it; or, as we may say, standing out of the body that we may look into the body so as to know the nature of it. We have been acting as if our spirit was an æolian harp thrilling to accordant tremors of the breath of life, apart from material touch,-learning of existence; and it is certain that by supposing a substance wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving subsist, we have as clear a notion of the substance of spirit, as we have of body.1 Now, if this be so, it is unwise to doubt as to the existence of spirit; seeing that, as philosophers, we can only know of other things by its means; and to doubt of that by which we know, and to believe in that which we should not know, were it not for the other, is in the highest degree unreasonable.

The case is not made better, as to Matter and Nature, by the assumption that vortex-motions have been from everlasting in the perfect fluid; for no mechanical theory can account for their existence. There is no help in the contrary assumption, that no perfect fluid exists: for, then, without continual restoration of energy, which no mechanical theory affords or sufficiently explains, the universe would long since have burnt out. We conclude, from the whole argument, that neither for primal origination, nor for successive restorations, does mechanical power yield the equivalent.

A similar process of investigation may be carried into the unwise assertion as to the physical intervention of the Deity in human affairs being to the scientific thinker, à priori, so improbable, that no amount of historic testimony suffices to make him entertain the hypothesis for an instant.2

3

The fact that all sciences, specially that which concerns the Dissipation of Energy, points to a beginning, to a state of things incapable of being derived by means of any existing laws from any conceivable previous arrangement, is proof of physical intervention; therefore, that which is unwarrantably declared " à priori improbable," becomes a matter of actual science; there have been physical interventions, or all our knowledge is at fault.

1 "Locke on the Understanding," Book 2, ch. xxiii. § 5.

2 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii. pp. 379, 380: John Fiske.

3 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 26: Prof. P. G. Tait.

Existence of the Unknown.

433

We take outside things, either as materials for the scaffold of our argument; or, using them as a sort of algebraic symbol, submit them to the necessary operations for ascertaining the unknown quantity-whether of Divinity or miracle; and thus proceed:

The agency of light is wave-movement, but the moving agent we know not; the mode of operation by chemical affinity is known, chemical affinity is not known; the laws of motion seem to be laws of heat, we do not know what is moving nor how it moves;1 but our conviction of the existence of the unknown is verified by experiment.

We can now advance somewhat further-Do we know all Nature's combinations? Certainly not; for many of its operations are wrought by means of a complexity so extreme as to be an almost insuperable obstacle to our investigations. It is impossible, therefore, for men to have any evidence which can be accounted sufficient to enable a scientific thinker to conclude that miracles are, à priori, improbable.

We will now try another mode of investigation.

Though human consciousness is brought into connection with material things only by means of nervous tremors—a neural process, it is easy notwithstanding to conceive of a succession of sentiments, of consciousness eternally prolonged; indeed, our recollections are not limited to the present-they embrace the past, and our expectations take hold of the future. There is organic union throughout: our thoughts are not separate beads, but as a necklace; and the string is organic union," so we continue to be ourselves. If we say—the Mind is a series of feelings; we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future. Then we are brought to the alternative of saying that the Mind is something different from any series of feelings; or that a mere series of feelings can be aware of itself, as a series, which is absurd.

Now in all this, as philosophers who have most carefully studied it decide, "there is no need of substance, except

1 "Natural Philosophy," vol. i. p. 311: Thomson and Tait.

as the support and bond of phenomena; "1 but the ego, our own mind, is the real existence. As we proceed in investigation, the lines become finer and finer, and are concerned with new unimaginable elements, though the process is "thinkable;" until we are conscious that, go far as we may, an untried universe lies beyond; a region of

"The measures and the forms Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,

Whose kingdom is where Time and Space are not."

We may conveniently turn the argument. Our consciousness of existence may be thought of as pages of algebraic figures which the scientific student reads off into the splendour and variety of light, with untold gradation of blended colours; or as notes written on the mental tablet, which a musician stirs into sweetest and complex harmony. Hence, arguing on scientific principles, we have an actual revelation, directly or indirectly, in signs and symbols to our thoughts, concerning things material and immaterial; and the laws of thought are laws of our organism. Scientific truths, like spiritual, have for ever been descending from Heaven to men. They are waves of the universal flow of existence. Concretes and their abstractions are as the convex and concave of things, the outer and inner meaning, as body and soul, as sides to the tablets of our mind, and the matter and meaning of the stony leaves of history. All modes and all grades of knowledge, at all times and in all places, are only differentiations; therefore our intelligent consciousness, our reasoned faith as to the unknown, our convictions and experiences as to fine lines of intelligence and emotion extending beyond the world's material surface, claim a place within the domain of human intellect. Not only is Revelation to be found in Holy Scripture, it is an essential part of our consciousness concerning the Almighty's operations; it binds everything that is natural into one splendid unity; it is the bond of continuity in all existence, and renders the mind of man, in its concentrated view and comprehension of Nature, a symbol of the complexity and mystery of the universe.

1 66 English Psychology," p. 119: Th. Ribot.

Further:

Disproof of Materialism.

435

It is demonstrably certain, if Materialism is true, that we cannot take a step physically or mentally, religiously or morally, but in the way and according to the thoughts of the millions who have gone before us. It is not given to any man, however endowed, to rise spontaneously or quickly into intellectual splendour, there is no break, no solution of continuity. At any and every given moment of our history knowledge has limits which it cannot pass, and every one of us is weak, standing alone.

As if to disprove this mechanical theory, an unknown law intervenes. The thought and work of other men converge in us; the long travail of past centuries-the patience, experience, emotion, thought of all former ages, make us what we are; and this rule or empire of the dead is a great and increasing empire; not a small and measurable thing, the interpretations are illimitable, a reservoir of experience for all the living. Hence, we fairly argue, the human mind is not a gloomy cave, or winding passage leading no whither, dimly lighted with mirage of baseless opinion; but, gathering rich stores from the past, carries forward the whole man towards fullest truth and greatest good.

Such a revelation, from ancient source, of unknown and forgotten things, disposes for ever of that huckstering traffic which would measure the exercise of thought, the flight of fancy, the brilliancy of creative genius, and sell it by weight over the counter of physical experiment. The psychical laws of it are real, true, but further reaching than the physical; their effects may be likened to those thrills of the earth seen and measured in magnetic mirror; so that to our mental centre there is a revelation of things that are not of our own creation, and an interpretation as if a Hand played with Divinely ordered variety on the chords of our emotion: emotion, which giving grand conception of mysteries and supreme events, makes the successive ages spectators, and the great souls of all periods contemporary. We may enlarge the fact.

Energy and brilliancy of thought not being of unvarying quantitative or qualitative stability in an individual, a race,

or a period, we are not surprised by appearances, when and where least expected, of great and sudden splendour. The progress not being uniform, but intermittent; gathering strength in the clearness consequent upon repose, or by mighty wrestling, some thinker of exceptional power thrusts aside barriers, and wins a wider circle in which thought entrenches itself, thence to go forth with new strength once more to conquer. This thrill and interchange of energy acts as by a spurt, or without any known parentage of antecedent thought. Enormous distance comes between the experience of Pythagoras and the scientific computations of Newton, between common minds and the genius of Shakspeare, between profane persons and men of piety. Throes arise out of the long travail of centuries, from the trouble and struggle of a million workers, and, by passionate exercise concentrating much light and power, turn common places of effort into miracle-scenes. This accounts for Moses, a slave, delivering a nation of slaves-rendering them free men; and giving laws which evermore preserved them, as a pure race and a peculiar people. This shows how holy Apostles, not having movement and tone from their age, received sparks of new worldenlightening thought from Jesus Christ; this was real inspiration.

Timid souls exclaim-" Let us leave one another alone; keep to your own province, do not enter ours; let there be peace between us." This will never do: the pact can be observed only so long as neither party is quite in earnest. By no treaty can the domain of truth be divided. No bargaining nor fencing off, nor any form of process, will maintain artificial barriers against inquiry, or bar the right of way blessed right, enforced by rightful power. The natural world and spiritual world, the intellectual and the emotional, cannot be separated in any such fashion. That fatal objection "It is not true," will cast down any system. Truth will not admit nor allow a lie. Every truth, whether physical or psychical, is connected with every other truth; and especially with Him who is the centre of all. Science, therefore, must be allowed, without suspicion or hindrance, to pursue her own proper work. The Church will certainly, despite all hindrance,

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