182 REV. H. J. CLARKE. 



He vriW, of course, perceive that it must differ essentially from 

 these, and therefore must be such as to admit no succession 

 of states, and, indeed, to forbid even the conception of its 

 divisibility (seeing that divisions are inconceivable apart from 

 arithmetical relations), but must have comprehended poten- 

 tially, in an absolute unity and simplicity of being, all things 

 in which succession or complexity ever has been or ever will 

 be manifested. This assumption, it seems almost superfluous 

 to remark, cannot be classed with probable hypotheses, even 

 the most firmly established ; if admissible at all, it has for its 

 immediate basis fundamental conditions of thought. 



In contemplating the kind of essence which must thus be 

 conceived, any attempt to comprehend its mode of existence 

 is of necessity frustrated by the impotence of the mind that 

 makes the attempt ; that is to say, by the inaptitude of its 

 originated experiences to be utilised in representing to it the 

 TJnoriginated as such. All equivalents for this designation 

 are equally embarrassing ; no name can be found which more 

 fitly expresses the relation in which the thing signified stands 

 to the finite intellect than " I am that I am.''^ 



But it by no means follows that a scientific recognition of 

 the Being thus named is precluded by inevitable ambiguities 

 in the laws of Mind, by such conflicting interpretations of the 

 facts of consciousness relative to the matter in question as 

 Science can neither tolerate nor put a stop to by the legitimate 

 exercise of its functions. Had it not been for the hopeless 

 confusion which, as it seemed to Kant, must thus arise, if the 

 human intellect's decisions are to be received respecting the 

 origin of things, that eminently conscientious reasoner, as 

 honest as he is subtle, would no doubt, instead of establishing, 

 as the supreme court of appeal, what he calls 'Hhe Critique 

 of Pure Reason/' have given us a thoroughly comprehensive 

 scheme of philosophy, in which every question radically affect- 

 ing the highest interests of mortal man would have been duly 

 considered, and, as far as possible, answered. Failing, however, 

 to perceive that such a scheme is compatible with the subjective 

 conditions of human thought, he availed himself of the tran- 

 scendental conceptions which his imperial intellect was able to 

 muster, chiefly in circumscribing his design, and in imparting 

 to it features of which limitation and negation are the most 

 prominent characteristics, conceding to reason the possession 

 of a priori sources of knowledge, but labouring to prove that 

 even with these aids it can never get " beyond the field of 

 possible experience." But what are these " Antinomies " at 

 which he stumbled ? What are these perplexing ambiguities 



