PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 171 



their appointed purpose, and our equations traversing the mystic 

 region of " imaginary " expressions, transcend alike our interpreta- 

 tion and our comprehension. 



Final Unity of Causation. — As every suggestion of an assignable 

 limit to space or time directly impels us to " overleap all bounds," 

 so the very definiteuess of the physical leads us to spring in imagi- 

 nation beyond its frontiers, and to seek refuge in the transcen- 

 dental; — not the supernatural as replacing or suspending the natu- 

 ral, but as supplementing and completing it — the ultra-natural, — 

 in its best and highest sense the metaphysical. Incapable though 

 we be of realizing in thought anything but the finite and the rela- 

 tive, we none the less find ourselves alike incapable of confining 

 our thought to these ; and the necessity which inexorably forbids 

 our conception of the infinite and the absolute, no less imperiously 

 compels our unhesitating acceptance of the unknown infinite and 

 absolute as the unavoidable counterparts of the known finite and 

 relative.* 



Our visible material universe — to all appearance limited in ex- 

 tent — an islet in the boundless void, — is no less limited in duration, — 

 at least as to any of its aspects now displayed. Nor have the fall- 

 ing leaf or the ageing man, the disappearance of races or the past 

 extinction of species of genera and of orders, — more clearly in- 

 scribed upon them, the universal law and lesson of ephemeral birth 

 development and decay, than have the starry heavens themselves. 

 Under the present system of dynamic law, it is certain that as radia- 

 ting and cooling bodies, 



" The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 

 Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years." 



*Sir William Hamilton has well remarked (in his Essay on the 

 "Philosophy of the Unconditioned"): "The Infinite and the Absolute 

 (properly so called) are thus equally inconceivable to us. - - - We are 

 thus taught the salutary lesson that the capacity of thought is not to be 

 constituted into the measure of existence ; and are warned from recognizing 

 the domain of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon 

 of our faith. And by a wonderful revelation we are thus in the very con- 

 sciousness of our inabilit}- to conceive aught above the relative and finite, 

 inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditional beyond 

 the sphere of all comprehensible reality." (Discussions on Philosophy and 

 Literature. 8vo. London, 1852: part i, pp. 13 and 15.) This Essay — a 

 Review of Victor Cousin's Cours de Philosophic, — was originally published 

 in the Edinburgh Review, October, 1829 : vol. t, pp. 194-221. 



