The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-07-07

Of his own inner consciousness; wherC
upon DR.. Martineau comments that
"till we have got the door open out of
our own egoistic chamber and found
that there is a field beyond, it is pre-
mature to serve summons on incon-
ceivable people there to come and bear
witness to its existence"
And again, Mr.. Mill having as yet
found no bridge over the chasm from
the thinking sLJject to any real world
outside, DR.. Martineau notices that
though he does not bridge the chasm,
he leaps it, 'but does not tell us how
he managed to leave himself behind
him, "a feat without the achievement
Of which Mr.. j. S. Mill would, of
course, still have remained like every
pure ideallst imprisoned Theoretically
in himself. Again, what can be hap
pier than DIR. Martineau's criticism on
those philosophers who regard every
object as constituted of qualities with
out substance? 1t is impossible, he
says, to think of a thing as mere
public meeting" of its attributes,
however often the assembly may be
called. Once more, take this cOmmen-
tary on the use which the empirical
thinkers,-such as Dr.. Bain,-always
make of the baby in whose imagined
history they hide away all the most
marvellous secrets Of our intellectual
growth?-"I do not question the value
within certain limits of such careful
study as Balm has devoted to human
infancy, and even newly dropped lambs
and staggering calves; but the psyche
logical baby that he is SO fond OF dand-
ling seems to me to become sort of
fetish to him, from which he expects
and wrings oracles it was never meant
to give. AS it cannot contradict him,
he has it all his own way; and can so
tell the story of what is going on with
in, when it sprawls and springs and
laughs and turns and fumbles with
the hands, as to lead up to a foregone
conclusion. a large part Of his char
acteristic psychology appears to me to
consist of misleading differences cor
rectly drawn from the contents of a
hypothetical infant" Still more strik-
ing in its way is the criticism on those
pantheistic thinkers who hold it as
proving any doctrine concerning the
universe false, to show that it is an
thropomorphic,- other words, a
doctrine constructed from the human
point of view. "Our thought says
-II5Ngs aztinsagz, .neeesssEilssssholas ansto'
a locus whence its survey is taken Of
all else; it sails in its little skiff and
looks forth on the illimitable sea and
the great arch of the sky, and finds two
things alone with one another, the
universe and itself; the metaphysicians
who, in their impatience of distinction,
insist on taking the sea on board the
boat, swamp not only it but the
thought it holds, and leave an infnitude
which, as it can look into no eye and
whisper into no ear, they contradict in
the very act of affirming In all these
instances, and we could give many
others,-Dr. Martineau seems to us to
make humor in the truest sense service
able to his thought, by bringing out
through its help the very essence Of
some huge philosophical miscarriage.
What can describe more accurately the
fruitless aspiration of all pantheism
than this description of it as an at
tempt Ito take the sea on board the
boat?
Humor, according to Carlyle, who,
however, did not accommodate his own
humoristic pract,ce 10 his definition,
delights rather in taking up the little
ness of life and saturating it with what
is sublime, than in bringing down what
is good in life and showing its kinship
to that which is petty. In fact, true
humor may be shown in both ways
in the former way, by deeper study
of what is only apparently insignificant,
50 bringing out its deeper significance;
in the latter way by study of what is
really pretentious, so bringing out its
deeper hollowness. The greater phil
osophical humorists, from Plato down
ward, have used their humor with the
utmost freedom in both ways. But
DIR. Martineau uses it even more in
the fashion which Carlyle regards as
its normal function, and We can hardly
give nobler example of it in its high
er imaginative type, than the fine pas
sage in which he humOrously replies
to the foolish physical criticisms on
our planet which the various DEVILS
advocates, from Lucretius downward,
have pressed in the hope of disproying
what is called the argument from de-
sign,'' and of showing that our earth is
mere physical accident, and not the
product of any wise and proyident pur
pose:
Complaint is made Of several useless
and unmeaning arrangements. Even
in the inorganic world, faults have
been freely pointed out by scientific
II