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the laws of the physical exterior we can decipher the spiritual (the suo lective, or, if you please, metaphys.ral interior of the various Do lects that people the world around us.

CONCLUSION

A clear conception of the nature of knowledge, is one of the most indispensable requisites cf a sound world-conception; for knowledge—using the word in a broad sense-is the nature of mind. It is the characteristic attribute of the soul of man. If we understand what knowledge is, we know the nature of our own mentality, and what can be of greater importance to us than the fulfilment of the oid injunction INGI EATON Know thyself!

The importance of a comprehension of the innermost nature of being (which we call subjectivity is greatly exaggerated. It is frequently regarded as the object of metaphysics, and according to a fashionable mysticism claimed to be incomprehensible. If this metaphysical centre of being could be known, so the argument commonly runs, we should have the key to all the riddles of the universe. Its comprehension is regarded as a kind of philosopher's stone, and if a scientist could find the value of this x, he would be in possession of the solution of all problems. This is a great error. A misconception of that feature of existence which in living substance becomes feeling and in man blazes forth as consciousness, will throw all thought into confusion, but a right conception of it does not involve the advantage that in the future we can dispense with the drudgery of scientific investigation, as though the acquisition of further knowledge had become redundant. Faust's hope of opening channels of wisdom by magic is a mistake. The world-problem does not lie in what Schopenhauer calls the metaphysical, but it reveals itself in objective nature. There it must be sought and there alone it can be found. He who does not find the correct solution should find fault not with reality, but with himself. The world is not unintelligible, but the man who is unable to decipher its wonderful cryptography intelligent. Faust is quite conscious of the fact that his in

is

acquire genuine knowledge is his own fault. He says:

"The spirit world no closures fasten;

Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead.
Disciple up! Untiring hasten

To bathe thy breast in morning-red."

["Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen :

Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt.

Auf, bade, Schüler, unverdrossen

Die ird'sche Brust im Morgenroth."]

The elements of subjectivity, being, as it were, the substance out of which the soul has been fashioned, are the same in man as in the dust that is trodden under foot. And Christ's words are literally true when he says: "God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."

The metaphysical nucleus of reality, the in-itselfness of things and of ourselves does not contain the key to any problem either of science or philosophy. The identity which we must attribute to its nature in all its elementary forms, renders it unimportant as a factor in explanation. The diversity, however, which it exhibits in its various combinations, now as phenomena of inorganic nature; now again as the irritability of a plant, and here in us as the soul of a rational being, depends upon the forms which it assumes, and these forms become tangible, visible, and observable in the objective world. The parallelism of subjectivity and objectivity teaches us that the things-in-themselves of objects are as much combinations of the elements of the metaphysical essence of all reality, as the objects under our observation appear to our senses as combinations of material elements.

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Summa summarum: The source of knowledge is inner as well as outer experience, observation as well as introspection, but metaphysics is of no avail. Metaphysical philosophies must give way to the only true philosophy-which is the philosophy of science.

The peculiar nature and the worth of man lies not in what metaphysicians call the thing-in-itself,-granting here the propriety of the term, it lies not in the presence of any metaphysical essence, not in the subjectivity of his existence, but in the truth of the im

ages and ideas of which his soul consists. Man's soul is a description of reality sub specie aeterni; it is an image of God. God enters, as it were, in parts with every sense-impression into sentient creatures, and his likeness grows in clearness as the traces thus produced in living feelings reconstruct the World-Logos, which in man's soul appears as the divine spark called Reason. The progress of man's comprehension of natural phenomena, revealing the cosmic order of the universe and teaching the right conduct in life, is the history of God's revelation.

EDITOR.

W

THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE.

ONDERFUL indeed are the number and the variety of the

objects which nature discloses to our view, both in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath. A little reflexion will, however, show us that the things which we can either see, or of which any of our senses can inform us, must nevertheless be almost inconceivably small and unimportant in comparison with those objects in the universe which from one cause or another remain necessarily undiscernible.

It is indeed possible to demonstrate that objects do certainly exist which are not only utterly screened from view, so far as our present resources extend, but which there is not the least reason to anticipate that any future discoveries can introduce to our ken. We might illustrate this proposition from a variety of departments of nature. It is, however, my present purpose to speak only of that unseen universe, which is the most astonishing of all the many astonishing subjects which the astronomer leads us to contemplate.

The whole question as to whether an object shall be visible to us or not is largely a matter of illumination. If the object be bright enough, and if the distance at which it is situated be not too great for the degree of brightness which the object possesses, then that object will generally be visible. We should, however, provide that the sensibility of the retina to the impression of light is not to be reduced by the presence of an undue quantity of diffused light from some other source. A star is generally just visible to us at night by the unaided eye if it possesses that degree of brightness, indicated in the language of the astronomer, when he says that the star is of the sixth magnitude. If that star were moved further away then it

would presently cease to be visible to the unaided eye, though it might still be discerned with the aid of a telescope. The larger the telescope, the greater the depth to which it is able to probe into space. Indeed, it may be said that a star just visible to the unaided eye, would have to be removed to a distance about one thousand times greater, before it had ceased to be visible in the great Lick telescope, or in the great reflector of Lord Rosse at Parsonstown. Were the star to be translated ten thousand times as far as when just visible to the unaided eye, it would apparently be then utterly beyond the reach of any telescope at present existing. It seems, however, possible that even this distance might not be so great as to preclude some stars from recording their impressions in a photographic apparatus when a sufficiently long exposure has been given.

It should, however, be remembered that though in broad daylight stars shine over our head, yet we cannot in general see those stars. The reason is simply that the nerves of the retina are so strongly acted upon by the abundant floods of daylight that the twinkle of even the brightest star fails to produce any recognisable impression. No doubt stars, or at all events, the brighter stars, can be rendered visible in daylight with our telescopes. Supposing, however, that we had lived in perpetual daylight, as we might have done if it had happened that the earth turned round the sun, with the same face always directed thereto, just in the same way as the moon goes round the earth; then, if we had had no telescopes we should never, under ordinary circumstances, have seen the stars. We might indeed have occasionally glimpsed the planet Venus, but with this possible exception we should never have known anything about any other bodies in the universe, save the sun and the moon. All that glorious sidereal spectacle which is disclosed to our gaze at night, would have been utterly unknown. would have formed an invisible universe.

The starry firmament

Suppose that a being lived on a world constituted in this manner, then if the sun were to be suddenly eclipsed the whole of that universe, previously invisible and unknown, would have been instantly displayed to the astonished observer. There he would behold for

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