Greek Olympus, but not to reveal Him who dwelleth in immensity. This difficulty Mr. Mansel attempts to meet thus, namely:

Though our positive religious consciousness is of the finite only, there yet runs through the whole of that consciousness the accompanying conviction that the infinite does exist and must exist. . . . We cannot be conscious of the infinite, but we can be and are conscious of the limits of our own powers of thought; and therefore we know that the possibility or impossibility of conception is no test of the possibility or impossibility of existence. We know that unless we admit the existence of the infinite, the existence of the finite is inexplicable and self-contradictory; and yet we know that the conception of the infinite itself appears to involve contradictions no less inexplicable. In this impotence of reason we are compelled to take refuge in faith, and to believe that an infinite Being exists, though we know not how, and that he is the same Being who is made known in our consciousness as our sustainer and lawgiver."-P. 127.

But wherefore? Why take refuge in faith rather than in atheism? Why superadd to the necessary contradictions involved in the conception of the finite two new classes of contradictions, namely, "the no less inexplicable contradiction" inhering in the idea of the infinite, and the conjoined impossibility of conceiving the co-existence of the finite and the infinite? True, our author says, that unless we admit the existence of the infinite, the existence of the finite is inexplicable;" but it is not less so after such an admission, which is therefore at once irrational and futile.

Again, he says in the same paragraph, as already quoted: “We know that the possibility or impossibility of conception is no test of the possibility or impossibility of existence;" but may not the atheist retort with crushing power: "True, we cannot conceive the finite as self-existent, but we know that the possibility or impossibility of conception is no test of the possibility of existence;' therefore the finite may in reality be self-existent." Such a reply would, on the basis of the "Philosophy of the Conditioned," be entirely unanswerable. Nor should such a result be a matter of surprise when we reflect that for that philosophy there is no escape from the fatal circle of the hopelessly subjective. Practically, therefore, it ultimates in the same conclusions with the Positivism of M. Comte, although it starts seemingly from different premises and travels a diverse road. Both begin and end with the phenomenal, with this simple variation: that the one (Positivism) is based upon the fundamental postulate that to man the phenomenal alone is real, enunciated in M. Comte's celebrated "Law of Evolution," namely: "That the human mind by its nature employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different and even radically opposed, namely, the theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the scientific, or positive; each of

which excludes the other. The first is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding, and the third is its fixed and definite state; the second is merely a state of transition." The other, that is, the Philosophy of the Conditioned, begins with the correlate axiom, that the phenomenal alone is cognizable and conceivable. Both postulate the immediacy and reality of perception as a necessary truth, and both exclude the infinite and the absolute from the sphere of the cogitable or thinkable, and on almost identical grounds. But here, somewhat strangely, their paths diverge. M. Comte, consistently, we must think, exscinds and outlaws these negative notions as at once self-contradictory and mutually destructive; while Sir William Hamilton, ascribing to them identically the same character, challenges for them (so far as we can see) without reason a necessary faith. Paradoxical, therefore, as it may be deemed, we hazard the assertion that the French infidel could have based his rejection of theology more securely upon the foundation laid by his Scotch compeer than upon that which he has himself laid.

It is almost superfluous for us to add, that, if our preceding criticisms are just, Mr. Mansel's so called Regulative Truths are utterly worthless; that any consistent theory which denies to them a speculative value must go farther and discard them altogether, or, at best, retain them and ascribe to them no other office or potency than the astronomer ascribes to the imaginary lines by whose aid he maps out the starry heavens. Legitimately, Mr. Mansel may use them as the formal poles of thought; but the moment he attempts to postulate them as objects of faith, he is guilty of the grossest inconsistency.

There is yet one other aspect of this singular theory that deserves a more extended notice than it has yet received, inasmuch as it exhibits with peculiar force its inherent weakness. If we recur to its fundamental postulate, namely, "That the absolute and infinite as such are incognizable and inconceivable," and conjoin to it a declaration elsewhere made, namely, "That to conceive Deity as he is, we must conceive him as first cause, as absolute, and as infinite," we find ourselves planted on the horns of this singular dilemma: Given a being absolute and infinite, per se, it is required to reveal him, his existence and attributes, to a race of beings who are incapable of cognizing or conceiving anything but the finite, the relative, the determined. If God be revealed at all, he must be revealed as he is and not as he is not. But our author has iterated and reiterated that the finite cannot in whole or in part represent the infinite; while the latter as such cannot be cognized. It follows, therefore,

that a revelation of God to man is an utter impossibility, since he can neither be revealed by the finite nor the infinite, neither by unity nor diversity. It is but just to say, however, that he has endeavored to break the force of this objection; but how?

"It has been objected, (says he,) by reviewers of very opposite schools, that to deny to man a knowledge of the infinite is to make revelation itself impossible. The objection would be pertinent if I had ever maintained that revelation is or can be a direct manifestation of the infinite nature of God. But I have constantly asserted the very reverse. In revelation, as in natural religion, God is represented under finite conceptions adapted to finite minds.” -P. 22.

The obvious failure of this reply is conclusive proof that the objection is fatal. It is no sort of answer that he (Mr. M.) “never maintained that revelation is or can be a direct manifestation of the infinite nature of God;" for a revelation must be a manifestation (direct or indirect) of God as he is, that is, as infinite; but that which represents him under finite conceptions represents him as he is not, and demonstrably, therefore, is a false revelation. He, therefore, who worships a God thus represented worships that which has no existence, and is therefore an idolater, a conclusion from which there is no escape. Mr. Mansel then being witness, God has given us a revelation of himself which is demonstrably false; but which' he nevertheless requires us at the peril of our soul's salvation to believe not only to be true, but to be, par excellence, the truth. Instead, therefore, of having harmonized reason and faith by determining their several limits, our author has reduced them to a condition of irremediable hostility—a conclusion more self-contradictory and absurd than any to which a philosophy of the infinite could possibly lead us. We frankly confess that for ourselves personally, in preference to such a theory, we would embrace pantheism and sink the personality of Jehovah in the unconscious ocean of being, or join the atheist in the declaration that there is no God."

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We cannot, perhaps, better express the disappointment we have felt in tracing the development of our author's ingenious but erratic theory than by comparing it to that which I have sometimes imagined must have filled the breast of an old monotheistic Arabian patriarch if, attracted by rumors of the wondrous manifestations of the divine presence and power in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the desert, he had chanced to approach the foot of Sinai on the fatal morning when Aaron reared his golden idol, and hearing the herald's proclamation: "These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt," had hurried forward with eagerness, expecting to behold the Divine shekinah, and found only a

golden calf. There at least was a tangible image, upon which, if deftly wrought in polished gold, the eye might rest with pleasure as upon a beautiful work of art; albeit faith might, nay, must sink in utter death. But in the adytum of the sanctuary into which Mr. Mansel has invited us, we beheld not, as we had hoped, the symbols of a purer, higher, and more intelligent faith in the God of nature and revelation, but, on the contrary, were met with the chilling dogma, "That the revelations we do possess are not representations, true but inadequate, of the infinite Jehovah, but, on the contrary, mere illusions, representing nothing real, and serving no higher purpose than the nurse's fairy tale, with which she is wont to charm or terrify the wayward child.

It is with sincere regret that we thus characterize our impressions of a work that displays so much earnestness, ability, and devotion to the cause of Christ. But believing, as we do, that there is no source of danger to that cause more real than the ill-judged efforts of its enthusiastic friends, we could not reconcile it with a sense of duty to permit errors so dangerous to be disseminated as the teachings of a pre-eminently Christian philosophy without at least entering a protest against them. Christianity needs no such defense, and we have an abiding faith that she can live and triumph with or without the aid of metaphysics; and therefore she has everything to lose and nothing to gain by allying herself with any system, however plausible or popular, which silently but effectually undermines the fundamental conceptions upon which theology rests.

ART. II.-LIFE OF PLATO.

THE desire to know something of the person and habits of great men is not only an innocent curiosity, deserving to be gratified for its own sake, but it may be appropriated and turned to good account by the scientific spirit. The public life of a hero or statesman is better understood from an acquaintance with his private life and personal peculiarities. How these several particulars coalesce into unity is strikingly evinced in Napoleon and in Cicero. The influence and doctrine of a philosopher, likewise, may be the more thoroughly comprehended if we have command of the facts relating to his education, his manners, and his associations. Every fact pertaining to thing or person is part of the whole which we desire to understand, and has relations of antecedence and consequence, of

likeness and unlikeness to the remaining parts. As every manifestation of electric action, for example, leads to an understanding of the laws of electricity, and every new phenomenon is either referred to pre-established laws or directs us toward the discovery of new laws; so, in a man's life, every word and every act may either add confirmation to what we already know of him, or develop a new phase of character, a new habit and tendency. Now, while a close and careful study of life and character is what most men do not deserve at our hands, it is an imperative duty devolved on us by the Providence acting through those whom we call great men. What makes a man great is the fact that he generates, or in an eminent degree sustains and carries on the leading tendencies of human life in the age in which he lives. Since, therefore, we regard history as the manifestation of Divine Providence in our race, every great man becomes in our eyes an important minister of that presiding power, collecting in himself the momenta of the past, and foreshadowing the aims of the future.

Upon the intellectual life of our race no man has exerted a wider and more lasting influence than Plato, the Athenian. To this day he divides the empire of philosophy with his profoundest pupil, Aristotle, and there is no probability that future ages will dispute the place of either. The universe which man contemplates divides itself into an inner and an outer world—a material and a spiritual-a domain of thought and a realm of experience. Accordingly, all philosophizing, as it gives prominence to the inner or the outer, will take the type of idealism or sensualism, using these terms in a broad sense. Of these types the latter is represented by Aristotle, the former by Plato.

Had Plato been an ordinary mind he could not in his era have conceived the great problem of a philosophy of reason, much less have grasped it with such comprehension of its method and aim as to have propounded the questions, and marked out the way to their solution, which must occupy the speculative faculty of man to the remotest ages. Doubtless he was much indebted for the direction of his thoughts to his predecessors, and particularly to Socrates. But his superiority is discoverable in the fact that he was the only one of the followers of that divine man who had the speculative ability to seize the problems he proposed and develop his suggestions into a system.

The time has long since passed when inquiring minds could receive the dicta of either Plato or Aristotle as beyond appeal. The worship once paid them has forever ceased. To the many-sided thought of our age, both their results and their method are open to