REPLIES TO CRITICISMS. 413 



symbol of a process ; and hence any predicament inferable from the 

 law of thought cannot be asserted. 



I may fitly close this reply by a counter-criticism. To the direct 

 defense of a proposition, there may be added the indirect defense that 

 results from showing the untenability of an alternative proposition. 

 This criticism on the doctrine of an unknowable existence, manifested 

 to us in phenomena, Mr. Martineau makes in the interests of the doc- 

 trine held by him, that this existence is, to a considerable degree, 

 knowable. We are quite at one in holding that there is an indestruc- 

 tible consciousness of Power behind Appearance ; but, whereas I con- 

 tend that this Power cannot be brought within the forms of thought, 

 Mr. Martineau contends that there can be consistently ascribed certain 

 attributes of personality — not, indeed, human characteristics so con- 

 crete as were ascribed in past times ; but still, human characteristics 

 of the more abstract and higher class. Regarding matter as inde- 

 pendently existing ; regarding, as also independently existing, those 

 primary qualities of Body " which are inseparable from the very idea 

 of Body, and may be evolved a priori from the consideration of it as 

 solid extension or extended solidity ; " and saying that to this class 

 " belong Triple Dimension, Divisibility, and Incompressibility ; " Mr. 

 Martineau goes on to say that as these 



" cannot absent themselves from Body, they have a reality coeval with it, and 

 belong eternally to the material datum objective to God; and his mode of ac- 

 tivity with regard to them must be similar to that which alone we can think of 

 his directing upon the relations of space, viz., not Volitional, to causethem, but 

 Intellectual, to think them out. The Secondary Qualities, on the other hand, 

 having no logical tie to the Primary, but, being appended to them as contingent 

 facts, cannot be referred to any deductive thought, but remain over as products 

 of pure Inventive Eeason and Determining Will. This sphere of cognition a 

 posteriori to us — where we cannot move a step alone, but have submissively to 

 wait upon experience — is precisely the realm of Divine originality : and we are 

 most sequacious where He is most free. While on this Secondary field his Mind 

 and ours are thus contrasted, they meet in resemblance again upon the Primary ; 

 for the evolutions of deductive Reason there is but one track possible to all in- 

 telligences ; no merum arbitrium can interchange the false and true, or make 

 more than one geometry, one scheme of pure Physics for all worlds ; and the 

 Omnipotent Architect himself, in realizing the Cosmical conception, in shaping 

 the orbits out of immensity and determining seasons out of eternity, could but 

 follow the laws of curvature, measure, and proportion.'' — (Essays, Philosophical 

 and Theological, pp. 163, 164.) 



Before the major criticism which I propose to make on this hy- 

 pothesis, let me make a minor one. Not only of space relations, but 

 also of primary physical properties, Mr. Martineau asserts the neces- 

 sity : not a necessity to our minds simply, but an ontological neces- 

 sity. What is true for human thought, is, in respect of these, true 

 absolutely : " the laws of curvature, measure, and proportion," as we 

 know them, are unchangeable even by Divine power ; as are also the 



