purely without consideration of contingent things, an idea of an Infinite Being. For, has it not more clearly perceived what a wide door of possibility is left open on this supposition for our idea of an Infinite Being becoming a screaming contradiction or a patent impossibility?

More than ever, we believe, has theistic philosophy felt the need-Ritschl, Comte, and Littré notwithstanding—of a philosophia prima, a true Metaphysic, as, not less than in Kantian days, a defence (Schutzwehr) for religion against the speculation which," since Metaphysics of late without heirs (unbeert) to its fathers is gathered," denies God, freedom, and immortality. For such metaphysic, as recent times have seen, has been but a metaphysical abortion, consisting of a theory of evolution which is almost all-embracing, but evolves no possible communion with God. Such a Metaphysic as we in this time crave will ground its laws, not in any molecular movements of things physical, nor even in any mere volitions of the Will Divine, but in the Divine Nature or Essence.

An ethical metaphysic that ultimate metaphysic must be, as part of its endeavour to be a true metaphysic. For the Unconditioned Being with Whom we have to do is One wholly ethical in His nature. But in what has just been said we, for our part, have no wish to suggest any pursuance of metaphysics merely for the satisfaction of ethical needs, and apart from their sheer intellectual worth

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and discipline. There is not the slightest sign that theistic philosophy will allow such a metaphysic as we desiderate, with its vision and faculty for what we may here without misunderstanding call the Divine Noumenon, to be displaced by Positivism. We see, in fact, Comtean prophecy as to metaphysics in course of strange refutation of late. We see metaphysics, in face of the Ritschlian depreciation of its worth and function, in course of being justified of her children, and gaining in strength and solidity what it has lost in appearance and repute. We see the need of the science of metaphysics still more deeply felt, that it may determine for us, as Coleridge so well put the matter, what can and cannot be known of being and the laws of being a priori, -in other words, from those necessities of the mind, or laws of being, which, though first revealed to us by experience, must yet have pre-existed, in order to make experience itself possible. Chastened and critical, the metaphysic of the time is such that Paulsen has said "there is to-day probably not a metaphysician who believes that he has the key to unlock the mysteries of the world." But, for all that, it is well to remind ourselves that, when we think we have done with metaphysics, we arewhether we understand it or not-done with Deity. We need the light which their metaphysical treatment alone can shed on the basal problems of theology, just as truly as any perfect and thoroughgoing metaphysic needs theology-although in no servile

or unduly dependent way-as its touchstone and support. The rejecters of metaphysics will doubtless be found to mean the acceptance, as M. Fouillée has put it, of a metaphysical system which is their

own.

We are here still called to consider what significance the principle underlying the ontological argument, notwithstanding the imperfection in the logical form of its presentation, has had for recent philosophy of theism in its quest for truth as to the highest unity of thought and being. And, in the first place, we must remark that, while the ontological conclusion may be said to have been always more distinctly affirmed to land us in mere idealism -to bring us an ideal end, but one without any necessary validity in the realm of the real,—this affirmation has been very clearly shown to be made in mental oversight of the fact that the idea involved is, neither in itself nor even in its history, capable of being classed with the ideas born of individual fancy. That is to say, we feel bound to maintain that such a conception as the necessary idea of the Absolute has been more carefully differentiated— than by Gaunilo and Kant - from the incidental conception of something that is merely relative. Kant's criticism about the conception of a hundred dollars not implying a corresponding reality in his purse is pointless, when it is remembered that these do not represent necessary being at all, which is the case in point. Hence, as touching the fact that the

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corresponding existence of a thing is not guaranteed by its conception, it has been remarked that "the proposition is true except in the case of this one ontological thought of the totality of the thoughts that can be logically deduced from it." In the idealistic developments of post-Kantian philosophy, the Kantian "thing in itself" is seen to have been cashiered, and the ontological argument has become rehabilitated so far at least as an Absolute is concerned, if not a God of the religious consciousness-with thought's gradual recovery of confidence in itself. We are of them that hold Hegelianism to have touched the high-water mark of modern speculation, yet we cannot but say that the Hegelian effort to make the notion carry actual existence with it has been felt not only to fail of reaching more than a purely idealistic issue, but also to avoid, with ill success, the objection of losing finite and infinite in each other. The ontological mode of dispensing with the facts given in actual experience, in order that it may set out from the bare notions of the intellect, has been seen to be no proper start for any interpretation of the universe that could be deemed even speculatively warranted : its necessary entity, even if it could in this way be found, would, it is most surely believed, still stand at a vast remove from the Theistic God Who is the Infinite Personality and the Absolute Intelligence, although it must be allowed to take us beyond the finite and contingent. As a modern apologist has

said, "The perception of his own relativity leads man to the idea of some higher Being on Whom his own existence depends, and this Being he can only conceive as One that is absolute-above himself and above nature-that is, God." This Absolute Being is the necessary correlative of our own finite and conditioned being, and our idea of Him is developed along the lines of our personality and world experience. The mode of reaching self-existent being would in this proof manifestly not suffice to exclude Pantheism, for its reasoning does not make the universe stand out with sufficient distinctness from God. We are not admitting the discomfiture of the Absolute as necessarily known to our thought; we are, however, disallowing a world of reality different from the world as it is to thought, and to which thought-conditions might not be applicable. Recent philosophy of theism has been inclined to regard the persistence of the argument as accountable only on the supposition of its carrying with it in some way, after every theoretic disclaimer, the basal form of actual Reality, so that not merely the idea, but also the existence of God, has been found necessary to reason. Hence we think ourselves justified in claiming that it has not been content with the procedure of those who have had much to say of the oft-criticised Cartesian argument while neglecting the weightier matters of the contentions. of those who think Kant missed seeing that Being is given, not predicated, in this idea of God; who