all a priori reasoning, and condemning us to the endless labor of examining into the external or material evidences, not merely of every pretended revelation, but also of every fancied discovery in the arts or sciences, no matter how puerile or absurd. Yet from such a conclusion Mr. Mansel cannot escape after having propounded the twin dicta: first, That no criticism is legitimate in the absence of a complete knowledge of the subject, per se, of its origin, its import, and its relations. And, secondly, that neither relative nor self-contradictions can authorize us, a priori, to reject any doctrine whatever. Nor are these incidental expressions; they are dogmas which he not only iterates and reiterates, but which he himself applies practically: first, by proving that all conceptions of God as absolute and infinite (forms, be it remembered, under which he testifies that we must necessarily conceive Deity if we conceive him at all) are mutually as well as self-contradictory; and secondly, by attempting to fasten upon us this bundle of contradictions as the only proper object of faith. But if we may, nay, must believe one pair of contradictions, by what warrant shall we reject any other?

Such a definition of criticism not only effectually destroys it as an agent of human progress, but supersedes the necessity for its use where it is possible. The very act of criticism involves the idea of an attempt to reach truth by progressive approach, and it may therefore be successfully applied by the unskilled to the works or theories of the adept. But on Mr. Mansel's hypothesis it were not merely presumptuous, it were absurd for one possessing anything less comprehensive than omniscient wisdom to attempt to criticise any book whatever, however crude its statements or absurd its conclusions; and to one possessing such wisdom criticism were puerile, and direct revelation alone appropriate.

But if our author's definition of criticism is self-destructive, is his dialectic application of it, in his attempt to determine the limits of religious thought, more fortunate? Here, contrary to what might rationally have been anticipated, he seeks to solve the problem by applying the powers of reason directly to the solution of the very questions of theology in reference to which he desires to ascertain their scope. This, of course, necessitated the adoption of some a priori standard of criticism, in conformity to which the results of each successive application might be determined. This touchstone Mr. Mansel finds in the principle of contradiction. Every conception or notion, therefore, which in its logical development ultimates in contradictions, is declared to be incogitable and inconceivable, to transcend the limits of thought, and to have place only in the shadowy realms of faith. Thus our notions of the absolute and

infinite, when rationally developed, are found to be mutually as well as self-contradictory, and hence must be classed, not with the positive conceptions of the real, but with mere negative notions that have no other significancy or guaranty than our mental impotence can give them. But if this dogma is valid at all, it must ultimate logically in the general axiom, That every idea which, either in itself, its origin, its relations, or its results, involves the incomprehensible or the contradictory is incognizable, and must therefore be excluded from the domain of legitimate thought. But on such an hypothesis it is obvious that the finite as well as the infinite must be transferred to the category of the unthinkable; that mathematics is as incogitable and self-contradictory as theology can possibly be. If such a conclusion is deemed inadmissible, no alternative remains but to retrace our steps, discard this initial hypothesis, and thus absolve ourselves from the fatal conclusions to which it inevitably leads. Any attempt, therefore, by its aid to draw a line of demarcation between the realms of thought and of faith, or to identify cognition or knowledge with conception, and to predicate faith exclusively of the incognizable and the inconceivable, is as futile as it is absurd. One of two conclusions were inevitable. Either faith itself must become a delusion, as the infidel asserts it to be, or its rationality must be assumed to be in direct proportion to the number and degree of the self-contradictions inhering in its object.

Lest we be suspected of caricaturing Mr. Mansel, we waive farther discussion of this topic and hasten to a formal examination of his second fundamental postulate, namely: "That all notions of the absolute, the infinite, of a first cause, etc., lie beyond the limits of legitimate thought." Space will not permit us to enter at length into the metaphysical discussion involved necessarily in any issue taken upon this point; in fact, such an issue were far more pertinent to a review of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy of the Conditioned than to the volume before us. Necessity, however, compels us to notice some of its more salient features, and to indicate what seems to us to be the source of its inherent fallacies. The theory itself is based essentially upon the formulas of logic, and possesses therefore a dialectical rather than a psychologic character. It begins by reducing all our notions to two categories, namely, the conditioned and the unconditioned, (or, popularly, the finite and the infinite;) the latter, in turn, it subdivides into the unconditionally unlimited or infinite, and the unconditionally limited or absolutenotions radically contradictory of each other. Of the three notions the first alone, that is, the conditionally limited, or finite, is a subject of consciousness; that is, is cognizable and conceivable, because

it alone can be known under the conditions of limitation, difference, and relation which are affirmed, a priori, to be the conditions of all consciousness whatever. To limit the infinite or absolute as such were to destroy them in the attempt to conceive them; hence they are not real positive conceptions, conformed to reality, but mere negations of the finite. But in virtue of the dialectical law, "that of two contradictories both cannot be true nor both false at the same time," we are logically necessitated to believe in the existence of the one or the other extreme. But we must not mistake this formal faith for a demonstration, real though negative, of the actual existence of either. They are nothing more than necessary correlates of human thought, the imaginary poles between which it oscillates without ever attaining to either. It is true that both Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel have assumed that these mutually contradictory notions represent a real though, to us, an incognizable and inconceivable existence, the unknown god of Athenian polytheism, the Jehovah of Christian monotheism; but this assumption is not only wholly unwarranted, but it is inconsistent with their own positive enunciations elsewhere made. Both agree that the absolute and infinite, when viewed apart, are found to be severally self-contradictory, just as they are mutually destructive when considered in relation to each other or to the finite. But here again our author shall speak for himself:

"The conceptions of the absolute and infinite, from whatever side we view it, appears encompassed with contradictions. There is a contradiction in supposing such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with others; and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as one, and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as personal, and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot without contradiction be represented as active, nor without equal contradiction be represented as inactive. It cannot be conceived as the sum of all existence, nor yet can it be conceived as part only of that sum."-P. 84.

Surely, amid such a mass of incurable contradictions, the thought must sometimes have occurred to the distinguished author of this system of philosophy, that there must be some concealed fallacy in the logical premises upon which his theories are based. It were useless for him to retort "that similar contradictions environ all rival systems;" for were the allegation admitted it would not relieve his difficulties, much less could it justify his utterly inconsequent attempt to postulate a necessary faith in these self-contradictory negations as a normal law of our intellectual being. It were far more rational to reject his definitions of the absolute and infinite as being purely imaginary, and thus, by abolishing the poles of his

paradoxical antithesis, absolve ourselves from the logical necessity of believing such a mass of absurdities.

Followed out to its legitimate conclusions, the system must ultimate in complete atheism, notwithstanding the fact that it claims and is reputed to be, pre-eminently, the Christian philosophy. For:

1. It limits the domain of valid thought strictly to the finite, affirming that we can neither cognize nor conceive anything that transcends the sphere of the relative, the limited, the determined.

2. It declares all notions of the infinite, the absolute, and of a first cause to be, not positive conceptions based upon the necessity of things per se, but mere negations of the finite, self-contradictory and mutually destructive, based on mental impotence.

3. Therefore it necessarily excludes all that is cogitable (or thinkable) from our representations of God, affirming him to be at once incognizable and inconceivable; or in other words, it declares him to be essentially an unknown God, to worship whom were not less idolatrous than absurd.

Permit us to illustrate. Either wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth, which both reason and revelation predicate of Deity as his essential attributes, are conceivable or they are inconceivable. If conceivable, they pertain to the finite, and cannot rationally be predicated of the infinite; if they are themselves inconceivable, they cannot be to us a revelation of anything, for the unknown cannot reveal the unknown. In a word, on the basis of the Hamiltonian philosophy, God, as absolute, infinite, or first cause, is essentially incognizable and inconceivable, and can be represented to us neither by the finite nor the infinite. The former cannot represent the latter by similarity, for it has and can have nothing in common with it; nor yet by contrariety, for the infinite, as absolute, excludes all contrariety. Hence God is to man as if he were not; rationally we can neither affirm his existence nor predicate of him any attribute whatever; nay, more, revelation itself becomes an impossibility and a dream. The same conclusion may be reached as directly by another route equally convincing, namely, either our negative conception of the absolute and infinite (or of God, if the reader prefer) are conformed to reality or they are not. If they are conformed to reality, then, pro tanto, we do cognize and conceive the absolute and infinite; if they are not conformed to reality, God escapes us wholly, and blank atheism is the hopeless result. It is utterly in vain, at this juncture, that Mr. Mansel tells us that atheism involves contradictions equally hopeless. Grant it, and what then? Either mutual and self-contradictions are or they are not a sufficient ground for the rejection of any notion or hypothesis whatever; if they are, all

such must go by the board together; if they are not, the law of contradiction and the excluded middle, upon which Sir William Hamilton bases his excision of such notions as incogitable, is valueless in psychology. Either alternative is fatal. For ourselves we choose an easier path, and demur outright against a theory which would force us upon the horns of such a dilemma. Will it be objected that we must accept some one of the systems offered, or propound a better? We reply that we acknowledge no such necessity, but prefer, if we must, to follow the example of the South Sea Islanders-burn our idols and wait patiently for a God.

But our readers may be curious to know how our author avoids these logical but self-destructive results of the premises which he has so confidently propounded. Here again he shall speak for

himself:

"On the one hand it must be allowed that it is not through reasoning that men obtain the first intimation of their relation to Deity, and that, haď they been left to the guidance of their intellectual faculties alone, it is possible that no such intimation might have taken place; or, at best, it would have been but as one guess out of many equally plausible and equally natural.* Those who lay exclusive stress on the proof of the existence of God from the marks of design in the world, or from the necessity of supposing a first cause of all phenomena, overlook the fact that man learns to pray before he learns to reason; that he feels within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being and the instinct of worship before he can argue from effects to causes, or estimate the traces of wisdom and benevolence scattered through the creation. . . . We may therefore, without hesitation, accede to the argument of the great critic of metaphysics when he tells us that the speculative reason is unable to prove the existence of a Supreme Being, but can only correct our conception of such a Being, supposing it already obtained."-Pp. 115, 116.

Again he says:

"Religious thought, if it is to exist at all, can only exist as representative of some fact of religious intuition, of some individual state of mind, in which is presented, as an immediate fact, that relation of man to God of which man by reflection may become distinctly and definitely conscious. Two such states may be specified as dividing between them the rude material out of which reflection builds up the edifice of religious consciousness. These are the feelings of dependence and the conviction of moral obligation."-P. 119.

The one gives us as a fundamental principle, the fear of God; the other carries with it the conviction of sin. But these, either separately or conjoined, as Mr. Mansel admits, can only give us the conception of a God finite like ourselves; logically, therefore, it can serve only as the basis for the conception of an anthropomorphic deity, adequate indeed to the wants of a refined Grecian polytheism, but not to those of a Christian monotheism; it may suffice to people a

• He should have said, equally contradictory and absurd.-REV.