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interior judgment, which is the very condition on which any 
investigation must proceed, is a preceding reality, which by 
no means depends on our understanding it : our a 'priori self, 
our permanent being, may be hidden ; but is a fact to begin 
with. Our earliest thought assumes it. It is anterior to the 
phenomenal by the very nature of the case ; and its being is 
not merely relative, for it exists prior to relation. And hence 
we must refuse the philosophy of the “ Relativity of all know- 
ledge,” and the philosophy of “ the Regulative ”; for it is a con- 
tradiction .of all metaphysics, a basing of the moral world 
upon nothing, if not also a superseding of the real by the 
phenomenal. 
We have been most explicit, we trust, in stating these four 
principles of the Christian Philosophy — the Supernatural 
beginuing, the Gradual process, the created Varieties of 
creatures and of life, and the original Supremacy of man over 
creatures, all good in their kind — man, as a distinct moral 
being nearest to the Divine; as it is elsewhere expressed, 
“ Glod made man upright,” though he has “'sought out many 
inventions.” We are not aware of any ideas of reason, or any 
facts in nature which even seem to contradict these principles. 
XIV. The point where we suppose exception will be at 
present taken lies scarcely in the first of our propo- what excep- 
sitions ; for the material beginnings of the universe 
are almost left by our popular teachers for meta- ci P lPS - 
physics to settle. The antagonism begins at the next state- 
ment, and there is a demurring to the representation we 
make that life itself is a definite creature of God, i.e., a being 
(or multitude of beings) called into existence by a Power above 
and beyond nature. Our position, of course, implies that 
where life is not, it is never known to arise from any combina- 
tions of other, that is lifeless, beings ; and we believe that 
science confessedly is with us, and so confirms the Christian 
Philosophy as.to leave it not only unassailable on its own 
ground, but unassailed on any other. 
There is, indeed, a sort of persistency in the hope and the 
hint (which the credulous and ignorant willingly take for fact) 
that science can trace life to a natural origin, that it seems 
right to repeat what the first among our men of Firgtj ag to 
science, Sir Charles Lyell, Professor Huxley, and the^be’gmning 
others, fully acknowledge thus far on this subject. ° 1 e ’ 
Their primary statements are such as the following : — 
In carbon, in hydrogen, in oxygen, and nitrogen, there is 
no life. Then, the compounds, carbonic acid, water, and 
ammonia, are lifeless ; that is to say, the union of carbon and 
