premises may chance to be perfect or imperfect, true or false-and it thus becomes what may, for the purpose of distinction, be called the reflective reason. I will give instances of both forms of this reason, which fall within the sphere of our own observation and decidedly manifest the source from which they emanate. When I witness a change in any object of sensation, I instinctively ascribe it to a cause; I have no choice but so to do. It is the dictate, the impulse of this reason. Here this reason is absolute-irreflective. But when I go in quest of the cause, this same reason is still my guide, yet it has now passed from the sphere of the infinite, to that of the finite; and can only refer me, for the cause, to such ideas as are to be found within the sphere of my individual consciousness. In this sphere, it becomes the reflective reason, and puts on the appearance of human fallibility. In the sphere above-that is, in its essential and absolute beingit is the all-creative energy, ever present at the centre of our consciousness; and that which is to us the material universe, is but one of its conceptions; in the sphere beneath, or exterior to it, that is, in the perceptive consciousnes, it puts forth the same conceptive power, but puts it forth only in accordance with the blind promptings of the human will; and then acts on the partial and imperfect conceptions, which it has thus produced, to whatever results they may yield at the demand of individual volition. Such is the distinction between what is here called the Reason, considered as the divine unit that comprises all things, and in which all things are ever immanent, as the forms of its thought, and the Reason in its limited relations to the conscious me, or homo individualis. And if it be true that this self-subsistent entity gives law to the will conditionally, and thus rules in thought, it must be apparent that what we call the self, is rather an object of its action than a part of itself. Accordingly, in this treatise, I distinguish it from that which constitutes the personality or self, by naming it the Not-Me; meaning thereby to embrace all that subsists in, or from it, distinct from the human will; whilst I designate the will itself as the Me; meaning thereby, to designate the conscious identity-the indestructible feeling that I am. Yet should it be perfectly understood, and the idea should be ever present to the mind, that between the Reason and the Will, the NotMe and the Me, the union, in some sense, is most intimate, though the entities be most distinct. The moon is not in the ocean; yet is her presence manifested by the tides, in every drop of the mighty mass, and at the same time, in the whole, as in every single drop. The Reason or Logos subsists in like manner, by its laws, and the results of those laws, in each and all of the entire man; but with this difference, it acts from within outward, and acts in, and on, an entity, conditionally free. The Me governs the body as a whole, or entire instrument, but it does so, only by putting in requisition the laws or energies of the internal structure, (as of nerve, muscle, and so forth,) which are of the Reason, Logos, or Not-Me; and about which it knows no more, than it does of the constitution of the mind. The Me puts in action the soul as a whole, or rather is itself that whole, considered as an active entity; but the internal action of that whole is of the Reason, or Not-Me. It puts in requisition the memory, the imagination, the reflective Reason; but the action of each of these is of the Reason or Logos. The union of the Me and the Not-Me, or Logos, is so intimate, that what is in the entirety, the Me, is, in its constituent elemental power, forces, or laws, the Not-Me, or Logos. The Not-Me is ever the internal law or energy of the Me, even to infinitesimal degrees. The two entities seem, as it were, to interpenetrate each other, and still to subsist without blending: so that if viewed on one side, the Not-Me, or Logos, alone appears; if on the other, the Me alone is manifest. The system which I shall now endeavor to establish, is, in fact, a doctrine of entireties. The principle, which gives it order and combination, is such as to be susceptible of embracing all entities, whether of the world of spirit, or of the world of matter. And, if in this respect it be something novel, the reader will find therein some apology for the frequent recurrence of any terms or phrases which may grate harshly on the unaccustomed ear. It will not be in my power, if I would express my meaning, entirely to avoid them. And in regard to style, generally, my sole object shall be to make myself intelligible, in as few words as possible. If these introductory remarks be such as to encourage the reader to a perusal of the chapters which are to follow, I still feel it a duty to warn him that he has no holiday work to do. They are, I flatter myself, intelligible, but if he means to understand them and to comprehend the system as a whole, he must gird up his loins like a man that has a task before him. He must labor in thought, as well as the author. If he does, his labor, in any event, may not be entirely lost to him. An intellectual exercise upon a doctrine of entireties, in an age so much accustomed to deal in fragments, may do him a service, even though his anticipations may not be realized. CHAPTER II. THE ALL RESOLVED INTO ITS SUBJECTIVE UNITY IN THE LOGOS, OR ABSO LUTE REASON. Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ην πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. JOHN I. 1, 3, 4. We We know nothing of matter, but by the agency of the senses. have, and can have, no knowledge, except by intuition and inference, of any substance separate and distinct from its qualities. Locke has distinguished qualities as primary and secondary. Solidity, extension, figure, and mobility, he considers inseparable from matter in whatever form it may be, and therefore he classes them as primary qualities. His secondary qualities are those that spring from the primary; that is, qualities which are nothing in the objects themselves, but which are certain sensations in us, produced by the various powers of the primary qualities; as by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts. Hence colors, sounds, tastes, &c., are by him denominated secondary qualities. In the above enumeration of primary qualities, it does seem to me that three names are bestowed on what is essentially but one quality. Figure is but a mode of extension; and solidity results from extension and figure. If my hands embrace a cannon ball, and I endeavor to bring them together, what is it that prevents their contact but a modified extension in the ball, resisting a modified extension in the hands. Extension acts against extension, and the only new element, which this action reveals, is resistance. This I shall hereafter consider; and it will, I think, be made to appear that if extension be resolvable into an absolute Reason, resistance, as its correllative, is equally resolv able into an absolute Will. I may, therefore, now dispose of all these primary qualities, simply by considering two of them, viz: Extension and Mobility. But since we cannot have an idea of either of these qualities without the idea of space, I deem it well first to consider our idea of space. Space is not a quality, either secondary or primary. It is not an object of sensation. Of all our primary ideas, this, without which none other could exist, comes not to us through the medium of any one of the senses. No one ever saw, heard or felt space. Nor is its idea a product of the reflective reason. The brute creation have as truly a perception of space as we, though they may not make it an object of reflection. Yet, notwithstanding it is neither an object of sensation nor a result of reflection, we have such entire faith in its existence, that it is easier to conceive of the non-existence of bodies than of space. But if it come neither from sensation nor reflection, there is but one other source from which it can be derived, and that is from intuition, or (to confine myself to the language of this treatise) from that absolute Reason, which I conceive to be God's presence within us. I will endeavor to make this position good, by satisfactory proof. According to the common notion, space is a somewhat which extended bodies fill, or by which they are separated; and which would remain as a vast— as an immeasurable vacuity-if they were all annihilated. Now, as preliminary to the consideration of extension and mobility, I will endeavor to show what space really is, in the absolute, whence it comes to us, and how a conception of it is forced upon the mind. There is truly nothing in external creation but ultimate forms called material. Wherever these forms are, we perceive spontaneously, intuitively, all possible geometrical relations between them; and space is nothing but this objective geometry, minus the material forms or coexistent plurality which suggests it, or gives it, as it subsists in the geometrical reason, to become objective. Take away then material extension-the coexistent plurality, and space is nothing but this geometry, which a pure mathematical Reason, of its own spontaneity, has created out of itself; or rather which exists in itself, and of which the external is only its objective form. This position, it is believed, can be established as an incontrovertible scientific truth. It can be proved, by an experimental process, that the space of a body is nothing but the body itself and its geometrical relations, by showing that if you annihilate a portion of the field of vision, you also annihilate a portion of its space. I can best illustrate this idea by the experiment itself; and as it is one to which frequent reference may hereafter be made, I must beg the reader here to make it a subject of particular consideration and to criticise it closely. I value it for the means which it affords of illustrating ideas in relation to spirit and matter, concerning which we have hitherto had an obscure notion, rather than a definite conception. An impression upon the organs of sight is not itself vision, but only the condition necessary to seeing. Now the faculty of sight is one and indivisible; but it has two distinct organs, with each of which, independently of the other, it can see, and with both which it does see, when both are in the appropriate condition. But since the same field of vision paints two distinct pictures-one on the right retina and one on the left-why is it that two objects are not perceived instead of one? It is not owing to the unity of the faculty of sight only, for distorted eyes see double. The question has been answered in various ways; but the only answer which appears to me satisfactory is, that the objects are not seen double because the space between the picture on the right retina and that on the left excites no visual perception. I will give the answer in another form. You see the object through both the impressions, but through the space between them you can see nothing-nothing visual or visible separates them to the internal faculty-and it is for this reason, though we see distinctly with each eye, independently of the other, that both together produce but a single perception of the object. The two impressions are as independent of each other as if each belonged to a distinct person; but by reason of a common faculty of sight, the object seen by both appears somewhat larger and more distinct. But let the reader satisfy himself on this point. If he be under the necessity of using glasses to aid his sight, he can at once realize the truth of our problem. The two glasses will represent the two images produced on the organs of sight by an object, and the bow between them will represent the space which separates the two images. Now apply them in the usual manner to the eyes, and the space between the two glasses will utterly disappear, and the two glasses will be seen as one. Here then are actually two objects-the two glasses; they are actually separated by the space of an inch-they produce on the retina two distinct images, and why do we not see the two distinct images, instead of seeing both as one? I answer that, because the glasses are applied to the eyes in the usual manner, the visible space between them is made to disappear-is annihilated as to the percipient mind; and hence, as there is no visible extension to separate them, and as they are in all respects similar, they necessarily appear as one object or glass-considerably enlarged, but still as a single object. So if on corresponding portions of the glasses, nearest each to each, circles be drawn, say of the size of half-dimes, or the coins themselves be so placed, they will appear as one. Now here are actually two objects producing their images, yet both seen as one, because the extension between them is annihilated as to the sight of the beholder. But when we look at a single object, it produces two images, one on each retina, and the space between them may be called the non-visual, and these images and this non-visual space precisely correspond, the former |
