188 EEV. H. J. CLARKE. 



accounted for, the force to which their component atoms 

 yield. Some latent force having originated them, they 

 are but the medium through which it finds further issues 

 into the sphere of manifestation which it has thus created. 

 They are the receptacle of a charge and the condition 

 of the discharge. This mysterious thing can by no possibility 

 have its source in space-determined properties, — that is 

 to say, dimensions, resistance to pressure, capacity for gravi- 

 tation, for molecular vibrations and combinations^ for the 

 expansion and contraction of molecular aggregates. To 

 conceive of it as coming out of these is preposterous : it 

 must belong to a higher sphere of existence, whence, within 

 the limits wherewith they fence it round, it acts upon them. 



But this conclusion is far from fully representing the 

 philosophical significance of thought, considered as an object 

 of intuition. Thought may involve, indeed it is hardly 

 separable from, sentiment ; hence its energy. In contem- 

 plating its possible characteristics, I become aware of some- 

 thing immediately cognisable by the faculty I have for moral 

 discrimination. Now, then, I cannot help seeing that the 

 Agnostic philosophy labours under a radical defect in recog- 

 nising but two kinds of intuition ; namely, that in which 

 phenomena are empirically perceived, and that which merely 

 presupposes the forms under which such perception is possible, 

 thus leaving out of view entirely intuitions of the moral sense. 

 These intuitions assuredly presuppose for their objects real 

 existence, but essentially distinct from that which may be 

 conceived of as a substratum for phenomenal attributes. No 

 mind can, without some consciousness that the effort is 

 absurd, attempt to represent to itself the subject of moral 

 attributes as something which has a certain cubic capacity, is 

 in imagination divisible, and might be examined with the eye, 

 if only physical conditions permitted the construction and 

 the application of a suitable microscope. 



While, however, a subject or substratum of this kind cannot, 

 as an object in thought, find place, except in the way of 

 symbolical representation, by means of any of the concepts 

 which arise from the intuition of space, its attributes are no 

 otherwise perceived than in a succession of experiences, and 

 therefore under the conditions of a temporal existence. May, 

 then, any of these attributes be conceived as having place in 

 that kind of essence which is eternal ? The Agnostic, as it 

 seems to me, disposes of this question without due reflection. 

 In the first place, qualities must be distinguished from the 

 subjective conditions ivhicli their ma)i if estat ion presupposes . The 



