to Lect. v. ; so Pascal, in the preface to the Pensées. It is not clear that Cousin altogether succeeded in his intention, as, for example, in his views of creation and of universal reason. Speaking of the Deity as cause, he says, 'Being an absolute cause it cannot avoid passing into action; it cannot avoid developing itself.'-Hist. of Mod. Philos. 1. 72. So also he has allowed himself to identify human reason with the Divine. 'Reason is not, then, individual, hence it is not ours; it does not belong to us, is not human. Ideas are conceptions of this absolute and universal reason, which we do not constitute, but which appear in us.'—Ib. 1. 76. It is on the ground of such passages as these that Cousin has been regarded as the exponent of a Pantheistic system. Much that might, at first sight, appear to warrant such a conclusion, admits of a different interpretation. If there are passages which seem more to favour the charge of Pantheism, Cousin himself did not regard them in that light.

9. The course which German thought took after the days of Kant, was decidedly in a Pantheistic direction, though it did not result in the construction of a pure Pantheism, such as that of Spinoza. The identification of the Ego (I) with absolute Reason by the elder Fichte; Schelling's absorption of the Ego (I) into the Absolute, and the elaborate Dialectic of Hegel which makes the idea the essence and source of things, all point in the same direction. The system of Hegel is that which in form most approaches the appearance of Pantheism. Instead of the definitions of Spinoza, Hegel begins with pure Being and pure Nothing, that is, bare existence without any determinate quality, and its contradiction. With these there begin moments, or, more properly, movements. The combination of Being and Nothing, that is, the movement of the one into the other, leads to Becoming.-Wissenschaft der Logik,-Werke, III. 77, 78. In starting with Being, the possibility of a beginning of the world is denied.-Ib. p. 106. • There can nothing begin, whether so far as it is, or so far as

it is not; for, in so far as it is, it does not first begin; but in so far as it is not, neither does it then begin.'-Ib. The movements of Becoming involve passing-into-being and passing-out-of-being-Entstehen und Vergehen, p. 108,-the disappearance of Being in Nothing and of Nothing in Being, and the result is determinate Being, or being existing in a definite place or state, p. 112. The determinate existence, or Being possessed of quality, is by its determinateness distinguished from some other. This is the interpretation of quality or determinateness,' It is something over against another, it is changeable and finite,'-veränderlich und endlich. The determinate Being is finite; it is a something contrasted with another something; each has another opposite to it, p. 122. This introduces the distinction of existence in itself, Ansichseyn; and existence-for-another, Seyn-fur-Anderes, p. 124. This existence-in-itself is the thing-in-itself, Ding-an-sich; but an answer to the question, what requires that determinations be assigned to being, is an impossibility, p. 127. 'The thingin-itself is the same as that Absolute of which one knows nothing, but that in it all is one. We very well know what these things-in-themselves are; they are as such nothing else than truthless, empty abstractions,' p. 127. But the finite, with its relation of inner and outer, is the ending, perishing, or passing away; and if it merely pass away, it goes back to abstract nothing, and we make no progress, p. 139. But in passing away, it is affirmative of the Infinite, a union with which is impossible. 'The Finite stands perpetually over against the Infinite,' p. 140. The limited is the bounded or bound. In this appears the ought-to, the necessity to pass over into something else. Something is raised above its limitation, and yet this ought-to has its limit, p. 142. The finite in passing away is not passed away, it has become another finite, and that becomes another, and so on to infinity, p. 147. This, as affirmative being, must have its other, or contrary, that is the Infinite, which in this aspect is only the negative

of the finite, p. 148. But, as standing opposite each other, the Infinite is restricted by the finite, is in reality only another finite, p. 154. The finite passes over to the Infinite, and the Infinite passes over again into the finite for its realization. The finite and infinite thus relatively contain each other, and it is in the absorption of both that we attain the true Infinite, the unity of finite and Infinite, p. 157.

For Hegel's Philosophy, see Schwegler's Hist.; Ueberweg's Hist.; Translation of first part of Hegel's Logic, in Dr. Hutchison Stirling's Secret of Hegel, beginning vol. I. 319, and Lectures on Jurisprudence, by same author.

This system may first be regarded as representative of a course of abstraction. In this light, every one will allow, that Being or Existence is the ultimate abstraction, and that from this ultimatum we may synthetically return to the complex order of things with which we are familiar. But that this can produce a theory of existence is not evident. It is a development of abstract thought, not a theory of existence; and to argue from thought to existence is incompetent.-V. p. 116118.

Viewing the whole as a philosophic system, the following considerations are adverse to its logical competency. Its first requisite is moment or movement, which it assumes, but does not account for. And as movement cannot come from indeterminate being, nor from nothing, its presence is an inconsistency, unless it be merely mental movement which is intended, in which case the claim of the theory to be received as a theory of existence is abandoned. The line of progress from a negative to a positive is incompetent. At every stage in advance there is a violation of logical rule, by the assumption of more in the conclusion than is involved in the premisses. It is admitted that the finite must have a beginning, and yet no explanation of such beginning is afforded, since the question of causality is ignored. Determinate being is placed before the Infinite, and leads to it. If this mean only that the

mind seeks the explanation of the finite in the Infinite, Hegelianism has made a wide detour, with weary zigzag, to reach a position which may be taken at once. The whole question of the origin of existence lies outside the Hegelian Logic. Consciousness and thought are assumed and employed, yet not made account of: and all the while Hegel's offer is this,-Given the single contradictory Being and Nothing, and I shall create, not the universe merely, but even the Infinite.

CHAPTER IV.

KNOWLEDGE OF THE DIVINE NATURE.

1. BELIEF in the Divine existence implies knowledge of the Divine nature. This follows from the place which faith holds among our cognitive powers. To classify belief otherwise would be an inconsistency. Sir W. Hamilton and Cousin agree in this, though differing so widely as to knowledge of the Infinite.-Hamilton's Metaph. II. 15, and 350; Cousin's Hist. of Mod. Philos. 1. 79. That a knowledge of the Deity belongs to man has been the general testimony of philosophic thought, from Socrates and Plato down through the Patristic period, even while it was held that none of the categories apply to God, as by Clement of Alexandria.-Strom. v., and Augustine, De Vera Religione, and De Trin. v. 2. And this knowledge of God has been maintained along with those acknowledgments of his incomprehensibility, of which Sir W. Hamilton has given examples in his philosophical testimonies to 'learned ignorance.'—Discussions, p. 634, and Mansel in his Bampton Lect., Pref. to 5th ed. p. xx. The saying of Clemens Alexandrinus may be taken as axiomatic: 'Neither is there knowledge without faith, nor faith without knowledge.' So Cousin: To believe is to know and comprehend in some degree.'-Hist. I. 79. Hamilton, on the contrary, held that the Infinite is 'an object of belief, but not of knowledge.'