The Press.
London, England, 1855-06-16 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

his leading position is this :—Because we are,
we are ; and because we are, we are auother's ;
and that other must be an intelligent first
cause ; and hence the " great truth of the
" Divine personality comes befJre us with in-
" tuitive brightness."
In the chapter on the " Cognitive Structure
in Man" we have this luminous paragraph,
which may be received as a specimen of the
general style of the book :
On any admissible explanation, we have in perception,
according to what we have already stated, self and nut self,
the ego and non•ego, in clear distinction, and yet in in-
dissoluble relation. The correlation is in the perceptive
act inseparable, while its factors are distinguishable. The
one stands face to face with the other, and equally with
the other attests itself. The reality in cognition is, there-
fore, ever twofoll—subjeet and object; and in this twofold
reality we have. for the first time the full manifestation of
mind—self-consciousness not merely gazing outward upon
the objective world (as in the brute), but realising itself as
distinct from and above the world.

From this twofold reality we arrive at " the
" theistic fact round which as their rational
" nucleus all the others gather," and that fact
is that " man's rational being is essentially
" distinct from nature." On this fact the
author dwells, through several pages, atter this
fashion :

What, then, is the bearing of this fact on our subject ?
As we previously said, it is tile most vital for our purpose
in our whole range of inquiry; but just corresponding
with its peculiar depth and importance is the difficulty of
fully seizing and expressing its significance. We have
already seen in what respect it lies at the root of our in.
ductive evidence as the source of our idea of cause. The
strange relation of affinity and yet conflict which thus
emerges between the principles of personality andcasualuy
were an interesting subject of consideration, but cannot
occupy us here. We have at present simply to do with
the direct import of the fact of personality in the enlarge-
ment of our theistic evidence. In tracing back our mental
life, we have this fact as the last word for reason. The
Me asserts itself as an inscrutable reality, beyond which
we cannot go in the way of natural explanation. It refuses
obstinately to be related to any higher fact, as a natural
sequence. But have we not thus reached a startling conclu-
sion ? If the human ego he thus as it so clearly pro-
nounces itself to be, a cause in the highest. and indeed
only true sense—viz., a naturally undetermined source of
activity, is it not thereby, in its very character, its own
author ? If undetermined, is it not necessarily inde-
pendent?
So tar is this from being the case, that we here approach
the very peculiarity of the theistic meaning which this
prime tact yields us ; fur, in the very act of expressing
itself, it is found to be its essential characteristic, at the
same time, to express Another. It only realises itself in
Another. The more we sink back into the depths of con-
sciousness, and the more vivid force and reality with
which we seize our personal being, as something uncondi-
tioned by nature, and rising above it, the more directly and
immediately do we at the same time apprehend ourselves
as relative and dependent. The more we become self-
conscious, the more do we feel, at the same time, that the
ground of our existence is not in ourselves, but in Another
and a Higher. Our personality, in asserting itself to be
distinct from nature, yet with equal force asserts itself to
be derived, or, in other language, to take its rise in a
Principle above nature. The human self, in a word, irre-
sistibly suggests a divine Self; the limited cause, an auso-
Intel), original and unlimited Cause.

It is requisite to observe the full import of our conch-
lion. Our own personality not only gives another per-
sonality, but another which is at the same time absolute.
It is, in fact, the special rational intuition of the absolute
in the relative—the infinite in the unite—which carries us
beyond the Self within, to a Self without and above us.
How vital, in a theistic sense, this intuition is, must
therefore be obvious.

There may be persons whose minds this
kind of reasoning will a itisfy ; but the argu-
ment seems to us as far from true philosophy
as the language in which it is conveyed is from
genuine English.
- • -•

In the section on the " Difficulties regarding
the Divine Goodness " the same spirit of dog-
matism is visible. "In the comprehending
" evil of sin," it is said, " all the lower pheuo-
" mena of evil in human life find their satin-
" factory explanation." Why satisfactory I
Then what explanation shall be given of this
major evil including all minor ones? Only
this :

It has been oar aim simply to show, in reference to
human life, how all the difficulties attending the theistic
inference run up into this point, and here find their ulti-
mate force. And if at length, in approaching this point,
we find that the light of explanation fails us, or, in other
words, find that we cannot at all resolve sin in our process
of theistic induction, it may at the same time appear that
this arises from its very nature, which is such as compels
us to cast it out of the theistic argument, and per ae libe-
rates that argument from its injurious burden, mysterious
and irresolvable as it may for ever remain. It may be
seen that, while this mystery defies all solution, it sepa-
rates itself by its character from ali &root relation to *hi
Divine sgento

SATURDAY,

So, the " Difficulties regarding the Divine
Wisdom and Goodness " are, in plain terms, to
be obviated only by asserting that they are
not to be obviated at all. Whenever Dr.
Tulloch brings us to a conclusion we may be
sure it will resemble the final chapter in
" Rasselas,"—a conclusion in which nothing is
concluded.

One "difficulty" stated in the Leader news-
paper is quoted in this volume :

If the celebrated argument of design is to hold good as
evidence in favour, it must hold equally good as evidence
against the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator--a
startling proposition, and one we believe never made before,
but one from which logic. has no escape. When you point
to the perfection of organisations as evidence of wisdom,
and to their manifold enjoyments as evidence of goodness,
you force the reflective mind to think of the imperfections
and the misery so abundantly displayed. When you take
your relative good for the absolute good, you must equally
accept your relative evil for the absolute evil.
The difficulty is not new, and it has already
been answered by Paley. The good As plainly
the object of contrivance—the evil never the
object of contrivance, but incident to it. A
" smash" occurs on a railway ; but the object
of the railway is to carry passengers safely, not
to kill or maim them. A man is hung (to the
disgrace of our civilisation) in presence of
thousands of spectators; but the end of
government is nut to execute the people, but
to protect and benefit them. But God is far
above all human arrangements, and why
should sin and pain not have been excluded
from the world of His creation? Dr. Tulloch
says

Now of course it is undeniable that, if God had so
willed, there would have been no pain in the world.
But then he adds :

Supposing the organism had been made incapable of
pain, how do we know that it would have retained its capa-
city of pleasure ?
And the conclusion, as usual, with the wor-
thy Principal is :
We put the question thus, because we really do not
know, and cannot know.

In succeeding pages he attempts to show, in
that style of vicious and unbiblical philosophy
which has found favour witu sow° shallow
philosophers of our day, that evil is not really
evil. It is true no doubt that,

The more highly-refined and exalted the organism, and
the inure exquisite its issues of pleasure, the inure exquisite
also is its liability to suffering.

This is but another expression of the exqui-
site lines of Burns :
Dearly bought, the hidden treasure
Finer feelings can bestow ;
Hearts that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill with deepest notes of woe.
But it is not true, as applied to the moral
and intellectual world, that,
The higher and more richly susceptible the organisms,
the mare carefully defended are they. The more life be-
comes intensified in nobler creations, the more carefully is
its freight of happiness secured against spoliation.
Nor is it true that pain contributes to hap-
piness (even Paley is in fault on this point),
nor that death is a beneficent contrivance for
increasing the sum of sentient bliss:—
The life which has sported itself in joyful hours, or days,
or years, expires in the brief pang of a moment. Here, as
everywhere the measure of pain is found to be strictly
economised, while the measure of life and its enjoyments
is poured forth with a profuse hand.

Theology, to our view, is not concerned
to deny the existence of pain or evil, or
the amount of suffering they occasion. The
Christian says plainly, "We live in a dis-
" ordered world, and we admit that the priu-
" ciplo of evil, by whatever name it may be
" called, is ever present, and ever active in it."
To this great fact the history of all mankind
testifies. The evil may be resolvable into
good at last, but its existence is not to be
denied or extenuated.

Is it then inseparable from the conditions of
earthly existence? Perhaps so, as those con-
ditions are, but not as they might be, or as
revelation tells us they once were. And the
great difficulty lies in attempting to prove, in
the face of acknowledged evil, that God is all-
powerful, all•wise, and all good.
If sin, having its root in some powerful
principle of evil, exists in spite of His will, as
revelation and reason alike declare it does,
then He is not all powerful in the sense gene-
rally ascribed to the phrase. The chain of
necessity may ascend to the heights of the
highest heaven and encompass the throne is

JUNE 16, 1855.

our loftiest conceptions of Omnipotence. The
scheme of creation may yet be in course of
evolution. There may be time in eternity,
and the conflict between the will of Deity and
the evil principle be yet but partially ended.
The universal consent of mankind to acknow-
ledge a principle of evil, and to attempt to
propitiate it by sacrifices, and even worship,
is a proof of its reality, of which even philo-
sophy may take cognisance; and though
speculations concerning it are not to be
lightly hazarded, yet they are much more
legitimate than feeble negations of its real
and active existence.

While Dr. Tulloch's volume adds little or
nothing to those sensible evidences of natural
theology on which the mind always dwells
with pleasure as they seem to bring God
nearer to us, and place him in a fatherly
relation to man, it seems to us nearly worth•
less as a metaphysical discourse. Such a
book ought to have been, we think, of an
essentially popular character; but two condi-
tions not to be sought in the popular mind
must be found in persons capable of appre-
ciating this volume,—a cloudy intellect and
intimate familiarity with the nicest verbal dis
tinctions of modern metaphysical scholas-
ticism.