APHORISM IV.

The characteristic Difference between the Discipline of the Ancient Philosophers and the Dispensation of the Gospel.

By undeceiving, enlarging, and informing the Intellect, Philosophy sought to purify, and to elevate the Moral Character. Of course, those alone could receive the latter and incomparably greater benefit, who by natural capacity and favourable contingencies of fortune were fit recipients of the former. How small the number, we scarcely need the evidence of history to assure us. Across the night of Paganism, Philosophy flitted on, like the lantern-fly of the Tropics, a light to itself, and an ornament, but alas! no more than an ornament of the surrounding darkness.

Christianity reversed the order. By means accessible to all, by inducements operative on all, and by convictions, the grounds and materials of which all men might find in themselves, her first step was to cleanse the heart. But the benefit did not stop here. In preventing the rank vapours that steam up from the corrupt heart, Christianity restores the intellect likewise to its natural clearness. By relieving the mind from the distractions and importunities of the unruly passions, she improves the quality of the Understanding: while at the same time she presents for its contemplations, objects so great and so bright as cannot but enlarge the organ, by which they are contemplated. The fears, the hopes, the remembrances, the anticipations, the inward and outward Experience, the belief and the Faith, of a Christian, form of themselves a philosophy and a Sum of Knowledge, which a life spent in the Grove of Academus, or the "painted Porch," could not have attained or collected. The result is contained in the fact of a wide and still widening Christendom.

Yet I dare not say, that the effects have been proportionate to the divine wisdom of the scheme. Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the heart, the moral nature, was the beginning and the end; and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion. This was the true and first apostasy—when in council and synod the Divine Humanities of the Gospel gave way to speculative Systems, and Religion became a Science of Shadows under the name of Theology, or at best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without life or interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority of Christians. For these therefore there remained only rites and ceremonies and spectacles, shows and semblances. Thus among the learned the substance of things hoped for (Heb. xi. 1.) passed off into Notions; and for the unlearned the Surfaces of things became[82] Substance. The Christian world was for centuries divided into the Many, that did not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but think—both alike unreflecting, the one from defect of the act, the other from the absence of an object.

APHORISM V.

There is small chance of Truth at the goal where there is not a child-like Humility at the starting-post.

Comment.

Humility is the safest Ground of Docility: and Docility the surest Promise of Docibility. Where there is no working of self-love in the heart that secures a leaning before-hand; where the great magnet of the planet is not overwhelmed or obscured by partial masses of Iron in close neighbourhood to the compass of the judgment, though hidden or unnoticed; there will this great desideratum be found of a child-like Humility. Do I then say, that I am to be influenced by no interest? Far from it! There is an Interest of Truth: or how could there be a Love of Truth? And that a love of truth for its own sake, and merely as truth, is possible, my soul bears witness to itself in its inmost recesses. But there are other interests—those of goodness, of beauty, of utility. It would be a sorry proof of the humility I am extolling, were I to ask for angel's wings to overfly my own human nature. I exclude none of these. It is enough if the lene clinamen, the gentle bias, be given by no interest that concerns myself other than as I am a man, and included in the great family of mankind; but which does therefore especially concern me, because being a common interest of all men it must needs concern the very essentials of my being, and because these essentials, as existing in me, are especially intrusted to my particular charge.

Widely different from this social and truth-attracted bias, different both in its nature and its effects, is the interest connected with the desire of distinguishing yourself from other men, in order to be distinguished by them. Hoc revera est inter te et veritatem. This Interest does indeed stand between thee and truth. I might add between thee and thy own soul. It is scarcely more at variance with the love of truth than it is unfriendly to the attainment that deserves that name. By your own act you have appointed the Many as your judges and appraisers: for the anxiety to be admired is a loveless passion, ever strongest with regard to those by whom we are least known and least cared for, loud on the hustings, gay in the ball-room, mute and sullen at the family fireside. What you have acquired by patient thought and cautious discrimination, demands a portion of the same effort in those who are to receive it from you. But applause and preference are things of barter; and if you trade in them, Experience will soon teach you that there are easier and less unsuitable ways to win golden judgments than by at once taxing the patience and humiliating the self-opinion of your judges. To obtain your end, your words must be as indefinite as their thoughts: and how vague and general these are even on objects of sense, the few who at a mature age have seriously set about the discipline of their faculties, and have honestly taken stock, best know by recollection of their own state. To be admired you must make your auditors believe at least that they understand what you say; which, be assured, they never will, under such circumstances, if it be worth understanding, or if you understand your own soul. But while your prevailing motive is to be compared and appreciated, is it credible, is it possible, that you should in earnest seek for a knowledge which is and must remain a hidden light, a secret treasure? Have you children, or have you lived among children, and do you not know, that in all things, in food, in medicine, in all their doings and abstainings they must believe in order to acquire a reason for their belief? But so is it with religious truths for all men. These we must all learn as children. The ground of the prevailing error on this point is the ignorance, that in spiritual concernments to believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same thing in different periods of its growth. Belief is the seed, received into the will, of which the Understanding or Knowledge is the Flower, and the thing believed is the fruit. Unless ye believe ye cannot understand: and unless ye be humble as children, ye not only will not, but ye cannot believe. Of such therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven. Yea, blessed is the calamity that makes us humble: though so repugnant thereto is our nature, in our present state, that after a while, it is to be feared, a second and sharper calamity would be wanted to cure us of our pride in having become so humble.

Lastly, there are among us, though fewer and less in fashion than among our ancestors, persons who, like Shaftesbury, do not belong to "the herd of Epicurus," yet prefer a philosophic Paganism to the morality of the Gospel. Now it would conduce, methinks, to the child-like humility, we have been discoursing of, if the use of the term, Virtue, in that high, comprehensive, and notional sense in which it was used by the ancient Stoics, were abandoned, as a relic of Paganism, to these modern Pagans: and if Christians restoring the word to its original import, namely, Manhood or Manliness, used it exclusively to express the quality of Fortitude; Strength of Character in relation to the resistance opposed by Nature and the irrational Passions to the Dictates of Reason; Energy of Will in preserving the Line of Rectitude tense and firm against the warping forces and treacheries of temptation. Surely, it were far less unseemly to value ourselves on this moral strength than on strength of body, or even strength of intellect. But we will rather value it for ourselves: and bearing in mind the old adage, Quis custodiet ipsum custodem?—we will value it the more, yea, then only will we allow it true spiritual worth, when we possess it as a gift of grace, a boon of mercy undeserved, a fulfilment of a free promise (1 Corinth. x. 13.). What more is meant in this last paragraph, let the venerable Hooker say for me in the following.

APHORISM VI.

Hooker.

What is virtue but a medicine, and vice but a wound?—Yea, we have so often deeply wounded ourselves with medicine, that God hath been fain to make wounds medicinable; to cure by vice where virtue hath stricken; to suffer the just man to fall, that being raised he may be taught what power it was which upheld him standing. I am not afraid to affirm it boldly with St. Augustine, that men puffed up through a proud opinion of their own sanctity and holiness receive a benefit at the hands of God, and are assisted with his grace when with his grace they are not assisted, but permitted (and that grievously) to transgress. Whereby, as they were through over-great liking of themselves supplanted (tripped up), so the dislike of that which did supplant them may establish them afterwards the surer. Ask the very soul of Peter, and it shall undoubtedly itself make you this answer: My eager protestations made in the glory of my spiritual strength I am ashamed of. But my shame and the tears, with which my presumption and my weakness were bewailed, recur in the songs of my thanksgiving. My Strength had been my ruin, my Fall hath proved my stay.[83]

APHORISM VII.

The Being and Providence of One Living God, holy, gracious, merciful, the creator and preserver of all things, and a father of the righteous; the Moral Law in its[84] utmost height, breadth, and purity, a State of Retribution after Death; the[85] Resurrection of the Dead; and a Day of Judgment—all these were known and received by the Jewish people, as established articles of the national faith, at or before the proclaiming of Christ by the Baptist. They are the ground-work of Christianity, and essentials in the Christian Faith, but not its characteristic and peculiar Doctrines: except indeed as they are confirmed, enlivened, realized and brought home to the whole being of man, head, heart, and spirit, by the truths and influences of the Gospel.

Peculiar to Christianity are:

I. The belief that a Means of Salvation has been effected and provided for the human race by the incarnation of the Son of God in the person of Jesus Christ; and that his life on earth, his sufferings, death, and resurrection, are not only proofs and manifestations, but likewise essential and effective parts of the great redemptive Act, whereby also the Obstacle from the corruption of our Nature is rendered no longer insurmountable.

II. The belief in the possible appropriation of this benefit by Repentance and Faith, including the aids that render an effective faith and repentance themselves possible.

III. The belief in the reception (by as many as shall be heirs of salvation) of a living and spiritual principle, a seed of life capable of surviving this natural life, and of existing in a divine and immortal state.

IV. The belief in the awakening of the spirit[86] in them that truly believe, and in the communion of the spirit, thus awakened, with the Holy Spirit.

V. The belief in the accompanying and consequent gifts, graces, comforts, and privileges of the Spirit, which acting primarily on the heart and will, cannot but manifest themselves in suitable works of love and obedience, that is, in right acts with right affections, from right principles.

VI. Further, as Christians we are taught, that these Works are the appointed signs and evidences of our Faith; and that, under limitation of the power, the means, and the opportunities afforded us individually, they are the rule and measure, by which we are bound and enabled to judge, of what spirit we are.

VII. All these, together with the doctrine of the Fathers re-proclaimed in the everlasting Gospel, we receive in the full assurance, that God beholds and will finally judge us with a merciful consideration of our infirmities, a gracious acceptance of our sincere though imperfect strivings, a forgiveness of our defects through the mediation, and a completion of our deficiencies by the perfect righteousness, of the Man Christ Jesus, even the Word that was in the beginning with God, and who, being God, became Man for the redemption of Mankind.

Comment.

I earnestly entreat the reader to pause awhile, and to join with me in reflecting on the preceding Aphorism. It has been my aim throughout this work to enforce two points: 1. That Morality arising out of the Reason and Conscience of Men, and Prudence, which in like manner flows out of the Understanding and the natural Wants and Desires of the Individual, are two distinct things. 2. That Morality with Prudence as its instrument has, considered abstractedly, not only a value but a worth in itself. Now the question is (and it is a question which every man must answer for himself)—From what you know of yourself; of your own heart and strength; and from what history and personal experience have led you to conclude of mankind generally; dare you trust to it? Dare you trust to it? To it, and to it alone? If so, well! It is at your own risk. I judge you not. Before Him, who cannot be mocked, you stand or fall. But if not, if you have had too good reason to know, that your heart is deceitful and your strength weakness: if you are disposed to exclaim with Paul—the Law indeed is holy, just, good, spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin: for that which I do, I allow not; and what I would, that I do not!—in this case, there is a voice that says, Come unto me: and I will give you rest. This is the Voice of Christ: and the conditions, under which the promise was given by him, are that you believe in him, and believe his words. And he has further assured you, that if you do so, you will obey him. You are, in short, to embrace the Christian Faith as your Religion—those Truths which St. Paul believed after his conversion, and not those only which he believed no less undoubtingly while he was persecuting Christ, and an enemy of the Christian Religion. With what consistency could I offer you this volume as Aids to Reflection, if I did not call on you to ascertain in the first instance what these truths are? But these I could not lay before you without first enumerating certain other points of belief, which though truths, indispensable truths, and truths comprehended or rather presupposed in the Christian scheme, are yet not these truths. (John i. 17.)

While doing this, I was aware that the Positions, in the first paragraph of the preceding Aphorism, to which the numerical marks are affixed, will startle some of my Readers. Let the following sentences serve for the notes corresponding to the marks:

1 Be you holy: even as God is holy.—What more does he require of thee, O man! than to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Lord thy God?[87] To these summary passages from Moses and the Prophets (the first exhibiting the closed, the second the expanded, Hand of the Moral Law) I might add the Authorities of Grotius and other more orthodox and not less learned Divines, for the opinion that the Lord's Prayer was a selection, and the famous passage [The hour is now coming, &c., John v. 28 29.] a citation by our Lord from the liturgy of the Jewish Church. But it will be sufficient to remind the reader, that the apparent difference between the prominent moral truths of the Old and those of the New Testament results from the latter having been written in Greek; while the conversations recorded by the Evangelists took place in Hebrew or Syro-Chaldaic or Aramaic.—Hence it happened that where our Lord cited the original text, his biographers substituted the Septuagint version, while our English version is in both instances immediate and literal—in the Old Testament from the Hebrew Original, in the New Testament from the freer Greek translation. The text, I give you a new commandment, has no connection with the present subject.

2 There is a current mistake on this point likewise, though this article of the Jewish Belief is not only asserted by St. Paul, but is elsewhere spoken of as common to the Twelve Tribes. The mistake consists in supposing the Pharisees to have been a distinct sect, and in strangely over-rating the number of the Sadducees. The former were distinguished not by holding, as matters of religious belief, articles different from the Jewish Church at large; but by their pretences to a more rigid orthodoxy, a more scrupulous performance. They were, in short (if I may dare use a phrase which I dislike as profane, and denounce as uncharitable), the Evangelicals and strict professors of the day. The latter, the Sadducees, whose opinions much more nearly resembled those of the Stoics than the Epicureans (a remark that will appear paradoxical to those only who have abstracted their notions of the Stoic Philosophy from Epictetus, Mark Antonine, and certain brilliant inconsistencies of Seneca), were a handful of rich men, Romanized Jews, not more numerous than infidels among us, and holden by the People at large in at least equal abhorrence. Their great argument was: that the belief of a future state of rewards and punishments injured or destroyed the purity of the Moral Law for the more enlightened classes, and weakened the influence of the Laws of the Land for the people, the vulgar multitude.

I will now suppose the reader to have thoughtfully re-perused the paragraph containing the tenets peculiar to Christianity, and if he have his religious principles yet to form, I should expect to overhear a troubled murmur: How can I comprehend this? How is this to be proved? To the first question I should answer: Christianity is not a Theory, or a Speculation; but a Life;—not a Philosophy of Life, but a Life and a living Process. To the second: TRY IT. It has been eighteen hundred years in existence: and has one individual left a record, like the following? "I tried it; and it did not answer. I made the experiment faithfully according to the directions; and the result has been, a conviction of my own credulity." Have you, in your own experience, met with any one in whose words you could place full confidence, and who has seriously affirmed:—"I have given Christianity a fair trial. I was aware, that its promises were made only conditionally. But my heart bears me witness, that I have to the utmost of my power complied with these conditions. Both outwardly and in the discipline of my inward acts and affections, I have performed the duties which it enjoins, and I have used the means, which it prescribes. Yet my assurance of its truth has received no increase. Its promises have not been fulfilled: and I repent me of my delusion!" If neither your own experience nor the History of almost two thousand years has presented a single testimony to this purport; and if you have read and heard of many who have lived and died bearing witness to the contrary: and if you have yourself met with some one, in whom on any other point you would place unqualified trust, who has on his own experience made report to you, that He is faithful who promised, and what he promised He has proved Himself able to perform; is it bigotry, if I fear that the Unbelief, which prejudges and prevents the experiment, has its source elsewhere than in the uncorrupted judgment; that not the strong free mind, but the enslaved will, is the true original infidel in this instance? It would not be the first time, that a treacherous bosom-sin had suborned the understandings of men to bear false witness against its avowed enemy, the right though unreceived owner of the house, who had long warned it out, and waited only for its ejection to enter and take possession of the same.

I have elsewhere in the present work explained the difference between the Understanding and the Reason, by reason meaning exclusively the speculative or scientific power so called, the νους or mens of the ancients. And wider still is the distinction between the Understanding and the Spiritual Mind. But no gift of God does or can contradict any other gift, except by misuse or misdirection. Most readily therefore do I admit, that there can be no contrariety between Revelation and the Understanding; unless you call the fact, that the skin, though sensible of the warmth of the sun, can convey no notion of its figure or its joyous light, or of the colours, which it impresses on the clouds, a contrariety between the skin and the eye; or infer that the cutaneous and the optic nerves contradict each other.

But we have grounds to believe, that there are yet other rays or effluences from the sun, which neither feeling nor sight can apprehend, but which are to be inferred from the effects. And were it even so with regard to the Spiritual Sun, how would this contradict the Understanding or the Reason? It is a sufficient proof of the contrary, that the mysteries in question are not in the direction of the understanding or the (speculative) reason. They do not move on the same line or plane with them, and therefore cannot contradict them. But besides this, in the mystery that most immediately concerns the believer, that of the birth into a new and spiritual life, the common sense and experience of mankind come in aid of their faith. The analogous facts, which we know to be true, not only facilitate the apprehension of the facts promised to us, and expressed by the same words in conjunction with a distinctive epithet; but being confessedly not less incomprehensible, the certain knowledge of the one disposes us to the belief of the other. It removes at least all objections to the truth of the doctrine derived from the mysteriousness of its subject. The life, we seek after, is a mystery; but so both in itself and in its origin is the life we have. In order to meet this question, however, with minds duly prepared, there are two preliminary inquiries to be decided; the first respecting the purport, the second respecting the language of the Gospel.

First then of the purport, namely, what the Gospel does not, and what it does profess to be. The Gospel is not a system of Theology, nor a syntagma of theoretical propositions and conclusions for the enlargement of speculative knowledge, ethical or metaphysical. But it is a history, a series of facts and events related or announced. These do indeed involve, or rather I should say they at the same time are, most important doctrinal Truths; but still Facts and Declaration of Facts.

Secondly of the language. This is a wide subject. But the point, to which I chiefly advert, is the necessity of thoroughly understanding the distinction between analogous, and metaphorical language. Analogies are used in aid of Conviction: Metaphors, as means of Illustration. The language is analogous, wherever a thing, power, or principle in a higher dignity is expressed by the same thing, power, or principle in a lower but more known form. Such, for instance, is the language of John iii. 6. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit, is Spirit. The latter half of the verse contains the fact asserted; the former half the analogous fact, by which it is rendered intelligible. If any man choose to call this metaphorical or figurative, I ask him whether with Hobbes and Bolingbroke he applies the same rule to the moral attributes of the Deity? Whether he regards the divine Justice, for instance, as a metaphorical term, a mere figure of speech? If he disclaims this, then I answer, neither do I regard the words, born again, or spiritual life, as figures or metaphors. I have only to add, that these analogies are the material, or (to speak chemically) the base, of Symbols and symbolical expressions; the nature of which is always tautegorical, that is, expressing the same subject but with a difference, in contra-distinction from metaphors and similitudes, that are always allegorical, that is, expressing a different subject but with a resemblance.

Of metaphorical language, on the other hand, let the following be taken as instance and illustration. I am speaking, we will suppose, of an act, which in its own nature, and as a producing and efficient cause, is transcendent; but which produces sundry effects, each of which is the same in kind with an effect produced by a cause well known and of ordinary occurrence. Now when I characterize or designate this transcendent act, in exclusive reference to these its effects, by a succession of names borrowed from their ordinary causes; not for the purpose of rendering the act itself, or the manner of the agency, conceivable, but in order to show the nature and magnitude of the benefits received from it, and thus to excite the due admiration, gratitude, and love in the receivers; in this case I should be rightly described as speaking metaphorically. And in this case to confound the similarity, in respect of the effects relatively to the recipients, with an identity in respect of the causes or modes of causation relatively to the transcendent act or the Divine Agent, is a confusion of metaphor with analogy, and of figurative with literal; and has been and continues to be a fruitful source of superstition or enthusiasm in believers, and of objections and prejudices to infidels and sceptics. But each of these points is worthy of a separate consideration: and apt occasions will be found of reverting to them severally in the following Aphorisms, or the comments thereto attached.

APHORISM VIII.

Leighton.

Faith elevates the soul not only above sense and sensible things, but above reason itself. As reason corrects the errors which sense might occasion, so supernatural faith corrects the errors of natural reason judging according to sense.

Comment.

My remarks on this Aphorism from Leighton cannot be better introduced, or their purport more distinctly announced, than by the following sentence from Harrington, with no other change than was necessary to make the words express, without aid of the context, what from the context it is evident was the writer's meaning. "The definition and proper character of Man—that, namely, which should contra-distinguish him from the Animals—is to be taken from his reason rather than from his understanding: in regard that in other creatures there may be something of understanding, but there is nothing of reason."[88]

Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, complains, that there are not impossibilities enough in Religion for his active faith; and adopts by choice and in free preference, such interpretations of certain texts and declarations of Holy Writ, as place them in irreconcilable contradiction to the demonstrations of science and the experience of mankind, because (says he) "I love to lose myself in a mystery, and 'tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity and Incarnation;"—and because he delights (as thinking it no vulgar part of faith) to believe a thing not only above but contrary to reason, and against the evidence of our proper senses. For the worthy knight could answer all the objections of the devil and reason "with the odd resolution he had learnt of Tertullian: Certum est quia impossibile est. It is certainly true because it is quite impossible!" Now this I call Ultrafidianism.[89]

Again, there is a scheme constructed on the principle of retaining the social sympathies, that attend on the name of Believer, at the least possible expenditure of Belief; a scheme of picking and choosing Scripture texts for the support of doctrines, that had been learned beforehand from the higher oracle of Common Sense; which, as applied to the truths of Religion, means the popular part of the philosophy in fashion. Of course, the scheme differs at different times and in different individuals in the number of articles excluded; but, it may always be recognized by this permanent character, that its object is to draw religion down to the believer's intellect, instead of raising his intellect up to religion. And this extreme I call Minimifidianism.

Now if there be one preventive of both these extremes more efficacious than another, and preliminary to all the rest, it is the being made fully aware of the diversity of Reason and Understanding. And this is the more expedient, because though there is no want of authorities ancient and modern for the distinction of the faculties, and the distinct appropriation of the terms, yet our best writers too often confound the one with the other. Even Lord Bacon himself, who in his Novum Organum has so incomparably set forth the nature of the difference, and the unfitness of the latter faculty for the objects of the former, does nevertheless in sundry places use the term Reason where he means the Understanding, and sometimes, though less frequently, Understanding for Reason.[93] In consequence of thus confounding the two terms, or rather of wasting both words for the expression of one and the same faculty, he left himself no appropriate term for the other and higher gift of Reason, and was thus under the necessity of adopting fantastical and mystical phrases, for example, the dry light (lumen siccum), the lucific vision, and the like, meaning thereby nothing more than Reason in contra-distinction from the Understanding. Thus too in the preceding Aphorism, by Reason Leighton means the human Understanding, the explanation annexed to it being (by a noticeable coincidence), word for word, the very definition which the founder of the Critical Philosophy gives of the Understanding—namely, "the faculty judging according to sense."

ON THE DIFFERENCE IN KIND OF REASON AND THE UNDERSTANDING.

Scheme of the Argument.

On the contrary, Reason is the Power of Universal and necessary Convictions, the Source and Substance of Truths above Sense, and having their evidence in themselves. Its presence is always marked by the necessity of the position affirmed: this necessity being conditional, when a truth of Reason is applied to Facts of Experience, or to the rules and maxims of the Understanding; but absolute, when the subject matter is itself the growth or offspring of the Reason. Hence arises a distinction in the Reason itself, derived from the different mode of applying it, and from the objects to which it is directed: accordingly as we consider one and the same gift, now as the ground of formal principles, and now as the origin of ideas. Contemplated distinctively in reference to formal (or abstract) truth, it is the speculative reason; but in reference to actual (or moral) truth, as the fountain of ideas, and the light of the conscience, we name it the practical reason. Whenever by self-subjection to this universal light, the will of the individual, the particular will, has become a will of reason, the man is regenerate: and reason is then the spirit of the regenerated man, whereby the person is capable of a quickening inter-communion with the Divine Spirit. And herein consists the mystery of Redemption, that this has been rendered possible for us. And so it is written: the first man Adam, was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening Spirit. (1 Cor. xv. 45.) We need only compare the passages in the writings of the Apostles Paul and John, concerning the spirit and spiritual Gifts, with those in the Proverbs and in the Wisdom of Solomon respecting reason, to be convinced that the terms are synonymous.[94] In this at once most comprehensive and most appropriate acceptation of the word, reason is pre-eminently spiritual, and a spirit, even our spirit, through an effluence of the same grace by which we are privileged to say Our Father!

On the other hand, the Judgments of the Understanding are binding only in relation to the objects of our Senses, which we reflect under the forms of the Understanding. It is, as Leighton rightly defines it, "the faculty judging according to sense." Hence we add the epithet human, without tautology: and speak of the human understanding, in disjunction from that of beings higher or lower than man. But there is, in this sense, no human reason. There neither is nor can be but one reason, one and the same: even the light that lighteth every man's individual Understanding (Discursus), and thus maketh it a reasonable understanding, discourse of reason—one only, yet manifold: it goeth through all understanding, and remaining in itself regenerateth all other powers. The same writer calls it likewise an influence from the Glory of the Almighty, this being one of the names of the Messiah, as the Logos, or co-eternal Filial Word. And most noticeable for its coincidence is a fragment of Heraclitus, as I have indeed already noticed elsewhere;—"To discourse rationally it behoves us to derive strength from that which is common to all men: for all human Understandings are nourished by the one Divine Word."

Beasts, we have said, partake of understanding. If any man deny this, there is a ready way of settling the question. Let him give a careful perusal to Hüber's two small volumes, on bees and ants (especially the latter), and to Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology; and one or other of two things must follow. He will either change his opinion as irreconcilable with the facts; or he must deny the facts, which yet I cannot suppose, inasmuch as the denial would be tantamount to the no less extravagant than uncharitable assertion, that Hüber, and the several eminent naturalists, French and English, Swiss, German, and Italian, by whom Hüber's observations and experiments have been repeated and confirmed, had all conspired to impose a series of falsehoods and fairy-tales on the world. I see no way at least, by which he can get out of this dilemma, but by over-leaping the admitted rules and fences of all legitimate discussion, and either transferring to the word, Understanding, the definition already appropriated to Reason, or defining Understanding in genere by the specific and accessional perfections which the human understanding derives from its co-existence with reason and free-will in the same individual person; in plainer words, from its being exercised by a self-conscious and responsible creature. And, after all, the supporter of Harrington's position would have a right to ask him, by what other name he would designate the faculty in the instances referred to? If it be not Understanding, what is it?

In no former part of this volume has the author felt the same anxiety to obtain a patient attention. For he does not hesitate to avow, that on his success in establishing the validity and importance of the distinction between Reason and Understanding, he rests his hopes of carrying the reader along with him through all that is to follow. Let the student but clearly see and comprehend the diversity in the things themselves, the expediency of a correspondent distinction and appropriation of the words will follow of itself. Turn back for a moment to the Aphorism, and having re-perused the first paragraph of this Comment thereon, regard the two following narratives as the illustration. I do not say proof: for I take these from a multitude of facts equally striking for the one only purpose of placing my meaning out of all doubt.

I. Hüber put a dozen bumble-bees under a bell-glass along with a comb of about ten silken cocoons so unequal in height as not to be capable of standing steadily. To remedy this two or three of the bumble-bees got upon the comb, stretched themselves over its edge, and with their heads downwards fixed their fore-feet on the table on which the comb stood, and so with their hind-feet kept the comb from falling. When these were weary, others took their places. In this constrained and painful posture, fresh bees relieving their comrades at intervals, and each working in its turn, did these affectionate little insects support the comb for nearly three days: at the end of which they had prepared sufficient wax to build pillars with. But these pillars having accidentally got displaced, the bees had recourse again to the same manœuvre till Hüber, pitying their hard case, &c.

II. "I shall at present describe the operations of a single ant that I observed sufficiently long to satisfy my curiosity. One rainy day, I observed a labourer digging the ground near the aperture which gave entrance to the ant-hill. It placed in a heap the several fragments it had scraped up, and formed them into small pellets, which it deposited here and there upon the nest. It returned constantly to the same place, and appeared to have a marked design, for it laboured with ardour and perseverance. I remarked a slight furrow, excavated in the ground in a straight line, representing the plan of a path or gallery. The Labourer, the whole of whose movements fell under my immediate observation, gave it greater depth and breadth, and cleared out its borders: and I saw at length, in which I could not be deceived, that it had the intention of establishing an avenue which was to lead from one of the stories to the underground chambers. This path, which was about two or three inches in length, and formed by a single ant, was opened above and bordered on each side by a buttress of earth; its concavity en forme de gouttière was of the most perfect regularity, for the architect had not left an atom too much. The work of this ant was so well followed and understood, that I could almost to a certainty guess its next proceeding, and the very fragment it was about to remove. At the side of the opening where this path terminated, was a second opening to which it was necessary to arrive by some road. The same ant engaged in and executed alone this undertaking. It furrowed out and opened another path, parallel to the first, leaving between each a little wall of three or four lines in height. Those ants who lay the foundation of a wall, chamber, or gallery, from working separately, occasion now and then a want of coincidence in the parts of the same or different objects. Such examples are of no unfrequent occurrence, but they by no means embarrass them. What follows proves that the workman, on discovering his error, knew how to rectify it. A wall had been erected with the view of sustaining a vaulted ceiling, still incomplete, that had been projected from the wall of the opposite chamber. The workman who began constructing it, had given it too little elevation to meet the opposite partition upon which it was to rest. Had it been continued on the original plan, it must infallibly have met the wall at about one half of its height, and this it was necessary to avoid. This state of things very forcibly claimed my attention, when one of the ants arriving at the place, and visiting the works, appeared to be struck by the difficulty which presented itself; but this it as soon obviated, by taking down the ceiling and raising the wall upon which it reposed. It then, in my presence, constructed a new ceiling with the fragments of the former one."—Hüber's Natural History of Ants, p. 38-41.

Now I assert, that the faculty manifested in the acts here narrated does not differ in kind from Understanding, and that it does so differ from Reason. What I conceive the former to be, physiologically considered, will be shown hereafter. In this place I take the understanding as it exists in men, and in exclusive reference to its intelligential functions; and it is in this sense of the word that I am to prove the necessity of contra-distinguishing it from reason.

Premising then, that two or more subjects having the same essential characters are said to fall under the same general definition, I lay it down, as a self-evident truth,—(it is, in fact, an identical proposition) that whatever subjects fall under one and the same general definition are of one and the same kind: consequently, that which does not fall under this definition, must differ in kind from each and all of those that do. Difference in degree does indeed suppose sameness in kind; and difference in kind precludes distinction from difference of degree. Heterogenea non comparari, ergo nec distingui, possunt. The inattention to this rule gives rise to the numerous sophisms comprised by Aristotle under the head of μεταβασισ εις αλλο γενος, that is, transition into a new kind, or the falsely applying to X what had been truly asserted of A, and might have been true of X, had it differed from A in its degree only. The sophistry consists in the omission to notice what not being noticed will be supposed not to exist; and where the silence respecting the difference in kind is tantamount to an assertion that the difference is merely in degree. But the fraud is especially gross, where the heterogeneous subject, thus clandestinely slipt in, is in its own nature insusceptible of degree: such as, for instance, Certainty, or Circularity, contrasted with Strength, or Magnitude.

To apply these remarks for our present purpose, we have only to describe Understanding and Reason, each by its characteristic qualities. The comparison will show the difference.

The Result is: that neither falls under the definition of the other. They differ in kind: and had my object been confined to the establishment of this fact, the preceding columns would have superseded all further disquisition. But I have ever in view the especial interest of my youthful readers, whose reflective power is to be cultivated, as well as their particular reflections to be called forth and guided. Now the main chance of their reflecting on religious subjects aright, and of their attaining to the contemplation of spiritual truths at all, rests on their insight into the nature of this disparity still more than on their conviction of its existence. I now, therefore, proceed to a brief analysis of the Understanding, in elucidation of the definitions already given.

The Understanding then (considered exclusively as an organ of human intelligence,) is the faculty by which we reflect and generalize. Take, for instance, any objects consisting of many parts, a house, or a group of houses: and if it be contemplated, as a Whole, that is, as many constituting a one, it forms what in the technical language of Psychology, is called a total impression. Among the various component parts of this, we direct our attention especially to such as we recollect to have noticed in other total impressions. Then, by a voluntary act, we withhold our attention from all the rest to reflect exclusively on these; and these we henceforward use as common characters, by virtue of which the several objects are referred to one and the same sort.[95] Thus, the whole process may be reduced to three acts, all depending on and supposing a previous impression on the senses: first, the appropriation of our Attention; second, (and in order to the continuance of the first) Abstraction, or the voluntary withholding of the Attention; and third, Generalization. And these are the proper Functions of the Understanding: and the power of so doing, is what we mean, when we say we possess Understanding, or are created with the faculty of Understanding.

[It is obvious, that the third function includes the act of comparing one object with another. In a note (for, not to interrupt the argument, I avail myself of this most useful contrivance,) I have shown, that the act of comparing supposes in the comparing faculty, certain inherent forms, that is, modes of reflecting not referable to the objects reflected on, but pre-determined by the constitution and (as it were) mechanism of the Understanding itself. And under some one or other of these forms,[96] the resemblances and differences must be subsumed in order to be conceivable, and a fortiori therefore in order to be comparable. The senses do not compare, but merely furnish the materials for comparison. But this the reader will find explained in the note; and will now cast his eye back to the sentence immediately preceding this parenthesis.]

Now when a person speaking to us of any particular Object or Appearance refers it by means of some common character to a known class (which he does in giving it a Name), we say, that we understand him; that is, we understand his words. The Name of a thing, in the original sense of the word Name, (nomen, νουμενον, το intelligible, id quod intelligitur) expresses that which is understood in an appearance, that which we place (or make to stand) under it, as the condition of its real existence, and in proof that it is not an accident of the senses, or affection of the individual, not a phantom or apparition, that is, an appearance that is only an appearance. (See Gen. ii. 19 20, and in Psalm xx. 1, and in many other places of the Bible, the identity of nomen with numen, that is, invisible power and presence, the nomen substantivum of all real objects, and the ground of their reality, independently of the affections of sense in the percipient). In like manner, in a connected succession of names, as the speaker passes from the one to the other, we say that we can understand his discourse (discursio intellectûs, discursus, his passing rapidly from one thing to another). Thus, in all instances, it is words, names, or, if images, yet images used as words or names, that are the only and exclusive subjects of Understanding. In no instance do we understand a thing in itself; but only the name to which it is referred. Sometimes indeed, when several classes are recalled conjointly, we identify the words with the object—though by courtesy of idiom rather than in strict propriety of language. Thus we may say that we understand a rainbow, when recalling successively the several Names for the several sorts of colours, we know that they are to be applied to one and the same phenomenon, at once distinctly and simultaneously; but even in common speech we should not say this of a single colour. No one would say he understands red or blue. He sees the colour, and had seen it before in a vast number and variety of objects; and he understands the word red, as referring his fancy or memory to this his collective experience.

If this be so, and so it most assuredly is—if the proper functions of the Understanding be that of generalizing the notices received from the senses in order to the construction of names: of referring particular notices (that is, impressions or sensations) to their proper names; and, vice versâ, names to their correspondent class or kind of notices—then it follows of necessity, that the Understanding is truly and accurately defined in the words of Leighton and Kant, a "faculty judging according to sense."

Now whether in defining the speculative Reason (that is, the Reason considered abstractedly as an intellective power) we call it "the source of necessary and universal principles, according to which the notices of the senses are either affirmed or denied;" or describe it as "the power by which we are enabled to draw from particular and contingent appearances universal and necessary conclusions:"[97] it is equally evident that the two definitions differ in their essential characters, and consequently the subjects differ in kind.

The dependence of the Understanding on the representations of the senses, and its consequent posteriority thereto, as contrasted with the independence and antecedency of Reason, are strikingly exemplified in the Ptolemaic System (that truly wonderful product and highest boast of the faculty, judging according to the senses!) compared with the Newtonian, as the offspring of a yet higher power, arranging, correcting, and annulling the representations of the senses according to its own inherent laws and constitutive ideas.