my thoughts, and they
produce order, that is, one suggests another, and the
rule of the suggestion proves to be a regular and
beautiful series in the mind.
Now the laws of the one law are the laws of the
order; what it consists in; whether contiguity, or resemblance, or causation. And the laws of the other law
are the laws of suggestion, viz. what it is in one thought
that produces another, and what the laws of relation
are between one thought and another which can be
supposed to be connected with the rising of one upon
the occasion of the other in the mind.
These two sets of laws, however, need not be so
very discriminatingly enumerated, and that for two
reasons, first, that men have never agreed upon them,
and, second, that where they have in part agreed, the
lists of the first have been largely made up of the same
things as are found in the lists of the other. Contiguity, for example! Where men have talked of the
mere order of perceptions, they have talked of contiguity as one of the forms of order. And where they




CHAP. XXIV.]   The Laws of Association.          49
have talked of absolute suggestion, they have talked
of contiguity as one of the suggesting laws.
We intend to dispense with all these categories;
and intending that, we merely glance at them. We
admit, of course, that contiguity suggests ideas; and
if a man is like his neighbor, the idea of one is apt to
suggest the idea of the other: and resemblance, therefore, and relation, and, let me say, order of any possible
description, is apt to suggest anything else in the
order. And, therefore, the very wideness of the range
might move our suspicions. Any possible form of
relation, I don't care what it is, be it cause or sequence or contrast,-any possible connected thing,-is
basis for suggestion. And it may well excite the
doubt whether anything that must be so loose-twisted
when we come to the detail, can be the promising clue
*to lead us to account for the beautiful series of our
perceptions.
ATe are satisfied, therefore, with the remark, that
Contiguity or Resemblance, sometimes both, sometimes
neither, sometimes other things, have been enumerated
by different philosophers, sometimes as the rule, sometimes as the cause, of the associated order of perceptions; that the entire difference of opinion as to what
do and what do not constitute the catalogue, awakens
the reasonable fear that catalogue-making of this wide
and particular kind is not the practicable analysis;
that a study of these oft repeated attempts would
seem to show that ORDER of any kind is the rule of the
current; that any conceivable species of relation or
connection or contrast-whatsoever in fact makes
thought interesting or vivid or progressive, —tends to
enter; and. therefore, that while contiguity and resemblance and all these are doubtless laws of the current,




50                 Psychology.             [BOOK IF
it is expedient to go beneath these mere instances of
order, and find what more original law occasions and
includes all these multifarious characteristics of the train
suggested or associated.
CHAPTER XXV.
LAW II:-LAWV OF THE STRONGEST EMOTION.
THE law of perception as Transient, the law of perception as Limited, the law of perception as in a Current,
and the law of perception as in an Orderly Current, that
is, as associated and suggested, have all been said not
to be original, and must all depend, if that be the case,
upon some other characteristics of perception, that
could occasion and include them.
Now one characteristic of perception is the advantage that those perceptions have to get a place in the
current that can rouse our emotions. If I am sitting
in an open landscape listlessly gazing into space, it is a
familiar fact that plenty of things may happen that
sensation never reaches. The roar of a mill may be
utterly unknown to me. Sense is an eclectic instrument. It takes what interests it. The eye of the
heaven may directly look at me and I see absolutely
nothing. For to suppose that I hear all the myriad
sounds that are about me, and see all the sights, is
contradicting my sense. My sense reports that I have
some limited perceptions, and beyond them have no
perceptive consciousness.
But now let a voice call. It may not be half as loud
as the thunder of the mill; yet I hear it instantly.
Sense and memory are two latent stores, and I
take out of them my limited perceptions. There are
shoals of perceptions in the past, and how they come




CHAP.'XXV.] Law of the Sftrongest EmJotion.    51
back to me is a thing hereafter to be considered. But
they do not come back to me in shoals. Just as in a
splendid landscape I get report of things that strike
me and nothing else, so in the field of memory the bird
or the flower or the patch of cloud or the waterfall may
not emerge to consciousness, but somhething I care for,
something I feel when it is perceived, and, therefore,
something that will keep my thought moving in the
path of fresh emotion, rather than scouring over desert
wastes that have no life and no amusement in their
history.
I derive, therefore, a law that I will call the Law of
the Strongest Emotion; and I will define it to be that
law by which those perceptions that are within reach
of the mind, either from sense or memory, tend to come
up into it, which, other things being equal, will be at
the time the most pain or the most pleasure.
Now Contiguity and Resemblance and all those
other laws fall under this; for the most orderly thoughts
are of course the most pleasant thoughts.. Thought
becomes practical. A cow is a more pleasant thing to
look at than the tail of a cow associated with the
branch of a tree and part of a mill-race.  We are
pleased with whole pictures. Thought becomes profitable when of an orderly kind; and, therefore, additionally pleasant. And from this kind law, that emotional
perceptions shall emerge, Providence educes the whole
theory of our associations, namely, that nearness and
likeness or relation or order of any sort shall characterize
the current, for the one satisfactory and perfect principle that what moves us shall characterize it, and order
of whatever sort is more calculated for perceptive
emotion than a chaos of jumbled sights without law
and without meaning in its character.




52                 Psychology.             [Boox I.
Here we catch a glimpse of the secret too of suggestion, as well as of association, in perception. A perception being already in the mind makes order with
another within our reach, and not with still another.
A song I hear interests me in connection with a friend,
but not in some indifferent relation. I see a knife. It
was such a knife amputated my arm. The knife and
scene together will make a painful picture, and therefore, it suggests the scene. Thought does not cause
thought in the ordinary significance of causation. But
perceptions, which are in a continuous flux, tend to
have rising with them others that will make moving pictures, whether of pain or pleasure, from the one simple
principle that perceptions have the advantage to come
next that are perceptions of the deepest emotion.
CHAPTER XXVI.
LAWI III: —PERCEPTION AS FADING.
WE are not quite ready to generalize the whole till
we bring in another principle; that is, the Law of Perception as Fading. This does not flow from the last;
because, why should not the perception we have remain
the strongest? Why, when I have seen a meteor, and it
continues the most extraordinary spectacle of the hour,
do I not continue thinking of it, and that by the force
of the same law, the law of the strongest emotion?
We need another law, therefore. If the law of the
strongest emotion held its rule without being restricted
by another, we should think of one thing all the time.
We should fall into one great gulf of thought, and stay
in it. WVe need a dynamic principle, to change and
shift, that thought may move on into knowledge. And




CHAP. XXVI.]    Perception as Fading.           53
we have this by the grace of the Almighty, who has
ordered another great principle of thought, namely,
that it shall fade away.  I put my hand upon my
cheek, and presently I cease to feel it. This fact is
partly bodily and partly mental. But the mental fact
is true in all perception. It is our third great law, the
law of Perception as Fading. It is an inexplicable law.
I cannot trace it to the rest. But by it perception has
hardly been originated before it begins to fade, and the
law of a stronger emotion comes in, to push out the
faded one, and to bring in something new, so as'to
cater for the thought in more and more varied subjects
of contemplation.
You understand now the reason of the fact that
Perception as Transient is not an original law. It is
transient because it fades, and the new thought pushes
it out. You see also why Perception as Limited is not
an original law. It is limited by the stronger emotion.
Perception is pared down to the capacity of the vision,
and fades off all the selvage of the picture, till we are
left with that which will make the maximum impression
on the mind. Moreover the other laws, of Perception
in a Current, and Perception in an Orderly Current,
all come into their place. For Perception as Fading,
and Perception as most likely to appear when most
emotional, and Perception as most emotional other
things being equal when most in order, contain all
these other laws, and account for all the beauty of the
train in its associated order and suggestions.




54                  Psychology.             [BOOK I.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE LAW OF THE STRONGEST EMOTION THE ONLY LAW OF MENTAL
ASSOCIATION.
I DO not mean by this of course, that the Law of
Perception as Incessant and the Law of Perception as
Fading are not necessary to the Law of Association.
We have shown that they are, and in what exact way
they are: in fact, all the laws of perception are necessary each one to every other; but I mean that what
are usually called laws of association, and which are
in fact laws of a law, are all actual laws no doubt; that
is, causality and nearness and likeness and contrast are
all facts that beget suggestion; but so are any related
peculiarities. The list might be categorically endless.
And the primal law is that which we have noted, viz.,
that there rises into consciousness when the last perception fades, the one that we will feel the most, the
other things that must be equal being the ease of the
sensible impression, or the ease of the recollecting act,
both of these things, however, having the obvious effect
of making it more emotional.
If there is any other primordial law, the way will be
for its advocate to bring it forward. And till then the
strongest argument against it seems to be that no
other one is needed, and indeed that no other one
seems really possible, so completely does this one perform the work of every possible suggestion.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
KANT'S THREE GREAT CLASSES OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE MIND.
HAVING disposed of Consciousness, Emotion, and
Cognition, and shown that they were but aspects of




CHAP. XXVIII.]   Kant's Three Phenomena.        55
Perception, andy as acts, numerically not different, it is
time to take the most difficult opponent of our simplifying scheme, viz., Volition.
Kant early in the promulging of his system divided
the mental phenomena into three-the Cognitive, the
Emotional, and the Conative. The Cognitive is near akin
to what.we have entitled Perception. The Emotional,
according to Kant, is a separate phenomenon, and is
the feeling of Pleasure or Pain. The Conative, to use
a word employed by Sir William Hamilton, is the Will
in its phenomenal nisus or conaitus, a thing, of course,
which, we freely admit, is plainly to be apprehended in
the current.
It is better always to employ the words of a school
in arranging its own defence.
" The phenomena of which we are conscious," says*
Sir William Hamilton, expounding the analysis of
Kant, " are seen to divide themselves into three great
classes. In the first place, there are the phenomena
of Knowledge; in the second place, there are the phenomena of Feeling, or the phenomena of Pleasure and
Pain; and in the third place, there are the phenomena
of Will and Desire.
" Let me illustrate this by an example. I see a
picture. Now, first of all, I.am conscious of perceiving
a certain complement of colors and figures,-I recognize what the object is. This is the phenomenon of
Cognition or Knowledge. But this is not the only
phenomenon of which I may be here conscious. I may
experience certain affections in the contemplation of
this object. If the picture be a masterpiece, the gratification will be unalloyed; but if it be an unequal production, I shall be conscious perhaps of enjoyment, but
* Lectures on Metaphysics. Boston Edition, pp. I27, I29.




56                 Psychology.            [BOOK I.
of enjoyment alloyed with dissatisfaction. This is the
phenomenon of Feeling, or of Pleasure and Pain. But
these two phenomena do not yet exhaust all of which
I may be conscious on the occasion. I may desire to
see the picture long, to see it often, to make it my own,
and perhaps I may will, resolve and determine so to
do. This is the complex phenomenon of Will and
Desire. *  *  *  *
"This division of the phenomena of mind into
the three great classes of the Cognitive faculties, the
feelings or capacities of Pleasure and Pain, and the
Exertive or Conative powers, I do not propose as
original. It was first promulgated by Kant; and the
felicity of the distribution was so apparent, that it has
now been long all but universally adopted in Germany
by the philosophers of every school; and, what is
curious, the only philosopher of any eminence by
whom it has been assailed; indeed, the only philosopher of any reputation by whom it has been, in that
country, rejected,-is* not an opponent of the Kantian
philosophy, but one of its most zealous champions.
To the psychologists of this country it is apparently
wholly unknown. They still adhere to the old scholastic division into Powers of the Understanding and
Powers of the Will; or, as it is otherwise expressed,
into Intellectual and Active Powers."
Now we have already attempted to show that two
of these phenomena, Cognition and Emotion, are the
same in different aspects not, (as we guarded before)
the same, as words, in respect of their significance, for
one is significant of perception in its cognitive or apprehensive aspect, and the other of preception as pleasure
or pain. And to show that this is but naming the
~ Krug.




CHAP. XXVIII.]   Kant's Three Rhenomena.        57
same act, to abstract from it its different aspects, I
took the simplest perceptions, like the perception of
heat, or like the perception of a single note, or like a
glance at the beautiful azure, and I said that the feeling of the thing and the seeing of the thing were
numerically the same. Tell me only that part of the
complex perception that I am pleased to have, and I can
state three things about my being pleased in having
it:-First, that I do not have the perception first and
the pleasure afterward; second, that I do not have the
perception as one thing (i. e. the sight or the sound or
the taste or the scent) and the pleasure as another
thing. The perceiving is the pleasure. And, thirdly,
taking perception in its third sense, i. e. as the perceived
thing, I do not have the perception in the one case to
be the blue, and in the other case the beauty of the
blue, in the one case the scent, and in the other case
the fragrance of the scent, in one case the sound, and
in the other case the melody of the sound, but the
phenomenon is consciously one; the blue and the
beanty; the scent and the fragrance; the sound and
the melody; not philologically I know, but metaphysically and in respect of the thing perceived,-are incontestably, because consciously, the very same.
When Hamilton employs the picture, he confuses
us by the immensity that we perceive. Such a thing
is a forest. But let him take out the thing that gives
the pleasure; not the paint; not the frame; not the
thread ribbing up the canvas; not the mill; not the
woman; not the horse; not the pond, with the ducks;
not the thing that wakens the comfortable home sense,
or the amatory boy sense, or the horse-fancier or duckfancier or even picture-fancier emotions; nay, let him
cast out from the piece all the pleasure-giving powers
q*




58                  Psychology.             [BooK I.
that it may have, apart from what he is having at the
time; and that perception, at the time, that he is
having of some limited part or beautiful whole of the
picture is itself the pleasure bearer, itself the happy
thing. That he sees the picture, and sees the beauty
of the picture; that he sees the pleasure that it gives,
and feels it; that he perceives the beauty that he feels,
and feels the beauty that he perceives,-are not expressions I know of the same meaning; as none are
that are ever verbally different; but they are expressions about the same act; and are all satisfied by the
statement that perceptions are either pains or pleasures.
But I must go on to what chiefly concerns us now,
the third class, or Conative phenomena of mind, or, as
Hamilton calls them, the phenomena of Desire and
Will.
CHAPTER XXIX.
VOLITION.
VOLITION is the act of the mind, and Will the
faculty in which it is supposed to originate. This distinction is not well kept up; but, as we are speaking of
the conscious current, we will choose Volition as the
conscious act, rather than Will which is the imagined
faculty.
Now what is Volition?
Let it be said in reply that it is one of the most
complex words of which we have any knowledge.
Lest we spoil however the clearness of our analysis
by making it prematurely, let us interpose at this point
certain facts about the will that no other writer has
noticed, as we are trusting much to them to conciliate
regard to what may be supposed beforehand to be
very improbable assertions.




CHAP. XXXI.]  Perception Affecting the Body.     59
We propose in the end to teach that Will is no
faculty at all, or, to follow our rule of reverence for all
language, is a most complex assemblage of faculties,
made up of powers to perceive, and to influence by perception, as we shall presently consider: that Volition,
as apart from the body, is no act other than perception; and the truths we would interpose as conciliating
favor for what we are thus to teach, are discoveries
that narrow in astonishingly the province of Volition.
CHAPTER XXX.
VOLITION HAS BUT TWVO PROVINCES.
VOLITION has but two provinces; in the body, to
move the muscles, and in the mind, to create attention.
A man can will to move the voluntary muscles,
so called, and he can will to hold an idea. Besides
these neither hell nor heaven have any accountable
volitions.
CHAPTER XXXI.
LAW IV: —PERCEPTION AS IT AFFECTS THE BODY IN ITS NERVOUS;
MUSCULAR, AND SANGUINEOUS SYSTEMS.
IN a way that cannot be explained, and that certainly never will be explained except in the mere recitation of the phenomena, certain perceptions of the
mind produce certain changes of the body. We perceive both; that is, we are conscious of the perceptions, and we consciously perceive the changes. When
I perceive certain shameful things, I blush. I can be
conscious of the perception. I can feel the blushing.
I can see it in another. And if I am a physiologist,
I can trace the physiological effects to any extent




60                  Psychology.           [BOOI I.
while I keep within the body. I can do more than
that. I can perceive that there is a cause. Without
anticipating too soon certain logical and ontological
facts, I will assume as admitted for the present, that I
can infer causation. I can conclude upon a causal
nexus and that, as uniting the shameful thought and
the irruption of the blush upon my neck and countenance.
But really what that is that leaps across the gulf,
and really the causal nisus that makes the shame
affect the sanguineous system, we hope no thinker
would ever be absurd enough even to conjecture.
The like are a round of mental perceptions, all of
which have certain influences upon different parts of
the body.
Now, when we come to consider, the parts are
three,-the Muscular, the Nervous, and  the Sanguineous parts.
Possibly we ought to say four; and that the Glandular parts are also affected.
Possibly we ought to say two; for the Sanguineous
parts, as in the instance of blushing, are affected
through the muscles. Possibly the paleness of anger,
or the flush of anger, or the hair standing erect through
fear, or the sinking of the heart, or the sweat pouring
out through our agony, might all be traceable to the
muscles. The nervous system is involved, of course,
because it acts upon the muscles. But as the muscles
can pump the veins, and of course act and react upon
the flux and reflux from the heart, it would pose a
physiologist to say what the mind does or does not
act upon in these expressions of the body.
And, indeed, it makes no difference. What we are
asking for are the conscious phenomena of the current.




CHAP. XXXI.]  Perception Affectinzg thie Body.  6I
And we see that on certain perceptions of wrong, or
on certain perceptions of shame, or on certain perceptions of risk, or of reasons for joy, the heart and indeed
other viscera are moved, causally this work hereafter
will show, but exactly for what cause, no mortal, and
perhaps no angel, need ever consider.
Metaphysically and not physiologically, therefore,
our question is a narrow one; and we have answered
it by saying that all that takes place in the mind before
a blush or before a cold sweat breaks out upon us, or
a mortal paleness, or a joyful flush, is a perception of
the rousing or terrifying object, with its inter-entering
pain or pleasure.
Let no one say, No! There is more. There is
the flush, or the sinking. That I admit. But these
are the physical sensations. Let no one be confused
as to the perception that occasions the blush by those
other perceptions which are the sensations of the blush
itself.
So now in respect to Volition; it is a phenomenon
of mind producing a phenomenon of body. (I speak
thus of the First Province of this Bestrebungs Ver-.mZgben as the Germans call it.) The phenomenon of
mind is the thing we are asking after. The phenomenon of body tends sadly to confuse it. The phenomerion of mind is something we must be actually conscious of. The phenomenon of body unfortunately we
are also conscious of as far as concerns the nisus and
the changes in our sensations. The metaphysical problem  is to get these things thoroughly separated; to
get the struggle that the body makes, and the weariness and the pain and the actual effort, so far as they
are consciously sensational, and in fact the sequence
that wre consciously advise ourselves of; that is, the




62                       Psychology.                    [BOOK I.
sense-attempt following or rather instant upon the phenomenon of the mind,-separate, and that in the distinctest way, from  this last itself.
I have a perception and I blush. I have this perception in the very birth, if I may speak so, of the
conscious sensation on my cheek.
So I have a mental something, and I move. And
I have that mental something at the very birth of that
conscious sense that is awakened in the muscle.  The
two are together, and it is hard to separate them.
But certainly it is practicable to put apart that
mental phenomenon which is not of sense, and that
muscular swell and push which is not of mind; which
is merely reported of; which is throughout a sense
perception; not occasioned in any visible way; and
only intruding upon Will because it is so intimately
mixed with that mental act anterior to its -motions.*
CHAPTER XXXII.
MUSCULAR VOLITION.
LET us recall our mind to the idea that one of the
provinces of Volition is to move a certain tissue of the
body called muscles.
x- We are reminded that we might state as a seventh law of perception, its power to be operated on through the avenues of sense. This is
plainly as much primordial as what we have just been discussing, viz.,
its power to operate upon the nerves and muscles. In fact physiology
lays both mechanisms bare. One set of nerves travels to the muscles,
and one set of nerves travels from the sense and carries its notiticz to the
brain and mind. Doubtless the law that it is aroused by sense is a primordial law of perceptive consciousness: so primordial, however, that
it hides under its very prominence, and can hardly be divorced from the
idea of the very nature of perception. We can imagine perception
divested of all its other laws, but hardly that it could have been
awakened without there having been sensation.




CIHAP. XXXII.]  Muscular Volition.            63
It is interesting to know that there are certain
muscles of the body that the will cannot move, but
which shame can, so that they pump up the blood to
certain conspicuous and tale-telling parts, viz., the
human countenance. The muscles that the will moves
are known. The muscles that shame'moves, or anger
or dread or joy or brooding melancholy, might doubtless be also known.  And possibly there are some
muscles that are not moved at all except by physical
causes not influenced by the mind.
I. Now if there are some muscles influenced by the
mind, not influenced by the mere perceptions of the
mind as in shame or fear, they are of the nature of a
rare exception, and this is aprimafacie reason against the
idea of Volition being anything more than Perception.
2. Again, the overbearing thought that our new
generalization is preposterous, for that Volition is an
imperial act, and Perception a tranquil vision; that
Volition has moved the world, and that Perception
merely marks and notices; and that the mere apothegm, Volition is Perception, is enough to stamp the
thinker as hopelessly at variance with his species,-all
this first-blush and very strong preoccupation against
us, we must meet by begging people to consider how
much which is foreign to the point is wrapped up in
the very word Volition.
3. For, thirdly, it takes in what belongs to sensation. It takes in the nisus, which we have no more
right to intermix than the flushed sense in the phenomenon of blushing. It takes in the immediate sequence, which like redness is an observed fact. It
takes it in, however, and makes much of it, and it has
had much to do in confusing the mind. It takes
it in in the manufacture of choice and decision, and in




64                  Psychology.           [BooK I.
most of these imperial titles of the will; for what is
the idea at the bottom of all these, but the sequence
that has been observed in the body, of muscular motion
upon the want or will of the mind?
Let palsy come, and it is a fine metaphysical illuminator.
Let a man be shut down to his mere mental act,
and he finds, when the sequence ceases, as, for example,
in a paralyzed arm,-that all that was imperial ceases,
and he is left only with perception; perception of want,
perception of pain, perception of pleasure, Desire, as
these complicated perceptions have been called; and
there being no more sequence, decision ceases, which
he finds only to be a complex act made up of immediate desires and expectations.
Moreover the nisus disappears; and that helps to
clear him. He wills and wishes, but makes no attempt;
or, to be more analytically accurate in the consciousness, he makes one part of what he meant by the
attempt, but not the other part. He makes the mental, but not the physical attempt. That is, he makes
so much of the attempt as was in the perception. He
comes to the perception that this was the right time
to act. He sees and feels that now he wants to act
and by all previous usage must and would act and had
always overwhelmingly expected and imperiously felt
sure to act; but soon perceives that so much of the
thing as consisted in an attempted nisus was physical,
and has departed from him;-that it miserably confounds the will; that in look it is sensation; that
sensation is mental but not a part of the volition; or
that if it is a part, it is a part ex usu loquendi, and hence
of this man's or that man's idea of volition as he may
get it mixed with the more pure phenomenon.




CHAP. XXXII.]    ZJ/ltscular Volition.          65
4. Moreover the philological peculiarities are significant. All nations originate will in wishing. All
thought about it is traced back to the same seminal
expression..The boulormai of the Greeks, the volo of the Latins,
the vouloir of the French, the que'rer of the Spaniards,
the chaphatz of the Hebrews, and like terms in other
dialects and tongues even more so than in our own, all
teach the lesson, that though willing and wishing are
not the same, Will taking in more of the adjuncts
of a complex and more extended signification, yet
that seminally they are the same phenomenon, and
that wishing is nothing more than complex perceptions of a good, inter-entering into which is the complexity of their pains and pleasures.
5. If anybody is conscious of anything more than
I have described in Volition, let him state distinctly
what that consciousniess is.
6. And, in the last place, in order to be perfectly
fair, let me state, more than I have yet done, the whole
of the phenomena that are seen in Muscular Volition.
Let us suppose, in order to clear the facts, that it
were. possible for a man to cultivate the habit of blushing. I am not sure that it might not be actually possible, so that a man might be able to blush at pleasure.
Now how would he do it? Not by moving the muscles
of the blood-vessels, as he does those of the arm, but by
the other province of will, viz., attention. He might learn,
like many a play-actor of a high power, to attend or not
to attend, that is, to perceive or not to perceive deeply
and with high emotion the object of shame; and, so,
to blush or not to blush. Actors in private life learn
to keep back a blush. And turning pale or turning
livid are said to be powers of wonderful tragedians.




66.Pysczology.           [BOOK I.
Now when we come to treat of that second province (Attention) these things will be better understood.
But for the present, what would be the difference phenomenally between blushing and moving the arm?
One difference would be that in blushing we would
not have the same consciousness of a muscular nisus.
In moving the arm we would have a sensation. In
moving the veins we would do it mediately, and would
have no sensation other than the flush of the blushing. The loss of the nisus, therefore, would impair
the phenomenon of will. And yet the sequence would
remain, and, therefore, much of the imperial act.
Now what is the inference? A man blushes at
pleasure, and a man moves at pleasure. Where is the
difference? The blushing is operated by nerve and
muscle, and the moving by nerve and muscle. The
blushing is an immediate sequence, and the moving an
immediate sequence, and both caused by something in
the current. There is a nisus in one case, and no
nisus in the other, and a plain deficiency in this other
of the usual character of Volition. There is a directness in the one case, and an indirectness (on account
of the interposition of shame), in the other; and yet
both are acts of will, and both act upon the nerves,
and both act upon the muscles, and both are followed
by sensations, and both may become imperial on account of unvarying sequence. Now what is the conclusion? Why that perception, raising the blush in one
case, may raise the motion in the other; that both act
upon the muscles. If mere shame may move in that,
why not desire in this? Volition is mixed up with the
sense, as indeed shame is. To a palsied man it alters
with the disease. In its muscular province it runs into
its results; and the nisus and the sequence which are




CHAP. XXXII.]    Muscular Volition.             67
mere sensational perceptions; which are not part of
the will, but helpless consequences,-have need to be
dissected out of it before we can arrive at the anterior
phenomenon as it is to be seen in the current.
So, what is Muscular Volition?
First, it is Perception of that complex sort which
we shall explain (see Ethics, Introd. Chap. III.) under
the name of Desire. But let me be understood. A
desire to move my arm would be too gross a statement.
A desire to move my arm would be too consciously
vague to be the truth in Muscular Volition. From
childhood up I have learned the movements of the
arm. From random scuffles in my mother's lap I have
learned what I can do, and what are the sensations in
doing it, like a girl strumming her guitar.
Through facts of causality which I am to explain in
our ontological discussion I reach perceptions of cause
and a trust to analogical recurrences. My arm, therefore, is too gross a statement. I have learned each
muscle of my arm; not anatomically, but in its practical capacities. My desire, therefore, is for the recur.
rence of a specific well understood motion.
Now along with this, I have, in the second place,
instantaneous with the wish, a perception that it will
be gratified, founded, as we shall afterwards explain,
upon uniform experience.
Instantaneous with this, thirdly, I have sensation:
the charm actually operates:
Characteristic of this sensation, fourthly, the nisus,
which belongs to no other form.  It wearies and
struggles and exhausts like no other emotion of sense.
And being simultaneous with the desire, I feel my way
along it, and shape it, and alter it, by the experiences
of my perceptive volitions.




68                 Psychology.            [BOOK I.
Now I do not say there is no difficulty in all this.
There is a puzzle as to how a man can march when he
is not awake. There is a puzzle as to how the lungs
can move sometimes when we desire, and sometimes
when we have no desire in the matter. There is a
puzzle as to how the fingers move with the velocity of
thought over the key-board of an instrument. But it
only convinces me more that it is by the velocity of
thought; that the girl beating on the keys is as quick
as her perceptive consciousness; that at each touch
there is perception and emotion; and that the complexity of the facts is less difficult in our scheme than
in any other.
Add now to all this, that the best philosophers have
always spoken confusedly on the subject of the Will;
that Hamilton calls it * that " complex phenomenon of
Will and Desire": that he has claimed to fix the
succinct division, into Cognition, Emotion, and Conation; and then called the last, Will and Desire; Desire
unquestionably being quite inseparable from Emotion;
and then that all men and all languages mix Will and
Wish indistinguishably and by the very necessities of
spoken thought constantly together; moreover that
the other province of Volition, viz., Attention, is about
to be proved to be nothing more than an instance
under the Law of the Strongest Emotion,-and I think
that the first improbabilities of our scheme ought not
unduly to depress it, and that there is a higher improbability by far (if we accomplish that last mentioned
generalization) in the idea of a primal faculty of the
mind, if the sole work that calls for it is the moving
of the flexors of the body.
* Lectures, p. I27.




CHAP. XXXIV.] The Only Volition not Muscular.   69
Let us proceed, therefore, to that last mentioned
generalization, viz., as to Will in its other province.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
ATTENTION.
ATTENTION is Perception held in the mind by an
act of Will.
The perception may be of any kind; of sense; of
memory; of self; of not-self; of past; of present; it
matters not what; if it pleases us; or if it does not
please us; and on any account it pleases us to have it
or to detain it in the current; then by an act of Volition we transmute a common perception into an act
of Attention. There is nothing consciously present,
therefore, except perceptions, unless Will can be
demonstrated to be a separate faculty.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
ATTENTION THE ONLY PROVINCE OF VOLITION NOT MUSCULAR.
I SIT down to my desk to write a sermon. In the
course of that sermon I exert all the powers of the
Will, I think any one will admit, of which I am capable.
Eliminate now all the muscular struggles, the
twitching of my hair, the moving on my seat, the fixing of my eye, and the muscular power to cast out a
thought by distracting myself by some voluntary strain.
Leave out of course all that is muscular in writing:
and so let us take up those grander classes of intellectual acts that are concerned in the production of the
sermon. Let us take up memory for example. What
is there in memory, as a voluntary struggle, other than




70                 Psychology.            [BooK I.
the fixing of the Attention? Consciously think of it!
I want to recollect the word Mesopotamia, for I seem
entirely to have forgotten it. Not so entirely, you will
observe, that I have not something present in my perception that makes me know something about it, enough to
desire it. Now what do I consciously do? I cannot
command the absent syllables. I cannot say,' Come,'
by a direct act of imperial volition. I sit biting my pen
and ATTENDING to the perceptions I have. I reach,
perhaps, a part of the word-" Meso!" "Meso I" and
I repeat it, or attend to it in thought. By the law of
association I have experience that it' will bring the residue. But I cannot command the residue. I can simply
attend to the perceptions already possessed. And so
in all the forms of elaboration, fancy, judgment, comparison; in all the acts of the mind; which, like the
memory, we are yet in this book to reduce to the phenomenon of Perception; as respects the present point,
we can see enough at once to admit that the sermon
gets on by the mere exercise of Attention. I have a
present thought. Its tendency is to suggest in order.
As long as the order lasts I just gaze at it, and write
it down. By the law of the Stronger Emotion the
mind thinks to please me, and travels on for a page,
perhaps, of just the associations. If they stop, I stop.
If impertinent lines begin, I stop the machinery, like
a mill operative who has broken a thread. I refuse to
attend to one thing. I insist by attention upon another.
I wait for that to start anew. I cannot order it to
start anew. I cannot command an absent thought.
But by the beautiful law of the strongest, and by the
single act of Attention, I have experienced former success; and I confidently trust that the train will weave
on to the close.




CHAP. XXXV.] Attention no Separate Faculty.     71
Now think of all the struggles of the will; on a
battle-field; in the utmnost storm of work; and think
if I can do anything but attend and wait. I can brandish my sword, and rush upon the guns, and shout to
my captains in the field, but can I do anything in
thought but perceive what I perceive, and if I wish
to perceive anything outside of that, attend to something I already perceive, and expect that to suggest
to me the perceptions that are absent from my consciousness?
All this will be plainer when we come to speak of
Memory; and will grow plainer afterward by our doctrines of Sensation; but the only way to establish
metaphysical truth is through consciousness, and we
appeal to that for any volition that does not move a
muscle, or else secure a more attentive consciousness.
CHAPTER XXXV.
WILL IN ITS SECOND PROVINCE NO SEPARATE ACT AT ALL; ATTENTION ENTIRELY ACCOUNTED FOR BY THE LAW OF THE STRONGEST EMOTION.
HAVING proved the Will to be concerned in moving the muscles, and in nothing else besides except
the phenomenon of Attention, we mean to lower it in
its claim altogether, and show that the phenomenon
of Attention is itself an instance under the Law of the
Strongest Emotion.
Not, let me explain, that we are to hold that the
word Will is without a meaning; nor that we are to
cast it out from its place, or to deny it our thought as
a correct and critical reality; but that we are to renounce it as an original act. It moves the muscles,
and it spurs us to attend. So doing, it shakes the




72                 Psyczhology.           [BOOK I.
earth, and it scales the heavens. Nor can we exaggerate the measure of accountability to which it will be
held. And yet it has but two provinces,-certain
tissues of our body, and the movement to attend.
And not only is it solely Perception, but, in the latter
instance, Perception pure, the fact that we attend being
only a case under the Law of the Strongest Emotion.
To prove this,-what was that law? That, out of the
two storehouses of Sensation and Recurrence, the next
thought that would consciously emerge would be the
one that could produce the strongest emotion. If a
rocket-stick fell, and should tumble at our feet, then
that might wake us most, and would irrupt into our
consciousness. Then the boy that fired it.  So the
thread would spin, each last striking thought marrying
itself to the next, and picking from the stuff of Sensation and Recurrence the most shining woof for the
fabric of our continued thinking.
Now perceptions give place as the stronger ones
move up.  Why?  Because perceptions fade.  But
suppose we can prevent their fading. Why will that
be?  Because they are precious.  What will that
mean? Simply that they have not faded. For some
cause they continue to interest us; and apart from
some muscular motions by which we can throw out
what disturbs, we keep to a line of thought by a
superior wish; and what is that but the law of the
strongest emotion?
We will to attend. What is that but a will for the
present thought? We feel a need that it should stay.
By experience it can. Experimentally it does. And
that begets the imperial sense.  We decide, or we
elect, or we determine, that it shall; and, as in the
instance of the muscles, we know that it will have to.




CHAP. XXXVI.]  All  Volition Perception.      73
It is proper, therefore, (though we must not anticipate Ethics), that a man should be responsible for his
wish as well as for his Volition; one is but an instance
of the other: that he should he responsible for his
perceiving as well as for his feeling, since both are
but an aspect of the same: and that Volition, merely
moving the muscle or merely enabling us to attend,
should not be set down as all our account, since the
thoughts and affections of the soul are alike phenomenally responsible.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
ALL VOLITION PERCEPTION.
WE are better prepared now to understand exactly
what Volition is. We were able to say in the instance
of Consciousness, — All Consciousness is Perception,
and all Perception Consciousness. In the instance of
Volition' we are able to say only one of these. We
can say, All Volition is Perception; but we cannot say,
All Perception is Volition. Volition is the shape only
of a few perceptions.
We have been able to show that Volition occurs
simply in two provinces, the one the moving of the
muscles, and the other the phenomenon of Attention.
These, obviously, are very different. Will when I
move my arm, and Will when I hold a perception, are
so thoroughly distinct, that this alone ought to destroy
their primordial character. And it will be very helpful
to our consciousness to show where they agree; to
show where they differ; to show how complex they
are; to show that they are emotional and cognitive; to
show what the complexity is; and to show that the complexity consists in perceptions emotional and cognitive
heaped up and interblended the one upon the other.
4




74                   Psychology.              [BooK I.
I have a perception, and I desire to keep it. That
desire keeps it.  Interpenetrated into that desire is an
experience that it will be kept. That experience, as
will be hereafter shown, is itself perceptive, and it lends
to the desire an imperial or authoritative character.
So much for Attention.
Now I have a muscle that I have moved from childhood; at first vagrantly (till I grew cognizant about it),
like an infant fighting the air, the phenomena being (I)
a desire to move it, (2) an experience that it will move,
(3) a perception that it does, (4) a conscious sensational
strain or stress, and (5) an imperial sense of control or
authority in the matter. Now the first is a Perception,
as we show when treating of Desire. The second is
Perception, as we shall show when treating of Experience.  The third is Perception pro formna, and as is
above announced. The fourth is Perception, for it is
only Sensation. And the fifth is a Perceptive confidence, made up of all the Perceptions combined, and
giving assurance of the successful act.
Further; of the two acts, Musculation and Attention, there is absent from Attention the nisus, or instantaneous attempt, and all bodily sensation.x  But
there is present, the desire, and the choice (that is, the
immediate imperial expectation), and then the immediate sequence instantaneous with the desire itself, not
so clean-cut in the instance of Attention as in the
instance of Muscular Motion, yet showing such powerful analogy, and connected, the bodily and the mental, so much in human accountability, as to show why
these two things, Muscular Motion and the Act of
Attention, determined by like sets of conscious emo* Except, indeed, certain incidental strains of certain muscles of the
body, particularly of the eye, when we attempt mentally to attend.




CHAP. XXXVII.] Perception as Recurring.        75
tional perceptions, have set apart such perceptions,
and labelled them Volitions.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
LAW V:-PERCEPTION AS RECURRING,
HAVING considered Perception as Incessant, Perception as Associated by the Law of the Strongest
Emotion, Perception as Fading, Perception as Affecting the Body, I come to the Fifth great law of Conscious Perception, Perception as Recurring.
And this demands the very simplest enunciation.
Being inexplicable, and utterly original, to try to give
it a name even in semblance expressing a cause, would
disguise the reality. Perception recurs. That is the
whole of it.
To say that it is retained, and to call the power
Retention; to say that it is impressed, and to call the
power a power to receive impressions which endure
in the mind; to call it Memory (a good word in its
proper place, but) as a faculty directly to cognize passed
events,-is all to cloud our Metaphysics with an
imagined explanation, or at least the guise of one; when
all the fact that comes up into our consciousness is
that perceptions come back again. Why,-no mortal
will ever discover: and it is unscientific to take anything but the fact. By a law of Nature, the kindness
of which is all that can be established, a perception,
once had, may or may not come back again. There
can be probabilities found out; as, for example, where
the thought has been deep and pungent, where it has
been held fast to by an act of the Will, that is, in conscious Attention. But experience discovered this. The
naked phenomenon apart is, that Perception, when it




76                  Psychology.             [BooK I.
has once occurred, recurs, and that without the sound
and without the sight and without the scent that originally engendered it.
This makes the shoal of possible perceptions that
the Law of the Strongest Emotion does so eternally
fish up.
Let not the fact that perceptions differ as they recur, suggest that there must be a power of Fancy that
new combines the material before their advent. The
law of association, i. e. the Law of the Strongest Emotion, is that flashing and immediate influence. Let but
the selvage of an old thought come up, it rushes into
new arrangement; that is, it calls up a set to meet it.
The mind does have new pictures that it never had
before. But why? Grant but two things, the power to
recur and the power to suggest each other, and perceptions will be varied endlessly.  Each smallest one,
having the power to come back, will choose its fellows;
and the result will be a mental kaleidoscope. The law
of association will choose the one by which we will be
most entertained, and the result will be endless combinations of thought out of the old material.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
LAW VI: —PERCEPTION AS CONTINUOUS.
I MUST interpose at once some account of the last
law of Perception, viz. that it is Continuous. It would
have been easy to omit this, it is so unobtrusive. And
yet it would have been convenient to have had it earlier. But I postponed it; not that I did not feel the
want of it in treating of Association, but because it
would delay the thought.  In expounding Memory,
it becomes altogether vital; and therefore, as it must




CHAP. XXXVIII.] Perception as Continuous.      77
be somewhere interposed, we will let it come in in the
very happiest place. Like the long staple of which the
manufacturers speak, the law of continuance, like the
long fibre of cotton, helps to strengthen the thread
which (granting the Law of Recurrence) connects the
present with the past in the phenomenon of Memory.
The law of Perception as Continuous is, that, as a
primordial fact, Perception continues a little, and does
not flash upon the mind and die with no conscious duration. It melts slowly like a glow-worm in its gleam.
Sensation corresponds in this.  The eye is inert in
seeing. It sees on after a vanished vision.
So of the ear. A  note of music does not die
instantly.
So of the smell. There is a lingering on the sense.
If I take a brand and twirl it, it will make a ring
of light, showing that the light and the coal do not
get out of the way together.
Now all of this is not physical; it is partly in the
mind. The mind takes some time to think. And
without attention, and without anything to breed delay, thought does not flash in an absolute instant, but
glides in a conscious period; and this fact, like the
thread in wool, helps to spin thought, and carry on a
train. It gives edge to connect pictures. It gives the
waiting moment necessary to get the next association.
And, therefore, I said it would have been convenient
to be known at the time when we were speaking of
the progress of an orderly suggestion.
Perception as Continuous, therefore, is the law by
which Perception as Fading takes an instant to fade,
that it may join itself in the current to others.




78                 Psychology.           [BOOK I.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MEMORY.
WHEN I look at a distant house, I see a red brick,
or a white painted, surface, and if any one should say
I had a primordial faculty by which I cognized that
house as distant, and just so distant, he would contradict consciousness, and all the later metaphysical
teachings. I cognize the color as a sheer sensation.
But the out-ness of that color, and the length of that
out-ness, is the accretion of many perceptions. I learn
it as we shall hereafter see. And now, when I behold
a house, perceptions in an associated order flash along
the intervening landscape. My eye has been bred a
land measurer. Experience teaches me the distance.
And more than that, certain deepness of the hue, and
certain focus of the eye itself, and certain thousand
other things, aggregate as tests, and make the decision
facile and perfectly immediate.
Now PRECISELY THIS, MUTA TIS MUTADTIS, is
THE PHENOMENON OF MEMORY. For the brick house I
have nothing but the instrument of Sensation. For the
past event I have nothing but the instrument of Recurrence. Sensation announces the brick house, and a
glance over the intervening space, and those other
things, announce it as distant. Recurrence brings back
an ancient thought, and a glance over the intervening
time, and certain other things, announce it as past.
That is, a thought comes up by the law of bare
Recurrence, which we have described as primordial. It
comes with no label on its back, and we have no power
such as everybody has been imagining, to cognize it as
past. But the very law of Association that brought it




CIAP. xXXIX.]           Memory.                   79
up, has already probably connected it. That is, the
oat-field and the wheat-field and the grass lawn, by
which we give distance to the house, serve no other
purpose in the matter of space than intervening events
do in the matter of time. Nay, time has two advantages. Time can borrow also a measure by space. I
see a house: this time not actually, but as a matter of
Recurrence. I see it is my neighbor's house, in ten
thousand ways. The intervening fields show it; measuring the distance of it, as though by sensation, right
up to my door. The familiar face of it; its connection
with all my life; its thousand tracks of associated
thought,-all fix it in an instant.  And just as the
hue of a building, or the focus of my eye, are those
"other things" of which I spoke a moment ago, so
there are lesser things that attend Recurrence, like
the deepness of the print or the familiarity of the
look of an idea, by which we learn by experience *
that it is remembered, i. e. that it has been in the
mind before.
The dogma, therefore, that Memory is a primordial
power by which the mind directly cognizes the past;
or as Sir William Hamilton describes it,t " a knowledge
of a present thought, involving an absolute belief that
this thought represents another act of knowledge that
has been,"-all theories of the past as directly known
as the past by one act of original intelligence, are de
trop, and, therefore, fanciful. The whole can be explained far short of that. And this analysis of Memory which makes it perfectly on a par with Sensation
as applied to distance, is a wonderful philosophical
* The teachings of experience will be analyzed when we come to the
Book on Logic.
W Vight's Phil. of Sir WV. H., p. I78.




80                   Psyc/ology.              [BOOK I.
relief, because it removes the bar that has stood in the
way of many a metaphysical elucidation.*
There is a law then that perceptions, once possessed,
come back again. The law is naked and perfectly
inexplicable in any other way than that it is a good
law, and highly consistent with the goodness of our
original Creator. They come back unmarked and undiscriminated and undistinguishable from others, except
intrinsically, that is, as fainter and other than perceptions of direct sensation. This power to recur is a
store-house in an inexplicable way like Sensation.  I
say like Sensation; for thought may be liable to recur
and never do it, just as light may beam upon the eye,
and sounds pelt upon the ear, and scents bathe the
nostril, and be store-houses of sense; and never sensation. Consciously we do not see or hear. Consciously
we do not remember. We see some things. And we
bring back some things from the store-house of the
past; but infinitesimally few things in contrast with
the enormous crowd that are ready to come into our
consciousness.
Suggestion, indefatigably busy; —or rather, to
speak in more measured terms, Perception, by its law
of the Stronger Emotion, is emerging into consciousness from either store of our unconscious perceptibilities.
It picks its thread from either distaff; and now a house,
and now a past event, and now an abstract fragment, is
drawn into the staple of the thread, leaving the myriads
that are beating on the sense just as distant as the
throng that is clamoring for Recurrence. Let it seize
a house, Suggestion immediately places it in space by
a flash over the field of vision; or is it a past event,
* See Mill's difficulty which he gives up as insoluble. (Exam. of
Sir Wm. Hamilton, vol. I, p. 262.)




CHAP. XL.]         Recollection.               8i
Suggestion immediately flashes over the past till it
places it in time. Memory is nothing but this. And
a recurrent thought would have to stand out in the
cold, for any power we have to cognize it as of the past,
unless it can rouse some other thoughts and bridge
over the space and know itself by intervening histories.
Of course the whole contents of consciousness
recur. The very idea of thought as past, by whatsoever way I get it, may then after that recur. And
thus in ways hereafter to be more fully sketched when
I come to speak of Intuitive Belief, pastness may be
learned just like distance, but, when once learned, may
recur along with the thought, and may be at once concluded on as a part of its recurrence.
CHAPTER XL.
RECOLLECTION.
MEMORY being only the power by which a recurrent thought is recognized as past by its simple associations, and having no other claim to be a simple
power than that which reveals to us distance in the
instance of sensation, Recollection is nothing more than
Memory with the Will annexed.
Experiencing the law of Suggestion as recalling
thought, I use the Will in it. Recurrence is the mere
emerging. Memory is the recognition of the emergent
thought by quick associations with the rest that give
it its place in history. Recollection is an effort in all
this, that is, the use of the Will in its second province
of Attention, I mean attention to something already
perceived, and I mean in order that that perceived
something may suggest a thought, a thought of which
we know enough already to know that there is such a
A4*




82                 Psyc/z ogy.             [BoOK I.
thought, and then further than that that it is a
thought waiting for recurrence.
CHAPTER XLI.
IMAGINATION.
No separate Fancy, therefore, is required. The
Law of the Strongest Emotion makes pictures to please
us. It uses the store-houses of the present and the
past. Out of the past it is really Memory. For
though we may paint a goblin, and can hardly say we
ever remember one, yet the materiaz is out of the storehouse of the past, and the grozpzing is by the stronger
emotion. The picture I form of Windsor Castle, when
I stand and look at it, and the picture I form of the
town of Man-Soul, when Bunyan speaks of it, are both
by the Law of Association. Sensation furnishes me
for one, and Memory furnishes me for the other. I
pick out the " Castle," and I pick out the " Town," and I
discard other things. I pick out the Castle and leave
the rest of Sense, and I pick out the Town from all the
other Recurrences; and though the Castle is made
ready to my sight, so the Town is by the same flash
of the Strongest Emotion that seizes upon the one just
as it throws together the pieces of the other.
Imagination therefore is that grouping of perceptions which the mind got by Recurrence, and which the
mind selects by the Law of the Strongest Emotion.
CHAPTER XLII.
ANALYSIS.
I HAVE said (Chapter XV.) that there are no Simple
Ideas; that is, Perception cannot be made so unitary




CHAP. XLIV.]  Other Instances of Perception.    83
that more truths than one must not of necessity be
in it.
Dividing a perception, however, and distinguishing
as far as possible its conceivable elements, is the work
of Analysis.
CHAPTER XLIII.
ABSTRACTION.
ABSTRACTION takes these elements, and looks at
them separately.
I analyze a sunbeam. I note its course and its
color-its heat and its continuance-its light and its
actinic influences. I abstract any one of these. Consciousness, emotion, and cognition are abstractions from
any one perception. Nevertheless nothing is unitary.
All stay mixed; though we think we abstract them.
A course or a color or a time gives us more to think of
than can be absolutely single. Consciousness grasps
back a't both its sisters. Analysis is a mere bungle:
Abstraction never perfect; and the names and of
course the definitions (see Chap. XVII.) which it is
the office of Abstraction to bestow, a mere hint at a
real difference.
CHAPTER XLIV.
JUDGIMENT, COMPARISON, DEDUCTION, REASON.
WE mention these simply to glance at them. These
are not different faculties.  Each is the mind in its
power to perceive. Each is the whole mind with
names used as for mental convenience. They differ as
perceptions differ. And they may be multiplied to
any extent, the vocabulary of perceiving having all the
room that perceptions have of being multiplied in the
mind.








BOOK II.
LOGIC;
OR, THE
SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS KNOWLEDGE.
CHAPTER I.
KNOWLEDGE.
A VERY subtle philological question might be
allowed to hinder us at the very opening of this discussion.
A simple statement would be, that Knowledge is of
two kinds, Conscious and Unconscious. By Conscious
Knowledge I would understand that which a man has
at the time, as when I say,'I know that I have a sensation of pain,' or' I know that light is beautiful, for I
am looking at it at this very moment.' Unconscious
Knowledge would be the Knowledge of Greek or
Latin,-Potential Knowledge, or the power to know
when the opportunity offers, as, for example, when I
say,'Such a man knows Logic, or the whole circle of
the Sciences.'
Now the question to which I allude is, whether
this last is not the only proper sense; whether power
to perceive is not the universal sense of the word
Knowledge. We are not willing to make the least
pause about it. Metaphysically it makes no difference.




86                   Logic.              [BooK II.
To make clear the statements, we will adopt the
twofold distinction. Conscious Knowledge is something cognized at the time; and Unconscious Knowledge something I could cognize if the occasion should
occur. Let it be distinctly observed that any difficulties of all this are simply difficulties of Philology.
CHAPTER 1I.
CONSCIOUS KNOWLEDGE.
CoNscIous Knowledge will be found to be of two
kinds, Intuitive and Empirical.
CHAPTER III.
INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.
THE three aspects of Perception were Consciousness, Emotion, and Cognition. The.wonder might be
felt that we did not employ these three as the subjects of Divisions. Psychology might have been the
Science of Consciousness. We might have called Logic
the Science of Cognition: and Pathics the Science of
Emotion. There might have been some advantages
of this. But there were disadvantages that we need
not stop to mention. Yet simplicity will be achieved
by saying now that Cognition is nothing more or less
than Intuitive Knowledge. All that we said of it will
apply to the subject of the present chapter. All Perception was Cognition, and all Cognition was Perception, and what is more important far, Cognition is
nothing more than Consciousness. Therefore our definition in this place can be very distinct. I intuitively
know nothing but the contents of my consciousness.




CHAP. III.]     Intuitive Knozwleedge.            87
To show that I distinctly appreciate what I say,
I mean that Intuitive Knowledge does not cognize
self unless self as an object of knowledge is itself a
consciousness.  Please understand  me literally.  I,mean to show hereafter that self is partly consciousness, as I mean to show by that, that that is the reason that we speak always of being conscious of self.
I mean to show that it is an affair of language.
Self as a mere thing of dictionaries, for reasons that
might be stated, includes the passing consciousness
that is with us at the time. When I speak of self I
mean an ens and its consciousnesses.  This is an accident of language-not an accident either as being devoid of sense. What I know intuitively is only consciousness. If consciousness were counted as the act,
and self were kept out of view as only the agent, it
would not be true that there were intuitions of self.
This is mere vocabulary. We wish thus early to make a
point of that. We mention it out of place; for Ontology is that which will introduce us to self. But we
mention it to allay distrust. It might be thought contemptuously that we were not contemplating results.
It will make our meaning plainer as to Intuitive
Knowledge. We have no Intuitive Knowledge of self,
if only self is considered as meaning what thinkers
have universally imagined it to mean, viz. an inward
entity. Of that we have naught intuitive. Self in its
working sense, that is as the word can be seen consciously to be framed, includes the present consciousness; and qua that consciousness we are conscious of
it, and that is all the way we are conscious of self.
So of not-self. We are conscious of it; but only
because qualities have gone into it. As mere lexiconwork, matter includes blackness,-includes hardness,



88                    Logic.              [IBooK II.
includes anything we see that we are conscious of as
of it. Not Metaphysics now, but mere Dictionary,
-very important in Metaphysics, because it uncumbers a difficult subject, yet not in se, but only as words
go in usu, declares that not-self includes consciousness, because the pink and yellow of the peach go into
the fruit, and my Intuitive Knowledge seizes the
peach, but only as including these conscious seeings.
So much to allay impatience. When Ontology is in
turn, it will be seen that Intuitive Knowledge is sheerly
Consciousness.
Nay I may go a good deal further. When I say
I am conscious of the peach, I do not mean I am conscious of the peach tkrotgkz its qualities. I mean nothing
of the kind. There is no such consciousness. I mean I
am conscious of consciousness, and the dictionary puts
consciousness inside of the peach.  I have property
inside the word, and merely go for it. Let the pink,
which I consciously see, be kept out of the fruit, and
the strictly constructed entity, viz. the atoms that have
the hue, or the force that projects it to the sense, I am
not conscious of. Intuitive Knowledge is simply of
the contents of Consciousness.
CHAPTER IV.
GROUND OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.
IF Intuitive Knowledge be Consciousness, i. e. the
intelligence that each perception has of itself, the
ground of the Knowledge is nothing more than the
perception. The ground of any certainty is the reason
that we have for its belief. As all that we believe in
Intuitive Knowledge is that we have a perception, it is
idle to battle the watch about the truth of conscious



CHAP. VI.]  Extent of Intuitive Knowledge.     89
ness, or the goodness of God in not imposing a deceit,
as the ground we look for is found in the very proposition. If we have a perception, that is all we mean by
Intuitive Knowledge.
CHAPTER V.
DEGREE OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.
THE degree of Intuitive Knowledge is as complete
as the fact of the perception. The degree of Empirical Knowledge is not complete. It is never absolute.
Intuitive Knowledge, as will appear in the sequel, is
the only absolute certainty possessed by man.
CHAPTER VI.
EXTENT OF INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.
KEEPING it well in our memory that we are now
speaking of Conscious Knowledge, or Knowledge at
the moment in the mind, the extent of Intuitive Knowledge can be seen to be nothing more than the extent
of the perception, that is the extent of absolute consciousness possessed by any beholder at the time. As
Perception is never simple, and sometimes very varied,
and always entire, I mean by that an entire perception
of everything present in the vision; as, for example, I
perceive light, and I perceive flavor and scent and
sound and other things often all in one consciousness;
though the perception be but a fleeting gleam and
is always passing to the next, yet while it lingers, it has
a manifest extent, and that extent is all the points and
hues and sounds and angles, and emotional enjoyments, and immediate associations, and I may add,




90                    Logic.               [BOOK II.
uncertainties, that are present in that one perception
of the mind.
CHAPTER VII.
INFLUENCE ON INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION.
THE influence on Intuitive Knowledge of the Law
of Perception as Incessant is of course this much, that
it makes it embrace in time a vast multiplicity of
objects; but except for other laws which are concerned in weaving these objects together, each separate
perceptive gleam would have little gained by it. Perception as Fading, Perception as Transient, Perception as Continuous, almost all the laws, unless all combined and perfected by the later ones that we mentioned in the list, would leave perceptions each standing by itself; and though they would be varied endlessly,
yet Intuitive Knowledge being only the present perception, each one would be unconscious of all the
others, and a man's intuitions would be a set of fire-fly
gleams, just melting out in the night, not spreading
into thought, and not rising into anything like practical
intelligence.
But now, take all these former laws, and add to
them the Law of Recurrence, and the Law of the
Strongest Emotion, and there occurs Memory; and
Memory we have seen to be the recurring of something in the past, and then the recurring by the law
of association of enough of intervening things to serve
as a bridge. I see a cottage on the plain, and enough
all around it and between, in the same flash almost, to
show me its position. I have a perception from the
past, and enough all around it of other perceptions that
it immediately suggests to bridge over all that inter



CHAP. VII.]  Effect of the Laws of Perception.  9I
venes. I see the thought mapped. And so my perceptions, though only conscious of my perceivings at
the time, and only intuitively knowing my present consciousness, yet are so bred by my beneficent Creator
that they come up in maps or connected pictures. They
have something of the present, and something of the
past; something of the near, and something of the distant; and these in every picture; so that recurrent
past suggests the present, and the intruding present
suggests the past. And thus my Intuitive Knowledge,
though a mere perception, is nevertheless a conscious
sight of a suggested chain that may link together the
past and the present.
We shall see, when we come to the third Book, more
of this effect of these laws upon our knowledge. We
shall see how Sensation unites with them, and how
Self and Not-Self both emerge to their full proportions.
We shall show how Being, in all its idea, is built up by
the help of these laws of the mind.
For the present, let us confine ourselves to a distinct progression. Knowledge is either Actual or
Potential (Conscious or Unconscious). Actual Knowledge may be divided into Intuitive and Empirical.
Intuitive, which we are now considering, is simply our
knowledge of our own Perceptions. More distinctly,
it is only the perception we are having at a time. Its
Ground is that perception itself. Its Degree is absolute, for it asserts nothing but the perception. Its
Extent is the extent of the perception. And what
redeems it from a mere fire-fly gleam hither and
thither idly in the night, is the law of the perception
itself, as continuous enough and complex enough and
then associated enough to make it move in connected
pictures, and give conscious information of itself by
Recurrence and by connection at the time.




92                   Logic.              [BOOK II.
CHAPTER VIII.
EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.
WE have seen how Intuitive Knowledge confines
itself to immediate Consciousness. We wish to show
how it can grow into Experience, or how it can arrive
at anything else except that I am perceiving at the
time.
In the town where I live is a chime of bells. Suppose I have a perception of one stroke of one bell.
Suppose I have the same perception in five minutes
again. Suppose I have the same perception in five
minutes more. Suppose I have the same perception
each five minutes all my life. I know that five minutes from the present stroke it will strike again: and
in five minutes again. What is the ground of my
knowledge? Simply Experience. What is the ground
of my belief in Experience? Some say, A native principle. But let us examine that. WVhat do I mean by
my belief in Experience? Simply that what has always
happened will happen again. Now suppose it does
not happen again. Will it violate any native principle? Will it not only violate experience? We throw
up our hands and say, We never knew the like before.
The law is in the bell then, and not in the mind. It
is a fact about the bell. We express it in the very
usages of speech when we throw it into the form of a
characteristic.' It rings' (as a discovered experience
of the bell, or a simple thing that we have perceived).
It rings as the habit of its history once in five minutes.'
Now THAT IS A TYPE OF ALL THAT WE KNOWV
ABOUT THE UNIVERSE EXCEPT THIS MOMENT'S CONSCIOUSNESS. This latter little gleam is my Intuitive




CHAP. IX.]  Ground of Enpirical Knowledge.        93
Knowledge. All beyond is but an endless repetition
of the case of the bell, and is my Empirical Knowledge.
But let us look at this more closely.
CHAPTER IX.
GROUND OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.
WE have seen that Intuitive Knowledge, or Consciousness, is cognitive in the respect of its extent of
all the phenomena that are present in the immediate
perception.  If it is blue color that I perceive, I perceive its shade and any variety of its tint in one part
of its surface or another.  I perceive its surface and
any angle that it makes; and if it borders a purple or
a scarlet, I observe that. If it moves, I observe that.
If it fades, that also I notice. The extent of my Intuitive Knowledge, let me insist, reaches all that
appears. Now if a bell has sounded for twenty years,
does not that appear? You may say, Not consciously;
not as a matter of perception at any one time; and
that clears the question, and brings it to a point of
vivid elucidation just as I desire. I am not conscious
that it has always rung, and, therefore, it is not a matter of Intuitive Knowledge. But I am conscious that
it now rings; and five minutes afterward I am conscious that it rings again. And while I am conscious
of its ringing again, I am  conscious of the recurrent
perception of its ringing the last time. And I am conscious of a row of such perceptions recurring like city
gas-lights, fading back into the past. These things I
intuitively know, for I actually perceive them. Now
that the bell did ring in the past, or will ring in the
future, is not intuitive. Yet I hold that, though it is
not intuitive, simply because we are not immediately




94                    Logic.               [BooK II.
conscious of what is either past or future, yet that it
is known without an independent faculty, and as a
thing revealed in the Conscious Perception.
As this is difficult we will go to work'With great
method and in the following order:I. I will state, first, three examples of Empirical
Knowledge.
II. I will make, second, a distinct affirmation of
their empirical ground.
III. I will state, third, certain peculiar difficulties.
IV. I will state, fourth, how they are to be obviated; and
V. I will state, fifth, the single form to which all our
Empirical Knowledge is to be reduced.
I. Let us suppose a house and a garden and a lawn
and a lake and the man whose Intuitive Knowledge
we are to start with, to be floating on the lake in a
boat. We wish to present in his instance three forms
of Empirical Knowledge.
I. In the first place he lies down in his boat and
just thinks of the house, or remembers it. That is
the simplest knowledge of the three. He has an image
of the house though past.
2. In the second place he looks off at the house and
perceives its hue and its distance. That is, he has an
image of the house as though present.
3. In the third place, he begins with the lake, and
raises his eyes by degrees, and predicts as he raises
his eyes, the lawn, the garden, and the house. This is
the most complex of all. It is cognizing a house
though future.
II. Now my affirmation of each and all of these is
that they are Empirical.
The favorite modern affirmation is that they are by




CHAP. IX.I  Ground of Emnpirical Knowledge.     95
an independent faculty; that the first is by Memory,
and that Memory is a direct cognizing. of the past;
that the second is by Perception, with the moderns an
independent faculty over and beyond Sensation (the
measuring of distance being, as they admit, in part
Empirical); and that the third is by a belief that
what has been will be, which some men make also intuitive, and also independent, as an original faculty of
the mind.
I. Now my affirmation about the first is that it is a
case of simple Memory, and that Memory is a recurrence of a past perception with our past convictions
about it, and such an immediate tracking of itself by
association with the present, as to show where it is in
the past. With us the perception only is intuitive, and
its connection with the past observed, and that by one
line of experience which is concerned in Memory.
2. My affirmation about the second is that it is a
case of simple Memory and of still another fruit of experience beside. I have to remember ten thousand
things before I recognize a house as a house at all; and
then, as to the distance, it is a remembrance of distances on which I build when I estimate it, and then
besides this that other experienced fact, that nature is true to herself in these perceptions before
the mind.
The first therefore is simple Memory; the second
in fact Memory, but in two particulars: now —
3. My affirmation about the third is, that it goes
further and is built upon Memory in three particulars.
I am bending my eye upon the lake. I say, When
I raise it, I will come upon a lawn. Why? Because I
remember a lawn: because secondly, I have experience




96                    Logic.               [BooK II.
of distance, or, in other words, shape and position;
because, thirdly, what things have been will be. Or
in other words I remember continuance in the past,
and predict it therefore as my coming perception in
the future.
My affirmation therefore is, that neither Memory
when I close my eyes, nor Sensation when I lift them
up, nor Prediction when I gradually raise them, reveals
anything either of lawn or house that is not phenomenally perceived, or associated in a traceable remembrance.
III. I am to state now great difficulties in this
arranging of a theory.
I. In the first place, where does the afJirmance
spring from in this account of cognition?  I have a
recurrence of a house. It instantly associates objects
up to the very point where I am standing. It also
associates events. Grant if you please that association
flashes us a map, where the house that I conceive, and
the spot where I stand, are drawn in their relative
locality. Grant more than this, that time has its picture, and that the hour when I saw the house recurs
by its intervening association. Where is the grip of
actual belief? In other words, where is the affirmance
of the house as actually of the past?
Recollect; we are shut up to a perception. What
is not in the consciousness is not in the mind. My
consciousness comes and is gone. What that does not
teach is not taught at all. And I have refused to let
it teach anything but by its own perceivings, and
declared those perceivings to be annunciatory of
nothing but themselves, or not in any intuitive way
of facts or histories outside of what they experience.
Now grant a picture as perfect as I please. How




CHAP. IX.]  Ground of zEm~irzcal Knozowledge.  97
can I by mere Recurrence, which just returns me my
thoughts so, with no mark upon them; and by mere
association, which flashes those thoughts into connection with the present, affirm anything of those thoughts
except their mere consciousness? How can I place
them except in the present picture? How can I know
so much in what is confessedly a fleeting gleam?
And how, when I look at a house, or when I predict
that I can look at one, do I get the grip of knowledge
from what is confessedly a transitory consciousness?
2. Again: improvement; How do I get that?  I
advance in knowledge. Unless there are original faculties that are strengthened and increased, how does
my consciousness to-day have so much more in it than
my consciousness earlier in my history?
Remember, it will be said, you find all your knowledge of God and the universe in a passing gleam.
How does that gleam get full? And how does this
mere picture-making that connects, improve the
thoughts into incalculable amounts of knowledge?
IV. Now we must recall our minds to the distinction of Actual and Potential knowledge, as before
enunciated. Potential knowledge is that incalculable
amount just hinted at.
Actual knowledge is that which is present at the
time. But as nothing is present at the time of which
we are not conscious, a man's consciousness at the time
shuts in all his actual knowledge. So far then, for the
steadying of the mind, we have something actually
demonstrated.
The position, therefore, on the part of those that
bring forward these very plausible and difficult arguments must be, that there is more in our consciousness
than the phenomena we have mentioned, because, first,
5




98                    Logic.              [BOOK IT.
no beauty of association would affirm the past or
future or the distant present, and because, second, no
practice in mere tracking by pictures could accrete
into one consciousness so much as we learn to know
by one perception of the mind.
Now these are central difficulties, and deserve a
most perspicuous answer.
I. Let me say first:-Convictions themselves are
conscious, and are matters of memory.
I have a conviction this moment that there is a
house beyond me. No matter how I get it, and no
matter what I mean by it; that will come after (see
Ontology). If I attempted to define it and say, as
I certainly might, that it was a hundred perceptions,
or rather a circumlocution to include a hundred points
of consciousness in a sort of algebraic expression (for
language lives by such things), you would easily entangle me in debate. But if I say, I know there is a house
over yonder, you perfectly understand me; and you
also understand me when I say, that this conviction, is
itself a subject of recurrence.
Now with what sort of a grip would the conviction,
granting I once had it, come back to me?
Some may say, It-would come back unrolled from
its self-affirmation, and with no grip at all. But is that
certainly so? In fact is it consciously possible? What
is it? It is a conviction. It is a seeing, by indicia I
have, that there is a house over in the field. Now
what comes back? You say, a mere picture, or
the mere idea, of a belief. What do you mean by
that? The mere idea of the house? Then the conviction does not come back at all. Or do you mean
the mere consciousness of such a conviction? Well, I
accept that. Then you admit the mere consciousness




CHAP. IX.]  Ground of Empirical Knowledge.      99
of a past conviction, as recurring like everything conscious by a law of the mind.
But how  does it come back?  Of course with
all its circumstances. The house recurs to me, and
with it the consciousness of my first conviction when
I saw it, and with that the additional consciousness of
all that opens afterward. It is the harmony I wish
to point out.
2. For, second, convictions being taken for granted
as originated somewhere (we will not as yet say exactly
how), they may be exceedingly obscure and feeble, and
yet grow strong by mere reduplication. I have a conviction there is a house upon the plain: I look and see
and find that it is the case. There recurs now a whole
list of phenomenal additions. There recurs the old
conviction. There recurs the new experiment. There
recurs the fresh discovery. All these items of consciousness recur just as they were perceived. Nay, I
try again; and try again. I multiply the experiment.
The man in the boat looks up ten thousand times.
The convictions all agree. They all aggregate. And
this is the history of life. Life is an infinite experiment, as we shall see when we come to Ontology, in
which a harmonious Providence confirms our convictions in ten thousand fashions; and it is out of these
harmonious perceivings that we track sensation; that
we track it to the senses; that we track it to the body;
that we track it to self; that we track it to a not-self;
that we track it to God; for all these are Empirical
ideas, and all these easily flow if you will accord us
the possibility of originating the first Empirical conviction.
3. Now as to that, (viz. how we get the first conviction), when I have a perception, it is cognitive. I




Ioo                   Logic.                [BOOK II.
mean by that, it cognizes everything in the present
perception; shape, color, everything, as we have said
repeatedly before. Moreover, this cognition is an
affirmance. It has every grip that we can imagine.
That is, it is a conviction that everything is so perceived.
If you ask me, Is not this a separate faculty, the
perception being one thing and the conviction another?
I answer, Plainly not. The perceiving is a perceiving
that I perceive, and that as an integral part, or rather
the whole, of my perception. When it recurs, therefore, the conviction recurs with it, and that for the reason that the perception itself recurs.
When it recurs, however, there is quite an explicable
reduplication. There is the old conviction and the old
perception. They recur. Now they are the same;
just as light and color; yet they are discriminate.
Perception and emotion are one, yet easily distinguishable. In other words, emotion can be abstracted from
perception and viewed separately. In like manner
conviction is an aspect of perception, concretely inseparable from it, in compass commensurate with it, in
origin the same, but so discrepant in potential thought
that I can speak of the blueness that I perceive and
of the sureness that I perceive it, without the risk
even of entangling my speech in appearing to be
announcing two separate perceivings.
When my perception recurs, however, the old conviction recurs, and with it flashes the intervening
events. And this thing is redoubled endlessly.
I see a light, for example. Along with it is the
recurrence of my seeing it before; along with that the
old conviction; if you please simply in its transcript:
along with that a new conviction. I close my eyes and




CHAP. IX.]  Ground of Empirical Knowledge.      IoI
open them again; and there is the light again and a
new conviction. These things we are repeating all the
time. And to say that we cannot spell out the past as
past, and the distant as distant,j and the future as
predicable upon the past, by the help of a complete
return of old perceptions with the convictions that
attended them, is to deny the perceptive clearness of
each act and its full recurrent consciousness.
Besides, there are side lights from Sensation.
We cannot fully understand this till we come to
speak of Sense in the next department. But we can go
upon received ideas far enough to explain what we mean.
Suppose the recurrent conviction were a mere
transcript, that is, the mere idea of a conviction, rather
than a conviction itself. We are willing to suppose
that, because we are willing to admit that the recurrent perception is rather a copy of the perception, and
that altogether faded, than a recurrence of the perception itself.
Now suppose the sheer influence of such an instance
of a mere copy of a conviction were originally only
enough to suggest an experiment, and that with' an
infant it began with that mere tentative experience.
Do we not see how, rapidly it would grow? All nature
is full of harmony. Little Chubby-cheeks, very bright as
to sense, but very empty empirically, stuffs his fist into
a pillow. Instantly it is a matter of memory. Now I
do not believe he cognizes the touch as past by a primordial faculty, but that the cool feeling was pleasant,
and has a power to recur. Moreover, a conviction
recurs with it, or, if you please, the picture of a conviction, that it was cool and pleasant. Many actual
* This, however, cannot be articulately understood till we come to
speak of Sensation.




Io02                 Logic.              [BOOK II.
touches would be necessary before he could build up
the requisite experience; but each punch bringing its
memories, and each memory aligned in a vista of convictions, and all convictions blended into one like the
pictures under a stereoscopic lens, the child would
begin to punch for himself, and would build up, before
he became a man, his own complete circle of empirical
predictions.
2. We are strong now against that almost overpowering objection, that a man must have the noblest
knowledge in the form of some mere fleeting perception. Yes i For what may not that perception be?
He may have a perception of the heavens. He may
be in the night of a dungeon, and may just think of it.
That is, he may have the recurrence of the stars and
of the starry frame as one picture. He may have it
with all its past convictions. He may run riot in
trooping memories. And to say nothing of the changes
of the thought, the picture at each conscious moment
will be that of the Strongest Emotion to his mind.
V. Returning to the man in the boat, we will be able
to answer to our fifth point, which is, the Single Form
to which all our Empirical Knowledge can be reduced.
I. He lies in the bottom, and there simply recurs
a house with lawn and garden, and all the attendant
facts as we have repeatedly described. Here the form
of Empirical Knowledge is simply memory: the recurrence of the house; the recurrence of intervening indicia
of the house; and the recurrence chiefly and more important than the rest, of repeated convictions of all the
cognitive realties. This shall be our first instance.
2. The second is of the man standing in the boat
and looking at the house and judging of the intervening distance.




CHAP. IX.]  Ground of Empirical Knowledge.       I03
3. The third is of the man rising from the boat and
predicting as he rises, in his glance, the lawn, the garden, and the house, just as they appear in the other
instance.
Now I have shown that the first is a single, the
second a double, and the third a triple, instance of the
phenomenon of memory. In the first I remember the
house. In the second (I) I remember houses (how they
look, etc.), so that I perceive this to be a house,d and
(2) I remember distances, and how  objects help to
measure them, so that I cognize this house as distant.
In the third, (i) I remember this house, (2) I remember and judge its distance, and (3) I remember and
predict that a house once perceived may at that point
be perceived again.
Now  what does all this teach?  Why, at first
glance, every one would say, that knowledge empirically considered, in these instances at least, is nothing
more in the world than Memory. And so it is, in
an instrumental sense. But, in its ground, Memory
itself shares with it in something deeper.  Memory
itself is but an instance of Empirical Knowledge.
As an instrument it does all the work. All Empirical Knowledge is an act of Memory. For, as all
Empirical Knowledge is built upon experience, Memory, that gathers it up, is the active agent in every
part of it. All experience is Memory, and all Memory experience; and though it will not do to say
I remember that a thing will happen, or I remember
that that house that we are looking at must be a
mile off, yet it might do to talk in that way, and
* Of course all this is premature to any extent further than we design
to illustrate, as we have not yet explained how we perceive a house
at all.




104                   Logic.             [BooK II.
would do beyond a doubt, if it were the usus loquendi.
Both statements are made by means of what we
remember.
If we will distinguish, accordingly, between the instrument of Empirical Knowledge and the ground of
Empirical Knowledge, Memory is doubtless the former,
and we remain free, as a distinct question, to ask, What
is the latter?
Now the ground of our Empirical Knowledge is
the orderliness of our perceptions.
If our perceptions were all sporadic, like fire-flies
gleaming in the night, we could have nothing empirical.! But, as it is, we have two orders. We have the
order of external nature, which we will treat when we
come to speak of Sensation, and we have the order of
perceptive laws. Both of these beget the one order
of perception. It is on the ground of the orderliness
of perception that is bred empirical belief.
Nor let some one who doubts this as the final truth
interpose the idea of the truth of our perception.
The ground of Intuitive Knowledge, it might be
argued, is the veracity of consciousness. Now if the
ground of Intuitive Knowledge is the veracity of consciousness, the ground of Empirical Knowledge is the
veracity of memory; or as memory is so entirely complex, the veracity of those blended consciousnesses, recurrent and original, which make up that blended whole
which is an act of memory. The veracity of consciousness, it has often been insisted on as evident, must be
our final support in all our possible convictions.
But let us look at this very carefully.
If Knowledge of any sort is based upon the veracity
of consciousness, it must differ as a matter of course
from consciousness itself. Consciousness must be one




CHAP IX.]  Ground of ~Empirical Knowledge.    Io5
thing, and certain facts that it veraciously teaches
must be numerically another, or there is no pith in
such a proposition.
But consciousness, as we have consistently taught,
is itself the fact in intuitive cognition. All our intuitive knowledge is our present consciousness. Now to
make the veracity of consciousness the ground of consciousness itself is empty to the last degree. And the
only significant speech is, that our belief in consciousness, or our trust in our conscious cognition, is imbedded in the act itself. To know that I perceive is nothing
more in the world than to perceive. And to know
anything else than that I perceive, is not intuitive
knowledge. And to build up that something else on
what is called the veracity of consciousness is to evoke
a figment, totally different I grant, but at the same
time totally false as compared with  absolute  consciousness.
The ground of Intuitive Knowledge, therefore,
is itself. The reason I have it is because it is itself the
thing known.
The ground of Empirical Knowledge is the order
of perception, just as the ground of Intuitive is the perception itself. The ground of Empirical Knowvledge,
therefore, is an order which I find to be.
Let us study this; and then we will be at the end
of a long chapter.
The ground of any knowledge is the reason why
we believe it. The ground of Intuitive- Knowledge is
consciousness itself. The ground of Empirical Knowledge is consciousness itself revealing itself in a certain
order. The degree of Intuitive Knowledge is absolute.
We are certain of everything that we intuitively know.
The degree of our Empirical Knowledge is not abso5*




io6                   Logic.              [BOOK II.
lute. Now, if both be grounded on consciousness,
whence this difference, and how can consciousness,
which is sure, be the ground of anything that is essentially uncertain?  These are critical questions, and
indeed vital to the possibilities of Logic.
I begin by asking, Can I, or can I not, perceive any
order in my perceptions?
In my perceptions in space I can; for though we
have not studied Ontology yet, still this much is a
matter of consciousness. I look out on the starry
heavens, and the order of moon and comet and cloud
and the belt of Orion consciously appears to me. In
fact, all that is synchronous in the current of whatever
sort has its order when it comes into notice. But can
I be conscious of order in my perceptions in time?
Without Recurrence I certainly could not. For
though there is a flux of the current during the conscious instant; that is, from the law of Continuance,* a
flowing off and coming on during the moments in
which the perceptions are lasting; still, if the perceptions leaped off and fell into the dark and never
returned to us, we could know nothing essentially of
order in time.
But how is it at present? Past perceptions come
back to us with a suggestion of much that intervenes.
They come back to us as images of themselves, but
nevertheless with the conviction (or the image of it)
that they were not images at the time that they
occurred. They come back in all their order, like
present visions. Then we have this much at least,
that we have in our actual consciousness orderly
images of the past coming back into the current by
the law of Recurrence.
* See B. I, chap. xxxviii.




CHAP. IX.]  Ground of Empirical Knowledge.      Io,7
We have an order of perceptions in space; we
have an order of perceptions in time; both, in our consciousness; both actual; that is, both absolute perceptions; but the first assertatory only of themselves as
of the present moment; and the last assertatory also of
themselves as of the present moment, but assertatory
also of their character as images of the past.  H6w do
they get that last assertatory character?
Now  to this we are ready to reply by six propositions:
I. First; not only do past perceptions recur, but
they recur with their essential convictions, one of these
convictions having been of their being actual perceptions. As this conviction was conscious, and all conscious phenomena have the law that they recur, this
conscious conviction may recur. And though it be a
mere copy of a conviction, still what is that? and I
appeal to consciousness whether it has not some affirming character.
2. Second; if it have the least affirming character,
it becomes great by ceaseless and multiform reduplication. Grant that I see a house, and that each time I
see it I am convinced of my conscious perception; and
that that conviction, being conscious, recurs, like the
perception itself; and that when the perception recurs
conviction recurs, and with it the still earlier conviction, and so, like the two plates of the stereoscope, one
adds vividness to the other, and so on in an endless
progression,-and I think it cannot remain unapparent
how convictions may grow, so that the mere sight of a
thought may recognize it as passed, and fix it in time,
just like an object in space by the tokens of present
sensation.
3. This is still more easy to conceive under the law




Io8                   Logic.              [BOOK II.
of the Strongest Emotion, by which the recurrent
thought pictures itself in its actual connections;
4. And yet again more easy by the bearing of sense
upon memory. I lift up my eyes and see a house. I
shut them and remember it. I open them and see it
again. I can do this a hundred times. Each of these
acts is conscious. Each of them, therefore, will be
recurrent. All of them agree perfectly. The agreement is recurrent. All convictions that they agree,
and that they recur, and that we have done the one
and the other thing and asked the one and the,other
question, and that they have been answered in but
one way, all blend in one recurrent perception. And
that a man cannot in this way locate in time what correspondingly he can locate in space appears to me to
be inconsistently denying the possibilities of the present
perception.
5. When a conviction is once obtained it likewise
is conscious and of course recurrent. It becomes general also. I know thought as past by its very glance,
just as a house as. distant. It has become an alphabet; that is, I mean, the very look of a past thought.
I learn to know my consciousnesses, as a man does his
flocks and herds, and simply by their looks. That tall
image is a house. It stands there over the plain.
You can touch it if you travel far enough. I know this
by experience. Yon ghost-like thought, not actual,
not really white or really square, but the image of such
realities, is just the hue and guise of a thing remembered. I know it as such by the light of a life's experiments. I know a dream: and I know the memory
of a dream; and I know a mere fancy, i. e. a mere
fancied house, never actual, that is, that cannot place
itself in any actual picture. I know each and all, as a




CHAP. IX.]  Ground of Empirical Knowledge.    Iog
girl knows the keys of her piano. I know them in the
same way. And I cannot insist too narrowly upon the
light that is thrown upon recurrent convictions of what
has taken place in time, by convictions of the external
world, and of the place things occupy in space under
actual sensation.
6. All moreover reduces itself just to one formula,
viz. What has been will be. This is not an axiom
either, but a mere fact. When it ceases to be so,
knowledge vanishes. I believe I saw a house. Why?
Because whenever such appearances recurred, when I
went to the spot I found one. I believe it is a mile
off. Why?  Because whenever the field and the
grove and the sky looked just so and so wide and so
shaded as these intervening objects look, I have walked
a mile and come to the object. I believe over there
we will find a boat. Why? Because I have been to
that sheet of water ever since I was a child and always
found one. I believe the farm scene now before my
mind is a dream and I dreamed it last night. Why?
Because it looks like a dream (I mean the memory of
one), and it has last night's surroundings.
Let the uniformity of perception cease and the
things that have been cease to be, and a dream will no
longer be known the morning afterward, nor a house
the day after it was seen, nor a sunrise as a thing to
happen to-morrow, nor any recurrent conviction. Man
will have to learn the new system in the place of the
one that resolved itself into the not-self and the conscious current. Perception has been a language to him
like the dots of the telegraph, and he has learned to
decipher it. It has led him up to God. Let that
good Being give him  no order for his perceptions,
either sensational or recurrent, and they will teach him




I I                  Logic.              [BooK II.
nothing. Intuitive Knowledge would be but a spark.
And Empirical Knowledge could not even be imagined;
for Empirical Knowledge is the discovery we make by
the order of the conscious current.
The kept up order of that current is therefore the
ground of Empirical Knowledge.
To prove it farther let us go backward. I go to
the house. It is not there. Why?  Has my mind
deceived  me? No: the house. The facts have
changed. Nature has a different order. I look in my
mind. The house recurs. I go to it and it is a different house. I recollect this last and pay the visit
again. It is again different. What now! Is my mind
deceiving me? That may be very possible. It is not
deceiving me as to the contents of its perception. I
perceive plainly enough. I perceive what I-perceive,
and feel what I feel. My intuitive knowledge is perfect. A deranged man has perfect intuitive knowledge, i. e. he perceives what he perceives. But my
empirical knowledge is all awry. Order has fled.
CHAPTER X.
THREE KINDS OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.
As Intuitive Knowledge is Consciousness, so Empirical. Knowledge is grounded upon an order in consciousness, or upon a fact discovered in experience,
that what things have been will be. Now, to be more
precise in our statement, what things have been will
never be again.
The things that come under the eye of our consciousness are perceptions. And it is the order of
perceptions, discovered empirically, that constitutes experience. But it is like perceptions, not the same, that,




CHAP. X.]  Kinds of Empirical Knowledge.     III
having been, we learn empirically, do happen again.
Empiricism is a great system of analogy.
Now of this analogy there are three sorts:-Absolute Analogy, Partial Analogy, and Analogy undiscoverable except by intermediate resemblances. They are
all the same thing, —Analogy. They are all traced by
the same thing,-Experience. They all employ the
same instrument,-Memory. They all build the same
system,-Logic. And they all point to this fact,that conscious perception and its analogies, that is its
discovered order, make up the whole of the knowledge unfolded to our species.
We must from the very beginning see clearly that
these three are all monogonous. The first is often
referred to Consciousness; the second, to Intuitive
Belief so-called, a myth that has had a most wonderful
place in modern investigation; the third has been
given the whole of Logic. Now the harm has been
inconceivable. It has kept us back from simple views;
and prevented what I firmly believe easy, viz. the
making of Logic to consist in the mere tracing of consciousness and its analogies. That when I see a
horse it is the horse I saw yesterday, i. e. Absolute
Analogy; that when I see a horse it is a horse —i. e.
Partial Analogy (though the horse may be different
from nine-tenths of the horses I ever saw before);
and that when I see a bone from the pastern of an
animal I perceive it to be the pastern of a mammal,
though by intermediate analogies the steps of which I
have forgotten;-these are the three species of empirical faith. And though so apparently diverse the one
from the other, they are all in principle the same. They
are all the dictum of consciousness, and the dictum of
the conscious fact, discovered by recurrence in the way




I 12                 Logic.               [BOOK II.
I have articulately given, that perception has an orderly
course, the bifold order (I) of what we have yet to treat
in outward sensation, and (2) of what we have so carefully marked in the grouping of what is associatedly
recurrent.
Now let us treat the three kinds more definitely
and in an elementary light.
I. I brought in the chime of bells, and I intended
them for this distinct service. I imagined one bell
and one stroke repeated at a determined interval. The
expectation of that bell would be a mere perception
of a fact, or a LIKElihood as we significantly describe
it; and if it did not ring, it would not violate a consciousness or a separate conscious act, but simply a
fact about the bell. We would cry out, It has quit ringing! We are so constituted by the affirmance of our
present knowledge, and by the recurrence of convictions
that are redoubled, that we can note the habits of our
perception, and mark that when it has sounded once it
sounds again.
Now this is Absolute Analogy.
And I can go a little further and make it much
more complex, and still not deprive it of this absolute
degree.
Suppose that with one second between each of the
bells the whole chime is set afloat in the belfry. Suppose it continues for twenty years. Here again is
Absolute Analogy. If it continues at determined
intervals and in the order of the scale, while it is not
the same stroke of course, it is a like stroke; while it
is not the same perception, it is a like perception; it is
a prediction of what I have never heard by the light
of what I have heard. It is not, What has been will
be, which is therefore an imperfect formulary, but, The




CHAP. X.]   Kinds of Empirical Knozwledge.     I 13
like will happen again. It is, therefore, an instance of
analogy, and in this case of absolute analogy. The
identical strokes are never repeated, but precisely simlar ones, with the peculiarity of their note and in the
order of the diatonic scale.
We might make the similarity, too, far more intricate, and yet not depart out of the category of absolute
or complete analogy.
2. But, secondly, let the chime ring any notes of
the scale, or at all hours of the day, but simply keep
ringing. Suppose it had done this for twenty years.
Suppose it did it scarcely at all some days, but never
omitted it altogether. There would still be analogy,
and still prediction, but it would be Partial Analogy,
and this is a great track by which we climb to the being
of the Almighty.
I see an animal in a gate. The gate hides all but
her hinder half. I have never seen any other part of
her. She has legs and tail, but unlike any other animal. They are not the legs of a horse, nor of a cow,
nor of a deer, nor of a moose; but yet they are like
all four. What can I tell?  I can tell it is a quadruped,
by mere analogy. I say, Let me go round the gate,
and I will see head and ears and eyes totally unlike all
I have ever witnessed, and yet like. The principle is
just the same as if it were my own cow and I knew
her perfectly. And if I went round the gate and found
the fins of a whale, it would shock no intuitive belief,
but only multiplied experience. If it seemed my own
cow, and I found her a fish, it would be precisely the
same. The shock would be greater. But it would
only be the interruption of the order of what I have
beheld. My mind by recurrence can take hold of the
past. And I would express it all by saying, as the




I 4                  Logic.             [1OOK. II.
acme of the mystery, not, My Intuitions are failing,
but, Did ever anybody see the LIKE?
3. Suppose the tower, like the statue of Memnon,
chimed its own bells; and that, by action of the morning sun. Suppose I had it all explained to me, and
had understood the steps. The expansion of the masonry on the easternmost side; that would be one
analogy. Like happening to like, too, about some iron
rods; that would be another. It might be a long
catenation that no man could carry as a whole, but
that any man could follow in its parts. Such would be
the third species; empirical knowledge, but with the
steps forgotten, just leaving the investigator with the
fact; so that, coming up by recurrent conviction, he
would be able to say, Sometimes (exactly when I am
unable to state without going over the points,) that
chime will ring of itself; and say it on the old ground
of analogy or remembered order.
CHAPTERP XI.
DEGREE OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.
THE Degree of Empirical Knowledge will depend
entirely upon the degree of the perceptive order.
This might appear at first sight not the case. If a
bell had rung every hour since I was born, and the
sun had risen and no more regularly every day, I
would believe much more in the rising of the sun,
though it had occurred twenty-four times less often
than the occurrence of the other.
But this will explain only more perfectly the doctrine of experience.
Experiences mat themselves together. Convictions are redoubled by borrowing from their kindred




CHAP. XIII.]   Einpirical Knowledge.             I 15
class. The rising of the sun belongs to an order of
causation. Causation, as we will hereafter learn, is but
a dictum of experience. And yet it links together
analogous phenomena. The rising of the sun is a cause
of causes, made credible by other facts that we fail to
separate; matted together with a maze of probabilities. And yet it is precisely analogous with the bell.
The ground of belief is identically the same. The bell
may never ring again, and the sun may never rise
again. And if either never do, the ground of surprise
would be elementarily the same. Nay that either
some day never will is a like prediction. And, as a
universal fact, the Degree of our Empirical Knowledge
depends upon the uniformity of the order that has
been previously perceived.
CHAPTER XII.
EXTENT OF EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.
BY this if there be intended the extent of perception at the time, of course it has been sufficiently delineated. But if there be intended (rather potentially)
the classes of things that can become empirically
known, I would answer, All past perceptions with their
analogies. As this is a difficult subject, I will divide
it into the two that are to succeed.
CHAPTER XIII.
INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE AS EMBRACING EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.
IT is now familiar to the reader that in the conscious current there is a phenomenon called Perception,
which can be looked upon in the three aspects of Con



I 6                   Logic.               [BOOK II.
sciousness, Emotion, and Cognition. It is also familiar
to the reader that these aspects are not partial but
total; that is, that the whole of Perception is Consciousness, and the whole of Consciousness Emotion,
and the whole of all or any, Cognition or any of the
rest.
Now grant the truth of what we have established,
that there is nothing consciously in the mind at any
moment except one of these more or less complex
perceptions, and we have the easy inference that Empirical Knowledge, if conscious, is a conscious perception. But if it be a conscious perception, it is entirely
that and entirely conscious. Now if it be entirely conscious, it is entirely consciousness; and consciousness,
by our very definitions, is Intuitive Knowledge.
We have, therefore, the ugly result that Empirical
Knowledge, which we have started out to make distinct, reverts into the bosom of simple intuition.
Moreover, all that is intuitive we have already
found is absolute or certain, and all that is empirical is
in our very statement of its degree essentially uncertain. How then can conscious empirical knowledge
be consciousness, and therefore absolute in degree, and
yet according to the facts be CONSCIOUSLY UNCERTAIN'?
Now fortunately this very last term is a fine key to
the whole dilemma. Consciousness totally reveals all
that is in its bosom, and reveals it intuitively. It
reveals the exact appearance of the inward sight, whatever that may be. But of course part of the appearance of the inward sight is uncertainty.
If I see all that I see, intuitively, and therefore certainly, it does not impair the completeness of that
sight, but rather enhances it, that I see things con



CHAP. XIII.]  Einpirical KInowledge.          I I7
sciously and just as they are, if what they are is in its
own nature necessarily uncertain.
I have but to preserve the same meaning for perceptive cognition, and make it always mean the perceptive aspect of an inward consciousness, and it would
be always absolute, and always certain, and always
intuitive, and Intuitive Knowledge would then fairly
include the whole circle of our possible cognitions.
But Knowledge has slipped from one sense to
another.
I see, for example, a pair of doves. I am perfectly
conscious of the sensational impression. All that the
doves work upon my perceivings and upon my conscious state at any one time I am articulately aware of.
Nothing escapes me that is consciously present. Who
shall say that all this is not Intuitive Knowledge?
But one of the facts intuitively known is that one of
the apparitions I call a dove, that is, one of the white
surfaces or buff colored phenomena of vision, I care
care not what you call it, may or may not be equal to
the other. This I intuitively see. This is, in fact, the
thing known. The knowledge in the case is a knowledge of uncertainty. And the corruption of speech is
in taking the word knowledge, which might well be
left for perceptive cognitions, and applying it to something else, that is, not to the perceptive cognition of a
fact, but to the perceptive cognition of the greater or
less probability of a fact, or in other words to the
mere belief that a certain bird is bigger than the other.
When I say, therefore, I know that the doves are
equal, if I supply the ellipsis, and say, I know that
they seem equal, or am conscious of a likeness in the
visions, I am translating the conclusion into the actual
phenomena of thought. I keep the word knowledge




I I8                  Logic.                [BOOK II.
for my actual conscious intuitions. I show that doubts
and measured probabilities are part of the objects of
my consciousness. I mark the genesis, so to speak,
of all that is empirical. And I explain how, in the
strictest metaphysical sense, apart from the use of
terms, Intuitive Knowledge includes the other form
of our alleged cognitions.
CHAPTER XIV.
INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE AS DISTINCT FROM EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE.
IT has not pleased the popular ear, however, to
retain the word knowledge for what is conscious so
far forth as it is conscious and therefore certain. But,
there being conscious thoughts which are certain in
themselves, as all thoughts are, but marked by certain
uncertainties, which are consciously and hence intuitively known, and therefore matters of direct and
absolute knowledge, it has not pleased the public to
state facts that way, but to cut across lots, so to speak,
and instead of saying I am conscious of a high probability that those doves are equal, to say I know they
are; which means, I am conscious that they seem so,
and take the seeming for a full cognition.
So, therefore, if we could discard this habit of the
people, we could return to metaphysical strictness in
this way:-We could say, I know that of which I am
conscious, and nothing else. That would keep all things
in their place, metaphysically, and therefore correctly.
But among the things I know is the fact of certain uncertainties, which are just as open to my consciousness
as blueness or fragrance or consciousness or certainty
itself. This uncertainty appears before me in lesser or
greater degrees, like blueness or cold; and I am able




CHAP. XIV.]    Empirical Knowledge.             I 9
consciously to know a less or greater probability or
uncertainty, and that as the very fact itself. Now, so
long as I confine myself to facts, I can only say, I
intuitively know the object of consciousness, that is, the
uncertainty itself. And that is in fact all the phenomenon. But if I choose to translate it into other
language, I can do so very usefully, not by employing
spuriously the word knowledge, but by going off to
other language altogether: by using for example the
word belief; that is, by saying I am conscious that the
hue of the sky seems the same all over; therefore I
believe that it is the same; or, I am conscious of certain pictures and convictions that look like as though
a perception had been possessed before; therefore I
believe that it has been possessed before; belief not
meaning, as it now sometimes does, my conscious intuitions, except those of this single case, where I am
intuitively conscious of greater or less uncertainties
of one of the facts perceived.
The question would then arise, Is belief in this case
intuitive? I would say, It is. We might divide in
this way then:I. Intuitive Knowledge.
II. Intuitive Belief. And this would have to include Ist, Direct Intuitive Belief; as, for example, where
I see two lines abreast, and believe that they have
equal length; and 2d, Empirical Intuitive Belief;
which is now just that Empirical Knowledge which is
so important in philosophy.
Ist. Direct Intuitive Belief has no outgoings, and
therefore is just what it seems to be at the moment of
perception. It is no more than my simple consciousness of the state of the uncertainty when uncertainty
is my phenomenal consciousness.  I see blue all over




120                   Logic.              [BooK II.
the sky. I am conscious that it seems alike; but it
may not be. I am conscious of what seems a point,
but it may not be. It may be two points minutely
separated. Beliefs like this are innumerable like the
leaves of the forest.
But there is no outcome in them. That is to say
(to explain this twice repeated expression), the moment
we verify the belief, it becomes, as we shall see,
Empirical.
2d. Empirical Intuitive Belief differs from Direct
Intuitive Belief, in the employment of Memory.
Direct Intuitive Belief, though we never get it entirely
separate from Empirical, yet, in theory, would be my
Intuitive Knowledge that those lines, for example,
seem equal, or that that point that I have supposed
seems one. This seeming is in the very glance, without any employment of other impressions. And if I
go nearer to the point, and it seems two, this also is, in
that newer seeming, a Direct Intuitive Belief. Moreover, if I had no Memory, it would be entirely distinct.
An interval of time would have given me opposite and
contradictory impressions. Moreover the actual impression in the case would have been true, as all matters of consciousness are. That is, th'e actual contents
of consciousness, paring off everything aside, are absoluteor undeniable. I am conscious of what I am conscious. I perceive what I do perceive. And if there
was a fine white interval across the spot when I stood
in the first position, and it was marked upon the retina,
and might have been seen if I had perceived it, yet
that does not affect the fact that all that I perceived
reported itself just as I perceived it. And when I
looked again, the two spots were just as I perceived
them. And when I approached again, three spots




CHAP. XIV.]   EnZpirical Knowledge.           I21
might have been developed. Now each separate intuition is Direct. But if I put them together, and go
nearer for a purpose, and still nearer to try again, and
the former is corrected by the later, that becomes Empirical, and Empirical in many ways: that is, it
depends upon the order of' nature, first, as to the continuance of self, second, as to the reliableness of memory, third, as to the continuance of the spots, and a
great many other things. The moment I recede from
what is Direct, I cast myself upon an immense Empirical generalization.
The lines I adverted to are a similar instance.
They look alike. But if I attempt to prove them
alike, what do I do?  I act empirically; that is, I
employ a measure. I lose at once all Direct inspection.
I launch upon a thousand uncertainties. And though
they become practically what we call certain (and
hence claim to be " Knowledge "), yet they are all uncertainties. The stick may have changed. The lines
may have changed. The eye may have changed. The
mind may have changed; and so the memory. I am
conscious of what I perceive'; but everything besides
rests solely upon an order in Nature.
We are prepared now to note the difference
between Intuitive and Empirical Knowledge. We
cannot use that word Belief, though metaphysically it
would be very accurate. It would be displacing old
usage. Belief means sometimes consciousness; and
consciousness means often belief. We could not dislodge such old peculiarities. We must be content to
take language as it is. And we will understand Intui.tive Knowledge as simply consciousness, that is, my
act at the time by which I perceive what I perceive;
and my Empirical Knowledge as also consciousness, as




122                   Logic.               [BOOK II.
nothing conscious is not, but consciousness of intuitive
uncertainties, which, of course, are very many, and consciousness of that class of intuitive uncertainties which
are made less so by the voice of empirical recurrence.
The mind is conscious of some degrees in these
uncertainties; just as it is conscious of some degrees
of black and white. And it is my consciousness
of these degrees, which is as natural as any other
perception, that marks the boundaries of empirical
conviction.
I am not sure that I have made enough of a certain stereoscopic quality that I have noticed. Convictions redouble themselves. Let us look at this more
narrowly.
There can recur anything of which I am conscious.
I am conscious of convictions. I am conscious of general convictions.  I am conscious that when a house
looks in a certain way, I have a conviction that it is
distant. I am conscious when a thought looks in a
certain way, that I have a conviction that it is past.
No matter yet for the genesis of these facts; you
admit that they are conscious. Now, all things conscious can recur.
But if they can recur when so general, they doubtless recurred when more particular. They recurred
in their earliest asseverations.
Let mne explain this.
I see a house. I have a conscious conviction of my
consciousness whatever that consciousness is. I see it
again. I have a conscious conviction again, and
another conviction, viz, the older conviction recurrent.
I see it again. Three convictions! I see it again.
Four! I see a thousand other things. They multiply convictions. They mat themselves together. By




CHAP. XV.]   Intuitive Beliefs So-Called.         123
the law of harmonious association they blend themselves into one. Like six thicknesses of tulle partially
transparent they blend themselves into one brighter
and more solid color. They blend themselves into
universals of actual and instantaneous belief.  And
so perfect is it, this harmonious centring into one, that
men call them original. It is the pride of modern
philosophy to have found out this "' Regulative Faculty," as Hamilton calls it. There never was such a
superb figment. It characterizes the present philosophy more than any other one trait. The schools are
full of it.  It is the convenient pack for all sorts of metaphysical carriage. And in claiming for it antiquity
of date, it is the faith widely most dominant in the
thinking of modern times.
It cannot stand, however, this distinct analysis of
Recurrence.  The coal shows the fern-leaves.  The
man thought, who first looked into the measures, that
it was an original rock, like flint-stone or granite; but
the tell-tale print upon the seams hinted at last at the
discovery. And so our recurrences, matted together
like that ancient vegetation, abstract from themselves
into universals, until the conviction that appears can
hardly be realized as mere recurrent perception.
CHAPTER XV.
INTUITIVE BELIEFS SO-CALLED.
ARISTOTLE gained great influence over the Church;
but in later times, on this very account, and by a
mis-reading of Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, philosophy has been at a discount; and yet, by
a strange caprice, a certain tenet in philosophy in the last
fifty years has been erected almost into a tenet in religion.




124                      Logic.                    [BooK II.
The Church and, in lesser degree, the Schools are
like oysters. They shut more easily than they open.
It is a provision of nature. By a law of the imperilled
mollusk taste regulates its feeding, and taste is made
by what it feeds upon. The oyster, habituated to the
past, snaps itself down to new food, and opens to all
that is old.  We would not have it different.  At the
same time doctrines have to be dispossessed; and this
Kantian belief,* which arrogates as original in the
mind what is called an Intuitive Faculty, if it is, as we
perfectly know, a fiction, gains by this habit. It has
become entrenched in the creed. Theology will confidently tell us that the  reverse  is atheism.  And,
therefore, we must think with infinite care.  Philosophy
has had ill luck on the side of theism. Coming in she
has been resisted, and going out she has been clung to
as one with our salvation.
One device is always acceptable; and that is, to be
perfectly fair with what we attack, and that we shall
attempt religiously toward the faith in question.  We
will consider first what it is not.  We shall consider
second what it distinctly is. We shall consider third
what it says for itself, and fourth what can be said
against it, and fifth whether it be an unnecessary doctrine. The first three points belong to this chapter..
The fourth and fifth to the two that follow.
I. In the first place, Intuitive Belief is not oldfashioned intuition.  I do not believe the sky is blue;
I see it. And to make this clear let me settle ambi* " Thus it is that Hume became the cause or the occasion of all
that is of principal value in our more recent metaphysics. Hume is the
parent of the philosophy of Kant, and, through Kant, of the whole philosophy of Germany: he is the parent of the philosophy of Reid and
Stewart in Scotland, aid of all that is of preeminent note in the metaphysics of France and Italy."-Hamilton's Lectures (Am. Ed.), p. 545.




CHAP. XV.]   Intuitive Beliefs So-Called.        125
guities.  Blueness has three meanings.  First it is a
sense.  I do not believe in there being a blue.  I see
it as an actual sensation. Again, blueness is on the
sky, painted on it, and included in it by the Lexicon.
The peach, as we have already seen, includes its ruddiness. The blueness is a part of the heavens. This is
Philology at her work, not Metaphysics. The name
heavens includes the blueness. This, therefore, is the
same as the first. I do not believe merely. I see:
and so am conscious. The third sense is merely empirical; and, therefore, not a consciousness, and not
an intuition, but only the imagined power the air has
to' project blue upon the eye.
Then, higher: taste! I see a lily. What are we
to understand by beauty? To prevent mistakes we
must again distinguish. Beauty is either first, sensational, or second, what is mere dictionary-work, the
sense transferred into the object, or third, a power.
The last is not intuitive, but only the gift, empirically
thought of, that the lily has to awaken the emotion.
The first views the emotion itself. The second views
the same thing precisely, only transferred by human
speech to the surface of the lily. Each use is reasonable. But the first and second are mere intuitions.
The third is an empiricism. So that there is no room
for Intuitive Beliefs.
Again, a story higher. Let us come into the
domain of right. This is not a color. It is mobile.
It is the quality of an emotion. * Blueness is a painting on the air. Beauty is a painting on the flower.
That is, they can be transferred  that way.  But
right is painted on an emotion.  There is another
difference: —We may have an emotion at an emotion
* This we shall see hereafter (see Ethics).




126                    Logic.               [BOOK II.
in the respect of right; not in the same way in the
respect of beauty.  For example; I love others.
That is an emotion. In that emotion is a conscious
right.  Again, I love that right.  That is another
emotion. Like blue upon the sky, right, whatever that
consciously is, is seen to be upon this also. And now,
the kindred ambiguities. Right is either the conscious
nature of the good emotion, or else the conscious nature
of the good emotion transferred as mere dictionarywork to an emotion looked at, or, thirdly, the quality
of the emotion, or its imagined power, to awaken the
sense of right, or breed the conception of it in the
mind. These are mere differences of meaning. If we
had more words, we could have a word for each of
them. In either case there can be no Intuitive Belief.
The first right is a consciousness, as much so as of blue
or beauty. The second right is objectwise, but the
same precisely as the other. The third right is the
mere power to produce the others, viz. the fact about
the emotion that it does produce a sense of right, as
the lily does the emotion of the beautiful. We must
wade through the dictionary, therefore, before we can
reach the high ground, that right, like beauty, is of
the contents of consciousness.
II. That Intuitive Belief is not old-fashioned intuition, will' help amazingly in the inquiry, what Intuitive Belief really is. Old-fashioned intuition lays hold
of beauty. It looks directly into it, as a matter of consciousness. It reveals it just as it is. It becomes aware
of all of it just as it stands. For beauty is a certain
tang of sense, like flavor of Johannisberg grapes, and
there is nothing that can see it but intuition, and it
sees it consciously, and sees the whole of it. But now
take Causality. It is so different from beauty that Sir




CHAP. XV.]   Intuitive Beliefs So-Called.      127
William Hamilton could say (we think mistakenly)-" It
is now universally admitted that we have no perception
of the connection of cause and effect in the external
world." Lectures (Am. Ed.)p. 54I. Intuitive Beliefs lay
hold of cause. See then the distinct difference between
Intuitive Beliefs, and what we mean by old-fashioned
intuition. Let me give other cases. Intuitive Beliefs
lay hold of substance. They declare that qualities
require substance. And this now will give us a fine
opportunity to show what these credences most definitely are. Given qualities, which I most directly
inspect; given, for example, red and hardness —of
which I am directly conscious, and the mind has a believing faculty, by which it posits substance; though,
as Sir William would declare, we have no immediate
perception of substance in itself. Let us make this very
clear. Given motion or sound, the sense of these things
is directly conscious. It is therefore what we call an oldfashioned intuition. But the cause of these things we
are not conscious of. We only assert it. We are
conscious only of the assertion. The belief in this
cause is an assertion in the reason. Such is the doctrine. We are born into this world with this appanage
of thought. Given any experience of effect, we opine
a cause. And we do so necessarily and by force of an
original intuition, which believes that a cause has sway.
But we must be careful of our specifyings: —In the
first place, men are not agreed as to these original
truths. Their categories are endless. I have never
seen two that were the same in every particular. In
the second place, the Belief itself is pictured differently.
I cannot define it, because Hamilton, for example,
would denounce me as positively unjust. There has
been a flux since the days of Kant. So that Reid and




128                   Logic.               [BOOK II.
Reid's commentator have been opposite in belief.
This contrariety is indicative of mistake. And Philosophy may well come in like a mother upon two quarrelling girls, and snatch the doll from both of them.
The account of Sir William Hamilton that cause is
from an inability to think the opposite, and the account
of Thomas Reid that cause is a square-faced original
and positive belief, are so plain-facedly quite different,
that it requires a good-natured polemic to unite them
doctrinally.
WtVe have, therefore, rather sketched the doctrine by
example.
But we do insist most positively upon a third point.
There has been a shuffle in the game. Eluding even
first-class philosophers, a-fusion has occurred of these
so called intuitions with other positive intuitions, but
which are of a far different class. It is like the sale
of a watch on Pearl Street. The watch is really gold,
and is of an uncommon value, and is sold for a song;
but the buyer never gets it; for when it is the time
that it should be delivered, there is a shuffle with
something else.
We cannot move a step without making this clear.
That two and two are four is obvious, and we are
born to believe it. That things that are equal to the
same thing are equal to each other; that the whole is
greater than its part; that it is impossible for a thing
to be and not to be,-is intuitive enough. Call it what
you please, a man had better be dead than not have
some faculty to tell him such things as these. So the
Regulative Faculty of Hamilton, and the Vernunft of
Kant, and the necessity-belief of Leibnitz, things
seriously different, and yet, as we have seen, claiming
to be the same thing, have at least been the same




CHAP. XV.]   Intuitive Beliefs So-Called.      I29
thing in this, that they have swept into the same indiscriminated heap two entirely different classes of affirmation.
That the whole is greater than its part is one thing.
That every change must have a cause is a very different thing. These two things are metaphysical antipodes. And yet the two have been swept into the
one basket.  I know not that any one has detected it.
This undetected introspective legerdemain has had
unspeakable results. The one sort of notion is necessary. We are forced to have it. It is, therefore, universal. And seeming to be born with a power to see
such things, some native-born faculty seems to be confessed. If any one seems to hesitate about cause,
some other fish in the basket is brought up, and some
such truth as that it is impossible for the same thing
to be and not to be is made to knock down opposition,
if experience is pleaded as sufficient for that other
asseveration.
The thing is a shuffle.
The remedy is to upset the basket.
Our right is to sort those fish out.
Here are two perfectly distinct classes.
One is of the sort, —It is impossible for the same
thing to be and not to be. The other is of the sort,that every change must have a cause.
ONE IS A TRUISM. That is now the solution. That
the whole is greater than a part means that it is the
whole.'That things that are equal to the same thing
are equal, means simply that they are equal. The thing
is chop-logic. There is no aggression in the thought,
and therefore of course a man is born to see it. But
the truth that a change must have a cause is different.
It is aggressive. This ought to have been the intui6*




I30                   Logic.               [BOOK II.
tion aimed at. That those others are Intuitive Beliefs
so-called, I cannot deny. That they are not included
by Hamilton, I cannot assever. They are unquestionably. I can only say,-They ought not to be. And
whether they ought or not, we at least shall treat
them separately. One sort are truisms, and therefore
are not Intuitive Beliefs, but simple consciousnesses.
The other sort are discovered facts, heaven-wide from
the first, and really the field on which the Kantian battle will have to be arrayed.
III. The second point, therefore, viz. What are
Intuitive Beliefs? prepares us aptly for the third
point, viz. What are the proofs of them?  I. And
first we are told that we have this regulative vision,'because we are conscious of its exercise. And here at
once we must make a distinction.  I know that I am
conscious of the vision that two and two are four, and
that an apple occupies space, and that perceiving occupies time. I know, therefore, that I cognize space
and time. I know that the apple is extended, and I
know that the extended apple is nothing more than
the apple occupying space, and that the continuous
perception is nothing more than the perception occupying time. Space and time, therefore, are consciousnesses. Moreover they are not beings: they are not entities; so that in existence they are nothing; they are
mere abstractions, and, therefore, conscious thoughts,
and, as applied to objects, conscious facts. Space is no
more an essence by itself than extension is; or time, than
continuousness is; and that they are infinite, means
only what may be said of any consciousness; for sound
and taste and angularity and tint and sphericity and
surface may be made various in infinite ways, and
endure through infinite dates, and be abstracted from




CHAP. XV.]   Inftuitive Beliefs So-Called.       I31
for infinite varieties of idea. Whether we can conceive the infinite is mere child's talk. The peasantman might scout it, if he merely had nerve to think.
Infinitude is a mere made up idea. And having put it
beyond conception by its very terms, viz. as devoid of
boundary, half the questions that are built upon it are
the mere dazing of the mind, as when we chafe and rub
our eyes, and then amuse ourselves with the confusion of their first artificially palsied vision.
This obvious class are undoubted intuitions. And
so of others that we mentioned before. That the
whole is greater than its parts; that whatever is, is;
or, set down with mere verbal variety, that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be; and
an infinite horde of just such tautological expressions,are undoubtedly Intuitive Beliefs; and that, because
we are conscious of it. So that unquestionably this
first proof does apply to these truistic expressions.
But then we mention that fact simply to get ridof it.
These beliefs are conscious simply because they are consciousnesses. And they are consciousnesses all through.
They are not beliefs as the Kantians intend. They
are not the mind projecting itself ex se by the force of
an original belief; but merely the mind turning round
upon a hinge, or rather exhibiting its consciousnesses
when they are merely assertatory of themselves.
The force of the first proof, therefore, we only
dignify with treatment when it applies to the second
class,-truths that are really aggressive; and here it is
stoutly pressed, encouraged though I feel sure by the
confusion of this class with  the other.' Quality
requires substance.' This is a specimen of the more
genuine class. This the Kantian calls an Intuitive
Belief. Let us state another.'Change implies cause.'




132                    Logic.               [BOOK II.
This also asserts something. Now, says the Kantian,
-Cause is not a consciousness, and I am not directly
conscious of the cause itself; but I believe its existence. And the same of substance.  I am born with
a faculty such that, on experience of effects, I assert
both cause and substance. And the first proof is, that
I am conscious I do. This the first proof. And we
lay it away in its distinctness for future refutation.
2. The second proof professes to be different.
Consciousness, these new philosophers declare, is
an evanescent vision. It is not granite. It is not God.
If therefore I am conscious only of my consciousness,
and if now it is distinctly declared that consciousness
fills all our thinking, and if this further is so much the
case that consciousness is conscious only of itself, how
prythee does it get beyond it?
3. This might seem to vary in a third proof. There
is a cosmos: is there not?   That question these
philosophers may most rightfully press. If there be
a cosmos, might we not have a need to know it? —to
know God, if there be one? nay, to know self? Here
the advantage seems to be enormous. If there be a
universe, is it not better that I should believe it? The
last argument was,-Do I not believe it? This argument is, Do I not imperatively need to? And now the
whole presses,-How can I believe in anything, if it
be cosmos, if it be actual existence, if it be abiding
rock, or if it be Eternal Spirit, if it be demonstrable
that my knowledges are cut down to what is consciousness, and I have no power per saltumn to lay
hold of being?
It is on this rock that the intuitionist scoffs at his
empirical opponent. All seems a truism. Thinking
is thinking and being is being. It seems as easy to




CHAP. XV.]   Intuitive Beliefs So-Called.     I33
make one out of the other as Cheops out of soap-bubbles. And it makes men arrogant. How can they be
thought insulting if they refuse to argue? If we have
built a high fence, and made the absurdity the more
distinct, stating, till men have no power to restate it,
that consciousness is everything that is in the current,
and then following into the very region of relief, and
cutting off all possibility of it by saying that consciousness can only be conscious when it is conscious of itself,
we seem to have written our own fate, and to have
announced that unless Cheops be consciousness we may
stand and look at it and there may no pyramid exist.
4. Then a fourth proof, the argument of Leibnitz.
Suppose I could see cause. Suppose Hamilton were
wrong (Lectures p. 545), and it were not " universally
[to be] admitted that we have no perception of the
connection of cause and effect," we are now to climb
to the very topmost argument as all these Kantian
Intuitionists profess. Suppose it were admitted that
we were even conscious of causality. The great invention of Leibnitz, so these men declare, is what
they call the argument from  necessity.  It is the
prince-dictum of modern times. It amounts to this,that if we had seen substance, and been conscious
of cause, if there were no difficulty in foro conscientire, but we had looked them to the bottom, still there
is a need of them that the mere sight of them could
never give; there is a 6of which quite transcends the
simple Ov; so that had we seen cause a thousand times,
an averment would be missing that every change is
bound to have one.
5. And now, one more formula of proof. This
averment, we are taught, is Intuitive Belief. And
another view is the doctrine of universals.




134                    Logic.               [BOOK II.
I see red. I see blue. I see both a myriad of
times. Each time I see them something asserts gross
particles behind them. That something is Intuitive
Belief. And yet there is still another ground for saying so: at least so it is pretended; and that is the
doctrine of universals.  If I could see them  without
such a faculty, I would still need it in the gross, for
there is something that asserts that the gross particles
must be always present. I might see them a thousand
times, and yet that experientially would not decree
them universal. I see a sunrise a thousand times, and
thereanent make no prediction that it will be always.
But I see the red and blue a thousand times, and
immediately assever, that universally the red and the
blue will ever more require the presence of substance.
Hence, therefore, fifthly, there must be Intuitive
Beliefs.
CHAPTER XVI.
NO SUCH THING AS INTUITIVE BELIEFS, SO-CALLED.
I. Now, the first thing we do with all these arguments is to pronounce them the same.
The first, viz. that we are conscious of Intuitive
Beliefs, is the same precisely as the second. The
second is, that we have arrived at the belief of being,
and could not have done so without these intuitive
cognitions.  But that we are conscious of Intuitive Beliefs, and conscious of thoughts that could not have
been obtained without them, mean precisely the same
thing. That I am conscious of Intuitive Beliefs
means that I believe, for example, in cause and substance. That I believe in cause and substance, and
therefore must have just such beliefs, means in the




CHAP. XVI.]    No Intuitive Beliefs.            135
Kantian dialect simply that I am  conscious of them.
If any one doubts that this is so, let him try to put a
knife-blade of difference between these two proofs
after he has carefully studied them. Again if there be
an external world, the saltus from  the within to the
without must be made by just such a faculty. But
where is the force of this third proof? Simply an invincible belief. I believe that there is an external
world, and therefore am  conscious of such a belief.
So Leibnitz's proof: a cause is necessary: there is an
element of necessity in these Intuitive Beliefs. This
is the fourth proof. But what does that amount to?
This,-that I consciously believe so. But that was
stated in the first. That I consciously believe there
must be causality includes the second proof,-that
I know  causality, and the third proof,-that there
notoriously is causality, and the fourth proof,-that
there must be causality, viz. that it is consciously necessary, and now also the fifth proof, viz. that it is universal; the Intuitive Belief that the existence of a
cause is necessary being identical in its very nature
with the conviction that its necessity must be universal.
The proofs of Kantianism, therefore, are all a unit.
II. But so, in the second place, are the refutations.
I am to be taught that I know the ego by an
Intuitive Faculty.
Or, keeping out still among externals, I am to be
taught that I know cause by an Intuitive Faculty.
Now, WHAT DISTINCTLY IS IT THAT I KNOW? That
is the crowbar that is to pull down the building. To
know a thing I must know it. To believe a thing,
even though that be the phrase under which I hide
the indistinctness, I must know, to some measure at
least, what it is that I believe in. This was the tremor




i36                  Logic.              [BOOK II.
that had reached Sir William.  He had confessed
boldly,-" We have no perception of the connection
of cause and effect " (Lect. p. 54I). Nevertheless he
admits that "we cannot believe without some consciousness or knowledge of the object of the belief"
(Logic, p. 385). Whereupon he does not go bravely
and ask (what would explode his theory)-' How then
can we believe the connection of cause and effect?'
But he does say, and that toward the close of his
career,-" Just here is one of the most difficult problems of which Metaphysics attempts the solution"
(Logic, p. 385).
Still, let us complete-the argument. To believe in
cause I must know something of what cause is. You
may say,-No; it transcends idea, and is in the region
of mere conviction. But you forget. Conviction of
what? This is the difficulty that pressed Sir William
Hamilton. You forget that c-a-u-s-e is an English
vocable. To believe in five characters is to believe
incontinently nothing. We force the answer,-What
is it you intuitively believe? And there are few cases
where a system lies so naked to the lance.- A theory
grown reverend with age is really quite open to a
child's undoing.
To believe, I must in some measure see. The
measure that I see is the measure of my practical conviction. Tell me how I see, and I will tell you how I
get my practical belief. I cannot consciously believe
till I in some measure consciously know. Now I may
stammer in the genesis of this last, but no matter; I
must wait for it. The thought must come up before I
can believe about it; and when it has come up,. I no
longer need a Regulative Faith, but I get my belief
precisely where I get my knowledge.




CHAP. XVI.]    No Intuitive Beliefs.           137
III. Nor will it weaken my point the least if I go
through the five proofs, and diffuse my argumentation
through every one of them.
I. It is said in the first place that I am conscious of
Intuitive Beliefs. What does that mean?  Does it
mean that I am conscious of a Regulative Faculty?
Hardly.  It means that I am conscious of an exercise
that points to the possession of such an original gift.
What is that exercise?  The exercise of believing is,
of course, beyond all manner of question, simple belief.
Now, as we showed, consciousness never gets beyond
the contents of consciousness. What I intuitively
know is sheerly the sum of the soul's perceiving. But
there has always been an attempt like this, viz. to
project the consciousness; to confess what seems to be
plain, that we are conscious only that we are conscious,
but that one of our conscious perceivings is, that we
look beyond our consciousness, and that we see things,
or, to take shelter in a fog, that we believe things, that
are beyond the contents of our consciousness: that
this is the very thing we are conscious of. But now,
like the plunger of a pump, the inquiry eternally follows, What is that we believe in?  Sir William Hamilton confesses everything. " We can[not] be conscious
of an act without being conscious of the object to
which that act is relative" (Lect. xii. p. I47).  But
as Kantians differ, and bewilderedly refuse to follow
any one leader, we will urge what all agree in in the
second proof. They are forced to admit an object;
and it is some knowledge of the object that is the
ground for their belief under the second argumentation.
2. Now, what is that object?
The actualness with which I believe in the external




I38                    Logic.               [BoOK II.
world is the ground for that scoff, —How can I build
Cheops with soap-bubbles? Consciousness being an
evanescent dream, how, if I know no more than consciousness, can I transmute that into granite?  Of
course I have a right to ask, What is granite? It is a
difficulty that the vernzuzft men will have to meet.
How idle to triumph over me, and say, I have dropped
out the very universe, and, when I turn to be taught,
find no universe;'for undoubtedly Hamilton is right,
that to be conscious that I believe I must be conscious
of the object of the belief, so far at least as to have
some idea.
3. And to make that plainer yet, let us go to the
still grosser attitude of proof. There is a universe, is
there not? Now, no matter for the belief. The object
of these men is to press the issue of faith or scepticism.
Let us not bother about beliefs. Such is their position. Is there not a cosmos? If there is, everything
is manifest; for consciousness is not being; and to get
intimations of the without, out of consciousness which
is the within, involves the very saltus of Intuitive
Beliefs.
So cosmos,-what is it?  We have seen that names
take in qualities. A chair takes in yellowness. A
stove takes in blackness and rotund dinginess and
shape. I mean that the genesis of thought has carried
into nouns the properties under which the things discovered themselves.
So, of self. It has absorbed consciousness. This,
which is but of the usage, nevertheless clears the metaphysic; for when I speak of knowing cosmos, I mean
-a thousand qualities in addition to the ens, whatever
that quiddity may be. When, therefore, I speak of
knowing cosJmzos, let it be remembered first of all, that




CHAP. XVI.]    No Intuitive Beliefs,.         I39
I am conscious of those myriad traits which the Dictionary has actually engulphed in the names of being.
Of the quiddity which is really in dispute this may
be said, that it would be an amazing comfort if we
could philosophize it under some mere believing. Men
do such things. Lecturers in many a school relegate
what they do not understand to some " law of nature."
And we plead this as a positive objection. There was
too muck need for this doctrine. The mortar seems to
have gone in because there lacked a stone. If the
ghost. could have risen unbidden, instead of in the
creak and shuffle of the scenes, it would have inspired
more faith. As it is, it is the very necessity of the
belief, though in a sense grosser than that pleaded
by Leibnitz, that becomes prima facie an occasion
of misgiving.
That apart, however.
The paring down to the very quiddity itself, helps
us; for it clears the question,-What is it that you distinctly believe? If I believe so consciously in matter
as to make it atheism  to deny the faculty, of course I
must live up to so much boldness, and be able to show
my neighbors what it is that I so consciously believe.
You may say, I do not know the dinzg an sick, but
I know the diong. Well, what is the ding-?  In other
words, we can force the Kantian to say what he believes.
If he believes, he knows what he believes. If he does
not know, he is trifling with us. If he knows what he
believes, how did he find it out? Let him set that into
the light, and there will be no need of a doctrine of
original convictions.
4. But rallying to another point, he says, —what if
he did know, that would not compass the doctrine of
Leibnitzizan necessity.  He has in fact abnegated this.




I40                   Logic.              [BooK II.
For if he refuses to tell what he believes, its necessity
or non-necessity are not a question. Still let us do all
we can. Let us call the unknown quiddity, x. Now he
says, if I had seen x a thousand times, that would not
pronounce it necessary. This is the celebrated doctrine.
If I had seen a sun-rise a thousand times, that would not
reach the Leibnitzian affirmance, for it does not grow
of repetition. But if I see an effect once, presto I aver a
cause. Here is the triumph. I see the heavens blue
from infancy to age; but if I woke up to-morrow, and
saw them green, I could not complain. They are alike
experiences. But cause,-that is a different matter.
And so of substance. Suppose I could see substance,
and it was decked with qualities, that would not make it
necessary. Were it seven times a day, and seven times
a day more, nay seventy times a minute, it would not
begin to become necessary to thought. Where is the
difference, therefore,-between a sun-rise, which I have
seen a myriad of times, and a change which I may have
seen never, and which yet, if I hear of it but once, I
pronounce determinately to require causation? Where
is the difference?
Why just nowhere. That is my answer.
And now it must vie in force with the single argument to which we before alluded.
Let us look at that.
The argument to which we before alluded was, We
have none of these Intuitive Beliefs because they give
us no means of cognizing their objects. Then, if we
have no means of cognizing their objects, a fortiori
have we none of cognizing the necessity of their
objects; and this will appear on independent trial.
Let it be understood, we utterly deny any Leibnitzian necessity. If I see Orion a million of times, I do




CHAP. XVI.]    No iztuitive Beliefs.           I4I
not say, Orion must necessarily have his belt; for I
may wake up at midnight, and the belt may be no
longer in the heavens.  This therefore with most
people is no Leibnitzian belief. But so it is in respect
to effects. If I had seen an effect no oftener than I
had seen Orion, my conviction would be the same.
Effect is a mere experience. The thought that it looks
for a cause by a congenital belief, is an absurd and
impossible figment. It looks for a cause by every
imaginable experience. And if any one says, Experience never can be total, I answer, Nor is the conviction. I deny that a jet of being is unthinkable. That
bread should suddenly start up; that a loaf should
spring upon my table; that rocks should rise upon
my field,-are not things that my mind has visions
about one way or the other. It has a mighty experience that such things cannot happen; but sheerly
that they cannot, by the force of any native power to
know,-I deny that there is any such consciousness.
If any one presses the fact, it must be discrimnen
simplex between his mind and me. I have no such
consciousness. In fact, to have consciousnesses they
must be conscious facts. And to have facts, they
must be conscious pictures in my experience.
But, to carry the war into Africa; how do you
dispose of God? Is not He an effect? You say, No;
an effect is that which is caused. 0, then, I grant the
truth of your proposition. Everything that is caused
is caused; that of course. But if in effects we can
include the greatest of all existences, viz. the Almighty,
then of two things one; either the mind is a nice theological sense fixing God in His niche by an innate
detection of His history; taking the most complex of
all results, viz. the detection of such a Power, and




I42                  Logic.              [BooK It.
finding the mind prepared for it by unexampled and
immediate exceptions, or else God Himself and all
His creatures are just matters of experience, and the
laws of one and the laws of the other rise upon us
just as they do rise, simply as a fact both revealed
and experienced.
But says one, provoked by such folly, is there no
necessary truth? And how. does man ever discover
it? Take the case that two and two make four, can
experience teach it? Things that are equal to the
same thing are equal to each other? Suppose we had
seen that since we were born, would that be needful,
or would that be competent, to explain it or to show
it to be necessary? And how absurd, therefore, this
empirical conceit, when all men in all ages have seen
deeper than their sight, and more than the mere
pictures of their phenomenal experience.
Now, here is a mixture to which we have already
alluded. Philosophy has, played false, and by a fresh
shuffle has thrown in a new trick of conscious appearances.
They are not experiences. They are not the other
thing. They are not one thing or the other as to having any philosophic pith or any bearing whatever upon
the things at issue. They are mere truisms. And the
slight is, to take things, of course intuitive, but which
mean no more than blue is blue, or than joy is pleasant,
and, because they are intuitive, to huddle them in
incontinently among these other propositions. That
the whole is greater than its part, means nothing more
than that it is what it is. And to make that tally with
every effect having a cause, is to bring live ducks down
from the heavens by the plain wooden things that we
throw as a decoy into the water.




CHAP. XVI.]     NTo Intuitive Beliefs.            I43
The proposition, Things that are equal to the
same thing are equal to each other, means simply
that they a.re equal to the same thing, or simply
that they are equal.
So that we might formally announce that the truths
said to be original are of two classes, one simply of
experience, such as that every effect must have a cause,
and the other simply identical, as that black is not
white, or that it is impossible for the same thing to be
and not to be. Unquestionably these quite identical
things require an original gift; but it is the same gift
that it requires to see green to be green, or to see
round to be not square, viz. the gift that it requires
originally to see green or round.
4. The fourth argument, —that, experience could
never decide upon universaes, is still easier to dispose
of:-N either could an original belief. In fact this
mark of universality is mere rubbish after Leibnitz
introduced the doctrine of necessity.  The mark of
universality is not one that men dream of contemplating in itself. The plea is: necessary, and therefore
universal. All necessary truth is universal because it
is necessary. All universal truth is necessary because
it is necessary. Necessity, therefore, is all the mark.
And universality, that is, universality in time, or universality in space, is not a thing that the mind can
compass in itself, but can only dream of as inferred
from its necessity. Necessity, therefore, is the only
mark of original truths.
Now, distinctly, we admit necessity in the instance
of two and two are four, and John and Robert are not
Jim; and therefore we admit these truths to be universal. We profess to believe, and that originally, that
it will always come out that way. For, though we have




I44                  Logic.             [BooiK II.
not seen all the Jims and all the Roberts, yet there is
a necessity for our belief and that simply on the
ground that Jim is Jim, and Robert Bob. But that I
have an innate belief that cause is necessary, and an
innate belief that substance is necessary, and an innate
incompetence to imagine a rock or a loaf as possessed
of neither; that my mind originally evicts all possibility of phenomena without substance, and all possibility
of a rock without origin just looming into space, are
dogmas that we utterly deny. The mind has no rock
and no loaf as an understood phenomenon at any rate.
And when Sir William Hamilton perfectly revolutionizes the whole, and says our original belief is not an
old fashioned thought of cause, but some Hamiltonian
one that he would substitute, he shows how arbitrary
is the wMhole conception. The mind, according to
him, has an original belief in the sameness of the sum
of being! that there goes out of the cause just as
much as is lodged in the effect I! and a whole parcel of
other aphorisms, which are just as much true of the
mind as that it is born with an original conviction of
the proper length and breadth and thickness of a brick,
or that it was born with an original norm as to whether
there were nut-galls in the hand-writing upon the
wall, or as to whether there were carbon in the angels
at Joseph's tomb.
All this about necessity is absurd;'and the way its
advocates vary when they come to the categories of
belief, shows that it is an unsound induction. Cause,
like blue or green, is a thing that we have merely
observed. If all things were blue, there are men that
would enter it among the elements of thought. And
if, as in the instance of cause, it could be predicated of
the spiritual world, there would be men to argue that




CIAP. XVII.] Intuitive Beliefs Unnecessary.     I45
the creation required blue, or, perhaps, the Almighty
required blue, and that we were born with that elemental belief.
For though I hold that no event, other than the
continued existence of God, ever did happen without
an adequate cause, I hold so from no native belief
(particularly, as my very thought of cause is patched
and imperfect and variously put together), but from an
absolutely entire experience, which has had positively
no exception; and from  what IPhave known of cause;
and from what I have seen of the requirements of its
nature. In stating this in the next chapter we shall
complete our adverse argument.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE DOCTRINE OF INTUITIVE BELIEFS NOT NECESSARY FOR PURPOSES
OF EXPLANATION.
I. IF we go forward into a system of Ontology
(Book III.) which shows distinctly how the idea
of being could originate, this, if it say nothing of Intuitive Beliefs, must explode them  better than any
other argument. We might omit this chapter, therefore, and trust for its results to the whole that is to
follow.
II. Again; the argument behind us! If the " Beliefs " we are instructed to imagine are not efficient, in
that case too they are not necessary. The excursive
leap, the saltus from the within to the without, may be
ever so much vital, still if the Regulative Faculty will
not make it, it is not the faculty that is needed. Here,
therefore, we might pause also. A man's leg might
have to be cut off; but if a knife is without an edge,
that knife at least is not necessary. This chapter,
7




I46                   Logic.                [BooK II.
therefore, is really superfluous, if we are punctual and
complete in the rest of the argumentation.
III. But error is impatient.  It settles itself in long
dynasties.  If error is prescriptive; if it has held the
best minds of the world; if it has struck its roots into
letters, and, what is more than that, if it has got itself
ennobled as one with the religions of men, we must
not wait for the leisure of our demonstration. The
waters may burst a pipe, which, if they would wait,
might be sufficient to carry them off. We must reply
to the first gusts of displeasure. And here are two of
them,-first that it is imprudent to cry, Nay, to some
power which the world has certainly found to carry us
from the phenomenal to the real; and, second, most
especially impudent, when, not only as fact, but as demonstration, we have not dreamed of any knowledge
of the real from what is phenomenal alone.
Let us look at this.
I. The world is certainly carried from the phenomenal to the real. There is that much of preascertained
argument. Now grant, it may be said, that Intuitive
Beliefs are hazily exhibited; still, there must be something. Consciousness cannot be being. Consciousness, if it only sees consciousness, cannot see being;
and that it does see being having been the conviction
of our race, there must be something (better or worse
in its expounding) that answers to what we have been
groping after in Intuitive Beliefs.
This is the first impatiency.
And the second is like it:-2.  How do you arrive
at the real? Demonstrably you cannot, empirically.
Consciousness is one thing. Being is quite a different
thing. Let us force admissions as we go. Consciousness is a perceptive gleam. Self is a real entity.




CHAP. XVII.]  Intuitive Beliefs Unnecessary.     I47
Unless there be a gnosis that projects me out of my
thought, how can I conceive of self? Let us consider
both impatient appeals to us under one.
(I) I may say, as belonging to the philology of the
case, that all men conceive of substance as both phenomenal and real. A -star, even to a philosopher, is
partly a bright light. This we shall often advert to.
As an actual fact (I speak now  as apart from your
philosphy) you conceive a chair as yellowness as well
as scientific substance. In other words you put together all you know of it, and, phenomenal as well as
real, the whole bundle you call a chair. And so of
self. It is not the scientific ens; above all, it is not
the Pantheistic Power: indeed, it is not the veritable
I,-but it is the consciousness and that. Or rather, to
utter the real philosophic fact, the veritable I, as we
become entitled to call it by the usages of speech, is
really, like the yellow chair, the enzs AND its qualities.
The philosopher (the very best) cannot fail to understand that his conscious meaning for the word self is a
painted entity; that is, a ghostly entity with the consciousness annexed. So then, the very Lexicon entitling me to be conscious of myself, I must remember
that carefully,-that I make the trajectory from the
within to the without first of all by carrying the within
into the without. This is not important philosophically: I mean, except in the way of correcting our
mistakes. But it shows how error fastens. I really
see being if yellow color is made a part of it. I really
see self if consciousness, as with every thinker, sticks
fast as an ingredient.  But the chair aback of the
yellow color, and the self as the dunamis of thought,
metaphysically are something different; and when




148                   Logic.              [BooR II.
these are in the case, Intuitive Beliefs are the things
dispatched to go and fetch them.
Here comes the appeal,-' How do you empirical
men dream of these hidden entities? You believe in
God. Did you ever see Him? You believe in cause.
Do you comprehend the whole of it? Nay, do you
perceive the least of it? If " Intuitive Beliefs " are to
be exploded just to the extent that we cannot conceive
their subjects, how are any beliefs to flourish outside
of actual perception?'
Now, there is the very point. The doctrine of
this treatise is that no belief is to flourish outside of
positive consciousness.
There is nothing consciously in the mind but
Perception.
There is nothing intuitively known but Perceptions.
There is nothing consciously believed, except either
first what I consciously introspect, and that I prefer to
call knowledge, or secondly, as a part of this, so much
of what I consciously introspect as is uncertain, and
whose uncertainty can be measured in my consciousness, and thus become the object of probable knowledge, or what it would have been philosophical to call,
simply belief,
The uncertainty of doves being alike has formerly
been instanced. That they are alike is probable; that
they are unlike is probable. The probability is present
to my consciousness. So now (what is wider in its empirical range), the uncertainty that an order, if it is
once observed, will be observed repeatedly. The uncertainty is empirical; the uncertainty is conscious.
Here it is that the two theatres come together. It is
the same with cause; only in the instance of cause the
uncertainty is so diminished by the effect of repetition




CHAP. XVII.] Intuitive Beliefs Unnecessary.     I49
that the empiricism answers all the ends of positive
and certain knowledge.
Carry this into theology.
I cannot see God, but I trace Him in an order hereafter to be explained. I cannot trace Him wholly, but
so as I fail to trace, it is absurd to say that I believe.
I believe more than I know. but I believe it nakedly in
that shape, that there is something more than I know;
and I believe that for conscious cause. I k elieve
all the analogies I trace, just as I believe the ears and
the head of the cow standing in the gate;' nay, I believe the ears and the head where I know it cannot be
a cow, and that they are head and ears that I cannot
entirely shape or conceive in my expectation. So I
believe in God like a man, because I trace him through
man's nature.  I believe in God dzfferent from man, because I trace the need of difference. I believe in God
higher and holier and something altogether beyond
man, for that I have traced in the analogy of Nature.t
And yet beyond the fact of this beyondness, that is,
beyond the fact of more and wider, and this beyondness
itself a dictum of solid orders already traced, I believe
in nothing for which I have not an experienced reason.
And, therefore, I believe in God no further nor other
than in the way I know Him.
And so of Cause.  I believe in Cause; and why?
Because I have some idea of it?: But do I believe no
further? No. Except just in that shape: I do believe
FURTHER. That is, from the very amplest tracings of
analogy I believe there is mnore in cause than I am
able to uncover. If you retort and say, Why not let
* See B. 2, chap. x.
t That is, as we shall see hereafter in the " Order of Perception."
t See Ontology




I50                   Logic.               [BooK II.
us have this ulterior belief? I say, For the want of
grounds for it. I base this thought of more upon trains
of consciousness. I have this thought of more. Whereas in your case you have absolutely nothing. By your
own anterior reasoning you believe that of which you
have no idea.
(2.) To come back to a more distinct answer to
what has been asked, we take the leap to being by its
ANALOGY with what we have seen in our consciousness.
We will trace this in the Book that follows.
(3.) And, last of all, we add to it by the idea of
MORE. This itself is a dictum of analogy. We have
no intuitive belief that there are phenomena and more,
but we have an experienced discovery that there are
analogies traceable without; and that these trace still
further analogies, and these further (dependent on the
uniformity of nature), and these further still; till like
the x. y. z. in an equation, the color fades out, and the
result that our empiricism holds, is rather the counter
for a thought, than any distinct self-conscious idea.
This, which we can now but faintly trace, will more
distinctly appear under the head of Ontology.




BOOK III.
ONTOLOGY;
OR, THE
SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS THE
KNOWLEDGE OF BEING.
CHAPTER I.
ONTOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLOGY.
ONTOLOGY is the Science of Being. Being is either
self or not-self. The doctrine of Psychology is, that
there is nothing consciously in the mind but perception.
If there is nothing consciously in the mind but perception, then self and not-self are perception, or they are
not consciously in the mind.
If any one says, There is nothing consciously in our
minds but perception, but perception of being is one
of our conscious perceptions and therefore we are
conscious of being, we turn to our former arguments.
The whole of perception is consciousness, and the
whole of consciousness is perception. If the whole
of perception is consciousness, then we do not perceive
being unless the self or the not-self is throughout a
consciousness, because moreover on the other hand
the whole of consciousness is perception, and if the
whole of consciousness is perception, then we are not
conscious of being, unless the whole of being is a
mere perceiving.




152                   Ontology             [BOOK III.
Unless a part of being is perceiving, therefore, we
are in no part conscious of either self or not-self.
CHAPTER II.
ONTOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF LOGIC.
THE doctrine of Logic is, that there is nothing
intuitively known but perception. If there is nothing
intuitively known but perception, then being is perception, or it is not intuitively known.
There are men who believe that we are conscious
of all of self; for they imagine that self is a unit, and
when I put my hand upon a stove, they believe that
the feeling of warmth is a consciousness of myself as
feeling it. But there.are no men who believe that I
am conscious of all of a not-self.
I see a peach.
No one dreams that I see all of the peach, or that
I see all of any part of it. I do not see or hear or taste
or smell or take-in any even phantom of the peach,
except a mere superficies of color. Even that I can
divide,-because the very word color means an impression upon my sense, or it means a pigment upon the
peach. Now, press any one to his last results, and he
will confess, that, if he is conscious of the peach, he is
conscious only of a part of it, and that that part consists only of this light upon the sense, and hence that
this light must be the peach or that it cannot be said
to be intuitively known.
Now, is this light the peach?
I may have been delivering an answer which has
surprised the pure metaphysician when I have said
that it is.
Our first impulse was to say that it was not, or




CHAP. II.]    under the Light of Logic.        I53
rather to say, that the peach of the scholar, and above
all, the peach of the Christian, was different from the
peach of the peasant, and proved itself empirical by
the different versions given at different stages of empirical development: for example, that the peach of the
peasant was little more than qualities: and so of self,that the self of the peasant was little more than consciousness: and then I meant to advance upon our
learning: the scholar looking deeper; the theist far
deeper still.
But when I came to consider, language asserted a
far different signification. Language stood with the
peasant.
The simple eye of a peasant-race looking out upon
the world had seen being with its qualities. The idea
had become conglomerate. They had seen self with
its consciousness. They had never separated them.
And I hardly mean that the peasant-man got the start
in our vernacular: for the scholar finds it convenient
also. Who ever dreams of substancepure?  And this
is no mean fact to bring out in our Ontology; for that
which has the right of names has the correctness of
aphoristic statement. If being includes qualities, and
if, when I speak of self, I include consciousness, then
of course, as a mere statement out of the Lexicon, I
am conscious of self, just as far as the working name
of self includes an ephemeral consciousness.
But then, see! This may be quite important to
explain,-but it is not important to deep investigation.
There is a scholar's self, and, moreover, deeper still,
there is a Christian's self. Ab extra, there is a scholar's
peach, and a Christian's or a theist's peach. I care
not a particle whether they are ever called by the
name; and I know they never are. The conscious self
7*




I54                     Ontology.                [BOOK III.
and the purple peach have long ago got possession of
the words.
But there is a metaphysical reality, viz. the  ens
without the quality. It is either I or not-I. We
might call it this name or that name. The name does
not interfere with the reality. It is in self what is
thought of as the unconscious mind. It is in matter
what is philosophized about as substance. It is this
which under the light of Logic is by clear demonstration not a consciousness; is, therefore, not perceived;
is not intuitively known; being, therefore, not certainly  demonstrated; but left to be inferred; and
opening the whole field of empirical investigation.
CHAPTER III.
HOW COULD PERCEPTION BEGIN?
PERCEPTION could only begin by a sensation.*
If any man thinks differently, let us proceed  inductively and ask for that other perception than a sensation with which a man's perceiving might consciously
begin.
Let us suppose Adam just born, or a man swept, as
to his past thinking, by an entire oblivion; and let the
statement be of some thought, other than a sensation,
that might set on foot the conscious current. Suggest
any. Nay, even dimly describe the mere ghost of an
idea that could be obtained for such a beginning of
perception.'3 Sensation has not been treated of yet; but Metaphysics is an interlapping scheme; and a system cannot be promulged without anticipating
some of its parts. Sensation is enough known popularly to meet our
purpose; we have already been obliged to allude to it, in ways, however,
requiring no assent except what all will give to its general idea.




CHAP. III.]    How Could'Perception Begin?    155
The reply that might come back upon us would
be, that we might be conscious of self. But think!
how could we be conscious of self, without some
conscious perception? And if any one promptly replies, Why, the conscious perception is a conscious
perception of self, we beg to get him ready for dealing
fairly with his position by certain plain reminders.
The self that he is to suppose conscious ab initio of itself, is a self by agreement destitute of all sensation.
It is not clothed in. flesh; or, if clothed in flesh, it is to
be destitute for the moment of all sense-consciousness.
If the Adam is sitting on the ground, he is to be unconscious of any pressure by reason of weight, or of
any glow of muscular sensibility. His flesh-sense all
over him is to be for the moment dead. He can have
no recurrent thoughts; for he has had, up to this first
thought, of course, none to recur. Now give me some
idea of self that a man may have before any sense or
any desire or any perception other than of self itself
has intervened to give the scaffold on which the idea
of self may climb into his view.
Asking how angels manage is a mere interpellatio
dificultate. Angels are not men. They may begin
with sensations just as we do; getting them from matter without a body, as we do, with a body; moving
matter without a body, as we move it with a body. I
do not say that sensation is necessary to thought, but
that God has chosen that ours shall begin with it, and
that men, who are to sit as kings, shall have their dwelling in the dust, and, like a child's kite, are to be tied to
to it as their only chance of rising consciously to something higher.




156                  Ontology.            [BOOK III.
CHAPTER IV.
PERCEPTION NOT IN A CURRENT NO COGNITION OF BEING.
PERCEPTION not in a current is perception nakedly
by itself. Perception in a current is so uniformly our
experience of perceiving, that we asked the question
how perception could begin, that we might look at one
perception in its most naked and original isolation.
But we may conceive of it in any way. All we ask is,
the simplest possible perception.
And let us think of one. Let a man lie upon a
tower, and get a glare of sky, with no sight of anything
beside. Or, to make it simpler, take a probe, and
touch an optic nerve, and give the idea of blue. Or
let it be an odor, or, if you choose, a harp-note. All
that we ask is that it be single. The body is to lie
dead, and the mind is to have no recurrence from the
past. The blue glare is to be all, and we are to treat
it as it first spreads upon the sense. I am conscious
in that gleam of no idea of being.
I cannot demonstrate what I say; for, when I have
seized the thing, and held it up in this very delicate
segregation, each man must judge for himself. But
let any one who cannot submit, tell his own story, and
say what consciously happens.  Being is either self or
not-self. Does the blue gleam give the idea of self?
or does it give.the idea of not-self? or does it give the
idea of both? If it gives the idea of self, it gives two
ideas. It gives the idea of self and one articulately
different, viz. the blue gleam. Now, is it consciously
anything but the blue vision? If it give the idea of
not-self, then the glare upon the nerve and something
else than the glare upon the nerve are distinctly to be




CHAP. IV.]   No Current, no- Onltology.          157
made different.  Can consciousness do this?   Shut
a man off from everything else, and give him just
a simple color.  Can that thrill upon the nerve be
translated into anything but itself? And if being be
considered as both self and not-self, can that instant
of his fragrant sense divide itself, like a triple ring,
into three ideas, and without any suggestion from the
past to give shape or number to his consciousness, can
that one smell have a threefold discrepance, or indeed
any possible plurality whatever?'Yes,' a man may say,'it has plenty.' (For now
mark the thing that misleads us.)'When  all our
experience matures we see the tell-tale sense on both
ideas. Take men consciously as they are, and let the
odor come in the midst of our natural experience, and
we see the odor on both self and not-self.  How did
it get there? Not troubling ourselves with an attempt
at forced simplicity, our thinking, naturally, as it comes,
shows the odor on both self and not-self.  Now, if it
gets there at all, why may we not suppose it to have
been dual at the beginning? And why are we not
forced to feel that the blueness, if it appear in both
self and not-self now, did not originally appear so, as it
is unchanged in its relation to our being?'
Now, this will help us very much toward our own
particular discriminations.
Blueness appears in both self and not-self, because
both are highly complex ideas, and sensation is found
as a part of either.  I did not say, sensation is not concerned in exhibiting being; but shall teach the contrary.
I did not say, sensation in a current is not called being,
and that inveterately; I have said the opposite. I only
averred that the moment that the current starts, the
gleam that begins is nakedly itself. It is not I; it is




I 58                 Ontology.             [BOOK III.
not Not-I. It is a whiff of fragrant delight, that is
exhibitive not at all of either. And if it wear a telltale look as it rides afterward upon both, it only helps
to show how the idea of being is made up. There is
nothing intuitively known but perception. If, therefore, being is intuitively known, it must be perception.
If it be in part intuitively known, that part must be
consciously perception.  If any part of it be not intuitively known, that part of it must be empirically discovered. This is the genesis of ontological thought.
And, therefore, the riding on the idea, at the time, of a
present consciousness like a blue vision only expounds
the conscious reality. The blue gleam may come to
be noticeable in both self and not-self; but that does
not show that it would be the least of either, if, as an
isolated gleam, it had just arisen.'Nay!' the retort will come,'you have missed the
argument.' And there is a point in the case that we
are now ready to consider. If there be possibilities in
a single gleam to enable it to appear at any stage of
the current in both self and not self, how can it be said
that that one gleam has no duality in the beginning?
If in its original rise it was not subjective and objective
in its very nature as a gleam, how can it become so in
any stage of our experience? The I and the Not-I are
unquestionably two: how can the gleam, if indivisibly
one, appear in both of them? Is not a sense of Ego
and a sense objective to the sense a sense thus consciously inferred in the most isolated and original
sensation?
Now our whole Book will be an answer to this in
its successive chapters. Suffice it now that we challenge the boldest consciousness to see any duality in a
gleam. We claim it as originally one. How it appears




CHAP. V.]     No Order, no Ontology.            I59
experimentally two it is fair to treat as a question when
the subsequent consciousnesses come in. The bold
denunciation of its doing so, as of necessity absurd,
we may, however, roughly reply to  by a case in
mathematics.  Is not a point one? With the utmost
compass of invention can I impart to it any duality?
Let it alone, and it is one individual unrevealing point.
But I move it, and it traces a line. Or I let it alone
and draw a line through it, and it appears in that line.
Then I draw another line through it, and it appears in
that. Does that make it originally two? Metaphysics
can have but little light shed upon it by such mathematical conceits.  But still, till we get on into the
facts, it is enough to serve as a breakwater to hold
back the attack. The point appears in the two lines,
and the gleam appears in the two beings, for precisely
similar reasons. If the point began the two lines, it
would be in both because they start there, and if the
gleam began the me and the not-me, it would be in
both because they start in it. The sense that is consciously present is the starting gleam of both varieties of being.
CHAPTER V.
PERCEPTION NOT IN AN ORDERLY CURRENT NO COGNITION OF BEING.
IF perception not in a current could be no cognition of being, perception not in an orderly current
could not be such a cognition.
Perception not in an orderly current is hard to
think of, if that want of order is to be entire. A
building that falls into ruin is not an indistinguishable
heap. The maddest maniac has some harmony in his
continual perceivings.
But let us suppose perception banished of all its




I60                Ontology.             [BOOK III.
laws. Suppose it to be not Incessant: then an irruption of gleams would be no better than one single one,
in which we saw there could be no idea of being.
Suppose it not Transient, and also not Recurrent, and
also not Associated, or, as we explain it, not marshalled
forth by the law of the Strongest Emotion. Suppose
it to be utter jungle, and that, with no continuous
influences to chain my consciousnesses together: we
defy any man to think of any other result in Ontology
than would arise from one gleam.
If there be no leaping memory, or power to cognize the past, passed objects must be orderly mapped
to see them in their position, and present objects must
be orderly mapped. If, therefore, our original positions
are correct, we are following what necessarily results
when we say, that if one gleam can give us no ontological thought, ten million cannot, if they are breaking around us like sparks with no harmony and no
memory together.
CHAPTER VI.
PERCEPTION IN A CURRENT OF BUT ONE ORDER NOT A COGNITION
OF BEING.
IF perception not in an orderly current can give
no idea of being, perception in a current of but one
order can never give it.
This may excite surprise.
We speak with reserve too, because we are imagining an impossibility.
Perception with but one order could never begin.
The order of perception traceable to the laws we
have noticed could not begin except with another
order, and the reason will be found to be, because
perception cannot begin without a sensation.




CHAP. VII.]   Two Orders of Perception.       i6I
It will be better for us, however, to explain at once
these two orders.  How one would be barren will
appear more definitely when we come to describe the
fecundity of the two.. And that one cannot start by
itself need not really interfere with the conviction that,
if it could, it could not be prolific. The fecundity of
ontological thought is due to the duality in our train of
consciousness.
CHAPTER VII.
TWO ORDERS OF PERCEPTION.
I LOOK off from the top of an unsheltered tower
and see nothing but a blue glare. We have used that
place because it helps us to conceive of the simplest
possible sensation.
But, really, one sensation is never by itself. The
eye looks out from a body all full of nerve sense. If I
were bound upon my back, and held fast to that single
vision, other consciousnesses would break in. Sounds
would steal up; or at least pressures upon every limb,
or general sensations of my flesh, would rise to my
thought, even if this had been the very beginning of
my being.
Of course then the current would set out. Just as
through all eternity, the first thought would fade, and
the next would weave to it by the law of the Strongest
Emotion. Now, a child can see that two harmonies
would begin at once.
There would be but one current. Nothing through
an eternal age would lie outside of that linear unityI mean nothing conscious; but in that consciousness
of mine would be immediately revealed two accreting
harmonies. (I) Thought would go on, harmonious
through the law of the Strongest Emotion, and yet (2)




162                Ontology.            [BooK III.
with pieces of harmony supplied otherwise, such as the
harmony of Orion's belt, or such as the harmony
between sensation and recurrence.
It matters not now to say how. We are seizing a
fact. The fact is beyond all cavil, that the man with
the azure glare starts from that simple point, and there
accretes to it two orders, an order of the strongest
emotion, and an order bred otherwise, that is an order
forced upon his eye in ways not wholly by the laws of
thinking.
These orders are immense,-the one for all time,
and the other for all space and for all the reaches of
possible recurrence.
And yet how simple they are!
A little baby wakes to the beginning of thought.
A cherry hangs before him. There is a harp in the
casement, and a fragrance from a vase of flowers. His
little thought begins to travel. It instantly gathers
two separable arrays. He looks at the cherry, and
afterwards returns to it. He hears the harp, and afterwards hears it again. He smells the flowers, and has a
sense of them a hundred times afterward. All is very
dreamy yet, but two orders are waking in the single
current. One is leading him from harp to cherry and
from cherry to the fragrance of flowers, and regaling
him by variegated thought, and feasting him by its
calm continuance. The other is the order of the room.
But we must be careful about such matured thought.
What does the baby know about the order of the
room? The order of the room is a high empirical discovery. The embryo of the order of the room is an
order of analogy. If the baby saw novelties every
time, the cherry and then a lamp and then a fire-fly and
then the moon and then its mother, and moreover had




CHAP. VII.]    Two Orders of Perception.         I63
no remembrance, but spun an eternal line with no
analogies, the fact would be entirely different; but he
sees the cherry and sees the cherry again; he hears
the harp and hears it afterward; there is a room-full
of analogies that recur. They are not the same things
at all, but the like. The harp-note is not the same
sound, but a totally different sound made by new
undulations. And the cherry not the same light, but
a totally different light that left the lamp after the
other. Still, as the absolute reality with the child, he
sees things LIKE.  He would not know that fact but
for the fact of recurrence; but, as we have already
explained, sensation recurs. The new sight fits down
upon an old recurrence.  The child has not gotten
over grasping at the moon; but in his eye (for it is
too soon yet to speak of it as in the room,) he sees old
faces. Analogy is his very earliest life. There are
two orders, the order of emotional thought and the
order of recurred analogy.
And so the man upon the tower. Suppose Lethe
blotted out the past. Starting from a point if you
please, viz. one blue gleam, two orders like two lines
emerging from a point would begin at once to travel.
They will never be young again, not even through all
eternity; but will fill themselves with endless maze; one
the order of continuous thought, and the other the
order of observed analogy; * one the emotional line of
remembered consciousness, and the other the emotional
world of remembered like things; one not all inward,
for it picks material fiom without, the other not all
outward, for it blends its pictures with what is within;
* These are but proximate expressions; for the order of continuous
thought is itself also, in another view, the order of observed analogy.




I64                  Ontology.              [BooK III.
in fact neither inward and neither outward, but both
in the line of thought; inwardness and outwardness
being both conscious perceptions, but one order being
the conscious succession of the current, and the other
the conscious stability of like-recurrences.
CHAPTER VIII.
ONE ORDER CONTINUOUS IN THE CURRENT, AND PRODUCED WHOLLY
BY ITS LAWS.
ONE of the orders in the current of perception is
unbroken in it (unless we consider sleep as breaking
it), and is nothing more than the order of association,
produced in ways that we have already considered.
The law of the strongest emotion makes it really an
order, choosing for it agreeable pictures, and making
it deal in wholes not in fragments, and in groups not
in monads, and in lines not in glimpses, and in logical
results not in casualties of no distinguishable interest.
CHAPTER IX.
THE OTHER ORDER, IN THE CURRENT, BUT NOT CONTINUOUS IN IT,
NOR PRODUCED WHOLLY BY ITS LAWS.
To show that there is an order in outward nature
and an order in inward consciousness; that is, (to treat
the case by an easy example) that there is an order in
a spangled sky and an order in a current of perception,
-this, which is really an advanced stage of dissertation, is not our object in these chapters.
Our object in these chapters is to show that in conscious knowledge, that is, in perception this moment as
it may arise, I discern two orders, an order continuous




CHAP. IX.]  The Other Order not Continuous.      I65
in the current, and an order in the current but not
continuous.
The order continuous in the current is what I may
perceive by present sense, or any other present perception, with what I see redoubled upon it in the
way of recurrence. For example, as a harp-note slides
along (and it must not be forgotten that perception
before it fades is consciously continuous) it not only
weaves into our consciousness from some other thread of
sight or sound that just preceded it, but what is more,
it weaves into some other thread just as it fades.
There is thus trodden a conscious track. Only a certain part.is conscious at the time, but. it may be any
part. The thread in the region out of which recurrence comes is continuous.  It may recur in great
lengths. It may recur in myriads of ways, and, more
than that, myriads of times; reduplicating myriads of
instances of conviction. At last, no length of it can
ever recur without reduplicating upon it former consciousnesses; till the mind becomes aware.of a current;
and this is what we mean by saying that there may
be perception of continuous order at any conscious
moment in the current.
But now, my sight of the starry sky brings back
another starry sky, and lo! it fits itself upon it; and
again, myriads of starry skies. I have shown how
these years of harmony mat themselves like ferns in
the coal measure. It looks as though coal were an
original formation, just as though coal were an original gift. But Orion grows familiar in the sky, just as
feelings grow familiar in the current, by repetition.
At any rate (for we need not grow so explicit yet in all
that we behold), the harmonious heavens can be lost to
me, so that they are not continuous in the current. A




166                  Ontology.             [BOOK III.
sound can lead me off, or some pain that twitches at
my knee; and when I come back again, the heavens
spread upon my eye, and then another heaven, and
another, stereoscoped all into one. And then so orderly
becomes this train, which is not in the current, that it
covers all space.
Just as the train continuous recurs from a single
track, and may report from any part of it, till we
become satisfied there is but one; so this train in-continuous grows into heaven and earth. It takes in all
sense. It is found to be perfectly combined.
"The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea."
It blends all that is recurrent into one. And as each
conscious length reports itself backward and forward
through the current, so, each conscious breadth spreads
over all that is seen, and finds no break in harmonious
recurrences.
Let the reader however grant but this; we will
take up other developments as they arise:-There is
an order each conscious moment in the perceptions
that we see, as concerns those that weave to them as
they are passing off, and as concerns those that weave
to them as they are passing on. There is an order,
therefore, continuous in the current. And there is an
order each conscious moment in the sensations that
we have, not simply that the pictures remain in order
while they are passing before our mind, but that they
recur analogously, the old picture and the new picture
fitting upon themselves, so that Orion's belt (to speak
of what is a conscious spectacle) recurs as Orion's belt,
and so that, if the belt recur, we may open our eyes
and actually fit it upon a new sensation.
There is an order, therefore, not continuous.




CHAP. X.]       A Rudimental Self.               167
CHAPTER X.
PERCEPTION IN ITS CONTINUOUS ORDER SELF TILL MORE IS ADDED
TO IT.
Now perception in its Continuous Order is Self
until more is added to it.
It will be seen that we avoid saying that Self is
nothing more than perception. We believe the
contrary.
But as perception is not even Self in its first simple
sensation, afterward it is all the Self we see till more is
added to it.
We have described a certain track, lengths of which
are kept in view by every recurrence. That track is
Self, till other more complicated recurrences and analogies come in.
If you shudder at such a thought, remember that it
is an error to supply others when the facts already
noticed supply all the realities thus far in the case.
For example, I have a certain perception: it is
bright, clear, and complex. It is conscious of all that it
perceives. \Ve have already seen that by itself it
would give us no idea of Self. It is just as bright
though as if we had had a thousand. Suppose we had
had a thousand, but leave off for a moment ideas of Body
and Will that we are afterward to consider.  It would
be seen weaving itself out of a perception past, and lingering for the company of the perception yet to come.
This weaving goes on. It is pleasurable. The pleasure is in a continuous thread. When a pleasure fades
from consciousness, it goes into the enormous store
out of which are to travel back innumerable recurrences. They come back conscious of what they were.




i68                  Ontology.              [BOOK III.
They fit innumerably upon the new part of the thread.
Now, knowing, as I do, that God could create me this
moment, and yet supply me with all these analogous
recurrences, and, therefore, that the evidence of a past
self is not intuitive to mte like iny present consciousness,
yet I see that this conscious inweaving of recurrences
would connect the present with the past, and give the
first idea, that I am to notice, of self as one form of
being.
We see, too, how the present thought belongs to
it. It is the great attaching centre. Past thoughts
are gone, and are never to come back again. It is the
present perception of which it is the law that it paints
itself with the images of the past. It is the present
perception that is our first self. And it is so rich and
continuous in its  feeling, because  those recurrent
images make it so. To see the invisible God, and to
seethe invisible self, are about equally impossible. And,
therefore, that neat alphabet of recurrence is what sets
itself in order, and is about the best news of self that
perception at its start is instrinsically able to give us.
CHAPTER XI.
PERCEPTION IN AN ORDER NOT CONTINUOUS THE NOT-SELF TILL
MORE IS ADDED TO IT.
As in one sense we are not conscious of Self, and
in another sense are conscious of nothing else (because
it takes all our consciousnesses to arrive at our idea
of it), -so we are conscious and not conscious of
external being. We wish it to be distinctly understood that our evidences of Self and Not-self are precisely similar.
I look off from my high tower and see the broad




CHAP. XI.]   A RZtdimental Not-Self. -69
blue. We have long ago attempted to show that this
could give no idea of Being. But the first consciousness, which is a mere' light, and which, if it be all my
consciousness, must be all of myself that I wot of
in that first moment, soon moves upon its eternal
journey. The blue gleam from my tower passes into
a distant harp-note; that, into a pain in my leg. The
current starts off upon its track, and it will not be
long before the baby, even, will find out that the sights
are to be depended on as alike. The red patch that
she sees before her eyes, stays, and she has two ways of
being conscious of it. The patch that she sees before
her eyes, and that I know to be a cherry, does not
flash and disappear, but hangs there through the
moment of her consciousness. She thinks away from
it to the ivory of your teeth, as you chuckle and
laugh, and she thinks back to it again perpetually.
She has the brightest recurrent thoughts. And without saddling ourselves with all the processes, her consciousnesses, which are thus early perfect, reveal to
her by necessary steps those orders in themselves.
The order in the behavior of the cherry is all she
knows of it step by step.
This order will be very slow; but hastening it, as it
is all the same, the coldness and the redness and the
roundness and the smoothness and the hardness and
all about the cherry can become conscious.  How
such thoughts can become perfect, it need not matter.
Generically they are all isogonous. They are things in
consciousness, with one marvellous help, that they all
agree, and that, from no order in the mind other than
from that second order that is not continuous.
Not only does the cherry hang out till recurrence
touches itf again; but it is a consciousness where sense




170                  Ontology.             [BoOK III.
is harmonized. I see where I touch, and touch where
I see, and smell and taste and even hear concordantly;
and though these are most advanced modes of expression, yet they tell a tale of our very merest consciousness. The cherry is an assemblage of my sense, and
that, meeting all in harmony, is a necessary part of
that baby's actual perception.
Now, would it do nothing for her in the way of a
Not-self?  Strip off from her all "Perception " in that
most baseless and modern sense. Conceive of her
senses as fresh and bright, and that she sees as we do,
only without experience. Know that she will have that
track of recurrent consciousness which we have spoken
of as the first order, and the ranges of heaven and
earth harmonious and one before her; let me ask, Will
she learn nothing? Shut off the idea of Intuitive
Belief, and say, Will she not see things precisely as she
does see them?  Do we not know that she sees the
cherry round and red?  Do we not see all her other
consciousnesses? And, as those consciousnesses are
in strange harmony, is it too much to ask that where
those harmonies are the harmonies of the Not-self in
its appearance to men, that she consciously see them,
and learn that much of exterior being?
If we carl suppose that that baby can find out in
the cherry all that is in the most perfect sensation,
and hold on to her recurrent sights till other sides and
other phenomena of the fruit have blended themselves
all together, unquestionably she will have (by help of
other lessons, too, that she is taking, in other visions)
a harmonious cluster of sense, which she consciously
sees; and that I aver is her first idea of being.
The track of continuous consciousness, therefore,
initiating a knowledge of Self, is like the breadth of




CHAP. XII.]    Effect of the Six Laws.        171
harmonies that are not continuous, initiating' a knowledge of Not-self.
CHAPTER XII.
THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION, GIVING RISE TO THE CONTINUOUS ORDER,
GIVE RISE TO THE IDEA OF BEING.
SUPPOSE there be such a thing as being, apart from
actual perception, what a special instance of the power,
wisdom, and goodness of God, to frame the Laws of
Perception as the only possible occasion by which it
could be traced!
Being must be a shadowy conception, or the finest
minds would not have been so much at sea. No one
can doubt the superior intellect of Berkeley. Now, if
the ideas of being are so singularly plain and simple,
why all this noise about them?
We have shown the nicest arrangement of Perceptions. No one can have read all that has been said
about original laws without receiving at least a part
of them. Now, with half of this strangely artificial
system-Perception as Continuous-Perception as Fading —Perception as Recurrent-Perception as Associated, and that in interesting forms by the Law of the
Strongest Emotion —if, with these singularly adapted
laws, being sheds such a dim light upon the best minds
that strive to comprehend it, how would it be if these
laws did not exist?
Sensation would be but a passing flash; or make it
Continuous, then it would be but a passing glare; or
make it orderly, who would take note of the order?
or make it Recurrent; unless the laws of perception
were exactly what they are, there could not be built
up those two orders of recurrences which the veriest




I72                 Ontology.            [BoOK III.
enemy of our system  must now admit must have
something to do with discoveries beyond us.
CHAPTER XIII.
SENSATION.
THERE being nothing consciously in the mind but
perceptions, and perceptions being endlessly different
and multiplied, sensations are a certain class of perceptions, that are found to be connected with what we
call the body. It would be useless, in studying the
current, to study the nerves and organs by which these
parts of it are produced. The nerves and organs do
not show themselves, except empirically, in the constitution of the current. Neither need we tell all the
history of what men have thought about sensation.
Indeed it would be better to exclude all else but the
current. There are certain perceptions in the current.
They are very peculiar in their vividness. They are
our only connection consciously with things around
us. They are the only start conceivable of thought
within us. And yet they are but five simple consciousnesses. A smell and a sound and a taste and a
sensation of light, and then a corporeal feeling or nerve
sense of some kind or other, are all the alphabet of
this amazing and all-including revelation.
The splendor of philosophy here is that it is so
conscious. A sound holds itself up before me till I
hear exactly what I hear. A smell floats till I have
discerned all of it. I am sure that the consciousness
in the smell stands perfectly revealed. What my eyes
take in is but parti-colored light. And what my flesh
reports is what I am conscious of as felt. This, and
nothing more, is all that is meant by my sensation.




CHAP. XIV.]            Slzell.                   173
If any one conceived that it was less material than
this, he errs; and yet, it is not material at all. A
sound-is a pure perception. If an odor floats upon
my sense, it is perceptibly a mental consciousness.
Light is in the current; so is my zest for good eating.
If there is anything that goes abroad in my sense, it
has learned to do so afterward. The beauty of sensation is that it is so mental. Light is altogether lighted
up. Its colors and its shapes and its surfaces are all
revealed in it. And sensation is so thoroughly among
our consciousnesses, that it is emotional like all the
rest, and weighs and judges and compares, like any
form of possible perception.
If any one therefore thinks sensation not intelligent,
let me deal with him specially, as I take up each
special sensation of the five.
CHAPTER XIV.
SMELL.
SMELL is nothing more than what I am conscious
of in any one familiar instance of the sensation. How
vain, therefore, to multiply words about it.
And yet a smell is so intelligent that it grades itself
with the nicest discrepance. I never have more than
the first generic scent, if I continue to use my nose
for ten million of ages: but then, perhaps, all that time
I never have two odors passing to my brain that do
not report either in strength or flavor some sort of
intelligible variation. The mind becomes aware of all
these differences; but, as the mind is but the name
for the empirically discovered self, the smell must be
considered as intelligent,.just as much as any other, isolated or gregarious, of our perceptions.




174                 Ontology.            [Boo III.
We have pleasure in it; and seek knowledge by it.
We' measure distances and detect objects by their
smell. It harmonizes with the order not-continuous,
that grows into that grand creation, the not-self. And
though it is a simple odor, and never gets-by that
nerve-state, it is a mighty helper, when it comes to be
found perfectly at one, in carving out that mighty universe without, when it comes to be shaped of these
endless harmonies.
CHAPTER XV.
TASTE.
WE would not object if Touch, which is the fifth
sense, were allowed to embody Taste, which we have
here numbered as the second sense in the series.
Touch is a very slack-twisted generalization. Hunger and sexual delight,-in fact warmth, and different
sorts of pain, keep but slender company with the usual
results of touch.
But, for our purpose, it is all excellent; and Taste
might go with them. Metaphysically there is the
same great lesson. We are conscious of what is discernibly felt, and we are conscious of every part of it.
We are intelligent in all the changes through it. And
whatever is to be learned of what is consciously revealed, we learn of course, and we learn alike, in all
the forms of actual sensation.
CHAPTER XVI.
HEARING.
SOUND does not differ from Smell or Taste. It
differs entirely from both, if we mean to consider the




CHAP. XVI.]          Hearing.                    175
nature of the distinct sensation.  It differs so much
from either, that in the case of a deaf man it is impossible in its least conception. But in the relation it
bears to thought, it bears itself identically like all.
Light does not differ. I have upon my nerve a distinguishable odor.  I am  conscious of nothing beside.
But I exclaim with confidence, that there is a dead carcass in the woods. If I am called to give my reason, I
say, I smell it. Consciously I smell nothing but an
odor. And while all will admit that the carrion, as the
cause of it, is only an empirical belief, we refuse to be
so easily persuaded as to either a sound or a vision.
I hear.a horn away up in yon distant Alp. As a
sound upon my ear we are slow to treat it as a smell
upon my nostril. It seems to be up in the hills; and
I point to it as the very seat of the sensation. And
yet how impossible! The child would hear it at his
pillow; just where he sees the moon. I am sure of the
triumph of this fact, that noises are mere sensations;
that what we learn of them as to place is as we learn
of odor, a mere experience; that the Alp-boy in the
hills is tracked like the nearness of the carrion; and
though five million of sounds have been present to my
sense since the beginning, they may be endlessly different, and beautifully arranged in their expression, yet
they are eternally sounds; generically they are but one
sensation; empirically they are the whole of speech,
but actually they are the pelting of a nerve, which
returns but one kind of perceivable impression on our
consciousness.




176                  Ontology.              [BOOK III.
CHAPTER XVIT.
SIGHT.
WE have been thus particular about Smell and
Sound, because they introduce us in the happiest way
to the facts of vision. Here, the odor in the nose and
the sound on the ear are identical in mentalness with
the light upon our vision. That peerless sense that
reveals to us the starry heavens, is nothing more than
a nerve-sense like the rest, dealing in its own easily discrimin4ted sensation.  The reek that is felt from the
carrion is isogonous with the lights that are taken from
the sky.  Both are unitary, generically never to be different. I may see things for a thousand years, and my
eye will have but a kaleidoscope of lights.  If they are
red and blue, so the smells are good or putrid. If they
are broad or bright, so are the sounds shrill or constant.
If they are beautiful and in graceful swells, so are the
melodies. The neatness of this generical research is
that it is so perfect; for sight upon my eye, and sound
upon mine ear, and smell upon my nose, are incontestably alike, mere nerve-senses for a thousand years;
and yet, so varied, and so delicate, and so conscious,
that is, intelligent of themselves, and so harmonious,
that is, reporting in. one great system, in which they all
agree, that though literally but light and odor, they
combine into a frame which becomes the sum external
at first of the not-self before our minds.
If any one points me out qualities that he calls
Primary and Secondary, I admit them as having distinctive traits, but I ask him where is the flaw in these
pictures of my consciousness? If he says, What I see
in the light is there where I fix it, and much more
19




CHAP. XVII.]          Sight.                   177
plainly than what I smell in its odors, I do not.hesitate
a moment. Smelling a thing and seeing a thing are
very distinct indeed in their exactness. One sense
may be much more useful than another. But, come
back to where we are flatly conscious. Smell a thousand years, will it be anything but a smell? and will it
not be an act of perfect consciousness? So gaze for a
myriad of years, will you get anything consciously but
light?  Will it not be an eye-surface like a bed-quilt
patched over with colors? Do you not see the whole
of it? And if you do, leave not me absurdly in an error.
I see nothing all the time but light. Tell me what
you see that can be more. I see it move. I see it
square. I see it fade. I see it beautiful in figure. My
vision is perfect in its sense. But it gives me nothing
but light. And if I find out a universe of things by
its colors, I do the same by the mere noises and smells
that fall consentaneously with my vision.
I see a distant city; but the houses are out there,
and the steeples are off far, only as the Alp horn is,
because I have learned to translate. And all you tell
me, that the eye actually places the city at the spot, I
answer by remembering, so the ear does, so the nose
does, in a much more imperfect way. The Alp horn
sounds precisely where it is; and I can hardly persuade
my ear that she has learned to do herself injustice by
her use; that my hearing is not off yonder among the
snows, but close at home; and that the eye and the
ear have nothing more than one way and one place
for their sensations.
8*




I78                 Ontology.            [BooK III.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TOUCH.
ToUCH does us so much good in many metaphysical ways that we might fear that a perception so versatile in its effects might fail to be traced to the same
simplicity of sensation. But Touch, more than any
other sense, is almost brutish in its plainness. What a
child feels when it touches a cherry, it feels generically
in everything.
Now I do not deny that Touch has immense advantages:I. It fits in so nobly with vision. I stand by a
shelf, and look at a silver goblet. The sensation of
sight is a mere consciousness of light in the goblet's
shape on the hemisphere of vision. I touch the cup,
and a harmony of fact is at once perceptible. I rap
the cup and there is an agreement of sound. Taste
and the other faculty of smell might be each arranged
to bear a perceptible relation. But of all these har'monious facts the first is the most immediate. The
eye and the finger meet at the same surface, and without staying to ask what language we shall use to
describe this early agreement, the fact is conscious.
The light upon my eye and the touch upon my nerve
are a visible result, and that result may be as untutored as you please, it is obvious in both, that they
stand related in some way harmoniously together.
2. So Touch has an immense advantage in respect
to surface. The eye has but a narrow inlet. So has
Taste. The nose and the ear and the palate and the
optic nerve, all have a limited dwelling place. Touch
revels over all the body.




CHAP. XIX.] Sensation and ihe Idea of Not-SeZf.  I79
3. Moreover, it has wonderful variety. It feels
warm, and it feels hard, and it feels smooth, and it feels
pain, and, what is more, a muscular stress that it will
require care to represent as only feeling:
4. Because, next, Touch is connected with the
empire of the will. I choose to smell, but the power
with which I draw in the scent is a power of muscle,
and reports itself to Touch before it reaches the pleasure of the odor. My Taste must be muscularly through
touch. My sight, and above all my hearing, must be
involuntary things, unless a motion, which is in the
theatre of Touch, opens the eye, or moves the ear, into
their theatre of pleasure. Touch, therefore, is an imperial sense, less magnificent than sight, but more
singularly rich in its reports of Being.
CHAPTER XIX.
SENSATION AS IT CONTRIBUTES TO THE IDEA OF NOT-SELF.
THOUGH the Eye and the Ear and the other instruments of sense report consciously nothing but sensations, yet those sensations appear consciously in shapes,
and those shapes marvellously agree together.
That silver urn comes upon my eye as a mere patch,
the absolute sense being one of a mere surface. I have
an eye-full of variegated lights, and this silver urn is
simply one of them.
But then I have seen this urn before. The mind,
in its recurrent power, is not like sense, but may deal
in many surfaces. I have my vision all on one: and
though sense is far brighter than my memory, yet it
has to confine itself to its absolute plane. I see the urn,
but, as an absolute sensation, only a color. But the
mind, by its recurrent law, builds an urn upon that




I80                 Ontology.             [BooI III.
face. It saw the back of it last week, and the inside
yesterday. Or, if it never saw that urn, it has seen a
thousand. Or, if it never saw an urn, it has seen things
just like it. It puts its recurrences together. Now,
you would rather help me if you would deny one
resource or two, for they crowd upon me till I cannot
build conveniently. They crowd upon me in amazing
order; and the back and the side and the bottom of an
urn all come in in place. What, as an actual sensation,
is but a patch of light, adds to itself recurrent parts
of it.
Then my finger comes in. I touch the urn. Grant
me my mere conscious sense. I smell it. I take my
finger and wake it into sound. I take my tongue and
it has a taste. Now limit these consciousnesses as
much as you desire, there is an amazing harmony of
sense, which does actually build itself fair and round.
Say, all this would not produce the urn. I grant
it; and have a tale of much more. But it would produce something; and you may take the laboring pen
and tell what that something is. We are conscious
of nothing but sensations; and those sensations are
nothing but colored lights, smells, tastes, sounds, and
feelings. But those thoughts, though bald in sense,
are very rich in recurrent combination.  And all
recurrent senses, consciously perceived, do give enough
for an urn; for there is no discovered part of it that
was not sometime visible.
Now this urn, thus made of images; thus built of
harmonious sense, and lost sometimes to immediate
consciousness,-comes finally to be identified at once.
A spout will show it, or its topmost acorn. It breeds
recurrence at a glance; and the mind delights in it as
a whole by the law of the strongest emotion.




CHAP. XXI.]           Body.                   i8I
Now, if any man demands, Do you think this the
whole of Not-self? I answer, No. I am yet to speak
of Body, and I am yet to speak of Will. But I say,
This is a conscious something. I go up to the urn
and put both hands upon it. It is cold and hard. I
tap it on the top. I smell it, and taste its surface. I
gaze at it, and it is covered by my hands. I step back
from it. It is an image in its place. I say, All these
things are conscious: and if you will do me the favor
to take out from them everything but sense (save only
what may be recurrent), something will remain: now it
is that something that I pronounce to be some thought
of Not-Self.
CHAPTER XX.
SENSATION AS IT CONTRIBUTES TO THE IDEA OF SELF.
IF perception could not begin without Sensation,
Self of course could not emerge; because, as we have
seen, the mind could not become conscious without
perception.
If perception could not begin without Sensation,
Sensation must have an important role all the way
through. Self, therefore, being revealed to us by a
continuous orderly current, what Sense contributes to
the current it contributes to our idea of Self.
CHAPTER XXI.
BODY.
IN the region of the Not-self lies a something
which, curiously enough, is all mixed up with the
absolute Ego. The Eye and the Ear and the Nose
and the Tongue and the whole net-work of nervous
tentacula are parts of what we call the Body. Bodies




182                  Ontology.          [BooK III.
are unveiled through instruments that are parts of
themselves.
Two things may be said of Body:i. First, that it is, like the urn, cognized by the
nerve sense and completely in the same methods. I
look upon the urn, and precisely with the same perceiving I look upon my body. It seems to me round
and full, and I build it up with recurrent sights of it,
just as I do the other. I strike the urn, and so I
strike my body. Sound and smell and taste and tactual sensation can all be experienced upon this hulk of
flesh, precisely as they. can be experienced upon a lump
of gold or upon the silver goblet. Let it be understood, therefore, that, if the body differs from the silver
urn, it differs in the direction of plus, and that, quite
consciously as respects sensation.
It belongs to the external world as distinctly as
my raiment. But then it has another whole mass of
facts, which have only to be added to those that belong
to everything.
2. It is found that this something behaves double
in respect to all my sense. The eye that looks out
upon my leg finds itself carried about with it-nay,
looks out on it from a position in the body. The nose
not only smells my hand, and drinks the perfume on it
as on a rose or on a bean, but is found in partnership
with my hand, the smell itself finding its centre in my
nostril. My tongue tastes my finger, and my finger
feels my tongue, and both that instant in the current.
The current seizes them in one. And the whole wilderness of Touch has this double action. I touch the
urn, and it is simple. I touch my hand, and it is a
double effect. It is the wakening of two sensations;
and the sound and the smell and the taste and the




CHAP. XXIII.]   Body and the Not-Self.         IS3
light and these two sensations and the whole crowd
that can be packed into my present consciousness,
are found to be blended into this: —that they are in
one perception of the current, and in one accord in
this thing called Body.
CHAPTER XXII.
BODY AS IT ADDS TO THE IDEA OF SELF.
Now it can be imagined that in the infancy of
thought Body could be supposed to constitute the
Ego. And it does not involve the peril of that genesis
of Self that I before considered.
Order in a continual current, with the power to
have that order back in the way of recurrent threads
of it, a path re-beating itself again, until a foot of it
flashes back in glances of a mile, this is that loitering
consciousness that we learn to speak of under the name
of Self. But yet no mortal can fail to see, that that
oneness of body which we feel to our very sole, helps
the report of consciousness; and that a something (I)
shaped to us like the urn, and then (2) knit to us by
every sense, must be consciously united, first (I) as the
urn is by single-handed sense, and second (2) in a
double way, by what is equally our mere sensation.
This unity, therefore, helps our idea of Ego.
CHAPTER XXIII.
BODY AS IT ADDS TO THE IDEA OF NOT-SELF.
BUT in a still more striking way the sensations of
Body unveil the external world.
I. They help the idea of outness, which has been so
much talked of by philosophers.




I84                 Ontology.            [BOOK III.
Now, I do not mean the rude reality, that the body
unveils the universe because it carries the senses.
That of course. Nor do I mean, what is a more pertinent claim, that it carries us to the scene of our sensations. I do not mean that it opens the eye, and draws
in the odor, and moves the tongue. I do not even
delay to show  its dexterity of feeling.  All these
things will be known of and thought of of course. I
mean, that the mere sense that unveils a body, the
mere sight that ranges from the eye, and the smell and
the taste and the wide-spread tactual impressions, all
of which have conscious sensations of position, sketch
that body forth into a figured shape, like the urn or
goblet; do it by usual sense like the urn or goblet;
but do it over again by sense utterly unusual and dif-'
ferent; that is, frame my body precisely as I would
the urn, by sight and touch, but do it also, as I can
frame no other thing, by double consciousnesses, not
only the set by which I know the urn, but a set, just as
consciously perceived, by which the smell feels itself at
the nerve, and light at the optic threads, and the taste
and the sound and the touch at each conscious point
of the sensation, by which the whole feels itself in the
current, and by which this whole shapes itself upon
our material frame just as consciously and just as
mechanically as the urn by my sensations. And I
mean that when the body is thus set forth by nerve
perceptions, the outnzess from it of other things is a
mere sensation.
Why should a man admit angles and admit shapes
as open to our consciousness?  Why should he confess they are consciously before my eyes-an absolute
sensation; and not admit that externality is just the
same? Here is the leap, that has puzzled men so much,




CHAP. XXIII.]   Body and the Not-Self.           I85
from the inward to the outward.  But is not outwardness just as much a feature of our sense, as blueness,
or pitch in sound?
The urn I noticed is either outside or inside my
body. If it is outside, is that not consciously my sensation? And is not the interval between, like intervals of any sort, a strong reality of vision.
2. Again, the idea of body by its unity leads me to
a more intelligible world outside.
The idea of unity is triumphant in the body. The
harmonious nerves lap all round it, and bring intelligence of sense from every corner. Each square inch
of sense reports; and, what is more, reports from every
inch may come almost each instant. The body is unified in almost every consciousness.
Now, as the body besides all this is visible, also, like
the urn, it is easy to see how the unity conscious in the
body suggests unity in other objects. Color and
sound and smell and taste and all tactual impression
are themselves adequate quoad the urn to ideas quoad
hoc,; but recollect, we claim  every atom  of conscious
perception. And accumulating everything as we go
along, we say, that what simple sense begins, the body,
as sensible, adds to and knits together. And carrying
about this sensitive and harmoniously reported hulk, I
claim all that it perceives. It is a great mass with
harmoniously reported sensations; and I say that, consciously thus unified, it helps to the idea in objects
that are spectacled around it.
3. Again, it has inzward feelings. It feels all through
as well as all over.
It is perhaps imprudent in me to attempt categories
of comparison. I am much more zealous to hold clear
one fact, that Being is piled up by our perceptions;




I86                  Ontology.            [BOOK III.
that it grows in all we wot of it by downright consciousness; that it is immensely heaped together by one
perception and another; and that what our perceptions
do not make of it out of all that is consciously combined,
is not Being, that is, is not Self or Not-self, in any way
that we can dream of or believe.
Sense actually carrying to us inzzward feelings, we
just add those as we do the rest. The heart and the
lungs and all the interior viscera report themselves.
I feel all through what I call my person physically.
Now, what I want confessed is, that these things,
which are consciously perceived, give notions accordingly of other being. The urn and the body are both
similarly perceived. The body is perceived also additionally, and in a way dissimilarly to the urn. This
way gets noticed, and gives me feelings of substance
which I attribute to the urn. And in the old Hindoo
theology, and in the every-day experience of children,
inside facts are attributed without, which are actually
over-reasonings. The urn is supposed to feel. The
clod is invested with too muc/ of our inward life. The
little hideous gods are preached of as only samples of
this inward and universally existing sense. I mean, all
matter is supposed to feel; and beyond all shadow of
a doubt, our thoughts of matter are but slenderly right,
even though we may have taken out of them a great
deal of pantheistic prepossession.
Now, to repeat my idea, matter is just what we
have sense to make it. I do not mean that it is not
more; on the contrary we have actual sense for making it what we consciously perceive,-and that very
thing-more: but beyond what we consciously perceive, including this very idea of more, matter as a
zoumelzon is nothing but the sum of my perceivings;




CHAP. XXIV.]   Will, Power, and Cause.         187
and body in all its traits, and sense in all its outgivings, all the myriad differences of vision, and the rest,
and all their harmonized recurrences, make up my ideas
beyond me-beyondness itself being a mere reality
of my working consciousness.
CHAPTER XXIV.
WILL, POWER, AND CAUSE.
WE have already exhibited Perception as resulting
(in two conditions of its consciousness) in certain very
imperial effects.
I. When it desires the stay of a thought; that is,
when it is so strong in its emotion that the thought
coming in by that law continues to be pleasant, and, as
the effect of a whole experience, desires and expects
and seesfit, as men philosophically express it, to continue in the mind, we call that the phenomenon of attention, and we have already established the fact that
Will has but one other province that can possibly be
divined.
2. That other province is muscular motion. Now
this obedience of the muscle gives, in its shadowiest
outline, the idea of Power. My thoughts go sailing
along, and one of them with its peculiar emotion moves
a muscle. It is in fact a thought to move that muscle,
or, to speak less learnedly, a thought to do a thing
which the infant as he kicked and fumbled learned
would be done at certain thoughts of it by the
mind. Able to say, therefore, what shall be done, the
infant moves one step further in sense, and experiences
Power, but Power only in its earlier gleam of desire as
it determines motion.
Separate altogether from this is a nisus which is




i88                  Ontology.             [Boox III.
conscious in our sense. And hastening at once to
terms, I say, this nisus is a physical pressure. Let me
be understood. I do not disown the sense that it is a
nisus; but the nisus is not-the sense.  I teach barely
two consciousnesses, one a desire,-the other a pressure.
The desire may be dismissed at once as already
treated. The pressure is all that is left in this conscious sensation.
Now let us understand it. A timber lying on my
leg exerts, as we are conscious, only a tactual impression. We call it pressure: but confine yourself to the
simple thought. A finger touched upon your nose,
or a feather wafted to your cheek, are not generically
different from the timber in their touch sensations.
Now articulately then you will understand the speech
when I say, that the pressures bidden by the will are
precisely of a piece with the squeeze that is felt from
the timber.
Anatomically, I know there is a difference. But
metaphysically, there are but two facts, a desire and
decree and choice long ago put together in these chapters, and, secondly, a mere sensation.
If any one asks, Is there not a strain of some kind?
I say, Yes, upon the muscle. If any one asks, Are we
not conscious of it in our mind? I say, Yes, as a sensation.  If any one asks, But is it not a sensation of
a strain? I say, Yes; but, metaphysically considered,
the strain is not generically different from a pressure.
Let me explain this now critically.
I have what we have combined into the complexity
of Will. I have what follows as the swelling of my
muscle. The first I am conscious of as Will. The
second I am conscious of as a sensation. I do not
doubt that interposed between the two there are




CHAP. XXIV.]    Will, Power, and Cause.          189
physiological facts of nerve and cerebellum. That is not
the question. We are talking of what we are conscious. Our study of the facts is entirely in the current.  Now I say, after we have desired with the Will
we only feel the pressure consequent.
If I could will to weigh down the timber, and, without a hand upon it, I could make it press at the direction of my desire (as perhaps angels do), I would imitate, generically considered, the feeling about the muscle. That is to say, There are present two consciousnesses, the consciousness of an imperial Will, and the
consciousness of a sensational pressure, with no consciousness between, and no knowledge, reported to
the sense, of nervous messages that may fly between
them.
Now I clear off a great deal of doubt by one pertinent reminder,-that what may be generically the
same, specifically may be very different. The pressure
of the timber is one specific thing; the pressure under
the muscle is multiform and diverse in its sense. For
example; this cannon-ball! Here I am raising it in
my hand. What do I experience? First of all a swelling pressure at the muscles. I need not picture it;
for a man can strain his arm, and try it for himself;
second, a leverage strain of a very peculiar sort, undoubtedly a cultivated idea when we speak of the
lever of the arm, but a mere conscious one in its
peculiar pressure; lastly, the mere timber over again,
that is, weight and touch, or, in other words, the ball,
as it is raised, touching and pressing in the fingers.
Besides, there is more than this; there is fatigue,
like hunger, and a sense of effort uneasily submitted to
as a form of bodily pain; and I do not for a moment
question that other attributes might be added to the




Igo                  Ontology.            [BooK III.
list. Touch is a badly generalized sensation. But all
the discoveries that might be made whatever, would
bow to the consciousness, that, when I lift the shot,
the strain is all sensation. Outside of the dictum of
the W~ill there is nothing that can be traced but what
generically is like tactual impressions.
But though I have thus carefully enforced this
generic sameness in the sense, I shall be able all the
more usefully to employ the specific difference.
There is a strain upon the muscle which, though sensationally pressure, consciously is peculiar to itself, and
in connection with the Will initiates our idea of Power.
As before, I only ask consciousnesses. They are rich
beyond even our need.
I am conscious of the imperial desire. I am conscious of the immediate strain. I am conscious of
ulterior results. The total; what is it? In your own
language, it shall be, usque hoc, empirically my idea of
Power. And if any one says, Consciously not so; for
the nexus is the thing we want; and you have developed only an order not continuous in the current, —I
say, One thing in the order is an idea of Power. It is
not mere antecedence and consequence. The muscle's strain is a reality in sense. The will before it is
an ancillary consciousness. -The cannon ball that
moves is the absolute result. And I say, these things
together, peculiarly the first, give us in shadowy form
an idea of Power.
I need hardly make a separate treatise on Cause.
Philology employs the terms. Their difference is
philologically great. Their employment is mechanically necessary. Nay, their theatre is but partially the
same. But metaphysically we have explained them
both.




CHAP. XXIV.]   TVill, Power, anzd Cause.         I 9 
That every effect must have a cause means simply
that this ball-raising is a universal experience. If any
one says, Nay; that is an intuitive belief,-we put off
that question to a subsequent chapter. But if he says,
as a ground for there being an intuitive belief, that
there is no causal nexus, meaning by that that there
is no idea of cause possible in the mind, that brings us
exactly to what we have been saying of Power. The
causal nisus and the muscular nisus take their very
expressions from each other.
The cause in the wax, that melts it under the shining of the sun, may be mysterious and practically invisible. But men learn like children. The little infant
gets an idea of strainz; wrinkles its little face under the
effort to rise up from his crib. Ten million of repeated
thrusts must give him some idea of strength. And it
is this stress continually on our sense that would be
hard to dispossess of some gleam of this wonderfully
agitated matter of causation.
At any rate, we will show the folly, in a subsequent
chapter, of an intuitive belief where we have no possible
idea, and be all the more careful now to show that we
have an idea.
The wax melts not at all for like causes with the lifting of the ball; but let it be remembered we were
dealing with the springs of thought. The child is to
live a score of years. The first weights that he may
lift give him a shadowy sense; but he is to lift a million.  He is to see a million lifted by other men.  He
is to run against brute pressure, and to have piled upon
him material weight.  And in the midst of it all, he is
to have his own imperial will, and his own muscular
strains, to pattern forever what is to be meant by these
causations.




I92                 On fo ogy.           [BooK III.
Now I know that the wax does not melt that way.
But how does it melt? It melts, you say, by some
causal nisus. Very well, he has generalized all that.
He has observed ten thousand powers travelling out
from his first lessons in the cradle. The grand central
ones were more mechanic. But the list has been enlarged. He adds now everything to it. He found
motions and liftings had to be produced, and he looks
further; till the circle of what he calls Power has been
increased to the very extreme; till changes unrelated
to the first are found just as certainly to show causation.
Science comes in to tell us what makes the analogy
more complete, but we did not know that all the time.
In our intermediate state we called that thing Power
which had the very slenderest similitude to that which
we felt upon the muscle.
I am to be held to the strongest accountability at last
(Chap. XXXVIII.) to tell whether all these things are
ONLY perceptions; but before that reckoning day comes,
I wish to teach boldly, that they are all perceived; and
that though, with all the rest, they are what we perceive and more, still the MORE that they are is itself
also a dictate of Sensation.
It is a bold ephemera of thought to teach, as this
century does, that there are beliefs where there is no
perception.
CHAPTER XXV.
WILL, POWER, AND CAUSE, AS THEY ADD TO THE IDEA OF THE NOTSELF.
CALLING back, now, the idea of two orders, the
order of interior thought, and the order of external harmony, it has been seen how each particular sensation,
though originally one, appears on both these harmo



CHAP. XXV.]  Will and tI1e Idea of Not-Self.  I93
nized groupings. The blue color appears on that harmonized assemblage that we call the sky, and in that
interminable current that we call our consciousness.
Now, we might anticipate the like in anything so
conscious as the strain of muscle.
And blueness being a simple consciousness, and
Power being conscious, as we have seen, we can
understand it all the better. The Will being a conscious thought, and the nisus being a physical sensation, and the idea of Power partaking of these two, we
can understand how it should attribute itself within to
our inward consciousness, and how it should attribute
itself without as belonging to our body.
The more might this become the case because body
for a long time would be mixing up with self. The
infant would hardly get them separate. The man of
adult years would incorporate self undoubtedly, and
give to it ideas of body. And while this was so, Power
would be shared between them. And if science carried such a sway as to convince the man that body
was altogether outside his consciousness, it would still
preserve of course its ideas of Power, the muscular
stress being a better thing to translate into our ideas
of body, than blueness or smell or any other of our
usual sensations.
Parting with self, however, the body would cast off
the Will. As we became cleared in our intelligence
the nisus would stand out more separately. We would
retain the shadow that Will had helped to give, but
mould it with a continual difference; till the various
strugglings of the flesh, incessantly perceived, would
make Power more visible, till we came steadily to attach
it as an attribute of these muscles of our system.
But, obviously, there would be shadows of it with9




194                  Ontology.            [BooIK III.
out. The ball, when lifted in the hand, would have its
nisus. Its pressure downward would be felt like the
pressure upward of the muscle. This would be witnessed every day. The tree bent over by our nisus
would bend back with all its force by a nisus of its
own. Though Will would vulgarly perplex this thought
of Power, yet ultimately we would get rid of it, and
have left pure force suggested originally with the Will,
but divested at last of all idea of it.
Still, Power would be but a shadowy idea. And
what I mean now is this. Consciously there can be
nothing but perception.  Perception as alleged of
Power began by being Will and nerve feeling. And
the shadow that arose from thence was a conviction
that there must be MORE. The consciousness of the
Will, and the conscious immediate strain, and the conscious visible results, and then the conscious pressure
of the ball, and further still the strain that is from the
tree, —all are perfectly conscious perceptions; but then
they are consciously different, and that leaves a shadow
over the whole. There seems to be a strain without
Will, and a nisus absolutely independent of the Body.
And that leaves an idea of Pozwer; something more
than a, mere associate of Self, and something else than
consequent upon any usual volition.
What is that, therefore?
Plainly, a shadow. Plainly a thing hinted at rather
than discovered. Plainly an empirical belief; and, to
place it just in the position where in a future chapter
we will make it generically stand, it is a thing discovered
by consciousness itself, but discovered to be uncertain;
that is, discovered to be probable by something that
we are conscious of as its like; discovered to be
a-wanted in a chain where in another chain a link just




CHAP. XXVI.]   TWill and the Idea of Self.     195
like it is consciously supplied; discovered perceptibly
by its effects; but then not on the principle that of
necessity there must be a cause; but on the conscious
fact that in a million instances the effect has had one.
Now, therefore, to the main subject that is in place
we are prepared to speak in saying,-that Power, being
thus evolved, goes out from the conscious Self, and
attaches itself to trees and balls. Of course it adds to
the idea of Not-self. The Unity that was borrowed
in a previous chapter from the Body, is made more
complete in the rock or in the urn by this harmony of
Power. Indeed, it takes new aspects. Externality,
figured forth, gets more vital, as though conscious of
itself. Indeed too much so; for it was not always in
the history of men that the ball weighing down was
not imagined to have will, and the tree snapping back.
The standing out independence of things, quoad our
consciousness, seeming only to be images, is immeasurably helped by these multiplied introactions of what is
outward and our muscular volitions.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WILL, POWER, AND CAUSE, AS THEY ADD TO THE IDEA OF SELF.
BUT matter, with its new gifts, returns to help its
comrade. Matter without Power, seeming only like
an image, when endowed with force seems to get
still further off from us. And this force is endlessly
different.' We have seen in a previous chapter how it
gets generalized into everything that will make results.
The muscular nisus of the arm gets generalized with
the action of a mirror. The likeness is of the most
shadowy sort. No marvel! Blueness and smell have
no likeness; and so, shape and melody. Will is a




I96                  Ontology.             [BooK III.
conscious thing: motion is a conscious thing: strain
is a conscious thing: weight is a conscious thing.
These leave their prints, and are reported back into
our consciousness. Then, as we travel out, things of
diminished likeness-the pressure of the wind; the
waving of the forest; the pelting of a storm  of hail;
these all throng innumerably. Of course consciousnesses are had of them; and these consciousnesses
contain two things, first, direct consciousness of
facts, and, second, direct consciousnesses of evident
resemblance.  The mind by its amazing harmonies
groups all these; and, as its result, Power falls heir to
a huge class that bears but a small analogy to original
musculation.
Now, armed with this thought, the Not-Self helps
the Self; that is to say, the mind, having learned to
count its own images without as independent powers,
returns with them to edify itself.
A class of these powers it finds wakening sensation.
That is, all sense moves, so the mind discovers, at the
beck of Not-Self. Hearing dies if there is nothing to
provoke it. I scrape a light, and then I see. I ting
a lyre, and then I hear; uncork a vase, and then I
smell; touch my forehead, or I cannot feel. Self,
therefore, gets this incident from Not-Self, that it is a
consciousness that can be acted on. In other words,
the Not-Self, being only an order, or, to talk more
vulgarly, being at first only an image, gets an independent stand from certain attributes of Power; and so
the Self, being at first only a current, gets a shadow
of consistence from finding that it can be acted on.
Not-Self gives sensation and somzething more,; and so
Self feels sensation and something more; that is, as
we shall now increasingly explain, Being, though




CHAP. XXVII.] Self and Not-Self Build each Other.  I97
revealed by consciousness, is revealed as possessing
more than consciousness, and that by conscious analogies traced in the resemblances of consciousness itself.
Meanwhile, to sum our chapter: —Will, Power, and
Cause add to the Idea of Self in this, that beyond its
being a mere order of consciousnesses, it is found to be
at least such an order as this, that it can be acted upon,
and caused by moods that it does not will, in the condition of the other order not continuous.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE IDEAS OF SELF AND NOT-SELF AS THEY ADD TO EACH OTHER.
AN idea very valuable in all my ideas of Being, is
the idea of Continuity.
Wlere do I get it?
I look at a rock, and it prints itself upon my consciousness. I look at it again, and it comes recurrently; that is, my sensation that is fresh, has fitting
itself upon it a sensation that recurs. Now I conclude
that that rock has stood there; and why?
Observe, I have no evidence of it in my sight. I
have but immediate consciousness. When odors fade
from my nerve, what tell they of anything continuous?
Besides, I may be the victim of a mistake. The rock
may have been crumbled up, and carved in like fashion again. The principle of the " same sum of Being," *
is mere shop-work to account for difficulties. The
idea that a grand mountain remains, is not a native
one, and must be learned by experience. Now, as I
cannot watch all mountains, why, when one heaves in
sight,-why am I so pat in the conviction that it has
been there all the time?
+ Hamilton.




I98                  OJztology.           [BooK III.
Obviously, here; —Self lends to Not-Self.
The order in the current is continuous. There is
an order not continuous, as, for example, where the
mountain comes and goes again in its harmonies before
the mind. But there is an order that is continuous,
because, though consciousness is an immediate thing,
it recurs; and by its recurrences weaves back a chain
of Self in the way that we have considered. Now this
chain of Self associates itself with the Body, and knits
all that into its chain of continuousness. Not that I
am willing to teach that the Body is never forgotten
(for even the mind may be, in sleep); but that it is so
associated with sense as not possibly to be severed
from it in the idea of our own continuousness.
The body though, like the secular men among the
monks, goes out to mingle with the world. My hand
is just as earthy as the rock. If my hand continues,
so, by analogy, all. And my frame, therefore, becomes
a scaffolding of thought by which I climb to the permanency of all that is external.
Permanence, therefore, is one of the great facts
that the Self offers to the Not-Self.
But now a serious consequence! If the mountain
must be permanent, it is permanent without consciousness.
The continuous idea of my Self is made easy because
my consciousness continues; and this truly is the great
attribute of Ego, that it never parts with consciousness.
But here certainly is a great stride without, that what
began as a consciousness, comes now to be something
utterly without it. The clamor of a horn was mere
sense. The glimmer of the urn was a mere patch upon
my vision. The carrion pelt was a mere fume upon my
nostril. But it has come to this, that these conscious



CHAP. XXVII.] Self and Not-Self Build each Other. I99
nesses have so well agreed into themselves as to stand
out in conscious images. Though the present puts in
the front, and the past comes in with its recurrences,
yet the urn stands urn-like in my consciousness, and
my nose and my finger wander to it and have also their
harmonies. And yet this harmonized consciousness
(adding also power and other bodily ideas), gleams
at last into something unconscious; that is, a continuance of the image after its hardness or its blueness have
absolutely faded from the mind.
Now, call not this belief simply. There is some
idea. This thing has traced itself, and earned its
Being. Flesh, having reported itself as continually
conscious, there is a manifest likeness between the
flesh and the rock. My first impulse is to call the rock
conscious. But driven from that, what follows? Why
that something must remain; and like the body it must
be something of Power, and, like the body, permanent
in shape and figure.
We see, therefore, at a glance, what an immensity
is done by Self for the entity of the Not-Self.
But, now, obversely:-Of course the outward, being
seen as cognizable in permanent being, reflects that
thought upon the inward. If rock may be something
fixed, so, travelling back, must be the body, and so,
travelling back, may be a mind. If rock lasts when it
is unseen, so somethzing may when we are in slumber.
If Ego seems a mere conscious journey, the facts that it
finds out, viz: its action upon body, and the action of
body upon consciousness, must all be showing their
analogies. If body lasts, so may mind. If body may
exist unconscious, so may mind. If body be possessed
of power, may not mind be? Order continuous in the
current, and order not continuous, started as mere




200                 Ontology.            [BOOK III.
perceptions. They were conscious as harmonious
groups. They partook of sensations with each other.
They gathered each to each immense accumulations.
Now, if one by that singular sensation of power, and
by its likeness to the body, retrocedes out of a passing
consciousness, and claims an abiding entity, why may
not the other, acted upon by this and claiming common facts, arrive at the same idea of corresponding
Being?
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE IDEA OF OTHER SELVES AS IT ADDS TO THE IDEA OF SELF
AND NOT-SELF.
IT might be an easier plan to show how the being
of self could be supposed, to remember that, in the
cruder form, Self is included in the Body.
The wandering Goth had perhaps no other idea.
Now, as a continuous something attaches most easily
to the Body, especially when it has suggested (and then
returned from doing so) the unconscious continuances
without, it would be perhaps far the simplest to say,
that the body, having the idea of continuousness,
and being supposed to include the mind, gives that
the idea of Being, and Self, once existent, never loses
the idea.
If Self be nothing but a round of exercises, certainly it thinks otherwise, and thinks falsely to a large
degree; that is, our ideas of Self are largely corrupted
by the body.
Our existent entity, taken up primarily from the
animal frame, takes up many of its coarsenesses with it;
and perhaps, therefore, the most philosophical account
of all is, that self begins with a conscious order, advances
into a physical awareness of itself still further in the




CHAP. XXVIII.] Other Selves Build Self and Not-Self. 201
body; adds afterward the idea of power; and, being
possessed of an easy sense of continuousness in its
physical frame, retires out of that, only when the most
reduplicated analogies lead it to more interior imagination of Being.
However it ends, therefore, certainly the permanence of matter makes our largest e'claircissement of an
unconscious entity for mind.
This being so, how wonderfully must it contribute
to the result, to see other bodies, and to argue from
them other minds; especially to see animal bodies,
and to infer from them other resemblances.
Unquestionably the idea of brutes helps our ideas
even of our Maker.
But, in respect to man,-the rock having borrowed
continuousness from our ideas of body, hands it on
again with large interest when we see other figures
heave in sight —the very image of our material frame.
Possessed of sensation all through Self, and all through
body, which, in coarser minds, is part or the whole of
Self, it is impossible to see a leg without thinking of its
sense, or an arm without ideas of the nisus; and thus
other men's senses come of course to be considered;
with this important difference, that it is no longer conscious sense that is perceived, but sense imagined to
be conscious in a consciousness not conscious where it
is conceived: I mean by that, consciousness conscious
but in another man. I repeat: worlds of addition is
made here to the idea of entity; and I want it felt, as
these consciousnesses are stated, that each adds its trait;
that each piles the already accumulated assemblage;
and that, if the bitterest sceptic would only tell us what
each of these incontestably experienced consciousnesses adds to the assembled group, we would be pre9*




202                  Onltoloy.             [BooK III.
pared to use his terms for the genesis of the ontological idea.
Not only men, but brutes; not only brutes, but trees;
not only trees, but rocks,-these forms are all unquestioned in our vision. Now rocks, seen in visible analogies with all the three, borrow their attributes, and in
the end lend them back, and in the end multiply them
by diverse relations and impressions, till Power and
iWill and Continuousness, and all the legomiena of sense,
speak together, and shed their reflected lights, and all
upon the idea of Being.'
A body becomes not my body but one like it.
Its senses become not my senses but similar and seriously different: its consciousness, if we but look to
the primary idea, no consciousness really at all. The
otherness of all this is in fact a new and strong idea,
and helps in unnumbered ways our important point,that all that can be learned by consciousness, whether
ontological or not, must be either intuitive or empirical; that is to say, must either be consciousness barely,
or else, what is a wider field, what consciousness discovers to be its like.
CHAPTER XXIX.
EFFECTS OF THEOLOGY ON THE IDEA OF BEING.
I WILL not anticipate the origin of the idea of God,
and, therefore, can dwell but meagrely upon the effect
of Theism upon our Idea of Being. I want it however
thus early to fix our point, that Being is a great accumulation.
Being, among different people (and of course by that
I mean, the idea among different people), is this or that
largely according to their training.  If Being is solely,
according to the true account, what men can gather




CHAP. XXX.]  Science and the Idea of Peing.   203
up into it empirically by reduplicated observations, it
takes-on this or that additional construction, according
to the facts that men have brought into their consciousness. To the Fakir it is all perceptive, even to the
rock and to the clod. When he leaves his person, instead of travelling to plants and mountains as things
that unconsciously exist, he just travels on as though
the whole were conscious. He steps upon the earth
as though it felt his trampling; and, therefore, he
gathers up a little portion of it into a god, to represent
by that little fragment of it its whole intelligence.
He makes no difference sensitively between the rock
and his finger.
Theology, therefore, must operate marvellously.
Through all the journey that we have thus far
been describing, if we travel at last to a Deity, it is
easy to see how entities would recede under the truth.
We would grow modest in the end about imagining
ANYTHING BUT POWER. And though the difficulties
of that would continue back into the Deity, still it
would give all a shadowy phase. We would trace the
mystery of matter to the invisible God; and knowing
that He is unseen, we would yield better to the invisiblenesses of matter, and to the shadowy Pozuer to
which we seem endlessly at last to trace it.
CHAPTER XXX.
EFFECTS OF SCIENCE ON THE IDEA OF BEING.
THE Self and the Not-Self tracing themselves back
further when we get the idea of God, so they do when
we get the ideas of Science.
To the Hindoo, even when not Buddhist, body may
well seem himself. And as he travels out to what is




204                  Ontology.            [BooIK III.
external, it may be hard to divorce matter from sense
or consciousness. The best of us in our lazy moods,
and perhaps the best of us forever, make body include
our-Self, and make matter automatic like the body.
Science however, at least, influences this. The educated man gets matter more entirely dead, and gets mind
far backward out of the body. And yet Science holds
up the fact of the meagreness of sense. It tells us that
there are but five gates to do all our journeying to the
outward. It tells us that there is but one-way to communicate with every sense. It tells us that every one
requires a propulsion on its organ. It tells us that the
residuum in every search is finally the idea of Power.
It tells us that light must impinge upon a web, and
sound upon a drum, and smell upon a couple of nerveplaits, and so of course touch and flavor, and then, therefore, that varieties of Power are all that can be traced
in exterior Being. Like things are pronounced upon the
Ego; and though all these facts do not take us out of
the court of consciousness, yet they affect our whole
thought, and make an addition to our views of Being.
These we must again repeat and, therefore, take
from all things; and it is the amazing harmony of
sense (that is, the order not continuous) that makes it
pile up so, and so endlessly subtract as well as add,
while the idea of Being is being put together.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE WORD BEING.
CONSCIOUSNESS, being so very express, and reporting so very consciously, would bring its reports most necessarily through the verb' to be.' Most naturally would
this be so if the verb'to see' should begin to fail it.




CHAP. XXXIII.]    The Word Substance.            205
If I looked upon the urn, and found it most stubbornly in place, and felt it and smelt it and found it
harmonious in my vision, I would part with the idea,' I see,' and deal in the fact,' it is.'
In other words, walking and sleeping and coming
back, there would be the urn again, —grant, now, merely
an image. And while consciousness would put in its
*face in immediate sensation, recurrence would put in
its back, and'touch and sound would complete a harmonious impression. This impression consciously as I
look, I can realize this instant. It is, whatever I reason
about it; and call it image if you will, I cannot strip
it of absolute BEING.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE WORD EXISTENCE.
BUT not only does it BE in spite of what we think
of it, but it EX-ISTS; it STANDS OUT. This stereoscopic rilievo,-though it is empirical, yet it is made up
of the clearest dictates of consciousness. Grant that
it is a mere image (with Berkeley), still its thereness
learned from the body, and its outness seen from the
body, and its distance measured by touch, are all
apparent. It EX-ISTS. If it be the ghost of a fancy,
still these particulars can be known. And, therefore,
aside from Perception, there is a name for this abiding
harmony.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE WORD SUBSTANCE.
AGAIN, it SUB-STATS.
And I had always thought that this was a difficult
word for a mere empirical observer. I had always




206                    Onto/ogy.              [BOOK III.
thought it meant, It stands under, and might allude to
to'a tertiun qOuid bearing up qualities-too early a
conception, it struck me, of Qualities as opposed to
Substance.
But, in looking at some old dictionaries, I found
that substare meant to resist, and substantia, something that resists; and I saw immediately its primordial explanation.
The urn, visible before my consciousness, has this
fact about it, that, if I touch it, it resists. The image
is all apparent without that trial of touch; but this
consciousness which BE'S, and also EX-ISTS, has this
separate phenomenon, that in its outzness, and its there-?ness, i. e. just at the margin of color, it SUB-STATS,
i. e. it RESISTS the finger that is pushed out toward
its surface.
Like a guide-post, therefore, the word points, not
to Intuitive Beliefs, but, like outnzess and thzerezess, to
conscious experience; a downright resistance of touch
which finds itself encountered in harmony with vision.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
SELF AND NOT-SELF HIGHLY COMPLEX IDEAS.
BEING is either Self or Not-Self.
I. Not-Self is either that which is entirely material,
or else it is other selves.
That which is entirely material is either perception,
or else it is not a matter of consciousness (B. I. Chap.
IV.). Now sensation is a perception. Let us begin
our inquiry as to the true idea of being by asking (I.)
whether the not-self, considered as matter, is all or any
part of it sensation.
This, at first view, will be scouted at as utter trifling.




CHAP. XXXIV.]  Self and Not-Self Comnplex Ideas.  207
Sensation is a print upon the nerves. It is true it has
two mfeanings, one the potential faculty, the other the
print as it is perceived. But this last sense, which is the
one which is questioned, is so fleetingly a mental act,
that to ask whether sensation is matter, seems to be
trifling with the whole metaphysical theme. And yet
query now, What are we asking for?  Are we asking
for the meaning of a word? or are we asking for an unwritten thought that may please philosophers or men
of very abstract ideas? There is doubtless a naked
quiddity bereft of traits that would be convenient to
think of under some proper philosophical term; but
this quiddity is not matter. I am speaking soberly
when I say, that a cherry is matter. I am speaking
more soberly yet when I say, that a cherry is in part
sensation. Here shall be again a time to tell what I
mean by that. I do not mean much metaphysically.
And yet I do mean much in the way of clearing metaphysical idea. When I ask, What is matter?  I mean,
What does that word portend?  I do not mean, What
ought it to portend? or, What would be a completer
or more advanced sense to agree upon under that
vocable? I mean, What is matter? And with whatever metaphysical refinement I state that which it
does not'really mean, I inflict a wrong, for all these
appellatives have an unbounded right to be philosophized upon in' the absolute sense in which they are
consciously conceived. For example, a cherry. What
do I call a cherry? Do I conceive a naked ens, that
bears the red color, and is cause of the round shape,
and that lies metaphysically under it? Or do I,
philosopher though I were, include the red surface?
It is a question of the use of speech. And I answer it
without a moment's hesitation. A cherry is a cherry,




208                  Ontology.             [BOOK III.
not as a metaphysical ens, but ruddiness and all; I
mean by that, when I say, A cherry, I mean a ruby
surface as part of the idea that I put into the very
term.
You may say, This is a mere question of philology.
That is the very idea that I wish to impress. When I
speak of matter, I mean, as my habitual sense, the ens
WITH its qualities, the cherry as partly color; I mean
by that, as I look upon the fruit, My sensation in the
conscious sense is an actual part of my working appellative of cherry. We have reached therefore this far
at once, that the not-self in the sense of what is entirely
material includes sensation, and, therefore, is partly a
consciousness (see B. III. Chap. II.) and therefore
intuitively known (see B. II. Chap. III.) just to the extent that the speech we make of it takes in our senses.,But now a cherry takes-in our senses to a very
small degree. If I stand off and look at it, there is a
patch of ruddiness. That patch has breadth and surface and varieties of hue. I am conscious of the peach
that much; and I say, conscious of the peach, because
usage has actually chosen to put that much in the
peach as a part of its meaning. If any body doubts
it, it is mere logomachy. We lay the stress simply to
be clear. Men talk of consciousness of self, and intuition of an external world, simply from this usage, that
from the peasant up, always as we shall hereafter see,
they choose to put consciousness into their idea of
self, and pink and scarlet into their idea of the external world.
Ruddiness, however, is but a small part of the
peach. -How do we form the rest?  (2.) We resort to
recurrence.  How does recurrence build for us? This
is a pleasant side-question. Does it put-in actual




CIAP. XXXIV.]  Self and Nlot-Self Conplex Ideas.  209
recurrences? Or does it transmute them into imagined
sense?  We think, the latter. The back and sides of
the peach are imagined ruddinesses like the front.
And here let me assert again;- These are actual parts
of the peach. The front wasa sensation. It was, therefore, the directest consciousness. The back is not a sensation. It is not even a recurrence. But it is what
recurrence was helping us to of an imagined red. And
these, let me say, are actual parts of the peach. Now
take in all other senses. We have been speaking only
of color. We have prepared the way that all may crowd
in. Imagine touch with all its remembrance,-and
scent, and sound. Our word-making seems to part
with nothing. Consult your consciousness. In the
very meaning of the peach you pack all you think of;
the color, and its interior look, the hue it would have if
you should open it, and the hue it would have behind
it, and the grain, and the touch, and the surface;inspect your consciousness; that is the most prudent
test as to what you put into your meaning of a peach.
(3.) Now, as the actual fact, these images are all in
order.
A bullock in a pasture is known to lick his flesh,
and to lick the flesh of his companions, till a great quantity of hair is carried into his maw, and, usually, with no
other effect than what might betide any other foreign
substance. But sometimes, as a rare result, the hair
adds to itself the attribute of order. By a strange
felting process, that Darwin might envy for his protoplasm, the hair takes on a form. That which piece by
piece is but a hair, webs itself into a cone. It is but
hair after all. But who shall say that this exquisite
shape is not more? Ideally I mean, the hair and this
growth of the hair have the divinest differences. And




2IO                 Ontology.            [BOOk III.
so now in matter; the baldest sense, a single ray
shot here, or a single touch felt there, are very different ideals from that felted sense which binds these five
messengerings together.
(4.) And now we rejoice to note exactly what the
old thinkers meant by species or images. They meant
truth. The moderns who discard it all have fallen into
error. I~agoes are precisely the way in which the mind
arrives at external things. Images moreover are real.
That is to say, not only does the mind frame an image
of external things, but it throws the name over it;
that is, arriving at a cherry by having its image, I put
the image in the cherry; that is, I give the name to
that which includes the image.
For example, I see a cherry. That is my first consciousness. It might have been touch. It might have
been taste. I might have shut my eye, and some
baby-trifler might have fed me with a cherry. It matters not. Eye or hand, my first thought is a sensation.
That first thought is the cherry,-I mean, a part of it.
What care I what the philosopher says? He may say,
My eye has never seen the cherry, and my hand has
never touched it. And he may prove all he says.
That is to say, descanting upon molecular realities, he
may show me that hand and fruit molecularly have
been hedged away. I care nothing at all. What I am
descanting about is the name. The name cherry, even
with the philosopher who talks so well, includes the
sense. The ruddiness on which his eye falls, is part
of the fruit; and when he takes it in his hand, the
sphericity that resists his touch is the boundary of the
thing. That is, the bundle of its traits is swept into
his speech, and is included under the definition that is
made.




CHAP. XXXIV.] Self and Not-Self Complex Ideas.   2 I
Now this bundle is the ilmage. Like the cone in
the ox it is a something that is more than the hair;
not more in essence, but more in thinking.  The
image that I frame is either, first, sensation, or, second,
the thought of it which I bring up by recurrence; and
though each gleam may be of small effect, like each
hair in the maw of the ox, yet, felted into one, it
makes an image; that image is by an order that is in
nature; that image is of the' most conscious that I
possess; that image has been the dream of the past;
and that image is the true philosophy: when I look
upon this stove, the working word, STOVE, keeps in it
the front and the sides that I put in it by sensation
and recurrence.
(5.) But now, having such an image, an immensity
is added to it by an empirically discovered perzmanzence.
This is the progeny of recurrence.
Having a sensation of which I am directly conscious, it was noticed how the rest was put into the
cherry by recurrent memory.  Shifted, however. I
think I am conscious that it is not a memory that I
put into the fruit, but an imagined copy. I see the
front: I imagine sides that shall be like it. But the
more beau iful what memory does do in fabricating
permzannence!  That is an immense stride in idealization. The inzage as a flash is a wonderful harmony;
but if the image lives! The stove with its black bulk,that seems more to think of than any one feeling of
its surface; but if the stove stands there! And see,
This is really nothing but perception. The cone in the
maw of the ox is nothing but hair. Let us look at
this suspiciously. The stove!-it is in part a bundle of
images. And when we speak of permanence, what do
we mean by that?  At first, but a permanence of




212                  Ontology.             [BOOK III.
images. I see a house. I have learned distance in
space. I remember a house. I have learned distance
in time. And all the intervening length whether of
time or space is filled up by experience. We are not
going to teach that all being is perception; but see
how we can go very far without putting anything into
the name but sense and recurrent permanence.
(6.) But now permanence begins to mutiny. Permanence is a thing that requires food and clothes, and
something more solid than mere perception.  The
image of a stove is a very solid looking thing, and the
remembered image of a stove is very real, but what
does it do for itself when no one is looking? That it
drops out of existence we cannot think, for we believe
it permanent just as we believe the analogy of the
bells (see B. II. Chap. VIII.). It is not a consciousness, but an experience; and if it should not be permanent, and we looked and it had entirely vanished,
it would only be a stoppage of the bells after a century
of ringing. But if permanent, what lasts?  Certainly
not the idea; for there is no one looking. We are
forced of into Ontology.  Being is not idealized. We
are not conscious of it. We are not looking at it; I
mean as ultra ideal; but that word SOMETHING describes its origin. Mill dared wildly to say, that possi-,bil),  was the word,-that self was a possibility of
senss tion,-that the peach was a possibility of being
seen,-that the stove, in order to live between-whiles,
was a possibility to be seen when we felt free to look
at it; but, alas for Mill! this is but tanltul per terzato.
It is scarce as good as our word somzethzing,; for while
possibili:, is but a repeating of the case, somethinzg is a
modest disclaimer of our being able to say much: it is




CHAP. XXXIV.] Self and Not-Self Complzex Ideas.  213
a convenient trunk, into which we can pack many an
understood analogy.
7. For example, pozuer, —that begins to toll us off
from pure and mere idea.
Pozuer is conceived of in our consciousness (see
B. III. Chap. XXIV.). Then it wanders off from there,
and is seen in its analogies. There is power in my
arm. That I feel. There is power in another man's
arm. There is power in the wind. There is power in
the heat. How vague the analogy at last becomes.
Finally there is power in the cherry. I saw it last
night: I see it again now. Has it existed all that
time? Yes. Did you see it? No. Has anybody
seen it?  No. How has it existed? Why, surely not
as a consciousness; but as a somze/thzing, and as a something with.power. And though the imzagecs no longer
serve us, rotund and solid though they seem, yet they
have done the arguing for us as to something permanent; and though we have to drop them  out of the
picture when the stove ceases to be imaged, yet they
leave these vague analogies of power and of permanence
and of somctlziizg that continues to be there.
8. Nor must we go on from just this spot in Ontology without setting in its right shape that much abused
term of qzuality. It is indeed three terms, the first two
meaning the same thing numerically, the last meaning
nothing of the kind. The first means a quality of the
sense, as when we speak of the shrillness of a certain
sound, or the sweetness of a certain taste; and even then
we must state that it is the heard sound and the felt
taste; for these words wander incessantly in objective
ways. The second means precisely the same thing,
but turned objectively. There is a tendency we have
seen to put our sensations into the object. Thus blue




214                        Ontology.                   [BOOK III.
is blue, and all the dictionaries in the world cannot
make it anything conscious but a color. Yet-the color
is imputed to the heavens, and that as a consciousness. It goes as a paint all over it; nay, dictionarywise, right into it. There is a second meaning therefore to the term. The same color is a quality of my
sense, and a quality, by the habit of men's speech, of
exterior matter; though the same conscious blueness,
numerically meant, is that which is present in my mind
and painted on the sky. Palsy my power of sight,
and the two would fade at once, proving their identity.
But the third would survive. And this will make things
a great deal clearer. The third is the mere power to
awake the  others.  There is vast confusion  from  not
having detected this dictionary-difference. The first
and second are a sense. The third is not even a consciousness. And yet they are all called qualities. A
quality in the third sense is a mere imagined potence
to project the blue, or to awake the sound, or to produce the taste upon the healthy organization.*
Therefore at this stage of Ontology, if a man says,
we are conscious of qualities, but we are not conscious
of substance, we must ask him what he means. If he
* Now, one word here. W,~e have said that consciousness goes into
our idea of self, and that ruddiness goes into our idea of the cherry. So,
let it be observed, these three dictionary-meanings of quality are more
or less fused together. The mere consciousness, color, trajects itself we
have seen, and becomes object-wise; and the more genetic meaning, viz
that which produces the consciousness, like the cherry itself, becomes
suffused with the consciousness itself; so that all three meanings are
with difficulty abstracted from each other. It would be difficult to say
that color is not a sensation, and yet we rather say, Sensation of color; so
obstinately does the mind speak object-wise of its different sensations.
Let me entreat, however, attention to this fact;-these are dictionary
questions; not points about which consciousness differs outside of our
speech.




CHAP. XXXIV.]  Self and Not-Self Comoplex Ideas.   215
means qualities in the earlier senses, we have nothing
to say; but if he means qualities in the third, he is
utterly at fault, for we are conscious of substance as a
dictionary thing, for it includes qualities in those earlier forms; but we are not conscious of quality at all,
I mean of quality in its third sense, that is, simply of
the power by which a thing seems blue, or is the instrument of God in projecting the blueness or projecting the sound or enkindling the taste upon the mind.
II. We are not ready for our last assertions, and,
therefore, we will go on, and close this chapter with
what is the second great head of it, viz. Self.
(I.) SELF INCLUDES CONSCIOUSNESS. This is the
great philologic fact. We have seen that the cherry includes ruddiness. These are things of the Lexicon.
We do not say that they might not have been different. W\hen I say, I am conscious of self, I mean conscious of self understood as that word must mean.
And when I say, I see a cherry, I mean that I see what
that word cherry answers to; and I must know what
that word cherry answers to, before I know whether I
really see it.
Now that I see a cherry depends upon the fact
that its ruddiness is a part of its idea; with the cherry
a very slender part. The ruddiness is a mere patch
of light; and a vast deal idealistically has to be fabricated from the region of recurrence.
It is not so with the ego. The ego is all the consciousness. Let me be understood;-The word ego, or
to speak more plainly the whole idea of myself, includes
my consciousness, and not, as in the instance of the
cherry, a patch of sense, but the whole contents of the
spirit; the whole existing consciousness goes by the
law of the Lexicon into myself at the time.




216                   Ontology.             [BooK III.
In the instance of the cherry, recurrence brought up
and finished the fruit by imagined sensations. In the
instance of self, all goes in directly.  Whatever my
mind is conscious of at the time, enters for that time
into my idea of ego.
Do not debate now!  Deny or reject or declare
that this speech contradicts your dictionary. That is
the direction which we are now travelling.  But if you
admit that practically it is actually the case,-that is
all I care for. I say, that, as my mother taught me, I
have learned to count self, conscious self. And, therefore, when I speak of self, I am  not remembering
whether some other self would be more for science,
but I am speaking of the self I know. The self I know,
includes the thoughts.
(2.) Now, though recurrent thought is conscious,
and, therefore, makes up my consciousness, yet it does
rmore for the felt ego than this.  It not only adds its volume to the consciousness which is self, but it also tells
facts about it; that is, as in the instance of the stove,
it brings out the idea of pcranlzazence.
(3.) In like manner,pozuer. The stove is permanent.
Why?  Is any one looking at it?  No. Possibility is
the word with Mill. The stove is not looked at, but
it has a possibility to be looked at. That is its permanence.  But we, claiming a vast many other experiences, lay emphasis upon the fact of power.  It has a
power to be looked at; and that helps the thought of
being.  And so now in the instance of the ego; —not
only is it all our consciousness, but, if forced to give up
that, and if a race should arise that should change the
dictionary and shrink self into a naked ecns, we would
make much of the idea of power. The stove has
power to be visible. I never knew it except visually;




CHAP. XXXV.] Lanoangge and the Idea of Being.   217
or, otherwise, never, except tactually; but I know by
likeness that it has a power. And if the stove has
power, why not I?  I never think stoves if not in part
as images, and I never think self if not in part as consciousness; but if the stove has power to project these
images, why not I to receive them? and, moreover, if
the stove sends images, and has therefore efficient
strength, why have not I also? for as the stove sends
images to me, so do I to myself in those perpetual
recurrences which something or other is printing and
sending to my eye.
Now this is all very slender, but it xwill help what
was more fully treated before. It is very slender,
because we have singled out but one sense. The stove
is a hulk of images, and the ego a maze of consciousness.  Nevertheless one is just like the other.  Both,
as words, take in consciousness.  Neither, as things, is
confined to it.  Both are like in travelling out from it.
And neither could advance an inch but on that principle
of the bell (B. II. Chap. VIII.), which, beginning with
the sense, travels out empirically on the strength of
likeness.
CHAPTER XXXV.
EFFECT OF LANGUAGE ON THE IDEA OF BEING.
MERE language makes self include consciousness,
and makes the not-self, so far as it is material, include
the instant sensation. We have no questions to ask
as to whether this is for the best. " Vox populi, vox
Dei."  In all languages, so far as we are aware, the
words for being include the consciousnesses that
reveal it at the time.
To men of perfectly sharp minds this would make
no difference. The philosophic entity could be treated,
IO




218                  Ontology.            [BooI III.
whether cherry included its red color, or whether ego
included my existent consciousness, or whether it did
not. It is only a question of the Lexicon; though
the formation of the Lexicons of all language indicates
in the most striking way that path of thought which
enters the domain of being.
All men have not sharp minds, however; and in the
maze of Metaphysics no man has a particularly sharp
mind; and, therefore, the meaning of terms, though it
can be conventionally agreed, has had a most potential
way of warping knowledge.
I. In the first place, self, including consciousness,
and yet coming afterward to be dreamed of as a naked
entity, has started with a sort of scorn at any one who
has spoken of it as not conscious. If I were to declare,
You are not conscious of yourself, you would cry and
stop your ears. And yet this is but the effect of language. Ever since the world began, self has included
consciousness; and now, when metaphysicians dig and
conceive an cnrjz inside of our conscious thinking, that is
seized upon as though it were the genuine philosophic
self, and, not remembering that then language has to
change, we utter an outcry of horror if a man says we
are not conscious of the ego.
II. And'so of the non-ego. These are useful words
even in their popular sense. The non-ego, in the cases
where it is wholly matter, takes in, as we have already
seen, the mere sensation. It takes in the whole bundle
of recurrent images. This is a grand help. (I) It
gives unitariness to our speech; and (2) it introduces
the peasant by easy stage to the idea of being. But it
has proportioned evils. It breeds chapters of mistake.
It has seduced men since the time of Plato. Having
intuition of a cherry; being sure that I see it; having




CHAP. XXXVI.]  4 2'e Ce Consciouls of tCe Vozt-Sef?  219
consciousness that I am in its very presence; so long
as a cherry includes sensation, my dictum is complete;
but thought steals in and cuts off the quiddity, and
sheers away what is conscious from the fruit, and yet
still spends its time in inquiring how I have certainty
of the cherry.
The remedy lies in the speech.  Changing the
speech, I must change my intellection. Taking hue
out of the peach, and looking at it in metaphysic guise,
I must cease to see it. And so of the ego. Robbing
it of consciousness; I mean by that, taking out of the
word a thought-current as part of its signification; and
we relegate it into the inane. After that it is not conscious. Then it becomes a spirit like God. We believe in it, like angels. And for a man to say he is
conscious of himself, is a mere tripping up upon the
old idea.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CAN NWVE BE SAID TO BE CONSCIOUS OF THE NOT-SELF?
WVE are ready, therefore, for all those questions
about the domain of consciousness.
It seems that matter is an object of consciousness
because, as the actuality of speech, the word matter
includes sensation.  I am conscious of matter because
I am conscious of its hue; or I am conscious of matter
because I am conscious of its image, and its image,
grouping all that is sensational together, is an integral
part of the defined reality.
Other parts, however, are not sensational.  The
image is mostly made up of the past. Of the ruddiness of the peach I am distinctly conscious; and if
that is the peach, I am conscious of the peach. But




220                  O/Itolog/.            [BooK III.
of the back of the peach I am not conscious. It is
made up of images. They are fashioned from the
past.  And though they are integral parts of the
peach; I mean lexically: yet I am not conscious
of them; for they are not like the ruddiness I see,
actual facts, but they are likeli/oods,; that is to say,
whether they are ruddy or white I cannot settle till
I actually see them.
So of permnaizezce, and so, above all, of power.
They have drifted further from  consciousness.  We
will explain how far, under another chapter. So, above
all, of eJzti&I. WVhen the philosopher comes in, and
sheers away all that is of the image, an entity is conceived, and of that there should be no pretence that
we can at all be conscious.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CAN WE BE SAID TO BE CONSCIOUS OF SELF?
IF the appellative, self, includes our existing consciousness, of course, as we have already explained, we
are conscious of self. And as consciousness is very
large, we are conscious of very much of self,-far more
than of the not-self as matter.
Ego signifies all of consciousness. The non-ego
does not.  Hence in common language we are said to
be conscious of self, but we are not said to be conscious of a cherry.
We aie conscious of a cherry just in a patch of
ruddiness, a sort of umbilical feeding of the main idea.
We are conscious of self all over. And this is the
answer we give to the above inquiry. We are conscious of self as a dictionary word including all our
consciousness at the time. But as a philosophic ens,




CHAP. XXXVIII.]  BDCing, 7not al Perception.     22I
if thought succeeds in divorcing it from all our consciousness, we are not conscious of it at all.  But as a
thought-bearer, just as a stove may be conceived as an
image-bearer, as an original esse, inside of consciousness, and yet outside of God, and given by Him efficiency to breed our thinking, it is dead as Dido; it is
outside of all our image-making: we have no look
into its face: we look into its being as we do into God
who made us.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
IS BEING NOTHING BUT PERCEPTION?
THIS seems an obstinate going back to an offensive
scepticism; but wTe are guilty of it in order to gather
up every crumb of the required empiricism.
All that man knows he must perceive. All that he
perceives he is conscious of; moreover his perceptions
of wlhatever sort, as awas long ago determined (B. I.
Chap. VIII.), are throughout a consciousness. Therefore, if we perceive being, must it not be all perception? inasmuch as all perception is all a consciousness?
We are at a state when this difficulty can be gotten
over, and, we think, finely and finally.
A cherry is being. Ruddiness in our conscious
thought of it is part of it; and, therefore, so far as a
cherry is ruddiness, it is a perception. But ruddiness
is but a small part of it; and there are back and sides
and juice and pulp and pit and ten-thousand-concourse
of images.  What are  these images?  Sensations?
They are not even recurrences. They are images of
recurrences; and what our mind asserts when it fits
them to the peach is that they are parts of it like the
ruddiness.  But am  I conscious of them?  Let me




222                   On/tology.            [BOOK III.
ask another question. Am I conscious of the ringing
which having continued every five minutes for a thousand years I perceive will ring the next minute? Behold
the answer!-Perception is the unlucky term. I really
mix things when I consent to use it. I do not really
perceizve the ringing that is to be the next moment.  If
I did, it would be all a consciousness.  The ringing
this moment is all sensation, and of every wave of it I
am squarely conscious.  But the ringing that is to be
is a faith.  Now let me transfer this, and we can become
very lucid. The patch of ruddiness is the peach, that
is, according to the vocabulary, it is a conscious part
of it. Therefore th'at much is perception.  But of the
back and sides of the peach think a moment. It is
just like the ringing of the bell. The ringing next
moment is a faith. The back of the cherry is a faith.
I do not even know the color of it.  No, not the fact
of it! I have a sensation of the front, and that sensation two things,-first, the hue of it, and, second, the
fact of it. And now of the back what have I?  Decidedly a consciousness; and that consciousness is all
a perception. But a perception of what? A perception
of the exact mental phenomena.  What are the mental phenomena? They are conscious recurrences. Is
that the peach?  No. W\hat more are they?  They
are facts about these recurrences; for of all the facts,
as in blueness and redness, we are supremely conscious.
What are these facts?  First, their conscious analogies.
What more? Second, the order that they keep. Give
us, therefore, four things; first absolute consciousnesses; second, among these, conscious recurrences; third,
among these, visible likeness; and, fourth, among these
like things, conscious order,-and Ontology becomes a
thing of prediction. The front of the cherry is a con



CHAP. XXXVIII.]  Beizfg, not all Perception.   223
sciousness; but all beside is predicted probability, —
which might actually deceive,-a framing of faith on
the base of experienced recurrence.
How, still it may be shouted out, does anybody get
the enzs from the image? the granite from the soap
bubble?  Thought is one thing. Iron  is another.
Where does the latter come from?  And our antagonists may press in upon us, and crowd us in this extremest moment with the question, Where did you get
the iron? Our answer is, We have not gotten the iron
at all. Thought is all mine. I see every part of it.
Iron is not all mine. I see scarce any of it. What I do
see is thought.  Beyond thought I do not see the iron.
By thought I get a faith in it. As thought I have seen
power. As thought I have seen permanence. Abundle of thought has made an image. The iron would be
mere thought, were it not that discovered order, and
experienced analogy, and detected difference (all these
mere thoughts), had pushed me beyond thought into
the region of empirical believing. A rock first reports
to me as light; but when I infer permanence where there
is no light, I am forced to conceive of sozclhzing not
light that abides in the absence of my vision.
This something I am not conscious of. It is a made
up thing. I do not possess it sensibly, as I do my
consciousness.  I assert it as I do the future ringing
of the bell. And if any one says, Yes, but it is an
entity; and that is very different from perception, —-I
say, Yes, but the diferenzc~ is what perception asserts.
And if he adds, It is so different as to be genetically
incapable of such a birth, I bring him to pause by asking,-.Specifically what is it? He soon begins to describe it in terms of consciousness; so that when power
and hue and bulk and weight and permanence, all of




224                  O,/tolog7y.            [BooK III.
which are consciousnesses, all combine, he has nothing
beyond, except SOMETHING, that he can assert of being.
And that so;07t/tzinz is just the same discovery in
the instance of the egoo. The cgo as consciousness is of
course perception and nothing more. The fego as something that has consciousness is an empiric functionary,
permanent because we trace it when out of thought,powerful because acting and acted on, these being simply consciousnesses,-a being, because it Is all that it is
consciously discerned to be, —an existence, because it
stands out in imagined separateness like matter,-and
a substance as some men call it, as though it did really
resist, and had power for impinging upon the body.
Now these are all shadows. They go by the tether
of consciousness. They go as far as that swill lead
them. That fact is seen in the very terms that we
employ. And when consciousness leaves them, we
embrace the 6ot rather than the  Fv?. We no longer see
anything direct. But like a hand holding us out of the
window, consciousness holds us out into the inane, that
we may affirm by analogy and experience tiat there is
sonzet/zizng F;;ore cnzc dzi'lren to what perception itself
can squarely bring under its eye.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
IS THE ID'A OF THE NOT-SELF INTUITIVE OR EMPIRICAL?
INTUITIVE and empirical are terms of Logic. That
is intuitive which I know directly.  Whether the notself is intuitive, depends upon the question whether I
know directly all or any part of it? That we have
settled already. It makes little difference inherently;
but philologically our minds are conscious that we do
attribute to the word stove a patch of the present




CHAP. XXXIX.] Is 70ot-Sc/f I/z1iftiz've or Emp1irHical? 225
sensation. So far therefore our question is answered.
The idea of a not-me is intuitive so far as it takes in a
patch of the present sensation.
But how is it, farther? Here let me divide. We
go farther by asserted analogy; and we go farther,
beyond a doubt, also, by asserted difference. Both of
these assertions, let me be careful to say, are not by
any separate faculty, but by mere experience.
We go farther by asserted analogy. I see a black
surface, and it is part of a stove. I fill up behind it,
and that is the other part: but the first part I see. The
other part I only think of. Moreover I only think of
it in analogy. The rotund back is as much the stove
as the rotund front, though both are images; but
the one is just as I see it. The other is in but uncertain analogy.  It may be brown. It may be rusted.
It may be broke; I cannot tell. It is a mere analogy.
Nevertheless it is a part of the stove. And it is a
part aimed at by analogy, such that I dream that if I
stood where I could see it, it would be a part of the
image, and as such (as an ancient species) would make
part under that vocable, a stove.
But now a deeper part comes in by difference.
WVe hug sense for one. We dream out away from
sense to supply the other.
For example, the stove.  It endures when we are
not looking. Why?  Because we endure. And we
learn that largely by the body. We trace its permanence. It comes out by facts of consciousness. The
indicia are immense. We will not repeat them.  We
are forced to have signs of permanence without consciousness; and that sets us at what?   Why, at
asserting likeness with difference.  These are the
thought-carriers. WVe are carried by likeness to the
IO,:




226                   Ontology.             [Book III.
limits of consciousness, and then we are projected off,
and forced by what we have called intermediate analogies (B. II. Chap. X.) to assert a sometzinzg of which
we have no consciousness.
The not-self, therefore, is in one single patch intuitive; in the rest of a rotund image it is by partial
analogy: as a metaphysical essence it is more empirical still, and results from tenuous likeness carried the
very farthest off and there forced to assert a difference
in a needful something that must have permanence
with no consciousness at all.
CHAPTER XL.
IS THE IDEA OF SELF INTUITIVE OR EMPIRICAL?
ALL is plainer in the instance of self. The idea
of self is intuitive so long as men persist in putting
into it the idea of consciousness; but when it gets
to the launching-off place it has to shift as in the
instance of matter.  It is bred of likeness.  It is bred
likewise of asserted difference.  I think of self as conscious in the past. There of course it is analogy.
And there of course it is empirical. I do not see the
past. I am not conscious of what was conscious then.
It comes up to me by recurrence. And though, like
the back of the stove, past consciousness goes in to my
image of myself, it is a matter of empiricism.  I no
more see myself in my existence yesterday than the
back of the stove, and may make the same mistakes
about it as to its minuter consciousness.  But now the
stove, when I am no longer looking, and my body,
when I am fast asleep, and my neighbor, who has his
own separate consciousness, all cluster their evidences
upon me, and force me to think of a self that is not con



CHAP. XLI.] Are we Certaizn of oulr Existencce?    227
scious. How does it look you may ask me? It does
not look at all. Then of what is it conscious? It is
not conscious at all. Then what is it? Genetically
analogy and difference. State that more carefully.
Well, take that sentence, —  self that is not conscious,
take ten thousand other sentences; take all the facts
that are bred of a countless experience: try to sink
them as a boy does when he tries to go under; consent to my terms that they are not conscious ens, and
try to annul them such as they are; and when you see
that like the hair they are webbed into a cone, and all
agree to the very uttermost accord, take that for self,
that is, the asserted somect./ingz that must endure in the
absence of the present consciousness.
CHAPTER XLI.
ARE WE CERTAIN OF OUR OW\N EXISTENCE?
TAKE self as partly consciousness, and we are certain of that much of self as is constituently conscious:
but take self as a metaphysical ens, and we are not certain of it at all.
If I am asked, Are you certain there is any such
city as London? I would say, Yes; because, for practical purposes, I am sure enough. But if any one begs
me to speak definitely, I would say I am not certain
of it at all. And if any one begs me to give my logical intent I would say, It is impossible to be certain
of anything but my immediate consciousness.
Now my belief in the City is precisely akin to my
belief in myself.
If any one exclaims at this, let me ask:-Might I not
be mistaken? London is a tale. To most people it is
a mere averment. Do men never tell lies? Suppose




228                4OztiZolo)gy.         [BooK III.
all the wocrld had united to deceive me. You may say,
That is not possible: and I admit that, in the sense of
the highest conceivable per cent. There is not the ten
millionth of a probability that the world has vitiated
its maps. Nevertheless the conception is possible.
The world may have been in conspiracy ever since I
was born to deceive me on this subject of London.
Moreover, I have been there. God may have deceived
me. I mean by all to show that consciousness is a
direct intuition. God cannot make it true that I have
not the experience of light as I mark these strokes upon
the sheet of paper. But empiricism  is a faith built
upon order. The order  cray deceive me, and things
cease to be predicable upon that base which has been
a sheer experience.
So now of my own existence.  Is it consciousness?
Ah then I know it certainly. Is it a substantial ezns?
God might be utterly deceiving me. He might make
my present consciousness by the flash of an immediate
power. Can any one deny it? He might make my
immediate consciousness and nothing in the world
beside. And in that consciousness is memory, which
would be a mistake, and sensation, and image-making,
and belief in the past, and belief in self and body and
all my present harmonies, and yet it would be all a lie,
God having chosen to create a consciousness like a flying
seraph with no basis of life on which it could sit down.
You may say, He might not deceive us. There
again is empiricism. Confidence in Heaven is never
the terminal fact, but confidence in consciousness:
when that is past, conscious probability is all that is left,
higher and stronger like the likeness of the two doves,
or like the probabilities of the bell that has been ringing a thousand years.




CHAP. XLII.] Are we Certain of Other Existences?  229
CHAPTER XL1I.
ARE WE CERTAIN OF ANYBODY ELSE'S EXISTENCE?
TIHE cherry as partly ruddiness we are absolutely
sure of. All beyond, not so.
I might go into a house. Who says I am certain
of the house? I am certain of my consciousnesses, and
nothing more.
I might own the house, walk its porches, sack its
pantries, feel its fires, yea, have all my growth from
infancy to a dotard's age inside of that house,-and
never be sure of a single timber. Nay I will force
you to admit it; for I have only to ask, Could not the
Almighty make me believe I had a house? Could He
not raise Samuel when there was no Samuel there?
Could he not come as a tired man (Judges vi. II) when
He came as a God? Could He not wrestle at the
Ford Jabbok (Gen. xxxii. 24), with no molecules in
His form, and with no flesh upon His bones? And in
my life-long home could He not make it all a dream to
me? He could not make me conscious of that of
which I was not conscious; and that is the bourne of
the intuitive; but He could make me dream of any
not-me, and fill up all its consciousnesses as of a score
of years, and there not be a back to any front, or an
instant of existence beyond the point where I was
looking on.
The not-self, therefore, is well defined. Where it
is sense, I know it. But as a physical ens, it is only
empirically believed.




230                  Onto/ogy.             [BooI0  III,
CHAPTER XLIII.
INTUITIVE BELIEFS, SO-CALLED, UNDER THE LIGHT OF ONTOLOGY.
WE are now prepared to dispense with that jurymast in metaphysical sailing, viz. Intuitive Beliefs.
We are now prepared to charge it with three incompetencies. First, it is not conceizvable.
It is intended to make the trajectory from the me
to the not-me, and of course, that is very essential.
To do so it cuts away all other tackle by which that
journey can be made; and that might seem very reasonable. In doing so, it denies that the journey is
made with any tcrmzizz/s ad qzclz,'  I mean with any professed arrival at a conscious idea. Cause, for example. I believe it; I do not see it. And so of other
examples. Our great averment against the system is
that it is utterly inconceivable.
We must set a guard, however. There has been
a false synopsis. That two and two are four, —that is
conceivable. Regulative Faculty or not, the mind undoubtedly perceives that much,-and that a whole is
greater than its part. If you like that style of getting
forward we are willing to admit, that we were born
with that much faculty, viz. a faculty, if we know that
a thing is, to know that it is, which is all that we can
get out of the axiom that it is impossible for the same
thing to be and not to be. Such things are the baldest truisms. And if it were left to these, universals
never could have reigned so long in Logic.
It is those other maxims,-that quality implies
substance,-and that changes require efficiency,-that
have made the Regulative Faculty seem at all worth
while; for while these truisms have seemed to make




CHAP. XLIII.] ILtyZ'ti/ve Beliefs and Oltology.   231
it precise, these later maxims render it aggressive.
That the whole is greater than its part is sterile; but
that quality requires substance is philosophically prolific. Now, I say, there is no such Intuitive Belief:
first, because, by the admission of its friends, there is
no conceivable idea. This is the thought that will
pull down the castle. Substance, what is it? S-u-bs-t-a-n-c-e is a file of letters. Put an idea in it, and it
is a matter for belief.  But it is a weapon for a child
that will arm him against the most honored reasoners
if he is able to ask, How  can I believe in that of
which I have no idea?
The first argument therefore against the system
is, that it is in terms mzieanzilfz2ess.
II. The second argument is, that it is practically
false.
Here are Moses and Elias on the top of Tabor.
These men exhibit, so the doctrinists say, certain phenomena about their persons which are merely mental;
that is to say, I, looking on, see, not Moses, but certain
colors, and the fact that there is a substantial patriarch
is by an innate faculty, or, as these scientists tell us, by
an Intuitive Belief.  But query now, Is there a substantial patriarch?  Elias was carried to heaven, but
Moses died on Nebo.  It is sane to think that Moses
was disembodied.  Suppose it were so. These men
distinctly aver that qualities imply substance. They
will not leave it to empiric steps, but leap toward it
as a fact universal. Now, abandoning our first difficulty, that the thing is inconceivable, let us press this
last. How can I be born to certainty that qualities
imply substance, when here are two saints, the very
thread on whose vestments seems alike, and yet one
may be bones and flesh, and the other a floating phan



232                  Ontology.            [Book III.
tasm of whatever sort may be put forward by the
Almighty?
Nor can it be replied that this is a fine illustration
of the very doctrine impeached. These men may say,
We have confessed we have no idea. What Moses
was, and what Elias was, we have no conception.
That is the very nature of the belief. That Moses is
the same as the other, we can never know. But all
the better does it illustrate our doctrine, that the mind
reaches to universals, and asserts that neither patriarch
is mere phenomena; that underneath the color of his
hair there must be an actual something; and that
neither figure can be a mere floating sense, but must
have a ground to stand on in some group of material
efficiencies.
But let us not be too bold.
The hand upon the wall,-did Belshazzar see it?
In all that part that consists in consciousness he certainly saw it, and that is all the part that he did certainly see. He certainly saw all that my hand seems
as I look at it now as it moves over the paper. And
yet what did he see? These men say, A phantasmic
something. No, not certainly that. All quality implies
substance, and these men say there is something efficient upon the wall; and yet there may have been
nothing upon the wall. We may pare down the reality
until we see that there is nothing we can assert except
the bare consciousness that had arisen in Belshazzar's
mind. Nay, we who are mere empiricists can assert
more than the advocates of universals. For universals
are all or nothing; while we who are empirical in
belief can have probabilities for faith outside of the
domain of certainty.
III. Therefore a third argument. A third argu



CHAP. XLIII.]  In/zliZive Beliefs and Onlology.  233
ment is, that this Faculty has no pretence for its main
proof, viz. that it is necessary.
WVe argue this in several ways. (I) In the first
place, that is not necessary which is impossible. If I
can have no belief in that of which I have no idea, then
the pretension of a leap outwardly is all chimerical.
Either the me is an idea, or it is not: if it is not, there
is no possibility for a belief: if it is, where did I get
it? The Regulative Faculty is de trop in either event.
If I have no idea, it has no province. If I have an idea,
it has no necessity. This is the grand argument. I
can get my belief where I got my ideas. If I have
ideas, I know whence I believe them.  If I have no
ideas, I am fighting about English words, and cause
and substance are only alphabet.
(2) In the second place, that plea of necessity is the
feeblest of all which pretends to be wholly philosophical. It is the old scholastic mark. Original truths
are said to be universal and necessary, and the necessity, when it comes to be described, is that which is so
much insisted upon by Hamilton, viz. that of which
the opposite is unthinkable. Every effect must have
a cause.  Why?  Because  the opposite cannot be
conceived.
Now what do we mean by that?
That the whole is greater than a part is an original
truth.  That I admit. The opposite of it is inconceivable, and therefore it is necessary. That every
effect must have a cause is also an original truth if we
begin by the definition of effect itself as having a cause.
So of substance. If quality is quality of substance,
and that is the definition, the inference is plain. All
quality requires substance; and we may go on to build
up aphorisms at pleasure. But what does it all amount




234                  Onlzolog/y.           [BooK III.
to?  Each one on the list is a truism; and the whole
and its part, and the cause and its effect, are similarly
related, the aphorism  being stamped as true by the
force of definition.
But if, as Sir William does, we go boldly to sea; if,
as an actually aggressive argument, we say, Yon ship
must have had a cause for the fact that the opposite is
altogether inconceivable; or, again, that rock must have
been created because its flashing out just so upon the
field is beyond our thoughts,-we are giving in to proof
which will establish altogether too much.  lWhat do
we mean by conceivable?  Do we mean that the phenomenon cannot be conceived?  IHow then do we
describe it? Do you say, it is past your consciousness
that a rock should flash up without there having been
any rock before?  It is not past mine.  Moreover, it
is not past yours.  Pardon me such an assertion.  But
I deny that it is possible to talk on that of which I
have no idea. If then I can think of a ship flushing
out without a creator upon the main, you are driven
to another position, viz. that it is the  azouw that is
unthinkable, and then you are in a most atheistic
attitude, for the hozow is unthinkable as to its having
any creator at all. You prove too much, therefore.
Either it is not fair to argue by the amount of what I
can conceive, or you sweep everything:-the rock
itself; the ship; the Deity on high. To think the
rock without a creator is no whit harder than to think
it with a creator; nay, to my thinking, not so hard.  I
can conceive of neither. A lazier thought will reveal
to me the widow's cruse flooding over as by itself, than
that farther thinking of a mystic hand to achieve the
feat by an inconceivable creation.
Returning to reality, therefore, do we dispense




CHAP. XLIII.]  Itluitive Beliecfs and Ontology.  235
with God? By no means. We prove Him empirically.
And there are our next reasonings. Intuitive Beliefs
are not necessary; for the I and the not-I can both be
reached in other ways which we have already considered.
(3) As the next step, therefore, conceive of being
zalayically. What do you find in it? Look over your
whole Ontology, and tell me, What do you see in self
or not-self that could not be put there by the facts of
consciousness?  The red color?  That is sense. The
order of shapes and color? That is consciousness.
The images that are built up by the past? That is all
recurrence. Permanence? That is all perceived. And
so is power. Tell me anything in the whole range of
fact that is not consciousness or its shadowy likeness.
And as I pile these things in, and surely there is a vast
accumulation of them, do not say that I have done
nothing toward being until you at least have described
something that you have done, or somethingc in part at
least that you have put into the significance of an Intuitive Belief. I tell you actual thoughts. I depict to
you obvious images. I show you how they grow out
of my sense. Do not say I must superadd a Regulative
Faculty, when you admit that it gives no actual ideas,
and only avers what in the very necessity of the case
must be conceived of in some other way.
(4) And then, syznthetIically. How do you put your
world together?  I have shown you how I do mine.
I have been free with all my material. I have shown
you its grand variety.  Outness, for example, and
otherness; things that seem mental; things that look
difficult, unless they can be catered after by an Intuitive Belief; I have shown you how they are actually
conscious; how they come up into the sense; and




236                   Ontology.             [BooK III.
now match them, and, what is more, give conceptions
of the things that you believe, or else admit that you
have been adding what is supposititious, and impairing
the honor of God in the alphabet He has fixed in the
mind of His creature.
WVe spell out the universe.
That is not a good figure you say, for thought is
one thing, and being is another. The mind may be full
of thought, but that is not being. That is the eternal
argument. We use it for purposes of recapitulation.
(I) In the first place, shame on you for using it,you confess that you give us no idea.
(2) In the second place, if you give us no idea, the
mind has to depend upon what it has at any rate; and
how can it employ your mere idealess belief?
(3) In the third place, it does not stop at thought,
but by thought as a great projectile it can assert its
likenesses.
(4) Fourth, it does not stop at likeness: but
(5) Fifth, it is made aware of difference; and going
to the verge of the dissimilar, it reports exactly, what
you say, viz. that there is something different from
thought. And it reports about it all that you pretend;
for you pretend to give no additional ideas, but only
to assert a some/zing, which is exactly what empiricism
does, a something more and different beyond the
sphere of a naked consciousness.
CHIIAPTE R XLIV.
"PERCEPTION" IN ITS MODERN SENSE A FIGMIENT, BEING BUT AN
INSTANCE OF INTUITIVE BELIEF, SO CALLED.
THE world has accepted with a wonderful degree
of unanimity the attempt to turn aside the old meaning




CHAP. XLV.]   Sensation as Knozoecdg-e.          237
of perceptionz, and to install a different one. The old
meaning was ours, and may be described as a general
term for cognition or thought, and included sensation.
But as Ontology wrestled with itself there came a
change. Perception was made to mean a discerning
of matter, and sense the mere occasion for it. For
example, fragrance; it is a mere brutish sensibility;
or taste; it was plausibly argued, it is possessed by
animals; or sight, it is a mere color upon the eye.
The doctrine was, that these were to be called sensations; but following them as the intellectual part,
came a different power, viz. the perception of matter.
I need not say that this is our old friend of the
previous chapter. Every one can recognize it at once.
It is the old bridge as between the me and the notme.
And, therefore, three remarks are sufficient. First,
it cannot do the duty assigned to it. We cannot have
a perception where we have no idea. Second, if we
consult our consciousness, we will find that all that we
directly cognize of the external world is sensation and
its recurrences. And, thirdly, we shall discover that
sensation is not brutish but intelligent; nay, is a pure
mental act; and this we shall particularly advert to in
the chapter that follows.
CHAPTER XLV.
SENSATION AS KNOWLEDGE.
IN denouncing "~Perceptionz" in its modern sense
we have revivified sensation, and thrown upon it all
the weight of our knowledge of the universe. What is
sensation? It is the slender report of five bodily
tissues. Consciousness reveals to us a smell, and a




2 3 8                 Ontology.            [,OOK III.
taste, an effusion of color, a sound, and a cutaneous
feeling, and that, with a still more brutish sensibility
of pain or appetite, is all our avenue to the world
beyond us.
But then superb things can be stated of each.
I. First, these are not bodily phenomena at all.
Whatever else we conclude, they are purely mental.
And what I mean by this is, that the smell that comes
from carrion is not material in any sense of consciousness.  It may have a material origin.  That is, it may
take a dead carcass ever to send it to the mind.  But
this is a matter of discovery afterward.  Gzcnlically it
may be as material as you please. But consciously, that
is to say as a mental fact, the smell is pure intelligence;
and helps by its intelligence afterward to find out the
matter and its outward state that helped to bring it to
the mind.
Nay, not even the nostril and its agency in it, nor
the nerve which is the carrier of the actual sense, nor
the brain which may be the seat of all of it, makes it
the least material. The smell proper, as a thing looked
at by itself, is a matter of mere consciousness.  If I
had not learned science, yet it would seem, as indeed
it really is, a matter entirely within the mind.
But if this is true of smell, then how of taste? and
how of color? Sensation is a form of consciousness;
and as that idea is singularly complete, we must never
forget it in all our unravellings of the mind.
2. But if sensation be a form of consciousness, then
all sensation is intelligent. Sensation is a macrocosm.
It is endless like the universe.  No two sensations are
alike. And, what must be uttered with the most emphatic eagerness,-no one sensation but has almost endless capabilities of thought and reasoning.




CHAP. XLVI.]   Sensation and lze Not-SeZf.      239
For example, what I see! Let me mention some
of the things that I am conscious of in every vision.
First, I am conscious of color. That color is
red or blue. If red, it may be any of a thousand
shades. Second, those shades have shapes. Those
shapes are literally endless. Third, those  endless
shapes may vary in size and number. Again, number
and size may be abstracted, and viewed apart. It is
impossible to enumerate all the consciousnesses.  But
I may pile in touch and odor, and recollect that these
are equally intelligent, and, without going further into
the crowd, I reach this general reality: —that if sensations are in harmony at all, there are enough of them,
and they are enough significantly varied, and they are
enough consciously intelligent, to build somzt/lino up,
whatever that something may intelligently appear.
Let us state that under the two forms of Being.
CHAPTER XLVI.
SENSATION AS KNOWLEDGE OF THE NOT-SELF.
SENSATION does very little, intelligent as it is, without the help of Recurrence. Stop any picture in the
train. Stop a dozen of them. How very little in the
current is absolute sensation.
I look upon a house. Recurrence almost builds
the whole of it. And what it does not build, or rather
what it does not seem to put together, it colors with
all the past.
Let us think of that.
My mere sense-consciousness is a superficies of light.
That it does not lie lazily within, and stands out a distant image of conception, is a tribute from the past.
Understand me distinctly, I see simply what I see, but




240                   Ontologyo.            [BooK III.
that conscious seeing is a mere surface, and (confining
myself of course to sense) it contributes only that to
my thought of Being.
Let us have no mysteries therefore. Recurrence;
how shall iwe call it?  It certainly is not Sensation,
and yet it plays the larger part in the game of knowledge. The reality is this: —Sensation and recurrent
sensation,-they are the things to speak of. I cannot
say they are the whole of knowledge.  We will speak
of that presently. I cannot say, Sensations when they
recur are still sensations. They are not. They are
quite different consciousnesses.  I can only say, Sensations and recurrent sensations are pure intelligences,
and as such are largely concerned in my ideas of Being.
Now what else is concerned in them?
WVe have seen that sensation is conscious of its
likenesses.  Recurrence is but a bringer up of things
like.  No two sensations are anything but like.  If
sensation is never the same, recurrence does not even
seem the same. And we have explained the slow receding of likeness till power and substance and God
are slowly made to emerge, retaining scarce a patch of
original likleness as means to recall my senses.
We will return to this point.  For the present we
will assert the truth, that Sensation and recurrent Sensation, though not our whole thought of the Not-Self,
are nevertheless the foundation consciousnesses.
Whether there be more, we will state presently.
CHAPTER XLVII.
SENSATION AS KNOWLEDGE OF SELF.
SELF without perception could of course never be
discovered. No school is so bent on first truths as to




CHAP. XLVII.]  SCensationZ as Knzowlcde of Sc/f.    24
affirm that a man could be conscious of self without
ideas. There must be ideas coursing through his
mind. And the second great fact we have already
treated, viz. that he could never begin ideas without
sensation.  Sensatidn, therefore, must at leas-c originate before he could have any ideas of self. And yet
sensation never could give any idea of self. We have
established this sufficiently. A flash without order, a
sense without continuance, could give no dual notion.
And we must have in effect a twin notion, viz. the
me and the not-me, as well as the perceiving consciousness, before we can assert intelligently either being.
That brings in recurrence. Sensation and recurrent
sensation, as in the instance of matter, must both be
possessed, before we can build the idea of spirit.
Keeping purely to these two however; I mean by
that, excluding any other imagined consciousness,how entire a self can we build up? Sensation as
merely nervous, or (to revive the list) a sound, or a
scent, or a light, or a taste, or a still coarser feeling, is
all that starts thought; and now a recurrent sense, or
nerve-feelings brought shadowily back, these are the
self-builders. They could build a very decent self if
there were nothing direct besides. They could build
it as they build matter, partly (that I may show respect
to usage) out of consciousness itself, but partly as a
metaphysic cns, outness and power and permanence
and otherness and number being seen in recurrences
themselves, and then analogy and difference being also
seen, and taking the leap that carries us to metaphysic
being.
Yet if any one asks us, Is the self simply framed
by these two?  Must sensation and the recurrent sensation be regarded as the sum  of knowledge?  Nay,
T T




242                  OnZtology.             [BooK III.
adding the increment of what is like, or plying the
empiricism of what is different, must sense and recurred sense be all the base for projecting analogies
toward the thought of being, we answer, No: but we
postpone the secret for another chapter.  We answer,
No: as in the instance of matter. All being is perception and its analogues. Perception, therefore, plays
the heroic part.  But then, what perception?  Perception must be all sensation; or perception rather must
be sense or sense recurrences, or else there is a terti'lm
quid that must be looked after as being directly conscious.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
IS ALL PERCEPTION SENSATION?
PERCEPTION might be separated from belief. I see
the blue.  That is sense perception.  I see the likeness of the blue. That is also direct.  But I assert
the equality of the blueness; that is a belief.  It looks
ever so much equal. I cannot consciously assert it,
but it passes into the other region of empirical uncertainty. So I hear a bell. I have heard it for a score
of years. I have never known it to be silent. So, when
the time comes, I perceive that it will ring again. But
that perception is a spurious appellative. I do not
really perceive. I perceive when there is a ringing
now, but I perceive nothing of the future. That perceiving is really believing. It is an accommodated
use, and means simply that I expect a ringing from
analogies that have been experienced.
So the ego. What is conscious of it I perceive.
And if that is a fair vocabulary that makes the me and
the not-me take-in a patch of consciousness, so that far
and no farther I may be said to be conscious of self.




CHAP. XLVIII.]   Is all Perception Sensationz?  243
But if there be a metaphysic ens, which wears the red
color or has the thought which marks the outward and
the inward, that ens is like the ringing of the bell. It
is bred of analogy. It is believed in, and not perceived.
And it is believed in not from a Regulative Faculty,
but as with the being of a God, because we are driven
to it by analogy and difference.
Perception, therefore, might be bounded consciously,
and limited only to a metaphysical sense. And in this
limit we do not say that we perceive the Deity, and
we do not say that we perceive our spirits. We limit
the vision to our consciousness. -And there, as we
have long ago explained, every atom of the thought is
entered into and possessed as conscious.
Now, is every atom of this thought, sensation? Or,
as that of course must be negatived, is every atom of
that thought, sense or sense-recurrence?
We might come much nearer saying, Yes, than
many would dream. What else is there beside these
two? Number,-that is a sensation. Outness and
inness and permanence and power, —those are all sensations. I mean literally what I say. These all may
be dressed up by recurrence, but the base feature in
each is imbedded in sensation. Recollect, each sense
is all intelligence. That fact is not sufficiently remembered. Sensation of two ducks!-fancy that, void of
number; or the blue sky without space; or two bellnotes without duration. These are all discoveries of
sense. And if you yearn back after something intellectual, why not ask it in. hue or pitch or beauty?
Sensation is either all of sense, or else it is none of it.
Either it fails at the delicate colors of the sea, or else
it takes in all it sees, or else it staggers at the universal
fact that it shows to us; and, therefore, time and space




244                  Onztology,.          [BooK III.
and permanence and outness and number are all a part
of the actual facts of sense that come up by sensation
and recurrence.
Now are these two all of consciousness?
Let us be very careful here.
I think of other selves. They are bred of a free
empiricism. They are analogues, therefore, and not a
consciousness. I think of them as I do of the future
bell-ringing of which I am  never conscious, but in
which I only believe.
Nevertheless my mind is so constituted that I have
certain emotions even when I do not conceive a thing
but only believe. I do not conceive another, but only
believe him. That is, I do not perceive my neighbor,
but only put him together. I perceive his color, and
loose talk may make that a part of him, but otherwise
he is not a consciousness. Of all things he is an empirical conceit, and yet with this fact about him to
which I wish to draw particular regard, viz. that as I
build up the analogue,-his sense from my sense,his thought from my thought,-his power from  my
power,-his joy from  my joy, —the emotion tlhat his
ina;ginzd happinzess creates is totally diff-erent fronm that
created by mny owen. A mere analogy of consciousnesses
that builds up a neighbor spirit, evokes an entirely new
consciousness, not an analogue, but a novelty, not a
mere inferred thing, but an original; that is, though
the quiddity, my neighbor, is a mere inferred thing
through an empiricism, my emotion thereanent is an
original; and a different pleasure is awakened by his
happiness from that which is awakened by what is
consciously my own. This will be understood under
Pathics. It is not true, therefore, that all perception is Sensation; for not only are many perceptions




CHAP. XLVIII.]  Is all Perceptzon Sensation?    245
a recurrent sense; but these Pathic ones are quite
original.
We could show the same in the realm of Taste.
Indeed, as another thing;-there are emotions
which are upon emotions.
Let me explain.
I believe in others. I frame them as an empirical
conceit. I do not squarely look at them, for they are
matters of analogy. But I do squarely look at my
emotion. They waken in me a species of perception,
which, in the Pathic aspect, is absolutely new. This is
a perfect consciousness, as much so as sense or memory.
But then, this joy itself can in turn be looked at. It
awakens another joy: this joy, in turn, is itself original.
And now, multiply results. This joy is a matter of recurrence.  Sense, therefore, and sense recurrences are
not enough. The nobility of these moral joys is itself
a consciousness. Perception, and the analogies of perception, are all we wot of; but perceptions are not all
sensations.  Perceptions are not all sensations and
recurrences; but consciousnesses can spring out of
conceits. That is to say, My neighbor, who is not a
certainty, can breed in me consciousnesses that are,
and that not mere belief-consciousnesses as of a future
bell, but first-hand emotions that can spring on no
other ground.








BOOK IV.
PATHICS;
OR, THE
SCIENCE  OF PERCEPTION  AS EMOTION.
INTRODUCTORY  CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I.
AN ATTEMPT TO INVENT ADEQUATE NAMIES.
THE Science of Perception as Emotion has no name
such as we have laid our hands on in all the other'
branches of our subject. To change an old name is
awkward; and old names are very likely to straggle back
to old meanings. To invent a new name is bold, but is
very certain to end happily, if the speculation does to
which it is attached. If the speculation fails, of course
all will, that is launched with it. If the task succeeds,
the names' being quite new is all the better, as they
will not shift through some older signification.
The names we invent are Pathics, Eudemonics, and
Agathology.
Emotioh is perception in the aspect of pleasure or
pain. Pleasure or pain are not the only aspects of
emotion. If they were, our course would be much
simpler. Emotions are pleasures or pains, but emotions are very different. Emotions are sensuous or




248                  Patzzics              [BooK IV.
poetic or moral; nay, just as different as perceptions;I mean by that, with precisely the same differences as
the perceptions of which they are but aspects. But
more than that,-as emotions they are not merely
pleasurable. They may be rz'g/t, or they may be
heroic, or they may be tasteful, as we shall hereafter
see. If not, Euzdetmonics is the only word we would
have had to invent. But emotion has other aspects
beside the eudemonic, viz. the ethical aspect, and also
the  esthetical;- moreover, not necessarily coterminous. Though they be all eudemonic; that is, emotions always of either pleasure or pain,-they are not
all ethical; and they are not all aesthetical; and,
therefore, we need a wider term. And accordingly,
we have chosen Pathics, as of the same form  with
Ethics, and as embracing all of them. Pathics is the
Science of Perception as Emotion. We still retain
Eudemonics, and use it for that branch of Pathics which
treats of emotion as simply pleasurable or simply painful. Then we have this division,-Pathics, including
(I) Eudemonics, (2) AEsthetics, and (3) Ethics.  This
is the whole of the subject. And we know no better
way to bring out all the facts that it can be made to
exhibit.
And now, as coining is unpopular, let us finish that
part of the business.
Eudemonics would save us from another term if
the good of emotion lay only in its pleasurableness;
but it does not. We delay the proof of this. All good
lies in emotion; but, strange to say, all not in its
pleasurableness. Pathics is the whole field of good.
Pathics has all divine good. Emotion is all the good
of the universe. What a splendid department Pathics
is! Thought-what would that be worth, or wisdom,




INTROD. CH. II.] under the Lzght of Psych/ology;    249
or infinite power, or being, eternal in its years, but for
emotion? We need a term, therefore, —A rtyology, as
the Science of Good. It lies in Pathics; but: we give it
no separate discussion. There is other good than
pleasure; but there is no other good than emotion.
If there be good in being, and good in power, and good
in wisdom, and good in the divine existence, it is all
ancillary. The real good, whether in God or man, is
that aspect of perception in which it goes by the name
of emotion.
CHAPTER II.
PATHICS UNDER THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLOGY.
WE learned, under the head of Psychology, that
the Law of the Strongest Emotion was that which
made pictures for us, or called out of sensation, or out
of memory, that thought which would be most interesting to each particular mind. We should mistake
this doctrine though, if we should imagine that perception happens to be emotional simply because unemotional perceptions are not called out. The law of
perception is simply the law of the stronzgest emotion;
and somle emotion is inseparable from the very idea of
perceiving at all.
But Psychology would be still a mistake if its doctrine
was, that perception had somne emotion. The fact that
we found out was, that perception zwas emotion, for that
emotion was but perception under another aspect; and
it will be remembered that we formulated Pathics (B. I.
Chaps.. X., XI.) by saying (I) that all perception was
emotion, and (2) that all emotion was perception, so as
to make the truth presented one of the most clear-put
and comprehensive in all philosophy.
(I.) That all perception is emotion, will appear best
II*:




250                    Pathics               BooK IV.
from the very thought of the current.  If the current
is entire, and all our perception fills it;-that is, if the
current is all our consciousness, and there is nothing
consciously in it but perception,-then emotion is not
consciously in the current, or it is perception.  But
when we come to think, emotion is not only consciously
in the current, but it is consciously in it all the time.
This consciousness we can arrive at any moment. If
we look within, the whole current is emotional,-nay,
think of it for a single instant, the whole current is an
emotion: and now not because it has sensitive sides,
so to speak, or sensitive points; for it is emotional
throuchout. The whole current of perception is perceptive in an emotional way.
And not only so, but each part is. It is by these
different views that we inspect our consciousness. Let
us try the driest things. An angle! I say I feel it,
just as much as I see it. You may ask, Why do I not
talk so then? I do not say, I feel an angle; first,
because it would be ambiguous, feeling being an emblematic word, and being derived from another sense.
Moreover, I do not say, I feel an angle, because it does
not suit me: I choose my words according to the perceptive or emotional aspect, just as I need them in my
speech. But I say enough, in cases that admit the indifference, to set forth all the reality.  I say I see or
I feel with a freedom absolutely total. I feel the truth
or I see the truth, I feel His power or I see His power,
I feel the reasonableness of an act or I see the reasonableness of an act; and I will let you dismember the sentence, and put one indifferently for the other. My
appeal is simply to consciousness. If I stand at any
hour of the day and fish in the current, and take the
fish that first cometh up, perception and emotion are




INTROD. CH. II.]  Ztudcr the Lz,'/ot of Psychology.    25 I
perfectly commensurate. Perception is all emotional,
and emotion is all perceptive. And I can see it best
by just touching my thoughts. Try it as we read.
Each one is not a hard concept, but a warm sense,
pleasant or painful according to its nature.
(2.) The other thought, All emotion is perception,
is singularly fertile. It settles many a question. If
taste have but emotion, men are ready to say, Why do
we speak of reason as concerned in Taste? Or, as a
far weightier case, if conscience beget emotion, if holiness be only emotion, if the law be all that is right, and
love be the fulfilling of the law, why is reason appealed
to?  Conscience itself is supposed to be intelligent;
the truth an instrument upon it; light necessary to it;
illumination the beginning of its reform; and the Holy
Ghost needed to enlighten it, as well as to wrap its
frame with warmer feeling.
All these things are explained when we remember
that emotion is perception.  WLhen a man says, We
must believe first, and feel afterward, we say, No:
there is a Pathical unity. Nor is it so very hard to
understand.  Emotion is conscious. That much is as
well settled as iron.  Now  if emotion is conscious,
how much of it is conscious? And if emotion attaches
to perception, can it be conscious of all of itself, without
being conscious of all the perception? If I feel warmth,
must I not have all the warm perception? If I love
virtue, must I not know it? or God, must I not know
all that I love? or sin, must I not enter into its
delights?  And by this I do not mean either as a
prelude or a consequence, but must not love that goes
feeling down to the very bottom of the emotion, feel
all the perceptive facts, or have the love precisely as
the same thing as the perceptive consciousness?




252                  Pathics               [BOOK IV.
Emotion is not only perceptive in perceiving the
perceptions that attend it, as for example, that it perceives the light before it feels it: on the contrary,
emotion perceives itself. It perceives the sight in its
own emotional aspect. It can abstract its own emotionalness. Emotion is that functionary word that
notes perception in its pleasurableness; but as to its
seeing less than perception, or being less than perception, or being in essence different, that has been the
mistake that has tangled ethical beliefs. I see beauty
when I feel it, and right when I dote upon it, and God
when I bow down and love Him. And if any one says,
Why say feel, instead of see? or why ever speak of
feeling? why pile up words when one would answer
even better? I say, One would not answer. Feeling
and seeing are both needed, and present a different
sense; and there now we come to the point.  If any
one exclaims, How can seeing and how can feeling
present the one reality of perception? I say, How can
blueness and how can brightness present the one reality
of color?  Here is the secret. A bright blueness and
a blue brightness are identically the same. But if any
one declares them philologically similar, we take issue
at once. The brightness and the blueness are distinguishably significant; and yet they are numerically the
same. And so perception and pleasure are distinguishable, but only as aspects of a thought. The pleasure
sees all that is to be perceived, and the perception feels
all by which we are pleased; and the phenomenal facts
are open throughout all of either.




INTROD. CH. III.]  Unlder tdie Light of Logic.  253
CHAPTER III.
PATHICS UNDER THE LIGHT OF LOGIC.
IF nothing is intuitively known but perception,
emotion is perception or it is not intuitively known.
This is the glory of Ethics.
A way of speaking of it has been, that we reason
out duties, and when chastity and truth and gratitude
and self-love have been inspected by the reason, they
are brought near to conscience, and become subjects
of emotional regard.
How superficial this is!
There are but two ethical emotions. Both these
will be treated in the sequel. All duties are but
instances of these. Out in life reason may have a
play, I mean in its discursive acts, to judge whether
this thing or that thing can be prompted by the two
ethical emotions; but this is all empirical. The whole
conscience is intuitive. If any one asks, Is not Ethics
reasonable? I say, Doubly. Not only does it appeal
to reason in its discursive acts, but to reason as the
mind's intelligence. All conscience is reason. And
now the explanation:-All conscience is a region of
emotion: all right is in emotion: but then, as we
have just explained, all emotion is perception. Conscience, therefore, both perceives and feels; and hence
the clearness of what many men blunder over, that
conscience should both be an intelligence of the mind
and a region of the heart,-the heart and the mind
being in fact the same region of the spirit.
I. Hence the question, whether faith or repentance
comes first, is ploughed under by this metaphysic.
Both will come first. The conscience and the mind
are not even twins, but one unitary spirit.




254                  Pat/zics            [BooIK IV.
2. Hence the nobility of the word conscience. It
meant consciousness in all the earlier period of men.
Even in the New Testament it is misinterpreted.
When Paul said, " I have lived in all good conscience"
(Acts xxiii. I) he meant consciousness. The word in
the Greek had not lost its original meaning. "Curse
not the king, no, not in thy conscience" (Ecclesias. x.
20 voarg.) of course tells a similar history. "Their
conscience also bearing witness" (Rom. ii. I; see
also ix. I, Heb. x. 2). "The testimony of our conscience" (2' Cor. i. 12).  We would not multiply
instances. The grand fact is, that ethical truth is so
under the eye of our consciousness that it at last monopolized the word. Glory to God, that which we are to
give account for at last is not, like our substantive
selves, or like a substantive not-self whether divine or
human, a matter of proof, but an intuitive conscience.
The nobility of right is consciously witnessed under
the very eye of the mind.
3. Hence the strength of our polemic in defending
Christianity. Holiness,-that we are conscious of:and sin. The great facts of religion are matters of
intuition. We are not emboldened enough by this
reality. Protoplasm; that is a mere empirical conceit.
There may be much truth in it. The Unknowable;
we have too great a dread of it. Half of Spencer can
be swept at once into the coffers of the Church. We
have expounded God too much, and forgotten that
most that we know of Him lies in the region of our
conscience. When the Gibeonites come and pretend
to be groping for the Almighty (Jos. ix. 3, 9), their
"clouted shoes" and mouldy provisions, and their
"' old sacks upon their asses," ought not to deceive us,
as though they had come a great way; for they are




INTROD. CH. IV.]  Under the Lzght of Ontology.    255
neighbor sinners; and, poor imbeciles like us all! let us
at least deal wilily if they come among us, and make
them hewers of wood and drawers of water for the
men of Israel.
A vast deal may be gotten out of a working
infidel.
They scour the bottom of a filthy sailing vessel.
Hume did it; and so did Mill.
And while our cause is the better for their rude attacks,
it is never wrecked. Religion lies in the region of our
consciousness. And while in teleological argument we
have all the advantage of the infidel, we have a region
into which he can never enter,-the testimony of conscience;-and, therefore, ought to allow the widest
liberty in the outer region of empirical results.
CHAPTER IV.
PATHICS UNDER THE LIGHT OF ONTOLOGY.
THE very idea of God we have admitted as empirical; how, therefore, can we speak of consciousness in
matters of religion?
Let us explain this.
The very idea of self, so far as scientific men have
pushed it out of the region of consciousness (see B.
III. Chap. XXXVII.), is empirical also. Another man's
self is just as empirical to me as the existence of the
Almighty.
It will appear when we come to Ethics, that moral
emotion begins with our relations to other beings. Let
us anticipate a little.  We love others, and then we
love the love that we thus begin with. Moral emotion
could not begin except with the exercise of benevo



256                  Pathkics            [BooK IV.
lence. We will not particularize. The knowledge of
right must begin with the knowledge of other beings.
But now a strange anomaly!  My knowledge of
other beings is empirical. My knowledge of the differences of right is conscious. WVhat is the solution?  I
can never feel benevolence except in the thought of
other beings.  How then can it be possibly true that
benevolence can be a consciousness, when the sole
object of benevolence must be empirically discerned?
Let us take analogies.
Blue; is not that intuitive? and yet the very object
that breeds it is quite empirical.
Moreover, blue; does not that awaken emotion?
It is beautiful. Is the blue thing beautiful?  Unquestionably not -in the sense in which that question would
be pertinent. And yet it awaklens the emotion. All
my reasonings about it are decidedly empirical. I do
not know the not-me; I do not know the me; I do
not know the Almighty,-except empirically. And
yet that which shines out through these empirical conceits, I mean beauty, and the emotion of right, are
conscious intuitions, the latter so gloriously so as to
have usurped towards it the name of conscience.
Nay more, remember:-All things breed emotion.
All perceptions are  emotions. There are no such
things as empirical conceits, or else they are emotions.
All things breed different emotions. Just as the ideas
differ, so do the different emotions. It seems that
empirical ideas breed all the highest emotions. That
is not wonderful. Empirical ideas are beyond us.
They border the invisible. Blue sky we see. That is,
we see its blueness. That breeds a low emotion.
My neighbor I do not see. He is empirical. He
breeds a high emotion. The great God is utterly be



INTROD. CH. IV.]  unGder t/zc Lzc/1t of Otlzogooy.    257
yond me. The only great emotion is built upon what
is empirical; and conscience, which is the power of that
emotion, would lie utterly dead, unless empirical conceits rose by experience before my mind.
Still the question remains, why is religion so comfortable because it appeals to consciousness, when right,
which is indeed an intuition, is predicated of emotional
regards which are bent toward that which is empirical?
Let us look at this.
The being of my neighbor I am not conscious of.
It is a dictate of experience. God I am not conscious
of. He is a dictate of experience.'Without such
other beings I could know no morals. This will appear
(see Ethics). Whyam I so entrenched because virtue
is a consciousness, when the very neighbor that makes
it possible is only found out empirically before my
mind?
Empiricism, let it be observed, is a combination of
myriad experiences. The heavier the combination, the
stronger the empirical conceit. If Herbert Spencer's
God and my God compare favorably in all other proofs,
and I add moral ones which his does not possess, I
gain the victory, for induction is of all facts, and if
there be a world of consciousness which he does not
take in, he fails that much. Mere benevolence; I
will not assert that that proves the existence of other
beings that we may be benevolent to; or mere love of
right; I will not say that that proves a great Embodiment of Right to whom wve may worship and bow
down. But this I do say, that if Darwin and I have
equal teleological claims in all other respects; and his
protoplasm-brute and my Jehovah-God are equal, in
foro rationis, in all physical respects; and I take in the
moral, and he cannot, but must leave it meaningless




258                  PatZics               [Book IV.
and dead; then I have beaten by his own organon.
That is the best theory that takes in all the facts. And
if he, beginning with the monad, has to leave out so
conscious a fact as conscience, then he had better strain
a little and bring in miracle, which is not so improbable a fact as that the Power that made me made me
more and nobler than He.
But once admitted-my God once suffered to come
in,-then what follows? Why, that the nobler fact of
Him is a matter of my consciousness. This it is that
entrenches us so. If there were no God, facts of virtue
would still survive. MAen make their polemic rudely.
Atheism is right, that right is right independent of the
Deity. But when Theism is forced-in as necessary to
explain the facts, how gloriously is it suffused with
virtue' How strong we become! Our very highest
consciousness puts the finishing stroke to our Theology.
Blueness in the sky shows to us the not-self. Consciousness in the current shows to us the self; and
soon aggregates to us in ten thousand ways notitias of
other selves. Then our conscious virtues, not laying
perhaps the base of the Deity, are ready to put in the
key-stone. After that, the arch should not be shaken.
The whole string of the curve is necessary.  Every
fact helps. But emotions are conscious facts; and
morals are the highest emotions. And, satisfied there,
Christians should be less timid about the rest, and
should leave more liberty in physics when the moral
God is firmly and strongly in their hands.
The moral God; —what does that imply?  The
moral God must be personal. The personal God must
be intelligent; and, if intelligent, then also emotional,
and possessing will and happiness. Give me a moral
God, and I ought to allow more liberty to the students




INTROD. CII. IV.]  under the Lzig/t of Ontology.  259
of Ontology. And if you say,'No: they may undermine our arch: you yourself say that its foundations
are empirical: virtue is conscious, but the God who is
to possess it, is an empirical conceit:' I say, Yes, but
an empiricism so broad, so matted in its world of facts,
so moulded in its ancient arguments, so attacked since
the world began, and so defended under every argument, that when I see it walled around by the very
darts and javelins that it has broken, I think a shame
to be so timid for it; and, when we possess the citadel
of conscience, let the empirical Copernicus, or the adventurous Galileo, take time to show what they can
produce before our eyes.




260                Eudemnonics         [B. IV. PT. I.
PART I.
EUDEMONICS; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION
AS AN EMOTION OF PLEASURE OR OF PAIN.
CHAPTER I.
EUDEMONICS IN ITS RELATION TO PATHICS.
PATHICS is the science of perception as a pleasure
or a pain. Eudemonics is the science of emotion in its
pleasurableness or painfulness. Where is the difference? All the emotion is a pleasure, and all the pleasure is an emotion. Where can Eudemonics find room
to differ from Pathics, and, above all, in any discernible
way to be embraced by it? The doctrines of Agathology, which we are next to consider, will begin the
answer to this most radical question.
CHAPTER II.
EUDEMONICS IN ITS RELATION TO AGATHOLOGY.
EMOTION is the only possible good. Let one consider. If man had nothing but knowledge and power:
or, to go at once to the Almighty, if God knew everything, and did everything, and lived forever, and
reached immensity, but had no feeling, where would
be the good of the universe? It is a very neat and
very admirable question. A cosmos may be all rocks,
or still nebular mist, or better yet never have been
created, and be just as well as a universe without
emotion.
Now emotion is never anything else than a pleas



CHAP. III.]     as Related to Ethics.            26I
ure or a pain. If a pleasure were no good except
merely in its pleasurableness, then Eudemonics would
cover the whole ground of Agathology. But pleasures
are different. Some pleasures are merely pleasurable,
like the taste of honey. Some pleasures are also tasteful, like the sight of beauty. Some pleasures are
heroical, like a glow of courage. And some, above all,
are Ethical.  Here is the great heart of Metaphysical
Science. All are Eudemonic as far as they are pleasurable. But some are /Esthetic. Pleasures that are
AEsthetic we shall find are good in other ways than as
merely pleasurable.  And when we come to the two
Ethical emotions, we will find the highest conceivable
good. These right emotions will some day be the
highest pleasures; but as a thing that is to take rank
of that, they are pleasures excellent in themselves, or
in other words emotions consciously conceived as having
hzSiher good than their simJzple pleasurableness.
CHAPTER III.
EUDEMONICS IN ITS RELATION TO ETHICS.
PLEASURE,-and now I mean in its sense as pleasant,-has one dignity, and that is that it is the starting
point of all the possibilities of morals. Sensation we
have seen must begin consciousness. And so benevolence, which requires for its province other people's
pleasure, is the first occasion of all things ethical.
I. Benevolence we shall find is not the highest
virtue;
2. And pleasure we shall find is not virtuous simply as pleasurable;
3. And self-love we shall find is a truism, and is
fiercely misconceived when we call it virtue;




262                 Estlctz'cs.       [B. IV. PT. II.
These are great facts of Eudemonics; and they
leave for Ethics this great reality, viz. that there is that
in two simple pleasures (Ethics, D. II. Chap. VI.) which
lifts them above everything in the universe besides,
and that this quality is not their pleasurableness, but
a conscious excellence, not accepted through an Intuitive Belief (B. II. Chap. XVI), but actually seen in the
heart's emotion.
PART  II.
AESTHETICS; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION
AS AN EMOTION OF TASTE.
CHAPTER I.
DEFINITION.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON defines pleasure to be unrestrictedness of energy (Metaphysics, p. 577). Pain
is obstruction of some energy. And to defend so
bizarre a statement, he calls in Plato and Aristotle,
and, to our amazement, those fathers of the human
mind are guilty of such notions as this,-Plato, that
pleasure is reaction from pain, and Aristotle, that it is
a concomitant of energy. That is, I hang a flower
before the eye of a child, and the pleasure of the child
is a mere reaction from pain. So says Plato. Or I
stick a pin into the flesh of a child, and his shriek of
dismay is from mere impeded energy. Old monks getting hold of the manuscripts of these men could hardly
make them seem more crazy by stuffing them with




CHAP. I.]            Dr.fi'iti/l.               263
dreams. And yet these were deliberate arguings; and
Sir William  Hamilton, with his splendid gifts, lays
claim to Aristotle, and argues at length for the " unimpeded" theory.
Now, how are we to account for these things?
If a house does not get down to the hard-pan for
its base, it crazes and goes awry.
The doctrine of perception is the hard-pan of
Pathics. As long as emotion floats as something separate, it is a Will-o'-the-WVisp.  Men will make fools of
themselves chasing it.  But when it appears that emotion is but all aspect of perception, it is marvellously
cleared. It does not need a definition. It cannot
have one. We cannot define blue color (except perhaps spectrally); and so we cannot define pleasure,
except in discourses about it as in these chapters.
Pleasure is an aspect of consciousness. Consciousness
is a definition to itself. Pleasure is down at the very
hard-pan; and we cannot dig lower. And the jingle,
Pleasure is pleasure, is a far better definition, and will
be a better enlightenment even to a child, than all the
mixed thoughts about energy,-empirical, and, therefore, of no kinship to the whole class that is to be defined.
So, eminently, certain definitions about taste.
I hang a lily before a child, and it gives him
pleasure. Long ago it has been noticed that this is not
a pleasure like that which is given to him by its smell;
and yet it is a mere consciousness. The child, if
idiotic, might clap its hands, and glare its eyes, at the lily.
How foolish to give any definition other than one
that merely bounds and separates. To attempt to give
all of beauty, and to make it all up artificially and of
extraneous things, is the wildest dream possible; and




264                        Est1zetics.                LB. IV. PT. II.
yet precisely this has been done by Alison and other
annotators.
Beauty is an affair of consciousness. If you do not
see it, I cannot show  it to you.  It is like warmth from
fire, or light from torch, or scent from the breath of
flowers. It is a consciousness in a mind's emotion.*
And when Alison says, it is Association, and thus
builds it bodily;  and  when  Plotinus says, it is Sympathy,-we always think of little seraphs, with  wings,
but with nothing  to  sit down on.t   There  is a differciztia of beauty, and no doubt it will be difficult to
fix, and there will be our labor. But we can start to
build from  the hard-pan.  Beauty is an  affair of consciousness.  And by dziffereniti  we mean, that we can
cut it daintily from all things else. But when we come
to make it in the rough, we shall find, as in Alison's
case, that it is an utter craziness.
* We are speaking here of course, seminally. There are three
meanings of the word, beauty. We are pestered by these dictionary
differences.  If anybody says, there are but two, we shall not stop to
differ with him. If any one says, No; only one,-we will have our
agreements with him even there. The three we meant are, first, a consciousness; second, a consciousness thrown like paint upon the object;
and, third, a power in the object, that is the empiric trait, by which the
esthetic consciousness is supposed to be aroused.  Some may say, Not
the first at all. The word beauty is always used objectwise. Some may
say, Not the last at all.  The conscious beauty is always felt to be
suffused.  We make little cavil. Abstractly, we triplify as we have
done. Concretely, the three grow into a point. Self includes consciousness: and why should we wonder that the dry quality of reflecting
beauty should keep itself suffused, first, with the objectwise charm, and
second, with the charmed sense; this lost of course being the whole
genetic realiyz? (see Ethics, Introd. Ch. IV.).
f Of a like baselessness is " the old definition in the Roman school
that beauty is'multitude in unity,'" of which Coleridge says, that " no
doubt such is the principle of beauty."




CHAP. II.]     Differentlia of Beauty.           265
CHAPTER II.
THE DIFFERENTIA OF BEAUTY.
THE differentia of beauty is hard to give, for three
reasons.
I. First, it is a term woidely generalized.
Perception is immense; and no two perceptions
are ever alike. Perception of sound, perception of
scent, perception of power, perception of heat, perception of time-there is no end of difference; and the
difference of taste is almost as various as the difference
of perception. To crowd under one word all varied
beauties-such as of sound, such as of light, of music,
of poetry, of a woman's face, of a bridge's curvilineal
outline, is to insure a difficult difgretzntia. A logarithm
is very far from a harp-note as having the one element
of the beautiful.  In Ethics it is not so. There there
are but two emotions. At least that is what we shall
propound. This gives amazing simpleness, and just
where man needs it. But in beauty, a dzffereiztia would
seem a myth, so varied are the forms of it, and so
m any.
2. And further, secondly, there is so bad a generalization. Smell; has not that its beauties as well as
color? The exquisite fragrance of the Jasmine,-is
not that beautiful as well as flowers or birds? To me
it seems so. And when we get among tastes of the
higher flavor, there is a delicacy among its daintiest
feasts that to my consciousness at least is strictly beautiful. Of course this breeds delay. For if, in defining
beauty, I find it break over the very bounds it has,
there seems no end to the investigation.
3. Thirdly, what we are to look for must be definite.
12




266                   -Estz/tics          [B. IV. PT. II.
Is beauty mere pleasurableness? When I speak of
delicacy, is it a mere quainter form  of the pleasure?
When I say, that to me the taste of a vanilla bean
seems beautiful, do I merely describe a phase of the
pleasure's pleasurableness?  Here is a vital question.
We insist on it for its light on Ethics: and we shall go
forward for it to another chapter, viz. to Beauty as a
Good.  For here now is the vital question.  Is a harpnote only beautiful as a higher dainty for my sense?
or is it a good /er se?-rather is the emotion a good,
apart from its good as merely pleasurable?
If this last can be affirmed, a fortiori will it give
strength to Ethical positions.
CHAPTER III.
ZESTHETICS UNDER THE LIGHT OF AGATHOLOGY.
ALL good is of the nature of emotion. If all emotion is only pleasurable, then all good consists in being
happy. This is the shirt of Nessus that has clung fast
to the morals of the world.,But now, very discriminatingly, All emotion is a
pleasure. That is beyond a doubt.  Moreover all the
emotion is a pleasure, and it is nothing else (unless it
be a pain). And yet all the emotion is a perception.
We say this to show that things may be numerically
the same, and yet have very different aspects. Pleasure
may be the whole emotion, and yet may have different
aspects.
The question arises whether pleasure has but one
aspect, viz. its being pleasurable, or whether it has
other aspects, these other aspects being other goods
beside its mere pleasurableness.
If pleasure has but one aspect, viz. its pleasurable



CHAP. III.]j   Zzder thez.Lizit of sg$t/lology.  267
ness, this book of ours could be shut up like a telescope. Eudemonics could take the whole place instead
of Pathics, and Agathology would only include Eudemonics, pleasure being the only good and the single
pivot for revolving histories.
But, now, pleasure is not the only good. The emotion otherwise may have a conscious excellence. The
splendors of art,-a man may actually worship them.
He may say, I actually dote upon these pictures. If we
ask him, Do they give you pleasure? He may say,
Yes. If we ask him, Do they give you more pleasure
than your food and banquetings?  They may or may
not. After a moment's hesitation he may refuse to
say. But this he will say, that they give him a better
sort of pleasure. And the more we investigate, the
more we will come to the conclusions, that men see
good in emotions besides their pleasurableness. And
this not for their hygiene, and not for their pomps,
and not for their results, and not for their reputes, but
purely. There is a conscious good in taste above and
beyond its being simply pleasurable.
And among plainer people, why do we say that
cleanliness is next to godliness? Is it that it is healthy?
Is it that by a roundabout reasoning we have found
out that purity of body is favorable to purity of
mind?  And even then, why is it favorable? If a
man were to confess, A good plum-pudding would give
me more pleasure than a clea'n room, but yet the clean
room would give me the higherform of pleasure, would
we think him crazy? or would we think that he was
conscious of a good in certain emotions of pleasure
other than their mere pleasurableness before his
mind?
We have hints of the truth here by what comes float



268                 ~Est/zetics.         [B. IV. PT. II.
ing in our speech. Like when we come near to England
the sea-weed begins to float, so, in this neighborhood
of Ethics, the word ouight begins to color our vocabulary. If a man says that for his part he likes roast
beef; he does not care for pictures,-a man would not
be thought senseless who should tell him, he ougat to
care for pictures. And when we float into the region
of Heroics, a man ougl/t to be brave even outside of a
question of morals. We ozug/t to be cleanly. A man
ouzhZt to enjoy Niagara. And if it give him more pleasure to eat his dinner than to go to see it, he ougzl/t to
see it, for the mere superiority of the taste, beyond its
measured pleasurableness.
And men act upon this-miscreants who have no
morality. Servetus will die at the stake. The devil
will storm heaven if it sinks him leagues deeper into
misery. All men smart for their heroics. And it is
not a question of right, nor a question at all of happiness, nor a question of ultimate results, but a present
heroism. All men will bend to their taste in sacrifice
of that which has superior pleasurableness.




INTROD. CH. I.]   Emotionz at Emotion.         269
PART III.
ETHICS; OR, THE SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS AN
EMOTION OF CONSCIENCE.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I.
EMOTION AT EMOTION.
CONSCIOUSNESS is the perception of our perception,
or the awareness that each perception has of all of its
own perceiving. Emotion is also perception, and is
also self-conscious; and it can abstract. And emotion
itself being an aspect of perception, it can abstract that
aspect; that is, emotion can be conscious of itself in
the mere aspect of being a perceptive pleasure. Now,
in the instance of AEsthetics, there is a duplicity in this
abstraction: that is, I can feel a pleasurableness in a
pleasure,-and I can feel a dignity apart from what is
merely eudemonic. A blue sky, for example; it is
not only a delight, but it is beautiful. It is a delight
because it is beautiful; but it is beautiful more and
better than simply as being a delight. This is not an
Intuitive Belief; it is directly a consciousness. I see
a thing blue. I see a thing round or square. That is
not an Intuitive Belief. So I see a thing beautiful.
The emotion of beauty is just as conscious as the emotion of warmth. I cannot define it, except as beauty
is the chosen name for the power that a sky has to




270                    Ethics.           [B. IV. PT. III.
look beautiful, or to give that species of pleasure which
is not a good simply for its pleasurableness.
So now  of conscience.  There is something still
rarer. Emotions of taste abstract and separate their
own especial dignity.  But emotions of conscience do
more than this. There are emotions at emotions.
Let me define carefully. All emotions breed emotions.
That is, all emotions are self-conscious, and all selfconscious things, when we turn to look at them, are
again emotional, simply on the ground that all perception is itself emotion.
When I think of the sky, therefore, the emotion of
beauty that it excites I can think of afterward; and
when I think of it afterward, it is again emotional, that
is, the emotion of beauty, when it recurs, is beautiful
again before my mind.
But Ethics goes a story higher.  A  first sight
actually bequeaths a second sight, and that nobler and
most discrepant.  I see a beautiful cloud, and that is
the end of the reality.  But I see my friend's prosperity, and I rejoice in it, and that is a pleasure, like the
pleasure for the blue cloud, dignified beyond its mere
pleasurableness. But I think of this pleasure, and
there is now a new pleasure again; but not as in the
instance of beauty a mere reduplication of the other,
but quite a different one, not like the second rainbow
fainter than the first, but more dignified and more imperative. In other words there emerge two excellences,
one an excellence of my pleasure in the prosperity of
my friend, and the other in my pleasure at that excellence, the germs as we shall hereafter see of our two
sole virtues, one my virtue at being pleased for my
friend, and the other the vastly higher one of being
pleased for that pleasure, that is to say, the dignified




INTROD. CH. III.] Emzotion as it Leads to Action.   27I
emotion of being pleased at a pleasure simply for its
excellence.
CHAPTER II.
EMOTION AS IT WIDENS ITS VOCABULARY.
LOVE is mere pleasure with a new name to make
it fit better in the uses of our literature. So with a
host of other words that confuse from not being kept
unitary. I love a tune, simply as meaning that I see
its beauty. I love to think, I love to pray, I love my
neighbor, I love my Maker, partly let me here say as
meaning a habit, viz. the fact that I could love if the
occasion offered; but, as a conscious exercise at the
time, it simply means pleasure; viz., thought pleases
me, and prayer pleases me, and my neighbor pleases
me when he continues prosperous, and God pleases
me; that is, perception is emotion, and the perception
of these things is emotional pleasantly before my mind.
So of desire. Digging down to its root in pleasure
and in the opposite pain is mere dictionary work.
And so of will. These are all moral terms; but
how they are bred of emotion has already appeared.
There is nothing moral but emotion; and there is no
emotidn that is moral but two, as will hereafter appear;
and will, as has already been seeln, is a highly artificial
vocable, bedded in emotion, with two narrow offices
to meet, one in the play of the muscles, and the other
in the mere phenomenon of detained perception.
CHAPTER III,
EMOTION AS IT LEADS TO ACTION.
As Not-I can only be known through the five senses,
so I can only act through my bare volition. If volition




272                    Et/tics.         [B. IV. PT. III.
is that narrow thing (B. I. Chap. XXX.), moving my
muscles, and fixing my attention, it is easier to trace
to pleasure or the want of it all my personal responsibility. Will is a pleasure pained and straitened if it
does not reach certain expectations. Killing a man,
therefore, is not wicked till we have cut down past all
the vile accessories. The knife; and, just as much,
the arm; and, of the arm, the muscle; and, down the
arm, the nerve; and, through the nerve, the brain;
and, in the brain, the motions, whatever they chance
to be, —these are all innocent. The whole guilt is in
the pleasure, that is, the pleased emotion which begot
the force which swept mysteriously down to the nervous agency.
We shall see hereafter what sin is. It is negative.
It is a want of two emotions. If action is called sin, it
is by accommodation. If positives are called sin, like
loving wine, or like loving gain, it is as a sign or a sinbearer.  There is nothing primarily sinful but a want.
And as the muscles of the neck pull it all awry when
those are dead on the side opposite, so sin is really sin
in its positive lusts, because they are not restrained
and balanced in an opposite affection.
CHAPTER IV.
EQUIVOCALS.
IF any one will try the phrase upon his lips,-'Beauty is an emotion,' he will find that it does not
agree with general usage. If he will try it, however,
in his consciousness, he will find that it might be the
usage, for that beauty is an emotion turned objectwise;
for that the joy is a consciousness; and that out of the
habit of empirical reference it is painted on the object;




INTROD. CH. IV.]    EquZ'vocals.                  273
just as color is a pure consciousness, but, out of the
same habit, we paint it on the sky; and paint it at a
distance, though distance all now agree is an empirical
conceit, found out, beyond all manner of question,
after empirical delays. Now, beauty is also equizvocal;
for it may be put for that weird power which the sky
has to produce the consciousness, or to give the inexplainable idea of beauty.
Precisely so virtuousness can be discoursed about.
If we try the phrase,' Virtuousness is a consciousness,'
we will find it is not usage.  But if we try the thought,
Virtuousness is a consciousness, for we have no manner of thought of it but as it is revealed as an aspect
of an emotion,-we find ourselves stating all the cognizable truth.  Beauty is painted outwardly: but yet
it is an emotion inwardly. Color is painted outwardly;
and yet it is a bare sensation. Virtuousness is affirmed
of the emotion; and yet what constitutes it, and makes
it cognizable, is the emotion itself; just as the sensation is the color. The only confusion is, that we don't
speak that way. We take an aspect of consciousness;
in the instance of sight, all the aspect, viz, color, and
color it upon the sky itself; and so when the sight is
beautiful, we turn that objectwise also; though the
beauty is all in the sight. And so, virtuousness, though
really a consciousness, is turned objectwise also; though
nothing can be more purely emotional than that tang
of taste that belongs to the delights of conscience.
Where do we stand, therefore?
What is emotional is of the essence of virtuousness; just as what is sensational is of the essence of
blue color. Nevertheless, as dictionary talk, the virtuousness is painted as a quality, just as blueness is
painted on the sky. And now, to add also the'quivoque,




274                          Ethics.              [B. IV. PT. III.
the word is made to apply to a drier quality, that is to
say that trait thzat starts the emotion, just as color occasionally goes to  that fancied power that projects the
blue light upon the mind.
We can inazgine virtuousness, therefore, with three
meanings;- first, as a conscious emotion, just as beauty
might be called a conscious emotion, if language worked
that way; second, as a consciousness in the emotion
looked at objectwise, just as beauty is all of consciousliess, but painted outwardly on the sky; and third, a
dry quality. This last is a mere empirical conceit; and
is the  made-up thought of something  to produce the
consciousness, or to warrant the emotion bred inwardly
in the mind.i
Now, carefully hide these three distinct meanings.
We wish to bring  in for immediate use three totally
distinct from  them.
Let us take  the  word virtue.  This word babbles
like a brook.  But, out of its dozen  meanings, let us
take centrally  three.  It means, first, the virtmoztsness
which  we  have  just dissected.  This  is the  prolific
meaning. WVe speak, for example, of the virtue of a
certain emotion.  It means, second, the virtuous emotion  itself.  It means, thirdly, the character that has
the habit of such emotions.t   Please divide our Ethics
* I need not say that this last requires Abstraction carefully to separate it. Practically, it mixes with the others, just as self takes-in the
present consciousness. When I say,'The coloring on that fence,'-it
is very hard to keep out the conscious blue, and to think only of the
chemical trait by which that projection can be made upon the eye.
{ Here we must erect again the same guard. Self includes consciousness.  The not-self includes the instant color. Men cannot keep
such things separate. And hence these ethical meanings get mixed.
The (I) quality of the emotion sinks into the (2) emotion.; for there is
nothing numerically but the emotion. And, again; the (3) character of




INTROD. CH. IV.]      Equivocals.                    275
with these three; first, Virtue, or the Moral Quality;
second, Virtues, or Moral Duties; and third, Virtue,
or Moral Character.  These will be the headings of
our three principal Divisions; and, springing, as they
all do, out of the first, they will keep in view our main
idea; that it is on the Quality of Virtuousness that
the whole Science is made to depend.
Here we mean to print a manuscript of twenty
years' standing.  We print it unchanged.  We alter no
word up to page 339 where it ends.
iWe wrote it as Ethics longc before other metaphysical investigations. We were enamored of its analytical truth.  We are so still.  We have pursued all
subsequent search that we might confirm  or explode
it.  We have not been able to explode it.  We have
drifted in some of the detail, but in the direction of
plus rather than of minus.  Where we need it we
will supply a foot note." But we will retain all the
text; first, because we could but little change it; and
second, to show that we have not changed: that here
has been a system, conceived in an earlier period, held
steady for twenty years; that here has been a system
that other metaphysical study has not modified; that
here has been a system in the very centre of the interests
of men, not bent to other systems, but itself enthroned
first, and finding through a quarter of a century mere
mental facts wonderfully assimilated to its understood
moralities.
the man seems nothing but the (I) character of his act, from the reason
above given, that self includes our present consciousness. These things
are different, however; and can be kept apart by a discreet abstraction.
* AMarked (1875), to distinguish it from old foot-notes,




276                      Ethics.        [B. IV. PT. III. D. I.
DIVISION I.
THE MORAL QUALITY.
CHAPTER I.
OF MORAL SCIENCE.
MORAL Science treats of that quality of certain
conscious exercises which we call moral.  Conscience
is the mind in its power to discern this quality. Duties
are those exercises of mind which possess this quality.
Obligation is that aspect of this quality in which those
exercises that possess it become our duty. Law is
that formulary, written or unwritten, expressed or
implied, in which those exercises that possess this
quality are commanded. Moral Science, therefore,
turns in no direction, and uses no language, in which
this quality in its various connections and relations is
not its sole subject.  Moral Science, therefore, has
this element of simplicity, that its subject is one idea.
CHAPTER II.
OF THE MORAL QUALITY.
BUT the moral quality as the subjeet of Moral
Science is not only one idea, but, what is more important, it is a simple idea. You call perceive it but cannot define it.* It is like beauty. Beauty is a simple
* This is all sufficiently true, though written obviously under the
conception of simple ideas technically so called. There are no such
simple ideas (see B. I. Chap. XV). Ideas are more or less simple. No




CHAP. III.]    Of What Things are Moral.             277
idea.  You can perceive it, but cannot define it.  And
IEsthetics, which is the science of beauty, would be a
fine illustration of Ethics or Moral Science, which is
the science of the quality we are considering, if beauty
were not so varied. It is, in fact, a congeries of simple
ideas. For the beauty of a poem, and the beauty of a
sunset, and the beauty of a chorus, and the beauty of
a logarithm, are certainly not all one object of thought;
nay, they are not all one simple idea. But the quality
we are considering has no variety except it be in its
negative or opposite. For except we make a second
simple idea of sin, the moral quality all over the world
is single: it admits of no definition; and Moral Science
would have nothing to show for itself in the way of an
analysis, if it depended upon resolving that most unique
and indivisible idea or quality into anything like distinct or essentially different appearances or natures.
CHAPTER III.
OF WHAT THINGS ARE MORAL.
BUT though we cannot define the moral quality,
yet we can tell what things are moral. This is a very
different question. I cannot define beauty; but I can
tell what things are beautiful. And it will be observed
that a quality and the thing by which it is possessed
can be looked at as different ideas. I cannot define
color; but I can say what things are red and purple.
And if it should be found  that the moral quality
belongs to a very few-of the objects of our consciousabsolute definition is possible. The simpler the idea, the less possible
its definition. But no idea, however complex, is capable of precise
definition; but only can have suggested its closest analogies in our
consciousness (1875).




278                  Et~/cs.      [B. IV. PT. III. D. 1.
ness, and these few can be put into a catalogue, the
doing so would be a beautiful analysis. For, once
having settled that the quality is an indefinable idea,
and that the things by which it is possessed can be
all marked down and numbered, and the science is
complete. No practical detail can afterward give us
serious anxiety.
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT THE MORAL QUALITY SHALL BE CALLED.
WE might be satisfied with this very expression,the Moral Quality: and indeed there would be some
serious advantages gained; for it would oblige us
always to consider that it is a mere quality, and nothing else. But then sin is a moral quality, as well as
its opposite. It is important to keep these simple
ideas more separable.
We had thought of rzgzt,. that Moral Science
was that branch of human philosophy that was concerned in right; that right was a simple idea; that
being on that account incapable of being defined, we
could only ask, What things are right? and so go on
in our path of investigation.  This would be very simple. But then, unfortunately, right means not wrong,
as well as that which is positively virtuous.
And so io/lizess, and  rzS/zgteozoszess, and many other
ethical expressions. Holiness, for example, is the moral
quality; and that in no other than its absolute idea;
there could be no other; but then, the moral quality
in a certain restricted application. Holiness, moreover, is applied to character; and, moreover, it is applied to conduct; so that it is endlessly ambiguous.
We have determined, all things considered, to go




CHAP. IV.]   Name for t/Ie Mloral  Qzlality.  279
back to an old word, and call the moral quality
Virtue.
Our objections to this are that virtue is really a
name for eicht or nine different ideas. We need not
mention all of them. Some of them will never be confounded with any philosophical expression. We shall
mention three of them. And these are so constantly
important that we must keep them in our view. One
is the moral quality; as for example where we say,
The virtue of certain exercised affections. The second
is the things that are moral; in which case the word
is used in the plural, meaning those virtues or exercised affections themselves. Thirdly, it is applied to
character. These uses are really the divisions of our
subject as we intend to consider it. And we might have
employed the word in the titles of our different books,
and called them,
I. VIRTUE, OR THE MORAL QUALITY;
II. VIRTUES, OR THE MORAL DUTIES; AND
III. VIRTUE, OR MORAL CHARACTER.
This distinct discrimination will at least keep us
from being confused by the word itself. For let us
remember that virtue means, either rightness, or the
things that are right, or the character in which these
right things are found.
They are, in fact, altogether different ideas.




280                  Ethics.        [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
DIVISION II.
THE MORAL DUTIES.
CHAPTER I.
OF WHAT THINGS ARE MORAL.
THERE are but two things that have virtue, or that
possess the moral quality, and that become on that
account virtues:' or Moral Duties; and besides these
there are no virtues in the universe. One of these
is Benevolence, or a love of the Welfare of other
beings; and the other is a love of the Moral Quality
itself.
We do not mean that all other virtues are implied
in these, or that if these are observed all other duties
are equally brought to pass, but that all moral duties
are these, and that virtue is not a quality of anything
beside, any more than taste or fragrance is a quality
of anything else than matter.
CHAPTER II.
OF BENEVOLENCE.
FoR one of these in which the moral quality is
found we have a word which, for one derived from
popular language, is remarkably philosophical. Love
of others is a far more ambiguous expression. Love
to others may arise from esteem as well as from BenevX The reader will mark the different uses of the word.




CHAP. III.]    Benevolence, a Virtue.          281
olence. Indeed, the love that arises from esteem, is
much more properly expressed by the word, than the
love which arises from Benevolence. The love by
which we pray for them that despitefully use us and
persecute us, is only a love for their welfare.* And I
am no more bound to love those that are not lovable
or worthy of my affection, than I am bound to love a
spider or poisonous capello which nevertheless I am
bound to regard and treat with a suitable compassion.
Benevolence, therefore, is a universal principle.
"Do not I hate them  that hate thee?" says the
Psalmist; and yet we are commanded to " bless them
that curse us." It is rare that in popular language a
word is found so perfect in its meaning as this word
Benevolenzce for the simple affection of wishing well to
all others than ourselves.
CHAPTER III.
WHETHER BENEVOLENCE IS A VIRTUE.
No man, perhaps, ever denied that Benevolence in
any case had the moral quality; but there are men so
inconsistent as to declare, that Benevolence is not
moral unless it is indulged in from a sense of obligation.
If they denied that benevolence had a moral quality
in any case, it would be impossible to answer them;
for, except by appeal to Scripture, which commands us
to love even our enemies, whether benevolence be a
virtue or no, is an affair of consciousness. If a man
cannot feel that benevolent affection is moral, it cannot
be proved to him.
To those, however, that imagine that benevolence
* (Bene-volo) benevolence.




282                  Et/ics.       [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
becomes moral only when we conceive that it is right,
there are three considerations to be presented.  (I.) If
a thing is not moral until we feel it to be so, then it is
not moral at all; for how can we feel a thing to be
moral, if it be not moral in itself? (2.) Again, if a
thing is not moral until we feel it to be so, then we
must make our election between the two ideas that are
here stated.  Here is the feeling of benevolence, and
the feeling of duty. The two are not even coincident.
xWVe must first have a feeling of benevolence; and then
a regard for it as our obligation.  Wherein is the moral
quality contained?  If in the feeling of benevolence,
that is the very thing for which we are contending.  If
in the sense of obligation, that is altogether a different
idea. (3.) Then a practical difficulty; —If the thing be
not moral until we feel it to be so, then a man who is
so engrossingly benevolent that he does not stay to
consider its obligation, may be more of a benevolent
man but less of a moral one.  In other words, his love
is not moral at all unless he delays it long enough to
think of its obligation.
These things are not all very consistent.
Benevolence is either a virtue or not.  If it be not
a virtue, then its opposite is not a vice, and I may be
as hard-hearted as I please, without any dereliction of
moral obligation.  If it be a virtue, then it is possessed
of the virtuous quality itself, for if Awe attempt to trace
it and say, Benevolence is our duty because God has
commanded it, the question returns, Why God has
commanded it, and the answer, Because it is our duty.
And if it be said, It promotes the general welfare, it
may be asked, And why am I bound to promote the
general welfare? and then it may be answer'ed, Because
it is benevolent.




CHAP. IV.]  Is BLze-vo/cIce the olzl  Virtzle?     283
Benevolence, therefore, is a simple and original
virtue.
CHAPTER IV.
IS BENEVOLENCE THE ONLY VIRTUE?
BUT if it be asked, Is Benevolence the only virtue?
I answer, No; and I prove it merely by finding another. That, after all, is the simplest argumentation.
If the question arises, Are there only four senses?
any arguments I might build up on the evil of having
only four, would be far less potent than the proof that
there are five.
Nosw I might stay to show the inconsistency of a certain mode of stating a certain doctrine, —Tzclz/ all virtzle consists ini bencvolnce.  I might show that virtue is
a quality, and benevolence the thing in which it inheres; and that unless virtue is used in a very narrow
and uncommon sense, it would be just as awkward to
say that all virtue consists in benevolence, as that all
beauty consists in singing, or that all power consists in
a steam engine. Virtue and benevolence are entirely
different ideas.  Or, returning to what is evidently implied, I might deny that benevolence is the only virtue,< because God has far higher aims, and man far
higher obligations, than the happiness of others. And
we might produce the consequzezces of holding that benevolence is the only thing that is possessed of a moral
quality.
But a far simpler way is just to show that there is
some other virtuous affection; and that that affection
is primordial like benevolence itself, and cannot be confounded with it, but is a different idea; that benevo* In the second sense of that term; see Ethics, D. I. Chap. IV. (I875.)




284                  Ethics.      [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
lence and that other affection are reduced to an ultimate analysis, and are both separate possessors of the
idea or quality of virtue.
CHAPTER V.
OF A LOVE TO THE MORAL QUALITY ITSELF.
Now to find out what that other affection is, let us
imagine a great instance of benevolence exhibited. Let
us suppose a horse dashing along the public street, and
some person periling his life to save a child that is
playing upon the pavement. Suppose this to be an
instance of pure benevolence. Suppose another man
standing at his door, and the tears of a generous admiration starting to his eyes on seeing the benevolent
act. Suppose this to be an instance of pure admiration of benevolence. Here then are two things, benevolence and admiration of benevolence, things unquestionably different, but both with the appearance
of virtue; and, at first sight, these two might be imagined as at least worthy of being looked at as to whether
they are not the only possible virtues.
Presently, however, a third person is seen eagerly
watching the second. A love of benevolence has
become in its turn an object of admiration, like benevolence itself. And so, a fourth person might express
his approval of the third; and a fifth, of the fourth;
and a sixth, of the fifth; and a seventh, of the sixth;
and so on indefinitely; benevolence, and the love of
benevolence, and the love of the love of benevolence,
and so on, burdening our catalogue, until it might be
thought to be impossible to have any more convenient
statement.
And yet immediately we are reminded of the fact,




CHAP. V.]   Of Love to th/e Mlforal Quality.     285
that what each man loves in his neighbor is the moral
quality.  The first man saves the child out of a
simple feeling of benevolence. The second man loves
the first out of a regard to that moral quality of which
the act of his benevolence is possessed. And so on in
the other cases. It is the moral quality in each. And
if I say, BENEVOLENCE AND A LOVE OF THE MORAL
QUALITY, I shall have described all the feelings of the
case. The first man loves the child from benevolence.
The second man loves the first because he loves the
moral quality of his benevolent self-sacrifice.  The
third man loves the second because he admires the
moral quality of the admiration which the second feels
for the first. And the fourth man loves the third
because he admires the moral quality of this previous admiration. And so on indefinitely.  There is
no difficulty in the further statement. Benevolence
and the love of the moral quality are therefore all
that appear in this whole concatenation of experiences.
Now, that this second is a virtue I need hardly stop
to demonstrate: or that it should be the only virtue I
need hardly stop to prove impossible. It is entirely
distinct from benevolence. The two are reduced to
their last analysis. And if any man imagines that
what have been reduced to two, might, on a closer
inspection, result in unity, he must remember that
the two are simple ideas; that they are incapable of
any further simplicity of sense; benevolence and admiration for the virtuous quality being emotions of
the soul which can only be felt, and which cannot be
conceived by any description of their meaning. *
* There have been two general theories of morals; one, that all
virtue consists in benevolence; the other, that all virtue consists in a




286                         Ethics.         [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
CHAPTER VI.
PROOF THAT THERE ARE BUT T\rWO VIRTUES.
BENEVOLENCE and a love of the moral quality can
be proved to be the only virtues in the same way that
five of our physical gifts can be proved to be our only
senses.  No man would attempt to decide it by looking at any of the five, but at a sixth or seventh  that
might claim  to belong to the catalogue.  We mean to
pass in review several of our common affections, namely,
Love to God, Love to Self, Gratitude, and Natural
Affection; and having exhausted the possibilities in
the case, appeal finally to Scripture, which declares that
there are but two virtues.
CHAPTER VII.
OF LOVE TO GOD.
GOD, though the most simple of all existences, is
the most compound of all ideas.  We put together all
that is excellent in ourselves; and, making it infinite,
attach it to the Supreme Being; and that is every idea
of Him. A love of the Supreme Being is, therefore, a
love of right on its own account.  The argument against the first has
been, that then God has no real hatred of sin, and only opposes it because of its effects. The argument against the second has been, * that
then there is no such thing as right; for that if ail virtue consists in the
love of right on its own account, where do we get the first right to love?
The theory we are introducing provides for both these difficulties.
Benevolence is' the first right we get to love'; and then love to right
itself is the second right thing; benevolence playing the same role in
Ethics that Locke said sensation did in Logic; sta;rtizg' us, so to speak,
in our conceptions, or giving us the possibilities of thought in the case.
Or, may be (1875.)




CHAP. IX.] lTV/Iy Sclf-LOr'e /ns bctgl,/Zo/zZt a Virtue. 287
love of wisdom and power and justice and goodness
and truth; and, so far as it is a moral feeling, it is a
love of His moral character. For, except so far as it
is gratitude, of which we shall afterwards speak, or
benevolence, if any one chooses to assert that we are
benevolent to the Almighty, it is a love of His moral
attributes, and, therefore, nothing more than a, love
of the moral quality as it is embodied in the holiness
of God.
In either case, therefore, benevolence and a love of
the moral quality cover all the experiences in its
history.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF LOVE TO SELF.
SELF-LOVE is neither a virtue nor a vice. It is
constitutional. If we are made capable of happiness,
being happy, which is very little removed from delighting or loving to be so, is as innocent as existence itself.
Desiring to be what we are constituted happy in being
is neither right nor wrong. The opposite of it is as
inherently impossible as grieving when we are not sad,
or joying when we are not happy. Self-Love, therefore, is not a virtue.
CHAPTER IX.
WHY SELF-LOVE HAS BEEN THOUGHT A VIRTUE.
PRUDENCE was one of the four cardinal virtues of
the ancients; and, therefore, Self-Love has, almost by
common consent, assumed to itself a virtuous character.
But then Self-Love, it must be duly considered, is




288                   Etzics.      [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
only one of the motives of prudence. I am bound to
be benevolent. A care of myself is necessary to the
welfare of others. Again, I am bound to love duty.
The care of myself is necessary to the enjoyment of
duty. I am bound to obey God. There are mzany
motives for prudence. And Self-Love, on its own
account, is not the virtuous motive. Nor has it on its
own account a virtuous character.
Why some men have thought it a sin, we shall
afterwards explain. But Self-Love is not a sin in itself. It becomes mixed with sin only through the
want of benevolence. Self-Love is like the ball of the
eye, which anatomists tell us is totally without feeling.
It has neither one character nor the other, but is indifferent as to the quality of virtue.
CHAPTER X.
OF NATURAL AFFECTION.
KEEPING our eye, however, upon obvious differences, we must not say the same in respect to Natural
Affection. The idea so often broached, that Natural
Affection is not of a virtuous character, labors with
many difficulties; for, in the first place, it is contradicted by conscience. If a man disregard his offspring,
we pronounce it a sin. Moreover it is contradicted by
Scripture; for the astorgoi, or, as the word is translated,
those "without natural affection," are mentioned by
the Apostle Paul in the list of the most outrageous
sinners. The love of a husband for a wife, or of a
father for a son, or of a niece for her uncle, are certainly
virtues; and yet it would be impossible to believe,
that each of these inaugurates a separate moral dis



CHAP. x.]     Of  LNz a/raz/ ActzO1z.        289
tinction, or, in fact, that there are as many virtues as
there are relations among men.
The light that is to be shed upon these difficulties
depends upon the fact that benevolence is regulated
by circumstances. I cannot love a being till I know
something of him. A stranger on a distant planet is
out of the reach of my benevolence. I cannot love a
being so much as when I know more about him, or he
is living near me. And, therefore, the Bible commands
me to love my izez'/zbor. I cannot love a being so
much who is of another nation, or of another race;
and these differences are in the nature of the case.
Benevolence remains the same, a simple and unchangeable virtue; but it is constitutionally affected by circumstances; and Natural Affection is, therefore, a
compound. It is partly an instinct, and that far has
no virtue; but it is also benevolence, and benevolence
kindled by the most favoring appeal. If a man has no
benevolence when the objects of it are placed at his
fireside, and when the warmth of it is increased by an
instinct, he must be singularly low down in his benevolent susceptibility. And, therefore, the Bible gives
us little credit for this sort of benevolence, for it says,
"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts
unto your children, how much more shall your Father
which is in heaven give good things to them that ask
him!"
Natural affection, therefore, is a compound phenomenon, made up partly of benevolence, in which
respect it is moral, but partly also of an instinct which
constitutes a favoring circumstance (along with others)
for benevolence itself.
I3




290                         Ethics.         [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE LOVE OF GOOD MIEN.
THE like may be said  of the Love of Good Men.
The Love of Good Men is a compound  phenomenon,
made up of common benevolence, heightened and
made warmer by a love of the Moral Quality.*
CHAPTER XII.
OF GRATITUDE.
AND the like may be said of Grazitude.  It is an
instance of common benevolence, heightened and made
warmer by a love to benevolence  itself; and that benevolence particularly attraicting our attention, because
it was a benevolence exercised toward us.t
I am not saying that I have given all the phenomena
connected with these different affections; particularly
all the phenomena of the different duties that flow
from  them.  For example, love to God is immediately
followed by the duty of unreserved obedience. But
then  obedience to God  flows also from  the duty  of
benevolence, as well as from the obligation to love
* Here it will be observed, both are virtues. But yet so much lower
is benevolence when assisted by these favoring circumstances, that the
Bible recommends it when it stands unaided by any; for " for a good
man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love
toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us"
(Rom. v. 7, 8).
f Where also the Bible testifies that it is benevolence, and not the
favoring circumstances, that constitute the virtue; but that, on the contrary, benevolence is the more praiseworthy, the less it is assisted. For
" if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for
sinners also do even the same " (Luke vi. 33).




CHAP. XIII.]          Of Y.%stice.                291
Him; because the duty of obedience is necessary to
the general welfare. So also of the exercise of gratitude; it is for the general good. We have not exhausted our analysis, but sufficiently indicated that all
may be included in fewer and more original affections.
CHAPTER XIII.
OF JUSTICE.
THE same may be said of Justice.
Justice is a name for a great many different
things.
It has three meanings, like those that may be found
in Virtue. That is, it means first the quality of which
we speak when we speak of the justice of certain feelings.  It means, secondly, the feelings in which this
just quality is found; and it means, thirdly, the character of the persons to whom the feelings that possess
this just quality belong.  It is in the second of these
three senses that we wish to speak of justice w\hen we
ask if we are obliged to consider it as a separate and
independent virtue.
Justice, moreover, has a great many different meanings in each of the three senses in which we have considered it. It means virtue in the general. It means
honesty. It means strictness in governing, including,
on the one hand, strictness in rewards, and on the
other, strictness in punishment. It has been divided
into gezera', colznuzzlziz've, distritil'tzze, and viz'zdiatory
justice; a division, however, which can be of but small
philosophical account, because it is all an illogical
jumble; general justice including all the rest, and distribzltive, which is defined to be " the giving of every
one his due," being much the same as  enzeral, or, at




292                 Etlics.       [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
least, certainly including vindicatory, and, in this way,
overleaping all the bounds of a metaphysical division.
To follow justice, therefore, into all the windings of
popular speech, would be utterly impossible. And we
have thought that we would take two great instances
of it, which, if they. are not the great meanings of the
word, are nevertheless sufficient as examples of how
entirely it may be included under the forms of our
original virtues. Honesty, which is one of the two, is to
be considered in the present connection; and rectitude,
as it is applied to government, that is, strictness in
rewarding, and strictness in punishing, will be taken up
when rewards and punishments come to be the subject of
inquiry.
CHAPTER XIV.
OF HONESTY.
IF a poor widow, living alone, and with no one to
depend upon but herself, has scraped together through
the toils of a laborious life a poor pittance against the
infirmities of age, and some man with no shadow of a
right robs her and takes all that she possesses, it would
seem to be an imperfect statement of the moralities of
the case to say that benevolence had been grossly violated. Is there not such a thing as an original justice?
Or is it true that a regard for the welfare of others,
followed of course by its obligation as virtuous, and by
the command of the Almighty, is all that is to restrain
us from robbery and fraud?
Holding that there is nothing else than this, we
challenge the party that may differ to tell us what that
other thing is. What is it?  Is it a love for others'
rights? What we call for is a distinct expression that
may serve to be an account of an original virtue.




CHAP. XIV.]        Of Honesty.                293
I. It cannot be a love for others' rrghts, because,
under that word is included an endless variety of meanings: There are rights that come to us by war and
accident. Indeed there are all possible varieties; rights
of law, and rights of equity; and these opposite oftentimes; rights that cannot be maintained in the forum of
conscience, and yet that cannot be denied in the forum
of human adjudication: rights of discovery and rights
of possession, and rights of whimsical technicality, that
nevertheless are held sacred by men. How can that
be an original affection that has for its object a vast
multiplicity of things?
II. Again; justice has exceptions. The poor widow
would be sacrificed for the benefit of the state. A
cargo would be thrown overboard for the safety of a
vessel. Fortunes would be squandered, or houses
blown up, for the gaining of a battle; and property
might be seized upon in cases of starvation. We hold
everything at the call of a higher principle. And how
can that be a primordial right which becomes wrong or
the opposite according to our need?
III. Observe, this is not the case with benevolence.
Benevolence has no exception. We are to love even
our enemies. Nor is there any exception in the love
of virtue. Benevolence, therefore, and the love of the
moral quality might be proved to be the only virtues by
this fact, that they are the only forms of obligation
that admit of no exception.
IV. And moreover, fourthly, when we come to consider what the exceptions are, they are all on the one
principle of the general welfare.
V. And, therefore, I say, fifthly, that as the one
principle of the general welfare accounts for the exceptions of justice, so, afortiori, may it account for justice




294                  E/h'cs.      [B. IV. PT. TII D. II.
itself; for if A regard for the general good is so potent
as to put away the equities of ordinary administration,
then benevolence'must be higher than justice; that is,
it must stand higher in logic; that is, it must go nearer
to the origin of right; I mean by that, justice must be
derived fiom benevolence, because, in the last appeal,
it yields to the consideration of the public good.
Now let me not be mistaken. I do not mean that
a care for that poor widow is all that should restrain
the man from defrauding her of property: but that the
general welfare makes necessary a general law, and that
that law must be very exact, and that that exactness
must reach even to the slenderest obligations; and
that when that law is set up, then duty comes in to
press it; because benevolence is followed by a recognition of duty, and that duty becomes interlocked by
all species of confirmation; by the command of God;
by the need of example; by a respect for ourselves;
and by all the forms of the interlacing of duty by which
two simple virtues can combine in all the forms of obligation for men.
It is not, therefore, benevolence in t/is simple case
that keeps the man's hand off the property of his
neighbor; but benevolence grown into an intelligent
system, and that system enjoined by the authority of
the Almighty, and recognized by its wisdom as essential in the very constitution of affairs.
CHAPTER XV.
OF TRUTHFULNESS.
THE same wisdom makes it necessary that one man
should tell the truth to his neighbor.




CHAP. XV.]        Of Trzutkfzulness.              295
But if truthfulness aspire to be itself an original
virtue, we have of course a right to inquire what it defines itself distinctly to be.
Truthfulness is not a love of truth on our own account; for then it would run into all the departments of
philosophy and science. Truthfulness, therefore, is more
properly a love of the possession of truth by others;
or to put others in possession of the truth; or, if we
might make the matter somewhat more complicated,
perhaps, it is a principle such that if we intimate anything in the presence of others, we ought not to deceive them.  Truthfulness, therefore, is the attribute
which refuses to deceive.
1. Now, that it is not an original attribute we argue,
first, because it has many exceptions.  God tells Joshua
to set an ambush behind the City of Ai, and thus he
deceives and defeats them.  He tells Samuel when
he fears to go up to anoint David king over Israel,
Take a heifer with thee and say, I am come to sacrifice. And though it may. be said,'PenvoZ/nzce has certain practical exceptions: we refrain to do good to
others in certain cases of practical necessity:' yet,
when we come to consider it, it is at the call of benevolence itself. We refrain to do good to others for the
sake of some higher design of benevolence. But who
can say that we fail to tell the truth for the sake of
some higher design of truthfulness?
II. No; and, therefore, truthfulness finds its exceptions outside of itself.
III. And, thirdly, truthfulness, being controlled by
benevolence in such a way that when its exceptions
come up we find them dictated by the public good,
the only question that remains is, whether the public
good may not account for truthfulness. A fortiori, if




296                   Etl'ics.    [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
the public good may impair and make exceptions to
truthfulness, may it not be the occasion of truthfulness
itself? In other words, if truthfulness be a great and
important blessing, and in its highest exactness fully
accounted for by benevolence, and yet sometimes subject to exceptions, and those exceptions prompted by
benevolence itself, is not the demonstration complete
that benevolence is the origin of truthfulness, and that
except so far as it is enjoined by the authority of
God, or laid on us by other obligations because it is
benevolent, benevolence is the only source of the
obligation of truthfulness?
CHAPTER XVI.
OF CHASTITY.
IN chastity we find the peculiar illustration of a
virtue in which exceptions are made by the very ordinance of God. Chastity in any way that we can define
it forbids things that were the law in the family of
Adam, and that were announced in statutes by God
on Sinai. Truthfulness may have exceptions in cases
of necessity; or honesty, in cases of starvation; but
chastity has had exceptions for a whole age together.
And when it is said, " Moses for the hardness of your
hearts " allowed you certain liberal concessions, that
does not mean that it was not lawful, but that chastity
was a dictate of benevolence, and that where polygamy,
for example (to take one instance out of the many),
became a less evil than its inexorable prohibition, " for
the hardness of their hearts " God adjusted his commandent, making it lawful to marry many wives, not
that it was not a prodigious evil, but that the mischiefs
in the case were less than of its rigid prohibition.




CHAP. XVII.       Proof frotz  Scripture.                297
Now this does not prove that polygamy in our day
is right; for God has again prohibited it; but it proves
that it is subject to His ordinance, and that it is not in
this respect like benevolence, which is always an obligation; but that it is, like the aberrations of justice,
to be directed by the law of the Most High.
CHAPTER XVII.
PROOF FROM SCRIPTURE.
WE come next to Scripture.
In the 13th chapter of the Romans we have a passage which in a remarkably accurate way states all that
we have said in respect to benevolence. Indeed, it
would be hard to imagine how language could be more
philosophical.  The Apostle is saying, " Render to all
what is owing (atc n9e&ca)  tribute to whom tribute; custom  to whom  custom; fear to whom  fear; honor to
whom  honor": and then, for the manifest purpose of
showing  how reasonable these exactions were, he says,'"Yo  do ~not owUe any 7ZCm ZanZ anyt/ing (sI7rEt,1n,5V oErie2ere) dut
to love onle anlotchr."   And though, by an unfortunate
translation, the imperative * has been put for the indicative-" Owe  no  man  anything" —yet the  context
sufficiently corrects it. The indicative and the imperative are of course the same in the original, and it is
left to the reader entirely to decide in the case.
* Perhaps, however, the imperative must stand on account of the
peculiar negative (though eminent scholars, Reiche, Koppe, Rosenmtiller,
EBohme, Flatt, Erasmus, do not think so), but we must count it an indicative-imperative such as was of usage in the East; as, for example,
where Christ says, " What thou doest do quickly," or where the prophet
says, " Make the heart of this people gross"; which we are never to
understand as a usual imperative, but as a more than usually asseverating indicative (I875).
I3"




298                   Ethzcs.     [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
But the Apostle goes on. He not only tells the
Romans that it was interesting to perform our obligations because all were a part of the duty of mutual
benevolence, but he tells this more plainly,-" He that
loveth another hath fulfilled the law."  And then he
goes on to particularize.  " For, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal,
Thou shalt not bear false Mwitness, Thou shalt not covet;
and if there be any other commandment,-it is briefly
comprehended in this saying namely, Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself." These, you perceive, are the
very obligations we have been considering. And the
duty not to steal and not to commit adultery; that is,
the duties of honesty and chastity, and the duty not to
lie, and not to kill, and, as the Apostle says, " if there
be any other" duty,-they are summarily comprehended
in this,-which is nothing more than the duty of common benevolence.  " Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore," says the Apostle, proving his seriousness by the philosophy of an abundant explanation,"therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."
Now the other important Scripture that I will bring
into notice is where Christ tells an insidious questioner
that on two commandments, namely, " Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God," and, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor," —are summed up all the law and the prophets.
He is no longer speaking of mere obligations to
others (,-ar 6,2Lcr), but is speaking of the whole law, and
we might imagine that he would divest it of all metaphysical abstraction, and speak in the common language
of secular men.  He does not, therefore, say, Thou
shalt love other beings; though the command, Love
thy neighbor, includes, of course, duty to animals and
all the objects of compassion. Nor does he say, Thou




CHAP. XVIII.] A1rel  Mci' Temwo VYf2zrcs Equal1?  299
shalt love the moral principle; though the command,
Love thy Maker, is formed, as we have shown, upon
the basis of our obligation to holiness, but he says,
"Love the Lord thy God," as a far more useful way
of commanding our affection for holiness, and " Love
thy neighbor," as a far more popular style of enforcing
benevolence among men.
But, strictly, the passage says, that there are but
two commandments; certainly it says, that on these
two commandments hang all the law and the prophets;
and unquestionably, if these two commandments are
not adoringly to honor holiness and warmly to love
our fellows, it lies with a different exposition to explain
to us their original meaning.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WHETHER ONE OF THE TWTO VIRTUES IS EQUAL TO THE OTHER.
ONE of the two virtues is undoubtedly equal to the
other in its claim of being original; but whether equal
in degree will best appear by asking whether their
objects are equal.  Holiness on its own account is the
object of the one, and we are to compare it swith the
object of the other; and though no reason can be
given, yet our own consciousness declares, that holiness
is in itself the higher object. Benevolence, therefore,
yields to its sister virtue, not in the sense of being
dependent or derived, but in the sense of being feebler;
the welfare of others being a poorer object of desire
than the no more original desideratum, the quality of
virtue.




300                 Etz ics.      [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
CHAPTER XIX.
WHETHER BENEVOLENCE IS ALWAYS EQUAL TO ITSELF.
THE welfare of others is not only a poorer object
of desire than the no more original object, the quality
of virtue, but it is also a poorer object of desire in one
instance of benevolence than another. I cannot love
an animal with the same earnestness that I do an intelligent being; and, therefore, I sacrifice animals. I
cannot love an individual neighbor more, other things
being equal, than I love myself; and, therefore, the
Bible commands me to love my neighbor as myself. I
cannot love an individual neighbor as much, other
things being equal, as I can a million; and, therefore,
I am to sacrifice one to many. I am to love a world
of mankind more than I do any single individual.
And, therefore, I am to love a world more than I do
myself.
Accordingly  Paul says, "'I could wish  myself
accursed from Christ for my brethren my kinsmen
according to the flesh;" and though this passage has
been the ground of error, yet never in respect to
benevolence. Till we come to speak of holiness it is
clear enough. Paul loves the happiness of Israel, as
he necessarily must, more, whether temporally or eternally, than his own felicity.
"Hereby know we love," says the Apostle John,
discoursing on the very evidence of our own conversion; (and we regret that just at this point our translators should have clouded the sense by inserting
Italics,-" Hereby perceive we the love of God, ")
"Hereby know we love;" (just as on other occasions he has said, "Hereby know we the spirit of




CHAP. XX.]    A N Holinesses not Eqzual.       30o
truth," or, " Hereby know we that He abideth in us;")
"Hereby know we love, that He laid down His life
for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the
brethren."
Moses, when he cried, " If not, then blot me out of
thy book," may be a subject of criticism in respect to
its bearing upon his holiness; but in respect to its
bearing upon his happiness, he had a right,-nay, it
was his duty, to prefer all to one; and, therefore, to
desire the salvation of his race in a style that would be
fatal to his own inheritance.
CHAPTER XX.
WHETHER THE OTHER VIRTUE IS ALWAYS EQUAL TO ITSELF.
BUT whether the other virtue is always equal to
itself; depending, of course, upon the question whether
the moral quality is always equal to itself, —is a much
more delicate subject of inquiry. Happiness we must
put far off. at the very opening of our investigation.
The love of happiness must not only yield to the love
of holiness, and that whether it be for ourselves or others,
but must never come into the account. The moral
quality is so superior to others' welfare that they can
never come into comparison. The highest measure of
one can never match the lowest farthing of the other;
because virtue is perfectly imperative. God's infinite
felicity could not be a match for the slightest betrayal
into the smallest crime.
Virtue, however, having this sort of imperativeness,
has it only in the form that I have described. Its imperativeness does not consist in its being infinite; for
then all forms of virtue would be precisely on a par.
It matters not who should be the being, whether saint




302                    Ez/zzcs.     [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
or angel, nor would it matter what should be the action.
The making of a world, and the sparing of an ant or
caterpillar, would be precisely on a level.
The measure of virtue, therefore, is not always
alike; and whether the love of it is so, is an easy question. If the measure of virtue is not always alike, the
love of it is similar. The love to God must be greater
than the love to man; the love of one action greater
than of one confessedly lower, even when both actions
are perfect;  Gabriel, a higher object of affection than
inferior excellences.  And even when we understand
objects better, that is a valid ground for a higher exercise of virtue.
As God, therefore, is infinitely excellent, God, under
the eye of a Divine Nature, should be infinitely approved.  God, under the eye of God, appearing in
His excellence, becomes, so, an object of infinite affection; but God to man is not infinite; God to man
grows, and, therefore, there is but one instance of infinite affection.  God to man changes, and, therefore,
our love to Him is not infinite; nor does He claim that
it should be. All that He desires of us is, that we
should love the Lord our God with all our soul and
strength.
But if the love' of man to the Almighty is not infinite, much less is his love to any inferior degree of
moral elevation. Our love of virtue, therefore, is of
all degrees. And taking care only to keep up that fact
of its imperativeness, and to make virtue prevalent
over all measures of felicity, we can reason about holiness, and prefer it, the one case over the other, just as
as we did the object of benevolence.
The holiness of God is more important than any
other reality. This is the end of the universe. We




CHAP. XX.]    All Alolinesses nsot Eqzua.       303
have reached a point that is the highest in the affections of man.,
And if the holiness of God is the greatest end of
the universe, of course I am to desire it more even
than my own holiness. I cannot be a sinner. I cannot transgress a precept even though it be for the honor
of God. I cannot sin to uphold the universe, or to
uphold the Almighty. The thing is preposterous; for
sin admits of no license. But I can coolly think, that
my holiness is less than the holiness of God, and I can
cooly say, " Let God be true," and, as a mere comparison
of relative desires, all the world may sink into apostasy.
The Apostle, vwe deliberately believe, meant that.
So now in respect to his wishing himself accursed
from Christ;-If God's holiness is more important than
the holiness of man, the holiness of man is more important than the holiness of one; and I can throw that
fact into an expressive proposition.  I cannot consent
to sin; and it would be infamous in me to be willing
to be eternally a sinner. And it would be infamous in
me to be eternally a sinner even for the salvation of
humanity.  But then we are immediately to consider,
What is being a sinner? Being a sinner is the opposite
of being holy.  Being holy is to possess two positive
affections. To possess two positive affections is to be
holy in all the sense in which being holy can possibly
be conceived.  Now these affections are love of other
beings, which of course permits us to love others more
than we do ourselves, and (as the only remaining virtue) love of holiness.
Now the difficulty seems to be that Paul could not
say, I could wish myself accursed from Christ, without
compromitting this last affection. And we are willing
to admit that if Paul had said, I could sin for my




304                  Ethics.     [B. IV. PT. III. D. II,
brethren, my kindred according to the flesh,' it would
be inconsistent. But what is sin?  It.is, not loving
others, and not having an affection for holiness. Now,
if Paul had said,' I could be unbenevolent,' or,' I
could be unregardful of holiness, for my brethren
according to the flesh,' that would be preposterous and
wicked. But what does he say?'I am so withered by
the idea of a whole nation being given up to sin, that
is, I love holiness so much, that I make the obvious
comparison of one man's holiness as compared with
many; and, as every ideal comparison is capable of
being translated into speech, I merely utter it: —that,
out of regard to that higher excellency the love of
which is the first and great commandment, I would
rather see that excellency spread over the world than
to see it possessed by any individual believer.'
Nor are we saying here more than what every one
believes. What every one believes is, that a thousand
sinners are more to be mourned over than the existence
of one. If that one happens to be I myself, that does
not alter a certain form of the proposition when we
come to a comparison. And what I mean is, that that
form of the proposition is the one intended by Paul.
When he says, " I could wish myself accursed from
Christ," he means, that the high character of millions
was more important than the guarding of his own,
and that he had rather those millions should be saved
than that he himself should be kept from eternal
undoing.
If any one says, This means that he would be willing to sin, I retract so much as by any possibility
could mean that,-and I keep his mind undividedly to
this proposition, that Paul meant, only what he himself must believe to be true,-that the holiness and




CHAP. XXI.]   Tlze Thi igs Moral in God.     305
happiness of a nation were more to be desired, than
the holiness and happiness of any conceivable believer.
This much we suppose every one will admit.
CHAPTER XXI.
OF WHAT THINGS ARE MORAL IN GOD.
THOSE things that are moral themselves are moral
also in the Almighty.
The doctrine that no things are moral in themselves, but are made moral by the will of the Almighty, is the only doctrine that can oppose this
simple proposition.
That no things are moral in themselves, would
make no things moral in the Almighty; for I take it
that it is an easy reasoning, that if God makes things
moral, there can be nothing moral to Him. Moreover, if He makes things moral, He might make immoral things moral; that is, originally He might make
benevolence and love of virtue, which are confessedly
right, shamefully and universally wrong; and destroy
altogether the present system.
If it be said,' He is too wise for this,' then there
is an original virtue; for if originally what is indiscriminately right, is made wrong by the will of the Almighty,
-then it is evident He has no liberty of will, or things
are made wrong or right according to His pleasure.
And, moreover, having no principle for Himself, but
being obliged to make one by the freedom of His will,
His holiness is only to be adored for being the object
of His choice, and not on the principle of having any
peculiar excellency.
These postulates are so absurd that we mean to
pass on as though no such things were ever enter



3;o                  Et~/ics.    [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
tained; and those things that are moral in themselves
being moral also in the Almighty, we return to that
region of thought where we discover that benevolence
and the love of virtue are the only things that are
themselves virtuous.
Benevolence and the love of virtue being the only
things that are themselves virtuous, benevolence and
the love of virtue are the only virtues in the Almighty.
And so, John, speaking of the virtue of benevolence,
descants upon it in this wise, "Which thing is true in'
Him and in you;" meaning that its eternal obligation belongs as well to God as to man. We are created
in His image, as the Bible repeatedly declares. And
our Saviour, when He wishes to press in the furthest
climax, a love of enemies, says, " Pray for them which
despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of
your Father which is in Heaven "; and then explains
this reference to their relation, by saying, " For He
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
Benevolence and the love of virtue, therefore, are
the only virtues in the Almighty.
CHAPTER XXII.
OF GOD'S LOVE TO HIS OWN HAPPINESS.
HAPPINESS being an object which it is no virtue to
pursue, but yet which it is right to pursue if we pursue
it no farther than its own importance, it is right in man
to pursue his own happiness as far as he does his neighbor's: and it would be right in God to pursue His by
a corresponding measure of relation.
As therefore the happiness of God is more important than the happiness of the universe, it would be




CHAP. XXIII.] God's Love to His own Holiness.    307
right in God to pursue His own happiness more than
the happiness of the universe. But as the happiness
of the universe can never interfere with the happiness
of God, the happiness of God being infinite, and the
very infinitude that makes it infinite being independent of the happiness of men, the two things can never
come into competition. The happiness of God, therefore, can never interfere with the happiness of the
universe.
CHAPTER XXIII.
OF GOD'S LOVE TO HIS OWN HOLINESS.
THE holiness of God is not very different in respect
to its bearing upon others.
The holiness of God is the greatest object of His
nature.  Holiness, being most excellent in itself, is infinite in case of the Almighty. His desire for it, therefore, is boundless. Having no object above it in the
scale, there is nothing beyond it in the region of his
pursuits. The holiness of God, therefore, is the highest
object in the universe.
The holiness of God being the highest object in the
universe, it is the,=3,* or excellence, that is generally translated glory. The glory of God, being the
great end of His being, means his holiness. The idea
that has conferred this honor upon the display of it, is
a singular mistake.  If the display of His glory be the
great end of the excellence of God, then what is the
great end of that?  We may reduce it to absurdity by
going behind it. But if the holiness of God be the
great end itself, there our inquiry must pause. The
display of His holiness centres His object upon man.
* Literally, weight.




303                   Ethics.     [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
And how absurd it is, that, for centuries together, an
object that centres in the creature should have been
thought the highest object of our Great Creator!
If, therefore, the holiness of God is the great object
of all His being, the question arises whether it ever
interferes with the holiness of man; for as all things
else must yield to it, if the holiness of God ever interferes with the holiness of man, the universe is less holy
than if there had been no such interference. We want
to see whether this su~preme desire, namely, for His own
holiness, could ever interfere with the holiness of His
creation; because we would like to show that if it
does not, then the next most supreme desire, viz. for
the holiness of all beyond Him, has an undivided and
unmitigated sway in His soul.
Now, what is the love of His own holiness? The
love of His own holiness, in God, is the love of His
own benevolence toward other beings, and the love of
His own regard for moral excellence. The love of His
own benevolenee for other beings cannot make Him
less benevolent toward them, or do them less good;
and the love of His own regard for moral excellence
cannot make Him care less for the moral excellence of
all His creatures. Though the love of His own moral
excellence, therefore, is supreme, it cannot hinder that
the love of others' moral excellence should appear as
though it were supreme; and therefore the love of
God for the moral excellence of all the universe, is
just the same as though it were the leading feature
of His excellence.




CHAP. XXIV.]   God's Love to Others' Holiness.   309
CHAPTER XXIV.
OF GOD'S LOVE TO THE HOLINESS OF OTHERS.
GOD'S love to the holiness of others, is, therefore,
as great as it could be, having no possible impediment.
And as He is an omnipotent God, and has no other
impediment in His nature, and this is His leading
desire,* there is no reason why it should not have been
granted. God's universe, therefore, is as holy as it
could possibly have been made.
As each part of the universe is dear to Him in its
relative part, each part of the universe is as holy as
was consistent with the whole; and each part of the
universe, in the ages to come, will be as holy as this
supreme affection of the Almighty, combined with
His omniscience, can possibly cause it to be.
The Christian, therefore, who has fallen under no
ban of the Empire, and who' has been left in no state
demanding his eternal confusion, will be lifted all
lengths, and will be carried all heights of perfection,
and will be raised as near to the Almighty, as the plan
of the universe will possibly devise.
The lost would be made holy, if it were not for
invincible demurs.
And insects would be lifted into men, and the
universe incredibly enlarged and promoted, if it had
not received, each moment, the highest promotions
of the Almighty.
These are some consequences of God's love to the
holiness of others.
* Next to His own holiness, which we have seen does not interfere
with it.




310                   Ethics.     [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
CHAPTER XXV.
OF GOD'S LOVE TO THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS.
GOD'S love to the happiness of others is of course
altogether secondary. The slightest consideration of
holiness would at once command it all away. Yet
God's love, like the atmosphere, presses upon all His
works. Like the atmosphere, it presses everywhere;
and steals into every crevice that holiness (which is
weightier) will allow.
Hence, benevolence is unlimited. And we make a
distinction here between unlimited, and infinite. Benevolence is not infinite, because it is greater or less;
but benevolence is unlimited, because it clamors endlessly. It has no limit in benevolence itself. It has
no limit, except in some higher principle, why it should
not make an angel of a man, or why it should not lift
the wicked to the highest or holiest felicity. It taketh
no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but that all
should repent and live. It so loved the world as to
give the Only Begotten Son. And it has this glorious
reality for the Christian, that he may know that God will
do all for His vineyard, that can possibly be done; that
He doth not afflict willingly; that He is kind to the
unthankful; and that, even in respect to the depraved,
His tender mercies are over all His works.
Yet though benevolence is so great; for the simple
reason that holiness is greater, men are punished, and
millions sink into eternal ruin. Wherever holiness
comes into collision with happiness, happiness must
yield; and therefore we are back at our premise, that
God will make this the holiest possible universe even
at the expense of wickedness and misery.




CHAP. XXVI.]          Of Sin.                   31 
The only question is, whether the holiest possible
universe must not necessarily be the happiest possible;
and as it would be utterly preposterous that the opposite of this could be maintained, ve believe we have
arrived at both the propositions,.-that, while this universe is the holiest possible in spite of its being tinctured by the presence of sin, it is on this very account
the happiest possible in spite of its being afflicted by
being an abode of misery.
This universe, therefore, is the best possible universe.
CHAPTER XXVI.
OF SIN.
POSTPONING all consequences till a time when we
have more thoroughly brought out the features of our
system, we go next to what stands opposite to virtue,
I mean, the evil of sin.
We had supposed that the expression, sin, would
be found to agree in the number of its meanings, with
the expression, virtue; and accordingly had determined
to say that sin means the quality of wickedness, or secondly, what is wicked itself, or, thirdly, the character
of him who does the wickedness.  It was much to our
surprise that we remembered that it means only the
second.
We hear, indeed, of the sin of a certain action; and,
in a still more restricted instance, of the sin of a certain
character; but, on examining the sense, we find that it
means the sinning, or actual transgression. It does
not mean the quality of the act, or the character of the
person, but the sin that is committed; and we have
only to prove this by substituting the word sinfulness,
when a nice ear will detect, that the sin of an act and




312                  Ethics.       [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
the sinfulness of an act are not entirely synonymous;
but that one means the sin which the act is understood
to commit, and the other the quality of sinfulness that
belongs to the commission.
Accordingly, the term  "Original Sin" is perhaps
not well chosen for the fact that is intended. The
transgression of Adam, or our share of it, or our original trespass, if any such thing were intended in the
view of theology, might be called original sin; but original character, which is the idea intended to be conveyed, ought only to be called original sinfulness.
At any rate, in this treatise, sin will be only those
things that possess the moral quality, and sinfulness (I)
the character, and (2) the moral quality itself.
CHAPTER XXVII.
OF THE QUALITY OF SINFULNESS.
THE quality of sinfulness is a simple idea. It is
the opposite of virtue, but cannot be defined by it. It
can be understood only by being conceived by the conscience. It cannot be analyzed; and, therefore, cannot be discussed as an object of philosophy.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
OF WHAT THINGS ARE SINFUL.
BUT though the quality of sinfulness cannot be defined (though we have a very clear conception of it
from the disapprobation of conscience), yet we can tell
what things are sinful.
There are but two sinful things, want of benevolence, and want of love to the moral quality. These
two make up all the iniquity that exists in the creation.




CHAP. XXIX.]  Proof of but Two Sins.          313
The evil that falls upon the universe, falls upon it
for these two sins. And Hell has eternal punishment
for nothing but want of benevolence and want of love
to the moral quality.
CHAPTER XXIX.
PROOF THAT THERE ARE BUT TWO SINS.
IT might seem that the proof that there are but two
sins, is contained in the proof that there are but two virtues,-that we have but to consider what are the
opposites of benevolence and the love of virtue, to be
able to infer, with a good degree of probability, our
only sins; but, now, in the first place, not only is this
a thing not altogether to be taken for granted, but,
in the second, the opposites of virtue are not altogether
so easy to be declared.
For example, there are three sets of opposite affections, either of which might be possessed of the attribute of sinfulness. The love of others and the love of
virtue may be opposed, in the first place, to the love
of self and the love of wickedness. Again, the love,
of others and the love of virtue may be opposed, in
the second place, to what may be equally regarded
their opposites, viz. the hatred of others and the
hatred of virtue; and, then, in the third place, benevolence and the love of virtue may be opposed to the
want of benevolence and to the want of the love of the
moral quality.
These six phenomena of mind are all in their nature
sinful, except self-love, which becomes sinful when it
degenerates into selfishness; and the only way in which
we can prove that they are not all six equally original,
is to look at them one by one, and to show that all but
I4




3I4                  Ethics.      [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
two are forms or instances of the two that we have
already suggested.
We shall alter the order a little; and as the love
of wickedness can be best considered when we have a
better idea of wickedness itself, we will put that the
last of the four, and show that they are, all alike, derivative or else complex iniquities.
CHAPTER XXX.
OF SELF-LOVE.
SELF-LOVE, in itself considered, is, in a moral point,
entirely indifferent. Benevolence being a great primary virtue, self-love, in itself considered, may be conspicuously right, and yet may afford the exercise in
which the want of benevolence may be foundto appear.
For example, it is right to love my neighbor no better
than I do myself, where circumstances make the comparison a fair one. If, therefore, I love my neighbor
less than I do myself, self-love becomes, so to speak,
the kakop/oronz, or sin-bearing exercise of mind. Benevolence, in that case. being a negative quantity, the want
of it shows itself in the overgrowth of principles otherwise indifferent. And covetousness and selfishness
(which, by the way, may be defined to be that measure
of self-love which exceeds our love to our neighbor) and
theft and any principle that sacrifices others to ourselves
become wrong, not because self-love is itself a principle
of evil, but because it manifests the other. The want
of benevolence, being a negative, and therefore unable
to exhibit itself, it is a parasite, and grows upon its
neighbors, and therefore all exercises become equally
depraved in which there is manifested a want of this.
original benevolence.




CHAP. XXXI.]      Of Malevolence.              3I5
And so of the love of virtue. Selfishness is also
manifested where self-love has outgrown an affection
for holiness. It is not that self-love is wicked, but that
the man is not willing to mortify himself or crucify
himself at the call of virtue.
And now to prove that self-love is not wicked in itself, we have only to remember that the wicked have
no more self-love than the righteous (except in proportion). God has more self-love than His creatures.
Angels have more self-love than we have, and probably
to a wonderful degree. Heaven has more self-love
than the earth. And as men grow old in wickedness,
self-love crumbles away. And it is the keen, exquisite,
enlivened ideas of the saint, that open before him the
highest conceptions of happiness, and therefore the
highest appreciation of his own felicity.
Self-love, therefore, is not the measure of selfishness; but selfishness is to be measured by the disparity. A man is selfish to the degree that he loves
self more than he loves others, or to the degree that
he loves happiness more than he loves holiness; and
the sin, in either example of the two, lies, not in his
affection for self, but in his want of affection for the
other objects.
CHAPTER XXXI.
OF MALEVOLENCE.
MALEVOLENCE, on the contrary, is not an original
trespass, not because it is morally indifferent, but because originally and on its own account it does not
exist. We love our own happiness by an original and
necessary principle of our humanity. We love the
unhappiness of other beings not at all as an original




3I6                 Ethizics.    [B. IV. PT. 1I... II.
principle, but on account of other affections, which are
themselves the original transgressions.
Benevolence and malevolence are so much alike in
their appearance, that we would fancy they were
equally at the fountain-head in respect to order, were
it not that we can prove in respect to the latter, first,
that originally there is no such thing, and, second,
that derivatively or in respect to its origin we can
mark it out and show how it is awakened and continued in the mind.
Originally there is no such thing, because unhappiness in others is not agreeable in itself, nor is it conceivable how it can become so except from some other
inducement that may exist at the time; moreover, we
are conscious that, unswayed by self-love, and uninduced
by some other object than itself, man's unhappiness is
not a thing that we desire, and not a thing that is
desirable in any conceivable way on its own account.
But when we are seeking our own happiness, and
others thwart us; or when we are seeking our own
honor, and others stand in our place; and when we are
seeking the luxury of power, and others rebel; then we
hate and envy them; but this, you see, falls in with
the idea, that self-love is at the bottom of malevolence, and self-love, itself made wicked by a want of benevolence and of true regard to the principle of virtue.
For example, we are so constituted as to love our
own happiness. An instance arises where another
man diminishes it. As an obvious consequence we
hate him; not because his happiness is undesirable in
itself; but because he has diminished ours; and because
a want of benevolence and a want of the existence of
its sister grace give us up to ourselves, and leave us
to the influence of our own resentment.




CHAP. XXXII.]   Of Hatred of Virtue.           317
The self-love is not the cause of the disease; nor
especially is it the feeling of malevolence; but, instead
of "being angry and sinning not," or, as the Bible
intends it, feeling our injuries and being held in place
by benevolence and the love of the moral principle, it
is the want of these principles of government that are
the sum and centre of our whole malevolence.
CHAPTER XXXII.
OF HATRED OF VIRTUE.
THIS will appear still more strongly of our hatred
of virtue. The hatred of virtue is not a thing that
can exist directly and on its own account; for virtue
is the love of the happiness of others, and the love of
a pure benevolence itself, and a love of this very affection, and so on, presenting an order of feelings creditable to the race of man, which our own consciousness
declares never could become objects of hostility; and
which, like the azure heavens, or like the starry firmament, can become invisible on account of the blindness
of the eye, but never can become repulsive.  Holiness,
therefore, on its own account, as the impenitent declare,
never can become an object of hostility.
But when it defrauds us of our pleasures; when it
interferes with self-love; when it condemns us for what
we have committed; when it erects a strong barrier
against pride, and other engagements of the wicked,virtue becomes an enemy, from its opposition. " He
that doeth evil," says our Saviour, "hateth the light;"
and here he gives us all the doctrine that we are propounding; for he declares, that " he hateth the light,
neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be
reproved."




3I8                  Ethics.      [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
Give a man no true benevolence, which is the idea
we have offered for his original iniquity; and give him
no true affection for the quality of virtuous excellence;
and give him up to self-love, even though that selflove be blunted by the effects of wickedness; and the
opposition that he meets, will turn him against virtue
with the bitterest malignity.
The hatred of virtue, therefore, is derived from the
opposition that it gives to our natural appetites; and
the sin consequently consists in a want of original love
to it; a love that would have sanctified its restraints,
and made them happy and delightful to the mind.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
OF ENMITY TO GOD.
Now, if moral excellence, viewed abstractly and
in itself considered, is not the object of the sinner's
hatred, neither can it be when it comes to be embodied in an Infinite Divinity.
"The carnal mind is enmity against God;" and
some have carried that text so far as to say, that enmity
to God is of the very essence of iniquity. But what is
it in God that we oppose?  Is it His immensity? Is
it His infinity?  Is it that He is all wise, or all powerful? Is it supposable that we could be His enemies
because He is infinitely lovely in any mere grandeur or
might of His omnipotence? Or is it the fact, that it
is His holiness that is the object of hostility? And if
so, must it not observe the rule that we have given;
that is, that it is not His holiness itself, but that cross
upon the sinner that is imposed by His punishment of
wickedness?
"The carnal mind is enmity against God;" but




CHAP. xxXIV.]  Of Love to Wickedness.             319
then, as a great proof text, we quote the last part of
the passage,-" because it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be."
It is not the loveliness of God that the sinner despises;- His long suffering to us ward, not willing that
any should perish; but His tyranny over the wicked,
as it appears to the man who has no true love to holiness; and this our Saviour declares when He says,
" Me it hateth, because I testify of [the world] that the
zorks thereof are evil." *
CHAPTER XXXIV.
OF LOVE TO WICKEDNESS.
So, it is an entire perversion that men love wickedness on its own account. They love those things that
possess the wicked quality; that is, they love sinful
indulgence;-nay, they love that lenity that wickedness observes toward their sins, as compared with the
rebukes and the comparisons of virtue; but no infamous quality itself, or hardness of the feeling of benevolence, or crookedness of spirit, can intrinsically be
felt as agreeable, or a pleasure to the sinner.
A sinner can love sin because it permits him to be
sinful; but that he cin love sin by any direct appreciation of enjoyment in the quality itself, or of lovableness either in the want of benevolence or in the want
of love to the principle of virtue, is an idea incapable
of proof, and utterly at variance with an understanding
of the Scripture.
Our inference, therefore, from all these chapters is,
that sinfulness is an indefinable quality; that it is found
* John vii. 7.




320                  Ethics.     [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
in two negative conditions, a want of benevolence and
a want of love to the moral quality; and that these
two can turn into sin self-love or any affection in which
they can appear.
CHAPTER XXXV.
OF WHAT THINGS WOULD BE SINFUL IN GOD.
GOD, having, out of the superiority of His nature,
a benevolence unequalled in its strength, and a love
of virtue infinite when His own virtue is the object of
His affection, would be sinful, not only if He wanted
these, but if He wanted either in that immeasurable
degree in which they belong to Him as an infinite
Creator. If He were not more benevolent than Gabriel,
He would be more sinful than Satan. And as the
universe is the dictate of His character, it would be
sinful in Him not to have created it; and it would be
sinful not to have created it in that form or order in
which His benevolence and love of virtue have brought
it into being.  "The Lord is righteous in all His ways,
and holy in all His works." And though it would be
irreverent to suppose Him sinful; yet it would not be,
to say, "All thy works are done in truth;" and to
argue, that a hand-breadth of departure in all the
myriads of them since the universe began, would be
aside from truth, and, therefore, opposite to His eternal
obligation.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
OF GOD'S CHIEF END.
GOD'S chief end in His own infinite existence is that
in His own infinite existence which is the highest and
the best. That in His own infinite existence which is




CHAP. XXXVI.]   Of God's Chief End.            321
the highest and the best, is His own infinite holiness.
The infinite holiness of God is therefore His chief end
in His own infinite existence.
But if the infinite holiness of God is His chief end
in His own infinite existence, then the display of His
own infinite holiness is not the chief end; and this we
prove from four considerations:First, if the display of His own infinite holiness be
the chief end of the Almighty, it is either at the call of
holiness or not: if it be not, then we have such a thing
as the chief end of the Almighty unprompted by His
holy character: if it be, then we have a chief end of
the Almighty which is prompted by something else.
Secondly, if the display of His own infinite holiness be the chief end of the Almighty, then we have
the chief end of such a being as the Almighty terminating on the creature.
Again, if the display of His own infinite holiness be
the chief end of the Almighty, then the question may
be asked, What is the chief end of that? but no one
can ask the question, What is the chief end of holiness?
seeing that it carries in itself its own infinite claim upon
the mind.
Lastly; if the display of His own infinite holiness
is the chief end of the Almighty, then He had no chief
end in the ages that preceded the creation.
Now we do not deny that the display of God's holiness is an im^portaznt end; for he says of Pharaoh,
"For for this cause have I raised thee up, that I
might shew in thee my power, and that my name
might be declared in all the earth; " but it is at the
call of benevolence, and the love of virtue: and therefore the ulterior end is the glory,* or supreme excel* Kabhodh.
I4'




322                  Ethics.      [B. IV. PT. IiI. D. II.
lence itself; and not the glory in the other sense, i. e.
the instrumental display which is so often spoken of as
a high end in Scripture.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
OF GOD'S CHIEF END IN CREATION AND PROVIDENCE.
GOD'S chief end in His own solitary existence would
be that holiness which, in that case, would be a love of
other beings that were yet to be, and a love of that
holiness that would exist at any rate in His exalted
character. The invisible things of Him before the
foundation of the world would be all determined by
benevolence and love of virtue.
But when the universe began, His chief end would
come more distinctly into notice. And His benevolence being, as we have seen, undiminished by His
love of virtue, and His love of virtue untarnished by
the utmost display of His benevolence, His universe
would be the result of both. God's chief end, therefore, in Creation and Providence, is His own infinite
holiness; and holiness demands the highest results of
benevolence, and the highest diffusion of holiness, all
over the worlds that He shall have brought into
being.
To give happiness, therefore, to the greatest number of intelligent and immortal creatures, to raise it
highest, to keep it longest, and to occasion it to grow
with the highest conceivable celerity; to diffuse holiness all over His works, and to make it the highest possible in all periods of time,-that is what is dictated by
benevolence and love of virtue; and these being the
divisions of His holiness, are that in which He consults
it to the very highest degree.




CHAP. XXXVIII.]   Of Optinzism.               323
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
OF OPTIMISM.
GOD, therefore, is either incapable or weak, or that
which He aims after with the highest desire is that
which He attains in the very highest degree. Holiness is something that He does not value more than
anything else; or else there is something weak or imperfect in His nature; or else there is something in
His own holiness which impedes the holiness of others;
or else He uprears the holiness of others to the very
highest possible degree. And happiness, is either impaired by holiness; or man's happiness is inconsistent
with the happiness of God; or God's happiness makes
Him indifferent to the happiness of man; or else the
happiness of the universe will be extended to the utmost pos3ible extent.
We are not afraid, therefore, of being accused of optimism, if optimism were only these extreme ideas,that God's universe is the happiest possible, and that
God's universe is the holiest possible, making the holiest possible that (as the superior in its excellence) in
which the beltistic reality most gloriously consists.
We have no fear to enlarge upon these points, and
most thoughtfully to affirm them, that God could not
have made a better,-that he could not have made a
holier, and that He could not have made a happier;
and that this universe is the most complete, not only
as possible with God, but as conceivable in the very
nature of affairs.
But when the optimist comes in and teaches, that
all virtue consists in benevolence, or that all virtue consists in utility, and so builds up a universe, the best




324                  Eth ics.     [B. IV. PT. II1. D. II.
only because it is the happiest, making the beltistic
property to consist in its ability to make its inhabitants
enjoy life, then we demur,-not because of an inferior
beltistic conviction, but of a better, and because our
optimism, though establishing a maximum felicity, has
piled up above that a holiness that is superior to all.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
OF OBJECTIONS TO GOD'S NOT BEING ABLE TO CREATE A BETTER
UNIVERSE FOUNDED UPON HIS OMNIPOTENCE.
BUT then it may be argued, If God is not able to
create a better universe, then we have an argument
that throws us all into confusion at once, founded upon
God's omnipotence. Let the beltistic property be what
we please; yet if it be finite; if it be a finite holiness,
and a finite happiness; or a finite excellence in which
holiness and happiness are blended, or in which one is
the superior, but both the extremest possible; then,
when that property is reached, God's mightiness is
brought to a pause. The little increment beyond
is as impossible as the creation of Divinity. And
God is limited; that is, the infinitesimal fraction
of a line cannot be passed, when what is called
the highest possible condition has been reached
in a finite creation. Now, to all this we answer, God
is limited. It may be said, He could throw out other
worlds, and create, this very morning, higher and holier
abodes than He has ever brought into being. Suppose it done. Then, of course, He can create others.
And suppose it done. Then of course there can be
multitudes of others. And when the last sentence had
been uttered, announcing the possibility of constellations happier than the rest, some one could take his




CHAP. XL.] Objections from the Existence of Evil.  325
stand and say, He could create a thousand more.
Now of two things one; —either God could not if He
desired create the noblest possible universe, or, if He
did, it must still be finite. There is no limit to the talk
of casting out other worlds; and yet there must be
some limit to the execution.  If God desired ever so
much to make the holiest possible universe, it must
still be finite; and that is all that can be asserted of
the universe that His hand has made.
Now, I know, that it is hard to imagine what that
could be that could make Him stop, if He really desired to go on and on to the very acme; but this we
know, that He must somewhere stop; and, after creating a universe that is nameless in extent, He must
somewhere set a horizon to His work, and must somewhere stop short of its being as immense as His
Divinity.
Now, if this be the case, where is the unreasonableness of taking advantage of it in our belief? And as,
if God did wish to make the holiest possible creation,
He must still stop somewhere for its boundary, where
is the sin of thinking that He has chosen the wisest
and the best? and though He still means immeasurably
to expand its excellence, yet He pauses at each bestowal
that He makes, out of the necessities of its finite
nature?
CHAPTER XL.
OF OBJECTIONS TO GOD'S NOT BEING ABLE TO CREATE A BETTER
UNIVERSE FOUNDED UPON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL.
BUT it may be asked, How does this agree with the
existence of evil? Could not God create a universe as
holy and as happy as the best, and yet leave out of it
those parts that are beset with evil? And is it possi



326                   Ethics.     [B. IV. PT. III. D. II.
ble that God is limited in such a sense that He cannot
work out the highest purposes of good without admixture of eternal evil?
Now, we dare not talk of these things without talking in the clearest and most intelligible way. When
we say that God is limited, we mean that He is limited
in a way that all will admit, —in the power to make
creatures unlimited, or to raise a nation to an equality
or likeness to Himself. If, therefore, it wvere His wish
to make all sentient and intelligent existence the highest and happiest that He could, there must be a pause,
from this very confessed and necessary imperfectness.
He could raise a universe so high, and no higher. For
if any one should take His stand and say,' He could, a
little higher,' this sort of speech might be perpetual.
There is evidently a point at every stage of what is
finite, where Omnipotence must pause, out of the very
necessities of its * finite nature.
Now if it be the will of the Almighty to make this
the best possible universe, He would set that point the
highest possible at each stage of His duration. Whatever circumstances would do this, those circumstances
He would embrace. And if evil were such a circumstance, the very holiness of God's character, which
binds Him to the best possible creation, would lead
Him to the existence of evil; and, therefore, eternal
truth, which is that which His holiness obeys, would
sanction the employment of a power thus known to
be for the advancement of the universe.
Now, in respect to evil as a means of benefit, we
utter two truths. We challenge any one to doubt
them:First, it may be the fact that evil is a circumstance
* That is, the creation's (I875).




CHAP. XLI.]     Of Man's Chief End.           327
in the arrangement of the universe, connected with the
highest good; and,
Secondly, there is much to convince us in the
arrangements of the universe that such is the fact.
Natural evil would give us no difficulty. Moral
evil, which absolutely requires the other, is the sum of
the objection. And now let any one ask, how much
of the glories of Providence is connected with the existence of evil, and he will be staggered, at least, with
the idea, that it imay be necessary to the design that
has been made.
CHATER XLI.
OF MAN'S CHIEF END.
GOD'S chief end being His own infinite holiness,
man's chief end can be neither higher nor lower. It
cannot be higher; because that which is highest to
God must be highest also to the creature. And it
cannot be lower; because that which is highest in
itself, if discerned, must be highest to all that discern
it. Man's chief end, therefore, is the holiness of
God.
But, as the holiness of God is not an object actively
to pursue, except by desiring it, or praying for it, which
seems to be our duty, man's chief end of a more practical kind is the holiness of others. If any man say,
No; man's iron obligation is to be holy himself,-I
answer, That is the very question. The very question
is, What is man's highest holiness? If any one say,
Man's highest holiness is man's highest holiness, I
agree, but doubt the progaress of such a proposition.
Man's highest holiness, next to the holiness of God, is
to promote the holiness of the world around him.




328                  Ethzzcs.      [B. IV. PT. III. D. I7
CHAP'rER XLII.
OF THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE FOREGOING SYSTEM.
I. A system that makes all virtue an indefinable
quality, must shorten debate, because it precludes the
questions on the nature of virtue.
II. A system that makes all virtue belong to two
definite affections, must assist our theology, because
theology, though the science of God, is the science of
God chiefly in His moral relations.
III. A system that makes all virtue belong to two
definite affections, must assist us in duty, for duty is
the creature of light, and light could hardly be shed
more expressly upon the boundaries of obligation.
IV. A system that makes all virtue belong to benevolence and a love of virtue, must be a basis for happiness, because it shows that this universe is not a failure,
but is the noblest possible that even God could have
prepared.
V. A system that makes all virtue belong to benevolence and a love of virtue, should aid us in worship,
because it makes God not a mysterious Sovereign, but
a glorious Creator, managing the best for the lands that
he has made.
VI. A system that makes all sin, want of benevolence and want of love to the virtuous principle, must
aid us in piety, because it simplifies our penitence, and
shows us but two evils that it is needful to restrain.
VII. A system that makes this universe the best
possible universe, must include the existence of evil,
and take away the appearance of arbitrariness of what
we are accustomed to contemplate as the naked sovereignty of God.




CHAP. I.]    Virtue a Quality of Emotions.      329
DIVISION III.
THE MORAL CHARACTER.
CHAPTER I.
THE MORAL QUALITY A QUALITY ONLY OF SINGLE FEELINGS.
THE first Division being on the subject of the Moral
Quality, and the second, on the subject of the Moral
Duties or those things in which the quality is found, it
follows that we have gone no further than the consideration of single feelings; for benevolence and love of
virtue being our only duties, we have only to remember
that benevolence and love of virtue are transitory feelings, to see that transitory feelings are all the length
we have yet gone in the phenomena of the mind.
Now, the question arises, Do these transitory feelings come up in any order as to their goodness or their
badness? or is there an entire uncertainty?  Can I
only say, This feeling is a good feeling, and this feeling
is a bad feeling? or can I also say, This man is likely
to feel what is right, and this man is accustomed to
feel what is wrong? Can I only pronounce upon feelings when I see them? or can I also say what feelings
they are likely to be? for if the first of these statements is the fact, we have finished our work; but if the
second, we have another entire department, and that
department is the department of Character.




330                   Ethics.    [B. IV. PT. III. D. III.
CHAPTER II.
OF CHARACTER.
CHARACTER (xapacTup) is derived from the Greek
word xapciar, which means to cut or engrave.
I. Character, therefore, in its first sense, meant a
cut or engraving, such as was used for a hieroglyph or
letter. And letters under the name of characters are
spoken of up to the present day.
II. Characters, however, being made in a particular
way, and every man's characters having something
peculiar in them to mark them as his own, a man's
character came to mean the letter he was accustomed
to form, or, more comprehensively speaking, his handwriting.
III. This, which was only used by the Greeks and
Romans, gave place in a later period of the world to
another meaning; for a man's writing being seen to
resemble conduct (that is, as he fell into one, so hie
was found to fall into the other), a man's character
came to mean the conduct that he shewed, or his
prevalent behavior.
IV. This, being supposed to arise within him, gave
the name of character to nature or inward disposition
of heart:
V. And, afterward, to the man himself, as possessed
of such a nature: in which case we say a man is a
shocking character.
VI. Finally, it came to mean character as ascribed
or imputed to a man, and which might be ascribed or
imputed to him justly or unjustly; in which sense a
man might be said to be better than his character.
Now of all these senses, the third is the more phil



CHAP. III.]       God and Character.                   331
osophical, but the fourth is perhaps the common one.
We need not, however, be particular.  Our work, as it
proceeds, will sufficiently distinguish our own immediate meaning.
CHAPTER III.
OF CHARACTER IN ITS CONNECTION WITH GOD.
GOD being Creator only in such a sense as to give
being to an object for the instant while He is engaged
in creating it, it follows that Providence is a new creation every moment. Accordingly, a horse might be
one moment a horse, and the next might be nothing.
In the nature of finite things it is better that it should
continue a horse; but this is only the reason.  The
efficient cauzse of its continuing so, is solely the will of
God. It might be one moment a horse, and the next
moment a wall, and the next moment a college. Its
continuing a horse is solely because God considers it
better to create it the same; although, if He had
created it an elephant, it would be as simple to create
as though He had created it just continuously a horse.
Now, in respect to mind, the continuance is no different from the continuance of matter. It might be
one moment mind, and the next moment it might be
created a vapor. It has in it only at the time what
God puts into it by the act of creation. And as the
rules and the reasons of its being are no part of that
which God puts into it at its creation, it may be said
that what He put into it yesterday has passed away,
and that it is a different creation at each act of His
continuing of it in its being.* Now, if it be a new
* We ought to have had some reserves for ignorance. We do not
know all that God might create. We should not be too positive. But,
from the Law of Parcimony, we have no reason to posit atoms; and,
therefore, the likelihood at least, or what we have traced as the empirical
probability, is that each creature is continuously brought into being (I875).




332                  Ei/zics.    [B. IV. PT. III. D. III.
creation by each act of God by which He continues it
in its being, then it is evident that it might be man or
devil according to His will. There is nothing in the
arm of God to forbid Him to make a new creature just
what He may please. And if the upholding of a spirit
is a new creation, there is nothing in the universe of
God that would make the new being like the old,
except the mere good pleasure of a will that has to
select its pattern as though no old one had ever been
created.
Now, if the new mind and the old mind might have
been entirely different, it is evident that they might
have been different morally. Yesterday, I might be a
saint; to-day, I might be a sinner. If God new-creates
my whole existence, surely He new-creates my character. And it is just as impossible to believe that He
must make me all new because what He made me yesterday perished at the moment He was making it, and
yet that he must not make my character, as it would
be to believe that He must make a star all over again
every moment, and yet not make the greenish or the
yellow light that twinkles from it in its passage through
the heavens.
What we teach, therefore, is, that character, as a
thing to-day, is revived by the Almighty from the
character yesterday. He gave me my character this
morning when I waked. And this He does, not arbitrarily, but under the direction of reasons.
There are, therefore, two things, the power and
the eternal reasons. The power we have found to be
from God.  We are to consider next the reasons that
direct it.
Our next subject therefore is the reasons of God
in the direction of character.




CHAP. IV.]    Character and H7ppziness.            333
CHAPTER IV.
OF CHARACTER IN ITS CONNECTION WITH HAPPINESS.
IT has been remarked upon as an interesting fact,
that God takes care of a man in the exercise of virtue;
that is, that as virtues are a disinterested exercise, God
takes care of our happiness. Now this statement is
not adequately profound.
God does not make benevolence and love of virtue
a source of happiness by arranging our nature so as
to make us happy in the exercise of these affections;
but (what will be instantly perceived) these virtues
are happinesses themselves. God could not make virtue any different. And virtue belonging to benevolence and the love of excellence, it will be seen that
virtue belongs to two pleasures; for pleasure at holiness and pleasure at others' welfare are the only things
that are actually virtuous.
It is not profound, therefore, to say, that God
arranges our being so as to make virtuousness happy;
for virtuousness belongs to happiness; happiness at
the welfare of others and happiness at the excellence
of virtue being the only possible forms in which God
even is a possessor of excellence.
These pleasures also are the highest. There are
none which have more to do with heavenly felicity.
It is a truth, therefore, that happiness is holiness * in
the highest forms in which the idea of happiness can
possibly exist.
* By holiness, of course, is here meant, that which possesses holiness,
or holiness in its second meaning. By happiness is meant, those two
forms of happiness which a man feels at virtue and the welfare of




334                         Ethics.        [B. IV. PT. III. D. III.
But though being happy in the two highest possible
forms in which happiness ever exists, is the only possible form of the possession of virtue, yet happiness,
notwithstanding that, is a high inducement to virtue
itself. I am made more virtuous because happiness is
virtue. And not only in the nature of things does
happiness, where it is itself a virtue, serve as an inducement to virtue itself, but God uses other happinesses.
He not only elicits virtue by help of the happiness of
holiness itself, but also by superintending other happinesses; that is, by a system of rewards that is made as
general as Providence itself.
CHAPTER V.
OF REWARDS.
Now, these rewards need only be described by saying, that happiness has an intrinsic tendency to be an
inducement for virtue. No man will have a doubt of
this. Happiness may have an intrinsic tendency as an
inducement to wickedness, in those cases, for example,
where chastisement is better.  But happiness offered
to the innocent, and having an influence not only upon
others. The proposition less briefly stated is, that two of our highest
happinesses are our only virtues.
This shows what those ethical philosophers were in search of who
were betrayed into the very erroneous doctrine, that " virtue was only
the highest form of seeking our own happiness; " a proposition that
would be entirely true if rectified in two ways, first, by taking virtue in
its meaning as that which possesses virtue, or as virtuous affection, and
second, by striking out the idea of " seeking." Virtuous affection is no
doubt the highest form of personal happiness (IS55).
We have already shown, however (Pathics, Introd.), that happiness,
in the instance of holiness, is good distinctly from its being happy; that
is, possesses an ethical excellence which is a consciousness in the happiness itself I875).




CHAP. VI.]    Summairy of the Preceding.           335
them but upon the public that witness it, must be an
encouragement to virtue; otherwise, where is the
principle of reward-? Without being particular, therefore;-happiness, as a gift to the innocent, is a high
inducement to character.
But now, happiness largely consists in holiness.
Not only are the two holy affections the highest
possible happiness; but happiness, as we have just
been declaring, is accorded to holiness. For God to
keep a character holy therefore, is the highest possible
reward.
We see, hence, one great reason for character.  My
being holy to-day is the chief of my recompense for
holiness yesterday. And so, holiness is made to continue. I retire to my bed with no hold upon character but as a reward of the Almighty.*
CHAPTER VI.
SUMMARY OF THE PRECEDING.
IT becomes us, however, to make all these things
somewhat more distinct.
I. Affection, in each separate case, is comparatively
simple. It glows in the mind, and passes off and has
ended forever.
II. The question is, whether, ending forever, it
leaves behind it no influence, or no ground for knowing whether the affection that comes after will be virtuous or sinful; or whether the hundreds that come
after it will be all tinged with a prevailing quality.
III. This we have answered by saying, that all that
comes after it is with God. He only can decide, for' Man, however, has really no holiness, and no proper reward. The
reward that he meets with, is really the reward of the Redeemer.




336                       EtiZcs.        [B. IV. PT. III. D. III.
He only sustains our existence. If, therefore, the existence of the future borrows anything from  the existence
of the past, it is God that carries it over, and, therefore,
it is God preeminently that is the connecter of character.
IV. Yet God's having the power, does not prevent
His acting under the authority of reasons.  On the
contrary He has the strictest reasons for the bestowment of character; and these reasons are chiefly * the
need of reward.
V. Reward is all forms of happinesses, used in their
influence to encourage virtue. Virtue being a happiness itself, and, moreover, being the thing that calls for
a reward, it becomes therefore, immediately and mediately a reward itself. The continuance of virtue is,
therefore, that it may serve as a reward.
Now in saying this we mean to say, that this is all
the principle on which reward is based.  Righteousness does not deserve a reward in any sense of immediate connection. But it deserves a reward in a roundabout way, and that roundabout path  is this:-First,
happiness, in the nature of things, is an eternal incentive to virtue. Here lies the principle of reward in
the nature of things.'t Second; being an eternal incentive, God must notice it, and use it as such. Third;
if He use it at all, He must use it accurately. God,
therefore, having a high affection for holiness, will
* I mean reasons for the discriminations of character..The bestowment of good character, other things being equal, is a main governmental desire of the Almighty (I875).
+ For a man to say that we see by conscience directly that virtue
deserves a reward, as though desert were a simple and separate idea, or
even part of the idea of virtue, is simply absurd. We see that virtue
deserves a reward in no other sense than gangrene requires a knife, or
drought requires rain.




CHAP. VI.]   Sunmayzn    of the Precedizg.    337
reward its possessor from the intrinsic nature of reward
to be an incentive to holiness.
But it will be asked, How can three things agree?
I. God is the Creator of character, that is, restores it
again from night to morning. II. Reward is a promoter of character; and III. Character is itself a
reward. Now here seems a harmful jumble, that keeps
anything clear from being appreciated. So let us treat
these matters very plainly.
God is the Preserver of character, and yet helps it
by rewards, in just as plain a sense as God is the improver of character, and yet advances it by the gospel.
WVhere had I my character this morning when I slept?
Certainly where I had my being. And if God is
charged with one just as much as He is charged with
the other, certainly the fact of His agency cannot be
one moment denied. But power is one thing, and instrumenis another. Without instruments I cannot
have any benevolence at all. Unless God shows me
virtue, I cannot have any love of it. And, therefore,
the sight of the truth is necessary to the exercise of
character, even though the whole of the power should
come entirely from God.
Now take reward in, in the horizon of truth, and
we have but another instrument.  I cannot love others
unless I see them; and it seems I cannot love others
as much, as if I am rewarded for it. Both then are
instruments.
Now, that character itself should become a reward
for character, is not so unnatural, seeing it is the nearest to us. That fishing itself should become a reward
for fishing, is not so unnatural, seeing that it gives me
pleasure. I open my eyes and see virtue all bathed in
happiness. I take in, therefore, two sights; the exI5




333                    EtA ics.     [B). IV. PT. III. D. III.
cellence of virtue, and the happiness with which it is
attended. Both these apparitions help it; and not
singularly: the happiness of virtue is the nearest pleasure at the time.
CHAPTER VII.
OF COVENANTED REWARDS.
Now, it being possible to state all these things so
clearly, we might fancy  some  mzeasure of reward.
Certain it is that reward must be perfectly accurate.
Yet though the principles of it are so entirely simple,
yet the statutes of it are entirely unknown.
Indeed, we are troubled by dangerous exceptions.
Satan, after obedience to the right, was afterwards forsaken, and abandoned to the wrong. So was Adam.
Adam's children never knew anything of right.* It
would exhaust any man's intelligence, if he spent his
life in laboring for a law that would comprehend the
administrations of God. It was necessary, therefore,
that He should reveal Himself; and, therefore, all the
rewards of which we know anything very clearly, are
covenanted rewards.
All these are founded in nature; and yet some of
them are very peculiar. For example, God promised
to Adam that he would bless all his race perpetually
for his temporary and single obedience. This, in so
artificial a connection as birth, of which Adam knew
nothing, and which psychologically seems no connection
at all, was a promise to millions for the labor of one;
and yet, quoad Adam,t it served all the uses of a
reward. It was an inducement of the highest kind; and
* Of a perfect kind.' And so it should be treated. It was not our reward, but Adam's;
though the guilt, as a mere matter of philology, is both ours and his.




CIAP. IX.]         Of Punishcent.               339
moreover, a lesson to the universe that will last forever
and forever. So Jesus Christ was promised the salvation of his people. We must not, however, dwell upon
these things. The simplest rewards are those that
were promised to Adam, and to the angels.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF MERIT.
MERIT is only a convenient word for expressing all
that we have been saying. It is the suitedness of a
mind to be blessed with happiness according to those
principles of inducement and encouragement which we
have just been stating. A man merits either, when, in
view of his own past character, the highest interests
of holiness and happiness would be promoted by giving him either. Christ merits the salvation of His people; and so do we, in a modified use of that term,
merit through Him our own deliverance. We shall
return to these subjects. The difficulty of ourselves
having been guilty, need give us no uneasiness; for
reward, though founded in nature, is only for the end
of the highest inducement of virtue.
CHAPTER IX.
OF PUNISHMENT.*
LOVE of others and love to the quality of virtue
being the only virtues, of course a disposition to punish must be an instance under one or both of them.
It is an instance under both. Punishment, therefore,
is not a virtue, original on the part of God, and the
fruit of a primordial desire; but an instrument. It is
* With this caption written down, the old manuscript ceases (1875).




340                  Ethics.       [B. IV. Pr. Ill. D. I. I.
not moral, any more than a plough or a flail. If any
one dreams that it is, consciously so, and that we think
of its desert intuitively, and as of the very nature of
sin, we have but to point him to the idea of distance.
The two ideas are similar. Distance seems so evident
when we look at a star, that it seems a consciousness,
like the very light that twinkles.  And yet it was long
ago found to be the fact that distance was empirical.
So of punishment: it is so fixed an instrument; so
bred in the very nature of things; and has been used
so long, and borne so often,-that it seems one with
trespass. We hardly separate them. And yet, beyond all manner of doubt, it is a mere instrument,
demanded by nature, and which it would turn everything awry not to threaten and to employ.
Punishment is of two kinds, suffering and sin. The
former is what is usually conceived. But if suffering
were the whole of punishment, there would be no
hell; * for sin is not an infinite evil such that if it were
not punished by apostasy, a single sin would merit an
eternity of punishment.  It pleases justice that sin
should corrupt us; that is, that it should defile our
nature. That is a part of its punishment (Rom. i. 26).
That is the serious part. I sin, and I am given up to
sin. I sin more, and it becomes more. It grows.
Sin, therefore, is a part of the punishment of sin. And
it adds to suffering, because, first, it is a suffering in
itself, and, second, it deserves more suffering; it is the
great prolific centre from which the hell of the soul
must emanate.
One word more. Punishment is an instrument.
Now an instrument for what? If sin more and greater
goes on as the punishment of sin, how can punishment
* Prov. xix. I9. See Author's Commentary.




CHAP. X.]     Covenanted Puntishment.          341
be an instrument for repressing sin and advancing holiness?  This it emphatically is. Not singly for the
greatest happiness, but for the greatest good, moral
and mental; and, as moral good can never interfere
with happiness, then for both objects. Punishment
we define as an instrument for increasing the holiness,
and so thie happiness, of the widest universe.
Punishment employs sin. Punishment (for the
widest part of it) consists in sin. Punishment entails
sin; and, for men and angels, makes it perpetual.
But none the less on that account can we see that it is
a moral engine. (I) To the few that escape, and (2)
to the wide universe that were never implicated, it is
the deepest teaching; far deeper than reward; far
deeper than' a simple suffering; opening the huge proportions of guilt; stamping the hateful lineaments of
sin; and building a wider monument out of its infernal
growth than could at all be reached by pain as penalty.
CHAPTER X.
OF COVENANTED PUNISHMENT.
PUNISHMENT, therefore, not being as of an original
taste, we are prepared to hear that, as an instrument,
it can be shifted; that is, where no oath is violated,
and where the end can be maintained, some other
punishment might be substituted than that which is
straightforward to the sinner.
I. Adam, for example, was punished twice; once
in himself, and once in his offspring. All men are punished similarly. If I sin, it strikes other parties. But,
in Adam's case, it had a plighted definiteness. He
lived under its shadows.  He may not have known
what offspring was, or understood all that was to follow.




342                 Ethics.     [B. IV. PT. III. D. III.
But he understood more than the one blighted life.
He knew that he was under bonds for others. And,
therefore, that breadth of penalty increased his caution
about the Fall, and increased immeasurably the monumental testimony.
2. The second Adam was a still different case.
Here the punishment was not multiplied, but narrowed
in. Here the penalty was shifted. Here the punishment was shown artificially to be an instrument, and
the punishment of one was made to answer by covenant
for many. Here the penalty was lifted off where it
was shockingly deserved, and freighted down on Him
who was entirely innocent. It is not vengeance, therefore. It is not the greed of an original taste, or the
fire of a self-justified anger. But it is a government
expedient, sworn to by solemn oaths, and required by
the very nature of our spirits, not to produce happiness
alone, but to produce the widest holiness amonig all
the creatures.
CHAPTER XI.
OF VINDICATORY JUSTICE.
PUNISHMENT having been carefully defined, our
true policy is to lay justice side by side with that, and
let them define each other. We shall do the same
with guilt; and we shall do the same with forgiveness
and atonement. If punishment is a mere expedient,
Vindicatory Justice is a form of words to tell that
whole story. It is not a primordial trait. The two
primordial traits are benevolence and the love of virtue; and we have but to look at these to see how
simple they are, compared with anything we can think
of in the forms of justice. Given a creature, no matter
what the form of its thinking or sentient life, and man




CIHAP. XII.]        Of Guilt.                343
and God and devil are bound to love him. There is
no exception. Given a right thought, no matter who
has it, or what the form in which it may appear, and
men and angels are bound to reverence it, and with
no reserve of which we can conceive.
But how different justice! There are cases when
it does not overtake the guilty. There are cases where
it does overtake the innocent. There are cases where
two parties have been guilty for the same offence.
All these things have been illustrated in the sacrifice
of Christ. The guilty have been glorified, and the
glorified have been made guilty; and both have been
followed by Vindicatory Justice according as the good
of holiness has demanded this or that. Christ has
been punished that the guilty might escape, and the
guilty have ceased to be so by the mere award of a
divinely accepted covenant. Vindicatory Justice was
the appropriate term in each of these changes. Did
it follow Christ, it was equally in place. And, therefore, I say, that this alone puts vengeance just where
it ought to stand. That vengeance upon Christ and
vengeance upon the lost are the one form of a primordial trait, is dangerous and absurd; and, therefore,
there is no such virtue. Vindicatory Justice is but a
convenient speech of that story of God which tells of
Him how He discourages iniquity.
CHAPTER XII.
OF GUILT.
AND so of Guilt.
We are really most pronounced and most elaborate
where we are most brief, and where we go to the mark
in the very shortest period of time. Guilt is the con



344                  Ethics.    [B. IV. PT. III. D. III.
verse ot punishment. Tell me where anybody ought
to be punished, and I will tell you where he is guilty.
And even here that word ozughtt, must be distinguished.
It is used sometimes in the instance of desert. But
tell me where a man ought to be punished for the
advancement of holiness, and I will tell you where he
is guilty. So Christ, He became an object of wrath.
So Cain, in his unconscious infancy. So all the world,
upon the sin of Adam. These were all innocent;
though innocent in different ways. And yet they were
all guilty. And so guilt is a like term with wrath and
vindicatory justice, variant in its case, and anything in
the world but a primordial idea.
CHAPTER XIII.
OF ATONEMENT.
KEEPING close to the ideas thus defined, we get
the best conception of the Lord's Atonement. It was
a punishment. It was a punishment of the covenanted
sort. It was a punishment in the shape of vengeance,vengeance however never being primordial. It was at
the call of Vindicatory Justice; this, as best seen in
Christ's case, being secondary, and never primary.
It, therefore, implied guilt; but showing more imperatively on that very account that guilt was a whole
bundle of speech, telling the whole story of punishment,
and meaning that Christ could be punished for men
with the same plighted results in the advancement of
holiness.




CHAP. XIV.]       Of Forgiveness.             345
CHAPTER XIV.
OF FORGIVENESS.
THERE are but two virtues, a love for the welfare
of others, and a love for the quality of virtue. Neither
of these must eventuate upon forgiveness. In the first
place, not the first; for we must love the welfare of
others, even if we do not forgive them: and in the
second place, not the second; for we must not esteem
others, even if we do forgive them, except as they
become worthy of this species of love.
There has been infinite error about this matter of
forgiveness.
When I forgive a man, I lift away punishment.
When God forgives him, He does precisely the same
thing.
Let us keep among these words. They wonderfully clarify each other. Guilt,-that is the correlative
of forgiveness.
When a man says, I hate him, and can't forgive him,
and means by that, he wishes him evil, he has a mongrel idea of the duty of forgiveness. So ought he never
to have hated him.
When a man says, I hate him, and can't esteem him,
and mourn my hardness of heart that I cannot forgive,
he is mistaken again. He ozzu,/t not to forgive. At
least he ought not to forgive in that sense in which he
understands forgiveness. Men are tormented by these
mistakes; and alas! die hard, because they cannot
think well of their enemies. It was never intended.
We are bound to wishz well even to the devil. We
are bound to tzzink well only of the, estimable. Forgiveness lies in another beat. Even God forgives only
1T5*




34x6                Eth ics.    [B. IV. PT. III. D. III.
upon an atonement; and so it is with men. We punish for morals' sake. We punish for defensive purposes. We punish as a remedial act. Noxw satisfy
these ends, and it is time to forgive. When will men
understand these facts? The Bible says,-Upon an
offence rebuke; upon repentance forgive (Lu. xvii. 3).
We scatter all this to the winds. We have a notion
that there must be a universal forgiveness. We get it
all mixed. (I) We think we ought to forgive and
cease resentment. We ought never to have begun
resentment. (2) We think we ought to soften and
think well of the base. We ought never to do it, whatever their courteous amendment. (3) We think we
ought to shake hands with them whether they apologize or no. This whole thing is wonderfully mistaken.
The Bible says,-" If thou bring thy gift to the altar,
and there rememberest THAT THY BROTHER HATH
AUGHT AGAINST THEE, leave there thy gift before the
altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift " (Matt. v. 23, 24).
This shows what I am to do when I am the transgressor. But now again,-" IF THY BROTHER TRESPASS AGAINST THEE," (Matt. xviii. I5). Here is something that will shed its light upon the whole subject
of forgiveness. There are to be conditions. I am
never to need to forgive as ceasing to resent; for I am
never to feel resentment. But I am never to dare to
forgive as ceasing to inflict, till there has been the
proper remedy. Our Saviour insists upon this. When
justice is committed to the state, I am to depend upon
its adjudications; but where it must be by private attitudes, I am instructed to a very hair. " IF HE REPENT,
forgive him." I suppose that means, that if he does not
repent, we are not to forgive him. The direction is




CHAP. XV.]          Of Yustice.                347
yet more explicit. "If he trespass against thee seven
times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again
to thee saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him"
(Luke xvii. 4). And then, when all remedies fail, we
are distinctly instructed (and how different is this from
our goody-good conceits), "LET HIM BE UNTO THEE
AS A HEATHEN MAN AND A PUBLICAN " (Matt. xviii. I7).
Like diatribes against hanging; like extreme views
about temperance; like general-happiness schemes,these softly notions about injuries breed injuries, as
one might naturally expect. A Puritan mistake about
offences breeds a Congress that can give the lie with
no troublesome results. It breeds a manhood that can
take an insult, and shake the hand that may administer it; that admires a Christian who can smile forgivingly under an affront; that can manage schools of
learning by random imputations of deceit, when the
scholar is nearly grown; that can bring Billingsgate up
into the higher markets of exchange; and that can
make it appear as of the teaching of Christ, to take
lovingly, and with relations afterward, an unatoned
assault upon honesty and honor.
CHAPTER XV.
OF JUSTICE.
THOUSANDS of persons will be sure that orthodoxy
is put in peril, and will see no basis for the central
doctrines of the cross, if justice is made not primordial,
and is denied a place as an original attribute of God.
Justice, of all moral traits, seems to demand a position
at the side of mercy, and to claim to be first considered if there is to be any priority the one over the
other.




34~$                  Ethics.    [B. IV. PT. III. D. III.
But by all the rules of philosophy, to say nothing
of Scripture, how can that be a primordial trait that
refuses unity?  We defy any one to tell us what justice is by a word. Benevolence is a perfect expression.
It tells the story of an original virtue thoroughly and
once for all. There is no vestige of an exception.  I
am to love my enemies. I am to love the wicked. In
the sense of be;ze-volenzs I am to wish well to the devil,
and have a pity for him, for so has the Almighty. I
am down at the hard-pan of the absolute, just as with
that other virtue. For God and man and devil and
angel and all intelligences have two moralities with
which there is no varying, —a love of others, which consists in desiring their welfare, and a love of virtue, virthe being a simple quality, and a love to it being of so
plain a kind that an exception can no more occur than
in the duty of God to keep Himself from palpable
iniquity.
But how is it with justice? It begins to drop its
meanings as a balloon parts with ballast. We get
down to a forensic sense after endless distinctions.
Honesty and things like that are crowded into it.
And when we say, We will treat of rectoral justice, our
difficulties have scarcely begun. Let any man declare
a law of rectoral justice. Let him so much as declare
a fragment of one. We defy him to attempt it. Suppose he says, The innocent may not suffer like the
wicked. That is not so. Animals suffer. Some poor
brutes are bred deformed, and do nothing but suffer to
their dying  day.  Suppose  another enouncement.
Suppose he says, The wicked must suffer. That is not
so. Vast multitudes of the wicked are to be gloriously
lifted. WVhere shall justice appear?  Are the righteous
to be rewarded? Satan was righteous. Is every good




cG:,EA. xvI.]     Of Rzighrtousncss.           349
work to be blessed? Adam had good works. It
would puzzle any one to see where a line could be
drawn that would take in justice in that well bounded
way that marks all ideas that are truly primaries.
But when we resort to the two sole virtues, benevolence and the love of virtuousness, we can argue out
from there with the utmost clearness. Justice becomes
a bundle; a sort of huge store-house of proprieties and
sequences under these. Punishment becomes an instrument; vindicatory justice, the norm  that wields
it; reward, the encouragement for virtue: covenant,
the pre-promised scheme for making all recompenses
more efficient; justice, therefore, not an unnatural
trait; not one not based in the origin of things; not
one not fortified by promise; not one not seated like
the primaries from which it is derived; but not one
itself primary, but, contrariwise, deriving from those
that are; and on that very account hard to be defined,
and bundled loosely like all other derivative ideas.
CHAPTER XVI.
OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
INCIDENT to the derived nature of justice, is the
looseness of all these attendant conceptions. Guilt
coming as the counterpart of punishment, we might
suppose that righteousness might fix its meaning as
the opposite of guilt. But try that on an example.
The guilty are certain to be punished; but are the
righteous certain to be rewarded? No one can write
a sentence or begin a paragraph on the general subject
of righteousness without coming to the utmost difficulty. Disembarrassed of all equivocals, and not noticing that righteousness means holiness or goodness of




350                  Ethics.      [B. IV. PT. TII. D. III.
heart; confining ourselves to what is strictly forensic,who understands even that? and will come aboard
and sail our craft through three leagues of sea without
discomfiture?  What is righteousness?  Is it a merit
that secures reward? Then what characterizes it?
Give us a case of it in some noted instance. Is Gabriel
righteous? Then how about Satan?  Satan, exactly
like Gabriel, up to a certain mark of time, deserved
well of the Almighty. What is righteousness? Is it
righteousness beyond a mark of time? Then it is not
primary. What was the righteousness of Adam?
Was it righteousness if it lasted a certain age? And
what fixed that age? After all, is there any righteousness? Is it not a thing of covenant? And if it be so,
that explains our Saviour,-After we have done all
" we are unprofitable servants " (Lu. xvii. io): and that
explains Ezekiel,-" His righteousness which he hath
done shall not be remembered," etc., etc., (Ez. iii. 20):
and that enforces our facts,-that justice is no primary
trait; for it is impossible to build difficulties like this
around benevolence and the love of virtuousness.
CHAPTER XVII.
OF DESERT.
RIGHTEOUSNESS being a merit of reward, and guilt
an obligation to be punished, it might be supposed that
desert corresponded to each of these, and it does
correspond, perhaps, in the instance of reward. I do
not deserve reward, unless I am entitled to it; and it
appears I am not entitled to it, unless it is given me
by covenant. I only deserve, therefore, covenanted
rewards. It is different with punishment. I deserve
punishment often when I am not guilty. My guilt may




CHAP. XVII.]         Of Desert.                  3 5
have been removed by the Gospel, but not my illdesert.
And, again; Christ may be guilty; and, indeed, an
infant may be guilty; and, in a certain sense, the unborn world may be guilty,-but not ill-deserving.
These things are the mere usage of language.
Nevertheless this word desert has played an important part in arguments about the nature of justice.
It has been said, I am conscious of ill-desert.
Now, if there be no such thing as ill-desert, except
as a convenient expression for saying that there is a
certain use for punishment, and that I am a sinner, it
is evident that this argument from consciousness is
altogether beyond the facts. I am conscious of sin.
I am conscious of its filth and shame. I am conscious
of its pestiferousness as an evil.  If that be ill-desert,
then I have a sense of it. But that it deserves punishment as a thing consciously revealed, is about as true
as that I am conscious of the distance of a house. I
am conscious of the color of a house, just as I am of the
odiousness of my sin; but that it requires force to build
it, or that it requires bricks to go into its wall, I am not
conscious; any more than I am conscious of desert,
though I am conscious of the infamy of sin, and
see men naturally benefited by pain and penalty.
Desert, therefore, like guilt, is an expression for
describing the suitedness of recompense: only, unlike
guilt, it sticks to the broader features of suitedness;
while guilt, straying into theological speech, goes into
all the niceties of award, where covenant and astounding grace transcend the bourne of any usual administration.








BOOK V.
THEOLOGY;
OR, THE
SCIENCE OF PERCEPTION AS KNOWLEDGE
OF THE BEING OF A GOD.
CHAPTER I.
THEOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLOGY.
IF there is nothing consciously in the mind but
perception, God is perception, or He is not consciously
in the mind.
We should like to see a professorship established in
some great university, on Rudimental Thought as
hinted at by Rudimental Language. We never hear
of a man being conscious of himself, or of his being
conscious of his own soul. We never hear of his being
conscious of a rock, or of a tree. We never hear of
his being conscious of God. We hear of his being
conscious of pain, and conscious of sin, and conscious
of joy, and perhaps conscious of the love of God in his
own heart; but it makes us feel strong in our philosophy
to remember, that we can be loyal to the most delicate
hints of established idiom. If any one hears of being
conscious of a peach, or conscious of the mne, or of the
spirit, it shall be in the writings of some philosopher
who is placing himself in the wrong by unusual language.
We hear of the sun rising; but, then, justifiably;




354                  Thzeology             [BOOK V.
for the sun does rise. Relatively, that is just the very
appearance. And so we hear of a pain in the fingers;
for that is the sensation; but when the fingers are cut
off, and the pain keeps where it was, that does not
falsify the fact. The language speaks the conscious
seeming; and thus it becomes our appeal as to the
conscious seeming among men when we say that it
does not speak of our being conscious of our souls, or
conscious of that loftier Soul, the Spirit that is declared
invisible.
CHAPTER II.
THEOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF LOGIC.
IF there is nothing intuitively known but perception, God is perception, or He is not intuitively
known.
As God is not perception, and, therefore, not intuitively known, and as nothing is certain but what is
intuitively known, it is not certain that there is any such
being as God.
This reasoning we admit.
I. But then we insist upon a technical sense of
certainty.
If nothing is certain but what is intuitively known,
certainty must be confined to what is so ex se. Consciousness is consciousness. To deny the truth of
consciousness, is to deny that we are conscious. There
is nothing else that is certain in a similar way. Now
unless we are conscious of God, He falls short of
original certainty.
2. And why should we repine at this? because the
most pious men are engaged in provizng that there is
such a being as the Almighty. Do they ever prove
that there is such a thing as their being conscious?




CHAP. III.]   under the Light of Ontology.        355
3. The Bible speaks of "faith." Why not say
certainty?  It uses a word (mla7~o) meaning trust or
confidence. It applies this very word to our theosophy.
It does indeed speak of our knowing God (I Cor. xv.
34); but it is referring there to certain conscious qualities; as when I say, I am conscious of the goodness
of my neighbor. In the great matter of the divine
existence it says, " Ye believe in God " (Jo. xiv. I);
"Thou believest that there is one God " (Ja. ii. I9);
or again, " By faith we understand  that the worlds
were framed by the word of God " (Heb. xi. 3).
4. Nor is there any hardship in this. The A B
C of all knowledge is intuitive. Nothing else is. The
City of London is an empirical percept. So is self.*
So is the existence of every creature. If God can
condemn me at the last as having had a like facility for
discovering Him as for discovering my own existence,
the lack of certainty of the conscious sort will not
defraud Him of the right to punish me.
Beyond all question, however, there is nothing conscious but consciousness; and unless God is consciousness, I do not intuitively know any such existence.
CHAPTER III.
THEOLOGY UNDER THE LIGHT OF ONTOLOGY.
BEING is either Self or Not-Self. God is not Self:
therefore He belongs to the great class of Not-Self.
The class of Not-Self, more easily than the unit Self,
is seen to be empirically discovered.
But the class of Not-Self, as well as the unit Self,
with children, and with all peasant-men, and, therefore,
with all men, for all men are partial children, never
* So far as it does not embrace consciousness (see Ontology).




356                   Thleolo'gy.            LIOOK V.
divorce themselves from qualifying consciousness.
Self is conscious self; and not-self is the red cherry, or
the gray rock, or the high God; in which the redness
or the height is not put apart, but is put in consciously.
Let abstraction be complete, and let self and rock and
the Almighty be thought of emptily, and they are all
alike in Logic. They are inferred empirically. They
subsist invisibly. They are known by likeness. And
that likeness is not (I) Direct (B. II. Chap. X.); neither is it even (2) Partial; but it is of that (3) Intermediate sort, like:x, y, z,, in a lengthened arguing.
There is nothing intuitively known but perception.
God is certainly unlike any perception. But we
trusted ourselves to things that were like; and from
those to other things; and from those to other
things; each last thing, like the one before it; till, at
last, the discrepance was so great, that the first likeness faded out; but we were carried by a bridge of
analogies to results that were singularly different.
CHAPTER IV.
GOD AS LIKE OTHER BEINGS.
THtERE is nothing consciously in the mind but perception.  There  is nothing intuitively known but
consciousness. God, therefore, being not consciousness, is not intuitively known. But being invisible,
as substance is, and as man is, and as the universe
is, and, indeed, as I myself am, considered apart from
qualities, His history genetically, that is, the genesis of
the Idea,-is ontologically like all His creatures.
Here then is vast resemblance.
Hence (I) the teleological argument.
Precisely as I trace cause, so I trace the First Cause.




CHAP. IV.]    God as like Other Beings.       357
Hence (2) the nature of the teleological argument.
It is not,-I see works in man, and, therefore, I
infer works in the Great Jehovah. The argument is
the same for each. We neither see man nor the Almighty. We begin with consciousness. The beauty
of Metaphysics is, that it deals with that which we intuitively know. I have neither seen God nor my neighbor. But beginning with that which I have seen, viz.
my perceptions, I see two growing orders; and, in an
inevitable way (immediate to a childish mind, and distant to one more abstract), I trace analogies. And
whatever God is, man is. That is, I see neither in
himself, but both as the result of an ontological experience.
3. Hence also the consequences of the teleological
argument.
Man seems to be moving about. God is hidden.
How mad I shall appear in saying, Both are similar!
But when I come to weigh, it is clothes that are moving about, or at least flesh or body. It is certain appearances of sense. I grant you we come to man first,
and reach him earliest in the train of analogy. But
what do we really reach?  We reach his works. We
reach certain appearances in our inward consciousness.
We see man mostly in ourselves. And hence, in going
on to God, we can only say, Man came first. We saw
in him the closest analogy. But the raiment of God;
and the mark of His busy fingers; and His tokens
(which were all that we saw of man),-were precisely
similar as empirical beliefs.
Hence the consequences.
First, man is intelligent; therefore God must be
intelligent. Second, man is powerful; therefore God
must be powerful; Third, man is somewhere; there



358                Theology.              [BOOK V.
fore God must be somewhere. Fourth, man has virtue; therefore God must be virtuous. And, as virtuousness is a quality of emotion, and emotion has to do
with happiness, (fifth) God must be happy. Teleologically we infer all this: loosely, at first; but endlessly
confirmed by analogies of working.
And there is one great mercy in empiricism. The
things that are most important, have the closest analogies. Power; that is a shadowy ghost: I dimly
realize it. Being! who sees it?  Place! it is half a figment. God's Person, I know is little like, and His
mind nothing similar, to any of His creatures. But
His morals are close up at once. What a mercy! The
only thing we are to give account for: the only thing
we are to win heaven by: the only thing we need Christ
for: I mean the only region of thought in which guilt
and the need of an atonement and the purchase of the
Spirit, nay, the only field in which the worship of God
at all, is obligatorily set forth, is the only -field that
comes closest to my consciousness. I am conscious
of His goodness if there be a God: but I am not conscious of His wisdom; nor am I conscious of His
power: I am not conscious of His being. His wisdom
and His power must be other things than mine. But,
given a God empirically discovered, and His goodness
is my goodness. I see it in Him as I do beauty in a
star; and I have, imbedded in my consciousness, the
very thing I have to give an account of in the day
of Heaven.
CHAPTER V.
GOD AS UNLIKE OTHER BEINGS.
BUT, though God is like man in holiness, He is
variously unlike man under the light of Ontological




CHAP. V.]   God as Unlike Other Beings.     359
analogies. We need more and other in God than what
we need in man, as a theoretic percept.
Being slowly recedes in man, till it lies back of all
consciousness. This is the triumph of scientific light.
But the religious triumph is still greater than this.
It carries the thought still further in its analogies. A
group of order was the first non-ego. I carried it
back. I conceived of something that had the order,
and gave the impact! I conceded rock when I was
not looking,-and spirit that had not (my) consciousness. But analogy travelled on, and I found SOMEBODY ELSE was working as I worked, and as my
neighbor worked. I made a watch, but I found one
in the sky. I made a pulley, but I found one in my
cheeks. I made a telescope, but I found one in my
eye. The analogies that would find man out, would be
empirical of the Almighty; but now with this difference:-man would not now need so much efficiency.
By the law of parcimony, much that we had conceived
in man would be relegated to the Most High.
Exactly now what our idea of God would be I need
not depict. The simplicities of the thing have been
altered by revelation. What our idea without revelation would amount to I need not measure. The simplicity of that reckoning has been altered by the Fall.
Only this I say: —Travelling out from consciousness
we would arrive first at the creature. And there, like
an unfinished Road, there would be gathered much
that would not be permanent at that terminus. When
the'road-building went on to God, much that had
grown up by the way would be carried on to that
abiding dep6t.
See then the difference. Man has being, and God
has being. But man's being must be so different from




360                   Thzeology.            [BooK V.
God's as scarcely to claim  the right to a common
vocable.  So Power. God has it; and man has it:
but God's power is so much more archaic than man's,
as to breed a right to say, that both are the power of
the Almighty.
All is so shadowy that we forget that it is an empirical result, where we clamor so for unity. Morals!
there we ought all to agree. Wisdom! there we ought
to have but little difference. Infinity! in the like of
that we should be at one. But being! as to what it
is in essence; and power! as to what is mine and
God's; there we are in the clouds. Only this I say,
that the best intellects have thought that all power
was of God; and that whatever we thought of ours,
even our power was God's power in certain more
important respects than it could possibly be our own
efficiency.
And then another important difference! God is a
Spirit. What is meant by that? It does not mean
that He is a tenuous fluid, or any atomic ether, such
as we are quite apt to imagine; but it means an emblem. It means that He is of that tenuous sort that
penetrates every atom. It means that He is a breath
(Job xxxiv. I4), and like a breath can raise the dead.
It means that He is pervasive like an ether: and
therefore, that His personality is in His traits, not as
with us as persons; but, on the contrary, that He is
entire everywhere; as pervasive as a mist, and yet as
local as though He were all an atom.
These things we should keep in view.
They are not a whit more shadowy than our own
spirits. For nothing is seens but consciousness. And
he has taken a good step, who holds himself possessed
of just so little about being, as to be unencumbered for a




CHAP. VI.]  God made Like where He is Unlike.    36I
stand, when differences that he does know, and light that
he does possess, are dangerously brought to be denied.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MISCHIEVOUS EFFECTS OF MAKING GOD RESEMBLE OTHER BEINGS
WHERE HE DIFFERS FROM THEM.
WILL has two provinces, musculation and attention. Efficiency, as it belongs to man, is either
brute efficiency, like the digestion of food or the
nisus of a muscle, to which he contributes nothing consciously; or it is mere volition; volition being nothing
but that complicated thought, which we have before
described as being the whole of our imperial potency.
An efficiency so narrow in man, and in many particulars so helpless, we might be expected to transfer
to God; and we do so in two ways, leading to the two
extremes, either (I), on the one side, of Pantheism, or
(2), on the other, of Arminian independency, or segregation of the divine and human.
(I.) God may be the Former of our bodies, and the
Father of our spirits; and yet, if emblems, as those
words undoubtedly are, are pushed too far, we attribute, in spite of ourselves, some of our impotency to the
Almighty.  We are the former of a body, simply by
altering its positions. If it is a statue, we chip some
of its mass. If it be a photograph, we array the chemicals; we have hardly a dream of the moduzs qzuo, we
trust all to the actinic ray. If we are the father of a
spirit, we are still darker. The Bushman has an immortal progeny, and hardly knows as much of what has
come from him as the bee does of the wax upon his
legs; and no wonder; for, what we call agency in man,
is not even nisus. Musculation and attention are all
I6




362                  Thz col:ogy.         [BooK V.
that include the possible activities that are human.
No wonder, therefore, that we should impair with them
our conception of the divine.
Hence that strange phantasy, that God comes to
consciousness only in His works. The rock is not conscious; and, therefore, God is not conscious in the
formation of the rock. Man is conscious; and, therefore, God is conscious only in man. In our attempt
to conceive of God as a pervasive spirit, philosophers
are strangely warped. Evolution must be blind evolution. La Place's Theory must draw to it formative
efficiences such as ours. Requiring a shrewder God
than the older theories, it proclaims one less so; and
driven from the narrower personality of man, we
tumble into the opposite incompetency. We bury
God in the nature of what He frames; and, as Father
of spirits, make Him  no more conscious of His work,
than man is, of the child that he has begotten.
(2.) Driven from Pantheistic thought, the Church
has gone stupidly to the opposite extreme.  Man
being a creator, God must be a Creator. Man creating
mechanisms, God must; and must stand separate from
what He makes, as man does from a ship or from a
scythe. Man being the begetter of a son, God must
be; and must stand separate from the son whom He
begets, as man does from the children that are given
to him.
See then the two extremes;- either, first, Herbert
Spencer's Unknown, with all its blind obscurity, refusing to carry the analogy from man even as far as man's
intelligence and man's-conscious motive; or, second, a
universe set sailing like a ship. In either case it is the
curse of emblems: in the one case man's agency made
to fix its obscurity upon God's; and, in the other case,




CHAP. VI.]  God made Like wzere lHe was Unlike.  363
the ship, for example, made to pattern the sun or the
planet; the separateness of what we do, because really
we do nothing very deep, made to separate God from
His works; made to create an atomic theory, for example; and made to pronounce it heresy, unless some
tertium quid separates God from the forces of the
creature.
Let us not be misunderstood here. We travel out
from consciousness to the self and the not-self. Our
chariot is analogy. It fades as it travels farthest. The
ulterior not-self is the Almighty. I say, HIeret in corli'ce when we force the emblem.
I mean that from the one analogy of man there
spring two opposite Creators: —(I) One a Pantheistic
one. The man on the locomotive has no efficiency
but will. That is of the very narrowest. The muscle
and the rude engine effect the balance. What is the
result? We are steeped in such thoughts of God. He
is the obscure will in the locomotive; and if we are
scientific men, we make Him pervade the work, but
with a poor thread of consciousness. We separate
Him not a moment. We bury Him in the whole design. We tie Him fast in our idea. But He is the
Grimy Engine-Driver. The great machine He drives
is made to bury His obscure intelligence.
But men have rarely science. Therefore the opposite error:-(2) The engine stands clear of the driver,nay of the builder. That is the nature of man's work.
He finishes it, and it may stand loose upon the track.
Hence another analogy for God. Venus stands clear
of Him, and may whirl without Him in her orbit.
And if men shape that a little, and admit that He
sustains the creature, still they are horrified even by
Bible notions that in (&v) Him all things consist (Col. i.




364                 ThLeology.             [BooK V.
I7). They must have some separate entity, such as
man looks at when he completes a fabric.
And though it is beyond a doubt that God is responsible for His work, even though it stand aloof like
a car upon the rail, yet there is this mixture in the
thought. The way man puts out a work, and is done
with it, and leaves it to itself, will taint with inevitable
fault our thought of the Most High.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MISCHIEVOUS EFFECTS OF AMAKING GOD DIFFER FROM OTHER
BEINGS WVHERE HE RESEMBLES THEM.
ti's a kind provision of Providence; or, perhaps, I
should rather say, a glorious reality in the very nature
of the case,-that God should be unlike us in secular
traits, and like us in moral ones. He is omnipresent
and local. We are only local. He is immense. We
are limited. He is omniscient. We know nothing
but our own consciousness. He is omnipotent. We
have no power of a conscious sort; only volition.
Unless we include the body, which is really a not-self,
we have no conscious nisus, and no imperial realm save
our willing_. When we say, He wills and it is done, we
describe man. Man wills and it is done, but God has
to do it. God wills and it is not done, unless there
follows a stricter Efficiency, which actually accomplishes
the work which the Will designs to be done.
Now there is a vast perversity in man in that in
these natural traits in which God does not resemble us
we make Him resemble us, and in moral traits in which
He does resemble us we make Him differ. We have
seen the former of these in the previous chapter.
The latter we start into best, perhaps, by thinking




CHAP. VII.j  God made Unlike whzere HIe is Like.   365
of this concept,-will. What is will? It is a narrow
exercise that looks to the muscle and to the act of
attention. We impute it to God. We speak of the
will of the Supreme. We make it broad as His works:
not foolishly, if we remember that it is an emblem,
and not hurtfully, if we make it accord with the broad
affections of the Most High.
But now notice. It illustrates both errors. We
make it like, where it is unlike; and unlike, where it is
like; and just as we have said. Where it is a secular
trait, we make God's will like man's will; and where
it is a moral exercise, we make them differ.
Let me explain.
(I) The will of man as a natural efficiency is an
efficiency at all only in an imaginary way. We will,
and there is motion. That is all our conscious knowledge. We are imperial because we are dependent. If
we were omnipotent, we would have to make the
motion ourselves; but, as we are dependent, God
makes it; and, as the fruit of this dependence, we
attribute to God the sort of will that we witness in
ourselves.
How common the remark, that the universe survives by God's naked will.
Hence our delight in the rhetoric of the Bible.
"He spake, and it was done. He commanded, and
it stood fast."
And though, with God, there is no logos like this,
but a patient travelling to results; and molecular work
in every hand-breadth,-yet there is this strange perversity,-which makes the emotions of Heaven command as ours do, and makes Providence a law, as
though there were something to obey it outside of
Deity.




366                Theology.              [BooK V.
(2) But hugging the analogy where it fails, we cast
loose from it in those higher particulars where it
obtains and would bless us. The will of God is like
the will of man in its moral attributes. Holiness is a
quality. It belongs to two emotions (Ethics, D. I. Chap.
VI.). One of these is benevolence. The other is a
love to the holy or right quality itself. These are all
that is worth living for in man; and these are all that
is worth existing for in the Most High.
Dim in a conception of any being, it is a mercy that
we know most of God just in the direction in which we
have to worship Him; and, now, it is a strange perversity, that, having compared Him with man in all
natural particulars, we begin to separate Him here,
just in the point where we possess His image.
How we do this has appeared already under the
head of Ethics. Suffice it to say, again, We make a
different right for God than we do for His creatures.
We give Him hard attributes. We make man all for
duty. We make God all for Himself. We make man
love right in itself considered. We make God make
right; and we suffer its obligation to depend upon a
decision of His will. We make God primordially
revengeful; man not so; God aiming for display; man
never; God'not doing the best; man bound to; God
not bound for the best possible work; man always
(see Dr. Hodge's Systematic Theology, passimn); in one
word, the morals of man differing from the morals of
God; impairing the rule, that we are to be holy as God
is holy (I Pet. i. I5).
And, now, the evils of this are immense. All entity
being empirical, because arrived at, whether self or notself, by shadowy analogies, it is an irnimense outfit to
start in the search with the intuitions of virtue. God




CIAP. VII.]   God made Unlike wzere He is Like.  367
may be singularly Unknown; yet, if we can put into
Him the timbers of virtue,-make that the end, —make
that also the root,-declare that God would not desire
to be, nay, would not consent to act, but for the sake of
holiness,-we make a queen-cell that will vastly centralize the hive. Then there may be many drones. Then
there may be dreadful battles. Then there may be
vast mistakes about the outworks of our theism. Then
we can wait for science till she settles her shifting
facts. That soul is wonderfully at peace that has its
refuge in its conscious part, and in plenitude of hope
as to what will turn up at last in empirical demonstration.
But the opposite, viz. an unmoral God; that is, a
being not humane, or with no intelligible excellency, —
is just the idol to destroy the personality of Jehovah.
It breeds the Pantheist. What care I for Pantheism,
if it only transfuses God in His works? He has not a
bald will; but, on the contrary, a diffused efficiency.
He cannot stand off and order, but must go in and
work; and, beingz in, all over the universe, I do not
object to knowing that I live in Him, and have my
being (Acts xvii. 28). But how can I get him back
again, without His holiness? How can I get Him
back out of myself, if you confuse me in my notion of
His being a God of conscience? That monstrous
dream of an unconscious Deity, with no light, and no
separate thought, and no individual accountability for
what He does, is most of all promoted by destroying
conscience; that is, by taking away from Him a virtuousness like man's, and causing us to merge His excellence into a dry Supremacy.




368                     Theology.               [BOOK. V.
CHAPTER VIII.
PANTHEISM.
THE outer world reveals itself to us by our five
senses. The revelation is said to be made to us in
every instance by power. I do not mean by this that
what I see is power. On the contrary, what I see is
sense. If I smell a flower, the fragrance is an absolute
consciousness. So of a note in music, or of the light,
or of a hard surface, or of a taste: what I actually perceive, is a naked consciousness. But, without going
back to bring up tediously the analogies, no one doubts
that matter gets at sense by power.  If I taste, or
smell, or see visions, or feel warmth, or hear a buglenote, the thing is done by impact. Force is used upon
the nerve in every instance of sensational perceiving.
Then that is a plausible account of matter, that it
consists in power. Other ingredients have dropped off.
It began with order. But the grouping of harmonized
sensations will not answer; for, after all, order is not
being; and sensation itself is something different from
metaphysical  existence. Body helped much at its
birth; but body is one form of it: so did will; but
will is itself perception. It helped as a shadow of
power; but soon disappeared as not efficiency. Cause
vanished also; not as a thing of no sense; but as the
same as power. The best thinking that the world can
give, is always bringing back this idea; —that there
may be ten million things in the world beside power;
nay, that there may be no power in the shadowy way
in which we conceive it; but that the very best image
* I say, metaphysical, and the reader must notice such cautionary
terms, or else excuse us for the tediousness of repeating, that, as a mere
usage of speech, existence does include the instant sensation.




CHAP. VIII.]        PaIt/TzcismZ.              369
we can make of the world is power; and that, by the
law of parcimony, we have no reason to posit substance,
in the vulgar form in which it is asserted.
I. For, as the first step; if sound sense seems to be
offended, let us treat her difficulties. If she says,
Something is necessary that must /zave the power; or,
with more particular plainness, something must resist
it, and something must exert it, —let us look at this
more narrowly. We are to acknowledge molecular
atoms on the solitary plea that matter cannot act
where it is not; or that force needs something actively
to possess it, and forcibly to resist its onslaught.
But notice.
Where is the matter between the atoms?  Air is
infinitely  compressible. That  means, the learned
tell us, that its atomic grains are each of them distant.
What holds them? Force. What sort of force?  Repulsion. What kindred force? Attraction: which
keeps them  reined in to their place, and keeps repulsion from  repelling endlessly. Where is the matter
between the atoms? for if it is ice or silver, there is
an appreciable distance?  How does atom get hold
of atom? And if the very essence of the theory is,
that matter must be there to hold the force, or to meet
the wrestle, where is there any between the monads?
and where is the good of substance if it fails to meet
us at the very point desired?
2. But, secondly; if matter be nothing but power,
self may be nothing but power, and for the same
reasons.
This we admit
At the same time we claim, that we have gone farther on a most shadowy path, and where there is the
largest room for the very utmost difference.




370                  Thcology.             [BOOK v.
Power at all is a mere shadow, —a high empirical
conceit. Power, as force, is a clearer notion; because
analogous to the conscious nisus. But power as a
power to think, is the dimmest of the dim. Still
there is an analogy; and I admit that there is no substance in mind, that can be thought of as separate from
power, unless it be a suppositional something, which we
all along admitted, viz. a creature of our ignorance;
that, whereas (I) we know nothing but power, and,
again, (2) little of power and much of our ignorance
about it, therefore, third, (3) there may be a vast deal
else, and indeed must be a vast deal more, than we
have ever brought to be intelligently considered.
But a posited something; made familiar to us, and
given names to by us as a substantial ego, —that we
are not convinced of. Power is by analogy. The first
power was my muscle.  Nay it was a complex thing,
first my will, and then my nisus. It corrupted the
notion. It carried it into matter.  It tainted it wvith
a gross duality. It carried it into mind. And I confess I am not prepared to say that there is a brutzuzn
tertiur, —first a power to think, then a substance. I
cannot fix polemically three quiddities as certain;
first, thought; second, power to think; and third, substance,-this last separate from God, and looked at as
isolated work like a car upon the rail.
But then why should I?  Who cares for the mere
hulk, if I keep the conscience? There is the difficulty.
Men shudder when we throw man so closely upon God
as to deny the molecules; because they shudder for
God. They think man is bad company for Him. The
brutltLz ens is necessary to give man a separate responsibility; otherwise bad acts are God's acts. This is
the gist of the polemic. Men would not care what we




CHAP. VIII.]       Pantheism.                371
did with an intervening hulk, if we did not throw
man blasphemously upon God; and did not make
the wickedness of man too much the part of the
Almighty.
But now, notice. What defends God if we adopt
the molecule? Did we make it? Are we responsible
for it? Did we bring our wicked selves into being?
Did we begin far back in eternity, and decree all our
going? Do we uphold these lives of ours? and could
we carry them without concursus? and could we possess
them a single moment without the power of the Most
High? Now, imperatively, where is the difference?
If I live in Him and have my being (Acts xvii. 28),
where is the responsibility of God greater if I live by
the mere flow of His power, than if He has bred some
substantial enzs, and keeps it in being by the breath of
His lips? It seduces men, to prate a difference. We
have shown already what morals are. We have shown
the likeness between God and His creature. And
though it is beyond our ken how God could create
such a wicked world; yet it is not beyond our ken
that He does do it. "I form the light and create
darkness. I make peace and create evil" (Is. xlv. 7).
It is not beyond our ken that the potter has " power
over the clay" (Rom. ix. 21), and that it is disgraceful
to God to defend Him, as with the Ahriman of the
East, by the shelter of intervening particles.
3. But the best men will say, You are mad. You
are not seeing the vile consequence. You are sinking
man into God. You are sinking matter into mind. If
rock is nothing logically but power, then whose power?
If man is nothing but a power to think, then whose
power to think? and, logically, whose thought?
Moreover, if power does not imply substance, how




372                 T/ecology.            [Po00K V.
God's power? And are we to have the madness over
again of denying entity to the Great Almighty?
Now, with abundant caution:Note; here are five difficulties, —(I) If matter is
only power, what holds the power or meets its pressure?
(2) If matter is only power, mind is only power. (3)
If matter and mind are only power,-whose power? or
is there any room for maintaining a power of God
separate and different from the power of either? (4) If,
therefore, mind is only power, how do we teach a
responsibility of God separate from the responsibility
of His creature?  And (5) if mind is only power, God
is only power; for how can we argue substance in
God, if we deny it as possible to be demonstrated in
the instance of the creature?
Now, first; that matter is only power we have not
taught. We have been infinitely far from teaching it.
We have felt Herbert Spencer's reasonableness in
much of his argument for the Unknowable. We do
not know what matter is. The use of infidels is to
scour the bottom of the faith. We scout his atheism;
but it clears our theism. What we really teach is,
that by the law of parcimony power covers all we
know; that we have no right to imagine atoms; that
they are bred of certain dualities of will; that they do
not account for the results; that it is ours to seize
power as the best residuary gleam; and to admit the
possibility of more; nay, to assert that there must be
much unknowable,-under the forms of matter.
Second, precisely the same of mind.
Third; precisely the same of sin. An appeal is to
the law of parcimony. I do not deny that there are
difficulties about power; but atoms do not help them.
I do not deny there are difficulties about sin. But




CHAP. VIII.]        Pantheism.                373
atoms do not help them. I prefer to mark down great
facts about God, and imagine that something unknowable will come to reconcile them. It belittles Him to
appeal to atoms. To say that He upholds me constantly, and so much that I vanish without Him, and
then to make that less responsible than some more
direct nakedness of Power, is to make an unworthy
difference. Men see through such things. It is far
better to speak like Paul (Rom. ix. 2I). If I sin when
upheld by God, it is explained just as little, considering all the circumstances of that upholding, as if I
sinned if I live in God (Acts xvii. 28). It is better
to imagine unknown circumstances of explanation.
This usual defence does mischief by its clear impertinency.
So of the last point. If mind may be only power,
God may be only power. That is, analogies, out from
consciousness, leading us at last to power, if they teach
nothing more in matter, and if they teach nothing more
in mind, teach nothing more in God. Atoms, if not
necessary to hold power, and not imaginable indeed,
and therefore not noticeable, in mind;-I mean by
that, mental atoms, or, more properly speaking, some
mental substance,-the same argument would strip a
substance away from the Almighty.
This is partly sound and partly unsound.
I. It is partly sound; because if we do not see a
substance; if it is bred of human weakness; if it comes
from  muscular power; if it arises from  where our
thinking began, viz. from the muscular nisus, preceded
by the desires of will,-then it is traceable how we got
it into matter, and it is not traceable how we ought to
get it into God. God has no nisus, and no muscular
will. He has no duality of nature. He moves uniquely




374                 Theology.            [BOOK V.
and at a blow. Why He need to have substance to
hold power is scarcely apparent; and the whole thing
seems disreputable. In other words,-Power alone as
being God is (a shockingly inadequate idea, but) just
as adequate as a Powerful Substance, or Powerful Spirit,
or Powerful Entity, distinct from power, which like the
two lines in the vapor betoken the medium of human
life through which we see it.
The Divine is " invisible." This is the doctrine of the
Bible. Marking empirical boundaries is, therefore, dangerous work. Imputing brute atoms to man, reflectively
bears upon God. Imputing stark substance to God,
reflectively bears upon man. Both theories play into
each other. But when we come to ask for proof, we are
left with this idea,-God. is a Power. Even that is a
shadowy idea. And all beyond is the region of the
Unknown. He is a false defender who binds himself
with the small cords of his fancy when called upon for
proof of what is essential to the Most High.
2. Nevertheless stripping substance away from God
because we strip it away from man is partly unsound.
Stripping it away from either is sensible enough if it
rebuke the folly of theorizing and explaining substance
as though it could be consciously conceived. Stripping
it away from neither is sensible, too, if it simply mean
that there is more in both than power can possibly
contain. But stripping it away from God has a redundancy of fault in this last direction, because power
could do better for man in its shadowy shape than it
possibly could for God, as our whole idea. Man could
live in God, but who could God live.in? Empirically,
and as a mere following of the like, we could dream of
man as a mere immanence of power. But God is the
great terminus. Analogy has reached its crest. There




CHAP. VIII.]        Pantheism.                  375
cannot be anything beyond. And, therefore, the
conjecture (that is a very good word), the thlrozwing together, of analogies from self, dictates a terminal will,
and therefore a something, if it is ever to be traced,
an origin, if it is ever to be conceived, and Being in its
most real sense, if it ever be needed to explain the
order of the universe.
It is all empirical, and, therefore, all unconscious;
but the LIKE, as it reaches out, speaks more for an Ens,
when it comes to deal with the Almighty.
Anchorage in this tossed ocean can always be found
in the region of Ethics. What would God be without
it? What would creeds be?  Theology would be a
creeping dream.
Let us notice this point. The very gem of evidences is to be found in morals.
Ontology might be much more machine-like but
for the phenomenon of conscience: and morals, whether
in God or man, is the mother of all those proofs which
are teleologically rich in shaping the Deity.
And blessed be God, it is a conscious thing that is
essential!
And be careful here!
Let me not be misunderstood. Power is essential.
Being is essential. Skill is essential. But what I
mean is, essential in our knowlege of God. Power is
of the most shadowy; Being, not less so; Skill, unsearchable. But Holiness is right under our eye.
What a mercy this is! The great trait of God is conscious. Be very particular with this. That God has
a conscience depends of course upon His having a
being. That He had a being is empirical, and, therefore, metaphysically not intuitive, and, philosophically,




376                  T/heology.            [BOOK V.
never certain. Nay, that He has a conscience if He
has a being, is empirical besides.
What we thank God for, therefore, may be easily
misunderstood.
There is a great theory. The sum of it we call
Theology. The pith of it is, that it takes all the
facts. It pins itself together. Like a gallant arch, it
holds by its mass. Morality is the key-stone. It
could not get into its place without the others; but,
being there, it is singularly defined and well shaped.
Now, what I mean is, that everything else may lie in
the haze. Power, what that may be, and substance,
how that is to be fixed, and life, how that is to be supposed to live; atoms, how they are to be understood,
and molecular physics, how that is to be fashioned
forth, —lie in shadow; ought to do so, because they
are uncertain; must do so, because they are empirical;
and have done so in every period of the world.
But morality, once set in place, is evident. It
belongs to consciousness. I know what right is. God,
as powerful, is a mist. God, as conscious, is a riddle.
God, as anything you think, is a wonder, and a maze.
But God, as good, is all simplicity.  I draw to Him at
once. And it steadies all other thought. Here is
where theologians ought to stand; and, like a captain
on his deck, the watchful believer on this key-stone of
the arch should govern all his theories.
(I) Matter, therefore, may be only power. Why?
Because I see no around for atoms. (2) Mind, therefore,
may be only power. Why? By a kindred parcimony.
(3) Power, too, may be all of God. Why?  Because
why the opposite? (4) God, then, must be responsible for sin. No: because God is holy. God does not
sin the sin if man sins it; and God cannot sin in men if




CHAP. VIII.]        Pantheisnz.               377
He acts from the impulse of benevolence, and from the
love of holiness in Himself and in the universe. (5)
Still, He must be a Power, therefore? Not necessarily. That would limit God by our knowledge. He
must be more than power; because, as Spencer establishes the fact, He must be much that is unknowable.
But that He is specifically this or that, spirit or matter,
being, as substantial ens,-all this, is mere insanity.
He is Power. This Power is guided by conscience.
This power is itself a shadow. We know nothing of
His essence. And the man who insists that there are
atoms, that he may insist that there is a God, is losing
the whole logic that he seeks, and likening the Deity
to a material image.
To what extent, then, may true philosophy be Pantheistic?
To this extent;-that it may deny to matter atoms
in the more brutish sense. How far is that Pantheism?
Not at all in that pestilent folly that makes God find
His being in matter, and find His consciousness and
His only personality in human minds. We not only
execrate this, but we do not even understand how it
could have arisen. If God's power is matter, and
God's activity is the ceaseless producer of mind, He
needs all the more on that account a mind of His own,
and a separate personality, where thought and morals
may hold their court. We do not so much as know
why, when God emerged as always in the creature, producing him always, and never able to be rid of him by
setting him apart, that therefore we should suppose
that God is less personal, and must, therefore, bulk into
the universe, and be the creature that He is perpetually issuing into being. We need, the rather, more of
a Person on this account. And, moreover, to call us




378                  Th7eology.            [BooK V.
Pantheists, you must satisfy another thought. We are
merely negative. We merely deny brutish atoms.
We merely say, They have no foundation. We merely
see that power is the shadowy idea. We say that
power itself is the flimsiest conceit. We are merely
holding to parcimony. And instead of saying, There
is nothing but this or that, we are distinctly advancing
the Unknowable. It is not atoms; it is not entity; it
is not a brutumz quid', it is not intelligibly anything to
mislead us by its imagined marks; but it is, what the
Bible calls it, an " Invisible " (I Tim. i. 17; Col. i. I5).
We are only Partheists in the privative refusal of its
being known. WVe are anything you please as to a
room for a Jehovah's being.
Going back, therefore, to Ontology with its distinct
avowal that the not-self is either perception or else
some fabrication from perception by analogy and difference, we give that as our account of God. He is
not atoms, because we have no thought of atoms, and,
therefore, among a thousand things we have no reason
why that surd thing should be. He is not spirit, for
a kindred reason, that when we come to speak with
emphasis there is nothing inside the word that we distinctly mean. But He is a Spirit as a verisemblance
to man. Spirit is nothing ontological. It is philological. It means a breath. It means that as a breath
God pervades; that as a breath God acts; that as a
breath He is invisible. And the very name betokens
rather a blind something impossible to be conceived,
than a bold-faced word attempting intelligence as to
a style of being.
We believe in God, therefore, because we believe in
man. We believe in God mainly as of the image He
gave to man. We believe in God most of all as by




CHAP. VIII.]        Pauntheisisn.             379
our moral image. That thought of Him is best that
comes under the eye of conscience. I am a theist,
therefore, most and strongest in the realm of Ethics.
When you drive me out of what is moral, I catch up
but the dimmest shadows. I make no complaint of
this. Worship involving morals, and law involving
morals, and judgment only morals, it is to me an unspeakable relief that morals will bring me nearest to
the Deity through all the period of my being. What
He is in essence it concerns me less that I should conceive. To keep His morals right, I see no advantage
in molecular atoms, or that I should be anything but
an immanence froim Him. Did I assert I do, I should
equivocate; for I see no superior responsibility in God
did He continually create, than did He make me
separate, and yet hold me up all the time. I see no
piety in thinking that the ego is more than power.
And if the ego is no more than power, then Pantheism is true in a certain Christian sense.  But that
the ego is only power would be a vague conceit if a
man did not perceive how shadowy it is; if he did not
remember how false it is; if he did not confess how
certainly ten thousand other things are likely to be
true; and if he did not pursue the negative plan of
merely denying results. I will not believe in atoms,
and I will not believe in mind, and I will not believe in
God as an intelligible ens, for this is the hypocrisy of
belief. Power is the shadow that He has given to
bring us near to the conception of a being.




380                  Thzeology.            [BOOK V.
CHAPTER IX.
POLYTHEISM.
POLYTHEISM might be reached in two ways; either,
first, by a highly polished people slowly declining; or,
by a low, brutal people slowly climbing up.
I. Polytheism as a symbol of decay, is where a
polished people, possessing the idea that God pervades
all His works, choose an object indiscriminately, and
take it as a reminder of the presence of the Deity.
This, which, at first, might be thought innocent, becomes, as divine truth dies out, the origin of multitudes
of idols.
2. The other is the opposite route: we doubt
whether it has been ever travelled,-where a savage,
seeing power in himself, imagines it in a tree and in a
rock. This supposes the childhood of the race, and
imagines thought actually travelling out to the Invisible. We doubt whether it ever made that journey.
We believe in an original revelation, and doubt whether
it was ever lost; that is, whether any tribe of men
were so entirely embruted, that they had initially to
think out the fact of, a Divinity.
It makes little difference, however.
I mean in the view of Polytheism. It makes great
difference in the respect of Archaic Science. But, in
the respect of Polytheism, it would be reaching it,
going up or coming down; and it would be reaching
the same result. A man, seeing divinity in himself, I
mean a certain image of what is divine, sees that things
around him are like him, and is therefore very likely to
put will and intelligence into the storm or into the
plant that acts as he acts. This is done, therefore, by




CHAP. X.]            Evolution.                 38I
multitudes. Nevertheless, if we read Hindoo literature,
or search deeply even into the fetich-worshipping as
among the blacks, we will find that Polytheism is never
a square thing among a people. The more brutish
conceive of it in part, but their gangels explain it away.
There is but one God among the more thinking class;
and we can find Him with the Malay and the black as
a unitary or Nzambi Deity.
CHAPTER X.
EVOLUTION.
EVOLUTION, as a doctrine of Ontology, is attracting
more attention than perhaps any other of the beliefs
of men. On this very account it is unsettled. We
shall trace the most common doctrine; or rather, that
thread of thought that runs through most of the systems. If any man believes in the eternity of matter,
or some one else believes in the inzterference of God, or
still another in Divine slpport, and yet still claims Evolution, we will not be able to give each all his theory:
for, in the nature of things, we must choose one central
stem, and, in this eclectic account, call that Evolution
that lies nearest to the centre, and which takes in most
of the thought of most of the promoters of this influential system.
Evolution shall be the doctrine of those who believe
that matter, in its full quantum, was originally created
with such gifts as would enable it to live apart from
its Creator, and with such powers as would enable it
gradually to evolve all specific changes, and all the
developed facts of life and spirit. Matter, with this
creed, is the origin of thought; but not with the absurd faith, that the weight-qualities, and the force



382                   Threoloy.             [BOOK V.
qualities, and the blue-qualities, of observed matter,
are to be attached to its thought-results, but simply
that there is one original ens, and that the greater Ens,
in originally endowing it, gifted it with all that lives,
and that the shooting of a ray, and the shooting of a
sprout, and the shooting of a thought, unconscious as
we are how they are arranged, are arranged in one; as,
by the appearances of matter, there is the same exhaustion of power in producing one as in producing
the other.
Evolution, therefore, is an eternal system, not
eternal a parte ante, but eternal a parte post, by which
a nebular mist, freighted for an eternal voyage, has,
stored within it, all change, and by powers resident in
its parts, and by powers acting back upon it from other
parts, not even excepting the change (inexplicable) of
thought and consciousness.
Let it be noticed, that this does not get rid of God;
but rather makes Him great: neither indeed of Teleology, but rather enforces it; for it leaves all the existing marks of current design, and adds the unspeakable feat of providing it in the original creation.
How, therefore, could I reject the system?  I
could reject it, first, if it clashed with Ethics. There,
on that account, will be our first inquiry. I could
reject it, second, if it clashed with Scripture. There
will be our second. I do reject it, thirdly, because it
embroils Ontology.  Such, therefore, will be our order
of discourse. I. We do not object to Evolution as
thwarting Ethics.  II. We do not consider it as assailing Revelation. III. But we do consider it as no
Ontology.  Here, where the system  claims the most,
we regard it as unspeakably the weakest. Its development facts weave in better with better systems: and




CHAP. XI.]    Evolution and Et/ics.             383
yet, ontologically tried, the man who reasons differently
upon the material facts has a perfect right to his scheme;
and, if he deal fair with Ethics, and allow A CERTAIN
CORRECTIVE on the part of Christianity, we have no
objections. A pious Evolutionist will be a constant
phenomenon among future believers.
CHAPTER XI.
EVOLUTION UNDER THE LIGHT OF ETHICS.
ETHICS teaches the fact that God's highest motive
is His holiness.  Ethics, therefore, teaches the fact,
that this universe is the holiest possible.  For, either
God's holiness, which is really His highest object, must
diminish the holiness of His creature, or else the highest holiness of His creature is the object of God. Now
of two things one, either God does not reach His highest object, or the holiness of His creature is the greatest possible.
There are great numbers of His creatures, and
there is an eternity for them to live in. God, therefore, must strike a balance. If His object is the highest holiness of His creatures, He must prefer the
greatest number and the longest time. It follows
that He might sacrifice some of the number (Ethics,
D. I. Chap. XL.), and some of the time.
We cannot tell a priori which must be the time.
God, wishing to give the greatest holiness through the
greatest time, might be thrown upon the earliest time.
As with Satan, holiness might come first, and trespass,
or even reduced holiness, from lesser light and less
spiritual endowmNent, follow  after. We cannot consciously decide. But the vast probabilities are, from
mere passing analogy, that holiness must grow. I am




384                  Theology.           [BooK V.
speaking nows ethically, without the Bible. The path
of the just would naturally brighten. For though
Adam did not grow, but fall, and righteousness has no
merit without the fixedness of a covenant, yet, in its
total sphere, morals has probabilities of advance, and
in that case it has its Evolution. At any rate, God
gives the highest holiness; and this involves the sum
of the creature and the sum of its duration. And if
the aggregate advances, then this follows,-viz. that
each particular moment is holier than the last, and
grows holy upon the last, and that there results a
scheme of ethical Evolution. Each last moment is
for it the holiest possible; yet the next is holier. And
the Evolution goes on. If this is to be the rule for
eternity, then there is an eternal Evolution. And
when we remember what this involves; and that happiness is to keep pace with holiness; and that matter
is to be the handmaid of either; we see the consequence, that Evolution, if the right Ontology, comes
right in place. God must have had an original scheme.
That scheme, if the holiest possible, must be necessarily
one. God had no liberty: none in the vagrant sense.
He preferred A BEST which was always mapping His
work. And, therefore, if His course was fixed, and lHe
had powver to create a protoplasm, it is no contradiction
of Ethics that He bred all change in the egg. Credat
71zdzLvs. With a certain corrective that Revelation
gives, and with room for that corrective that even Darwin leaves, let these egg-builders go on.
Ethics znakces sure to me a beltistic scheme. Ethics
makes probable, at least, one that shall advance. Grant
me this much, and I have an Evolution of my own;
an Evolution that takes in miracle and every change;
an Evolution that never flags; an Evolution set to a




CHAP. XII.]    Evoiution and Revelation.     385
hair, because, on its base, it can never alter; an
Evolution, therefore, built upon a original decree, that
needs no retouching of the plan, and that would look
smilingly upon a scheme (if one corrective were allowed)
that would make a nebulous egg act, once it was laid,
independently of the Most High.
Onur Evolution no facts can oppose. There is pain
in the world. Well, we have seen that even the innocent can suffer pain. There is death in the world!
Well, even the innocent can suffer death. We have
seen that death existed before apostasy. Shoals of
mammals suffered death thousands of ages before there
was sin. Justice I would like to look better at when I
arrive at Heaven. But benevolence and the love of
virtue,-these I can look clearly at now. They are
conscious. These are by God's side, His Builders *
(Prov. viii. 30). These know no exception. What they
demand of animal pain,-that is Justice. What they
give up,-that perishes.  What, they build,-that
stands. And as they are exquisitely precise, they have
but one dictate. And all I mean to say is, that if Evolution has but one dictate, and that the wisest and the
best, God might have put it in the egg, and shown
only the more in that one respect His strange Omnipotence.
CHAPTER XII.
EVOLUTION UNDER THE LIGHT OF REVELATION.
EVOLUTION is thought to contradict the Mosaic
Record. Certainly, under the hand of some expounders of it, it does do it. We do very wrong not to distinguish better than we do one field of Theology from:
* See Commentary.
I7




385                 ThCol oy.             [BooK V
another. One field of Theology is Theism. Another
field, requiring different proof, is Christianity. We do
very wrong that we let both these fields get embroiled
together. It ought to be remembered that Theism is
much the less vulnerable. When we behave as though
Theism were ceaselessly in danger, and let it share all
the panics that belong to technical Christianity, we
build with very unphilosophical haste. We should
posit Theism, and get that well entrenched, and then
proceed to what is Christian.
Let us do something of this logical sort.
Revelation is of two kinds, that which might be
known without it, and that which might not be. The
word Iziglizt must be peculiarly handled. When I enter
under the first head Theism, I must distinguish. It
nzm/,lt be found out, considering man to be perfect, or
it mzin/zt be found out by perfect men in a long heredity,
but this is doubtful. Let us define the tignt by saying that one class of revelations could be demonstrated
after they were revealed, and one class could not be.
In one class would be Theism, and in the other, for
example, the Incarnation.
I. Now this first class is but little exposed by
Ontology.
i. Take for illustration the fact of a Decree. If
Darwin is right, all future is fixed in an original mist.
How could he object to Predestination? Or bring, to
test his theory, the ideas of Ethics. If God would
have existed singly but for an Ethical taste; if that
taste is a love of holiness; if that taste rules each successive act, and begets but one line by the possibilities
of the case, and that the very holiest and the best,-Predestination is but another name. The dust that floats
in the air is where it is by the Almighty; is where it is




CHAP. XII.]    Evolution and Revelation.               387
as the very best; is where it is by a decree; and the
three propositions are all blended into one; and take
in kindly, too, the original egg, if that be the method
that God originally fixed for the fulfilment of His will.
2. So  of iziracle.   Darwin  teaches the greatest
miracle.  I beg that this may be considered.  WVre
think of Darwin as putting an end to all miracles.
But how  unjustly.  Darwin I do not speak of in his
detail.  I do not answer for him  in his miscellaneous
speech.  He may say a thousand things that are profane.  I only say that Evolution, as above declared, is
very  favorable to miracle.  And  I press home  the
proof.  The greatest miracle on earth is Darwin's miracle. And after that there is room for all. Darwin is
right in saying that miracle is a matter of faith. Having announced the loftiest miracle that we can conceive,
viz. the creation of the mist,* he justly says that, after
that, it must be against nature.  What can be more
reasonable? For, having transcended me in miracle,
that is, having announced one that I cannot grapple,
going beyond all other theists to speak of God as creating all things in a single egg, what can he deny afterward? This he distinctly notices. He does not deny
miracle, but shuts it out into the region of faith. Well,
is it not in the region of faith? He says it denies
nature. Well, does it not deny nature? Nay, does it
not suspend it, and bring it to an end? Does it not
violate it? and cause it to take up its thread afterward,
and begin anew? Is not this the very nature of mir* We are imputing here to Darwin the evolution not exactly in the
shape in which he holds it. We have explained this already. He believes in protoplasm. We have chosen a main stem of theory, and treated
it as representative of all. Darwin would doubtless posit many protoplasms. We mention one clear theory, and that is to be representative
of all the rest.




388                  Theology.             [BooK. V.
acle? And though I carry science into the domain of
faith, and speak of mental science, and of ethical science, and theological science, and though, therefore,
science carries me to miracle, and carries me to the
very throne of God, yet Darwin's Evolutionism is in a
lower sphere. Darwin's Evolution must be violated by
miracle. But the system does not forbid that it should
be so violated: only it says, You must get your proof
from a higher reasoning. Darwin has set the model
of a most astounding act; and no act that can possibly
follow can be half the miracle of the mist in its original
creation.
3. And now of prayer.
It is a false argument that says that prayer is inconsistent with Darwinism, and that demands miracle,
or demands extemporized Providences, in order to
answer our requests. Of course I must insist that
Darwinism must be what I have defined. To follow it
into all its wanderings, or to believe this or that infidel
speech, is another affair. That God built all things at
a stroke, that is, created a mist, and endowed it to sail
alone, is in our belief a mad Ontology, but it is not the
death of prayer, and supplementary schemes are not
what we might think them to be to afford hope for the
answer of our supplications. For, think a moment.
Suppose a miracle. Or suppose a chance for God to
come in for extemporized acts. It might seem all simple. Elijah prays, and the heavens give rain. Or I
pray, and God keeps me from death. It might easily
seem that Evolution, settled from the egg, would leave
no room for requests, and that miracle or extemporized
relief were the only chance for the hopeful offering of
supplication.
But look further.




CHAP. XII.]    Evolution acnd Revelation.      389
Miracle or not, God fixes everything from the beginning. That is a thing forgotten. Darwin fixes
everything in an iron frame, but so does Ethics. Miracle might offer a look of freedom, but there is but one
system. If it admit miracle, it is broader than if it
follow law; but the law. of nature, if superseded and
deposed, yields to a higher law. This universe is the
holiest possible. To make it so, there must be a frame
like iron. No two bests can exist. And, therefore,
miracle or no, there is a path mapped out from the
first, which has never been transcended. Pray, and
there will be the same beltistic consequences.  Entreat,
and nothing alters. Tyndall can transfer all his scoff.
For, if we held to the fixity of nature, it could not be
more entire than the fixity of grace. God sees a certain
plan. No other eye sees it. It is nevertheless fixed
by law. And if miracle came, and God directly intervened at my request, that would not alter the iron of
His will. In the ages of the past He fixed that miracle.
And now we have only to choose between the iron of
Darwin's scheme, and the iron of a higher one, both
being equally unchanged, and both being impossible to
alter by prayer or anything.
WVhat is the solution, therefore?  Why that the
iron includes the prayer. In the observatory in my village, the seat moves round with the dome.
Tyndall argues, My daughter's malady is fixed by
nature. Pray, if you like; but the result is settled.
Nature will remain unchanged; and if matter moves
finally to a relief, well. Prayer does nothing. Now,
grant it. Give me Darwin's scheme, and will I surrender prayer? By no means. There was an original
act. That act was Providence. Darwin's Providence
was sealed up in an egg. Beautiful beyond my possi



390                  Theology.             [BOOI V.
bility to conceive, that Providence was finished at a
stroke. God might have vanished, and the universe
move on. Prayer, therefore, must be built into the system. Darwinism must take in all instruments;-what
seed is to crop, what steam is to travel, what heat is
to life. In view of the provided prayer, God had arranged the provided healing. If Darwin says,'This
exacts too much;'-behold the audacity of his system!
There being a world of act,-ploughing and sowing,
thinking and willing, praying and getting a relief, —Tyndall stops at prayer, and pronounces his own scheme
insufficient to admit of this last prevision.
And so of the answerers of Tyndall. They do harm
certainly in the way that they reject his system. Law
is not against prayer. Strict natural sequence does not
forbid it. We are horrified at the thought that the
nebular hypothesis should restrict our prayer. When,
therefore, a preacher admits that where physics is
fixed prayer has no province, I feel betrayed; because
I know that miracle is equally fixed. If God could be
changing nature, that would be equally settled. There
is a beltistic universe. It must be built upon a single
scheme. That scheme must be settled from eternity.
To alter it must breed a worse. To pray against it
would be utterly futile. And, therefore, the duty of
prayer, like the duty of anything beside, is wove into
the plan, and is of the very highest force; but can only
be recompensed as itself a fixity in nature.
To speak squarely, therefore,-May a Darwinian
pray? Undoubtedly. Why may a Darwinian pray?
Because he is a theist. How is he a theist? Because
he believes in a creation. How does he believe in a
creation? He believes in an act that called a nebula
into being that is to live by itself and produce all the




CHAP. XII.]    Evolution and Revelation.       39I
realities of the universe. Is there a Providence to
follow it?  No. Is there a Providence at all?  Yes.
How is there a Providence at all? There is a Providence in the parent egg, such that it is to produce all
results, and to act as though Providence did follow,
and as though God did intervene to produce all that
seems ex teiznpore in nature. May I pray, therefore?
Certainly I may pray. Why may I pray?  Because I
will not be answered without. Why? Because my
prayer and answer were arranged in the creation. It
is arranging a great deal, I grant; but there is the
audacity of the system. As a mere effect, prayer as
arranged with its reply, and mercy as a gift to faith, are
not things that should be rejected, if the universe of
facts were bred in the womb of being.
For how differs the follower of miracle? He says,
I pray, and God works a miracle. Or how the interference-theist? I pray, and God extemporizes a result.
Be this ever so much the case, it was fixed eternally.
And this, not by an arbitary plan, but by the very
nature of Ethics. There is but one holiest possible
world. To make it, there is but one holiest possible plan.
What difference if that could be tied up in an egg? It
would be but one difference, that of a God providing
at a stroke, and that of a God following His work with
no possible license beyond what has been originally
decreed.
And take the wiliest reply. Suppose it be said,
Evolution is physical. If I pray, that cannot alter
Evolution, and all that can be thought is, that Evolution was arranged to meet that prayer from the first
moment of time. But prayer can lead now to miracle,
or, take the other theory, prayer can move nozv upon
will. If things are not locked up in Darwinism, prayer




392                 Theology.              [BOOK V.
can be operative at once; and the will of God can be
actually moved at the time by my petitions. And yet,
notice how  little this relieves. Darwinism  has one
fixity; Ethics has another. It is true that prayer
could ask for an immediate intervention of divine
compassion. If I were the whole of the universe, I
could conceive of some extempore results. But if the
whole is beltistic,-and the plan is blent,-a girl speaking just so at a well (Gen. xxiv. 14, I8, I9), and a man
hanging just then upon a cross, a sparrow not falling to
the ground without my Father, then Darwinism is really
less fixed than the Almighty; for Darwinism could be
interrupted by miracle, but the Almighty never. It is
a fancy, that prayer must have extemporized results;
for the sequences of Ethics are just as fixed as the laws
of matter.
II. Going over to the other kind of Revelation, I
find myself infinitely more exposed.
Theism I can hardly imag-ine to be overturned; but
a Deluge, or a birth from a first pair, or a Tower of
Babel, or a resurrection of the body, I find much more
liable to be overturned.  I do not pretend that the
Bible is not a book of Science. I know that it is.
When it says, " In the beginning God created," it is
as distinct a scientism as Boscovitch's atoms. It is
misery to make such a defence. Nor would we hold
with those who make the Bible to be merely popular.
We should insist that it is precise. When it declares,
that God "has made of one blood all nations," I claim
that. And I make it literal. That is, the story of
Adam and Eve is with me as special as Darwin's protoplasm. If I were a hot polemic, I would prefer that.
For, believing as I do in a Scriptural triumph, I would
make it as great as it can be; and not be found, when




CHAP. XII.]   Evolution and Revelation.      393
Science begins to be confused, with half my battlements
thrown down, and half my Scriptures gratuitously forsaken.
The Bible is either all or nothing.
Now that it is all, I satisfy myself in two particulars.
I. First, the t/zeoretical.
Do you not notice that Darwin admits the greatest
miracle?
THIS IS OUR ONE CORRECTIVE.
Jesus rising from the. dead is a light achievement
beside the original nebula.
This I firmly insist on.
Evolution may be conceived unending. Grant it.
And let us have no varyings. Darwin speaks of more
beginnings. Let us have one. And let us make the
miracle the extremest possible. Let us suppose one
mist, never again interfered with, to be the cause of all
causes, and to be so endowed, from the first moment
of its time.
Now I say, The man ready for that, is ready for
Scripture. The man of protoplasm is the very man for
Adam and Eve. I grant, the Garden is not the dictate
of Science: I mean physical science; neither indeed
could it be. Darwin himself admits all that. It is
built onl faith. But faith with us is itself a science.
Give us Ethics, and its mates, and we are fenced with
a higher science; and we return to Darwin, and say,
We have miracle by your own confession; and now
we claim all sorts of miracles. WVe are open to all the
miracles in the Bible; only we admit that they violate
nature: and that is precisely what you admit. We
stand on the very definition of a miracle; and the
Garden of Eden, and the Noachic Deluge, and the
Plain of Shinar, and the Crossing of the Sea, and the
17*




394                   T/zeoZogy.             [BOOK V.
Incarnation of Christ, and the Resurrection of the
Body, are lesser miracles than your original protoplasm.
2. But, says Darwin, there are historic difficulties;
and here I admit is the critical field. Miracle in gesnere
cuts its own way; but miracle in particular must agree
with history. Miracle, as such, is like the burglar's
jimmy: it may break the stoutest locks; but miracle,
in particular, may break some little thread which with
its tell-tale seal makes the burglar turn pale.
Now this we most plenarily confess. It is a contempt of this, that has worked such mischief in religion.
There are foot-prints on the dust of ages, that are
more formidable facts than the most deep-rooted of
the laws of nature. And let me say, distinctly; religion is on trial before these. It does harm to deny it.
It is mnean to deny it; because we have reaped the
most splendid results by its history. And this I mean
by historic proof. It has been the noblest of our outward evidences. And now, when Christianity has fought
this battle, and for years and years and years gone in
and come out victorious, I want her to go in again.
To shirk, and say her books are parables, and wish her
out of the broil, is all wicked. Science has been her
finest ally. To be afraid of it, is to deny the Deity.
And the foot-prints on the past must still come to give
triumph to her among the concerns of man.
But now, after this prologue, to come to facts. The
rocks have a certain chronology. That I confess. The
world might be created six thousand years ago, and
Darwin could not challenge it on the score of miracle.
But then these rocks!
Now I admit all this.  The world is older than six
thousand years; and the argument that God might
create all as it is, is not a likely one, and all empiricism




CHAP. XII.]    Evolution and Revelation.      395
is by likeness. I admit that worn teeth and dead ages,
without particularizing the proofs, have been read correctly by the geologists of the planet. But so much
the fairer the Christian venture. It has left all to the
proofs. It has confessed itself perpetually at stake.
It has been presented by the grand juries of a thousand years,-and yet it has not been cast. Speeches
are now making which seem ominous of results; and
yet History, which is the just appeal, has carried her
as winning in the past, and with a bundle of Reports
that say for her more than she at first imagined.
I will never stand against well settled Science.
But now look at one case. Darwin says, that man
bears the marks of being developed. He must concede
to miracle; but the miraculously created man he objects to, as telling another story. The miraculously
created rock he objects to, and I share in his difficulty.
The miraculously created man, then, he asks,-Why
read his record in a different way?
Now, let us be careful: for just here we bring in
what has perhaps never before been considered.
Suppose we were at Babel. The Bible asserts a
miracle. Some men give it up as they do Eden.
Suppose we enforce it. Suppose there were a birth
of languages. What sort would they be?  Undoubtedly a created sort. Suppose there were a division of
peoples. How far would that go? Darwin would leave
room for any miracle. But suppose he fitted-on his new
argument. Suppose he talked of the foot-prints of the
past. Suppose he looked at the Coptic, and said, This
is a developed tongue. This points backward. Here
are the very sibilants that must have sprung from a
savage use. Here is the Azum and the hiss and the
twist and the skatter, and the seeds of speech, that




396                 Tizeology.          [BooK. V.
show that it grew up from brutal utterances. Suppose
he were to measure, and say, the Coptic was growing a
million of years: would that be fair treatment? If
God inspired languages, would they not be likely to be
developed?  And, intended for development while
they last, might they not be started with a base of it
in their first creation?
Now, travel with the question into Eden. Suppose
God created trees on the fifth day, would you expect
them to be developed trees? Must they be fibreless
and ringless and bear no look of the past? Must
Adam have no umbilicus, and would it be dishonest in
God to give him any look of the past? If God divided
the nations, might He not blacken the Copt? and give
him the look of a separate species? Do you know
much about it? If you honestly thought that it would
hardly do that they should look developed, do you certainly know? And if Adam was created at a stroke,
and with ample arrangements that he might develop a
race, do you know how much he might look developed,
and how much analogy with brutes might serve as a
foundation for his history in the future?
Miracle is a great corrective. Where miracle can be
posited, Science has to stand bowed. Miracle must not
be wild. It must not hold up a fossil, and say, This
tooth never chewed. It must not hammer a chalk
cliff, and say, This cliff sprang at a word. It must respect its record as of the past. But to say of a single
loaf, Christ did not create this, and to laugh at the pretence that He did, because forsooth here are the very
bubbles of the yeast, is to trifle with the scope of miracle. WVihat mortal can tell that the negro may not be
a species from Babel? that language may not have
looked derived? that Adam may not have been created




CHAP. XIII.]    Evolzition and Ontology.     397
at a stroke? and nevertheless be a base for our descent
best if he appeared developed?
CHAPTER XIII.
EVOLUTION UNDER THE LIGHT OF ONTOLOGY.
EVOLUTION, escaping almost all cavil while it
lives under the test of Revelation, comes into hard
times at once when it comes among other Ontologies.
Here is its real difficulty.
How could God create protoplasm?  I, for one,
utterly scout it. I believe in Omnipotence; but Omnipotence has its limits; and here is one of them.
Protoplasm would be God. To create a thing that
could do all things, so that God might adjourn and go
out of being, would be to create God; and this is the
form in which the wheel turns round. Darwin admits
creation; but others do not; and presently some wiser
scheme moves round in the ring, and develops protoplasm into the Almighty.
Hence are to be distinguished other systems.
2. A second (Darwinism being the first) requires
concursus. This scheme can be described by simply
adding to the former the idea of God's continual support. We may maintain protoplasm. All the ideas
of steady invincible Evolution: the development
scheme: the survival of the fittest: all the effects in
" selection " and the improvement of the species,-are
just the same under this as under the other. In appearance the schemes are similar. This only supplies
the fact that God flows into and upholds. Otherwise
all is the same. Darwinism, in its detail, is similarly
possible. And theism can have the same respect;
that is, it can claim its miracles. It can open the




398                  TzleoZogy.             [BOOK V.
Bible, and claim any event upon the list, and make it
the interruption of second cause, and the violation of
physical law, precisely under this scheme as under the
other. The only gain is, a higher probableness. For,
protoplasm left to itself, and protoplasm sustained
forever, will look exactly the same; the only difference
being, a lesser miracle.
3. The poorest hypothesis of all is that which we
shall mention as the third scheme. It is an itching to
make prayer reasonable. It, therefore, posits a third
interference.  It not only imagines support; it not
only declares for miracle; but it supposes a third thing,
viz. an intermeddling of the Almighty by any random
motive of His will. Its argument is, A physician can
interfere: is God less free than a physician? Its reasoning is, A daughter is dying of disease. A physician
can intervene: cannot the  Almighty?  There are
imagined, therefore, three modes for the result, the
Almighty's steady law, the Almighty's intervening
care, and Almighty miracle. The three make up the
system. Prayer, therefore, is like prayer to a friend.
He can come in on the spot. Recently, there has
been a great deal like this. But then how mad! A
physician can come in. But why?  Because he is in
the chain of natural law. He is himself a part of the
creation. To illustrate the system by a stone;-that
it seeks the earth by law, but that a boy can interfere
by will, is to forget that the boy is under the sweep
of law. Of two things one. Either there is natural
law, or there is not. If there is not, cut off the first
part of the theory. If there is, cut off the third. For
nature and miracle is all that can be conceived in an
ontological system.
There may be covert miracle. A man starves, and




CHAP. XIII.]    Evolution and Ontology.       399
prays for bread, and crosses the hill, and a loaf lies
upon the highway, and God may have created it.
We do not know how frequent such things may be. I
wish to say distinctly that the world may be full of
them. But this only means that I do not understand
the Almighty's administration. But this I know, God
cannot be natural and unnatural. He cannot work by
law and not. He cannot net-work the universe with
rule, and lay down in the same measures a random
system. IHe can break up the law by miracle. But
this exhausts the possibility. Miracle can be covert,
of course. But miracle of some sort is all that can
alternate with a rule of nature.
4. A fourth system lays down the same chance for
Evolution, and goes by the same rule of law, and brings
in the same scope for miracle, but turns its back entirely upon an original protoplasm. It denies a nebula
as anything but the power of God. Soit follows with
the universe. It pronounces atoms to be nothing:
and deals with a dynamistic structure. And when
simply challenged for its proof, it turns the tables. It
makes its war simply on the ground of no proof,-that
is, the law of parcimony. It challenges the five senses.
It says, They see everything. In the not-self, at least,
they tell all that is going on. Now it says, Notoriously you are conversant with power. Sense brings
you that; and sense, it can be notoriously demonstrated, brings you nothing otherwise. Why do you
assert a brutish atom? And so a system is built up
that begins with no protoplasm, and goes on through
the ages of eternity as a simple potence.
And yet it has the same appearances.
It may believe in Evolution, like any other theory.
It accepts settled laws; and counts them the effect




400                 Th eology.            [BOOK V.
of one efficiency as making room symmetrically for
the advent of another.
It pleads cause. Cause, dynamistically considered,
is not simply the Great Cause, but differently, and in a
secondary sense, power basing one exertion upon another. And, therefore, all theories,-of Christianity,
for example, in everything that it may reveal; of miracle, breaking one thread, and substituting another; of
prophecy, involving a decree; of Providence, shaping
everything to a single scheme; and of Evolution itself
in all its Darwinian extreme, —are just as possible
dynamistically as with some other molecule.
5. Now change this theory a little, and we will
adopt it personally. It arrogates too much. The
atomic phantasy arrogates too much in positing the
atom; but dynamism goes to the opposite extreme.
Let it say, We knowz nothing but power. There
we will agree with it. Let it say, All positing of substance is a thing of fraud. That we hold. Let it explain, We mean substance in its more brutish sense.
And then, settling its robes in this discreet attitude,
which is simply of negation, let it say, NEVERTHELESS
THERE MUST BE MORE THAN POWER; and we are
with it at a bound.
Our objection to the brute atom is, that it pretends
something; that it posits something visible; that it
gives it an intelligent name, and works upon it as
though it were a thing discerned. Whereas our last
land in the voyage was, our idea of power. That is a
shadowy mist; and to see anything further is a sheer
deceiving. I only say, that, by a train of analogy, I
am not at the end of my line. Analogy shakes her
wand, and says, There is more yonder. She frowns if I
say, I see it. She laughs, if I impute it to Intuitive




CHAP. XIII.]    Evoluztio07  and Ontology.      40I
Belief. And she explains all, if I go back over the
line of what is like, and see how she has pushed me
along, and how, at the end of the light, she points out
into the dark, and asserts the INVISIBLE.
WVe are dynamists, therefore, in a mere negative
sense; appealing to parcimony; ridiculing the man
who posits atoms; believing that efficiency is dark
enough, but that a brizttuzz  tertizlumz is utterly unknown;
referring everything to the power of God; believing
Evolution to exist, except upset by miracle; upholding prayer as involved in the original decree; believing
that it is necessary, even though all travel on unchanged; believing that all does travel on unchanged,
but only because the supplication was supplied; believing that we are answered in one case in ten million by miracle; and believing that we are answered
then in a way differing nothing in its liberty, because
the miracle itself is imbedded in a scheme that is unchanged.
See, therefore, how Ontological schemes lie in shadow, and how Ontological difficulties chiefly occur from
Ontological cause. Ethical schemes can look blandly
upon all of them; nay, Ethical law supplies their best
light. A cause for all creation is best found in Ethics.
And while Theology without Ethics would be a gloomy
mass, with Ethics it escapes out of the Unknowable of
Spencer, and posits a personal Jehovah. The universe
becomes the best possible. A motive for it emerges
at a stroke. The law of it supervenes perfectly.  It
assumes to itself but a single thread. And while unethically it would be a chaos of chance, Metaphysics,
which is thought so dim, proves clearer than Physics,
and is the part of Ontological schemes that survives the
shock, when sense-calculations meet with overthrow.




402                    Theology.                [BooK V.
Blessed be the influence, therefore, that stole conzscience out of the vocabulary. Conscience meant consciousness. All through the Latin years, and early in
our English history, conscience had no other meaning.
It kept on that way all through the time of King James
(see Ec. x. 20 mzcarog. Heb. x. 2). But virtue was so
much its most precious consciousness, that virtue stole
all the name. And it is a fine lesson for our age, that,
as men refined, thev saw little wealth in consciousness
but virtue, and ejected out of the original word all
other forms of introspective vision.
THE END.
PRIINTED BY LANGE, LITTLE & CO., NEW YORK.




-BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
FETICH IN TH EOLOGY.,l gMtbelj of 7r. 5fg-e'_p d stemntic  tleologg.
12rr.o. $1.73.
For Opinions expressed by Prominent Professors
see following pages.








LETTERS INTRODUCTORY
TO A
SECOND EDITION.
NEW YORK, Feb. I5, I875.
REV. AND DEAR SIR,
In preparing a new edition of "Feich zin Theology," a
book that has provoked much comment both adverse
and favorable, we are desirous of having the opinion, as
to its essential views, of Professors in Theology of the
same school of belief as that to which the author belongs.
We desire to publish such opinions as an Introduction to
the work itself.  It is, perhaps, not aside from the ancient duty of the Professor to be a referee in matters of
belief; and as you hold the Divinity chair in the most
largely attended Seminary of your branch of the Presbyterian communion, we will be especially obliged if you
will unite with others, also Calvinists, in sending us a
proper judgment upon the points which this work involves.           Yours very truly,
DODD & MEAD.
To the REV. R. L. DABNEY, D.D.




ii              Letters Introdzctory
UNION THEO. SEMINARY, * VA.,
Feb. 25, I875.
To Messrs: DODD & M[EAD,
Publishers, etc., New York.
DEAR SIRs,-You ask my candid opinion of the work
of the Rev. John Miller, " Fetich in Theology, or, Doctrinalism Twin to Ritualism," published by you. If you
are willing to accept an answer prompted by perfect sincerity and independence, I will reply that I had read this
criticism  on Dr. Chas. Hodge's Systematic Theology
before you called my attention to it, with great interest
and profit.  MIr. Miller has, in my opinion, shown in it
high ability, full scholarship, and fine acumen.   His
friends have, I think, cause to regret its title, on the
ground that the supporters of Dr. Hodge will regard it
as too biting, and even disrespectful to him; although
all who know -Mr. Miller are aware that he is incapable
of either bitterness or discourtesy.  His style is in several
places so highly tropical, and in others so compressed, that
I fear those passages will prove, to many hasty or imperfectly taught readers, not wholly intelligible.  The professional student finds an astonishing amount -of acute,
just, and profound matter condensed in these brief chapters. There are also points of exception taken which explanations on the part of Dr. Hodge's advocates will probably remove. Yet others of Mr. Miller's exceptions I regard
as well taken; and his criticism is timely and valuable.
The Gospel system set forth in the Scriptures is obnoxious
to the deepest prejudices of the natural heart.  It has
always been the object of violent or subtile perversions.
* Southern Presbyterian Church.




to a Second Edition.                iii
Hence, it is a subject of profound regret, when one whom
so many regard as an authorized and able expounder as
Dr. Hodge, so misrepresents the belief of the friends of
the Gospel, as to exasperate unnecessarily any of the
angles of God's truth, to provoke needless opposition, or
to obscure the glory of its divine Author in any degree.
When such mistakes are made by a hand so influential,
protest is usually found as difficult as it is necessary.
Hence, I highly honor the moral courage of Mr. M[iller
in this criticism.  He could not but foresee, knowing the
degree in which the writer criticised is "'the fashion"
among Presbyterians, and being aware of the spirit of
subserviency,'the moral cowardice, and the impatience of
independent thought which characterize his day, that the
professed friends of the truth, whose battle he is really
fighting, would leave him to wage it single-handed, or
even oppose him.  So it was plain that he would receive
public applause from those dissenters from the truth
whom both he and Dr. Hodge have been all their lives
opposing: as the event has verified.  This applause is to
Mr. Miller an inconvenience; because it affects to claim
him as making common cause for error.  It is true that
the approbation coming from the advocates of the socalled "Liberal" theology, is a preposterous blunder;
that M[r. Miller has nothing in common with these mennot even opposition to Dr. Hodge; for while they would
injure him because they regard him as a formidable enemy
to their erroneous system, Mr. iMiller only seeks to correct him, in order to make him a more formidable enemy
to it; that the system  which Mr. MIiller upholds is in
more utter-because more intelligent, consistent, and
scriptural-opposition to theirs. But none the less is this
applause an inconvenience to the friends of the truth.




iv             Letters Introductory
In the Soutlhern Presbyteriazn Review, of April, I873, I
published a review of some parts of Dr. Hodge's work.
I may indicate my own estimate of it by some quotations
from this review (see pp. I68, I70).
"Among the other characteristics of this treatise, which
present themselves to a cursive examination, may be
noted the following:
I. " Dr. Hodge asserts that our knowledge of God is'intuitive,' and then argues for the proposzition that there
is a God! This argument, ignoring the usual theistic
method in a manner rather marked, relies chiefly upon
the ethical phenomena of the soul."
2. "Those who have had the privilege of Dr. Hodge's
conversation, are aware that the denunciation of the
claims of philosophy to be a true science has been rather a
favorite topic with him; and this opinion is not obscurely
indicated in his Theology. Yet we know of no standard
Reformed treatise which makes so much use of philosophy, or contains so large a proportion of philosophical
speculation. "
3. "The author, under many heads of divinity, displays the multifarious forms of error with more fullness
than his own views of what is true."
4. " If we might judge by the author's citations in
what direction his theological reading chiefly lay, we
should conclude that German heresy, in its different
forms, had received more of his attention than any other
department, orthodox or heterodox.  Next would come
the works of the Continental Protestants-Lutheran and
Reformed. The teachers and leaders of Scotch and Scotch
Irish Presbyterianism are very scantily noticed; and, so
far as we now remember, there is not a single reference to
the theology of the Anglican Church, or its great masters,




to a Second Edition.                  v
to intimate that the author had ever heard of them.  So,
American theology appears chiefly in the names of its
heresiarchs, and for purposes of refutation."
" This extract...... gives us also a very characteristic
specimen of Dr. Hodge's method as a debater. Under
an appearance of simple, Saxon straightforwardness, he
most adroitly modifies, and by modifying, disparages, the
view he intends to assault: and he gains credit for his
own, by associating it with unquestioned truth, and
claiming for it, with a quiet dogmatism, the universal
adhesion of the orthodox learned."
You will see from the above, that while Dr. Hodge's
great learning and force are admitted, no very great value
is placed by me upon his huge work. I should, like
Mr. Miller, protest against the adoption of it as the representative, for our day, of the Westminster theology.
The unfitness of the work for this purpose arises from the
dogmatism of Dr. Hodge's temper, often deceiving himself, and often his readers. With an appearance of simple directness, and clear logical method, he is often inaccurate and confused; while the illations, seemingly so
close, are in fact disjointed.  My chief objection to being
held responsible for this work as a showing for our Presbyterian theology, is that species of one-sided hardness
which Dr. Hodge's logical ultraism  gives it.  Many of
Mr. Miller's points are, I think, well taken against this
tendency.  In reply to most of them, it is true, Dr.
Hodge's friends will probably be able to point to statements in other parts of the work, correcting or softening
these erroneous colorings.  We are glad to allow all the
weight to these modifying statements t6 which they are
entitled, and to acquit the work of all fatal intentional
error.  But the general impression remains, that this




vi                Letters Introductory
presentation of doctrine gives us, not the God of the Law
and Gospel to worship, the Being of consummate moral
beauty, glory, and goodness; but a God of hard force
and bare sovereignty.*  For instance
Dr. Hodge begins by saying, that our belief in God is
"innate: " and then explains it by saying, it is "'intui* This practical estimate is singularly-because very artlessly
and independently-confirmed by a letter, which something akin
to chance has thrown within reach, just as these replies are coming
in for publication. It is from a niece of the most eminent Divinity professor that Virginia ever gave to the Northern Church. It
is to another lady, and without the most remote idea of any other
perusal:-" I have read' Fetich' —would you believe it?-not
only with pleasure but with eagerness! (I have not finished it
either, but that is because I am so busy.) I thought it.would be
rather heavy reading for one of my reach, and so left it long untouched on my book-case; but w-hen I fairly waded in, I sat up
late as one does over a novel. Perhaps it would not be such fascinating reading, except for the novelty and beauty and often
queerness of the language, that tolls you along through whatever is
too abstruse-for I don't love abstruseness.  When I opened the
book I said to myself, It don't matter one bit what Dr. Hodge and
Mr. Miller write and wrangle about the nature of God; it only
matters to love Him with all the heart, and mind, and soul, and
strength; but I find it does matter indeed, for I shall have to
thank'Fetich' all my life, for making it possible for me to love
a good, holy, beautiful God, without that hazy discomfort which
has from my very childhood hindered my worship. I don't know
where I got that unworthy idea of God; but after reading the first
part of this book, and re and re-reading it, I found my eyes wet
with tears of glad emotion. Lo! 1his was my God, whom I had
known through such a hindering, distorting haze, and now saw
for the first time in such loveliness and beauty that I needed no
spur to worship Him.  I do thank Mr. MAiller from my heart, and
only wonder that everybody had not told me before what he has
done for Presbyterianism.  I shall attack Mamma in my next
letter that she did not urge me to read it sooner."




to a Seconzd Edition.              v.i
tive."  Now, in the sense of the philosopher: it would
not be innate if it were intuitive; for our real intuitions
are not innate; but only the principles or laws of reason
which give them to us afterwards are innate.  And, second: our belief in God is not intuitive; it is a near, a
clear, a just condlsz'on from all our rational and moral intuitions.  It is thus a truth which every right mind infallibly gets, upon coming to think.
In stating the great and priceless argument from our
intuitions of conscience, Dr. Hodge seems to teach that
our judgment of moral obligation only recognizes God
as suprevze.  But does might make right, in God's case,
any more than in a man's? \My reason tells me, that I
am immediately and infinitely bound to obey God, because His is a holy supremacy; because the will which
controls me is infinitely excellent.
Is an act right solely because God requires it: or has
He required it because it is right? The Bible teaches me
the latter, with the Westminster Assembly, and the great
Reformed divines, like Turrettin.  Dr. Hodge seems to
obscure this blessed truth, and to argue as though there
were a hankering for the opposite answer, which resolves
obligation into God's power, instead of His righteousness.
We go with Dr. Hodge in condemning Optimism,
where it says that the greatest beneficence to creatures is
God's ultimate end. But he seems to demand of us that
we shall say with him, that God's own glory is His ultimate end, in a sense so hard as to resolve God's whole
providence into a scheme of infinite selfishness.  When
we say: God's own infinite perfections of wisdom, love,
and holiness will surely prompt in Him a providence which
will prove beltistic in this sense: that it will, on the




viii            Letters Introductory
whole, doubtless secure in the most perfect way that
whole set of ends which God sees to be (We blind creatures can see but in part what they should be), as a whole,
most consistent with His holiness: it would seem that
this scarcely contents Dr. Hodge.
When we come to the awful mystery of God's dealings
with our race in its first father, Adam, Dr. Hodge is
scarcely content to claim  for God (what every reverent
mind gladly concedes) a width of discretion in applying
the immutable principles of justice agreeably to His transcendent wisdom, holiness, goodness, and sovereign proprietorship in us, as far above any application we creatures
are entitled to make of the same principles, as the heavens above the earth.  But he appears to crave to drive us
to the wall until we acknowledge that, because God is
supreme, He deals judicially with his creatures, upon no
principles of distributive justice at all! And should even
the reverent mind reply: " I see not how I could believe
that of this lovely, holy God, were I to try:" Dr. Hodges
would rejoin: God does that way: and so, you shall believe it or be damned, whether you can or not.  There
is, it appears to us, a sort of perverse and perilous zeal to
exasperate the difficulties of a difficult problem of divine
providence, into the hardest shape.
When we come to God's punitive justice-where other
Calvinists say, that God's holiness prompts Him to punish
-Dr. Hodge prefers the statement which represents God
as punishing for the sake of punishing, in the same immediate sense in which He blesses for the sake of blessing.
Here again, these solemn'dispensations of severity, where
purity, truth, and justice combine with goodness, to visit
the deserved penalty on the guilty, in Dr. Hodge's hands
freeze into the harshness of a power simply vindicatory.




to a Second Edition.                 ix
When we meet the objection: " If the sinner is unable
to repent, to love, to believe, how  can it be just to require these of him? " the great Reformed divines taught
us, with the Saviour, to answer: It is just, because his
ungodly disposition is his inability.  But Dr. Hodge requires us to say; No: his inability is something more
than that.  But if this inability is rooted somewhere else
than in the spontaneity, and requires for its removal
something else than renewal of heart, can we punish the
sinner for his helplessness, without harshness? Dr.
Hodge seems to insist on that harshness.
When we inquire into the tie between saving faith and
repentance, the Scriptures answer that they are twin
graces, both the offspring of regeneration, entering the
soul to bless it simultaneously, and co-operating instrumentally, the one to purge, and the other to justify.  We
had believed that both graces touched the head and the
heart: so that while repentance was inspired by a knozoledge of God in Christ, faith led the man to believe
with  the  hear/ unto  salvation.   This  Gospel-philosophy Dr. Hodge reverses, making an intellectual faith
somehow result in a heart-repentance as its consequent.
Thus again, the very bond which instrumentally unites
the sinner to his Saviour, is hardened into a logical
process.
It is not surprising that Dr. Hodge, after outraging the
necessary intuitions of the soul, should suppose himself
constrained to depict that rationalism which is the antithesis of humble faith, as an over use of the reason.
The Westminster theology had taught us to regard it as
the abuse of the reason.  Is it not unfortunate, that Dr.
Hodge should seem  to give the intelligent adversary of
the Gospel this pretext for saying: "The price, at which




x              Letters Introductory
I am invited to adopt the Bible theology, is the abnegation of my essential manhood"?
In the former half of my Review, to which I have referred, I have already made the attempt to subject Dr.
Hodge's theory as to the nature of inability, regeneration,
repentance, and faith, to a radical examination. I think
I have there shown, that his peculiar teachings on those
points are not those of the Bible, nor of the great Reformed divines, nor of sound philosophy; and that,
with all their hardness of aspect, they are yet, in fact,
short of the real truth touching the sinner's ruin and recovery.
Very respectfully, etc.,
ROBERT L. DABNEY.
II.
REPLY (TO A LIKE COMMUNICATION) OF REV. JOSEPH T.
COOPER, D. D., PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN
THE SEMINARY OF THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
ALLEGHANY, March 23, I875.
AMessrs. DODD & MEAD.
DEAR SIRS, -I read some time ago " Fehi/ ziz ThZeology,
in relation to the merits of which you ask an expression
of my judgment. The style is very peculiar, and, in
some of the sentences, there is a lack of perspicuity.
It is, however, vigorous, terse, and well freighted with
thought/. With some of the positions of the author I cordially concur.
It would be an act of injustice to Dr. Hodge, whom I
have been accustomed to venerate as an able defender of




to a Second Edition.                xi
the faith, to give an opinion, in relation to the question
whether he has been fairly represented by Mr. Miller.
Before doing this I should feel bound to give the matter
a more thorough examination than my engagements at
present will permit.
I, however, cordially approve of the republication of
the work; for it will lead to a more thorough examination of the Calvinistic system to which Mr. Miller professes an adherence.  His object evidently is to present
some of its features in an aspect less stern, and more in
accord with our moral intuitions.  If this can be done
without compromising the truth, all its friends, and, I am
well persuaded, none more so than Dr. Hodge, will
greatly rejoice. At all events, the discussions contained
in this book cannot fail to quicken the intellect, and, it
is hoped, lead to a more discriminating view of the abstruse but important topics on which it treats.
Should a different title for the work be selected it would
be more agreeable to my taste.
Yours respectfully,
J. T. COOPER.
III.
REPLY OF REV. A. B. VAN ZANDT, D. D.. PROFESSOR OF
SYSTEMIATICTHEOLOGY IN THE SEM3INARY OF THE (DUTCH)
REFOkMIED CHURCH.
NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J. April 2, I875.
Messrs. DODD & MIEAD.
GENTS,- In reply to your note requesting an expression of opinion in regard to the essential views set forth
in "Fetihh li  Theology" I can give you only my general




xii             Letters Introdulctory
impressions. And I give you these as bearing' upon the
purpose which you have intimated of issuing a new
edition of the work.
The significance of this book is almost certain to be
misunderstood.  It is the author's misfortune, that his
work is more likely to receive the applause of those with
whose views he has no affinities, than of those with whom
he is substantially in accord.  The so-called "Liberal
School " will probably claim a larger interest in it than
can possibly be made good from its pages.  Whilst, on
the other hand, the Orthodox may feel scandalized by
this very claim, and utterly misjudge its spirit and intent.
Moreover, the fact that the discussions of the author
turn chiefly upon the positions taken, or supposed to be
taken, by Dr. Hodge, may even cause the book to be regarded as an unfriendly attack upon that distinguished
and venerated man, or upon that system of theology of
which he is so prominent a representative.
But these are accidents, which do not affect the importance of the questions discussed, and ought not to
prejudice the author's discussion of them.  The book,
whatever may be its faults, is evidently the product of an
earnest, independent mind.  It is the outcome of bold
and vigorous thought, which has been occupied long with
the questions upon which it treats.  Its logic is sometimes compressed to the verge of obscurity, and there are
some expressions which startle us, as being on the verge
of irreverence.  But a careful reader will be convinced
that its reasonings are too cogent to be easily brushed
aside, and that its aim and intent is the conservation of
truth, in order to holiness.
Without indicating any points of agreement or differ



to a Second Edition.             xiii
ence with the author, I have no hesitation in saying that,
as a contribution to the theological literature of the day,
his book deserves the thoughtful perusal of all who care
to examine the great questions upon which it treats, and
the bearing of the different modes of their treatment
upon the great controversies of the age.
There is undoubtedly "a way ofpuiting " the old theology, which puts it at a great disadvantage.  The fear
of toning it down below the requirements of truth, may
easily lead to the mistake of formulating it into an aspect
of unnecessary harshness.  How far Mr. Miller has convicted the distinguished theologian whom he criticises,
of this mistake, or has himself shown a more excellent
way, is a question which I have not assumed to discuss.
But it is a question which may properly awaken a very
deep interest in the book which you propose to reissue.
Respectfully yours,
A. B. VAN ZANDT.