Alexander Campbell Fraser

“ It is, notwithstanding, evident that the perfect philosophy must recognise and include a body of first principles, resting on faith, by which all knowledge of things divine and human must be regulated. As, in the material world, the lever needs a fulcrum before it can work, so, in the world of thought, these mysteries are the indispensable fulcrum of intellectual exertion. To obtain a refuge from doubt, and a sure and rational foundation on which knowledge and action may be based, must always be the aim of the higher philosophy. ”

“ There are two modes of thus rising beyond the limits of the imagination in a philosophy of the universe. We may follow the course of the modern astronomy; or, we may meditate on the facts of metaphysics and speculative theology. He who studies the one, gazes on the starry heavens and ranges in thought over the distant parts of material creation, till, lost in what he observes, his astronomy seems merged in idealism. The votary of speculation, on the other hand, taking in the spiritual as well as the material world, contemplates the Human and the Divine ”

“ Faith is, on the one side, lost in the dark abyss of doubt: on the other, it evaporates in the sunny haze of the empyrean of transcendentalism. In either case, a pretended philosophy, instead of guiding the perplexed labourers who are pressing on with their work below, only adds to the fogs which already darken their atmosphere. ”

“ They are, moreover, suggested to the soul by all its most prominent objects of thought—by the starry heavens—by the infinite space in which we and they are included—by the awful eternity through which we are passing—by the consciousness of our own existence—by the revelation of Him "in whom we live and move and have our being"—by the sublime realities of a moral law, and a responsible because personal agency—and by the dark shades of guilt in which a portion, at least, of that created personal agency is involved. Of mysteries like these we cannot rid ourselves. ”

“ Every principle must be either resolvable by the understanding, or must rest on faith; and as every conceivable question may be thus carried down to faith, all knowledge runs into mystery. An adjustment of the fact of this realm of mystery, from which no effort can disconnect us, has ever been the profound difficulty with men of contemplative minds, and one which the labours of thinking men of all ages have advanced only a very few steps towards a solution. Its mal-adjustment in the philosophical system has already wrought havoc with the highest and most solemn interests of men. ”

“ That religion must be pervaded by this series of mysteries which we have endeavoured to trace, is a principle of which the cordial reception should moderate our polemical ardour with reference to all in theology that is merely human opinion, and conduct us "as little children" to that practical solution of them all, which is opened to the soul that has become "willing to do" the will of God. History, which has to record the signs of the moral disorder of man, bears the record of other irregularities, and that even in the series of natural phenomena. ”

“ We find that each member of our own race is born into the world "alienated" from God, and we are told of another race that has fallen, without hope of recovery, into the same awful habit of ungodliness. The continued existence of moral creatures in the universe has thus added another inexplicable phenomenon to the mystery of their original creation. ”

“ This last harmony links the theological with the merely philosophical part of the system of Leibnitz; and introduces us to his philosophy of religion. A question may be asked,—If the universe—moral as well as physical—is a self-regulating machine, is not the Creator seemingly excluded from the government of His creation; and, if not thus excluded, how is He related to the sin and misery which it contains? That the apparent manner of His relations to the creation should be what it is, results, he thinks, from our relative knowledge, which can never rise superior to the condition of time. ”

“ The region of a new science, or at least of a wider and better application of metaphysical and also of logical science, seems to open before us, when we contemplate in their connexion the series of events which pervade natural and supernatural theology, regarded as the science of the mutual relations of God and man.
The primary truth of theology demands the exercise of philosophical faith. The finite mind cannot grasp the full conception of the co-existence of a responsible creature with the infinite Creator. The existence of a moral creation is a fact which man cannot explain. ”

“ The mystery of sin is not to be explained by the resolution of evil into good, for sin is essentially evil. But sin is necessarily involved in the idea of this best of possible universes, which, notwithstanding its evil, it is better to translate out of the possible into the actual, than to have no universe at all. Thus, the created universe must be the harmony of one great Theocracy, expressive of the attributes of the one Perfect Being. ”

“ The evolution of the theological system is a further evolution of the mystery into which its first principle retires. As the understanding cannot embrace a reconciliation of the infinity of the divine attributes with the creation of beings free to act, and therefore responsible, neither can it devise a scheme for harmonizing with these attributes the dark history of a portion of that created agency. ”

“ The tendency of men of earnestness and reflection in this direction, depends on the maxim involved in the very act of reflecting; for the root of reflex thinking is the consciousness which we feel, that in rigorous search for truth or decisive controversy, we are called to labour for the attainment of an ultimate principle which shall either itself explain that about which we speculate, or else supply a self-evident reason that to us it is inexplicable. ”

“ The adjustment of the long-agitated controversy about the nature of Matter is of practical importance, chiefly as it is connected with the refutation of scepticism. There surely remains room for a better-defined settlement of the actual evidence of consciousness with regard to a subject which, in all ages, has tended to excite speculation, and which, since the time of Berkeley, has been regarded by acute minds as, at least, an "open question" in metaphysical science. ”

“ Since then, the principle which at first separated the schools of Locke and Leibnitz has modified the currents of thought in Britain and Germany, and is thus connected with many of those characteristics by which the British is signally distinguished from the Continental mind. Since then, too, Germany has been the centre of European speculation, and has exhibited some of the most extraordinary phenomena in the history of human thought. There, amid the successive revolutions of more than a hundred years, every abstract question has been debated that the mind of man can entertain ”

“ The whole history of the early years of Leibnitz forms a precious record of what we might call speculative experience. It reveals the self-educating genius of the really original mind, and shows a singular development of abstract thought at an age when the attention is usually engrossed with the objects of sense. ”

“ The development of his speculative genius continued to advance, and his thoughts, stirred from their lowest depths by the cycle of the sciences during that whole period, would present an exceedingly curious spectacle, if we could have these changes in the current of the soul represented to the senses. History, languages, geology, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, politics, and theology, in turn secured his attention, and his busy spirit collected the various learning of each department. ”

“ Creation must thus involve the existence of One Supreme infinite, the monas monadum, from whom all that is finite has been derived, and in whose existence it finds its complete explanation. This Supreme Substance is God. He is the fountain of all reality. The attributes of the created monads, as far as they are perfect, result from the perfection of God; as far as they are imperfect, from the necessary imperfection of the creature. ”

“ A more profound view of what is revealed to reflection, finds an infinity of things which the understanding cannot solve, and which, while not contrary to sense, are yet above sense. A love for the mystic obscurity in which this principle involves the higher truths of knowledge, may confine an enthusiastic thinker exclusively within that region of abstraction, and conduct him altogether away from sense and experience, till, lost in the supersensible forms of thought, he resolves the actual into the ideal ”

“ They fail to recognise Religion and the Church as independent powers, whose liberties are essential for the accomplishment of the ends of the Christian society. Even this philosopher seems not to have felt, that when religion becomes the slave of merely human authority, it ceases to be either the great instrument of civilisation, or the means of preparing men for full union in the City of God. ”

“ The study of the systems of Philosophy in all their variety, and of the lives and labours of various philosophers, is to be encouraged for many reasons. It supplies curious and useful thoughts, which might never otherwise have been suggested, and it also stimulates reflection in the student. The history of the erratic course which the human spirit has taken in the experience even of profound thinkers, is besides fitted to moderate dogmatism. The men of mightiest genius are found often to have fallen into the most signal errors. ”

“ Trained in the doctrines of Bacon and Locke, but receiving them into a soul that delighted to hold converse with Plato, and ignorant of the high questions agitated in Germany by his contemporary, he deduced from the principles of the English philosophy a system of idealism, which, besides its seductions for the imagination, is urged in a spirit and for a purpose that must ever render venerable among Christians, as well as illustrious among metaphysicians, the name of Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. ”

“ We fear we may not have succeeded in rendering very intelligible, and far less in rendering attractive, the nature and scope of the most comprehensive question in philosophy. After any attempted statement of it, the consequent experience of the insufficiency of the words of ordinary language for these refined purposes, must invest with interest the splendid project by Leibnitz himself of a universal language, of which the alphabet should indicate the few original ideas with which all the rest of our knowledge is connected ”

“ They result from the relation of monads, considered as co-existing or in succession; and are simply modes in which we regard the objects of our experience. Further, the elements of creation being absolutely destitute of parts and extension, cannot mutually influence one another. Inter-causation is thus excluded from the real universe, and is confined to the phenomenal, which is governed by mechanical law. Yet the universe is ideally related in the mind of God, and of each creature, in proportion as his ideas approximate to the Divine. ”

“ That philosophy has to encounter the opposition of three contrary idealistic hypotheses, according to one of which all created existence is resolved, with Leibnitz, into spiritual substances of different orders, and material phenomena are regarded as merely resulting from these immaterial elements—according to a second, the material world is conceived as a series of ideas produced immediately and in regular order by God in the minds of men—according to a third, as a group of the phenomena of our own minds, regulated by an unknown principle. ”

“ The present is a remarkable, and, indeed, anomalous historical epoch. In these islands it is, and has been since the commencement of this century, a period of rapid physical and social progress. Men have gained an increased knowledge of the laws and processes of matter, and thus the world is becoming a more convenient place of habitation. The principle of commerce has been developed to an extent unknown in the ancient world. The present revolution in the means of social intercourse and communication seems to be preparing the way for other changes, about which it is hardly safe to speculate. ”

“ The tests proposed for its extension were too vague. The effects soon became apparent. The disciples and admirers of Des Cartes maintained doctrines the most various. Malebranche could not, without the infallible Church, retain an external world. The Egoists, whose existence as a sect is, however, somewhat problematical, having declared their inability to rise beyond the first axiom of their master, rested there amid the fluctuations of a merely subjective universe. Spinoza, unable to defend, by reasoning, our faith in finite substances, absorbed mind and matter in one all-pervading Existence. ”