cal issue. Such a man was found in Benedict Spinosa, that profound and subtile Jew, whom Novalis in a "furor" of admiration calls "the God inspired Spinosa."1 Ignoring as Descartes had done the proper idea of cause, and really identifying being with thought, he posited the existence of a single, infinite, all comprehending Substance with two attributes, or rather projections of himself (itself?) thought and extension, thought being manifest in mind, extension in matter.2

As both mind and matter proceed from the same source, or rather are attributes of the same substance, he maintained, of course, their interior identity. All things come from God, and exist in God, thence all things or the universe of material and immaterial forms, are God—not indeed God in his absolute essence, but God immanent, that is God embodied or manifested.3

A fundamental and favorite position of Spinosa's is that " one substance can not produce another;" if God therefore seems to produce finite matter or finite mind, it is but an extension of himself, or projection into space and time of his own inscrutable essence. The cause passes into the effect, the effect in this sense is the cause, and vice versa; so that the ordinary idea of cause, and consequently of the creation, is abandoned. The one is God absolute, the other is God conditioned, or as he chose to express it, the one is Natura naturans, the other is Natura naturata.4

Nor can we deny, if these fundamental positions are granted as just, namely, that the universe is constituted by ideas, and human thought and absolute being are identical, that there can be, in the sense of Spinosa, only a single all comprehending substance. All else which we call finite must be attribute, quality, phenomenon, however vast and varied, however refined and beautiful. If all things and all beings are in God, in an absolute literal sense, then God is in all things, nay constitutes all things. The universe is not dual, but one, and that one, THE ABSOLUTE ALL. Thought is infinite and eternal, and matter is its shadow. The omnipresence of God, or the infinite Substance, is what Spinosa calls extension, not meaning by extension any thing gross or palpable, but the universal

1 As proof that Spinosa based his system on the Cartesian metaphysics, we refer to the "Principia Philosophiæ Cartesianæ," in the first volume of Spinosa's works (Tauchnitz ed. 3 vols. edited by Dr. Bruder), as also to his little tract, "De Emendatione Intellectus" (vol. ii. p. 7), in which he lays down the true method of philosophical investigation. The following passage (vol. i. p. 24), deserves particular attention. "Hac igitur delecta veritate simul etiam invenit omnium scientiarum fundamentum, ac etiam omnium aliarum veritatum, mensuram ac regulam; scilicet Quicquid tam clare ac distincte percipitur quam istud verum est." The abuse of Descartes' criterion has been a source of infinite mischief.

2 Opera, vol. i. Cog. Meta. p. 117 Ethica, pp. 187, 190. See also "Ethica," Part ii. p. 225.

3 Opera, vol. i. p. 197. Compare pp. 190 and 204, particularly Prop. xviii. "Deus est omnium rerum immanens."

4 Ethica, Props. xxix xxx. xxxi. Opera, vol. i. pp. 210, 211.

presence of an infinite essence.1 Particular things-souls or bodies, are only modifications of God.2 All in fact, is literally and truly God. A single idea, namely unity, constitutes and construes the universe. Right and wrong, holiness and sin are only different aspects of the same thing. In ethics right is the correlate of power, while sin is weakness, negation, or deficiency; whence the object of all law is the exercise of force, and all law is limitation. The inexorable unity of God ought to be the type of the inexorable unity of all government and law.3

How much all this differs from the material unity and inexorable fatalism of Hobbes, or from the grosser pantheism of the old Hindoo philosophers, it would require some ingenuity to say. It is more refined and spiritual perhaps, but the end is the same. So that one is almost tempted to believe with Dugald Stewart, in reference to the reproduction of old errors, "that human invention is limited like a barrel organ to a specific number of tunes."

It would seem as if Spinosa had carried the rationalistic method of inquiry to its highest point, beyond which no human intellect can go. But the spirit of speculative thought is not to be repressed, and slight variations. will satisfy even the profoundest minds that they have escaped the errors of their predecessors, and solved, the enigma of the universe. On this ground Leibnitz, a man of vast erudition and almost illimitable range of thought, endeavored to lay the foundations of a vast superstructure of spiritual philosophy. He rejected the sensational origin of ideas, defended, as he supposed, by Locke, and carried out the spiritual views of Descartes with reference to mind, giving a better exposition of fundamental ideas, and enlarging the criteria of their validity. His method, however, is rationalistic and ontological. It is an attempt to ascertain the possible and the actual on what he calls the principle of "contradiction," and of “the sufficient reason." The first gives us the possible, or what may be without a contradiction; the second, the actual, or what ought to be, on the ground of second causes, or "sufficient reason."

Applying these criteria to things as they are, he finds not only the idea of substance, with its attributes of thought and extension (that is, of embodiment, for such is Spinosa's idea), but also of cause or power, spontaneous and creative; so that God, as the great primal Substance, or Subsistence, not only is, but acts and produces. Power does not reside in masses, for these are infinitely divisible; power is inherent in substance from which all material qualities must be excluded, so that, strictly

1 Opera, vol. i. p. 208.

3 Ibid, vol. i. p. 115. Compare pp. 131, 212, 217.

2 Ibid, vol. i. p. 228.

* This fact is well brought out by M. Jaques in the Introduction to his Ed. of the Works of Leibnitz, from the press of Charpentier, vol. i. p. 31. His views of the human mind are developed in his "Nouveaux Essais," his theosophy or theology in the "Monadologie," and "Theodicee.”

speaking, we come to power or force as a pure immaterial essence. This constitutes the basis of existence. Thence spring all the forms and forces of the universe, which is dynamical, and not, as Descartes taught, mechanical.1

Thus reducing, as usual, all things to the region of pure ideas, or abstract forms, as we may call them, he endeavors from the supposition of an absolute One, or Monad, to construe the universe of matter and of mind; so that his system is a monadology, corresponding in some sense to the "numbers" of Pythagoras and Plato. His problem therefore is little more than a geometrical proposition. Given one necessary and eternal Monas, or Force, to find all other monads or forces.2 God "geometrizes” the universe, and does so, apparently, by an evolution of plurality from unity. From such a system all dualism of course is excluded. Of matter, in its ordinary import, there is none. Identity runs through the whole. The universe is one, as God is one.

Yet Leibnitz admitted the distinct existence of the external world, and brought it into union and connection with spirit by means of a system of "pre-established harmony." The different monads both of matter and of spirit have no intercommunion; indeed this is impossible on Leibnitz's theory; but they move in unison, like automata, by the preformed arrangement of the Eternal Mind. Hence also the doctrines of philosophical necessity and optimism.

By these suppositions it is evident that Leibnitz wished to avoid the difficulties which spring from the ill-understood distinctions between matter and mind; on which account his monads or ones are simple forces, independent of each other, though springing from the same eternal source, possessing inherently the same characteristics, and capable of developing themselves in outward shape and act. Some are in a state of stupor, so to speak, and constitute matter, yet possess a sort of perceptive power; others are conscious, forming, in the case of those distinct and clear, men and angels, of those dull and obscure, the souls of the lower animals. Each has its separate sphere, and each is a microcosm of the universe.3

The original Monas or Power, however, is recognized as a conscious mind, an intelligent, self-controlling cause, capable by a voluntary productive act, of giving rise to distinct, inferior agents, possessed of intelligence and will; so that in this respect his views differ from those of Spinosa, and so far harmonize with some of the highest forms of moral and theological truth. It is on this ground that in his Théodicée, he maintains "The conformity of Faith with Reason," and rises to the sublimest heights of religious contemplation. His Théodicée has the charm

:

1Œuvres, vol. ii. p. 463.

2 See his "Monadologie,” passim.

3 Œuvres, vol. ii. p. 471, "Monadologie," § 51. Hence the expression, “Chaque monade crée represente toute l'univers." Monad. § 62.

of a grand moral epic, in which are celebrated the perfections of the eternal Jehovah. The distinguished Genevese philosopher Bonnet tells us, that he used it as (C a manual of devotion."

But in the hands of others, and especially of less devotional minds, the Leibnitzian monadology, involving in its last analysis the interior identity of subject and object, of finite and infinite, and constituting the universe of simple spiritual forces, supplied the scientific basis for a system of idealism. His speculations found a congenial home in the minds of his countrymen. In nearly all the theories which have successively followed each other among that speculative people, Leibnitz constantly reappears. It is the same lofty, but mysterious and fanciful melody, with endless and ever-recurring variations.

In the hands of Wolf, who attempted to methodize the philosophy of his master, it lost its warmth and grandeur, and appeared as a formal system of ideal abstractions, giving rise to an arid skepticism, which lasted for many years.

The eighteenth century closed with Kant and the Kantian philosophy, in which the possibility of metaphysics or ontology as a science is denied, and, as many think, completely demolished. Even reason is shown to be not only weak, but illusive, so that "apodictical," that is, demonstrative judgments, of absolute certainty, are proved to be impossible. This is the object of the "Kritik of Pure Reason" (reiner Vernunft), so that to speak of "the Kantian metaphysics," as many do, or to cite the Königsberg philosopher as an authority for the absolute demonstrations of "Reason," is a practical solecism. Kant swept the whole field of speculation; and though denying neither the external nor the internal world, as practical realities, proved that neither the reason nor the understanding, formal powers both, gives us any thing in its absolute certainty. Both space and time, unity and cause, according to Kant, are subjective ideas, by means of which we systematize our knowledge, but can never be shown to have a real, or independent existence.

Thus, again, all things are reduced to pure ideas or abstractions. Reality escapes into the void, and truth remains, like a shadowy island in the midst of a boundless gulf. "The region," says Kant," of the pure understanding, is an island, and inclosed by nature itself in unchangeable limits. It is the region of truth [an engaging title], surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean.

"1

But the nature of Kant, like that of every other man, can not be satisfied with abstractions; and though truth is not theoretically demonstrable, it is necessary, it is real. Our moral nature and practical wants demand it; and not only demand it, but prove it. So that what is demon

1 Kritik of Pure Reason.-Eng. Tr. p. 222. As Sir W. Hamilton has shown, Kant is by no means precise in the use either of Vernunft or Verstand. His island of the pure understanding, after all, is a fabulous one.

strated to be illusive on one side of our nature, according to Kant, is proved to be real on the other-a strange logical contradiction-for which Kant poorly accounts, but to which he most earnestly clings. A happy inconsistency of which the most astute philosophers are not unfrequently guilty. Hence his "Kritik of the Practical Reason," which gives us all moral truths, God, the soul, and immortality. The conscience, the affec tions, the longings of the soul, the wants of the individual, and the wants of society, demand a God and a life to come; and as all things are adapted to each other, and all permanent wants are met, God and a life to come are given in the Practical Reason. God exists for man; man exists for God. Responsibility and justice, love and worship, are real and eternal.

Here, then, Kant lays a broad foundation for religion and morality.

But why should our nature be in contradiction? Above all, why should Reason, which we are told is highest in man, mislead us? There must be some great error here; and Sir W. Hamilton, to whom we refei the reader, in his Critique on the Eclectic Philosophy, thinks that the error consists in making reason not simply "weak, but delusive."

Fichte, ambitious of absolute knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre), young, ardent, enthusiastic, with great force of character, and an imagination which nothing could limit, took up the problem of the Kantian philosophy, and endeavored to determine the relation of subject and object, of finite and infinite. His mode of solution is summary; object does not exist except as posited by subject. That is, the human mind creates its own intelligible world. Subject and object are one. A subjective idealism is the true philosophy. God exists, but exists in consciousness; he is known only as the Moral Order (moralische Ordnung) of the world.1 Of course, such a system of subjective idealism, though held by its author with a lofty moral heroism, must give rise to the most startling errors and extravagancies. "To-morrow, gentlemen," he said, on one occasion, with singular audacity, "I shall create God." By this he meant that he would develop the process by which God comes into consciousness as subject and object. Fichte strenuously denied the charge of atheism, and, in later life, somewhat modified his views-but, at best, he is seen evermore hovering over the abyss of absolute nothing. "The sum total," says he, "is this: there is absolutely nothing permanent without me or within me, but only an unceasing change; I know absolutely nothing of any existence, not even of my own. I myself know nothing, and am nothing. Images (Bilder) there are; they constitute all that apparently exists, and what they know of themselves is after the manner of images; images that pass and vanish, without there being aught to witness their transition ; that consist, in fact, of the images of images, without significance and

1 Sittenlehre (1798), pp. 184, 189. See also his "Göttliche Weltordnung."