< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu
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REPLIES TO CRITICISMS.

symbol of a process; and hence any predicament inferable from the law of thought cannot be asserted.

I may fitly close this reply by a counter-criticism. To the direct defense of a proposition, there may be added the indirect defense that results from showing the untenability of an alternative proposition. This criticism on the doctrine of an unknowable existence, manifested to us in phenomena, Mr. Martineau makes in the interests of the doctrine held by him, that this existence is, to a considerable degree, knowable. We are quite at one in holding that there is an indestructible consciousness of Power behind Appearance; but, whereas I contend that this Power cannot be brought within the forms of thought, Mr. Martineau contends that there can be consistently ascribed certain attributes of personality—not, indeed, human characteristics so concrete as were ascribed in past times; but still, human characteristics of the more abstract and higher class. Regarding matter as independently existing; regarding, as also independently existing, those primary qualities of Body "which are inseparable from the very idea of Body, and may be evolved a priori from the consideration of it as solid extension or extended solidity;" and saying that to this class "belong Triple Dimension, Divisibility, and Incompressibility;" Mr. Martineau goes on to say that as these

"cannot absent themselves from Body, they have a reality coeval with it, and belong eternally to the material datum objective to God; and his mode of activity with regard to them must he similar to that which alone we can think of his directing upon the relations of space, viz., not Volitional, to cause them, but Intellectual, to think them out. The Secondary Qualities, on the other hand, having no logical tie to the Primary, but, being appended to them as contingent facts, cannot be referred to any deductive thought, but remain over as products of pure Inventive Reason and Determining Will. This sphere of cognition a posteriori to us—where we cannot move a step alone, but have submissively to wait upon experience—is precisely the realm of Divine originality: and we are most sequacious where He is most free. While on this Secondary field his Mind and ours are thus contrasted, they meet in resemblance again upon the Primary; for the evolutions of deductive Reason there is but one track possible to all intelligences; no merum arbitrium can interchange the false and true, or make more than one geometry, one scheme of pure Physics for all worlds; and the Omnipotent Architect himself, in realizing the Cosmical conception, in shaping the orbits out of immensity and determining seasons out of eternity, could but follow the laws of curvature, measure, and proportion."—(Essays, Philosophical and Theological, pp. 163, 164.)

Before the major criticism which I propose to make on this hypothesis, let me make a minor one. Not only of space relations, but also of primary physical properties, Mr. Martineau asserts the necessity: not a necessity to our minds simply, but an ontological necessity. What is true for human thought, is, in respect of these, true absolutely: "the laws of curvature, measure, and proportion," as we know them, are unchangeable even by Divine power; as are also the

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