Viewed, then, in this light, metaphysical philosophy, instead of being a science having its own separate objects, and co-ordinate with other sciences, is really a kind of "prima philosophia," which underlies all the rest. It is conversant, in a sense, with every object; it touches upon the whole matter of human knowledge; only it seeks to trace it up to first principles, to exhibit the abstract form under which it must be viewed, and to show the primary laws from which it springs. In this sense there is a philosophy of nature, a philosophy of art, a philosophy of religion, a philosophy of history, as well as a philosophy of the mind; every branch of human knowledge may, in fact, be traced back till it come within that small circle of the sphere which metaphysical science claims as its own peculiar province.

'Hence philosophy, in its highest application, is the reference of the contingent to the absolute, the grounding of facts in their necessary principles: it is the science which looks beneath the phenomenal world, either of matter or mind, and inquires into the stern ultimate realities of both.'Vol. ii. pp. 45—47.

We think that this is a most dispassionate contrast and estimate of the two systems. The Scottish school deals solely with the facts of our consciousness. And in no one particular does it so exhibit this its exclusive empiricism as in its vaunted distinction between necessary and contingent truths. It is not in our power,' says Dr. Reid, to judge as we will. The judgment is carried along necessarily by the evidence, real or seeming, which appears to us at the time. But in propositions that are submitted to our judgment there is this great difference: some are of such a nature that a man of ripe understanding may apprehend them distinctly, and perfectly understand their meaning, without finding himself under any necessity of believing them to be true or false, probable or improbable. The judgment remains in suspense, until it is inclined to one side or another by reasons or arguments. But there are other propositions which are no sooner understood than they are believed. The judgment follows the apprehension of them necessarily, and both are equally the work of nature and the result of our original powers. There is no searching for evidence, no weighing of arguments; the proposition is not deduced or inferred from another; it has the light of truth in itself, and has no occasion to borrow it from another.'* Still these are only facts of consciousness-subjective. We are so constituted that we cannot but refer every event to a cause. Such is one of the necessary forms of our understanding. Still it is only a form which of itself cannot prove the existence of a reality. We cannot argue from certain affections of our sensitive faculty that colours have an objective existence; we cannot argue from certain notions of our understanding, however universal and necessary, that they have their prototypes. That they exist in us that, whether absolutely true or not, they are true to us as long as our understanding remains as it is, is all that we can predicate respecting them.

* Reid, Essay vi. chap. iv.

Such appears to us to be the deficiency of even that philosophythe Scottish--which approaches the nearest to transcendentalism. It does not attain to the reality of God. It gives us but a conviction -and no degree of conviction of a truth can be its proof as a truth.

We have now arrived at the point where we must inquire from transcendentalism, On what grounds, and with what significant conception, can we attain the knowledge of the real existence of the Absolute? Our limits will not allow us to enter on the difference of reason and the understanding,-a difference which we believe to be one of kind; neither may we discuss the question, Whether reason be personal or impersonal. The former bas been most amply investigated for the English reader by Coleridge; the latter is the characteristic inquiry of Cousin's philosophy. We will assume that reason differs not in degree, but in kind, from the understanding, that, while this is the faculty of reflection, that, as the great Hooker says, 'is a direct aspect of truth, an inward beholding, having a similar relation to the intelligible or spiritual, as sense has to the material or phenomenal.' And whether reason be personal or impersonal,-and so whether the truths it attains be but the products of our own faculty, or our immediate apperceptions of 'the Absolute,' must be as summarily disposed of. The problem is of inconceivable importance, and every conscientious mind who feels proper interest in the subject, will give it the most thorough investigation. The pages of Cousin, and these volumes of Mr. Morell, will give him ample assistance.

Let it suffice for us to state our belief, that reason is impersonal. The co-operation of the will with our faculties is necessary to constitute the personality of those acts which those faculties may perform. Then, but only then, are the notions they attain subjective. But the first moment of the exercise of reason is a moment of pure spontaneity. It creates no truth. It evolves no truth. It sees truth. Truth, therefore, had a prior--a real existence. Such is the step by which we pass from the sensible to the supersensible, from the demonstrable to the intuitive, from phenomenal and conditioned to essential and absolute existence.

Mysterious moment! when the soul's eye involuntarily opens. It is surrounded by the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' It may be confused by the excessive brightness, but it takes in the inexhaustible. But all is real.

In regard to the significant conception which we attach to the term 'infinite' and absolute,' we cannot refrain from quoting Mr. Morell's words,-words which we have read repeatedly with increased admiration :

Cousin's view of the Divine nature is confessedly somewhat recondite and indistinct. While on the one hand he altogether repudiates the charge

of pantheism, yet on the other hand it is difficult to say how his opinions can be altogether vindicated from it. Time, perhaps, will show how far he has grasped, or how far misconceived the whole subject. There is one point, however, upon which Cousin has expressed himself with great clearness and precision, and that is the essential comprehensibility of the absolute and Infinite Being by the human mind. This is, in fact, a principal feature in his philosophy. He considers that the establishment of the absolute as a fundamental notion, and a constitutive principle of the human intelligence, is his chief merit as a philosopher, and upon this he grounds the peculiar claims of his modern system of eclecticism. Now, of all questions which philosophy proposes for our investigation, there is probably not one so difficult to sound to its depths, not one on which the greatest thinkers have so much differed, as upon this.

Sir William Hamilton has reduced the philosophical hypotheses, which have obtained, respecting our knowledge of the absolute or unconditioned, to four distinct heads:-1. The absolute is altogether inconceivable, every notion we have of it being simply a negation of that which characterises finite and conditional existence. This opinion he holds himself in common with the English and Scottish school of modern times. 2. The absolute, though not an object of real knowledge, yet exists subjectively within our consciousness as a regulative principle. Kant held this opinion: he believed that pure reason necessarily gives rise to the notion of the infinite and unconditioned, which notion we view under the threefold type of the soul, the universe, and the Deity; but he did not admit the objective reality of these conceptions. He regarded them merely as personifications of our own subjective laws or processes. 3. The absolute cannot be comprehended in consciousness and reflection; but it can be gazed upon by a higher faculty, that of intellectual intuition. This is the well-known doctrine upon which Schelling has erected his system of philosophy. 4. The absolute can be grasped by reason, and brought within the compass of our real consciousness. Such is the theory of Cousin himself.

Now, here we have three minds standing severally at the head of the respective philosophies of Britain, France, and Germany, assuming each a different hypothesis on this subject; while Kant, the Aristotle of the modern world, assumes a fourth. Under such circumstances he must be a bold thinker who ventures to pronounce confidently upon the truth or error of any one of these opinions. Few, perhaps, in our country would be inclined to side either with Kant or Schelling; the great point of dispute is most likely to be between Sir W. Hamilton and M. Cousin, that is to say, whether the infinite, the absolute, the unconditioned, be really cognisable by the human reason, or whether it be not; whether our notion of it be positive, or whether it be only negative.

'And here we freely confess, that we are not yet prepared to combat, step by step, the weighty arguments by which the Scottish metaphysician seeks to establish the negative character of this great fundamental conception; neither, on the other hand, are we prepared to admit his inference. We cannot divest our minds of the belief, that there is something positive in the glance which the human soul casts upon the world of eternity and infinity. Whether we rise to the contemplation of the absolute through the medium of the true, the beautiful, or the good, we cannot imagine that our highest conceptions of these terminate in darkness, in a total negation of all knowledge. So far from this, there seem to be flashes of light, ineffable it may be, but still real, which envelope the soul in a lustre all divine, when it catches glimpses of infinite truth, infinite beauty, and infinite excellence. The mind, instead of plunging into a total eclipse of all intellection, when it rises to this elevation, seems rather to be dazzled by a too great effulgence; VOL. II.

S

yet still the light is real light, although, to any but the strongest vision, the effect may be to blind rather than to illumine. It is not by negations that men are governed; but it is before the idea of eternity and infinity that our fiercest humanity is softened and subdued. Until we are driven from this position by an irresistible evidence, we must still regard the notion of the infinite, the absolute, the eternal, as forming one of our fundamental notions; and one which opens to us the highest field, both for our present meditation and our future prospects.'-Vol. ii. pp. 395–398.

In

As we close this article, we must beg our readers to regard it as but one of a series, in which the claim of transcendentalism as the only philosophy that can conduct to reality, is being urged. the present paper the Absolute,' as it regards our conception of God, has been the subject of our investigation. It is necessarily incomplete, and each one in the series must be so of itself. We shall still avail ourselves of Mr. Morell's volumes, and meanwhile commend them in the strongest terms to those ministers of religion who obey the apostolical command to 'give themselves to reading.'

V.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DR. FLETCHER.*

THE memory of the just is blessed.' This utterance contains a truth which appeals to the judgment and to the heart of all who have been privileged to hold fellowship with the excellent of the earth, who have left its toils for the repose and bliss of heaven, Recollections of the virtues of the noble spirits who in their day stood forth as examples of piety and virtue, as witnesses for truth, as martyrs for religion, become a blessing to those who cherish them, when the beings to whom they pertain are gone into the world of light. Remembrance of them is clothed with holy associations, rendered but the holier from the fact, that they have dropped the garments of mortality and the inevitable imperfections of the present state. The distance to which they are removed, so far as our sight is concerned, invests them with a character which, while partaking in some degree of the ideal, serves to stimulate us to the pursuit of the loftiest moral excellence and spiritual attainment. Though dead they continue to speak, and to rule our spirits from their urns; and it is at once a duty and a privilege to cherish hallowed recollections of departed worth.

Happily for the church, the number of those who are entitled to be had in everlasting remembrance is by no means small. While science, philosophy, and poetry, have each their bright embodiments

*The Select Works and Memoirs of the late Rev. Joseph Fletcher, D.D. Edited by the Rev. Joseph Fletcher. 3 vols. 8vo. London: Snow. 1846,

of the noble and the good to present to their disciples; Christianity is attended by a great cloud of witnesses,' as exhibited in the lives and deaths of men who evinced the heavenly origin of their faith by a growing meetness for the works of the present life, and for the recompence of the life to come. While the few who have lived for every country and for all times, are our common heritage, the personal reminiscences we indulge of departed friends are very numerous. These, if somewhat pensive, are highly profitable and precious. The companions of our studies, the friends of our youth, the guides of our early years, the loved ones of more recent times, have dropped one by one from our side. We have only thoughts of them remaining, but these are identified with our daily states of mind and scenes of action; and we feel in some sort allied to heaven by the recollection that those who were, and still are, dear to us are gone thither. They are remembered with a holy, living, embalming remembrance, which is twice blessed; for while their memory is blessed, it blesses those who remember it.

Still there is something mournful in the fact, that, however varied and distinguished were the excellences of departed individuals, however wide the space they filled in the public mind, and however vast the benefits they scattered upon others in their pilgrimage through time, their memory soon fades from the multitude of their contemporaries, and is cherished sacredly but by few. No storied urn or sculptured marble can long preserve them from comparative forgetfulness. If they escape censure for the zeal with which they expended life in doing good, which is often dealt out freely by the more prudent, who are learning the art of eking out earthly existence to its utmost point; if they should even be commended for a season by the multitude, they are soon erased from the tablets of public memory. They laboured, and other men enter into their toils, and reap the advantages. While their works follow them, their memories, at first fragrant through a whole region, die away.

;

There is no surer way of counteracting this necessary tendency to oblivion than by collecting the books and publishing the lives of distinguished persons. The men whose names are for all times and lands live in their works. Who would care for Homer or Shakspere; who would breathe the names of Bacon or Locke who would speak even of Taylor and Barrow, but for their writings? By these, and for these, they are known. A good service, then, is done to society when competent persons undertake to edit the labours of the wise and good, to embody their opinions in a permanent form, and to give to the world the mental and moral portraiture of writers who were fitted by their sentiments and conduct to instruct mankind in all coming ages.