418 CONSTITUTION OF THE INTELLECT. [CHAP. XXII. 



that we have not yet advanced sufficiently far on this track to 

 enable us to determine what are the ultimate forms into which all 

 the special differences of Nature shall merge, and from which 

 they shall receive their explanation. 



2ndly. Were this correspondence between the forms of thought 

 and the actual constitution of Nature proved to exist, whatso- 

 ever connexion or relation it might be supposed to establish be- 

 tween the two systems, it would in no degree affect the question 

 of their mutual independence. It would in no sense lead to the 

 consequence that the one system is the mere product of the other. 

 A too great addiction to metaphysical speculations seems, in 

 some instances, to have produced a tendency toward this species 

 of illusion. Thus, among the many attempts which have been 

 made to explain the existence of evil, it has been sought to assign 

 to the fact a merely relative character, to found it upon a species 

 of logical opposition to the equally relative element of good. It 

 suffices to say, that the assumption is purely gratuitous. What 

 evil may be in the eyes of Infinite wisdom and purity, we can at 

 the best but dimly conjecture ; but to us, in all its forms, whe- 

 ther of pain or defect, or moral transgression, or retributory wo, 

 it can wear but one aspect, that of a sad and stern reality, 

 against which, upon somewhat more than the highest order of 

 prudential considerations, the whole preventive force of our 

 nature may be exerted. Now what has been said upon the 

 particular question just considered, is equally applicable to many 

 other of the debated points of philosophy ; such, for instance, 

 as the external reality of space and time. We have no war- 

 rant for resolving these into mere forms of the understanding, 

 though they unquestionably determine the present sphere of 

 our knowledge. And, to speak more generally, there is no war- 

 rant for the extremely subjective tendency of much modern spe- 

 culation. Whenever, in the view of the intellect, different 

 hypotheses are equally consistent with an observed fact, the 

 instinctive testimony of consciousness as to their relative value 

 must be allowed to possess authority. 



3rdly . If the study of the laws of thought avails us neither 

 to determine the actual constitution of things, nor to explain the 

 facts involved in that constitution which have perplexed the wise 



