attributes, which we concede, does in no sense respond to that of three persons; because all the divine attributes are common to each of the divine persons. Morever it is only virtually real, and exists in our minds with merely a foundation in reality. Regarded in himself, since God is most simple, simplicissimus, as he must be if, as we have proved, he is most pure act,―actus purissimus,—there can be no distinction between him and his attributes, nor between one attribute and another. His attributes are himself, and in himself all his attributes are identical. He is goodness, wisdom, justice, power, &c.; and goodness, wisdom, justice, power, &c., are in him one and the same. But he being infinite, and we finite, we cannot conceive him adequately, and are obliged to conceive his attributes separately, and, in our conceptions, distinguish them both from his divine esse and from one another. This is allowable, because he eminently contains the distinctions we make, or contains himself that which equals and more than equals, all that we conceive in our separate conceptions.

But we must quicken our pace, or we shall never reach the end of our journey. "And throughout creation every existence, as made in the likeness of that Being of beings, is triune also, having an impulse of good for its motive power, a coöperative use for its ultimate destiny, and a form of order as the law of its development.' This throws some light on what has preceded, and proves that God, as well as his creatures, has, in Mr. Channing's view, an ultimate destiny, that is, beautiful joy. Who appointed to God his destiny? Does God work to realize or perfect his own beautiful joy? Do you suppose him, in the beginning, destitute of complete blessedness, and that he creates out of his own emptiness to fill up his joy, not out of his own fulness, and that his blessedness is completed or perfected in his creatures? This is what we have all along seen to be Mr. Channing's doctrine. He does not appear to be able to conceive a God perfect in himself, and creating from pure disinterestedness, for the sake, not of increasing his own joy, but of communicating his goodness and blessedness to creatures. He condemns selfishness, and yet, with an inconsistency not uncommon in system-mongers and world-reformers, makes God himself intensely, infinitely selfish, laboring only to perfect his own existence, and to fill up the measure of his own joy. He would seem, then, not to wish us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, but more perfect,

to have an altogether higher perfection, so as, by our noble and disinterested conduct, to help perfect God, and complete his "Beautiful Joy."

If every creature is made in the likeness of God, as Mr. Channing represents him, it by no means follows that every creature is triune; for according to him, as we have seen, God is not triune, since he is a totality, not a unity, a mere union or complexity of different elements. Theologians find in man, who is made to the image and likeness of God, some faint analogy to the most holy Trinity; but that every creature's existence reproduces in itself the image of the three persons of the Godhead, is a proposition the author may find it not a little difficult to prove. But letting this pass, we are unable to conceive-perhaps owing to our native and acquired dulness-how a being can be essentially constituted of an impulse, a coöperative use, and a law of development. An impulse implies some one who imparts and some one who receives it, and from both of which it is distinguishable. But who or what gives the impulse? It cannot be man himself, because the impulse is a constituent element of his nature. Who or what receives the impulse, or is moved by it! Not man, again, for he is indistinguishable from it. A cooperative use implies a thing used, distinguishable from the user, and an end to which it is used. What is the thing that is used? Not man, because he is the use,-the use being one of his constituent elements. Who is the user, or cooperator? Not man, for the same reason. What is the end to which the cooperative use is directed? Beautiful joy! But that also is à constituent element of man, without which man is not constituted, and therefore identical with the use and user. Cannot the author see, that, if he makes the three elements constitutive of the creature, he must write-nonsense? No being, conceived to contain its motive, moans and end in itself, as constitutive of its nature, can be conceived as active. The actor must be one, simple, indivisible, and the whole being must be on the side of the actor, and distinguishable from the end for which it acts. If man is divided into motive, means, and end, there is no entire man to be placed on the side of the actor, or to seek, by the means, the end. One third is detached, and set before the other two as the end; and the other two, again, are separated, and one third takes the other third as its means of gaining the first. Is this really conceivable? Can the third part of man, distinguished from

the other two thirds, be a simple, complete, active being? Or suppose Mr. Channing does not mean to separate them, -suppose he considers them united; then he must consider the whole man essentially and entirely in each of the three terms, that he is all motive, all means, all end, simultaneously and together, and therefore that man uses himself as the means to obtain himself! We have seen a young dog amuse himself running round after his own tail; but that is nothing in comparison with a man running round after himself, like one of the characters in Jean Paul Richter's Titan, who is everywhere seeking his Ich, his Ego, which he fancies he has lost.

2. "The divine idea of man is of many men made one, or, in other words, of a race unfolding, through ages, around the globe, from simple original unity into every possible variety, and thence by combination into fulfilled, composite unity." This means, we suppose, that man, properly viewed, is many men made one, or unity unfolded, in space and time, into every possible variety, and through that variety becoming completed or actualized unity. But this, if it mean any thing, must mean something which is not admissible. Mr Channing recognizes in his system no simple, original unity, from which the race can unfold into variety; for he makes man essentially the mere union of three distinguishable elements, related to each other as motive, means, and end; and he also represents God, the fountain of all being and existence, essentially composite, composed, as man, of three distinct elements, which are in like manner related to each other in him. He supposes plurality, multiplicity, in God, or first link in his series of evolutions, which is reproduced in each and every evolution or existence, and therefore denies all simple, original unity as his point of departure, whether for God or for creatures. Besides, unity cannot unfold. Simple, original unity unfolding, is a contradiction in terms. Only complexity, multiplicity, plurality, can unfold, all of which are excluded by simple unity, and, in turn, exclude it. Even if the author could, without contradicting himself, assert simple, original unity, he could not assert that the idea of man is of a race unfolding from unity. There is no difference between a unity that unfolds into variety, and no unity at all.

"And thence by combination into fulfilled, composite unity." Here is queer philosophy. The race unfolds from simple unity into every possible variety, and from variety

into fulfilled, composite unity. Unity is fulfilled in variety; that is to say, unity, considered in itself, is not actual unity, is only potential unity, and becomes actual unity only in multiplicity and composition! Unity, then, must cease to be unity in order to be unity. Our modern philosophers have made strange discoveries. "Thence by combination into fulfilled, composite unity." Composite unity! What sort of an animal is that? Why not talk of a round triangle, or a square circle? A composite unity is no unity at all, but a sheer contradiction in terms. Composition denies unity, and unity denies composition. By no conceivable combination of particulars can you obtain unity; for combination gives only a union, a whole, an aggregation, all terms which are excluded by unity, and which exclude it in turn. Mr. Channing can hardly be ignorant of this, for he has once, unless our recollection fails us, been able to distinguish between union and unity.

The contradictions and absurdities which meet us at every turn in the author, and which we grow weary of pointing out, result, we suppose, from his eclecticism, or rather syncretism, in which he includes and attempts to harmonize systems essentially incongruous and irreconcilable. He has some reminiscences of Christian theism, which he would retain and reconcile with the pantheistic conceptions he has, consciously or unconsciously, adopted; and these last he wishes to harmonize with the doctrine of progress furnished him by the dominant sentiment of the age, or modern Weltgeist, and which is his favorite doctrine, to which all in his system is subordinate. Some whom he respects advocate Christianity; others whom he respects equally as much, perhaps more, advocate pantheism; and both classesadvocate progress. He concludes, therefore, that Christian theism, German pantheism, and French socialism or progressism are, at bottom, identical, or, at least, mutually reconcilable. He throws them all into the same category, and reasons from them as if there was no fundamental difference between them, and hence the confusion and contradictory character of his thought and speech.

Christian theism asserts one God, infinitely perfect, selfexisting, eternal, independent, absolutely one and most simple, excluding from his being all potentiality, all complexity, composition, multiplicity, variety, distinction, and therefore asserts other existences, or the universe, visible or invisible, only as created by his omnipotent power out of noth

ing, or, what is the same thing, out of his own infinite fulness;-fulness, we say, not stuff, as Cousin maintains, which would imply the eternity of matter, or that God is the materia prima of the universe. Pantheism denies the creative Deity, and asserts that God is all, or the whole, and that nothing but God exists. Man and nature, as distinguished from him, are, in its view, no real existences, are nothing but the infinite fulness of his own being. The world of space and time is a mere illusion, for there are and can be no separate existences coexisting, and no succession of events. All is eternal, immovable, silent. But now comes the great difficulty. To reconcile the idea of a creative Deity, Deus creator, with the idea of an uncreative Deity,-a God who creates the heavens and the earth, and all things visible and invisible, with a God who creates, does, nothing, and is all that is or exists,-is hard enough; but to reconcile this latter idea, which denies the world of space and time, and therefore all progressibles, with the idea of universal and unlimited progress, is for Mr. Channing a still harder, as well as a more pressing, problem.

To solve these problems, the author, while he asserts the creative God, as he must in order to assert the world of space and time, quietly assumes that creative and uncreative are the same, or that creation and evolution have one and the same meaning, and that to assert a God unfolding himself in variety is the same thing as to assert a God creating the universe. This disposes of the first difficulty. He then, in order to be able to conceive of God unfolding, and to reconcile the idea of the uncreative Deity with the idea of progress, imagines multiplicity and variety in God himself; that is, in the first cause, or the first link of his series. All now is simple and easy. God contains infinite variety, which he is infinitely developing. Each evolution, since it is an evolution of God, is an image of God,-or, so to speak, God himself in miniature, God in its own sphere, and therefore contains a variety in itself, which, in its turn, it must evolve. Its evolutions, again, each in its degree, contain a variety, which also must be evolved, that is, actualized. These successive or serial evolutions are what is meant by progress. When God, as the first evolver, has evolved all his variety, actualized his entire potentiality, and each evolved existence has evolved all its variety, actualized its entire potentiality, according to the law of the series ascertained and determined by Fourier, all potentiality is actualized, and the