1884.1 
“ Ultimate Religious Ideas” 
513 
have preceded mind. To say that intelligence and mind are 
the same is not true, because intelligence is unparticled ; 
mind is particled into ideas, thoughts, reasons, memories, 
&c., the whole subsisting as intelligence cognized in con- 
sciousness. We cannot reason beyond consciousness, for 
where perception and conception go consciousness goes with 
them. If we, possessing a finite consciousness, can conceive 
so vastly as to magnify the conception by infinitude, we have 
then the apprehension of a something which the human 
conception cannot grasp, and is therefore unfathomable as 
f^r as we can think. If it be said that consciousness is con- 
ditioned, for it is said to be limited, conceive infinitude as 
one of its aspects, and there is no limitation ; and so it is 
in all the aspects in which it may be contemplated, — call it 
by whatever name it may be called, we have but that which 
is perfect in its own perceptions and conceptions, not as parts 
or conditions or states, but as an abiding whole, a perfedted 
entity ; and whether finite or infinite the same principle 
pervades it. In its infinite aspedt it comprehends time and 
space, and all to which perception and intelligence can 
attain. There is no need to chop logic in such a conception, 
for it contains its own logical answer — that which is the 
whole can only be equal to itself. Extend the human con- 
ception so that it shall comprise all possible conceptions, 
and we have comprised in its cognizance the Absolute, the 
Infinite, the Cause, an inseparable and an all comprehensive 
entity manifested in phenomena. 
In what way “ the fundamental conceptions of rational 
Theology ” are self-destrudtive, supposing the absolute, &c., 
are the fundamental conceptions, I am at a loss to conceive ; 
but if an assumption is to be taken for a fadt, and we begin 
by a given, then we reason from the assumption, and all the 
inductions it will fairly carry are admitted with it. But 
when several things are presented, not as the constituted 
thing but as conditions of the thing, and taking each as 
such, then any hypothesis, logical or otherwise, has within 
itself the potence of its own destruction. 
We cannot reason on the absolute supposing it to be an 
ultimate conception, for when we begin to reason on it 
it is not then the absolute, but a conception of the finite, as 
are all suppositions which stretch beyond the bounds of the 
human mind. We get a conception of the oblate sphere we 
call the world by balancing fadts, by experiment, and by 
observations upon the sequences and aptitudes of natural 
things ; we go beyond, and find by the consonance of in- 
duction that an oblate solid sphere must have existed as an 
