terized by uniformity and constancy; for otherwise both knowledge and its communication would be impossible. Accordingly, the senses are themselves organic parts of external nature, and, as such, partake of its stability. Our "confidence in the stability of nature" is unquestioned and universal. The uniformity of the subjective, therefore, is implied in this confidence in the stability of the objective, for it is through the former alone that the latter is verified. 16. Now, if external nature is to be a manifestation of God, and if man is to know it as such, the conditions enumerated appear to be essential to his knowledge. In the generation of knowledge, the first step of the intellectual process, in the order of time, is, undoubtedly, sensation. But then it is only the first step, though without it the second could not be taken; for in sensational perception, along with the sensation is given the instant belief of an external reality, and in this inseparable union of self and nature the mind finds its knowledge. In speaking of perception, however, we have been logically presupposing many of the subjective conditions of knowledge, all of which, as we shall hereafter show, are necessarily implied from the first as the very conditions of experience. 17. With these primary means of knowledge, then, though not with these alone, the first man awoke to life in Eden. The fragrance which nature presented as incense to her new sovereign, and which he inhaled with his first breath, the melody which welcomed his awakening ear, and the many-colored glories which courted his opening eye, were probably the occasions that first quickened his new-made mind into a state of activity, which continue still and will never cease. The sensations of that first hour, of even the first moment. the sight, the perfume, the touch of a flower - might, had he quitted the earth with those sensations alone, have furnished his mind with an occasion for unending thought. As effects, did they not say to him "there is a cause, a First cause, a self-existent and eternal Creator." As a complex mental change, of which he perceived the cause was not in himself, did it not say to him "there is a world without· a world from which you are distinct, and yet to which you are mysteriously related." What an inexhaustible store of materials for thought, then, must he have accumulated by the evening of the first day, when every moment was crowding his mind with new sensations! Truly, there is a language earlier than that of words; and in that language nature begins to speak to man from the first moment of his existence. By - the wise and wonderful arrangement of light and colors, of tastes and odors, one object instructs him on the subject of forms, another on magnitude, and another on distances; one object says to him, "I am to be chosen ;" and another, “I am to be avoided; I am related to you, and yet different and distinct from you; I am destined to serve you as long as you observe a certain law; violate that, and you become my victim." What an incalculable sum of subjects for reflection, then, does every man take away with him when he quits the visible world for the invisible! How few consider that among these are included the materials of inconceivable regret for a paradise lost, or of eternal joy on account of a paradise regained! 1. If all the phenomena of the external world are variously related in and among themselves if they sustained these relations prior to the creation of man, or have an objective reality —and if these relations display a portion of that Divine Perfection which man is to appreciate, he must be able to trace and to apprehend them. 2. In the last section, we regarded sensational perception as giving us the knowledge of separate material phenomena, or individual objective facts, though we remarked that even these perceptions of material objects logically presupposed certain subjective conditions, such as the ideas of self, of personal identity, of causation, and others, as essential to all intelligent experience. But, in addition to the power of observing insulated objects, and which alone could be only, at best, the means of very limited knowledge, we are endowed with the power of observing relations among phenomena, which enables us so to classify individual facts under their proper conception, still further to generalize these conceptions, and so to arrange the whole, as indefinitely to enlarge the sphere of our knowledge, and, at the same time, to retain every such addition. But where do these relations exist? in the subjective, in the objective, or in both? What are the forms or laws of the mind in thinking? and what the modes of its pursuit after truth? 3. As to the first inquiry, we may seek for the laws or relations in question either by making a classification of all surrounding things as the objects of our feelings and thoughts; in which case the leading characteristics or principles of the clas sification would give us the required laws; or else, observing the processes of our own minds, and marking the general laws which regulate them, we may regard these as giving form to all the variety of our mental phenomena. Aristotle pursued the former or objective method-classifying things as understood; Kant pursued the latter or subjective method-analyzing the mind as understanding. Our historical or chronological method embraces both; for, regarding time as an independent reality, it views everything objective as having a place in it, and requiring examination both the phenomena of matter and the phenomena of mind. Accordingly, some of the laws or relations of external phenomena, viewed as the matter of our thoughts, were noticed in the preceding volume. These very relations, however, are relations of which the mind is conscious. Our investigation of these, as known to consciousness, may bring to light others for which no material phenomena will account. Besides which, as the phenomena of the mind are open to inspection, as we are conscious of them, that is, in such a manner as that we can observe them, they are themselves objective, and, like the material objective, in relation to which they are additional and distinct, they demand distinct examination. Here, then, we find ourselves in a new region of inquiry, and dealing with a new element of knowledge. We are not now exclusively in the external world, examining how matter operates on matter. Nor are we merely, as in the last section, standing on the line which unites matter and mind, and marking the combined result of the laws of both. We are now, in addition, to enter within the mind, and to mark how it acts by and on itself, as subject and object, percipient and perceived; what becomes of its sensations, what accompanies or follows its perceptions. 4. Our second inquiry relates to the forms or laws of the mind in thinking. Locke regarded the truth of our notion respecting anything as depending on the conformity of our idea of it with the outward reality; Kant, on the contrary, made it to depend on the validity of the understanding itself, from whose constructive laws the outward object receives its form. Now, we believe, in harmony with the former, that the mind, when it classifies external objects truly, does not create the classification. the arrangement existed before man came, he only reads and understands it. But then the power of reading and interpreting the laws of the classification aright, indicates the 66 existence of independent laws in his own mind. And, in accordance with the latter, we believe that the operations of the understanding develope laws which external nature only awakens; but then the very office of awakening them implies that nature has forms of its own corresponding to the laws-meaning by form, that part of an object through which it ranks under a law; that its laws are not created or imposed, but only recognized by the mind. Every power exerts its agency under some laws - that is, in the language of Kant, by certain forms." The manifestations of Creative power are expressed in the laws of nature; and, for the same reason, it might have been anticipated of the human mind, that the power of God, in its creation, would be regulated by laws also. But we are now speaking of the mind, not as a manifestation of Creative power, but as the intelligent power to whom the manifestation is made. As a power, therefore, its movements and manifestations are all according to law - thus reflecting the legislative power of its Maker. What, then, are the laws which its activity evolves? In speaking of these, it will be perceived that constant reference is made to those primary ideas or beliefs of the reason, the investigation of which belongs to the next section. As being presupposed by the understanding, however, and as regulating its activity, they are necessarily introduced, in a general man Of 5. Treating the subject in the order of nature in the Divine manifestation an order therefore already prescribed to us we commence with body and motion. We cannot think of body but as in space. Every body is somewhere, for space is its place. Every body has extension, and occupies space; has figure, and measures it; has parts, and co-exists in it. space without body we can conceive, but not of body without space. Again, we cannot think of the motion of body, or of events or changes of any kind, except as occurring in time. Every event is viewed by us as before or after; as a first, or second, or third, and so on. Were it not for this law, every event would be to us a first event; it would want even the character of being first, because for us there would be no second. The relation of successiveness in the world without, has its correlate within in the memory. "Men derive their ideas of duration," says Locke, "from their reflection on the trains of the ideas they observe to succeed one another in their own understandings." But when our consciousness has given us this apprehension of successiveness, there is involved in it the judgment that this succession takes place in a determinate time. We can conceive of the non-existence of the succession, but not of the time in which it has taken place. Events, then, inhabit time, as bodies occupy space. The continuity of space renders the co-existence of bodies possible; the continuity of time renders their successive existence possible. Both the co-existence and the successive existence are contingent; but the space and the time can be thought of only as necessary. And, in a similar manner, any instance of number-which is an element of succession, and which, with succession, measures time involves the idea of its universal applicability. Now here it is to be observed, that a particular body and a particular succession being given, both of which we regard as variable and contingent, the mind finds itself in the possession of ideas of space and time, which it can think of only as unchangeable and absolutely necessary; and further, that while body and succession imply limitation, the ideas of space and time imply the absence of all limitation, indestructibility, and immensity. Leaving now the particular phenomena of body and succession, the reason takes possession of pure space and time, as its appropriate and rightful domain. Here it proceeds to unfold sciences out of ideas alone: breadthless lines, depthless surfaces, bodiless figures, and abstract numerical relations. These are the pure and the exact sciences - geometry, theoretical arithmetic, and algebra regarded as the investigation of the relations of space and number by means of general symbols-pure, as incapable of being formed out of material phenomena, and as being unmixed with them; and exact, as never exceeding and never falling short of the principles on which they are based. And when the mind, having discoursed with the truths involved in the ideas of space, time, and number, returns freighted with the science of pure mathematics to the region of material phenomena, it finds that all such phenomena, whether objects or events, sustain relations to this science, and are subject to its conditions. And it is because these truths of pure mathematics extend to all external phenomena, that such sciences as astronomy and mechanics are termed mixed mathematics; involving as they do both pure mathematical truths, and the special laws of the phenomena collected by observation. Here, then, in the order of time, we have first a particular sensation occasioned from without, and involving a cognition or perception of body or of succession; involving, next, the intuition that the body is in space, and the succession |