scending to the a posteriori argument-whereas the high pretension is, that in the light of that same principle which enables the mind to discard from all matter the property of self-existence, may it without the intervention of any derived or created thing lay immediate hold on the truth of a selfexistent God. This forms what we might call the positive part of the a priori argument. The truth is, if matter be not self-existent, because the supposition of its non-existence involves in it no felt and resistlessly felt contradiction; then the supposition of the non-existence of that which really is a self-existent Being must involve in it such a contradiction. "This necessity must," to use the language of Dr. Clarke, "force itself upon us whether we will or no, even when we are endeavouring to suppose that no such Being exists." This is the same principle on which we have animadverted already; but there appears, we think, to be a second and a distinct fallacy involved in the application of it. What is that in the whole compass of thought, whose existence must force itself upon the mind-and whose non-existence involves that contradiction which the mind with all its efforts cannot possibly admit into its belief. The answer is space and time. We can imagine matter to be swept away and the space which it occupies to be left behind. But we cannot imagine this space to be swept away. We cannot suppose either immensity or eternity to be removed out of the universe, any more than we can remove the relation of equality between twice two and four. "To suppose," he adds, "immensity removed out

of the universe or not necessarily eternal is an express contradiction." "To suppose any part of space removed, is to suppose it removed from and out of itself; and to suppose the whole to be taken away, is supposing it to be taken away from itself that is to be taken away while it still remains which is a contradiction in terms." The language of Sir Isaac Newton to the same effect is_" Moveantur partes Spatii de locis suis, et movebuntur (ut ita dicam) de seipsis." Here then is a something, if you choose thus to designate either of the elements of space or time-here is a something which fulfils what is affirmed to be the essential condition of necessary existence. Its non-existence involves a contradiction which the mind cannot possibly receive; and its existence is forced upon the mind by a necessity as strong as either any logical or any mathematical.

9. Now it is at the transition which the argument makes from the necessary existence of space and time to the necessary existence of God that we apprehend the second fallacy to lie. Eternity and immensity, it is allowed, are not substances— they are only attributes, and, incapable as they are of existing by themselves, they necessarily suppose a substantive Being in which they are inherent. "For modes and attributes," says Dr. Clarke, "exist only by the existence of the substance to which they belong." The denial then of such a Being is held to be tantamount to the denial both of infinite space and of everlasting successive duration and so such denial involves contradiction in it. It is with him a contradiction in terms to

assert no immensity and no eternity; and to sup pose that there is no Being in the universe to which these attributes or modes of existence are necessarily inherent is also a contradiction in terms. Now, it is here we think that the non-sequitur lies. We do not perceive how boundless space and boundless duration imply either a material or an immaterial substratum in which these may reside as but the modes or qualities. We can conceive unlimited space, empty and empty for ever, of all substances whether material or immaterial-and we see neither logical nor mathematical impossibility in the way of such a conception. We do not feel with Dr. Clarke that the notion of immense space as if it were absolutely nothing is an express contradiction. Nor do we feel aught to convince in the scholastic plausibility of such sentences as the following: "For nothing is that which has no properties or modes whatever. That is to say, it is that of which nothing can truly be affirmed, and of which every thing can truly be denied, which is not the case of immensity or space." In spite of this we can imagine no eternal and infinite Being in the universe-we can imagine an infinite nothing; nor do feel that in so doing, we imagine eternity and immensity removed out of the universe while they at the same time still continue there. There is nothing it appears to us in this scholastic jingle about modes and substances that leads by any firm or solid pathway to the stupendous conclusion of a God. Both Space and Time can be conceived without a substance of which they are but the attributes-nor is it at all clear that

these modes imply a substantive Being to which they belong.*-Now the main stay of the a priori argument is that Eternity and Immensity are modes and as we cannot rid ourselves of the conception of a stable existence in the modes, so neither therefore can we rid ourselves of the conception of an existent substance to which these modes belong. We repeat that we have no faith in the product of such excogitation as this—and should as little think of building upon it a system of Theism, as we should of subordinating the realities of History or Nature to the mere technology of Schoolmen.

10. However interesting, then, the modesty of Dr. Reid on the subject of the a priori argument, yet we cannot but regard the deliverance of the younger Metaphysician Thomas Brown as greatly the sounder of the two-although in it, perhaps, there is a certain air of confident temerity, especially as he only pronounces on the defects of the argument without expounding them. And if any futile or inconclusive argument have been devised for the support of religion, it is a real service to discard it from the controversy altogether. It is detaching an element of weakness from the cause. A doctrine stands all the more firm when placed on a compact and homogeneous basis-instead of resting on a pedestal which like the feet of Nebu

* Sir Isaac Newton seems to have penned the following sentences of a Scholium Generale under some such conception as this::-"Deus non eternitas et infinitas, sed eternus et infinitus; non duratio vel spatium, sed durat et adest, et existendo semper et ubique durationem et spatium, eternitatem et infinitatem constituit.

of iron.

chadnezzar's image is partly of clay and partly Let us be assured that a weak or a wrong reason is not only not an accession but is a positive mischief to the interests of truth-a mischief indeed which Dr. Brown has well adverted to in the following sentences:-" Still more superfluous must be all those reasonings with respect to the existence of the Deity, from the nature of certain conceptions of our mind, independent of the phenomena of design, which are commonly termed reasonings a priori, reasonings, that if strictly analyzed, are found to proceed on some assumption of the very truth for which they contend, and that, instead of throwing additional light on the argument for a Creator of the universe, have served only to throw on it a sort of darkness, by leading us to conceive that there must be some obscurity in truths, which could give an occasion to reasonings so obscure. God and the world which he has formed-these are our great objects. Every thing which we strive to place between these is nothing. We see the universe, and, seeing it, we believe in its Maker. It is the universe, therefore, which is our argument, and our only argument; and as it is powerful to convince us, God is, or is not, an object of our belief." And again

"The arguments commonly termed metaphysical, on this subject, I have always regarded, as absolutely void of force, unless in so far as they proceed on a tacit assumption of the physical argument, and, indeed, it seems to me no small corroborative proof of the force of this physical argument, that its remaining impression on our