which the Critical Philosophy was designed to deliver us. In other words, what he tells us is, that the argument is good, but only on the conditions that it is not to be subjected to rational scrutiny, and that no attempt is to be made to determine what its conclusion signifies. It seems to me that, on these conditions, he might have found any argument good. Such conditions are inconsistent with the whole spirit and very existence of a critical philosophy. And it is not really God that Kant reaches by his argument: it is a mere moral ideal—a dead, empty, abstract assumption, which is regarded as practically useful, although rationally baseless-a necessary presupposition of moral action, but one which tells us. nothing about the nature of its object. Fichte was only consistent when he refused to speak of that object as a Will or Person, and affirmed that God exists only as the Moral Order of the universe, and that we can neither know nor conceive of any other God. He was also only following out the principles of his master when he represented that order as the creation of the individual mind, the form of the individual conscience, a mode of mental action.

Kant has expounded his argument, and discussed its bearings fully and minutely, in his 'Kritik der Urtheilskraft,' sec. 86-90, and Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, Zweites Buch, Zweites Hauptstück,' v.-viii. M. Renouvier, in an article entitled "De la Contradiction reprochée à la doctrine de Kant" (La Critique Philosophique, zieme Année, No. 29), has exposed some errors on the subject which are common in France, and equally common in England.

NOTE XXVI., page 217.

DR SCHENKEL'S VIEW OF CONSCIENCE AS THE
ORGAN OF RELIGION.

Dr Schenkel has fully set forth his reasons for holding that conscience is the religious organ of the soul, in the ninth chapter of the first volume of his 'Christliche Dogmatik.' He endeavours to meet the objection urged in the text by representing what is truly the primary and distinctive function of conscience as a secondary and derivative function. Its primary activity is, according to him, religious; it unites with God-it is conscious communion with Him. Its ethical activity is only elicited when this communion is disturbed and broken; its source is the religious want occasioned by the rupture of communion. That is felt to be a something abnormal and unsatisfactory, and awakens a desire after the restoration of the lost communion with God. The conscience is cognisant of a moral law only when, its communion with God being disturbed, it seeks its re-establishment. Dr Schenkel thus, as he thinks, accounts for conscience having an ethical function as well as a religious function. But clearly the result at which he arrives is in direct contradiction to the position from which he starts. The affirmation of conscience as religious is represented as being that man is in direct communion with God; and the affirmation of conscience as ethical is represented as being that man. is not in direct communion with God, but desires to be so. These are, however, contrary declarations; and to describe conscience in the way Schenkel does, as 66 a synthesis of the ethical and religious factor," is to represent it as a synthesis of self-contradictory elements-a com

pound of yes and no. We cannot be conscious both of communion with God and of non-communion with Him. And, on Dr Schenkel's own showing, the evidence for immediate communion with Him is but small. The consciousness of moral law he affirms to be consciousness of the want or need of communion with God, not the consciousness of enjoying it. But is conscience ever independent of the consciousness of moral law? If not, it can never, according to the hypothesis, be a consciousness of God. If it be independent thereof, the fact would require to be better proved than by the misinterpretation of a few texts of Scripture. Solidly proved it never, I believe, can be. A conscience not conscious of a moral law is simply no conscience at all.

NOTE XXVII., page 221.

CHALMERS AND ERSKINE ON THE ARGUMENT
FROM CONSCIENCE.

The moral argument was, as was to be expected, a very favourite one with Dr Chalmers, and his way of stating it was as remarkable for its simplicity and directness as for its eloquence. "Had God," he asks, "been an unrighteous Being Himself, would He have given to the obviously superior faculty in man so distinct and authoritative a voice on the side of righteousness? Would He have so constructed the creatures of our species as to have planted in every breast a reclaiming witness against Himself? Would He have thus inscribed on the tablet of every heart the sentence of His own condemnation; and is this not just as likely, as that

He should have inscribed it in written characters on the forehead of each individual? Would He so have fashioned the workmanship of His own hands; or, if a God of cruelty, injustice, and falsehood, would He have placed in the station of master and judge that faculty which, felt to be the highest in our nature, would prompt a generous and high-minded revolt of all our sentiments against the Being who formed us? From a God possessed of such characteristics, we should surely have expected a differently-moulded humanity; or, in other words, from the actual constitution of man, from the testimonies on the side of all righteousness, given by the vicegerent within the heart, do we infer the righteousness of the Sovereign who placed it there."-‘Natural Theology,' vol. i. pp. 323, 324. This argument of Dr Chalmers, like all other arguments from conscience, implies the soundness of the reasoning by which God has been attempted to be shown to be the intelligent cause or author of the universe; and, on that perfectly legitimate presupposition, it seems to me as irresistible as it is simple. An intelligent but unrighteous God would never have made a creature better than himself and endowed with admiration of what is most opposite to himself, the reverse and counterpart of his own character.

The argument as stated by the late Mr Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, is no less simple and direct: "When I attentively consider what is going on in my conscience, the chief thing forced on my notice is, that I find myself face to face with a purpose—not my own, for I am often conscious of resisting it—but which dominates me and makes itself felt as ever present, as the very root and reason of my being. consciousness of a purpose concerning me that I should

This

be a good man-right, true, and unselfish-is the first firm footing I have in the region of religious thought: for I cannot dissociate the idea of a purpose from that of a Purposer, and I cannot but identify this Purposer with the Author of my being and the Being of all beings; and further, I cannot but regard His purpose towards me as the unmistakable indication of His own character."The Spiritual Order, and other Papers,' pp. 47, 48.

NOTE XXVIII., page 225.

ASSOCIATIONIST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF
CONSCIENCE.

I have indicated to some extent my reasons for regarding this theory as unsatisfactory in an article entitled "Associationism and the Origin of Moral Ideas," in Mind,' No. III. (July 1876). In the treatise of M. Carrau, 'La Morale Utilitaire,' and in that of M. Guyau, 'La Morale Anglaise,' the various forms of the theory are examined with fairness and penetration.

NOTE XXIX., page 229.

CHALMERS AND BAIN ON THE PLEASURE OF
MALEVOLENCE.

Dr Chalmers devotes a chapter of his 'Natural Theology' to the illustration of "the inherent pleasure of the virtuous, and misery of the vicious affections." I do not think the psychological doctrine of that chapter unexcep