action, it is said, of which we have any knowledge, is the action of mind or person, the only species of causation of which we can form a conception is the causation of will. In no case are we able to discern between two successive events in the outward world, as the falling of a spark and the explosion of gunpowder, or the taking of poison and the subsequent death of the individual, any real tie or connection. All that either our senses or the investigations of science make us acquainted with is the order of their succession. Nor are we able to conceive of any relation subsisting between them beyond that. But granting this to be a true account of the matter, does it afford any sufficient ground for the assertion that the events of the physical universe have absolutely no connection with one another; that they are wholly independent of the material masses which enter into the structure of that universe; that throughout the whole of God's creation there is no agency but that of mind,-no power but that of will? Are we to bound the actual by the narrow limits of our own knowledge, and the possible by the almost equally narrow limits of our own power of conception? Were the power of matter inherent, and its phenomena evolved by the reaction of its own elements, could we have any other or stronger evidence of the fact than we now possess, the evidence of constant, indissoluble association? In the succession of physical events, were each antecedent the true cause of its consequent, were the two connected with one another in such a manner that unless by a special interposition of Divine power, the former could not occur without being followed by the latter, should we be able with our present constitution to perceive it? Have we any faculties for the apprehension of things in themselves or in their essential relations of causes, as such? By the admission and in the language of Mr. Bowen himself, "Čause implies power or force, which is never directly perceived; but we infer that it exists because the event happens or the effect is produced." Even in the case of our own voluntary actions, from which he strangely enough supposes we not only derive the idea of cause, but pass by a mere generalization to the belief that every change must be produced by some cause-even in this case, all that we have any knowledge of is order of sequence. The motion follows the volition, but how or why we know not. We perceive no adaptedness in the one to produce the other. Indeed, the discoveries of modern physiology have shown that the connection between the two is not immediate-that it is established only through a long chain of physical antece

dents and consequents, fastened at one extremity to the volition, and terminating at the other in the motion. The volition, it is true, lies within the sphere of consciousness; regarded simply as a mental act or state, we know perfectly what it is. But, in its character as cause, we have no more knowledge of it than we have of cohesion, gravity, chemical affinity, or any other of the properties or powers of material substances. Of the mode of its connection with the first link of the chain of antecedents and consequents, through which its influence is transmitted, we are as profoundly ignorant as we are of the mode in which the successive links of that chain are connected with one another. Causation is no more a subject of consciousness in the world of mind, than it is an object of sense in the world of matter. In both cases it is revealed only through the phenomena accompanying it. Whenever or wherever these are exhibited, by the very principles of our mental constitution, we necessarily infer it. Our inability, therefore, to perceive in the outward world any true or efficient causes in their character as such-which Mr. Bowen sets forth at so great length, and which few persons who have given attention to the subject will be disposed to deny—has in reality nothing to do with the question of their existence. We have no faculties for perceiving them. Were we surrounded on every side by such causes, constituted as we are, we should be equally unable to perceive them. Were every fixed antecedent, in each one of the innumerable trains of physical events which are everywhere in progress, a true cause, as we have already said, we could have no other or stronger evidence of the fact than we now possess. Had Mr. Bowen pushed his analysis a little further back, he would have seen that all this applies equally to mind; that consciousness as well as sense takes cognizance only of phenomena; that in both cases the causes which produce the phenomena, the existences which lie behind them, are necessarily inferred, but in neither directly apprehended.

In the second place, it is affirmed that matter is wholly inert and passive, that it possesses no inherent power, and is absolutely incapable of any kind of action. How, we would ask, has this been ascertained? By what marvellous penetration into the constitution, into the very essence of things, has a knowledge of this fact been gained? Do the phenomena connected with matter indicate it? Judging from these, should we be led to such an inference? Do the explosive gases, gunpowder or steam make upon us the impression of inert substances of powerless agents, if without too great a

violation of the use of language we may employ the expression? Or, do we regard electricity and caloric as in their nature wholly passive,-capable of being acted upon, but not of themselves acting? But the power manifested by these agents, it is said, is not inherent but derived. The phenomena exhibited in connection with these, and other similar substances, are not evolved from them, but imposed upon them. They have their origin in the immediate personal agency of the Deity,-in the unceasing, universal activity of the Divine will. They are wholly incompatible with what we know of matter, and cannot be referred to it without doing violence to our rational natures. Why, we ask, cannot these phenomena be referred to matter? What do we know of it inconsistent with their manifestation? Nay, more: what do we know of matter except through the manifestation of these very phenomena ? What other grounds have we of inferring its existence even? Mr. Bowen would indeed distinguish the geometrical properties of matter and its vis-inertia or passive resistance to change, either from motion to rest or from rest to motion, from the attractive and repulsive forces with which it is endowed, and upon which its more active phenomena depend. The former he refers to the matter itself, the latter to the direct agency of the Deity. But the distinction is without foundation in nature. In the actual constitution of matter, we find the two classes of properties connected with one another in such a manner that it is impossible to separate them. The one class are immediately dependent upon and grow out of the other. Indeed Mr. Bowen himself, in another part of the work and in a different connection, admits our inability to determine what qualities are inherent in matter, and what are only manifested through it. "It is certain," he says, "that we cannot distinguish between the qualities properly belonging to it in itself and those imposed upon it, either by our faculties of observation, or by an external power." This admission goes far enough to do away all possible ground for making any such distinction as the one suggested, though not far enough for the truth. In reality, the external properties of matter are immediately dependent upon the forces acting within it, and must consequently have a like origin. If the latter be attributed to a direct exertion of the Divine power, the former must be attributed to that also. Then will there be left nothing from which we can infer the existence even of matter. On that supposition, in accordance with the Hindoo doctrine, the whole mighty fabric of the physical universe resolves itself into the Deity acting. As

we said in the beginning, idealism is the legitimate and necessary consequence of the philosophy taught in these lectures. Admit its truth, and the existence of matter becomes a gratuitous hypothesis, indicated by nothing and explaining nothing, the external world a mere metaphysical incumbrance, which, however difficult it may be to rid ourselves of it, we find no good reason for retaining. In fact, this is substantially admitted in the following passage. In quoting it, we take occasion to express our utter dissent from the doctrine contained in the first paragraph:

There can be no reasonable doubt, I think, that the sensations of an infant are not accompanied by what we call perception; that they are not referred by it to an external cause; that they give it no information at first respecting outward realities, but are to it merely so many sources of pleasure or pain. By a gradual process, that is, by induction, finding that the sensations recur in a fixed order under given circumstances, that they are wholly independent of the will, that muscular exertion can sometimes be made without restraint, and at others is checked or resisted by a foreign obstacle, the infant mind comes at last to a conception of outward things, or of existences foreign to itself.

Whether this induction is so complete that we can consider the independent existence of brute matter as proved by it, is another question. It does prove that there must be some cause of these sensations, which cause is foreign to our own minds; and this is enough to disprove the monstrous idealism of Fichte, that we create everything from ourselves, though the doctrine of Berkeley remains quite as plausible as the vulgar belief, and rests, perhaps, on a more philosophical basis. (Pp. 29, 30.)

Whether [matter] exists at all, according to the ordinary conception of it, is doubtful; and it is certain that we have no knowledge of it, that we cannot perceive it, that we cannot distinguish between the qualities properly belonging to it in itself, and those imposed upon it either by our own faculties of observation, or by an external power. (P. 123.)

Such by our author's own admission is the precarious and unsubstantial foundation upon which he rears the structure of the physical universe. Having adopted at the outset the hypothesis which refers all material phenomena to the immediate agency of Deity, we think it would have been more philosophical and in every respect better to have gone at once the whole length of idealism. In that case, whatever might have been thought of the truth of his system, he would at least have been able to preserve the virtue of consistency.. Then he would not have been under the necessity of vibrating between the two great and opposite theories of matter which have for so many ages almost equally divided the suffrages of philosophers; framing his language and accommodating his thought now to one, and now to the other; speaking of matter sometimes as a real substance, something which can be

wrought and moulded, "the crude material out of which worlds are fashioned," and sometimes as a mere idea of the human mind, necessarily imposed upon it indeed by the perceptive faculties, but without any corresponding external reality; now maintaining that it is essentially inert, destitute of all power, wholly incapable of action, and from its very nature cannot be conceived to have any part in the production of the changes which are continually transpiring around us; and now affirming that "we know nothing of it," that "we cannot perceive it," and that, "whether it exist at all, according to the ordinary conception of it, is doubtful."

But we have already commented at greater length upon Mr. Bowen's philosophical system than we intended. We hasten to a brief notice of its application to the evidences of religion. The importance which is attached to it in this connection, more particularly as offering the only conceivable and only possible ground of support to the cardinal doctrines of God's moral government and superintending providence, will be seen from the following passage. It is taken from the lecture on the characteristics of modern skepticism :

The next cause of infidelity in our own day, which I shall here notice, is the want of consistency, if not the apparent contradiction, between many persons' religious views and their scientific opinions, or their ideas of the course of nature and the operation of physical causes. There is a difficulty here in many minds, which is not the less real because it is seldom made the subject of reflection, or even recognized as an inconsistency that proves the existence of error on the one side or the other. I do not now refer to the crude and hastily formed hypotheses and generalizations in modern science, which come directly in conflict with the great truths of the being of a God and his agency in the physical universe, so far as these depend upon or are proved by material phenomena, and which have been framed, perhaps, with direct reference to such contradiction. These hypotheses have been sufficiently confuted by the progress of science itself; and the reception of them at any time being confined to a small number of persons, mostly those who are engaged in scientific pursuits, they are not to be ranked among the general causes of popular skepticism. I refer rather to the direct incompatibility between a belief in the moral government of God, and the necessary connection of physical causes with their effects. The doctrine of an immediately superintending Providence cannot be reconciled with the idea of a chain of events, each link of which is determined by an inherent necessity, growing out of its relations to those which precede and follow it in the succession. Even if the human will is admitted to be free, while everything else is guided by a secret and irresistible power, depending on the original constitution of things, man cannot be considered as the object of moral control, and all religious belief, properly so called, is mere delusion. (Pp. 210, 211.)

Religion requires us to consider ourselves as the objects of a Divine Providence, of an infinite superintending care, which orders all events for good. This doctrine is a necessary consequence of a belief in the benev