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[Feb. 7, all departments of knowledge, we may designate its three primary subdivisions as Pure Reason, Practical Reason, and Logical Reason.

Pure Reason corresponds pretty satisfactorily to Kant's Reine Vernunft, in so far as it is the faculty of the highest intuitions. It holds all the direct revelations of faith, all positive or a priori certainty, all absolute and incontrovertible knowledge. Of absolute knowledge we have examples in pure mathematics, and in every axiom or proposition which carries with itself the perception of its necessary and universal validity. From the decisions of pure reason there can be no appeal. No professed infallibility, of pope or conclave or synod or man or body of men, can shake the assurance with which we accept the decisions of self-evidence. Others may think us in error, either through want of the clear insight which we enjoy, or through misunderstanding some of the details or bearings of our decision. Whatever we know to be true, no one else can know to be false, however much he may doubt it or however absurd he may think it. The Christian philosopher ranks among the most valuable portions of his absolute knowledge the facts of his own religious experience; the certainty of spiritual being; the self evidence of a SELF-evident source and authority for self-evidence; the necessary Being of a Planner and Lawgiver to prepare the plans and enact the laws of the universe.

Practical Reason is nearly represented by Kant's Praktische Vernunft. It works in the field of morality, for the formation of character; furnishing motives for the guidance of the will; fitted, under the divine sanctification of desire, for the inauguration of noble purposes; giving the real knowledge which makes by far the largest portion of our intellectual attainments. Real knowledge embraces every fact which we are compelled to believe by the constitution of our minds, but of which we do not perceive the absolute necessity. Absolute and real knowledge are often so closely united that it is difficult, especially for persons who have not been thoroughly trained in habits of nice discrimination, to tell where the absolute ends and the relative begins. For all practical purposes, the authority of a truth, which is valid under all the relations by which it is surrounded in our apprehension, is just as binding as the authority of a truth which is valid under all possible relations. Moral certainty is as much the gift of God, and therefore as obligatory, as self-evidence. Both physically and spiritually, the absolute knowledge of others may become our real knowledge, provided we are satisfied of their truthfulness. By practical reason we learn that we are surrounded on every side by limitations which we cannot overleap; that we are, to some extent, the creatures of circumstance; but that, within our bounds and under all possible circumstances there are such things as right and wrong, duty and responsibility; that we must, therefore, have so much freedom of choice and action as is necessary for the exercise of our responsibility. God has provided for the satisfaction of our needs by giving us a real knowledge of what will elevate our character, as well as by giving us an absolute knowledge of what will elevate our thoughts.

1879.]

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Logical, or Empirical Reason is the faculty which is commonly regarded as the crowning glory of man, by those who look upon reason and faith as mutually antagonistic. It is, however, rather an evidence of intellectual weakness than of intellectual strength; because its sole office is to unfold what is given us by pure and practical reason, and because it is exposed to all the mistakes which may arise from undue assumption of premises as well as from fallacious inferences. Kant calls it Urtheilskraft, the power or faculty of Judgment. It works largely in the field of science, for the classification of phenomena; examining especially the information which comes to us through the avenues of bodily sensation; confining itself, therefore, mainly to the interpretation of the material universe; and attaining, by its unaided efforts, only to problematical knowledge. Problematical knowledge covers everything which we believe to be true, but the truth of which depends on circumstances which it is impossible for us to determine with certainty. The vacillations and inconsistencies of scientific theories and systems are due, at least partly, to the attempts to disregard or discredit the testimony of the only faculties which can give us positive knowledge.

Fortunately for the interests of truth, and fortunately for science itself, such attempts are always vain. Whether we are aware of it or not, the inspirations of understanding compel us to act under the instinctive promptings of our highest faculties. We may scoff at metaphysics if we will; yet, if we study at all, we speedily find ourselves trying to explain and coördinate the physical facts which we accumulate by observation and experiment. The question, what, is necessarily followed by the question, how; fact points and leads irresistibly to theory and law. For the completion of possible knowledge the question, how, is naturally followed by the question, why; theory and law indicate such accordances of thought and will, as may be readily understood if we believe that they represent the activity of a Thinker and Willer, and such as cannot be satisfactorily explained on any other hypothesis. In order that any physical phenomena may be. brought within the domain of scientific thought, we must have faith in the validity of the simple presentation, enough curious desire to keep up a proper representation, enough understanding to distinguish the general from the special and the essential from the accidental.

Religion, entrenched in the citadel of faith, has always been helped by antagonism, gaining new strength from every new struggle. Skepticism, assuming protean forms and continually shifting its ground, tries in vain to dislodge its antagonist, and at every assault furnishes new weapons to be turned against itself. The old truths, the primitive beliefs of our race, are still as precious as ever; beyond the reach of death and decay, they continue to hold forth the promise of participation in their own eternal youth and vigor, to those who will accept and rightly use them. Such acceptance and use always bring a full assurance of knowledge, which shrinks from no controversy that is worthy of notice. But skepticism is too apt to forget the two fundamental rules of controversy: that for every individual, self-evidence outweighs all other evidence; and that, whenever

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[Feb. 7, self evidence is not attainable, only qualified judges are competent to decide mooted questions.

Philosophy neither needs nor seeks any suppression of facts, and it is not fettered by any theories, however skilfully they may be framed or however haughtily they may be set forth. It grants to science the right of self-imposed limitation to the field of material phenomena, and it accepts material laws as the true keys to material facts, but it looks to moral and spiritual laws as the only keys to the facts of moral and spiritual life. It does not go to a doctor for legal advice, or to a theologian for scientific instruction; it cares little for a deaf man's judgment of a symphony of Beethoven, or for a scientific theorist's views upon a question of religious experience; but it welcomes from every quarter, from Religion, Ethics and Science alike, any new revelation of the eternal truths of God, and it always strives to reach such clear insight into the harmonies of truth as will help it to dispel the mists of human error. No truth is so insignificant that its place would be better filled by a plausible falsehood; none is so formida ble that it can overthrow any other truth. The "may be" of the shrewdest conjecture, the "perhaps " of the wisest hypothesis, may be helpful to the investigator, and the philosopher will always gladly accept every wellestablished result to which they may lead; but they count for nothing against the "surely" of self-evidence or the "therefore" of experimental knowledge.

"A thoughtful writer," cited by Dr. Pusey in a late Oxford sermon, says: "Special studies, which bring into play any special aptitude of intelligence without paralyzing the rest, are conformable to the wants of nature. Exclusive studies, which amass a sort of conjectural life upon one point of the mind, leaving the rest in inaction, are but abnormally developing the excresences of intellectual life; so when special science forms men who are eminent, exclusive science produces judgments which are false. Exclusive science is the only one injurious to religion, but it is also the only one opposed to it. What withholds man from faith is not the knowledge of nature which any one has, but the knowledge of religion which he has not."

The Christian philosopher would gladly share this knowledge with others, but he can point out no other way for its attainment than that of direct revelation. He is often astonished at the condescension of God; he asks, with David, "what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him?" If any satisfactory answer can be found to the question he believes that it should be sought by looking upwards, and not downwards; by following the leadings of the highest spiritual truths, and not by sounding the quagmires of material truth; by studying the records of Supreme Power and Wisdom, not by stopping short at the laws of protoplasm and chemical affinity and molecular motion.

The materialist boasts of the positive knowledge which can be attained by the senses, and regards nothing as worthy of investigation which cannot be verified by sensorial observation and experiment. The Christian

recognizes the value of the sensorium as an instrument of mind. and the reverence with which he regards his experimental religious knowledge, leads him to appreciate, at its fullest worth, experimental secular knowledge. But the worth is spiritual, not material. Beauty and order and law are spiritual attributes. The microcosm of each individual is what his spiritual discernment sees it to be, even as the macrocosm of the universe is what God saw it to be, when "he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast," and when he "saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good."

The deceptions of sense are proverbial. We learn, by experience, to correct such as are practically harmful, but the correction involves an exercise of judgment, an assertion of the controlling authority to which sense always is, as it was intended to be, subservient. If each of our senses may sometimes deceive us we can get no valid authority from any combination or comparison of mere sensorial findings. But if the spiritual interpretation of every finding has always a relative truth, a way is opened for supersensual knowledge. The unsoundness of any claim that such interpretations are the evidence of the senses may be made more glaring, by showing that sense-deception is not exceptional and rare, but normal and universal.

Take the sense of sight. The most advanced physical science of our day teaches that light and shade, color and visible form, are due solely to wave-motions in the luminiferous æther. These motions are received by an optical instrument, consisting of a combination of lenses and transparent media of various refracting powers. Whatever doubts any one may have as to the Contriver of this wonderful instrument, there can be no doubt that it was made with a specific design for a specific end or purpose; that it was designed to meet certain wants or needs of its possessor, and that its purpose is vision. There is little room for doubt that the æthereal vibrations enter the eye, and are transmitted to the brain, where Consciousness receives them, not as wave-motions, but as a beautiful and inexplicable panorama of blended ideal harmonies and contrasts. Light as we know it, and light as a material agency, are two entirely distinct realities. The spiritual power of the soul transforms the simple motions into conceptions, supplementing creative purpose by introducing a new order of things, and showing that the highest reality requires, for its continued existence, the continual exercise of intelligence.

Turn next to hearing. The unanimous verdict of the most competent judges is again in favor of motion, as the physical instrumentality of all the impressions which reach us through this important sense. The waves, however, are now in a much grosser medium, and are received by a much more sluggish apparatus. While the slowest visible light waves vibrate more than three hundred million million times in a second, the swiftest audible sound waves do not vibrate more than seventy-five thousand times in a second. The frequency of vibration is, therefore, more than four thousand million times as great in light as in sound. The atmospheric

waves strike the drum of the ear, awakening answering vibrations in the organs of the inner ear, where they are received by the delicate branching fibres of the auditory nerve and sent to the brain. There Consciousness receives them, not as waves. nor as motions of any kind, nor even as light, but as transformed, by the soul's spiritual activity, into a new order of spiritual conceptions; conceptions which have a reality of the highest degree, but a reality which exists only so long as it is upheld by the power of intelligence.

Taste and smell are more nearly alike than any other two senses, and they may be examined together. The influence of wave motion is not so evident in them as in sight and hearing, but there is no reason for doubting that the gustatory and auditory and all other nerves transmit their impressions to the brain and receive their influences from the brain, by waves or beats. Tyndall's investigations show a striking resemblance between odors and vapors in their absorption and radiation of heat; sapid substances are always soluble, and taste is not excited until some solution is made. Both these senses, therefore, require a preliminary breaking up of cohesion, and consequent increase of active elasticity. The "kinetic theory of gases," which was first proposed by Daniel Bernouilli, supposes that they are formed of material particles, animated by very rapid movements, and that the tension of elastic fluids results from the shock of their particles against the sides of the vessels which enclose them. In discussing the theory most physicists, and perhaps all, have assumed the motions of the particles to be rectilinear, but cosmical analogies indicate a probability that they may be more often elliptical, and perhaps often parabolic or hyperbolic. The likelihood of continual internal motion, of some kind or other, amounts to moral or practical certainty; the probability that taste and smell are in the same category as sight and hearing, objectively as well as subjectively, is, therefore, incalculably great, and if some skilful physiologi should announce the discovery and measurement of waves of smell and taste, the discovery would awaken great interest but little or no surprise. While awaiting the discovery we know that the throbs of the different nerves, which terminate in the mouth and nose, finally reach the brain, where Consciousness receives them, not as waves, nor as motions of any kind, nor even as light nor as sound, but as taste and smell. The spiritual wonder-worker again uses its transforming power to set forth new orders of conceptions; conceptions full of living reality, but a reality which requires the action of intelligence, both to call it into being and to maintain its existence.

The sense of touch seems so completely to underlie all the others, that they are often spoken of as modifications of touch. There are, however, some special considerations, connected with the general sensitiveness of the skin, which are worthy of notice. Many of the most important bodily sensations, at least in a physiological point of view, are dependant on temperature. One of the most interesting modern physical treatises is Tyndall's "Heat as a mode of motion." In that work, the successor of Fara