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the inconsistencies which have most forcibly struck us in the writers' modes of thought and statement. Where there is no argument, but only dogmatical denunciation, there can be nothing so respectable as a fallacy to answer: and the only work which remains for criticism to do is to draw forth into notice the logical principles tacitly assumed by the author, and show where they are either at variance with each other or untenable in themselves. It is incumbent on every one who controverts a belief sacred to the affections of his fellow-men, to state distinctly the conditions on which he would accept that belief, and the particulars in which he conceives them to be unfulfilled. Without this, all discussion is vain as a skirmish in the dark; and arguments in proof or disproof, however successfully they hit the imaginary point at which they aim, may do no execution and conduce to no result. We have a right to ask, of those who taunt us with the inefficacy of our persuasion, 'What is the evidence which would suffice to convince you?' and till that question is clearly answered, the taunt is a barren insolence from which an earnest and tender mind will shrink. These Letters not only furnish no reply to this inquiry; but plainly show that the writers have never thought of it at all, and would be quite unable to answer it to themselves. They are drawn, by a heedless sense of something grand to look at, into the deep forests and among the solemn Alps of moral and religious truth, without clue to guide them or compass to show them where they stand. Whether the doctrines of Duty and of God are inherently absurd,-absolutely unpresentable in thought, so as to be no proper objects of evidence at all; or whether they are susceptible of conceivable proof, but, on being admitted to a hearing, fail to establish their case-whether human knowledge. stops with physical objects and events, or goes on to Laws, or advances even to Causes-whether Causality means simple Antecedence, or involves the notion of Power, or proceeds to embrace the idea of alternative power or Volition;-all these questions, without a settlement of which neither Theism nor Atheism can pretend to a philosophic basis, are left by our authors in the most hopeless confusion; answered sometimes in one way, sometimes in the opposite, and in neither case for any better apparent

reason than that so, for the nonce, the shortest cut is obtained to the predetermined negations of human faith. Miss Martineau, with that quickness of exultation which so often makes observers sad, says :

“The fresh dawn of science has for some time been brightening upon the nightmare period of theology; and the full and perfect day is the surest prophecy afloat in the universe. The great step of all is achieved, the learning what knowledge is."-P. 249.

We submit that this is precisely the step which is not achieved; that while many particular "knowledges” have made progress, there is no established definition or theory of knowledge in itself and its ultimate grounds; and that if there were, then would that science of Metaphysics, whose failure is the object of our authors' perpetual derision, be already in a perfect state, and be chargeable with no failure at all: for this is the whole problem of Metaphysics, to determine the nature and conditions of human knowledge. We do not hesitate to say that of this problem, not one of the celebrated mediæval Schoolmen, whom modern Illuminism loves to revile but declines to know, was capable of entertaining a conception so incompetent and vacillating as Mr. Atkinson.

He repeatedly lays it down as an axiom, that the range of knowledge is precisely co-extensive with the range of perception by sense. "A man can know no more than he has perceived. Clairvoyance does not reach beyond phenomena: nor is it in our power to conceive of anything different from what we know" (p. 141). "We only know phenomena and phenomena are no representation of the external and inherent force of nature" (p. 226). "All we know is phenomena" (p. 240). It is plain, that if this be so, God, not being a phenomenon, cannot be known; and however possible his existence, evidence of it is impossible.

But on the same ground we must admit that Space and Time cannot be known: for they are not phenomena, but the theatre of all phenomena: they are not objects accessible to us by perception; for they are infinite, while the sphere of our perception is finite. Does our author then deny their reality, and to his atheism add a doctrine of achronism and atopism? On the contrary, he says, "I

think it rather absurd of Kant to suppose that these fundamental matters, space and time, have no existence out of our sensibility" (p. 145). On what evidence then does he admit their objective existence? On the very same that induced Kant to pronounce them purely subjective, viz., that "we cannot imagine matter or motion, or mind, to exist without space and time. We can conceive the absence of all objects; but it seems necessary that time and space must be and exist eternally, though there were a total void " (p. 145). Here then our inability to conceive of any thing without space and time is allowed to pass as proof, and as sole proof of their reality. We know them, not because we have apprehended them as phenomena, but because we must think them as conditions of all phenomena. Thus the maxim "All we know is phenomena" is discarded, as soon as it has served the purpose of putting every thing divine out of the way.

The contradiction, however, does not stop here. Causation is no more a phenomenon than Time and Space. At least we presume that Mr. Atkinson would acknowledge this for his atheism is not founded on Hume's and J. S. Mill's principle, that causation is known to us only as invariable (and unconditional) succession, and is therefore nothing more than an observed priority and posteriority of phenomena loose and detached inter se; but on the assumption that we possess genuine dynamical knowledge, and that such words as "electricity," magnetism," "gravitation," are not mere names, compendiously referring us to events in a certain order and classification, but denote positive forces, having actual as well as conceptual existence. He supposes us to be so well acquainted with these forces as to be able to affirm several things respecting them; for instance, that they are all material (p. 7); and that they are all convertible (p. 256). But on what tenure, by what title, do we hold such knowledge? Force is invisible, inaudible, intangible: you cannot plead that you perceive it; you perceive only its effects: you cannot point to it as a phenomenon; for whatever is phenomenal refers you to it as its source. You see the stone fall, or the needle dip; you only think the power of which the movement is an expression. If then you believe in the reality of that power, you believe it on the evidence of a

thought; it has no guarantee beyond the deposition of your own faculty. We are thus introduced to another class of objective existences, freely allowed to pass on presenting their subjective ticket of admission. Mr. Atkinson himself, when posted as door-keeper, permits them to enter on these terms: 66 Time, Space, and Causation are ultimate facts recognised by appropriate faculties of mind" (p. 181). Miss Martineau indeed proposes the logical question to him in the most general form: "Do you conclude upon an objective reality, in an always equal degree, as to certainty, when you find a corresponding organ in the brain?" (p. 159): and the nearest approach to an answer is given in these words: "If I am told that I have no right to infer the objective from the subjective, I reply, 'Very well: then, you who object must believe only in your own mind, and that only in the impression that is then passing"" (p. 272).

The new canon which is thus let in,—that the primitive beliefs involved in the exercise of our faculties must be accepted as true,—is not only in palpable contradiction of the previous rule,—that "All we know is phenomena;" but is subversive of all the characteristic doctrines of this book. Our knowledge of Causation, for instance, being altogether a subjective disclosure, it follows that the sole authority to which we can appeal in every question of this nature is our own idea of Cause. This one constant type of thought is to be carried by us into all experience, and to serve as the regula naturæ. Phenomena are to be construed by it and can add nothing to it. They start up, and, as we notice them, we are constrained to think of them as the expression of power: and whenever they come, and whatever they be, this is the self-identical thing that occurs to us over and over again. In its original subjective seat of authority, therefore, all Causality is one; it lies there in undistributed unity of type. How, then, do we come to speak of a plurality of different causes, such as electricity, gravitation, and chemical action? Does this classification belong to our knowledge of causation, or to our knowledge of phenomena? Evidently to the latter. The only ground for the discrimination lies in the resemblances and differences prevailing among the effects. A family likeness running through a groupe of phenomena

and their observable conditions induces us to set them apart, to think of them together, and make propositionsamong others, causal propositions-about them collectively. It is because the movement of the tides, the path of a projectile, and the revolution of a planet, present, as events, certain features of similarity, that we refer to their cause under the one word gravitation. It is because the flash of lightning and the spark from the excited surface of a non-conductor are alike in themselves and different from the others, that we denote their source by a distinct name, electricity. Of these, however, as two forces different per se we know nothing: the causation which we think in the one is identical with that which we think in the other: now it is Power issuing one class of phenomena, and then Power producing another. The whole arrangement lies in the facts perceived, not in energies conceived: it is sensible, not dynamical. It is therefore altogether an illusion to suppose that science can take us behind phenomena, and lay out before us a series of "physical," or "vital," or "mental" forces, distinguished from one another by certain special characters; and it is a deeper plunge into the same illusion, to discuss the convertibility, the correlation, the possible identity of these forces; as if their specific difference as Suváμes was the present datum of our knowledge, and their sameness the future quæsitum. Not that we in the least deny the importance of such researches as those of Faraday and of Manteucci, which cannot fail to give new insight into the order and analogies of natural events. Only let it be clearly understood that they are phenomenal investigations prosecuted under the disguise of dynamical language. In rerum naturá as apprehensible by us, there are not several kinds of causes, but only several kinds of effects: and causation, while it is given to us as an object of knowledge by the testimony of our own faculties, possesses, as such, that perfect unity which belongs, as their distinctive mark, to all things cognizable a priori. To determine the nature of the one uniform cause, the process, since we have to do with an object subjectively known,-must be altogether psychological: no physical inquiries can ever throw the least light upon the matter: on the contrary, the first aim must be to strip off the distinctions and classifications accumulated

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