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grouped in masses, and classified under heads, it says of these too, they must have a cause, and it finds no cause worthy enough, except some being which must be to all the hopes and aspirations of man either as analogous as the fountain is to the stream, or else as transcendent as the fashioning thought is to the material wrought.

"Nor here probably will the intellect be able to avoid taking notice of what we call habit. I mention it, because you will not be able to say of it, as you implied of the affections, that it is a mere sensation or sentiment, implying no law of mind. At least, if any one were to imagine beforehand what sort of bias from the force of habit he would wish for the benefit of mankind should be given to our actions, he might perhaps despair of any such bias being made wholesome, expecting it to be the same probably in every kind of action. But if he were told that good actions would, however disagreeable at first, become easier and pleasanter as they were persevered in; while bad actions, being the perversion of some capacity for better things, might for a little time seduce, but would gradually lose the outside varnish of honey which gilded them,—so that good men would become stronger or happier, while the obstinately bad would become more and more loveless and miserable to themselves and others, so that at last goodness would be the greatest blessing, and wickedness turn out to be the greatest punishment, I humbly conceive, any purely spiritual thinker, in considering from a remote world the possibility of such a law of moral recompence being established, would find in it manifest trace of some being who is to our conscience, what the highest Mind may be to the worldly fabric, or an infinite Love as compared to the holy affections of man. Especially also would such a conclusion be drawn, supposing it was seen that young sinners would, on their first going wrong, have many checks from violent emotion, and a tenderness of shame, like the blush on a maiden's cheek; but yet that all these sanctities, being again and again violated, might fade away, and the safeguard involved in them be destroyed. But now I need scarcely argue at large

144 MORAL GOVERNMENT CLEAR-IF METAPHYSICS DOUBTFUL.

that such is the principle of moral recompence, which by means of the force of habit is intertwined into the constitution of the world. For if you either observe or reflect, you will find it to be so; and I should only weary you by illustrating in detail every step in this long argument. Finding then, as we do, that modesty as a safeguard against recklessness is only destroyed by obstinacy; and that all the holier and purer affections grow up into habits, which become a second and a happier nature to a man, while on the contrary, selfishness, in all its forms of insincerity or crime or sensualism, becomes an avenging scourge, must we not say that the logical reason in man consents to whatever element in us apprehends righteousness, and whatever feeling rejoices in things amiable, that both some being is to be worshipped, and that such being must be intelligent, holy, and lovely? Something like that, I suppose, is what most men intend by an Iswara, or what we call God. Was I not therefore right in saying, that the hard as well as the soft in man, or the masculine understanding no less than the feminine love, cries out for some such religious sentiment as your argument disparages?

"I say here some religious sentiment, or some worship of God, including therefore the belief in God; for let that suffice as our principal object of proof just now. It has come to light incidentally more than once in my discourse, that I conceive the common cause of my friends here and of myself against you, (here Blancombe turned to Wolff,) is best supported by arguments which they are not quite agreed about. Yet it is not impossible for some of my arguments to be wrong, yet for our main cause to be right. Suppose, for example, all the ideas which I have suggested on the subject of mind as distinct from matter, were to be so far mistaken that one substance in many modifications should turn out to be the cause and the material without duality of all possible causes or effects; still, the modification which this substance would undergo in its thinking stage and its wrought stage, would be so important as to render it for all practical purposes two distinct things, as to the popular

METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESIS-RELIGIOUS NEED.

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If then you

apprehension of mankind it undoubtedly seems. prefer still to understand the term mind as meaning matter sufficiently refined to be the organ of mental powers, do so. Not but that, with such a change in our mode of viewing that of which the world consists, I confess, a strong argument for the revival of our personal being in an immortality after this life, would appear to me lost; but again, many pious persons, of whom our friend Vidyáchárya may partly serve as an illustrious instance, think quite differently upon that point; and whatever became of a personal immortality, I conceive that at least the necessity of worshipping and loving God in this life would remain. We should not be a bit more able to do without religion, though it would be more difficult to say in what manner we ought to be religious. Again, in the same way, I remark, that if the attributes of wisdom, righteousness, and goodness, have been assigned by me to the Deity with more confidence than they ought, yet at the very least you acknowledge that we are surrounded by tokens of superhuman power. What that power may be, in at least its relations to ourselves, and how we ought to feel mentally towards its intelligent wielder, if such be its origin, or how mould to our purpose whatever may be permitted of its lesser agencies, and triumph over any dread attached to them, are still questions of awful interest, and may well invite our most devout attention. Only I cannot look at such questions without including among the elements of the problem to be solved the moral experiences of mankind. From those experiences it appears that prayer is an instrument of obtaining peace, and of what to its possessors appears knowledge, whether, as we should say generally, because the prayer is answered by some higher power, or, as your theories would imply, because it is itself a mental effort of the most intent and aspiring kind. We must then take in prayer together with our inquiries as to either the being of God or our eternal destiny. Then it seems to me already self-evident that no kind of natural piety will allow us to deprive the Deity of whatever 10

M. P.

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INFERENCE OF ULTIMATE BEING.

attributes we should think holy, or pure, or lovely, in the higher forms of being; nor can I shake off a presentiment, which goes upon sufficient ground to deserve the name of a conviction, that we shall find at last the mass of mankind have anticipated with their feelings, what the keenest searchers may for a time make difficulties about, but must at last admit is a necessity of their understanding. So that it may be with spirit as with matter. We have already heard how difficult it may be made to prove that any solid substratum underlies the objects which our senses deal with; yet at last the thinker says by inference that something must be there, whether he make that something material or mental; a body or a form; an underlying solid or a combining principle of law; and, by saying this, he returns, in effect, to what simple people never doubted. In fact, even our positive knowledge of geometry, and perhaps all our cognition of the material world, may be said primarily to rest upon faith, or ultimately to revert to faith; although the most sceptical reasoners admit it would be absurd in this case not to have such faith. For any reasoning or knowledge which made this practically doubtful would make everything doubtful, so that it must be itself doubted. By being so universally destructive it would destroy trust in its own process. Even sceptics thus come round in mathematical science to agree with those who accept in a kind of faith the preliminary axioms and postulates. Just so, I conceive, will be the case with what we call Mind, which, at least so far as our common consciousness is a guide to any truth, we recognise as distinct from bodily objects; for it seems properly active, while they are comparatively passive. Perhaps we call by its name some appearances which may not be mind; but, beyond all or within, I know not how many subtle sheaths, as our friends would call them, either mind reasoning or soul feeling must dwell. Either of these seems a name for what is immortal in us; and so long as men believe that the highest lord of all is infinite in all which they feel highest in themselves, so long they have what we call a religion, whether

ATTRIBUTES OF HIGHEST BEING.

147 it be recorded in histories, or expressed in prayers, or in any other way embodied and directed to some one infinitely better than ourselves. Upon this condition only does a religion seem to satisfy all those portions and capacities of Man of which we have spoken, or exercise a ruling and wholesome influence. For whatever wonderful things may be said of Pracriti, no one is raised, or awed, or comforted by dwelling on an infinite fluid, or infinite electricity, or, in short, by the application of the idea of infinity to anything else than Mind in the highest and largest sense of whatever may be Mind. If instead of mind you would prefer me to say thinker, with the understanding at present that it is not settled how far a subtle modification of matter can think, I have no objection. Only, on your part again, there must be no hesitation in ascribing to this unknown author the most absolute infinity as regards all the higher powers of man, or, what would be the same thing here, as regards a power capable of creating those. You must not, therefore, exclude government, or providence, or dread majesty, or anything else which is noblest in man, except you do so by putting something nobler still and transcendent, because creative, in any one of their places; for it will be absurd to seek the Deity in anything less than ourselves. Moreover you will hence understand why, just as we exclude earth and water and electricity, so also I reject the mere range of human affections as adequate expounders of the sentiments which here we ought to entertain; and as they themselves cannot cling kindly, unless they are justified, or as it were upheld, by strengthening intellect, much less can that highest and illimitable object, which is to satisfy our whole affectionate and intellectual being, be less than infinite itself in all wisdom and majesty as well as goodness. Nor is any kind of worshipping belief worthy of being properly called a religion, as embracing what men in general mean by that sacred word, unless it have a positive and intellectual element referring to God, not merely as life, or as order, nor perhaps even as law, though indeed he is all these, but also as a providential governor.