organic matter is in turn dependent. Yet we praise and reward, or blame and punish, human actions that are ultimately determined by these apparently blind external forces !

I think it will be enough to reply, that, however they are determined, here they are; and it is not their origin or causation, but themselves, that seem to us ideal and praiseworthy, or unideal and censurable. Still I should also reply, that, even if the chemical be implicit in the mechanical, and the vital in the chemical, and the conscious in the vital, and the moral in the conscious, which is what I believe—yet that to be implicit is not to be explicit that existence takes on a distinctly different, nobler and richer kind of life in taking on each of these new conditions. What dominates each separate element, and the properties latent in each separate element, molecular motions or other properties, so as to mould them first into given chemical substances, and then into given vital organisms? What, again, differentiates these into ever more complex organizations? If you talk of forces at all, it must be proper to speak of mechanical, chemical and vital force. What, again, makes consciousness proper emerge from the specialization of general sensibility?

We must remember that forces, elements, molecules, properties, ether, atoms, void, are but provisional modes of conceiving the external universe after all, which have a regulative, phenomenal, but only a very relatively constitutive, or absolute noumenal value. The truth is, we have experience of how certain modes of external being we call "elements" have acted in certain relationships; so we isolate them in our minds, and call these ways of acting their properties; being apt to fancy that they have a really separate entity with a lot of properties locked up in them, which enable them all to get together now and then, and add these properties, or the rhythms of all their molecular motions, together, thus giving you at once the varied universe. But this or any similar conception is surely unphilosophical in the extreme. We are obliged to isolate a thing. in conception, no doubt; but it is never isolated for all that, except as humanly conceivable; and the manner of its action

we discern in an utterly imperfect degree; while apart from its action it is itself nothing. The logical laws, or necessities of thought and knowledge are implied in its very structure, and in every exercise of its functions. "Inheritance" does not account for the necessity of intuition; only fact-internal or external, or both-can account for it. For any event you know intuitively there is a sufficient cause. How does "inheritance" touch that? Our intuitions must correspond to external fact, unless the whole of consciousness be a lie, and if there be any external fact at all. The external world must in that case share half the responsibility of uniform experience, our faculties sharing the other. If we impose our thought on things, yet things must have a uniform capacity for being thus thought; if they impose our thought on us, then our thought and they agree. Again, if our thought be all, then outer and inner world, being one, agree admirably. Only then we must take the whole of thought fairly. Anyhow, that which is uniformly intelligible must in some sense be intelligent, or at least partake of the same nature as the intelligence that understands it. Subject and object agreeing, they must be radically identical. Some the external world has developed our reason, accounts for it entirely; then it must agree and correspond with it perfectly, be of the same substance, i.e. the external world must be Reason. The uniformly varying affinities, weights, sizes, forms, of the hypothetical atoms of material elements (only to be conceived by externalizing the categories or forms of thought itself), and the uniform rhythmic motions or other properties of these, if they be assumed, with Tyndal and Huxley, to be the "potential" intelligible universe, can only be conceived as themselves intelligence operating to produce a complex result,-intelligence, moreover, acting in a concerted, harmonious, rational fashion throughout all these atoms and controlling forces. For the action of each supposed atom and element is strictly dependent on, forms therefore but a truncated part of, the true idea of the action, both simultaneous and successive, of all elements and atoms; while its own mode of manifestation is ever changing; it emerges from one mode of existence, and disappears into

say

another. That is part, then, of its very idea or essence. What brings the complex result about cannot possibly be each atom or molecule taken separately-for then there were no concert or harmonious unity provided for-but must necessarily be all taken together, and, strictly speaking, all as they are in the effect, not merely as they are before-for the special novel complexity of the effect has to be accounted for. Creative power is implied at every stage of motion or change (as I have shewn in the Contemporary Review, Feb. 1874); that is to say, the "potential," if the word imply power to emerge at a given time, is really not in the preceding stage of existence, but in the whole Divine Kosmos, which includes both past, present and future, is, however, implicit in the past, because the past. is only past and isolated to us. Alas! that Aristotle should not yet have convinced the world that form is older than matter, that form dominates matter, not matter form, although in time the reverse order appears to prevail-matter appears first. But when we regard the time-process of phenomena, atoms, elements, forces, &c., then we must conceive of these as in themselves blindly intelligent, unconscious intelligence; yet I admit that this is a human, inadequate way of regarding them. They are otherwise in their true noumenal being. If the time-development of humanity took place in the manner suggested by Mr. Spencer in his very interesting second volume of Psychology, it was certainly the very reverse of a tentative, accidental kind of development, implying as it did fixed inherent laws at every stage of progress, and laws operating together to produce the highest conceivable intelligible and even intelligent result. When I speak of "laws," I mean orderly, harmonious, intelligible ways of acting, in concert with other agencies, to produce intelligible, complex, differentiated, yet integrated and selfreproducing results-each of the apparent failures of organisms unfitted to survive itself fulfilling its own purpose, both obviously for the organism itself, however comparatively short and poor its existence (all is comparative so far as survival or excellence goes), and in view of larger issues, not always manifest, which the formation, defeat and destruction of such

organisms brings about; while it seems necessary (therefore reasonable) that there shall be a struggle for existence, in order to bring out the latent energies of individuals and species most adapted to the conditions, most fitted to survive. Moreover, it will be found that the lesser and the greater, the innumerable varieties of life, the successful and unsuccessful, help one another in more positive ways; they come forth together, and are mutually necessary to one another. It is most important to remember that neither our physical nor our moral ideals are absolute, but relative. In both nature and man, therefore, we shall find them often quietly ignored, in favour of an ideal out of sight and of quite different scope. Still our ideals seem to us absolute; as Kant puts it-"Act so that thy action may become a rule for all rational creatures." And herein lies one of the contradictions of our limited intelligence, which Hegel and his school in vain would hypostatize and deify as final, as absolute. Doubtless our own ideal, and the very different ideals actually fulfilled by others, are but broken lights of a greater ideal, which includes and satisfies them all, in which the very individuals that seem such utter failures to us are perfected and justified both to themselves and to their fellows. Thus misery and deformity become transfigured for all our scorning a scorning, however, that has its justification also.

These lower "unsuccessful" lives are to perish-as men count perishing, and want of success-the highest kind of existence is not destined for them, at least now; and, indeed, how can all have the same kind and measure of existence all at once? Where then would be the discord, the difference, the strife? conditions of harmony, of life, of love, that seeks in another what it has not in self? of pity, sacrifice, generosity, curiosity, sounding the depths of infinite being? And yet there is a power antagonistic to the destructive power, tending to the elevation of all: all do seek an ideal; that is the Reason, the Love, that draws all upward into itself, yet cannot prevail in some creatures, while they are in their actual circumstances-cannot prevail, because it would not be well on the whole, nay, not even for them as members of the whole, as in the deepest sense selves, that it should

at the present stage of their existence prevail-yet shall and must prevail even in these. Conciliation here again is to be found by intelligence vaster than our own. But Faith trusts and acquiesces. Taking God in this fullest meaning of the word, we see how much truth there is in the Calvinistic doctrine that God "seeks His own glory," that even the wicked praise Him," that "He hardens whom He will." Being, nonbeing; unreason, reason; contingency, necessity; evil, good; become one in a deeper intuition we cannot fathom; where there is no time, nor causality, nor space, nor finite, nor infinite. Hegel (attempting rigorously to deduce the categories of Kant), having led us up to the essential identity of these contraries, did not take the further step, which now, however, philosophy must take. Schelling's Indifference-point has to be conciliated with Hegel's Logical process. (Yet I sincerely trust that no so-called "originality" may be proved against me. I believe that I am supported by authoritative revelation and reason.) I now, then, venture to point out that all these fundamental Notions or Ideas of human Reason are essential to the constitution of such supreme Intuition; are stages in the passage of spirit and nature toward this goal; are true, therefore, and not illusory (as the Know-nothing school of Kant, Hume, Mansel, Comte, maintain)-but true, with a limited human truth only. No doubt we could deduce all the system of Knowledge and Being from fundamental Ideas of Reason (even "one's writing pen," as Hegel was asked to do for I cannot share the orthodox metaphysical contempt for mere phenomena, for mere material things), if we had the ultimate fundamental Intuition. But Hegel mistakes in assuming that our logical notions are this fundamental intuition, and, gigantic as his intellect is, he has therefore failed in such attempted deduction. Hence also his contempt. for inductive science, for the method of experience, is not justified. We are bound to adopt that Baconian method, because our principles or ideas can never rise to the fulness of the Divine creative ideas, from which indeed the world of thought and being does flow. Our logical notions and our intuitions