all the rest; and that is the idea of Cause. Unity, or Substance, being an absolute cause, cannot but pass into act, cannot but develop itself. Take away the category of Causality from the other categories, the superficial observer discovers no omission of any importance; but you may now perceive its consequences. It destroys every possible conception of the creation of the world. But Unity in itself, as absolute cause, contains the power of becoming variety and difference.

"What is the road that leads from God to the Universe? It is-creation. And what is creation? What is it—to create?— not according to the hypothetical method, but the method we have followed,—that method which always borrows from human consciousness that which, by a higher induction, it afterwards applies to the Divine Essence. To create, is a thing which it is not difficult to conceive; for it is a thing which we do at every moment: in fact, we create whenever we perform a free action. We create a free action: we create it, I say; for we do not refer it to any principle superior to ourselves: we impute it to ourselves exclusively. It was not: it begins to be, by virtue of that causality which we possess. Thus to cause is to create; but with what? With nothing? Certainly not. Man does not draw forth from nothingness the act which he has not yet done, and is about to do: he draws it forth from the power which he has to do it,from himself. Here is the type of creation. The divine creation is the same in its nature. God, if he is a Cause, can create; and, if he is an Absolute Cause, he cannot but create; and, in creating the universe, he does not draw it forth from Nothingness, but from Himself."

Although M. Cousin here claims to have abandoned a hypothetical method that is uncertain for a practical method that is sure, because he reasons from facts of the individual consciousness, he has evidently mistaken his own position, both as to its nature and its tendency. He, as well as they, reasons hypothetically; because he assumes that the consciousness of freedom in the individual is equivalent to a conception of the law of Causation, and draws from this hypothetical premise his conclusion: but while they reason legitimately, because they reason from cause to effect, he reasons absurdly, because he reverses the legitimate order of thought, and not only reasons from effect to cause, but substitutes a natural phenomenon for a spiritual law. Now, this is a double absurdity: first, because phenomena can be understood only through a knowledge of law; and, next, because the pheno

mena of the individual consciousness from which he reasons are natural and fictitious, and therefore completely opposite to spiritual law. M. Cousin is even inconsistent with himself; because, while assuming the false position that the act of selfdetermination in man, through which he creates from the power inherent in himself, is a type of Causality or of Creation, which is to reveal to us the nature of creation by God, he uses this, as a premise, to prove that God, from Himself, produces the opposite of Himself. The most unfortunate position assumed by this writer is that in which he attempts to obtain a conception of the modes of existence and operation in God by referring to the deceptive appearances presented by the natural consciousness of man. Being unable to obtain any conception of absolute cause, he thought that man infinitely extended might be made to answer the same purpose. He therefore, with the most amusing selfcomplacency, says, "I wonder at the folly of those, who, in order to understand God better, consider him, as they say, in his pure and absolute essence. I believe I have for ever removed the root of such an extravagance. We must leave vain dialectics, in order to arrive at a real living God. It is the consciousness of ourselves as beings, and at the same time limited beings, which raises us immediately to the conception of a being who is the principle of our being, and who is himself without limits. The being which we possess forces us to recur to a cause which possesses this same being to an infinite degree. Hence God will no longer be simply the infinite, abstract, and indeterminate being which reason and the heart cannot lay hold of: he will be a real and determinate being like ourselves; and psychology will conduct us, without hypothesis, to a theodicy at once sublime and within our reach, free at once from hypothesis and abstraction. Consenting to recognize God only in his signs visible to the eyes, intelligible to the mind, sensible to the soul, it is upon infallible evidences that we have elevated ourselves to God."

Such a theodicy as this is certainly "within our reach," but is as far from being "sublime" as it is from being true. Indeed, the idea, as here set forth in the pompous language of M. Cousin, is rather suggestive of the ridiculous; and is less deserving of serious consideration than the Hindoo theory, that each separate particle of material substance is God. It is somewhat remarkable, that one, who has shown so much sagacity and discrimination in describing and in criticising the philosophic theories of others, should have adopted the worst instead of the best features belong

ing to them; although this is a good illustration of the fact, that the more intellectual and logical the mind is, the more external and material, and the less rational and consistent, it is. True, that in reasoning, as he has, in a circle, by which process he has invested the discordant and deceptive phenomena of the natural consciousness with all the importance and authority of absolute truth, he has only followed the example of Descartes and his follower Malebranche; but by his greater impetuosity and directness, combined with what may be called a superficial simplicity, he has, though seemingly unconscious of the fact, produced in a much more palpable form than either of these philosophers, not only the worst kind of Pantheism, but the most objectionable kind of Anthropomorphism.

The development of Eclectical Philosophy from an intellectual point of view having been completed, and having come to an end in the labors of M. Cousin, who seems to have been peculiarly well adapted to exhibit all its defects, and thus to close its career, we find Scepticism again appearing, for the purpose of accomplishing the destruction of Philosophy, in the person of M. Comte, whose labors have been seconded by J. Stuart Mill and Henry Buckle in England. To show that this is a correct statement, we will refer to the "Biographical History of Philosophy," by George Henry Lewes, a late English writer, who has undertaken to write the obituary of Philosophy, and to introduce us to a substitute in Atheism, as illustrated in the works of Auguste Comte. The following is the statement of Mr. Lewes: "Philosophy is everywhere in Europe fallen into discredit. Once the pride and glory of the greatest intellects, and still forming an important element of liberal culture, its present decadence is attested no less by the complaints of its few followers than by the thronging ranks of its opponents. Few now believe in its large promises; still fewer devote to it that passionate patience which is devoted by thousands to Science. Every day the conviction gains strength, that Philosophy is condemned, by the very nature of its impulses, to wander for ever in one tortuous labyrinth, within whose circumscribed and winding spaces weary seekers are continually finding themselves in the trodden tracts of predecessors, who, they know, could find no exit. Philosophy has been ever in movement; but the movement has been circular. Precisely the same questions are agitated in Germany at the present moment that were agitated in ancient Greece, and with no more certain methods of solving them, with no nearer hopes

of ultimate success. The difficulty is impossibility. No progress can be made, because no certainty is possible. To aspire to the knowledge of more than phenomena,-their resemblances, coexistences, and successions,-is to aspire to transcend the inexorable limits of human faculty." Having completed his History of Philosophy, which ends with a description of the development of Eclectical Philosophy, of which M. Cousin was the last exponent, he says, “Having dismissed Eclecticism as a method, we need not waste time in examining M. Cousin's various and constantly shifting opinions. It is enough that he himself has relinquished them. It is enough that France and Europe reject them. This final decision, then, fares no better than the doctrines which preceded it. Philosophy is still in search after its method and its basis; and, wearied out by so many fruitless efforts, it finally gives up the quest, and allows itself to be absorbed by Science. The dogmatic assertion of this position is to be found in Auguste

Comte."

The position taken in this new advent of Scepticism, under the name of Positive Philosophy, is correctly stated by Mr. Lewes: It is, that knowledge is necessarily confined to "phenomena, their resemblances, co-existences, and successions." The method by which these sceptical writers hope to arrive at truth is just the opposite of a true one. According to this method, we must commence our researches in the lowest and most external, which is the material, region of knowledge, and work upwards from this by the application of the law of similarity; the ground being taken by Mr. Buckle, that it is only by exhausting phenomena that we can obtain materials for the highest generalization, and thus make the nearest approach to the truth. "We need not waste time in examining" this new advent of Scepticism. It commences with the old atheistical method of positing a material, finite, natural multiplicity, instead of an infinite, spiritual unity, as a basis for truth; and must, of course, come to the old atheistical end. It is a foundation of sand upon which these builders of a new Babel are expecting to erect a tower that shall reach to heaven, but which must lead, instead, to the confusion of thought and the dissipation of all true knowledge; because the law of similarity, upon which they depend as a guide, is, as we shall demonstrate, an inversion of the law of true relationship, and is a destructive element even in the Fancy.

We have now shown that the natural development of Philosophy in three several spheres has been completed, by which it has

been exhausted from a natural point of view; that it has been productive of nothing but Pantheism, Atheism, and Anthropomorphism; and that its results are now being repudiated and destroyed, and a materialistic and atheistic scepticism substituted in their place. The questions which naturally arise are, therefore, these: What are the causes which have produced these results, ⚫and prevented the realization of Philosophy in its legitimate form as Absolute Science? and what are the conditions which seem to be demanded, in order that Philosophy should be so realized? The first cause to be mentioned is, that the Consciousness must be fully developed in its natural form, from a natural point of view, before its spiritual form can be developed; and, therefore, that Philosophy must be developed as a natural production in three spheres, before it can be realized as a Universal Spiritual Science. The second cause of the results and of the failure here mentioned is, that universal spiritual cause has been conceived from a pagan, unitarian, and naturalistic point of view; and it has therefore been demanded that every thing should be realized from One Universal Cause or Substance: because, in consequence of this, Philosophy has failed to recognize the difference between absolute and phenomenal spheres of being, and so has failed to explain the difference between the nature of God and the nature of man from any rational point of view; and has also failed to recognize the antagonism of Infinite and Finite in the original causes of things, and so has failed to realize a ground for individual Freedom, and for Marriage as the universal law of Life. It has therefore failed to obtain any conception of those finite laws which constitute the natural life of Creation,-are antagonistic to those of the Infinite Life,—and the knowledge of which is necessary to the explanation of natural existence, by showing the origin and nature of diversity, imperfection, and evil. In consequence of this, Philosophy has been obliged to recognize Necessity as the universal law of Life, and to conceive the production of the phenomenal from the absolute, therefore of Man from God; and also the production of the finite from the infinite, - therefore of diversity from unity, of evil from good, and of death from life; which is the greatest violation of rationality that can possibly be supposed. It has, therefore, not only failed to supply the legitimate demand of the Reason for a universal science, but has realized substitutes for this which are inversions of rationality and universality, and which fail to explain permanently and satisfactorily a single fact of the consciousness, or a single phenomenon of natural