for its representations on the one monad at the root of all; and this applies necessarily to all the changes of the monads, and thus to all the changes in the universe. But unless there be reciprocal knowledge and action as between the coexisting monads, there could be no ground or change in any one. We could not change if nothing around us changed.1

M. Dauriac no doubt supposes his theory to be analogous to that of Leibniz, but it is certainly not identical in the essential point; and in speaking of it as a “monadistic phenomenalism," he indicates clearly that it is much more extreme than that of Leibniz. If to perceive with Leibniz implies a percipiens, or (conscious) subject, we are already far beyond the mere phenomenal relationism of consciousness and extension. We are, in truth, back to the idea of substance, or the subsistent, in one main sense of the term.

M. Dauriac's view of the Divine is a very fair test of the application of his theory. "If there be a divinity," he tells us, "this is either the Absolute-that is, an unintelligible—or it is a 1 Croyance et Réalité, p. 243.

person, and a person which it is impossible not to incarnate in the profound sense of the term. It is not only when Christ descends into the bosom of Mary that God becomes man; in creation, God makes himself Word. But the day the first Word was, there were beings who understood it. Unfortunately, it escapes the defenders of Christian metaphysics that personality excludes pure spirituality, not less than immensity and eternity; and that if the world, in order to be, has need of God, in order that God should be there is need of the world. And if it be objected that we lessen God by taking from him that by which his idea surpasses us, it is perhaps because the religious problemseven within the limits of reason—are not, properly speaking, philosophical problems. Picture to yourselves a time when time was not, an immensity anterior to space, a consciousness capable of selfconsciousness without determining itself, of determining itself without limiting itself, of limiting itself without dividing itself (se segmenter), and you will have the idea of a God anterior and superior to the world; you will have a contradictory concept—that is, a pseudo-concept.

Imagine, now, a being flowing into time, knowing that it exists and thinks, and capable of thinking without experiencing sensations. Do you try it in vain? Be it so; introduce sensation, and extension will follow. Not-me, body, extension-these are distinct terms, signs of one and the same reality. But there is no me without a not-me. The Me, the successive conscious being (conscient), that which implies the synthesis of the changing and the enduring ―time,—these are the distinct terms by which the ideas are designated. Time is born with consciousness; but with this space appears. Hence time and space are twin brothers-twins equally, those pretended hostile brothers which are called soul and body. No spirit without matter.1

In so far as this passage criticises a current conception of Deity, taken in its literality as at once absolute and relative, undetermined and determined—and of Personality as qualified by immensity and eternity-there is nothing to object. But exception certainly may be taken to the statements that Personality excludes "pure spirituality," and that an extended world, even 1 Croyance et Réalité, pp. 233, 234.

this world apparently, is necessary to constitute God. This dogmatism is rash and unguarded, and, as I have attempted already to show, even in regard to the concept of a finite consciousness, not founded in reason or fact. It may be that we can form no concept of a God who is not a Person-nay, that we ought not in reason to seek to form any such concept-and that a self-conscious personality is not conceivable unless as implying an object of knowledge. But we are not, therefore, warranted in saying that this personality is only possible as joined to or immanent in an extended world-in body or matter-that it is necessarily incarnate in this, and that this is as necessary to God as he is to it. There is nothing in the analogy of our own experience to warrant this—much indeed against it. And it would legitimately end in supposing that the present world or system is the only one possible, because coeternal with God, as necessary to his very consciousness, and therefore to his being. If he is not, until or as a world is, then this must be the world that is; for as only co-conscious with the world, he is helpless to create any world that is not.

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IV. BEING AND LAW.

M. DAURIAC, carrying with him the doctrine that existence in any form, material or other, is inseparable from that of consciousness or consciousness and object known-a centre or representation -proceeds to sketch what he calls a phenomenal theory of being which should wholly exclude "substance." This under the heading of "Being and Law." In Section III. he comes to deal especially with the relations of Being and Law.2 We must attend carefully to his definition of phenomenon. In reality, according to his view, there is not one phenomenon, or a phenomenon by itself. There is always at the lowest (1) sensation and (2) subject of sensation. "Every phenomenon is a term in a relation; but a relation implies always more than one term. Hence 2 Ibid., p. 245.

1 Croyance et Réalité, p. 223.