The

observation "that variety must be admitted to be an aim in nature") the following remarkable question: "I wish the Duke had explained what he here means by nature. Is it meant that the Creator of the universe ordained diversified results for His own satisfaction or for that of man? former seems to me as much wanting in due reverence as the latter in probability." To this it may be replied that, granting the validity of the deductions of our reason as to the First Cause, then God, as at once the Sustainer of the universe, concurs by His action in every natural phenomenon, and has an infinite complacency in each. But there is a due because rational order in such complacency; and since we see clearly that "goodness" is the highest of all qualities, an important consequence follows. Let us endeavour to bring home to ourselves the fact that the existence of a countless multitude of actions and interactions is revealed to us in every department of science. Let us consider the series of such in the physical, chemical, and biological sciences; in the rise and fall of states, and the manifestations of art in all its branches. Let us contemplate the physical possibilities of being in the vast fields of stellar space, receding from us on all sides into unfathomable abysses and for incalculable ages, and then try to realise the thought that the Divine complacency in all such phenomena is as nothing compared with that complacency with which He regards one single act of man's free-will directed in harmony with a moral perception, even though it be a mistaken one.

Conclusion.

If then the reasoning contained in this chapter is good and valid, the last and the highest lesson which nature (considered as a whole, i.e., as both rational and sentient) teaches us is that the Great First Cause has attributes of such a nature that the terms "power," "knowledge," "goodness," "purpose," and "will" are those least inadequate to convey to our minds a practical conception and belief concerning them. Of such a Cause the word "personality," in a similarly analogous sense, can not only be fitly used, but must be positively affirmed, since not to

affirm is in fact (1) to deny to the First Cause the necessary adequacy for producing the effects we see, and (2) to endeavour to degrade Him to an order of existence lower even than that of mere man, since whatever has knowledge and will has personality. In a word, we learn that we and all the beings we see around us have for our origin, our sustentation, and our end, one only being-GOD.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONSEQUENCES.

"The consequences which flow from the acceptance or rejection of the teaching here advocated are and must be most momentous both to individuals and the community. Those who reject it are logically driven into extreme and irrational negation. Its bearing upon conduct is direct, and must of necessity powerfully affect the future condition of society through popular education. Such consequences may rationally serve to reinforce conclusions before arrived at on other grounds."

HAVING learned from Nature the lesson just deducedthat as to her first and final causes, we may now, Various conin the last place, consider certain "consequences -consequences of several kinds.

"sequences,

speculative and practical.

First, we may consider the consequences resulting from our acceptance of the teaching of rational nature as to the intellect and will (resulting, as we have seen, in Theism), and in connexion therewith, our own immortality: secondly, the consequences of the rejection of that teaching (in the form of Atheism and Pantheism), noting the extremes to which logic drives those who thus reject it: thirdly and lastly, the necessary consequences of such rejection as regards conduct, i.e., the practical tendencies which thence arise.

quences of

before no

Glancing retrospectively over the consequences of the various controversies which have come under our Conseobservation about (I.) our own existence-the Ego; controversies (II.) about the Will, and (III.) lastly about God, ticed. we may see that the efforts which have been made to impugn these truths seem likely to have as their consequences the

strengthening and wider diffusion in a more developed form of those very beliefs which such efforts were designed to uproot. To make manifest the reinvigorating effect of these hostile efforts we must briefly traverse again some of the ground we have gone over.

As to the
Ego.

I. As regards the Ego, the persistence with which our knowledge of it has been denied, and the arguments by which such denial has been supported, serve to bring out the supreme importance of our recognition of our own self-consciousness and all that our knowledge of the Ego implies and contains. Each man who for the first time has his eyes opened to the marvellous nature of his present knowledge of his own past existence, will see in the necessarily postulated "veracity of memory" the evidence of his possession of real objective truth and of knowledge other than phenomenal. In recognising his own self-consciousness he must also recognise that his mind declares certain truths (e.g., that what thinks, exists) to be absolutely and universally true. He must, on introspection, further see that such truths are not passively apprehended by him, through his impotence to think the contrary, but are actively apprehended and seen to be truths positively necessary and universal, and in this way his mind will again be carried by its own force from subjectivity to objectivity. The validity of the declarations of his intellect, and consequently of its logical processes, being thus rendered unassailable except at the price of absolute intellectual paralysis, its declarations as to "causation" and "morality" gain at once a recognised validity. That phenomenal conditional changes, even if ranging in cycles through a past eternity, must require a real, absolute, eternal Cause, will, as we have seen in the last chapter, be apparent to him, while the absolute declarations of the intellect in the sphere of morality will necessarily lead to the attribution to that cause of "a goodness" harmonising with, however immeasurably exceeding, his own. In other words, the widespread propagation of the absurd denial of our own self-knowledge is an antecedent condition

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to a more thorough and complete appreciation of that selfknowledge and of all that is made known to us thereby, than any other cause (save such denial) could well be conceived as producing. The supreme importance of the Delphic inscription acquires a fresh significance. In knowing ourselves" we come to know, with a supreme degree of certainty, a whole sphere of objective truths which the intellect is seen to have the wonderful faculty of perceiving together with the very light by which those truths manifest themselves to it—namely, their objective, necessary, and universal truth.

The facts here referred to may be recapitulated and summed up, in other words, as follows:

The consideration of our own continued existence reveals to us objective truth and our possession of it.

Our self-consciousness also reveals to us that there are universal, objectively necessary truths (as e.g., " what thinks exists"), and that we can know them.

Similarly our intellect shows us the validity of our own reason and the objective validity of the syllogism which renders implicit truth explicit to us.

Hence we learn the validity of our inference as to the existence of a First Cause of the universe known to us, and of a possible indefinitely vast universe beyond our knowledge.

From this Cause, which our reason tells us must be greater and higher than we can conceive, we rationally infer "order." Therefore there must be a purpose in all that such Cause produces, since "order" and "purpose" exist in human actions and are recognised by the human intellect, which is one amongst the effects of such First Cause.

Such are the consequences which spring from the denial of and consequent controversy about our knowledge of our own continued existence.

As to the will.

II. With respect to "Will,” the passionate obstinacy with which the declarations of the common sense of mankind are contested and every fragment of free self-determining power denied, serves to bring out more