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April 28, 1S60.] THe Leader and Sciturcl...
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THE CHURGH HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.*! H /TAC...
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• Tkc CM,W«<o><« nt""*'™*- ^^^' Ee^Tor^u...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Pjlovlnclj: Of Reason. * Fe W Works ...
rationalism Mr . Mansell availed himself of the forms ; winch , it / has assumed in certain German systems , very foreign t > English modes of thought . Dr . Yonng gives a brief but able sketch of the dochunes of the chief German philosophers , indicating their nrterits and defects , and showing that the ] atter do iiot render ^ the : less incumbent upon us to cling to a rationalism which he deviates as " reverent , hi ^ mble , and pious , " and which it would be false to our minds to ° Xookin *> - at the social aspects of these questions , we cannot fail to recognise " the connexion between liberty and progress on the one hand " with perfect freedom of inquiry ; and of retrogression and slavery on the other , with any attempt to establish a ^ national faith repugnant to the understanding , by the exercise of terrorism or force ; Mr . Mansell is hopeless of convincing oiir reason that he is ri"ht , but he would scare us from the iise of that reason by hobgoblin pictures of its alleged works , and compel us to swallow without examination the system which he ^ ffirms ^ to be the only one m which we can find safety and peace . The first step in tins process ^ to inquire into , with a view of limiting , our powers of thought . ^ The Bampton Lecturer asserts that "to conceive of a Deity as he is we must conceive of him as First Cause , as absolute , and as infinite , and the terms First Cause , absolute , and infinite , he declares to be " familiar as household words . " Dr . Young objects at the outset to cumbering the discussion with words which are far from being . generally understood , and shows thatio make a distinction between the Absolute and the Infinite is to follow ^ r W . gamilton into one of the errors which that great man committed . He then comes to the definition of the Infinite which Mr , Mansell lays down , and especially the strange assertion that ¦* ' an unrealized . potentiality is a limit , " and consequently that nothing can be considered to be . infinite which has not already accomplished all it can do , or in other words , used up all its powers . Dr . Young is . here completely at issue with the subject of his criticism , and he . justly considers that " power which is truly infinite must he for ever unrealized ,- for qver unrealizable in its utmost extent , and just because it is infinite . Mr Mansell considers " every infinite mode of consciousness as extending- over the field of every other , and that their common action involves perpetual antagonism '' —a fallacy of confusion that would make infinite benevolence the opponent of . infinite skill . Just as Imlac convinced Kasselas that no one could be a poet Mr , Mansell seeks to gain his object by drawing a p , eture . winch nobody could realize . If the idea of infinity did involve the absurdities which Mr . Mansell supposes , it ^ q ^ t e ^ leav that the human intelect would never arrive at it , and equally ^ ear that Dr Young * right in perceiving that such an infinite could notbe accepted by the Stion of any Sternal authority , , Mr . Manse . « 3 «*« . " Hojr can the relative be conceived as coming into being ? If it is a distinct reality from the absolute , it must be considered as passing from non-eistence into existence . " It is by no means easy to know what these hard words mean , but they seem intended to show that any idea of creation is an intellectual impossibility . Their author has chiefly read German metaphysics to obtain instruments of confu-. . sion A thing cannot pass from one state to another , unless it w in the first state from which it is supposed to progress . Passing from non-existence into existence is simply nonsense , but with the aid of such nonsense it is easy for the Lecturer to arrive at the assertion that from whatever side we view it , the " conception ^ the Infinite is encompassed with contradictions . " ; It is strang l e that fallacies so obvious as those , of Mr . Mansell , should have needed the ' "fiction provided for them by Dr . Young ? but the influence of his book , is undoubted , and must to a large extent be ascribed ^ the mg « mu ty with which the subject was confused by a swarm of technical woids , which concealed alike , its meaning and its fallacies , and left a vague hn , Session that a man of cleverness and learning had sa . d a wonderfurdeal of fine stuff to prove ocrtain propositions ,, wlach were affirmed with afanatical energy that looked like well-meaning- seal . So cu nous an idea has Mr . Mansell of that Infinite which is happily beyond the cognisance of our faculties , that he tells us it " cannot bed > st > nguishcd from tho ! finite by the abseoico of any quality wnobit * e firn ' to possesses , for such absence would bo a limitation . Dr . ^ out g shows tlmt the sort of infinite here imagined is mercy an deal abstraction— " the all , " and cannot have any reference to he qualities of an I finite ' Being- By a nog . itivo method , Mr . Iuansell constructs an hcistio systen , and then tells us if nvg do not like it wo can acceTt his version of revealed theism , But if the . atheism wore the natural conclusion , of reason , the- foundations for the . proposed theism would have been taken away . In other directions tie theory o ? e Bampton Lecturer is equally at variance w . th foot ; and we fully concur with Dr . Young ' a ^ protest against Buch assertions as Unit , "in religion , in morals , in our daily buemess in t careof our lives , in th < T exercise of our senses the ru os which gfnido SSr , ;^ vs-pst ? ' ^ - " * ^ m i ?& Kt « Jnrly ^ a v " ys sprfnff iVom the adhorentB of OcClps , « Bt . cal ¦ ^ 3 &&^^» 2 Ti ( i sg oVrelSK . abovStUo which are internal , a process which is wonof nn arbitrary nnd unronsonable authonty . For mnn } eloquent
i remarks on this subject we refer to Dr . Young ' s work , and also for ' his vindication of immutable morality and the authority of man s I conseience as an ultimate appeal . . 3 > ,, , Di \ Young objects to Sir fm . Ilamilton ' s opinion that our kn owledge is merely phenomenal , that is , a knowledge of effects , not of essences or causes , and he adopts , in a manner wedo ^ ! altoo-ether understand , a theory of intuitions , as distinct from [ the natural action of the mind upon external objects , » r upon J its own manifestations . Tons it seems enough to be certain that our knowledge is true , and we have no reason to Consider phenomenal knowledge ¦ as iintrustworthy or unsound . It must iaii to give us all the truth , but , as finite beings , we cannot expect more than partial success in our efforts at either knowing or being what we desire ; and , with regard to the theory of intuitions , we may remember that we are designed and destined to come lnto ^ contact with a host of external circumstances , which furnish food tor thought as well as objects , of perception , and at each stage of our progress our mental horizon is enlarged , and new objects and generalisations shine upon us as true , —felt to ^ be so , because , in harmony with the experience we have gained , and the development we have reached . We see no gain in believing that without experience or without antecedent culture , some nm-acuW fact of intuition would unfold itself in our minds . But while differing upon a few minor points of controversial metaphysics , we offer our . sym--pathy and applause to Dr . Young for his bold assertion of the claims of reason .
April 28, 1s60.] The Leader And Sciturcl...
April 28 , 1 S 60 . ] THe Leader and Sciturclay Analyst . 403
The Churgh History Of Scotland.*! H /Tac...
THE CHURGH HISTORY OF SCOTLAND . *! H / TACAULAY has somewhere stated that Scotland has always : 1 V 1 had the worst government , and always been the best governed , of European countries . The constitutional love of Ihe J *»^™ startling antithesis occasioned the exaggeration of the . paradox . We -iay ftiirly deduct something , and limit our acceptation of the dictmn to this-that Scotland has always had a feeble government , butSVS has suffered so mucli therefrom as at first sight imght hSve beSi expected : > Still the saying , even as ^ ' ^ f ^*^ S and we anxiously beat about for some sohU ion of the 4 ifficuUy ' SwiU not suffice for the doctrinaire at once to ^ leap _ to ^^ of laissez-faire , and calmly to assume , m a satisfied way that theie i s here yielded one more demonstration of the ^ insufficiency of « s b ^ s ^^ m ^^ t ^ f ^ " 4 ¦ SL ^ dfe ^^*^^?© - '' - Eva feeble , or iujm-ed by a worthless . , governing body P JSovv , Scotland is and has been , at least since the Reformation , the most SSastical and the most theological of modern peoples , lie S ^ T ^ ^^^^^^^ f 1 ^ BklSzt V ^*^^ t l ° i wlLtliei this theory will avail , whether the facts will support . t , and * ° B ^ 1 n Un ? wa ^ tllat our interest in Scottisli ecclesiastical lnstory becomes --eater than if Scottish ecclesiasticals had been as subordi-STo civil and secular questions and ^ f ™«^ £ " . ^ g msm % ®& L day has pa UyLen produced by ecclesiastical causes and movewmmm ^ Hiilfeis ^^ S ^ sssiissii to in « tnnQO a minor ^^ I ^ SX ^ « S 8 umed to bounder .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 28, 1860, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_28041860/page/15/
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