110 
beautiful passage, in which they speak of some Christians, in 
devotional conditions, having at last actual glimpses of the 
Unseen (p. 255, &c.). 
But the sections of this volume which call for most recogni- 
tion are some in which the Law of Continuity is by means ot 
memory carried on unto the moral future. This moral con- 
tinuity implies so much more than is said of the identity of 
“ the Ego ” (referred to so unequivocally in the new Introduc- 
tion), that it ought to be fully acknowledged. But it is here 
most specially that we should hope that our authors will 
hereafter fully think out the only logical conclusions, as to 
conscious intelligence, and a moral world. 
79. Minds, indeed, too exclusively occupied in scientific pur- 
suits are not only apt (as Sir William Hamilton said) to be 
disinclined to logical exertion, and to content themselves with 
symbols, but may even acquire an incapacity for philosophical 
ideas, and can persuade themselves to turn aside from all inves- 
tigations of the grounds of thought which precede the condi- 
tioned ; and they become involved in “ hopeless intellectual 
confusion.” They cannot conceive of a Contingency ; although 
without such a conception not only the universe, but God Him- 
self, must be regarded as necessarily and eternally fixed, as to 
every detail of act and being. If sometimes they seem to leave 
a space for the free action of an originating agent, they do so 
illogically ; not seeing that one single contingency, really such, 
is sufficient to vindicate the conception of any number of con- 
tingencies, i.e. possible events which may or may not be, and 
cannot be known beforehand in any of the modes of finite 
knowledge , though included in the Infinite. To introduce the 
element of certainty into the knowledge of the future, is at 
once, quoad hoc, to make the knowledge finite, and affirm the 
tiling known w to be no real contingency. To say “ that the 
choice oi one being is not affected by the knowledge of another, 
is true ; In t it is an evasion, because both the knowledge and the 
choice are ii every detail, f rom moment to moment, for ever fixed, 
if the hypothesis be admitted that there is no real contingency. 
No real “ contingency ” means materialistic necessity, i.e. no real 
agency; every seeming-agency being but a form of the latent 
energy of the whole necessary Universe. Now physical science 
itself is not satisfied with this. It asks for agency, it asks for 
“ Life from the Unseen.” 
80. Since then, the Law of Continuity, as already pointed 
out, becomes mechanical, without the admission of something 
more, why should not that something have a name? Clearly it 
lies beyond the visible; but it has existence, and is not only 
