osition, therefore, on the ground of an insight into the nature of straight lines. We know that if they are straight, they can cross each other at most only once, and hence they can effect no inclosure how far soever they may extend. And by this word "insight" in this connection, we mean something different from what the Greek and Roman philosophers ever thought of, something different from what the Germans mean by their "auschonung," usually translated "intuition." They all, Greek, Roman, and German, alike meant, as their terms literally translated signify, an on-sight, and not an in-sight. With the Germans, sense-perception is an "auschonung," an intuition or onsight; for when we see an object we look at or upon it. And so, too, in imagination, when we do not indeed see an object, we "see how it looks," the act is 66 an auschonung," an onsight, a looking at it and contemplating it as real, and as if it were before the eyes. Hence, the German auschonung can give us no more knowledge of objects than mere sense-perception; it can help us to no assertions, which we could not have made from the mere perception of the object without any such act, which is, in fact, only an act of imagination. All this may be only Common Sense in the higher exercises of it. And if so, let us have Common Sense hereafter, and no more Philosophy. And there is reason for calling it Common Sense. It is essential to raise man above the brute, above the mere idiot. Without it, he may have the senses all complete, their action perfect and unimpaired. But without some capacity to see into things as well as to see them, man could have no science; he could not even have that share of understanding which enables him to kindle a fire-a thing which not one of the animals in the species below man has ever been able to do. Without some measure of this insight, some insight of what others intend and design to do, he could by no means coöperate with them and help them; he would not know enough to enable him to keep out of their way. In conclusion of our Article, let us make one more application. By "insight" into nature man knows that it is not self-existent and self-moved. By a like exercise of his faculties he knows that he did not create and does not now sustain it; and, moreover, that no being or number of beings like himself, in the limitation of their capacities and powers, did create, or could now sustain it, and keep it moving. The only rational inference, therefore, would be that there is One Being who did create it, and who now sustains it, and keeps it moving by His wisdom and power. We might call Him infinite and absolute or not, just according to the meaning, or no-meaning that we attach to those words. What we should know would be that He IS, that He possesses and exercises the wisdom, and the power, and the goodness which those works of His hand imply. And from this conception of Him and His attributes we should expect, as in the highest degree probable, that while His nature and attributes and the mode of His being are incomprehensible to us, He would nevertheless make such a Revelation of Himself and His will concerning us as we might need for all the purposes of holiness, happiness, and eternal life. And we should certainly expect that He would attest this Revelation, when He might make it, by miracles. All this, you will say, is but Common Sense. Of course it is. But it is the very best and highest kind of Philosophy nevertheless. It is metaphysics in the truest and purest sense. It is transcendentalism if you please, and the only kind that is anything more than the freak of an idle and wayward fancy, wandering from the domain of reality and the universe of facts, as God has made them and man has seen them, into a region of man's creation, where he encounters the obscurity, the inconsistencies, the antinomies," and the insoluble problems which always attend upon incompetency and imperfection. 66 But in order to escape these obvious conclusions of Common Sense, Philosophy has several expedients. We have spoken of two, that of the idealists and that of the sensationalists. We will notice one or two more. It is said that for aught we know, or can infer from an observation of nature, its objects and these phenomena of motion and change may have been going on forever, and so imply no creation and superintending providence. We answer (resting on the same "insight," or Common Sense) that everything in nature exists in the form of series; thus, for example, in nature every oak comes from an acorn, and inversely every acorn comes from an oak. But it is Common Sense and mathematics too, that every existing series must have a first term, and that no series can generate its own first term. Now nothing in physical science is more certain than that there was a time when there was neither oak nor acorn in this world of ours. Which was first? and how came the first term in this series of re production? Whichever may have been first, that first term had a cause and an origin out of and above the series. It may indeed sometimes happen that a term in one series is generated by another series, and so on backwards infinitely. As for example, a comet coming with one planetary system in a parabolic orbit might be so influenced at a certain point, as to move thenceforth in an elliptical orbit around our sun. In the first case the successive stages would be a series of terms making up a parabola; after the change the consecutive differentials would constitute an ellipse. But in this case the change, the origin of the first term in the second series, did not grow out of the preceding; it was caused by an influence foreign to it, which acted once, and could act but once only (in that particular way at least) as an occasional cause. If now man, for example, sprang once, and in one instance only, from some of the lower orders according to the Lamorkion and Darwinian theories, yet the production of the first man, the origin of the first term in this series, is no less a proof of the existence and activity of some Being above all series. Thus it would be if there had been no previously existing series of reproduction in the order of monkeys, or whatever other species of animals may be preferred as man's immediate progenitors. In either case the origin of a protoplastic pair in any series implies a Creator, and that Creator must be above and out of all series, and not a term in any. For the reasons just given, He must, therefore, be eternal in the only sense which we can attach to that word. He must be personal, for the first act must have proceeded from Himself alone without any concurrence of exciting or occasional causes, since there was, by the very supposition, nothing in existence but Himself, and therefore nothing to act as such a cause. Another expedient which "philosophy falsely so-called" has devised to get rid of the inference that is thus drawn, is to refer to the "forces of nature," light, heat, electricity, converting them into gods, the real demiurges of our modern polytheistic naturalism. Of these agencies in themselves we know nothing. We do not even know that they are agents. We see an object becoming warm by the influence of another, and we talk of heat. We see an object becoming visible by means of another which we call luminous, and we talk of light. We see another object exhibiting a peculiar excitement, and we talk of electricity and galvanism, as if we knew something of these agents as being more than mere modes in which these invisible objects seem obviously to act upon and influence others. It is a pure and mere act of fancy by which we create them into forces "the forces of nature,' - an act, moreover, which Common Sense, and the insight of a higher Philosophy to say nothing of the recent investigations in the purely physical sciences as exhibited by such men as Mayher and Tindall -show to be absurd, and which would be ridiculous, if it were not so mischievous in its consequences. Accept, then, this correction of our fancy, and the assertion that the "forces of nature are in themselves adequate to the production of these phenomena of change and growth, and the doctrine comes to be something like this: certain elements, as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, with others, after having remained for an eternal period inactive, aroused themselves from the past inactivity, and combined themselves into an acorn or an egg, and then by a continuance of the like activity in another form, and under other circumstances, they developed the acorn and the egg into a mature individual, capable of reproduction, and thus the series began, which has been prolonged to this day. And in this form no man of Common Sense will accept the theory. But even if he should, he is making oxygen and hydrogen his gods, making them eternal, and ascribing to them acts of personality, intelligence, wisdom, and power. He is asserting that they did once what they have never done since, and what no preceding occasion or cause could have induced them to do, since by the supposition there was no such occasion or cause. But even so, we are better off than when we talk of heat, light, etc., as "forces and "causes" in nature, for oxygen, carbon, etc., are real substantial things; whereas, heat, light, etc., are but objectified abstractions, the mere creation of the human fancy. We have gone far enough, however, for the present. We will merely add, that we think that this course of remark will satisfy all; that when we have a Philosophy, a metaphysics based upon the facts of nature and the "insight" of the Common Sense of men, we shall have one that so far from being the parent of error, the cause of unbelief and misbelief in matters of Religion, will prove a handmaid of Religion; will lead men up from the natural to the supernatural, from the study of the phenomena of the material world to a belief in the Father of spirits, and from the pur suit of things here below to the attainment through Jesus Christ and the Revelation of God's will, of Life Eternal. ART. III-JEESEH, THE GREAT PYRAMID: ITS AGE, DESIGN, AND ORIGIN. THE past is a dead thing leading through a valley of dry bones. Largely of antiquarian interest, we find it difficult to excite inquiry about its buried generations. This may be affirmed of the past in general. And yet there are periods that never expire. Perennial in being, the same yesterday and forever. One illustration of this is found in that union of the present and the past exhibited in the structure of the Great Pyramid. The age of Jeeseh is our own age. And here we indulge in no metaphor or hyperbole. The proposition is not presented as something only poetically true; for when we come to understand the age of the Great Pyramid, the declaration may appear in the main as a sober fact, and we shall feel persuaded that that age was full of our thought, and throbbing with many of the practical issues of modern life. It may also appear, that in history there are no asymptotes, and that the widest extremes never trend so far away but that they finally meet. It is indeed difficult to realize that the present has any substantial connection with that dim past of which we speak. When Egypt is the theme, History waves her magic wand, and in a moment the centuries roll back, leaving us upon the banks of the Nile in the days of the Pharaohs. The land, far and wide, is strewn with cities, towns, and villages, and teeming with a busy population. The streets are alive with trade; the placid Nile, born of the Mountains of the Moon, is flecked with light rushbuilt boats; and on every hand is seen the magnificent temple, the stately palace, the hallowed shrine, and the venerated sphinx; while beyond, along the border of the desert, the eternal pyramids heave upward their tremendous bulk, and with their summits pierce the sky. Yet in the midst of all is the grinding oppression 1 This article is based chiefly on Professor Piazzi Smith's works, "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," and "Life and Work at the Great Pyramid; " together with John Taylor's book, "The Great Pyramid; why it was built." |