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F. F. ROGET, ON ERNEST NAVILLE^S LIFE. 



Another system is idealism, a doctrine abstruse, but of some 

 grandeur, which has more than once collected enthusiastic 

 disciples. 



According to this philosophy all that exists and comes into 

 being, in the realm of history as in that of nature, is the outcome 

 of eternal ideas, of absolute laws unfolding their consequences by 

 a necessity which belongs to them. The fundamental error of 

 this philosophic hypothesis is to forget that a law only 

 formulates the regularity of a phenomenon, and is by no means 

 its efficient cause. Ideas are but abstractions without power, 

 unless indeed they are thoughts, the thoughts of a Spirit 

 endowed with will. 



If we leave out of court sundry deficiencies belonging in 

 common to materialism and idealism, we find that both those 

 doctrines concur in a complete determinism, which is out of 

 keeping with some of the essential facts with which every 

 philosophy has to reckon, principally with the certainty in 

 which we are that we are morally bound to the law of duty, 

 though not compulsorily made to obey it. 



There remains a third hypothesis, or philosophy : Naville 

 calls it spiritualism. The " spiritualistic " solution of the 

 problem of the universe supposes that its is an 



infinite and absolutely free Spirit whose creation the universe 

 is. In this manner only is it made intelligible that there 

 should be in the world a multiplicity of existences, yet 

 reciprocal harmony among elements so diverse. Thus can it be 

 explained that beside things which, without any consciousness 

 thereof, move in the world according to unvarying laws, other 

 things exist which are beings endowed with real liberty, although 

 a limited liberty and one subject to moral obligation. Thus is 

 justified the distinction which we make between material fact 

 and moral law, a distinction the making of which characterises 

 all our acts and all human institutions, and which materialists 

 themselves make perpetually in their usage and wont, regardless 

 of the utter illogicality of their position. Thus at last and thus 

 only does one succeed in seeing how man, as a knowing spirit, 

 is capable of science, and why, on the other hand, science cannot 

 extend beyond the limits of observation. 



Our faculties have indeed been constructed by the maker of 

 the v/orld so as to apply themselves usefully to the study of 

 things, but these too are the creation of an infinite Spirit whose 

 scope exceeds our faculties, thus making it impossible for us to 

 fathom His designs by an a priori process which would put us 

 on a level with Him. 



