First, the marvellous analysis by which he showed how the human intellect, on receiving the necessary stimulus, builds up the phenomenal world; and secondly, the real though unknown external world, the Ding an sich selbst, which gives this stimulus. The minds of men were attracted to the first part, and, in proportion as they fixed themselves on it, they recoiled from the second. The cry arose, There is no jenseits, no supernatural world, no Ding an sich selbst. The phenomenal world, which alone we know, is that which alone exists. Men argued: This supposed real external world is confessedly beyond the reach of our knowledge; its existence is only postulated for the sake of the supposed stimulus it gives to our intellectual faculties. But might not a deeper analysis of the principles of intelligence show that this stimulus is unnecessary; that the intelligence possesses within itself every requisite for the building up the phenomenal world. Thus the idea of a real outer basis of the phenomenal world was rejected. The phenomenal world was acknowledged to be the only reality, and the problem which the successors of Kant set for themselves was how to remodel and simplify his analysis of intellectual principles as to show that the building up of the phenomenal world is accomplished by them unaided and alone.

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This attitude of the first followers of Kant deserves our attentive consideration, for it throws a flood of light upon all that followed. It is evident that we have here the root of that disbelief in the unseen which forms such a marked feature of our present culture. Here, too, we have the very workshop in which were forged those principles of evolution and necessary law which have since been applied so remorselessly against the higher aspirations of mankind. But let us postpone for a moment the consideration of this aspect of the case, and go on with the historical statement.

Fichte was the first who set to work to remodel the analysis of Kant. Kant had traced the phenomenal world to three spheres in the human mind, viz., the sensibility, with its two forms of space and time; the intelligence, with its twelve categories; and the reason, with its three ideas. Fichte thinks the assumption of these multiform principles is unnecessary; all that he assumes is an ordinary self-consciousness, which he conceives as essentially active and consequently as needing no stimulus. The self-consciousness is essentially determined to think, and Fichte shows how, the moment it begins to think, it evolves, by a system of necessary sequence, all the categories and forms which Kant had traced to different sources, and how, by means of the productive imagination, it must build up a phenomenal world in all respects the same as what we see around us. All this ratiocination you will find in Fichte's principal work, the

Wissenschaftslehre, which I regard as a most marvellous performance. Indeed, full justice has hardly been done to him. He was speedily overshadowed by his great successors, and, his works being thrown into the background, it was forgotten how much of the foundation he had laid upon which they subsequently built.

Hardly, however, had Fichte completed his work when difficulties in the way of the sufficiency of his theory revealed themselves. If the phenomenal world is evolved out of the individual self-consciousness, there must be as many phenomenal worlds as there are selfconsciousnesses. Then, again, according to the theory, each phenomenal world being the product solely of the self-consciousness, ought to be perfectly distinct from every other phenomenal world; and yet it is a fact that my phenomenal world is to a great extent the same as yours, and more than this, that we communicate with each other upon it as upon a common ground. Besides this there was another serious difficulty, which is indeed the difficulty of all idealistic systems. If the entities which exist in the phenomenal world had only one relation-a relation, namely, to our intelligence-Fichte's theory might have been deemed sufficient; but obviously this is not the case. They are not only related to our intelligence, but they are related to each other; they act and react upon each other. The sun, for instance, rises, traverses the heavens, and sets in the west, whether I take heed to his motion or not. It was evident, therefore, that Fichte, in tracing everything to the individual self-consciousness, had made a mistake, and it is in the recognition of this mistake that we have the point of transition from Fichte to his successor, Schelling. Schelling rejected the individual self-consciousness as the basis, and sought a surer footing in the postulate of an absolute self-consciousness. The step which Schelling took was characterised as a Durchbruch, or breaking through. He broke through the bonds of the individual self-consciousness, and mounted on the wings of genius into the transcendent region of the absolute self-consciousness. According to Schelling, the phenomenal world has an existence independent of our individual self-consciousness, but not independent of the absolute self-consciousness. It is derived from the absolute selfconsciousness by a process of necessary evolution-a process which is substantially the same as that by which Fichte had derived it from the individual self-consciousness.

The salient point in regard to Schelling is that his system became distinctly a Pantheism, and as such it exercised over the minds of men a wonderful fascination. Pantheism has in it a whole world of exuberant feeling and poetry, and this new world was opened up to the mind of Europe by the brilliant genius and rich imagination of Schelling. Those who take their knowledge of Schelling's philosophy from the abstracts given in the current books can hardly conceive the

fascination which attaches to his writings. Nor did he deal only in abstract writings; his principles he carried into almost every department of human knowledge, and whatever he touched he

enriched.

Nevertheless, the same fate which had overtaken Fichte overtook also Schelling, and in an equally brief time. As I have said, he referred everything that exists to the absolute self-consciousness; but if this is so, he was bound to show how everything was derived from it by a necessary evolution. Here it was that he failed. Several wide and yawning breaches revealed themselves in his system, which all his ingenuity and energy failed to bridge over. He returned again and again to the task, but it was of no avail. The fates, or perhaps the great law of evolution, had determined that Schelling must succumb to his great successor. It was in fact at this point that Hegel took up the task. He perceived clearly that from Schelling's assumption of an absolute self-consciousness it was impossible to get the evolution of the phenomenal world. He therefore altered the fundamental assumption, and, instead of an absolute self-consciousness, assumed simply absolute thought. With this presupposition he constructed the wonderful evolution contained in his logic. Starting from the naked idea or thought of being which is equal to nothing, he showed how this empty thought, by contradicting, sublating, and differentiating itself, goes on by a ceaseless process, ever becoming richer and more concrete. When it has attained the necessary degree of consistency it suddenly projects itself and becomes the outer world of nature, and then returns to itself in the higher world of human thought and consciousness. this way Hegel explained the necessary evolution of all things. It is an explanation which may be very cogent and convincing to the inner circle of his disciples, but which to the outer world of the uninitiated is perhaps as recondite and perplexing as is the thing it is intended to explain.

In fact, the peculiarity of the Hegelian system was that it was confined to a small and very select circle of students. It could not be otherwise, owing to its intense difficulty. It may safely be affirmed that the Principia of Newton or the most abstruse calculations of the higher mathematics are mere child's play compared with the logic of Hegel; and such being the case, we naturally wonder how it ever could have attained the immense influence which it exercised over the thought of Europe. The explanation is, that the Hegelian principles, although inscrutable except to a few, were applied to almost every department of human knowledge, and not infrequently they transformed and shed a wonderful light upon them. History, science, theology, ethics, jurisprudence, were in turn remodelled according to the Hegelian ideas; and it was in this way

that the Hegelian principles gradually became acclimatised in popular thought. But this process had also its drawbacks, and, in fact, we have here the occasion that ultimately led to the downfall of the Hegelian system. Naturally those who admired Hegelian principles as applied to their own department of knowledge wished to know more of them in their origin and development. But when they turned to the logic, they met with anything rather than satisfaction. They had to face a terrible array of empty and unintelligible distinctions, and hence the cry arose, "We sought for nutriment and we are fed upon abstractions."

Another cause, too, operated powerfully. The Hegelian system among other things was applied to science, and it is but simple justice to acknowledge the great service he rendered in clearing up many scientific principles and placing them in new and striking lights. But Hegel could only deal with science as it existed in his time; he could not make new discoveries, or take into consideration discoveries that were afterwards to be made. Then, too, his system was of such a nature that it left no place for new discoveries; a new discovery would, in fact, be fatal to it as an absolute system of knowledge. Hence we can conceive the shock when in its natural progress science departed more and more from the position it occupied in the time of Hegel. There was but one conclusion to be drawn from this fact, viz., that the phenomenal world was not, as Hegelianism taught, a mere evolution of thought. Hence, towards the middle of the present century, the mind of Europe, wearied with the empty abstractions of the a priori philosophy, and convinced of the vanity of its high pretentions, turned away from it, and sought satisfaction in the more promising pastures of scientific research.

But though in one sense the downfall of this a priori philosophy was complete, in another sense it was far from complete, and this is, in fact, the salient point to which I solicit your attention. There were three principles which underlay the whole of this speculation and constituted its very essence, so to speak. They were assumed equally by every class of a priori speculators, and as self-evident truths they had been dinned and hammered into the thought of Europe for half a century. Unfortunately these principles were not given up when the speculative systems which had been their native home were discarded. They were carried over from these systems into the new study of science, where they have continued to play a most important part. These principles claim our special attention, because they constitute, in fact, the speculative basis of modern unbelief. It is to them, ultimately, that we have to trace that alienation from Christian faith which is so characteristic of the educated mind in the present day.

They may be briefly stated as follows:

First, the doctrine that there is no jenseits, no supernatural world; that the only existence is the phenomenal world which we see and feel. Second, the doctrine that everything in nature is ruled by necessary, inexorable law.

Third, the doctrine that nature is an evolution, having been evolved from some first principle or primitive state of things.

It may be that these principles are not consciously held in the naked way in which I have put them, but taken as a whole they undoubtedly constitute a mode of thought, a way of looking at things which has penetrated into every department of our modern culture. How completely subversive they are not only of Divine revelation but of all the highest hopes and aspirations of mankind is easily seen. The first of these principles subverts and destroys the doctrine of a higher world, and deprives man of every hope of existence beyond the grave. The second eliminates all miracles, all providential guidance of the world, and all answers to prayer. The third destroys belief in God and in the creation of the world, as well as belief in our own higher nature. It reduces man to the same level as any other phenomenon in nature; he is but the product of a play of forces, and ceases to exist when his bodily organisation is destroyed. It is true that these doctrines, as taught in the a priori philosophy, gave many compensations for the wholesale destruction they effected in man's highest hopes. But the case is very different when they are transferred to the domain of science. The principles do their work effectually and completely, and leave their votaries no prospect but blank, utter atheism, disbelief in everything but the visible and tangible.

But it may be asked, By what right were these principles transferred from their native home to the altogether foreign domain of science? If we were to refer the matter to a metaphysician his answer would be short and decisive. He would say, By no right at all. Rather the transferrence was made in defiance of every principle of proportion and congruity; and perhaps you will permit me briefly to point out how this is so. Take the first principle, the doctrine that there is no supernatural world. This denial was perfectly intelligible in the mouth of an a priori philosopher, because he denied the philosophical ground or basis on which the doctrine reposes, viz. the existence of an external world independent of our minds. His principle was that no world could be conceived as existing but that which is derived from our own intelligence. He rejected both the doctrine of a real external world and the doctrine of a supernatural world, and for precisely the same reason, viz. that both supposed a residuum of being lying outside the sphere of knowledge. But the denial of a supernatural world assumes a very different aspect when it is made by a man who admits the existence of an external world. Such