justice, beauty, in opposition to wise, just, and beautiful. And here again we take our stand with Plato against Aristotle, with the Realists against the Nominalists, and with Victor Cousin against Sir W. Hamilton, in affirming the objective reality of ideas independently of the human mind which considers them, independently of the things which represent them. Nor can we understand how any one who admits that the world was created by design, and that the design is seen in the creation, can refuse to acknowledge in the main the truthfulness of the Realist's position of the objective reality of universals. When I contemplate individuals, such as men, camels, horses, I cannot help recognising a plan or type which is reproduced in the different individuals—a plan which reveals a Mind, or Reason, as Plato has it. Now the individuals come and go, begin and perish, and form what metaphysicians term the phenomenal world; they exist, but their non-existence can be thought without repugnance. But the plans, types, or ideas form what has been called the archetypal or real world-real, because their non-existence is absolutely unthinkable. Suppose all just men had perished; yet justice, that type after which all just men are just, is imperishable. Suppose all wise men had perished; yet wisdom, that type after which all wise men are wise, is imperishable. So, though all animated nature should perish, yet the types would not perish with the things; they did not originate with creation, they would survive its destruction. This difference between the phenomenal and archetypal world is thus characteristically described by St. Augustine: "Tu es, et Deus es Dominusque omnium quæ creasti; et apud Te rerum omnium instabilium stant causæ; et rerum omnium mutabilium immutabiles manent origines; et omnium irrationabilium et temporalium sempiternæ vivunt rationes" (St. Aug. Confess. lib. i). In short, the arguments which are brought to sustain the objective reality of our ideas are precisely the same as those which have been already adduced to establish the objectivity of the principles of reason-arguments based on the necessity and universality of ideas. These eternal reasons of things we cannot annihilate even in thought. We may suppose another order of things in another world, in which all that is merely physical should be changed; in which nature should be governed by other laws; in which bodies should be devoid of weight; where there should be other sounds, other colours, tastes, and wholly diverse properties of things but one order of things we cannot suppose changed; for we cannot conceive by any effort of imagination the change or destruction of ideas. Order would be order still, : harmony still harmony, proportion still proportion: we can no more think the subversion of the order of ideas than we can think that two and two could make five, or that things equal to the same should not be equal to one another. But these characteristics of ideas are not denied by the conceptualist; he only maintains that they are mere conceptions of the mind; and hence he says they are immutable and eternal because they are conceptions of the mind.* But this account does not consider the fact, that the human race believes ideas to be wholly independent of the human mind. Wisdom is wisdom, beauty is beauty, order is order, justice is justice, whether I choose to think it or not; nay, were my mind annihilated, wisdom is wisdom, beauty is beauty, and order is order. Hence we cannot understand, we repeat, on what grounds the main position of the Realist can be disputed. But perhaps they injured their cause, as Cousin asserts,† by pushing their claims too far; and from realising universals proper, they fell into the palpable error of realising mere abstracts, in which there is no type reproduced in divers individuals, as in universals proper, but which only present a mere summary of the common properties of divers objects, as redness, weight, smoothness, which are phenomenal, like the objects whence they are abstracted. But ideas proper are eternal, and reveal the Eternal Wisdom, or Aoyos, of Plato. "I read there" (in Plato), says St. Augustine, "not indeed in these words, but the selfsame thing on the whole, proved by many and divers arguments, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; ... and that although the human mind give testimony of the Light, yet it is not itself the Light, but the Word of God is the Light which enlighteneth every man who cometh into this world.. But," he adds, "that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, I did not read there" (Confess. vii. c. 9). The ontological argument, then, once more, which supposes the reality of our ideas, is sound for ideas; universals proper, not mere abstracts, are a reality independent of all finite minds and of all finite things, because invested with the characteristics of necessity, eternity, and immutability, which cannot be claimed without absurdity for any finite mind or finite object. But Sir W. Hamilton has one argument which we cannot overlook, viz. that the Absolute is unthinkable, and that all our knowledge is conversant with the relative; an objection which, * Thus argues Reid in his Intellectual Powers; the conclusion is just the reverse of what one would naturally expect from the antecedent; for eternity, necessity, and immutability are strange attributes of the finite. † Cousin's Abelard; Introduction. 4to. if it be true in an unmodified manner, puts an end to the whole question. But what does the objection mean, that the Absolute is unthinkable? Does it imply that we cannot assert the Absolute as a fact of human consciousness, waving the question about its nature and origin? or does it mean only that the Absolute is incomprehensible? The former supposition contradicts human language, for when we pronounce that a thing is good, wise, just, we affirm the Relative; but when we speak of goodness, wisdom, justice, we affirm the Absolute. If, then, it be objected that the Absolute is unthinkable in any sense, the objector should be prepared to go much further, and to state that whensoever in common discourse we speak of the Absolute as distinguished from the Relative, we are talking nonsense.* The latter hypothesis, that the Absolute is incomprehensible, we accept. I can think the infinite; I cannot comprehend it. I cannot comprehend what, or the like of what, I cannot experience, such as heaven, substance, God. I cannot comprehend the infinite because practically (out of the ideal) I never meet the infinite, but only the finite; but that I think it is attested by the very fact that I sometimes strive to realise, i. e. comprehend, that infinite which I apprehend or think about, but invariably fail to do so. In this sense we accept of Kant's celebrated axiom, that our knowledge never transcends the limits of possible experience spoken of our comprehensive knowledge, it is true; spoken of our apprehensive knowledge, it is false. We can think also the absolute unity, simplicity. This does the mathematician when, in order to obtain the truest notions about the phenomenal world, he works with his ideal points and lines-seeing the type in the copy, the one in the many, the perfect in the imperfect; whilst what he comprehends, what he meets with experimentally, is always the many, the compounded, number and division being the condition of all our experimental knowledge. We can think the absolute wisdom, justice, and beauty; common language attests that we do so: when we would gain the most precise notions of things which are in their measure wise, just, good, we recur to an ideal; whilst out of the ideal, and experimentally, we are only conversant about divers grades of wisdom, justice, and goodness. But it might be answered, "The objection does not imply that we have no ideal of the Absolute. Who ever denied that we have? It only signifies that our idea is of merely subjective value: but knowledge is essentially of the objective; we have therefore no knowledge of the Absolute." This, then, is the grand argument against Realism,-to assert it : * Sir W. Hamilton, however, maintains that the Absolute is both incomprehensible and inexcogitable. false because we have no knowledge of the Absolute, and to assert, again, that we have no knowledge of the Absolute because Realism is false; or, Realism is false because Conceptualism is true, and Conceptualism is true because Realism is false. But we want the proof; and Sir W. Hamilton's proof too often supposes true what he has to prove. But perhaps, in his article on the "Philosophy of the Unconditioned," his object was not so much proof, as the exposition of his own sentiments; or perhaps he thought that Realism was so weak, that the simple statement of the opposite position would prove its surest refutation. Yet Realism is just as well represented in our times as Conceptualism; and Victor Cousin is as good a name in philosophy as Sir W. Hamilton. Thus far we have taken for granted the correctness of the statement, that all the theoretical arguments in favour of the existence of God rest upon the validity of the ontological argument: we now beg leave to dispute that position, which we only admitted for the sake of combating our adversaries on their own ground. And it would indeed be a hard case, were they in the right; for the ontological argument, which is the identification of the ideal with the real Absolute, is the sancta sanctorum of metaphysics, as St. Bonaventure calls it, open exclusively to the philosophically initiated; the vulgar and the ordinary run even of educated minds must content themselves with the physical, or with a mixed argument, the physical and cosmological combined. In short, the old-fashioned method of laying down the necessity of a First Cause and Independent Being, and then arguing out His attributes from the mere fact of His existence, is critically sound; and Kant's attempts at weakening its value are only successful on the hypothesis of his conceptualistic data, which we deny. It cannot be said that the physical argument reposes upon the ontological, merely because the defendant, when pressed by his adversaries' objections, begins to develop his idea of an Independent Being; for he has already established the real existence of an Independent Being, and it is in truth the characteristics of this concrete reality that he is developing; so that the question does not turn upon the reality or unreality of his idea of the Absolute, and not therefore upon the validity of the ontological argument. But Kant denies the validity of the proof of an Independent Being in the first instance; he denies that human reason can *Philosophical Discussions. †The cosmological argument is not demonstrative of itself; but it assists the physical argument. We are speaking of the merely cosmological; for when the type or plan is considered as eternal and immutable, the argument is identified with the ontological. establish the necessity of a First Cause, since it is obliged to return to the question, Why is He? Now it seems curious enough to us that so eminent a philosopher should have attached so much importance to an objection which is really very easily answered. If human reason can succeed in establishing the Independent, it is a poor objection to ask, Why is He? because it is denying again that He is the Independent. If there must be a First Cause, it is idle to ask what is the cause of Him, because that is simply denying that there must be a First Cause. The question is, Must there be an Independent, must there be a First Cause? And to that question, which is really the question, reason has only one answer to give. The dependent must depend upon somewhat; to say that it depends upon the dependent, while that depends upon some other, and so on, is equal to saying that it depends upon nothing so that we must either deny that aught in the universe depends upon aught, which contradicts experience; or we must deny that the dependent depends, which contradicts sense; or we must admit an Independent Self-sufficient Being. But of course we cannot comprehend why God is, although there must be a God; all our mind darkens before that awful question: but hence it does not follow that the Independent is "unthinkable," as Sir William Hamilton words it, but merely that He is incomprehensible. Now, the Independent established as an objective reality, all the rest follows,-that He is the Plenitude of Being, the Infinite, the Goodness, the Beauty, &c.; and all this by a process of reasoning which is familiar to the mere tyro in philosophy. We repeat, this mode of reasoning is sound: but not of course upon the conceptualistic principles of Kant, not on the primary dogma of the Critique of Pure Reason,—that our knowledge is only valid within the limits of possible experience; nor on the hypothesis that the axioms of reason are mere subjective laws of thought, and that our ideas are subjective,principles which form the skeleton of the Critique of Pure Reason,-themselves unproved, incapable of proof, and at variance with the common sense of mankind. If the validity of natural theology does not repose upon the ontological argument, yet it depends, we believe, on the ontological position in general* of the objectivity as well as subjectivity of human thought. If I cannot think the Absolute Himself, * There is surely a great difference between the ontological argument and the ontological position of the reality of ideas. The vulgar believe instinctively that truth is objective; but it would be difficult to persuade a peasant that Necessary Truth is God, even if you could get him to understand what Necessary Truth means. |